against black, and black against black, until the falcons return. Until the falcons return.'
The Umlirno raised her narrow pink-palmed hands, and lifted the garland of intertwined serpents from off her own neck. She laid them gently on the stone floor of the cave and with a single flowing movement, she stood erect, and the firelight glinted upon her oiled satin body. When the falcons return, ' she spread her arms, and the round breasts changed shape at the movement, when the falcons return, then once again the Mambos of Rozwi and the Monomatapa of Karanga will hold sway in the land. ' She lowered her arms and her breasts sagged weightily. 'That is the prophecy. That is the whole prophecy, she said, and turned away from the fire and, with a gliding walk, moved across the irregular stone floor, her back straight and her naked buttocks swaying in stately rhythm.
She disappeared into the dark shadows that shrouded one of the fingers of the cave beyond the amphitheatre. Wait! ' Zouga called after her, scrambling to his feet and starting after her.
The huge female mamba hissed sharply, like the steam of a boiling kettle, and rose up as high as Zouga's head.
The butter yellow mouth gaped again, and a crest of dark glittering scales came angrily erect down the length of her neck.
Zouga froze, and the snake hissed again and flared a little higher, the raised body arching gently into a taut is) shape. Zouga backed off, one pace and then another.
The crest of scales subsided a little. He took another step backwards and the tense bow of the serpentine body relaxed, the head lowered a few inches. He moved steadily backwards towards the entrance of the cave, and before the amphitheatre was obscured by the shoulder of rock he saw the huge snake coiled in a knee-high pile of glinting scales still locked in sexual congress with her deadly consort.
The prophecy of the Umlimo, cryptic and unrevealed, stayed with Zouga during the long march back to where Jan Cheroot waited with his porters.
That night, by the firelight, Zouga copied it word for word into his journal, and afterwards the sweet smell of snakes hiunted his nightmares, and lingered in his nostrils for long days after.
. . .
Now the wind turned fickle, sometimes completely still in the enervating bush and heat of noon, at other times dancing in the tall swaying vortex of the dust devilsacross the plains, lifting leaves and dried blades of grass hundreds of feet in the yellow columns of dust, then again it gushed in turn from every point of the compass, one minute firm out of the north and the next as firmly from out of the south.
It was impossible to come up with elephant while the wind played so loosely. Often when the spoor was hot and true, and they had already laid aside their heavy traps and stripped down to light running order, Zouga would feel the cool touch of the breeze upon the back of his sweating neck and almost immediately afterwards hear the alarm squeal of an elephant ahead of them in the forest, and after that first alert, it was impossible to close with the herd, for they went into that long sloping gait that they could keep up for mile upon mile, hour upon hour, day upon night, that would kill a man who tried to match it for more than a few miles.
Thus they killed no elephant in the days following Zouga's meeting with the Umlimo, and once, when they had a good spoor which would have led them back into the north, away from the direction in which Zouga was convinced lay his quest, it was Zouga himself who called off the hunt. Jan Cheroot muttered bitterly for the rest of that day and the next while they made those seemingly aimless casts, eastward and then westward again, through the unmarked and uncharted wilderness.
Each day now the heat became fiercer, for the suicide month that ushers in the rains was upon them. Not even Zouga could march during the hours before and after noon. They would find the best shade and throw themselves down under it, sweating out the worst of the heat, trying to sleep when the buffalo flies would let them, but it was an effort to speak, an effort to wipe away the sweat that welled up on their bodies, and dried in white crystals on their skin and clothing. The salt rotted the fabric of Zouga's shirt and breeches so they tore like paper at the first touch of thorn or rock, and Zouga was gradually reduced to a beggar's rags, patched and stitched until little of the original material remained.
His boots had been resoled more than once with the raw-hide peeled from the inner surface of an elephant's ear, and his belt and webbing, the sling of his elephant gun renewed with uncured buffalo hide.
He made a strange gaunt figure, for hard hunting had burned all the fat and loose flesh from his body and limbs. His height was enhanced by his leanness and the breadth of his bony shoulders tapering sharply to his waist. The sun had burned his skin dark, yet bleached his hair and beard to white gold. His pale hair hung to his shoulders, and he tied it at the back of his neck with a leather thong. He kept his beard and whiskers trimmed neatly, using scissors to cut and the heated blade of his hunting knife to singe them.
The sense of well-being from his superb physical condition, together with the vaunting anticipation of a successful outcome to his search drove him onwards so that the days seemed too short for him and yet when the night fell he lay down on the hard earth and slept the deep dreamless refreshing sleep of a child, to awake again long before the dawn's first glimmerin& impatient for what the new day would bring forth.
However, the time was passing. After each hunt, the powder bags were lighter, and though he dug the spent musket balls from the carcasses of his victims and recast them, there was always wastage.
The precious little store of quinine dwindled as swiftly, and the rains were coming. No white man could survive the rains without ammunition and quinine. Soon he would have to abandon the search for the ruined city with its idols decked in gold. He would have to march to beat the rains, south and west, five hundred miles or more, if his observations were still accurate, to cut his grandfather's road and follow it down to the mission station at Kurunian, which was the nearest outpost of European civilization.
The later he left it, the harder would he the march when he made it. Hard and fast, stopping for nothing, neither elephant nor gold, until he was out into the drier, safer land to the south.
The thought of leaving depressed him, for he knew with a certain deep gut feeling that there was something here, very close to where he now lay, and it irked him terribly that the oncoming rains would frustrate his search. But then he consoled himself that there would be another season, and he knew with the same deep gut certainty that he would return. There was something about this land, an insistent, irritating sound interrupted his thoughts. He pushed the cap up from his eyes and looked into the dense branches of the morula tree under which he lay. The harsh cries were repeated, and the drab little bird that uttered them hopped agitatedly from branch to branch, flirting its wings and tail with a sharp whirring. The bird was the size of a starlin& its back dull brown and its chest and belly a muddy yellow.
Zouga rolled his head and saw that Jan Cheroot was awake also.
Well? ' he asked. I haven't tasted honey since we left Mount Hampden, Jan Cheroot answered. 'But it's hot, and
