Cherry Ames, Jungle Nurse by Helen Wells

Author:Helen Wells
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Publishing Company
Published: 2008-03-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

The Yellow Stone

BUT CHERRY’S CURIOSITY ABOUT ED SMITH FADED AS nothing unusual happened. The days at the jungle hospital sped swiftly by. They were happy days for Cherry, filled with the sights and the sounds and the wonderfully clear sunshine of tropical Africa.

“Why do people persist in calling this Darkest Africa?” she asked Jeff late one afternoon after work, as they were strolling along the river. “I will always think of it as Brightest Africa.”

The days were filled, too, with a rewarding sense of accomplishment. All of the trypanosomiasis cases were responding to the treatment that she and Dr. Bob administered. Most of the patients that had been brought into the ward in a coma had come around nicely. Many of them were allowed out of bed to walk about in the sunlight of the compound for a little while each day. Best of all, only three new cases had developed—and they proved to be light ones that Bob’s medication had caught in time.

Chuck Warner had gone back to Nairobi two days ago to go to work on another Abercrombie assignment. But Jeff stayed on as a permanent member of the Ngogo staff. Ed Smith had also continued to hang around, snapping his cameras incessantly. “This will be the greatest African story Click has ever published,” he said to Cherry one evening. “And you are going to have a starring role in it.”

“I can do without your flattery,” Cherry thought. She still did not like Smith. Yet maybe, after all, she had jumped to some hasty conclusions about him, Cherry told herself. He did seem like a pleasant, friendly man, at least on the surface.

Then one morning Long Jack Robertson drove into the village in his safari truck. Again he brought a goodsized antelope that he said was “meat for the pot.”

“I took my people over to the Ngorongoro Crater for a couple of days,” he said at lunch. “And Mr. Porter had the time of his life. He practically worked his cameras to death.”

“I don’t wonder,” Bob said. “I remember Ngorongoro as the most fabulous place in Africa—or most likely in all the world.”

“What an odd name,” Cherry remarked. “And what makes it so fabulous?”

Long Jack looked thoughtful. “Ngorongoro is the crater of a long-dead volcano. Its walls are a thousand feet straight down, and at the bottom is a lush, level meadow that is about fifteen miles across. You get down to it from the rim by a narrow winding trail. And once you’re there, it’s like a paradise. The herds of animals have been completely cut off from the rest of the world for centuries, and the animals themselves are perfect specimens. I guess Ngorongoro is what all of Africa must have looked like before the white men and the trophy hunters swarmed in to spoil it.”

“If you and I ever do make that camera safari I was talking about,” Ed Smith said, “that’s the first place I want to go.”

“Look here,” Long Jack said, snapping his fingers, “that gives me an idea.

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