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Baradales’ Plymouth, threw the luggage into the back and jumped into the front seat. (The hunter had left his own car in Malabeya.) Englebrecht let in the clutch with a bang and the car shot at high speed into the bush.
    “Luke seems in a hurry to leave us,” a woman’s voice said. “Are you ready to go?”
    Vachell turned to greet Chris Davis, the gamespotting pilot. She had been instructed by de Mare
    to take the newcomer out to look for elephant before breakfast. This was part of the second hunter’s job, and it had been agreed that Vachell had better act the part as realistically as he could.
    He had hardly had a chance to speak to Chris
    Davis at dinner the night before. Like de Mare, she was quite different from the picture that he had unconsciously built up in his mind. He had heard, vaguely, of her history, and knew that it was not a happy one. She had been married very young and her husband, a local farmer, had been killed in a motor smash on their honeymoon. She 44
    had struggled, singlehanded, to carry on his farm, but bad luck and bad seasons had forced her out, and for a time she had made a living by capturing wild animals for American zoos. She had learnt to fly, and become obsessed with aviation; and now she supported herself precariously by taking any flying job she could get. She had operated her second-hand Miles Hawk for a while as an air taxi, and had once held a job as a parachutist in an air circus in England. Vachell had expected someone masculine and hardboiled and weather-beaten; but there was nothing tough about her outward appearance. She was slight, slender and fair, with thick corn-coloured hair and a pale clear complexion.
    Her thin, rather delicate-looking face wore a grave expression, but there were little puckers at the corners of her mouth and eyes which
    suggested indulgence in a private amusement at the world.
    The ball of the sun was rising over the hilltops as the Baradale Plymouth rattled along a rough track that de Mare had cut through the bush to connect, the camp with the main road. The car twisted and turned among stunted thorn trees and lurched up and down rocky gulleys apparently at random, but Chris, who was driving, seemed to know exactly where to take it.
    A five-mile shadow lay across the bush-covered flats like an immense dark stain, and beyond it the open plains were flooded with sunshine. Below them Vachell could see the shadow rolling up like 45
    a carpet and the sunlight racing after it up the slope. A few minutes later the sun burst over the summit, and suddenly he felt warmth on his bare arm and saw the car’s shadow in front. Birds twittered excitedly in the green acacias, and steam
    started to rise out of the bush as the dew evaporated.
    They crossed the drift, abandoned the car, and plunged on foot into the long grass on the righthand side of the river. Vachell stripped some grass seeds and florets off a handful of stems and threw them into the air to test the wind. They floated gently down to his right.
    Their intention was to search for spoor around the drinking pools along the river. Vachell led the way, gripping his new .470 in one hand. The grass reached nearly to his waist and he was soaked to the skin in the first few minutes. He followed the swing of the river, moving with caution and
    straining his eyes to see round each clump of bush.
    The grass swished against his knees as he walked.
    After ten minutes he caught sight of something grey moving behind a bush to his left. He stopped dead in his tracks and watched an animal about the size of a donkey stalking majestically across his field of vision. It must be a waterbuck, he
    decided. It was a fine male, holding its forwardcurved horns high and sniffing the air with soft
    black nostrils.
    A little farther on his eye caught a movement to the right and he stopped again, this time with 46
    more abruptness. Thirty yards away, through the long grass, he saw a face: the tips of two tawny ears, a black nose.