‘Yes.’ I agreed, and climbed out of the ravine.
My only excuse is that my reasoning was clouded by intense disappointment and my recent physical excitement with Sally. 1 do not usually behave in such a cavalier fashion with scientific clues. Nor do I usually miss as many as four hints in the space of an hour. We walked away without a backward glance.
The camp was fully set up and functioning smoothly when Sal and I trailed in, sweaty and dusty, and sat down to lunch off tinned ham and Windhoek beer.
‘Anything?’ asked Louren, and we shook our heads in unison and lifted our beer glasses.
‘Warm!’ Sally spoke with disgust at her first taste of the beer.
‘Cook has got the refrigerator going. It’ll be cold by tonight.’
We ate in silence until Louren spoke. ‘I raised Larkin on the radio while you were away. He will send in a helicopter tomorrow. We’ll have a last search from the air. That will settle it once and for all. If there’s nothing doing, I will fly out. Some things are brewing back in Johannesburg, and there is only one passenger seat, I’m afraid. You two will have to bus out the hard way.’
It was at that moment that a deputation arrived, headed by Joseph, to tell us that some unknown and foolish person had left the taps open on four of the water tanks. We had thirty-five gallons of water between seventeen people to last the rest of the trip.
‘Therefore,’ added Joseph, with evident relish, ‘we will have to leave this place tomorrow, and return to the nearest water on the Maun road.’
There were a few expressions of disgust at this latest, clearly deliberate setback, but none of us could work up any real anger.
‘All right, Joseph,’ Louren agreed with resignation. ‘Break camp tomorrow morning. We will leave before lunch.’ There was, an immediate improvement in employer-employee relations. I even noticed a few smiles, and heard a little laughter from the cooking fire.
‘I don’t know what you two intend doing this afternoon,’ Louren lit a cigar as he spoke, ‘but I noticed elephant spoor when I did my little recce this morning. I’m taking the Land-Rover and the gunbearers. Don’t worry if I don’t arrive back tonight, we may get hung up on the spoor.’
Sally looked up quickly; for a moment I thought she was going to start her anti-blood sport campaign again, but instead she merely frowned and went back to her ham. I watched the Land-Rover drive off along the base of the cliff before I suggested to Sally:
‘I’m going to try and find a path up to the top - do you want to come along?’
‘Deal me out, Ben,’ she answered. ‘I think I’ll do some sketching this afternoon.’
Hiding my disappointment as best I could, I set off along the base of the cliff, and within half a mile I had found a game trail leading into one of the bush-choked gullies that furrowed the face of red rock.
It was a steep climb and I toiled up with the sun burning onto my back and bouncing off the rock into my face. From cracks and crannies in the cliff-face an army of furry little rock rabbits watched my endeavours with avid interest. It was forty minutes before I came out on the top, my arms scratched by the thorny undergrowth of the gully and sweat soaking my shirt.
I found a good vantage point on the front edge of the cliff under the spreading shade of a giant euphorbia, and my first concern was to sweep with binoculars for any trace of ruins. The thorn bush at the base of the cliff below me was fairly open and scantily grassed, and immediately it was obvious that there was no trace of any human habitation or cultivation. I shouldn’t really have hoped for more, but disappointment gave a sickening little lurch in my guts. Then I dismissed it, and turned the glasses towards the camp far below. A Bantu was cutting firewood, and for a while I amused myself by watching the axe-stroke, then listening for the sound of the blow seconds later. I searched farther from the camp and picked up Sally’s rose-coloured blouse at the end of the grove. She had obviously given up all hope of a major discovery and, sensible girl, was deriving what other enjoyment she could from the expedition. I watched her for a long time, trying to decide how exactly to proceed with my campaign to make her my own. I had spent one night with her, but I was not so naive as to believe that this proved a breathless and undying passion on behalf of a sophisticated, highly intelligent and extravagantly educated modern Miss. Angel that she was, yet I was pretty damned certain that my Sally had played the game with other men before Dr Ben stumbled starry-eyed into her bed. The odds were extremely high she had been motivated by respect for my mind rather than my body, pity, and possibly a little perverse curiosity. However, I was almost certain she had not found the experience too repulsive, and I had only to keep working on her to change respect and pity into something a little deeper and more permanent.
A good quiet sense of peace came over me as I sat there in the high kranz; slowly I realized that this whole journey had been worthwhile and I found myself wishing that I could stay longer at these haunting Hills of Blood, with their mystery and silent beauty. Sally and I together here in the wilderness where I could teach her to love me.
A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye made me turn my head slowly, and within six feet of where I sat a marico sunbird was sucking the nectar from the blossoms of a wild aloe, its metallic green head shimmering as it dipped the long curved bill into the fiery red blossoms. I watched it with an intense pleasure, and when it was gone on quick darting wings I felt as though I had missed something. The feeling became stronger, making me restless, there was a message somewhere that was trying to come through to me but it was being blocked. I let my brain relax, and had the feeling that it was just there at the very fringe of my conscious mind. Another second and I would have it.
Dull on the hot breathless hush of afternoon the double boom-boom of distant heavy gunfire jerked my attention away, I sat up and listened for another thirty seconds - then it came again, boom, and again. Louren had found his elephant.
I picked Sally up in the field of the binoculars. She had heard it also, and was standing away from her easel staring out into the bush. I stood up also, my sudden restlessness still persisting, and started down the cliff path again. I could not shake off the mood, and it grew stronger. There is
‘You and I are lucky, my friend,’ Timothy Mageba had told me once. ‘We are marked by the spirits and we have the eye within that can see beyond, and the ear that can catch the sounds of silence.’
It was cool now in the heavily shaded gully and my shirt was still damp with sweat. I felt the goose pimples rising on my skin but not entirely from the chill. I began to hurry, I wanted to get back to the camp and Sally.
