The Lost World of the Kalahari (19 page)

Soon after sunrise the first column of smoke stood upright, a palm purple with distance, on the eastern horizon. My pulse quickened. No smoke without fire; no fire without man! Could it, by some miracle, be a sign of River Bushman? I signalled to Karuso and our guide to join me. A long and earnest consultation took place between us. They agreed on the possibility of my interpretation but they thought it more likely that the water in the swamps now was getting low enough for odd hunters from the few African posts around to move in after buffalo and other game. They said there were a few hardy hunters who each year before the rains burnt certain favourite areas of the swamp in order to bring out the shy antelope that lived there, and to attract them and their spring progeny to snares set cunningly among the succulent young shoots that would soon arise out of the ashes of their fires.

‘But surely this stuff is too green and wet to burn?' I exclaimed, waving my hand at the hundreds of miles of vivid swamp around us.

None the less, they assured me gravely, without a smile at my innocence, I would soon be able to see for myself that it not only burned but burned well if one had patience to kindle it. Before long I spotted two more columns of smoke north and south of us. As the morning went on they grew steadily in size and spread fanwise in the higher atmosphere until the smoke of all three were joined and the air astringent with transpired resin and burning fibre. We saw more and more palms and, finally, dense clumps of great trees standing up with sombre determination in the flat green under an arch of blue through which the smoke of remote uncontrolled fires now drifted densely. Like so many trees in love with water, great and straight as were their stems, their leaves tended to be frail, tender, and pointed, and to curl shyly about the intricate branches not unlike another kind of smoke or mist. Yet all were clear signs that the swamp was forming more and greater islands. At that distance, to me, one clump of trees and feather of palm was very much like another. To our guide, however, each group was different and he proceeded to read them like separate words forming a sentence in a well-thumbed book.

At noon the stream brought us alongside an island where our guide said we could safely land. At first glance it looked like a junction for the main nocturnal traffic of hippo, for the clay was broken with their spoor, and the paths they had trodden ran in all directions into the reeds. But scarcely had we landed when Vyan called me. He, Ben, and the guide were on their knees in the clay studying some of the largest buffalo spoor I had ever seen. The spoor was fresh, and our guide looked up, his eyes shining with excitement, smacked his lips loudly, and said with a deep laugh: ‘Soon plenty of meat.'

Though the buffalo spoor and the steadily narrowing stream convinced our ferrymen that the launch was near the end of its journey, we had to hold on in this way for another four hours. It was the hottest time of the day and even the natural life of the swamp had withdrawn to rest. The birds and crocodile vanished. There was so little to distract the eye that most of our company dozed, their heads deep on their chests. However, I could not take my eyes off the swamp. The columns of smoke, the buffalo spoor, all had stirred me deeply. I had a hunch that despite the blank look of the papyrus grass, people, perhaps Bushmen, were near, and I feared that if I allowed my concentration to lessen for one single instant I might miss some sign or clue vital to our purpose.

Then, about two hours out from our last port of call, I thought I was rewarded. Between me and the sun, almost down to the glassy water-level, the papyrus was shyly parted by small yellow hands and a young woman's face peered carefully through the stems. A pair of odd Mongolian eyes, bright even in the shadows, looked up straight into mine.

I took the sleepy Comfort roughly by the arm to waken him but in that moment the face disappeared.

‘No,
Moren
!' Comfort said, peering deep into the green. ‘No! I see nothing at all. It must have been the play of the water and shadow on the reeds.'

‘Why then are those fine papyrus tops trembling so?' I asked, pointing to where gilded tips vibrated like a nerve with fever above the place where I had seen the face.

‘Oh, that! It's the wind coming to turn the day,' he answered and went back to his sleep.

I climbed up into the prow. There was no island near. If it had, indeed, been a human face how could it have got there? What feet could have carried it over the papyrus water, and where could it have come from? There was no apparent channel through the reeds even for a makorro. On reflection it all seemed so unlikely, and had passed so swiftly and obscurely, that I could not even be certain I had not imagined the incident. Yet two hours later when we came to the end of the journey by launch I still saw the face vivid in the shadows above the bland water.

The island on which we disembarked was the biggest we had yet seen, and the first of a kind of marsh archipelago. It was crowned in the centre with a copse of magnificent trees in full leaf, and instead of being merely an inch or two above the water was raised a foot at the edges and slightly higher in the centre. The grass and clay were criss-crossed with hippo tracks and crocodile slithers but unlike our last resort it rang solid underfoot. A mile and a half below the island the main Okovango channel ran into a triumphant papyrus barrier, then broke up and vanished into obscure runnels between the roots and plaited growth of the deep centre of the swamp. East of the island lay a broad lagoon which, our guide assured us, was linked to other lagoons forming a gleaming chain of water which, in the right season, would lead a makorro through to the river that flows a further hundred and fifty miles past Maun. Both he and Karuso, however, believed we would now find the water-level too low, though both were prepared to try to make passage. One thing was certain. We could not go on by launch. On the other hand, if the water ahead was too low for makorros, it would be too low also for a return to Muhembo by any other route except the main channel.

From what I had seen on our journey I realized I could not expose my companions, particularly Spode, to the dangers of a slow journey by makorro against the current on the main stream. Therefore I arranged with the ferrymen (who had to leave almost immediately if they were to be in time for their scheduled ferry service at ‘The Place of the Eddies') to return to the island as soon as their run was accomplished. Either we would be there to meet them; or else I would leave written instructions for them buried in a tin in an agreed place. As we had come no more than two hundred miles by water from the entrance to the swamps, I reckoned they could do the round journey in five or six days.

I settled all this as quickly as possible because all the time I was aware of the potential forces of disassociation among the paddlers. They had behind them a far easier journey than they had bargained for. Yet judging by their faces the long hours of idleness in the launch had only increased their latent capacity for dissatisfaction. Also they were very hungry for the meat of which the average African gets too little and needs so much. I reckoned that before long they would come in a disgruntled body to demand more food; and I did not want that to happen. Believing that what one gives unasked is worth a hundred of that conceded on demand, I was determined to use what daylight was left in an effort to get meat for our evening meal. At that moment it seemed to me our whole future might depend upon the issue of the hunt. I organized three shooting parties and sent one, under Vyan, and another under Ben, into the areas which the guide thought most likely to have game. Karuso and two of his best hunters went with Ben; the guide and two others went with Vyan. Since I was less in practice and had a new gun I took the least likely and the wettest area across the main stream. Samutchoso, Long-axe, and two others came with me. The look of revived interest on even the most sullen of faces as we all set out with our guns on our arms was most encouraging.

My own party crossed the channel in two makorros. It was my first experience of this craft. I sat in the middle with my .375 across my knees, because it was the hour when the hippo begin to re-emerge from their beds of reeds and pools of sleep. Indeed, before we left the bank Long-axe, paddle in hand and erect in the prow, first looked carefully up- and down-stream. Then, satisfied the channel was clear, he called softly on Samutchoso to shove off, and in a second they were paddling with long sweeps as fast as they could for the cliff of papyrus opposite. Where I sat, the sides of the makorro were barely three inches clear of the water and I realized at once what Ben had meant about the difficulty of keeping balanced so temperamental a craft. I found myself moving continually from the hips like someone riding a tight-rope, and had to discipline myself not to extend my arms also. Yet my companions, upright on the footboard, rode the waters with a confident rhythm that instantly rebuked my uncertain waist. The other makorro followed serenely in our wake and once we had both reached the shadows of the papyrus turned to slide into the shelter of the green.

All the while we spoke only in the lowest of whispers. It was astonishing how sound travelled in the quiet evening air. For a long time we heard the normal talk of the camp behind us, and however silently the polished crocodile or larded hippo took to the creamy water round us, the ripples resounded like flute-song among the reeds. Only when the noise of the camp had died did we make an effort to land on a raft of uprooted papyrus caught among the trunks of some young trees. Long-axe, in one supple stride, stepped straight over the prow, took the grass mooring ropes of both makorros in hand, and tied them to a trunk. When he had done so he turned to beg us, with a finger on his curved lip, for silence.

Leaving two men with the makorros, he, Samutchoso, and I, barefoot, waded carefully through a broad channel of water between our raft and an ancient termite mound of immense size which had a great tree planted in the middle of its crown. To my amazement, beneath the water my feet trod not in mud or clay but on firm Kalahari sand. There, as everywhere in the swamp, earth and clay existed only in islands; all else was water and pure drift sand. Without a word having been spoken I was grateful to see Long-axe and Samutchoso behaving like veteran hunters; Long-axe keeping his eyes focused on what might lie ahead; Samutchoso ignoring the distance and concentrating on what was around our feet. After that I felt less apprehensive of crocodile. Soon we were creeping up the shadow-side of the mound, and when at last we looked furtively over the summit I thought I had never seen anything more beautiful.

The sun was low and already beginning to redden. Above us the sky was intensely blue and without a bird or cloud, but round the sun was formed a wide band of emerald green with an inner ring of gold. The island trees and the tender curls of slim young palms on tip-toe in the water rose like the smoke of hunters' fires from vast fields of papyrus, reeds, and grass, all tasselled and so lit with light that they might have been corn ripening for a newly forged sickle of the eager moon. Wherever the shadows lay the swamp was purple and, within the purple, like cut-glass buttons on young velvet, was a sparkle of round water. All had the look of things made pure for sleep in devout ablution. Yet even more impressive than the colour, the crystal clarity of the immense scene, and the perfection of the curve of the horizon going towards the night smoothly as a ripple left by a round pebble in a round pond, was the quality of silence rising from this evening world. It was not so much an absence of sound as a delicate music plucked by the long fingers of the light from that finely strung hour to send to sleep a world that had suffered much under the sun. I looked at Samutchoso and with apparent irrelevance the expression on his ascetic old face reminded me that it was Sunday and that I had overlooked it.

At that moment Long-axe, tense as a bow-string, whispered in my ear: ‘Look!
Moren
, look! Lechwe!'

Some distance away a luminous sprinkle of water was thrown up against the dark reeds. I could just distinguish the outline of a shy and graceful antelope picking its way carefully through the water between two mounds. So still was it that a faint tinkle of the spangle of water on its evening shoes just reached my ear. But it was too indistinct and too far for a shot, though we all thought I might have a chance from the farthest of the two mounds. We made for it as fast and as silently as we could, only to find that the lechwe had changed direction and we had not bettered our position. We tried again to get nearer but with the same disappointing results until at last the sun stood in scarlet, on the blue horizon. There was no time left now for more manoeuvring. The lechwe, uneasy, stood between us and the light, up to its pointed chin in reeds, and looking hard in our direction. It was my last chance to shoot, but so forlorn a chance that it was hardly worth taking. I reckoned the distance was a hundred and fifty yards; the visible target an elegant head and a bit of smooth slim throat; the direction almost straight into a sun level with the eye. If I had not been so convinced of the absolute necessity of getting meat for the camp I would not have attempted it for fear of wounding the lechwe. But I had heard no shots from the other hunters. If they had shot, in that silence I would have heard them. I looked at my companions. Both faces were solemn with resignation to a vain issue of the hunt and offered neither advice nor encouragement. In my hands was the new gun which I had bought because of my wife's insistence. I had not yet fired at a live target, though, of course, I had zeroed it on a marked one. I said a wordless prayer to the unknown gods of the world around me and aimed at the living target. As soon as I had the lechwe within my sights I shot quickly without deliberation and as much from instinct as from observation. As the harp-like silence fled swiftly from the day, the lechwe vanished instantly in the long reeds. I was certain I had missed, but my two companions were shouting: ‘Oh! Our master. Oh! Our father. You've hit it. Lo! The lechwe is dead!'