Much as he missed Hintza, since this was the first time François had ever ventured out on anything so important without him, he was glad he had come alone. Hintza could not possibly have managed the furrow. The water there was too deep for a dog to stay on his feet and he would have been carried along swimming for his life into the night and ultimately forced to scramble for safety up and over the walls, with every chance of betraying them against the star sheen on the skyline of the furrow.
The first part of the approach went quickly and according to plan, except when he stopped by the river, where a new thought struck him. Remembering his tell-tale white face and knowing he was near an ample source of black potter’s clay, he made his way to it, crouching low among the reeds. Removing his bush hat, he rubbed his face, nose, forehead, neck, all over with a layer of the black clay, put on his bush hat again, pulling the strap firmly underneath his chin so that there would be no danger of it being dislodged. From there he made his way swiftly but carefully to the furrow. He reached it with immense relief, yet he was so close to the great stream that he could not hear any sound except that of the infinitely objective onflowing water, and was deprived of one of his most valuable sources of intelligence in the dark. However, the further he moved from the river, the less insistent became its sound, and at the point where the old hippopotamus track ended against the furrow, he heard again the pitiful lowing of the cattle mixed with that strange upstart barking and howling of hungry jackals and always complaining hyenas.
Still he was afraid that once in the furrow the noise of rapidly flowing water might suppress all other sounds again. To his delight however the water there went by him so quietly and smoothly that he could hear it rippling only faintly around his legs as he went down it slowly, bent double so that no part of him could show above the walls, taking care also that he himself did no splashing. All again went well until he arrived at a point exactly opposite the Matabele kraals, half-way between them and the house. There suddenly he heard a murmur of human voices. Afraid that they might come from men on patrol, and perhaps on a beat that would take them right across his protective furrow, he paused at once to investigate.
All the while he had kept his eyes averted from stars and starlight, even their reflection in the water, focusing mostly on the darkness ahead, so that as he now crawled up the wall in order to peer over the top he found that he not only heard the voices but could see the kraals themselves, clearly outlined against the star sheen lying like water on the dark of the clearing between river and bush. He could not, of course, make out any detail in the kraals themselves but was startled to notice that they were not destroyed. Somehow he had assumed that they would have been.
There was nothing, in fact, to show any observant eye that they were not still what they had been the day before, the homes of scores of innocent Matabele people, looking as if their owners might still be asleep inside them, despite the unusual volume of noise coming from the cattle hard by in their enclosures. In the intervals between the cattle noises, François lying tensely alert, distinctly heard men talking to each other in low, fluent voices. By looking hard and long in the direction of the sound, he was able to make out the shapes of two men, facing each other, from their perches on the walls on either side of the wide gate to the main kraal. He could not gather what they were saying or even what language they used, but they sounded for all the world innocent enough, until his eyes made out at last the full silhouettes. Then he saw, high above the shoulders of each, the sharp pointed bracket made by bayonets fixed to service rifles.
His sense of the dangers of his undertaking heightened immeasurably. If there were men on guard so far away from the homestead, he could expect a far more highly organised and alert concentration of sentries closer in. He had done well to presume the worst, but even his worst now seemed inadequate in the face of what he had just discovered. Yet there was some reliefin the fact that the sentries appeared utterly unsuspecting and at their ease. Above all they were stationary and not on patrol. With an heightened sense of danger, he slid slowly back into the water of the furrow and more deliberately and carefully than ever, resumed his way towards the garden, praying that however much greater the numbers of men on watch around the homestead were, they too would be stationary, at their ease and engaged in casual conversation.
Soon the voices vanished, the lowing of the cattle grew fainter and with this fading of sound, the ripple of the water round his legs began to sound ominously loud. Afraid that even so slight a sound might make him impervious to more significant noises, he began to stop every ten yards not only to listen carefully, but to crawl slowly up the wall of the furrow, first on one side and then the other, in order to look around for any indication of movement. But he heard and saw nothing. Even the amber glow had now gone behind the shadow thrown by the trees in the garden, particularly by the thick lines of fig trees round its perimeter. The fig trees and the orchards they sheltered were high, wide and dense. They obliterated the star sheen which had been so helpful, and stifled the cries of jackals and hyenas which he knew were massed on the edge of the clearing on the far side of his home. This absence of light and sound was a complication he would have given anything to avoid as the most critical moment of his advance approached. Had he been pushed to such a terrible alternative, he would have preferred a temporary blindness of vision to such a total deprivation of sound, for in the garden he was certain the blackness would overwhelm the brightest of starlight. The great tree shadows there would double the night, and only sound could help him not to blunder into guards who might well be posted there invisible in a position which would give them a field of vision over the wide clearing between the house and bush.
Despite the temptation to hasten that the sense of imminent danger brings to the human spirit, François, thanking life many times over in his heart for the lessons and examples of ’Bamuthi and Mopani, managed to accomplish with the utmost patience and vigilance the last fifty yards to the reservoir. At moments it was almost as if ’Bamuthi were stalking the enemy with him, and every now and then from close behind him came a voice full of concern to whisper: “Careful, Little Feather, careful. He whose eye reaches the end of the spoor before his feet falls into the pit dug for game, and great heights have never been subdued by haste.”
All this helped to make François restrain himself and pause for a thorough examination of the night on either side of the furrow when he at last reached the edge of the reservoir itself. Normally at the end of the day the reservoir would be empty as a result of the irrigation of the garden and the water from the furrow would flow into it, making a noise like a small waterfall, as it plunged over the high wide concrete walls of the basin, carved out of the slope from the hill which ended there on the level clearing. But obviously no irrigation had been done that day. The reservoir was full and close to over-flowing, for the water entered without a murmur. It was as well because for François one of the most vulnerable moments of his venture had come. Before he could make the shelter of the wide row of fig trees and bushes which impinged here on either side of the reservoir, he would have to crawl with no cover at all for some ten yards. However flat he pressed himself down, however slowly and carefully he went, a really observant pair of eyes would have every chance of seeing him move over the bare concrete wall.
So he took his time to first look and listen into the night north of the furrow, the side farthest away from the homestead. He saw and heard nothing except the sound of water seeping as it always did from the base of furrow and reservoir. He then did the same from the rim of the southern wall which overlooked the area between him and the house, where danger was likely to be the greatest. He was on the point of withdrawing, when some thirty yards away he saw a sort of fire-fly flicker among the leaves of the base of the trees. He stared unbelievingly because if fire-flies were causing the flickering, they must be of a giant species he had not met before, and he was convinced that he could not leave until he knew precisely what were those stitches
of red flashing in and out of the black cloth distance. The explanation came almost immediately. Both the movement of the red light, still at one moment and then travelling upward to be held still and expand, before contracting and moving down again, told him that there were men smoking nearby, and judging by the way the fire moved in and out of the dark on a limited orbit, the smokers, like the men at the Matabele kraals too, were stationary, relaxed and not on patrol.
This, added to other instances of negligence he fancied he had already encountered, began to look as if the fallibility of his enemy might be greater than he had dared hope. Indeed he had to reprimand himself not to build too much of these instances in case they made him careless. The reprimand was vindicated at once for the glow of cigarettes suddenly vanished, and François was startled to find that he was so close to the smokers that he distinctly heard what he assumed was the sound of their bodies brushing against the leaves of the trees against which they must have been sitting before they jumped up.
Hard on this he heard the undisguised crunch of boots coming down the main path from the homestead to the reservoir, from somewhere not fifty yards beyond the smokers. He had a hunch that the men must have been smoking against orders, and would therefore have their attention entirely focused on re-establishing an appearance of innocence before the boots reached them. The conviction that this was perhaps the perfect moment, sent him as by reflex down the side of the furrow, to move quickly forward and crawl over the northern edge of the reservoir and lower himself down the far wall. All this was done at such a speed that the grip of his hands on the edge of the smooth concrete top nearly failed him. He only just saved himself from falling backwards into the fig trees and heavy bushes round their base and making a noise which those men could not have failed to hear. As it was the butt of his rifle, which he had slung horizontally across his shoulders from a sling shortened round his neck, tapped against the wall as he went down it, far too loudly for his comfort. Luckily it was only a single tap against the wall farthest away from the enemy, assuming of course that the enemy was only between him and his home. Nonetheless he was so alarmed by his carelessness and fearful of its consequences, that he crawled immediately on into some dense wild raisin bushes which had often hidden him during his games with his friends, to lie there with a quickened pulse, listening in case he had given himself away.
The men coming from the house with no effort at concealment, however, were making so much noise with their heavy tread on the ground, that the sound had gone unnoticed. They came on with an ominous deliberation and with no slackening to suggest that they were aware of anything abnormal.
Reassured, François used the shadow and cover of bushes, trees and the high wall to crawl farther to the eastern corner of the reservoir and take up a position, heavily camouflaged with shadow and leaves, to survey the comparatively open vegetable garden, its many paths and water furrows, right up to where it ended against the walls of the courtyard between his home, stables and outhouses.
The first thing he noticed was that the door leading into the courtyard must be open because in its frame stood a clear rectangle of amber upright in the dark, coming no doubt from the glow of lamps he had noticed from afar. He could only assume that the door was left open because the men approaching the smokers would be going back. He thought he would only have to lie there watching until the amber glow vanished again in order to know when the men left the garden and he could be on his way again in relative safety. He reached the comforting conclusion just as the newcomers and smokers met and a series of loud peremptory questions and answers, broke the silence. They were the sort of sounds he expected between officers and warrant officers and pickets on a round of inspection.
François assumed that the men doing the tour of inspection would return to the house once they had done with that particular picket, but he was dismayed when questions and answers ended, and the heavy tread recommenced, this time making for the reservoir. He promptly wriggled backwards deeper into the wild raisin bushes. He was hardly under their thickest cover when the boots arrived at the reservoir.
Convinced as he was that if the smokers had reported anything unusual, the boots would not have crunched their way so frankly, François’s sense of danger compelled him to consider whether this frank approach could not be the best possible disguise for a more sinister design. Indeed this aspect appeared so serious, that he automatically disengaged the sling of his rifle from his neck and laid his gun in the crook of his right arm ready beside him. The heavy boots came to within five yards of where he lay, did not stop but went on parallel to the rows of great trees for some fifty yards in the direction of the far corner of the garden. There they halted and the same sort of question which had introduced the series of questions and answers broke the silence abruptly. That truly frightened François. He had observed the garden as closely as the area on the side of the house and had noticed nothing. It could only mean that men there had been more disciplined and kept a far better watch on the night than the others.
The conclusion became more pointed and agonising when the question which he assumed must have drawn a reply, was answered so quietly that he could not hear it. Worse, the answer was not followed as before by any audible questions. For all he could tell, the night now was as silent as if no one were about and that slow, peaceful seeping of reassuring water from the walls near him was so faint that every now and then a remote echo of the complaining jackals and hyenas on the far side of his home reached him.
Whatever the reasons for this highly disquieting silence, François could do nothing except lie where he was. His only chance of avoiding detection should the patrol, made suspicious by the picket, as he now believed it had been, come back to the reservoir, was to keep as still as that francolin which he had shown Nonnie one bright summer’s day more than a year ago, sitting without a shiver of down on her eggs, deep in the grass on that hillside overlooking Hunter’s Drift, terrified and yet brave as a racing little pulse would allow it to be. It was extraordinary how apprehension sharpened his hearing because, within seconds, he knew that the men, doing their utmost not to make a sound, were coming towards him. Fortunately the men were not dressed for such an exercise. Their boots were too rigid and heavy, the bayonet scabbards on their hips as well as their water flasks, were not tied back and all emitting a faint rattle which François detected when they were still only half-way towards him.
As they came nearer, the more obvious became the line of their approach. Although they did not speak, François knew when the main body halted by the head of the reservoir and sent one man on his toes down the side of the track, since François could hear the grass and leaves distinctly swish back into position as his boots and legs brushed them aside.
Plainer still was the sound of the men presumably joined by the smokers, returning to the others by the reservoir. There were so many of them so close that he only needed to raise his head to see as well as hear them. Yet as long as he could hear there was no point but only danger in looking. He must not risk the movement of head and readjustment of body that looking would demand in case he rustled the bush which was packed close and thick with leaves all round him.
The two lots of men had hardly become one when a slight bustle of bodies and feet through the bush and grass round the reservoir and the far side of the rows of fig trees, told him that the area was being surrounded. For all its circumspection, the operation did not take long to complete and soon François was startled by the volume of sound that assailed him from all directions as the men, with no effort at secrecy began to close in on the reservoir, beating the grass and bushes with the butts of their rifles and calling quite audibly to one another to keep contact. Within seconds it sounded as if one pair of boots was going to walk straight into his own bush.
The temptation to prepare for this became almost overwhelming. Everything within him seemed to urge him to be ready both with his rifle and hunting knife to meet his enemy, quickly to do away with him and try to escape
as fast as he could back into the night. But it was extraordinary how the vivid image of the francolin shone in his imagination at that moment and restrained him. The explanation he had once given to Nonnie that he needed the example of the birds and animals for sanity as well as for controlling his fears, impulsiveness and predilection for quick and spectacular answers to problems, was totally vindicated, in the severest test to which it could possibly be submitted. For francolin-wise, if he moved then it was only to press himself more closely to the gravel. Just when it seemed as if the boots would crash down on the bush and trample it flat, they stopped. Instead the butt of the rifle started to beat at the branches and leaves vigorously. Fortunately the elastic bush stood where its own wide shadow increased the blackness of the night and both were reinforced by the shadows of fig trees and their broad leaves which François had always admired so ardently and now loved all the more for their help, as well as the broad band of ink of the high wall of the reservoir itself. The owner of the boots could have seen nothing in the bush for after a brief period of frantic beating, the boots once more trod on, passing the bush to continue searching and beating the grass all along the wall of the reservoir, until a voice of command farther away stopped it, to François’s amazement, in English.
It was not English English. The officer, because François somehow assumed that the owner of the voice had to be an officer, spoke with what he recognised as a very pronounced Scottish accent and turn of phrase. Scots had played a conspicuous role in pioneering the interior of Africa and many had visited Hunter’s Drift over the years. François knew their inflection and idiom well. Moreover, he almost preferred it to other ways of speaking English, particularly the affected kind of superior officials in Government service, whom even Ousie-Johanna had condemned for making sounds as if with “sweet potatoes in their mouths”. He also remembered Ouwa remarking to him once after a visit from a Scottish inspector of schools: “You know, Coiske, there’s something rather unfair about the Scottish way of speaking English. There is always a ring about it which predisposes one to accept implicitly that the owner of such a voice must always and inevitably be sincere and dependable. If I had to pass off a lie as a truth I could think of no better way than of doing it with a Scottish voice.”
A Far Off Place Page 7
