François was near weeping as he remembered this and above all that flourish of defiance from Ouwa that had preceded it and was revealed to him and Lammie in Ouwa’s dying days. It flew bright over all other memories as if it were a flag of union before being nailed to the mast of a ship sinking in a battle against overwhelming odds.
All of this struck François quick and bright as lightning and hardly had the truth within himself been resurrected and the silence between the two officers still not broken, when he felt Hintza not only nudging him in the cheek but lashing him with his tail as well. That brought him alert back into a world where he was lying flat on the ground, and he realised at last that it was not a participation in the turmoil of his own emotions that had made Hintza so restless but a strange harsh murmur of sound coming out of the darkness towards them from the direction of Hunter’s Drift. As he heard it the sentry posted at the Hunter’s Drift end of the camp jumped from his perch on a boulder of stone, came striding fast towards the pair of officers, stood to attention before them and blurted out: “Trucks to the right of us, sir!”
The two officers looked at one another as if they were coming out of a trance of their own. The Scot was the first to find his voice and break the silence with a bantering, “Ah, our MrChairman, I presume,” hesitated, but could not resist adding, “no doubt bringing up a full complement of his thoughts as well.”
This drew a quick comment from the French officer and although François had already turned about and was beginning to crawl back the way he had come and so could not see the scene, he could imagine the severe expression that went with his comment, “You can make a mock of yourself of the Chairman as often as you like, mon cher, provided you remember that his thoughts have a habit of becoming deeds as well, and if you would permit me of it, since you quoted an ancient Chinese saying to me just now, I will return the compliment and remind you of another: ‘The master speaks but once’.”
The Scot sounded unrepentant and answered like one uttering a truth in jest, “It depends on whom you consider your master to be.”
François heard no more. He was crawling back the way he had come as fast as he could and the camp by the fire at once was loud with the sound of men being summoned to prepare for the newcomers. For François this was a welcome sign of inexperience in his enemies which, slight as it was, encouraged him. They obviously had no idea how far sound could travel at night through any gap in the bush and this sound might just be audible to any scout which the experienced old “Major” at Mopani’s camp, warned by Kghometsu’s messengers, surely would have sent out as soon as it was dark. Then, man-made sound, particularly mechanical sound, travelled farthest of all so that François knew the trucks were further away than they sounded. It would be an hour if not more before the loose, earthy beloved old Punda-Ma-Tenka road would allow them to get to their destination. And even when they arrived, surely it would take some time before they came round to explain to the Chairman all that had happened, sorting out the priorities of the situation and getting their intelligence unit working on his intercepted letter.
However, François was by training not inclined to be over-optimistic and in matters of life and death in the bush he always remembered one of Mopani’s maxims, “a hunter should always remember that a comforting belief in everything being for the best often does not prevent the worst somehow from happening”. Accordingly he prepared to hasten back to the cave. First he turned on his back and looked at the sky. From the angle of Orion, which had started to dip somewhat towards the West, he realised that he had been lying listening to that debate by the fire for close on an hour. That did not dismay him perhaps as much as it should have done because somehow it had seemed a great deal longer—a length that could not be counted in hours or even days.
Yet to return to the immediate practical issues, even the loss of an hour of darkness could be serious. If he were to reach the cave before daylight there could now be no question of following that faint, inadequate game track as he had intended to after parting with Kghometsu. The shortest and easiest way back was by the track he had followed in the morning. Once certain that he was deep enough in the bush to eliminate any risk of giving his presence away, he came to his feet, put Hintza in the lead and followed an old rhinoceros trail that led him to it, somewhat perturbed by the pain of moving even at the slow pace imposed on him by the difficulties of so contrite a trail.
There was risk of course in what he proposed doing. He could run into some kind of guard left there by his enemies, but somehow he thought that most unlikely. From what he had heard and now knew of the invaders, he was certain that all the troops in the vicinity would be regrouped in overwhelming numbers for the attack on Mopani’s camp, which his action the night before had precipitated, because the original plan had been to regroup and rest at Hunter’s Drift before moving forward. But even should they have left a guard on the trail, he had no doubt that with Hintza in the lead, they would spot the guard before he spotted them.
It is an indication of what the nature of the night of Africa does for those who belong to it as François did, that it never occurred to him that he might have cause to fear any wild animals as he had in the morning. It was just a fact of life in the bush that unless one were born to be the natural prey of the few animals who made a speciality of hunting at night, one had less cause for fear in the dark than at any other time. Hintza perhaps was a disquieting exception to the rule because of the love of leopards for the flesh of dogs. Leopards were supremely of the night. But they felt so at home and secure in it that they were far less aggressive then than when dazzled by the day. In any case they were methodical animals who liked to work out a plan of campaign before they did their killing of carefully pre-selected prey. It was extremely unlikely, even should he run into a leopard, that it would attack, and at the speed at which François proposed travelling he and Hintza would be in and out of even so wide an area as a leopard’s awareness before it could be tempted to form a plan for attack. His one instinctive precaution was to insist that Hintza did not travel as far ahead of him as he had done in the morning, and he gave Hintza an explicit operation order in Bushman to this effect before setting out.
At first it was difficult to supervise Hintza’s movements because the hour or so he had spent staring at that immense fire of his enemy had dimmed his vision, but soon it began to recover and improve at such a rate that he was astonished at what a distance he could keep the fast moving shadow of Hintza in view. When the shadow tended to get lost along the track, so still was it, that a whispered command which died immediately on the leaves of the dense bush hemming them in, would bring Hintza back closer towards him.
By eleven he was once more in the broad, well-used trail. There he paused, rested and fed himself and Hintza. Above all he listened in with the utmost care to the night. Apart from the far-off sound of the military trucks moving up on the road to the West, he heard only normal sounds expressed in such a free, un-self conscious manner that he was relatively certain no abhorred beings were about in his part of the bush. Even more than listening carefully, he observed Hintza closely. Hintza was sitting on his haunches erect and close beside him, the best natural radar system of early warning a human being in the bush could possibly have. The scrutiny, close as it was, not only reassured François completely but did his heart good. Hintza was so without apprehension now that he was almost entirely preoccupied in the many varied and sensitive ways he had of showing François affection and letting him know now much it meant not having to share him with others, however briefly, and being at their ease alone together after all those brutal separations and alarms of the past two days. He did this with such eloquence and delicacy that François had to respond. He put his arm round him, pressed him close against him while giving his mind to consider the rate at which they would have to travel. He remembered that it had taken him between four and five hours travelling at the limit of his capacity to reach the stream where he had met Kghometsu. He had now rejoined
the track some three to four miles nearer to the cave and by his reading of the stars still had some six and a half hours of darkness left.
That of course gave him more time than he had taken in the morning. Yet, considering that it was night and that his whole body was aching with fatigue he assumed that he would not be able to go as fast as he had gone in the morning. He really had no time to spare at all. Once he was sure in his own mind of what he had to do, and the last of their rations eaten, he set out at his fast, long-distance hunting jog.
At first it was even worse than he feared. The reaction of his aching muscles and legs was so violent that he doubted whether he could go a furlong at that pace, let alone keep it up for as long as necessary. Yet he forced himself to continue with an immense act of will and as he began warming up, the pain and the stiffness began to diminish. All the natural resilience and reserves of energy of someone who had led so active a life joined in the process so that his movement found a natural, almost self-generating rhythm. His second breath came to him with an ease and steadiness that surprised him. Moreover the loss of vision brought about by the dark impeded him far less than he had anticipated. It was almost as if the soles of his feet had within them a clear memory of the track they had travelled so often in the past that he hardly needed his eyes to direct them. A strange, yet definite kind of reassurance entered him through the soles of his feet from the track itself, as if all the countless feet of the forgotten men who had trodden it over the years still lay there in the bush defined like a line in the palm of a black hand, had imprinted upon it the message for their successors that however winding, casual and tentative the track might appear to them, it was the certain way from life to life as it always had been for them.
What astonished him most of all, however, was the difference made to fatigue by the fact that the night was so cool, whereas the day had been so hot. It was another fact of all the love implicit in the night working on his behalf, lending a clarity to all his senses and breathing hope in him, so that if anything he travelled faster and with less labour than he had done in the morning.
The exhilaration produced by all these unexpected factors warmed his blood like wine. He passed the boulders and places where he had rested in the morning without even being tempted to do so again, merely saluting them in his heart as friends and thanking them for the shelter they had given him. Soon, much sooner than he had ever dreamt possible, he passed the place where the old elephant monument had stood and, only a few hundred yards further on, the sun-parlour of the pride of young lions. Even in the dark he saw that the surface of that lovely grassy little clearing was torn and littered with leaves, twigs and shattered branches, no doubt from the outburst of shooting to which the Scot had referred. But beyond noting it, he did not pause, afraid that since his body and stride had now found their own special rhythm he must not abandon it or he might never be able to recover it again. From time to time he glanced quickly up at the stars that were sextant and chronometer to him, and was relieved to see that his fears of running out of darkness were not going to be realised. A faint feeling came to him that a tide of fate might have turned for him. But in true primitive fashion he did not allow himself to take it for granted, in case Providence found him presumptuous and reversed it again.
Only one immediate problem perplexed him more and more as he drew nearer the place where he had to branch off for the cave. Would he be strong enough to carry Hintza as he had done the previous morning, so that no tell-tale tracks were left on the ground? He would have to try and though he could go on jogging along for a considerable time, to stop, pick up and carry Hintza in his arms, seemed beyond the powers of a profoundly exhausted self.
Close to the place where he had to branch off, he called Hintza back in a whisper. Hintza, immediate as ever, had hardly joined him when there rose up on the silence about half a mile ahead the clear and urgent call of a plover. No plover’s call could have sounded more like a plover piping an outward-bound summons to the night, but there was something about it that made François suspect it came from a plover that he had, as it were, known personally. Also, to his amazement, Hintza, instead of watching him had turned sharply about and with ears erect, nose up, was sniffing and re-sniffing the air in the direction from which the call had come. Most significant of all, his tail had begun to wag tentatively.
François’s thumping heart beat even faster. Either one of them had made mistakes in anticipation in the past. But the two of them together had never yet been wrong. But for once he was almost certain that out of desperation they were imagining wishful things. Then the plover called again. The call sounded somewhat nearer and so realistic and urgent that a mile away somewhere near his old home, another plover felt compelled to reply. François knew then that he had to investigate the call, particularly since Hintza was already in such a state of conviction that he was not wagging his tail so much as being wagged by it.
François instantly knelt down beside him and whispered, “Yes, Hin, I think you’re right. Go and find him but go carefully in case we’re both wrong.”
Hintza bounded off while François waited for what seemed to him a very long time, his gun unslung and at the ready, his chest heaving and himself doubtful whether he could shoot straight if he had to. But it could have been no time at all really before he heard, first very faintly, the pad of Hintza’s feet bounding along the track. The sound of the rush of his dog’s approach had hardly reached him when Hintza’s elongated shadow appeared, and, wildly impetuous, threw himself at François, put his paws on his shoulders so that he could look him straight and deep in the eyes. That done, he jumped down, whisked about and led off down the track again. This time François had to follow as well, all the pain and stiffness in his body rushing back after even so brief a pause. Two turns in the track further on he saw the shadow of a person coming soundlessly towards him until there, remarkably clear under the starlight, was Xhabbo.
“Oh Foot of the Day!” Xhabbo exclaimed softly, the emotion running deep in the still tone of his voice, “I heard you coming from afar and hearing felt myself living again so that I came hurrying to meet you.”
François did not pause to reflect that either this was an implied criticism of the manner in which he and Hintza had travelled along the track or just another startling manifestation of Bushman powers of perception. There was no room in him for anything except relief that he had achieved what had seemed unbearable and impossible only a few hours before and was back with a beloved helper and friend. With the relief, the long-rising flood of suppressed weariness broke through his resistances and threatened to overwhelm him. Suddenly he was without breath enough to respond properly, and could utter only half the greeting a well-brought-up Bushman would have thought appropriate: “I too, Xhabbo, live again in a way I never thought I would ever live again.”
At that a kind of dizziness came over him on the track and Xhabbo blurred in his eyes. He was so unsteady that he put out a hand to Xhabbo and wanted to sit down there and then in the track. Xhabbo knew what he longed to do and caught him by the arm, steadying him but also stopping him saying, “Foot of the Day, we cannot stay here to rest, however much you need the rest. We must hasten back to Mantis’s place as we have never hastened before. All day long I, Xhabbo, have been sitting apart, listening in to my tapping and oh, Foot of the Day, the tapping has been so clear that Xhabbo could follow you almost as if Xhabbo were seeing you with his own eyes, feeling himself utterly to be wherever you were going. The tapping, yes it was so loud and clear that Xhabbo felt himself suffering with you and feeling great fear with you. By sundown he was feeling utterly dark with a feeling that you had utterly gone and would never return. But then in the middle of the night the tapping showed Xhabbo you were turning back on your heels and told him how he and Nuin-Tara and that utterly your woman must hasten to prepare for your coming, because the danger coming up behind you now was new, great and terrible, and that we all must hasten to leave the place of Mantis our father for e
ver, and go the way the tapping would at last tell me to go.”
François wanted to protest and plead that surely they could afford just the briefest segment of time to let him get his breath back and reassure his straining body, which was hurting as it had not hurt before. But the tone of Xhabbo’s voice was so grave and urgent and convincing that his recollection of how only obedience to this voice in the past had saved him and Nonnie, made him obedient to it again without reserve. Some of the instinctive self-respect of the natural world of Africa and its inborn aristocracy of living spirit which compels its children never to admit defeat this side of death glowed in him and, short of breath as he was, he said, “Xhabbo, you lead and I will follow. I know our danger is great as you say. I will tell you more as we go along, though I do not feel it is as immediately as you feel it. But what is this way your tapping would tell us to go?”
“Foot of the Day,” Xhabbo began obliquely, “I cannot tell you yet what form this danger will take. But I feel utterly that it is almost upon us. We cannot wait. All Xhabbo knows and feels utterly within himself, is that this tapping tells him that we must all be gone from the cave before the Foot of the Day has stepped clear of the trees and brought the day into the sky. In Mantis’s place all is ready for our going. Like you, Foot of the Day, Xhabbo felt himself feeling at first that it was not a tapping speaking but just fear telling him to go and he would not listen to the tapping and say yes to what it was telling him to do.”
That Xhabbo, with all his instinctive respect and his implicit obedience to the commandments of his tapping could have questioned the process in himself, was frightening testimony of their desperate plight for François. Dismay rushed at him, making him utter in a kind of silent prayer to himself, “Oh dear God, if even Xhabbo’s tapping is to be confused and doubted, what is to become of us? Where are we to turn for help and where to go? You’ve just got to help us now!”
A Far Off Place Page 18