The Burning Shore c-8

by Wilbur Smith

  If I don't drink very soon, I won't be able to go on, she whispered, and she peered ahead at the low rampart of black rock and straightened up incredulously; her eyes were tricking her. She blinked them rapidly and stared again.

  People! she whispered and pulled herself to her feet. People! She began to stagger forward.

  They were sitting on the rocks, she could see the movement of their heads silhouetted against the pale sky, and she laughed aloud and waved to them.

  There are so many, am I going mad? She tried to shout, but it came out as a reedy little whine.

  Disappointment, when it struck, was so intense that she reeled as though from a physical blow.

  Seals, she whispered, and their mournful honking cries carried to her on the soft sea breeze.

  For a while she did not think that she had the strength to go on. And then she forced one foot in front of the other, and plodded on towards the headland.

  Several hundred seals were draped over the rocks, and there were many more bobbing about in the waves that broke over the rocky point, and the stench of them came to Cental the on the wind. As she approached, they began to retreat towards the sea, flopping over the rocks in their ludicrously clownish way, and she saw that there were dozens of calves amongst them.

  If I could only catch one of those. She gripped the clasp knife in her right hand and opened the blade. I have to eat soon- But already alarmed by her approach, the leaders were sliding from the rocks into the surging green water, their ungainly lumberings transformed instantly into miraculous grace.

  She started to run, and the movement precipitated a rush of dark bodies over the rocks; she was still a hundred yards from the nearest of them. She gave up and stood panting weakly, watching the colony escape into the sea.

  Then suddenly there was a wild commotion amongst them, a chorus of squeals and terrified cries, and she saw two dark agile wolf-like shapes dart from amongst the rocks and drive into the densely packed troop of seals.

  She realized that her approach had distracted the colony, and given these other predators a chance to launch their own attack. She did not recognize them as brown hyena for she had only seen illustrations of the bigger and more ferocious spotted hyena which almost every book on African exploration contained.

  These animals were the beach wolf of the Dutch settlers, the size of a mastiff, but with sharp pointed ears and a shaggy mane of long ashy yellow fur that was now erect in excitation as they dashed into the colony of seals; unerringly they picked out the smallest and most defenceless of the infants, seizing them from the flanks of their cumbersome dams, and dragged them away, easily avoiding the grotesque efforts that the mothers made to defend their young.

  Centaine began running again, and at her approach the female seals gave up and flopped down the black rocks into the surf. She snatched up a club of driftwood from the pile of rubbish on the high-tide mark and raced across the end of the headland to cut off the nearest of the brown hyena.

  The hyena was hampered by the squealing baby seal that it was dragging, and Centaine managed to get ahead of it. The animal stopped and lowered its head in a threatening stance, and watched Centaine approaching. The young seal was bleeding copiously from where the hyena's fangs were locked into its glossy pelt, and it was crying like an human infant.

  The hyena growled fiercely and Centaine stopped, facing the beast, and swung the club and shrieked at it.

  Drop it! Get away, you brute! Leave it! She sensed that the hyena was perplexed by her aggressive attitude, and though it growled again, it backed up a few steps and crouched protectively over its wriggling prey.

  Centaine tried to stare it down, holding the gaze of the formidable yellow eyes as she shouted and brandished the club. Abruptly the hyena dropped the badly injured seal cub and rushed directly at Centaine, baring long yellow fangs and making a roaring bellow in its throat. Instinctively Centaine knew that this was the crucial moment.

  If she ran the hyena would follow her and savage her.

  She rushed forward to meet the animal's charge, redoubling her yells and swinging the club with all her strength.

  Evidently the hyena had not expected this reaction. Its courage failed. It turned and ran back to its floundering prey, and burying its fangs in the silky skin of its neck, began to drag it away again.

  At Centaine's feet was a crevice in the rocks and it was filled with waterworn round stones. She grabbed one of these, the size of a ripe orange, and hurled it at the hyena.

  She aimed for the head, but the heavy stone fell short and it hit the creature's paw, crushing it against the rocky ground. The hyena squealed, dropped the seal cub and limped swiftly away on three legs.

  Centaine ran forward and opened the clasp knife. She was a country girl and bad bel ed Anna and her father slaughter and dress animals before. With a single, swift, merciful stroke, she cut the seal's throat and let it bleed.

  The hyena circled back, growling and whining, limping heavily, undecided and confused by the attack.

  Centaine snatched up stones from the crevice in both hands and threw them. One of them struck the hyena on the side of its bushy-maned head and it yelped and fled fifty paces before stopping and staring back at her over its shoulder with hatred.

  She worked swiftly. As she had watched Anna do so often with a sheep's carcass, she slit open the belly cavity, angling the point of the blade so as not to nick the stomach sac or the entrails, sawing through the cartilage that closed the front of the ribcage.

  With bloodied hands she hurled another stone at the circling hyena, and then carefully lifted out the infant seal's stomach. The need for moisture was a raging fever within her; already she sensed that lack of it was threatening the existence of the embryo in her own womb, and yet her gorge rose at the thought of what she must do.

  When I was a girl, Anna had told her, the shepherds used to do it whenever a suckling lamb died. Centaine held the seal cub's little stomach bag in her cupped and bloodied hands. The stomach lining was yellowish and translucent so that she fancied that she could see the contents through the walls. The cub must obviously have been lying with its mother up to the moment of the hyena attack, and it must have been suckling greedily. The small stomach was drum-tight with milk.

  Centaine gulped with revulsion and then told herself, If you don't drink, you'll be dead by morning, you and Michel's son, both. She made a tiny incision in the stomach wall, and immediately the thick white curds of milk oozed from it.

  Centaine closed her eyes and placed her mouth over the slit. She forced herself to suck the hot curdled milk. Her empty stomach heaved and she choked with an involun tory retching reflex, but she fought and at last controlled it.

  The curds had a slightly fishy taste but were not altogether repulsive.

  After she had forced down the first mouthful, she thought it tasted a little of the goat's-milk cheese that Anna made, strong with rennet.

  She rested after a while, and wiped the blood and mucus from her mouth with the back of her hand. She could almost feel the fluid soaking back to replace that lost by her body tissues, and new strength seemed to radiate through her exhausted body.

  She hurled another rock at the hyena, and then drank the rest of the thick curdled milk. Carefully she slit open the tiny empty stomach sac, and licked up the last drops.

  Then she threw the empty membrane to the hyena.

  I will share it with you, she told the snarling beast.

  She skinned the carcass, cutting off the head and the rudimentary limbs, and threw those to the hyena also.

  The big doglike carnivore seemed to have resigned itself.

  It sat on its haunches twenty paces from Centaine, with its pointed ears pricked up and a comically expectant expression, waiting for the scraps she threw it.

  Centaine cut as many log narrow strips of the bright red seal meat as she could get off the skeleton, and wrapped them in the canvas of her headdress. Then she retreated and the hyena rushed forward to lick up the
spilled blood from the rocks and to crush the small skeleton in its ugly, over-developed jaws.

  At the top of the headland the wind and wave action had cut a shallow overhang from the compacted sandstone, and it had provided a shelter for others before Centaine. She found the scattered ashes of a long-dead cooking fire on the sandy floor of the cave, and when she scratched in the dirt, she turned up a small triangular flint scraper or cutting tool, similar to those for which she and Anna had hunted on the hillock behind the chAteau at Mort Homme. It gave her a peculiarly nostalgic pang to hold the scrap of flint in the grubby palm of her hand, and when she felt self-pity overcoming her, she placed the sliver of stone in the pocket of her blouse, and forced herself to face harsh reality rather than mope over bygone days in a far-off land.

  Fire, she said, as she examined the dead sticks of charcoal, and she laid out the precious scraps of seal meat on a rock at the mouth of the cave to dry in the wind and went back to gather an armful of driftwood.

  She piled this beside the ancient hearth and tried to remember everything she had ever read about making fire.

  Two sticks, rub them together, she muttered.

  It was a human need so basic, so taken for granted in her life until then, that now the lack of fire with its warmth and comfort was an appalling deprivation.

  The driftwood was impregnated with salt and damp.

  She selected two pieces, not having the vaguest notion of the qualities of the wood she required, and she set about experimenting. She worked until her fingers were raw and hurting, but she could not induce a single spark or even a wisp of smoke from her scraps of wood shavings.

  Depressed and despondent, she lay back against the rear wall of the rock shelter and watched the sun set into the darkening sea. She shivered with the chill of the evening breeze and wrapped the canvas shawl more securely around her shoulders; she felt the small lump of flint press into her breast.

  She noticed how tender her nipples had become recently, and how her breasts had begun to swell and harden, and she massaged them now. Somehow the thought of her pregnancy gave her renewed strength, and when she looked southwards, she saw Michel's special star hanging low on the horizon where a sombre ocea was blending into the night sky.

  Achernar, she whispered. Michel- and as she SAID -his name her fingers touched the flint in her pocket agaiN it was almost as though it was Michel's gift to her, AND her hands shook with excitement as she struck the fliNT against the steel blade of the clasp knife, and the whitE

  sparks flared in the darkness of the rocky shelter.

  She worried the threads of canvas into a loose BaLl.

  mixed with fine wood shavings, and struck flint and steeL over it. Although each attempt produced a shower OF bright white sparks, it took all her care and persistANCE before at last a wisp of smoke rose from the ball of kiNDLING

  and she blew it into a tiny yellow flame.

  She grilled the strips of seal meat over the coals. they tasted like both veal and rabbit. She savoured each bitE and after she had eaten, she anointed the painful blisters that the sun had raised on her skin with seal FAT She set aside the remaining strips of cooked meat FOR the days ahead, built up the fire, wrapped the caNVAS

  around her shoulders and settled herself against the wall of the shelter with the club beside her.

  I should pray- and as she began, Anna seemed verY close, watching over her as she had so often before wheN

  Centaine, the child, knelt beside her bed with haNDS Clasped before her.

  Thank you, Almighty God, for saving me from the se and thank you for the food and drink you have provide(but- The prayer petered out, and Centaine felt recrimnations rather than gratitude pressing to her lips.

  Blasphemy. She almost heard Anna's voice and shE

  ended the prayer hastily.

  And, oh Lord, please give me the strength to face what ever further trials you have in store for me in the dayahead, and if it please you, give me also the wisdom to see your design and purpose in heaping these tribulations upon me. That was as much of a protest as she would risk, and while she was still trying to decide on a suitable ending for the prayer, she fell asleep.

  Al When she awoke, the fire had died down to embers, and she did not at first know where she was or what had woken her. Then her circumstances came back to her with a sickening rush, and she heard some large animal out in the darkness just beyond the opening of the shelter.

  It sounded as though it was feeding.

  Quickly she piled driftwood on the fire and blew up a flame. At the edge of the firelight she saw the lurking shape of the hyena and she realized that the package of cooked seal meat that she had so carefully wrapped in a strip of canvas the previous evening was gone from the rock beside the fire.

  Sobbing with rage and frustration, she picked up a flaming brand and hurled it at the hyena.

  You horrible thieving brute! she screamed, and it yelped and galloped away into the darkness.

  The seal colony lay basking on the rocks below her shelter in the early morning sunlight, and already Centaine felt the first stirrings of the hunger and the thirst that the day would bring.

  She armed herself with two stones, each the size of her fist, and the driftwood club, and with elaborate stealth crawled down one of the gulleys in the rocks, attempting to get within range of the nearest members of the colony.

  However, the seals fled honking before she had covered half the distance and they would not emerge from the surf again while she was in sight.

  Frustrated and hungry, she went back to the shelter.

  There were spots of congealed white seal fat on the rock beside the hearth. She crushed a knob of charcoal from the dead fire to powder and mixed it with the fat in the palm of her hand, then she carefully blacked the tip of her nose and her cheeks, the exposed areas which had been burned by the sun the previous day.

  Then she looked around the shelter. She had the knife and the scrap of flint, the club and canvas hood, all her worldly possessions, and yet she felt a dragging reluctance to leave the shelter. For a few hours it had been her home.

  She had to force herself to turn and go down to the beach, and to set out southwards into that ominously monotonous seascape once again.

  That night there was no cave shelter and no pile of driftwood trapped against a rocky headland. There was no food and nothing to drink and she rolled herself in the strip of canvas and lay on the hard sand under the dunes.

  All night a chill little wind blew the fine sands over her so that at dawn she was coated with sparkling sugary particles. Sand had encrusted her eyelashes, and salt and sand were thick in her hair. She was so stiff with cold and bruises and over-taxed muscles that at first she hobbled like an old woman, using the club as a staff. As her muscles warmed, the stiffness abated, but she knew she was getting weaker and as the sun rose higher, so her thirst became a silent scream in the depths of her body.

  Her lips swelled and cracked, her tongue bloated and furred over with thickening gluey saliva that she could not swallow.

  She knelt in the edge of the surf and bathed her face, soaked the canvas shawl and her skimpy clothing, and resisted somehow the temptation to swallow a mouthful of the cool, clear sea water.

  The relief was only temporary. When the sea water dried on her skin, the salt crystals stung the sun-tender spots and burned her cracked, dry lips, her skin seemed to stretch to the point of tearing like parchment, and her thirst was an obsession.

  In the middle of the afternoon, far ahead of her on the smooth wet sand, she saw a cluster of black moving shapes, and she shaded her eyes hopefully. However, the specks resolved into four large seagulls, with pure white chests and black backs, squabbling and threatening each other with open yellow bills as they competed for a piece of flotsam washed ashore by the tide.

  They rose on outsretched wings as Centaine staggered towards them, leaving their disputed prize, too heavy for them to carry, lying on the sand. It was a large dead fish, already b
adly mutilated by the gulls, and with new strength Centaine ran the last few paces and dropped on her knees. She lifted the fish with both hands and then gagged and dropped it again, wiping her hands on her canvas skirt. The fish was stinking rotten, her fingers had sunk into the soft putrefying flesh as though into cold suet.

  She crawled away and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, hugging them to her breast, staring at the lump of stinking carrion and trying to subdue her thirst.

  it took all her courage, but at last she crawled back to it, and with her face turned away from the stench, hacked off a fillet of the maggot-white flesh. She cut a small square of it and placed it cautiously in her mouth. Her stomach heaved at the taste of sickly sweet corruption, but she chewed it carefully, sucked out the reeking juices, spat out the pulpy flesh and then cut another lump from the fillet.

  Sickened as much by her own degradation as by the rotten flesh, she kept sucking out the juices and when she reckoned that she had forced a large cupful down her throat, she rested a while.

  Gradually the fluids fortified her. She felt much stronger, strong enough to go on again. She waded into the sea and tried to wash the stench of rotten fish from her hands and lips. The taste lingered in her mouth as she started once more plodding along the edge of the beach.

  just before sunset a new, crippling wave of weakness came over her and she sank down on to the sand. Suddenly an icy sweat bra across her forehead and cramp, like a sword thrust through her belly, doubled her over.

  She belched, and the taste of rotten fish filled her mouth and nostrils.

  She heaved, and hot reeking vomit shot up her throat.

  She felt despair as she saw so much of her vital fluids splash on to the sand, but she heaved again, and at the contraction she felt a spluttery explosive release of diarrhoea.

  I'm poisoned. She fell and writhed on the sand as spasm after spasm gripped her and her body involuntarily purged itself of the toxic juices. It was dark by the time the attack passed, and she dragged off her soiled carniknickers and threw them aside. She crawled painfully into the sea and washed her body, splashed her face and rinsed the taste of rotten fish and vomit from her mouth, prepared to pay for the momentary relief of a clean mouth with later thirst.