It rained all night.
I lost all count of time and must have really slept because I remember jerking awake at the roaring. It was the flood and it seemed much nearer to me in the dark than it had been when I first landed. I thought the water lapping at me was rain, but when I crawled a little way away from the tussocky patch I found it was the river and that very soon my refuge would be under water.
I stood up and knew daylight was near because there was a grey smudge in one part 'of the sky. The wind was down and the downpour had changed to a drizzle. I decided to stay in my safe place amongst the grass and wait for the day. I stood there while the sky changed to a pale shade between brick and rose and the water level reached my ankles and then my shins. There was the extra cold which always comes with the dawn. When it was light enough I faced east and could make out in the distance a kind of flattening-out of the low hills on the northern bank which I guessed must,be Rhodesia. Between me and the visible shore line was an apparently endless expanse of bucking dirty water. It was too dark to see the other side. I guessed from the geography that I was about six or seven miles down-river from The Hill.
There was no sign of the boat.
I realized I would have to vacate my perch and decided to select the best log that came floating past. When the water was nearly up to my knees I got a big one. It was only after I'd grabbed it that I was struck by the significance of the direction in which it was travelling. I was facing east, downriver, in the same direction as a flood might be expected to flow. But the way the log came was from the east — in other words, it was travelling west, upriver. I hadn't time to speculate because the water was about to sweep me off my feet. I was dead tired and frozen and dreaded another log journey because I didn't think I could hang on. The growing light showed nothing but that faraway shoreline.
The sun showed rosier through the hazy rain and the great lake looked soft in its light. I propped myself up by the armpits on a fork of my log and pushed off When the current took strong hold and swung me away from the east I knew my previous hunch had been right. I was being carried west on the current. I could scarcely credit it at first but when my direction stayed I knew that it was so. I lost sight of the shore and after a while the waves began to steepen and slap. The rain let up a little but the air was still so full of moisture it was soggy as a wet towel. The glow in the east became more brick-red and visibility lengthened. I tried to counteract the physical effects of the cold by concentrating my mind on the puzzle of the current. I was losing feeling in the entire lower half of my body and the skin on my hands was taking on a puckered look from the water. Then I sighted and positively identified a hilltop which I knew was a few miles down-river from The Hill itself, and the solution came to me. I wasn't suffering from hallucinations. I was being carried in the opposite direction to the normal run of the current — back towards The Hill. The answer was that I was caught up in a situation similar to that of two rivers I'd heard about in the adjacent territory of Botswana, where, in its northern part, there is an odd geographical feature known as the Selinda Spillway. Two great rivers, the Zambezi and the Chobe, converge at this point as do the Limpopo and Shashi at The Hill. The gradient of the Chobe's bed is shallow and that of the Zambezi's steep. Under heavy flooding the Chobe reverses its course when the bigger Zambezi takes over and forces its water up the shallow-sloping Chobe bed and as a result great areas of the countryside are swamped. In my case the Limpopo, in full flood, was taking me back towards the Shashi channel and consequently The Hill.
The solution gave me a momentary shot in the arm but it was short-lived. The pale sun filtering through the fine rain had no warmth in it. I became frightened of losing my grip, so I struggled out of the poncho and tied myself to the trunk with it. Soon I was glad I had done so because the waves became sharper and started splashing into my face. Because of this I kept my eyes closed for long periods while trying to fight off my growing lassitude and sleepiness. As a result I was almost swept past the boat without seeing it. I thought I was dreaming when I saw it riding near an island behind a little enclosure of debris which had banked up against a reef. I shouted but my voice was so weak that I knew that even if she were still alive she wouldn't hear me above the sound of the rushing water. The deck was deserted.
As I came closer I saw, from the way the other timber was being carried, that I should miss the island. I thought of swimming but knew I couldn't make it. I slipped free of the poncho and, pushing the tree-trunk end-on, thrashed and paddled until a blue haze came across my vision from the effort. I didn't see the whole tree floating on the current before it had crashed into me. The bump sent my log off into a kind of cannon towards the boat. At the end of its impetus and before the river caught it again I let go and splashed a few strokes to the debris piled over the reef. I went from log to log until I reached the boat and then fell into the water just short of it, but I managed to get a hand over the gunnel and started to knock feebly at the hull.
I knew no more until I found myself lying, stripped, on a blanket on the cabin floor with Nadine bending over me, massaging my chest and throat with warm oil.
'I came back,' I said.
She didn't stop rubbing but switched her fingers lightly to my mouth and face.
'My darling — my poor, poor, stupid darling!
Her eyes were misty and I knew the drops on my chest were tears: they were warmer than the oil.
I reached up to kiss her but everything span round and the effort brought on an uncontrollable convulsive tremor in my frozen muscles.
Tie quiet,' she murmured. 'Quiet, with me. Not alone. Not like all last night. That long, long night.'
She took off her clothes and put her warm breasts against my chest and her body over me and her lips against mine as if she were reviving a drowning person until the rigors died down. I thawed and her warmth drew the sweet smell of oil from our skins. Then all at once I wanted to cry and stay like that forever And I tried to tell her so but it was she who did the comforting, with those warm breasts of hers bringing the life back into me.
A bump on the hull brought us back to the reality of the flood danger.
'We must get out of here fast,' I said. 'Your island's being submerged, as mine was. All the stuff is starting to break away from the reef and soon this little cove will disappear. Then we'll be at the mercy of the current. I don't like the look of the waves either — they seem to be getting steeper. My guess is too that they'll get worse when we approach The Hill.. The Hill?'
'You'll understand when I tell you how I got here. She sat up and her slim body looked very lovely in the pinky sunrise showing through the porthole.
'Not a word before you have something hot inside you.'
'I'll disobey orders, however attractive they may be,' I grinned back. 'We're not out of the wood yet and when the current switches back to normal we'll never stand a chance of getting near The Hill.'