Books: Coexistence with Giants

BETWEEN THE ELEPHANT’S EYES!, by Colonel Robert L. Scott Jr. (243 pp.; Dodd, Mead; $3.75).

Colonel Scott, who told in his wartime bestseller, God Is My Co-Pilot, how he bagged Japanese planes now has spun an ingratiating yarn about how he bagged African big game. After dispatching the usual lion, leopard and elephant, Scott tracked Samburu, an almost legendary six-ton, ancient bull elephant that glides on noiseless, 28-inch footpads. Once, floundering out of a river, Hunter Scott suddenly came upon the huge-tusked giant and shouldered his rifle, only to find the sights waterclogged. By sliding back into the river, he sought to escape the shrieking charge. The monster, possibly distracted by Scott’s Borana tracker, turned aside. Scott finally crept close enough to aim between the elephant’s eyes. But his admiration for the handsome old tusker dulled his urge to kill. He shot high, the old bull crashed off, and Colonel Scott returned to the States, well content that the big one got away.

NORTH TO DANGER, by Virgil Burford as told to Walt Morey (254 pp.; John Day $3.75) makes a fine companion piece to Scott’s elephant adventure. Diver Burford spent years in Alaska, mostly pirating salmon from cannery-owned traps or diving to the ocean floor to mend the same traps -amidst sharks and 20-foot octopuses. Once Burford was manning the airline on board ship when another diver in the water below rashly tried to spear an octopus. A hairy tentacle shot out, and for three hours the diver (Scotty Evans by name) was caught 70 feet down in an inhuman tug-of-war between the octopus, which tried to drag him down, and Burford, who tried to haul him up. Finally, at the risk of splitting Evans in two, Burford started the boat to pull Evans loose. Then “the ugly, pear-shaped body of a giant octopus [appeared]. He was perched atop the [diver’s] helmet, all eight tentacles about Evans’ body.” Burford slammed a pike pole through the creature’s head and pulled Evans aboard. The great thing, Burford decided, is to avoid 1) panicking, 2) provoking the creatures. On those terms, he says, divers and octopuses can coexist.