A Falcon Flies Part 27

Once the green stone birds must have stood in a circle, facing inwards like the granite columns of Stonehenge, and the gold had probably formed some part of the offerings and sacrifices made to them. Whoever had thrown down the statues had scattered and trampled the sacrifice, and time had corroded all except that lovely yellow incorruptible metal.

Within ten days of first hacking away the undergrowth that choked the inner courtyard, the temple yard, as Zouga called it, they had gleaned over fifty pounds weight of native gold, and the interior of the stone courtyard had been gutted, the earth rutted and harrowed as though a troop of wild bush pig had rooted it out.

Then Zouga turned his full attention to the twin towers. He measured them around the base, over a hundred paces, and inspected each joint in the masonry for a secret opening. There was none, so he built a rickety ladder of raw timber and bark rope and risking neck and limb reached the top of the tallest tower. From this vantage point he could look down into the roofless pa.s.sageways and courtyards of the city. It was a maze, all of it choked with growth, but there was no other part as promising as the temple courtyard of the bird statues.

He turned his attention back to the tower on which he stood. There was again no sign of a secret opening, although he searched diligently for one. It puzzled him that the ancient architect would have built such a solid structure with no apparent use or motive, and the possibility occurred to him that it might be a sealed treasure house, built around an inner chamber.

The work of trying to penetrate the ma.s.sive stonework, daunted even Zouga, and Jan Cheroot declared the attempt to be madness. But Zouga had exhausted the digging below the tower, and this seemed to be the only fruitful area left to him.

Complaining bitterly, a small team led by Matthew climbed the rickety ladder, and under Zouga's supervision began prising loose the small blocks from the summit of the tower. However, such was the skill and dedication of the original masons that progress in the demolition was painfully slow, and there was a long pause between each crash of one loose block into the courtyard below and the next. It needed three days" unremitting toil to break a jagged aperture through the first layer of dressed blocks and to discover that the interior of the tower consisted merely of a fill of the same grey granite.

Standing beside him on the summit of the tower, Jan Cheroot voiced Zouga's own disappointment. We are wasting our time.

It's stone and more stone."

He spat over the side of the tower and watched the speck of phlegm float down into the ransacked courtyard. What we should look for is the place the gold came from."

Zouga. had been so obsessed by his search and plunder of the ruined and deserted city that he had paid no thought to the mines which must lie somewhere beyond the walls. Now he nodded his head thoughtfully. No wonder your mother loved you, he said. "Not only are you beautiful, but clever too. JA! Jan Cheroot said smugly. "Everybody tells me that."

At that moment a fat weighty drop of rain struck Zouga's forehead, and ran down into his left eyeball so that his vision blurred. The drop was warm as blood, warm as the blood of a man racked by malarial fever. .

Beyond the high walls there were other ruins, none of such proportions or importance as the inner city, however, and all of them so scattered, so overgrown and thrown down as to make detailed exploration of them out of the question in the time still available to Zouga.

The kopjes around the city had been fortified, but were deserted, the caves empty as the eye-sockets of a long dead skull, smelling of the leopards and rock rabbits who were the latest tenants, but Zouga concentrated his search on the ancient mine workings which he had convinced himself had formed the backbone of this vanished civilization. He imagined deep shafts driven into a hillside, and dumps of loose rock like the ancient Cornish tin mines, and he scoured the densely wooded country for miles in each direction, eagerly checking each irregularity of ground, each eminence that could possibly be an abandoned mine dump.

He left Jan Cheroot to oversee the scratching and sweeping up of the last tiny sc.r.a.ps of gold in the temple yard, and all the men profited by the new relaxed supervision. They shared views with Jan Cheroot on the role of menial work in the life of a warrior and hunter.

The first spattering of rain had been only a warning of the fury to come, and it had barely wet Zouga's shirt through to the skin before pa.s.sing, but it was a warning that Zouga realized he was ignoring at his own peril. Yet still the hope of the ancient mine workings with their fat golden seams of the precious metal tantalized him, and he spun out the days until even Jan Cheroot began to worry. If the rivers spate, we will be trapped here, " he brooded beside the camp fire. "Besides we have taken all the gold.

Let us now live to spend it. "One more day, Zouga promised him as he settled into his single blanket, and composed himself to sleep. "There is a valley just beyond the southern ridge, it will take me only another day to search it, the day after tomorrowhe promised sleepily.

. . . -A Zouga smelled the snake first, the sweet sickening stench of it filled his nostrils, so he drew each breath with difficulty, yet trying not to gasp or choke lest he called the snake's attention. He could not move, he was pinned under an immense dark weight which threatened to crush his ribs and the smell of snake suffocated him.

He could barely turn his head towards the place from which he knew the snake would come, and it came flowing sinuously, coil upon thick undulating coil. Its head was lifted, its eyes were unblinking and gla.s.sily fixed in the cold and deadly reptilian stare, the ribbon of its tongue flickered in a soft black blur through the icy smile of its thin curved lips. Its scales scratched softly across the earth, and they glittered with a soft metallic sheen, the colour of the polished gold foil that Zouga had gleaned from the temple courtyard.

Zouga could not move nor cry out, his tongue had swollen with terror to fill his mouth and choke him, but the snake slid past him, close enough to touch if he had had command of his arms to reach out. It slid on into the circle of soft wavering light, and the shadows drew back so the birds emerged from the darkness, each on its elevated perch.

Their eyes were golden and fierce, the cruel yellow curve of their beaks echoed by the proud pout of their russet-flecked b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the long pinions folded across their backs like crossed blades.

Though Zouga knew they were hunting falcons with belled tresses on their legs, yet they were the size of golden eagles. They were decked with garlands of flowers, crimson blossoms of King Chaka fire, and the snowy virginal white of arum lilies. They wore necklaces and chains of brightest gold about their arrogant necks, and as the serpent slid into the midst of the circle they stirred upon their perches.

Then as the serpent raised its glittering head with the crest of scales erect upon the back of its neck, the falcons burst into thunderous flight and the darkness was filled with the roar of their wings and the plaintive lament of their wild hunting cries.

Zouga lifted his hands -to shield his face, and great wings beat all about him, as the flock of falcons took flight and the presence of the snake was no longer of significance, what was important was the departure of the birds. Zouga felt a tremendous sense of doom, of personal loss, and he opened his mouth, able to utter again. He shouted at the birds to call them back to roost.

He shouted into the darkness, after the soaring, buffeting thunder of the birds" wings and his own shouts and the cries of his servants woke him from the coils of the nightmare.

He woke to find the night was thunderous with the wind of the storm that swept down upon the camp. The trees tossed and thrashed their branches overhead, showering them with leaves and small twigs. and the rush of air was glacially cold. It stripped the thatch from their crudely built huts and it scattered ash and live coals from the fire. The coals, fanned into new life, were the only source of light, for overhead, the stars were obscured by the thick rolling banks of cloud that pressed close upon the earth.

Shouting to each other above the wind, they scrambled to collect their scattered equipment. Make sure the powder bags are kept dry, Zouga bellowed, naked except for his tattered breeches, and barefooted as he groped for his boots. "Sergeant Cheroot, where are you? " The Hottentot's reply was lost in the cannon's roar of thunder that drove in their eardrums, and the flash of lightning that followed immediately scared their eyeb.a.l.l.s, and imprinted on Zouga's vision the unforgettable picture of Jan Cheroot dancing stark naked on one foot, a red hot coal from the scattered fire stuck to the sole of the other, his wild curses lost in the drawn-out roll of the thunder and his face contorted like that of a gargoyle on the parapet of Notre Dame cathedral. Then the darkness fell on them again, like an avalanche, and out of it came the rain.

It came in cutting horizontal sheets like the blade of a harvester's scythe, so thick that it filled the air with water so they coughed and gasped like drowning men, it came with such hissing force that it stung their naked skins as though coa.r.s.e salt had been fired at them from a shotgun barrel, and the cold chilled them to the bone, so that they crawled into a forlorn huddle, crowding together for comfort and warmth with the sodden fur blankets pulled over their heads, and stinking like a pack of wet dogs.

The cold gloomy dawn found them still huddled from the silver streams of falling rain, under the swollen bruised sky that pressed down upon them like the belly of a pregnant sow. Scattered and sodden equipment floated or was submerged in the ankle-deep flood of water that poured through the wind-shattered camp. The lean-to shelters had been wrecked, the camp fire was a muddy black puddle of ash, there was no prospect of rebuilding it, and with that went any chance of hot food or comfort for their stiff cold bodies.

Zouga had wrapped the powder bags in strips of oilskin, and he and Jan Cheroot had held them in their laps, like ailing infants, during the night. However, it was impossible to open the bags and check the contents for damp, for the rain still teemed down out of the low grey sky in long thin silver lances.

Slipping and sloshing in the muddy footing, Zouga drove his men to make up their loads for the outward march, while he made his own final preparations. In the middle of the morning they ate a miserable and hasty meal of cold millet cakes and the last sc.r.a.ps of smoked buffalo meat. Then Zouga stood, with a cloak of halfcured kudu skin draped over his head and shoulders, the rain dripping from his beard and plastering his patched clothing to his body. Safari! he shouted. "We march! "And not too d.a.m.ned soon either, muttered Jan Cheroot, reversing his musket on its sling so the barrel pointed at the ground and the rain could not rim into the muzzle.

it was then that the porters discovered the extra burden that Zouga had for them. It was lashed to carrying poles of mopani wood with bark rope, and protected by a plaited covering of e lant gra.s.s. They are not going to carry it, Jan Cheroot told him, squeezing the rain from his woolly eyebrows with his thumb. "I told you they would refuse. "They'll carry it. " Zouga's eyes were cold and green as cut emeralds, and his expression was fierce. "They carry it, or they'll stay here with it, deadV He had carefully selected the best specimen of the carved stone birds, the only one that was completely undamaged and the one on which the carving was the most artistically executed, and he had packed and prepared it for porterage himself.

For Zouga the carving was physical proof of the existence of the ancient abandoned city, proof that could not be denied when even the most cynical critic read his account in far-away London. Zouga guessed that the intrinsic value of this relic probably surpa.s.sed the equivalent weight in pure gold. The value of the artefact was not the most important consideration in Zouga's determination to carry the carving out to civilization. The stone birds had come to have a special superst.i.tious significance to him.

They had come to symbolize for him the success of his endeavours, and by possessing one of them he had in some strange manner taken possession of this entire savage and beautiful land. He would return for the others, but he must have this single perfect specimen. It was his talisman.

You and you. " He picked two of his strongest and his usually most willing porters, and when they still hesitated, he unslung the heavy elephant gun from his shoulder. They saw his expression and knew that his intention was serious, deadly serious. Sulkily they began breaking down their own loads and distributing them amongst their comrades. At least let us leave this other thundering piece of rubbish The rain and the cold had affected Jan Cheroot as much as the others, and he indicated the tin box that contained Zouga's dress uniform with a hatred and contempt usually reserved for animate objects. Zouga did not bother to reply, but gestured to Matthew to take it UP. It was noon before the bedraggled little column struggled through the long sodden gra.s.s that choked the valley floor and began to climb the far side, slipping and cursing in the mud.

It rained for five days and five nights, sometimes in thick drumming bursts that seemed to fall in solid sheets of water from the sky, at other times it was a cold drizzling mist, that swirled gently about them as they trudged on in the soft treacherous footing, a fine silver mist that blanketed and muted all sound except the eternal dripping of the forest and the soft sighing pa.s.sage of the wind in the upper branches.

The fever vapours seemed to rise from the very ground, entering their lungs with each breath, and in the icy cold mornings they writhed and twisted like the wraiths of tormented souls down in the hollows of the valleys. The porters were the first to show the symptoms of the disease, for the fever was in their bones and the cold rain brought it out so they shivered in uncontrollable spasms and their teeth chattered in their jaws until it seemed they might crack like porcelain. However, they were seasoned to the rigours of the disease and they were still able to march.

The bulky statue in its ungainly packing of gra.s.s and bark was borne painfully up the rocky ridges and down the other side by half-naked men staggering like drunks from the fever boiling in their veins, and when they reached the bank of another water course they dropped it gratefully and fell in the mud to rest without the will to cover themselves from the relentless rain.

Where there had been dried river-beds, with drifts of white sand shining like alpine snowfields in the sun, with quiet pools of still green water, and with steep high banks in which the brilliant kingfisher and little jewelled bee-eaters burrowed to nest, there were now maddened torrents of racing brown water, which brimmed over the high banks and carved out the roots of tall trees, toppling them into the flood and whisking them away as though they were mere twigs.

There was no possible means by which a man could cross these racing, foaming deluges; the corpse of a drowned buffalo with bloated pink belly and its limbs sticking stiffly into the air was borne downstream at the speed of a galloping horse, while Zouga stood morosely on the bank, and knew that he had left it too late. They were trapped by the spate. We will have to follow the river, " he grunted, and wiped his streaming face on the sleeve of his sodden hunting jacket. It goes towards the west, Jan Cheroot pointed out with morbid relish, and it was not necessary for him to expand on the -thought.

To the west lay the kingdom of Mzilikazi, King of the Matabele, and already they must be close to that vaguely defined area that old Tom Harkness had marked on his map. The Burnt Land, here Mzilikazi's impis kill all travellers.

"What do you suggest, my ray of golden Hottentot sunshine? " Zouga demanded bitterly. "Have you got wings to fly this? " He indicated the broad expanse of wild water, where the curled waves stood as stationary as carved sculptures as they marked the position of submerged rocks and hidden snags. "Or what about gills and fins? " Zouga went on. "Let me see you swim, or if you have neither wings nor fins, then surely you have good advice for me? "Yes, Jan Cheroot answered as bitterly. "My advice is that you listen to good advice when first it is given, and second that you drop those in the river. " He indicated the bundled statue and the sealed uniform box. Zouga did not wait for the rest of it, but turned his back and shouted. Safari! On your feet, all of you! We march!

They worked slowly west and a little south, but too much westward for even Zouga's peace of mind, though his route was dictated by the network of rivers and flooded valleys.

On the sixth day the rain relented, and the clouds broke open, revealing a sky of deep aquamarine blue and a fierce swollen sun that made their clothing steam, and stilled the fever shakes of the porters.

Even with the accuracy of his chronometer in doubt, Zouga was able to observe the meridian pa.s.sage that local noon and establish his lat.i.tude. He was not as far south as he had calculated by dead reckoning, so he was probably even further west than his suspect calculations of longitude suggested. The land of the Mzilikazi is drier, Zouga consoled himself, as he wrapped his navigational instruments in their oilskin covers, "and I am an Englishman, and the grandson of Tshedi. Not even a Matabele would dare deny me pa.s.sage, despite what old Tom writes. " And he had his talisman, the stone bird, to add its protection.

Resolutely he faced west again, and drove his caravan onwards. There was one other misery to add to their sufferings. There was no meat, and there had been none since the day they left the abandoned city.

With the first onslaught of the rains, the great herds of game that had been concentrated upon the last few pools and waterholes had been freed to scatter widely across the vast land where every ditch and irregularity was now at last br.i.m.m.i.n.g with fresh sweet water and where the baked and sun-scared plains were already blooming green with the tender first shoots of new growth.

in five days" march in the rain, Zouga had seen only one small herd of waterbuck, the least palatable of all African game with its rank turpentine-scented musk which permeates the flesh. The heavily built bull, in his s.h.a.ggy plum-brown coat led his small troop of hornless females at a frantic gallop across Zouga's front with his wide lyre-shaped horns c.o.c.ked high and the perfect white circle over his b.u.t.tocks flashing with each bound.

He tore through the drizzling rain and dense wild ebony bush not twenty paces from Zouga. Zouga threw up the heavy gun and led on his driving shoulder.

Behind him his hungry, exhausted porters yipped like a pack of hunting dogs with antic.i.p.ation, and Zouga held his aim for an instant to make deadly certain and then squeezed off the trigger.

With a sharp crack, the cap exploded under the falling hammer, but there was not the long spurt of flame from the muzzle and the great clangour of the shot, followed by the heavy thumping impact of the lead ball into flesh.

The gun had misfired and the handsome antelope led his harem away at full-gallop, disappearing almost immediately into the bush and rain while the dwindling clatter of their hooves mocked Zouga. He swore with frustration as he laboriously drew the ball and charge with the corkscrew tool fitted to his ramrod, and found that the insidious rain had somehow entered the barrel, probably through the nipple and that the powder was as wet as though he had dipped it in the raging brown flood waters.

Those few hours of fierce sunlight on the sixth day gave Zouga and Jan Cheroot an opportunity to spread the coa.r.s.e grey contents of their powder bags on a flat rock and dry it out so there would be less chance of another disastrous misfire, and while they did so the porters let drop their packs and limped off to find a dry spot to stretch their aching limbs.

Then too swiftly the sunlight was blotted out once more, and hurriedly they scooped the powder back into the pouches and as the fat raindrops began to hiss and splat about them they wrapped them in the worn oilskins, tucked them under their voluminous leather capes and resumed the westward trudge, heads bowed, silent and hungry and cold and miserable, Zouga's ears singing with the quinine-buzz, the first apparent side-effect of ma.s.sive doses of the drug taken over long periods. The quinine-buzz that can lead to eventual, irreversible deafness.

Despite the heavy daily doses of the bitter powder, the morning arrived at last when Zouga. woke with the deep ache in the marrow of his bones, the dull weight like a heavy stone lying behind his eyes and by midday he was shaking and shivering with the alternate flood of fierce heat and deathly sepulchre cold through his veins. The seasoning fever, Jan Cheroot told him philosophically, "it kills you, or hardens you. "Some individuals would appear to have a natural resistance to the ravages of this disease, his father had written in his treatise, The Malarial Fevers of Tropical Aftica: Their Causes, Symptoms and Treatment, "and there is evidence to suggest that this resistance is hereditary.

"We'll see now if the old devil knew what he was talking about, Zouga mumbled through chattering teeth, hugging the stinking wet leather coat around his shoulders. it never occurred to him even briefly to halt for his affliction; he had not accorded that courtesy to any of his men, and he did not expect it himself.

He trudged on grimly, with his knees giving a rubbery little bounce at each pace, his vision blurring and starring into little pinwheels of light, then emerging again though phantom worms and gnats still wriggled across his sight. Every now and then a touch upon his shoulder from the little Hottentot who marched behind him directed Zouga's stumbling feet back on to the path from which they had strayed.

The nights were hideous with the nightmares of his fever-inflamed brain, they were filled with the buffeting thunder of dark wings and the sickly stench of snakes so that he would wake panting and screaming, often to find Jan Cheroot holding him with a comforting arm around his shaking shoulders.

The lifting of that first bout of his seasoning fever coincided with the next brief break in the rains. It seemed that the bright sunlight, magnified by the lingering moisture in the air, burned away the mists from his mind and the poisonous miasma from his blood, leaving him clear-headed, with a fragile sense of well-being but a weakness in his legs and arms and a dull ache up under the right-hand side of his rib cage where his liver was still swollen and hard as a rock, the typical after-effect of the fever. You will be all right, Jan Cheroot prophesied. "You threw it off as quickly as I've seen any man with his first hit of the fever. Ja! You are a man of Africa, she will let you live here, my friend."

It was while be still walked on wavering legs, lightheaded, so that it felt as though his feet did not touch the muddy earth but danced inches above it, that they cut the spoor.

The weight of the great bull had driven the spoor a foot deep into the sticky red mud, so that it was a series of deep pot-holes, strung across the earth like beads on a necklace. The exact impression of the huge pads had been cast in the holes as though in plaster of Paris, each crack and fissure in the skin of the sole, each irregularity, even the outline of the blunt toe nails were there in precise detail, and at one place where the soft earth had been unable to bear his weight and the elephant had sunk almost belly deep, he had left the impression of his long thick ivories in the earth when he had used them to push himself free. It is him! " breathed Jan Cheroot, without looking up from the enormous spoor. "I would know that spoor anywhere. " He did not need to say more to identify the great old bull that they had last seen so many months before on the high pa.s.s of the elephant road on the escarpment of the Zambezi river. Not an hour ahead of us, Jan Cheroot went on in a reverential whisper, like a man at prayer. And the wind stands fair.

" Zouga found he was whispering also. He remembered his premonition that he would encounter this animal again. Almost fearfully he looked up at the sky. In the east the storm clouds were rolling ponderously towards them once more, the brief respite was almost over. The next onslaught of the storm promised to be as fierce, and even those deep and perfect prints would soon dissolve into liquid mud and be washed into oblivion. They are feeding into the wind, he went on, trying to put the threat of rain out of his mind and concentrating his still fever-dulled wits to the problem of the hunt.

The old bull and his remaining consort were feeding and moving forward with the wind into their faces. That way they would not walk into trouble. Yet these two old veterans, with their decades of acc.u.mulated experience, would not hold steadily into the wind for long, they would turn at intervals to get below the wind of a possible tracker.

Every minute now was of vital consideration, if the hunt was to succeed, for despite the weakness in his legs and the silliness in his head, Zouga had not for a single moment considered letting the spoor go. They might be a hundred miles within the borders of Mzilikazi's country with a Matabele impi of border guards closing swiftly, and the hours lost in following the two old bulls might make all the difference between escaping from these fever-haunted forests or leaving their bones here for the hyena to crunch, but neither Zouga nor Jan Cheroot hesitated. They began to shed their unnee equipment, they would not need water bottles for the land was overflowing the food bags were empty anyway, and the blankets sodden They would shelter tonight against the old bull's ma.s.sive carca.s.s. Follow at your best pace, Zouga shouted to his heavily burdened porters, dropping his unwanted equipment into the mud for them to pick up. "You can fill your bellies with meat and fat tonight, if you put your feet to it now."

They had to gamble all Zouga's remaining strength on the opening play, using speed to beat the rain and to reach the bulls before they made a turn into the wind and took the scent. They ran at the spoor, going hard from the first, knowing that even a healthy man could not hold that pace beyond an hour or two at the most before his heart broke.

In the first mile Zouga's vision was starring and fragmenting again, sweat drenched his lean body and he reeled like a drunkard as his legs threatened to give under him.

Run through it, Jan Cheroot counselled him grimly.

He did it, by a sheer effort of will. He drove himself through to that place beyond the pain. Quite suddenly his vision cleared and though there was no feeling at all in his legs they drove on steadily under him so he seemed to float over the ground without effort.

Running at his side Jan Cheroot recognized the moment when Zouga broke the shackles and went clear of his own weakness. He said nothing but glanced sideways at him, eyes bright with admiration and he nodded once. Zouga did not see that nod, for his head was up and his dreaming gaze was fixed far ahead.

They ran the sun to its zenith, Jan Cheroot not daring to break the rhythm for he knew that Zouga would drop like a man shot through the heart if they stopped to rest.

They ran on as the sun began to drop, pursued by the ponderous cohorts of the o that ricoming storm threatened it with extinction, and their own shadows danced ahead of them along the deeply driven elephantspoor. In a tight bunch behind Zouga, his four gunbearers matched him pace for pace, ready to hand him a weapon at the instant he required it.

The hunter's instinct warned Jan Cheroot. He twisted his head every few minutes to look back along the trail they had already run. That was how he picked them up.

They were two grey shadows, merging softly into the darker acacia shadows below the dripping trees, but they were moving with steadfast purpose, circling to strike their own spoor again, throwing a loop about their pursuers an taking the wind from them.

The bulls were half a mile away, moving with that swinging deceptively leisurely gait that would bring them, within minutes, full on to the hot trail with which the small band of hunters had overlaid their own huge pug marks; the trail would be reeking with the rank odour of man, the air thick with it.

Jan Cheroot touched Zouga's arm, turning him back upon their own run without checking him nor breaking the driving rhythm of his numbed legs. We have to catch them before they cut our spoor, he called softly. He saw Zouga's eyes come back into focus and the colour flare in his waxen pale cheeks as Zouga turned and saw for the first time the two huge shapes cruising serenely through the open forest, under the tall umbreRa-shaped acacias, moving with a stately deliberation down towards the string of reeking man-prints in the red mud.

The big bull was leading, his gaunt frame too tall and bony for the wasted flesh over which the skin hung in deep folds and bags. The huge yellow tusks were too long and heavy for the ancient head, and his ears were ripped and torn into scarred tatters that dangled on to his creased cheeks. He had been wallowing in a mud hole and his body was slick and shining with wet red mud.

He stepped out on his long, heavily boned legs around which the thick loose skin bagged and drooped like a badly tailored pair of breeches, and close behind him strode his askari, a big heavily toothed elephant, but dwarfed by his leader.

Zouga and Jan Cheroot ran together, stride for stride, their breath hissing and gasping in their throats, as they spent their last reserves to get in gunshot range before the bulls took the scent.

They traded all stealth, any attempt at concealment for speed, trusting that the weak eyesight of the old bulls would betray them. This time, the vagaries of the weather favoured them, for as they ran, the storm burst about them again.

It had held off just long enough to allow them to come up, and now the thick streamers of pale grey rain were drawn across the forest like lace curtains. he had light beneath the thick cloud banks gave them cover to cross the last few hundred yards unseen, and the tapping rain and the rush of the wind in the branches of the acacias m.u.f.fled their racing-footfalls.

A hundred and fifty yards ahead of Zouga the old bull hit the man spoor, and it stopped him as though he had run into the side of an invisible cliff of gla.s.s. He flared back on his hind quarters, his back humping and his wrinkled ivoried head flying up high, the ragged banners of his ears filling like the mainsail of a tall ship, and clapping thunderously as he flapped them against his shoulders.

He froze like that for a long moment, groping at the tainted earth with the tip of his trunk, then he lifted it to his mouth and sprayed the scent into the open pink buds of his olfactory organs. The dread and hated odour struck him like a physical force and he went back another pace, then his trunk lifted straight into the air above him, and he wheeled and like a well-trained pair of coach horses his tall askari wheeled with him, shoulder to shoulder, and flank to flank, they began to run, and Zouga was still a hundred yards behind them.

Jan Cheroot dropped on to one knee into the mud, and flung up his musket. At the same instant, the askari checked slightly and swung left, crossing his leader's rear. Perhaps it was unintentional, but neither Zouga nor Jan Cheroot believed that. They knew that the younger bull was drawing fire, protecting the other with his own body. You want it? Take it then, you thunder! " Jan Cheroot shouted angrily, he knew he had lost too much ground by pausing to fire.

Aiming for the younger bull, Jan Cheroot took the hip shot, and the bull staggered to it, flecks of red mud flying from his skin where the ball struck, and he broke his stride, favouring the damaged joint, swinging out of the line of his run, broadside to the hunters, while the great bull ran on alone.

Zouga could have killed the crippled bull with a heart shot, for the animal was down to a dragging, humpbacked trot and the range was less than thirty paces, but Zouga ran straight past him, never checking, hardly glancing at him, knowing he could leave Jan Cheroot to finish that business. He ran after the big bull, but despite his utmost endeavour, losing ground to him steadily.

Ahead of them, the ground dipped into a shallow open and beyond that it rose to another ridge on which saucer, the wild teak trees stood like sentinels in the grey rain.

The bull went down into the saucer, still in his initial burst of speed, stretching out so that his padfalls sounded like the steady beat of a ba.s.s drum, opening the gap between himself and his hunter, until he reached the bottom of the dip, and then be was almost halted.

His weight broke the surface of the swampy ground, and he sank through almost to his shoulders, and had to lunge for each step, with the glutinous mud sucking and squelching obscenely at each of his frantic movements.

Swiftly Zouga closed the range, and his spirits took wing, his exultation driving back his weakness and fatigue. He felt intoxicated with battle l.u.s.t. He reached the swampy ground, and leapt from tussock to tussock of coa.r.s.e swamp gra.s.s, while the bull struggled on ahead of him.

Closer and closer still Zouga came up to him, almost point-blank range, less than twenty yards and at last he stopped and balanced on one of the little islands of gra.s.s roots.

just ahead of him the bull had reached the far side of the swamp, and was heaving himself out on to the firm ground at the foot of the slope. The bull's front legs were higher than his still-bogged hindquarters, the whole slope of his back was exposed to Zouga, the knuckles of his ma.s.sive spine -stood out clearly through the mudpainted skin and the arched staves of his rib cage were like the frames of a Viking longboat. Zouga fancied he could actually see the pounding rhythm of the great heart beating against them.

There could be no mistake this time. In the months since their first encounter, Zouga had become a skilled huntsman, he knew the soft and vital places in the mountainous bulk of an elephant's body. At this range and from this angle, the heavy ball would shatter the spine between the shoulder blades without losing any of its velocity, and it would go on deep, to the heart, to those thick serpentine arteries that fed the lungs.

He touched the hair trigger, and with a pop like a child's toy the gun misfired. The great grey beast heaved himself clear of the mud, and went away up the slope, now at last settling into the swinging ground-eating gait which would carry him fifty miles before nightfall.

Behind him Zouga reached the firm ground and flung down the useless weapon, dancing with impatience as he screamed at his bearers to bring up the second gun.

Matthew was fifty paces behind him, slipping and staggering in the swampy ground. Mark, Luke and John were strung out behind him. Come on! Come on! " screamed Zouga, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the second gun from Mathew, an dashed away up the slope. He had to catch the bull before he reached the crest of the slope, for down the other side he would go like an eagle on the wind.

Zouga ran now with all his heart, with all his will and the very last dregs of his strength, while behind him Matthew stopped, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the misfired weapon from where Zouga had thrown it down, and, acting instinctively in the heat and excitement of the chase, he reloaded it.

He poured another handful of black powder on top of the charge and ball already in the barrel and tamped down a second quarter-pound ball of lead on top of it all.

In so doing he changed the gun from a formidable weapon to a lethal bomb that could maim or even kill the man who attempted to fire it. Then Matthew slipped another percussion cap over the nipple and ran on up the slope after Zouga.

The bull was nearing the crest of the ridge, and Zouga was coming up on him, but slowly, the difference in their speed just barely discernible. At last Zouga's strength was failing, he could keep this pace for minutes more and he knew when he finally stopped he would be on the verge of total physical collapse.

His vision was swimming and wavering, and his feet stumbled and slipped on the wet lichen -covered rocks of the slope, and the rain beat into his face, almost blinding him. Sixty yards ahead of him the bull reached the crest, and there he did something that Zouga had never seen a hunted elephant do before, he turned broadside, flaring his ears, to look at his pursuers.

Perhaps he had been pushed too hard, perhaps he had been hunted too often and the hatred had acc.u.mulated like weed below the waterline of an old ship, perhaps this was his last defiance.