The African Safari Discovery - Jeff Brown [7]
“I say! Does that boy have a flat head?” he cried as the canoe lifted onto shore.
“Hello,” said Stanley, drying his hands on his pants. “I’m Stanley.”
The man’s eyes bulged. Without another word, he turned and ran into the jungle.
“Hey!” cried Arthur. “Come back!”
“Perhaps he’s going to get us a towel,” said Mr. Lambchop.
Stanley, Arthur, and Mr. Lambchop followed a well-worn path away from the water. Soon, they came to a clearing dotted with canvas tents.
Out of the largest tent charged a very large man with a very large white mustache. Behind him shuffled the man from the shore, who appeared to be his assistant.
The large man stopped short at the sight of Stanley. He held up his hand, and his assistant walked right into it with a slap. “I’ll handle this,” the man with the mustache boomed.
Several people emerged from other tents, including a woman clutching a camera. They gathered around curiously.
The man marched up to Stanley. Without a word of greeting, he pulled out a ruler and measured the thickness of Stanley’s head. Then he carefully rapped him on the crown in four different spots, appearing to listen carefully each time. He gestured gruffly for Stanley to open his mouth. He peered inside. Finally, he tugged Stanley’s ear.
“Ouch,” said Stanley.
“Harrumph,” the man grumbled. He turned to his audience. “I hereby pronounce this scoundrel a fraud!”
The woman with the camera snapped a picture.
“I beg your pardon?” said Stanley’s father.
“Don’t be fooled,” the man said. “This boy is NOT a genuine, living, flat Homo sapiens.”
“I am, too,” protested Stanley.
“He totally is,” agreed Arthur. “You should see him rolled up.”
Mr. Lambchop was red. “Who do you think you are?” he asked the man sharply.
“I, sir, am Dr. Livingston Fallows, the world’s greatest ologist!”
“What’s an ologist?” said Arthur.
“It’s everything,” the man answered proudly. “Anthropologist, paleontologist, archaeologist, et cetera.”
“Well,” said Mr. Lambchop, “my sons and I have traveled all the way from the United States of America in order to see a flat skull that has been discovered by real scientists in this area. And I think we’d prefer not to spend another moment with a fraud like you.”
The man huffed with indignity. He pointed an enormous finger in Mr. Lambchop’s face. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw the skull!”
The crowd around them murmured.
Stanley’s heart skipped a beat. “You mean it’s here?” he said. “The flat skull is here?”
They had made it, at last.
“Please, Dr. Fallows, sir.” Stanley’s voice was shaking. “May I see the skull?”
Chapter 7
The Flat Skull
“I present to you,” thundered Dr. Fallows in the dim light of his tent, “the flat skull of Rufiji!”
Stanley, Arthur, and Mr. Lambchop all gasped.
The skull was flattened the wrong way!
Instead of being flat the way Stanley was flat—front and back—its edge was down the middle. Dr. Fallows turned the skull sideways, and Stanley could see right in one eye socket and out the other.
Nobody spoke for a long while.
Arthur shook his head. “Look at its teeth,” he said almost to himself. Stanley saw that they were very small and jagged.
“That’s not a person,” Arthur said suddenly.
“Not anymore!” beamed Dr. Fallows.
“It’s a big fish!”
At once, Stanley could see that his brother was right.
Dr. Fallows rotated the skull in his hand. Something changed in his eyes, and he swung around to his assistant. “You fool!” he cried. “Of course this is a fish! How dare you suggest otherwise!” With a grunt, he flung the skull out of the tent.
Stanley’s eyes welled up with tears, and he ran from the scene.
“Stanley!”
Mr. Lambchop and Arthur found Stanley where he had folded himself at the edge of the jungle. “Stanley, what’s wrong?”
Arthur kneeled down. “What is it, Stanley?”
Finally, Stanley lifted his wet face and wiped it with the back of his hands.
“It’s just that . . .” He let out a heavy sigh. “We came all this way, and . . . I didn’t find out anything about . . . about why I’m flat.” His voice