chanced upon a tsama vine like this one. Isn't it tasty?'
She looked at the pale yellow pith that filled the shell, then up at him. Unexpectedly she was filled with a girlish mischief she had not known since before the death of her parents.
'What are you grinning at?' Jim demanded.
'This!' she said, leaned across the camp table and mashed the soft wet fruit into his face. He gaped at her in astonishment as juice and the yellow flesh dripped off his nose and chin. 'Isn't it tasty?' she asked, and dissolved into peals of laughter. 'You look so silly!'
'We shall see who looks even more silly.' Jim recovered, and snatched up the remains of the melon. She squealed with alarm, leaped up from the table and ran. Jim pursued her through the camp brandishing the melon, with pips in his hair and juice down his shirt.
The servants were astounded as Louisa dodged and ducked around the wagons. But she was weak with laughter and at last Jim caught her, pinned her against the side of a wagon with one hand and took aim with the other.
'I am mortally sorry,' she gasped. 'Please forgive me. I am abject. It will not happen again.'
No! It will never happen again,' he agreed. Till show you what will
happen if it does.' He gave her the same treatment, and by the time he had finished she had yellow melon in her hair and eyelashes, and in her ears.
'You are a beast, James Archibald!' She knew how he hated that name. 'I hate you.' She tried to glare at him, but burst into laughter again. She raised one hand to strike him, but he caught her wrist and she stumbled against him.
Suddenly neither of them was laughing. Their mouths were so close that their breath mingled and there was something in her eyes that he had not seen before. Then she began to tremble and her lips quivered. The emotion he had seen faded and was replaced with terror. He knew that all the servants were watching them.
With an effort he released her wrist and stepped back, but now his laughter was breathless. 'Beware, wench. Next time it will be a cold slimy lump of melon down the back of your neck.'
The moment hung precariously, for she was on the edge of tears. Bakkat saved them by breaking into a pantomime of their contest. He picked up the remains of the melon and hurled it at Zama. The drivers and voarlopers joined in, and melon rind flew in all directions. In the uproar Louisa slipped away to her wagon. When she emerged later she was demure in a fresh frock, her hair in long plaits. 'Would you like a game of chess?' she asked, not looking into his eyes.
He checkmated her in twenty moves, then doubted the merit of his victory. He wondered if she had purposely allowed him to win, or whether she had merely been distracted.
The next morning Jim and Louisa, with Bakkat, rode out before dawn, taking their breakfast with them tied in the canteens behind their saddles. Only an hour ahead of the wagons, they stopped to water the horses and eat their breakfast beside a small stream that meandered down from the line of lightly forested hills that lay across their path.
They sat opposite each other on fallen logs. They were shy and subdued, unable to meet each other's eyes. The memory of the moment from the previous day was still vivid in their minds, and their conversation was stilted and overly polite. After they had eaten Louisa took the canteens down to the stream to wash them while Jim resaddled the horses. When she came back he hesitated before helping her to step up into Trueheart's saddle. She thanked him more profusely than the small act called for.
They rode up the hill, Bakkat leading the way on Frost. As he reached the crest he wheeled Frost back off the skyline, and raced towards them, his face contorted with some strong emotion, his voice reduced to an unintelligible squeak.
'What is it?' Jim shouted at him. 'What have you seen?' He seized Bakkar's arm and almost yanked him out of the saddle.
Bakkat found his voice at last. 'Dhlovul' he cried, as though in pain. 'Many, many.'
Jim threw his reins to Bakkat, jerked the small-bore rifle from its sheath and sprang out of the saddle. He knew better than to show himself on the skyline and stopped below the crest to gather himself. Excitement had clamped down on his chest and he could hardly breathe. His heart seemed on the point of leaping out of his mouth. Yet he still had the good sense to check the direction of the breeze: he picked a few blades of dry grass, shredded them between his fingers, and studied the drift of the tiny fragments. It was favourable.
Suddenly he felt Louisa's presence close beside him. 'What is it, Jim?' She had not understood the word Bakkat had used.
'Elephant!' Jim could barely enunciate the magical word.
She stared at him for only a moment, then her eyes flared like sunlight in blue sapphire. 'Oh, Jim! Show me!'
Even in the turmoil that had overwhelmed him, he was grateful she was there to share something he knew, deep in his heart, would stay with him all his days. 'Come!' he said, and, quite naturally, she took his hand. Despite all that had gone between them, this trusting gesture came as no surprise to him. Hand in hand they went to the crest of the hill and looked over.
Below them lay a vast bowl of land hemmed about with hills. It was carpeted with new growth, freshly sprung after the recent rains on ground that had been burned by grass-fires during the dry season. It was green as an English meadow, and scattered with clumps of tall mahobahoba trees, and copses of thornbush.
Spread out in the bottom of the bowl, alone or in small herds, were hundreds of elephant. For Jim, who had imagined this first encounter so many times and in so many ways, the reality far outweighed all his fantasy. 'Oh, sweet Mary!' he whispered. 'Oh, God, oh, beloved God!'
She felt his hand shaking in hers and tightened her grip. She recognized this as a seminal moment in his life and suddenly she was proud to be beside him, to share it with him. It seemed that this was her place: as though she had at last found where she belonged.
He could see at once from their relative size that most of the elePhant herds consisted of females and their young. They formed grey
agglomerations like reefs of granite, and the shapes of the herds changed only slowly, coming together, then flowing apart again. In all this mass of animals the great bulls stood apart and aloof, massive dark shapes, even at this remove dominating the herds that surrounded them, unmistakable in their majesty.
Close below where Jim and Louisa stood one particular animal made all the others seem insignificant. Perhaps it was merely the way the sunlight played upon him, but he was darker than any other. His ears were spread like the mainsail of a ship, and he fanned them with a lazy, flapping motion. With each movement the sun caught the curve of a huge tusk, and shot a ray towards them like the reflection of a mirror. Once the bull reached down with his trunk, and gathered up the dust at his feet and threw it back over his head and shoulders in a pale cloud.
'He is so big!' Louisa whispered. 'I never expected them to be that size.'
Her voice roused Jim from his trance of wonder, and he looked back to see Bakkat hovering close behind him.
'I have only this small-bore gun with me.' Jim had left the two big German four-to-the-pounders with the wagons. They were awkward weapons to carry and handle and, having been so often disappointed, he had not expected to run into elephant today, and certainly not in such numbers. He regretted the oversight now, but he knew it would be folly to use the little London rifle he had with him against a creature endowed with such bulk of muscle and sinew, such massive bone structure. Only with great luck could he hope to send such a light ball into its vitals.
'Ride back, Bakkat, as fast as Frost will carry you, and bring the two big guns to me with the powder flask and shot belt No sooner had Jim finished speaking than Bakkat was up on Frost and going back down the hill at a mad gallop. They did not watch him go, but Jim and Louisa crept forward, using a small bush to break up their silhouette as they crossed the skyline. On the far slope they found a clump of thorny acacia that offered concealment, and settled among the fluffy branches and yellow blossom, sitting side by side while Jim focused his telescope on the great bull below them.
He gasped aloud, amazed at the animal's enhanced size when seen through the lens, and he stared in awe at the length and thickness of those shafts of ivory. Although he had not yet had his fill of such a magnificent sight he passed the glass to Louisa. By now she had learned to use it with expertise, and she trained it on the great animal. But after only a few minutes her attention was diverted to the playful antics of a
group of calves further on: they were squealing and chasing each other through the forest.
When Jim saw the direction of the telescope wandering away from the patriarch he was strongly inclined to take it out of Louisa's hands and continue his study of the bull. Then he saw the tender smile on her face as she watched the calves at play, and he restrained himself. This in itself was a mark of his feelings for her: he was almost consumed by the hunter's passion and his heart beat hotly for the chase.
Then, to his delight, the bull left the shade of the mahoba-hoba tree and started ambling up the slope directly towards where they sat. He placed his hand on Louisa's shoulder to warn her. When she lowered the telescope he put a finger to his lips and pointed at the approaching bull.
Louisa's expression changed to awe as it drew closer, and
