12 Cannibal Adventure by Willard Price

Author:Willard Price [Price, Willard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Bat for breakfast

Pavo came early the next morning, bringing something good to eat. At least he thought it was good to eat. Hal usually got the breakfast for Ted, Roger and himself. Pavo knew that this morning Hal would be in no condition to get breakfast, so he had one of his wives prepare something very special, and now he swam out to the ship towing the delicious meal on a banana leaf.

Hal was suffering from his arrow wound and must lie still. Pug, thanks to the antivenin, had almost recovered from the poisonous bite of the taipan. He was hungry. His eyes lit up with pleasure when he saw the food Pavo had brought.

Roger too had been hungry, but when he saw the breakfast he lost his appetite.

The meal that Pavo presented with such pleasure was a large broiled bat garnished with fried beetles. Captain Ted, when he saw it, exclaimed, ‘Mother of Moses!’

Pavo fortunately did not understand such talk and took it to mean that the captain was delighted.

‘I think I’ll skip breakfast,’ Roger said.

‘No you won’t,’ said Hal. ‘You would hurt Pavo’s feelings. It was very kind of him to do this for us. After all, what’s the matter with bat? We’ve eaten grasshoppers in India, python in Africa, raw fish in Japan, living oysters in America, so why not bat?’

It was no ordinary bat. It measured at least five feet across from wing tip to wing tip. Its face was enough to strike terror in the stoutest heart. Any artist wishing to paint a picture of the devil could do no better than use this face as a model.

‘Never saw anything so ugly in my life,’ Roger said.

‘And look at the size of it! It can’t be a real bat. Bats are small. It looks more like a fox that has been run over by a truck and got its face all squashed out of shape.’

Hal laughed. ‘You’re right and wrong. Wrong if you think it isn’t a real bat. It is. You’re right in thinking that it looks like a fox. In fact one of its names is “flying fox”.’

‘But foxes can’t fly.’

This one can. And the strange thing about it is that it flies with its hands, not wings.’

‘But there are the wings, plain as day.’

‘Not really wings,’ Hal said. ‘Actually hands. You can see the fingers. That webbing between the fingers makes it able to use its hands as wings. Its scientific name is Chiroptera, meaning hand-winged. It’s no bird. It’s a mammal, like you.’

‘Not like me, thank you.’

‘Inside, it’s about the same. Ages ago bats walked and never flew. But as millions of years passed they found that by flapping those webbed hands they could lift themselves from the ground. They must have liked the air better than the earth because they flew more and more instead, of walking, and now they are so used to living in the air that they can’t walk without staggering like drunken men. Come now, smile at Pavo and smile at the bat, and eat it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.