Part 14 (1/2)

No.

'very well. I will trouble you for a little firewood.'

She built another bonfire, and burnt three of the remaining books in front of them and then set off back across the plain.

That night one or two curious people from the city sneaked out and sifted through the embers to see if they could salvage the odd page or two, but the fire had burnt very thoroughly and the old woman had raked the ashes. There was nothing.

Another hard winter took its toll on the city and they had a little trouble with famine and disease, but trade was good and they were in reasonably good shape again by the following summer when, once again, the old woman appeared.

'You're early this year,' they said to her.

'Less to carry,' she explained, showing them the three books she was still carrying. 'A quarter of all the knowledge and wisdom in the world. Do you want it?'

'What's the price?'

'Four sacks of gold.'

'You're completely mad, old woman. Apart from anything else our economy's going through a bit of a sticky patch at the moment. Sacks of gold are completely out of the question.'

'Firewood, please.'

'Now wait a minute,' said the people of the city, 'this isn't doing anybody any good. We've been thinking about all this and we've put together a small committee to have a look at these books of yours. Let us evaluate them for a few months, see if they're worth anything to us, and when you come back next year perhaps we can put in some kind of a reasonable offer. We are not talking sacks of gold here, though.'

The old woman shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'Bring me the firewood.'

'It'll cost you.'

'No matter,' said the woman, with a shrug. 'The books will burn quite well by themselves.'

So saying, she set about shredding two of the books into pieces which then burnt easily. She set off swiftly across the plain and left the people of the city to face another year.

She was back in the late spring.

'Just the one left,' she said, putting it down on the ground in front of her. 'So I was able to bring my own firewood.'

'How much?' said the people of the city.

'Sixteen sacks of gold.'

'We'd only budgeted for eight.'

'Take it or leave it.'

'Wait here.'

The people of the city went off into a huddle and returned half an hour later.

'Sixteen sacks is all we've got left,' they pleaded. 'Times are hard. You must leave us with something.'

The old woman just hummed to herself as she started to pile the kindling together.

'All right!' they cried at last, opened up the gates of the city and led out two oxcarts, each laden with eight sacks of gold, 'but it had better be good.'

'Thank you,' said the old woman, 'it is. And you should have seen the rest of it.'

She led the two oxcarts away across the plain with her, and left the people of the city to survive as best they could with the one remaining twelfth of all the knowledge and wisdom that had been in the world.

Mark's Last Word ...

Was this really our last chance to see these animals? Unfortunately, there are too many unknowns for there to be a simple answer. With strenuous efforts in the field, the populations of some have actually begun to rise. But it is clear that if those efforts were suspended for a moment, the kakapos, the Yangtze river dolphins, the northern white rhinos and many others would vanish almost immediately.

Not that a large population necessarily guarantees an animal's future survival, as experience has shown many times in the past. The most famous example is the North American pa.s.senger pigeon, which was once the commonest bird that ever lived on earth. Yet it was hunted to extinction in little more than fifty years. We didn't learn any lessons from that experience: ten years ago, there were 1.3 million elephants in Africa, but so many have been killed by poachers that today no more than 600,000 are left.

On the other hand, even the smallest populations can be brought back from the brink. Juan Fernandez fur seal numbers dropped from millions to fewer than one hundred by 1965; today, there are three thousand. And in New Zealand in 1978, the population of Chatham island robins was down to one pregnant female, but the dedication of Don Merton and his team saved the species from extinction and there are now more than fifty.