The small conical tower, about four feet high, was silhouetted against the moon.
It was made of tiny flints, each one worked with infinite care, morticed together. I dragged myself into a sitting position. The little tower was firmly fixed in a concave rock structure. It was against the side of this that I had struck my head. The flints all amalgamated into one larger pattern, a long fluted spiral which twisted round like a fire escape to the top of the structure. The concave rock in which it rested must have been about six feet across.
The animals, still in Indian file, kept station behind me. I cursed them for not putting an end to it all.
Then everything went blank.
I thought I had passed out again, but it was fog. Thick, enveloping fog, so tightly woven of land heat and sea-cool that I couldn't even see the strange conical tower a hand's-breadth away.
I heard the tinkle of water. I knew then that I was dying. Yours was a much easier death, Anne, I said aloud. A bullet is neat and swift. Johann has had his revenge. I am dying more slowly than he could ever have wished.
The hyena came right up to my feet. I stared fascinated into the reddish eyes. He stank worse than anything I have ever smelt, before or since. I wondered if my breath was as bad. I debated how he would begin, and what the first bite would feel like. But he wasn't looking at me. He was looking past my head at the conical tower. The other animals crowded closer, but still didn't move out of position.
Water was dripping down the conical stonework, gathering momentum as it accumulated more from the lower flints, and was dripping into the stone basin. There must have been a cupful even as I watched. I didn't wait. I thrust my head under the stone funnel and felt cold, pure water pour into my parched throat. As it dripped across my face and mouth I saw that the fog was condensing against the stones and precipitating into the stone basin. What dead race — for this was human construction — had made this ingenious drinking fountain? The principle was simple: adiabatic warming. The flints had been heated in the same way as a bicycle pump heats up when used; by a change in air pressure, The air pressure in this case changed steeply between mountain slope and sea level, heating itself. The stone flints absorbed it, retained it, and when the cold sea fog struck the little tower, pure moisture condensed. The simplicity of genius!
For how many centuries had this ingenious source of life in a country of death been working? The heavy sea fog was miraculously converted to channelled, life-giving water. The water was running in a steady stream and I let it wash away the sand from my head and face.
The animals stood and watched, crowding, but none came forward to drink. I realised with amazement what was happening. They were waiting for me to finish! I had been ú first in the queue. The life-giving liquid was so precious that it had impressed a code of behaviour even on these savage animals. They were waiting in line while the one in front drank from the fountain! I took another long drink and pulled myself to one side. The hyena came forward eagerly and drank. He paid no attention to me or the other animals. Water had declared eternal truce among the wild creatures. He drank long and eagerly, waiting for the water to accumulate in the stone basin. He must have taken a quarter of an hour over it.
Then he withdrew and one of the jackals came forward. The ritual was repeated as each reached the basin. Tin n was no hurrying, no jostling, no fighting for place. The priceless fluid dripped from the tooled flints. I waited until I had drunk, and then I drank again, as much as I could take.
If I kept going all night, I would be on the beach in the morning.
As I left the ancient drinking-fountain another stinking animal passed me. He took no notice, but his tongue was almost black with thirst and he was panting heavily. A strandwolf! A savage, nomadic animal called a wolf which wanders the surf-line of the beaches preying on carrion swept up by the sea. He took no notice of me and brushed past as I regained the main track.
I found the surf-boat at sunrise. The sea was shrouded in fog. Etosha would be out there all right. The tide was receding from the causeway. I could imagine John's surprise when a scarecrow emerged, literally from the sea! It was perfectly calm.
I went across to the boat to see if there was anything left of the Kroo boy.- There wasn't. A narrow pathway of sand stretched out in the grey light, pointing out to sea. I started to walk out along the causeway. The sea was a curious metallic grey. A wave slopped over my feet and I stopped to straighten the torn boot. My hand came away oily and sticky.
Oil!
With the clarity of mind which follows complete fatigue, I saw it all in a flash.
The charts — they all said "discoloured water."
Discoloured — with oil!
Onymacris — the oil beetle of the North Borneo and Gobi oilfields!
NP I — she didn't have to refuel, she was atomic driven! I had set the sea on fire round her. And the sea had burned because it was — oil! Natural oil!
The Onymacris beetle — that is why Stein was prepared to do murder, anything, to find it. He knew the connection.
Everywhere where Onymacris is found, there is oil. It's a surer pointer than any wildcat. And they'd struck oil in Angola, only a couple of hundred miles north of the South African border.
Oil! The whole of Curva dos Dunas anchorage was oil! So much oil that it filled the sea as it burst up from its untapped billions of gallons beneath. And Curva dos Dunas was mine! Except in the Sahara, they'd never struck oil richly in Africa. And here it was, the same kind of pitiless desert, bursting with oil! Stein went for the mountains first — he must have had a strong hunch — but if only Anne had seen the Onymacris as I had done within five miles of the sea! The whole sand had seemed to crawl with them as I lay there.
I limped slowly out towards where Etosha lay with my seaboots coated in oil.