by Wilbur Smith
‘Where will we find it, I wonder?’ She was all big-eyed and enthusiastic again.
‘I can’t even guess, but when we do I promise you something interesting.’
That night when I came into the tent in my pyjamas, having modestly changed outside, she was already in her bed with the sheets up under her chin. I hesitated in the space between the two camp-beds, until with a mischievous grin she took pity on me and lifted the blankets beside her in invitation.
‘Come to Mama,’ she said.
In the chilly darkness before dawn I huddled in my leather jacket on the cliff above the hive, and waited for the sun. I was a very happy man again, some of my doubt dispelled during the night.
Down on the dark plain there was a flash of light. Sally at her place beyond the grove again, probably lonely and a little scared in the African darkness with its night rustlings and animal cries. I flashed my torch down at her to reassure her, and the dawn started coming on quickly.
Dawn was a thing of soft pinks and roses, misty mauves and mulberry - then the sun burst up above the horizon and the bees began to fly. For twenty minutes I watched them to decide the pattern and purpose of their flight, There was a fan of workers winging wide out over the plain. These were the pollen-gatherers. I established this by leaning out and watching their return, through the binoculars, checking the bunches of yellow pollen on their hind legs as they alighted on the protruding bulge of the crack.
In doing so I discovered another pattern of flight that I might have missed. A steady stream of workers was dropping almost vertically down towards the dark foliage of the silent grove below me - and on their return there was no pollen on their legs. Water-carriers then! I signalled Sally in towards the base of the cliff, this morning our roles were reversed by the slant and angle of the sun’s rays. After a while she waved to let me know she had spotted them, and I began the laborious climb down to the plain.
She had to point out to me the indistinct flight of bees down the cliff towards the grove, but even then the shadow cast by the cliff caused them to vanish before we could establish their exact destination within the grove. We watched them for thirty minutes, then gave it up and went into the trees to search at random.
By noon I could swear that there was no sign of surface water within the environs of the grove. Sally and I flopped down side by side with our backs to the sturdy trunk of one of the mhoba-hoba trees, the wild loquat tree that legend states the ancients brought with them from their homeland, and we looked at each other in despair.
‘Another blank!’ She was perspiring in a light dew across her forehead and temples and a dark curl was plastered to the skin. With one finger I pushed it gently back and tucked it behind her ear.
‘It’s here, somewhere. We’ll find it,’ I told her with the confidence I did not feel. ‘It’s got to be here. It just has to be.’
She was about to answer me, when I pressed my fingers to her lips to silence her. I had seen movement beyond the last trees of the grove. We watched the troop of vervet monkeys crossing the open plain at a gallop with their tails in the air. As they reached the grove they shot up the trunk of the nearest tree with comical relief. Their little black faces peered down anxiously from the massed green foliage, but they did not notice us sitting quietly at the base of the mhoba-hoba.
Confidently now they moved across the tree-tops towards the cliff, the big males leading while the mothers, with infants slung beneath their bodies, and the rabble of half-grown youngsters followed them.
They reached the top branches of a gargantuan wild fig tree, one of those whose roots and trunk were embedded in the vertical cliff wall of red rock, and whose branches spread wide and green fifty feet above the earth - and they began to disappear.
It was an astonishing phenomenon, sixty monkeys went into the tree and dwindled swiftly until the branches were deserted. Not a single monkey was left.
‘What happened to them?’ whispered Sally. ‘Did they go up the cliff?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ I turned to her grinning happily. I think we’ve found it, Sal. I think this is it, but let’s just wait for the monkeys to come back.‘
Twenty minutes later the monkeys suddenly began reappearing in the branches of the wild fig again. The troop moved off in a leisurely fashion along the cliff, and we waited until they were all out of sight before we went forward.
The convoluted and massed roots of the wild fig formed a flight of irregular steps up towards the point where the trunk emerged from the cliff. We climbed up and began examining the trunk, working our way around it. peering up into the branches high overhead. The trunk was gigantic, fully thirty feet around, deformed and flattened by its contact with the uneven wall of red rock. Even then we might have missed it, had there not been a smoothly polished footpath leading into the living rock - a path worn by the passage of feet and paws and hooves over the course of thousands of years. The path squeezed between the gross yellow trunk of the wild fig, and the wall of rock. In the same manner there is often a cave behind a waterfall hidden by the falling water, so our wild fig screened the entrance.
Sally and I peered into the darkened recess behind the trunk, and then we looked at each other. Her eyes were sparkling bright and her cheeks flushed a dull rose.
‘Yes!’ she whispered, and I nodded, unable to speak.
‘Come on!’ She took my hand and we went in.
The opening was a long vertical crack in the cliff and good light came in from high above. Looking up I saw how the rock was polished by the paws of the monkeys who came in that way.
We moved on down the passage, the wall rising twenty feet on each side of us to a narrow vee of a roof. Immediately it was clear that we were not the first human beings that had entered here. The smooth red walls were covered with a profusion of magnificent bushman rock paintings. The most beautiful and well preserved that I had ever seen.
‘Ben! Oh Ben! Just look at them!’ One of Sally’s specialities is bushman art. ‘It’s a treasure house. Oh, you wonderful clever man!’ Her eyes shone in the gloom like lamps.
‘Come on!’ I tugged at her hand ‘There will be plenty of time for that later.’
We moved slowly along the narrow passage as it slanted steadily downwards for another hundred feet. The roof above us climbed progressively higher, until it was lost in the gloom above. We heard the squeak of bats from the dark recesses of the passage.
‘There is light ahead,’ I said, and we went on into an open chamber, rounded, perhaps 300 feet across with sheer walls which rose 200 feet upwards. Like the interior walls of a cone, they narrowed into a small aperture high above which gave a view of cloudless blue sky beyond.
I saw immediately that this was an intrusion of limestone into the red sandstone, and that it was a typical sink-hole formation, very similar to the Sleeping Pool at Sinoia in Rhodesia.
Here also the floor of the cavern was a basin which led down to a pool of water. The water was crystal clear, obviously very deep as the pale greenish colour showed, perhaps 150 feet across, the surface mirror-smooth and still.
Sally and I stood and stared at it. The beauty of this great cavern had paralysed us. Through the tiny aperture 200 feet above us the sun’s rays poured in like the beam of a searchlight, striking the walls of shimmering limestone and lighting the entire cavern with an eerie reflected glow. From the arched roof and walls hung great butterfly wings and stalactites of sparkling white.
The walls of the main chamber were also decorated to a height of fifteen feet or more with the lovely bushman art. In places water seeping from the rock had destroyed the graceful figures and designs, but mostly it was well preserved. I guessed there was two years’ work for Sally and me in this wondrous place.
Slowly she disengaged her hand from mine and walked down to the edge of the emerald pool. I stayed where I was in the mouth of the tunnel, watching her with rapt attention as she stood at the edge of the pool and leaned forward to peer down into the still water.
Then she straightened and slowly, with deliberate movements, began to strip off her clothing. She stood naked at the edge of the pool and her skin was as pale and translucent as the limestone cliffs. Her body, for all its size and strength, had a delicacy of line and texture to it that reminded me of the Chinese carvings in old ivory.
Like a priestess of some old pagan religion, she stood beside the pool and lifted her arms. With a strange atavistic thrill this gesture brought to my mind an ancient forgotten ritual. There was something deep in me that I wanted to cry out, a blessing perhaps, or an invocation.
Then she dived, a long graceful curve of white body and flowing dark hair. She struck the water and went on down, deep. The sweet clean shape of her showed clearly through the crystal water, then she came up slowly from the depths and broke the surface. Her long dark hair was slicked down over her neck and shoulders, she lifted one slender arm and waved at me.
I felt like crying out aloud with relief. I realized then that I had not expected her to come up again from those mysterious green depths. I went down to the edge of the pool to help her out of the water.
Presently we moved slowly around the walls of the cavern and passage, awed by the profusion of paintings and engravings, Sally with her damp hair hanging to her shoulders and her face shining with wonder.
‘There is work here spread over 2,000 years, Ben. This must have been a very holy place to the little yellow men.’ The light failed before we had completed half the tour of the cavern, and it was chilly and scary in the passage as we groped our way out. It was only then that I realized we had not eaten that day.
While Sally warmed up a hash of bully beef and onions, I raised Peter Larkin on the radio and was relieved to hear that the two trucks had returned safely to Maun. I ended the transmission by asking Larkin to get a message through to Louren. ‘Tell him we have found some very interesting rock paintings and will be staying on here indefinitely.’
‘How are you for water?’ bellowed Larkin, his voice distorted by static and Scotch whisky.
‘Fine. We managed to find an adequate supply here.’
‘You found water?’ roared Larkin, ‘There isn’t any water there!’
‘A small catchment in a rock basin from the last rain.’
‘Oh, I see. Okay then. Keep in touch. Over and out.’
‘Thanks, Peter. Over and out.’
‘You are a fibber.’ Sally grinned at me as I switched off the set.
‘All in a good cause,’ I agreed, and we began to prepare lanterns, and cameras, and sketching equipment for the following day.
The old bull elephant was mortally wounded. Blood, slick and shiny, poured from the wounds in throat and shoulder and the shafts of fifty arrows pin-cushioned his massive frame. He stood at bay with his back humped in agony, while around him swarmed the brave little yellow hunters with drawn bows, and pelting arrows. A dozen of their number were strewn back along the path of the hunt, their frail bodies crushed and broken beneath the great round pads and cruel ivory shafts - but the others were closing in for the kill.
The ancient artist had filled his canvas of red rock with such movement and drama that I felt myself witness to the actual hunt. However, the light was tricky and the best reading I could get was F-11 at l/10th of a second.
Reluctantly I decided to use flash. I try to avoid it where possible for it tends to distort colour and throw in false highlights. I began setting up tripod and camera when Sally called.
‘Ben! Come here, please!’
The echo effect and distortion caused by the lofty cavern could not disguise the urgency and excitement in her voice, and I went quickly.
She was in the main cavern beyond the emerald pool, where the rear wall cut back steeply to form a low recess. It was gloomy in there and Sally’s torch beam jumped quickly over the smooth rock surface.
‘What is it, Sal?’ I asked as I came up beside her.
‘Look.’ She moved the torch beam down and I stared at the representation of a massive human figure before me.
‘Good God!’ I gasped. ‘The White Lady of the Brandberg! It’s the same!’
Sally played the beam of the torch down across the figure until it spotlighted the vaunting erection that thrust from its thighs.*
*The White Lady of the Brandberg is one of the most celebrated and controversial rock paintings yet discovered in Africa. Its date is agreed at about AD 0-200, but its interpretation is the subject of much dispute. One source clams it is a Xhosa circumcision candidate daubed with white clay (one thousand miles from the territory of the Xhosa). The famous Abbe Breuil named it a lady, and Credo Mutwa in his recent book Idaba My Children gives an intriguing interpretation in which he concludes ‘It is not a Lady, but a strikingly handsome young white man, one of the great emperors who ruled the African Empire of the Ma-iti (Phoenicians) for nearly two centuries.’
‘That lady is beautifully hung,’ she murmured, ‘if you get the point.’
The figure was six feet tall, dressed in yellow breastplate and ornate helmet with a high arched crest. On his left shoulder he carried a rounded shield on which yellow ornamental rosettes were set in a circle about the central boss. In his other hand he carried a bow and sheaf of arrows, and from his waist hung sword and battle-axe. His shins were protected by greaves of the same yellow metal and on his feet were light open sandals.
The figure’s skin was depicted as deathly white, but a fiery bush of red beard hung onto his chest. The display of his sexual parts was clearly a stylized indication of his dominant and lofty status. The effect was in no way obscene, but gave to the figure a masculine pride and arrogance.
‘A white man,’ I whispered. ‘Armour and rounded shield, bow and battle-axe. Could it be—’
‘A Phoenician king,’ Sally finished for me.
‘But the Phoenician type is more likely to have been darkhaired, hook-nosed. This man would have been an unusual figure amongst the ancients, to say the least. A throw-back, perhaps, to some north Mediterranean ancestor. How old is it, Sal?’
‘I can’t be sure yet, but I’d say 2,000 years. This wall of paintings is the most ancient in the whole cavern.’
‘Look, Sal.’ I pointed eagerly.
Beyond the central figure was an army of stick figures that followed the king. They were not executed in such detail, but the swords and helmets were unmistakable.
‘And look there.’ Sally directed the beam of the torch onto a row of white-robed figures that stood at the king’s feet. Tiny figures, perhaps nine inches tall.
‘Priests, perhaps - and, oh Ben! Look! Look!’
She played the beam across the stone canvas, and for a moment I did not recognize it - then my heart jumped. Like a huge frieze, that was obliterated in places by moisture, moss and lichens, or that was obscured by the myriad figures of men and animals drawn over it, and that yet managed to maintain its imposing majesty and power, swept the drawing of a stone fortress wall. It was built in blocks with the joints clearly shown, and along its summit was the decorative pattern of chevrons, identical to the one that graces the main temple wall at the ruins of Zimbabwe. Beyond the wall rose outlines of the phallic towers we had expected to find.
‘It’s our city, Ben. Our lost city.’
‘And our lost king, Sally, and his priests, and warriors and - oh, my God! Sally, look at that!’
‘Elephants!’ she squealed. ‘War elephants with archers on their backs, just like Hannibal used against the Romans. Carthaginian - Phoenician!’
There was so much of it, a curved wall 100 feet long and ten to fifteen feet high and every square inch of it thick with bushman paintings. The figures and forms were interwoven, some of the earlier pictures overlaid and smothered; others, like our white king, standing proudly untouched and unspoiled. It would be a major undertaking to unravel those portraits which related to our lost civilization, from the great mass of traditional cave art. This was Sally’s special skill, my camera could only capture the whole con
fused scene, while she would patiently and painstakingly pick out a figure or group of particular interest that was almost entirely obliterated and recreate and restore it on her rolls of wax paper.
However, there was no suggestion of such work beginning now. Sally and I spent what was left of the day climbing and crawling along the back wall peering and probing and exclaiming with wonder and delight.
When we got into camp that night we were physically and emotionally exhausted. Peter Larkin had a message for us from Louren:
‘He says to wish you good luck, and that one of the oil helicopters will be in your area within the next few days. Is there anything you need, and if so give me a list. They will drop it to you.’
The next ten days were the happiest of my entire life. The helicopter came as Louren had promised with the name ‘Sturvesant Oil’ blazoned across its fuselage. It carried a full load of necessities and luxuries for us, another tent, folding chairs, a surveyor’s theodolite, gas for the lamps, food, extra clothing for both of us, more paper and paints for Sally, film for me, and even a few bottles of Glen Grant malt whisky, that sovereign specific for all the ills of man. A note from Louren enjoined me to carry on with what I was doing as long as it looked promising. He would give me his full support, but I was not to keep him in the dark too long as he was ‘dying of curiosity’.
I sent him my thanks, a roll of film showing the paintings which had no ancients in them, and a batch of polythene bags containing samples of pigments from the cavern for carbon-14 dating. Then the helicopter flew away and left us to our idyll.
We worked from early each morning until dark each evening, mapping the cavern in plan and elevation, and photographing an overlapping run of the walls and relating this to our map. Sally alternated between assisting me and continuing with her own task of isolating our ancient figures. We worked in complete harmony and understanding, breaking off now and then to eat our lunch beside the emerald pool, or to swim naked together in its cool limpid water, or at times just to lie idly on the rocks and talk.