A Pride of Lions by Isobel Chace Read Free Book Online Page A

behind, still rumbling by way of keeping up her end of the conversation. It was a steep and, despite the rain that had fallen in the night, a dusty climb to the top of the great pile of rocks on which it was planned to build the Chui Safari Lodge. At the top of the path, looking rather ridiculous in the middle of nowhere, was a slatted notice-board headed with the picture of a leopard resting in a tree. Underneath were the names of the architect, Mr. Doffnang, and the various contractors for each part of the building.
    Of the building itself there was as yet no sign. A group of African labourers had built a temporary road up one side of the rocky plateau and they were busy now, driving up the raw, red soil, a number of bulldozers and mechanical diggers to begin the foundations. Most of them were sitting by the road, gossiping, while the heavy machinery ploughed past them. If there was much more rain, I thought, the road would be a greasy mire and nothing would be able to get up or down at all.
    “We’ll have to give that road a top dressing of stone chips,” I said, more to myself than to Johnny. He shrugged his shoulders, plainly uninterested in such considerations.
    “I come up here strictly for the view,” he said. “Have you ever seen anything better than that?”
    I turned to where he was pointing. It was true that it was a fantastic view. From the top of this outcrop of rock one could see a hundred miles of Africa before one. Above was the blue and gold of the hot sky, bleaching the colours from the grass and brush below. But nothing could take away from the colours of the rust soil and the deep purple shadows. The horizon was so far away, it looked as though the land gave way to water, but it was sheer distance that turned the far-off hills a vivid, deeper blue than the pale sky. And in all that space nothing apparently moved. It was only after one’s eyes had grown accustomed to the sheer size of the land before one that one could make out some elephants crossing the river to go up to the plateau, some warthogs trooping from one place to another, and the olive baboons that played on the slopes at our feet, drinking from the dripping irrigation pipes that were to bring the water from the river to a permanent artificial lake below.
    “Oh well,” said Johnny, “I’d better take myself off. See you this evening!”
    I nodded abstractedly. Karibu rumbled gently in my ear, calling herself to my attention. With a sigh, I leant against the grey pillar that was her foreleg and pulled my hat down over my eyes against the glare. Karibu’s trunk embraced my waist.
    “It’s all home to you, isn’t it?” I said to her.
    She rumbled her assent, reluctantly letting me go as Mr. Doffnang came toiling up the steep path towards us.
    “So Miss deJong, you are already here,” he said fussily. “Are you sure that elephant is safe?”
    Karibu rumbled some more. “I hope so,” I said in Dutch. “Mr. Doffnang, we’ll have to do something about that road. That murram surface will be washed off in no time as soon as the rains come in earnest!”
    Mr. Doffnang and I happily inspected the road in question and there began my first full working day on the site. I was kept pretty busy. Mr. Doffnang’s orders had to be translated to Abdul Patel, and the men’s comments had to be translated back again. More often than not, there were messages to be run as well from one end of the site to the other, explaining in detail exactly where a trench was to be dug, either in Swahili, which most of the men understood, or in Kikuyu, or sometimes in the few words of Masai that I had at my disposal. There were not many Masai workers on the site, however. They preferred to live their own free, untrammelled existence, untouched by
    the remotest touch of civilisation, in their own lands. Most of the men were Kikuyus, Embus, and Wakamba, who had come away from their own homelands to earn the big money that building hotels in the middle of