‘Elephants!’ she squealed. ‘War elephants with archers on their backs, just like Hannibal used against the Romans. Carthaginian - Phoenician!’
There was so much of it, a curved wall 100 feet long and ten to fifteen feet high and every square inch of it thick with bushman paintings. The figures and forms were interwoven, some of the earlier pictures overlaid and smothered; others, like our white king, standing proudly untouched and unspoiled. It would be a major undertaking to unravel those portraits which related to our lost civilization, from the great mass of traditional cave art. This was Sally’s special skill, my camera could only capture the whole confused scene, while she would patiently and painstakingly pick out a figure or group of particular interest that was almost entirely obliterated and recreate and restore it on her rolls of wax paper.
However, there was no suggestion of such work beginning now. Sally and I spent what was left of the day climbing and crawling along the back wall peering and probing and exclaiming with wonder and delight.
When we got into camp that night we were physically and emotionally exhausted. Peter Larkin had a message for us from Louren:
‘He says to wish you good luck, and that one of the oil helicopters will be in your area within the next few days. Is there anything you need, and if so give me a list. They will drop it to you.’
The next ten days were the happiest of my entire life. The helicopter came as Louren had promised with the name ‘Sturvesant Oil’ blazoned across its fuselage. It carried a full load of necessities and luxuries for us, another tent, folding chairs, a surveyor’s theodolite, gas for the lamps, food, extra clothing for both of us, more paper and paints for Sally, film for me, and even a few bottles of Glen Grant malt whisky, that sovereign specific for all the ills of man. A note from Louren enjoined me to carry on with what I was doing as long as it looked promising. He would give me his full support, but I was not to keep him in the dark too long as he was ‘dying of curiosity’.
I sent him my thanks, a roll of film showing the paintings which had no ancients in them, and a batch of polythene bags containing samples of pigments from the cavern for carbon-14 dating. Then the helicopter flew away and left us to our idyll.
We worked from early each morning until dark each evening, mapping the cavern in plan and elevation, and photographing an overlapping run of the walls and relating this to our map. Sally alternated between assisting me and continuing with her own task of isolating our ancient figures. We worked in complete harmony and understanding, breaking off now and then to eat our lunch beside the emerald pool, or to swim naked together in its cool limpid water, or at times just to lie idly on the rocks and talk.
At first our occupation of the cavern seriously affected the ecology of the local fauna, but as we hoped would happen, they soon adapted. Within days the birds were dropping down through the hole in the cavern roof to drink and bathe at the edge of the pool. Soon they ignored us as they went about their noisy and vigorous ablutions, shrieking and chattering and spraying water, while we paused in our labours to watch them.
Even the monkeys, driven by thirst, at last crept in through the rock passage to snatch a mouthful of water before darting away again. Rapidly these timid forays became bolder, until at last they were a positive nuisance, stealing our lunch, or any loose equipment that was left unguarded. We forgave them, for their antics were always appealing and entertaining.
They were wonderful days of satisfying work, good loving companionship, and the deep peace of that beautiful place. There was only one day on which anything happened to ruffle the surface of my happiness. As Sally and I were sitting below the portrait of our wonderful white king, I said: ‘They won’t be able to deny this, Sal. The bastards are going to have to change their narrow little minds now!’
She knew I was talking about the debunkers, the special pleaders, the politico-archaeologists, who could twist any evidence to fill the needs of their own beliefs, the ones who had castigated me and my books.
‘Don’t be so certain of that, Ben,’ Sally warned. ‘They will not accept this. I can hear their carping little voices now. It’s secondhand observation by bushmen, open to different interpretations - don’t you remember, Ben, how they accused the Abbe Breuil of retouching the paintings in the Brandberg?’
‘Yes. That’s the great pity of it - it is secondhand. When we show them the paintings of the fortified walls, they will say, “Yes, but where are the walls themselves?”’
‘And our king, our beautiful virile warrior king,’ she looked up at him, ‘they’ll emasculate him. He will become another “White Lady”. His war shield will become a bouquet of flowers, his milky white skin will change to ceremonial day, his fiery-red beard will suddenly turn into a scarf or a necklace, and when they reproduce his portrait it will be subtly altered in all those ways. The
‘I wish - oh, how I wish we had found some definite proof,’ I said miserably. I was facing for the first time the prospect of delivering our discovery to my learned brothers in science, and the idea was as appealing as climbing into a pit full of black mambas. I stood up. ‘Let’s have a swim, Sal.’
We swam side by side, an easy breaststroke, back and forth across the pool. When we climbed out to sit in the spot of bright sunlight that fell from the roof above, I tried to alleviate my unhappiness by changing the subject. I touched Sally’s arm, and with all the finesse of a wounded rhinoceros, I blurted out, ‘Will you marry me, Sally?’
She turned a startled face to me, her cheeks and eyelashes still bejewelled with water droplets, and she stared at me for fully ten seconds before she began to laugh.
‘Oh, Ben, you funny old-fashioned thing! This is the twentieth century. Just because you done me wrong - doesn’t mean you have to marry me!’ And before I could protest or explain she had stood up and dived once again into the emerald pool.
For the rest of the day she was completely occupied with her paints and brushes, and she had no time to even look in my direction, let alone talk to me. The message was received my end loud and clear - there were some areas of discussion that Sally had put the death curse on. Matrimony was one of them.
It was a very bad day, but I learned the lesson well, and decided to clutch at what happiness I now had without pressing for more.
That evening Larkin had another message from Louren:
‘Your samples 1-16 give C14 average result of 1620 years ±100. Congratulations. Looks good. When do I get in on the secret? Louren.’
I perked up at this news. Assuming our old bushman artist had been an eye-witness of the subjects he had drawn, then somewhere between AD 200 and AD 400 an armed Phoenician warrior had led his armies and war elephants across this beloved land of mine. I felt guilty about excluding Louren from the secrets of the cavern, but it
