A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 64
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"I'll look after her for you, sir," he agreed. "You just go kill that elephant. We'll be here when you come back."
Working in the moonlight, they moved out of the burned-out village and built a fly camp a few hundred meters back in the forest.
They made a lean-to shelter for Claudia and under it placed a mattress of cut grass. Sean left the medical kit and most of their remaining provisions in the shelter with her. He detailed both Job and Dedan to remain with Claudia. Job would keep the light 30/06 rifle with the fiberglass stock, and Dedan had his ax and skinning knife.
"Send Dedan back to keep an eye on the isthmus. Any Frelimo or Renamo patrols will come that way. At the first sign of trouble, get the girl into the swamp and hide out on one of the islands."
Sean gave Job his final orders, then sauntered across to where Riccardo was taking leave of his daughter.
"Are you ready, Capo?"
Riccardo stood up quickly and walked away from Claudia without looking back.
"Don't get into any more trouble," Sean told her.
"You neither." She looked up at him. "And Sean, take care of Papa for me."
He squatted down in front of her and offered her his hand as he would have if she had been a man. He tried to think of something witty to say but could not.
"Okay, then?" he asked instead.
"Okay, then," she agreed. He stood up and walked down to the edge of the swamp where Matatu, Pumula, and Riccardo were waiting for him beside the dugout canoe.
Matatu took up his position in the bow of the frail craft, while Sean and Riccardo were amidships, sitting on their depleted packs and holding their rifles across their laps. Pumula stood in the stern with one of the freshly cut punt poles and propelled the dugout in response to Matatu's hand signals.
Within seconds of pushing off from the bank they were surrounded by a high palisade of papyrus and their view was restricted to the wall of reeds and the small patch of lemon-yellow dawn sky overhead. As they passed, the sharp, pointed leaves of the reeds dashed into their faces, threatening their eyes, and the webs the tiny swamp spiders had spun between the stems of the reeds wrapped over their faces, sticky and irritating. The night's clammy chill hung over the swamp, and when they came out suddenly into an open lagoon, there was a heavy mist lying over the surface and a flock of whistling ducks alarmed the dawn with the clatter of their wings.
The dugout was heavily overloaded with the four men aboard.
There was only an inch or so of freeboard, and if any one of them moved suddenly, water slopped on board. They were forced to use the tea billy to bail almost continually, but Matatu signaled them on.
The sun rose above the papyrus, and immediately the mist twisted into rising tendrils and was gone. The water lilies opened their cerulean blossoms and turned them to face the sunrise. Twice the four saw large crocodiles lying with just their eye knuckles exposed. They sank below the surface as the dugout slid toward them.
The swamp was alive with birds. Bitterns and secretive night herons lurked in the reed beds and little chocolate-brown jacanas danced over the lily pads on their long legs, while goliath herons as tall as a man fished the back waters of the lagoons. Overhead flew formations of pelicans and white egrets, cormorants and darters with serpentine necks, and huge flocks of wild ducks of a dozen Merent species.
The heat built up swiftly and was reflected from the surface of the water into their faces so that the two white men were soon sweating through their shirts. At places the water was only a few inches deep and they were forced to climb out and drag the dugout through to the next channel or lagoon. Under the matted reeds the mud was black and foul-smelling and reached to their knees.
In the shallower places the elephant's pads had left deep circular water-filled craters in the mud banks The spoor of the old bull led them ever deeper into the swamplands, but there was consolation in the swift progress the dugout made across the lagoons and channels, thrust on by the long punt pole. For a while Sean spelled Pumula in the stern, but soon Pumula could no longer abide his clumsy strokes and took the pole away from him.
There was room for only one man to stretch out in the bottom of the dugout. Riccardo slept in it that night while the others sat waist deep in the mud, leaning against the hull of the canoe and taking what rest the clouds of mosquitoes allowed them.
Early the following morning, when Sean stood up out of the mud, he found that his bare legs were swarming with black leeches.
The repulsive worms were attached to his skin, bloated with the blood they had sucked from him. Sean used a little of their precious supply of salt to rid himself of them. To pull them loose would leave a wound into which the leech had injected anticoagulants and which would continue to bleed profusely and probably become infected. However, a dab of salt on each leech made them twist and contort with agony and then fall off, leaving only a scaled wound on the skin.
When he opened his trousers, Sean found they had crawled up into the cleft between his buttocks and were hanging like black grapes from his genitalia. He shuddered with horror as he worked on them, while safely in the dugout Riccardo watched with interest and made a facetious comment: Hey, Sean, this must be the first time you've ever objected to a bit of head!"
Sean set the end of the punt pole in the mud and steadied it while Matatu shinned up it like a monkey and peered ahead. When he came down he told Sean, "I can see the islands. We are very close.
We will be there before noon, and unless Tukutela has heard us, he will be on one of the islands."
Sean knew from flights over the area and from study of his large-scale map that the islands formed a chain between the swamplands and the main channel of the Zambezi. They dragged the dugout through the shallows, Sean hauling on the nylon rope tied to the bow and Purnula and Matatu shoving in the stern.
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