‘Oh God,’ Sybil Prosser asked suddenly, ‘why did she have to bring the damn thing? I told her not to.’ Her voice was as ironed-out and expressionless as ever, but inside her white cotton gloves she kept clenching and unclenching her fingers. ‘I wish now she’d stayed back at the House. We’re in for a packet, I can tell you. I feel it here.’ She indicated a point somewhere in the middle of her breastbone. Tm never wrong about that kind of thing.’ Then she leant over in her seat to get a better look at the Humber. ‘Well, anyhow, we all know where she is for once,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I suppose that’s something.’
The first official stop, the one for the night, had been arranged for one hour before sundown. By then they should have been on the rolling grasslands of the Tibbuta plateau. But, with the late start, this was out of the question. Sir Gardnor was aware of this, and he and Major Mills went into conference.
It was a situation dear to Major Mills’s heart. Comparatively new to Africa, but with a natural flair for terrain, contours and compass-readings were his speciality. He spread out his maps by the roadside and consulted them reverently like a priest. Section by section he opened them up, using little stones to keep the corners flat, until the whole verge looked like washing-day. Then the auguries told him something. It was something to do with water, Harold gathered.
They made for it. Major Mills, compass in hand, with his map spread across his knees and the Governor’s guncase catching him in the groin every time they hit a particularly violent pot-hole, kept alternately glancing down at his wrist watch and then lifting his head to note the height of the declining sun.
What worried him was that the contour-maps belied the vegetation. The maps showed nicely wooded slopes. But already they had left he occasional shade-patches behind them and were heading into arid desert. It looked like the gateway to the Kalahari.
According to Major Mills’s calculations, they should have made a shallow ford crossing of one of the tributaries of the Mirabillo about five miles back, and now be following the course of the great river itself. A second halt was called, and the native servants closely questioned. But it was useless. To a man, they were strangers to this part of the country; and after much sniffing, one and all agreed that they could not smell water in the air, not even the faintest white trace of it, in fact.
It was Sir Gardnor who made the decision. They would laager where they were, he said; and, looking hard at Major Mills, he added that they could start prospecting for rivers in the morning. He added also that they could see now why he had laid such stress on carrying adequate water-tanks with them. Anything less than a full hour before sundown inevitably meant an unseemly scramble instead of a properly laid-out camping site.
Harold did not see Lady Anne again that evening. Together with Sybil Prosser, she had retired into the shelter of one of the big trucks while their tent was being erected; and, alongside, dwarfing it completely, the twin poles of the Governor’s marquee had been dug into the ground by Major Mills’s labour corps.
Already, the place was beginning to look like a small township. Smaller poles and awnings and guy-ropes were going up everywhere; and in front of one of the better tents—Major Mills’s, Harold reckoned —someone had deposited two white stones, one on either side of the entrance flap, to make a formal doorway.
It was the catering and hotel-side that were at the moment in the lead. The field-kitchens had been unloaded, their long chimneys plugged into place, and one of the orderlies had got a fire going.
Alongside, the Governor’s own catering department had been opened up. And here the military were excluded. This was Residency soil, with Old Moses in command. With a white cloth tied round him, he looked more knarled and withered-up than ever; beneath the cloth, his legs showed thin and scaly like a heron’s. He was superintending the unwrapping of a side of meat from the blood-stained butter-muslin in which it had been travelling.
Beside him, one of the kitchen-boys was standing. He was a new boy whom Harold had not seen before; and he was distinct from all the others. He was bronze-coloured, pure bronze. He shone. He was finer boned, too; with slender wrists and ankles. From the way he held himself, he might have been a dancer. His lips were thinner: they were like European lips. When he saw that Harold was looking at him, he didn’t hump his shoulders and stare down at his feet as the other boys would have done. Head held a little to one side and baring his magnificent white teeth, he simpered.
But he was not left to himself for very long. Already Old Moses had a job for him, a butcher’s job. One of the sides of beef was there to be carved, and it was below his dignity for Old Moses to carve it himself. Instead, with his dark bony forefinger, he indicated the filet that he wanted. He even went twice over the outline so that his assistant would know exactly what the cut should be.
But the bronze kitchen-boy was clearly quite untrained. And, when he started to carve the side of beef savagely as though he were attacking someone, Old Moses snatched the knife from him. Poised like a picador, Old Moses himself thrust the blade home cleanly and firmly. Then, tiny cricket of a man though he was, he deftly cut out the slice of steak that he wanted. The whole operation was as clean and rapid as a surgeon’s.
The kitchen-boy gave a little laugh of sheer admiration.
Chapter 18
It was a miserable spot that Sir Gardnor had chosen; more rock than sand, and more sand than soil.
But Harold had to admit that the Army certainly knew how to make the best of it. The Governor’s marquee, double ceiling and all, looked as though a firm of Ascot caterers had just been putting the finishing touches to it; and on the far side of the camp, behind a polite screen of canvas, more of Major Mills’s men were digging the latrines. The little mounds of freshly-turned earth suggested a mass burial. Up on a little knoll behind, the Army Signals transmitter mast was braced and stayed ready to withstand a hurricane.
Sir Gardnor was already at work in his tent as Harold went past. A trestle table had been set up on a square of coconut matting; and, on the table were carefully set up the tools of office. The A.D.C. had omitted nothing. There was the silver-and-crystal ink-well—Sir Gardnor always insisted on using a dip-pen; the red morocco writing-folder; the rocker-blotter with the big gilt handle; and the long, bayonet-like paper knife. Seated in his folding chair, the Governor looked every bit as installed and comfortable as in his own study in the Residency. And every bit as imposing.
Even though it was scarcely more than dusk, the acetylene lamp over his head had already been lighted. The whole of his face was in shadow. But that served only to bring out the massive forehead, the hard ridge of the eyebrows, the boxer’s shoulders that overlapped the canvas of his chair.
He looked up as Harold passed, and seemed pleased at the interruption.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘Pour yourself a drink if you’d like one.’
He had tilted his chair back as he was speaking, and was now amusing himself with the paper-knife. It was one of his favourite toys, the paper-knife. He liked playing with it; balancing it like a seesaw; holding it upright, sword-fashion, and fingering the point; staring down its length as though it were a gun barrel.
‘You’re finding all this very dull, I’m afraid,’ he went on. ‘But things should be looking up by tomorrow. We shall be in good game country by then.’
He was taking another sighting down the paper-knife as he said it.
‘You’ll be getting your first shot, won’t you?’ he asked. ‘There’s something peculiarly satisfying about a good kill. It takes your mind so entirely off everything else. Indeed, if you allowed your mind to wander you could very easily get killed yourself. You do realise there’s always a strong element of danger when on safari, don’t you?’
Harold started to answer, but Sir Gardnor was already speaking.
‘And it is simply not a question of killing animals,’ he explained. ‘Any ruffian with a gun could do that. It is a matter of selection, and planning and forethought. This leopar
d I’m going after, for instance. I had the first reports of him six months ago. An unusually fine specimen, so I’m told. And a menace. I’ve spent hours thinking about him. Hours,’ here Sir Gardnor allowed himself his slow, rather quizzical smile, ‘when no doubt I should have been thinking of other matters. Government matters.’
He replaced the paper-knife, and sat looking down at the official papers in front of him. Harold could see that they were all scored down the margin in his fine, flourishing handwriting.
‘It’s a curious business, don’t you think?’ Sir Gardnor asked. ‘We are here for the sheer pleasure, let us be frank about it, of taking life. The larger the life somehow the more pleasurable. And here’—he flipped his finger-nails across the sheet in front of him—’is an appeal for clemency. A condemned murderer, you understand. One of our missionaries, I regret to say, is responsible for the petition. He’s been going round collecting these pathetic crosses that he calls signatures.’ He paused. ‘I have to give my decision to-night. By radio, you understand. The execution is arranged for tomorrow.’
‘Suppose the radio breaks down?’ Harold asked.
‘Then he’ll be hanged,’ Sir Gardnor replied. ‘There’ll be nothing that can stop it.’ His smile appeared again for an instant, and then vanished. ‘As a matter of fact, he’ll be hanged in any case. I intend to reject the petition.’
He sat in silence staring out into the darkness beyond his tent.
‘I delayed my decision deliberately,’ he said. ‘I wanted to have more time to think about it. It’s been unfortunate for the poor fellow to be kept in suspense this way, don’t you think? But it’s better in the long run. I’m quite sure now my decision is the right one. I was in some doubt before.’
It was getting on towards midnight when Harold went for a final saunter round the camp.
And he was immediately challenged. Major Mills had posted sentries back and front of the Governor’s tent, and the corporal in charge was glad enough of anything to relieve the endless starlit tedium of his vigil. There was the oddly disconcerting sound of a rifle bolt being slammed smartly home.
A moment later they were joined by Major Mills himself. He had changed into rubber-soled sneakers and, revolver in hand, was making a tour of inspection. He seemed rather to welcome it when Harold suggested that the two of them should go round together.
And on the way he talked.
‘Can’t afford to take any chances,’ he explained. ‘Big reponsibility you know, having H.E. on your hands like this. Glad when it’s all over. Too much knife sticking going on for my taste. Take it from me, it’s the L.M.s.’ Major Mills always referred to the Leopard Men as though they were a kind of service corps. ‘When there isn’t time to get their claws out, they just use a knife. In the back usually. Shows the kind of fellows they are. Sort of thing we’re up against.’
His sentences were all uttered in short bursts like machine-gun fire.
‘Don’t know what sort of numbers either,’ he went on. ‘That’s half the trouble. Could be a company. Could be a whole battalion.’ There was a longer pause this time. ‘Could be just a few isolated fanatics, of course. No way of telling. But they’re organised, all right. Make no mistake about it. From abroad, too. Found the stub of a foreign-made pencil near one of the killings. German, actually.’
Major Mills dropped his voice a little before revealing the full depth of his researches.
‘And don’t know who they are,’ he said. ‘That’s another thing. Could be your own houseboy, or the sweeper-upper. Don’t exactly go around in uniform, you know. And choose their weapons where they find them.’ He dropped his voice still lower, and was talking out of the corner of his mouth by now. ‘There’s enough cutlery over there on the Q.M. side’—he pointed vaguely in the direction of the field-kitchens— ‘to put paid to every damn one of us. And in native hands, too. Simply inviting trouble. Asking for it.’ He shook his head sadly at the thoughtlessness of other people. ‘Just had it all counted and put away under lock and key until tomorrow. Left one of my men there to keep an eye on it. Don’t want the wrong kind of steak carved up, if you get me.’
He took a final look round the sleeping camp. The peak of a South Staffs cap showed in silhouette on the skyline.
‘Couldn’t get in from outside,’ he said. ‘That’s for certain. If there’s going to be any funny business, the johnny’s here inside already.’
He placed his hand suddenly on Harold’s arm and pulled him to one side.
‘Careful!’ he said. ‘Mind your step. I’ve had trip-wires put all round this bit. Got little bells on ‘em, too.’
Chapter 19
Next morning they made their start as Sir Gardnor had intended. By 7.30, they were packed, loaded and under way again. Only the fresh sand on the covered-up latrines showed where His Excellency’s caravan had once rested.
And by eight o’clock they had found Major Mills’s river. It was exactly as the contour map had shown it. Ahead of them in the haze loomed up the outlines of the fever trees, and the cars even had patches of coarse grass to run on instead of the everlasting terraces of burnt rock.
The Morris, unprepared for anything more strenuous than the lanes of Oxfordshire, kept boiling over, cooling off and then boiling over again; Major Mills, with his eye on the water tanks, personally administered the refills like a sacrament.
Nor was the Morris the only cause of trouble. The clouds of dust thrown up by the advancing vehicles had brought on Sybil Prosser’s hay-fever. And in its most severe form. When she removed her dark glasses to wipe her eyes, Harold could see that they were red-rimmed and raw-looking. Her carefully controlled sneezes sounded like suppressed sobs. Thickly veiled and with her shoulders heaving, she might have been some poor, half-demented mourner.
And, all the time, in the Governor’s Humber ahead of them sat Sir Gardnor and Lady Anne. They were leaning up against their separate side-rests, like strangers. They appeared to be oblivious of each other. Not that Sir Gardnor appeared to be the least bit put out. When the column halted for lunch, he was at his most easiest and affable.
‘Well, Major?’ he asked. ‘Which is it to be next time? Shall we divert the river, or re-draw the contour map? It’s entirely up to you. You’re in charge round here, you know.’
And to Harold he was warmly avuncular.
‘Been studying the hand-book I lent you?’ he asked. ‘Remember it’s a rifle, not an air-gun: it wasn’t designed for shooting rabbits. The recoil, you know. It can easily break your shoulder if you don’t hold it properly.’
He shaded his eyes for a moment, and inspected the surrounding bush.
‘We may even be able to get in a few practice shots this afternoon,’ he remarked. ‘Thanks to Major Mills we’ve made excellent time this morning. You could spare us an hour or so, couldn’t you, Major, now that you’ve pin-pointed us?’
But Major Mills was scarcely listening even though it was the Governor who was speaking to him. His keen soldierly eye had detected something. It was figures moving. There were four or five of them, shimmering in the haze. Black, naked savages, armed with long spears.
He slapped his hand instinctively onto his revolver-butt.
‘I think we have visitors, sir,’ he said. ‘Better send out a party.’ There came the habitual short break. ‘See what they want, sir,’ he explained.
Ever since they had left the rock-desert and come down alongside Major Mills’s river, they had been among habitations. They had passed beside a village of beehive huts. The residents, most of whom had never seen even one car before, had come out in their numbers, awe-struck and incredulous, to watch the vast entourage rumble past them. Only the presence of the native cooks, unshackled and grinning, served to reassure them that they were not being borne down upon by slavers.
‘A good man, the Major,’ Sir Gardnor observed, not addressing Harold directly but rather as though he were dictating some invisible testimonial. ‘I think he’ll make an excellent soldier. If only he
were a little more at his ease. Damn rude really, breaking off in the middle of a conversation like that. He could perfectly well have sent a messenger.’
Major Mills, however, was leaving nothing to chance. Left to himself he would have had the five tribesmen placed under close arrest, interrogated and, even though they were naked, searched thoroughly. As it was, he stood alongside the Governor’s Humber carefully observing through his binoculars and wondering about covering fire in case of trouble.
He returned ten minutes later, a trifle tense, but pleased with the comprehensiveness of his report.
‘Beef, sir,’ he announced. ‘Big beef. Down there beyond the swamp. Say they’re native hunters, sir. Look the genuine article. But can’t be too careful. I’m still having them vetted, sir.’
Sir Gardnor gave his most expansive smile.
‘I don’t question the beef,’ he said. ‘I merely query the big beef. Everything’s big to them, even if its only a duiker. They always lie like children, just to get taken on.’ He shifted the smile temporarily in Major Mills’s direction. ‘Even so, Major, with your permission, I think after lunch we might give our friend here his first taste of the real thing. So don’t let them go away again. And don’t give them too much to eat. After a good meal they only get sleepy. They’re simply not used to it.’
They were joined at luncheon by the doctor, the A.D.C., the O.C. Signals and the Transport officer. Lady Anne and Sybil Prosser ate alone under an awning strung between two baggage trucks. It was at Sybil Prosser’s request: the attack of hay-fever had taken it out of her rather, and she didn’t feel up to general conversation.
‘One of the most delightful things, don’t you think, about being on safari is the uncertainty of it?’ Sir Gardnor asked as he sat back, gingerly prodding about with the slim, gold tooth-pick that he always carried. ‘Like last night, for instance. Or this afternoon, for that matter. Who would have thought an hour or so ago that we should actually be out after something, instead of simply travelling.’ He turned to Major Mills. ‘You’re sure you can spare us that long, Major, and still keep up with the map? I say “spare us” because I’m afraid we shall have to leave you behind to take care of the ladies.’
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