‘Now,’ he announced, ‘we will inspect the caves.’
The black boy did not refuse, but would not have gone ahead of that exorcizing magic the white man possessed. Night was terrifying, and was never quite emptied out of pockets such as these caves. He would not willingly have gone through darkness without carrying fire. Even moonlight was suspect, full of the blandishment of malicious fur, and treacherous teeth that snapped at black skin.
‘Blackfeller belong by these caves,’ said Jackie, beginning to scent something.
‘How?’ asked Voss.
The black boy could not explain his instincts, so he smiled, and swayed his head, and avoided the expectant eyes of his superior.
‘We shall soon see,’ said the German, stooping.
Immediately he entered, there was a flitting of bats. The bats flew out, screamed at the rain, circled, and for want of an inviting alternative, returned to their disturbed darkness. Alone in the landscape, the black boy began to feel it was probably preferable to follow the bats, and rejoin his master. How fortunate he was to have one. The rain was sighing with him.
It transpired that the caves were neither very deep nor very dark, for in addition to their general shallowness, a shaft descended through the cliffside into the most important chamber, and down this sleeve a dusty light poured. The floor was deep in dust, which deadened footfall, and made for reverence. There was a smell of dust and age, also possibly of human bodies, but ancient ones, and passionless at last.
Under the influence of the reverent light, the black boy was murmuring, but in his own tongue, because he was moved. Now the cave began to smell also of his live, youthful body. It appeared from his unguarded face and dreaming muscles that the place was full of a good magic.
Then Voss caught sight of the drawings.
‘What do these signify, Jackie?’ he asked.
The boy was explaining, in his own language, assisted by a forefinger.
‘Verfluchte Sprachen!’ cried the German.
For he was doubly locked in language.
As the boy continued unperturbed, the man had to recover from his lapse. He was looking.
‘Snake,’ Jackie explained. ‘Father my father, all blackfeller.’
‘Gut,’ added the boy, for the especial benefit of the German, and the word lit the whole place.
The man was yielding himself up to the simplicity of the drawings. Henceforth all words must be deceitful, except those sanctioned by necessity, the handrail of language.
‘Kangaroo,’ said the boy. ‘Old man,’ he smiled, touching certain parts.
These were very prominent, and befitting.
Although initiated by sympathy into the mystery of the drawings, of which the details fulfilled needs most beautifully, the German did retreat from the kangaroo.
He now said, rather primly:
‘Ja. Natürlich. But I like these better. What are they?’
These appeared to be an assembly of tortuous skeletons, or bundles of bones and blowing feathers. Voss remembered how, as a boy, he had flown kites with messages attached to their tails. Sometimes the string would break, and the released kite, if it did not disintegrate in the air, must have carried its message into far places; but, whatever the destination, he had never received a reply.
Now, however, looking at the kite-figures, his heart was hopeful.
‘Men gone away all dead,’ the boy explained. ‘All over,’ he waved his arm. ‘By rock. By tree. No more men,’ he said, beginning to comb the light with his dark fingers, as if it had been hair. ‘No more nothink. Like this. See?’ He laid his cheek upon his hands, seed-shaped, and his eyelashes were playing together. ‘Wind blow big, night him white, this time these feller dead men. They come out. Usfeller no see. They everywhere.’
So that the walls of the cave were twanging with the whispers of the tangled kites. The souls of men were only waiting to come out.
‘Now I understand,’ said Voss gravely.
He did. To his fingertips. He felt immensely happy.
Why can it not remain like this, he wondered to the woman who was locked inside him permanently, and who would answer him through the ends of her long, dreaming hair. She suggested: the souls of those we know are perhaps no more communicative than their words, if you wind in the strings to which they are attached, and that is why it is arranged for those to break, and for the liberated souls to carry messages of hope into Bohemia, Moravia, and Saxony, if rain has not erased; in that event, the finders must content themselves with guesses.
The man in the cave should have felt wet, and aching, and cold, but the woman’s smooth, instinctive soul caressed his stubborn, struggling spirit. Secretly he would have liked — or why secretly, for the boy would not have understood — he would have liked to contribute to the rock drawings, in warm ochre, the L of happiness.
But time was passing, bats were stirring, the boy had tired of the drawings, and was standing at the mouth of the cave, remembering that substantial kangaroo, of which he had stuffed into his belly the last singed squares of hide ten days previously. He was hungry now.
‘Nun wir müssen zurück,’ said the man, emerging from his thoughts.
Language did not bother the black: that is to say, generally he would not listen. Now he waited for the man to act. Then he followed.
During the afternoon the main party was conveyed as far as the providential caves, Le Mesurier still very weak, swaying on his horse, with Turner, Angus, and Harry Robarts by now also debilitated, though to a lesser degree. Arrived at the point where Voss and the native had swum the river, it was decided to build a raft on which to ferry to the opposite bank any stores that could suffer from a wetting. Accordingly, Judd began to fell some saplings, of which there were few enough in the neighbourhood, and those none too straight. However, he was able to hew down a bare necessity of timber. Rain could not quench him. Water had become his element, as his shining axehead swam through the wood. The saplings were soon bound together, and upon floats of hollow logs, by means of thongs cut from a cowhide that Judd had saved against the day when such a situation should arise.
In the meantime, the men had begun to curse and bludgeon cattle, mules, and spare horses into swimming the river. The animals were begging for mercy in piteous strains, but did finally hump themselves, and plunge. Goats were next shooed into the water after a preliminary scampering. This operation was nearer murder, for the rational creatures were crying as though the knife was in their throats; indeed, some of the murderers promptly felt the blade in their own. But the goats were bobbing and swimming. Their horns were ripping up the air in vain. Then it was seen that at least five of the animals would not scramble out. As they were carried past and away, one old horny doe was beseeching Voss, who began calling out:
‘Mr Judd, have you not yet prepared the raft? We shall not be across and dried before darkness overtakes us.’