"What is it?" Anne asked me in a whisper of fear.
"Back a little," said Stein.
The four of us withdrew from the gloom of the narrow defile towards the brighter light where the sand of the river still caught, whitely, the sun from overhead, despite the tree-lined banks. It was about ten the next day and we had marched since eight. Stein had had nothing to say when we returned to camp the previous evening from the old ship. I had lain awake long with my own thoughts, and now and then I had heard Anne turning restlessly, too.
For the two hours of the morning's march the river bed had gained altitude considerably, and the gorge narrowed sharply. Now, at a point which I estimated to be half-way between the previous night's camping-spot and our turn-off point down the Nangolo valley flats, a huge spur of the Ongeamaberge threw itself, as if in despair to link up with peaks on the Portuguese side, right into the course of the river, leaving a passage so narrow that in flood time the water must have shot through with the velocity of an open faucet.
We had come upon the narrow gap after rounding a steep bend.
Now we fell back towards some huge trees a couple of cables' lengths from the gap.
Stein turned to me venomously.
"You never mentioned this," he said furiously. "Is there still another cataract? What is that — that animal?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Let's go and have a look," I said ironically. "Give me the gun."
Johann burst into a cackle.
"If there's any shooting to be done, we'll do it," he snapped. "What is that animal — is it dangerous? Can we get past without its tackling us?"
"How should I know?" I retorted.
"You soon will," he said. He spoke to Johann in his own language again. Reluctantly the U-boat sailor passed him the Remington. Stein carried all the arms now. But he wasn't going to take any chances. He took the Luger in his right hand and swung the rifle under his left.
"Forwards," he said to me. "You and the girl wait here, Johann. If there's any shooting, come after us."
I led. We rounded the bend again, gloomy and overhanging. The giant shadow moved. He was standing sentry.
I looked up the gorge and my heart froze. The river bed had narrowed until it had cut its way through solid rock. There must have been another sharp bend a little higher up, for the water had swathed away the rock on our left until it looked for all the world like the last lap of the Cresta run, smooth, polished rock instead of snow, with a shallow runnel above extending for maybe three hundred yards. If a toboggan can touch ninety miles an hour on the Cresta, my guess was that the Cunene in flood came round this bed with the speed of Nautilus. Above the gigantic furrow of rock was a ledge running the whole length of the bed. I thought it was in black shadow.
The shadows were gigantic black lions.
Stein drew back in amazement and fear.
"A lion!" he exclaimed. "But it cannot be! There is no living lion as big as that!"
The sentry beast got to its feet from a crouching position and looked over at us, measuring the distance. For the first time I saw the tawny coat as well as the enormous black mane which enveloped not only its head and shoulders, but its back and chest. It was the size of an ox, though not as tall.
"Not one lion, Stein," I said. "Look, the whole ledge is crawling with them!"
I laughed in his face.
"Now find the ace," I sneered at him. "Remember what I said — ' famous last words.' You'll have to go back. Stein."
"Never!" he shouted. "I'11 shoot every one…"
"Don't be a bloody fool," I said. "How many do you think you'd get before they'd get you? Look at that, man!"
There were stirrings on the ledge and a whole troop of eyes swivelled on to us. The great brute at the mouth of the rock tunnel opened his mouth and purred softly. It was the most frightening noise I have ever heard. The great black heads, majestic, contemptuous, watched lazily, vigilantly, every muscle at the ready.
"It's the Cape lion!" screamed Stein. A quiver ran through the beast when he heard the noise of the human voice. "My God! It's been extinct for over a century. The old Cape hunters said it was the most dangerous animal in Africa! They shot it out on the plains. Now — the Skeleton Coast is its last retreat."
I gazed in fascinated awe at the huge beast poised on the ledge. Stein's was the only explanation. I was looking at history, looking at antiquity. Deadly, hellishly dangerous antiquity! The Skeleton Coast guarded its gateway with the world's oldest and deadliest animal! I felt weak at the knees. I also knew that Stein and his crazy expedition was at an end.
I said so.
"This is the point of no return, Stein," I said roughly. "You couldn't get past that lot, even with a tommy-gun. I doubt whether a high velocity two-two would even halt one of those brutes."
Stein rounded on me so savagely that I thought he would use the Luger.
"You capitulate, Captain Peace, but I don't! We go on, even if we have to go round the mountains."
"What is it you're so keen to find there in the Otjihipo mountains?" I said bluntly. "Not some piddling beetle. Is it a cache of diamonds?"
He looked surprised. He wasn't lying.
"No, Captain Peace, not a cache of diamonds. Something much more valuable. The Onymacris beetle. Found only in the Gobi Desert and North Borneo once. No longer."
He must be mad, I decided.
"Let us go back and talk this over with the others," he said, and there was nothing irrational in the way he said it. "But understand, we are going on — at whatever cost."
We retreated cautiously again, with a careful eye on the huge black-covered face.
We were starting to emerge when I heard the noise at our backs.
"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.