Chapter Nineteen 
MADAGASCAR (III) 
N the summer of 1939 I decided to make a quick trip alone to 
Madagascar and so complete two expeditions in a single year— 
a thing I had never done before. The underlying motive for this 
sacrifice of my usual summer holiday in England was shortage 
of cash. 
It was a sad day when I bade Delys good-by in London, for the 
thought of voyaging alone after making five collecting trips in 
her cheerful company was depressing, to say the least, though not 
so bad as it would have been could I have foreseen the future. 
Little did I know that shortly war was to be declared and that I 
would be compelled to stay in Madagascar for six long years, 
during two and a half years of this time completely cut off from 
the outside world with no money and no news of my relatives. 
Events moved swiftly when I arrived in the Great Island. I had 
been asked to look for two rare rodents for the British Museum. 
One of these, the Madagascar Gerbil—a mouse-like rodent with 
long ears, long hind feet, and a long tufted tail—was not repre- 
sented in the Museum, and was then known only by the type 
specimen in Paris. The other was the Madagascar Giant Rat, of 
which the Museum possessed only one specimen (preserved in 
alcohol), and which was thought to be extinct, as nothing had 
been heard of it for over fifty years. 
As I had planned to do a lightning trip, cramming into a couple 
of months the collection of waterfowl at Lake Alaotra and of 
various mammals, birds, and reptiles from the eastern forests, 
there was not a day to lose. My return passage had been booked by 
the Dutch Line to Durban, and from there to England by a Union 
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