A Cleft Of Stars

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The individual drops were huge, falling cold and raw on to our naked bodies and making muddy little explosions all round us. The horizon was down and the east was a dirty grey the rest of the sky was low and black and hostile. There was a hot, wet smell from the demolished cairn, like steam round an old fashioned locomotive. Our cold bodies clung together and I noticed the tiny rivulets of rain that chased down her breasts and puckered nipples. So we lay in an ebb tide of reaction until pools from the downpour began to form round us. Then there was another small rockfall. We couldn't stay where we were.

We sat up. Her face was white and strained and her eyes great dark pools. She drew my own face against hers and made a tent over our heads with her long hair. It was halfdry inside and warm compared with the cold rain, and the smell of her hair and skin was sweet in my nostrils. She touched my cheeks and eyes and lips with her finger-tips, then kissed me with cold lips.

'It's the big thing. We'll never know about it unless we have it here'

'Darling,' I said. 'Darling, darling.'

The rain broke through her hair and drew an icy line between us where our bodies met.

'We'll come back. It's not for now. The moment's past'

What made the bolt strike the cairn?'

°Some special attraction in those stones, perhaps. The Hill people didn't see it as a heap of stones but as a person, a sort of deity who kept a watchful eye on lovers in order to bind them in their vows.'

I laughed shakily. 'It certainly put on a king-size show for us.'

'Queen-size.' She tried to smile, too. 'Which reminds me. All I've gat on is the queen's ring, It's a good thing I didn't leave my clothes in a heap at the spring instead of here.'

We found our soaking garments and dressed while the rain drove down and it became darker. It must have been about breakfast-time. Nadine had her flying-jacket and tucked her hair under the hood. It seemed to emphasize the shadows under her eyes. I hunched up my shoulders and tried to protect myself against the rain but it was useless. Suddenly I exclaimed. 'We've lost the "King's Messenger"!' '

No, Guy, here it is. I still had sense enough when I left the spring to put it in my pocket.'

I surveyed the tabletop with dismay. 'No "King's Messenger" or anything else is going to be much use to us now, Nadine.'

'What a shambles!'

Between us and the way into the underground chamber a crevasse about ten feet wide had opened. It narrowed in the direction of the secret stairway and widened on the opposite side facing the river. Thousands of tons of soil and rock had collapsed into it, forming a rubble-littered sloping ramp from the summit to the terrace.

The implication struck us both.

It's the end of The Hill, Guy! Look, anyone can simply walk to the top now. It's not even a climb.'

'The rock supporting the tabletop must have been eroded and rotten and ready to split and the thunderbolt did the rest. We must get off here — quick. Look there!'

We were only about a dozen feet away from the crevasse, and soil and rocks were tumbling into it as the rain undermined them. Nadine looked with anguish towards the underground chamber.

The isifuba board, Guy! We just can't abandon it!'

The whole place has probably caved in. We can't risk our necks trying to find out. Anyway, the crevasse is too wide to get across.'

'Where can we go, Guy?'

'My boat — down that ramp. It's the only route left open.'

Another tremor shook The Hill.

'It's breaking up under us, Nadine! Hurry!'

The tattoo of rain sent muddy runnels pouring over the lip of the crevasse but we picked a spot which didn't look too dangerous. I went first. It was only an eight-foot drop to the ramp but it felt like eight hundred. I was muddied to the knees when I landed and so was Nadine in spite of my help. Soaked, cold and dejected, we struggled and sloshed down the slope with our arms linked. The farther we plodded, the trickier the going became, as we stubbed our feet and shins against obstacles we couldn't see. The rain, too, became heavier.

'It's developing into a cloudburst!' I called out. 'If this goes on the river will come down!'

There was a heavy rumble and we froze in our tracks, wondering whether a new avalanche was on its way which might overwhelm us, but it was thunder we heard. Flickering tongues of lightning leapt from cloud to cloud, illuminating the terrace below us like a gigantic flash-bulb. It was the onset of a new spectacular display which blinded, deafened and frightened us. At the same time the wind steadied into the north-east and, since we were heading north, it whipped the sheets of rain into our faces, which had the effect of making the downpour seem to increase in intensity. Everything was now a water-swept haze; the sun, too, had given up and all there was left in the way of light was an opaque dimness, like twilight.

We still had about halfway to go down the moraine-like incline and plugged ahead doggedly, heads down, slipping and stumbling, sometimes falling waist-deep into softer patches until we looked like scarecrows. Finally, at the level of the terrace, the crevasse broadened out to about three times its upper width. On the open terrace we felt more exposed to the vivid flashes of lightning and one of these underwrote our danger when it struck the wire fence and blazed along it like a magnesium flare. We made our way as quickly as we could through ankle-deep water and where the terrace ended, fronting the river, we found torrents of dirty water pouring over like a small flood. We negotiated the wire where I had originally cut it and it was like crawling under a small waterfall. The thought of another lightning strike to the wire lent wings to our crossing feet and we breathed easier when we were safely through and across the ladder with which I had bridged the rolls of wire. Then we reached the outer limits of the river bed proper and squelched our way slowly and tediously through a semi-liquid mess of mud until we located the boat by the palm clump, and crawled thankfully aboard out of the storm's uproar.

It was dry and snug in the tiny, low cabin and stuffy, too, because the air in it had heated during the blazing days and had had no opportunity to disperse. The main cabin was for'ard and there was another smaller one aft: they were linked by an open, self-draining cockpit. I had named her the Empress of Baobab because she had bulges where no craft should have had bulges. As a boat she was a herring-gutted bitch; as a sanctuary from the storm she was heaven. It was difficult to hear one another speak above the drumbeat of the rain on the cabin's thin aluminium roof.

'Get dry and help yourself to some of my clothes from the locker,' I told Nadine. 'I'm going over the side with a rope to make her fast. I'm scared of a sudden flood. If the river does come down we could be wrecked.'

Isn't there an engine?'

'Of sorts. It's seen better, days. It wouldn't hold her head into a flood.'

The wind caused me more concern than the rain which it brought slanting and cutting into my face when I opened the door. At sea it would have been considered a moderate gale. It blustered in from one direction only, the north-east, and this is what puzzled and worried me. A normal thunderstorm is usually accompanied by strong erratic gusts, but judging by the lightning flashes, the force of this one was already falling off in intensity. Yet the powerful wind continued. I took a rope and dropped into the mud, which gave off a kind of stale flatus. The palm seemed firmly enough anchored though its trunk was whipping and the tattered fronds streamed like a battle ensign. I was making the rope fast when a brilliant flash spotlit the streaming river front. By its light I saw a propeller turning in the wind some distance up the main river channel and I realized immediately that it was von Praeger's plane. I finished double-lashing the moorings and then hurried back to Nadine.

'Now we know where von Praeger landed,' I explained. 'I wouldn't have thought it possible unless I'd seen for myself.'

Nadine had changed into a shirt, sweater and pants of mine. She'd rolled tip the bottoms and tied back her wet hair. There was an air about her almost as withdrawn as on that day I had seen her in the trench during the expedition, and her eyes were equally inscrutable.

She replied almost detachedly, 'A plane can't offer him any shelter'

'No. But I know that if I had been in his place I would have beaten it to Rankin's cave post-haste once The Hill started falling down.'

Her eyelids flickered when I said 'The Hill' as though I'd been discussing a person.

'Yes.' Her tone remained non-committal.

'I've got a solid-meths stove in the for'ard cabin and some coffee — I think we could both use some. While I'm still soaked I'

ll run and fetch it.'

I wondered what was eating her and I found out when I had changed and we'd had our coffee almost in silence.

'Guy — are we going to run away? Is this the end of The Hill for us?'

'I hadn't thought that far, Nadine. We needed shelter and safety and the-boat was our obvious bet.'

'Do you want to go back, Guy?'

'My innocence is locked up there and so is whatever Praeger is after.'

'The other half of the Cullinan.''If we accept that, it makes a mockery of Rankin's admission. He said cut diamonds, not one diamond but many, and certainly never mentioned one great diamond.'

'It would have been much simpler if he hadn't dragged in that business of the hyena's blanket.'

'That takes us right back to square one, Nadine.'

She came swiftly and knelt in front of the low locker I sat on and rested her arms on my knees.

'We must go back, Guy! We must!'

'If there's anything left to go back to.'

'We must be sure! We know we were on to something with the isifuba board. We can't throw it away.'

'The decision may be taken out of our hands,' I said. 'Listen to that!'

The boat rocked under a more powerful gust from the north-east. The rain went on hammering on the deck but the electric storm had clearly lost steam.

'It's ominous,' I went on. 'It's not an ordinary storm. My guess is that it was a thunderstorm at the start but that wasn't the major thing in itself: it was the small stuff on the fringe of a major blow-up. You don't get rain and wind like this from anything as local as a thunderstorm. It's coming in from the sea. And if I read the signs right, it's a cyclone which has run amok inland from the Indian Ocean, which isn't more than a few hundred miles from here as the crow flies. It's pouring in on that north-easter and it scares the pants off me, especially in this cockleshell.'

'Let's get back ashore, then.'

'That's impossible: we're too late. Feel that. She's just starting to ride the water. I went up to my waist in muck over the side just now. There's already enough water in the river to drown us before we could reach firm ground'

Are we simply going to wait for the river to sweep us away?'

The boat lurched farther upright and began to snatch at its mooring.

'Now's our moment of decision, Nadine. We're so to say afloat. If we're to keep the idea of somehow getting back to The Hill as soon as possible we'll have to fight the river. Otherwise we can simply hang around until we judge there's enough water under the boat and hightail it downstream.'

While I was speaking the boat swung cleanly on to an even keel and brought up with a jerk at the end of her rope.

'Do you still want The Hill, Guy?'

I took her hands and kissed the palms. 'More than anything in the world.'

She buried her head against me, still kneeling, and the warm drops fell on my hands.

When finally she drew back her eyes were very bright. 'I'm under captain's orders.' She threw me a mock salute. 'The captain and crew had better go and take a look at the situation on deck.'

I gave her my oilskins and wrapped myself in a kind of improvised poncho made of tarpaulin.

To my mind the wind seemed to be gaining momentum, and it sent sheets of rain slanting at us so that it was almost impossible to face the weather for more than a few minutes at a time. We turned our backs on the north-east and, hunched and streaming, tried to assess our chances.

The river front was a breath-taking sight. The formidable sky was a little less black in the east where the sun should have been, and gave off a smudgy grey, watershot light which made all outlines indeterminate. There was no horizon to be seen — just the slanting curtains of rain. The Hill appeared _ once or twice through the murk like a ship pitching in a seaway and throwing water all over itself. Nearer at hand, the edge of the terrace looked equally strange. Torrents of frothing, chocolate-coloured water pouring over it were caught by the whipping north-easter so that it had the appearance of a great roller breaking on shore. What had a short while before been a stagnant pool at the confluence of the two rivers was now a flowing river beginning to flex its muscles. It was difficult to estimate its strength because the gale was churning it up against the run of the stream into masses of small waves. From every quarter came the roar of pouring water and the moan of the wind through the bare trees. Some of those near the terrace were already half submerged.

I pointed this out: 'No good there — the water's banking up,' I shouted.

'The edge of the terrace looks like Niagara!'

'The opposite side in the Shashi channel is our best bet,' I told her. 'Look at its big trees. They'll give safe moorings. This palm isn't going to hold much longer. Once the storm's blown itself out, we'll recross to The Hill.'

'How wide can the river become in flood?'

'A mile — two miles — who knows?'

The Empress of Baobab was now straining and tugging at its mooring like a dog on a leash. Her shallow draught and high freeboard made her very cranky in the gale.

'It's no use trying to plug into the teeth of this wind; the engine simply won't make it,' I said. 'We'd do better to strike diagonally across the confluence and then allow the current to carry us down to the tree we choose.'

'Isn't that pretty dangerous?'

'Anything's dangerous in this. You steer and I'll nurse the outboard.'

I pointed out as our target a large tree on a high bank opposite, slightly above the confluence.

'Steer for that and don't let her head fall off, if you value our lives, or we'll be swamped'

'Isn't it simply Hobson's choice which bank we go for? Why not strike to this side where The Hill is?'

'If I'm right about a runaway cyclone, we can expect still more wind. Those high Shashi banks will shelter us. We'll make fast right under their lee.'

'What about your flash flood?'

'The Shashi's gradient isn't steep like the Limpopo's and therefore the run-off won't be as fast. Let's go!'

I stripped off the waterproof engine cover and prayed the electrics would work, It took half a dozen pulls on the starting cord before it kicked but it sounded healthy enough. Of course, her head fell off as soon as I cast off but I managed to bring her back on course by gunning the motor to its maximum.

The crossing was as slow and tedious in its way as our plod on foot through the wadi's sand. The engine's power against the combined forces of the river and the gale was weaker than I had expected and we chugged across the choppy water (with the bows trying to break away all the time) with a kind of hellish single-mindedness. Nadine was kept busy compensating but our course was as zig-zag as a war-time convoy under attack. We finally made it across and then nearly came to grief when the current bore us down on the tree I had selected. The boat's unexpected speed caught us by surprise and she was snared by a sunken branch which luckily snapped before ripping the hull.

I secured the boat fore and aft to the big tree and, with the lesson of the underwater branch in mind, lashed several small trunks to the boat's above-water bulges to serve as buffers. It was mid-morning before we crept below out of the wind and driving rain.

It stormed all day.

By late afternoon the river was in full flood and presented an awe-inspiring sight. Muddy water roared by, making a kind of deep-throated complement to the sound of the gale, which had increased in violence to a long dismal howl. It simply threw the rain at us, and it became impossible to stand and face the wind quarter, which remained north-east. Its con· tinuous pressure was broken at intervals only by fiercer squalls. The air was full of flying debris; these squalls seemed to pick up objects which the otherwise steady thrust of the wind passed over. The way the weather was developing made me more certain that a cyclone from the sea had indeed broken loose overland instead of veering characteristically back into mid-ocean. I explained to Nadine that I had heard of this happening on occasions in the past and that on these rare occasions thousands of square miles of countryside had been swamped. The pool at the rivers' junction had now vanished and in its place was a swirl of chocolate water by virtue of the down-current becoming stronger and running headon into gale-lashed water. We checked at intervals and saw the waves grow in size until they were about three feet high. Two great natural forces were testing their strength against each other.

By midday we were certain that our decision to move to the Shashi bank was a wise one. The main torrent was in the Limpopo channel beside The Hill and the water there was banked right up to the terrace. The trees near the palm to which I'd originally tied up were under water, or had been washed away. The choppy water was full of floating timber and we saw some dead animals too.

As the storm grew in intensity I double-lashed the boat to our big tree. At first I secured her both bow and stern to its trunk and later to the overhanging branches as well. It was risky working on the exposed deck which the rain had made as slippery as glass and the wind plucked at one's clothing making it dangerous to stand. From time to time we had to bail out the cockpit when the waves came aboard and added their quota. As the afternoon wore on I became anxious about our tree's holding power in the wet bank. I checked and felt reassured: it still stood firm; and I thought that by fending off the drifting debris and preventing a dam forming round the boat we would safely ride out the gale. The boat had also the advantage of the lee under the bank but this decreased as the water rose and increased her exposure to the gale. And as the day progressed the weather grew colder.

We spent some time examining and discussing the 'King's Messenger'. The fresh, strong torch we'd found in the boat showed clearly the chevron pattern in the centre of the stone and we made a cast of it by softening a candle and pushing it through the hole. Afterwards we felt surer that my hunch about its being part of an ingenious 'combination lock' was correct. However, trying to talk above the racket of the storm was tiring and as it grew worse we conversed less and even dozed at intervals.

About five o'clock in the afternoon I left Nadine and went on deck. The air was full of storm sounds. There was a weak smudge of light in the west where the sun was sinking but I reckoned that it would be dark soon. I couldn't see anything in the direction of The Hill and the river seemed to be boiling and churning worse than before. I checked the boat's moorings because there appeared to be a new degree of play in the way she bucked and swung on the ropes. I wondered if the tree was working loose from the wet bank and decided to get a light and inspect it after I had cleared away the build-up of loose stuff round the hull.

I was busy on this with a pole and had my head down, so still don't know from which direction came the wall of water which hit us. One moment I was shoving the debris clear; the next the boat had flipped on to her side, throwing me to the cockpit's bottom-board. The tree came loose and fell with a crash on top of us. Its weight must have plunged us completely under water because everything became a choking mess of muddy water. Mechanically, I grabbed hold of something and held on and then the boat and the tree, tangled together by ropes and branches, broke surface and shot away on the current. I had no idea which way we were going. The cockpit was full of water and the boat was still pinned on her side by the tree, which now began to bump and crash and threatened to hole her at every lift and fall.

I tried to get across to the cabin door to find an axe to-cut away the tree but the angle of list made my first attempt impossible. For a moment I was held by evidence of how powerful had been the force of water which had hit us. A big tiger fish lay on the gratings: it had been sliced lengthwise on some metal projection and its guts lay pulsating while" its razor toothed jaws snapped feebly. I managed to reach the door at my second attempt, and found Nadine safe but bewildered and up to her waist in water:

'Bail, Nadine! For God's sake, bail! I'm going to try and cut her loose!'

I thrust a bailer — a saucepan I found floating about — into her hands and seized my axe. I thought when I began to work on deck, however, that she would never rise again: the tree and boat swinging together in circles made my task doubly difficult. I went for the ropes first, then switched my attack to the entangling branches. Some of these were dead and hard and too much for the small chopper, so I concentrated on the smaller ones and cleared them sufficiently to enable the boat to float more upright. Nevertheless she was still trapped by some big limbs which banged down on the deck and punched some holes through it. I selected one which I thought was the main danger and after a tough struggle succeeded in hacking it off. This gave me room for manoeuvre: I got the engine going and awaited my moment for trying to break free. The dizzy slewing went on and on and the way the boat rode heavy and dead brought fear into the pit of my stomach. I could see no sign of the banks: nothing but dirty brown water everywhere. I watched my opportunity and it occurred during one of the merry-go-rounds. The stern pointed clear and I snapped the engine into reverse and gave it the gun. She barely pulled clear of the tree because of the weight of water inside her; then, despite full power on the screw, she too began the same sort of swirling movement. I moved the rudder in every direction but it didn't help. So I cut the engine and went below to help Nadine bail out.

'Are we sinking, Guy?'

'Not yet. She's not badly holed, as far as I know. If we can lighten her and get control before she crashes into something we'll be okay.'

She touched her pocket. 'I've got the "King's Messenger" safe.'

'We'll need all the luck it can bring us'

We bailed and bailed and brought down the water level inside the cabin but the worst part was the way the boat was listing first to one side then the other, as she went round and round with a slow spinning movement wherever the current chose to take her. As soon as the water in the cabin was below the immediate danger level I decided I must again try, using the engine, to bring things under control.

'I don't know if it's got enough guts to make any difference but I'll try,' I told Nadine. 'I must bring her head steady.'

'Where's the shore, Guy?' Her voice was very small and flat and her face looked peaked in the light of the swinging lantern.

'God knows. We may hit it at any moment. I daren't even think about floating obstacles.'

The roundabout movement seemed worse up on deck,

though I had no fixed point to assess it by. The light was too bad to see more than a few yards ahead and all that was visible was the bucking water with its white caps of dirty foam looking like cappuccino coffee. I couldn't spot the banks but from the force of the current judged we must be in midstream. I wanted something to steer for, something to end — that sickening motion. I tried to get the boat's head steady by using impetus of an outward wing plus full throttle but it didn't work. I tried a similar tactic when it seemed that the stern offered a hope, and revved the motor in reverse under full power until it felt it would jump clean out of the transom; but that didn't help either. I abandoned my efforts for a moment when I spotted a big tree trunk with broken-off branches whirling close in the same orbit as the boat and managed to pole it clear. There were suddenly more logs and trunks all round us now. I went into the bows with the pole to see whether there was perhaps a whirlpool or some obstruction which was causing the debris to bank up.

Through the murk and rain I saw what it — was- a moment before the boat struck — a low brush island with debris of all kinds heaping up against it. The boat was still running and yawing like a hunted animal and there was no time to make even a gesture with the engine to avoid it. We tripped over a seething white reef fronting the island and bumped across it with a sickening crash-grind, crash-grind.

I was caught on the open deck with only the pole in my hands and nothing to hang on to. The jar on the keel shot me headlong into the water and I was carried away downstream on the current and into the night.