The Mottled Lizard by Elspeth Huxley

Author:Elspeth Huxley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446475799
Publisher: Random House

Chapter 16

WE always had breakfast on the wide veranda, a mild sun streaming in, with hot scones on the table and dark honey provided by wild bees. Outside a pony waited for Frank and a M’kamba called Kioko waited for me. He was a middle-aged man in a blanket with a snuff-horn round his neck, charms worn as armlets and a hunting-knife tucked into a leather belt set with beads. Normally he herded cattle but at heart, like most Wakamba, he was a hunter, and Frank had put me in his charge. The more buck I shot the better both were pleased, and even when I failed to shoot any I enjoyed walking about the plains and hillsides, never knowing what we should come upon next.

So after breakfast we set off, Kioko leading the way. He walked with long strides, following a predetermined direction through thorn-scrub and scattered trees. The place was full of birds. This was a haunt of glossy starlings, the gayest of creatures, as far removed from the starling of the north as a peacock from a crow. With his purplish-blue wings folded he shone all over like lapis lazuli, his breast the colour of ripe strawberries, and when he flew a sea-green tinge appeared, banded with white. Even more splendid were the rollers we often came upon in pairs. In flight they looked like sapphires tossed in the air, and when they perched you could see their puffed-out breasts of lilac and their greenish necks and tails. I had been told they smelt like curry powder, but this I was never able to confirm.

So on these walks there was always something to see. The acacias had tiny balls of sweet-smelling blossom, yellow or white. Canary-coloured weavers fussed and twittered in the trees they had selected for their feverish nesting, which seemed to go on all the year round. Sometimes we would almost tread upon a duiker, lying so close that it waited until we were a yard away before bolting for the bush, its head laid back and neck outstretched and feet flying. Hawks and buzzards were little specks high overhead, an infinity of ants kept up their ceaseless questing in the grasses. It was a scene of restless, unremitting activity devoted to the purpose of keeping alive. Later in the day the pace would slacken and everything would idle in a torpid heat.

There was a daily rhythm among all creatures inhabiting these hills and plains, from eagles to beetles, from buffaloes to mice. The venturing forth in a cold white dawn, the search for food as the long light spread, the browsing and scurrying and fluttering about, the flash of brown and blue in dappled sunlight; then a falling tempo and the period of suspension, of tail-twitching sleep, of drowsing in branches; then the gradual renewal of life, like sap creeping up the bark or a breeze awaking leaves: the evening parade and questing, less purposeful than that of early morning, more haphazard; and at

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