Chapter four

We had come down to the Rift Valley by a sandy red road across a high

plateau, then up and down through orchard-bushed hills, around a slope of

forest to the top of the rift wall where we could look down and see the

plain, the heavy forest below the wall, and the long, dried-up edged shine

of Lake Manyara rose-coloured at one end with a half million tiny dots that

were flamingoes. From there the road dropped steeply along the face of the

wall, down into the forest, on to the flatness of the valley, through

cultivated patches of green corn, bananas, and trees I did not know the

names of, walled thick with forest, past a Hindu's trading store and many

huts, over two bridges where clear, fast-flowing streams ran, through more

forest, thinning now to open glades, and into a dusty turn-off that led into

a deeply rutted, dust-filled track through bushes to the shade of M'utu-Umbu

camp.

That night after dinner we heard the flamingoes flighting in the dark.

It was like the sound the wings of ducks make as they go over before it is

light, but slower, with a steady beat, and multiplied a thousand times. Pop

and I were a little drunk and P.O.M. was very tired. Karl was gloomy again.

We had taken the edge from his victories over rhino and now that was past

anyway and he was facing possible defeat by oryx. Then, too, they had found

not a leopard but a marvellous lion, a huge, black-maned lion that did not

want to leave, on the rhino carcass when they had gone there the next

morning and could not shoot him because he was in some sort of forest

reserve.

'That's rotten, ' I said and I tried to feel bad about it but I was

still feeling much too good to appreciate any one else's gloom, and Pop and

I sat, tired through to our bones, drinking whisky and soda and talking.

The next day we hunted oryx in the dried-up dustiness of the Rift

Valley and finally found a herd way off at the edge of the wooded hills on

the far side above a Masai village. They were like a bunch of Masai donkeys

except for the beautiful straight-slanting black horns and all the heads

looked good. When you looked closely two or three were obviously better than

the others and sitting on the ground I picked what I thought was the very

best of the lot and as they strung out I made sure of this one. I heard the

bullet smack and watched the oryx circle out away from the others, the

circle quickening, and knew I had it. So I did not shoot again.

This was the one Karl had picked, too. I did not know that, but had

shot, deliberately selfish, to make sure of the best this time at least, but

he got another good one and they went off in a wind-lifted cloud of grey

dust as they galloped. Except for the miracle of their horns there was no

more excitement in shooting them than if they had been donkeys, and after

the lorry came up and M'Cola and Charo had skinned the heads out and cut up

the meat we rode home in the blowing dust, our faces grey with it, and the

valley one long heat mirage.

We stayed at that camp two days. We had to get some zebra hides that we

had promised friends at home and it needed time for the skinner to handle

them properly. Getting the zebra was no fun; the plain was dull, now that

the grass had dried, hot and dusty after the hills, and the picture that

remains is of sitting against an anthill with, in the distance, a herd of

zebra galloping in the grey heat haze, raising a dust, and on the yellow

plain, the birds circling over a white patch there, another beyond, there a

third, and looking back, the plume of dust of the lorry coming with the

skinners and the men to cut up the meat for the village. I did some bad

shooting in the heat on a Grant's gazelle that the volunteer skinners asked

me to kill them for meat, wounding him in a running shot after missing him

three or four times, and then following him across the plain until almost

noon in that heat until I got within range and killed him.

But that afternoon we went out along the road that ran through the

settlement and past the corner of the Hindu's general store, where he smiled

at us in well-oiled, unsuccessful-storekeeping, brotherly humanity, and

hopeful salesmanship, turned the car off to the left on to a track that went

into the deep forest, a narrow brush-bordered track through the heavy

timber, that crossed a stream on an unsound log and pole bridge and went on

until the timber thinned and we came out into a grassy savannah that

stretched ahead to the reed-edged, dried-up bed of the lake with, far

beyond, the shine of the water and the rose-pink of the flamingoes. There

were some grass huts of fishermen in the shade of the last trees and ahead

the wind blew across the grass of the savannah and the dried bed of the lake

showed a white-grey with many small animals humping across its baked surface

as our car alarmed them. They were reed buck and they looked strange and

awkward as they moved in the distance but trim and graceful as you saw them

standing close. We turned the car out through the thick, short grass and on

to the dried lake floor and everywhere, to the left and to the right, where

the streams flowed out into the lake and made a reedy marsh that ran down

toward the receded lake, cut by canals of water, ducks were flying and we

could see big flocks of geese spread over the grassy hummocks that rose

above the marsh. The dried bed was hard and firm and we drove the car until

it commenced to look moist and soft ahead, then left the motor car standing

there, and, Karl taking Charo and I, M'Cola, to carry shells and birds, we

agreed to work one on one side and one the other of the marsh and try to

shoot and keep the birds moving while Pop and P.O.M. went into the edge of

the high reeds on the left shore of the lake where another stream made a

thick marsh to which we thought the ducks might fly.

We saw them walk across the open, a big bulky figure in a faded

corduroy coat and a very small one in trousers, grey khaki jacket, boots,

and a big hat, and then disappear as they crouched in a point of dried reeds

before we started. But as we went out to reach the edge of the stream we

soon saw the plan was no good. Even watching carefully for the firmest

footing you sunk down in the cool mud to the knees, and, as it became less

mucky and there were more hummocks broken by water, sometimes I went in to

the waist. The ducks and geese flew up out of range and after the first

flock had swung across toward where the others were hidden in the reeds and

we heard the sharp, small, double report of P.O.M.'s 28-gauge and saw the

ducks wheel off and go out toward the lake, the other scattered flocks and

the geese all went toward the open water. A flock of dark ibises, looking,

with their dipped bills, like great curlews, flew over from the marsh on the

side of the stream where Karl was and circled high above us before they went

back into the reeds. All through the bog were snipe and black and white

godwits and finally, not being able to get within range of the ducks, I

began to shoot snipe to M'Cola's great disgust. We followed the marsh out

and then I crossed another stream, shoulder high, holding my gun and

shooting coat with shells in the pocket above my head and finally trying to

work toward where P.O.M. and Pop were, found a deep flowing stream where

teal were flying, and killed three. It was nearly dark now and I found Pop

and P.O.M. on the far bank of this stream at the edge of the dried lake bed.

It all looked too deep to wade and the bottom was soft but finally I found a

heavily worn hippo trail that went into the stream and treading on this, the

bottom fairly firm under foot, I made it, the water coming just under my

armpits. As I came out on the grass and stood dripping a flock of teal came

over very fast, and, crouching to shoot in the dusk at the same time Pop

did, we cut down three that fell hard in a long slant ahead in the tall

grass. We hunted carefully and found them all. Their speed had carried them

much farther than we expected and then, almost dark now, we started for the

car across the grey dried mud of the lake bed, me soaked and my boots

squashing water, P.O.M. pleased with the ducks, the first we'd had since the

Serengetti, we all remembering how marvellous they were to eat, and ahead we

could see the car looking very small and beyond it a stretch of flat, baked

mud and then the grassy savannah and the forest.

Next day we came in from the zebra business grey and sweat-caked with

dust that the car raised and the wind blew over us on the way home across

the plain. P.O.M. and Pop had not gone out, there was nothing for them to do

and no need for them to eat that dust, and Karl and I out on the plain in

the too much sun and dust had gone through one of those rows that starts

like this, 'What was the matter? '

'They were too far.'

'Not at the start.'

'They were too far, I tell you.'

'They get hard if you don't take them.'

'You shoot them.'

'I've got enough. We only want twelve hides altogether. You go ahead.'

Then someone, angry, shooting too fast to show he was being asked to

shoot too fast, getting up from behind the ant hill and turning away in

disgust, walking towards his partner, who says, smugly, 'What's the matter

with them? '

'They're too damned far, I tell you, ' desperately.

The smug one, complacently, 'Look at them'.

The zebra that had galloped off had seen the approaching lorry of the

skinners and had circled and were standing now, broadside, in easy range.

The one looks, says nothing, too angry now to shoot. Then says, 'Go

ahead. Shoot'.

The smug one, more righteous now than ever, refuses. 'Go ahead, ' he

says.

'I'm through, ' says the other. He knows he is too angry to shoot and he

feels he has been tricked. Something is always tricking him, the need to do

things other than in a regular order, or by an inexact command in which

details are not specified, or to have to do it in front of people, or to be

hurried.

'We've got eleven, ' says smug face, sorry now. He knows he should not

hurry him, that he should leave him alone, that he only upsets him by trying

to speed him up, and that he has been a smugly righteous bastard again. 'We

can pick up the other one any time. Come on, Bo, we'll go in.'

'No, let's get him. You get him.'

'No, let's go in.'

And as the car comes up and you ride in through the dust the bitterness

goes and there is only the feeling of shortness of time again.

'What you thinking about now? ' you ask. 'What a son of a bitch I am,

still? '

'About this afternoon, ' he says and grins, making wrinkles in the caked

dust on his face.

'Me too, ' you say.

Finally the afternoon comes and you start.

This time you wear canvas ankle-high shoes, light to pull out when you

sink, you work out from hummock to hummock, picking a way across the marsh

and wade and flounder through the canals and the ducks fly as before out to

the lake, but you make a long circle to the right and come out into the lake

itself and find the bottom hard and firm and walking knee deep in the water

get outside the big flocks, then there is a shot and you and M'Cola crouch,

heads bent, and then the air is full of them, and you cut down two, then two

again, and then a high one straight overhead, then miss a fast one straight

and low to the right, then they come whistling back, passing faster than you

can load and shoot, you brown a bunch to get cripples for decoys and then

take only fancy shots because you know now you can get all that we can use

or carry. You try the high one, straight overhead and almost leaning

backward, the {coup de roi}, and splash a big black duck down beside M'Cola,

him laughing, then, the four cripples swimming away, you decide you better

kill them and pick up. You have to run in water to your knees to get in

range of the last cripple and you slip and go face down and are sitting,

enjoying being completely wet finally, water cool on your behind, soaked

with muddy water, wiping off glasses, and then getting the water out of the

gun, wondering if you can shoot up the shells before they will swell,

M'Cola delighted with the spill. He, with the shooting coat now full of

ducks, crouches and a flock of geese pass over in easy range while you try

to pump a wet shell in. You get a shell in, shoot, but it is too far, or you

were behind, and at the shot you see the cloud of flamingoes rise in the

sun, making the whole horizon of the lake pink. Then they settle. But after

that each time after you shoot you turn and look out into the sun on the

water and see that quick rise of the unbelievable cloud and then the slow

settling.

'M'Cola, ' you say and point.

'N'Dio, ' he says, watching them. 'M'uzuri! ' and hands you more shells.

We all had good shooting but it was best out on the lake and for three

days afterward, travelling, we had cold teal, the best of ducks to eat,

fine, plump, and tender, cold with Pan-Yan pickles, and the red wine we

bought at Babati, sitting by the road waiting for the lorries to come up,

sitting on the shady porch of the little hotel at Babati, then late at night

when the lorries finally came in and we were at the house of an absent

friend of a friend high up in the hills, cold at night, wearing coats at the

table, having waited so long for the broken-down lorry to come that we all

drank much too much and were unspeakably hungry, P.O.M. dancing with the

manager of the coffee shamba, and with Karl, to the gramophone, me shot full

of emetine and with a ringing headache drowning it successfully in

whisky-soda with Pop on the porch, it dark and the wind blowing a gale, and

then those teal coming on the table, smoking hot and with fresh vegetables.

Guinea hen were all right, and I had one now in the lunch box in the back of

the car that I would eat to-night; but those teal were the finest of all.

From Babati we had driven through the hills to the edge of a plain,

wooded in a long stretch of glade beyond a small village where there was a

mission station at the foot of a mountain. Here we had made a camp to hunt

kudu which were supposed to be in the wooded hills and in the forests on the

flats that stretched out to the edge of the open plain.