Текст книги "The Dark of the Sun"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Never occurred to them that old Uncle Wally might up and walk away.

Thought I'd just sit here and wait for them to come back and fetch me

take me in and hand me over to a bunch of nigger police aching to get

their hands on a white man.

Well, I got news for you, Mr. Fancy-talking Curry!

He rummaged in the cubbyhole and then slammed it shut.

Okay, they're not there. Let's try under the seats. The border

is not guarded, might take me three or four days to get through to Fort

Rosebery, but when I do I'll have me a pocket full of diamonds and

there's a direct air service out to Ndola and the rest of the world.

Then we start living!

There was nothing under the seats except a greasy dustcoated jack and

wheel spanner. Hendry turned his attention to the floorboards.

Pity I'll have to leave that bastard C'brry. I had plans for him.

There's a guy who really gets to me. So goddam cock-sure of himself.

One of them. Makes you feel you're shit – fancy talk, pretty face, soft

hands. Christ, I hate him.

Viciously he tore the rubber mats off the floor and the dust made him

cough.

Been to university, makes him think he's something special. The bastard.

I should have fixed him long ago that night at the road bridge I nearly

gave it to him in the dark. Nobody would have known, just a mistake. I

shoulda done it then. I shoulda done it at Port

Reprieve when he ran out across the road to the office block. Big bloody

hero.

Big lover. Bet he had everything he ever wanted, bet his Daddy gave him

all the money he could use. And he looks at you like that, like you

crawled out of rotting meat.

Hendry straightened up and gripped the steering wheel, his jaws chewing

with the strength of his hatred. He stared out of the windscreen.

Shermaine Cartier walked past the front of the truck.

She had a towel and a pink plastic toilet bag in her hand; the pistol

swung against her leg as she moved.

Sergeant Jacque stood up from the cooking fire and moved to intercept

her. They talked, arguing, then Shermaine touched the pistol at her side

and laughed. A worried frown creased Jacque's black face and he shook

his head dubiously. Shermaine laughed again, turned from him and set off

down the road towards the stream. Her hair, caught carelessly at her

neck with a ribbon, hung down her back on to the rose-coloured shirt she

wore and the heavy canvas holster emphasized the unconsciously

provocative swing of her hips. She went out of sight down the steep bank

of the stream.

Wally Hendry chuckled and then licked his lips with the quick-darting

tip of his tongue.

"This is going to make it perfect," he whispered. "They couldn't have

done things to Suit me better if they'd spent a week working it out."

Eagerly he turned back to his search for the diamonds.

Leaning forward he thrust his hand up behind the dashboard of the truck

and it brushed against the bunch of canvas bags that hung from the mass

of concealed wires.

"Come to Uncle Wally." He jerked them loose and, holding them in his

lap, began checking their contents.

The third bag he opened contained the gem stones.

"Lovely, lovely grub," he whispered at the dull glint and sparkle in the

depths of the bag. Then he closed the drawstring, stuffed the bag into

the pocket of his battle-jacket and buttoned the flap. He dropped the

bags of industrial diamonds on to the floor and kicked them under the

seat, picked up his rifle and stepped down out of the truck.

Three or four gendarmes looked up curiously at him as he passed the

cooking fires. Hendry rubbed his stomach and pulled a face.

"Too much meat last night!" The gendarme who understood English laughed

and translated into French. They all laughed and one of them called

something in a dialect that Hendry did not understand. They watched him

walk away among the trees.

As soon as he was out of sight of the camp Hendry started to run,

circling back towards the stream.

"This is going to be a pleasure!" He laughed aloud.

Fifty yards below the drift where the road crossed the stream

Shermaine found a shallow pool. There were reeds with fluffy heads

around it and a small beach of white river sand, black boulders,

polished round and glossy smooth, the water almost blood warm and so

clear that she could see a shoal of fingerlings nibbling at the green

algae that coated the boulders beneath the surface.

She stood barefooted in the sand and looked around carefully, but the

reeds screened her, and she had asked Jacque not to let any of his men

come down to the river while she was there.

She undressed, dropped her clothes across one of the black boulders and

with a cake of soap in her hand waded out into the pool and lowered

herself until she sat with the water up to her neck and the sand

pleasantly rough under her naked behind.

She washed her hair first and then lay stretched out with the water

moving gently over her, soft as the caress of silk.

Growing bold the tiny fish darted in and nibbled at her skin, tickling,

so that she gasped and splashed at them.

At last she ducked her head under the surface and, with the water

streaming out of her hair into her eyes, she groped her way back to the

bank.

As she stooped, still half blinded, for her towel Wally Hendry's hand

closed over her mouth and his other arm circled her waist from behind.

"One squeak out of you and I'll wring your bloody neck." He spoke

hoarsely into her ear. She could smell his breath, warm and sour in her

face. "Just pretend I'm old Bruce then both of us will enjoy

it." And he chuckled.

Sliding quickly over her hip his hand moved downwards and the shock of

it galvanized her into frantic struggles.

Holding her easily Hendry kept on chuckling.

She opened her mouth suddenly and one of his fingers went in

between her teeth. She bit with all her strength and felt the skin break

and tasted blood in her mouth.

"You bitch!" Hendry jerked his hand away and she opened her mouth to

scream, but the hand swung back, clenched, into the side of her face,

knocking her head across. The scream never reached her lips for

he hit her again and she felt herself falling.

Stunned by the blows, lying in the sand, she could not believe it was

happening, until she felt his weight upon her and his knee forced

cruelly between hers.

Then she started to struggle again, trying to twist away from his mouth

and the smell of his breath.

"No, no, no." She repeated it over an dover, her eyes shut tightly so

she did not have to see that face above her, and her head rolling from

side to side in the sand. He was so strong, so immensely powerful.

"No," she said, and then, "Ooah!" at the pain, the tearing stinging pain

within, and the thrusting heaviness above.

And through the pounding, grunting, thrusting nightmare she could smell

him and feel the sweat drip from him and splash into her upturned

unprotected face.

It lasted forever, and then suddenly the weight was gone and she opened

her eyes.

He stood over her, fumbling with his Clothing, and there was a dullness

in his expression. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and she

saw the fingers were trembling.

His voice when he spoke was tired and disinterested.

"I've had better." Swiftly Shennaine rolled over and reached for the

pistol that lay on top of her clothes. Hendry stepped forward with all

his weight on her wrist and she felt the bones bend under his boot and

she moaned. But through pain she whispered. "You pig, you filthy pig,"

and he hit her again, flat-handed across the face, knocking her on to

her back once more.

He picked up the pistol and opened it, spilling the cartridges into the

sand, then he unclipped the lanyard and threw the pistol far out into

the reed bed.

"Tell Curry I say he can have my share of you," he said and walked

quickly away among the reeds.

The white sand coated her damp body like icing sugar.

She sat up slowly holding her wrist, the side of her face inflamed and

starting to swell where he had hit her.

She started to cry, shaking silently, and the tears squeezed out between

her eyelids and matted her long dark lashes.

Ruffy held up the brown bottle and inspected it ruefully.

"Seems like one mouthful and it's empty." He threw the bottle out of the

side window. It hit a tree and burst with a small pop.

"We can always find our way back by following the empties," smiled

Bruce, once more marvelling at the man's capacity. But there was plenty

of storage space. He watched Ruffy's stomach spread on to his lap as he

reached down to the beer crate.

"How we doing, boss?" Bruce glanced at the milorrieter.

"We've come eighty-seven miles," and Ruffy nodded.

"Not bad going. Be there pretty soon now." They were silent. The wind

blew in on to them through the open front. The grass that grew

between the tracks brushed the bottom of the chassis with a continuous

rushing sound.

"Boss-" Ruffy spoke at last.

"Yes?"

"Lieutenant Hendry – those diamonds. You reckon we did a good thing

leaving him there?"

"He's stranded in the middle of the bush. Even if he did find them they

wouldn't do him much good."

"Suppose that's right." Ruffy lifted the beer bottle to his lips and

when he lowered it he went on. "Mind you, that's one guy you can never

be sure of." He tapped his head with a finger as thick and as black as a

blood-sausage. "Something wrong with him – he's one of the maddest

Arabs I've found in a long time of looking." Bruce grunted grimly.

"You want to be careful there, boss, observed Ruffy. "Any time now he's

going to try for you. I've seen it coming. He's working

himself up to it. He's a mad Arab." "I'll watch him," said Bruce.

"Yeah, you do that." Again they were silent in the steady swish of the

wind and the drone of the motor.

"There's a railway." Ruffy pointed to the blue-grovelled embankment

through the trees.

"Nearly there," said Bruce.

They came out into another open glade and beyond it the water tank of

Msapa junction stuck up above the forest.

"Here we are," said Ruffy and drained the bottle in his hand.

"Just say a prayer that the telegraph lines are still up and that

there's an operator on the Elisabethville end." Bruce slowed the Ford

past the row of cottages. They were exactly as he remembered them,

deserted and forlorn.

The corners of his mouth were compressed into a hard angle as he looked

at the two small mounds of earth beneath the asia flora trees.

Ruffy looked at them also but neither of the spoke.

Bruce stopped the Ford outside the station building and they climbed out

stiffly and walked together on to the verandah. The wooden flooring

echoed dully under their boots as they made for the door of the office.

Bruce pushed the door open and looked in. The walls were painted a

depressing utility green, loose paper scattered on the floor the drawers

of the single desk hung open, and a thin grey skin of dust coated

everything.

"There she is," said Ruffy and pointed to the brass and varnished wood

complexity of the telegraph on a table against the far wall.

"Looks all right," said Bruce. "As long as the lines haven't been cut."

As if to reassure him, the telegraph began to clatter like a typewriter.

"Thank God for that," sighed Bruce.

They walked across to the table.

"You know how to work this thing?" asked Ruffy.

"Sort of," Bruce answered and set his rifle against the wall. He

was relieved to see a Morse table stuck with adhesive tape to the wall

above the apparatus. It was a long time since he had memorized it as a

boy scout.

He laid his hand on the transmission key and studied the table.

The call sign for Elisabethville was

"EE'.

He tapped it out clumsily and then waited. Almost immediately the set

clattered back at him, much too fast to be intelligible and the roll of

paper in the repeater was exhausted. Bruce took off his helmet and

laboriously spelled outl

"Transmit slower." It was a long business with requests for repetition.

"Not understood" was made nearly every

second signal, but finally Bruce got the operator to understand that he

had an urgent message for Colonel Franklyn of President Tshornbe's

staff.

"Wait," came back the laconic signal.

And they waited. They waited an hour, then two.

"That mad bastard's forgotten about us," grumbled Ruffy and went to the

Ford to fetch the beer crate. Bruce fidgeted restlessly on the unpadded

chair beside the telegraph table.

He reconsidered anxiously all his previous arguments for leaving

Wally Hendry in charge of the camp, but once again decided that it was

safe. He couldn't do much harm.

Unless, unless, Shermaine! No, it was impossible. Not with forty loyal

gendarmes to protect her.

He started to think about Shermaine and the future.

There was a year's mercenary captain's pay accumulated in the

Credit Banque Suisse at Zurich. He made the conversion from francs to

pounds – about two and a half thousand.

Two years" operating capital, so they could have a holiday before he

started working again. They could take a chalet up in the mountains,

there should be good snow this time of the year.

Bruce grinned. Snow that crunched like sugar, and a twelve-inch-thick

eiderdown on the bed at night.

Life had purpose and direction again.

"What you're laughing at, boss?" asked Ruffy.

"I was thinking about a bed."

"Yeah? That's a good thing to think about. You start there, you're born

there, you spend most of your life in it, you have plenty of fun in it,

and if you're lucky you die there.

How's it for a beer?" The telegraph came to life at Bruce's elbow. He

turned to it quickly.

"Curry – Franklyn," it clattered. Bruce could imagine the wiry,

red-faced little man at the other end. Ex-major in the third brigade of

the Legion. A prime mover in the O. A.S with a sizeable price still on

his head from the De Gaulle assassination attempt.

"Franklyn – Curry," Bruce tapped back. "Train unserviceable.

Motorized transport stranded without fuel. Port Reprieve road. Map

reference approx-" He read the numbers off the sheet on which he had

noted them.

There was a long pause, then: "Is U. M.C. property in your hands?"

The question was delicately phrased.

"Affirmative," Bruce assured him.

"Await air-drop at your position soonest. Out."

"Message understood. Out." Bruce straightened from the telegraph and

sighed

with relief.

"That's that, Ruffy. They'll drop gas to us from one of the

Dakotas. Probably tomorrow morning." He looked at his wristwatch.

"Twenty to one, let's get back." Bruce hummed softly, watching the

double tracks ahead of him, guiding the Ford with a light touch on the

wheel.

He was contented. It was all over. Tomorrow the fuel would drop from the

Dakota under those yellow parachutes.

(He must lay out the smudge signals this evening.) And ten hours later

they would be back in Elisabethville.

A few words with Carl Engelbrecht would fix seats for Shermaine and

himself on one of the outward-bound Daks.

Then Switzerland, and the chalet with icicles hanging from the eaves. A

long rest while he decided where to start again.

Louisiana was under Roman-Dutch Law, or was it Code Napoleon? He might

even have to rewrite his bar examinations, but the prospect pleased

rather than dismayed him. It was fun again.

"Never seen you so happy," grunted Ruffy.

"Never had so much cause, Bruce agreed.

"She's a swell lady. Young still – you can teach her." Bruce felt his

hackles rise, and then he thought better of it and laughed.

"You going to sign her up, boss?"

"I might." Ruffy nodded wisely.

"Man should have plenty wives – I got three. Need a couple more."

"One

I could only just handle."

"One's difficult. Two's easier. Three, you can relax. Four, they're so

busy with each other they don't give you no trouble at all."

"I might try it."

"Yeah, you do that." And ahead of them through the trees they saw the

ring of trucks.

"We're home," grunted Ruffy, then he stirred uncomfortably in his seat.

"Something going on." Men stood in small groups. There was something in

their attitude: strain, apprehension.

Two men ran up the road to meet them. Bruce could see their mouths

working, but could not hear the words.

Dread, heavy and cold, pushed down on the pit of Bruce's gut.

Gabbled, incoherent, Sergeant Jacque was trying to tell him something as

he ran beside the Ford.

"Tenente Hendry – the river – the madame – gone." French words like

driftwood in the torrent of dialect.

"Your girl," translated Ruffy. "Hendry's done her."

"Dead?" The question dropped from Bruce's mouth.

"No. He's hurt her. He's – you know!"

"Where's she?"

"They've got her in the back of the truck." Bruce climbed heavily out of

the car. Now they were silent, grouped together, not looking at him,

faces impassive, waiting.

Bruce walked slowly to the truck. He felt cold and numb. His legs moved

automatically beneath him. He drew back the canvas and

pulled himself up into the interior. It was an effort to move forward,

to focus his eyes in the gloom.

Wrapped in a blanket she lay small and still.

"Shermaine." It stuck in his throat.

"Shermaine," he said again and knelt beside her. A great livid swelling

distorted the side of her face. She did not turner face to him, but lay

staring up at the canvas roof.

He touched her face and the skin was cold, cold as the dread that

gripped his stomach. The coldness of it shocked him so he jerked his

hand away.

"Shermaine." This time it was a sob. The eyes, her big haunted eyes,

turned unseeing towards him and he felt the lift of escape from the

certainty of her death.

"Oh, God, he cried and took her to him, holding the unresisting

frailty of her to his chest. He could feel the slow even thump of her

heart beneath his liquid. He drew back the blanket and there was no

blood.

"Darling, are you hurt? Tell me, are you hurt?" She did not answer. She

lay quietly in his arms, not seeing him.

"Shock," he whispered. "It's only shock," and he opened her clothing.

With tenderness he examined the smoothly pale body; the skin was clammy

and damp, but there was no damage.

He wrapped her again and laid her gently back on to the floor.

He stood and the thing within him changed shape. Cold still, but now

burning cold as dry ice.

Ruffy and Jacque were waiting for him beside the tailboard.

"Where is he?" asked Bruce softly.

"He is gone."

"Where?"

"That way." Jacque pointed towards the south-east. "I followed the spoor

a short distance." Bruce walked to the Ford and picked up his rifle from

the floor. He opened the cubby hole and took two spare clips of

ammunition from it.

Ruffy followed him. "He's got the diamonds, boss."

"Yes," said

Bruce and checked the load of his rifle. The diamonds were of no

importance.

"Are you going after him, boss?" Bruce did not answer. Instead he

looked up at the sky.

The sun was half way towards the horizon and there were clouds thickly

massed around it.

"Ruffy, stay with her," he said softly. "Keep her warm." Ruffy nodded.

"Who is the best tracker we've got?"

"Jacque. Worked for a safari outfit before the war as a tracker boy."

Bruce turned to Jacque. The thing was still icy cold inside him, with

tentacles that spread out to every extremity of his body and his mind.

"When did this happen?"

"About an hour after you left," answered

Jacque.

Eight hours start. It was a long lead.

"Take the spoor," said Bruce softly.

The earth was soft from the night's rain and the spoor deep trodden, the

heels had bitten in under Hendry's weight, so they followed fast.

Watching Sergeant Jacque work, Bruce felt his anxiety abating, for

although the footprints were so easy to follow in these early stages

that it was no test of his ability, yet from the way he moved swiftly

along – half-crouched and wholly absorbed, occasionally glancing ahead

to pick up the run of the spoor, stooping now and then to touch the

earth and determine its texture – Bruce could tell that this man knew

his business.

Through the open forest with tufted grass below, holding steadily south

by east, Hendry led them straight towards the Rhodesian border.

And after the first two hours Bruce knew they had not gained upon him.

Hendry was still eight hours ahead, and at the pace he was setting eight

hours" start was something like thirty miles in distance.

Bruce looked over his shoulder at the sun where it lay wedged between

two vast piles of cumulonimbus. There in the sky were the two elements

which could defeat him.

Time. There were perhaps two more hours of daylight.

With the onset of night they would be forced to halt.

Rain. The clouds were swollen and dark blue round the edges. As

Bruce watched, the lightning lit them internally, and at a count of ten

the thunder grumbled suddenly. If it rained again before morning there

would be no spoor to follow.

"We must move faster," said Bruce.

Sergeant Jacque straightened up and looked at Bruce as though he were a

stranger. He had forgotten his existence.

"The earth hardens." Jacque pointed at the spoor and Bruce saw that in

the last half hour the soil had become gritty and compacted.

Hendry's heels no longer broke the crust. "It is unwise to run on such a

lean trail." Again Bruce looked back at the menace of gathering clouds.

"We must take the chance," he decided.

"As you wish," grunted Jacque, and transferred his rifle to his other

shoulder, hitched up his belt and settled the steel helmet more firmly

on his head.

"Allez!" They trotted on through the forest towards the southeast.

Within a mile Bruce's body had settled into the automatic rhythm of his

run, leaving his mind free.

He thought about Wally Hendry, saw again the little eyes and round them

the puffy folded skin, and the mouth below, thin and merciless, the

obscene ginger stubble of beard. He could almost smell him. His nostrils

flared at the memory of the rank red-head's body odour.

Unclean, he thought, unclean mind and unclean body.

His hatred of Wally Hendry was a tangible thing. He could feel it

sitting heavily at the base of his throat, tingling in his fingertips

and giving strength to his legs.

And yet there was something else. Suddenly Bruce grinned: a wolfish

baring of his teeth. That tingling in his fingertips was not all hatred,

a little of it was excitement.

What a complex thing is a man, he thought. He can never hold one emotion

– always there are others to confuse it. Here I am hunting the

thing that I most loathe and hate, and I am enjoying it. Completely

unrelated to the hatred is the thrill of hunting the most dangerous and

cunning game of all, man.

I have always enjoyed the chase, he thought. It has been bred into me,

for my blood is that of the men who hunted and fought with

Africa as the prize.

The hunting of this man will give me pleasure. If ever a man deserved to

die, it is Wally Hendry. I am the plaintiff, the judge and the

executioner.

Sergeant Jacque stopped so suddenly that Bruce ran into him and they

nearly fell.

"What is it?" panted Bruce, coming back to reality.

"Look!" The earth ahead of them was churned and broken.

"Zebra," groaned Bruce, recognizing the round uncloven hoof prints. "God

damn it to hell – of all the filthy luck!"

"A big herd," Jacque agreed. "Spread out. Feeding." As far ahead as they

could see through the forest the herd had wiped out Hendry's tracks.

"We'll have to cast forward." Bruce's voice was agonized by his

impatience. He turned to the nearest tree and hacked at it with his

bayonet, blazing it to mark the end of the trail, swearing softly,

venting his disappointment on the trunk.

"Only another hour to sunset," he whispered. "Please let us pick him up

again before dark." Sergeant Jacque was already moving forward,

following the approximate line of Hendry's travel, trying vainly to

recognize a single footprint through the havoc created there by the

passage of thousands of hooves. Bruce hurried to join him and then moved

out on his flank. They zigzagged slowly ahead, almost meeting on the

inward leg of each tack and then separating again to a distance of a

hundred yards.

There it was! Bruce dropped to his knees to make sure.

Just the outline of the toecap, showing from under the spoor of an old

zebra stallion. Bruce whistled, a windy sound through his dry lips, and

Jacque came quickly. One quick look then: "Yes, he is holding more to

the right now." He raised his eyes and squinted ahead, marking a tree

which was directly in line with the run of the spoor.

They went forward.

"There's the herd." Bruce pointed at the flicker Of a grey body through

the trees.

"They've got our wind." A zebra snorted and then there was a rumbling, a

low bluffed drumming of hooves as the herd ran. Through the trees Bruce

caught glimpses of the animals on the near side of the herd. Too far off

to show the stripes, looking like fat grey ponies as they galloped, ears

up, black-maned heads nodding. Then they were gone and the sound of

their flight dwindled.

"At least they haven't run along the spoor," muttered Bruce, and then

bitterly: "Damn them, the stupid little donkeys! They've cost us an

hour. A whole priceless hour." Desperately searching, wild with haste,

they worked back and forth. The sun was below the trees; already the air

was cooling in the short African dusk. Another fifteen

minutes and it would be dark.

Then abruptly the forest ended. they came out on the edge of a vlei.

Open as Wheatland, pastured with green waist-high grass, hemmed in by

the forest, it stretched ahead of them for nearly two miles.

Dotted along it were clumps of ivory palms with each graceful stem

ending in an untidy cluster of leaves. Troops of guinea-fowls were

scratching and chirruping along the edge of the clearing, and near the

far end a herd of buffalo formed a dark mass as they grazed beneath a

canopy of white egrets.

In the forest beyond the clearing, rising perhaps three hundred feet out

of it, stood a kopje of tumbled granite.

The great slabs of rock with their sheer sides and square tops looked

like a ruined castle. The low sun struck it and gave the rock an orange

warmth.

But Bruce had no time to admire the scene; his eyes were on the earth,

searching for the prints of Hendry's jungle boots.

Out on his left Sergeant Jacque whistled sharply and Bruce felt the leap

of excitement in his chest. He ran across to the crouching gendarme.

"It has come away." Jacque pointed at the spoor that was strung ahead of

them like beads on a string, skirting the edge of the vlei, each

depression filled with shadow and standing out clearly on the sandy grey

earth.

"Too late," groaned Bruce. "Damn those bloody zebra." The light

was fading so swiftly it seemed as though it were a stage effect.

"Follow it." Bruce's voice was sharp with helpless frustration.

"Follow it as long as you can." It was not a quarter of a mile farther

on that Jacque rose out of his crouch and only the white of his teeth

showed in the darkness as he spoke.

"We will lose it again if we go on."

"All right." Bruce unslung his rifle with weary resignation.

He knew that Wally Hendry was at least forty miles ahead of them; more

if he kept travelling after dark. The spoor was cold. If this had been

an ordinary hunt he would long ago have broken off the chase.

He looked up at the sky. In the north the stars were fat and

yellow, but above them and to the south it was black with cloud.

"Don't let it rain," he whispered. "Please God, don't let it rain." The

night was long. Bruce slept once for perhaps two hours and then the

strength of his hatred woke him. He lay flat upon his back and stared up

at the sky. It was all dark with clouds; only occasionally they opened

and let the stars shine briefly through.

"It must not rain. It must not rain." He repeated it like a prayer,

staring up at the dark sky, concentrating upon it as though by the force

of his mind he could control the elements.

There were lions hunting in the forest. He heard the male roaring,

moving up from the south, and once his two lionesses answered him. They

killed a little before dawn and Bruce lay on the hard earth and listened

to their jubilation over the kill. Then there was silence as they began

to feed.

That I might have success as well, he thought. I do not often ask for

favours, Lord, but grant me this one. I ask it not only for myself but

for Shermaine and the others.

In his mind he saw again the two children lying where Hendry had shot

them. The smear of mingled blood and chocolate across the boy's cheek.

He deserves to die, prayed Bruce, so please don't let it rain.

As long as the night had been, that quickly came the dawn. A grey dawn,

gloomy with low cloud.

"Will it go?" Bruce asked for the twentieth time, and this time

Jacque looked up from where he knelt beside the spoor.

"We can try now." They moved off slowly with Jacque leading, doubled

over to peer shortsightedly at the earth and Bruce close behind him,

bedevilled by his impatience and anxiety, lifting his head every dozen

paces to the dirty grey roof of cloud.

The light strengthened and the circle of their vision opened from

six feet to as many yards, to a hundred, so they could make out the tops

of the ivory palms, shaggy against the grey cloud.

Jacque broke into a trot and ahead of them was the end of the clearing

and the beginning of the forest. Two hundred yards beyond rose the

massive pile of the kopie, in the early light looking more than ever

like a castle, turreted and sheer. There was something formidable in its

outline. It seemed to brood above them and Bruce looked away from it

uneasily.

Cold and with enough weight behind it to sting, the first raindrop

splashed against Bruce's cheek.

"Oh, no!" he protested, and stopped. Jacque straightened up from the

spoor and he too looked at the sky.

"It is finished. In five minutes there will be nothing to follow."

Another drop hit Bruce's upturned face and he blinked back the tears of

anger and frustration that pricked the rims of his eyelids.

Faster now, tapping on his helmet, plopping on to his shoulders and

face, the rain fell.

Quickly," cried Bruce. "Follow as long as you can." Jacque opened his

mouth to speak, but before a word came out he was flung-backwards,

punched over as though by an invisible fist, his helmet flying from his

head as he fell and his rifle clattering on the earth.