"Listen!" I rapped out. I heard it again.
"Sounds like thunder," he said uncertainly. "But there's no cloud about —"
"Run!" I yelled. "It's the river coming down! The highest trees farthest up the bank — quick!"
I grabbed his shoulder as he stood hesitantly. The narrow gorge funneled the sound. Anne and Johann saw us come sprinting towards them in amazement.
"Quick!" I yelled. "The river's coming down! Listen! It's like distant thunder! Those trees over there!"
We scrambled up the steep bank, slipping and scrabbling. The noise sounded like an approaching Underground train. We hoisted each other wildly into the branches, praying that the water would not reach as high.
The flood broke through the narrow tunnel and spread into the sand.
It wasn't water. It was thousands of zebra.
They came through the rock-lined gap at full gallop, packed so close together that they sprayed out like water as the river bed widened. The thunder of thousands, tens of thousands, of hoofs on the rock, was deafening.
"It's a mass migration," I yelled above the uproar. "It happens once in a lifetime. They'll tear on for scores of miles. Fifty years ago a magistrate in South West Africa saw the same thing happen with springbok. They threw themselves into the sea and drowned by the thousand. Mass suicide—"
Look!" screamed Anne.
The huge sentry-lion dropped like a stone off the rock on to the mass of animals below him. His victim staggered under his weight, but was borne remorselessly clear of the narrow section by the impetus of the herd behind. Almost without effort, it seemed, the black-maned brute struck the zebra across the head and together they tumbled into the sand. Terrified, those behind opened out around the lion and the prostrate zebra. Another huge lion dropped among the herd from above and was carried out into the sand by the flood. Like experienced paratroopers, lion after lion catapulted himself into the mass of thundering animals passing below. Soon the white sand was dotted, black and white stripes on the ground and huge black forms kneeling over them. Once the thundering zebra overran a lion and his victim. He rose savagely and struck out. I heard the dull sickening thud even above the other noise. I saw the outline of his gigantic paw across the rib-cage of one crazed creature which had overrun him, the mark outlined against the black and white stripes in scarlet blood. It was so swift and sudden that the zebra ran for fully thirty yards before it pitched head over heels in the sand, a shattered, bloody corpse.
The slaughter went on for half an hour. Then, like magic, the thunder of the hoofs stopped. The white bed of the river was red as the lions ripped at their victims. There must have been more than a hundred, each with his own kill. The nearest was perhaps fifty yards from our tree. He tore open the zebra's stomach and pawed among the bowels, still quivering with latent life. We watched fascinated, sickened. He scraped them on one side and then plunged his whole head into the hole in the carcass. The black mane emerged, soaked in blood. The black and scarlet looked like a flamenco singer's costume. He chewed some inner delicacy with gusto, uttering that same low purring.
The silence, except for the chewing noises like tearing sacking, was complete.
Stein's voice broke it.
"Down, all of you!" he rapped.
He was sitting on a branch below us. I looked at him incredulously.
"Hurry!" he went on.
"I'm staying," I said. Anne nodded in agreement, white-faced.
He made a faint gesture with the Luger and smiled.
"This is our moment," he said. "This sort of thing happens once in a generation. You said so. I'm playing my luck on this migratory compulsion complex of the zebra, as our American friends would call it. For once the rock passage is clear. All the lions are feeding. We can get through — now. There's nothing to stop us."
He was right. Dead right.
But he'd forgotten something.
"How about the return?" I asked.
His eyes gleamed.
"That's my problem," he replied shortly. "Get down!" he rapped.
We climbed down silently to the foot of the tree. Anne took my hand and her fingers were shaking. There was no avoiding the great beasts. Stein took the lead. I give him full marks for his guts. We passed within twenty-five yards of one of the huge animals, but it didn't even look up. Clear of the carcass-scattered sand, we broke into a run. We kept it up right through the gloomy tunnel with its overhanging ledge of death. The stench was unbelievable. I could set-that the water never reached quite as high as the ledge, but when the river foamed through the gap, it must have been a stupendous sight.
We ran on, panting and slipping.
Then we were through. In front the mountains drew back their fangs and I could see that we were not far from the Nangolo Flats, our turn off point into the forbidding mountains.
It froze that night when we made camp among the high peaks at an altitude of nearly seven thousand feet. As if relenting, the going had been easy all day. We left the river where the broad shelf of the combined Kapupa and Otjijange rivers meet the Cunene, striking south now instead of east. The view of the Baynes Mountains on our left as we rose steadily upwards, following the course of the Kapupa, was superb. About twelve miles from the river the Kapupa strikes down from the heart of the massive Baynes range and joins the Otjijange, which steps out from behind a huge dun peak, isolated, at the head of the valley. We followed the lead of the Kapupa — dry like all rivers in this territory — into the heart of the Otjihipo peaks, which are not ten miles from the Cunene as the crow flies. But between lies such an inextricable tumble of peaks and valleys, fretted with razor-edged kranzes and unscaleable cliffs, that it would be quite impossible to venture through them.
Stein pushed on eagerly. At the sharp easterly swing of the Kapupa into the mountains I would have liked to have had time to have studied a great fissure running south and east from the sentinel peak at the head of the valley, but Stein would not even pause. If the gap persisted, it must run roughly towards the Kandao Mountains which could — might — lead to the Orumwe valley where the caravel lay. I took careful mental bearings on the key peaks. It might be a way of escape. Even as sunset came and we were all panting at the unaccustomed altitude, Stein pushed on. Superb in all its primitive wonder, the great seven-thousand-rive-hundred-foot Baynes Mountain, dusted chalk-rose by the flaring sunset at our backs, stood as magnificently captain of the peaks as the huge lion at the rock tunnel entrance.
Even Stein was moved by the splendid panorama.
"We'll be right at the spot, or very nearly there, tonight," he enthused. "We'll start looking for Onymacris to-morrow."
Anne had scarcely spoken all day. She shrugged.
Now, with the coming of night, it was bitterly cold. The easterly wind, blowing in our faces all afternoon, had dropped. Anne sat by my side. Orion hunted over the Baynes Mountains and the Southern Cross hung lopsidedly over the Onjamu peaks towards Walvis Bay.
A slow light trailed across the frosty sky.
"Meteor or sputnik?" asked Anne. She felt for my hand. There was premonition in the cold flesh. Stein sat immobile, staring into the leaping flames. Half a dry tree was burning. It was the loneliest fire in the world. Anne and I sat close, scarcely exchanging a word. There were no words for what we felt, anyway. Her face was drawn in the light, not with fatigue, but with some inward tumult. Occasionally she glanced at me and smiled.
I rolled out her bedroll next to mine, our feet pointing at the flames. She squeezed my hand and pulled the blankets round her hair. I did likewise.
In about ten minutes she called softly.
"Geoffrey!" she said.
"Yes, Anne?"
The voice dropped until I could scarcely hear.
"Remember, I forgave you — everything?"