She was on a wide yellow beach backed by mountainous dunes. The beach was totally deserted. It stretched away in sweeping curves on each side of her to the very limit of her vision, twenty or thirty kilometres, she estimated, before it shaded into the sea fret. It seemed to Centaine to be the picture of desolation, there was no rock or leaf of vegetation, no bird or animal, and no cover from the sun.
Then she looked at the edge of the beach where she had struggled ashore, and she saw the remnants of her raft swirling and tumbling in the surf. Fighting down her terror of the shark, she waded in knee-deep and dragged the tangled sail and sheets of the raft high above the tideline.
For a skirt, she cut a strip of canvas and belted it around her waist with a length of hemp rope. Then she cut another piece of canvas to cover her head and shoulders from the sun.
Oh! I'm so thirsty! She stood at the edge of the beach and longingly peered out to where the kelp beds danced in the current. Her thirst was more powerful than her distaste for the kelp juice, but her terror of the shark was greater than both, and she turned away.
Though her body ached and the bruises were purple and black across her arms and legs, she knew her best chance was to start walking, and there was only one direction to take. Cape Town lay to the south. However, nearer than that were the German towns with strange names she recalled them with an effort, Swakopmund and Uderitzbuclit. The nearest of these was probably five hundred kilometres away.
Five hundred kilometres, the enormity of that distance came over her, and her legs turned to water under her and she sat down heavily on the sand.
I won't think about how far it is, she roused herself at last. I will think only one step ahead at a time. She pushed herself to her feet and her whole body ached with braises. She began to limp along the edge of the sea, where the sand was wet and firm, and after a while her muscles warmed and the stiffness eased so she could extend her stride.
Just one step at a time! she told herself. The loneliness was a burden that would weigh her down if she let it. She lifted her chin and looked ahead.
The beach was endless, and there was a frightening sameness to the vista that stretched before her. The hours that she trudged on seemed to have no effect upon it and she began to believe that she was on a treadmill with always the unbroken sands ahead of her, the changeless sea on her right hand, the tall wall of the dunes on her left, and over it all the vast milky blue bowl of the sky.
I am walking from nothingness on to nothing, she whispered, and she longed with all her soul for the glimpse of another human form.
The soles of her bare feet began to hurt and when she sat down to examine them, she found that seawater had softened her skin and the coarse yellow sand had abraded it almost down to the flesh. She bound up her feet with strips of canvas and went on. The sun and the exertion dampened her blouse with sweat, and thirst became her constant spectral companion.
The sun was halfway down the western sky when in the distance ahead of her a rocky headland appeared, and merely because it altered the dreary vista, she quickened her pace. But her step soon faltered again and she realized how the single day's trek had already weakened her.
I haven't eaten for three days, and I haven't drunk since yesterday- The rocky headland seemed to come no nearer, and at last she had to sit down to rest, and almost immediately her thirst began to rage.
If I don't drink very soon, I won't be able to go on, she whispered, and she peered ahead at the low rampart of black rock and straightened up incredulously; her eyes were tricking her. She blinked them rapidly and stared again.
People! she whispered and pulled herself to her feet. People! She began to stagger forward.
They were sitting on the rocks, she could see the movement of their heads silhouetted against the pale sky, and she laughed aloud and waved to them.
There are so many, am I going mad? She tried to shout, but it came out as a reedy little whine.
Disappointment, when it struck, was so intense that she reeled as though from a physical blow.
Seals, she whispered, and their mournful honking cries carried to her on the soft sea breeze.
For a while she did not think that she had the strength to go on. And then she forced one foot in front of the other, and plodded on towards the headland.
Several hundred seals were draped over the rocks, and there were many more bobbing about in the waves that broke over the rocky point, and the stench of them came to Cental the on the wind. As she approached, they began to retreat towards the sea, flopping over the rocks in their ludicrously clownish way, and she saw that there were dozens of calves amongst them.
If I could only catch one of those. She gripped the clasp knife in her right hand and opened the blade. I have to eat soon- But already alarmed by her approach, the leaders were sliding from the rocks into the surging green water, their ungainly lumberings transformed instantly into miraculous grace.
She started to run, and the movement precipitated a rush of dark bodies over the rocks; she was still a hundred yards from the nearest of them. She gave up and stood panting weakly, watching the colony escape into the sea.
Then suddenly there was a wild commotion amongst them, a chorus of squeals and terrified cries, and she saw two dark agile wolf-like shapes dart from amongst the rocks and drive into the densely packed troop of seals.
She realized that her approach had distracted the colony, and given these other predators a chance to launch their own attack. She did not recognize them as brown hyena for she had only seen illustrations of the bigger and more ferocious spotted hyena which almost every book on African exploration contained.
These animals were the beach wolf of the Dutch settlers, the size of a mastiff, but with sharp pointed ears and a shaggy mane of long ashy yellow fur that was now erect in excitation as they dashed into the colony of seals; unerringly they picked out the smallest and most defenceless of the infants, seizing them from the flanks of their cumbersome dams, and dragged them away, easily avoiding the grotesque efforts that the mothers made to defend their young.
Centaine began running again, and at her approach the female seals gave up and flopped down the black rocks into the surf. She snatched up a club of driftwood from the pile of rubbish on the high-tide mark and raced across the end of the headland to cut off the nearest of the brown hyena.