The sand gave place to scree, and soon the scree became shingle. They had come up against the bluff on a sheer, blood-red escarpment; and, where it had crumbled and gone crashing, great boulders were now littered. They were piled one upon another like earthquake-ruins. And somewhere in this scene of desolation, the Kiburru asserted, the leopardess, now widowed, was still living.
Sir Gardnor beckoned his A.D.C. to him.
‘I take it they know they get paid on results,’ he said. ‘We look like being here all day if it’s purely speculation.’
But the Kiburru were unshakable. The lair was in there, they said, pointing to the biggest of the rock-mounds in front of them. The slanting crevice that ran beside it that was the entrance to her homestead. Down below, on some unthinkable mezzanine, was where she had mated, littered, suckled and slept off her over-eating. At this hour in the morning, she had probably only just turned in.
There was the matter of the smell to vindicate them. Dilating their flat nostrils still further, they sniffed approvingly. It was strong, very strong, they agreed. The odour of cat was everywhere. It must, in all that sunlight, have been only minutes they said, since the leopardess had passed by, reeking.
It was at this point that Sir Gardnor intervened. More military than Major Mills, he laid down the battle plan with quiet precision.
‘If they do flush her,’ he said, ‘she’ll bolt in this direction. Accordingly, we’ll take up our positions there,’—he indicated a large boulder, half-buried on the left—‘here where I’m standing, and’—he screwed his eyes up and inspected the rock-fall on his right—’over there by the cliff-face. And aim carefully, remember: we don’t want any dead Kiburru on our hands.’
He seemed very much in command as he stood there, his hands resting upon his hips. He was rocking backwards and forwards, as though savouring the moment. When he turned towards Harold, he was smiling again.
‘You know all about rifles, don’t you, by now?’ he asked. ‘The recoil, I mean. And taking care of yourself if anything goes wrong.’ He slapped at the back of his neck where something had just stung him. ‘As regards firing-order, you may have first shot. You deserve it. Then Tony. I shall come last—that is, if I’m needed at all, of course.’
He had undipped the telescopic sight while he was speaking, and handed it back to the A.D.C.
‘At this sort of range,’ he said reprovingly, as though the A.D.C. should have thought of it first, ‘I shall hardly be needing it, shall I?’
The two Kiburru were busy with their own preparations. They were going round gathering up strands of dry elephant grass that the wind had blown into the gully, withered flowers, dead leaves. If they had been keepers in a Royal Park they could not have been more thorough. And, as soon as they had a handful, they deftly twisted it into a little skein, and began collecting more to weave into it. It was a torch that each one was making.
When they had finished, they came up pleading for matches. At the sight of the full box which Harold handed them, they temporarily forgot about leopards. All that they could think of was matches. They planned how to steal them. One of them succeeded. Not that Harold would have been particularly anxious to have the box returned to him. It was up the brief sash of his loincloth that the leading hunter had stuffed the Swan Vestas.
Sir Gardnor gave a little cough.
‘Are we ready?’ he asked.
He glanced round for a moment, and continued without waiting for the answer. ‘You will raise your hands when you’ve taken up your places,’ he said. ‘And I will give the order to smoke her out.’
The Kiburru had their bundles of rubbish all ready. They had clambered up onto the terraces of the rock-temple dragging their fire-machines after them. And they were taking no chances. While the thief who had stolen the matches was securing one of the grass-torches to the handle of his spear, the other stood over him like a sculptor’s model, knees flexed and spear lifted.
Miles and Harold both raised their hands. Sir Gardnor acknowledged them, and tried to attract the attention of the Kiburru. But they were preoccupied. Unused to Swan Vestas, the fire-raiser was stroking the match gently along the side of the box as if afraid of harming it. Minutes passed, broken only by the gentle scraping sound.
‘Come along. Come along, man. Get on with it,’ Sir Gardnor shouted.
But the Kiburru had lost his temper. He used all his strength, and tried deliberately to hurt the match. In revenge, the match blazed up and burnt him. He dropped it hurriedly onto the bundle at his feet, and the mass ignited. As soon as it was well aflame, he thrust it home into the crevice.
By now a thin spiral of blue smoke was rising into the air above the grotto as if the rocks themselves were on fire. But still nothing happened. The Kiburru were disappointed. They shouted. Picking up large stones, they hammered on the bare rock to cause a nuisance. Lying flat on their stomachs, they thrust their heads through the smoke screen and called the leopardess names, vile unmentionable names that even a leopardess could not tolerate.
Then they jumped down rather shame-facedly and admitted that she wasn’t there.
But it was only a matter of time, patience and numbers, they contended. Especially numbers. In the ordinary way, a whole team of at least a dozen hunters would have been engaged for such an operation. As it was, there were only two. They would both, therefore, have to work six times as hard. And unprotected, there was the added danger; the peril to each of them of being pounced on from behind. In the circumstances, an entirely new fee—payable, if necessary, to the survivor—would have to be negotiated.
Sir Gardnor told the A.D.C. to agree the fee. Nevertheless, he remained entirely unconvinced.
‘I should be more ready to believe them’ he said, ‘if there were any vultures around. They are like shadows. They follow leopards every-where. And you can see for yourself, the rocks are deserted.’
He indicated the vultureless landscape as he was speaking.
‘All the same,’ he told them, ‘I suppose we had better deploy ourselves. If they do find her, she could be anywhere. And at all costs, we must avoid cross-fire. We must therefore get ourselves a bit further back.’
He re-surveyed the rock-hillocks behind him.
‘I myself,’ he announced, ‘will be somewhere up there,’ and pointed to the blood-red face of the escarpment.
The Kiburru were delighted. Like this it could go on all day. ‘Bang, bang. Bang, bang,’ they cried jubilantly.
Sir Gardnor turned to the A.D.C.
‘And for this,’ he said, ‘I shall require the telescopic sight. You might clip it on for me, would you?’
Again, there was the slight hint in his voice not so much of reproof as of surprise that the A.D.C. should not have anticipated him.
‘I intend to go some distance up,’ he said. ‘The higher the better. And I shall wave my handkerchief when I’m ready. You will please do the same. And then, of course, we will none of us move. You are hardly likely to hit me, but, if I can, I want to avoid shooting one of you, don’t I?’
The climb up the face of the escarpment was a stiff one. What seemed to be solid, living rock crumbled away into red dust when Sir Gardnor grasped hold of it; and ledges that looked as if civil engineers had cut them there, disappeared in powder. Small avalanches started. Twice it looked as if Sir Gardnor would be carried down on the crest of them. But, despite his size, he was certainly agile. Each time, he merely flattened his back against the wall behind him, waited for the cascade of rubble to subside, and then mounted higher.
He paused to glance momentarily over his shoulder; and, reassured that he was being observed, he climbed even faster. He was making for a depression in the cliff-face where some earlier and forgotten landslide had scooped out an alcove. When he reached it, he disappeared from sight for a moment, re-emerged at the brim and raised his hand.
The A.D.C. was the first to choose his position. In full view of Sir Gardnor, he stationed himself beside a natural firing-platform in the
rock and, removing the sweat-band from his wrist, waved it in the air. Sir Gardnor waved back.
For Harold, it was not so easy. He chose the other side of the gully. This meant that there was a buttress of sandstone, shoulder-high, between him and Sir Gardnor. He selected the exact spot. Then, taking off his sunhat, he stood up to his full height and signalled to Sir Gardnor. The reply came back immediately. Apparently, Sir Gardnor had been keeping his eye on him throughout. Harold squatted down on his heels and waited.
The Kiburru had no intention of being hurried. They executed a little war-dance. They speared imaginary leopards. They recited spells. They relieved themselves. From the cliff above them, they heard Sir Gardnor shout something. The exact words escaped them but the tone sounded angry. Glancing understandingly at each other, they decided that they must at least do something.
And, in action, they were beautiful. They ran up to the tall rocks, and took them in their stride. Clinging only with their finger-tips, they scaled pillars. Goatlike, they bounded from crag to crag. They rattled their spears against the sides of caverns. They shouted. They threw stones into canyons which they could not reach themselves.
And, raising nothing, they were all the time retreating further and further up the gully, vanishing behind the rocks at times, still in search of fresh hiding-places where a tired leopardess might linger.
Out of the corner of his eye, Harold could see the A.D.C. His rifle ready, and his elbow on the rock in front of him, he was following every movement of the two Kiburru. His stance, too, was perfect. At once alert and relaxed, he was an example which any big game hunter might have copied. Resting his back up against the rock, Harold decided to make himself comfortable, too.
Then, from somewhere in front, came a shout. The Kiburru had found something, and they were calling. Harold saw the A.D.C. raise his rifle. The shouting continued. A moment later, one of the hunters sprang suddenly into view. He was astride a boulder, and pointing. One hand had the forefinger outstretched, and the other was cupped like a megaphone against his mouth. Harold edged cautiously along the rock in the direction of that pointing forefinger.
He could still see nothing. But the Kiburru could see all right. What they had rustled out was a solitary dog baboon. It was old and mangey and hollow-stomached. When it opened its mouth to snarl at them, it showed them that one of its canine teeth was missing. Without a struggle, they could have killed it with their spears. Not that it was really worth killing: it would so soon be dead anyway.
It could still move, however. Rump up and bare bottom showing, it lolloped along the gully, stopping every few yards to see if it was being followed. The shouting meant nothing to it. It had already been stone-deaf by the time it had left the troop. At the sight of the advancing Kiburru, it broke into a short, rheumatic scamper.
For an instant, Harold saw a glimpse of tawny fur through a gap between the boulders. Then it was gone again. But it was still coming his way. He crawled further along the rock face. Then, his rifle ready, he raised his head and stood there.
The next moment, something hit the loose stones in front of him and exploded in his face. He dropped his rifle and lifted his left hand to his eye. His cheek was soft and sticky.
Somewhere above and behind him he could hear Sir Gardnor shouting.
‘The damn fool,’ Sir Gardnor was saying. ‘We should never have brought him. I marked his exact spot, and he moved away from it. That’s where he signalled from. Over there, I tell you.’ Evidently, Sir Gardnor was pointing. ‘Where he showed up was a good twenty feet away.’
‘Perhaps we’d better be getting back, sir,’ the A.D.C. suggested.
‘And you can put the sight away,’ Sir Gardnor told him. ‘I didn’t use it after all.’
‘Pretty unlucky he’s been, hasn’t he?’ Harold heard the A.D.C. remark in his polite, conversational way. ‘First that bit of trouble in the swamp, and now this. Doesn’t look as if he’s really cut out for this kind of thing.’
Harold was sitting some distance away from them. He had wrapped his handkerchief across his face, and he had his head down on his knees, resting. Sir Gardnor’s back was turned towards him. The words came only faintly.
‘Unlucky? The fellow’s a Jonah, if you ask me. I shan’t be sorry when this safari’s over.’
They made the journey back to the camp in good order, but slowly. With only one eye on the job, Harold kept stumbling. Each time it was the A.D.C. who saved him. Sir Gardnor was in no position to do so: still angry and disgusted by the whole affair, he was way out in front with the two Kiburru. And, sensing that he was displeased by something, they led him back by a slightly longer route so that he would at least feel that he had been getting his money’s worth.
It was not until Sir Gardnor had reached the senty posted outside the camp that he seemed even to be aware of the rest of his party. He waited for them to catch up.
‘I should get your eye seen to,’ he said.
It was his first remark to Harold since the shooting; and he did not add to it. He turned immediately to the A.D.C.
‘The fact that it was a baboon,’ he told him, ‘makes the whole thing even more preposterous. Baboon is the staple diet of the leopard. No baboon would ever have gone near the place if it had been a lair.’
They were inside the camp by now, and Sir Gardnor was intercepted by the Corporal from Signals. The man gave the appearance of having been standing around for some time waiting for him.
And, once more, Sir Gardnor seemed eager for the message. Handing his rifle to the A.D.C, he ripped open the envelope. He stood there, for a moment, quite still—unnaturally still, Harold thought—while he was reading. Then, suddenly, he came to life again. He crushed the sheet up in his hand and, without speaking—without even looking back again— he went over to his tent.
The crumpled corners of the buff Signals form were still sticking out of his closed fist as he walked away.
Even though the hunting-party was back, the camp still seemed deserted.
Captain Webber’s enormous pink tablets had only just begun to have any effect, and Lady Anne remained in her tent all day alongside Sybil Prosser. Nor did Sir Gardnor appear. His A.D.C, rather subdued-looking and with his lock of hair more frequently out of place than usual, emerged shortly after one o’clock to say that H.E. was lunching inside and would the others please start the meal without him. Then the A.D.C. went back inside to Sir Gardnor again.
In the result, it was only Major Mills and the Signals Officer who sat down together. There was next to no conversation between them. Major Mills always suffered a mild stomach-upset when there had been any misuse of fire-arms, and the Signals Officer was singularly silent. He had, Major Mills decided, got something on his mind.
Harold himself was flat out on his folding bed. Captain Webber had taken a good look at the bad eye, and pronounced that the cornea was punctured. There was, he said frankly, nothing that he could do about it in camp conditions. He merely put on a proper bandage and gave Harold a couple of drops to kill the pain; the other tablets were against infection, he said. If the pain got worse, he added rather meaninglessly, Harold had only to call him.
The drops had been of double strength. One was the standard dose. But with Sybil Prosser on his hands, Captain Webber wanted to make sure. Two invalids at a time was more than he felt he could manage.
In consequence, it was not until after dark when Harold was about again. The fiercest of the shooting pains had gone from his eye—there was now only a dull ache that might have gone with any ordinary black-eye—and he was feeling hungry.
He went over to the doorway of the tent and looked out. But it was too late. The dinner-table had been cleared away and the chairs were all folded and stacked up against each other. Even the native end of the camp was silent. The only sound was the hu-hu-hu-huing of an eagle-owl that had come from nowhere and was now hanging about in the adjacent trees.
The light over Sir Gardnor’s desk was still burning. It lit up the w
hole marquee like a Chinese lantern. Evidently it was one of his late sessions.
Harold went inside again. Hungry as he was, there was nothing for it but to wait for breakfast-time.
Chapter 26
The scream that woke him in the night seemed loud and very close at hand while he was still asleep; and faint, remote and unplaceable as soon as he was roused.
But he could not mistake it. That was why, still dazed with sleep, he had slung his legs over the side of the bed and was groping his way past the tripod washstand for the door. It had been a woman’s scream. And, his head all swathed round as it was with Captain Webber’s crepe bandaging, he started to run towards the tent where Lady Anne had shut herself away with Sybil Prosser.
The tent-flap that faced him, however, was closed tight; and the tent itself was in darkness. The only light still burning anywhere in the camp was in Sir Gardnor’s marquee. The flap there had not been fastened down. It was laced loosely together on the outside as though someone had just gone out and had tied the cords behind him to keep the canvas from flapping.
Harold undid the knots and thrust his way inside. The light from the pressure lamp dazzled him, and he raised his hand to shield his good eye from the glare. Sir Gardnor was there all right. He was seated at his desk; presiding over it as it were. His eyes were open. But his jaw had fallen. Down one side of his face there was a great slicing cut that had pared off a sliver of the flesh. His throat, his shoulder and his shirt front were all soaked in fresh, wet blood.
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