A Far Off Place by Laurens Van Der Post

Author:Laurens Van Der Post [Laurens Van Der Post]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1974-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Kwa’mamengalahlwa

DARK AS IT still was, Nonnie and even François were amazed at the certainty and speed with which Nuin-Tara travelled. For all his brave words, François was for a moment uneasy about Hintza. But although still moving on only three legs Hintza, in that cool hour of the day, was keeping up well and, from the way in which his muzzle was searching the air, was resuming some of the duties that were always his when in the bush with François.

The journey to the bank of the river was without drama. The detail of an unknown road was always absorbing to François and Hintza, but all that mattered was that they arrived at the ford just as first light broke, well before the crocodiles could muster for the day. It was an hour so naïve and unthreatened by foreign elements that just a few hundred yards from where they began their dangerous crossing, a well-padded family of hippopotamuses returning from their grazing, without condescending even to glance at them, took to a large pool, stained a brilliant red with the light of a great dawn. On the far bank some white and lilac waterbuck, a vast herd of elegant impala and a lone, majestic sable were drinking up the firewater, lip to lip, from trembling reflections of themselves. The birds were beginning to stir and sing in a way François had not heard them sing for days, in voices that sounded singularly young, pure and acolytic, and they were able therefore to step quietly from stone to stone without haste, making certain of their footing, to music full of a sense of deliverance and devotion. Where the passage of water between one boulder and another was too wide for Hintza to step over the gap, François had more than time enough to pick him up and carry him across.

Just before the sun itself came over the horizon they found themselves back on the track, hidden from human sight by tall reeds and flared papyrus, their tops bright and crackling with vivid electric light. Even so, Nuin-Tara did not stop to rest but led on faster than ever for another mile across the gravelled and stony ground until it found the earth of the bush again. There, obviously afraid of leaving any spoor, she turned aside on the edge of the ridge of stone, and after another quarter of a mile on a curve parallel to the stream found shade and cover thick enough for them to wait for Xhabbo without danger of being observed.

They had barely recovered their breath when from what François judged to be a quarter of a mile away there came the summons of a honey-guide. At once Nuin-Tara was on her feet, giving a faultless rendering of a female honey-guide’s reply to a summons from her male. Back came the confirming answer, and soon there was Xhabbo, sweat running like water down his skin, stepping through the circle of bush and trees towards them.

Nonnie thought a man sweating like that would have had to be out of breath as well.

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