‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the knowledgeable voice of the guide said, ‘we are preparing to land at Kariba airstrip, where our bus is waiting for us. Fasten your seat belts please—’
Suzanna de Villiers did not move, she did not take her eyes from the window. She was thinking: somewhere down there Jake was once marooned in a tree. The man nudged her.
‘I say,’ he said jovially, ‘we’re coming in to land.’
‘Oh!’
She busied herself with the belt. Then she looked at him and flashed a smile. She was glad to be friendly with anybody at that moment.
Blue, the water of the great lake was blue, like the sea. And it seemed as big as the sea. And from the real faraway sea, alerted by some sweet natural call, came the gulls and the sea birds, squawking and circling, and they landed and made a new home and they began to build nests and they laid eggs and sat on them. And flamingoes, never seen before, flamingoes came in from the faraway lakes to the north in their red-spread glory and they circled round the new blue water and they dropped into the shallow treed shores, and they made a home too, and they laid their eggs.
But the birds who had always been in the Zambezi Valley had laid their eggs already. They laid them in the tree tops where they had always laid them. And they sat on their nests in the tree tops and watched the strange water rising up out of the river, rising up to the base of the tree, then up its trunk and then into its branches and they twittered and squawked with anxiety. At first they had unprecedented supplies of food. Driven up from the river, flushed out of their cracks and holes in the ground came the hordes of insects that never before had seen the light of day. Millions of bewildered insects floated on logs and the insects and the caterpillars and the ants even crawled right up the trees, and the birds did not have to look far at all. But then the feast dwindled, and the birds still sat on the nest, and then they had to fly far afield to find their food, and the water climbed higher up the branches. And the eggs came out and the parents sat agitatedly on the naked young birds and watched the water lapping higher and higher up to them, and they twittered and squawked and clucked. Some of the fledgelings just learned to fly in time, and many were coaxed out of the nests and they were not doing too badly at all. But then they crash-landed into the water and try and flutter and circle as their parents might, they could not get them out of the water, and they drowned. But very many never did leave the nest, for the water seeped up through the bottom and first wet their feet and then their bellies and they could not scramble up out of the nest because they did not yet have the strength. And the parents sat on the rim of the nest and on the twigs above it and squawked and fluttered and flew around in circles but they could not stop the water lapping up through the nest and then over the top of it. The parent birds flew away, and they did not know what was happening. And it seemed as if God Himself had intervened, for they flew to new places and built new nests and tried all over again.
The animals ran before the rising water of Partnership. They ran in ones and twos and in their herds. Many ran across the great broad valley and then clambered up the sides of the distant escarpment and found new food and homes. But many ran up the jungled hills and kopjes and ridges and found sanctuary there. And they ate the grass and the roots and the leaves there and for a while there was enough for everybody. But then the trees and the ground were bare and the water ran around the hills and kopjes and the animals could not get off them to find more. They found themselves living with animals they had never lived with before, and they chomped and milled around uncertainly and set about looking for food in competition with other animals with whom they had never competed before, and they stripped the bark off the trees and they pawed and clawed up the roots. The water rose up, through the trees, up the hills and kopjes, and then there was no food left, and they starved. But still the water rose every day and they crowded closer together on the islands and then their feet were in the water, then their empty bellies. Some struck out off the islands heading for the escarpment and some swam to other islands. Some made it to the mainland, but many struck out in the wrong direction and they were exhausted by hunger and they drowned. And some, like the little impala buck, refused to leave their drowning islands because they were terrified of water, and the water lapped up over their emaciated backs and they drowned. And some, like the zebras, had no sense of direction and they swam to all the wrong places, to treetops they could see in the distance, and they swam around in circles until they were exhausted, and they drowned. And some, like the sable and the waterbuck, found their big homs too heavy for their thin necks in the water, and they drowned too.
But for all the rising water they did not like being rescued.
The sun came up over the escarpment in a fiery ball, a blinding flush of vermilion then gold that tinted the white froth of the wake of the boats, turned the naked treetops into golden sticks above the water, made the dark silent water flash silver. They were in the middle of the world and the rest of the world was a million miles away.
This was a big island, half a mile long, a hundred yards wide, and over a mile from the Southern mainland. It was covered with thick dry jungle and the jungle spread out into the water so thick you could scarcely see where the land began. The game ranger in the leading boat signalled to cut down engines and the other boats followed him slowly, gingerly over the submerged treetops and through the hanging trees to the deep side of the island. As they coursed through the trees the ranger in the middle boat called ‘Snake!’ and everybody ducked their heads to their knees and covered their eyes with their hands. The thick snake was coiled in a high fork. It lifted up its head and reared and glared down on to the black and white backs of the men passing under it.
‘Stop,’ the bronze young man ordered Mahoney. ‘Get us round to the other side of that tree and stop underneath it.’
Mahoney pushed the machine into reverse and manoeuvred it round to the other side of the tree unhappily.
The man pulled on a pair of motor cyclist’s gauntlets and pushed a pair of goggles over his eyes. He wore only a pair of swimming trunks. He picked up a short stick with a noose on the end. ‘Want to help?’ he grinned.
‘Sure,’ Mahoney said drily. ‘I’ll sit here and blow it to bits with a shotgun for you.’
The man grinned again. ‘He’s a beauty,’ he said. He caught a branch and swung up into the tree.
‘Hey, I haven’t got any anti-snakebite kit in the boat.’
‘That’s okay.’ The young man reached out for another branch and he climbed higher, watching the snake.
The snake coiled round the fork, watching him, and it slid its long scaly body tighter in sections and it lifted its head and flicked its tongue. Its glassy eyes watched and its forked tongue went in and out and in and out. The man climbed up higher carefully, his head bent up, watching the snake and in one hand he held the noosed stick and with the other he felt for his hold. He got to the bottom of the branch that held the snake and suddenly the snake uncoiled itself and slithered out of the fork and twirled around the branch and out on it and over the end of the branch to the branch next to it.
‘Aw, come on now, Charlie,’ the young man said.
He climbed back down the branch and began to climb the new one. The snake entwined itself high up in the branch and it lifted its head and turned its neck and its beady eyes watched and its tongue went in and out furiously. The young man climbed after it.
He edged up the branch, the stick held out before him. The snake slithered round and round the branch watching him, flicking its tongue. ‘Come on fella,’ the young man crooned and he edged higher and higher with the stick out. Then the snake found there was no further place to go but down the branch towards the young man.
‘This way, this way, Charlie.’
‘He’s mad,’ Emie, the New York newspaperman, whispered from the boat below, ‘the guy’s stark raving nuts—’
The snake made a dart down the branch. The stick darted too. Into the noose plung
ed the snake’s head and the young man pulled it tight. A tug and a flick and the snake was off the branch and it wrapped itself convulsively round the stick and its tail whisked around the young man’s brown thin arm.
‘Well how d’ya like that!’ Emie said, and his camera was going click click. The man started back down the branch. He clambered carefully, holding the stick out from him, holding on to branches. And the branch gave way. The young man stood in the fork bent sideways, his free arm out to regain his balance, the stick waving on the other side. In a twist he got his balance back. In a swift slither the snake was off the stick. It launched itself into the air and splashed down into the water.
‘Damn it!’ the young man said mildly.
In one movement he dropped into the water after the snake.
The snake slithered in a circle on top of the water getting its bearings. Now it was cutting across the front of the man in a lightning wriggle, its head a little up making for another tree and the young man struck across to intercept it. Splashing, arms snaking through the water, head up so he could see what he was doing, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight strokes, and he was behind the snake, its flicking tail in front of his chin. Nine, and his hand came down on the back of the snake’s neck and held it tight.
He lifted his arm high out of the water, his face screwed up and puffing, and the snake’s head wriggled wildly between his forefinger and thumb and it entwined itself furiously round his arm. The young man dog-paddled back to the boat with his arm up high. He slung his free arm over the side and with a twist and a heave he was in the boat.
‘Open the bag, please.’ Mahoney held the bag open gingerly with the thumb and the forefinger of each hand.
‘Well kiss me, daddy,’ Emie said, ‘how d’ya like this guy?’
The young man stuffed the snake into the mouth of the bag and his fingers slipped round the snake’s neck. In a flash the snake turned and spiralled up his arm. It reached his shoulder in an instant. Its head flashed and its jaws opened and it sank its fangs into the young man’s lower lip.
There were cries and a scramble in the boat. The snake clung, its body tightening on the arm, its jaws clamped shut working into the lip. In one movement the young man flicked off both gauntlets. He shot both hands up to his mouth. He thrust the forefingers of both hands into his mouth, with its long horrible appendage. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and he buried his forefingers into the reptile’s jaws and he prized them open. He ducked his head and wriggled his jaw and manoeuvred his lip off the fangs. Quickly he slid his hand back to its neck and thrust it into the bag. The blood was welling in his mouth.
‘Snakebite serum!’ Mahoney gasped. He spun to the motor. But the young man made a noise in his throat and shook his head and waved his hand. He gave a big spit over the side into the water.
‘Forget it,’ he said, ‘i’m okay. It’s the back-fanged variety and they don’t shoot their poison until they have got a real good grip. He only just got me.’ He had another good spit.
‘We still better get you a shot of serum.’ Mahoney turned back to the motor.
‘Forget it,’ the young man said and he sucked on his lip and spat again, ‘I’m allergic to it.’
‘Wal, Jesus Christ,’ Ernie said.
Mahoney looked at the young man, his mouth slightly open, full of awe. ‘I take it,’ he said slowly, ‘that you’re kind of head man in charge of the snake department round here?’
The young man dabbed his lip with the back of his hand, ‘I hope I didn’t damage his jaws,’ he said. ‘He’s a beauty.
There were elephant on the island and big waterbuck and little impala and razor-tusked bush pig and genet and porcupines and rock rabbit and antbears.
‘The trick,’ the chief ranger said, ‘is going to be to clear the deck of the small stuff so that when we turn our diplomacy on the elephant we’ve got plenty of room to move about in. We’re in luck, the jumbo are on a big kind of peninsula on the west side. We must keep them there, out of the way. Telephone and Pakitcheni’—he turned to two black men and broke into kitchen kaffir—’your job is to keep them on that peninsula. Thunderflashes.’ He passed them a handful each: ‘Let them off whenever they try to come back on to the main island. There is only a female and her calf so I think she’ll be happy to stay there for a while away from the tumult.’
The two black men nodded.
‘And if she really wants to get back and she charges, Nkosi?’
The boss pulled his earlobe and grinned. ‘Jump,’ he said, ‘into the water and make like a fish.’
He turned to the others. ‘Now here’s what we do …’ he said.
They climbed out of their boats, seventeen men, black and white, and waded ashore through the trees. On their shoulders they carried big bundles of rope nets and they followed the boss up on to dry land, then through the hot dry jungle. Buck scattered before them, big waterbuck and little impalas bounding high and gracefully, and bush pigs ran on their stubby legs grunting and snorting and kicking up the hot dry dust. They came to a narrower neck in the island and the boss called a halt. They unrolled the nets and they joined them together and they strung them across the neck, fifty yards wide and fifteen foot high. Emie found himself a hidey-hole behind a big tree near one end of the net and he carefully erected his camera and dug and barricaded himself in. Ferdie, the London newspaperman, very sensibly climbed a tree and tore a hole in his pants.
‘Never mind, Ferdie, it’s tax deductible,’ Mahoney said.
Two rangers and four Africans concealed themselves at the edge of the high net. The remainder followed the boss in single file down the water line to the far end of the island. They reached the end and spread themselves out in a line across the island. Then they advanced through the bush shouting and beating on cans and they drove the animals helter skelter up the island towards the nets.
The buck and the pigs stampeded across the island leaping over bushes, sidestepping round trees, swiftly bounding and careening. Over the island they sped in leaps and bounds, the men running behind churning up the dust and snouting and beating on the cans. And into the nets stampeded the buck at full tilt leaping and charging in a rising cloud of dust and shouts and the pounding of hooves and crashing of bushes and bleats of terror and angry grunts and squeals. Charged into the net, head through the mesh, horns entangled, feet entangled, kicking and tossing and grunting. They skidded and swerved and turned around and stampeded back through the line of beaters and some jumped very high and clean over the high net, their legs and their bodies in one beautiful straight line. And from out of the bushes charged the gamesmen and pounced on the creatures fighting with the net, and grabbed their legs and held them down and tied them up. On ran the beaters coming up from the rear, each man for himself, throwing himself this way and that to catch a little beast, swerving to intercept, diving into the furious mass of pounding hooves and contorting kicking bodies. And the air was full of the grunts of men and animals and the swirling of dust and the crashing of bushes and bodies. For three minutes the pandemonium reigned, then the grunts and the kicking and the squeals and the dust settled down. And they counted their bag: five quivering impala, one doe waterbuck, one treacherous pig, fourteen deep scratches and one gored leg. Many animals had escaped.
‘I vote Ferdie to catch the porcupines,’ Mahoney said.
They picked up the frightened animals and draped them around their necks and they carried them to the boats. They tied their legs and they laid them exhausted from shock and malnutrition in the holds of the boat like cargo, then they went back to the nets and back to the foot of the island and they started all over again. They beat through the bush again and again. It took until noon to catch the fifteen impala and the three wild pigs. Of the bigger animals, only the waterbuck and the elephant were left.
They moved down the battered island in their line, spread out and beating the ground and beating their cans and shouting, and the tired waterbuck cantered wearily before them,
head up and ears and tails flicking and the calves cantering bewilderedly next to their mothers in the dust and the old ram with his big horns keeping between the men and his does, snorting and kicking up the earth. But he was tired too. Through the bush they were driven relentlessly, not knowing what it was all about, and then again they came to the end of the island, to the water’s edge. And they milled round the end of the island at the brink of the water, panting and their rumps trembling and sniffing the air and looking back and sniffing, their ears all cocked forward, looking from the bush behind them with its torments and the great stretch of water before them with its terrors. The men emerged out of the bush at a dusty trot, still shouting and beating their cans and they closed in and formed a semi-circle around the tired waterbuck, and the old ram snorted angrily and the does looked this way and that with their big eyes, trembling, and the calves milled and bleated in the inner circle of their tired hungry frightened mothers. And still the men came clattering closer and closer and there was no escape.
The old ram looked out across the water with his nostrils wide and his ears cocked forward, and he snorted and pawed the water uncertainly and he looked round at the men again. He went hesitantly into the water a few feet and sniffed and snorted and looked back again. Then he came out of the water with his knees lifting high and he trotted in a circle round his cluster of does and snorted and dropped his horns and pawed the earth and pretended that he was going to charge the line of men. Then he saw it was no good, he trotted back around his does, snorting the whole time, and he went back into the water a few yards with his legs lifting high. He went out farther than last time and he stood poised with his head and horns up and his nostrils flared and he looked out over the water again at the long dark line of the southern bank, a mile away, and he quivered. His does followed him a little way into the water and they stood milling around and watching him and then turning back to look over their shoulders at the dusty clanking chanting line of men. The ram took another two high steps forward into the water, and the water was touching the hairs of his belly and he shuddered. He looked back over his shoulder once more and now he saw the motor boats coming edging round each side of the end of the island too, cutting off his last avenues of retreat back on to the island. The old ram filled his lungs and gave a sort of whinnying snort of decision and announcement and he took one more look at his does, he took two more big steps into the water, then he lifted both his front legs and he plunged out into the lake. And his does took one last look too and trotted and then they jumped after him, and the little calves bounded beside their mothers with their noses stuck up in the air and their big little ears flapped back and they jumped in too. The line of dusty men on the banks cheered and the two laden motor boats beached and picked up some of the men, and then they sped after the buck to herd them across the treacherous water. The buck swam ahead in a cluster, head up, ears up, the does on the outside, the calves on the inside, nostrils flared, heading for the line of trees a mile away. The motor boats with their cargo came behind. The old ram swam ahead leading the way, but he looked over his shoulder at his does many times, and then he went to one side and slowed down and let them overtake him, then he swam beside them watching the hindmost doe and her calf. Twelve hundred, eleven, ten, nine hundred yards, and the trees still seemed a long way away.
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