The Passing of Tanapu

I

PIENAAR strode along the narrow track, joyously bellowing an obscene ditty in his native Afrikaans. The trail led downhill to a cool and shady valley, where he proposed to make camp under the fig tree beside the stream. The orange rays of the evening sun glorified the scrub-clothed hillside and glinted on the polished cooking pots carried by one of the line of porters behind him. Far away, the first hyena uttered its melancholy evening signal.

‘Upesi! Upesi!’ shouted Pienaar, halting and looking behind. A quiver ran through the burdened line as it passed him. One by one, each man stepped off the path and made a little detour round the spot where Pienaar’s huge bulk towered menacing, crowned by a battered felt hat pulled low down over his shaggy brows. No native would have contested the right of way with Pienaar, Sapuk, the Massive One.

Therefore, as they passed him, each man looked resolutely ahead and balanced his load carefully, but the sixth sense present in most Africans made him quiveringly alert to danger and ready to spring aside from the blow, should it come.

They had nothing to fear, had they known it, for Pienaar the terrible, the killer of wild beasts, was in a jovial mood. Two elephants, each with tusks above the average and each dropped

in its tracks, were responsible for his good humor. Further, the news of elephants in the bamboos on Ol-Pul mountain was excellent. Pienaar, his cunning brain stimulated by success, had been hugging himself, mentally, all day. Had he not, in addition to good luck and bright prospects, at last succeeded in persuading old Koinek to send his daughter to Pienaar’s camp, back on the Luka River? ‘Jerusalem!’ mused Pienaar, as he walked ponderously into camp. ‘How the bint fought! You never can tell with these verdammt Masai — but even prettier than I thought.’ He chuckled reminiscently.

Later, clothes loosened, he sat in the worn deck chair which creaked beneath his weight. Pleasantly replete after a rough meal of reedbuck meal and boiled potatoes, he puffed acrid clouds of Cape tobacco from a curved pipe. A bottle of German lager was at his elbow. Dreamily he surveyed the preparations of his men for the night.

The fire in the little clearing glowed. The tiny, clear stream splashed gently on its way, its fleeting presence scarcely audible. A falling log cast a shower of sparks which rose and were lost in the velvety blackness beneath the fig tree. Gradually the amiable bickering of the porters gave place to silence — the silence of the African bush, filled with myriad acute sounds. Bats swept overhead, ghostlike, twittering, uncannily swift. The world waited, breathless, for the coming of the moon.

Pienaar mused on, before the open flies of his little tent, his great body at case, the firelight winking on the carved gold ring on his little finger.

Death struck him thus. It flickered out of the bush ten yards away from the tree, bedded itself in his mighty, half-naked chest, and stood there, trembling. A curious, sweet taste invaded the back of his throat; his mouth and nostrils were filled with something warm and salt. He coughed once, a strangled sound; reached for the handle of the sword his filming eyes could see beneath them, standing out from the curve of his ribs; and, in reaching, slid down into hot blackness and — sleep.

II

The news reached the little bush station, one hundred and fifty miles away, on the fourth day. Wright, propped up in bed, every bone aching with the aftermath of fever, listened to the story of Pienaar’s tracker.

‘So!’ he said, sharply, when the stocky, wizened little Nubian had finished. ‘When you returned on the evening of the day after Sapuk was killed, you say that all traces were lost, for the ground was covered with the spoor of animals?’

‘Lord, I said so.’

‘There was no body?’

‘Lord, pieces there were only, for hyenas had come during the night. I found the head and an arm and other things. The hand lacked a finger — the finger on which my master wore the ring of gold. It was for that I returned, since I could not prevail on those low-born porters to stay in that place. When the sword struck and my master cried out, those sons of jackals fled. I pursued them and did not return until the next evening. I returned alone.’ He made a pretense of spitting.

‘Have you brought the sword?’

‘When I came back to the camp, there was no sword, master; only the head and one arm and other things. The head I have brought.’ He stooped and began to fumble at the neck of a sack which lay on the floor beside him.

‘Enough! ’ said Wright, hastily. ‘The tracks you saw — of what animals were they?’

The little man rose slowly. He hesitated and shifted his feet. At length, ‘Lord,’ he murmured, ‘I am a stranger in this country and its ways are strange to me. I am not certain, for —’

Wright cut him short.

‘Do not play with me, Juma,’ he said. ‘It is not wise. What are those scars on your forearms? I too have hunted elephants. How many elephants are counted by those scars on your arms?’

The Nubian was silent.

‘How many?’ repeated Wright, softly.

‘Three times ten and three, lord.’

‘A killer of three times ten and three elephants cannot tell me what were the tracks he saw? Or perhaps the scars lie and you are as those who live in the towns, talking much and bellying while yet young? ’

‘Lord, the scars tell truth.’

‘Of what kind, then, was the spoor you saw, or shall I tell you?’

‘The White Men know everything, lord.’

‘They were the tracks of no bush animal, Juma. They were the tracks of cattle. Is it not so?’

The dull, half-closed eyes flickered up and met Wright’s for a second. ‘It is so, lord,’ said Juma. ‘The Masai had been there at dawn and had driven their cattle over the spot until no sign remained.’

‘Fool,’ growled Wright, ‘go and rest. I shall come when I have gained strength, you following. Give what you carry to Lupenda and tell him to lock it in the store.’

The Nubian turned deferentially and left the hut, bearing his grisly burden.

Wright reached under the tucked-in mosquito net and arranged the bedside lamp so that all the light must fall on any who entered, leaving the bed in shadow.

‘O Tanapu!’ he called.

‘Oie! I come!’ answered a deep voice, and into the lamplight stepped, without noise, an arresting figure. A blanket, worn toga-fashion and knotted on his right shoulder, left half his chest bare and fell to just above his bony knees. A rawhide belt, stained a bright red, girdled the blanket at his waist and supported a flat, crimson sheath from which protruded the handle of a yard-long sword. His hair was parted laterally and fell in four braids — one down his back almost to the waist, a shorter one over each ear, and one on his forehead. A thin, heart-shaped metal disk depended from cither pierced ear lobe. From head to toes his skin was painted with a mixture of red ochre and mutton fat, except for a circular space on each cheek bone which was painted white. His physique was magnificent and he had the slightly convex shin bones of the bush dweller. A pair of small, keen eyes, fringed with upcurled eyelashes, peered from his daubed and ghastly countenance.

‘What is the news of the sickness?’ he asked, politely, advancing to the bedside and doubling his six-foot length into an easy squat.

‘It is well,’ said Wright. ‘When did you return?’

‘A little time ago, master.’

‘Have you heard that Sapuk has been killed?’

‘I was outside while the Mohammedan spoke.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Only a Masai would have thrown a sword, and I think that the little man spoke truth. As for the cattle . . .’ He paused.

‘Well?’

‘Will not a brother protect his brother, master?’

‘Are not the Masai kin to others who are not Masai?’ Wright answered question with question, watching keenly as he spoke.

Tanapu’s face was expressionless. He said, slowly, ‘I, and others like me, are as one with the Masai, but a Dorobo would have used an arrow, master.’

Both men were silent for a little.

‘There are two big bulls at the Sevenik water,’ said Tanapu, speaking in the same level tone. ‘One, I think, is the Ghost, for he is watchful and fierce beyond ordinary elephants. I did not see him, though I tried. When the master’s sickness has gone, perhaps we shall go? They will not leave the place while there is still water in the pond, for no one hunts there. They drink every second night.’ He waited.

‘Where have you come from to-day?’ asked Wright.

‘I left Sevenik when it was still moonlight.’

Wright ruminated. Sevenik rain pond was fifty miles away, over rough bush tracks, but he knew Tanapu’s power of covering ground and did not question his statement.

‘It is well,’ he said. ‘When strength has returned to me, we shall go, for I must see the place where Sapuk died.

If, as we pass Sevenik, luck is ours, we shall kill the Ghost. Now, enough. I wish to eat and then sleep, that my strength may return.’

Tanapu rose. He fumbled in his blanket and produced a small pebble, veined like marble and smooth as polished vulcanite. The metallic streaks in it glittered in the rays of the lamp. He examined it for a moment, his love of bright things manifest in every gesture. Then he placed it on the little table beside the bed. ‘It is beautiful. It is your present,’ he said, gravely, and went silently to the door.

There he was met by a Swahili body servant, bearing a loaded tray. With exaggerated caution, each drew aside to let the other pass, so as to avoid all possibility of contact.

Wright lay in bed while his food cooled beside him. Ceaselessly he turned the pebble in his fingers as he thought. His thoughts were not pleasant.

Ten years in close contact with natives had left him with few illusions regarding the temperament of the African. In common with many wiser men, he held no ‘views.’ He hoped for the best, worked as hard as he was able, and was not surprised when the worst occurred. He was never dogmatic about the unreliability of the native. Had you asked him, he would not have told you that the African can never be trusted, but he might have suggested, in that quiet voice which was one of his attractions, that different countries beget different standards, and that the African, whether Nilotic in origin or born in Zanzibar, had little to thank the white man for, when you came to consider it.

This Pienaar business was profoundly worrying. Since the opening of the station, three years ago, there had been no case of murder in the Reserve. He had begun to think that the last few months before his leave was due were to be free from anxiety. Pienaar had been a swine in many ways, but the murder of a white man was sure to provoke a storm from Headquarters.

‘Damn!’ he muttered, and stretched wearily. ‘First a dose of fever and now this! Troubles never come singly!’

The circumcision festival was not due for another year, and this murder did n’t look like the usual spear-blooding business, somehow. There was something more sinister about it, although it was difficult to say why. Curious, how the fear of the Masai persisted in alien tribes! The little Nubian had been scared stiff. Tanapu, too, had spoken with an implied reverence.

Well, he would have to go, and in his present state the journey would be the reverse of pleasant. Still, he might get that bull at Sevenik, on the way. If it turned out to be the Ghost, what extraordinary luck! How malignant fate was, to allow Pienaar to be killed now, right at the end of an exacting and successful tour!

His food untouched, he put out the lamp and settled down to sleep. The quinine roared in his ears, making thought disjointed and fragmentary. A monstrous elephant, Pienaar, the Nubian, and vignettes of his last leave in England chased each other through his weary, drowsy brain. He was awakened from an uneasy doze by a snatch of whining, falsetto song from the darkness outside. Monotonous and unaccented, with a curious, broken rhythm, it rose above the subdued bursts of laughter and the guttural talk of the Masai retainers in the little hut close by. Wright recognized the voice. It was Tanapu.

‘Extraordinary blighter . . . fifty miles . . .’ he thought affectionately, and slept.

III

Three days later, Wright’s caravan was on the move. To Sevenik was, normally, two days’ march for a fit man and good porters. In his still weak condition, Wright calculated on taking four easy days to the rain pond, going by a slightly longer route on which water could be obtained at frequent intervals. He reckoned that by the time Sevenik was reached his physical condition would be so much improved that he would be able to cover the remaining hundred miles to the scene of the murder at the rate of twenty-five miles a day.

Twenty porters, a dozen pack donkeys loaded with rations and water drums, — you cannot take liberties with certain areas of the Masai country, — a cook, a personal servant, and the tracker Juma made up the safari. Tanapu stalked in front, carrying an immense bow. A leather quiver was slung over one shoulder and on the other he balanced a .275 Rigby magazine rifle — a weapon particularly favored by Wright. The flat sword in its sheath at his right hip moved to his easy, supple stride. Two Masai Muran, armed with seven-foot spears, clubs of hard wood, and the inevitable swords, followed behind the donkeys to assist in replacing sliding pack saddles and rounding up stragglers. In the event of an arrest, these Masai were to act as escort. Each man carried handcuffs.

One journey on foot through the African bush is very much like another, when the novelty has worn off. Wright’s existence for the past three years had been made up of such journeys, varied by short spells in the station and brief visits to Provincial Headquarters, three hundred miles to the south. He was a good walker. He had to be, in a country where the distance between water holes, often as much as sixty miles, determines the duration of each day’s march. It is seldom possible to carry more than a very limited amount of water on pack donkeys, and the donkeys themselves must drink often or they speedily lose condition.

Evening of the first day found him a very tired man, although they had not covered more than ten miles, for malaria is tenacious and loosens its grim clutch reluctantly. Also, there had been the inevitable delays, due to badly adjusted loads, loitering porters, and the skittish behavior of the donkeys, which had not been out for nearly a month. Such minor annoyances are common on the first day’s trek, before the party has found itself.

Matters improved on the second day and Wright found that walking was not such a burden to the flesh. A good night’s sleep and magnificent recuperative powers were working wonders.

As they neared camp in the afternoon, he found that his pipe was beginning to taste less like an incinerator. His spirits rose.

Tanapu, who was several yards in front, halted suddenly. When Wright came up to him, he pointed a steady finger in the direction of a small herd of wildebeest on the edge of the plain which could be seen through the sparse bush in front.

‘Meat!’ he said, briefly, unslinging the .275.

As a shot, Wright had something of a reputation. It was his one vanity. The quivering of fever-slackened muscles, not yet properly attuned to physical exertion, made him disinclined to risk an inglorious miss. He said, carelessly, ‘Why do you carry a bow, Tanapu?’

The Dorobo looked at him squarely. Then he propped the rifle carefully against a convenient bush. ‘I have leave to shoot?’ he asked.

‘Assuredly,’ said Wright, glancing behind him. The porters were not in sight. He sat down and knocked out his pipe on his boot, observing Tanapu’s preparations.

The Dorobo pulled the fat leather quiver round in front of his body, took off the cap, and selected an arrow. Carefully he stroked out its feathered end. The iron head was wrapped in a thin piece of reedbuck skin, supple as chamois leather. This he proceeded to strip off, uncovering a bright, wicked-looking barb. The arrowhead, up to the barb, was coated with a black and sticky compound which looked like gutta-percha, but which Wright knew to be ouabain, the deadliest arrow poison in East Africa.

Tanapu subjected the poison to a close scrutiny, extracted a second arrow from the quiver, replaced the cap, and restored the quiver to its position between his shoulder blades. Then he gently tested the bowstring’s tautness. Apparently satisfied, he fitted the nock of the stripped arrow in place. Holding the bow close to his body, the spare arrow cradled in the palm of his right hand, he kicked off his sandals and moved forward slowly through the trees. His face was set and intent. Not a twig cracked beneath him.

Wright got to his feet, picked up the rifle, and followed slowly.

Tanapu, crouching a little, approached the edge of the plain, bearing to the right in order to keep down wind of the unsuspecting herd. Their long tails swishing unceasingly, the wildebeests moved slowly, parallel with the trees. An occasional outlying member of the herd raised his grotesque head, jaws champing rhythmically, and warily surveyed his surroundings.

Suddenly, every individual in the herd ceased feeding and looked in the same direction, a little to the left of Tanapu. Wright could see the Dorobo, bent almost double, worming his slow way to a point within bowshot. The wildebeests bunched together. Staring now directly toward Tanapu, they showed marked signs of restlessness.

‘He’ll have to hurry up,’ thought Wright. ‘They have —’ There was a faint click, and the herd was away. Manes tossing, tails flying, awkward slate-gray bodies humped into a lumbering gallop, ugly heads down, they streamed across the plain.

Tanapu stood erect at the edge of the trees.

‘Missed!’ murmured Wright, as he straightened up and walked forward. ‘No! By Jove!’

A big bull had separated from the remainder. Bucking, kicking, steering a maddened course in a wide circle, he was making for the trees where Tanapu stood. Bedded deep in his quarters an arrow was plainly visible.

Tanapu did not move as Wright came up beside him. Without turning his head, ‘It is done,’ he said. ‘Look now, master!’

The bull wildebeest galloped straight toward them, head down. He was a hundred yards away — seventy — when his strength failed him. He veered out of the straight, lurched, recovered, crossed his forelegs and went down with a crash. He was up again at once, but his hind quarters sank beneath him. He squatted, bellowing, for a moment and then rolled over on his side. When Wright and Tanapu reached him, his eyes were already glazing. The Dorobo placed his bow on the ground and unsheathed the flat sword.

Thoughtfully, Wright walked to the spot from which the arrow had been shot. From there to the broken, trampled ground where the herd had been feeding was seventy-five measured strides. As he finished his pacing, he turned and saw the porters emerging from the edge of the trees. Tanapu was on his knees beside the fallen wildebeest, hacking at the rump in which the arrow still quivered.

IV

Sevenik rain pond was reached on the evening of the fourth day. At Tanapu’s earnest request, Wright decided to pitch camp in a little grove about eight hundred yards from the water.

‘For,’ said Tanapu, ‘the Ghost will surely come. Are not these tracks the tracks of the night of yesterday? There are no Masai here and he has not been disturbed. Master, tell the porters to camp a little distance away and see that everyone draws what water he needs at once!’

Wright, the ultimate aim of his journey temporarily forgotten in the sense of well-being engendered by returning health, his senses stimulated by the fierce, quiet excitement of the true elephant hunter, gave the necessary orders. By sundown the donkeys had been watered and were safely inside the little thorn kraal near his tent. The subdued chatter of the porters and the Muran, clustered round their fires beneath the flattopped acacia trees, came to him as he dined in the verandah of his tent. For the first time in many days his appetite was keen. Peacefully he lay back in his long chair after dinner, his pipe nicely alight.

To him came the Nubian Juma. He walked diffidently into the fire glow before the tent.

‘A little matter only, lord,’ he began.

‘Tell me,’ said Wright.

‘If the elephant they call the Ghost should come before the dawn, may I also follow when the master follows him?’

‘Why?’ asked Wright, amused.

Juma hesitated.

‘I am a hunter,’ he said, at length. ‘I should like to show the master that the scars I carry are not meaningless. Besides —’ He broke off.

‘Yes?’ Wright encouraged him.

‘It is nothing, lord, but may I follow? I can carry the little rifle.’

‘Who can tell whether the elephant is here? I think he is not,’ said Wright. ‘But if I am wrong — yes, you may come with us in the morning if we follow him.’

When the Nubian had gone, Wright sat gazing into the fire. The thought of Pienaar, evoked by the conversation with the dead man’s tracker, was powerless to depress him. For the moment he could think of nothing but the chances of bagging this really big elephant. If rumor, for once, did not lie, the Ghost’s tusks must be enormous. The rifles were ready. Tanapu was sanguine. Why not?

As he knocked out his pipe, he thought:—

‘Nothing ever happens when a fellow lets himself get all worked up like this. I’m an ass. I don’t expect there’s one chance in a hundred of any tembo coming to this pool again.’

In after years he often thought of that moment.

V

‘Master! Master! Elephant! The Ghost has even now left the water!’

Tanapu’s voice, hoarse with suppressed excitement, had no sooner penetrated Wright’s consciousness than he was out of bed and struggling into his khaki trousers. Three minutes later, as he gulped down a cup of scalding tea, he was issuing directions to his boys and to the headman of the porters not to move from camp until his return.

Tanapu emerged from the tent with two rifles, and handed one, with its cartridge bag, to Juma. When Wright had assured himself that the cartridge loops on the breast of his khaki jumper were filled with the long .475 shells, he took the heavy double rifle from Tanapu’s outstretched hand, broke it, peered down the bore, loaded both barrels, snapped it shut, and gave the order to march.

Swiftly the three left camp, Tanapu in the lead, his bow and a fresh, naked arrow in his left hand. Juma brought up the rear, the .275 on his shoulder. He cuddled the cartridge bag under his arm and broke into a trot every few yards in order to keep up with the pace set by the longer legs of Tanapu and Wright.

The bush gleamed with a heavy dew which fell on them in showers as they thrust their way down to the water. The surface of the pond, green and stagnant, was wreathed in mist. They hastened round its margin. At the far side, Tanapu stopped short and indicated the ground. The vast spoor of an elephant, into which moisture was still trickling, led from the edge of the bush to the water and back. They turned and followed the trail.

As the sun rose an hour later, a twig cracked. The three stood still as death in their tracks. Into the tiny clearing twenty yards in front ploughed the half-seen bulk of an elephant, the branches scraping hollowly against his gray flanks. Tanapu stooped and straightened. From his down-stretched hand fell a little shower of fine sand. Gossamer particles were wafted back, toward Wright. Such wind as there was blew from the elephant.

Tanapu moved forward, cat-like, closely followed by Wright, his heavy rifle held in readiness. The elephant turned a little toward them, presenting a broadside at about fifteen yards’ range. Tanapu sank slowly to his knees.

The elephant stood motionless, his long, discolored tusks reaching to within a foot of the ground. His waterfilled intestines rumbled cavernously. His great ears moved gently backward and forward.

Sighting carefully for the heart, Wright fired.

For an instant, nothing seemed to happen, and he thought, agonizedly, that he had missed. As the gray mass slewed round he fired again, broke the rifle, and two slim cartridge cases flickered past his right elbow. Two live shells, torn with steady fingers from the looped pocket at his breast, replaced them. As he started forward, snapping the rifle shut, he saw, a little to his right, Tanapu stoop, gather the empty cases, and ram them into the fold of his blanket. He was conscious of little save a rending, tearing noise and the acrid smell of cordite.

The elephant had vanished.

The trail led straight ahead into the bush. Tanapu slipped in front, though traces of the elephant’s passing were plain enough for a novice to see. A mighty force had cleft the bush in twain. Mangled trees lay, oozing sap, in the direction whither the force had passed. Ragged fragments of creepers; branches torn from their parent stems and left to lie, bleeding; great scars in the ground, and a heavy, flat boulder overturned by a gigantic foot, the earth beneath it alive with bewildered insects, were signs of headlong flight.

They had gone forward for perhaps half a mile when Tanapu’s pace slackened. He gently signed behind him with a cautious, admonitory finger. On either side the leaves were covered with a mess of blood and froth, two feet above his head. He paused, moved forward again slowly, every muscle tense beneath the sheen of his brown skin.

In a moment Wright saw the elephant. Head-on, about thirty paces distant, the huge beast faced them. His great ears were spread, fanwise. All the devils of rage and hate looked out from his little red eyes. His head was up, his trunk retracted and curled into a compact mass. Two great hollows in the scrabbled ground in front of him showed that he had been down on his knees. Swiftly Wright moved to the left and forward. As the huge bulk quivered in the act of launching itself in a last, gallant, desperate attack, he fired high up into the great chest, at the juncture of neck and shoulder.

The attack wavered, collapsed. A second bullet sped for the heart as the great body sank with a thunderous rattle. The knees gave, gently. The mighty tusks struck the earth. Amid a flurry of dry branches and the tearing of undergrowth, the Ghost moaned once and was still.

Wright stepped off the wreckage of leaves and branches into the bush and was violently sick.

VI

When he returned, a little shaky, his mind filled with pleasurable anticipation regarding the tusks, Tanapu was squatting by the mountainous hind quarters, in the act of drawing his sword. His bow and the naked arrow lay on the ground beside him. Still holding the .275, Juma watched him idly.

As Tanapu leaned forward to give his right hand free play, the snuff gourd at his breast slipped out from the retaining fold of his blanket and swung free. Something else swung with it. Something, slung on a twisted sinew, which gleamed dully in the dappled sunlight. Tanapu never could resist things that shone.

There was a stifled sound from Juma.

Wright, at the elephant’s head, swung round quickly, to see the Nubian staring, his eyes almost bursting from their sockets. Wright looked at Tanapu, his mind racing.

With a clear, drawing sweep of the sword, Tanapu severed the tail and stood erect. He looked straight into Wright’s eyes. The thing swung from its cord on his breast.

‘So!’ said Wright. ‘It is his ring. It is Sapuk’s ring, and you . . .’ His voice trailed away into a miserable silence.

The sword loosely held in his right hand, Tanapu faced him. The elephant’s tail, stump down, dripped slow blood to the ground.

Tanapu spoke, slowly, as if weighing each word.

‘Sapuk is dead,’ he said. ‘I killed him, as you know now and as the Masai knew from the beginning. I think he also knew.’ He looked superciliously at Juma. ‘Often I have thought of telling you, but I withheld, for it would not have pleased you to judge me to be hanged. I followed Sapuk the day he left Tomonta and I killed him before there was moonlight. Thus none saw, but many knew.’

‘Why?’ asked Wright.

‘I killed him, using Masai weapons, because he took the woman you know of. I told you of her. She was my woman, the daughter of Koinek. She would have borne children. Now, I do not want her. For her I had already given two heifers.’

Thinking quickly, Wright said, ‘But now what? You know that I cannot let this matter pass. You have seen other killers judged in the Government Court. You are my friend, and because of that you know that I cannot let you go, lest my justice be a mockery forever.’

‘There is no settlement you can make, master?’

‘None.’

Tanapu smiled, the merest flicker of emotion crossing his iron face. With the swiftness of light, he dropped tail and sword and stepped back. Snatching up the stripped arrow from the ground, he drove it into his left thigh, just below the groin. The force of the blow broke the wooden shaft, but the head quivered deep in the flesh. He sat down quietly.

Wright started forward, a wild idea of amputation in his mind. The calm immobility of Tanapu checked him. Buttocks resting lightly on the ground, knees on cither side of his chin, hands lying loosely on the broken, scattered leaves before him, the Dorobo gazed steadily at the carcass of the Ghost. There was a gleam of excitement in his half-shut eyes.

‘Thus it is arranged,’ he said. ‘No trouble. I shall not have to face you and, before others, say that I have sinned. It is well. Last night I cleaned the little rifle.’ He shot a glance at Juma. ‘See that he does likewise and often. But twenty-and-two cartridges for it remain, and these you will find in the bag of sewn pig’s hide from Europe.’

Wright gazed at Tanapu dumbly. For the first time in an active life he felt utterly helpless. There was nothing to say. There would be time, after, in which to feel.

Savagely motioning to the Nubian to precede him, he turned on his heel and walked slowly away, leaving Tanapu alone with the dead elephant.