Once they came across a nesting colony of jackass penguins. The penguins were on a rocky island, connected to the mainland by a reef across which they waded at low tide, although Centaine had shark horrors all the way over. The thousands of black and white jackass penguins nested on the bare ground, and hissed and brayed with outrage as the Bushmen harvested the big green eggs and filled the canvas carrying bag with them. Roasted in the sand under the fire they were delicious, with transparent, jelly-like whites and bright yellow yolks, but so rich that they could only be eaten one at a time and the supply lasted many days.
Even the shifting dunes with precipitous slip-faces of loosely running sand were the homes of sand-burrowing lizards and the venomous side-winding adders that preyed upon them. They clubbed both lizards and adders and cooked them in their scaly skins, and after Centaine had mastered her initial aversion, she found that they tasted like chicken.
As they trekked northwards, the dunes became intermittent, no longer presenting an unbroken rampart, and between them were valleys whose bottoms were of firm earth, albeit as bare and as blasted as the dunes or the beaches. H'ani led, Centaine over the rocky ground and showed her succulent plants which exactly resembled stones. They dug beneath the tiny inconspicuous leaves and found a bloated root the size of a football.
Centaine watched while H'ani grated the pulp of the root with her stone scraper, then took a handful of the shavings, held them high with her thumb pointed downwards like a teat on a cow's udder and squeezed. Milky liquid ran down her thumb and dribbled into her open mouth, and when she had squeezed out the last drop, she used all the remaining damp pulp to scrub her face and arms, grinning all the while with pleasure.
Quickly Centaine followed her example. The juice was quinnine-bitter, but after the first shock of the taste, Centaine found that it slaked her thirst more effectively that water alone, and when she had scrubbed her body with the pulp, the dryness caused by wind and sun and salt was alleviated and her skin felt and looked cleaner and smoother. The effect was to make her aware of herself for the first time since the shipwreck.
That evening as they sat around the fire waiting for the kebabs of limpets threaded on a piece of driftwood to broil, Centaine whittled a stick and with the point cleansed between her teeth, and then used her forefinger dipped in evaporated crystals of seasalt that she had scraped from the rocks to scrub them again. H'ani watched her knowingly, and after they had eaten, she came and squatted behind Centaine and crooned softly to her as she used a twig to pick the knots and tangles out of her hair, and then dressed it into tight new braids.
Centaine woke when it was still dark to the realization that a change had taken place while she slept. Although the fire had been built up, the light was weirdly diffused, and the excited voices of H'ani and O'wa were muted as though they came from a distance. The air was cold and heavy with moisture and it took Centaine a while to realize that they were enveloped in dense fog that had rolled in from the sea during the night, H'ani was hopping with excitement and impatience.
Come, Nam Child, hurry. Centaine's vocabulary already contained a hundred or so of the most important words of San, and she scrambled up.
Carry. Bring. H'ani pointed at the canvas container of ostrich eggs and then picking up her own leather bag scampered away into the fog. Centaine ran after her to keep her in sight, for the world had been obliterated by the pearly fog banks.
in the valley between the dunes H'ani dropped to her knees.
Look, Nam Child. She seized Centaine's wrists and drew her down beside her, and pointed to the desert plant that was spread out flat against the ground. The thick smooth skin that covered the stone-like leaves chameleoned to the exact colour of the surrounding earth. Water, H'anfl Centaine exclaimed delightedly. Water, Nam Child. H'ani cackled with laughter.
The fog had condensed on the smooth leaves and had run down the slanted surface to gather in the trough-like depressions of the point where the foreshortened stems disappeared into the earth. The plant was a marvellously designed gatherer of moisture, and Centaine understood now how that bloated subterranean root was replenished at each coming of the fog.
Quick! H'ani ordered. Sun come soon. She stood one of the empty ostrich shells upright in the soft earth and unplugged it. With a ball of animal fur she mapped up the glistening pool of dew and then squeezed it carefully into the egg-bottle. With that demonstration, she handed Centaine a wad of fur.
Work! she ordered.
Centaine worked as quickly as the old woman, listening to her chattering happily and understanding only an occasional word as they hurried from plant to plant.
This is a blessing indeed, the spirits are kind to send the water-smoke from the sea. Now the crossing to the Place of All Life will be less arduous. Without the watersmoke we might have perished. They have made the road smooth for us, Nam Child, perhaps your baby will be born at the Place of All Life. What a prodigious benevolence that would be. For then your child would have the special mark of the spirits upon him for all his life, he would be the greatest of hunters, the sweetest of singers, the nimblest of dancers and the most fortunate of all his clan. Centaine did not understand, but she laughed at the old woman, feeling lighthearted and happy, and the sound of her own laughter startled her, it had been so long and she replied to the old woman's chatter in French.
I had begun truly to hate this harsh land of yours, H'ani. After all the anticipation I had to see it, after all the wonderful things that Michel told me and all the things I had read about it, how different it all was, how cruel and how malicious. Hearing the tone of her voice, H'ani paused with the wet wad of fur poised over the egg-bottle and looked at her quizzically.
Just now was the first time I have laughed since I have been in Africa. Centaine laughed again, and H'ani giggled with relief and returned her attention to the bottle. This day Africa has shown me its first kindness. Centaine lifted the sodden fur to her lips and sucked the cold sweet dew from it. This is a special day, H'ani, this is a special day for me and my baby. When all the egg-bottles were brimming full and carefully replugged, they indulged themselves, drinking the dew until they were satiated, and only then did Centaine look around her and begin to appreciate what the fog meant to the plants and creatures of the desert.
Bright red ants had come up from their deep nests to take advantage of it. The worker-ants scurried from plant to plant, sucking up the droplets so that their abdomens swelled and became translucent, on the point of bursting before they disappeared back into the burrows. At the entrance to each burrow a cluster of other ants were assembled, the wedding party to see off the breeding queens and their consorts as they lifted into the foggy air on paper-white wings, fluttering off, most of them to die in the desert, but a very few of them to survive and found new colonies.
The sand lizards had come down from the dunes to feast an the flights of ants, and there were small rodents, gingery-red in colour, that hopped down the valley floor on overdeveloped hindlegs like miniature kangaroos.
Look, H'ani, what is this? Centaine had discovered a strange insect the size of a locust which was standing on
