by Wilbur Smith
They talked on until late, and at last Nicholas glanced at his
wrist-watch and stood up.
"Long after midnight. I am scheduled to turn into a pumpkin at any
moment. Goodnight."
"There are still two days of the festival before the tabot is taken down
to the river. Nothing we can do until then.
What are your plans
"Tomorrow I am going back after that damned little Bambi. It has made a
fool of me twice already."
"I am coming with you," she said firmly, and that simple declaration
gave him a disproportionate amount of pleasure.
"Just as long as you leave Tamre at home," he warned her as he stooped
out through the door.
The tiny antelope stepped out from the deep shadow of the thorn thicket,
and the early morning sunlight gleamed on the silky pelt, It kept
walking steadily across the narrow clearing.
Nicholas's breathing quickened with excitement as he followed it with
the telescopic sight. It was ridiculous that he should feel so wrought
up with the hunting of such a humble little animal, but his previous
failures had sharpened his anticipation. Added to that was the peculiar
passion that drives the true collector. Since he had lost Rosalind and
the girls, he had thrown all his energy into the building up of the
collection at Quenton Park. Now, suddenly, procuring this specimen for
it had become a matter of supreme importance to him.
His forefinger rested lightly on the side of the trigger guard. He would
not fire until the dik-dik came to a standstill. Even that walking pace
would make the shot uncertain. He had to place his bullet precisely, to
kill swiftly but at the same time to inflict the least possible damage
to the skin.
To this end he had loaded the Rigby with full metal jacket bullets -
ones that would not expand on impact and open a wide wound channel, nor
rip out a gaping hole in the coat as they exited. These solid bullets
would punch a tiny hole the size of a pencil that the taxidermist at the
museum would be able to repair invisibly.
He felt his nerves screwing up as he realized that the dik-dik was not
going to stop in the open. It made steadily for the thick scrub on the
far side of the clearing. This might be his last chance. He fought the
temptation to take the shot at the moving target, and it required an
effort of will to lift his finger off the trigger again.
The antelope reached the wall of thorn scrub -and, the moment before it
disappeared, stopped abruptly and thrust its tiny head into the depths
of one of the low bushes.
Standing broadside to Nicholas, it began to nibble at the pate green
tufts of new leaves. The head was screened, so he had to abandon his
intention of going for that shot.
However, the shoulder was exposed. He could make out the clear outline
of the blade beneath the glossy red-brown skin. The dik-dik was angled
slightly away from him, in the perfect position for the heart shot,
tucked in low behind the shoulder.
Unhurriedly he settled the reticule of the scope on the precise spot,
and squeezed the trigger.
The shot whip-cracked in the heavy heated air and the tiny antelope
bounded high, coming down to touch the earth already at a full run. Like
a rapier rather than a cutlass, the solid bullet had not struck with
sufficient shock to knock the dik-dik over. Head down, the dik-dik
dashed away in the typical frantic reaction to a bullet through the
heart. It was dead already, running only on the last dregs of oxygen in
its bloodstream.
"Oh, no! Not that way," Nicholas cried as he jumped to his feet. The
tiny creature was racing straight towards the lip of the cliff. Blindly
leaped out into empty space and flipped into a somersault as it fell,
dropping from their sight, down almost two hundred feet into the chasm
of the Dandera river.
"That was a filthy bit of luck." Nicholas jumped over the bush that had
hidden them and ran to the rim of the chasm. Royan followed him and the
two of them stood peering down into the giddy void.
"There it is!" She pointed, and he nodded. "Yes, I can see it."
The carcass lay directly below them, caught on an islet of rock in the
middle of the stream.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I'll have to go down and get it." He straightened up and stepped back
from the brink. "Fortunately it's still early.
We have plenty of time to get the job done before dark.
I'll have to go back to camp to fetch the rope and to get some help."
It was afternoon before they returned, panied by Boris, both his
trackers and two of the skinners. They brought with them four coils of
nylon rope.
Nicholas leaned out over the cliff and grunted with relief "Well, the
carcass is still down there. I had visions of it being washed away." He
supervised the trackers as they uncoiled the rope and laid it out down
the length of the clearing.
"We will need two coils of it to get down to the bottom he estimated
and joined them, painstakingly tying and checking the knot himself. Then
he plumbed the drop, lowering the end of the rope down the cliff until
it touch the surface of the water, and then hauling it back and
measuring it between the spread of his arms.
"Thirty fathoms. One hundred and eighty feet. I won't be able to climb
back that high," he told Boris. "You and your gang will have to haul me
back up."
He anchored the rope end with a bowline to the hole of one of the wiry
thorn trees. Then he again tested it meticulously, getting all four of
the trackers and skinners to heave on it with their combined weight.
"That should do it," he gave his opinion as he stripped to his shirt and
khaki shorts and pulled off his chukka boots. On the tip of the cliff he
leaned out backwards with the rope draped over his shoulder and the tail
brought back between his legs in the classic. absed style.
"Coming in on a wing and a prayerP he said, and jumped out backwards
into the chasm. He controlled his fall by allowing the rope to pay out
over his shoulder, braking with the turn over his thigh, swinging like a
pendulum and kicking himself off the rock wall with both feet. He went
down swiftly until his feet dangled into the rush of water, and the
current pushed him into a spin on the end of the rope. He was a few
yards short of the spur of rock on which the dead dik-dik lay, and he,
was forced to let himself drop into the river. With the end of the rope
held between his teeth he swam the last short distance with a furious
overarm crawl, just beating the current's attempt to sweep him away
downstream.
He dragged himself up on to the island and took a few moments to catch
his breath, before he could admire the beautiful little creature he had
killed. He felt the familiar melancholy and guilt as he stroked the
glossy hide and examined the perfect head with the extraordinary
proboscis. However, there was no time now for regrets, nor for the
searching of his hunter's conscience.
He trussed up
the dik-dik, tying all four of its legs together securely,
then he stepped back and looked up. He could see Boris's face peering
down at him.
"Haul it up!" he shouted, and gave three yanks on the rope as the agreed
signal. The trackers were hidden from his view, but the slack in the
rope was taken up and then the dik-dik lifted clear of the island and
rose jerkily up the wall of the chasm. Nicholas watched it anxiously.
There was a moment when the rope seemed to snag when the carcass was
two-thirds of the way to the top, but then it freed itself and snaked on
up the cliff.
Eventually the dik-dik disappeared from his sight, and there was a long
delay until the rope end dropped back over the tip. Boris had been
sensible enough to weight it with a round stone the size of a man's
head, and he was hanging over the top of the cliff, watching its
progress and signalling to his men to control the descent.
When the end of the weighted line touched the surface of the water it
was just out of Nicholas's reach. From the top of the cliff Boris began
to swing the line until the end of it pendulumed close enough for
Nicholas to grab it.
With a bowline knot Nicholas tied a loop in the end of the line and
slipped it under his armpits. Then he looked up at Boris.
"Heave away!" he yelled, and tugged the dangling rope three times. The
slack tightened and then he was lifted off his feet. He began to ascend
in a series of spiralling jerks and heaves. As he rose, the belled wall
of the chasm arched in to meet him, until he could fend off from the
rock with his bare feet and stop himself spiralling at the end of the
rope. He was fifty feet from the top of the cliff when suddenly he
stopped abruptly, dangling helplessly against the rock face.
"What's going on?" he shouted up at Boris.
"Bloody rope has jammed," Boris yelled back. "Can you see where it is
stuck?"
Nicholas peered up and realized that the rope had rolled into a vertical
crack in the face, probably the same one that had almost stopped the
dik-dik reaching the top.
However, his own weight was almost five times that of the little
antelope, and had forced the rope much more deeply into the crack.
He was suspended high in the air, with a drop of almost a hundred feet
under him.
"Try and swing yourself loose! Boris shouted down at him. Obediently,
Nicholas kicked himself back and twisted on the rope to try and roll it
clear. He worked until the sweat streamed down into his eyes and the
rope had rubbed him raw under the arms.
"No use," he shouted back at Boris. "Try to haul it out with brute
force!
There was a pause, and then he saw the rope above the crack tighten like
a bar of iron as five strong men hauled on the top end with all their
strength. He could hear the trackers chanting their working chorus as
they threw all their combined weight on the line.
His end of the line did not budge. It was a solid jam, and he knew then
that they were not going to clear it. He looked down. The surface of the
water seemed much further than a hundred feet below.
"The terminal velocity of the human body is one hundred and fifty miles
an hour," he reminded himself. At that speed the water would be like
concrete. "I won't be going that fast when I hit, will I? he tried to
reassure himself.
He looked up again. The men on the top of the cliff were still hauling
with all their weight and strength. At that moment one of the strands of
the nylon rope sheared against the cutting edge of the rock crack, and
began to uncurl like a long green worm.
"Stop pulling!" Nicholas screamed. "Vast heaving!" But Boris was no
longer in sight. He was helping his trackers, adding his weight to the
pull.
The second strand of the rope parted and unravelled.
There was only a single strand holding him now.
It was going to go at any moment, he realized. "Boris, you ham-fisted
bastard, stop pulling!" But his voice never reached the Russian, and
with a pop like a champagne cork the third and final strand of the rope
parted.
He plunged downwards, with the loose end of the severed rope fluttering
above his head. Flinging both arms straight upwards over his head to
stabilize his flight, he straightened his legs, arrowing his body to hit
feet first.
He thought about the island under him. Would he miss its red rock fangs
or would he smash into it and shatter every bone in his lower body? He
dared not look down to judge it in case he destabilized - his fall and
tumbled in midair. If he hit the water flat it would crush his ribs or
snap his spine.
His guts seemed to be forced into his throat by the speed of his fall,
and he drew one last breath as he hit the surface feet first. The force
of it was stunning. It was transmitted up his spine into the back of his
skull, so that his teeth cracked against each other and bright lights
starred his vision. The river swallowed him under. He went down deep,
but he was still moving so fast when he hit the rocky bottom that his
legs were jarred to the hips. He felt his knees buckle under the strain,
and he thought that both his legs had been broken.
The impact drove the air out of his lungs, and it was only when he
kicked off the bottom, desperate for air, that -he realized with a rush
of relief that both his legs were still intact. He broke out through the
surface, wheezing an coughing, and realized that he must have missed the
island by only the length of his body. However, by now the current had
carried him well clear of it.
He trod water on the racing stream, shook the water from his eyes and
looked around him swiftly. The walls of the chasm were streaming past
him, and he estimated his speed at around ten knots - fast enough to
break bone if he hit a rock. As he thought it, another small island
flashed past him almost close enough to touch. He rolled on to his back
and thrust both feet out ahead of him, ready to fend off should he be
thrown on to another outcrop.
"You are in for the whole ride, he told himself grimly.
"There is only one way out, and that is to ride it to the bottom."
He was trying to calculate how far he was above the point where the
river debauched from the chasm through the pink stone archway, how far
he still had to swim.
"Three or four miles, at the least, and the river falls almost a
thousand feet. There are bound to be rapids and probably waterfalls
ahead," he decided. "From here it does not look good. I' say the betting
is three to one against getting through without leaving some skin and
meat on the rocks behind you."
He looked up. The walls canted in from each side, so that at places they
almost met directly over his head. There was only a narrow strip of blue
sky showing, and the depths were gloomy and dank. Over the ages the
river had scoured the rock as it cut its way through.
"Damned lucky this is the dry season. What is it like down in here in
the rainy season?" he won
dered. He looked up at the high-water mark
etched on the rock fifteen or twenty feet above his head.
Shuddering at the image he looked down again, concentrating on the river
ahead. He had his breath back by now, and he checked his body for any
damage. With relief he decided that, apart from some bruising and what
felt like a sprained knee, he was unhurt. All his limbs were responding,
and when he swam a few strokes to one side to avoid another spur of
rock, even the sore knee worked well enough to get him out of trouble.
Gradually he became aware of a new sound in the canyon. It was a dull
roar, growing stronger as he sped onward down The walls of the chasm
converged upon each other, the gut of rock narrowed and the flood seemed
to accelerate as it was squeezed in and confined. The sound of water
built up rapidly into a thunder that reverberated in the canyon.
Nicholas rolled over and swam with all his strength across the current
until he reached the nearest rock wall.
He tried to find a handhold, a place where he could anchor himself, but
the rock was polished smooth by the river. It slipped past under his
desperately grasping hands, and the river bellowed in his head. He saw
the surface around him flatten out and smooth like solid glass. Like a
horse laying back its ears as it gathers itself for a jump, the river
had sensed what lay ahead.
Nicholas pushed himself away from the rock wall to try and give himself
room in which to manoeuvre, and pointed his feet once more down river.
Abruptly the air opened under him and he was launched out into space.
All around him white spurning water filled the air, and he was swirled
off balance and tossed like a leaf in the torrent The drop seemed to
last for ever, and his stomach swooped against his ribs. Then once more
he struck with all his weight and was driven far below the surface.
He fought his way up and abruptly burst out through the surface with his
breathing whistling up his throat.
Through streaming eyes he saw that he was caught up in the bowl of
swirling water below the falls. The waters revolved and eddied, turning
in a stately minuet upon themselves.
As he turned, he saw first the high sheet of white water of the falls
down which he had tumbled, and then still turning, the narrow exit from
the basin through which the river resumed its mad career downstream. But
for the moment he was safe and quiet here in the back-eddy below the
