Birds of Prey (85 page)

‘She has gone beneath us!’ he shouted at Aboli.

‘Get ready!’ Aboli warned. ‘This is how they destroy the canoes of my people.’ The words had barely left his lips when beneath their feet came a resounding crack as the
beast reared up under them, and the heavy boat with its full complement of ten rowers was lifted high out of the water.

They were hurled from their benches, and Hal might have been thrown overboard if he had not grabbed the thwart. The boat crashed back to the surface and Hal again seized the tail of the
falconet.

The animal’s charge would have stove in the hull of any lesser craft, and would certainly have splintered a native dugout canoe, but the pinnace was robustly constructed to withstand the
ravages of the North Sea.

Close alongside, the huge grey head burst through the surface, and the mouth opened like a pink cavern lined with fangs of yellow ivory as long as a man’s forearm. With a bellow that
shocked the crew with its ferocity the hippopotamus rushed at them with gaping jaws to tear the timbers out of the boat’s side.

Hal swung the falconet until it was almost touching the onrushing head. He fired. Smoke and flame shot straight down the gaping throat and the jaws clashed shut. The beast disappeared in a
swirl, to surface seconds later half-way back to the mud-bank on which her calf stood, forlorn and bewildered.

The huge rotund body reared half out of the water in a gargantuan convulsion then collapsed back and sank away in death, leaving a long wake of crimson to mark the green waters with its
passing.

The rowers wielded their oars with renewed vigour and the boat shot round the next bend, with Big Daniel’s boat close astern. The hull of Hal’s vessel was leaking fairly heavily, but
with one man bailing they could keep her dry until they had an opportunity to beach her and turn her over to repair the damage. They pressed on up the channel.

Clouds of waterfowl rose from the dense stands of papyrus around them or perched in the branches of the mangroves. There were herons, duck and geese that they recognized, together with dozens of
other birds that they had never seen before. Several times they caught glimpses of a strange antelope with a shaggy brown coat and spiral horns with pale tips, which seemed to make the deep swamps
its home. At dusk they surprised one as it stood on the edge of the papyrus. With a long and lucky musket shot, Hal brought it down. They were astonished to find that its hoofs were deformed,
enormously elongated. Such feet would act like the fins of a fish in the water, Hal reasoned, and give it purchase on the soft footing of mud and reeds. The antelope’s flesh was sweet and
tender and the men, long starved of fresh food, ate it with relish.

The nights, when they slept on the bare deck, were murmurous, troubled by great clouds of stinging insects, and in the dawn their faces were swollen and bloated with red lumps.

On the third day the papyrus began to give way to open flood plains. The breeze could reach them now, and blew away the clouds of insects and filled the lug sail they set. They went on at better
speed and came to where the other branches of the river all joined up to form one great flow almost three cables’ length in width.

The flood plains on each bank of this mighty river were verdant with a knee-high growth of rich grasses, grazed by huge herds of buffalo. Their numbers were uncountable, and they formed a moving
carpet as far as Hal could see, even when he shinned up the pinnace’s mast. They stood so densely upon the plain that large areas of the grasslands were obscured by their multitudes. They
were tarry lakes and running rivers of bovine flesh.

The outer fringes of these herds lined the banks of the river and stared across the water at them, their drooling muzzles lifted high and their bossed heads heavy with drooping horns. Hal
steered the boat in closer and fired the falconet into the thick of them. With that single discharge he brought down two young cows. That night, for the first time, they camped ashore and feasted
on buffalo steaks roasted on the coals.

For many days, they went on following the stately green flow, and the flood plains on either hand gradually gave way to forests and glades. The river narrowed, became deeper and stronger and
their progress was slower against the current. On the eighth evening after leaving the ship, they went ashore to camp in a grove of tall wild fig trees.

Almost immediately they came upon signs of human habitation. It was a decaying stockade, built of heavy logs. Within its wooden walls were pens that Hal thought must have been for enclosing
cattle or other beasts.

‘Slavers!’ said Aboli bitterly. ‘This is where they have chained my people like animals. In one of these
bomas
, perhaps this very one, my mother died under the weight of
her sorrow.’

The stockade had been long abandoned but Hal could not bring himself to camp on the site of so much human misery. They moved a league upstream and found a small island on which to bivouac. The
next morning they went on along the river through forest and grassland innocent of any further evidence of man. ‘The slavers have swept the wilderness with their net,’ Aboli said
sorrowfully. ‘That is why they have abandoned their factory and sailed away. It seems that there are no men or women of our tribe who have survived their ravages. We must abandon the search,
Gundwane, and turn back.’

‘No, Aboli. We go on.’

‘All around us is the ancient memory of despair and death,’ Aboli pleaded. ‘These forests are inhabited only by the ghosts of my people.’

‘I will decide when we turn back, and that time is not yet come,’ Hal told him, for in truth he was becoming fascinated by this strange new land and the plethora of wild creatures
with which it abounded. He felt a powerful urge to travel on and on, to follow the great river to its source.

The next day, from the bows, Hal spied a range of low hillocks a short distance north of the river. He ordered them to beach the boats and left Big Daniel and his seamen to repair the leaks in
the hull of the first caused by the hippopotamus attack. He took Aboli with him and they set off to climb the hills for a better view of the country ahead. They were further off than they had
appeared to be, for distances are deceptive in the clear air and under the bright light of the African sun. It was late afternoon when they stepped out onto the crest and gazed down upon the
limitless distances where forests and hills replicated themselves, rank upon rank and range upon range, like images of infinity in mirrors of shaded blue.

They sat in silence, awed by the immensity of this wild land. At last Hal stood up reluctantly. ‘You are right, Aboli. There are no men here. We must return to the ship.’

Yet he felt deep within him a strange reluctance to turn his back upon this tremendous land. More than ever, he felt drawn to its mystery and the romance of its vast spaces.

‘You will have many strong sons,’ Sukeena had prophesied. ‘Their descendants will flourish in this land of Africa and make it their own.’

He did not yet love this land. It was too strange and barbaric, too alien from all he had known in the gentler climes of the north, but deeply he felt the magic of it in his blood. The silence
of dusk fell upon the hills, that moment when all creation held its breath before the insidious advance of the night. He took one last look, sweeping the horizon where, like monstrous chameleons,
the hills changed colour. Before his eyes they turned sapphire, azure, and the blue of a kingfisher’s back. Suddenly he stiffened.

He grasped Aboli’s arm and pointed. ‘Look!’ he said softly. From the foot of the next range a single thin plume of smoke rose out of the forest and climbed up into the violet
evening air.

‘Men!’ Aboli whispered. ‘You were right not to turn back so soon, Gundwane.’

T
hey went down the hill in darkness and moved through the forest like shadows. Hal guided them by the stars, fixing his eye upon the great
shining Southern Cross that hung above the hill at the foot of which they had marked the column of smoke. After midnight, as they crept forward with increasing caution, Aboli stopped so abruptly
that Hal almost ran into him in the darkness.

‘Listen!’ he said. They stood in silence for minute after minute.

Then Hal said, ‘I hear nothing.’

‘Wait!’ Aboli insisted, and then Hal heard it. It was a sound once so commonplace, but one that he had not heard since he had left Good Hope. It was the mournful lowing of a cow.

‘My people are herders,’ Aboli whispered. ‘Their cattle are their most treasured possessions.’ He led Hal forward cautiously until they could smell the woodsmoke and the
familiar bovine odour of the cattle pen. Hal picked out the puddle of faintly glowing ash that marked the campfire. Silhouetted against it was the outline of a sitting man, wrapped in a kaross.

They lay and waited for the dawn. However, long before first light the camp began to stir. The watchman stood up, stretched, coughed and spat in the dead coals. Then he threw fresh wood upon the
fire, and knelt to blow it. The flames flared and, by their light, Hal saw that he was but a boy. Naked except for a loincloth, the lad left the fire and came close to where they were hidden. He
lifted his loincloth and peed into the grass, playing games with his urine stream, aiming at fallen leaves and twigs and chuckling as he tried to drown a scurrying scarab beetle.

Then he went back to the fire and called out towards the lean-to of branches and thatch, ‘The dawn comes. It is time to let out the herd.’

His voice was high and unbroken, but Hal was delighted to find that he understood every word the boy had said. It was the language of the forests that Aboli had taught him.

Two other lads of the same age crawled out of the hut, shivering, muttering and scratching, and all three went to the cattle pen. They spoke to the beasts as though they, too, were children,
rubbed their heads and patted their flanks.

As the light strengthened Hal saw that these cattle were far different from those he had known on High Weald. They were taller and rangier, with huge humps over their shoulders, and the span of
their horns was so wide as to appear grotesque, the weight almost too much for even their heavy frames to support.

The boys picked out a cow and pushed her calf away from the udder. Then one knelt under her belly and milked her, sending purring jets into a calabash gourd. Meanwhile, the other two seized a
young bullock and passed a leather thong around its neck. They drew this tight and when the restricted blood vessels stood proud beneath the black skin, one pricked a vein with the sharp point of
an arrow head. The first child came running with the gourd half-filled with milk and held the mouth of it under the stream of bright red blood that spurted from the punctured vein.

When the gourd was full, one staunched the small wound in the bullock’s neck with a handful of dust, and turned it loose. The beast wandered away, none the worse for the bleeding. The boys
shook the gourd vigorously, then passed it from one to the other, each drinking deeply from the mixture of milk and blood as his turn came, smacking his lips and sighing with pleasure.

So engrossed were they with their breakfast that none noticed Aboli or Hal until they were grabbed from behind and hoisted kicking and shrieking in the air.

‘Be quiet, you little baboon,’ Aboli ordered.

‘Slavers!’ wailed the eldest child, as he saw Hal’s white face. ‘We are taken by slavers!’

‘They will eat us,’ squeaked the youngest.

‘We are not slavers!’ Hal told them. ‘And we will not harm you.’

This assurance merely sent the trio into fresh paroxysms of terror. ‘He is a devil who can speak the language of heaven.’

‘He understands all we say. He is an albino devil.’

‘He will surely eat us as my mother warned me.’

Aboli held the eldest at arm’s length and glared at him. ‘What is your name, little monkey?’

‘See his tattoos.’ The boy howled in dread and confusion. ‘He is tattooed like the Monomatapa, the chosen of heaven.’

‘He is a great Mambo!’

‘Or the ghost of the Monomatapa who died long ago.’

‘I am indeed a great chief,’ Aboli agreed. ‘And you will tell me your name.’

‘My name is Tweti – oh, Monomatapa, spare me for I am but little. I will be only a single mouthful for your mighty jaws.’

‘Take me to your village, Tweti, and I will spare you and your brothers.’

After a while the children began to believe that they would neither be eaten nor turned into slaves, and they started to smile shyly at Hal’s overtures. From there it was not long before
they were giggling delightedly to have been chosen by the great tattooed chief and the strange albino to lead them to the village.

Driving the cattle herd before them, they took a track through the hills and came out suddenly in a small village surrounded by rudimentary fields of cultivation, in which a few straggling
millet plants grew. The huts were shaped like bee-hives and beautifully thatched, but they were deserted. Clay pots stood on the cooking fires before each hut and there were calves in the pens and
woven baskets, weapons and accoutrements scattered where they had been dropped when the villagers fled.

The three boys squeaked reassurances into the surrounding bush. ‘Come out! Come and see! It is a great Mambo of our tribe come back from death to visit us!’

An old crone was the first to emerge timidly from a thicket of elephant grass. She wore only a greasy leather skirt, and her one eye socket was empty. She had but a single yellow tooth in the
front of her mouth. Her dangling dugs flapped against her wrinkled belly, which was scarified with ritual tattoos.

She took one look at Aboli’s face, then ran to prostrate herself before him. She lifted one of his feet and placed it on her head. ‘Mighty Monomatapa,’ she keened, ‘you
are the chosen of heaven. I am a useless insect, a dung beetle, before your glory.’

In singles and pairs, and then in greater numbers, the other villagers emerged from their hiding places and gathered before Aboli to kneel in obeisance and pour dust and ashes on their heads in
reverence.