Sean raised his binoculars and meticulously swept the channel and the nearest shore of the island, for even a great elephant could be swallowed up by the sweep and magnitude of this land- and waterscape.
Suddenly his nerves jumped as he saw weighty and ponderous movement in the reeds and the gleam of wet hide in the sunlight.
His excitement was stillborn, followed by the pull of disappointment in his guts, as he recognized the broad, misshapen head of a hippopotamus emerging from the swamps.
In the lens of his binoculars he could see the pink-shot piggy eyes and the bristles in the lisproportionately tiny ears. The hippo fluttered them like the wings of a bird, shaking off the droplets that sparkled like diamond chips, forming a halo above its huge head.
It plodded through the mud, crossing from one lagoon to another, pausing only to loose an explosive jet of liquid dung that it splattered with a violent stirring motion of its stubby tail. The force of this discharge flattened the reeds behind the obese animal.
With relief Sean watched it move on and submerge itself in the further lagoon. The rotten hull of the dugout would have offered no protection from those heavy, curved tusks in the gape of huge jaws.
At last Sean glanced across at Matatu in the fork beside him, and the little Ndorobo shook his head.
"He has moved on. So must we."
They scrambled down to the ground and went back to where they had left Riccardo. The voyage in the mokorro and a good night's sleep had invigorated him. He was on his feet, impatient and eager for the hunt, the way Sean had known him before.
"Anything?" he demanded.
"No." Sean shook his head. "But Matatu reckons we are close.
Absolute silence from now on."
While they loaded the dugout, Sean gulped a mug of the scalding tea and kicked sand over the fire.
They punted and pushed the canoe across the channel to the next island, and once again Sean climbed into a treetop while Matatu scurried into the dense undergrowth to pick up the elephant's spoor again. He was back within fifteen minutes and Sean slid out of the tree to meet him.
"He has moved on," Matatu whispered. "But the wind is bad."
Looking grave, he took the ash bag from his loincloth and shook out a puff of powdery white ash to demonstrate. "See how it turns and changes like the fancy of a Shangane whore."
Sean nodded, and before they crossed to the next island he stripped off his sleeveless bush shirt. Naked from the waist up, he could instantly feel the slightest vagary of the breeze on the sensitive skin of his upper body.
On the next island they found where Tukutela had left the water to go ashore, and the mud he had smeared on the brush as he passed was still slightly damp. Matatu shivered with excitement like a good dog getting his first whiff of a bird.
They left the canoe and crept forward, feeling their way through the heavy bush, thankful for the breeze that clattered the palm fronds overhead to cover the small sounds of their footfalls in the dead leaves and dry twigs. They found where the old elephant had shaken down the nuts from one of the palms and stuffed them down his throat without chewing them with his last worn set of molars, but he had moved on again.
"Run?" Sean whispered, fearful that the bull might have sensed their presence. But Matatu reassured him with a quick shake of his head and pointed to the green twigs the elephant had stripped of bark and left scattered along his tracks. The raw twigs had not completely dried out, but the spoor led them on a meandering beat across the island and then once more plunged into the channel on the far side. They sent Purnula back to bring the dugout around to where they waited and when he arrived piled Riccardo into it and pushed him across, wading waist deep beside him, moving stealthily and silently until they reached the next island.
Here they found a pile of dung, spongy and soft with reeds and hyacinth the bull had eaten, and beside it the splash mark of his urine as though a garden hose had been played upon the earth. It was stiff so wet that Sean scooped up a handful of the dirt and molded it into a ball like a child's mud cake. The pile of dung had a dry crust, but when Matatu thrust his foot into it, it was moist as porridge and he exclaimed with delight at the body heat still trapped within.
"Close, very close!" he whispered excitedly.
Instinctively Sean reached for the cartridges looped on his belt and changed them for those in the double-barreled rifle, careful to mute the click of the rifle's side lock as he closed it. Riccardo recognized the gesture-he had seen it so often before-and he grinned with excitement and clicked the Rigby's safety catch on and off, on and off. They crept forward in single file, but disappointment dragged them down again as the spoor led them across the island and then on the far side once more entered the papyrus beds.
They stood facing the wall of reeds, staring at the point where Tukutela had pushed down the stems as he went through. One of the flattened stems quivered and began slowly to rise into its original position. The elephant must have passed only minutes ahead of them. They stood frozen, straining to listen beyond the susurration of the wind in the papyrus.
Then they heard it, the low rumble like that of summer thunder at a great distance, the sound an elephant makes in his throat when he is content and at peace. It is a sound that carries much farther than its volume would suggest, but nevertheless Sean knew the bull was not more than a hundred yards ahead of them. He laid his hand on Riccardo's arm and drew him gently up alongside him.
"We have to be careful of the wind," he began in a whisper.
Then they heard the swish and rush of water sucked up in the bull's trunk and squirted back over his own shoulders to cool himself and caught a brief glimpse of the black tip of his trunk as he lifted it high above the tops of the papyrus ahead of them.
Their excitement was so intense that Sean felt his throat closed and dry, and his whisper was rough.
"Back off!"
He made a cutout hand signal that Matatu obeyed instantly, and they backed away a stealthy step at a time, Sean leading Riccardo by the arm. As soon as they were into the undergrowth Riccardo demanded in a furious whisper, "What the hell, we were so close."
"Too close," Sean told him grimly. "Without any chance of a shot in the papyrus. If the wind had swung just a few degrees, it would have been over before it began. We have to let him get across to the next island before we can close in."
He led Riccardo back faster, then stopped below the outspread branches of a tall strangler fig.
"Let's take a look," he ordered. They propped their rifles at the base of the trunk. Sean helped Riccardo to reach the first branch, then followed him as he climbed upward from branch to branch.
Near the top of the fig they found a secure stance. Sean steadied Riccardo with a hand on his shoulder, and they stared down into the papyrus beds.
They saw him immediately. Tukutela's back rose above the reeds. It was wet and charcoal black from the spray of his trunk, the spine urved and prominent beneath the rough wrinkled hide.