A Twist of Sand

Blind with sand and heat, my knees sagged and I fell full length off the right hand side of the track. The bright white sand of the Cunene had given way to grey, gritty filth. My ears, eyes, nostrils, mouth and throat were encased in one remorseless band of sand. The wind was an invisible thug choking me with a thong of sand. I fell clear of the path. I regained consciousness perhaps half an hour later as darkness fell. I felt strangely detached. My hair was half sunk in sand now. I was a dead man for all intents and purposes. I watched a small beetle suddenly shoot out from the sand not a foot in front of my eyes. Then another, and another. They catapulted up as suddenly as a submarine with her tanks blowing.

Then my detachment, the detachment of approaching death, vanished. I struck out hysterically, blindly, madly, at the half dozen or so tiny grey beetles.

Onymacris! I was so weak that I only succeeded in crushing them into the sand without doing them any real harm. They swarmed out of reach of my feebly striking hand.

Onymacris! The name was a curse. Why, I raved, had we not found them here, here within reach of Curva dos Dunas?   My sense of grief and of helpless rage jerked me into a sitting position.

The big hyena, as tattered and sandblasted as myself, sat ten feet away looking at me. We gazed at one another. So the scavenger had arrived even before his victim was dead. I threw a handful of sand at him in impotent rage, but he simply paid no attention. Unable to rise to my feet, I dragged myself twenty yards farther away, off the path. The foul animal followed. I thought I could detect the stink of him -- then a shock of realisation ran like a drink of life-giving water through me.

The wind had stopped.

I dragged myself farther from my tormentor. It was almost dark. The hyena advanced, and then stopped the same distance away. I saw two other smaller forms behind him. Jackals! I prayed that I would be dead before they started in on me.

The moon rose. I kept on dragging myself, away, but the animals followed. I saw to my horror that there were now about half a dozen of them, all in single file behind the hyena. He kept the same distance between himself and me. I let my head drop weakly. It didn't crunch on sand. It was packed hard. It was some sort of minor game track I had been dragging myself along.

I got semi-consciously on to all fours and struggled onwards -- away from that dreadful queue of scavengers. They kept station on me with the precision of a destroyer line. I half got to my feet, but my knees would not hold me and I rolled down the slope. My tormentors followed at a slow trot. My head struck against a rock. I was beyond caring. I rolled over to avoid it.

The small conical tower, about four feet high, was silhouetted against the moon.

It was made of tiny flints, each one worked with infinite care, morticed together. I dragged myself into a sitting position. The little tower was firmly fixed in a concave rock structure. It was against the side of this that I had struck my head. The flints all amalgamated into one larger pattern, a long fluted spiral which twisted round like a fire escape to the top of the structure. The concave rock in which it rested must have been about six feet across.

The animals, still in Indian file, kept station behind me. I cursed them for not putting an end to it all.

Then everything went blank.

I thought I had passed out again, but it was fog. Thick, enveloping fog, so tightly woven of land heat and sea-cool that I couldn't even see the strange conical tower a hand's-breadth away.

I heard the tinkle of water. I knew then that I was dying. Yours was a much easier death, Anne, I said aloud. A bullet is neat and swift. Johann has had his revenge. I am dying more slowly than he could ever have wished.

The hyena came right up to my feet. I stared fascinated into the reddish eyes. He stank worse than anything I have ever smelt, before or since. I wondered if my breath was as bad. I debated how he would begin, and what the first bite would feel like. But he wasn't looking at me. He was looking past my head at the conical tower. The other animals crowded closer, but still didn't move out of position.