The Beast of the Camargue by Xavier-Marie Bonnot Page B

still weighed down on the baked ground.
    When Texeira reached the edges of the marsh, he noticed that the cracks in the earth had widened again. Some greenish samphire, impervious to thirst, still survived in that tiny Sahara.
    Panting, he put down his bag, checked that his mobile was off, then took out his Zeiss binoculars and Reflex camera and hung them round his neck in case a rare bird happened to pass by.
    A mauve gleam spread over the flat, salty waters. The level of the marshes had fallen again in the heat wave. He heard a faint noise: a little egret, completely white, emerged from the reed bed and advanced into the pond in search of its first meal of the day, making little plops with every step.
    This bird was not very rare at that time of year, but he still took two photographs, pleased with this first encounter. The thought of the tourist who had sent him those shots of spoonbills crossed his mind.
    The light was changing fast; the salt marsh was turning pink. In less than an hour, the sun would start its torrid trajectory, indifferent to nature’s torments.
    Texeira picked up his bag and strode toward the reed hut, with its whitewashed walls, in the only clump of trees on the reserve at the far end of the little canal.
    He stopped twice to observe a redshank that seemed to be following him along the other side of the canal. He knew this nesting pair. His former assistant had pointed them out to him last spring, before going to join the team in Vigueirat. This specimen didn’t look afraid, it must have got used to tourists and other lovers of high-class bird life.
    Once at the hut, he put his bag onto a table half consumed by earwigs, took out his thermos and poured himself some coffee.
    The window provided a discreet view over the entire marsh. He raised his binoculars and made a slow panoramic scan of its greenish waters. Nothing. Just plain solitude, slightly disturbed by a soft morning wind that ruffled the occasional tufts of reeds.
    He would have to wait, perhaps for an hour, for the insects to come out of their hide-outs and offer themselves to the neighborhood’s gourmet beaks. Making the most of the calm, he placed hisZeiss on a tripod. Just at that instant, a black stork, an extremely rare bird, landed thirty meters from the hut, just below the haggard tree that had been sinking slowly into the swamp since time immemorial.
    The large bird was so close that he could hear the heavy beat of its wings stirring the humid air. He did not have time to grab his Nikon before the stork flew off again, ponderously, toward the east.
    Its sudden departure surprised him. He had been so careful not to make a sound.
    Two squadrons of rooks landed behind a tamarisk and started squabbling over what was presumably a scrap of carrion lying there. The rooks’ verbal jousting was disturbing his morning observations. He had to put a stop to it.
    In less than two minutes, he had covered the distance. The rooks flew off to the far side of the marsh. At first he saw nothing unusual, and looked for their feast for some time among the twisted roots, wary of the deepish mud around the area.
    Near the tree, there was nothing to be seen, but looking up he noticed a round shape, like an old leather football, just emerging from the water about three meters in front of him, out of reach.
    He went back to the hut, fetched a long herdsman’s pole and returned to the scene.
    It took same effort not to sink into the muddy slime. The stick glanced off the surface of the object, so he tried to get at it from beneath and the pole caught onto what he took to be a bit of bone or a piece of a large bird’s wing. Then, slowly, he dragged the thing back toward the edge.
    At first, its weight surprised him. It wasn’t a bird, but perhaps it was some big game animal, a boar maybe, which had drowned in the marsh.
    Suddenly the object turned over in the water, in a peculiar slow motion. Texeira tried to step backward, but the