happened to be visiting Sumatra and, using all his influence, persuaded this powerful shaman (for a substantial consignment of rare bird feathers) to travel across the islands on a trading
prahu
and visit me. So there was I, suffering dysentery and a high fever, sweltering in that damn palm hut, when this kindly native shows up. I barely registered his presence at first. I recall a happy, dusky fellow patting me on the shoulder, allowing some sweat from my brow to trickle into a tiny clay pot he kept strung around his neck. My native visitor lost no time in assessing my condition and it was lucky he acted so promptly. From beneath his shawl he drew out a bundle of brittle old bones wrapped in the stiffened, mummified hide of some long dead animal. A horribly squashed head, large furry ears, a compressed snarling snout, the vilest looking, longest and sharpest incisors I ever saw. The acute smell of the matted fur, the leathery skin, repulsed me.
‘“Take it away,” I exclaimed, more dead than alive. “Take the damn thing away and burn it.” The native found my feverish ranting highly amusing and chuckled merrily, once more patting me on the shoulder and emitting a
chuk-chuk-chuk, chuk-chuk-chuk
from between pursed lips, quickly followed by a peculiar keening noise such as a rodent makes, which seemed to soothe away my fevered thoughts and calm my inner being wonderfully. I slept soundly and deeply for the first time in weeks, awaking now and then to find my new friend, my surrogate mother if you will, squatted on his haunches, busily occupied with pestle and mortar, grinding bony fragments from that awful emasculated creature into a fine power which he then placed in a jar and mixed with a quantity of blood drawn by hideous slug-like leeches cleaving to my inner thigh, to form a mash to which he added water.
‘The shaman would occasionally allow me a sip of this potion, else feed me slices of a delicious fruit entirely unknown to me.’
‘This animal – would you classify it as a rat?’
‘Why yes, Mr Holmes, a giant tree-rat native only to Sumatra, a species rare and long extinct, an exotic specimen. I grant you that if I had been in my right senses and able to think straight, and record jottings in my journal of travels properly, or even write a paper on it, I might have regarded the specimen as a valuable link in the evolutionary chain. At the time my dear friend, Charles Darwin, was as you know busy embarking upon his great work
On the Origin of Species
, and perhaps if I had been more my old self I would have drawn his attention to the giant Indonesian tree-rat earlier. As it was, I loathed the sight of the filthy-smelling vermin. However, gentlemen, when it came time for Samu the shaman to leave, and I was fully recovered, he left the skin and bones for me and I had not the heart to throw them out or destroy them. So Samu, that dear, beloved companion of mine for so long, left me the tree-rat remains as a present – a gift to recall our association – and they got placed in a bamboo crate and were all but forgotten, until my eventual return to these shores. It was only when I began to classify and label my finds back in London, and by this time I was a happily married man, that the old bones, wrapped in animal hide, once more came to prominence. I recall my darling wife found the items stuffed behind one of my portmanteaux. She picked up the rolled-up carcass of matted hair and calcified bone, commenting about the awful snout and teeth the creature possessed. She said, “I don’t care if it’s a rare Sumatran tree rat, Alfred, for goodness sake get rid of it. The old skin and bone pongs to high heaven and should be heaped on the bonfire, I don’t want it in the house. I dread to think what dormant mites and ticks it is host to.”
‘Of course I did not even then want to destroy the specimen so we contacted Charles Darwin and his wife and they agreed to take it off my hands.’
‘Now we come to the
prahu
and visit me. So there was I, suffering dysentery and a high fever, sweltering in that damn palm hut, when this kindly native shows up. I barely registered his presence at first. I recall a happy, dusky fellow patting me on the shoulder, allowing some sweat from my brow to trickle into a tiny clay pot he kept strung around his neck. My native visitor lost no time in assessing my condition and it was lucky he acted so promptly. From beneath his shawl he drew out a bundle of brittle old bones wrapped in the stiffened, mummified hide of some long dead animal. A horribly squashed head, large furry ears, a compressed snarling snout, the vilest looking, longest and sharpest incisors I ever saw. The acute smell of the matted fur, the leathery skin, repulsed me.
‘“Take it away,” I exclaimed, more dead than alive. “Take the damn thing away and burn it.” The native found my feverish ranting highly amusing and chuckled merrily, once more patting me on the shoulder and emitting a
chuk-chuk-chuk, chuk-chuk-chuk
from between pursed lips, quickly followed by a peculiar keening noise such as a rodent makes, which seemed to soothe away my fevered thoughts and calm my inner being wonderfully. I slept soundly and deeply for the first time in weeks, awaking now and then to find my new friend, my surrogate mother if you will, squatted on his haunches, busily occupied with pestle and mortar, grinding bony fragments from that awful emasculated creature into a fine power which he then placed in a jar and mixed with a quantity of blood drawn by hideous slug-like leeches cleaving to my inner thigh, to form a mash to which he added water.
‘The shaman would occasionally allow me a sip of this potion, else feed me slices of a delicious fruit entirely unknown to me.’
‘This animal – would you classify it as a rat?’
‘Why yes, Mr Holmes, a giant tree-rat native only to Sumatra, a species rare and long extinct, an exotic specimen. I grant you that if I had been in my right senses and able to think straight, and record jottings in my journal of travels properly, or even write a paper on it, I might have regarded the specimen as a valuable link in the evolutionary chain. At the time my dear friend, Charles Darwin, was as you know busy embarking upon his great work
On the Origin of Species
, and perhaps if I had been more my old self I would have drawn his attention to the giant Indonesian tree-rat earlier. As it was, I loathed the sight of the filthy-smelling vermin. However, gentlemen, when it came time for Samu the shaman to leave, and I was fully recovered, he left the skin and bones for me and I had not the heart to throw them out or destroy them. So Samu, that dear, beloved companion of mine for so long, left me the tree-rat remains as a present – a gift to recall our association – and they got placed in a bamboo crate and were all but forgotten, until my eventual return to these shores. It was only when I began to classify and label my finds back in London, and by this time I was a happily married man, that the old bones, wrapped in animal hide, once more came to prominence. I recall my darling wife found the items stuffed behind one of my portmanteaux. She picked up the rolled-up carcass of matted hair and calcified bone, commenting about the awful snout and teeth the creature possessed. She said, “I don’t care if it’s a rare Sumatran tree rat, Alfred, for goodness sake get rid of it. The old skin and bone pongs to high heaven and should be heaped on the bonfire, I don’t want it in the house. I dread to think what dormant mites and ticks it is host to.”
‘Of course I did not even then want to destroy the specimen so we contacted Charles Darwin and his wife and they agreed to take it off my hands.’
‘Now we come to the
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