was still too soon. I wanted to have it to myself a little longer - to gloat upon it, to have its peace and beauty to myself, unsullied by other eyes. More than that, it had become the temple of my love for Sally. Like the old bushmen, it had become a very holy place to me.
On the following day, it was as though Sally was determined to make up for the unhappiness she had caused me. She was teasing, and loving, and mischievous all at once. At noon with the beam of sunlight burning down on us. we made love on the rocks beside the pool, Sally skilfully and gently taking the initiative once again. It was a shattering and mystic experience that scoured the sadness from the cup of my soul and filled it to the brim with happiness and peace.
We lay together softly entwined, murmuring sleepily, when suddenly I was aware of another presence in the cavern. Alarm flared through me, and I struggled up on one elbow and looked to the entrance tunnel.
A golden-brown human figure stood in the gloomy mouth of the tunnel. He was dressed in a short leather loin- cloth, a quiver and short bow stood up behind his shoulder, and around his neck hung a necklace of ostrich egg-shell beads and black monkey beans. The figure was tiny, the size of a ten-year-old child, but the face was that of a mature man. Slanted eyes, and high flat cheekbones gave it an Asiatic appearance, but the nose was flattened and the lips were full and voluptuously chiselled. The small domed skull was covered by a pelt of tight black curls.
For an instant we looked into each other’s eyes and then, like the flash of a bird’s wing, the little manikin was gone, vanished into the dark passage in the rock.
‘What is it?’ Sally stirred against me.
‘Bushman,’ I said. ‘Here in the cavern. Watching us.’
She sat up quickly, and peered fearfully about her.
‘Where?’
‘He’s gone now. Get dressed - quickly!’
‘Is he dangerous, Ben?’ Her voice was husky.
‘Yes. Very!’ I was pulling on my clothes quickly, trying to decide on our best course of action, running over in my mind the words I would speak. Although it was a little rusty I found the language was still on my tongue, thanks to sessions of practice with Timothy Mageba. They would be northern bushmen here, not Kalahari, the languages were similar but distinctly different.
‘They wouldn’t attack us, would they, Ben?’ Sally was dressed.
‘If we do the wrong thing now, they will. We don’t know how holy this place is to them. We mustn’t frighten them, they have been persecuted and hunted for 2,000 years.’
‘Oh, Ben.’ She moved closer to me, and even in my own alarm I enjoyed her reliance upon me.
‘They wouldn’t - kill us, would they?’
‘They are wild bushmen. Sally. If you threaten or molest a wild thing it will attack you. I’ve got to get an opportunity to talk to them.’ I looked around for something to use as a shield, something strong enough to turn a reed arrow with a poisoned tip. Poison that would inflict a lingering but certain death of the most unspeakable agony.
I selected the leather theodolite case, and tore it open along the seams with my hands, flattening it out to give it maximum area.
‘Follow me down the passage, Sal. Keep close.’
Her hand was on my shoulder as I led her slowly along the rock passage, using the four-cell torch to search every dark corner and recess before moving on. The light alarmed the bats and they fluttered and squeaked about our heads. The grip of Sally’s hand on my shoulder became painfully tight, but we reached the tree-trunk that guarded the entrance to the cavern.
We crouched by the narrow slit between rock and tree-trunk, and the bright sunlight beyond was painful to my eyes. Minutely I examined each tree-trunk in the grove, each tuft of grass, each hollow or irregularity of earth - and there was nothing. But they were there, I knew, hidden, waiting with the patience and concentration of the earth’s most skilful hunters.
We were prey, there was no escaping this fact. The accepted laws of behaviour did not apply out here on the fringe of the Kalahari, I remembered the fate of the crew of a South African Air Force Dakota that force-landed in the desert ten years before. They hunted down the family of bushmen that did it and I flew to Gaberones to interpret at the trial. In the dock they wore the parachute silk as clothing, and their faces were childlike, trusting, without guilt or guile as they answered my questions.
‘Yes. We killed them,’ they said. Locked in a modern gaol, like caged wild birds, they were dead within twelve months -all of them. The memory was chilling now and I thrust it aside.
‘Now listen to me carefully, Sally. You must stay here. No matter what happens. I will go out to them. Talk to them. If ,’ I choked on the words, and cleared my throat, ‘if they hit me with an arrow I’ll have half an hour or so before—’ I rephrased the sentence, ‘—I’ll have plenty of time to get the Land-Rover and come back for you. You can drive. You’ll have no trouble following the tracks we made back to the Makarikari Pan.’
‘Ben - don’t go. Oh God, Ben - please.’
‘They’ll wait, Sal - until dark. I have to go now, in the daylight.’
‘Ben—’
‘Wait here. Whatever happens, wait here.’ I shrugged off her hands and stepped to the opening.
‘Peace,’ I called to them in their own tongue. ‘There is no fight between us.’
I took a step out into the sunlight.
‘I am a friend.’
Another slow step, down over the twisted roots of the wild fig, holding the flattened leather case low against my hip.
