Read The Triangle and The Mountain: A Bermuda Triangle Adventure for Free Online Page B

never been beyond the human
inhabitants of the land, past and present, to bend over a freshly opened cone,
thereby allowing the nectar to flow directly into the mouth. Both KhoiKhoi had done this before. Both of them knew the alcoholic brew that the KhoiKhoi wives concocted from it. Now, in summer, however, the cones were dry and hard
and all that was to be had from the dense growth that reached to twice their
height, was shelter.
    They talked about the runaways.
    “How far do you think they will go?” asked Hadah.
    “I think they will reach the Great Mountains tonight,” said
the master. “Most probably they will rest there and that will be a mistake. The
Dutch know that you can get through at that break.”
    “That means sometime tomorrow they will be there with
horses.”
    “If they are clever they will go there even now and wait for
them. It’s the only place where these slaves can get through.”
    “If they escape do you think they will reach their people?”
    “Many of them run away but I wonder if any ever get back to
their own people. It is very far. You may start off as a young man but be home
when you are old. Also, I have seen that these slaves have no knowledge of
living off the land. They get a fright when they hear a bird make a noise in
the bushes. Most of them never try to go far. They just live around here,
mostly in caves near the coast where they eat shellfish like our people.”
    “So they have no chance?
“They have a chance but they must learn from our people and also from the Sonqua .”
    “The Sonqua will kill them with their poisoned
arrows.”
    “Only if they interfere with their women. The Sonqua may
make slaves out of them, though. So will our people. You must be able to rely
on yourself and for that you need knowledge.”
    The apprentice nodded. He was also trying to acquire
knowledge. He wondered if the slaves were going to overcome the temptation of
the dark cave that they will pass at the foot of the vertical face of the next
peak, the biggest in the range. Maybe they will feel the shudder that he
experienced when he was there for the first time and maybe then they will
realise that it would be prudent to act on the advice of the master to pass it
by. Even the baboons stayed away from that place.
    He wondered if they would recognise anything, being so
stupid. When they saw the slab of rock to the right of the entrance, would they
guess what it was used for? What would they make of the leather thongs with
loops at their ends that hung from the boughs of the ancient fire scarred tree
behind the rock? Would they somehow know that those thongs were meant to hold
the feet of infants while blood dripped from their sliced throats into
receptacles on the rock and their lives seeped away, only to be absorbed by the
spirit living in the mountain?
    It was his master’s and his place of work. It was important
that nothing should be disturbed.
    If they moved on he wondered if they would speculate about
the peculiar shapes in the scree below the cliff face, about the fact that the
rocks were organised in mounds. He once asked the master how many there were.
    “If a man lived to a very old age there would be a mound
here for every day of his life,” was his answer. “The first custodian of the
mountain was buried here,” and he indicated a spot very close to the cave.
“From here on the others were buried further and further away. It is important
not to disturb the graves of those who went before us.”
    On the day that he explained this they walked along the
footpath that tracked the cliff-face.  One of the big black eagles that circled
the mountain in search of careless rock hyraxes passed them at eye level and it
had returned by the time they reached a mound at which the master stopped.
    “This is the grave of my predecessor, Aitsi-!uma. “See here.
This is where you bring my body and if not my body, then my bones.” It was
prescient of him to talk about the bones because years later