shirt. His hands were trembling. Sean led him close to the fire, pulled Duff's hands down and examined the bites. His nose was torn and the flesh of one cheek hung open in a flap. Sit down! Duff obeyed, holding the scarf to his face again. Sean went quickly to the fire: with a stick he raked embers into a pile, then he drew his hunting-knife and thrust the blade into the coals. Mbejane, he called, without taking his eyes off the knife. Throw that jackal onto the fire. Put on plenty of wood. Do not touch its body with your hands. When you have done that tie up that dog and keep the others away from it. Sean turned the knife in the fire. Duff, drink as much of that brandy as you can What are you going to do? You know what I've got to do! He bit my wrist as well. Duff held up his hand for Sean to see the punctures, black holes from which the blood oozed watery and slow. Drink. Sean pointed at the brandy bottle. For a second they looked at each other and Sean saw the horror moving in Duffs eyes: horror of the hot knife and horror of the germs which had been injected into him. The germs that must be burnt out before they escaped into his blood, to breed and ferment there until they ate into his brain and rode him to a screaming gibbering death. Drink, said Sean again. Duff took up the bottle and lifted it to his mouth. Sean stooped and pulled the knife out of the fire. He held the blade an inch from the back of his hand. It was not hot enough. He thrust it back into the coals.
IMbejane, Hlubi, stand on each side of the Nkosi's chair. Be ready to hold him. Sean loosened his belt, doubled the thick leather and handed it to Duff. Bite on this. He turned back to the fire and this time when he drew the knife its blade was pale pink. Are you ready? The work you are about to do will break the hearts of a million maids. A last hoarse attempt at humour from Duff.
Hold him, said Sean.
Duff gasped at the touch of the knife, a great shuddering gasp, and his back arched but the two Zulus held held him down remorselessly. The edges of the wound blackened ened and hissed as Sean ran the blade in deeper. The stink of burning brought the vomit into his throat. He clenched his teeth. When he stepped back Duff hung slackly in the Zulus, hands, sweat had soaked his shirt and wet his hair.
Sean heated the knife again and cleaned the bites in Duff's wrist while Duff moaned and writhed weakly in the chair.
He smeared axle grease over the burns and bandaged the wrist loosely with strips torn from a clean shirt. They lifted Duff into the wagon and laid him on his cot. Sean went out to where Mbejane had tied the dog. He found scratches beneath the hair on its shoulder. They put a sack over its head to stop it biting and Sean cauterized its wounds also. Tie it to the far wagon, do not let the other dogs near it, see it has food and water,. he told Mbenjane.
Then he went back to Duff. Delirious with pain and brandy Duff did not sleep at all that night and Sean stayed by his cot until the morning.
About fifty yards from the laager under one of the wild fig trees the servants built Duff a hut. The framework was of poles and over it they stretched a tarpaulin. They made a bed for him and brought his mattress and blankets from the wagon. Sean joined four trek-chains together, forging new links and hammering them closed. He passed one end of the chain round the base of the fig tree and riveted it back up on itself. Duff sat in the shade of a wagon and watched them work. His hurt hand was in a sling and his face was swollen, the wound crusty-looking and edged in angry red. When he was finished with the chain, Sean walked across to him. I'm sorry, Duff, we have to do it. They abolished the slave trade some time ago, just in case you didn't know. Duff tried to grin with his distorted face. He stood up and followed Sean to the hut. Sean looped the loose end of the chain round Duff's waist. He locked it with a bolt through two of the links then flattened the end of the bolt with a dozen strokes of the hammer. That should hold you. An excellent fit, Duff commended him. Now let us inspect my new quarters. Sean followed him into the hut. Duff lay down on the bed. He looked very tired and sick. How long will it take before we know? he asked quietly.
Sean shook his head. I'm not sure. I think you should stay here at least a month, after that we'll allow you back into society. A month, it's going to be fun. Lying here expecting any minute to start barking like a dog and lifting my leg against the nearest tree Sean didn't laugh. I did a thorough job with the knife.
It's a thousand to one you'll be all right. This is just a precaution. The odds are attractive, I'll put a fiver on it. Duff crossed his ankles and stared up at the roof. Sean sat down on the edge of the bed. It was a long time before Duff ended the silence.
What will it be like, Sean, have you ever seen someone with rabies? No. But you've heard about it, haven't you? Tell me what you've heard about it, Duff persisted. For Chrissake, Duff, you're not going to get it. Tell me, Sean, tell me what you know about it. Duff sat up and caught hold of Sean's arm.
Sean looked steadily at him for a moment before he answered. You saw that jackal, didn't you?
Duff sank back onto his pillows. Oh, my God! he whispered.
Together they started the long wait. They used another tarpaulin to make an open shelter next to the hut and under it they spent the days that followed.
In the beginning it was very bad. Sean tried to pull Duff out of the black despair into which he had slumped, but Duff sat for hours at a time gazing out into the bush, fingering the scabs on his face and only occasionally smiling at the banquet of choice stories that Sean spread for him. But at last Seans efforts were rewarded, Duff began to talk. He spoke of things he had never mentioned before and listening to him Sean learned more about him than he had in the previous five years. Sometimes Duff paced up and down in front of Sean's chair with the chain hanging down behind him like a tail; at other times he sat quietly, his voice filled with longing for the mother he had never known. , there was a portrait of her in the upper gallery, I used to spend whole afternoons in front of it. it was the kindest face I had ever seen Then it hardened again as he remembered his father, that old bastard.
He talked of his daughter. - she had a fat chuckle that would break your heart. The snow on her grave made it look like a big sugar- iced cake, she would have liked that -At other times his voice was puzzled as he examined some past action of. his, angry as he remembered a mistake or a missed opportunity. Then he would break off and grin self-consciously. I say, I am talking a lot of drivel. The scabs on his face began to dry up and come away, and more often now his old gaiety bubbled to the surface.
on one of the poles that supported the tarpaulin roof he started a calendar, cutting a notch for each day. it became a daily ceremony. He cut each notch with the concentration of a sculptor carving marble and when he had finished he would stand back and count them aloud as if by doing so he could force them to add up to thirty, the number that would allow him to shed his chain.
There were eighteen notches on the pole when the dog went mad. It was in the afternoon. They were playing Klabejas. Sean had just dealt the cards when the dog started screaming from among the wagons. Sean knocked over his chair as he jumped up. He snatched his rifle from where it leaned against the wall and ran down to the laager.
He disappeared behind the wagon to which the dog was tied and almost immediately Duff heard the shot. In the abrupt and complete stillness that followed, Duff slowly lowered his face into his hands.
it was nearly an hour before Sean came back. He picked up his chair, set it to the table and sat down. It's you to call, are you going to take on? he asked as he picked up his cards. They played with grim intensity, fixing their attention on the cards, but both of them knew that there was a third person at the table now. Promise you'll never do that to me, Duff blurted out at last.
Sean looked up at him. That I'll never do what to you? What you did to that dog. The dog! The bloody dog. He should never have taken a chance with it, he should have destroyed it that first night, Just because the dog got it doesn't mean that you Swear to me, Duff interrupted fiercely, swear you won't bring the rifle to me. Duff, you don't know what you're asking. Once you've got it, Sean stopped; anything he said would make it worse.
Promise me, Duff repeated. All right, I swear it then. It was worse now than it had been in the beginning.
Duff abandoned his calendar and with it the hope that had been slowly growing stronger. If the days were bad then the nights were hell, for Duff had a dream. It came to him every night, sometimes two or three times. He tried to keep awake after Sean had left, reading by the light of a lantern; or he lay and listened to the night noises, the splash and snort of buffalo drinking down at the waterhole, the liquid half-warble of night birds or the deep drumming of a lion. But in the end he would have to sleep and then he dreamed.
He was on horseback riding across a flat brown plain: no hills, no trees, nothing but lawnlike grass stretching away on all sides to the horizon. His horse threw no shadow, he always looked for a shadow and it worried him that there never was one. Then he would find the pool, clear water, blue and strangely shiny. The pool frightened him but he could not stop himself going to it.
He would kneel beside it and look into the water; the reflection of his own face looked up at him, animal-snouted , shaggy-brown with wolf teeth, white and long.
He would wake then and the horror of that face would last until morning.
Nearly desperate with his own utter helplessness, Sean tried to help him. Because of the accord they had established over the years and because they were so close to each other, Sean had to suffer with him. He tried to shut himself off from it; sometimes he succeeded for an hour or even half a morning but then it came back with a stomach-swooping shock. Duff was going to die, Duff was going to die
