04 The Leopard Hunts in Darkness by Wilbur Smith

Author:Wilbur Smith [Smith, Wilbur]
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The road was single width, two continuous ruts running north and south, jinking now and then to avoid a spring-hare colony or a soft pan. It was patrolled regularly by the Botswana police on anti-poaching and prevention of alleged entry duties.

Craig and Sally-Anne reached the road in the middle of the afternoon. By this time Craig had discarded the rifle and ammunition, and stripped the pack of all but essentials. He had even considered for a while burying his manuscript for later retrieval. It weighed eight pounds, but Sally-Anne had dissuaded him in a hoarse whisper.

The water bottle was empty. They had had their last drink, a blood-warm mouthful each, just before noon. Their speed was reduced to little more than a mile an hour. Craig was no longer sweating. He could feel his tongue beginning to swell and his throat closing as the heat sucked the moisture out of him.

They reached the road. Craig’s gaze was fastened grimly on the heat-smudged horizon ahead, all his being concentrated on lifting one foot and placing it ahead of the other. They crossed the road without seeing it, and kept going on into the desert. They were not the first to walk past the chance of succour and go on to death by thirst and exposure. They staggered onwards for two hours more before Craig stopped.

‘We should have reached the road by now,’ he whispered, and checked the compass heading again. ‘The compass must be wrong! North isn’t there.’ He was confused and doubting. ‘Damaged the bloody thing. We are too far south,’ he decided, and began the first aimless circle of the lost and totally disorientated, the graveyard spiral that precedes death in the desert.

An hour before sunset Craig stumbled over a dried brown vine growing in the grey soil. It bore only a single green fruit the size of an orange. He knelt and plucked it as reverently as if it had been the Cullinan diamond. Mumbling to himself through cracked and bleeding lips, he split the fruit carefully with the bayonet. It was warm as living flesh from the sun.

‘Gemsbok melon,’ he explained to Sally-Anne as she sat and watched him with dull, uncomprehending eyes.

He used the point of the bayonet to mash the white flesh of the melon, and then held the half shell to Sally-Anne’s mouth. Her throat pumped in the effort of swallowing the clear warm juice, and she closed her eyes in ecstasy as it spread over her swollen tongue.

Working with extreme care, Craig wrung a quarter of a cupful of liquid from the fruit and fed it to her. His own throat ached and contracted at the smell of the liquid as he made her drink. She seemed to recharge with strength before his eyes, and when the last drop had passed between her lips, she suddenly realized what he had done.

‘Your she whispered.

He took the hard rind and the squeezed-out pith, and sucked on them.

‘Sorry.’ She was distraught at her own thoughtlessness, but he shook his head.

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