Under African Skies Read Online Free PDF Page B

feeling as though she had earned a moment’s rest—and she took stock of her surroundings. From the top of the hill on which she stood she saw spread out before her a great expanse of country.
    Far away in the distance was a town, or, rather, the remains of a town, for there was no trace of movement to be seen near it, none of the signs of activity which would suggest the presence of a town. Perhaps it was merely distance which hid from her sight all the comings and goings, and possibly once within the town she would be borne along on the urgent flood of activity. Perhaps.
    â€œFrom this distance anything is possible,” she was surprised to hear herself say aloud.
    She mused on how, from such a vast distance, it seemed still as though anything could happen, and she fervently believed that if any changes were to take place they would occur in the intervals when the town was hidden by the trees and undergrowth.
    There had been many of these intervals and they were nearly always such very long intervals, so long that it was now by no means certain that she was approaching the town by the most direct route, for there was absolutely nothing to guide her and she had to struggle continually against the intertwining branches and tangled thorns and pick her way around a maze of swamps. She had tried very hard to cross the swamps but all she had succeeded
in doing was getting her shoes and the hem of her skirt soaking wet and she had been obliged to retrace her steps hurriedly, so treacherous was the surface of the ground.
    She couldn’t really see the town and she wasn’t going straight toward it except for the rare moments when she topped a rise. There the ground was sparsely planted with broom and heath and she was far above the thickly wooded depths of the valleys. But no sooner had she finished scrambling up the hills than she had to plunge once more into the bushes and try to force her way through the impenetrable undergrowth where everything was in her way, cutting off her view and making her walk painful and dangerous again.
    â€œPerhaps I really ought to go back,” she said to herself; and certainly that would have been the most sensible thing to do. But in fact she didn’t slacken her pace in the least, as though something away over there was calling to her, as though the distant town were calling. But how could an empty town summon her. A silent deserted town!
    For the closer she came to it the more she felt that it must really be a deserted city, a ruined city in fact. The height of the bushes and the dense tangled undergrowth about her feet convinced her. If the town had still been inhabited, even by a few people, its surroundings would never have fallen into the confusion through which she had been wandering around for hours; surely she would have found, instead of this tangled jungle, the orderly outskirts of which other towns could boast. But here there were neither roads nor paths; everything betokened disorder and decay.
    Yet once more she wondered whatever forced her to continue her walk, but she could find no reply. She was following an irresistible urge. She would have been hard put to it to say how this impulse had arisen or indeed to decide just how long she had been obeying it. And perhaps it was the case that if only she followed the impulse for long enough she would no longer be capable of defying it, although there was no denying that it was grossly irrational. At any rate the urge must have been there for a very long time, as she could tell from the tiredness of her limbs, and moreover it was still very close. Couldn’t she feel it brimming up within her, pressing on her breast with each eager breath she drew. Then all of a sudden she realized that she was face-to-face with it.
    â€œThe urge is me,” she cried.
    She proclaimed it defiantly but without knowing what she was defying, and triumphantly although unaware of her opponent. Whom had she defied,
and what could