Suddenly the old man checked and began to swing up the rifle he carried, but the shot crashed out and he went down abruptly in the grass. Hobday swore softly, bitterly, he had missed the moment, had not been able to place the spot from which the shot had been fired. Now he waited with a finger on the trigger, screwing up his eyes against the rain, less certain of himself, feeling a new awe and respect for his quarry, and the first tingle of fear. It had been a good kill, that one, leading the old man right in close, calling him up as though he were a hungry leopard coming to the bleat of a duiker horn.
Then suddenly the bearded hunter’s doubts were dispelled, and for an instant he could hardly believe his fortune. Just when he had been steeling himself for a dangerous and long-drawn-out duel, his quarry stepped out into the open from the cover of a twisted dead tree trunk on the bank of the river, a childlike, ridiculously artless act
- an almost suicidal act, so ingenuous that for a moment he feared some trap.
The young man stood for a moment over the corpse of the man he had killed. Even at this range, it seemed as though he swayed on his feet, his face very pale in the weak grey light but the khaki of his shirt standing out clearly against the back lighting from the surface of the river.
It needed no fancy shooting, the range was less than a hundred and fifty yards and for an instant Hobday held his aim in the centre of the boy’s chest, then he squeezed off the shot with exaggerated care, knowing that it was a heart shot. As the rifle pounded back into his shoulder and the brittle crack of the Mauser stung his eardrums, he watched the boy hurled backwards by the shock of the strike and heard the bullet impact with a jarring solid thud.
Mark never even heard the Mauser shot for the bullet came ahead of the sound. There was only the massive shock in the upper part of his body, and then he was hurled backwards with a violence that drove the air from his lungs.
The earth opened behind him, and as he fell, there was the sensation of being engulfed in a swirling vortex of blackness — and he knew for just a fleeting moment of time that he was dead.
Then the icy plunge into the swirling brown current of the river caught him and shocked him back from the edge of blackness. The water engulfed his head and he had the strength to kick away from the muddy bottom. As his head broke the surface, he dragged precious air into his crushed burning lungs and realized that he held the P.14 in both hands still.
The wooden stock of the rifle was directly in front of his eyes, and he saw where the Mauser bullet had smashed into the wood and then flattened against the solid steel of the breech block.
The bullet was squashed to a misshapen lump, like a pellet of wet clay hurled against a brick wall. The rifle had stopped it dead, but the tremendous energy of impact had driven the P.14 into his chest, expelling the air from both lungs and hurling him backwards over the bank.
With enormous relief, Mark let the rifle drop into the muddy bottom below him, and was swept away by the current into a swirling nightmare of malaria and rain and raging brown water. Slowly the darkness overwhelmed him, and his last conscious thought was the irony of being saved from death by rifle shot to be immediately drowned like an unwanted kitten.
The water came up over his mouth again, he felt it burn in his lungs and then he was gone into nothingness.
There can be few terrors like those of a mind tortured by malaria fever, a mind trapped in an endless nightmare from which there is no escape, never experiencing the relief of waking in the sweat of terror and knowing it was only delirium.
The nightmares of malaria are beyond the creation of the healthy brain, they are unremitting and they are compounded by a consuming thirst. The thirst as the body bums its strength and fluid in the heat of the conflict, a cycle of attack no less terrible for its regular familiar stages: icy chills that begin the cycle, followed by burning Saharan fevers that rocket the body heat to temperatures so high that they can damage the brain, and that are followed by the great sweat, when body fluid streams from every pore of the victim’s body, desiccating him and leaving him without the strength to lift head or hand while he awaits the next round of the cycle to begin, the next bout of icy shivering chill.
There were semi-lucid moments for Mark between the periods of heat and cold and nameless terror. Once, when the thirst burned so that every cell of his body shrieked for moisture and his mouth was dry and swollen, it seemed that strong cool hands lifted his head and bitter liquid, bitter but cold and wonderful, flooded his mouth and ran like honey down his throat. At other times in the cold, he pulled his own grey woollen blanket close around his shoulders and the smell of it was familiar and well-beloved - the smell of woodsmoke and cigarette and his own body smell. Often he heard the rain and crash-rumble of thunder, but always he was dry, and then all sound faded and he was swept away on the next cycle of the fever.
He knew it was seventy-two hours after the first chilling onslaught that he came once again fully conscious. The malaria is that predictable in its cycle that he knew when it was to within a few hours.
It was late afternoon and Mark lay wrapped in his blanket on a mattress of fresh-cut grass and aromatic leaves. It was still raining, a steady grey relentless downpouring from the low pregnant cloudbanks that seemed to press against the tree-tops — but Mark was dry.
Above him was a low roof of rock, a roof that had been blackened over the millennium by the wood fires of others who had sought shelter in this shallow cave; the opening of the shelter faced north-west, away from the prevailing rain-bearing winds, and just catching the last glimmerings of light from where the sun was sinking behind the thick cloud cover.
Mark lifted himself with enormous effort on one elbow and looked about him, bemused. Propped against the rock wall near his head was his pack. He stared at it for a long time, puzzled and completely bewildered. His last coherent memory had been of engulfing icy waters. Closer at hand was a round-bellied beer pot of dark fire-baked clay, and he reached for it immediately, his hands shaking not only from weakness but from the driving need of his thirst.
The liquid was bitter and medicinal, tasting of herbs and sulphur, but he drank it with panting grateful gulps until his belly bulged and ached.
He lowered the pot then and discovered beside it a bowl of stiff cold maize porridge, salted and flavoured with some wild herb that tasted like sage. He ate half of it and then fell asleep, but this time into a deep healing sleep.
When he awoke again, the rain had stopped and the sun was near its zenith, burning down through the gaps and soaring valleys of the towering cloud ranges.
It required an effort, but Mark rose and staggered to the opening of the rock shelter. He looked down into the flooded bed of the Bubezi River, a roaring red-brown torrent in which huge trees swirled and tumbled on their way to the sea, their bared roots lifted like the crooked arthritic fingers of dying beggars.
Mark peered to the north and realized that the whole basin of swamp and bush had been flooded, the papyrus beds were submerged completely under a dull silver sheet of water that dazzled like a vast mirror, even the big trees on the lower ground were covered to their upper branches, and the higher ridges of ground and the low kopjes were islands in the watery waste.
Mark was still too weak to stay long on his feet, and he staggered back to his bed of cut grass. Before he slept again he pondered the attack, and the disquieting problem of how the assassins had known he was here at Chaka’s Gate; somehow it was all bound up with Andersland and the death of the old man in the wilderness here. He was still pondering it all when sleep overtook him.
When he awoke, it was morning again, and during the night somebody had replenished the beer pot with the bitter liquid and the food bowl with stiff porridge and a few fragments of some roast flesh, that tasted like chicken but was probably iguana lizard.
The waters had fallen dramatically, the papyrus beds were visible with their long stems flattened and the fluffy heads wadded down by the flood, and the trees were exposed, the lower ground dry
ing out; the Bubezi River in the deep gorge below Mark’s shelter had regained some semblance of sanity.
Mark was suddenly aware of his own nudity, and of the stink of fever and body wastes that clung to him. He went down to the water’s edge, a long slow journey during which he had to pause often to regain his strength and for the dizziness to stop singing in his ears.
He bathed away the smell and the filth and examined the dark purple bruise where the Mauser bullet had smashed the P.14 into his chest. Then he dried in the fierce glare of the noon sun. It warmed the last chills of the fever from his body – and he climbed back up to the shelter with a spring and lightness in his step.
In the morning he found that the beer pot and food bowl had disappeared, and he sensed somehow that the gesture was deliberate and carried the message that, as far as his mysterious benefactor was concerned, he was able to fend for himself again, and that he had begun to outlive his welcome.
Mark gathered his possessions, finding that all his clothing had been dried out and stuffed into the canvas pack. His bandolier of ammunition was there also and the bonehandled hunting knife was in its sheath, but his food supply was down to one can of baked beans.
He opened it and ate half, saved the rest for his dinner, left the pack in the back of the shelter, and set out for the far side of the basin.
It took him almost two hours to find the killing ground, and he recognized it at last only by the dead tree with its twisted arthritic limbs. The ground here was lower than he had imagined, and had been swept by the flood waters; the grass was flattened against the earth, as though brilliantined and combed down, some of the weaker trees had been uprooted and swept away and, in the lower branches of the larger stronger trees, the flood debris clung to mark the high-water level.
Mark searched for some evidence of the fight, but there was none, no body nor abandoned rifle, it was as though it had never been … Mark began to doubt his own memory until he slipped his hand into the front of his shirt and fingered the tender bruising.
He searched down the track of the waters, following the direction of the swept grass for half a mile. When he saw vultures sitting in the trees and squabbling noisily in the scrub, he hurried forward, but it was only a rhino calf, too young to have swum against the flood, drowned and already beginning to putrefy.
Mark walked back to the dead tree and sat down to smoke the last cigarette in his tin, relishing every draw, stubbing it out half-finished and carefully returning the butt to the flat tin with its picture of the black cat — and the trade mark ‘Craven A’.
He was about to stand when something sparkled in the sunlight at his feet, and he dug it out of the still damp earth with his finger.
It was a brass cartridge case, and when he sniffed at it, there was still the faint trace of burned cordite. Stamped into the base was the lettering ‘Mauser Fabriken. 9 mm’ and he turned it thoughtfully between his fingers.
The correct thing was to report the whole affair to the nearest police station, but twice already he had learned the folly of calling attention to himself while some remorseless enemy hunted him from cover.
Mark stood up and went down the gentle slope to the edge of the swamp pools. A moment longer he examined the brass cartridge case, then he hurled it far out into the black water.
At the rock shelter he hefted his pack on to his shoulders, bouncing from the knees to settle the straps. Then, as he crossed to the entrance, he saw the footprints in the fine cold ash dust of the fire. Broad, bare-footed, he recognized them instantly.
On an impulse he slipped the sheathed hunting knife off his belt, and laid it carefully exposed in an offertory position at the base of the shelter wall; then, with a stub of charcoal from the dead fire, he traced two ancient symbols on the rock above it – the symbols that old David had told him stood for ‘The-bowed-slave-who-bears-gifts’. He hoped Pungushe, the poacher, would come again to the rock shelter and that he could interpret the symbols and accept the gift.
On the slope of the south butt of Chaka’s Gate, Mark paused again and looked back into the great sweep of wilderness, and he spoke aloud, softly, because he knew that if the old man were listening, he would hear, no matter how low the voice. All he had learned and experienced here had hardened his resolve to come to the truth and to unravel the mystery and answer the questions that still hid the facts of the old man’s death.
‘I’ll come again – some day.’ Then he turned away towards the south, lengthening his stride and swinging into the gait just short of a trot that the Zulus call ‘Minza umhlabathi’ — or ‘eat the earth greedily’.
The suit felt unfamiliar and confining on his body, and the starched collar was like a slave’s ring about Mark’s throat, the pavement hard and unyielding to his tread and the clank of the trams and the honk and growl and clash of train and automobile were almost deafening after the great silences of the bush, and yet there was excitement and stimulation in the hurrying tide of human beings that swirled around him, strident and colourful and alive.
The tropical hot-house of Durban town encouraged all growth of life, and the diversity of human beings that thronged her streets never failed to intrigue Mark; the Hindu women in their shimmering saris of gaudy silk with jewels in their pierced nostrils and golden sandals on their feet; the Zulus, moon-faced and tall, their wives with the conical ochre headdresses of mud and plaited hair that they wore for a lifetime, bare-breasted under their cloaks, big stately breasts fruitful and full as those of the earth mother, to which their infants clung like fat little leeches, and the short leather aprons high on their strong glossy dark thighs swinging as they walked; the men in loincloths muscled and dignified – or wearing the cast-off rags of Western clothing with the same jaunty panache and self-conscious assurance that the mayor wore his robes of office; the white women, remote and cool and unhurried, followed by a servant as they shopped or encapsuled in their speeding vehicles; their men in dark suits and the starched collars better suited to the climes of their native north, many of them yellowed with fever and fat with rich foods as they hurried about their affairs, their faces set in that small perpetual frown, each creating for himself an isolation of the spirit in the press of human bodies.
It was strange to be back in the city. Half of Mark’s soul hated it while the other half welcomed it, and he hurried to find the human company for which he had sometimes hungered these long weeks just past.
‘Good God, my dear old sport.’ Dicky Lancome, with a red carnation in his button-hole, hurried to meet him across the showroom floor. ‘I am delighted to have you back. I was expecting you weeks ago. Business has been deadly slow, the girls have been ugly, tiresome and uncooperative; the weather absolutely frightful — you have missed nothing, old son, absolutely nothing.’ He held Mark off at arm’s length and surveyed him with a fond and brotherly eye. ‘My God, you look as though you’ve been on the Riviera, brown as a pork sausage but not as fat. God, I do declare you’ve lost weight again—’ and he patted his own waistcoat which was straining its buttons around the growing bulge of his belly. ‘I must go on a diet – which reminds me, lunch-time! You will be my guest, old boy, I insist—I absolutely insist.’
Dicky began his diet with a plate piled high with steaming rice, coloured to light gold and flavoured with saffron; over this was poured rich, chunky mutton curry, redolent with Hindu herbs and garnished with mango chutney, ground coconuts, grated Bombay Duck and half a dozen other sauces, and as the turbaned Indian waiter offered him the silver tray of salads, he loaded his side plate enthusiastically without interrupting his questioning.
‘God, I envy you, old boy. Often promised myself that. One man against the wilderness, pioneer stuff, hunting and fishing for the pot.’ He waved the waiter away and lifted a quart stein of lager beer to salute Mark. ‘Cheers, old boy, tell me all about it.’
Dicky was silent at last, although he did the curry full justice, while Mark told him about it – about the beauty and the solitude, about the bushve
ld dawn and the starry silent nights, and he sighed occasionally and shook his head wistfully.
‘Wish I could do it, old boy.’
‘You could,’ Mark pointed out, and Dicky looked startled. ‘It’s out there now. It won’t go away.’
‘But what about my job, old boy? Can’t just drop everything and walk away.’
‘Do you enjoy your job that much?’ Mark asked softly. ‘Does peddling motorcars feed your soul?’
‘Hey?’ Dicky began to look uncomfortable. ‘It’s not a case of enjoying it. I mean nobody really enjoys having to work, do they? I mean it’s just something one does, you know. One is lucky to find something one can do reasonably well where one can earn an honest coin, and one does it.’
‘I wonder,’ Mark mused. ‘Tell me, Dicky, what is most important, the coin or the good feeling down there in your guts?’
Dicky stared at him, his lower jaw sagging slightly, exposing a mouthful of half-masticated rice.
‘Out there, I felt clean and tall,’ Mark went on, fiddling with his beer stein. ‘There were no bosses, no clients, no hustling for a commission. I don’t know, Dicky — out there I felt important.’
‘Important?’ Dicky swallowed the unchewed curry noisily. ‘Important? Hey now, old boy, they’re selling rakes like you and me on the street corners at ninepence a bunch.’ He washed down the rice with a swallow of beer, and then patted the froth from his upper lip with the crisp white handkerchief from his breast pocket. ‘Take an old dog’s advice, when you say your prayers at night give thanks that you are a good motorcar salesman, and that you have found that out. Just do it, old son, and don’t think about it, or it will break your heart.’ He spoke with an air of finality that declared the subject closed, and stooped to open his brief case on the floor beside his chair. ‘Here, I’ve something for you.’