An exclamation of profound emotion broke from Xhabbo. He took François’s little finger in his hand and said, “Foot of the Day, you speak the words Xhabbo felt you would be feeling. You speak utterly as if your mother and Xhabbo’s mother were utterly one. Xhabbo utterly feels that we are brothers. As brothers we stay or go as one.”
And then quickly, before François, warmed through and through by his answer, could respond, he went on to explain that the dunes were little more than a long night and half a day’s march away. If they started at once, they could be there when the sun was in the middle of the sky the next day.
François, with the melancholy of desperation, just shook his head hopelessly. “You know, Xhabbo, neither Nonnie, nor Hintza and I doubt even I could march that far in that time.”
Xhabbo’s vehement reaction was accompanied by a smile of understanding. He knew, Bushman that he was, that it was too much all at once. All he wanted to say was that if they started out marching now, some time about half-way between the middle of the night and the coming of the Dawn’s Heart, they would reach a shallow cleft of a dry river-bed emerging into the pan. There was bush and cover enough there to hide. After resting there they could follow the cleft almost into the midst of the dunes. Only they would have to start at once after quickly doing one more little thing. Between them and the dunes there was no water. They would have to refill their almost empty flasks now. Once in the dunes, they would find first melons enough and later water for their needs. But here and now was their last chance of the water they needed badly.
François could hardly believe him. There was no sign of any water in their vicinity. It had been one of the first things he had instinctively looked for. Yet he accepted implicitly what Xhabbo told him. He fetched his own ration of water and gave it to Nonnie, insisting that she drink it and, as she was still thirsty afterwards, finish her own supply as well, despite her protests. He then made her collect all their dixies and follow him to join Nuin-Tara, who appeared busy with something at the far side of the ring of reeds. They arrived there to find she had uncovered from a lonely place in the sand, a pointed Bushman digging stick of ironwood, as well as a long, narrow tube which she cleared of sand by blowing delicately into it like a flute player clearing his instrument of dust.
She then led them some fifty yards over the sand to where Xhabbo was pointing with his finger at a place for her to start digging. Xhabbo meanwhile collected some of the finest reed tips, and bound them tightly round the tapered end of the tube. When Nuin-Tara had dug as far as her arm, fully stretched, could reach into the sand, he took over, inserted the end of the tube, filled the hole round it with freshly dug sand, stamped it carefully in with his heels until a bare foot of the tube showed above the sand. He placed an empty dixie close beside the tube, put his mouth to the opening and started sucking at it. His shoulder heaved with the effort he put into it. For two minutes he drew with all the power of his lungs at the tube until the sweat ran from him and made an orange satin of his back in the setting sun.
And then, suddenly—Nonnie could not believe her eyes—a spurt of bright water shot from the corner of his mouth to fall quickly into the dixie at his side. She watched, amazed how like an automatic pump, pumping water, he became, the water pouring almost in a continuous pulsing stream out of the side of his mouth, so fast and automatic were his actions. He went on until all their dixies and flasks were full. When he and Nuin-Tara and Hintza had all drunk as much as they could, he started again until all their dixies were refilled.
“You’d better have your fill of water as well, Nonnie,” François said. “But I’d better . . .”
He got no further because such a look of distaste came on Nonnie’s face that he nearly laughed. But, afraid of hurting her, he managed to restrain himself, as well as taking it as a sign that she could no longer be so exhausted if her palate could be so discriminating again. He quickly added, “I was going on to say that I don’t think you ought to drink this water until it’s been boiled. You haven’t yet had the immunities that we’ve got against it. What about getting some tea out of my pack and having some tea instead? I’ll just ask Xhabbo if he minds a fire in this place.”
Nonnie felt inclined to retort, “Your precious immunities were not exactly what was worrying me,” but held her tongue and watched Xhabbo signal to François that he did not mind a fire, provided it was only a discreet one.
As the sun went down they drank their tea and ate some rusks and biltong. So fresh was the evening air that with the re-emergence of the stars that Nonnie’s rebellious self vanished. She was still aching all over with tiredness and was beginning to realise how shaken and perturbed she was by that attack from the air and its implications, that she could not talk to François about it or even attempt to analyse it for herself. But there was no doubt that basically her spirits were restored in great measure and that the sheer necessity of having to move on again, was attracting her as a means of escape from the backlash of the shock of their attack, and the horror of that long march through the night and the morning before.
She stood up willingly enough, therefore, when the moment came to go and somehow managed to keep going until some time towards morning when they found the cleft in the pan as Xhabbo had promised. Just for a moment they all stood on its edge, while Xhabbo and François tried to judge the time from the position of the stars. Their pursuers, they both agreed, would have been unable to follow them far in the dark, and would have had to wait for morning before coming properly after them. That in François’s reckoning meant that they had between ten and twelve hours’ start on the enemy and that now they could have at least a rest under cover for the whole of the coming day, before they moved on.
This quick sum, tired as François was, made him smart all over with hope. He could not resist turning to Nonnie, who was now sick with fatigue and trembling in every muscle, and whispering, “I believe we’ve made it, Nonnie, we’ve made it!”
And with that, they followed Xhabbo and Nuin-Tara down into the cleft, worked their way southwards to their left along its sandy bed, until they found a sharp bend where the water apparently formed a pool in the rainy season. There, dense wide thorn bushes grew in abundance and gave them the certain promise of real shade against the sun in the coming day. Quickly they made themselves another brew of tea, breakfasted and fell asleep like sheep in a close huddle.
François felt he had hardly slept at all when Hintza woke him. Xhabbo was already awake, sitting up beside Nuin-Tara and listening. The sun had just risen. The air was cool, clear and still, and there could be no mistaking what had woken them. Their old friend the aeroplane was coming back after them. François looked around him to make certain they were indeed as well hidden as he had imagined the night before, and was reassured. Carefully, so as not to wake Nonnie and Nuin-Tara, he and Xhabbo and Hintza crawled over into the shelter and dark shadow of the bank of the cleft opposite them. They rose carefully, not raising any dust, until they could just peer over the rim across the pan.
The aeroplane, droning like an angry bee loud in their ears, was hardly bigger than one, so far away was it still, but clearly visible in the yellow light, circling over their resting place of the day before. Soon it found their spoor and followed it fast, straight towards them. François immediately signed to Xhabbo that it was time to get back, under cover from where they watched the plane appear above the place where they had gone down into the cleft. It circled it for about a quarter of an hour and then reconnoitred the cleft up and down repeatedly to the right and left of them. François feared that the cleft too was in for some more machine-gunning, but the aeroplane on this occasion seemed interested only in exploring the nature of the place where their spoor had vanished so abruptly, because after about half an hour it turned around in a wide circle and returned the way it had come.
They were all immensely relieved except Hintza. Sitting beside François while he and Xhabbo discussed their situation, Hintza began suddenly nudging François rep
eatedly with his head, and when François looked down at him at last Hintza returned his look with a steady but portentous expression like a shadow over his eyes, as if to say he wanted to swear to François by the nose he valued more than any organ in his body, that they had all better beware, for it was not over yet.
How right Hintza had been was proved in the early afternoon. François came out of a light, after-luncheon sleep, woken by another noise loud on the air, but this time it was not the noise of an aeroplane. It was some other kind of machine which did not drone, vibrate or scream so much as produce a jarring, cast-iron clatter. Alarmed, he and Xhabbo immediately manned the far edge of the cleft again.
A large helicopter, looking like a fully mechanised kind of pterodactyl, was coming towards them with graceless deliberation. It too was obviously making for the place where their spoor disappeared into the cleft. There was something infinitely purposeful and sinister about it as if it knew exactly what it was going to do and was not just scouting as the aeroplane had been. So much so that François felt bound not to take cover as before but to stay on in the shelter and shadow of the cleft, and watch every movement of the weird new machine.
When the helicopter arrived above the cleft, it hovered there like an immense spider, dangling on an invisible thread, and then slowly and methodically turned to pass over their heads and follow the cleft for some miles. Just as slowly and deliberately it came back and followed the cleft to their right for a similar distance. That done, it came back to where their spoor disappeared into the cleft, hovered there for some five minutes and then, slowly, to François’s dismay, moved somewhat sideways and away from it all and started to come down with the obvious intention of settling on the surface of the pan—settling, François had no doubt, to discharge a cargo of soldiers complete with Hottentot trackers.
The noise from the helicopter was so close and loud that François had almost to shout in Xhabbo’s ear, “Xhabbo, I’ve no time to explain . . . the danger is too great. You must go at once with Hin, Nuin-Tara and Nonnie and hasten away down the cleft as fast as you can! No, Xhabbo no. There’s nothing you can do to help me here – Nonnie and Hin are the two who will hold us back. We’ll need all the start possible and more. You must lead them therefore utterly from this place. Any minute now our enemy and those two Hottentots are going to come out of that screaming thing there. They are fresh and strong. We are tired and only two. I’ll stay here to hold them up as long as I can. When I can no longer hold them, I’ll come after you. But in the name of Mantis now, go!”
At that Xhabbo, Hintza and François rushed to join Nonnie and Nuin-Tara who were sitting by their haversacks which of course had been packed and ready for instant travel after their last snack as Xhabbo had insisted before they rested. Nuin-Tara had an expression not so much of alarm as of intense curiosity and an air that Xhabbo would know exactly what was best to do, believing that the less she said or thought about it the better. Nonnie, characteristically, was trying to make light of it all, pretending to stop her ears with her fingers against the terrible noise, putting out her tongue and making a face in the direction of the now invisible helicopter. François told her as briefly as possible what he had told Xhabbo. When it looked as if she would protest, he told her in words as uncertain as they were rough with the need for speed that he would not listen to another word and expected her as Hintza’s nurse to take him off immediately.
Somehow this one solid fact, that she would have some being to look after other than herself, more than anything else François had said, persuaded and silenced her. Hintza was another matter. He did not complain or whimper but looked at François with a deep, still reproach that nearly unmanned him. Quickly François turned away, just raising his hand slightly in farewell, snatched up his own haversack, field flask and pouches of ammunition, hurried over to the bank at the far end and moved further along it sideways towards the left where there was a deep indentation in the dry river-bed closer to where the helicopter was settling. Just before disappearing into it, he noticed that Xhabbo, Nonnie and Hintza had already vanished around the curve in the cleft to his right and that Nuin-Tara, following last, was on the point of doing so.
Quickly he emptied the magazine of his rifle which had been loaded ever since they had marched across the pan with lead bullets, in case he had a chance of shooting game for food. François reloaded it with steel pointed bullets and then came slowly up to his full height, pressing hard into the bank in front of him. Thank God, there were some bushes on both sides of the cleft and he found that he could work himself into a position where both his face and rifle were in the shade and yet where he had a clear field of fire in the direction of the helicopter.
The helicopter was now almost touching the surface of the pan some fifty to sixty paces away, its whirling blades drawing up grains of sand and spreading them outwards on the air all around before they came down like sleet again. But the moment it touched down, the blades above it ceased whirling. The noise of its engines spluttered and stopped and the silence and illusion of calm, by contrast, was so sudden and great that it was deafening.
Yet it was real enough for almost at once François heard distinctly the iron squeak of metal and a door in the side of the helicopter began to open. The sun behind him was low enough to shine as much into the interior of the helicopter as on its outside and François, looking over the sights of his rifle, watched the door open wide and a black man, an automatic rifle on his arm, appear in it and slowly begin gathering himself together, as if preparing to jump down on to the pan.
François knew he could not allow this to happen. But unlike that last fatal encounter with the enemy on the foot of the hill above Hunter’s Drift, he had just enough time to observe and to reflect. He found himself reluctant to kill. His rifle long since at the ready was made at once to bear on the shoulder of the enemy soldier. With a slow deliberation that was better and more accurate than speed, François did not squeeze the trigger so much as let the need for stopping the soldier without doubt, do it for him. The sharp, quick snap of the shot, characteristic of his remarkable little rifle, broke the crystal silence. A spurt of dust darted out of the soldier’s uniform, between his heart and his shoulder. The automatic rifle at once fell from his hand and crashed on the pan. The soldier stumbled backwards into the helicopter and immediately the sounds, first of astonishment and then great confusion broke out inside.
François knew that somehow he must not allow order to come out of that confusion. The door of the helicopter was still wide open. He saw through it to what he thought was the outline of the body of the pilot still at the controls and the sunlight gleaming in points of silver and gold and crystal on the instrument panel. With a speed that never lost its deliberation and with no distortion of aim, he shot once at the pilot and when the pilot’s shape seemed to vanish, he methodically emptied the magazine at whatever shone or glistened on the instrument panel. Reloading his magazine, he was encouraged to hear that the confusion was not being sorted out and that a kind of panic was compelling somebody inside to try and shut the door again and in the process preventing what François feared most, a rush that would bring the men inside tumbling out faster than he could shoot. His magazine full, he immediately resumed shooting into the helicopter before the door could shut. At once the movement of the door stopped, and François more deliberate than ever, continued his destruction of the instrument panel.
Having done that, he reloaded and started to shoot systematically at the helicopter from nose to tail and wing-tip to wing-tip, spacing his shots some three feet apart, until he realised he was using perhaps more ammunition than he could afford and that when he had emptied his magazine this time, he would shoot no more, but wait until there was a specific human target for his rifle. Accordingly he fired three more shots with greater care than ever at what he hoped were the fuel tanks. He was about to fire a fourth, when a sheet of flame suddenly shot out from the helicopter and hard on the sheet of flame there was a great explosion.
Fragments of metal whisked by François and spattered down so close that he ducked low. When he raised himself to look, what was left of the helicopter was fuel for a fire racing upwards, until it stood in a pillar of flame and black smoke high above the pan.
François somehow was certain, great as the distance was between the fire and the edge of the bush, that as the flame and smoke were so high and dark they would be visible to the many watchers the enemy must have deployed on the other side of the pan. He glanced in haste at the sun and realised that there was at the most an hour of daylight left. Considering how long it had taken the aeroplane in the morning to mount the helicopter operation, he knew that at the very least they were safe from pursuers for what was left of the day. Only too glad that there was no need to watch the cremation of the helicopter and its cargo of soldiers to the end, he prepared to leave, helped along because all that had just passed so quickly and terribly somehow seemed remote and impersonal, except for that brief moment of specific humanity imposed on it all by his fleeting glimpse of pilot and black soldier. But even that glimpse now was made singularly matter-of-fact since the soldier and his friends had so obviously come to kill, had he allowed them to do so.
Amazed as he was by how sheer necessity and a summons to defend all that there was left for him to love in life, could make him so easily calculating a person, something else utterly beyond his powers of definition and expression, must have stirred deep down in François. He was looking his last on that pillar of fire soaring into the sky, so unlikely in that spare desert setting that it might have been something conjured up not by man in a modern context but some supernatural manifestation prophetically evoked to point an Old Testament moral.
A Far Off Place Page 31