Won't you give me back at least a part of what you have stolen from me? she asked. For the sake of what we shared once long ago? He did not reply, but instead lifted his hand and touched the ancient puckered scar on his chest. She winced, for it was she who had fired that shot from the Luger pistol at the time of her disillusion and revulsion.
The boy has the diamonds, hasn't he? she asked. Your she was about to say, Your bastard? but she changed it: Your son? Lothar remained silent and she went on impulsively: Manfred, our son. I never thought I'd hear you say that. He could not disguise the pleasure in his tone. Will you remember he is our son, conceived in love, when you are tempted to destroy him also? Why should you think I would do that? I know you, Centaine, he said.
No. She shook her head vehemently. You do not know me. If he stands in your way, you will destroy him, he said, flatly.
Do you truly believe that? She stared at him. Do you really believe that I am so ruthless, so vindictive, that I would take my revenge on my own son? You have never acknowledged him as that. I have now. You have heard me do it more than once in the last few minutes. Are you promising me that you will not harm him? I do not have to promise you, Lothar De La Rey. I am merely saying it. I will not harm Manfred. And naturally you expect something from me in return, he demanded, leaning forward. He was breathing with difficulty, sweating with the effort of fighting off his physical weakness. His sweat had a rank and sour smell in the gloomy confines of the hut.
would you offer me anything in return? she asked quietly.
No, he said. Nothing! And he sank back against the bolster, exhausted but defiant. Now let me hear you withdraw your promise. I made no promise, she said quietly. But, I repeat, Manfred, our son, is safe from me. I will never deliberately do anything to harm him. I do not give you the same assurance, however. She turned and called. 'Thank you, Sergeant, we have finished our business. And she stooped to leave.
Centaine, he cried weakly, and he wanted to tell her, Your diamonds are in the cleft on the summit of the hill. But when she turned back he bit down on the words and said only, Goodbye, Centaine.
It is finished at last. The Okavango is one of Africa's most beautiful rivers. It rises in the highlands of the Angolan plateau above 4,000 feet and flows south and east, a wide deep torrent of green water that it seems must reach the ocean, so swift and determined is its flow. However, it is a landlocked river, debauching first into the mis-named Okavango Swamps, a vast area of lucid lagoons and papyrus banks, studded with islets on which graceful ivory nut palms and great wild figs stand tall. Beyond that the river emerges again but shrivelled and weakened as it enters the desolation of the Kalahari Desert and disappears for ever beneath those eternal sands.
This section of the river that Centaine and Blaine set out upon was that above the swamps where the river was at its grandest. Their craft was a native mukoro, a dugout canoe fashioned from a single tree-trunk over twenty feet long, rounded but not perfectly straight.
The owl and the pussy cat put to sea in a beautiful banana-shaped boat, quoth Blaine, and Centaine laughed a little apprehensively until she saw how masterfully their paddlers handled the mis-shapen craft.
They were two amiable coal-black giants of the river tribe.
They had the balance of gymnasts and their bodies were forged and hardened to Grecian perfection by a lifetime of wielding their paddles and their long punting poles. They stood at the stern and bows, singing their melodious work chant and trimming their narrow unstable craft with a relaxed, almost instinctive ease.
Amidships Blaine and Centaine lolled on cushions of raw-hide stuffed with the fluffy heads of the papyrus reeds. The narrow beam forced them to sit in tandem, with Blaine in the lead, his Lee Enfield rifle across his lap ready to discourage the close approach of any of the numerous hippopotami which infested the river. The most dangerous animal in Africa by far, he told Centaine.
What about lions and elephants and poisonous snakes? she challenged.
The old hippo gets two humans for every one killed by all the other species put together. This was Centaine's first venture into these parts. She was a creature of the desert, unacquainted with the river or the swamps, unfamiliar with the boundless life they supported.
Blaine, on the other hand, knew the river well. He had first been ordered here when serving with General Smuts' expeditionary force in 1915 and had since returned often to hunt and study the wildlife of the region. He seemed to recognize every animal and bird and plant, and he had a hundred stories, both true and apocryphal, with which to amuse her.
The mood of the river changed constantly; at places it narrowed and raced through rock-lined gaps and the long canoe flew like a lance upon it. The paddlers directed it past outcrops of fanged rock upon which the current humped up and split, and with delicate touches of the paddles took them through the creaming whirlpools beyond and into the next flying stretch where the surface was moulded like green Venetian glass into standing waves by its own speed and momentum. Centaine whooped breathlessly, half in terror and half in exhilaration, like a child on a roller coaster. Then they emerged onto broad shallow stretches, the flow broken by islands and sandbanks and bordered by wide flood plains on which grazed herds of wild buffalo, massive indolent seeming beasts, black as hell and crusted with dried mud, great bossed horns drooping mournfully over their trumpet-shaped ears, standing belly-deep in the flood plains, lifting their black drooling muzzles in comical curiosity to watch them pass.
Oh Blaine! What are those? I've never seen them before. Lechwe. This is as far south as you will find them. There were vast herds of these robust water antelope with coarse wiry red coats, the rams standing as tall as a man's chest and carrying long gracefully recurved horns. The hornless ewes were fluffy as children's toys. So dense were the herds that when they fled from the human presence they churned the water until it sounded like the thunderous passage of a steam locomotive heard at a distance.
On nearly every tall tree along the river's banks were posted pairs of fish eagles, their white heads shining in the Sunlight. They threw back their heads, belting out their throats to chant their weird yelping call as the mukoro glided past.
On the white sandbanks the long saurian shapes of the crocodiles were silhouetted, ugly and evil as they lifted themselves on their stubby deformed legs and waddled swiftly to the water's edge, then slipping away below the surface, only the twin knobs of their scaly eyebrows still showing.
In the shallows clusters of smooth rounded boulders, dark grey edged with baby pink, caught Centaine's attention, but she did not recognize them until Blaine warned: Watch them! and the paddlers sheered off as one of the huge boulders moved, raising a head the size of a beer keg, gaping red, the mighty jaws lined with tusks of yellow ivory, and it bellowed at them with the deep sardonical laughter of a demented god.
Blaine shifted the rifle slightly. Don't be taken in by that jovial haw haw haw, he isn't really amused, he told Centaine as he worked the bolt and pushed a cartridge into the breech.
