Soon they had cooked and all eaten another meal very much like the one on Lamb-snatcher’s Hill the night before. The moment they had done so, Xhabbo ordered Nuin-Tara to let all the fires except one small upright little flame die down and took up his spear. Telling them to rest as well as they could, he hurried off into the night without explanation. Since Nuin-Tara had not organised any sleeping places like the night before, Nonnie assumed that Xhabbo would not be gone long and that their rest would be an unusually short one. She therefore made no move to leave a fire in which her spirit even more than body found comfort. She made herself as comfortable as she could, doubled up, her head on her haversack near the haversack on which François was resting on one elbow, his head in his one hand and the other stroking Hintza, lying by his side. Nuin-Tara soon took up a similar attitude on the other side. And in this manner, tired out as she was, Nonnie fell uneasily asleep.
How long she slept Nonnie could not precisely tell, but it could not have been more than a few hours. She was immediately aware of Nuin-Tara and François getting to their feet and saw Hintza already standing on three legs, his tail stretched taut and straight behind him and his nose sniffing and sniffing at the dark beyond. Within a few seconds Xhabbo emerged at a run on the bed of the stream and slowed down to walk purposefully up to the fire. Without any effort at conventional greetings he began a report which Nonnie knew at once was urgent and ominous.
He told François, she soon gathered, how in the dark he had been up to the fringe of the enemy’s main camp. He arrived there just in time to see the two Hottentots brought into the camp by two black soldiers. He had watched them present a white paper to another white chief. He had watched the white chief talk to them at great length. He had seen the white chief send for other white chiefs and these white chiefs vanish again into the far side of their camp where immediately they started blowing whistles as they had done during the attack and their escape from Hunter’s Drift.
He was utterly certain that the Hottentots had seen into the true nature of their spoor and hurried on there in the dark to prevent them crossing the road as well as to organise a successful search for them as soon as daylight came. They had therefore to get up and go at once. Because those Hottentots were not to be deceived again. From now on only speed and the fact that Xhabbo knew the land and they did not, could save them.
It was typical of Xhabbo’s thoroughness in these matters that although he had declared himself convinced that their trackers could no longer be deceived, he made Nuin-Tara help him to scatter sand over their fires and eliminate all traces of their brief camp there before he declared himself ready to go. How their fortune had changed since the morning was evident now from the new order of their march. Whereas Xhabbo had preoccupied himself from Lamb-snatcher’s Hill onward with the danger from behind and remained in the rear, he now led the little procession out of the bed of the stream and up the track back into the bush. Hintza went immediately behind him, then François, Nonnie and last of all Nuin-Tara. But this was the only innovation in the manner of their going. Xhabbo’s injunction as before was for everyone to keep as much as possible in the footprints of the one in front; above all over the three pawprints of Hintza.
It looked at first as if they would rejoin the track of the morning but half-way there Xhabbo branched away along a narrow game track, so narrow and deep in the bush that François caught only an occasional glimpse of starry sheets of sky blotted with leaves of ink. The bush still maintained that determined, aloof silence which had so dismayed Nonnie earlier on, until after a bare half an hour’s march it was broken by the sound of trucks labouring in heavy sand in the far distance ahead of them.
Xhabbo immediately stopped and let the others join him. Wordlessly, they stood there listening to the trucks coming nearer, as it sounded, directly at them. Had they not been certain that they were in a narrow game track deep in the bush and judged their situation by the harsh, grating sound alone, they could have believed themselves to be standing exposed in the middle of the road along which the trucks were travelling. Soon the power of this illusion was increased by flashes of headlights brushing the leaves and tops of the tall trees. After a while, the flashes of light were so strong and continuous that they could see one another by them. When that happened Xhabbo, far from being dismayed, had turned to look at François, a wide smile of satisfaction on his face, followed it by a movement of his right hand, to point his spear in front of him to the right, and in a nearly inaudible whisper said, “Foot of the Day, it is just there!”
The “it” apparently was the great Hunter’s Road and, that demonstrated, Xhabbo went down quietly on his stomach, flat on the ground. Without a word, Hintza, so wise in the ways of hunters, went down on his stomach, and their example sent François, Nonnie and Nuin-Tara over like a collapsing pack of cards, to lie flat on the ground as well. They lay there then, the sound growing so loud, the light no longer flashing but steady and swelling over the trees, and the shadows cast by branches and trunks so clear and dark round them that it was almost impossible to believe the trucks were not going to crash through what could surely now be only the thinnest of screens of brush and branches between them and the road, and run them over. But suddenly the angles of light of the first of what sounded like five trucks, curved away, to be followed by the others, and gradually the sounds receded.
Still Xhabbo did not move but went on lying there until both light and sound had died away. Soon, far away on their right, so still was it in the bush, they heard men singing, singing again in the most beautiful natural bass voices, the sloganised music of so-called liberation that they had sung first on the night after the massacre at Hunter’s Drift.
Nonnie was aware only of the sound of music. But François lying there in the dark, with his hand on Hintza’s back, knew at once there was more than music to it and the sound of singing itself was suspect. For the hair on Hintza’s spine was erect and electric, his nose turned in François’s direction, his mouth hissing his own special warning of great, unseen danger. Almost at once François knew what it was. The sound of music was not one but divided in two. One part, with the greater volume, appeared stationary. The other, smaller and more compact, was coming nearer to them, he feared from a patrol marching along the road in the dark, probably to be in a position for the great search which Xhabbo anticipated at daybreak.
François, had he been in command, would there and then have led the party straight across the road and quickly put as wide a distance as possible on the other side between the road and themselves because the singing told him the men were still half a mile or more away. So convinced was he of the necessity of this that he crawled forward and suggested that they should do precisely that. But Xhabbo firmly said no, and told him to lie still where he was and to see that Hin and Nonnie remained still beside him. Indeed, so great was Xhabbo’s sense of the need for silence that he made no attempt to explain his refusal to François but resumed lying in the track as flat as he could, his hand on his spear.
François complied immediately, but having noticed Xhabbo’s state of readiness and realising it was not merely a perfunctory or routine readiness, silently cocked his own rifle, undid the safety catch and loosened the knife in his belt. Although Nonnie could not see precisely what was happening, the unusual movement was enough to forewarn and alarm her. She longed to crawl up to François and ask him what was happening but as Nuin-Tara hard by her did not move, some new instinct stopped her. All she allowed herself was to grasp François’s ankle just in front and to hold on to it tightly. It was enough to make François turn very slowly without a rustle towards her and just for a moment, to put his hand reassuringly on hers. And so they lay there listening to the singing coming nearer just as the sound of the trucks had done, but, unlike the trucks, when the singing was suddenly almost upon them, it abruptly stopped.
A loud voice of command suddenly called out: “Platoon, halt!” followed by a: “Stand at ease!”—“Stand easy!” and a final: “Fal
lout!”
Immediately the sound of men talking and relaxing took over. It was all happening far too close for comfort and safety and yet there was nothing they could now do but wait—a wait which made François think again, as he so often did nowadays, of that francolin mother he had once pointed out to Nonnie, as an example of true courage. They both had watched the place where it was brooding, still and silent, with only a tremor of grass to show the pulse of fear racing in her heart and eating in vain at her courage. It felt to Nonnie that the men at their ease, so close that she could have deciphered their conversation had she had a clue to their words, would be there for ever or if they moved, would deploy to beat the bush around them. She never had any idea how long the conversation, the joking, laughter, back-chat and the occasional authoritative pronouncements, all so deceptively and plausibly normal and harmless in their tone, continued. François himself was afraid that they might be there until dawn, and be deprived of any advantage of time and dark they had in their flight. But after what he calculated to have been almost the longest half hour of his life, the voice of command again rang out with a peremptory, “Platoon!”
Immediately there was a great scurrying and shuffling of feet and soon the command, “Platoon, attention!” followed by “In threes, by the left, quick march!”
At once the night was loud with the measured tramp of feet. Another of those natural bass voices started up a marching song. The others joined in and the men began to vanish purposefully to music away into the night.
When it was clear what was happening, Xhabbo turned about as swiftly as one of the turning foxes of the desert to face François and whisper that he wanted them to lie there while he inspected the road alone. He vanished and was back in a few minutes, beckoning to François and the others to come quickly. The road on which they had heard all that fearful traffic was not an arm’s length away as it had sounded, but a good hundred paces.
Once on the edge of the road, Xhabbo made François take Hintza in his arms and step across the road, Nonnie and Nuin-Tara following. He stayed behind only long enough to erase all signs of their spoor some distance back along the game tracks, in the road as well as the track on the far side. He accounted for the obvious disturbance of the surface by making with the nails of his fingers the hoof marks of a tsessebe father, mother and their young; the buck which most favoured that part of the world. That done, he hastened to join the others, once more took over the lead and, their eyes being fully readjusted to the dark, made them press on at a pace which the wounded Hintza, and Nonnie, found hard to maintain.
They must have travelled like this for some three hours with only the briefest of pauses, when suddenly the bush came to an end. At one moment their feet were firm in the track that was a deep scar of earth in the bush, scarlet by day but now a dark crayon line of its own. The trees and brush pressed tight and domineering upon them, so full of their own urgent business that it was almost as if François could hear the sound of new life started up in them by the heavy dew gathering in the air, and listen to it mounting to a kind of strumming and humming at his ears. At times it became almost a drumming from the oldest of trees, pumping sap from its deep well of being in the fecund earth of Africa and sending it sizzling up to the tips of the highest crowns of black Indian green. And then the next moment, their feet were sinking into sand. Suddenly all was space before them and everywhere they looked it was as if the gates of some ancient fortress of light had been flung open and they had passed through them and found all round them high secure battlements, lofty turrets and dark towers manned with belted constellations and sworded stars to welcome the return of authentic members of their garrison from a long and dangerous reconnaissance of the forces of darkness in the furthest recesses of the night. So dense indeed were the walls of space with armament of light that there was hardly any black left at all in the sky. Only star upon star joined to one another by a common phosphorescent incandescence until the night was a shining lacquer wherein the stars were not only presented individually but collectively reflected; not silent and still, as in the humid hemisphere to the north but loud and lively and some of them quite ostentatiously tapping, as Xhabbo would have had it. Indeed, all was so clear, wide and open in front of them that on the far horizon François observed star after star setting, and could follow them until only the last of their five spikes showed a platinum tip above the ripple of shadow that was the limit of a brave and frank new world.
But strangest and perhaps most exciting of all was an Isabella-white glow which emanated from the earth all round them and made Nonnie, despite a fatigue greater than any she had yet experienced, feel elated as if she had suddenly burst out of bondage. All the reflexes of her spirit were miraculously restored to her and breaking all her resolutions not to take any initiative of her own while on the march, she moved up quickly to join François so as to ask him what it all could mean. Xhabbo’s voice, speaking in a normal, uninhibited manner, stopped her. So bright was the starlight that she could see his hand holding a spear, clear-cut against the sky and note that for all its normality the voice underneath was taut with profound emotion.
“Foot of the Day, Nonnie,” he exhorted them, “look and feel as I, Xhabbo and Nuin-Tara feel, that we have utterly come to our home.”
Neither François nor Nonnie could think of any words adequate to reply but went up silently to stand beside him and Nuin-Tara and Hintza and almost as in an act of silent worship to allow the night, which had appeared irrevocably locked against them only a brief minute before, to complete its welcome, and so let the sea-murmur of music from the distant smoking beaches of the universe speak for them.
It was significant that Nuin-Tara herself did not speak either. She stood there close beside Xhabbo as silent as they themselves. After what seemed no time at all but actually had been some ten minutes, Xhabbo himself broke the silence.
They had better sit down there together, drink a little water and eat, he told them, for their journey was not over yet. He wanted them to go on as fast as they could until sunrise because in this place where they now were, there was no concealment of their spoor possible and their only safety would be the distance they could put between them and the men who might be coming after them in daylight. Provided they could get deep into the land in front of them, he doubted whether their enemies, least of all their Hottentot trackers, would follow them for long, knowing as they must know, that only Bushmen knew the secret of the rare water concealed underneath the sands of so immense a thirst land. A day, perhaps two days of pursuit at the most, he thought, was all they would have to expect. That would mean four days in all without water except what their enemies carried on them, and he doubted whether even the Hottentots would be capable of more.
They sat there in a circle, therefore, having a few carefully rationed gulps of water, some biltong and a handful of dried apple and apricot which François handed to each of them except Hintza, who had half of François’s share of water as well as his own, and a whole piece of biltong as well as some dried peaches. François knew that of all forms of conserved fruit these peaches were Hintza’s favourites, and considering the long way he had come without complaint, wounded and on only three of his four legs, François thought that even his favourite food was not good enough for him. At first Nonnie thought that she could not eat at all. She felt sick with fatigue and longed only for water, and more water. She would probably not have succeeded in eating at all, had not François produced his flask of old Hunter’s Drift brandy and made first her, then Nuin-Tara, Xhabbo and finally himself take a great gulp of the spirit.
Hintza too would have had his share had not François known it would be dangerous after all his sedatives. Yet although he knew it was for Hintza’s good he felt oddly mean when a great sigh like a sob fell from Hintza and the head that had been raised expectant, nose sniffing ardently at the bouquet of Huguenot Cognac, sank back to rest despondently against François. Nonnie, on the other hand, was convinced that the brandy would m
ake her condition worse. But after a few minutes her resilient body quickened to it, the smell of apple and apricot suddenly became appetising and she ate her ration with relish.
That done, she felt almost ready to go on, though when the moment came to start after an hour and she came to her feet, she doubted whether in fact she could walk for long.
Happily Xhabbo led off to the north-west at a deliberate pace, as if he realised that walking in the sand, easy as it was for himself and Nuin-Tara, would be difficult for Nonnie and to a lesser extent for François and Hintza. Yet, even that measured, long-distance pace of his became more than Nonnie felt she could manage. Her tiredness made her desperate, her desperation rebellious and unreasonable, and she began to project her unreason on to Xhabbo and above all on François.
She persuaded herself that they had long since come far enough and only typical, insensitive, masculine stubbornness was urging them on. When the Dawn’s Heart came up swiftly over the broad line of the black bush behind them, she felt that surely they had gone far enough and had not only earned the right but were more than safe and could now find a place to rest. When the Dawn’s Heart was followed by a fast colourless dawn which filled François and Xhabbo with foreboding, she almost cried out to them to stop. But still she managed to hold her peace, until an impetuous sun threw itself high into the sky with what seemed to be the speed and fire of a great passion denied far beyond its due, and a strange noise sounded in the blood in her ears almost like a shrill shriek of heat and light, mad with excess.
She was convinced she could not go on. She called out in despair to François who whisked round and looked at her with alarm.
“I’m so sorry, François,” she managed to plead for herself through a parched mouth. “I just can’t go on. If you and that Xhabbo of yours want to go on walking all day long you can leave me here. This is the end as far as I’m concerned.”
A Far Off Place Page 29