Geoffrey Jenkins - A Cleft Of Stars

Grasping the clip, I slithered back into my previous position overlooking the fire. I had barely eased over on my left side to give my throwing arm free play when the fire flared. I was relieved that the pay-off came so soon. I was shaking and sweating. A long wait would have wrecked my efforts. I lobbed the clip at the fire and ducked down hard. I didn't hear it drop. There was nothing but the continuing pregnant silence.

I lay immobile, trembling with anticipation, wondering how long the cartridges would take to explode. I dared not consider a miss. When I could take the strain no longer I peeped from my hide-out. The fireside picture was the same. I felt then that it must have gone wide of the mark and I started to fine-comb the camping-site for it with my wretched eyesight. Without warning the fire erupted like a grenade-burst. There were five shells in the clip; I do not know how many separate reports I heard before I catapulted myself from the funkhole and ran at a tight crouch down the slope towards a path which led behind the rocks to safety. Then followed two heavier crashes in quick succession and Rankin's bullets whined and sang off the cliffs. There was a third, but no ricochet, and I realized that he was firing into the root cage and not in my direction.

I stubbed my foot, tripped, and fell heavily. Breathless, I got to my feet and found myself on the pathway with a great boulder between myself and Rankin. I sped away, keeping it between him and me while more shots crashed and echoed as he pumped shells into my hiding-place of a few minutes before. The ground levelled off and I raced into the open in the moonlight. Rankin-remained within range still, however. I sprinted and jinked in case he saw me but another burst of firing told me he was concentrating on The Hill.

Then I struck the old wall which marked the outer line of fortifications and was over it almost before I remembered the twenty-foot drop to the wadi below. I found foot and handholds and started to work my way down like a fly on a wall. But I slipped and fell, landing awkwardly and heavily in the sand. Had it been ordinary ground I might have broken a limb; as it was, the bream was knocked out or me for the second time that evening.

I lay gasping and before I had recovered properly I hightailed across the wadi into the circle of hills beyond. I followed a shallow ravine to the top and found an agglomeration of rocky outcrops which were perfect cover. The firing ceased and across my sandy moat of safety The Hill reared pallid under the moonlight.

I was parched and my tongue felt like leather. I also wanted water to clean up the sticky mess of blood and grit on my forehead. During my escape blood had run from the cut into my injured right eye and now, as I lay quietly among the sheltering rocks, it began to congeal, further hindering my vision. I was badly bruised where the bolt had struck me. My physical discomfort, however, was not as great as my anguish of mind. I cursed that old rifle for letting me down at the moment when everything was going my way. I got to my feet, wondering where I should begin to search for water. The present area was clearly useless. The broken summit, though ideal cover in the cool of night, would become an intolerable furnace by day. I rejected a passing thought of making a wide detour of the fortress and returning to my boat. It seemed too much like throwing in the towel before the fight had begun and I was determined to remain within striking distance of Rankin while I concocted a fresh plan. The faraway glow of my fire was visible from my elevated position and I knew Rankin must be nearby. My task was to find some safe shelter where I could keep watch and later get my hands on him. The focus of my attention was The Hill and would remain so while he was anywhere near it.

I probed for water-bearing plants among the rocks — ghostly in the moonlight which now illumined the circle of hills. I was on a smallish peak at the western extremity while below me, stretching eastwards for a couple of miles, was a wide valley wholly ringed by the chain of hills. From my position on the rim I faced the inside of the bowl. The hills were of a more or less uniform height all round the compass except for one prominent square-cut crag which rose out of the northern group facing the wadi and, of course, across its sand, The Hill. It was the most noteworthy peak in the area with the exception of The Hill itself. Our scientific party had christened it simply K2 but there had been no opportunity to explore it. The moonlight softened the raw terrain and scabbed remains of bush but I knew what a death-trap it could be if I were caught there without water.

This thought gave urgency to my search, and I renewed it anxiously. At chest-height, out of reach of animals, I spotted a sickly flower above a crown of fronds. It was what I sought — a kaffirtulp or hypoxis — indicating a water-filled bulb which was just visible between rocks. With the diamond pencil I, stripped away the envelope of husks and gulped down the sticky orange-yellow liquid which made a good, if somewhat flat, drink. I used damp segments of the bulb to clean my face. I felt better and concentrated on Rankin. I still held one ace: he did not know it was Guy Bowker who was on his trail. If he had seen and recognized me he would have realized without doubt that I had come for a reckoning and, rather than showing aggression, might have vanished as completely as he had done from the diggings.

From the direction of The Hill came a thud and the magnified echo of a single shot which brought me satisfactory knowledge that my man was still in place — firing at shadows maybe, or at the movement of an animal.

Then I sighted the kind of hide-out I was seeking when the moon silhouetted a giant baobab on top of the distant crag of K2. The span of the biggest I had ever seen before was sixty feet and I guessed this one was as big. Its branches were patterned like a surrealist finger-spread against the moon. Not only would the water-filled monster provide a sentry-box if it were hollow (many of them are) but it would also solve my water problem. The tree would be cool and safe, with an unlimited supply of water-laden pith tasting slightly like acid drops.

I set off without further ado to climb K2. The going on the downslope into the valley was easy enough but once at the bottom it became heavy in thick sand. Because of this, I soon revised my time schedule for reaching the baobab: I reckoned now it would take a couple of hours.

I tried to lighten the slog by devising an accompaniment of words to my stomping steps. It came easily enough and I grinned to myself: Damn all Diamonds! Damn all Diamonds! My boots quickly filled with sand and held me back but I didn't want to shed them for fear of snakes. After the initial few hundred yards I had to pause to catch my breath. When I started off again I felt as if my mind were drifting away from the physical self plodding along. I found myself reciting a childhood verse of my father's which I had known disrespectfully as the Dismal Diamond Ditty:

The Evil Eye shall have no power to harm

Him that shall wear the Diamond as a charm;

No monarch shall attempt to thwart his will

And e'en the gods his wishes shall fulfil.

I started to march in rhythm with the jingle. Perhaps the liquid I had drunk contained some mild hypnotic; perhaps it was lack of sleep and reaction which dredged the words from the recesses of my brain.

I took five strides onwards and I found myself reverting to the first line like a cracked gramophone record: 'The Evil Eye..

The harmless game suddenly went sour on me. Christ, how I hated diamonds!

My own name-William Guybon Atherstone Bowker which had aroused the prison officer's derision, was in itself a proclamation of my father's diamond mania. I had been named in honour of the expert who, a century earlier, had identified the first 'shining stone' and had set South Africa on the road to becoming more famous for diamonds than the legendary Golconda of the East. The diamond had been found by a youth on the banks of the Orange River before anyone suspected that South Africa contained the world's largest diamond fields; it had been merely a child's plaything before being spotted by an acute trader.