***"*The Black-backed Jackal (Lupulella mesomelas) is, in the author's considerable experience, the most theatrically gifted animal on the continent. It has been observed approaching a lion kill, assessing the situation mid-trot, and collapsing onto its side in a performed death — remaining prone until the lions' attention wandered, then inching forward by increments, peeking periodically to assess progress. It got the scraps. The author has also watched one nip a hyena into vacating an area by the mechanism of sustained, targeted irritation — a tactic recognisable from several regimental postings. The jackal is, in short, an opportunist of considerable ingenuity, and the author has found it, on balance, more entertaining than threatening."
The field pack had been on the ground for less time than the Colonel considered significant. He had set it down to make a note — a brief note, thirty seconds at most — and when he looked up the jackal was already there, the buckle of the front pocket open in a manner suggesting either considerable dexterity or a working familiarity with field equipment that the Colonel found, in retrospect, more plausible than it should have been.
They regarded each other for a moment. The jackal with the Colonel's snacks in its mouth, standing absolutely still in the manner of an animal calculating rather than panicking. The Colonel with his pencil, calculating too.
The jackal bolted. Hit an uneven patch. Stumbled. Adjusted the snacks to a better carrying position with the focused efficiency of an animal that has made a decision and intends to honour it. Vanished across the open ground.
The Colonel watched it go. Then made his note, which now read: Jackal. 11.04. Dexterity: exceptional. Commitment: absolute. Snacks: gone.
He had been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by an animal the size of a medium dog. He had also, in that moment, understood something about the jackal that two volumes of literature had prepared him for intellectually but not quite experientially.
It was not afraid. It had never been afraid. It had been calculating.
That evening Cetshwayo retired early, without explanation, and the Colonel found himself alone at the fire with his notes and the African dark pressing in from all sides.
At dusk the insect chorus had established itself — crickets first, then the katydids joining in layers, building to the dense, textured wall of sound that is the African night's baseline and its constant. It was, the Colonel had long since decided, the sound of the continent thinking. It did not stop. It was always there.
Except when it wasn't.
He added wood. The fire was adequate. He added more.
At nine-fifteen, before anything called, the chorus went quiet.
Not all of it. A travelling silence, moving north to south through the bush to the camp's east, perhaps forty yards out. Something passing through, the insects closing behind it like water. The Colonel noted it without immediately noting what it meant.
Then the call came — from exactly where the silence had been.
He had heard it before. It was part of the continent's vocabulary — a rising wail that found the dark and filled it, broke into something almost melodic, fell away. Was answered from the south. Then a third, closer, from the north side of camp.