He turned to the A.D.C.
‘Well, if the guns are ready, we might as well be moving off. I take it you’ve arranged for bearers? It’s bound to be heavy going once we reach the swamp.’
The native guides were still resting when the Governor’s party came upon them. In the shade cast by one of the larger trucks, they were sitting in a row with their knees drawn up to their chins like dysentery-patients. But they appeared to be comfortable enough. All five were sleeping soundly, oblivious of the cloud of flies that was swishing round them.
It was not so much the men themselves, Harold discovered, as their anointment that acted as a fly-attractor. Before setting out, they had crowned themselves with pancakes of fresh cow-dung.
Sir Gardnor and the A.D.C. knew enough to keep to windward of them.
‘Not that it hasn’t got its uses,’ Sir Gardnor observed when Harold had caught up with him. ‘It kills the human scent you understand. It’s strange, isn’t it, that animals’—a particularly pungent blast from the leader had just been wafted across to them—’should prefer that to the smell of you and me?’
It was a good mile to the swamp that they were making for. Seen through the heat-haze, it had looked nearer; a mere two hundred yards, or so. And head held high and shoulders back, Sir Gardnor was striding out. He was nearly a foot taller than the A.D.C; in shorts and bush-shirt, he looked like the Chief Scout surrogate.
It occurred to Harold as he followed up the rear how magnificently Sir Gardnor always fitted any part: in full ceremonial dress with the plumed hat and tassels on his sword, perfect; in Council, dressed in a white suit that somehow or other never got a stain or a smudge upon it, perfect again; in faded khaki and a shapeless canvas hat, equally perfect.
Sir Gardnor turned his head for a moment.
‘We’ll have to decide what rifle to give you,’ he said. ‘You can take your choice really. There’s the Purdey—but, frankly, I think it’s a bit too good for you. There’s the Holland and Holland, but you may find it rather long. I generally use it myself. And then there’s the Winchester. You ought to get along all right with that. It’s a good piece. What do you say, Tony?’
The A.D.C. agreed politely: he left the impression that, if he had been measuring up Harold for safari, he would have fitted him up with the Winchester every time.
‘And you will be using your Italian one, I suppose,’ Sir Gardnor remarked. ‘If it suits you, you’re quite right to stick to it, of course. I’ve never really liked any Italian gunsmith. Opera, yes; but I’ve always felt that the Italians could afford to leave fire-arms to other people.’
But by now they had reached the first of the pools, and the guides were beginning to fan out into a shallow crescent. There was no one in charge, no command spoken. It was simply that they knew. Inside the swamp there was something living, and it was their business to see that it got itself killed. The size of their tip depended on it.
And they had speeded up now. The crouched-up invalids beside the lorry had suddenly become hunters. On their long legs, and with their spears trailing after them, they covered the rough ground as though it had been a race track. When they came to an obstacle they cleared it, keeping low like hurdlers.
Down by the swamp the ground was soft like sponge-cake. Every step broke the surface, and the hollow that remained filled itself immediately with thick rust-coloured water.
Sir Gardnor looked down at Harold’s shoes.
‘You’re wearing the wrong kind of footgear,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘Someone should have warned you.’
They were up to their ankles by now and, every moment, they were going in deeper. The A.D.C. was already in it up to his knees. Sir Gardnor, however, appeared hardly to have noticed. He might have lived his whole life half water-logged, he was enjoying himself so much. Chin thrust out, he moved purposefully forward, not forgetting that it was an instruction-course as well as an expedition.
‘Remember to keep it up,’ he told Harold over his shoulder. ‘A wet gun’s always a dangerous gun. And if you get any leeches on your legs don’t start trying to pull them off. You’ll only tear yourself. Salt’s the thing. We’ll send for the cook when we get back.’
They were passing along an avenue between the reed-beds. Ahead of them lay a small island where the rushes were trampled underfoot and matted. Sir Gardnor made for it.
‘This,’ he announced, ‘is where we take up our positions. If there’s anything there, those fellows will drive it out this way. They looked quite reliable to me. Rather good types, in fact. Not the slightest trace of yaws.’
Sir Gardnor inspected Harold’s rifle, as though expecting to find fault with it, and then passed it as satisfactory.
‘Well, there you are,’ he said. ‘It’s entirely up to you now. You won’t do anything foolish, will you?’
He turned to the A.D.C.
‘We might as well split up, I suppose. I think I can safely leave you to take care of yourself, can’t I? If you move over and cover that lagoon, we’ll see to this one.’
He let the A.D.C. wade in until the water was above his knees again, and then addressed his final advice to him.
‘You’ll keep a look out for wounded animals, won’t you,’ he said. I’m letting our friend here have the first shot. You may be needed later.’
It was hot down there in the swamp; hotter than Harold had ever known. And airless. What he was breathing was the original odours of ancestral reed-beds, all one by one long since rotted into slime. Round him, bubble-gum balloons of marsh-gas rose slowly to the surface, floated there for a few seconds and then burst with a faint plop. The smell of eggs was everywhere.
Harold slapped at the flies, and waited. Beside him, Sir Gardnor waited too, but he was motionless. Facing the steaming surface of the lagoon, he listened. And, from his intentness, it was obvious that he had heard something.
Then Harold heard it, too: a sound like water at a weir. It grew louder. It was moving, changing its direction as it came. The separate splashes were distinct now; and there were other noises mingled with it; snortings, and the sticky, kissing sound of large feet being dragged out of the clinging mud.
The reeds opposite parted, and the fore-quarters of a bull buffalo appeared. It stood there, massive and unperturbed, gleaming like black shoe leather. Then it lurched forward into the water, its flanks half-covered, and started drinking. It was a leisurely animal; placid, even mild-looking. And thirsty. Every mouthful was accompanied by an immense sucking noise like the last seconds of an escaping bath waste.
A moment later, another pair of the same wide, curvings horns appeared in the opening, and the whole reed-bed began moving. There were buffalo everywhere; the noise of thick bodies bumping. The quiet lagoon, with the bubbles bursting on it, became a rodeo, a cattle-market. Soon there was an entire herd wallowing there, all drinking. The noise of bath wastes multiplied.
Harold started to finger his rifle, but Sir Gardnor frowned at him. To be immobile: that was what was being taught. To be as stationary as a dead tree; unmoving even while the flies were biting. And, even when the herd, belching and grunting, began to move off out of sight, Sir Gardnor still made no movement. He merely stood there watching the crushed reeds, and waiting.
Then, after a long interval, she came. Out of the same torn gap, a solitary cow emerged. She was slow, slower even than the others. Ancient, too, and drooping. She was the great-grandmother of the herd, long since gone sour and unsociable. She did not mix with the others any longer, but still hung onto the herd in vague, disinterested fashion, from sheer lifetime habit.
It was the island she was making for; her island. It was her hooves that had matted up the reeds, her weight that had left it flattened like a mattress. There most afternoons, alone and undisturbed, unbothered by the calves, she sank down to chew the cud. It was siesta time now.
She was more than halfway across the pool when she saw Harold. Only her neck and rump showing above the surface, she stood still and stared. And s
till she could not be sure. Her eye-sight was failing, and she was face to face with the sun. She came nearer. She stared again. She tried to catch his scent. She grew curious. Raising her head, she bellowed. She waited. Then, as if she had forgotten all about him, she lowered her head once more and sloshed on, unsuspicious and uncaring.
It was when she was three-quarters out of the water, that she paused and looked again. This time there could be no mistake. It was a man all right. The mere number of his legs served to give him away. And he was on her piece of island.
For a second time, she raised her head, and bellowed. But it was no use. He still didn’t move. And more to scare him than anything else, she made a little rush, churning up the shallows with her hoofs and keeping her horns high so that she appeared to be looking down on him. When she stopped, she was less than fifty feet away, and she began staring again. It was the blank, uncomprehending stare of utter incredulity.
‘And even if she does come on why should I kill her?’ Harold found himself thinking. ‘She looks harmless enough to me. It isn’t even as though I particularly dislike her. I don’t. I’m just interested to see if I can do it. Not the act of killing: that’s not what is bothering me. I mean shooting straight: not making a fool of myself in front of the Governor.’
Then the cow saw the outline of Sir Gardnor, too: she had not been sure about him before. But now she could see that he had two legs like the other one. And she realised that she was in danger. They were waiting for her.
There was still time for her to turn back, still room out there in the swamp to get beyond their reach: that was the way that reason lay. But she had her buffalo nature to contend with. And old and tired and swollen-up with grass-ends as she was, her temper exploded. She became young again. Dilating her nostrils, she drew in a long wheezy breath and charged.
The slime beneath gave her no foothold. The cow stumbled, her rear hoofs kicking up the spray and sending dollops of mud flying out behind her. Harold thought for a moment that she was going right down. Then she found firmer ground beneath. Suddenly, she was up again, and coming forward. She was near now; very near. Harold could see the shape of her horns clear cut against the skyline of the opposing reed-bed.
‘Yours,’ Sir Gardnor told him. He said it quite quietly, casually almost, as though he had arranged it all. ‘Take your time. There’s no hurry.’
Harold felt his stomach go cold. His hands were trembling. And his knees. He could feel little jerkings all over him. Inside his head, he could hear the sound of his own heart-beats. But he remembered Sir Gardnor’s words: he wasn’t going to do anything foolish. Wasn’t going to let him down in front of the A.D.C.
And, as the sight of the rifle came level with the bare bone of the cow’s forehead, he pulled the trigger. It was like firing a cannon. He knew now what Sir Gardnor had meant about the recoil and about holding the rifle well into the shoulder. The whole of his right arm had been knocked numb and useless by the discharge.
But buffalo always drop their heads when the charge is almost over: they carry their armament too high to be effective otherwise. When it comes to the kill, they go right down, on their knees almost.
Harold’s shot passed clean over the cow. He saw the top of one of her horns disintegrate. But that was all. And she had reached the island by now. There was something solid for her hoofs to grip into. It was suddenly all noise and thunder like a cavalry charge. In another moment she would be on top of him.
And, to his surprise, Harold found that all sense of fear had left him. Even the trembling had ceased. He was perfectly calm and reconciled, simply standing there, his useless gun in his hand held slantwise across his body as if for protection. His mind was clear, too; clear and functioning very rationally.
‘Well, this is it,’ he told himself. ‘You’ve made a complete mess of things. You fired too high, and now you’ve had it. You can’t get out of this one, Harold Stebbs. You’re done for.’
He didn’t remember afterwards even hearing the sound of Sir Gardnor’s rifle. But he could distinctly recall the flash: the barrel was only a couple of yards from his face when Sir Gardnor fired. The cow, the top of her head blasted clean off by the charge, scarcely faltered. There was nearly a ton of her, and she had been gathering momentum all the time. She was unstoppable. Death, though untimely, had not really interfered.
Harold felt himself lifted up, carried along, deposited, and then buried alive. It was the front legs of the buffalo that had been the first to stop working, and the rear-quarters had just made their final heave. Like a goods truck up-ending at the catch-points, the cow had stood on her horns, hung motionless for an instant and then overturned.
Mission accomplished, she was no longer caring.
Chapter 20
‘He’s coming round. Definitely coming round. You’d say he was a better colour, wouldn’t you?’
The voice was Sir Gardnor’s, but the first thing that Harold saw was the face of the A.D.C.
At first he scarcely recognised it. That was not so much because of the mud stains, as because of the expression. The polite social look had vanished, and there was genuine concern there. It was the first time that it had ever occurred to Harold that the young man could really care about anything. What he didn’t know was that, while he had been unconscious the A.D.C, flat on his stomach, had been burrowing about under the dead cow trying to find him.
‘I don’t think any bones are broken, sir. But it’s hard to be sure. He’s in such an awful mess.’
While he was speaking, the A.D.C. was still prodding him. Harold could feel his hands going over his shoulders, ribs, thighs.
‘He’s probably all right, wouldn’t you say?’ Sir Gardnor’s voice said from somewhere behind him. ‘It was really very soft where he landed.’
Then, not liking the exploring hands any longer, Harold suddenly sat up.
‘I’m fine, sir,’ he said. ‘Absolutely fine.’
But it was different when he tried to stand. He struggled up onto his knees, clutched hold of the A.D.C. and sank back again.
‘Keep your head down until you’re feeling better,’ Sir Gardnor told him. ‘We’re in no hurry.’ He turned to the A.D.C. ‘You can tell them to keep the meat,’ he said. ‘They’ll be able to have a feast day. The head’s quite useless, of course. I’ve blown too much of it away.’
When, at last, they got Harold to his feet they had to support him, one on either side, as if he were drunk. And the going wasn’t easy. They stumbled over submerged roots, went up to their waists in pot-holes, sank into the underlying slime.
‘I must say I’d have thought the Major would have sent a party out by now,’ Sir Gardnor remarked, rather petulantly. ‘Presumably he’s posted someone to keep us under observation. Surely, he can see there’s something amiss.’
The arrival back at the camp caused more than ordinary consternation. For a start, there was blood on Sir Gardnor’s khaki shirt and Old Moses imagined that it was the Governor who had been wounded; gored probably.
‘Doctor baas quick,’ he began shouting. ‘Doctor baas for the Excellency.’
But he need not have bothered: Major Mills had everything in hand. Captain Webber, the Medical Officer—a little late in Sir Gardnor’s opinion—had been there to meet them on the foreshore, complete with stretchers, first-aid kit and blankets. Harold, on one of the stretchers, with Captain Webber beside him, was bringing up the rear of the procession. The Governor and the A.D.C. were both stepping it out in front, not even, somewhat to Captain Webber’s disappointment, classifiable as walking wounded.
Sir Gardnor looked hard at the A.D.C.
‘I’m going to take a shower,’ he said shortly and solemnly, as though it were an important public announcement that he was making. ‘And no doubt you will want to do the same. By all means use mine if yours isn’t working. I think’—with a wave of the hand he indicated Harold, lying under the regulations blanket—’we had better leave him to Captain Webber. He’s his property, you kno
w.’
With complete disregard for all human feeling, the stretcher-bearers marched straight past the tent that had been set aside for the ladies. It was cooler now, much cooler; and Lady Anne and Sybil Prosser were sitting outside their tent in the comfort of folding canvas chairs with striped canopies. They might have been at Henley. Sybil Prosser was drinking what looked like orange-juice and Lady Anne had a glass of whisky in front of her.
At the sight of Harold, she gave a sudden little cry, and jumped up. Harold saw the glass go over, and Sybil Prosser’s hand reach out instinctively to save it.
Lady Anne ran towards the stretcher.
‘What’s happened?’ she was saying. ‘Is he badly hurt?’
She began pulling at the blanket, dragging it down from underneath his chin to see how much Harold had been injured.
He smiled up at her.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m all right. It’s nothing. As a matter of fact, H.E. saved my life.’
Lady Anne was silent for a moment. Then she burst out laughing.
‘That’s funny,’ she said. ‘Really funny.’
She turned because Sybil Prosser had caught up with her.
‘He doesn’t know quite how funny, does he, Sybil?’
And, having started to laugh, Lady Anne could not stop. Sybil Prosser kept trying to quieten her, making discreet sssh-ssshing noises as she did so. But it was no use. She went on laughing.
As the stretcher-bearers moved forward, Harold inclined his head. Lady Anne, with Sybil Prosser’s arm round her shoulders, was being led back towards the tent. She was still either laughing or crying. He could not make out which.
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