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than an elephant and brownish-grey in colour. It had a long tail like a crocodile and a long neck like a dinosaur. As it slowly turned its head to inspect the visitors Neema was astonished to see that it had a single giant horn, larger by far than the horns she had seen in pictures ofrhinos. She detected a primitive and unformed greeting emanating from the animal, which she acknowledged with a bow, but it became apparent that the bonobos were completely unaware that the creature had communicated with her.
    ‘The Greathorn uses not the common tongue,’ Jambo said quietly to Neema. As far as she was concerned the creature had just made a meaningless grunt. ‘It speaks only to the Dreadful Ones.’ The bonobos were clearly terrified of the great beast, and the entire group withdrew with Neema as soon as possible. Neema was disappointed: she wanted to see if she could speak back to the extraordinary creature, but felt she had to follow Jambo and her family. Soon they were making their way back along the side of the swamp, the bonobos occasionally casting nervous glances behind them. Whatever the animal was, thought Neema, it certainly had a fearsome reputation.
    They had travelled about a mile from the Greathorn and the chimps were looking considerably more relaxed when Jambo pointed across the grey-green water.
    ‘Lo!,’ she said, ‘the other who seeks thee comes nigh.’ Then, over the swamp came a harsh and eerie cry. Neema looked out across the forbidding quagmire to see a black creature like a giant bat come flapping slowly across the swamp. The amazing creature had membranous wings spanning about two metres and a long black beak containing rows of vicious-looking teeth. It passed close to the girl and the apes, muttering a raucous rasping sound as it passed by and disappeared across the swamp.
    ‘It’s a pterodactyl!’ Neema gasped aloud. Once again she had clearly been aware of a primitive greeting being emitted.
    ‘I think the Great Flitterkin pays thee homage,’ said Jambo. ‘I cannot be certain, for he speaks only in a strange and ancient tongue,’ she addedby way of explanation. Before Neema had recovered from the shock of seeing a creature supposed to have been extinct for millions of years, she had another surprise. This time so, apparently, did Jambo. The chimp suddenly pointed across the swamp and said:
    ‘The Ancient Ones come. I knew not that they were aware of thee’.
    Neema gazed in fascination as two massive, long-necked shapes emerged through the surface of the swamp. From her school books she knew they could only be plesiosaurs and realised that the swamp she had been brought to contained several species that had survived since prehistory.The creatures gazed in silence for a few minutes at Neema then sank below the surface once again. A massive swirl of the waters as they disappeared gave Neema some idea of the true bulk of the monsters.
    ‘It is said they speak but slowly and often not at all,’ said Jambo, ‘but they came to see thee. I have heard tell of them but never before have I seen them.’
    As they made their way back to the hut Neema wondered what she should say to her grandfather. She knew he would be particularly interested in these creatures, but could hardly admit she had travelled through the depths of the jungle to a swamp when she was meant to be sitting quietly in her hut. In the end she decided to mention only two of the animals she had seen, on the grounds that they were both species she could conceivably have seen from her observation post.
    That night she told him first about the giant horned creature. To her surprise he showed no scepticism whatsoever, only giving a smile of quiet satisfaction.
    ‘So it does exist!’ he said. ‘The BaAka pygmies in the north speak in their legends of a giant unicorn who lives in the remote swamps of Ndoki. The creature is called mokèlé-mbèmbé, which means “Theone who stops the flow of rivers” in the Lingala language. I once