their legs broke the surface with each step and the papyrus rustled and
brushed against them.
It was almost two o 'clock when they reached the causeway. Bruce left
his men crouched in the papyrus while he made a stealthy reconnaissance
along the side of the concrete bridge, keeping in its shadow, moving
doubled up until he came to dry land on the edge of the village. There
were no sentries posted and except for the crackle of
the flames the town was quiet, sunk into a drunken stupor, satiated.
Bruce went back to call his men up.
He spread them in pairs along the outskirts of the village.
He had learned very early in this campaign not to let his men act
singly; nothing drains an African of courage more than to be on his own,
especially in the night when the ghosts are on the walk-about.
To each couple he gave minute instructions.
'When you hear the grenades you shoot at anybody in the streets or at
the windows. When the street is empty move in close beside that building
there. Use your own grenades on every house and watch out for Lieutenant
Hendry's men coming through from the other side. Do you understand?'
'It is understood.'
'Shoot carefully. Aim each shot - not like you did at the road bridge,
and in the name of God do not hit the gasoline tanker. We need that to
get us home.' Now it was three o'clock, Bruce saw by the luminous
figures on his wristwatch.
Eight hours since they had left the train, and twenty-two hours since
Bruce had last slept.
But he was not tired, although his body ached and there was that gritty
feeling under his eyelids, yet his mind was clear and bright as a flame.
He lay beside Ruffy under a low bush on the outskirts of Port
Reprieve and the night wind drifted the smoke from the burning town down
upon them, and Bruce was not tired. For I am going to another rendezvous
with fear.
Fear is a woman, he thought, with all the myriad faces and voices of a
woman. Because she is a woman and because I am a man I must keep going
back to her. Only this time the appointment is one that I cannot avoid,
this time I am not deliberately seeking her out.
I know she is evil, I know that after I have possessed her I will feel
sick and shaken. I will say, 'That was the last time, never again.' But
just as certainly I know I will go back to her again, hating her,
dreading her, but also needing her.
I have gone to find her on a mountain - on Dutoits Kloof Frontal, on
Turret Towers, on the Wailing Wall, and the Devil's Tooth.
And she was there, dressed in a flowing robe of rock, a robe that fell
sheer two thousand feet to the scree slope below. And she shrieked with
the voice of the wind along the exposed face. Then her voice was soft,
tinkling like Aft
*ad cooling glass in the Berg ice underfoot, whispering like nylon rope
running free, grating as the rotten rock moved in my hand.
I have followed her into the Jessie bush on the banks of the Sabi and
the Luangwa, and she was there, waiting, wounded, in a robe of buffalo
