A Falcon Flies (34 page)

He was trying to capture on paper the river's immensity, and the tallness of that aching blue sky set with the afternoon's building thunderheads, when there was the sharp crack of a rifle shot, and he looked up frowning with annoyance.

‘He is at it again.' Robyn dropped her book into her lap and glanced back at the second barge.

Camacho Nun˜o Alvares Pereira sat high on the barge's cargo, reloading the rifle, ramrodding the charge down the long barrel. The high beaver hat sat on his head like a chimney stack and the bunch of white ostrich feathers plumed out above the crown like smoke from the furnace. Zouga could not see what he had fired at, but he guessed what would be his next target, for the steamer was being pushed out by the current to the outside of a broad bend in the river, and it was forced to steer between two low sandbanks.

The sand shone in the sunlight with the peculiar brilliance of an alpine snowfield, contrasting with the dark shapes upon it that looked like rounded granite boulders.

As the steamer slowly closed the gap, the shapes resolved into a troop of sprawling somnolent hippopotami. There were a dozen of them, one a huge scarred bull, lying on his side and exposing the expanse of his belly.

Zouga glanced back from the huge sleeping animals to the figure of Camacho Pereira on the second barge. Camacho lifted the plumed beaver and waved it in jovial salute. His teeth flashing like a semaphore even at that distance.

‘You chose him,' said Robyn sweetly, following the direction of his gaze.

‘That's a great comfort.' Zouga glanced at his sister. ‘They told me he was the greatest sportsman and guide on the east coast.'

They both watched Camacho finish loading the rifle and setting the cap on its nipple.

The sleeping hippopotami suddenly became aware of the approaching vessels. They scrambled upright with amazing alacrity for such clumsy-looking animals, and galloped over the white sand, scattering clouds of it under their huge feet and then entered the water in a high crashing cascade of thrown spray, disappearing swiftly, and leaving the water churned and flecked with foam. Standing in the bows of the first barge, Zouga could clearly see the dark shapes below the surface of the water, galloping in comical slow motion, their movements inhibited by the water. They were silhouetted against the lighter-coloured sandbanks, and as he watched them, the ungainly creatures evoked his sympathy and amusement. He remembered a nursery rhyme that his Uncle William had recited to him as a child that began ‘A hippo – what – amus?'

Zouga was still smiling as the bull hippo surfaced fifty paces from the barge's side. The bulky grey head broke clear, the flaps of flesh that sealed the nostrils flared open as he breathed and the small round ears fluttered like the wings of a bird as he cleared them of water.

For a moment he stared at the strange vessels through pinkly inflamed, piggy blue eyes. Then he opened the full gape of his jaws, a cavern the colour and the texture of a pink rose. The tusks were yellow and curved to murderous cutting edges, quite capable of biting a bullock cleanly in half, and he no longer seemed fat and comical. Instead he looked exactly what he was, the most dangerous of all African big game.

Zouga knew that the hippopotamus had killed more human beings than all the elephant and lion and buffalo together. With ease they could crunch in the fragile hull of a dugout canoe, the ubiquitous
makoro
of Africa, and then cut in half the terrified swimmers. They would readily leave the water to chase and kill any human who they believed threatened a calf, and in areas where they had been hunted they would attack without provocation. However, the steel hulls of the barges were invulnerable even to the jaws and tusks of the massive creature, and Zouga could afford to watch with complete objectivity.

From the bull's gaping pink jaws came a challenging series of bellows, each mounting in volume and menace as he moved closer to drive off the intruders who threatened his females and their young. Camacho put his hand up behind his head, and tilted the beaver hat at a jaunty angle over one eye. As always, he was smiling as he swung up the rifle and fired.

Zouga saw the strike of the bullet deep in the animal's throat, it severed an artery and instantly bright crimson blood gushed against the roof of the open mouth, discolouring the gleaming tusks, and pouring in a quick flood over the rubbery, bewhiskered lips. The bull's bellow rose into a piercing scream of agony, and he lunged half clear of the surface in a burst of white water.

‘I keel heem!' roared Camacho, and his shout of laughter filled the sudden void of silence as the bull dived below the surface, leaving his blood to swirl away down the current.

Robyn had jumped up and was clinging to the barge's rail, a flush overlaying her sunbronzed cheeks and throat.

‘That was callous butchery,' she said quietly.

‘No point in it,' Zouga agreed. ‘The animal will die below the surface and be washed out to sea.'

But he was wrong, for the bull surfaced again, closer to the barge. His jaws still gaping and streaming gouts of blood, he thrashed and lunged in maddened circles, his bellows distorted by blood and water, as his death frenzy rose to a crescendo. Perhaps the bullet had damaged his brain, making it impossible for him to close his jaws or to control his limbs.

‘I keel heem!' roared Camacho, dancing with excitement on the foredeck of the second barge, pouring shot after shot into the immense grey body, grabbing a rifle from his black gunbearer or from his second loader as soon as it was primed.

His two black servants worked with the expertise of long practice, so that it seemed that Camacho always had a loaded rifle ready to snatch and waiting hands ready to take the smoking weapon from him the moment he had fired.

Slowly the string of barges drew away upstream, leaving the stricken animal wallowing with increasing feebleness in its own expanding circle of blood-tinged waters, until at last it rolled belly upwards, all four stubby legs sticking up towards the sky for a moment before it sank at last and the blood was diluted and swept away downstream.

‘That was sickening,' whispered Robyn.

‘Yes, but he has trained those gunbearers of his damned well,' said Zouga thoughtfully. ‘If one is going to hunt elephant, that is the way to do it.'

T
wo hours before sunset the
Helen
edged in towards the south bank. For the first time since leaving Quelimane there was some feature on the shore, beyond the endless reed swamps and sandbanks.

The bank was steeper here, rising ten feet above the river, and game paths had been cut into the grey earth by thousands of sharp hooves, and polished to shiny clay by the sliding wet bellies of the long lizard-like shapes of the big crocodiles that came tobogganing down the almost vertical slope when they were disturbed by
Helen
's churning propeller. The heavily armoured reptiles with the staring yellow eyes set on a hard horny scale atop the long saurian head repulsed Robyn, the first African animal to do so.

There were trees on the bank now, not just waving stands of papyrus. Chief of these were the graceful palms with stems sculptured like a claret bottle.

‘Ivory palms,' Zouga told her. ‘The fruit has a kernel like a ball of ivory.'

Then far beyond the palms, low against the ruddy evening sky, they could make out the first silhouette of hills and kopjes. They were leaving the delta at last, and that night the company would camp on firm ground, instead of soft white sand, and burn heavy logs on the camp fires rather than the pulpy papyrus stems.

Zouga checked the sentries that Sergeant Cheroot had placed over the irreplaceable cargoes in the barges on which the whole expedition depended, then he supervised the siting of the tents before taking the Sharps rifle and starting out into the open forest and grassland beyond the camp site.

‘I come weeth you,' offered Camacho. ‘We keel something.'

‘Your job is to make camp,' Zouga told him coolly, and the Portuguese flashed his smile and shrugged.

‘I make one damn fine camp – you see.'

But as Zouga disappeared amongst the trees, the smile slid off his face, and he hawked in his throat and spat in the dust. Then he turned back into the turmoil of men raising canvas on poles, or dragging in branches of freshly cut thorns to build the
scherm
against marauding lions or scavenging hyena.

Camacho lashed out at a bare black back. ‘Hurry, you one mother, twenty-seven fathers.' The man cried out at the pain of the cured hippo-hide whip, redoubling his efforts as a purple welt, thick as a man's little finger, rose across his sweat-oiled muscles.

Camacho strode on towards the small grove of trees which Zouga had picked as the site for the tents of his sister and himself, and he saw that the tents had already been erected and that the woman was busy with the evening muster when she treated the ailments of the camp.

She had been seated at the collapsible camp table, but as Camacho approached, she rose and stooped to examine the foot of one of the bearers whose axe had slipped and almost severed a toe.

The Portuguese stopped abruptly, and his throat dried out as he watched her. As soon as they had left Quelimane, the woman had taken to wearing men's breeches. Camacho found them more provocative than naked flesh itself. It was the first time he had ever seen a white woman dressed like this, and he found it hard to take his eyes off her. Whenever she was in sight, he would watch her surreptitiously, waiting hungrily for the moment when she stooped or leaned forward and the moleskin stretched over her buttocks, as it was now. It lasted too short a time, for the woman straightened up and began speaking to the little black girl who seemed more of a companion to her than a servant.

Still Camacho leaned against the bole of one of the tall umsivu trees and watched her with those black eyes gone velvet and swimming with desire. He was carefully weighing the consequences of what he had dreamed about every night since they had left Quelimane. He had imagined every detail, every expression, every word, each movement and each sigh or cry.

It was not as improbable as it seemed at first. She was an English woman, of course, daughter of a famous man of God, both facts should have been prohibitive to his intentions. However, Camacho had a canny instinct when it came to women, there was a sensuality about her eye and in the full soft lips, and she moved with animal awareness of her body. Camacho stirred restlessly and thrust his hands into his pockets, kneading and tugging gently at himself.

He was fully aware that he was a magnificent specimen of masculinity – those thick tresses of black hair, the gypsy feyness of eyes, the blazing smile, and powerful and well-proportioned body. He was attractive, perhaps irresistibly so, for more than once he had intercepted a quizzical appraising look from the woman. Often the admixture of his blood was attractive to white women, it was an exoticism, the attraction of the forbidden and dangerous, and he sensed in this woman a rebellious disregard for the rules of society. It was possible, no more than possible, Camacho decided, and there was unlikely to be a better opportunity than now. The cold stiff English brother was out of camp, would be so for another hour or more, and the woman had finished attending the little group of sick bearers. A servant had brought a kettle of boiling water to her tent, and she was closing the fly.

Camacho had watched this little ritual every evening. Once the oil lamp had cast her shadow upon the canvas, and he had watched her silhouette lowering those tantalizing breeches, and then using the sponge to – he shuddered deliciously at the memory, and pushed himself away from the tree trunk.

Robyn mixed the hot water from the kettle into the enamel basin. It was still scalding hot, but she liked it so that it reddened the skin and left her feeling glowing with cleanliness. She began to unbutton the flannel shirt, sighing with pleasant weariness, when something scratched on the fly of the tent.

‘Who is it?' she called sharply, and felt a faint stir of alarm as she recognized the low voice. ‘What do you want?'

‘I want talk you, missus.' Camacho's tone was conspiratorial.

‘Not now, I am busy.' The man repelled her, and yet in a contrary manner, fascinated her as well. She had found herself staring at him more than once – as she would at a beautiful but poisonous insect. She was annoyed that he had noticed and was vaguely aware that it was unwise to show even the vaguest interest in a man like that.

‘Come back tomorrow.' It suddenly occurred to her that Zouga was not in the camp, and she had sent little Juba on an errand.

‘I cannot wait. I am sick.'

That was one appeal she could not deny.

‘Oh very well. Wait,' she called, and buttoned her shirt, and then as an excuse perhaps to delay the moment turned her attention to her instruments still spread on the table that had been carried into the tent. It reassured her to touch them, and rearrange the bottles and pots of medicines.

‘Enter,' she called at last, and faced the entrance of the tent.

Camacho stooped through the entrance, and for the first time she realized how tall he was. His presence in the small tent was almost overpowering, and his smile seemed to light up the interior. His teeth were startlingly white and perfect, she found herself staring again, like a chicken at the dancing cobra perhaps. He was beautiful in a decadent, overblown way, he was bare-headed, all dark dancing hair and scalding eyes.

‘What is the trouble?' she asked, trying to sound brisk and businesslike.

‘I show you.'

‘Very well,' she nodded, and he unbuttoned his shirt. His skin had the sheen of wet marble, but was deep olive in colour, and his body hair grew in crisply springing whorls. His belly was moulded like that of a greyhound and his waist narrow as a girl's. She ran her eyes down his body, quite certain that her gaze was level and professional, but there was no denying the fact that he was an extraordinary animal.