The Lost World of the Kalahari (20 page)

‘No,' I told them, ‘it was an impossible shot. I think I've only frightened it and it's off round that mound.'

Yet, when we waded through the water now red with the sacrifice of day, we found the lechwe shot through the middle of its long throat, the bone of the neck so cleanly broken that there was no look of pain on its delicate face. Its coat was golden with warmth and its long magnetic toes were still coming, trembling, together. Yet I had no regret at so needful a killing. Indeed I felt a profound gratitude to the animal and life that I had been allowed to provide food for so many hungry men.

‘If only Ben and Vyan could now have the same luck,' I thought, ‘we'll be safe for a few days.'

However, they had had no such luck. I could tell that instantly from the tense, silent way in which they and the entire camp lined the island bank when we grounded on it in the dark. All had heard the shot and because of the late hour had been afraid to trust the sound. I was greatly rewarded by the look in Ben's and Vyan's eyes and the shouts of welcome and praise that went up from the others when they saw the sleek lechwe carried ashore into the leaping firelight of our camp.

Under my net that night, listening to an indignant hippo bull snorting and stamping around our camp because we had stolen his favourite moonlight walk, I thought long about the nature of the link between the kill and my wife's strange insistence, so many weeks before, that I should buy for myself the ‘best gun in the world'.

Early the next morning the paddlers, singing lustily, lifted their makorros out of the main stream and carried them high on their shoulders to the lagoon on the far side of the island. Spode, too, was there filming the scene. When the makorros were launched again on the far water he came with us, camera in hand, in a craft of his own to film the probing first lap of our journey deeper into the swamp. He worked hard and well until we ran into difficulties in the channel connecting one lagoon with the next. It was clearly too shallow for any but the lightest of craft to get through and I thought it useless to waste the energies of the whole party forcing a way through until it was established that we could go on beyond. Therefore I suggested to Spode that he and I should go on in two of the lightest makorros to explore the swamp ahead. He refused at once, saying the sun would soon be too high for effective filming. As he had already given us a long day's work I accepted his refusal gracefully, though I could easily have countered that where we went in the afternoon the light would again be right for filming. So I sent them all back to camp, and asked Vyan and Ben to cross over to the area where I had shot the lechwe and try to shoot more food for us, and decided to push through the swamps alone. Ben, however, was reluctant for me to do this. He pleaded that either he or Vyan should go on with me. The swamp, he said, was full of the worst-tempered buffalo in Africa. There was hardly a bull in it that hadn't a slug or two in his hide and black hatred in his heart, because the moment the herds tried to leave the swamp they were hunted and hurt by the worst shots armed with the worst guns in the world. Ben argued with unusual vehemence that one should never hunt buffalo except in pairs, and nowhere was that truer than in the long grasses and dense reeds of the central swamp.

I tried to reassure him, saying I was not setting out to hunt buffalo but merely to examine the water-way and islands for signs of Bushmen. Besides I would not be alone since Samutchoso, Long-axe, Long-axe's cousin, a man with greying hair and a steady brown eye, Comfort, and our guide were coming with me.

Ben interrupted almost impatiently, saying the point was I might run into buffalo unexpectedly and then paddlers armed only with spears would be unable effectively to help.

Touched as I was by his concern, I reminded him that, much as I would like to have one of them with me, we could not afford the waste in manpower. It was imperative if we were to get on with our search the next morning that we got more meat that day. The lechwe was almost finished and I hoped he and Vyan would set about replacing it as swiftly as possible.

At this Vyan took his pipe out of his mouth and said: ‘He's right, Ben. But keep a watch out, Laurens, won't you! If you do run into buffalo, try and keep a tree or two between you and them!'

So I set out across the still waters of the home lagoon alone with my black companions. I travelled ahead with our guide in the prow and Long-axe in the stern; Comfort and the other two following behind in another makorro. The lagoon was flashing like a mirror with light. Near the edges the blue and white lilies shone like stars and a giant-crested heron curtsied repeatedly to his own mauve and gold reflection. But in the centre the water was vacant and deeply amber. Ahead a crocodile slipped neatly, almost without a ripple, into the lagoon. Then two hippo nostrils and a pair of pointed ears rose hard by, as if swinging the periscope of their submarine-being upon us.

‘If his ears start fluttering like a bird's wing and then lie back like a cheetah's,' our guide whispered urgently, ‘please shoot,
Moren
!'

However ears and nostrils, like two toads on the water, remained still long enough for us to reach the channel between the home lagoon and the next. The channel was just wide enough to take our makorros. My companions laid down their paddles and produced their long forked punting poles. To my relief they managed to push our slender craft with little loss of speed through the reeds and sedges. These rose to a height of about ten feet all around us. I could not see through them at all, and their spurred tops waved rhythmically over the bowed heads of my tall companions. The sky itself was reduced to another blue-black channel as if it were a narrowed reflection of the water below in a mirror above. Suddenly the blue vanished, the channel became a tunnel through columns of branches of interwoven trees. The startled eyes of a baboon looked into mine from a perch fifteen feet above. It let out a booming bark of warning and immediately the silence was broken by the crashes and screams of an invisible multitude of baboons leaping wildly from branch to branch out of our way.

‘Oh! You thing of evil,' Long-axe exclaimed, aggrieved. ‘What is the use of us keeping so silent when you cry ‘Beware!' so loudly to the world, and that not even to a world of your friends?'

For a hundred yards or more we poled our way with difficulty through the intricate tunnel to emerge once more into an open channel between tall reeds. A quarter of a mile on we reached a great open lagoon where we looked on many miles of islands set in silver water. We took once more to the paddle. Our guide seemed to have no hesitations about the way and set his course like a homing pigeon. The wind of our increased speed was cool in our hair and on our faces. As always, for fear of attack by hippo in deep water, the paddlers never slackened until they were near shelter of some kind. On the far side we entered another channel and so it went on for some hours, lagoon, channel, and once more lagoon. Only the channels became narrower and the lagoons broader and shallower. About one o'clock, perhaps sixteen miles from the home lagoon, we found the passage east shut against us.

Our guide put his punting pole down firmly and said: ‘If we cannot enter here,
Moren
, we'll have to lift and carry the makorros for two days before we find water deep enough again to go on.'

We had clearly come to the highest and most solid part of the swamp. Much as I would have liked to go on to Maun by water, I was not over-disappointed. We were through the outer defences, across the last moat, and within the inmost keep of this formidable stronghold of ancient life. If there were River Bushmen still to be found in organized entities it would be here among the sparkling islands rising now everywhere out of the burning water. Behind screens of elegant reeds and sedges and fringes of palms, their dense bush and gleaming crown of lofty wood stood out resolutely in the blue.

‘Do you think there could be any people there?' I asked our guide. I did not mention Bushmen specifically, because I had become daily more superstitious about too direct an approach in so indirect a world.

‘Sometimes, perhaps two, perhaps three,' he said, gravely dubious, knowing what I meant.

‘Where do you think would be the best shade to rest for a while then, and perhaps find a buck or two to shoot before we go home?' I went on, pressing him no further.

At that a look of new life came into his eyes and a low laugh broke from him. He jumped into the water, swung the makorro round so fast without warning that Long-axe was nearly thrown off his balance, climbed quickly in and raced across to the north where a long slope of yellow winter grass went slowly up from green reeds to clumps of dense black high wood. So slight were all gradients in the swamp that we had to disembark a hundred yards from the edge of the lagoon and wade ankledeep ashore, leaving the makorros caught in the reeds. Instinctively no one spoke but conveyed their meaning by signs. The water was so hot it almost burned my cooler ankles and at the first touch of the fiery island earth I put on my boots. How still the island was! And yet I had an odd feeling that some kind of vibration was running there through the shining air, as if somewhere within these black woods a powerful dynamo was running to charge the lonely place with electricity. My companions seemed aware of it too, for as I took my gun from Comfort to move off towards the clumps of wood, the paddlers, each with a long throwing spear in hand, began hotly disputing with one another as to who should lead the way.

‘What's the matter?' I whispered to Comfort.

‘They're afraid of buffalo,
Moren
,' he said. ‘No one likes being in the lead when there might be buffalo about.'

Tired of the dispute, Long-axe turned his broad shoulders disdainfully on the others and, with a superb look of scorn on his broad, open young face, walked to the front. But I held him back and called the guide.

‘This is your place,' I commanded him in a whisper. ‘You are the guide. You go ahead and I'll follow immediately behind you.' He looked as if he would still demur but he was at heart a fair person and the justice, as much as the note of command, compelled him. Perhaps I should have paused a moment then to let the turmoil of the dispute subside within him. However, I let him walk straight on, his long spear in hand, but not looking about him as attentively as he should have done. I followed, with Comfort next and the paddlers in single file behind him.

We walked thus for about a quarter of a mile. All the while I felt increasingly uneasy and aware of the odd vibration and crackle of electricity charging the shining element of the high noon-day air. Carefully as I looked around me I saw no fresh spoor of any kind, and I am certain none of the others did or they would have warned me. None the less because of my growing uneasiness I was about to halt our small procession, when it happened.

We were in a round, hollow depression up to our chins in yellow grass and approaching the centre of the island. All around us were dense copses of black trees sealed with shadow and invariably wearing a feather of palm in their peaked caps. Suddenly the guide slapped his neck loudly with the flat of his hand. I myself felt the unmistakable stab of a tsetse fly on my own neck and thought: ‘If there's fly here, buffalo can't be far away.'

At that precise moment the copses all around us burst apart and buffalo, who had been within, sleeping, came hurtling through their crackling sides with arched necks, thundering hooves, and flying tails, all with the ease and speed of massed acrobats breaking hoops of paper to tumble into the arena for the finale of some great circus.

The guide dropped his spear, instantly fell flat on his stomach and wriggled away into the grass. So did the paddlers. Comfort stood his ground only long enough to call out to me hoarsely: ‘Master, throw your gun away. Let's crawl on our hands and knees and pretend to be animals nibbling the grass. It's our only chance.'

However, I stood my ground because, in some strange way, now that my uneasiness was explained I was not afraid. Perhaps I knew, too, it would be useless to run. But whatever the reason, I remember only a kind of exultation at witnessing so truly wild and privileged a sight. Automatically I slammed a cartridge into the breech of my gun and held it ready on my arm while the copses all round me went on exploding and the ground began to shake and tremble under my feet. For one minute it looked as if some buffalo, coming up from behind me, were going to run me down. But at the last minute they divided and passed not ten yards on either side of me. From all points and at every moment, their number was added to until the yellow grass and the glade far beyond ran black with buffalo, as if a bottle of indian ink had been spilt over it. They took to the channel ahead in a solid black lump, like a ship being launched, throwing up a mighty splash of white water over the reeds before they vanished round a curve of the main wood. I thought with strange regret, ‘They have gone', and stood turning over in my exalted senses the tumultuous impression of their black hooves slinging clay at the blue; bowed Mithraic heads and purple horns cleaving grass and reeds and spray of thorn like the prows of dark ships of the Odyssey on the sea of a long Homeric summer; deep eyes so intent with the inner vision driving them that they went by me unseeingly.

Suddenly there was another crackle of paper wood behind me. A smaller copse burst open and the greatest bull I have ever seen came charging straight at me.

The paddlers and Comfort, who were all miraculously reappearing, formed a kind of Greek chorus round me, shouting over and over again: ‘Shoot, Master! Shoot, Father! Shoot, Chief of Chiefs! It's the lone one! It's the lone bull!'

Yet again I held my fire, though for a different reason, and such a fantastic one that I must apologize for it in advance. When my paddlers shouted ‘Shoot!' I knew they were right. Here, even if safety did not seem to command it, was a chance to ensure our supply of food for days to come. But all my life I have dreamed about one particular buffalo. Much as I love the lion, elephant, kudu, and eland, the animal closest to the earth and with most of the quintessence of Africa in its being is for me the buffalo of the serene marble brow. Ever since I have been a small boy I have dreamed of one particular buffalo above all buffaloes. I will not enlarge on all the fantastic situations in which my dreaming mind has encountered him, and the great and little-known stretches of the continent in which my eyes have, for years, sought him with a growing hunger. All that matters is that unless absolutely forced to, I could not shoot on this occasion because here, at last, was the buffalo of my dreams. He took shape as a lone bull charging at me, the purple noon-day light billowing like silk around him. He came straight at me, so close that at last, reluctantly, I was about to put my gun to my shoulder and shoot.