The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 69

• Предыдущая
• 69/138
• Следующая

Just one step at a time! she told herself. The loneliness was a burden that would weigh her down if she let it. She lifted her chin and looked ahead.

The beach was endless, and there was a frightening sameness to the vista that stretched before her. The hours that she trudged on seemed to have no effect upon it and she began to believe that she was on a treadmill with always the unbroken sands ahead of her, the changeless sea on her right hand, the tall wall of the dunes on her left, and over it all the vast milky blue bowl of the sky.

I am walking from nothingness on to nothing, she whispered, and she longed with all her soul for the glimpse of another human form.

The soles of her bare feet began to hurt and when she sat down to examine them, she found that seawater had softened her skin and the coarse yellow sand had abraded it almost down to the flesh. She bound up her feet with strips of canvas and went on. The sun and the exertion dampened her blouse with sweat, and thirst became her constant spectral companion.

The sun was halfway down the western sky when in the distance ahead of her a rocky headland appeared, and merely because it altered the dreary vista, she quickened her pace. But her step soon faltered again and she realized how the single day's trek had already weakened her.

I haven't eaten for three days, and I haven't drunk since yesterday- The rocky headland seemed to come no nearer, and at last she had to sit down to rest, and almost immediately her thirst began to rage.

If I don't drink very soon, I won't be able to go on, she whispered, and she peered ahead at the low rampart of black rock and straightened up incredulously; her eyes were tricking her. She blinked them rapidly and stared again.

People! she whispered and pulled herself to her feet. People! She began to stagger forward.

They were sitting on the rocks, she could see the movement of their heads silhouetted against the pale sky, and she laughed aloud and waved to them.

There are so many, am I going mad? She tried to shout, but it came out as a reedy little whine.

Disappointment, when it struck, was so intense that she reeled as though from a physical blow.

Seals, she whispered, and their mournful honking cries carried to her on the soft sea breeze.

For a while she did not think that she had the strength to go on. And then she forced one foot in front of the other, and plodded on towards the headland.

Several hundred seals were draped over the rocks, and there were many more bobbing about in the waves that broke over the rocky point, and the stench of them came to Cental the on the wind. As she approached, they began to retreat towards the sea, flopping over the rocks in their ludicrously clownish way, and she saw that there were dozens of calves amongst them.

If I could only catch one of those. She gripped the clasp knife in her right hand and opened the blade. I have to eat soon- But already alarmed by her approach, the leaders were sliding from the rocks into the surging green water, their ungainly lumberings transformed instantly into miraculous grace.

She started to run, and the movement precipitated a rush of dark bodies over the rocks; she was still a hundred yards from the nearest of them. She gave up and stood panting weakly, watching the colony escape into the sea.

Then suddenly there was a wild commotion amongst them, a chorus of squeals and terrified cries, and she saw two dark agile wolf-like shapes dart from amongst the rocks and drive into the densely packed troop of seals.

She realized that her approach had distracted the colony, and given these other predators a chance to launch their own attack. She did not recognize them as brown hyena for she had only seen illustrations of the bigger and more ferocious spotted hyena which almost every book on African exploration contained.

These animals were the beach wolf of the Dutch settlers, the size of a mastiff, but with sharp pointed ears and a shaggy mane of long ashy yellow fur that was now erect in excitation as they dashed into the colony of seals; unerringly they picked out the smallest and most defenceless of the infants, seizing them from the flanks of their cumbersome dams, and dragged them away, easily avoiding the grotesque efforts that the mothers made to defend their young.

Centaine began running again, and at her approach the female seals gave up and flopped down the black rocks into the surf. She snatched up a club of driftwood from the pile of rubbish on the high-tide mark and raced across the end of the headland to cut off the nearest of the brown hyena.

The hyena was hampered by the squealing baby seal that it was dragging, and Centaine managed to get ahead of it. The animal stopped and lowered its head in a threatening stance, and watched Centaine approaching. The young seal was bleeding copiously from where the hyena's fangs were locked into its glossy pelt, and it was crying like an human infant.

The hyena growled fiercely and Centaine stopped, facing the beast, and swung the club and shrieked at it.

Drop it! Get away, you brute! Leave it! She sensed that the hyena was perplexed by her aggressive attitude, and though it growled again, it backed up a few steps and crouched protectively over its wriggling prey.

Centaine tried to stare it down, holding the gaze of the formidable yellow eyes as she shouted and brandished the club. Abruptly the hyena dropped the badly injured seal cub and rushed directly at Centaine, baring long yellow fangs and making a roaring bellow in its throat. Instinctively Centaine knew that this was the crucial moment.

If she ran the hyena would follow her and savage her.

She rushed forward to meet the animal's charge, redoubling her yells and swinging the club with all her strength.

Evidently the hyena had not expected this reaction. Its courage failed. It turned and ran back to its floundering prey, and burying its fangs in the silky skin of its neck, began to drag it away again.

At Centaine's feet was a crevice in the rocks and it was filled with waterworn round stones. She grabbed one of these, the size of a ripe orange, and hurled it at the hyena.

She aimed for the head, but the heavy stone fell short and it hit the creature's paw, crushing it against the rocky ground. The hyena squealed, dropped the seal cub and limped swiftly away on three legs.

Centaine ran forward and opened the clasp knife. She was a country girl and bad bel ed Anna and her father slaughter and dress animals before. With a single, swift, merciful stroke, she cut the seal's throat and let it bleed.

The hyena circled back, growling and whining, limping heavily, undecided and confused by the attack.

Centaine snatched up stones from the crevice in both hands and threw them. One of them struck the hyena on the side of its bushy-maned head and it yelped and fled fifty paces before stopping and staring back at her over its shoulder with hatred.

She worked swiftly. As she had watched Anna do so often with a sheep's carcass, she slit open the belly cavity, angling the point of the blade so as not to nick the stomach sac or the entrails, sawing through the cartilage that closed the front of the ribcage.

With bloodied hands she hurled another stone at the circling hyena, and then carefully lifted out the infant seal's stomach. The need for moisture was a raging fever within her; already she sensed that lack of it was threatening the existence of the embryo in her own womb, and yet her gorge rose at the thought of what she must do.

When I was a girl, Anna had told her, the shepherds used to do it whenever a suckling lamb died. Centaine held the seal cub's little stomach bag in her cupped and bloodied hands. The stomach lining was yellowish and translucent so that she fancied that she could see the contents through the walls. The cub must obviously have been lying with its mother up to the moment of the hyena attack, and it must have been suckling greedily. The small stomach was drum-tight with milk.

• Предыдущая
• 69/138
• Следующая