Sean crossed to where Riccardo and Claudia were sitting together.
As he came , he looked at her inquiringly and she nodded and smiled optimistically.
"Papa's doing fine. What is this place?"
He explained their reasoning as to the fate of the village.
"Why would they kill these innocent People?" Claudia was appalled.
you don't have to have a reason for killing "In Africa these days somebody other than a loaded gun in your hands and a fancy to fire it off."
"But what harm could they have done?" she insisted.
Sean shrugged. "Harboring rebels, withholding information,
hiding food, refusing the services of their women, any one of those crimes or none of them."
The sun was a red ball through the swamp haze, so low above the tops of the papyrus that Sean could look directly at it without screwing up his eyes.
"It'll be dark before we can leave," he decided. "We'll have to sleep here tonight and start again at first light tomorrow. One consolation is that now Tukutela has reached the swamps, he will slow down. He's probably not more than a couple of miles ahead of us right now." But as he said it he thought about those shots Riccardo had fired. If the bull had heard them, he would still be running. There was, however, no point in telling that to Riccardo.
He looked shaken and despondent, and he had been almost silent since the incident.
"He is just a husk of the Capo I knew, poor old devil. The last thing I can do for him is to get him that elephant." Sean's sympathy was genuine and unaffected and he sat down beside Riccardo and began to draw him out, describing what lay ahead and how they would hunt for the old bull in the papyrus beds.
The hunt was all that now seemed to interest Riccardo, and for the first time that day he became animated Once he even laughed.
Claudia flashed a grateful smile at Sean, then stood up and said, "I've got a little private business to attend to."
"Where are you off to?" Sean demanded immediately"
"The little girls" room," she told him. "And you are definitely not invited."
"Don't go wandering off too far, and no swimming this time," he ordered. "You'll get enough of that tomorrow."
"I hear and obey, O great white Bwana. " She gave him a sarcastic curtsy and set off out of the perimeter of the burned village.
Sean watched her go uneasily and was about to call another warning after her when there was a shout from the papyrus bed and his attention was diverted from Claudia.
He jumped up. "What is it, Job?" he yelled, and went down to the water's edge.
There were more confused shouts and splashing from the depths of the papyrus. Then Job and Matatu emerged, dragging something long and black and waterlogged between them.
"Our first bit of luck." Sean grinned at Riccardo and slapped him on the shoulder.
It was a traditional mokorro dugout canoe, about seventeen feet long, hewn from a single log of the sausage tree, Kigeha africana.
The body of the dugout was just wide enough for a person to sit ISO in it, but it was usually propelled by a man standing in the stem and wielding a long punt pole.
Job tipped the water out of the craft and they examined it carefully. The hull had been repaired and caulked in a few places but seemed reasonably sound. Search the village," Sean ordered. "They must have had caulking material here. See if you can find it, then send Dedan and Pumula to cut a couple of punt poles. Claudia screamed, and they all spun to face the sound. she screamed again. The sound was strangely muffled and far off, and Sean began to run, snatching up his rifle from where he had left it beside the nearest burned-out hut.
"Claudia!" he yelled. "Where are you?" Only his echo mocked him from the forest: "Where are you?... are You?"
nm 9 When Claudia stood up and rebuckled her belt, she found it came in easily a full two notches shorter around her waist. She smiled down at her belly with approval. Now it was no longer flat but definitely concave. The long march and frugal rations had stripped every last ounce of fat from her frame.
"Strange how in an age of plenty we set out to starve ourselves."
She smiled again. "I'm going to enjoy putting on those lost pounds, plenty of pasta and red wine when I get home," She started back toward the village, then realized that in her search for privacy she had gone further than she had intended and that a thicket of wiry thorn brush blocked her way back. She turned aside to circumvent it and came upon a broad pathway running directly down through the bush toward the edge of the swarnd. She followed it thankfully.
Claudia did not realize that she was following a hippo road, one of the wide thoroughfares the great amphibians followed on their nightly forays into the forest. However, the road had not been used for rnny months. The hippopotamus in the area had been decimated along with the other game. She was in a hurry to get back to her father, and she was feeling slightly uneasy at her isolation from the rest of the party. She strode down the pathway, just short of a run.
Ahead of her an old mat of dried papyrus stems was spread across the road from side to side. It had obviously been placed there by the previous occupants of the village, and although it served no purpose that Claudia could imagine, it was no obstacle to her progress and she stepped onto it without slackening her pace.