The hardwoods, he explained when he had finished, Kayimbi, Mulombwa, Mubanga and the rest, would not float. But there was a little light timber from which the natives cut their canoes.
'It's scattered about the hills,' he said. 'I'll have to blaze it before we start felling'—but his eyes showed his hesitation to leave his wife with her lover. She wondered what to do. If she offered to come, Dick might be stung to dangerous speech.
'I'll go and lie down,' she said. 'I've got a headache.'
An hour later, the apparently deserted hills echoed with the resonant chopping of axes. A dozen wooden bells seemed scattered in the forest as the tall trunks sounded with a rhythmic clop! clop! under the soft native iron. A rending, splitting noise, and the first tree, with the swish of a gigantic broom, tore through the boughs, prostrating its neighbours. The wooden bells clanked on as its limbs were hacked from it.
Soon Norah found the heat of the tent unbearable. She wandered to the shore, where she hoped a breeze might be perceptible. But the water was as smooth as a mirror. She faced inland. A tree top taller than the rest caught her eye. It stirred. The wind must be rising, although her wet face felt no breath. The tree trembled now. Its boughs waved, although wind seemed no more than a memory of the dead. The tree swayed. A modulated sway that lengthened with each period, until with a splintering crash it submerged beneath the ripple of the surrounding leaves. It was man's work she saw, not the wind's.
A native issued from the dark line of the forest. The light caught the tawny bundle he carried. Approaching the lake, he tossed a small log into the water that the splash might scare any crocodile which lurked there; then he bent and pushed the tangles of lushishi, broad strips of flexible bark, into the silvery margin. He hooked his axe over his naked shoulder and went off in search of more. To-morrow, Norah knew, the sodden lushishi would be twisted into rough ropes to lash the raft.
She pictured the adventure of the raft and shrank from the heavy hours that awaited the three of them cramped side by side on that narrow platform.
Archie had said 'two rafts,' but one would carry the loads and the carriers who were not needed to paddle their masters. It was a pity a sense of the ridiculous did not allow one raft to each European. Jealousy, shame, hatred demand more footage than a raft can give. All the world may be too little.
But she was glad Archie had not decided to wait in the bay. Her instinct that tragedy pervaded the deserted settlement had had foundation. It now urged escape before tragedy deepened.
She heard a European tread on the shingle and turned to find Archie.