I’m no old Africa hand, and what I’d seen of Abyssinia so far had jaundiced rather than impressed, but I’m bound to say that the Lake Tana country is as close to earthly paradise as I’ve ever struck, for scenery at least. From Azez to Gorgora on the northern shore is nothing out of the ordinary, but the lake itself beats anything in Switzerland or Italy, a great blue shimmering inland sea fringed by tropical forest, hills, and meadows, for all the world like a glorious garden of exotic flowers and shrubs in groves of splendid trees and ferns. The woods are alive with birds of every colour and size, from tiny feathered mites hardly bigger than butterflies to the mighty hornbill, a black-and-white monster as big as a man, braying as it rushes overhead like some flying dragon. There’s an abundance of game, deer and antelopes and monkeys everywhere, buffalo ranging on the slopes, huge hippos surging and bellowing in the lake itself, and the biggest snakes in Africa, twenty-foot pythons in shining coats of many colours, gliding through the shallows.
Good camels can cover the ground as quickly as horses, and we made our first-night camp in a little palm grove only a few miles from the lake. Uliba said it would be safer to steer clear of Gorgora, so next morning we made a bee-line for the western shore and the cover of the jungly forest. It had not been determined precisely where on Tana the groom should turn back with the camels, and when Uliba said we’d like to take them as far as the Abai source he had severe conniptions; he was one of your tough, lean Abs who run like stags, and had kept up easily with his long loping stride, but he was shot if he was going to venture any nearer the dreaded “Negus Toowodros”a than he had to; everyone knew of the carnage that had been wreaked south of the lake, of the burning and blinding and hacking off of ears and noses; why, all Metcha was a smoking desert.
Uliba came the headmistress with him, but he wasn’t to be moved, and it was only when she’d offered him twenty dollars and he’d beaten her up to thirty that he reluctantly agreed to come as far as Adeena, near the foot of the lake.
“We could have killed him and kept the camels,” says Uliba as we rode on our way with the groom trotting moodily after, “but he might have fought, and what is thirty dollars?” I wondered if she’d have expected me to do the dirty deed; knowing her style, probably not.
It took us the best part of the day to reach Adeena, a little fishing village in a pretty clearing by the shore. They were almost the first folk we’d seen since leaving Azez, friendly enough peasants but, like our groom, apprehensive of what lay farther south, and thankful that Theodore’s campaign of terror had not touched them so far. Zage and Baheerdar had been razed to the ground and all the people killed or driven away; yes, Theodore’s soldiers were still at Kourata across the lake; but no, nothing would induce them to ferry us anywhere near the city – or indeed, even down the coast. Having seen their boats, crazy coracles of woven bulrushes that were permanently waterlogged, I was happy to continue our journey on foot.
To Uliba’s fury, our groom, gossiping at the evening meal which we shared with the village headman, mentioned that we were on our way to find Queen Masteeat. It seemed harmless to me, but she was spitting blood later when she explained that the nearer we got to our goal, the greater our danger, with Theodore’s lances on hand. “I knew we should have slit the chattering bastard’s throat! Well, he has our dollars, but we’ll not bid him goodbye. When all are asleep, do you take the saddle-bags from the camels, and we’ll be away before dawn!”
It seemed to me she was starting at shadows. “These folk hate Theodore more than you do! They ain’t going to give us away.”
“And is their hate greater than their fear? Will they be silent if Theodore’s riders chance this way? We are not safe this side of the Silver Smoke. The camels could carry us there in a day, but to steal away with them by night might bring a hue and cry down on us.”
So we took French leave of Adeena in the small hours, slipping through the shadows with such stealth that I doubt if more than half the population heard us go, but they paid us no mind, presumably turning over and thanking God to be rid of a pair of unwelcome guests. There was a good moon, and with Uliba surefooted as ever it was a pleasant promenade through the shadowy groves until the light went and the chilly mist came in off the water. Then we built a fire, had a welcome snack of the monastery’s bread and ham washed down with tej, and rolled up together in one blanket, keeping warm in the jolliest way I know.
Next morning we rounded the bay which is the south-western limit of Tana, both in high spirits in the sunshine, swinging along like Phyllis and Corydon in Arcady, with not the least foreboding of the horror ahead. There were a few fishers abroad on the lake, staying afloat for a wonder, and we passed a couple of villages where the peasantry seemed to be taking no harm as they loafed about in their plots. We nooned in a secluded cove where a few water-fowl were disporting themselves out beyond the shallows, and Uliba asked me if I fancied duck for tiffin. I said by all means, if she’d catch them, and she laughed and asked, if she killed ’em, would I fetch ’em ashore? Kill away, says I, wondering, and she picked up a handful of pebbles from the beach, juggled them from hand to hand, and all of a sudden whipped them away like a fast bowler, side-arm, one-two-three! And blessed if she didn’t crack the heads of two ducks and lay a third squawking and thrashing in the water!
She’d told me of the Gallas’ skill with missiles, but I’d not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. I plunged in and retrieved the poultry, full of congratulation, but she made light of it, saying they had been real sitting birds, and next time she would bring one down on the wing. Again, I believed her. An odd thing: none of the other ducks had so much as stirred, and she told me that the birds and beasts of Lake Tana were so tame that they never minded hunters, not stirring even when the critter beside them was hit.
It was such a glorious day that we swam in the lake, icy cold as it was, and I have a happy memory of Uliba sitting on a smooth black rock like the little mermaid, naked, wet and shining.
We made good time in the afternoon, leaving the forest for a more broken and rocky shoreline, and I noticed that we saw fewer folk along the way, and at last none at all. That was the moment when I caught a drift on the air of that same flat stale stench there had been at Gondar, and Uliba stopped, head raised, and said: “Zage.”
We had crossed a few streams running through the rocks into the lake, and now we came to another, a small river really, with steep banks, and as we prepared to descend the weather changed with that speed so typical of Abyssinia, and a storm of hail came down like grapeshot, great lumps the size of schoolboys’ marbles that drove us under cover and churned the river mouth and lake surface into foam. You could barely hear yourself speak above the rattle of the downpour, but Uliba was laughing as she pointed to the stream and shouted: “Little Abai! Only a few miles farther now!”
I couldn’t make this out: the stream was flowing into the lake, and I knew the Abai, which is the Blue Nile, should run out of Tana – and thereby hangs a tale, which I heard first from Uliba as we crouched under the broad leaves of a baobab to shelter from the hailstorm, and again years later from the Great Bore of the Nile himself, Daft Dick Burton, at the Travellers’ Club. He had a most tremendous bee in his bonnet about it, with which I’ll not weary you beyond saying that the Little Abai runs into Lake Tana west of the town of Zage, and out again east of the town, when it becomes the Great Abai and eventually joins the White Nile which rises ’way up yonder in Lake Victoria – or so I gathered from Burton, who was full of bile against the chaps who’d discovered it. God knows why: he’d ha’ fought with his own shadow, that one.35
At all events, when the hail stopped we crossed and came to the promontory of Zage, the site of a once-populous town now ruined and deserted, thanks to Theodore, who had looted and burned it months before – hence that stale stink of charred wood and desolation. It was half-hidden by trees at the base of the promontory, through which we passed to open ground where there were signs of a disused camp-site, and so came to a swampy tangle of roots on the verge of the lake. Out on the water we could see a couple of fishing craft heading up in the direction of Adeena, and Uliba surveyed them frowning for a long moment before turning to follow the edge of the swamp away from the lake.
She paused again to point eastward to where, beyond the swampy ground, there was a small cluster of huts on the shore. “Baheerdar,” says she, smiling. “Remember? D’you think you could have found it?” I said I was glad I hadn’t had to try, and she led on again by the swamp, which was now flowing south, quite distinctly, and presently, when we’d pushed our way through marshy thickets buzzing with mosquitoes, and mounted a grassy rise, the swampy flow had become a stream between jungly banks. A mile or so farther on it was broadening into a river proper, shining ruddy in the sunset, and Uliba gave a great heaving sigh and stretched her arms high above her head.
“There it runs – the Great Abai! A few miles to the Silver Smoke, and not far beyond, the camp of my people.” She came to my side and put an arm about me, inviting an embrace. “Have we not travelled well together, effendi?”
I cried by gad hadn’t we just, and gave her a loving squeeze and a hearty kiss, telling her she was the queen of guides – while noting to myself that she was now talking of the camp of her people, not Queen Masteeat’s. Very soon now I must discover what was at work behind that triumphant smile, and whatever it was, prepare myself for some nimble footwork – oh, and if possible carry out the task Napier had given me, and ensure that the Wollo Gallas closed the trap about Magdala … whoever was occupying their tribal throne. I half expected Uliba to advert to it, but she volunteered nothing, so I must wait and see, composing myself to sleep on the banks of the Great Abai, and reflecting unprofitably on the irony that given a small boat and enough grub (and if the Napiers and Ulibas and assorted Abs and Bedouin let me alone) I could have floated a few thousand miles downstream in peace and tranquillity to Shepherd’s or the Hôtel du Nil in Cairo.
I awoke suddenly with a hand gripping my arm and another over my mouth, and was about to lash out in panic when I realised they were Uliba’s hands, it was just on half-dawn, and she was hissing a warning in my ear.
“Still! Keep down!” She was out of her blanket, snaking away across the turf damp with dew, and I followed her with my innards turning over at this sudden alarm. “See – yonder, across the river!”
I followed her pointing finger, and froze where I lay. On the far side of the water, which was barely fifty yards broad at this point, a line of horsemen was emerging from the jungle, pricking down to the bank. They were lancers, forty or fifty of them, trim in white robes and turbans and breastplates, one or two with chain-mail shoulder guards, their leader wearing a steel casque and knight’s gauntlets and carrying a silver shield. They ranged along the bank, dismounting at his word of command to water their horses, their voices drifting across the misty surface.
More in desperation than hope I wondered if they might be Masteeat’s people, but Uliba shook her head impatiently and wormed her way backwards into the shelter of the bushes, dragging blanket and saddle-bag with her, and signing to me to do likewise.
“They are Theodore’s guardsmen, his household cavalry. That silver shield is carried only by nobles high in his service.” Her whisper was fierce but steady. “Those boats we saw last night, making towards Adeena – they must have been at Kourata, bearing word of us and where we were going!” She screwed her eyes shut in fury, clenching her fist. “God of gods, why did I not kill that loose-tongued fool!?”
“Hold on – how d’ye know they’re looking for us? You can’t be sure –”
“A silver shield abroad before dawn with picked troops of the Emperor? I can be sure they are not on manoeuvres! He would never leave such an elite to garrison Kourata when he is marching on Magdala! No, he will have sent them west the moment he learned (doubtless from Yando’s vermin!) that a British officer was coming south, plainly to enlist aid from Masteeat and the Wollo Gallas! They will have been scouring Begemder for us, and now those peasant scum at Adeena have given them our scent. And they are following it.”
Talking like a book, as usual, and keeping her head. She signed me to silence and crawled forward again, to a solitary bush, the braided head cocked to listen. After a moment she was back, her lips at my ear.
“They are looking for a place to cross, then they will sweep both banks downstream. And we must be the quarry; no ordinary fugitive would be worth such a hunt.”
“Oh, God! What can we do?”
She smiled grimly. “Run! – away from the river, before they can cross. We can circle wide and come back to it, for we’ll be swifter afoot in jungle than they can be on horseback. If we can reach the Silver Smoke ahead of them we shall be safe, for they’ll venture no closer to Masteeat’s army than that.” A word of command sounded across the water; they were mounting up again. “But we’ve no time to lose. It is twenty miles through jungle to the falls.”
If you’ve never travelled in jungle you may be under a false impression, thanks to the tales of blowhards who’ll tell you how they’ve hacked their way through impenetrable undergrowth and been lucky to make two miles a day battling snakes and great hairy spiders. Well, such jungle does exist, and sufficiently hellish it is, as I should know who have gone my mile in Borneo and the Fly River country, but as a rule it ain’t so thick, and what you have to look out for is where you’re putting your feet. Even such good rain forest as the headwaters of the Blue Nile has its hazards, like sudden swamp and potholes and solid fallen trunks which crumble rottenly and drop you unexpected into the slime; by and large, though, it’s fair going, with more trees than thickets, and space to move in. I reckon Uliba and I made a good four miles an hour, which is faster than marching, and if it was hot work it wasn’t unbearable in the shade. I doubted if Theodore’s cavalry could do as well; with luck, when we circled back to the river, we’d be comfortably ahead of them, provided we kept up our pace.
Moving away from the river must have added two or three miles to our trek, but by sunset Uliba reckoned we had covered enough ground for the day; you don’t move in jungle after dark if you have any sense, so we camped among the banyans and acacias, not risking a fire but enjoying the rays of sundown gleaming through the groves, and the last chirping and calling of the millions of coloured birds in the branches overhead. It reminded me of the Madagascar forest, and you mayn’t believe it but I felt my eyes stinging at the memory of Elspeth blue-eyed and beautiful, smiling up at me with her golden hair tumbled about her head on the grass, her arms reaching up to me and those lovely lips parting … “My jo, my ain dear jo!”
Dear God, that had been more than twenty years ago, that strange idyll of joy and terror mingled, when we’d fled from Antan’ with Ranavalona’s Hovas on our trail … Theodore’s riders might be a fearsome crowd, and most professional by the look of them, but at least they were part-civilised, unlike those black monsters … Strange, though, how history repeated itself: here I was again, fleeing the forces of darkness through tropic forest in the company of beauteous tumble – not that Uliba could begin to compare in looks, style, deportment, vivacity, elegance, complexion, allure, voluptuousness, abandoned performance, erotic invention, or indeed in any way at all to my glorious Elspeth, at the thought of whom I was beginning to dribble … and whom I loved dearly and truly, I may say, and had seen only at brief ecstatic intervals in the past four weary years – no, five, dammit! It was too bad, and I missed her so, and God alone knew what she’d been up to while I was shirking shot and shell at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Yellow Tavern, Ford’s Theatre, and Queretaro, and look at me now, lachrymose in Ethiopia with the little grey monkeys sneering at me from the trees. Then the rain came on.36
It dawned gloriously sunny, however, and we were up and making for the river before first light. The closer we got to it, the thicker grew the jungle, which meant worse going for Theodore’s cavalry. At last we sighted the gleam through the undergrowth, and presently came out on a long stretch of sward running along the water’s edge. The river was about quarter of a mile across, I dare say, and a landscape painter’s dream, grey-green and shining as it slid smoothly by through the little forested islands. The far bank was luxurious foliage backed by green foothills rising to mountains, and to our right, a mile or two downstream, a faint mist hung over the river, with a perfect rainbow above it. Uliba clapped her hands and pointed.
“The Silver Smoke! Am I not the queen of guides, as you said?”
For the first time since we had left Tana there were folk to be seen, fishermen pottering about their ramshackle boats a few hundred yards downstream where the sward margin ended and the jungle overgrew the river’s surface. Closer at hand two girls were busy dhobying clothing and hanging it to dry on a line by the water’s edge, their little coracle drawn up on the bank. They stood up to stare at us, and when one of them waved, Uliba raised a hand. My spirits were rising as we set off down the bank, the birds were carolling, there was a perfumed breeze blowing from the water, we were within a few miles of journey’s end, I was absolutely humming “Drink, Puppy, Drink”, the larks and snails were no doubt on their respective wings and thorns, God was in his heaven, and on the verge of the jungle, not twenty yards away, a white-robed helmeted lancer was sitting his horse, watching us.
For three heartbeats we simply stared at each other, while I told myself this couldn’t be one of the troop we’d seen yesterday, they’d not had time – and then his eyes were wide, a hunter sighting the game, I was snatching out my Joslyn, Uliba was shouting “No!”, dashing my hand aside and racing past me, drawing her knife as she ran. Without breaking stride she threw it, straight as an arrow, for his breast, but this fellow knew his business, whipping his shield across to deflect the flying blade, shouting with triumph as he wheeled his mount for the forest.
She’d known that a shot would bring the rest of his gang down on us, but I was bound to risk it now, and was drawing a bead on his back when she stooped, grabbed up a stone, stood poised for an instant, and hurled it after him. It took him just below his helmet rim with a thunk! like an axe hitting wood, his horse reared as he hauled on the reins, and then he was toppling from the saddle, helmet going one way, lance t’other, and hitting the ground with an almighty crash of his back and breast. I bit back a yell of delight, but it was precaution wasted, for before we could stir another step half a dozen lancers were bursting out of the green, taking in the scene in a second, and sweeping down on us.
It was blind instinct that made me blaze away at the leader, for an instant’s thought was enough to convince me that I couldn’t hope to down them all, and it was folly to waste time firing when I could be flying for dear life. Anyway, I’d missed the bastard, and he was dropping his lance-point and charging me. Uliba was flinging stones, the mad bitch, and yelling defiance; she caught the leader full in the clock and he swerved his horse into the path of a comrade, both coming down in a splendid tangle of lashing hooves. She screamed with delight, and I thought, good luck, lass, you give ’em what for, for I ain’t stopping. The river was a bare fifty yards away, and I made for it like a stung whippet; from the tail of my eye I saw Uliba hurl a last missile and then come racing after me.
My goal was the two dhobi wenches who had a boat beached; I’d barely have time to thrust it afloat and leap aboard before the hosts of Midian arrived, but it was the only hope – and even as I high-tailed it with Uliba a few paces behind, I found myself thinking, my stars, I’ve done this before, on the banks of the Ohio, with Cassy the runaway legging it after me and the slave-catchers roaring behind, and they shot me in the arse on the ice-floes, and she’d dragged me to safety – aye, but this time there’d be no Abe Lincoln on the far shore to face down our pursuers …
Hooves were thundering horrid close, and I stole a glance which showed a lancer coming full career, point down, not twenty yards behind me; the dhobi girls were screaming and scattering, I knew I’d never reach their boat in time, and as I tripped and went down on the shingle, Uliba swerved aside in her flight and leaped like a panther into the path of my pursuer, somehow catching his lance just behind the point with its ghastly burden of somebody’s goolies. The glittering steel was diverted, driving into the ground a foot from my hip as I sprawled helpless, the lancer was flung from the saddle, and Uliba, keeping her grip on the weapon, rolled away, came to her feet like an acrobat, wrenched the point free, and drove it into the fallen man’s body, screaming like a banshee.
It was no time for thanks or congratulation: I scrambled up and fairly flung myself at the boat, knocking one of the dhobi lasses flying, seized its prow and thrust it down the bank into the water. It was more like a canoe than their usual woven tubs, and almost capsized as I heaved myself inboard, grabbing wildly for one of the flat sticks which these benighted clowns use as paddles. Still on shore, Uliba was hurling rocks and howling abuse; at her feet the fallen lancer was kicking like a landed fish with his own weapon pinning him to the earth, there were half a dozen of his fellows within ten yards, but keeping a wary distance, one of them nursing an arm to testify to Uliba’s accuracy.
“Noseless pigs! Bullies of the bazaar! Cowardly bastards got by lepers on street-corner whores! Can one unarmed woman make you turn tail, dunghill disturbers that you are!” She was in rare voice, but now two of them couched their lances and charged, and with a last shrieked insult she turned and did a racing dive which brought her within reach of the stern even as I lashed the water with my clumsy oar and the current carried us swiftly downstream and out of their reach. She scrambled in, shouting with laughter and bloodlust, taunting them with obscene curses and gestures as they stood helpless on the shore.
“Procurers of perverts! Offspring of diseased apes! Tell Theodore how Uliba-Wark, Queen of the Gallas, whipped you single-handed!” She stood up to rail at them, and the canoe rocked alarmingly.
“You’ll have us over, rot you – sit down and paddle!” The current was strong, and we would have our work cut out to reach the far bank before it took us down to the little jungly islands where I could see the surface breaking into white water which must mean rocks and rapids. But even as I weighed the distance I saw that it was impossible; the green shore was at least four hundred yards off, and with these near-useless paddles we could hardly make headway across the river.
The nearest islands were perhaps a mile distant; with luck we might adjust our course to find the smoothest water between them. I shouted to Uliba to paddle in harmony, but it was all we could do to keep the crazy little boat steady as the speed of the river increased. I turned my head to see how our pursuers were faring; the stretch of open shore from which we’d escaped was enclosed at its downstream end by jungle, so they would make only slow progress that way, but there were the fisher-folk’s boats, and I thought they might take to the water after us. But no; they were mounting up, in no haste that I could see, apparently giving up the chase.
We were bearing down at speed on the islands now, and the current was so swift that I could see the water absolutely sloping as it rushed between them. I shouted to Uliba, but there was little we could do to steer the boat; it slipped smoothly down the grey foamy slope which broke either side in white flurries as it dashed over the rocks, but immediately ahead the surface was unruffled, and if the canoe could pass through the great eddy at the foot of the watery slope without foundering, there was smooth water beyond. The islands were slipping past – and once again memory took hold, as I recalled the brown flood of the Ganges below Cawnpore, when we had to scramble in panic on to the mudflats with the muggers snapping at our heels.
There were no crocs this far up the Nile, but I didn’t know that as I clung to the gunwale of that rickety craft, absolutely bellowing in dismay as we struck the eddy, wallowed half-submerged for a frightening moment, and then surged through on to the calmer surface. We were sitting in a foot of water, but stayed afloat by a miracle – surface tension, I believe, although I did not define it as such just then. The river was carrying us on at a gentler pace now, but we were in midstream with the banks as far away as ever; we must wait for a bend, when we might be able to guide ourselves to one shore or the other, no matter which, for pursuit must be far behind by now.
I cried this over my shoulder to Uliba, and she called a reply, but I couldn’t catch it above the sound of the river, which seemed to be growing louder. I thought that strange, since we’d left the noisy rapids behind, but then I realised it was coming from ahead, a distant rumbling from beyond another crop of little jungly islands strung across the stream. In the distance there was a mist drifting up, stretching from bank to bank, the rumble was growing to a roar, the speed of the current was increasing, rocking us from side to side, and suddenly Uliba was clutching my shoulder, pointing ahead and yelling:
“The Silver Smoke! The Great Silver Smoke!”
I distinctly remember shouting: “The what?” – and then it struck me like a blow: it was the Ab name of the Blue Nile falls beyond which Queen Masteeat had her camp. Uliba had said nothing of their size, but from the increasing noise and the appearance of white water ahead among the islands, I guessed that they must be more hazardous than the rapids we’d already passed through, and that it would be a sound move to seek terra firma without delay. Had I known that they were the height of Niagara, I dare say I might have joined Uliba’s frenzied paddling with even greater enthusiasm; as it was I flailed the water, blaspheming vigorously at the futility of our efforts to guide the canoe to one of the islands towards which we were rushing. She was shouting something, but the roar of the river had risen to a thunder that blotted out every other noise, even my own anguished bellowing.
It was the damnedest thing: the din was deafening, we were racing along at the very deuce of a clip, and yet the water around us was as smooth as oil. Right in our path was a line of black rocks, great rounded masses gleaming like polished marble, for all the world like the backs of whales, and as our boat collided with the nearest I was sure it must be shattered to pieces. I seized the gunwale, screaming, but the rock must have been slick with river slime, for we shot along its surface for a sickening second before being flung into the eddies beyond; the current whirled the canoe clean round, branches were lashing across my head and shoulders, and I grabbed at them in desperation, tearing my hands on the thorny twigs but holding on, feeling the canoe slew round beneath me.
I’m strong, but how I kept my grip, God knows. We were at the downstream end of a little overgrown islet, a few yards ahead the smooth water was being smashed into foam by the jagged teeth of a rocky ridge, and beyond that a mass of raging white water was vanishing into a mist as thick as London fog. We must be almost on the lip of the fall, and my arms were being dragged from their sockets by the appalling strength of the current tugging the dead weight of the canoe and our two bodies.
I was half-in-half-out of the canoe, and it was slipping slowly away from beneath me. Another second and it would have been gone, leaving me behind, but Uliba, floundering in the water that was swamping it, made a frantic lunge towards me, seized my leg, and clung on with the strength of despair. I shrieked with pain as my palms slipped along the whiplash withies; they were cutting like fire and I was losing my hold, the intolerable weight was dragging me loose, and in another moment both of us would be swept away into that thunderous white death in the mist.
There was only one thing to be done, so I did it, drawing up my free leg and driving my foot down with all my force at Uliba’s face staring up at me open-mouthed, half-submerged as she clung to my other knee. I missed, but caught her full on the shoulder, jarring her grip free, and away she went, canoe and all, the gunwale rasping against my legs as it was whirled downstream. One glimpse I had of the white water foaming over those long beautiful legs, and then she was gone. Damnable altogether, cruel waste of good womanhood, but what would you? Better one should go than two, and greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down someone else’s life for his own.
With that dead weight gone I could just keep my grip, and with a mighty heave hauled myself into the thicket, catching a stouter branch and getting a leg over it – and suddenly there was an appalling crack, the branch gave way, and down I went, entangled in a mesh of leaves and withies, under the surface, helpless in the grip of the current which swept me away. I came up, half-drowned, into the fury of the rapids, buffeted against rocks and snags, tossed like a cork this way and that and clutching blindly for a hold that wasn’t there, unable even to holler with my mouth and throat full of choking water. A massive black shape surged up before me, one of the great boulders worn smooth by the centuries, and even as I was flung against it with shattering force, hanging spreadeagled half out of the water, I saw beyond it a sight which has since provided me with much food for thought.
Not two yards away the canoe was caught fast beneath the overhanging foliage of another of those islands, and climbing clear of the wreck was Uliba-Wark. She had hold of a stout vine, swinging herself like a gymnast to a clear patch of solid ground, and given a moment for quiet reflection I might have concluded that if I had not been an unutterable swine and selfish hound in kicking her loose, I’d like as not have been safe beside her gasping, “Will you have nuts or a cigar, ma’am?”
As it was, I was slowly slipping from the boulder. Its surface was like a frozen pond, my hands could get no grip as I flailed them on the stone, squealing like billy-be-damned, and while Uliba could not have heard me, she absolutely saw me for a split second before I slid from her view into the torrent, inhaling a bellyful of the Blue Nile as I continued my progress downstream, presently descending one hundred and fifty feet without benefit of canal locks.
Falling down one of the highest waterfalls on earth (so far as I know only the Victoria Falls are appreciably higher) is not like toppling from the lofty side of a ship (which I’ve done) or from any other dry height. I say “dry” because being engulfed in water which is undoubtedly drowning you quite takes away the sensation of falling, and there is no shock of entering the water at the end of your enforced dive; you arrive cocooned in the stuff and are borne into the depths in a state of complete confusion: you can see nothing but blinding light and hear nothing but continuous thunder, you can’t tell which is up and which is down, and only at the uttermost limit of your plunge does some inkling of your situation enter your consciousness, as you begin to rise again.
Even then you’re entirely helpless, for your limbs are paralysed by the sheer battering shock, as is your will. I’ve known what it is to drown, on several occasions, most memorably in the Skrang river with a blowpipe dart in my ribs, and upside down in that infernal drain beneath Jotunberg Castle, and at the bottom of a bath in the amorous clutches of the demented Queen of Madagascar, but only in the maelstrom under the Blue Nile falls was I unable even to struggle feebly as I drifted upwards through that silvery radiance, the agony of suffocation gradually changing to a dreamy languor – and then my head must have broken surface, for I was gasping great painful gulps of air, retching and trying to scream as I felt the undertow drag at my legs, sucking me under again, and reason returned to tell me that to give up now, or faint away, or allow that torpor to enfold me again, was to die.
Whether my pathetic attempt to swim, or some freak of the current, or just a plain miracle took me clear, I can’t tell, for all I remember is an engulfing white mist, and after a while gravel under my knees and body, and crawling on to wet rock and lying exhausted in pouring rain – in fact it was the spray thrown up by millions of tons of water pouring over that colossal natural weir into the enormous lagoon at its foot. I managed to roll over on my back and stare up through a glittering rainbow haze at that gigantic white curtain of water falling with the roar of a thousand thunderstorms; I was lying on a flat stone bank apparently at one side of the river and about two furlongs from the fall itself; as I say, how I came there, God alone knows.
If I’d been a half-decent Christian I dare say I’d have sent up a prayer of thanksgiving for my deliverance. Or I might have marvelled at the devil’s own luck that preserves rotters where good men get their cocoa. But neither of these things occurred to me, and my last thought before slipping into unconsciousness as I gazed up at that towering cataract, was: “I wonder if anyone’s ever done that before?”
a “Theodore, King of Kings”.