Free Sunbird by Wilbur Smith

sweeps along the cliffs, rising higher with each pass until it was a dark distant speck in the aching blue of that hot high sky. Its manoeuvres were so clearly indicative of failure, that Sally and I soon lost interest and went to sit in the shade of the dining tent.
    'Well,' she said, 'that is that, I guess.'
    I didn't answer her, but went to the refrigerator and brought us each a can of Windhoek. For the first time in days the fabled Kazin brain began running on all cylinders. Thirty gallons of water shared between two persons meant a gallon a day for two weeks. Water? There was something else about water in the back of my mind. Sally and water.
    The helicopter landed once more on the outskirts of the camp, and Louren and the pilot came to the tent. Louren shook his head.
    'No go. Nothing. We'll have a bite of lunch and be on our way. Leave you to make the best of it home.'
    I nodded agreement, not telling him my plans to forestall any argument.
    'Well, Ben, I'm sorry about this. I just can't understand it.' Louren began building himself a sandwich of bread and cold slices of roast gemsbok fillet, smearing it with mustard. 'Anyway, it won't be the last disappointment we will ever have in our lives.'
    Twenty minutes later Louren's essential luggage was packed in the helicopter and while the pilot started the motor we said our farewells.
    'See you back in jolly Jo'burg. Look after those tusks for me.'
    'Good trip, Lo.'
    'All the way, partner?'
    'All the way, Lo.'
    Then he was ducking under the spinning rotor and climbing into the passenger's seat of the helicopter. It rose in the air like a fat bumblebee and clattered away over the tree-tops Bumblebee? Bee? Bee! My God, that was what had been niggling me.
    Bees, birds and monkeys!
    I grabbed Sally's arm, my excitement startling her.
    'Sally, we're staying.'
    'What?' she gaped at me.
    'There are things here we've overlooked.'
    'Like what?'
    'The birds and the bees,' I told her.
    'Why. you randy old thing,' she said.
    We split the water fifteen to twenty gallons. That would give the servants a little over half a gallon a day each for two days, sufficient to get them out safely. Sally and I would have a full gallon a day for ten days. I kept the Land-Rover, making sure the petrol tanks were full, and there were twenty-five gallons in the emergency cans. I also kept the radio, one tent, bedding; a selection of tools including spade, axe and pick, rope, gas lanterns and spare cylinders, torches and spare batteries, tinned food, Louren's shotgun and half a dozen packets of shells, together with all of Sally's and my personal gear. All the rest of the equipment was loaded onto the two trucks and when the servants were all on board I took the old Matabele gunbearer aside.
    'My old and respected father,' I spoke in Smdebele, 'I have heard you speak of a great mystery that lives in this place. I ask you now as a son, and a friend, to speak to me of these things.'
    It took him a few seconds to get over his astonishment. Then I went on to speak a sentence that Timothy Mageba had given me. It is a secret code, a recognition signal used at a high level among the initiates to the mysteries. The old man gasped. He could not question me now, nor ignore my appeal.
    'My son,' he spoke softly. 'If you know those words then you should know of the legend. At a time when the rocks were soft and the air was misty,' an expression of the uttermost antiquity, 'there was an abomination and an evil in this place which was put down by our ancestors. They placed a death curse upon these hills and commanded that this evil be cleaned from the earth and from the minds of men, for ever.'
    Again those fateful words, repeated exactly.
    'That is the whole legend?' I asked. 'There is nothing else?'
    'There is nothing else,' the old man told me, and I knew it was the truth. We went back to the waiting lorries and I spoke to Joseph first in Shangaan.
    'Go in peace, my friend. Drive carefully and care well for those