They took turns cutting. The scraps were collected and wrapped in the hide, away from the insects for the night meal. The sun grew weak and they worked on. Bain carried off the bones, scattered them far away downwind from the meat. Flies swarmed after them; the vultures wheeled closer. Then the last long slice of meat hung drying from the tree. Grimmelmann and O’Brien decided to spend the night under the tree with a small fire; they went back to the cave to get their beds and while they were gone the others tried to find firewood for them.
Evening came. The tree stood in the cooling night festooned with the drying slivers of meat. O’Brien and the old man settled down to rest and keep watch. The others returned to the cave.
It was the best day they had seen.
Jefferson Smith wrote in his journal.
The gemsbok meat saved us. Bain is getting stronger now. Told me he was an educated roughneck. Apt.
How long can we stay here? Five of us. O’Brien hunts but gets little. He tries to kill baboons now. They’re clever. Stay out of range. I think it is doing something to him. He doesn’t talk to us as much as he did. Grimmelmann is fine. He’s a wonder at his age. Requires little. Tough. Good outlook. Grace is O.K. I am fine. I wish we could get another gemsbok. Raw meat. We all complain of headaches and dizzy spells. We need salt.
Jefferson Smith, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., is barefooted. Pants are now Bermuda-length, ragged. We get dressed at night, all we can wear. Nights are cold. O’Brien wears only filthy old tennis shorts. No shoes. No hat. He has never shaved, cut hair. Says it protects skull from sun, keeps his brain below boiling point when he must be in it. He’s right, I suppose. He brings in most of the small lizards in a small bag, all cleaned and ready for the fire. I am the worst hunter here. Grace is better. Outdoor girl. I have a bad eye, no patience. Grimmelmann is owl-like: waits for them to come from hole, sits for an hour, then strikes with his cane. He digs them out from the ground too. O’Brien throws rocks at them, hit or miss—he doesn’t care.
Civilization is a membrane stretched over the dark abyss of barbarism. Florid sentence. We’ve broken through. If this place was bigger, more food, if we all had women, the resulting kids would be born into a stone age. O’Brien’s gun would use up last bullet, all clothes would wear out. Kid’s vocab. would be basic. We might teach them something but after we went it would be meaningless to them (math., history, philosophy, etc.) and they would not pass it on. Toynbee’s twenty-some civilizations did it. H-Bombs will again maybe. All for now.
One afternoon, sitting in the shade at the mouth of the cave, Smith became restless with the speculation, the idle talk. He got up and found his flashlight, discovered that it still worked and stood before Mike Bain and Grace. Grimmelmann was inside the cave resting from his forage in the morning’s hot sun. O’Brien had been gone since dawn.
“I’m going to have another look at that kloof, as you call it,” he announced to them. “You want to come? I’m curious about it.”
“What’s there to see?” Grace asked. “It’s just a hole going up through the rock.”
Bain got up. “You going to crawl up it?”
“Yes,” Smith said. “There’s a bend in it, I think. I want to have a look. I think I can climb it if you hold the light for me.” Bain nodded. “What can we lose? ”
“You can fall,” Grace said. “Break a leg.”
But Smith went and Bain followed him back into the cave. Grace joined them.
Smith’s flashlight cut through the blackness of the interior cave; the light in back of them faded, then vanished as they turned a corner. The sand became deep, softer. They had the feeling that they were entering another place far away from the others, a place where they did not belong. And then they came to the end of the cave, to the place where the floor veered upward, where underfoot were rocks and shale mixed with heavier sand. They watched the beam of light go up into the wide, chimney-like hole overhead, saw it wander over the jagged sides. It did not go up straight as they had imagined; there was a slight angle to it which only Smith had seemed to notice, an angle which made it climbable.
“See where it veers off?” Smith said. He held the light steady and they saw that far up, the slant became more pronounced; one wall veered over and became a ceiling and the other vanished into the mountain.
“I’ve been here a couple of times,” Smith said. “I got to wondering about where that hole went. We should find out. Remember what Grimmelmann was saying about flash floods? Maybe this thing drains off water when it storms. If it does we’ll be in a hell of a fix; we could all be drowned or washed out of the cave.”
“It’s good you thought of it,” Bain said.
Smith handed the flashlight to Bain. He walked around the wall and then began to climb, his big hands reaching up and straining on smooth knobs, searching overhead for narrow fingerholds. He was barefooted and the others watched his toes seeking the places that the hands had found and used. He moved upward and they backed away so that if he fell he would not land on them.
He made it. They saw him stop fifty or sixty feet above them in the rock tunnel. He had climbed easily. After the first twenty-five feet, he was in no danger of falling. Bain had followed him with the light, keeping it ahead of him, helping him find his way up the jagged wall. But Smith vanished now without a word into the blackness. They waited. Bain held the light and wondered what they’d do if it suddenly went out. And then Smith came out of the hole, feet first, and he began to descend. Within a few minutes he was with them, sitting on the sand, bathed in sweat, laughing to himself.
“I’m going up again with the rope,” he said. “I crawled ten feet or so along the tunnel. Couldn’t see a damn thing, of course, but it must go somewhere. I’m going up again and toss the rope down and haul the flashlight up and explore the place.”
The others were excited with him.
“I’ll go back and get the rope,” Bain said. “I can walk back in the dark. Why not turn off the light before it wears out?” He was gone.
Smith pushed the button and they were drowned in darkness. Grace shivered next to him. “I’m afraid in the dark,” she said. “If I were alone I’d be hysterical.”
“This is total darkness,” Smith said. “It seems to weigh down on you, press down. I didn’t feel any air movement up there, but it’s difficult to tell. I’m willing to bet there’s a back door to this cave. I bet the Bushmen used it.”
“I’m afraid of Bushmen too,” Grace said. “I dream that they’ll come here and watch us from the cliff and then in the night come down and kill us.”
“I hope they do come,” Smith said. “They wouldn’t harm us. They’re not wild men or savages, remember that. I think they’d help us get out of here, help us get across the desert, I’d go with them if there are any left, any around; I hope they do come.”
Noises in the darkness came toward them. Smith turned on the flashlight and they saw Mike Bain with the coil of rope.
Smith took the rope, tied a loop in one end and tied the rope around his waist. “I might be able to tie it up there,” he told them. He went to the wall and began to climb, faster this time with Bain lighting the way with the flashlight. He reached the top of the kloof and halted at the horizontal tunnel.
“You want to come up, Bain?” he shouted down. “There’s an elbow of stone up here. I can make a few turns around it with the rope and hold it too. What about it?”
Bain didn’t want to go. It was pointless, and he wasn’t agile or confident of himself. But Smith seemed to want him to come.
“I’ll come up,” he shouted. He found the rope and tugged on it.
“It’s safe,” Smith said from above in the darkness. Grace held the light and Bain climbed slowly upward, pushing against the rock with his bare feet, leaning out above them, moving up the rope hand over hand. He reached Smith, and Grace Monckton let out a sigh of relief.
“Tie the flashlight on the end of the rope now,” Smith called down. Grace did and called back that it was ready. The
y watched it bob upward in the blackness, swaying and throwing an eerie light, showing her face turned upward, strained, taut.
Mike Bain followed Smith down the tunnel, holding the flashlight so that the man in front of him could see. The tunnel sloped upward and became larger until the two men walked upright. The stone closed around them and they walked on, wordless and awed by the sense of discovery.
The floor tilted upward at a sharper angle and the tunnel narrowed. Smith took the flashlight and went on and Bain followed as close as possible. The stone around them and underfoot was a deep dull obsidian black, smooth and glasslike; they began reaching out and touching the sides of the tunnel. The ceiling suddenly went up and Smith stopped for a moment and explored it with the beam of light and they saw that far above them the walls of the tunnel closed.
And all at once the slope ended and the floor underfoot flattened out and they stood in a wide corridor. The ceiling was even higher here; the light did not find it as Smith raised it up and up over the tapered side of the fissure.
The light came down and they went on. Smith stopped suddenly and Bain bumped into him. Smith grunted and Bain looked to see a skeleton curled against the side of the passage.
“Bushman,” Smith said. “Look at the size of it.”
They went to it and bent down and studied the small skull and the time-worn bones. The remains of a tiny bow were near it, and four arrows from which the stone heads had long since dropped. Bain touched the wood and it crumbled.
“Don’t touch the arrowheads,” Smith warned. “They were probably covered with poison once and it’s supposed to be one of the most powerful in the world. It might still be dangerous.”
Bain nodded and they stood up and went on. They came to another skeleton and then two more beyond.
They knelt by the last two skeletons and studied them. One was obviously a child and the other one a woman. Smith picked up a few beads: ostrich shell, uniform and perfectly made. And there were the powdery remains of the clothes they had worn. Why had four Bushmen died here so long ago?
Near the smallest skeleton were a tiny bow and a few arrows the size of pencils, curls and mounds of leather. Smith touched one of them and the ashlike decay crumbled.
The flashlight blinked and for an instant they were alone in the darkness. It frightened them.
“Let’s go on,” Smith said. Bain felt the excitement in his voice.
They moved on, away from the skeletons, down the black tunnel. Smith pointed the light upward and they saw that the ceiling was still out of its reach.
Something white ahead. More bones perhaps. They went on without speaking. The white objects were giant eggshells. A neat pile of them against the black stone. Some were broken. Smith stopped, reached out for Bain’s arm.
“Ostrich eggs,” he said quietly. “There must be twenty or thirty of them.” He reached down, picked one up, hefted it, handed it to Bain. “The Bushmen use them as water containers.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Bain asked. The shell was rubbery-hard with a small hole in each end.
“We can go out into the desert now,” Smith said. “These might save us.”
“Let’s get back to Grace,” Bain said. “I’ll carry a couple of them with me.”
Jefferson Smith nodded, played the flashlight over the pile of dirty white shells. “Be careful. Don’t break any.”
They worked their way back down the tunnel, Bain first, now walking in the path of Smith’s flashlight.
O’Brien came back from hunting as the sun went down. He was tired and short-tempered, flushed from the sun, with nothing to show for hours of tense waiting and stalking. They ate melons and some of the dried gemsbok meat and talked again of the ostrich shells Smith and Mike Bain had found in the kloof.
“We could create water stations,” Grimmelmann said. “I should not speak, really, for I would not be able to walk so far as would be necessary. In any case, with so many shells it would seem possible.”
“How would we do it?” O’Brien asked with sudden interest.
“We have plenty of water and plenty of shells and nothing else to do except wait for a plane to fly over and see us. Let us say that Bain here and Smith walked off into the sand with all the water they could carry in the shells. They walk all night. When they can no longer go on they stop and Bain buries his load where it can be found again. The next night they go on and do the same thing with the remaining water. They come back leaving two water points in the desert. They rest for a few days and regain their strength. They set off again with more water but now they can walk for two days without depleting the supply they carry; they drink from the two stations they created. They walk on and set up two more stations, the last four days from here. Eventually they would have a line of stations across the desert and there would come a time when one man could set off with no water weighing him down and walk for days finding, let us say, two shells of water and food too perhaps at the end of each night’s march.”
“It sounds possible,” O’Brien said.
“I’m not sure I could last that long,” Bain said. “It’s a good plan if you overlook the human factor.”
“We could take turns,” Grace said. “I could go out the first time. That would be the easiest trip.”
“I’ll volunteer to be the last one,” Smith said, “the one who makes the final run.”
“It’s not necessary to do that,” Grimmelmann said. “You would just throw away your life. With these shells it’s possible to explore the area around us. We might very well find another permanent source of water or a road. There is no point in anyone walking off the way Sturdevant did. None of us has the right to ask anyone else to do that.”
“I agree with that,” Bain said. “No heroics. If Sturdevant didn’t make it none of us can. Let’s use the shells to set up water stations for the purpose of searching the area, not to shoot somebody out there in hopes that they’ll find help before they die of thirst. Unless that is agreed upon I will not help.”
“You are right, of course,” Grimmelmann said. “I was only speculating on the uses the shells could be put to. We might well be two or three days’ walk from a small town, closer perhaps. I think we shall soon be out of here.”
“I can’t believe it,” Grace said. “It seems as if I’ve been here half of my life.”
“You have,” O’Brien said. “From the standpoint of your emotions and experiences.” He spoke slowly and carefully and the others looked up and nodded vaguely.
“We are more alive here,” O’Brien said. “There are the basic elements around us. The sun, the air, the darkness of the night and the heat shimmering over the rocks at noon. We live because we are so close to death; we are all more real here than outside.”
Smith nodded and looked at Bain. Grimmelmann understood and smiled to himself as if someone had discovered something in him that he had not known.
“That’s the trouble,” Bain said. “We’re too damn close to nature.” But he understood too, for he’d spent half of his life apart from the mainstream of civilization. And Smith knew: the feel of time about you in the lonely canyons, the smell and taste of the game they ate, the sweet water, the wonder of dawn.
“What do you think about using the ostrich shells? ” Grace asked O’Brien. “You didn’t say much.”
“We have no choice,” the big hunter said. “It seems to me that it would only be a matter of time before we hit something. Go out two or three days in all directions. Two guys carrying all the water they could in the shells leaving two behind every six hours or so. Go out and come back the same way carrying nothing except the empty shells. Only one thing: be sure we put them where we can find them, where they’ll be safe from some animal.”
“Mark each place with a pile of stones and maybe a piece of rag flying from a stick,” Smith said.
“The desert is not really featureless,” Grimmelmann said.
“Once past this sand desert the country would change, that I a
m sure of. It will be just as dry but with trees and some grass and you would find landmarks to go by.”
“We can start tomorrow evening,” O’Brien said. “I’ll go with one of you guys.” He turned to Smith and Bain.
“I’ll go with you,” Smith said.
“Okay,” O’Brien said. “Maybe I can come back with fresh meat. If nothing else, this will widen our foraging area.”
“Take a bag for melons,” Grimmelmann said.
“And build a big fire every day,” Grace said. “Lots of smoke.”
Suddenly they were all alert and expectant. Smith had chanced upon the cache of ostrich eggs and they were going to expand their world. They were going to be saved.
“I’m going to bed,” O’Brien said and he got up and vanished deep in the cave. Grace followed him.
And the others found their beds. Sleep was an escape from the hunger and the reality of their surroundings; sleep was dreaming. Bain was the last one to go. It was the best day so far; the eggshell expeditions might save them. They could be back in civilization within a week… .
It no longer seemed impossible.
Days went by and all of them were busier than they had ever been. O’Brien and Smith had made one trip into the desert, to the north. They found only endless stretches of bush-veld with no surface water. The trip had taken six days, three out and three back along the same route, drinking the water they had left on the way out. They found nothing but O’Brien shot a gemsbok on the last day. They went no farther. O’Brien butchered it and Smith wandered over a wide area and brought back armloads of dead bush. They cooked huge steaks for themselves and wished the others were with them, for there was no time or fuel to attempt smoking the meat. They ate all they could hold and fell asleep exhausted, feeling bloated and half-sick. The fire went out but they started it again when they awoke in the early evening. They cooked big chunks of meat and then hurried back the way they had come. The night was ending and they had to reach the last water station. They had found nothing, but the trip was worth the effort because of the meat. They slowed down on the last leg of the trip and O’Brien almost shot a gazelle but it was too far away and vanished as he raised his rifle.
The Sands of Kalahari Page 10