“I think she’s right,” Smith said.
“Suicidal,” O’Brien said. “You said so yourself. This place is endless. Bigger than most countries in Europe. What chance would you have?”
“A good chance, I think,” Sturdevant told him. “Those two cans hold quite a lot of water if only one is drinking. I’d walk at night and get out of the sun in the day. I’m in good condition. I know a little about deserts. And I’m responsible. I’m going.”
“The compass was broken,” Grace said. “It’s nobody’s fault. I say we should stick together. You said that yourself at the plane.”
“I’d go in a straight line,” Sturdevant said. “Eventually I’d have to hit something, a railroad, a ranch, a road, something.” It wasn’t really true and he knew it. It was possible to walk hundreds of miles and see nothing but scrub and sand. But there was nothing else to do. They’d all die unless they made contact with the outside world.
“I’m against it,” O’Brien said. “We’ve survived this long. We can hold out. Maybe natives come here. The Bushmen old Grimmelmann was talking about.”
“I don’t think so,” Sturdevant said. “There are no signs. If there were any real wild ones around they wouldn’t come near us anyway. Or if they did it might be dangerous for us. I’ve heard stories of them taking hunters out into the desert and then abandoning them.”
“I could go with you,” Jefferson Smith ventured.
“No,” Sturdevant said.
O’Brien stood up. “Shall we start back?” He held his hand down for Grace Monckton and helped her up. She felt the power in his arm and stood close to him for an instant, aware of his maleness.
Sturdevant and Smith groaned and got up and they began to make their way down the cliff. They did little talking on the way down. Instead one and all thought about what they had seen from the peak. They had stood at the point where the two sharp ridges came together, an arrowhead of black rock rising out of the sand. And between the rock walls the valley with a strange abundance of living things, the Biblical garden in the wilderness, narrow under the peak and then growing wider until the cliffs that enclosed it fell away and the sand started again.
When they reached the cave it was already late in the afternoon. They stumbled into the darkness and drank from the pool and slumped to the white sand. Grimmelmann sat by Mike Bain, who was asleep, wrapped in a blanket.
“Our friend Bain has a fever now,” said the old man. “I think from the cut hand.”
“I can look at it later,” Sturdevant said. “Maybe we can do something for him. We’ve got to watch infections and cuts.”
“There’s nothing but sand,” Grace Monckton said. “Everywhere there’s sand… .”
Grimmelmann nodded in the gloom.
“We didn’t see anything,” Jefferson Smith said. He too was beginning to doze off; the sand was so soft and it was cool here, unlike anywhere else in the canyon.
“I think we are farther west than you think,” Grimmelmann told Sturdevant. “In the Namib.”
“It’s possible,” Sturdevant said. “I told the others so I’ll tell you. I’m going to walk out of here, tomorrow maybe or the next day. I’ll take the two water tins and I’ll go out and tell them that we crashed. I’ll be back in a nice big plane …”
“You’ll die in the sand out there,” Grimmelmann said.
“Maybe,” Sturdevant said.
“The desert is a terrible thing,” the old man said.
“I think I might go with you.” O’Brien stretched out in the sand now, hands in back of his head, eyes closed.
“I didn’t invite you,” the pilot said.
“It’s a free country,” O’Brien told him.
“Listen,” Sturdevant said. “I’m going alone, carry my own water and set my own pace.”
“I could go in another direction,” O’Brien suggested.
“You haven’t any water tins, anything to carry water in,” the pilot said. “With those two tins I can make it. All a matter of endurance. If you want to help, let me have one of the rifles. And that big hat of yours with the wide brim. Once you beat the need for water it’s all distance.”
Grimmelmann cleared his throat and in the semidarkness they turned to him. “Listen to me,” he said. “Stay here. Do not try anything so foolhardy. The desert will kill you. The sun will get into your head and boil your brains. You will get tired and you will lie down and pray to die. You are a pilot, you are used to speed. The desert is no place for men; our bodies are not made for it; we are too small and weak for it, too slow.”
“He’s right,” Smith said. “It would probably be impossible to do it with anything short of another plane. Remember when we were coming down? All that space …”
Outside the sun went down and the canyon was suddenly dark. The noise of insects grew louder and a baboon sentinel barked from somewhere on a sheer slope. The troop moved higher, out of danger. It became cooler.
Mike Bain stirred in the sand and opened his eyes. The rock overhead seemed far away in the gloom; the daylight glinted dully on it. He closed his eyes. He was dying.
And he didn’t care. When he died all the pains in his body would stop; the crawling, scratching rawness of his throat, the stomach nausea, the constant headache, and above all the terrible hunger for tobacco and liquor. Death would be a welcome end.
Someone was bending over him; someone sat in the sand beside him.
“Feel better?” It was Sturdevant.
“I’m dying,” Bain said. “Dying happily. It’s going great.”
“Don’t talk like that or you will,” the pilot said.
“We haven’t got a chance, any of us.”
“I have,” Sturdevant said.
“I hope you make it,” Bain said.
“Where were you heading?” Sturdevant asked.
“Me?” Bain said. “I was going to Lusaka. Looking for a job. I know some guys from the old days who are with the big copper outfits there. Was going to hit them for a job.”
“What do you do?” Sturdevant asked.
“I’m an engineer. I’ve knocked around. Bridges, dams, mining, construction. Anything …”
“Well, get rid of that fever. We can use you.”
“Don’t be silly, Sturdevant. We’ve had it.”
“Where were you working before we got together on the plane?”
“Nigeria. We were messing about with a railroad in the back country. I got sick of the place after a year so I told them goodbye and headed south.”
“What’s wrong with the U.S.A.?”
“I went back there after the war,” Bain said. “I got a nice job with a big construction company. I bought a dozen white shirts and cut down on the booze and started to reform. It was tough but I was winning for a while there. Then trouble. I was fired. I went to Pakistan on a government deal, and I haven’t been back to the States since. I’m the original Point Four boy; I’m half-civilized, that’s why I go over big in the underdeveloped areas as they call them now. What the hell, the money was always good and if you made a mistake who the hell knew or cared? I mean we worked like bastards when we had to and when we played it was hard, too. I was sort of a bum in one way, or maybe I just felt like that being out of the country so goddamn long, kicking around, drinking too much… .”
“You want a melon?” Sturdevant said. “We got some cooling.”
“Maybe later,” Bain said. “How about some water?”
Sturdevant got up and came back with a canteen cup. Bain emptied it in one gasping drink, spilling it on his face, his chest, not caring. He pretended for an instant that it was good liquor.
“Thanks,” he told the pilot. He was weary again.
He felt Sturdevant putting one of the blankets over him as he slid off into sleep.
In the night Grace awoke. She lay still for a time and the sounds came again and she knew it was Bain.
Nobody moved. She got up slowly and stood over the almost-dead fire. She added a few pieces
of wood to the glowing coals, shivered in the cold night air. She went to Bain and knelt down next to him. His teeth chattered; he groaned from the cold that follows a fever.
She held his face, spoke quietly to him. Other dark forms turned and moved in the darkness, O’Brien perhaps or Smith. There wasn’t anything more they could do for him. They brought him food and water; Sturdevant had given up his sleeping bag. And during the night they were all cold, waiting for the dawn and the sun.
She wanted to cry. There was no medicine, nothing.
Bain’s teeth chattered. He was trying to double up in the bag, make himself smaller, conserve his warmth. But it would do no good; the cold was everywhere; there was not enough wood to keep a big fire going all night. He would have to suffer.
She began to shiver. A tear ran down her cheek and she brushed it away.
She found the zipper of the sleeping bag and pulled it down. Mike recoiled from the rush of cold air, came fully awake. She worked herself into the bag, wiggling, pushing, sliding her body deep into it, feeling Bain enclose her, seeking her warmth and softness. She turned and pulled the zipper up, sealing off the cold world.
When dawn came, Bain was against her, warm but without fever. He had survived the night-cold, the despair. She worked free from him and the sleeping bag and returned to her own bed.
Hours later, when Bain awoke, he lay and watched the girl move around the cave. She brought him a canteen cup of heated water and a piece of melon. She seemed so familiar … should he ask her?
“You had a fever last night,” she told him. “But you’re cooler now. You’re getting better.”
Bain looked up at her, studied the soft mouth, the warm neck, the heavy blond hair. … It had been a feverish dream, all of it.
After he had eaten melons with the others, Sturdevant took his map case and walked away until he found a place where he could be alone, where he could work, think. And he found such a place a quarter of a mile down the canyon. In the shade of the towering cliff was a thick, smooth slab of rock that reminded him of a table. He put the leather carrying case on the rock, unzipped it, and then carefully unfolded a large map, placed small stones on the edges to keep it flat.
He stood looking at the map for a long time, scratching himself, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, rubbing his bearded chin.
They were here on the map, somewhere, somewhere…
The lettering on the big map was of various sizes and types. The largest and most ornate was reserved for SOUTH-WEST AFRICA, BECHUANALAND PROTECTORATE and CAPE PROVINCE. Then came Damaraland and Great Nama Land and British Bechuanaland followed by the smaller letters for Windhoek, Keetmanshoop, Luderitz, Gobabis. And there were various colors on the map indicating altitude above sea level. Dark green for the lowest, then light green, tan, orange and brown for the high places over five thousand feet. It was a vast region, filled with great empty spaces. There was the railroad running up to Windhoek and there were some first-class highways and many roads but they were like a broken spiderweb spanning a wide window.
He found a pencil and turned away from the map. He began figuring, calculating, estimating. There was the gas load and the distance from Mossamedes in Angola; there was load and wind and the features of the land he had seen before the crash. He took a ruler and began placing it on the map, from one point to another. He began to whistle, to hum. He had to figure out their general whereabouts, to narrow it down. They were certainly south of Windhoek, say at least a hundred miles. And figure a hundred miles from the sea at a minimum. He put the ruler on the map and drew a line that started a hundred miles from the sea and ran eastward five hundred miles; it cut the railroad a hundred miles south of Windhoek almost on 24 degrees latitude. The line crossed into the Kalahari Desert at a tiny spot named Lehututu. He made this line the top of a rectangle, five hundred miles long, two hundred miles wide. They were somewhere inside of it. Both sides lay in pure sand desert, the Kalahari and the Namib on the west. Most of it was at an elevation of three thousand feet; but there were vast areas much higher. There were rivers but in this part of the world they were without water except during the brief wet periods after a violent rain. The Nosop, the Elephant, the Oup.
A hundred thousand square miles …
Two thirds of it was east of the north-south rail line. But there was no way of cutting down the area—nothing on the map or in the landscape that hinted whether they were east or west of it, nothing that indicated that the black mountain was in one part or another. It could be anywhere, in the Namib or in the bleak stretches of the Kalahari, in some sand pocket along the fringes of the jagged mountains between the railroad and the distant sea.
He folded the map and put it away with the papers. He would walk westward. There was nothing north and east except more of the Kalahari. He’d go west and maybe hit the railroad or a recognizable watercourse, a road.
He walked back to the cave.
CHAPTER III
STURDEVANT left the next day, two or three hours before the sun set. He would travel by moonlight, in the night, whenever the sun did not dominate the world. But for the first leg of the trip he would give himself a head start. He wore the big wide-brimmed hat that O’Brien had discarded and he carried the other rifle. He looked strong and able, almost casual—tall and lean, red-bearded. He wore a pair of American Army-surplus shoes, twill trousers and a tattered shirt. On his belt was a small hunting knife that he’d kept in the plane to open beer cans.
But the pack was the most noticeable, most unique feature. He had taken the two light water tins and fastened them to a makeshift packboard. They set high on his shoulders after much adjustment, filled with water now, heavy. The packboard was an ingenious affair of light pieces of wood, an old belt, a short length of copper wire, bits of cord and string from the things they had carried from the plane. It was covered now with his light windbreaker. He would need the jacket, Grimmelmann warned, and it would keep down the water evaporation. The old German shook hands with him now and patted him on the back.
“Walk at night,” he said. “Look for vleys first of all. Build fires from high spots … do you have some of the matches?”
“Yes,” Sturdevant said. “And I’ll make it. I’ve got enough water here for a long time.”
“Good luck, now, Dutchman,” O’Brien said. They shook hands.
“I’ll have the rifle cleaned before I give it back,” the pilot said.
“And the hat too,” O’Brien told him.
“What can I say?” Jefferson Smith told him. “What can any of us say except thanks … as long as we can’t keep you here. You’re a brave man.”
And Grace came. “Take this,” she said. It was a bundle made from a piece of her clothing, bulky and mysterious. It contained many melons, more than they could really spare.
Sturdevant looked around at all of them for the last time, up at the black cliffs, at the far peak.
“I’ll be seeing you,” he said and he turned and walked off down the canyon, toward the sand and the far horizon. In a little while he was no longer visible.
They carried armloads of wood to the top of the cliff up a zigzag trail that O’Brien had discovered and improved until it was relatively safe. It was close to the cave, close to the tiny fire that the girl kept going throughout the day. The wood was piled carefully so that once ignited it would flare quickly. There were four special piles of tinder at the bottom of the big pile. If any of them saw or heard a plane at any hour they were to seize one of the torches, light it and race to the cliff top. And perhaps the burning pyre would be seen and reported and they would be saved.
For a few nights Grimmelmann had made a fire each evening and in the morning it would be cold and they would have to start another. They had only a few dozen matches left, most of them in the old man’s tobacco can. A large permanent fire was impossible due to the scarcity of firewood, but in the end they decided to maintain a small fire—a bed of glowing coals in a cleft a dozen feet from the cave entran
ce. It was left to Grace to keep the fire alive by feeding it scraps of tinder and wood. In the evening she scooped it up in O’Brien’s mess kit and brought it into the cave and kept it alive throughout the night. And in the morning the glowing embers were again brought outside. The daily routine of carrying the fire back and forth became almost ceremonial; somehow the old man took it upon himself to do the job although the mess kit was O’Brien’s and the responsibility of keeping the coals alive was the girl’s. All of them carried firewood and never returned to the cave without a few dry sticks to add to the supply.
“It’s easy to see why primitive man worshiped fire,” Smith said that night as they sat around it.
“And why he feared the night,” Grace added.
“And the sun,” Bain said. “Don’t forget the sun. If it had been me, I’d have made the sun a devil.” He lay in the sleeping bag close to the fire.
“It was,” Smith said. “A god and a devil all rolled into one. Something that could be good and bad depending on the quality of human sacrifices.”
“Like all gods,” O’Brien said.
“And all devils,” Smith added. He threw a twig into the fire and they watched it curl up and snap.
“You’re so vulnerable here,” Grace said. “The sun bums you, the hot sand too; the night makes you shiver. Stones hurt your feet. When shadows come you imagine things, you see the goblins and spooks and ghosts that you laughed at in your easy chair.”
“And you wonder about the next day and the next week,” O’Brien said. “I mean you’re conscious of living and dying. You see a scorpion or you bruise a finger and you know you might not be around too long if luck runs against you.”
Jefferson Smith stared into the fire.
They were cut off from the world outside, not so much by sand and distance as by aloneness, fear, wanting… .
O’Brien needed excitement, risk, challenge. Bain had almost lost the will to live. And what of Grimmelmann? What of Sturdevant? Himself? Yes, what of himself Jefferson Smith?
He tossed a chip of wood into the fire. His back was cold, his face and arms warm. He had really come to Africa to find himself, to see himself totally. He was not a scholar as much as a self-seeker; the Negro past was his past, his searching had become personal.
The Sands of Kalahari Page 5