by Wilbur Smith
‘Here!’ Aboli pointed out a string of pad marks. ‘This is the spoor of the great bull. See the size of each footprint, the front foot round and the back foot more oval in shape.’ Aboli placed his own arm beside one of the tracks, using its length from the tip of his finger to the elbow as a yardstick. ‘So long means that he is a mighty bull, and see how his pads are worn smooth? He is of great age. Unless his tusks are worn or broken, this will truly be an animal worthy of the chase.’
They crossed the first line of hills, and in the lush valley beyond Fundi and Aboli divined from the sign that the herd had fed and rested the previous night. ‘We have gained many hours on them,’ Fundi exulted. ‘They are not far ahead.’ But Tom was to learn that day that Fundi’s idea of distance did not coincide with his own. By nightfall they were still on the herd’s tracks, and Fundi was still assuring them that they were not far ahead.
All the white men in the party were nearing exhaustion, for sailors are not accustomed to covering such distances on foot. They had hardly the will left to eat a biscuit and a stick of dried meat, to swallow a few mouth-fuls of water from the skins, before they fell asleep on the hard earth.
The next morning while it was still dark they were away again after the herd. Before long it was clear from the sign that they had lost much of their gain of the previous day, for the herd had kept moving westward in the moonlight while they had slept. For most of the white men the march became an endless torment of thirst, aching muscles and blistered feet. Tom was still young and tough and eager enough to make light of the hardship, forging along behind the trackers, with the heavy musket over his shoulders.
‘Close! We are very close now.’ Fundi grinned with malicious glee, and the gruelling miles dropped behind them. By now the waterskins were almost empty, and Tom had to warn the men with dire threats not to drink without permission. Tiny black flies swarmed around their heads and crawled into their ears, eyes and nostrils. The sun beat down like a hammer on an anvil and reflected up from the stony ground. The hooked thorns clawed at their legs as they passed, ripping their clothing and leaving bloody lines on their skin.
At last they found where the herd had stopped in a patch of dense forest, had spent many hours resting, dusting themselves, and breaking down branches, before it drifted on again, and the hunters finally made a real gain upon it.
Aboli pointed out to Tom how the dung that the herd was now dropping had not had time to dry, and when he thrust his finger into one pile he could feel the residual body heat. Clouds of brightly coloured butterflies hovered over the warm turds to drink up the moisture. With renewed strength in their legs they increased the pace, and climbed another line of hills.
On the rocky slopes grew strange trees with swollen trunks and crowns of leafless branches on their tops, fifty feet above the ground. At the base of one tree huge furry seed-pods were heaped. Aboli cracked one open: the black seeds inside were coated with a yellow pithy layer. ‘Suck the seeds,’ he said. The pleasant sour taste made their saliva flow again, and relieved the burning thirst of the march.
The line of hunters, burdened by their weapons and waterskins, toiled on up the hill. Just below the crest their heads went up. An awful sound came to them on the heated air, distant but stirring as the blast on a war trumpet. Though Tom had never heard the like before, he knew instinctively what it was.
Quickly he ordered the column to halt below the crest of the hill. Most of the men collapsed thankfully in the shade. He, Aboli and Fundi crept up to the skyline. They used a tree trunk to break their silhouette as they peered over into the valley beyond, and Tom’s heart leaped against his ribs like a caged beast.
Down the length of the valley below them was strung out a line of sparkling green pools, each surrounded by lush reed beds and spreading shade trees. The elephant herd was gathered around the pools, some of the huge animals standing in the shade, fanning themselves with their ears, which seemed to Tom as wide as the mainsail of the Swallow. Others were standing on the yellow sandbanks that surrounded the pools, dipping their trunks into the green water and sucking up gargantuan draughts, then curling their trunks into their mouths and sending it hissing down their throats with the force of a ship’s bilge pump. Younger animals crowded into the pools. Like rowdy children they frolicked and splashed, beating the water white with their trunks, shaking their huge heads and flapping their ears. Their wet bodies were black and shining. Some lay flat then rolled on to their sides, disappearing entirely below the surface, leaving only their trunks writhing above the surface like a sea serpent.
Tom went down on one knee and raised his telescope to his eye. This first sighting of the legendary beasts was so far beyond anything he had imagined that he was lost in wonder. He delighted in every detail. One of the youngest calves, not much bigger than a large pig but mischievous and bumptious, charged out of the water and, with swinging trunk and murderous trumpeting, chased the white egrets that were perched on the edge of the pool. The birds rose in a gratifying white cloud, and the small elephant swaggered back into the water, slipped almost immediately in the mud and trapped itself under a submerged log.
Its now terrified squeals brought every protective female within earshot rushing to the rescue, convinced that the calf had been taken by a crocodile. It was dragged out of the water, its dignity destroyed, and it fled, chastened, to hide between the legs of its mother, and suckle for comfort at the milk-swollen udders between her front legs. Tom laughed aloud, then Aboli touched his shoulder and pointed out a group of three huge animals that stood aloof from the raucous behaviour of the cows and calves.
They were in a patch of dense bush on the far side of the water, standing shoulder to shoulder, ears flapping lazily. Occasionally one picked up a load of dust in his trunk and dashed it over his head and back. Apart from that they seemed to be sleeping on their feet.
Through the lens, Tom studied this towering trio, which dwarfed every other animal in the herd. He examined the long ivory shafts they carried, and saw at once that, though they were all massive, the bull in the centre carried tusks that protruded beyond his lip almost the length of a boat’s oar, and were the girth of Sarah’s slim waist. He felt the pulse of his hunter’s blood pound in his ears at each pump of his heart. This was the bull he had dreamed of, and his instinct was to seize the musket he had propped against the tree beside him and rush down to do battle with the giant. But Aboli sensed his mood and laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘These are sage and wary creatures,’ he warned Tom. ‘It will not be easy to come up to that bull down there. His females will guard and protect him. It will call for all our cunning and caution to outwit them.’
‘Explain to me what we must do,’ said Tom, and Aboli and Fundi lay on each side of him and planned the hunt.
‘The wind is the key,’ Aboli told him. ‘We must always keep below the wind.’
‘There is no wind,’ Tom said, and pointed to the leaves that hung lifelessly from the top branches of the trees in the heated noonday.
‘There is always wind,’ Aboli contradicted him, and let a handful of dust trickle through his fingers. The fine golden motes floated in the sunlight, then drifted slowly away. Aboli made a delicate gesture describing the movement down the valley.
‘When they are alarmed they will always run with the wind in their faces, then they will circle to come above the wind and take the scent.’ He made another gesture to illustrate this manoeuvre. ‘We will place Alf and Luke there and there.’ He pointed out the positions. ‘When they are in place, you and I will come down there.’ He pointed out the path of their stalk. ‘We will creep in close. When we fire, the bulls will be driven on to the others.’
Tom gestured for Alf and Luke to come up beside him on the ridge. Once they had recovered from their initial amazement at the first sight of the quarry, he gave them their orders, sending them to circle out behind the ridge, and cross it a mile further down the valley where they would be out of sight and below the wind of the herd
.
It was almost an hour later that, through the telescope, he made out the two parties of hunters moving up the valley into the positions he had assigned them. It was good to have men under him who knew his mind and could carry out his orders so faithfully.
Aboli leading, they slipped quietly over the skyline, using the trees and scrub to screen their crossing. The great beasts were not so dim-sighted that they could not pick up alien movement. They crept down towards the pools with painstaking stealth, taking care not to run into one of the females scattered among the trees. Tom could barely credit how such a huge animal could become virtually invisible when it stood still among the thick bush, grey on grey, even its legs resembling the tree trunks. Slowly they closed in on the trio of bulls. Although they were still invisible, the hunters were guided by their deep rumblings.
Tom whispered to Aboli, ‘Is that the sound of their bellies?’
Aboli shook his head. ‘The old men are speaking to each other.’
Occasionally they saw a cloud of dust rise above the tops of the bush as one of the bulls dusted himself. It guided them through the thick undergrowth. Step by cautious step they went forward, once having to pull back and circle around a young cow and her nursing calf in the scrub between them and their quarry.
At last Fundi stopped them with a gesture of his pink palm, then pointed ahead. Tom went down on one knee and, looking below the hanging vines and branches, made out the massive grey forelegs of the nearest bull. The sweat of excitement was trickling into his eyes and stinging like sea-water. He wiped it away with the bandanna knotted around his throat, and checked the lock and flint of his musket. Aboli nodded at him and he drew back the hammer to half cock. They began to crawl forward.
Slowly, more of the nearest beast came into view, the droop of his belly, the baggy grey skin hanging in folds around his knees, then the lower curve of one thick, yellow tusk.
They crawled in closer still, and Tom saw that the tusk was stained with the juices of bark that the bull had stripped from the forest trees. Closer still and he could see every crease and wrinkle in the skin, each wiry hair in the stubby tail. Tom looked at Aboli and made the gesture of firing, but Aboli shook his head vehemently, and signed to him to move in closer still.
The bull was rocking gently on his feet, and then to Tom’s amazement something extraordinary began to issue from between its back legs. It was thicker than a man’s thigh and seemed to extend endlessly, until it was dangling almost to the ground. Tom had to make an effort to prevent himself laughing. Drowsy and contented, the old man was letting his member dangle out and engorge.
Again Tom glanced at Aboli for instruction, and again Aboli scowled and urged him forward, but at that moment the bull stepped back and reached up with his trunk to pluck a bunch of leaves from the branches above him. The movement revealed the other bull, which he had been screening with his bulk.
Tom drew breath with a soft hiss as he saw how much larger was the old patriarch than his attendant. His enormous head was drooping, and his ears flapped gently. They were tattered and worn like the sails of a storm-battered ship. His small eyes were closed, the thick pale lashes meshing, and the ooze from the gland behind his eye ran down his cheek in a long damp smear.
The bull’s head was propped on his tusks. Tom marvelled at the length and girth of those ivory curves, which reached down to the earth. They were so thick and heavy that there was hardly any taper from the lip to the blunt tip. He could see the bulge under the grey skin where a quarter of the length was buried in the skull. They must be an onerous burden for even such a mighty animal to carry through all the days of its life, he mused.
Tom was so close now that he could clearly see a metallic blue fly settle on the bull’s eyelashes. The elephant blinked to drive it away. At that moment Tom felt a light touch on his arm, and turned his head slowly to see Aboli nod at him. He turned back and focused his gaze on the outline of the bones of the bull’s shoulder under the wrinkled, eroded skin. He picked out the exact spot Fundi had described to him, just behind the shoulder and two-thirds of the way down the mighty barrel of the chest.
He raised the musket and slowly drew back the hammer to full cock, muffling the click of the mechanism with his hand. Looking down the long barrel, he saw that the muzzle was almost touching the bull’s flank. There was no need to use the pip of the foresight. Gently he took up the pressure of the trigger and the hammer dropped in a burst of blue-white sparks over the pan. There was that moment of delay that seemed as long as infinity, but was the smallest part of a second, then the heavy weapon bellowed and pounded into his shoulder, knocking him back on his haunches, and blinding him with a cloud of white powder smoke, which obscured the body of the elephant.
A moment after his shot he heard Aboli fire. All around him the tranquil forest erupted in a rush of mighty bodies. Trumpeting and squealing, the herd plunged through the undergrowth, and trees swayed and crashed down under the onslaught.
Tom dropped the empty gun, reached back, seized the second musket from the man behind him and sprang to his feet. He ran into the thick cloud of smoke. As he emerged on the far side he saw the plunging hindquarters of the bull disappear as the scrub closed behind him.
‘Chase him!’ Aboli shouted at his shoulder, and they raced after the fleeing bull. All around they heard the cows and squealing calves crashing through the undergrowth. Thorns and branches tore at Tom, but he ignored the ripping of his clothing and the scratching at his skin and ran on along the pathway that the bull had riven through the scrub.
He burst out on to the open bank of one of the pools, and the beast was fifty feet ahead of him, his ears spread and the curves of his tusks showing yellow on each side of his baggy hindquarters as he bore directly away from Tom at full run. His stubby tail tuft was held high, and Tom could see the knuckles of his spine running down the curve of his back to join the tail.
He swung up the musket and fired at the spine, the bull dropped into a sitting position on his haunches, and skidded down the bank. But the ball must have grazed the spine rather than smashed it: he was paralysed for but a second. As he reached the bottom of the bank he came up on all four legs again and splashed through the head of the pool and up the far bank.
Aboli ran alongside Tom and fired across the pool. They both saw the ball raise a puff of dried mud from the back of the bull’s skull, but he shook his head, clapping his ears against his flanks, and disappeared into the dense bush on the far side. Tom grabbed his third musket from the panting sailor who handed it to him, and plunged down the bank in pursuit of the bull.
Aboli ran beside him, and they could see the course the bull was breaking through the forest – the treetops were shaking and there was a rustling, crackling wake through the bush, like that of a breaching whale beneath the surface of the sea.
Suddenly there was a thudding outburst of musket fire out on the right flank where the other hunters were hidden, and Aboli grunted, ‘The other bulls have run into Alf and Luke.’
Running together, they skirted the edge of the pool and plunged into the bush on the far side. The path the bull had torn through was closing behind him, and they struggled on with difficulty, losing cloth and skin to the thorns.
‘We will never catch him now,’ Tom gasped. ‘He will run clear away from us.’
But when they burst out into a clearing at last, they both shouted with triumph as they saw the great bull only a pistol shot ahead. He was hard hit. His run had been reduced to an unsteady walk, and his head was hanging, his tusks ploughing long furrows in the soft earth, and pale frothy blood was bubbling from the tip of his trunk.
‘Your first shot was a lung hit!’ Aboli shouted, and they ran forward with renewed vigour, swiftly overhauling the wounded beast. Ten paces behind him, Tom dropped on one knee. He was gasping for air, his heart pounding and his hands shaking, as he tried to take a bead on the swaying hindquarters, aiming once again for the spine.
He fired and this time the ball
flew true from the rifled barrel. In the instant before the smoke obscured his vision, he saw it plough into the wide grey back, shattering the vertebrae above the tail. The bull dropped on to his haunches once again. Tom scrambled to his feet and ran out to one side so that he could see around the smoke bank.
The elephant was sitting facing him, shaking its head with fury and agony, the great tusks held high, blowing a carmine cloud of blood from the tip of its trunk. Its death squeals seemed loud enough to split Tom’s skull and burst his eardrums.
Aboli fired at the head and though they both saw the ball strike on the domed forehead, it could not penetrate the fortress of bone in which the brain was buried. The maimed beast tried to drag its crippled back legs behind it and reach its tormentors.
Both men ran back, well out of reach of the swinging trunk and, with unsteady hands, poured powder into the muzzles of their muskets, rodded down the wadding and the balls, then crept forward, circling to find an opening, to get in close before firing into the barrel of the chest.
Again and again they ran back to reload, then came forward to fire. Gradually the strength of the beast leaked out of him from the mouths of twenty running wounds, and with a last groan he fell over on his side, stretched out those fabulous tusks and was still.
Tom went forward cautiously. He reached out and with the muzzle of the musket touched the tiny eye, fringed with pale lashes and brimming with almost human tears. It did not blink. The bull was dead at last. He wanted to shout his triumph, but instead he found himself overwhelmed by a strange, almost religious melancholy. Aboli came to stand beside him, and when their eyes met, Aboli nodded in understanding. ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘You have learned what it means to be a true hunter, for you have understood the beauty and the tragedy of what we do.’