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Nicholas said, “Get the jeep.” His voice sounded as if he were out of breath. Stan started to answer and then noticed the blood.

“He hit you?”

“Get the car, man. Go on.”

It was too late. As Stan had taken his attention away, the lamed man had picked himself up, hopped over to the
protection of the trees, and reached the machine. They heard the engine start.

Stan ran out into the open, down the other side of the hill. The jeep was pulling straight away from him at an angle that made it impossible to get any clear line to the driver. He put some shots into the back tyres.

Nicholas joined him by the side of the second man, who lay curled up on the ground, hands clutching his belly and his face so bleared with blood that it looked as though the skin had been taken off with a knife. Nicholas stooped down on one knee. He inspected the man's clothes and hands, without touching them, then straightened up. He went back to his knapsack, pulled it over to a rock and sat down.

“Who is it?” Stan whispered. “Do you know him?”

“His name is McBride. It took me a moment or two to recognize him.”

“Why was he shooting at us?”

“I'm not sure that he was. I think the lion barged into him because he was in the way and the other one, Marcus Hart, picked up his rife to shoot. Lion kept going and Hart saw us coming, thought we were after him for whatever he was doing out here. Poaching, perhaps. That was McBride's game.”

“Is he dead?”

“Not yet. As good as.”

Stan turned to the body as if to try to help. Nicholas told him it was no use: the man was bleeding to death. At most, he could be spared a few more minutes, but the procedures involved might simply serve to wake him to a conscious appreciation of his pain.

Stan said, “Okay. Let's see the arm.”

“I'll need help,” Nicholas told him. “Bloody shame we
couldn't get the jeep.”

The bullet had landed as Nicholas was drawing a bead on the running lion and turning. It had entered just above the left elbow, ploughed its way up the arm and come out at the back of the shoulder. There was a lot of blood down his back and from the upper part of the arm, where the wound was open. Stan did his best to clean everything while Nicholas cursed and told him he'd make the kind of doctor Dr Crippen was. Then Stan took a long time doing the bandaging, which wasn't easy, since the trail of the bullet went around and up over the side. “And you'd better have some of the miracle pills, just in case,” he said. He shook out a few antibiotic capsules and offered his canteen. Nicholas took the medicine and drank.

All this time, Stan realized, he hadn't thought about Millie. Suddenly she came back: her head inclined, her eyes looking down, her hand on the back of a chair. But he had been unfaithful from the beginning—he had always intended to be. And Crippen was the name of the doctor who was famous for killing his wife.

“We can't take what's-his-name with us,” he said. “McBride. We'll have to come back for the body tomorrow.”

Nicholas laughed. “Come back by all means. You'd be lucky to find so much as a button. Everything that can walk, creep or fly will be making a meal of him soon. Very clean country, Africa. Nothing wasted. You might go through his pockets, take his watch.”

Stan knelt over McBride. There was no sign of movement. He found the watch, two knives, a wallet and some sodden papers. He tried to wipe the blood off with handfuls of grass. The wallet was completely clean and stuffed with banknotes. Nicholas stood up. Stan
shouldered the knapsacks.

“I can take mine,” Nicholas said.

“Just carry your rifle.”

“You were right about the man in the field. I thought you were seeing things.”

“It wasn't this man. At least—he's hurt so bad, it's hard to tell what he looked like, but I don't think so. Wait. I've got a picture of him. Two. Millie had them in her wallet.” He brought out the two photographs and held them up.

“That's who it was.”

“That's Harry Lewis,” Nicholas said. “You must have been dreaming, after all. He's dead.”

Stan put the pictures back. They made their way carefully to the road and began the long walk home to camp.

*

They moved forward in silence. Nicholas wondered if they would be able to make camp that evening. He began to doubt it. And now he had blood on him; there would be more than one predator after that. They'd come from miles off. Stan was temporarily off his head, but he could still shoot straight. It might be all right after all. Not a soul on the road—it was extraordinary. One would think the country had been evacuated. Perhaps they really were all at some enormous ceremony. Wonderful day for it.

They walked through a shady patch of tree-covered ground and he felt uplifted by the beauty of the place.

Stan said, “I've figured it out, now. He's the lion. He found out some way of doing it. He could change back and forth. They got him in town, but unless we get him when he's a lion, he's still alive.”

They came out into full sunlight again and Nicholas
stumbled. At last the penny had dropped and Stan knew about Millie and Harry, but couldn't come to terms with it. This was his version. In the position they were in, it was dangerous to hold such an idea. It would be a danger even if this lion hadn't been a rogue and unpredictable. There was a point where you could ruin your life yourself, though no one else would be able to do it to you. There were people who give up just at the time when they might win. They throw it away.

“Stan, I may need your help,” he said.

“I don't think there's anything we can do about it. It's like Dracula. Maybe we even need a silver bullet to kill him.”

“Listen to me. I want you to give me one of the photographs of Harry.”

Stan took out his wallet and handed over the picture that showed just the face of the man.

“Now, listen to me. A great many peculiar things have been going on. And no one about the place. If I can't keep walking, if we have to go our separate ways, then—you may run into strangers. I don't know what's happening, but if they threaten you and you can't make them understand anything, just hold up the picture. All right? This was his district. It should do the trick.”

“Do you feel bad?”

“I'm looking ahead. You never know.”

Shortly afterwards they heard shots coming from far away and followed by a short series of sounds that might have been explosions.

“Doesn't sound too good,” Stan said. “What do you suppose that could be?”

“We'll find out soon enough. We're walking straight into it.”

“Do you think we're going to make it?”

“You ask some bloody stupid questions, Stan. I don't know, and that's the truth.”

“Yes, of course. And it hurts too, doesn't it? That was the one I wasn't going to ask. Let's talk about something.”

“Perhaps later. I think we ought to save our energy.”

“They say soldiers in the jungle get all kinds of problems from not being allowed to talk. It's supposed to be psychologically debilitating to march in total silence, not even being able to sing. They say it makes all the work twice as hard.”

“It can be even harder, having to listen.”

Two hours later they found the remains of Marcus Hart in his jeep, which had been set on fire and still reeked of burning metal and rubber and flesh. It looked as if he had been trying to change a tyre, had been surprised by someone, or by several people, and had then taken shelter inside.

“They have guns?” Stan asked.

“A couple of old muskets.”

“This guy Lewis could have been arming his boys.”

“Not here, Stan. We muddle along without revolutions. We even got through Independence without one.”

“There's nothing like one or two ideals for toppling governments.”

“Of course, now they have Hart's rifle. There's that.”

The sun was lower. They kept walking. Stan went off into a daze, seeming to dream while he was moving. He saw disconnected parts and scenes of past times again, images of people he knew. He thought he heard voices talking to him, and singing in a chorus.

“Stan,” Nicholas said.

“What?”

“This is as far as I can go.” He sat down at the side of the road on a flat stone. “Leave me one of the haversacks. And you go on. Send back a car. You have enough ammunition?”

“I'll stay with you.”

“If you like. But if you get a move on now, you could make camp before it's too dark to see, and come back. Remember the photograph if there's trouble. Put it in your breast pocket, where you can get at it easily.”

“You take the wallet we found on McBride. It's full of money.”

“We'll turn it in.”

“I don't see why. Pay off your mortgage.”

“Honest as the day is long. I know what that is—it's the blood money they were going to pay the men in town for killing Harry. I wouldn't touch it.”

“Okay. But you take charge of it.”

They divided up the contents of the packs until Stan was satisfied. Then he said, “Just in case—”

“Hurry, Stan. When the light goes, you know what it's like.”

Stan said that if they never met again, what last wish did Nicholas have, because he himself had none. Nicholas said that neither did he, and hurry up. They shook hands. Stan turned twice and waved.

*

They picked Nicholas up the next morning. He had lost consciousness shortly after Stan was out of sight and had lain shivering on the stone, sometimes coming out of his coma and then being pulled back into dreams. He had woken to the realization that the light was almost gone, had risen to his feet, staggered over to a clump of trees he
was still able to mark out against the night sky and, after many attempts, had managed to climb up and wedge himself and his rifle into a nook, where he had once more passed out. The dawn had roused him and brought him down to the road, to begin walking again. And so the rescue team came upon him.

They also recovered the burned-out jeep, with what was left of Hart inside it. And Amos—he was the first to set foot in camp—had turned up late in the evening the day before; he had had to walk back after the landrover broke down on his way to rejoin the others. They never saw McBride, although as Nicholas had predicted, there was a button near the place where he'd been lying. And they never found Stan.

*

He had found something himself, just as the sun was giving out its last, best light before dropping into evening and sudden night. All the shadows were long, the light soft and yellow, not yet orange, not yet red. And he saw her, standing in the middle of a field, smiling at him. He couldn't believe it. She began to walk towards him, still smiling, just as she had that other time, and he went forward to meet her, until all at once he pulled up sharply. It was as if he'd fallen asleep and been woken by his head jerking back. He was standing alone in the middle of a surrounding sea of deep grass.

The sun was travelling right on the rim of the horizon. Way off in the distance was the official balloon, drifting freely along in the lovely air, much too far away to see him down there or to wonder about the significance of a shot.

It had been a trick. They had fooled him. It wasn't Millie at all, and now he was caught. But it wasn't going to
work. He'd read and heard about plenty of men who came to Africa to seek an outer reflection of their own primitive impulses, and who ended up confronting the animal world in some silly way—unprepared, romanticized—and so died. He knew all about the death wish and he knew he didn't have it. He wanted to get out of there. And he'd take life at any price, on any terms, no question about it.

The grasses encompassed him like a bowl of silence ready to echo anything that came from him. Every slight movement he made caused a distinct sound of unmistakable importance. For an instant he thought again that all his actions might be obliterated by his own panic, but the fear left him as soon as he realized what he had to do. He turned around quickly and began to stride back the way he had come.

From in front of him rose a low, reverberating growl. First on one side, then on the other, then in the centre: prolonged, rattling snarls like anticipatory drumrolls.

He turned again. He would walk back through the field the same way he had started. It would take him away from the road but if he could reach the higher ground, he might even spend the night up a tree. He went ahead, trying not to think about what was in back of him, whether they were following now or standing still.

As he moved forward, he heard behind him a throaty rumbling, succeeded by heavy grunts and impatient breathing into which the full voice would come for a moment and then fade back to a humming mutter. He kept walking steadily, not changing his pace, holding his rifle ready and with the safety catch off. The weapon was not too heavy, not too light; give them a sporting chance. But they never gave you one. This was nature, there was no way you could cleanse or make it pretty. He wanted to run.

The noises behind him began to keep pace with his movements. He couldn't tell if it was only one lion, or more than one. He didn't even know if it was the right one, looking any of the many ways he had seen it: a black shape in the twilight, a brown torso flying, a moving thing, dark or light as the sun struck its coat the colour of sand.

He thought about his brother, the one they had loved the best because he was the one who had died and couldn't disappoint anyone. Forget all that. That was over and he wanted to live. He should have finished with that long before. It had kept him from living his life and prevented him from making another person happy. It had brought him here. All his studies and researches had in the end yielded only that much knowledge, useless since it came too late. The firearm he held to his shoulder was more important than any of it now, and even that wouldn't help. There was no way he was ever going to get out of that field.