The Shores of Another Sea Read online

  In less than a minute the Baboonery was invisible behind them, screened by the bush and a slight dip in the land. It was an astonishing transition; Royce never got used to it. Within a few hundred yards he was in another world, an older world, and—perhaps—a better world.

  He knew that he could never describe it to anyone, not really. He had tried, in some of the hunting articles he had written, but he had never come close. It had to be experienced. It had to be seen and smelled and heard. A man had to bring something of himself to it. Some men, the dead ones that still walked, never could feel it. They were the men who might glance at a trout stream in the Rockies and see just another creek.

  There was the sky, that immense African sky that was like no other sky on earth. There was the land, now choked with thickets of thorny brush, now opening up into great meadows dotted with graceful flat-topped acacias and grotesque swollen-trunked baobabs. There were the colors, subdued now after the drought: long tawny grass the color of lions, red dust that powdered the earth, the dead gray-green of what was left of the vegetation. There were the birds, countless birds, birds on the ground and in the trees and darting through the clean air. Most of all, there was a feeling that time had no meaning here; time was somehow suspended. It was an illusion, of course, but it was a good illusion.

  The Land Rover pushed its way through a thick clump of brush. The tsetse flies came out in a cloud; they were always there, at that particular place, waiting. They settled on Royce and Mutisya, going for the patches of exposed skin. The devils hurt. It wasn’t just a matter of worrying about the sickness the flies sometimes carried. They were long, tough flies, and they bit until they drew blood. It was impossible to brush them away. You had to pick them off your skin and kill them one by one. Flies, Royce thought, were the curse of Africa. Flies and ants. The pretty picture books always left them out, but they were ubiquitous. He had seen the ants so thick that bedposts had to be placed in cans of gasoline before a person could sleep in safety. He had seen tsetse flies go after a herd of skinny cattle and turn their hides into raw sores. He had seen common flies so numerous in African villages that children would sit with flies in their noses and ears and eyes and refuse to make the hopeless effort to chase them away.

  Fortunately, the tsetse fly cannot live in open country. As soon as the Land Rover emerged from the thick brush the flies were gone. Royce didn’t expect to encounter them again until they passed through the same clump of brush on the way back to the Baboonery.

  He felt a wonderful sense of freedom, as though he had just been released from prison. Royce had never been a city man when he could avoid it, and this was a world where the city was only a faded memory of thronging unhappy people and jangling noises and filth that had once been air. Life could be dangerous here but it was not complicated. A man would win or lose on his own personal ability. He was not just a puppet jerking on a string.

  The Land Rover bumped to a stop as Kilatya engaged the low-ratio four-wheel drive. They went over the edge of the cut made by the Kikumbuliu River—little more than a trickle of water now—and splashed through the bed of the stream. The other bank was steep and it was hard to hang on as the Land Rover churned its way back up to level ground.

  The land opened up before them in a vast level plain. The trail ran along in a reasonably straight line that roughly paralleled the Kikumbuliu on their right. On the far side of the river there was a rocky ridge. On the near side there was only a sweep of sun-drenched miles that led away to the Tsavo. There was a light breeze blowing and it was cool and comfortable.

  Mutisya watched to the right and Royce to the left. There was nothing to it; the game was thick. In less than a minute Mutisya caught his arm and pointed. Royce caught a glimpse of gray with vertical white stripes. Kudu.

  Royce knocked with his fist on the top of the cab. Kilatya, as usual, kept on going. Royce leaned forward and hollered into the open window. “Simama!” he said. “Stop!”

  The Land Rover jerked to a quick halt as Kilatya hit the brakes, driving with his customary delicacy of touch. Royce was thrown forward almost over the cab. He grabbed his field glasses. It took him only a few seconds to pick the animals up. There were four or five kudu out there.

  He considered trying a shot from the Land Rover, where he could use the top of the cab as a rest for his heavy rifle. But even as he watched the antelopes moved away from him, screening themselves with brush. They were a good two hundred yards away.

  He jumped down to the ground. “Haya!” he said. “Come on!”

  Mutisya did not need to be told what to do. He had hunted kudu when Royce’s only knowledge of Africa had come from Tarzan books. Still, he smiled. He rather liked Royce, and he was used to redundant orders from white men.

  They struck off through the bush, keeping downwind from the kudu and making use of what cover there was. They moved fast; it was not difficult country in the dry season, and there was no particular need for caution. Royce had a healthy respect for mambas and puff adders, but they were no more common in Africa than rattlesnakes were in Texas and it was absurd to go about in constant fear of them. As for the dangerous animals—lion, elephant, rhino, water buffalo—a reasonable prudence was all that was necessary.

  He could not see the kudu but he knew where they were. They would not move very far unless they were seriously alarmed. They had a trick of running off for a short distance and then stopping. They would often stand quite still and look at a hunter until he fired.

  Mutisya spotted them first. He crouched down behind a bush, saying nothing. Royce dropped to one knee. He could see three of them clearly. One ram had his head up, listening. He was not over one hundred yards away.

  It was a piece of cake. Royce lifted the heavy .375 to his shoulder and peered through the scope. The kudu presented a natural target; Royce drew a bead just between the first two vertical white stripes. He squeezed the trigger. The big rifle bucked against his shoulder and the flat sound of the shot shattered the afternoon silence.

  The kudu dropped with the startling suddenness of a man clubbed with an iron crowbar. They wouldn’t have to track that one. The other animals ran off with the shot, bounding away with the white undersides of their tails showing curved up over their rumps.

  Royce was shaking a little, but he was grinning from ear to ear. It had been a clean shot. The regret would come later. There was still something in a man that responded to a kill—something, perhaps, that dated from a time when there was no latitude for sentiment.

  “Mzuri,” Mutisya said quietly. “Good.”

  Royce sent Mutisya back to tell Kilatya to bring up the Land Rover. Then he walked over and looked at his kill. The antelope was beautiful, even in death. The gray coat with the white stripes was dusty but sleek. The graceful horns were in good shape. It was a so-called lesser kudu, of course; Royce had never even seen the greater kudu. Nevertheless, it was quite an animal.

  It had the soft, sad eyes of death.

  The Land Rover pushed up through the brush like a tank. Royce opened the tail gate, and the three men wrestled the kudu into the back of the vehicle. It wasn’t an easy job; the kudu was over two hundred pounds of dead weight. When they got him inside, Royce put up the tail gate again.

  That was all there was to it.

  Royce pulled out his pipe and lit it. He glanced at his watch. It was only four-thirty. A good two hours of daylight left.

  Plenty of time. He did not want to go back to the Baboonery. He felt secure here, at ease. The feeling of being watched was somehow diminished. It was as though it was the Baboonery itself that was under observation, and when he moved away from it he moved outside a zone, like an animal stepping beyond the area swept by field glasses …

  If he went on, he might see Buck again.

  He told Kilatya to push on to the Tsavo and climbed in next to the dead kudu. The flies were beginning to gather around the darkening blood on the animal’s shoulder. He could smell the blood.

  He felt better whe
n the vehicle started and he could drink the cleansing wind.

  The land was softer now, and more mysterious. Much of its naked harshness was gone. The shadows cast by the lowering sun broke up the stark outlines and created depths, as though a flat picture had suddenly become three-dimensional. The world was very still except for the whine of the Land Rover’s engine.

  The trail angled away from the Kikumbuliu and stretched out in an easy descent across the sloping plain that led to the Tsavo. There was not much brush here and Royce could see for miles. There were elephant droppings along the pathway that looked fresh, but he could not locate the elephants. He saw a small herd of zebra in the distance, and that was all.

  He wondered what Mutisya was feeling, standing next to him in his old khaki shorts and a torn white undershirt. Mutisya did not know exactly how old he was, but he figured his age as about forty. His black face was smooth and unlined; the muscles in his bare legs were long and powerful. There was something enduring about Mutisya: he had been here before Royce came and he would be here after Royce was gone. He was a Kamba, as were all of the men who worked for the Baboonery; his incisors were filed down to points in the old tribal fashion. He was a good man, with the gift of dignity. Royce wished him well, whatever the future might hold for him.

  The Land Rover approached the drop-off that masked the valley of the Tsavo. Kilatya stopped without being told. It was possible to drive all the way to the river when the country was dry, but the game there spooked easily. It was better to walk.

  The three men walked quietly to the rim of the valley. The river seemed very near; it was in fact no more than three-quarters of a mile away. It looked placid and still from where they were, like a dark ribbon of oil. Actually, the water in the Tsavo was clear and the current was fairly swift. Africans drank from it all the time, but Royce had never tried it. He stuck to water that had been boiled and filtered.

  Royce lifted his glasses and surveyed the valley. There was a good deal of vegetation and there were even patches of green here and there. He picked up the giraffes first, off to his right. There were a lot of them, sixteen or seventeen that he could count. He swung the glasses and saw a troop of baboons out on the rocks by the river with one big old male standing guard. He wasted no time on them. He saw all the baboons he needed while he was working. He moved the glasses to his left.

  There they were.

  Four of them that he could see.

  No, five. Waterbucks. He studied them closely, his palms beginning to sweat. They were all males. There was something about waterbucks that got to him; it was just one of those things. They weren’t very good eating and most hunters thought little of them. But the waterbuck was a majestic animal. They were big fellows; there wasn’t an animal in the group that was much under four hundred pounds. They held their heads erect with their annulated horns almost motionless. They had a white ring around their rumps and patches of snowy white at their throats and eyes. Their coats were a gray-brown with a pronounced reddish tint.

  He looked at them intently but he did not see Buck. Buck was one in a million, an old bull that moved with the grace of a legend. He would hit five hundred pounds easily. Buck would be a record if he could get him, but it wasn’t the record that challenged Royce. Buck was … special. There is always one animal that stands as a symbol for a hunter, one animal that consummates the dream. For Royce, it was Buck. He had only seen him twice. Buck did not run with a herd, but he had been near groups of males when Royce had seen him.

  There was always a chance.

  “Come on,” he said.

  He started to walk into the valley. Mutisya came along without comment, but Kilatya hesitated. Royce turned and beckoned. Kilatya was a good tracker. Kilatya held back but finally came after them. He seemed very nervous.

  They walked down into the shadowed valley of the Tsavo, bearing to the left. It was very still. The soft call of a dove accentuated the silence. The dove called in a regular pattern, first two short calls and then a pause, and then four slightly longer calls with an emphasis on the next to last one. It sounded almost like an owl: hoo hoo … hoo hoo hoo hoo.

  Royce checked his watch. Five-thirty. They didn’t have much time left now.

  It was the killing time for the big cats.

  In fifteen minutes they were out on the valley floor and the ridge from which they had come was dark behind them. Royce had seen nothing: nothing had moved. He could not see the waterbucks now. He could see the heads and stalk-necks of the giraffes in the distance and that was all.

  Then, quite suddenly, he heard something.

  The sound was not loud but it was … disturbing. It was out of place. It did not belong.

  A humming noise, like a great generator. A faint whistling roar, not an animal’s cry, almost beyond the threshold of hearing …

  He looked up, trying to find the source of the sound. He saw, or thought he saw, an arc of white in the cloud-shadowed sky. It was like a phantom vapor trail but it did not persist. He had just a glimpse of it, curving down toward the earth, and then it vanished.

  He held his breath and listened. There was nothing. No sound of a crash, certainly. Even the humming was gone.

  The fading sun lost its warmth. Royce felt cold. The thing might have been a jet, certainly; the big planes sometimes passed over this area. And yet, somehow, he could not believe it. He had seen and heard plenty of jets and this one was wrong.

  Whatever it was, it had come down near the Baboonery. If it had been anything at all …

  Buck had been shoved out of his mind. It was getting late. Night would fall before they could get back to Kathy and the kids.

  He led Mutisya and Kilatya back up the ridge to the Land Rover, moving almost at a trot. All three men got into the cab. It was crowded but Royce was grateful for the nearness of the other men.

  Royce punched the starter. The engine caught on the second try. He switched on the lights and turned the Land Rover around. He picked up the trail and got moving. He hit forty, which was too fast for the road.

  It was pitch dark when they reached the steep Kikumbuliu crossing. Royce had a bad moment going up the bank but the four wheels dug in and pulled the vehicle over. He yanked the red-knobbed lever and went back into two-wheel drive. The worst was over now.

  He drove through the thick bush and he could feel the darkness pressing in around him. The twin beams of the headlights were like toy flashlights in a sea of black. He felt a momentary sense of panic, a drowning in an ocean of night, a sensation of shadows that were reaching out for him, swallowing him …

  They came out of the bush. The clearing was startling in its openness, its familiar solidity. He saw the warm lights of the Baboonery ahead of him.

  He knew at once that nothing was wrong. He shook his head. He was getting jumpy, acting like a child afraid of the dark. Maybe he had been out here too long.

  He drove the Land Rover past the baboon cages and stopped it under a floodlight that was some forty yards behind the barracks where the African staff lived. They unloaded the stiffening kudu and Royce gave Mutisya instructions to relay to Elijah, the foreman. The kudu had to be butchered without delay and the meat stored in the freezer.

  Royce moved the Land Rover to its usual parking place at the back of the main building. He got out and took the keys with him. He was very tired.

  He didn’t know what to tell Kathy. Had anything really happened? Kathy was not the nervous type, but he did not want to alarm her over nothing. Better wait, he decided. If she had not noticed anything peculiar he could take a look around tomorrow. For what, he did not know.

  He looked up at the stars blazing in the great night sky. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, he looked out into the bush. The lights of the Baboonery were only a fragile island in a sea of darkness. The vastness of the African night lapped at the edges of the light, trying to get in.

  Royce felt very much alone.

  Even as he stood there, the drums started up from somewhere near the
railroad. Royce smiled a little. It was nothing more than a dance over at Kikumbuliu Station. Still, he could have done without the drums tonight. The world did not seem as neatly predictable as it once had.

  He took a firm grip on his .375 and went inside to eat his dinner.

  2

  Royce woke up the next morning to the sound of excited voices. There was no shouting, nothing alarming. Just a babble of voices drifting through the open window. Ordinarily, the sound would not have been enough to awaken him. He must have been tense, he thought, sleeping on the edge …

  He sat up straight in the bed, instantly alert. Kathy stirred drowsily at his side.

  “What’s going on?” she muttered into her pillow.

  Royce strained to make some sense out of the voices. Everyone seemed to be talking at once. They were all speaking in Kamba, which didn’t help any. Royce’s knowledge of Swahili left something to be desired but his Swahili was better than his Kamba. He did catch the word nguli. Baboon.

  “Just some problem with the monkeys,” he said. “Go on back to sleep. The kids are still out cold.”

  He piled out of bed, jerked on his pants and a shirt, and slipped his bare feet into some scuffed loafers. He left the bedroom at a moderately civilized pace and closed the door behind him. He hesitated a moment at the gun safe on the breezeway, decided that he did not need a weapon, and ran outside.

  The men were all gathered in a knot over by the baboon cages. The baboons had caught the air of excitement and were very active, banging around in their cages and making explosive coughing noises. Royce had heard that sound many times in his work with baboons—it sounded exactly like the noise a man would make if you crept up behind him and stuck a big, dull knife in his back. There was a strong smell of urine.

  Royce joined the men. The reason for all the commotion was plain enough. Two of the sturdy baboon cages had been ripped open. One cage was empty. In the other one there was a male baboon—a big fellow weighing some fifty pounds—dead on the floor of the cage. His great white teeth were exposed in a snarl of pain. He looked as though he had been torn apart. One leg had been wrenched from its socket; it was attached to the animal only by a strip of bloody hide.