I got as far as the turn-off when the north-westerly gale started. Had I been in better shape my mind might have registered the fact that the wind, instead of being behind me from the east, had backed rapidly into the north-west. At sea a sudden backing into the north-west in winter time means only one thing. An enormous sea builds up and chops against the great Benguela current. For miles the sea bucks like a tormented thing. The winter north-west gales have twice the lash of the perpetual south-westerlies; the most remarkable thing about them is that the wind, blowing one moment high up in the Beaufort scale, will suddenly end, as if cut off by a knife. The sea remains anguished, while complete calm prevails. Then comes fog — the thickest fog I have ever encountered at sea.
I might have tried for water sooner had it registered that the wind had changed. But I was pushing mindlessly for the turn-off. The full realisation struck me when I emerged from the sheltering funnel of the cliff-bound river into the open. A solid curtain of sand struck me. I couldn't see where I was. The sun was hidden in the murk of white, gale-lashed sand. The gale seemed to bring every particle of sand with it which lay between me and the mouth of the river, ten miles away. I retreated a quarter of a mile the way I had come, but it was too late. The gale was now funnelling up the narrow bed and, if anything, the sand was even worse than in the open. Eyes smarting and streaming, my nose and mouth blocked with sand, I staggered back into the' open delta, keeping as far to my left as I could. I sank down and tried to make a small cup in the sand — anything to get water. It was hopeless. I couldn't even get a wet finger-tip. I remembered how we had had to go down almost four feet, Stein and I, for water here. My mouth was so full of sand that I retched weakly. It made things worse. Now I couldn't get rid of either the sand or the vomit in my mouth. Turning my back to the sand-driven whiteness, I scooped the muck out of my mouth with my fingers. This is where I had counted on one last long drink before my trek to Curva dos Dunas. If I stayed, I might wait for three or four days before the gale blew itself out. They seldom last less than that. I knew I'd be dead long before then. The only thing was to strike south — if I could find the elephant track along the edge of the sand delta, the wind screaming and plucking, bitter with sand. Now I knew why the feel of the sand had tormented Johann.
After about three hours I found the track. I stumbled southwards.
By sunset I knew I was finished.
Blind with sand and heat, my knees sagged and I fell full length off the right hand side of the track. The bright white sand of the Cunene had given way to grey, gritty filth. My ears, eyes, nostrils, mouth and throat were encased in one remorseless band of sand. The wind was an invisible thug choking me with a thong of sand. I fell clear of the path. I regained consciousness perhaps half an hour later as darkness fell. I felt strangely detached. My hair was half sunk in sand now. I was a dead man for all intents and purposes. I watched a small beetle suddenly shoot out from the sand not a foot in front of my eyes. Then another, and another. They catapulted up as suddenly as a submarine with her tanks blowing.
Then my detachment, the detachment of approaching death, vanished. I struck out hysterically, blindly, madly, at the half dozen or so tiny grey beetles.
Onymacris! I was so weak that I only succeeded in crushing them into the sand without doing them any real harm. They swarmed out of reach of my feebly striking hand.
Onymacris! The name was a curse. Why, I raved, had we not found them here, here within reach of Curva dos Dunas? My sense of grief and of helpless rage jerked me into a sitting position.
The big hyena, as tattered and sandblasted as myself, sat ten feet away looking at me. We gazed at one another. So the scavenger had arrived even before his victim was dead. I threw a handful of sand at him in impotent rage, but he simply paid no attention. Unable to rise to my feet, I dragged myself twenty yards farther away, off the path. The foul animal followed. I thought I could detect the stink of him — then a shock of realisation ran like a drink of life-giving water through me.
The wind had stopped.
I dragged myself farther from my tormentor. It was almost dark. The hyena advanced, and then stopped the same distance away. I saw two other smaller forms behind him. Jackals! I prayed that I would be dead before they started in on me.
The moon rose. I kept on dragging myself, away, but the animals followed. I saw to my horror that there were now about half a dozen of them, all in single file behind the hyena. He kept the same distance between himself and me. I let my head drop weakly. It didn't crunch on sand. It was packed hard. It was some sort of minor game track I had been dragging myself along.
I got semi-consciously on to all fours and struggled onwards — away from that dreadful queue of scavengers. They kept station on me with the precision of a destroyer line. I half got to my feet, but my knees would not hold me and I rolled down the slope. My tormentors followed at a slow trot. My head struck against a rock. I was beyond caring. I rolled over to avoid it.
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!