by Paul Twivy
‘You lot look bleary-eyed,’ Darius said.
‘My mind woke me up early as usual,’ Joe said.
‘Joe’s mind then woke me up early as usual,’ Freddie added.
‘I’ve been awake for hours because of the dawn chorus,’ said Hannah. ‘Why are the birds so noisy at sunrise?’
Ace stopped cleaning his binoculars to answer.
‘You need to think of the bush as a twenty-four-hour survival course. Different animals are stressed at different times,’ he said. ‘Many predators– the cats, hunting dogs, hyenas, for example – are most active at night when it’s cool and they are less visible. Birds are therefore most in danger at night. Come the dawn, they celebrate being safe by singing.’
‘As we all should,’ Ilana pointed out.
‘We should,’ said Ace. ‘However, as the birds relax, so others get stressed. The insects hide at dawn because the birds can now see them. The fish swim deeper in the river to avoid being caught by the birds. At dawn, the leopard and the wild dogs are active, and so the kudu and eland and baby elephants are stressed. And, so it goes on.’
‘If you look at elephants when they are under stress, you will see a dark mark below their ears. But most anxiety runs under the skin…as with humans,’ Basarwa added.
‘I’ll never look at the bush in the same way again,’ Freddie said.
‘We are at the top of the food chain. Think how stressed you would feel if you were in the middle!’ Ace pointed out.
After breakfast, they were ready to set off from the camp.
Ace and Basarwa gave them all a safety briefing. They both spoke softly but firmly.
‘Tracking on foot can be dangerous,’ Basarwa said.
Clara clung closer to Anne.
‘Are you sure Clara’s all-right to come?’ Basarwa asked.
‘She’s braver than all of us,’ Anne replied, hoping this would bolster her youngest child, which it did.
‘We walk in single file because if we encounter a dangerous animal, it will see one or two of us at most, not a whole pack of us,’ Basarwa continued. ‘Seeing all of us at once would throw the animal into a panic, making it more likely to attack. So, we trick them into thinking we’re singular.’
Ace took up the theme.
‘I will go in front and Basarwa at the back. Because they are alert to our voices, we must keep talking to a minimum. Cats can rotate their ears one hundred and eighty degrees, remember that. Instead, we will use signs.’
The five immediately thought of Namib, their own secret language, which included signing.
‘If I put my hand up like this…’
He signalled like the Pope giving a blessing with one hand.
‘It means we must stop and observe whether there is any danger. If I make a fist…’
His arm shot up like a black rights activist, fist pumping.
‘It means we have a dangerous animal close. In which case you must freeze. Is that clear?’
The nods were solemn.
‘What if our instinct is to run?’ Joe asked, voicing the turmoil churning in all of them.
‘Everyone’s instinct is to run,’ Basarwa answered. ‘However, it is exactly what you must not do. If you run from a lion or leopard, even an elephant that’s threatening to charge, they are likely to chase and kill you. Whatever you are feeling inside, you stand your ground, stare them in the eyes and slowly retreat…’
‘And hope they’ve just had a good meal,’ Freddie added.
Laughter punctuated their fear.
‘Are you carrying guns?’ Li asked.
‘No!’ Ace’s answer was quiet but defiant. ‘The best protection we have against animals is respect for them. Knowledge and a calm head also help. We have a sound-blaster and knives if we really need them.’
The adventure in their heads was rapidly being re-shaped into a harsher reality: the reality of being the hunted, not just the hunter. The fear of being prey seeped into their reptilian brains and nervous systems and took hold.
Joe pondered whether ‘being prey’ and ‘to pray’ were similar for a reason.
‘Remember,’ Ace said, ‘that even a lion can be confronted. Everything runs from the lion. So, if you don’t run, it will force the lion to re-think. “What is this creature that doesn’t run from me? Perhaps I need to run from it!”. It’s like all courage: it’s the resolve not to fear that saves us.’
Barbara found herself somewhat in awe of her guide. Ace was tall, well over 6 foot, and more like a Maasai than his fellow countrymen. He stood totally upright without it appearing military or forced. His face was bony and handsome, edged with a carefully trimmed beard. Whilst the bush was clearly his domain, his manner had a sophistication wholly lacking in Basarwa. For all their alpha male posturing, no other man she knew had this certainty, this core ‘maleness’ that didn’t need to protest too much.
After a few more nervy questions, they set off single file, each with binoculars, a rucksack, water bottles and a determination not to fear.
Li carried a giant rucksack for the ‘radiation suits.’ Darius had rope ladders, rope, pegs and crampons in canvas bags over his shoulders. Thank God, he’d inherited his father’s strong back. He and Ace carried the winch between them. Anne carried the medical kits in a bag slung diagonally across her chest.
After twenty minutes or so, they stopped by some animal tracks. Ace and Basarwa knelt to examine, Ben hovering behind them.
‘A leopard has passed here recently, heading North,’ Ace concluded.
‘How can you tell it’s recent?’ Joe asked, fascinated by their skill.
‘The outline of the tracks is still sharp,’ Ace responded, happy to be asked. ‘The wind hasn’t loosened or disturbed them. If they were covered by insect tracks, we’d know they’d been made last night because, as I explained, insects are active at night.’
Joe loved the detail of their logic.
‘We need to be quiet now,’ Basarwa counselled.
Clara put her finger to her lips and started to giggle, largely from nerves. Freddie took her hand and frowned to control her.
There was a rustling ahead. Ace signalled to halt. Through her binoculars, Selima caught a glimpse of the leopard. She passed on the agreed, tapping signal from shoulder to shoulder, to the front of the line where Ace acknowledged her. He then checked in his binoculars and signalled to move slowly ahead.
For several hundred, short-breathed, metres, they tracked the leopard through thickets, seeing his fur ripple then disappear, repeatedly. Every twig-snap wrenched their heads one way or the other. Fairly close by, they could see a herd of elephants, but they were grazing peacefully. At one point, a young bull raised his trunk high and curvy in the air, taking on the appearance of a giant, ungainly teapot.
‘He can smell us,’ Basarwa whispered.
The bracken and thickets thinned, and they found themselves in a large clearing. Trees in the distance shimmered, touched by the morning breeze. The only sound was the swish of the elephants cleaning the sand off roots in the water before eating them. It was strangely like the sound of washing-up and might have been comforting and domestic in other circumstances. As they entered the clearing, they froze.
‘Now that is something I’ve never seen before,’ Ace muttered.
The Golden Leopard was walking slowly and majestically, flanked on both sides by a cheetah. Such was their elegance, they could have been processing down the aisle of an ancient cathedral, rather than a scrubby bush-clearing dotted with dead branches. The bush often had the appearance of a recycling centre for Nature, in which discarded items were slowly re-purposed and nothing went to waste.
One of the cheetahs turned on hearing them. The early morning light flashed across its irises.
The three cats continued, on their steady path, rising up a gentle hill to its brow. The Go
lden Leopard then turned and gazed intently at them, as if searching each individual face for its readiness, before proceeding on its way. It seemed to almost be handing over a baton of responsibility. This was a feeling they all had, but they didn’t articulate it until months later, for fear of sounding foolish.
The three cats disappeared slowly as they descended the far-side of the hill, their muscular shoulders flexing, lowering and glowing in the sun.
They followed cautiously at first, Ace and Basarwa leading, and Darius offering to take the rear to help the trackers. Ahead of them rang the ‘alarm-calls’ of birds, spreading like beacons. They were triggered by the three advancing cats. The sound rose to a cacophony as they approached the brow of the hill.
They were so absorbed they broke the single file code, walking forward together, like a platoon entering a battle. The young ones interlocked arms. They were so engrossed that only Basarwa checked what was behind them. He learned to do it obsessively, like a driver checking his wing-mirrors.
Ace signalled to stop. He took his binoculars and scanned the trees. Basarwa and Darius did the same. He found the leopard and two cheetahs on the low-lying branches of an acacia tree. Their postures were relaxed if attentive. Ace sensed he could trust them, for now anyway.
‘Move forward slowly,’ he counselled. They walked in step, examining the ground in front of them carefully. Li checked the Geiger counters. The readings had suddenly shot up, edging the red.
‘Radiation is very high here. We could be close to something,’ he messaged.
They felt like a police force scouring for murder clues on some barren, murder-cursed heath.
Ralph’s left foot suddenly disappeared beneath him, throwing him off balance. Li and Darius grabbed him as he fell and hauled him back up.
‘Stop!’ Basarwa called. ‘Move back a couple of feet.’
They shuffled back like soldiers adjusting their positions in a parade.
The two Bushmen used their long walking-staffs to test the ground ahead. One punctured the undergrowth and threatened to disappear, like a punt pole plummeting in deep water.
‘There is a concealed entrance here,’ Ace said. He, Darius, Ben and Basarwa spread out, constantly prodding, testing the ground. They traced the perimeters of a covering with sticks and staffs whilst the others held back and watched. Soon they’d traced and marked its edges. It measured roughly four metres by three.
‘We need to find a way to cut and lift the covering,’ Darius announced. ‘Can everyone gather some fallen branches – strong ones. We need them as levers.’
‘No-one stray too far, please,’ Basarwa instructed. ‘And don’t go anywhere near the edges we’ve marked. We don’t know how deep it is beneath that covering.’
Because the elephants had stripped them, many trees had died in the vicinity and broken branches were plentiful. They slotted the biggest branches systematically under three sides of the covering’s perimeter, their bases disappearing into the ground, as they penetrated the space beneath the covering. They were careful to keep the angle of the branches shallow to stop them falling in. Then they spaced themselves evenly along the three sides, each taking a branch as a lever. Freddie and Clara did theirs together.
‘We’ll use the fourth side as a hinge,’ Ace instructed. ‘On the count of three, lever the branches upwards but be careful to lean backwards. Otherwise, you might tumble in.’
‘One, two, three!’
Plants were uprooted, roots stretched and snatched, grasses tore. They manage to lift the covering by almost a foot. It was clearly man-made not just a progressive build-up of fallen trees. Branches had been woven into a lattice and then bound with ropes, many of them now rotting. It had the thorough design of something military.
‘Hold it there if you can!’ Basarwa instructed. ‘Here hold mine,’ he said to Darius. Then he scampered round the perimeter, using all the skills he had honed in the Augustineum gardens, to cut stubborn roots and plants with his Bowie knife and a small machete. It was like releasing the guy ropes on a hot air balloon. The matted covering lifted higher as he cut his way round the edges.
The men ran to the longer, front side to maximise leverage and to lift the covering like a giant trap door, pushing it back on its ‘hinge’.
‘Let’s get it upright to ninety degrees and then push it over on to its back if we can,’ Li suggested.
They managed, despite its stubborn weight, to get it vertical so that a dark well appeared underneath it, seemingly sucking in its first sunshine and air for years like a rasping throat. The fourth side - acting as the ‘hinge’ - started to tear under the strain.
‘Wait, wait!’ screamed Darius. ‘It’s going to fall into the shaft and block it completely if we’re not careful. Just let it lower a little for now.’
He ran to his canvas bags and pulled out ropes, pegs and rings.
Then he and Ralph pegged rings on to the top edges of the ‘lid’ and tied ropes to them.
‘It looks like a giant spider’s nest opening,’ Joe observed.
‘Let’s hope there’s no funnel-web that big!’ Freddie added.
‘I knew my father’s knot-training would serve me well one day,’ Ralph said. He felt exhilarated by the challenge. At this moment he silently vowed he would never return to a desk.
Four of them pulled on the ropes. It looked like a tug of war with the landscape.
The weight of the covering was immense, and the hinge started to tear, threatening to give way completely. Straining every sinew and digging their feet ever deeper and steeper into the ground, they managed to pull the covering backwards and away from the well down which it threatened to plunge. It fell on its back with a huge cloud of dust and soil, leaving them spluttering.
They all instinctively shrunk back from the well that had been revealed. It gaped like a soil throat.
‘Don’t go too close to the edge please,’ Anne called out.
Ace, Darius and Basarwa tiptoed as close as they dare, testing the ground in front of them for firmness. Selima bellowed into the pit to hear if there was an echo. Instead the well swallowed her cry. Her voice was stolen underground.
Darius and Ace threw in stones and listened.
‘No splash,’ Li said. ‘It’s a dry pit. Above the watershed.’
A beeping sound rang out insistently from his belt. He removed a vibrating Geiger counter and looked again at the readings.
‘We’re going to need the radiation suits. Whatever’s down there is emitting strongly. We can’t take any chances.’
Li unpacked the radiation suits and they all donned them. Thirteen figures stood in snow-white suits. It was suddenly as if a nuclear laboratory had opened in the middle of the bush.
‘Keep the headgear on, but unzip the top of the suit, to the waist. Otherwise, you’re going to boil as the sun gets higher,’ Li advised.
They shone the most powerful torches down into the shaft. Heavier stones were thrown in to judge depth and the well flooring.
‘You hear that?’ Ben asked. ‘It’s rock at the bottom not soil. I suspect it’s a cave.’
After 15 minutes, Darius had firmly staked a rope ladder to the ground, rolling on a few boulders to secure it further. He threw its unfurling length down the side of the shaft. He was adamant that he should descend first. He zipped his radiation suit up to his neck, donned the white hood and sealed it around his neck and shoulder. He pulled on a safety harness and switched on his head torch.
Ilana felt panicky but knew she had to hide it for Selima’s sake.
Ace and Basarwa attached climbing ropes with clips to his harness and he slowly descended the ladder, facing the wall of the shaft.
‘Darius, wait!’ Freddie called. ‘There’s a Secretary Bird. We’re all going to be safe.’
Sure enough, there it was, its upper half like a bird of prey but its lower half comi
cal: black pantaloons on the upper half of its legs and white sticks underneath. The upper legs and body leaned forward but the lower legs leaned backwards, creating a curious right-angle and a comical walk. Suddenly it took flight and then swooped low, picking up a sidewinder adder in its talons and carrying it like a dangling question-mark in mid-air.
Darius smiled at his lucky talisman and disappeared beneath the surface.
‘Darius? Darius?’
Ten minutes had elapsed since Darius was presumed to have reached the bottom. There was no reply to their shouts down the shaft. The rope ladder was dangling loose, as was the rope attached to his harness, so they knew he’d either fallen or stepped off it.
‘I’m going down,’ Ilana said, unable to take the uncertainty any longer. Hannah was hugging Selima who was stiff with fear for her father.
‘No, let me go,’ Li said. ‘I’ve spent half my working life underground.’
Li strapped on a harness, was attached to the rope and descended carefully. As he got lower, he could see the faint glimmer of a light beneath him: Darius’s head torch he presumed. There was a curious noise. It was indeterminate, like an elusive butterfly of faint sounds.
He stepped off the ladder, worried by the absence of movement or a voice. He found Darius curled in a foetal position, sobbing uncontrollably. It had been barely audible through his head-mask until Li got close to him. He cupped his hands over Darius’s to comfort him and shuddered at their touch. They were clammy and cold.
‘Darius, what’s happened?’
He turned his head-torch slightly to the right and then he knew.
Lying next to Darius was an outstretched and badly contorted skeleton. In its sunken pelvis lay a rusted torch, a knife and the rotting remnants of a belt.
‘Darius?’
‘It’s my father,’ he sobbed. ‘I recognise his belt and knife. He must have fallen down the shaft. He always was clumsy. A clumsy, rough, bloody farmer.’ He wept uncontrollably. Telling Li had crystallised his pain.
Li embraced Darius, trying to hug away the pain. The ability to heal with touch was severely hampered by the radiation suits, but both the love and the comfort it provided were palpable enough.