Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
The nights, when they slept on the bare deck, were murmurous, troubled by great clouds of stinging insects, and in the dawn their faces were swollen and bloated with red lumps.
On the third day the papyrus began to give way to open flood plains. The breeze could reach them now, and blew away the clouds of insects and filled the lug sail they set. They went on at better speed and came to where the other branches of the river all joined up to form one great flow almost three cables" length in width.
The flood plains on each bank of this mighty river were verdant with a knee-high growth of rich grasses, grazed by huge herds of buffalo. Their numbers were uncountable, and they formed a moving carpet as far as Hal could see, even when he shinned up the pinnace's mast. They stood so densely upon the plain that large areas of the grasslands were obscured by their multitudes. They were tarry lakes and running rivers of bovine flesh.
The outer fringes of these herds lined the banks of the river and stared across the water at them, their drooling muzzles lifted high and their bossed heads heavy with drooping horns. Hal steered the boat in closer and fired the falconet into the thick of them. With that single discharge he brought down two young cows. That night, for the first time, they camped ashore and feasted on buffalo steaks roasted on the coals.
For many days, they went on following the stately green flow, and the flood plains on either hand gradually gave way to forests and glades. The river narrowed, became deeper and stronger and their progress was slower against the current. On the eighth evening after leaving the ship, they went ashore to camp in a grove of tall wild fig trees.
Almost immediately they came upon signs of human habitation. It was a decaying stockade, built of heavy logs. Within its wooden walls were pens that Hal thought must have been for enclosing cattle or other beasts.
"Slavers!" said Aboli bitterly. "This is where they have chained my people like animals. In one of these bomas, perhaps this very one, my mother died under the weight of her sorrow."
The stockade had been long abandoned but Hal could not bring himself to camp on the site of so much human misery. They moved a league upstream and found a small island on which to bivouac. The next morning they went on along the river through forest and grassland innocent of any further evidence of man. "The slavers have swept the wilderness with their net," Aboli said sorrowfully. "That is why they have abandoned their factory and sailed away. It seems that there are no men or women of our tribe who have survived their ravages. We must abandon the search, Gundwane, and turn back."
"No, Aboli. We go on."
"All around us is the ancient memory of despair and death," Aboli pleaded. "These forests are inhabited only by the ghosts of my people."
"I will decide when we turn back, and that time is not yet come," Hal told him, for in truth he was becoming fascinated by this strange new land and the plethora of wild creatures with which it abounded. He felt a powerful urge to travel on and on, to follow the great river to its source.
The next day, from the bows, Hal spied a range of low hillocks a short distance north of the river. He ordered them to beach the boats and left Big Daniel and his seamen to repair the leaks in the hull of the first caused by the hippopotamus attack. He took Aboli with him and they set off to climb the hills for a better view of the country ahead. They were further off than they had appeared to be, for distances are deceptive in the clear air and under the bright light of the African sun. It was late afternoon when they stepped out onto the crest and gazed down upon the limitless distances where forests and hills replicated themselves, rank upon rank and range upon range, like images of infinity in mirrors of shaded blue.
They sat in silence, awed by the immensity of this wild land. At last Hal stood up reluctantly. "You are right, Aboli. There are no men here. We must return to the ship."
Yet he felt deep within him a strange reluctance to turn his back upon this tremendous land. More than ever, he felt drawn to its mystery and the romance of its vast spaces.
"You will have many strong sons," Sukeena had prophesied. "Their descendants will flourish in this land of Africa and make it their own."
He did not yet love this land. It was too strange and barbaric, too alien from all he had known in the gentler climes of the north, but deeply he felt the magic of it in his blood. The silence of dusk fell upon the hills, that moment when all creation held its breath before the insidious advance of the night. He took one last look, sweeping the horizon where, like monstrous chameleons, the hills changed colour.
Before his eyes they turned sapphire, azure, and the blue of a kingfisher's back. Suddenly he stiffened.
He grasped Aboli's arm and pointed. look!" he said softly. From the foot of the next range a single thin plume of smoke rose out of the forest and climbed up into the violet evening air.
"Men!" Aboli whispered. "You were right not to turn back so soon, Gundwane."
They went down the hill in darkness and moved through the forest like shadows. Hal AT guided them by the stars, fixing his eye upon the great shining Southern Cross that hung above the hill at the foot of which they had marked the column of smoke. After midnight, as they crept forward with increasing caution, Aboli stopped so abruptly that Hal almost ran into him in the darkness.
"Listen!" he said. They stood in silence for minute after minute.
Then Hal said, "I hear nothing."
"Wait!" Aboli insisted, and then Hal heard it. It was a sound once so commonplace, but one that he had not heard since he had left Good Hope. It was the mournful lowing of a cow.
"My people are herders," Aboli whispered. "Their cattle are their most treasured possessions." He led Hal forward cautiously until they could smell the woodsmoke and the familiar bovine odour of the cattle pen. Hal picked out the puddle of faintly glowing ash that marked the campfire.
