The covenant - James A. Michener [204]
And now they were descending upon the three travelers. When they were close at hand, Swarts begged Adriaan to take him up, so the two men stood fast as the herd came down upon them. A strange thing happened. As the wildebeest and zebras came within twenty feet of the men, they quietly opened their ranks, forming the shape of an almond, a teardrop of open space in which the men stood unmolested. And as soon as that group of animals passed, they closed the almond, going forward as before, while newcomers looked at the men, slowly moved aside to form their own teardrop and then pass on.
For seven hours Adriaan and Dikkop stood in that one spot as the animals moved past. Never were they close enough to have touched one of the zebras or the bounding springbok; always the animals stayed clear, and after a while Swarts asked to be put down so that he could watch more closely.
At sunset the western sky was red with dust.
In the next months the landscape changed dramatically. Mountains began to appear on the horizon ahead, and rivers flowed north instead of east, where the ocean presumably lay. It was good land, and soon they found themselves in that remarkable gorge where the walls seemed to come together high in the heavens. Dikkop was frightened and wanted to turn back, but Adriaan insisted upon forging ahead, breaking out at last into that wonderland of baobab trees, whose existence defied his imagination.
'Look at them!' he cried. 'Upside down! How wonderful!'
For several weeks he and Dikkop and Swarts lived in one huge tree, not up in the branches, which would have been possible, but actually inside the tree in a huge vacancy caused by the wearing away of soft wood. Swarts, responding to some ancient heritage in a time when hyenas had lived in caves, reveled in the dark interior spaces, running from one to the other and making strange sounds.
He had become an exceptional pet, perhaps the finest animal Adriaan had ever known, placid like the best ox, brave like the strongest lion, playful like a kitten, and of tremendous strength like a rhinoceros. He enjoyed playing a fearsome game with Adriaan, taking the trekboer's forearm in his powerful jaws and pretending to bite it in half, which he could have done. He would bring his teeth slowly together and impishly watch Adriaan's face to see when pain would show. Tighter and tighter the great teeth would close until it seemed that the skin must break, and then, with Adriaan looking directly into the animal's eyes, Swarts would stop, and laugh admiringly at the man who was not afraid, and he would release the arm and leap upon Adriaan's lap and cover him with kisses.
At times Adriaan would think: These years can never end. There will be enough land for everyone, and the animals will multiply forever. When he and Dikkop left a carcass it was good to hear the lions approaching, to see the sky filled with great birds waiting to descend and clean the feast.
They came at last to the river, not the Zambezi, as Adriaan had promised, but the Limpopo, that sluggish stream that marked the natural northern borders of the subcontinent. Dr. Linnart had said the natural border was the Zambezi; Portuguese explorers had said the same; and anyone who had a map, rude and rough, saw that the Zambezi was the natural boundary, but reality dictated that this boundary be the Limpopo. South of here, the land was of a piece; north of here, it altered radically and could never be digested as an inherent part of a manageable unit.
Perhaps Adriaan realized this in December 1767 when he stood at the Limpopo beside his irreparably broken wagon and his oxen and horses dying from disease. 'Dikkop,' he said, 'we can't go any farther.' The Hottentot agreed, for he was tired, and even Swarts seemed