around with Compie watching
for warthog holes and roared,
bumping, along the stretch
between the fires and with the
last bump rose and he saw
them all standing below,
waving, and the camp beside
the hill, flattening now, and the
plain spreading, clumps of
trees, and the bush flattening,
while the game trails ran now
smoothly to the dry waterholes,
and there was a new water that
he had never known of. The
zebra, small rounded backs
now, and the wildebeeste, bigheaded dots seeming to climb
as they moved in long fingers
across the plain, now scattering
as the shadow came toward
them, they were tiny now, and
the movement had no gallop,
and the plain as far as you
could see, gray-yellow now
and ahead old Compie's tweed
back and the brown felt hat.
Then they were over the first
hills and the wildebeeste were
trailing up them, and then they
were over mountains with
sudden depths of green-rising
forest and the solid bamboo
slopes, and then the heavy
forest again, sculptured into
peaks and hollows until they
crossed, and hills sloped down
and then another plain, hot
now, and purple brown, bumpy
with heat and Compie looking
back to see how he was riding.
Then there were other
mountains dark ahead.
And then instead of going on to
Arusha they turned left, he
evidently figured that they had
the gas, and looking down he
saw a pink sifting cloud,
moving over the ground, and in
the air, like the first snow in at
ii blizzard, that comes from
nowhere, and he knew the
locusts were coming, up from
the South. Then they began to
climb and they were going to
the East it seemed, and then it
darkened and they were in a
storm, the rain so thick it
seemed like flying through a
waterfall, and then they were
out and Compie turned his
head and grinned and pointed
and there, ahead, all he could
see, as wide as all the world,
great, high, and unbelievably
white in the sun, was the
JOY FEELINGS | DECEMBER ISSUE
278