Over the tops of the pits we built platforms of bamboo poles, and covered them with mud and leaves, taking care to leave no traces of our work. To the building of each pit we gave a whole day of hard labor and we were constantly on the alert for fear one of the rhinoceroses might surprise us. Lookouts were already stationed to catch the sounds of the beasts as they broke through the jungle, coming to their bath.
One morning a native came running with the news that a rhinoceros was trapped. We gathered our tools and hurried off to the puddle. There, grunting and fighting, lay a two-ton rhinoceros, firmly wedged in and helpless. When he saw us, he became furious, squirming in the slime of the pit, pounding with his feet and grunting.
I divided my crew, putting half at building a cage of heavy timbers and the others at digging away the ground in front of the beast. By the time the cage was put together and bound securely with rattan, we had an incline running down to the pit, with two feet of earth walling the rhinoceros in. Then we placed skids on the incline and let the cage slide down. A native, who had been sent back to the nearest kampong, or native village, to recruit men and water-buffaloes, had soon returned with a score of other natives, driving six water-buffaloes before them. Then I went through the usual business of holding a meeting and explaining carefully, in the greatest detail, exactly what we were about to do and how we were to do it; what each man was to do and when and how. When they understood perfectly, we set about digging away the wall that separated the rhinoceros from the open end of the cage. With a little more than one foot of earth remaining, we began to prod him. The immense beast pounded his feet on the bottom of the pit, grunting and moving forward as rapidly as he could get foothold. He put his head against the wall and rooted; the wall toppled over, and he lurched out of the pit and into the cage. The natives slipped the end-bar into place.
"We began to prod the rhinoceros.... He put his head
against the wall and rooted; the wall toppled over and he
lurched out of the pit and into the cage."
The capture was finished—but not the work. A rhinoceros cannot be broken and driven through the jungle like an elephant; he must be hauled every foot of the way. With the six water-buffaloes straining and every native giving a hand, we pulled the cage up the incline and mounted it on the runners. It took a week of steady cutting to clear the way, so that we could drag the cage to the Trengganu River. There we built a heavy raft and floated the cage down to port. Another two weeks passed before we could ship the beast to Singapore, for transshipment to Perth.
I received for the animal £200, which was about one quarter of its value. But it was as much as the Perth Zoölogical Gardens could afford to pay, and I was glad to be able to put so fine a specimen into the hands of Mr. La Souef.
One day when I was busy in my animal house, Ali came to me with the message that three natives from Pontianak, Borneo, were outside. They had something important to tell me, Ali said. When they came in, I found that I knew one of them; he was an animal trader from whom I had bought some birds and monkeys. The other two were head-men from the interior of Borneo.
The headmen had gone to the trader with the story of two large orang-outangs that were terrorizing their villages, and the trader was bringing them to me for advice. We sat down in the shade and discussed the situation. The orang-outangs had run off with a young girl and had recently killed one of the men. The natives had tried repeatedly to kill them, but without success, and now they were afraid to venture into the jungle.