A FALCON FLIES

 Wilbur Smith

  

 Antionette 1860 AfRICA

 crouched low on the horizon, like a lion in ambush, tawny and gold in

 the early sunlight, scared by the cold of the Benguela Current.

 Robyn Ballantyne stood by the ship's rail and stared towards it. She

 had been standing like that since an hour before dawn, long before the

 land could be seen. She had known it was there, sensed its vast

 enigmatic presence in the darkness, detected its breath, warm and spicy

 dry, over the clammy cold exhalations of the current on which the great

 ship rode.

 It was her cry, not that of the masthead, which brought Captain Mungo

 St. John charging up the companionway from his stern quarters, and the

 rest of the ship's company crowding to the ship's side to stare and

 jabber. For seconds only, Mungo St. John gripped the teak rail, staring

 at the land, before whirling to call his orders in the low but piercing

 tone which seemed. to carry to every corner of the ship. "Stand by to

 go about!" Tippoo the mate scattered the crew to their duties with

 knotted rope-end and clubbed fists. For two weeks, furious winds and

 low, sullen skies had denied them a glimpse of sun or moon, or of any

 other heavenly body on which to establish a position. On dead reckoning

 the tall clipper should have been one hundred nautical miles further

 west, well clear of this treacherous coast with its uncharted hazards

 and wild deserted shores.

 The Captain was freshly awakened, the thick dark mane of his hair

 tangled, rippling now in the wind, his cheeks lightly flushed with

 sleep, and also with anger and alarm beneath the smooth darkly tanned

 skin. Yet his eyes were clear, the whites contrasting starkly against

 the golden-flecked yellow of the iris. Once again, even in this moment

 of distraction and confusion, Robyn wondered at the sheer physical

 presence of the man, a dangerous, disturbing quality that at the same

 time both repelled and attracted her intensely.

 His white linen shirt had been stuffed hastily into his breeches, and

 the front was unfastened. The skin of his chest was dark and smooth

 also, as if it had been oiled, and the hair upon it was crisp and black,

 tight whorls of it that made her blush, reminding her too clearly of

 that morning early in the voyage, the first morning that they had run

 into the warm blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean below latitude 35"

 north, the morning which for her had been the subject of much torment

 and troubled prayer since. That morning, she had heard the splash and

 drum of water on the deck above her, and the clank of the ship's pump.

 She had left the makeshift desk in her tiny cabin on which she was

 working at her journal, slipped a shawl over her shoulders and gone up

 on to the maindeck, stepping unsuspectingly into the bright white

 sunlight and then stopping aghast.

 There were two seamen working the pump lustily, and the clear sea water

 hissed from its throat in a solid jet.

 Naked, Mungo St. John stood beneath it, lifting his face and his arms

 towards it, the water sleeking his black hair down over his face and

 neck, flattening his body hair over his chest and the muscled plane of

 his belly.

 She had stood and stared, completely frozen, unable to tear her eyes

 away. The two seamen had turned their heads and grinned lewdly at her

 while they kept the handles pumping the hissing water.

 Of course she had seen a man's naked body before, laid out on the

 dissection table, soft white flesh collapsing over bone, and with belly

 pouch slit open and the internal organs spilling out of it like

 butchers" offal, or between the grubby blankets of the fever hospital,

 sweating and stinking and racked with the convulsions of onrushing

 death, but never like this, not healthy and vital and overwhelming like

 this.

 This was a marvelous symmetry and balance of trunk to long powerful

 legs, of broad shoulders to narrow waist.

 There was a lustre to the skin, even where the sun had not gilded it.

 This was not an untidy tangle of masculine organs, half-hidden by a bush

 of coarse hair, shameful and vaguely revolting. This was vibrant

 manhood, and she had been struck with sudden insight as to the original

 sin of Eve, the serpent and the apples, here offered again, and she had

 gasped aloud. He had heard her and stepped from under the thundering

 jet of water, and flicked the hair from his eyes. He saw her standing

 near, unable to move or tear her eyes away, and he smiled that lazy,

 taunting smile, making no move to cover himself, the water still

 streaming down his body, and sparkling like diamond chips on his skin.

 "Good morning, Doctor Ballantyne," he had murmured. "Perhaps I am to be

 the subject of one of your scientific studies?" " only then had she

 been able to break the spell, to whirl and rush back to her smelly

 little cabin. She expected to be greatly disturbed, as she threw

 herself on the narrow planks of her bunk, waiting to be overwhelmed by a

 sense of sin and shame, but it did not come. Instead, she was confused

 by a contraction of her chest and lungs that left her breathless, and a

 remarkable warmth of her cheeks and the skin of her throat, a prickling

 of the fine dark hairs at the nape of her neck, and the same warmth of

 other parts of her body which had so alarmed her that she flung herself

 hurriedly off the bunk and on to her knees to plead for a proper sense

 of her own unworthiness and a true understanding of her essential

 baseness and irretrievable wickedness. It was an exercise she had

 undertaken a thousand times in her twenty-three years, but seldom with

 so little success.

 For the thirty-eight days of the voyage since then, she had tried to

 avoid those flecked yellow eyes and that lazy taunting smile, and had

 taken to eating most of her meals in her cabin, even in the daunting

 heat of the equator, when the taint of the bucket behind the canvas

 screen in the corner of the cabin had done little to pique her appetite.

 Only when she knew that heavy weather would keep him on deck did she

 join her brother and the others in the ship's small saloon.

 Watching him now as he conned his ship off the hostile coast, she felt

 that disturbing prickle once again, and she turned away quickly to the

 land that was now swinging across the bows. The tackle roared through

 the blocks and the yards creaked and crackled, the canvas flogged and

 then filled again with a crash like cannon.

 At the sight of the land she almost overcame those earlier memories and

 was instead filled with such a sense of awe, that she wondered if it

 were possible that the land of birth could call so clearly and so

 undeniably to the blood of its children.

 It did not seem possible that nineteen years had passed since as a

 four-year-old waif, clinging to her mother's long skirts she had last

 seen that great flat-topped mountain that guarded the southernmost tip

 of the continent sink slowly beneath the horizon. It was one of the

 only clear memories of this land that she retained. She could still

 almost feel the coarse cheap stuff that a missionary's wife must wear

 and hear the sobs that her mother tried to stifle and feel them shake

 her mother's legs beneath the skirts, as she clung closer. Vividly she

 recalled the fear and confusion of the little girl at her mother's

 distress, understanding with childlike intuition that their lives were

 in upheaval, but knowing only that the tall figure that had been up to

 that time the centre of her small existence was now missing. Don't cry,

 baby, her mother had whispered. "We will see Papa again soon. Don't

 cry, my little one. " But those words had made her doubt that she would

 ever see her father again, and she had pushed her face into the coarse

 skirt, too proud even at that age to let the others hear her wail.

 As always it had been her brother Morris who had comforted her, three

 years her senior, a man of seven years, born like her in Africa, on the

 banks of a far wild river with a strange exotic name, Zouga, which had

 given him his middle name. Morris Zouga. Ballantyne she liked the

  

 Zouga best and always used it, it reminded her of Africa.

 She turned her head back towards the quarterdeck, and there he was now,

 , tall but not as tall as Mungo St. John, to whom he was speaking

 excitedly, pointing at the lioncoloured land, his face animated. The

 features he had inherited from their father were heavy but strong, the

 nose bony and beaked and the line of the mouth determined, harsh

 perhaps.

 He lifted the glass to his eye again and studied the low coastline,

 scanning it with the care that he took with any project from the

 smallest to the greatest, before lowering it and turning back to Mungo

 St. John. They spoke together quietly. An unlikely relationship had

 developed between the two men, a mutual, though guarded respect each for

 the other's strengths and accomplishments. But if the truth be told, it

 was Zouga who pursued the relationship most assiduously. Always one to

 profit by any opportunity, he had milked Mungo St. John of his knowledge

 and experience. He had done it with an exercise of charm, but since

 leaving Bristol harbour he had drawn from the Captain most of what he

 had learned in many years of trading and voyaging along the coasts of

 this vast savage continent, and Zouga had written all of it down in one

 of his calf-bound ledgers, storing knowledge against the day.

 In addition to this, the Captain had genially undertaken to instruct

 Zouga in the mystery and art of astronomical navigation. Each day local

 apparent noon would find the two of them huddled on the sunny side of

 the quarterdeck with brass sextants poised, waiting for a glimpse of the

 fiery orb through the layers of cloud, or, when the sky was clear,

 eagerly sighting it, swaying to the ship's motion, to hold the sun in

 the field of the lens as they brought it down to the horizon.

 At other times they cut the monotony of a long tack with a contest of

 arms, taking turns at an empty corked brandy bottle thrown over the

 stern by a crewman, using a magnificent pair of percussion duelling

 pistols that Mungo St. John brought up from his cabin still in their

 velvet-lined case, and loaded with care on the chart table.

 They shouted with laughter, and congratulated each other as the bottles

 burst in midair in an explosion of shards bright as diamond chips in the

 sunlight.

 At other times Zouga brought up the new Sharps breechloading rifle, a

 gift from one of the sponsors of the expedition, "the Ballantyne Africa

 Expedition', as the Standard, that great daily newspaper, had named it.

 The Sharps was a magnificent weapon, accurate up to the incredible range

 of 800 yards, with the power to knock down a bull bison at a thousand.

 The men who were wiping out the great herds of buffalo from the American

 prairie at this very time had earned the title Sharpshooters" with this

 weapon.

 Mungo St. John towed a barrel at the end of an 800 yard length of cable

 to act as a target, and they shot for a wager of a shilling a bout.

 Zouga was an accomplished marksman, the best in his regiment, but he had

 already lost over five guineas to Mungo St. John.

 Not only were the Americans manufacturing the finest firearms in the

 world (already John Browning had patented a breech loading repeating

 rifle that Winchester was evolving into the most formidable weapon known

 to men), but the Americans -were also far and away the finest marksmen.

 This pointed up the difference between the tradition of the frontiersman

 with his long rifle, and that of massed British infantry firing

 smooth-bore muskets in strictly commanded volleys. Mungo St. John, an

 American, handled both the long-barrelled duelling pistol and the Sharps

 rifle as though they were an extension of his own body.

 Now Robyn turned away from the two men, looked back at the land and felt

 a small dismay to see it already sinking lower into the cold green sea.

 She yearned towards it with a quiet desperation, as she had ever since

 that day of departure so long ago. Her whole life in the intervening

 years seemed to have been a long preparation for this moment, so many

 obstacles overcome, obstacles made mountainous by the fact she was a

 woman; there had been so much struggle against temptation to give in to

 despair, a struggle that others had read as wilfulness and vaunting

 pride, as stubbornness and immodesty.

 Her education had been eaned with such toil from the library of her

 uncle William, despite his active discouragement.

 "Too much book learning will only plague you, my dear. It is not a

 woman's place to trouble herself with certain things. You would do

 better to assist your mother in the kitchen and learn to sew and knit"

 "I can do both already, Uncle William."

 Later, his reluctant and grumbling assistance changed only slowly into

 active support when he at last assessed the depth of her intelligence

 and determination.

 Uncle William was her mother's eldest brother, and he had taken in the

 family when the three of them had returned almost destitute from that

 far savage land. They had only the father's stipend from the London

 Missionary Society, a mere 150 per annum, and William Moffat was not a

 wealthy man, a physician at Kings Lynn with a small practice, hardly

 sufficient for the ready-made family with which he found himself

 saddled.

 Of course, later, many years later, there had been money, a great deal

 of money, some said as much as three thousand pounds, the royalties from

 Robyn's father's books, but it had been Uncle William who had shielded

 and sustained them through the lean times.

 William had somehow found the money to purchase Zouga's commission in

 his regiment, even selling his two prized hunters and making that

 humiliating journey to Cheapside and the moneylenders to do so.

 With what William could raise, it was perforce not a fashionable

 regiment, and not even the regular army, but the 13th Regiment of Madras

 Native Infantry, a line regiment of the East India Company.

 It was Uncle William who had instructed Robyn until she was as advanced

 in formal education as he was himself, and who had then aided and

 abetted her in the great deception of which she could never bring

 herself to be ashamed. In 1854 no hospital medical school in all of

 England would enrol a woman amongst their student body.

 With her uncle's help, and active connivance, she had enrolled, using

 his sponsorship and the assertion that she was his nephew at St.

 Matthew's Hospital in the east end of London.

 It helped that her name needed only changing from Robyn to Robin, that

 she was tall and small-breasted, that her voice had a depth and

 huskiness that she could exaggerate. She had kept her thick, dark hair

 cropped short, and learned to wear trousers with such panache that ever

 since, the tangle of petticoats and crinolines around her legs had

 irritated her.

 The hospital governors had only discovered the fact that she was a woman

 after she had obtained her medical qualification from the Royal College

 of Surgeons at the age of twenty-one. They had immediately petitioned

 the Royal College to withdraw the honour, and the ensuing scandal had

 swept the length and breadth of England, made more fascinating by the

 fact that she was the daughter of Doctor Fuller Ballantyne, the famous

 African explorer, traveller, medical missionary and author. "in the

 end, the governors of St. Matthew's had been forced to retreat, for

 Robyn Ballantyne and her Uncle William had found a champion in the

 small, rotund person of Oliver Wicks, editor of the Standard.

 With a true journalist's eye, Wicks had recognized good copy, and in a

 scathing editorial had called upon the British tradition of fair play,

 ridiculed the dark hints of sexual orgies in the operating rooms and

 pointed up the considerable achievement of this bright and sensitive

 young girl against almost insurmountable odds. Yet even when her

 qualification had been confirmed, it was for her only a short step along

 the road back to Africa, on which she had determined so long ago.

 The venerable directors of the London Missionary Society had been

 considerably alarmed by the offer of the services of a woman. Missionary

 wives were one thing, were indeed highly desirable to shield the

 missionaries themselves against physical blandishments and temptations

 amongst the unclothed heathen, but a lady missionary was another thing

 entirely.

 There was a further complication which weighed heavily against Doctor

 Robyn Ballantyne's application. Her father was Fuller Ballantyne, who

 had resigned from the Society six years previously before disappearing

 once again into the African hinterland; in their eyes he had completely

 discredited himself. It was clear to them that the father was more

 interested in exploration and personal aggrandizement than in leading

 the benighted heathen into the bosom of Jesus Christ. In fact, so far

 as they were aware, Fuller Ballantyne had made only one convert in all

 his thousands of miles of African travel, his personal gunbearer.

 He seemed to have made himself a crusader against the African slave

 trade, rather than an emissary of Christ. He had swiftly changed his

 first missionary station in Africa into a sanctuary for runaway slaves.

 The station at Koloberg had been on the southern edge of the great

 Kalahari Desert, a little oasis in the wilderness where a clear, strong

 spring of water gushed from the ground, and it had been founded with an

 enormous expenditure of the Society's funds.

 Once Fuller had made it a slave refuge, the inevitable had happened. The

 Trek Boers from the little independent republics which ringed the

 mission station to the south were the original owners of the slaves to

 whom Fuller Ballantyne gave sanctuary. They called "Commando', the

 medium through which the Trek Boers dispensed frontier justice. They

 came riding into Koloberg an hour before dawn, dark swift horsemen, a

 hundred of them, dressed in coarse homespun, bearded and burned by the

 sun to the colour of Africa's dark earth. The bright flashes of their

 muzzle-loaders lit the dawn, and then the burning thatch of the

 buildings of Fuller Ballantyne's mission station made it bright day.

 They roped the recaptured slaves together with the station servants and

 freedmen into long lines, and drove them away southwards, leaving Fuller

 Ballantyne standing with his family huddled about him, a few pathetic

 possessions which they had managed to save from the flames scattered at

 their feet, and the smoke from the smouldering, roofless buildings

 drifting in eddies about them.

 It had confirmed in Fuller Ballantyne his hatred of the institution of

 slavery, and it had given him the excuse for which he had unwittingly

 been searching, the excuse to rid himself of the encumbrances which had

 until then prevented him from answering the call of the vast, empty land

 to the north.

 His wife and two small children were packed off back to England for

 their own good, and with them went a letter to the directors of

 the-London Missionary Society.

 God had made his will clear to Fuller Ballantyne. He was bidden to

 journey to the north, to carry God's word across Africa, a missionary at

 large, no longer tied to one small station, but with the whole of Africa

 as his parish.

 The directors were greatly troubled by the loss of their station, but

 they were further dismayed by the prospect of having to mount what

 seemed to be a costly expedition of exploration into an area which all

 the world knew was merely a vast desert, unpeopled and unwatered except

 around the littoral, a burning sand desert which stretched to the

 Mediterranean Sea four thousand miles northward.

 They wrote hurriedly to Fuller Ballantyne, uncertain where exactly the

 letter should be addressed, but feeling the need to deny all

 responsibility and to express their deep concern; they ended by stating

 strongly that no further funds other than his stipend of 150 per annum.

 could be voted for Fuller Ballantyne's highly irregular activities. They

 need not have expended their energy and emotions, for Fuller Ballantyne

 had departed. With a handful of porters, his Christian gunbearer, a

 Colt revolver, a percussion rifle, two boxes of medicines, his journals

 and navigational instruments, Fuller Ballantyne had disappeared.

 He emerged eight years later, down the Zambezi river, appearing at the

 Portuguese settlement near the mouth of that river, to the great chagrin

 of the settlers there who, after 200 years of occupation, had pushed no

 further than 100 miles upstream.

 Fuller Ballantyne returned to England and his book A Missionary in

 Darkest Africa created a tremendous sensation. Here was a man who had

 made the "Transversa', the overland passage of Africa from west to east

 coast, who had seen, where there should be desert, great rivers and

 lakes, cool pleasant grassy uplands, great herds of game and strange

 peoples, but most of all he had seen the terrible depredations of the

 slave-raiders upon the continent, and his revelations rekindled the

 anti-slavery zeal of Wilberforce in the hearts of the British people.

 The London Missionary Society was embarrassed by the instant fame of

 their prodigal, and they hurried to make amends. Fuller Ballantyne had

 chosen the sites for future missionary stations in the interior, and at

 the cost of many thousands of pounds they gathered together groups of

 devoted men and women and sent them out to the selected sites.

 The British Gbvernment, prevailed upon by Fuller Ballantyne's

 description of the Zambezi river as a wide roadway to the rich interior

 of Africa, nominated Fuller Ballantyne Her Majesty's Consul, and

 financed an elaborate expedition to open this artery of trade and

 civilization to the interior.

 Fuller had returned to England to write his book, but during this period

 of reunion with his family, they saw almost as little of the great man

 as when he was in the depths of Africa. When he was not locked in Uncle

 William's study writing the epic of his travels, he was in London

 hounding the Foreign Office or the directors of the L. M. S. And when

 he had gained from these sources all that he needed for his return to

 Africa, then he was travelling about England lecturing in Oxford or

 preaching the sermon from the pulpit of Canterbury cathedral.

 Then abruptly he was gone again, taking their mother with him. Robyn

 would always remember the feel of his spiky whiskers as he stooped to

 kiss his daughter farewell for the second time. In her mind her father

 and God were somehow the same person, all-powerful, allrighteous, and

 her duty to them was blind, accepting adoration.

 Years later, when the missionary sites chosen by Fuller Ballantyne had

 proved to be death-traps, when the surviving missionaries had stumbled

 back to civilization, their fellows and spouses dead of fever and

 famine, killed by wild animals and by the wilder men whom they had gone

 out to save, then Fuller Ballantyne's star had begun to fade.

 The Foreign Office expedition to the Zambezi river, led by Ballantyne,

 had faltered and failed upon the terrible rapids and deep falls of the

 Kaborra-Bossa gorge through which the Zambezi crashed and roared,

 dropping a thousand feet in twenty miles. Men wondered how Ballantyne,

 who had claimed to have followed the Zambezi down from its source to the

 sea, could have not known of such a formidable obstacle to his dreams.

 They began to question his other claims, while the British Foreign

 Office, parsimonious as ever, was considerably miffed by the waste of

 funds on the abortive expedition and withdrew the title of Consul.

 The London Missionary Society wrote another of their lengthy letters to

 Fuller Ballantyne, requesting him in future to confine his activities to

 the conversion of the heathen and the propagation of God's word.

 Fuller Ballantyne had replied by posting them his resignation, thereby

 saving the society 150 per annum. At the same time he had penned a

 letter of encouragement to his two children urging them to show

 fortitude and faith, and sent the manuscript, in which he vindicated his

 conduct of the expedition, to his publisher. Then he had taken the few

 guineas that remained from the huge royalties that his other books had

 earned and had disappeared once more into the interior of Africa. That

 was eight years previously and no one had heard from him since.

 Now here was this man's daughter, already nearly. as notorious as the

 father, demanding admission to the Society as a working missionary.

 Once again, Uncle William had come to Robyn's aid, dear mild bumbling

 Uncle William with his thick pebble spectacles and wild grey bush of

 untarnable hair. With her he had gone before the board of directors and

 reminded them that Robyn's grandfather, Robert Moffat, was one of the

 most successful of all African missionaries, with tens of thousands of

 conversions to his credit.

 indeed the old man was still working at Kuruman and had only recently

 published his dictionary of the Sechuana language.

 Robyn herself was dedicated and devout, with medical training and a good

 knowledge of African languages taught her by her now deceased mother,

 daughter of the same Robert Moffat, and by virtue of the reverence with

 which the said Robert Moffat was regarded by even the most warlike

 African king, Mzilikazi of the Ndebele, or as some people called them,

 the Matabele, the granddaughter would find immediate acceptance amongst

 the tribes.

 The directors had listened stonily.

 Then Uncle William had gone on to suggest that Oliver Wicks, the editor

 of the Standard who had championed the girl against the attempt by the

 governors of St. Matthew's Hospital to deprive her of her medical

 qualification, would be interested in their reasons for refusing her

 application to the Society.

 The directors sat up and listened with great attention, conferred

 quietly and accepted Robyn's application. They had then seconded her to

 another missionary movement who in turn sent her to the industrial slums

 of northern England.

 It was her brother Zouga who had found the way back to Africa for both

 of them.

 He had returned from India on leave, a man of considerable achievement,

 already a major in the Indian army, promotion that he had won in the

 field, with the reputation of being a soldier and military administrator

 of great promise for one so young.

 Despite this, Zouga was every bit as dissatisfied with his lot as was

 Robyn. Like their father, they were both lone wolves, responding badly

 to authority and regimentation. In spite of the promising start to his

 military career, Zouga recognized the fact that he had already made

 powerful enemies in India, and he had begun to doubt that his future lay

 on that continent. Like Robyn, he was still a searcher, and they had

 greeted each other after the parting of years with a warmth that they

 had seldom displayed during their childhood.

 Zouga took her to dinner at the Golden Boar. It was such a change from

 Robyn's daily surroundings that she accepted a second glass of claret

 and became gay and sparkling. By God, Sissy, you really are a pretty

 thing, you know, he had told her at last. He had taken to swearing now,

 and though it had shocked her at first, she had grown accustomed to it

 quickly enough. She had heard a lot worse in the slums where she

 worked. "You are too good to spend your life amongst those ghastly

 crones."

 It changed the mood between them instantly, and she was able at last to

 lean close to her brother and pour out all her frustrations. He

 listened sympathetically, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand

 so that she went on quietly but with utter determination.

 Zouga, I have to get back to Africa. I'll die if I don't.

 I just know it. I will shrivel up and die. "Good Lord, Sissy, why

 Africa? "Because I was born there, because my destiny is there and

 because Papa is there, somewhere. "I was born there also. " Zouga

 smiled, and when he did so it softened the harsh line of his mouth. "But

 I don't know about my destiny. I wouldn't mind going back for the

 hunting, of course, but as for Father, don't you often think that Papa's

 main concern was always Fuller Ballantyne? I cannot imagine that you

 still harbour any great fatherly love for him. "He is different from

 other men, Zouga, you cannot judge him by the usual yardstick. "There

 are many who might agree with that, Zouga murmured drily. "At the L. M.

 S.  and at the Foreign Office but as a father? "I love him! she said

 defiantly. "After God, I love him best. He killed mother, you know. "

 Zouga's mouth hardened into its usual grim line. "He took her out to

 the Zambezi in fever season and he killed her as certainly as if he'd

 put a pistol to her head."

 Robyn conceded after a short, regretful silence, "He was never a father

 nor a husband, but as a visionary, a blazer of trails, as a

 torchbearer.. ."

 Zouga laughed and squeezed her hand. Really, Sissy! "I have read his

 books, all his letters, every one he ever wrote to mother or to us, and

 I know that my place is there. In Africa, with Papa."

 Zouga lifted his hand from hers and carefully stroked his thick side

 whiskers. "You always had a way of making me feel excited-" Then,

 seemingly going off at a tangent, "Did you hear that they have found

 diamonds on the Orange river? " He lifted his glass and examined the

 lees in the bottom of it attentively. "We are so very different, you

 and I, and yet in some ways so much alike. " He poured fresh wine into

 his glass and went on casually. I am in debt, Sissy."

 The word chilled her. Since her childhood she had been taught a dread

 of it.

 How much? " she asked at last quietly.

 Two hundred pounds. " He shrugged. So much! " she breathed, and then,

 "You haven't been gambling, Zouga? " That was one of the other dread

 words in Robyn's vocabulary.

 Not gambling? " she repeated. As a matter of fact, I have, Zouga

 laughed. "And thank God for that. Without it I would be a thousand

 guineas under. "You mean you gamble, and actually win? " Her horror

 faded a little, became tinged with fascination. Not always, but most of

 the time."

 She studied him carefully, perhaps for the first time.

 He was only twenty-six years old, but he had the presence and aplomb of

 a man ten years older. He was already a hard, professional soldier,

 tempered in the skirmishes on the border of Afghanistan where his

 regiment had spent four years. She knew they had been cruel encounters

 against fierce hill tribes, and that Zouga had distinguished himself.

 His rapid promotion was proof of that.

 Then how are you in debt, Zouga? " she asked. Most of my brother

 officers, even my juniors, have private fortunes. I am a major now, I

 have to keep some style. We hunt, we shoot, mess bills, polo ponies -"

 He shrugged again. Will you ever be able to repay it? "I could marry a

 rich wife, he smiled, "or find diamonds."

 Zouga sipped his wine, slumped down in his chair, not looking at her,

 and went on quietly. I was reading Cornwallis Harris's book the other

 day - do you remember the big game we saw when we lived at Koloberg? "

 She shook her head. No, you were only a baby. But I do. I remember

 the herds of springbok and wildebeest on the trek down to the Cape. One

 night there was a lion, I saw it clearly in the light of the campfire.

 Harris's book described his hunting expeditions up as far as the

 Limpopo, nobody has been further than that, except Papa, of course. A

 damned sight better than potting pheasant or black buck.

 Did you know that Harris made nearly five thousand pounds from his book?

 " Zouga pushed his glass away, straightened up in his seat and selected

 a cigar from his silver case. While he prepared and lit it, he was

 frowning thoughtfully. You want to go to Africa for spiritual reasons.

 I probably need to go to Africa, for much better reasons, for blood and

 for money. I make you a proposal. The Ballantyne Expedition! " He

 lifted his glass to her.

 She laughed then, uncertainly, thinking he was joking, but lifted her

 own glass which was still almost full. "My word on it. But how? Zouga,

 how do we get there? "What was the name of that newspaper fellow? "

 Zouga demanded. Wicks, she said, "Oliver Wicks. But why should he help

 us? "I'll find a good reason why he should. " And Robyn remembered

 how, even as a child, he had been an eloquent and persuasive pleader of

 causes. You know I rather think you might."

 They drank then, and when she lowered her glass, she had been as happy

 as she could ever remember being in all her life.

 It was another six weeks before she saw Zouga again, striding towards

 her through the bustle of London Bridge Station as she clambered down

 from the carriage. He stood tall above the crowd, with the high beaver

 top hat on his head and the three-quarter length paletot cloak flaring

 from his shoulders. Sissy! " he called, laughing at her, as he lifted

 her from her feet. "We are going, we really are going."

 He had a cab waiting for them, and the driver whipped up the horses the

 moment they were aboard. The London Missionary Society were no use at

 all, he told her, still with his arm around her shoulders as the cab

 clattered and lurched over the cobbles. "I had them down on my list for

 five hundred iron men, and they nearly had apoplexy. I had the feeling

 they would rather Papa stayed lost in darkest Africa, and they would pay

 five hundred to keep him there."

 You went to the directors? " she demanded. Played my losing tricks

 first, Zouga smiled. "The next was Whitehall, actually managed to see

 the First Secretary. He was damned civil, took me to lunch at the

 Travellers', and was truly very sorry that they were not able to give

 financial assistance. They remembered Papa's Zambezi fiasco too

 clearly, but he did give me letters. A dozen letters, to every

 conceivable person, to the Governor at the Cape, to Kemp the Admiral at

 Cape Town, and all the others. "Letters won't get us far. "Then I went

 to see your newspaper friend. Extraordinary little man.

 Smart as a whip. I told him we were going to Africa to find Papa, and

 he jumped up and clapped his hands like a child at a Punch and Judy

 show."

 Zouga hugged Robyn tighter. "To tell the truth, I used your name

 shamelessly, and it did the trick. He will have all the story rights to

 our diaries and journals, and the publishing rights to both books. "Both

 books? " Robyn pulled away from him and looked into his face. Both. "

 He grinned at her. "Yours and mine I am to write a book? "You

 certainly are. A woman's account of the expedition. I have already

 signed the contract on your behalf."

 She laughed then, but breathlessly. "You're going too far, much too

 fast. "Little Wicks was in for five hundred, and the next on the list

 was the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade, they were easy.

 His Royal Highness is the Society's patron, and he had read Papa's

 books. We are to report on the state. of the trade in the interior of

 the continent north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and they came up with

 another 500 guineas. "Oh Zouga, you are a magician.

 "Then there was the Worshipful Company of London Merchants Trading into

 Africa. For the last hundred years they have based all their activities

 on the west coast, I convinced them that they needed a survey of the

 east coast. I have been appointed the Worshipful Company's Agent, with

 instructions to examine the market in palm oil, gum-copal, copper and

 ivory, and they have come up with the third and last 500 guineas, and a

 presentation Sharps rifle. "One thousand five hundred guineas, Robyn

 breathed, and Zouga nodded.

 We are going back home in style."

 When? "

 I have booked passage on an American trading clipper.

 We sail from Bristol in six weeks, for Good Hope and Quelimane in

 Mozambique. I have written asking leave from my regiment for two years,

 you will have to do the same with the L. M. S."

 It had all happened with dreamlike rapidity after that.

 The directors of the L. M. S perhaps relieved that they were not to

 pay for her passage nor the expense of relocating Robyn in the African

 interior, in a flush of extravagance decided to continue her stipend

 during the period she was away, and made a guarded promise to review the

 position at the end of that time. If she proved herself capable, then

 there would be a permanent post in Africa thereafter. It was more than

 she had ever expected, and she had thrown herself wholeheartedly into

 assisting Zouga with the preparations for departure. There was so much

 to do that six weeks was barely sufficient, and it seemed only days had

 passed before the mountain of the expedition's equipment was being

 swayed down into the holds of the big graceful Baltimore clipper.

 The Huron proved as swift as she looked, another wise choice by Zouga

 Ballantyne, and under Mungo St. John's skilful navigation she made good

 her westings before attempting to cross the belt of the doldrums at

 their narrowest point. They were becalmed not a single day and sped

 across the line at 29" west and immediately Mungo St. John put her on

 the port tack to stand down across the south east trades. Huron clawed

 her way southwards with the flying fish sailing ahead of her, close on

 the wind until she broke from their grip at last with 11ha da Trinidade

 on the horizon. The north-wester came howling at them and Huron fled

 before it, under low, sullen, scudding skies day after day that denied

 them sight of sun or moon or stars, until she almost hurled herself

 ashore 200 miles up the west coast of Africa from her destination at the

 Cape of Good Hope. Mr. Mate! " Mungo St. John called in his clear

 carrying voice as Huron settled down to reach across the wind, pulling

 swiftly away from the land. Captain! " Tippoo bellowed back from the

 foot of the mast great blurt of sound from the bull chest. Take the

 name of the masthead watch."

 Tippoo ducked his cannon-ball head on its thick neck like a bare-knuckle

 fighter taking a punch, and looked up the mast, slitting his eyes in the

 heavy folds of flesh. Twenty minutes more and he would have had us on

 the beach. " St. John's voice was cold, deadly. "I'll have him on the

 grating before this day is out, and we will get a peep of his backbone."

 Tippoo licked his thick lips involuntarily, and Robyn, standing near

 him, felt her stomach heave. There had been three floggings already on

 this voyage and she knew what to expect. Tippoo was half-Arab,

 half-African, a honey-coloured giant of a man with a shaven head that

 was covered with a mesh of tiny pale scars from a thousand violent

 encounters. He wore a loose embroidered, high-necked turdc over his

 huge frame, but the forearms that protruded from the wide sleeves were

 thick as a woman's thighs.

 Robyn turned quickly to Zouga as he came down the deck towards her. We

 had a good look at the land, Sissy. Our first definite fix since 11ha

 da Trinidade. If this wind holds we will be in Table Bay in another

 five days. "Zouga, can't you intercede with the Captain? " she

 demanded, and Zouga looked startled. He is going to flog that poor

 devil. "Damn right too, Zouga growled. "The man nearly had us on the

 rocks. "Can't you stop him? "I wouldn't dream of interfering with his

 running of this ship, and nor will I allow you to. "Do you have no

 humanity at all? " she demanded of her brother coldly, but there were

 bright hot spots of anger on her cheeks, and her eyes snapped clear

 angry green. "You call yourself a Christian. "When I do, I speak

 softly though, my dear. " Zouga made the reply he knew would annoy her

 most. "And I don't flaunt it at every turn in the conversation."

 Their arguments were always sudden as summer thunderstorms on the

 African veld, and as spectacular.

 Mungo St. John sauntered forward to lean his elbow on the railing of his

 quarterdeck, a long Havana cheroot of coarse black tobacco held between

 white teeth. He mocked her silently with those flecked yellow eyes,

 infuriating her further, until she heard her own voice going shrill and

 she turned from Zouga, and rounded on him. The man you had flogged last

 week could be crippled for life, she shouted at him. Doctor Ballantyne,

 how would you like Tippoo to carry you down and lock you in your cabin?

 " Mungo St. John asked. "Until you regain your temper and your

 manners."

 You cannot do that, she flared at him. I can, I assure you, that and

 much more. "He's right, Zouga assured her softly. "On this ship he can

 do virtually anything he wants. " He laid his hand on her upper arm.

 "Steady now, Sissy. The fellow will be lucky to get away with the loss

 of a little skin."

 Robyn found she was panting with anger and a sense of helplessness. If

 you are squeamish, Doctor, I will excuse you from witnessing punishment,

 Mungo St. John mocked her still. "We must make allowance for the fact

 that you are a woman. "I have never asked for consideration on that

 score, not once in all my life. " She tried to get her anger back under

 control, and she shook off her brother's hand and turned away from them.

 She walked with stiff back and squared shoulders up into the bows,

 trying to maintain an aloof dignity, but the ship's motion was awkward

 and her damned skirts fluttered around her legs. She realized she had

 thought the word, and she would ask forgiveness later, but not now, and

 suddenly she said it aloud. Damn you, Captain Mungo St. John, damn you

 to hell! " She stood in the bows, and the wind pulled her hair out of

 the neat chignon at the nape of her neck and flicked it in her face. It

 was her mother's thick silken dark hair, shot with tones of russet and

 chestnut, and as a pale ray of greenish sunlight at last broke through

 the cloud cover, it turned to a glowing halo around her small neat head.

 She stared ahead angrily, hardly noticing the hellish beauty of the

 scene about her. The co green waters, smoked with mist banks, opened

 and closed about the ship like pearly curtains. Wisps of mist trailed

 from the sails and yards as though she was on fire.

 In patches, the surface of the sea simmered and darkened, for these

 waters were rich in microscopic sea life, which supported vast shoals of

 sardine that rose to the surface to feed, to be fed on in turn by flocks

 of shrieking seabirds that plunged upon them from high above, hitting

 the water in little cotton puffs of spray.

 A thicker bank of mist took the tall ship in its damp cold grip so that

 when Robyn glanced back she could only just make out the ghostly figures

 of the Captain and her brother on the quarterdeck.

 Then just as suddenly they plunged out again into open sea, and sunny

 skies. The clouds which had covered them for all these weeks rolled

 away towards the south while the wind itself increased in strength and

 veered swiftly into the east, whipping the tops from the waves in

 graceful ostrich plumes of curling spray.

 At the same moment Robyn saw the other ship. It was startlingly close,

 and she opened her mouth to shout but a dozen other voices forestalled

 her. Sail oh! "Sail fine on the port quarter."

 She was close enough to make out the thin, tall smoke stack between the

 main and mizzenmasts. Her hull was painted black with a red line below

 her gunports.

 gain each side.

 The black hull had a sinister air to it, and the pile of her canvas was

 not shimmering white as that of Huron, but was sullied dirty grey by the

 belchings from her smoke stack.

 Mungo St. John played the field of his telescope swiftly over her. Her

 boilers were unlit, there was not even a tremble of heat from the mouth

 of her stack. She was under easy canvas only. Tippoo! " he called

 softly, and it seemed that the mate's bulk appeared beside him with the

 magical speed of a genie. Have you seen her before?

 Tippoo grunted and turned his head to spit over the lee rail.

 Lime-juicer, he said. "I seen her last in Table Bay eight years back.

 She called Black joke. "Cape Squadron? " Tippoo grunted, and at that

 moment the gunboat bore up sharply and at the same time her colours;

 broke out at the masthead. The crisp white and bright scarlet of her

 ensign shrieked a challenge, a challenge that all the world had learned

 to heed, and heed swiftly. Only the ships of one nation on earth need

 not heave to the instant that challenge was flowri. The Huron was

 immune, she had only to hoist the Stars and Stripes, and even this

 importunate representative of the Royal Navy would be forced to respect

 it, But Mungo St. John was thinking swiftly. Six days before he sailed

 from Baltimore Harbour, in May, 1860, AbrAham Lincoln had been nominated

 presidential candidate for the United States of America. If elected, as

 seemed highly likely, he would be invested early in the New Year, and

 then one of his first actions would surely be to grant to Great Britain

 the privileges agreed by the Treaty of Brussels, including the right of

 search of American ships upon the high seas which previous American

 presidents had so steadfastly denied.

 Soon, perhaps sooner than he expected, Mungo St. John might have to run

 his clipper in deadly earnest against one of these ships of the Cape

 Squadron. It was a heavensent opportunity to match his ship, and to

 observe the capabilities of the other.

 He swept one last glance about him, that took in the sea, the

 wind-driven lines of foam upon it, the piled white pyramids of canvas

 above him and the evil black hull to leeward, and then his decision was

 made easier.

 On the wind came the thud of a gun and a long feather of gunsmoke

 spurted from one of the gunboat's bowchasers, demanding instant

 obedience.

 Mungo St. John smiled. "The insolent bastard! " To Tippoo he said,

 "We'll try him on a few points of sailing, " to the helmsman beside him,

 softly, "Put the helm down. " And as Huron paid off swiftly before the

 wind, beginning to point directly away from the threatening black ship,

 "Shake out all reefs, Mr. Mate. Set fore and maintop, hoist studding

 sails and skysails, crack on the main royal, yes, and flying jib too. By

 God, we'll show that grubby little coal-guzzling lime-juicer how they

 build them down Baltimore way! " Even in her anger, Robyn was thrilled

 by the manner in which the American worked his ship. With his crew

 swarming out across the yards to the reefing points, the Insails swelled

 out to their full extent, dazzling white in the sunshine, and then high

 above, seemingly at the very base of the aching blue heaven itself, new

 unfamiliar-shaped sails popped open like over-ripe cotton pods and the

 ion& graceful hull reacted instantly to the pressures thrust upon her.

 By God, she sails like a witch, Zouga shouted, laughing with excitement,

 as she knifed into the crests of the Atlantic rollers and he hustled his

 sister back from the bows before the first green sheets of water came

 aboard and swept Huron's decks.

 More and still more canvas burst open, and the thick trees of her masts

 began to arch like drawn longbows under the unbearable pressures of

 thousands of square feet of spread sails. Now Huron seemed to fly,

 taking off from the crest of each roller and smashing into the face of

 the next with a crash that shocked her timbers and jarred the teeth of

 her crew in their skulls. A cast of the lo& Mr. Mate, Mungo St. John

 called, and when Tippoo bellowed back, "A touch better than sixteen

 knots, Cap'n! " the Captain laughed aloud, and strode to the stern

 rail.

 The gunboat was falling astern as though she was standing still,

 although every inch of her grey canvas was spread. Already she was at

 extreme cannon range.

 Again powder-smoke bloomed briefly on her black bows, and this time it

 seemed that it was more than merely a warning, for Mungo St. John saw

 the fall of shot.

 It struck the crest of a roller two cable lengths astern and skipped

 across the green torn. waters, before plunging beneath the surface

 almost alongside Huron's tall side. Captain, you are endangering the

 lives of your crew and passengers. " The voice arrested him and St.

 John turned to the tall young woman who stood beside him, and he raised

 one thick black eyebrow in polite enquiry. That is a British

 man-of-war, sir, and we are acting like criminals. They are firing live

 shot now. You have only to heave to, or at the very least show your

 colours. "I think my sister is right, Captain St. John Zouga stood

 beside her. "I do not understand your behaviour either."

 Huron staggered violently to a larger crest, driven wild by the

 mountainous press of sail, Robyn lost her balance and fell against the

 Captain's chest, but instantly pulled away, colouring fiercely at the

 contact. This is the coast of Africa, Major Ballantyne. Nothing is

 what it appears to be. Here only a fool would accept a strange armed

 vessel at its face value. Now if you and the good doctor will excuse

 me, I must attend to my duties."

 He strode forward to gaze down at the maindeck, judging the mood of his

 crew and the wild abandon of his ship. He unhooked the keyring from his

 belt and tossed it to Tippoo. "The arms chest, Mr. Mate, a pair of

 pistols to you and the second mate. Shoot any hand who attempts to

 interfere with the setting of the sails. " He had recognized the fear

 which gripped the crew. Most of them had never seen a ship driven like

 this, there might easily be an attempt to shorten sail rather than have

 her run herself under.

 At that moment Huron put her shoulder into the Atlantic and took it

 aboard in a solid roaring green wall.

 One of the topmast men was not quick enough on to the rat-lines. The

 water plucked him up and flung him down the length of the deck, until he

 crashed into the side, and lay huddled against the bulwark like a clump

 of uprooted kelp on a storm-driven beach.

 Two of his fellows tried to reach him, but the next wave drove them back

 as it came pouring aboard waistdeep and then cascading in a roaring

 white torrent over the side, and when it was gone the fallen topmast man

 was gone with it and the deck was empty. Mr. Tippoo, look you to those

 skysails, they are not drawing as they should."

 Mungo St. John turned back to the stern rail, ignoring Robyn

 Ballantyne's horrified and accusing glare.

 Already the British gunboat was hull down and her sails were barely

 discernible among the grey beards of the breaking Atlantic rollers, but

 suddenly Mungo St. John saw something change, and he reached quickly for

 the telescope in its slot under the chart table. There was a fine black

 line, as though drawn in Indian ink, extending from the tiny cone of the

 Englishman's sails for a short way across the bumpy horizon. Smoke! She

 has her boiler fired at last, he grunted, as Tippoo appeared at his

 shoulder, with the pistols thrust into his belt. One screw. She no

 catch us. " Tippoo nodded his round s en ea NNo, not downwind in a full

 gale, Mungo St. John agreed. "But I'd like to try her on the wind.

 We'll harden up now, Mr. Mate, on the port tack again. I want to see if

 I can run up to windward of her and pass her out of cannon shot."

 The unexpected manoeuvre caught the gunboat commander completely

 off-guard, and he was a few minutes slow in altering course to cut the

 shorter leg of the triangle and prevent the Huron wresting the weather

 gage from him.

 Huron went streaming past him at extreme cannonshot hard on the wind,

 her yards sheeted around as closehauled as she would sail. He tried a

 shot across her dipping, plunging bows with no visible fall of shot, and

 then he came around to follow her into the wind, and immediately the

 flaws in the design and construction of his ship were pointed up as

 clearly as they had been while both ships were running before the wind.

 In order to accommodate the heavy boiler and machinery to drive the big

 bronze screw under her counter, serious compromise had been made with

 the design of her masts and the amount of canvas she could carry.

 Within five miles it became clear that with all sail set and the boilers

 belching a solid greasy slug of coal smoke over the stern the Black lake

 could not point as high into the wind as the beautiful tall ship ahead

 of her. She was drifting steadily away to leeward, and although the

 difference in their speeds was not as dramatic as when running before

 the wind, yet Huron was headreaching on her steadily.

 The gunboat's commander pointed her higher and higher, trying

 desperately to hold the bigger ship directly over his bows, but all his

 sails were shaking and luffing before he could do so.

 In a fury of frustration, he took in all his canvas, stripping his poles

 bare and relying only on the drive of his steam boiler pointed up

 directly into the very eye of the wind, much much higher than Huron

 could sail. But the gunboat's speed bled away when her screw received

 no help from her sails. Even though her mast and rigging were bare, the

 storm whistled and howled head-on through them, acting as a great drogue

 that slowed her further and Huron forged ahead more swiftly. A bastard

 contraption."

 Mungo St. John watched her battle with all his attention, judging her

 performance at every point of the wind. "We are toying with her. As

 long as there is a breath of wind we'll romp away from her."

 Astern, the gunboat's commander had abandoned his attempt to run the

 clipper down with steam power alone, and had come back on to a fine

 reach with all his canvas set, plugging along stubbornly in Huron's

 streaming wake, until abruptly, with no warning at all, Huron sailed

 into a deep hole in the wind.

 The line of the gale was di-own clearly across the surface of the sea.

 On one side, the water was darkened and furrowed by the talons of the

 wind, on the other, the humped backs of the rollers in the calm had a

 polished velvety gloss to them.

 As Huron crossed that line of demarcation, the clamour of the wind which

 for week after week had battered their ears, fell to an eerie unnatural

 silence, and the ship's motion changed from the vital charge of a

 living, straining sea creature, to the patternless rolling and wallowing

 of a dead log.

 Overhead her canvas volleyed and flapped in the directionless eddies

 created by her own rolling and pitching, and her tackle crashed and

 clattered so that it seemed that she might roll her masts clean out of

 her hull.

 Far astern, the black-painted gunboat scrambled on eagerly, swiftly

 begining to narrow the distance between them, the bloc k column of coal

 smoke now rising straight up into the stillness of air, giving her a

 jubilant and menacing air.

 Mungo St. John ran to the forward rail of the quarterdeck, and stared

 over his bows. He could see the wind two or three miles ahead clawing

 at the sea and ruffling it to a sombre shade of indigo, but between them

 was the oily undulating surface of the calm.

 He swung back and the gunboat was closer, sending her smoke spurting

 high against the bright windswept blue of the sky, so certain of herself

 now that her gunports were swinging open and the stubby barrels of her

 32-pounder cannon protruding from the black sides of her hull, the

 churning wash of her screw tumbling out from under her counter and

 sparkling whitely in the sunlight.

 With no way upon Huron, the helmsman could not hold any course, and the

 clipper drifted around broadside to the on-rushing man-of-war putting

 her bows directly into the rollers.

 They could make out the individual figures of the three officers on the

 gunboat's bridge now. Again the bow-chaser fired, and the shell lifted

 a tall column of water so high and close under the Huron's bows that it

 collapsed upon the deck and streamed out through the scuppers.

 Mungo St. John took one last despairing sweep of the horizon, hoping

 even now for a resurgence of the wind, and then he capitulated. Hoist

 the colours, Mr. Tippoo, he called, and as the gaudy scrap of cloth

 drooped from the mainyard in the windless air, he watched through the

 lens of his telescope the consternation it caused upon the gunboat's

 bridge. That was the last flag they had hoped to see.

 They were now close enough to discern the individual expressions of

 chagrin and alarm and indecision of the naval officers. There'll be no

 prize money for you, not this time around, Mungo St. John murmured with

 grim satisfaction, and snapped the telescope shut.

 The gunboat came on and then rounded up to Huron, within easy hail,

 showing her full broadside, the long 32pounder cannon gaping menacingly.

 The tallest officer on her bridge seemed also the oldest, for his hair

 was white in the sunlight. He came to the gunboat's near rail and

 lifted the voice trumpet to his mouth. What ship? "Huron, out of

 Baltimore and Bristol, Mungo St. John hailed back. "With a cargo of

 trade goods for Good Hope and Quelimane. "Why did you not answer my

 challenge, sir? "Because, sir, I do not acknowledge your right to

 challenge ships of the United States of America on the high seas."

 Both captains knew just what a thorny and controversial question that

 reply posed, but the Englishman hesitated only a second. Do you, sir,

 accede to my right to satisfy myself as to your nationality and your

 ship's port of registry? "As soon as you run in your guns you may come

 aboard for that purpose, Captain. But do not send one of your Junior

 officers."

 Mungo St. John was making a fine point of humiliating the commander of

 the Black joke. But inwardly he was still seething at the fluke of wind

 and weather which had allowed the gunboat to come up with him.

 The Black joke launched a longboat on the heavy swell with an immaculate

 show of seamanship, and it pulled swiftly to Huron's side. While the

 Captain scrambled up the rope ladder, the boat's crew backed off and

 rested on their oars.

 The naval officer came in through the entry port, so lithe and agile

 that Mungo St. John realized his error in thinking him an elderly man.

 It was the white-blond hair that had misled him, he was evidently less

 than thirty years of age. He did not wear a uniform coat, for his ship

 had been cleared for action, and he was dressed in a plain white linen

 shirt, breeches and soft boots. There were a pair of pistols in his

 belt and a naval cutlass in its scabbard on his hip. Captain Codrington

 of Her Majesty's auxiliary cruiser Black joke, he introduced himself

 stiffly. His hair was bleached in silver white splashes from the salt

 and the sun, with darker streaks beneath and it was tied with a leather

 thong in a short queue at the nape of his neck.

 His face was weathered to honey-golden brown by the same sun, so that

 the faded blue of his eyes was in pale contrast.

 Captain St. John, owner and master of this vessel.

 Neither man made any move to shake hands, and they seemed to bristle

 like two dog wolves meeting for the first time. I hope you do not

 intend to detain me longer than is necessary. You can assure yourself

 that my government will be fully apprised of this incident. May I

 inspect your papers, Captain? " The young naval officer ignored the

 threat, and followed St. John on to the quarterdeck. There he hesitated

 for the first time when he caught sight of Robyn and her brother

 standing together at the far rail, but he recovered immediately, bowed

 slightly and then turned his full attention to the packet of documents

 that Mungo St. John had ready for his inspection on the chart table.

 He stooped over the table, working swiftly through the pile until with a

 shock of discovery he straightened. Damn me, Mungo St. John, your

 reputation precedes you, sir. " The Englishman's expression was

 strained with strong emotion. "And what a noble one it is, too. "

 There was a bitter sting in his voice. "The first trader ever to carry

 more than three thousand souls across the middle passage in a single,

 twelve-month period, small wonder you can afford such a magnificent

 vessel. "You are on dangerous ground, sir, Mungo St. John warned him

 with that lazy, taunting grin. "I am fully aware of the lengths to

 which the officers of your service will go for a few guineas of prize

 money.  "Where are you going to pick up your next cargo of human misery,

 Captain St. John? " the Englishman cut in brusquely. "On such a fine

 ship you should be able to pack in two thousand. " He had gone pale

 with unfeigned anger, actually trembling slightly with the force of it.

 If you have finished your investigation-" St. John's smile did not slip,

 but the naval officer went on speaking. We have made the west coast a

 little too hot for you now, have we? Even when you hide behind that

 pretty piece of silk, the naval officer glanced up at the flag on the

 mainyard, "so you are going to work the east coast now, are you, sir?

 They tell me you can get a prime slave for two dollars, two for a

 io-shilling musket. "I must ask you to leave now. " St. John took the

 document from his hand, and when their fingers touched, the Englishman

 wiped his hand on his own thigh as though to cleanse it of the contact.

 I'd give five years" pay to have the hatches off your holds, he said

 bitterly, leaning forward to stare at Mungo St. John with those pale

 fierce eyes. Captain Codrington! " Zouga Ballantyne stepped s the

 group. "I am a British subject and an officer toward in Her Majesty's

 army. I can assure you that there are no slaves aboard this vessel. "

 He spoke sharply. If you are an Englishman, then you should be ashamed

 to travel in such company. " Codrington glanced beyond Zouga. "And

 that applies equally to you, madamV You overreach yourself, sir, Zouga

 told him grimly. I have already given you my assurance."

 Codrington's gaze had flicked back to Robyn Ballantyne's face. Her

 distress was evident. . . ie accusation had shattered her, that as,

 the daughter of Fuller Ballantyne, the great champion of freedom and

 sworn adversary of slavery, she, the accredited agent of the Society for

 the Extinction of the Slave Trade should be travelling aboard a

 notorious slaver.

 She was pale, the green eyes huge and liquid with the shock of it.

 Captain Codrington, her voice was husky and low, my brother is right, I

 also assure you that there are no slaves aboard this ship."

 The Englishman's expression softened, she was not a beautiful woman, but

 there was a freshness and wholesomeness about her which was difficult to

 resist. I will accept your word, madam."

 He inclined his head. "Indeed, only a madman would carry black ivory

 towards Africa, but, and his voice hardened again, if only I were able

 to enter her holds, I'd find enough down there to run her into Table Bay

 under a prize crew and have her condemned out of hand at the next

 session of the Court of Mixed Commission."

 Codrington swung on his heel to face Mungo St. John again. Oh yes, I

 know that your slave decks will be struck to make way for your trade

 cargo, but the spare planks are aboard and it won't take you a day to

 set them up again, Codrington almost snarled, "and I'll wager there are

 open gratings under those hatch covers, he pointed down at the maindeck,

 but without taking his eyes from Mungo St. John's face, "that there are

 shackles in the lower decks to take the chains and leg irons-, Captain

 Codrington, I find your company wearying Mungo St. John drawled softly.

 "You have sixty seconds to leave this ship, before I have my mate assist

 you over the side."

 Tippoo stepped forward, hairless as an enormous toad, and stood a foot

 behind Codrington's left shoulder.

 With a visible effort, the English captain retained his temper, as he

 inclined his head towards Mungo St. John. May God grant we meet again,

 sir. " He turned back to Robyn and saluted her briefly. May I wish you

 a pleasant continuation of your voyage, madam. "Captain Codrington, I

 think you are mistaken, she almost pleaded with him. He did not reply

 but stared at her for a moment longer, the pale eyes were direct and

 disturbing, the eyes of a prophet or a fanatic, then he turned and went

 with a gangling boyish stride to Huron's entry port.

 Tippoo had stripped off the high-necked tunic and oiled his upper body

 so it gleamed in the sunlight with the metallic lustre of the skin of

 some exotic reptile.

 He stood stolidly on flat bare feet, balancing effortlessly to the

 Huron's roll, his thick arms hanging at his side and the lash of the

 whip coiled on the deck at his feet.

 There was a grating fixed at the ship's side and the sailor who had been

 at the masthead lookout when they had raised the African coast, was

 spread-eagled upon it like a stranded starfish on a rock exposed at low

 tide.

 He twisted his head awkwardly to look back over his shoulder at the

 mate, and his face was white with terror.

 You were excused witnessing punishment, Doctor Ballantyne, " Mungo St.

 John told her quietly. I feel it my duty to suffer this barbaric-"As

 you wish, he cut her short with a nod, and turned away. "Twenty, Mr.

 Tippoo. "Twenty it is, Cap'n."

 With no expression at all Tippoo stepped up behind the man, hooked his

 finger into the back of his collar and ripped the shirt down to the

 belt. The man's back was pale as suet pudding, but studded with fat

 purple carbuncles, the sailor's affliction, caused by salty, wet

 clothing and the unhealthy diet.

 Tippoo stepped back and flicked out the lash so that it extended to its

 full length along the seamed oak planking. Ship's company! " Mungo St.

 John called. "The charge is inattention to duty, and endangering the

 ship's safety."

 They shuffled their bare feet, but not one of them looked up at him.

 "The sentence is twenty lashes."

 On the grating the man turned his face away and closed his eyes tightly,

 hunching his shoulders. Lay on, Mr. Tippoo, Mungo St. John said, and

 Tippoo squinted carefully at the bare, white skin, through which the

 knuckles of the spine showed clearly. He reared back, one thickly

 muscled arm thrown high above his head, and the lash snaked higher,

 hissing like an angry cobra, then he stepped forward into the stroke,

 pivoting the full weight and force of his shoulders into it.

 The man on the grating shrieked, and his body convulsed in a spasm that

 smeared the skin from his wrists against the coarse hemp bonds.

 The white skin opened in a thin bright scarlet line, from one side of

 his ribs to the other, and one of the angry purple carbuncles between

 his shoulder blades erupted in a spurt of yellow matter that ran down

 the pale skin and soaked into the waistband of his breeches. One, "

 said Mungo St. John, and the man on the grating began to sob quietly.

 Tippoo stepped back, shook out the lash carefully, squinted at the

 bloody line across the white shuddering flesh, reared back and grunted

 as he stepped forward into the next stroke. Two, said Mungo St. John.

 Robyn felt her gorge rise to choke her. She fought it down, and forced

 herself to watch. She could not allow him to see her weakness.

 On the tenth stroke the body on the grating relaxed suddenly, the head

 lolled sideways and the fists unclenched slowly so that she could see

 the little bloody half-moon wounds where the nails had been driven into

 the palms. There was no further sign of life during the rest of the

 leisurely ritual of punishment.

 At the twentieth stroke, she almost flung herself down the ladder to the

 maindeck and was feeling for the pulse before they could cut the body

 down from the grating. Praise be to God, " she whispered as she felt it

 fluttering under her fingers, and then to the seamen who were lifting

 the man down, "Gently now! " She saw that Mungo St. John had got his

 wish, for the white porcelain crests of the spinal column were jutting

 up through the sliced meat of the back muscles.

 She had a cotton dressing ready and she placed it across the ruined back

 as they laid him on to an oak plank and hustled him towards the

 forecastle.

 In the narrow, crowded forecastle, thick with the fumes of cheap pipe

 tobacco and the almost solid reek of bilges and wet clothing, of

 unwashed men and mouldering food, they laid the man on the mess table

 and she worked as best she could in the guttering light of the oil-lamp

 in its gimbals overhead. She stitched back the flaps and ribbons of

 mushy, torn flesh with horsehair sutures and then bound up the whole in

 weak phenol solution, treatment which Joseph Lister had recently

 pioneered with much success against mortification.

 The man was conscious again and whimpering with pain. She gave him five

 drops of laudanum, and promised to visit him the following day to change

 the bindings.

 As she packed away her instruments and closed her black valise, one of

 the crew, a little pockmarked bosun, named Nathaniel, picked it up and

 when she nodded her thanks, he muttered with embarrassment, "We are

 beholden, missus."

 It had taken all of them time to accept her ministrations. First it had

 been only the lancing of carbuncles and sea-boils, calomel for the flux

 and the grippe, but later, after a dozen successful treatments, which

 included a fractured humerus, an ulcerated and ruptured eardrum and the

 banishing of a venereal chancre with mercury, she had become a firm

 favourite amongst the crew, and her sick-call a regular feature of

 shipboard life.

 The bosun climbed the companionway behind her, carrying the valise, but

 before they reached the deck, an idea struck her and she stooped to him,

 placing a hand on his shoulder. Nathaniel, she asked urgently, but in a

 low voice, "is there a way of entering the ship's hold without lifting

 the maindeck hatches? " The man looked startled, and she shook his

 shoulder roughly. "Is there! she demanded. Aye, ma'am, there is.

 "Where?

 How? " Through the lazaretto, below the officers" saloon there is a

 hatchway through the forward bulkhead. Is it locked? "Aye, ma'am, it

 is, and Captain St. John keeps the keys on his belt."

 Tell nobody that I asked, she ordered him, and hastened up on the

 maindeck.

 At the foot of the mainmast, Tippoo was washing down the lash in a

 bucket of seawater that was already tinged pale pink; he looked up at

 her, still stripping the water off the leather between thick hairless

 fingers, and he grinned at Robyn as she passed, squatting down'on thick,

 brown haunches with his loin cloth drawn up into his crotch, swinging

 his round bald head on its bull neck to follow her.

 She found herself panting a little with fear and revulsion, and she

 swept her skirts aside as she passed him.

 At the door of her cabin she took the valise from Nathaniel with a word

 of thanks, and then slumped down upon her bunk.

 Her thoughts and her emotions were in uproar, for she had still not

 recovered from the sudden avalanche of events that had interrupted the

 leisurely pattern of the voyage.

 The boarding by Captain Codrington of the Royal Navy overshadowed even

 her anger at the flogging or her joy at her first view of Africa in

 nearly two decades and now his accusations rankled and disturbed her.

 After a few minutes" rest she lifted the lid of her travelling-chest

 that filled most of the clear space in the tiny cabin, and had to unpack

 much of it before she found the pamphlets from the anti-slavery society

 with which she had been armed in London before departure.

 She sat down to study them once again, a history of the struggle against

 the trade up to the present time. As she read, her anger and

 frustration reawakened at the tale of unenforceable international

 agreements, all with built-in escape clauses: laws that made it an act

 of piracy to indulge in the trade north of the equator, but allowed it

 to flourish unchecked in the southern hemisphere; treaties and

 agreements signed by all nations, except those most actively engaged in

 the trade, Portugal, Brazil, Spain. Other great nations, France, using

 the trade to goad their traditional enemy, Great Britain, shamelessly

 exploiting Britain's commitment to its extinction, trading political

 advantage for vague promises of support.

 Then there was America, a signatory to the Treaty of Brussels which

 Britain had engineered, agreeing to the abolition of the trade, but not

 to the abolition of the institution of slavery itself. America agreed

 that the transport of human souls into captivity was tantamount to

 active piracy, and that vessels so engaged were liable to seizure under

 prize and condemnation by courts of Admiralty or Mixed Commission,

 agreed also to the equipment clause, that ships equipped for transport

 of slaves, although not actually with a cargo of slaves on board at the

 time of seizure, could be taken as prize.

 There was America agreeing to all of this, and then denying to the

 warships of the Royal Navy the right of search. The most America would

 allow was that British officers could assure themselves of the legality

 of the claim to American ownership, and if that was proven, they could

 not search, not even though the stink of slaves rose from her holds to

 offend the very heavens, or the clank of chains and the half-human cries

 from hertween decks came near to deafening them, still they could not

 search.

 Robyn dropped one pamphlet back into her chest, and selected another

 publication from the society.

 ITEM, in the previous year, 1859, estimated 169,000 slaves had been

 transported from the coasts of Africa to the mines of Brazil, and the

 plantations of Cuba, and to those of the Southern States of America.

 ITEM, the trade in slaves by the Omani Arabs of Zanzibar could not be

 estimated except by observation of the numbers passing through the

 markets of that island.

 Despite the British Treaty with the Sultan as early as 1822, the British

 Consul at Zanzibar had counted almost 200,000 slaves landed during the

 previous twelve-month period. The corpses were not landed, nor were the

 sick and dying, for the Zanzibar customs dues were payable to the Sultan

 per capita, live or dead.

 The dead and those so enfeebled -or diseased as to have little hope of

 survival were thrown overboard, at the ed e of the deep water beyond the

 coral reef. Here a permanent colony of huge man-eating sharks cruised

 the area by day and by night. Within minutes of the first body, dead or

 still living, striking the water, the surface around the dhow was torn

 into a seething white boil by the great fish. The British Consul

 estimated a forty-percent mortality rate amongst slaves making the short

 passage from the mainland to the island.

 Robyn dropped that pamphlet and before picking up the next, she

 reflected a moment on the sheer multitudes involved in the whole grisly

 business. Five million since the turn of the century, she whispered,

 "five million souls. No wonder that they call it the greatest crime

 against humanity in the history of the world."

 She opened the next pamphlet and skimmed quickly over an examination of

 the profits that accrued to a successful trader.

 In the interior of Africa, up near the lake country where few white men

 had ever reached, Fuller Ballantyne had discovered - her father's name

 in print gave her a prickle of pride and of melancholy, Fuller had

 discovered that a prime slave changed hands for a cupful of porcelain

 beads, two slaves for an obsolete Tower musket that cost thirteen

 shillings in London, or a Brown Bess musket that cost two dollars in New

 York.

 At the coast the same slave cost ten dollars, while on the slave market

 in Brazil he would sell for five hundred dollars. But once he was taken

 north of the equator, the risks to the trader increased and the price

 rose dramatically, a thousand dollars in Cuba, fifteen hundred in

 Louisiana.

 Robyn lowered the text, and thought swiftly. The English Captain had

 challenged that Huron could carry 2,000 slaves at a time. Landed in

 America, they would be worth an unbelievable three million dollars, an

 amount which would buy fifteen ships like Huron. A single voyage would

 make a man rich beyond mundane dreams of greed, all risks were

 acceptable to the traders to win such vast wealth.

 But had Captain Codrington been justified in his accusations ? Robyn

 knew the counter-accusations that were made against the officers of the

 Royal Navy, that their zeal arose from the promise of prize money rather

 than a hatred of the trade and a love of humanity. That every sail they

 raised was considered a slaver, and that they were swift to apply the

 Equipment Clause in the widest possible interpretation.

 Robyn was searching for the pamphlet that dealt in detail with this

 Equipment Clause and she found it next on the pile before her.

 To enable a ship to be seized as a slaver under the clause, she need

 only satisfy one of the stipulated conditions. She could be taken if

 her hatches were equipped with open gratings to ventilate her holds; if

 there were dividing bulkheads in her holds to facilitate the

 installation of slave decks; if there were spare planks aboard for

 laying as slave decks; if she carried shackles and bolts, or leg irons

 and cuffs; if she carried too many water casks for the number of her

 crew and passengers; if she had disproportionally large numbers of mess

 tubs, or her rice boilers were too big, or if she carried unreasonable

 quantities of rice or farina.

 Even if she carried native matting that might be used as bedding for

 slaves, she could be seized and run in under a prize crew. These were

 wide powers given to men who could profit financially by seizure.

 Was Captain Codrington one of these, were those pale fanatical eyes

 merely a mask for avarice and a desire for personal gain?

 Robyn found herself hoping they were, or at least that in the case of

 Huron he had been mistaken. But then why had Captain St. John put down

 his helm, and run for it the moment he sighted the British cruiser?

 Robyn was confused and miserable, haunted with guilt. She needed

 comfort and she slipped a lace Stuart cap over her head and shoulders

 before venturing out on to the deck again, for the wind had risen to an

 icy gale and Huron was always a tender ship, she heeled heavily as she

 beat southwards, flinging spray high into the falling night.

 Zouga was in his cabin, dressed in shirt-sleeves and smoking a cigar as

 he worked over the lists of the expedition's equipment that would still

 have to be obtained once they reached Good Hope.

 He called to her to enter when she knocked, and rose to greet her with a

 smile. Sissy, are you well? It was a most unpleasant business, even

 though unavoidable. I hope it has not unsettled you. "The man will

 recover, she said, and Zouga changed the subject as he settled her on

 his bunk, the only other seating in the cabin. I sometimes think we

 would have been better off with less money to spend on this expedition.

 There is always such a temptation to accumulate too much equipment.

 Papa made the Transversa with only five porter loads, while we will need

 a hundred porters at the least, each carrying eighty pounds. "Zouga, I

 must speak to you. this is the first opportunity I have had."

 An expression of distaste flickered across the strong, harsh features as

 though he sensed what she was about to say. But before he could deny

 her she blurted out, "Is this ship a slaver, Zouga? " Zouga removed the

 cigar from his mouth and inspected the tip minutely before he replied.

 Sissy, a slaver stinks so you can smell it for fifty leagues downwind,

 and even after the slaves are removed there is no amount of lye that

 will get rid of the smell.

 Huron does not have the stench of a slaver. "This ship is on her first

 voyage under this ownership, Robyn reminded him quietly. "Codrington

 accused Captain St. John of using his profits from previous voyages to

 purchase her. She is still clean. "Mungo St. John is a gentleman.

 " Zouga's tone had an edge of impatience to it now. "I am convinced of

 that. "The plantation owners of Cuba and Louisiana are amongst the most

 elegant gentlemen that you could find outside the court of St. James,

 she reminded him. I am prepared to accept his word as a gentleman,

 Zouga snapped. Are you not a little eager, Zouga? " she asked with a

 deceptive sweetness but his tone had kindled sparks in her eyes like the

 sheen lights in an emerald. "Would it not seriously impede your plans

 to find ourselves shipped on board a slaver? "Damn me, woman, I have

 his word. " Zouga was getting truly angry now. St. John is engaged in

 legitimate trade. He hopes for a cargo of ivory and palm oilHave you

 asked to inspect the ship's hold? "He has given his word. "Will you

 ask him to open the holds?

 Zouga hesitated, his gaze wavered a moment, and then he made his

 decision. No, I will not, he said flatly. "That would be an insult to

 him and quite rightly, he would resent itAnd if we found what you are

 afraid to find, it would discredit the purpose of our expedition, she

 agreed. As the leader of this mission. I have made the decision-, Papa

 would never let anything stand in his way either, not even Mama or the

 family-'Sissy, if you still feel that way when we reach the Cape, I will

 arrange for passage on another vessel to Quelimane. Will that satisfy

 you? " She did not reply but continued to stare at him with a flat

 accusing gaze. If we did find evidence, he waved his hands with

 agitation, "what could we do about it? "We could make a sworn

 deposition to the Admiralty at Cape Town. "Sissy, " he sighed wearily

 at her intransigence, "don't you understand? if I were to challenge St.

 John, we could gain nothing. If the accusation is unwarranted we would

 place ourselves in a damned awkward position, and if in the very

 unlikely event that this ship is equipped for the trade, we would then

 be in considerable danger. Do not underestimate that danger. Robyn.

 St. John is a F determined man. " He stopped and shook his head

 decisively, the fashionable curls dangling over his ears. "I am not

 going to endanger you, myself or the whole expedition. That is my

 decision, and I will insist that you abide by it."

 After a long pause, Robyn slowly dropped her gaze to her hands, and

 inter-meshed her fingers.

 Very well, Zouga."

 His relief was obvious. "I am grateful for your confidence, my dear.

 " He stooped over her and kissed her forehead. "Let me escort you to

 dinner."

 She was about to refuse, to tell him she was tired and that, once again,

 she would dine alone in her cabin, and then an idea struck her, and she

 nodded.

 Thank you, Zouga, she told him, and then looked up with one of those

 sudden smiles so brilliant. so warm and so rare as to disarm him

 completely. "I am fortunate to have such a handsome dinner companion."

 She sat between Mungo St. John and her brother, and had her brother not

 known better, he might have suspected her of flirting outrageously with

 the Captain. She was all smiles and sparkles, leaning forward

 attentively to listen whenever he spoke, recharging his glass whenever

 it was less than half filled with wine and laughing delightedly at his

 dry sallies.

 Zouga was amazed and a little alarmed by the transformation, while St.

 John had never seen her like this.

 He had covered his original surprise with an amused half-smile. However,

 in this mood Robyn Ballantyne was an attractive companion. Her

 stubborn, rather sharp face softened to the edge of prettiness, while

 her best features, her hair, her perfect skin, her eyes and fine white

 teeth, gleamed and flashed in the lamplight. Mungo St. John's own mood

 became expansive, he laughed more readily and his interest was clearly

 piqued. With Robyn plying his glass, he drank more than on any other

 night of the voyage, and when his steward served a good plum duff he

 called for a bottle of brandy to wash it down.

 Zouga had also been infected by the strangely festive air of the dinner,

 and he protested as vigorously as St. John when suddenly Robyn declared

 herself to be exhausted and stood up from the board, but she was

 adamant.

 In her cabin she could still hear the occasional shouts of laughter from

 the saloon, as she went quietly about her preparations. She slid the

 locking bar into place to assure her privacy. Then she knelt beside her

 chest and wormed her way down to the bottom layers, from which she

 retrieved a pair of man's moleskin breeches, a flannel shirt and cravat,

 with a high-buttoned monkey jacket to go over them, and well-worn half

 boots.

 This had been her uniform and her disguise as a medical student at St.

 Matthew's Hospital. Now she stripped herself naked, and for a moment

 enjoyed the wicked freedom of the feeling, even indulging herself to the

 extent of gazing down at her nudity. She was not too certain if it was

 a sin to enjoy one's own body, but she suspected that it was.

 Nevertheless she persisted.

 Her legs were straight and strong, her hips flared with a graceful curve

 and then narrowed abruptly into her waist, her belly was almost flat

 with just an interesting little bulge below the navel. Now here was

 definitely sinful ground, of this there was no doubt. But still she

 could not deny the temptation to let her gaze linger a moment. She

 understood fully the technical purpose and the physical workings of all

 her body's highly complicated machinery, both visible and concealed. It

 was only the feelings and emotions which sprang from this source which

 both confused and worried her, for they had taught her none of this at

 St. Matthew's. She passed on hurriedly to safer ground, lifting her

 arms to pile the tresses of her hair on to the top of her head and hold

 them in place with a soft cloth cap.

 Her breasts were round and neat as ripening apples, so firm as hardly to

 change their shape as she moved her arms. Their resemblance to fruit

 pleased her and she spent a few moments longer than was necessary in

 adjusting the cloth cap upon her head looking down at them.

 But there was a limit to self-indulgence, and she swept the flannel

 shirt over her head, pulled the tails down around her waist, stepped

 into the breeches, how good they felt again after so long in those

 hobbling skirts and then, sitting upon the bunk, she pulled on the

 halfthe ankle straps of the breeches under boots and buckled the arch of

 her foot, before standing to clinch the belt at her waist.

 She opened her black valise, took out the roll of surgical instruments

 and selected one of the sturdier scalpels, folded out the blade and

 tested it with her thumb. It was stingingly sharp. She closed the

 blade and slipped it into her hip pocket. It was the only weapon

 available to her.

 She was ready now, and she closed the shutter on the bull's-eye lantern,

 ddarkening the cabin completely before climbing, fully dressed, into her

 bunk, pulling the rough woollen blanket to her chin and settling down to

 wait.

 The laughter from the saloon became more abandoned, and she imagined

 that the brandy bottle was being cruelly punished by the men. A long

 while later she heard her brother's heavy, uneven footsteps on the

 companion way past her cabin and then there was only the creak and pop

 of the ship's timbers as she heeled to the wind and far away the regular

 tapping of some loose piece of equipment.

 She was so keyed, with both fear and anticipation, that there was never

 any danger of her falling asleep. However, the time passed with

 wearying slowness. Each time that she opened the shutter of the lantern

 to check her pocket-watch, the hands seemed hardly to have moved.

 Then, somehow, it was two o'clock in the morning, the hour when the

 human body and spirit are at their lowest ebb.

 She rose quietly from her bunk, picked up the darkened lantern and went

 to the door of her cabin. The locking bolt clattered like a volley of

 musketry, but then it was open and she slipped through.

 In the saloon a single oil-lamp still burned smokily, throwing agitated

 shadows against the wooden bulkheads, while the empty brandy bottle had

 fallen to the deck, and rolled back and forth with the ship's motion.

 Robyn squatted to pull off her boots and, leaving them at the entrance,

 she went forward on bare feet, crossed the saloon and stepped into the

 passageway that led to the stern quarters.

 Her breath was short, as though she had run far, and she paused to lift

 the shutter of the bull's-eye lantern and flash a narrow beam of light

 into the darkness ahead.

 The door to Mungo St. John's cabin was closed.

 She crept towards it, guiding herself with one hand on the bulkhead and

 at last her fingers closed over the brass door-handle. Please God, she

 whispered, and achingly slowly twisted the handle. It turned easily,

 and then the door slid open an inch along its track, enough for her to

 peep through into the cabin beyond.

 There was just light to see, for the deck above was pierced for a

 repeating compass so that even while in his bunk the master could at a

 glance tell his ship's heading.

 The compass was lit by the dull yellow glow of the helmsman's lantern

 and the reflection allowed Robyn to make out the cabin's central

 features.

 The bunk was screened off by a dark curtain and the rest of the

 furnishings were simple. The locked doors of the arms chest to the

 left, with a row of hooks beyond from which hung a boat cloak and the

 clothing that St. John had been wearing at dinner. Facing the door was

 a solid teak desk with racks to hold the brass navigational instruments,

 sextant, straight edge, dividers, and on the bulkhead above it were

 affixed the barometer and the ship's chronometer.

 The Captain had evidently emptied his pockets on to the desk top before

 undressing. Scattered amongst the charts and ship's papers were a clasp

 knife, a silver cigar case, a tiny gold inlaid pocket pistol of the type

 favoured by professional gamblers, a pair of chunky ivory dice Zouga and

 St. John must have fallen to gaming again after she left them, and then

 most important, what she had hoped to find, the bunch of ship's keys,

 that St. John usually wore on a chain from his belt, lay in the centre

 of the desk.

 An inch at a time Robyn slid the door further open, watching the dark

 alcove to the right of the cabin. The curtains billowed slightly with

 each roll of the ship, and she screwed her nerves tighter as she

 imagined the movement to be that of a man about to leap out at her.

 When the door was open enough to allow her to pass through, it required

 a huge effort of will to take the first step.

 Half-way across the cabin she froze; now she was only inches from the

 bunk. She peered into the narrow gap in the curtaining and saw the

 gleam of naked flesh, and beard the deep regular breathing of the

 sleeping man. It reassured her and she went on swiftly to the desk.

 She had no way of learning which keys fitted the lazaretto and the hatch

 to the main hold. She had to take the whole heavy bunch, and realized

 that it would mean returning to the cabin later. She did not know if

 she would have the courage to do that, and as she lifted the bunch her

 hand shook so it jangled sharply. Startled, she clutched it to her

 bosom and stared fearfully at the alcove. "There was no movement beyond

 the curtains, and she glided back towards the door on silent bare feet.

 it was only when the door closed again that the curtains of the alcove

 were jerked open, and Mungo St. John lifted himself on one elbow. He

 paused only a moment and then swung his legs out of the bunk and stood

 up.

 He reached the desk in two quick strides and checked the top. The keys!

 " he hissed, and reached out for his breeches hanging on the rack beside

 him, pulling them on swiftly and then stooping to open one of the

 drawers in his desk.

 He lifted the lid of the rosewood case and took out the pair of

 long-barrelled duelling pistols, thrust them into his waistband, and

 started for the door of the cabin.

 Robyn found the correct key to the lazaretto on the third attempt and

 the door gave reluctantly, dragging on the hinge with a squeal that

 sounded to her like a bugle call commanding a charge of heavy cavalry.

 She locked the door behind her again, feeling a rush of relief to know

 that nobody could follow her now and she opened the shutter of the

 lantern and looked about her swiftly.

 The lazaretto was no more than a large cupboard used as a pantry for the

 officers" personal stores. Sides of smoked ham and dried polonies hung

 from hooks in the deck above, there were fat rounds of cheese in the

 racks boxes of tinned goods, racks of black bottles with waxed stoppers,

 bags of flour and rice, and, facing Robyn, another hatch with the

 locking bar chained in place by a padlock the size of her doubled fists.

 The key, when she found it, was equally massive, as thick as her middle

 finger, and the hatch so heavy that it took all of her strength to drag

 it aside. Then she had to double over to get through the low opening.

 Behind her, Mungo St. John heard the scrape of wood on wood and dropped

 silently down the steps to the door of the lazaretto. With a cocked

 pistol in one hand, he laid his ear to the oak planking to listen for a

 moment before trying the handle. God's breath! " he muttered angrily

 as he found it locked, and then turned away and raced on bare feet up

 the companionway to the cabin of his first mate.

 At the first touch on his thickly muscled shoulder, Tippoo was fully

 awake, his eyes glistening in the gloom like those of a wild animal.

 Someone has broken into the hold, St. John hissed at him, and Tippoo

 reared up out of his bunk, a huge dark figure. We find him, he grunted,

 as he bound the loin cloth around his waist. "Then we feed fish with

 him.

 The main hold seemed vast as a cathedral. The beam of the lantern could

 not reach into its deepest recesses, and a great mass of cargo was piled

 high, in some places as high as the maindeck fifteen feet above her.

 She saw at once that the cargo had been loaded in such a way that it

 could be unloaded piecemeal, that any single item could be identified

 and swung up through the hatches without the necessity of unloading the

 whole. This, of course, must be essential in a ship trading from port

 to port. She saw also that the goods were carefully packaged and

 clearly labelled. Flashing the lantern around her she saw that the

 cases of equipment for their own expedition were packed here,

 "Ballantyne Africa Expedition" stencilled in black on the raw, white

 wood.

 She clambered up the rampart of cases and bales and balanced on the

 peak, turning the lantern upwards towards the square opening of the

 hatch, trying to see if there was an open grating, and immediately she

 was frustrated for the white canvas cover had been stretched around the

 lower surface also. She stood at full stretch to try and touch the

 hatch, to feel for the shape of a grating under the canvas, but her

 fingertips were inches short of the hatch and a sudden wild plunge of

 the ship under her sent her flying backwards into the deep aisle between

 the piles of cargo. She managed to keep her grip on the lantern, but

 hot oil from its reservoir splashed over her hand, threatening to

 blister the skin.

 Once again she crawled up and over the mountains of cargo, searching for

 the evidence that she hoped not to find. There was no dividing bulkhead

 in the hold, but the main mast pierced the deck above and came through

 the hold to rest its foot on the keel, and there were stepped wedges

 fixed to the thick column of Norwegian pine.

 Perhaps they were there to hold the slave decks. Robyn knelt beside the

 mast and sighted across the hold to the outward curved side of the ship.

 In line with the wedges on the mast were heavy wooden ledges, like

 shallow shelves, and she thought that these might be supports for the

 outer edges of the slave decks. She guessed that they were between two

 and a half and three feet apart, which she had read was the average

 height of the between decks in a slaver.

 She tried to imagine what this hold might look like with those decks in

 place, tiers of low galleries just high enough for a man to crawl into

 doubled over. She counted the shelves and there were five of them, five

 piles of decks, each with its layer of naked black humanity laid out

 sardine fashion, each one in physical contact with his neighbour on

 either side, lying there in his own filth and that of the slaves above

 him which leaked through the seams of the deck. She tried to imagine

 the heat of the middle passage when the ship lay becalmed in the baking

 doldrums, she tried to imagine 2,000 Of them vomiting and purging with

 seasickness as the ship reared and plunged in the wild seas where the

 Mozambique current scoured the Agulhas bank. She tried to imagine an

 epidemic of cholera or smallpox taking hold of that mass of misery, but

 her imagination could not rise to the task, and she pushed the hideous

 images aside and crawled on over the heaving cargo, flashing her lantern

 into each corner, searching for more solid evidence than the narrow

 ledges.

 if there was planking on board it would be laid flat upon the deck,

 below this cargo, and there was no way in which Robyn could reach it.

 Ahead of her she saw a dozen huge casks bolted to the forward bulkhead.

 They could be water barrels, or they could be filled with trade rum, or

 the rum could be replaced with water when the slaves were taken on

 board. There was no means of checking the contents, but she knocked on

 the oak with the hilt of her scalpel and the dull tone assured her that

 the casks contained something.

 She squatted down on one of the bales and slit the stitching with the

 scalpel, thrusting her hand into the opening she grasped a handful and

 pulled it out to examine it in the lamp light.

 Trade beads, ropes of them strung on cotton threads, a bitil of beads

 was as long as the interval between fingertip and wrist, four bitil made

 a khete. These beads were made of scarlet porcelain, they were the most

 valued variety called sam sam. An African of the more primitive tribes

 would sell his sister for a khete of these, his brother for two khete.

 Robyn crawled on, examining crates and bales, bolts of cotton cloth from

 the mills of Salem, called merkani in Africa, a corruption of the word

 "American" and the chequered cloth from Manchester known as kaniki.

 Then there were long wooden crates marked simply "Five Pieces', and she

 could guess that they contained muskets. However, firearms were common

 trade goods to the coast, and no proof of the intention to buy slaves,

 they could just as readily be used to purchase ivory or gumcopal.

 She was tired now with the effort of climbing and blundering around over

 the heaving slopes and peaks of cargo, and with the nervous tension of

 the search.

 She paused to rest a moment, leaning back against one of the bales of

 merkani cloth, and as she did so something dug painfully into her back,

 forcing her to change her position. Then she realized that cloth should

 not have hard lumps in it. She shuffled around and once again slit the

 sacking cover of the bale.

 Protruding from between the folded layers of cloth, there was something

 black and cold to the touch. She pulled it out and it was heavy iron,

 looped and linked, and she recognized it instantly. In Africa they were

 called "the bracelets of death'. Here, at last, was proof, positive and

 irrefutable, for these steel slave cuffs with the light marching chains

 were the unmistakable stigmata of the trade.

 Robyn tore the bale wider open, there were hundreds of the iron cuffs

 concealed between layers of cloth. Even if it had been possible, a

 perfunctory search by a naval boarding party was highly unlikely to have

 uncovered this sinister hoard.

 She selected one set of cuffs with which to confront her brother and she

 started aft towards the lazaretto, filled suddenly with desire to be out

 of this dark cavern with its menacing shadows, and back once more in the

 safety of her own cabin.

 She had almost reached the entrance to the lazaretto when suddenly there

 was a loud scraping sound from the deck above, and she froze with alarm.

 When the sound was repeated, she had enough of her wits still about her

 to douse the snuffer of her lantern, and then immediately regretted

 having done so for the darkness seemed to crush down upon her with a

 suffocating weight and she felt panic rising up to take possession of

 her.

 With a crash like a cannon shot the main hatch flew open, and as she

 swung back towards it she saw the white pin-pricks of the stars outlined

 by the square opening. Then a huge, dark shape dropped through, landing

 lightly on the piled bales beneath, and at almost the same instant the

 hatch thudded closed again, blotting out the starlight.

 Now Robyn's terror came bubbling to the surface.

 There was somebody locked in the hold with her, and the knowledge held

 her riveted for long, precious seconds, before she plunged back towards

 the lazaretto hatch, suppressing the scream that choked up into her

 throat.

 The shape she had glimpsed for a moment was unmistakable. She knew that

 it was Tippoo in the hold with her, and it spurred her terror. She

 could imagine the great hairless toadlike figure, moving towards her in

 the darkness, with repulsive reptilian swiftness, could almost see the

 pink tongue flickering out over thick cruel lips, and her haste became

 uncontrolled. She lost her footing in the darkness and fell heavily,

 tumbling backwards into one of the deep gullies between banks of cargo,

 cracking the back of her skull on a wooden case, half stunning herself

 so that she lost her grip on the extinguished lantern and could not find

 it when she groped for it. When she scrambled to her knees again, she

 had lost all sense of direction in the total blackness of the hold.

 She knew that her best defence was to remain still and silent until she

 could place the man who was hunting her, and she crouched down in a

 crack between two crates. Her pulse beat in her ears like a drum,

 deafening her, and her heart seemed to have crammed up into her throat

 so that she must fight for each breath.

 It took many minutes and all her determination to bring herself under

 control, to be able to think again.

 She tried to decide in which direction lay the lazaretto hatch, her only

 means of escape, but she knew that the only way she would be able to

 find it would be to grope her way to the ship's wooden side and follow

 it around.

 The prospect of doing this, with that grotesque creature hunting her in

 the darkness, was appalling. She shrank down as far as she could into

 the narrow space and listened.

 The hold was filled with small sounds that she had not noticed before,

 the heave and creak of the ship's timbers, the shifts of the cargo

 against its retaining ropes and netting, but then she heard the movement

 of a living thing close behind her and she caught the shriek of terror

 before it reached her lips, as she lifted her arm to protect her head.

 Frozen like that, she waited for a blow which never came.

 Instead she heard another movement pass behind her turned shoulder, a

 whisper of sound, yet so chilling that she felt all power of movement

 drained from her legs.

 He was here, very close in the blackness, toying with her, cruel as a

 cat. He had smelt her out. With some sort of animal sense, Tippoo had

 found her unerringly in the darkness, and now he crouched over her ready

 to strike and she could only wait.

 Something touched her shoulder, and before she could jerk away it

 swarmed up over her neck, brushed her face.

 She flung herself backwards and screamed, striking out wildly with the

 steel chain and handcuffs which she still held in her right hand.

 The thing was furry and quick, and it squealed sharply, like an angry

 piglet as she struck again and again. Then it was gone, and she heard

 the scamper of small feet across the rough wood of the crate and she

 realized that it had been one of the ship's rats, big as a torn cat.

 Robyn shuddered, revolted, but with a lift of relief that was

 short-lived.

 There was a flash of light, so unexpected that it almost blinded her,

 and a lantern beam was thrown in a single swift sweep about the hold,

 and then extinguished, so that the darkness seemed even more crushing

 than before.

 The hunter had heard her scream, and had flashed his lantern in her

 direction, had probably seen her, for she had clambered out of her niche

 between the crates. Now at least she knew in which direction to move,

 the brief flash of light had orientated her once again, she knew where

 to find the hatch.

 She threw herself over a pile of soft bales, clawing herself towards the

 hatch, then checking her flight to think a moment. Tippoo must have

 known how she had entered the hold and would know that she would try to

 escape in the same direction. She must move with care, with stealth,

 ready for the moment when he flashed the lantern again, taking care not

 to rush headlong into the trap he was certainly setting for her.

 She changed her grip on the iron chain, only then realizing its

 potential as a weapon, much more effective than the short-bladed scalpel

 in her pocket. A weapon! For the first time she was thinking of

 defending herself, not merely crouching like a chicken before the stoop

 of the hawk. "Robbie was always the plucky one.  " She could almost

 hear her mother's voice, troubled but touched with pride, when she had

 defended herself effectively against the village ruffians, or joined her

 brother on some of his more hair-raising escapades, and she realized she

 needed all of that pluck now.

 With the chain gripped in her right hand, she started stealthily back

 towards the hatch, crawling, slithering forward on her belly, pausing to

 listen every few seconds.

 It seemed like a complete round of eternity before her outreaching

 fingers touched the solid planking of the after bulkhead. She was

 within feet of the hatch now and that was where he would be waiting for

 her.

 She crouched down, with her back firmly against the planking and waited

 for the flutter of her heart to abate enough to allow her to hear, but

 any noise her hunter made was covered by the creak and pop and groan of

 the working wooden hull, and the thud and hiss of the sea as Huron beat

 up hard to the wind.

 Then she wrinkled her nose at a new smell that overlaid the pervading

 reek of the bilges. It was the hot oil smell of a shuttered lantern

 burning very close by, and now when she listened for it, she thought she

 could hear the pinkie and tick of the heated metal of the lantern.

 He must be close, very close, guarding the hatchway, ready to flash the

 lantern at the moment he could place her whereabouts accurately.

 With the slowness of spreading oil she rose to face into the darkness

 where he was, she slipped the scalpel into the palm of her left hand,

 and she drew back her right arm with the chain and iron cuff dangling

 from her fist, ready to strike.

 Then she pitched the scalpel with a short underhanded throw, judging the

 distance to drop it close enough to force him to move again, but far

 enough to make him move away from her.

 The tiny missile struck something soft, the sound muted, almost lost in

 other small sounds, but then it slithered softly along the deck, like a

 hesitant footfall and instantly light flooded the hold.

 Tippoo's monstrous shape sprang out of the darkness, huge, menacing,

 unbelievably close. He held the unhooded lantern high in his left hand,

 and the yellow light glistened on the bare round dome of his yellow

 skull, and on the broad plain of his back, the muscle rippling and

 tensing into valleys and ridges as he swung back the heavy club in his

 right hand, his head hunched down on the thick corded neck. He was

 facing away from her, but only for an instant. As he realized that

 there was nobody in front of him, he reacted with animal swiftness,

 ducking the great round head on to his chest, beginning to swing away.

 She moved entirely by instinct. She swung the heavy iron manacle on the

 length of chain. It hummed in a glittering circle in the lamp-light,

 and it caught Tippoo high on the temple with a crack like a branch

 breaking in a high wind, and the thin layer of yellow scalp opened like

 the mouth of a purse with a crimson velvet lining.

 Tippoo swayed drunkenly on straddled legs that started to buckle under

 him. She pulled back the chain and swung again with all the weight of

 her body and the strength of her fear behind the stroke. Again a deep

 red wound bloomed on the polished yellow dome of his skull and he went

 down slowly on to his knees, an attitude she had seen him adopt so often

 as he prayed on the quarterdeck, making the Moslem obeisance towards

 Mecca. N aw again, his forehead touched the deck, but this time with

 his blood dribbling into a puddle under it.

 The lantern clattered on to the deck, still burning, and in its light

 Tippoo rolled heavily on to his side with his breath snoring in his

 throat and his eyes rolled up into his head, glaring ghastly white and

 unseeing, his thick legs kicking out convulsively.

 Robyn stared at the prostrate giant, aghast at the damage she had done,

 already feeling the need to administer to any hurt or crippled being,

 but it lasted for only seconds, as Tippoo's eyes rolled back into their

 deep sockets, and she saw the pupils beginning to focus. The yellow

 gleaming body heaved, the movement of limbs was no longer spasmodic but

 more coordinated and determined, the head lifted, still lolling, but

 swinging questingly from side to side.

 Unbelievably, the man was no longer crippled by those two cutting blows,

 had been stunned for seconds only, in seconds more he would be fully

 conscious and in his fury more dangerous than ever. With a sob Robyn

 flew at the open hatch of the lazaretto. As she passed him, cruel

 fingers hooked at her ankle, pulling her off balance so she almost fell

 before she could kick herself free and dive through the opening.

 Tippoo was on hands and knees in the light of the fallen lantern,

 creeping towards her as she threw all her weight against the hatch. As

 it thudded into its jamb, she dropped the locking bar into its seating,

 and at that moment Tippools shoulder crashed into the far side of the

 hatch with a force that shook it in its frame.

 Her frantic fingers were so clumsy that it took three attempts to secure

 the padlock and chain, and only then could she sink to the deck and sob

 away her fear until her relief came to buoy her up and give her renewed

 strength.

 When she dragged herself to her feet, she was lightheaded, intoxicated

 with the strange fierce jubilation that she had never felt before. She

 knew it sprang from having fought herself out of danger, from the

 unfamiliar experience of inflicting punishment on a hated adversary -

 and she knew she would feel guilt for it later, but not now.

 The keys were still in the door between the lazaretto and saloon where

 she had left them. She pushed the door open quickly and paused in the

 opening an instant, feeling the quick flare of alarm overtake her

 feeling of elation.

 She had only an instant of time to realize that somebody had trimmed the

 saloon lamp, and then fingers seized her wrist from behind and swung her

 off balance, bearing her down heavily to the deck and holding her there

 with one arm twisted up between her shoulderblades. Keep still, damn

 you, or I'll twist your head off your shoulders. " Mungo St. John's

 voice was low and fierce in her ear.

 Her arm holding the chain was trapped under her, and now her captor

 shifted his weight over her, placing his knee in the small of her back

 and bearing down so painfully that she wanted to Cry Out with the agony

 that flared up her curved spine. Tippoo flushed you out quickly enough,

 " St. John murmured with grim satisfaction. "Now let's have a look at

 you, before we stretch you out on the grating."

 He reached forward and pulled off the cloth cap that covered her head,

 and she heard his little grunt of surprise as her hair tumbled loose in

 a slippery shining mass in the lamplight. His grasp slackened and the

 pressure of his knee into the base of her spine eased. Roughly he

 grasped her shoulder to turn her on to her back so he could see her

 face.

 She rolled easily towards him and then as her trapped arm came free, she

 hurled the chain at his face. He threw up both hands to catch the blow.

 As slippery as an eel she wormed out from under him and flew at the door

 to the saloon.

 He was quick, quicker than she was, and his fingers were steely, they

 caught in the thin worn flannel of her shirt and it ripped from collar

 to hem. She turned and lashed at him with the chain again, but now he

 was ready for her, and he caught her wrist, trapping it.

 She kicked wildly at his shins, and succeeded in hooking an ankle behind

 his heel and they went down together in a tangle on to the wooden deck,

 and Robyn found herself carried along by a fierce uncaring madness.

 She was hissing and snarling like a cat as she raked at his eyes with

 her nails, raising a bloody line down his neck. The tatters of her

 shirt flapped around her waist and the coarse dark hair of his chest

 rasped against the tender points of her naked breasts so that dimly in

 her madness she realized that he wore only breeches, and the man smell

 of his body filled her nostrils as he tried to smother her wild

 struggles with his body.

 She reached up towards him with her open mouth, trying to sink her teeth

 into that flushed handsome face, but he caught a handful of her hair at

 the back'of her head and twisted it. The pain seemed to flow down

 through her body and explode at the base of her belly in a warm soft

 spasm that took her breath and crammed it down into her lungs.

 He held her helplessly and she felt the strength going out of her, to be

 replaced by spreading languor, and she stared up into his face with a

 kind of wonder as though she had never seen it before. She saw his

 teeth were very white, his lips drawn back into a rictus of emotion, and

 fierce yellow eyes unfocused and smoky with a kind of madness that

 matched her own.

 She made one last feeble effort to repel him, driving her knee upwards,

 aimed at the fork of his lower body, but he trapped it between his

 thighs and then holding her thus he reared up over her and looked down

 at her bared bosom. Sweet Mother of GOD! he croaked, and she saw the

 cords strain tight in his throat, saw the hot yellow fire in his eyes

 and she could not move, not even when he freed his hooked fingers from

 the twisted tresses of her hair and ran them slowly down her body,

 cupping first one tight small breast and then the other in the palm of

 his hand.

 She felt his touch had gone, though the memory lingered on her skin like

 butterflies" wings. Then his fingers were back, tugging demandingly at

 the fastenings of her breeches. She closed her eyes and refused to let

 her mind consider what was about to happen. She knew that there was

 nothing she could do to escape, and cried out softly with the strange

 elation of the martyr.

 But her cry seemed to touch something deep in him, the smoky yellow eyes

 focused for a moment, the predatory expression of the face became

 uncertain and then tinged with horror as he looked down at her spread

 white body. Swiftly he rolled away from her.

 Cover yourself! " he said harshly, and she was overwhelmed with a cold

 avalanche of loss, followed immediately by as great a rush of shame and

 of guilt.

 She scrambled to her knees, clutching her clothing around her, suddenly

 shivering, but not with cold. You should not have struggled, he said

 and though he was obviously fighting to control it his voice shook as

 hers did. I hate you, she whispered foolishly, and then it became true.

 She hated him for what he had aroused in her, for the sickness and the

 guilt that followed it, and for the sense of loss and bereavement with

 which he had left her. I should kill you, he muttered, not looking at

 her. "I should have Tippoo do it."

 She felt no fear at the threat. She had rearranged her clothing as best

 she could, but still she knelt opposite him. Go! he almost shouted at

 her. "Get back to your cabin."

 She rose slowly, hesitated a moment and then turned to the companionway.

 Doctor Ballantyne! " he stopped her, and she turned back. He had risen

 and now he stood beside the door to the lazaretto, the keys in his one

 hand, the slave cuff and chain in the other. "It would be best not to

 tell your brother of what you discovered tonight. " His voice was

 controlled now, cold and low. "I would not have the same scruples with

 him. We will be at Cape Town in four days, he went on. "After that you

 may do as you will.

 Until then you will not provoke me again. One chance is already too

 many.

 She stared at him mutely, feeling small and helpless. Goodnight, Doctor

 Ballantyne."

 She hardly had time to pack her breeches and torn shirt away in the

 bottom of her chest, inspect and rub a salve on her bruises, pull on her

 nightdress and climb into her narrow bunk before someone pounded on the

 cabin door. Who is it? " she called huskily and breathless, not yet

 fully recovered from the night's stresses. Sissy, it's me. " Zouga's

 voice. "Someone has beaten Tippoo's skull in. He's bleeding all over

 the deck, can you come? " Robyn glowed with a fierce spark of pagan

 glee, which she tried immediately to suppress with less than complete

 success. I'm coming."

 There were three men in the saloon, Zouga, the second mate and Tippoo.

 Mungo St. John was not there. Tippoo sat stolidly on a stool under the

 oil lamp, naked except for his cotton loin cloth, and his neck and

 shoulders ran with sheets of dark slick blood.

 The second mate held a wad of grubby cotton to his skull and when Robyn

 lifted it away the wounds began spurting merrily. Brandy, she demanded,

 and rinsed her hands and her instruments in the spirit, she was an

 admirer and believer in the teachings of Jenner and Lister, before she

 probed the points of her forceps into the open wound. She gripped the

 vessels and twisted them closed.

 Tippoo made no move, his expression never changed and she was still

 carried along on the pagan mood, in direct defiance to the oath of

 Hippocrates which she had SWOrn. Must clean the wounds, she told him,

 and quickly, before her conscience could prevent it, she tipped the raw

 brandy into the wounds and swabbed them out.

 Tippoo sat still as a temple carving of a Hindu devil, making no

 acknowledgement of the harsh spirit burning open tissue.

 Robyn tied off the vessels with silk thread, leaving an end hanging from

 the wounds, and then she sutured the lips closed, laying precise neat

 stitches and pulling them up tightly so that the smooth bald scalp came

 up in a sharp little peak of flesh with each tug. I will pull the

 thread when the vessels mortify, she told him. "The stitches will be

 ready to come out in a week. " She would not deplete her stock of

 laudanum, she decided, the man obviously was impervious to pain, and she

 was still in the throes of unchristian spite.

 Tippoo lifted the round head. "You good doctor, he told her solemnly,

 and she learned then a lesson that would last her throughout her life,

 the stronger the purge, the more astringent or foul-tasting the

 medicine, and the more radical the surgery, then the more impressed with

 the surgeon's skill was the African patient. Yes, Tippoo nodded

 gravely, "you one bloody fine doctor. " And be opened one huge paw. in

 his palm lay the scalpel that Robyn had lost in Huron's hold. Without

 expression he placed it in Robyn's own unresisting hand, and with that

 eerie swiftness was gone from the saloon, leaving her staring after him.

 Huron flew southwards, meeting the long South Atlantic rollers and

 spurning them carelessly, brushing them aside with her shoulder and

 letting them cream over her rail and then tumble away astern in a long

 smooth wake.

 There were seabirds in company with them now, beautiful gannets with

 yellow throats and black diamonds painted around their eyes, coming in

 from the east and soaring above their wake, shrieking and diving for the

 galley scraps when they were thrown overboard.

 There were seals too, lifting their whiskered heads high above the

 surface to stare curiously after the towering clipper as she burst the

 sea open with her sharp bows in her flight into the south.

 Smeared across the brilliant blue water were long serpentine trails of

 sea-bamboo, torn from the rocky shoreline by the gales and storms of

 this uneasy and troubled sea.

 All these were indications of the land which was always just below the

 eastern horizon, and Robyn spent many hours of each day alone at the

 port rail staring towards it, longing for another glimpse of it,

 smelling the dryness and the spiced aroma of its grass and herbs on the

 wind, seeing its blown dust in the marvelous reds and glowing gold of

 the sunsets, but denied sight of it by the offing that St. John was

 making before coming back on to the starboard tack for the final run

 into Table Bay.

 However, as soon as Mungo St. John appeared on his quarterdeck Robyn

 would hurry below without another glance in his direction and she locked

 herself in her cabin, brooding there alone so that even her brother

 sensed that something troubled her. He tried a dozen times to draw her

 out. She sent him away each time, refusing to open the cabin to him.

 I'm all right, Zouga. I just want to be alone."

 And when he tried to join her in her solitary vigils at the ship's rail,

 she was short and unbending, exasperating him so that he stamped away

 and let her be.

 She was afraid to talk to him, afraid that she would blurt out her

 discovery of slaving equipment in Huron's hold and put him in deadly

 danger. She knew her brother well enough not to trust his temper and

 not to doubt his courage. Neither did she doubt Mungo St. John's

 warning.

 He would kill Zouga to protect himself, he could do it himself, she had

 seen him handle a pistol, or he could send Tippoo to do the work in the

 night. She had to protect Zouga, until they reached Cape Town, or until

 she did what she had to do. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. " She

 had found the passage in her Bible and studied it carefully, and then

 she had prayed for guidance which had not been given and she had ended

 more confused and troubled than she had begun.

 She prayed again kneeling on the bare deck beside her bunk until her

 knees ached, and slowly her duty became clear to her.

 Three thousand souls sold into slavery in a single year - that was what

 the Royal Naval Captain had accused him of. How many thousands before

 that, how many thousands more in the years to come if Huron and her

 captain were allowed to continue their depredations, if nobody could

 prevent them ravaging the east coast of Africa, her land, her people,

 those peoples whom she was sworn to protect and minister to and to lead

 into the fold of the Saviour.

 Her father, Fuller Ballantyne, was one of the great champions of

 freedom, the unrelenting adversary of this abominable trade. He had

 called it "the running sore on the conscience of the civilized world

 that must be rooted out with all the means at our disposal'. She was

 her father's daughter, had made her oath in the sight of God.

 This man, this monster, epitomized the sickening evil and monstrous

 cruelty of the whole filthy business. Please show me my duty, oh Lord,

 she prayed, and always there was her own guilt and shame. Shame that

 his eyes had probed her half-naked body, that his hands had touched and

 fondled her, shame that he had debased her further, by stripping bare

 his own body. Hastily she thrust the image aside, it was too clear, too

 over-powering. "Help me to be strong, she prayed quickly.

 There was shame and there was guilt, a terrible corrosive guilt in the

 fact that his gaze, his touch, his body, had not revolted and disgusted

 her, but had filled her instead with a sinful delight. He had tempted

 her to sin.

 For the first time in all her twenty-three years she had encountered

 real sin, and she had not been strong enough. She hated him for that,

 Show me my duty, oh Lord, she prayed aloud and rose stiffly from her

 knees to sit on the edge of the bunk.

 She held her well-worn leather-bound Bible in her lap and whispered

 again. Please give unto your faithful servant guidance.

 " And she let the book fall open, and with her eyes closed placed her

 forefinger on the text. When she opened her eyes again she gave a start

 of surprise, guidance obtained by this little ritual of hers was usually

 not so unequivocal, for she had chosen Numbers 35: ig. "The revenger of

 blood himself shall slay the murderer: when he meeteth him, he shall

 slay him."

 Robyn had no illusions as to the difficulty she would have in performing

 the heavy duty placed upon her by God's direct injunction, or how easily

 roles might be reversed and she become herself the victim rather than

 the avenger.

 The man was as dangerous as he was wicked and time was against her. The

 accurate observation of the sun that Zouga had made at noon that day

 placed the ship within a hundred and fifty miles of Table Bay, and the

 wind stood fair and boisterous. Dawn the next day would reveal that

 great flat-topped mountain rising out of the sea. She had no time for

 elaborate planning. Whatever she did must be direct and swift.

 There were half a dozen bottles in her medicine chest whose contents

 would serve, but no, poison was the most disgusting of deaths to

 inflict. She had seen a man die of strychnine poison when she was at

 St. Matthew's.

 She would never forget the arching spine as his back muscles convulsed

 until the man stood on the top of his head and on his heels like a drawn

 bow.

 It must be some other means, there was the big naval colt revolver which

 Zouga kept in his cabin. He had instructed her in its loading and

 discharge, or there was the Sharps rifle, but both of those belonged to

 her brother. She did not want to see him swinging from the gallows on

 the parade ground below the castle at Cape Town. The more uncomplicated

 and direct the plan, the greater was its chance of success, she

 realized, and at the thought she knew just how it must be done.

 There was a polite knock on her cabin door, and she started.

 Who is it? " Jackson, Doctor. " He was the Captain's steward. Dinner

 is served in the saloon."

 She had not realized how late it had grown.

 I will not be dining tonight." You must keep your strength up, ma'am,

 Jackson entreated through the closed door. Are you the doctor, then? "

 she asked tartly, and he went shuffling off down the companionway.

 She had not eaten since breakfast but she was not hungry, her stomach

 muscles were rigid with tension.

 She lay a while on her bunk, gathering her resolve and then she stood

 up, selected one of her oldest dresses, in a dark heavy wool.  It would

 be the least loss to her wardrobe, and the dark colour would make it

 less conspicuous in the shadows.

 She left her cabin and went quietly up to the maindeck. There was no

 one but the helmsman on the quarterdeck, his weathered brown face lit

 faintly by the binnacle lamp.

 She moved quietly across to the skylight of the saloon and looked down.

 Mungo St. John sat at the head of the table, with a joint of steaming

 salt beef in front of him. He was carving thin slices of meat, laughing

 across the board at one of Zouga's sallies. One quick glance was

 enough. Unless there was a call from the lookout or a need to change

 sail, Mungo St. John would not move for another half hour at the least.

 Robyn went back down the ladder, past her own cabin and down the

 companionway to the after quarters. She reached Mungo St. John's

 quarters and tried the door.

 Once again it slid open easily, she stepped through and closed it behind

 her again.

 It took her only a few minutes to find the case of pistols in the drawer

 of the teak desk. She opened it on the desk top and took out one of the

 beautiful weapons.

 The mottled Damascus steel barrels were inlaid with bright gold, a

 hunting scene with horses and hounds and huntsmen.

 Robyn sat down on the edge of the bunk, held the weapon muzzle-up

 between her knees while she unscrewed the silver powder flask and

 measured the fine powder into the cup. It was a familiar chore, for

 Zouga had spent hours in her instruction. She rammed the charge down

 into the long, elegant barrel under the felt wad, and then selected a

 perfect sphere of lead from the ball compartment of the case, wrapped

 that in an oiled patch of felt to give it a close fit in the rifled

 barrel and then rammed it down on top of the powder charge.

 Then she reversed the pistol, pointing it down at the deck while she

 fitted one of the copper percussion caps over the nipple of the breech,

 drew back the hammer until it clicked at full cock, and laid it on the

 bunk beside her. She did the same with the other pistol, and when they

 were both loaded and cocked, she placed them on the edge of the desk,

 butts towards her, ready for immediate use.

 Then she stood and, in the centre of the cabin, lifted her skirts around

 her waist and loosened the draw string of her drawers. She let them

 fall to the deck, and the air was cool on her naked buttocks so that she

 felt the little goose pimples rise on her skin. She dropped her skirts

 and picked up the cotton under-garment. Holding it across her chest she

 tore it half through and threw it across the cabin, then she took the

 fastenings of her bodice in both hands and ripped them down almost to

 her waist, the hooks and eyes hung on the torn threads of cotton.

 She looked at herself in the polished metal mirror on the bulkhead

 beside the door. There was a lustre in her green eyes and her cheeks

 were flushed.

 For the first time in her life, she thought her image beautiful, not

 beautiful, she corrected herself, but proud and wild and strong as an

 avenger should be. She was glad he would see her like this before he

 died, and she lifted her hand and rearranged one of the thick tresses of

 hair that had broken free of its retaining ribbon.

 She sat back on the bunk and picked up a loaded pistol in each hand, she

 aimed first the one and then the other at the brass handle of the door,

 and then laid them in her lap and settled down to wait.

 She had left her watch in her own cabin so she could not tell how long

 she waited. The voices and laughter from the officers" saloon were

 completely muffled by the closed door, but every time a plank creaked or

 some part of the ship's gear clattered, her nerves sprang tight and she

 lifted the pistols to cover the doorway.

 Then suddenly she heard his footsteps, there was no mistaking them for

 any other man aboard. They reminded her somehow of a caged leopard

 pacing its bars, quick, light and alert. He was on the deck above her,

 but the footsteps were so close that it seemed he was in the cabin with

 her. She looked up at the deck, swinging her head slightly to follow

 his turns from one side of the quarterdeck to the other.

 She knew what he was doing, she had watched him on a dozen other nights.

 First he would talk quietly with the helmsman, checking the slate on

 which the ship's course was chalked before going back to inspect the log

 trailing astern. Then he would light one of his thin black Havana

 cigars and begin pacing the deck, with his hands clasped in the small of

 his back as he walked, darting quick glances up at the trim of his

 sails, studying the stars and the clouds for signs of change in the

 weather, pausing to feel the scend of the sea and the run of the ship

 under him before pacing on again.

 Suddenly the footsteps stopped and Robyn froze, the moment had come. He

 had paused to flip the stub of his cigar over the rail and watch it

 fizzle into darkness as it hit the surface of the sea.

 There was still time for her to escape, and she felt her resolve weaken.

 She half rose. She could still reach her own cabin if she moved now,

 but her legs would not carry her across the cabin. Then she heard his

 footsteps cross the deck above her with a different tread. He was

 coming down. It was too late.

 Almost choking on her own breath, she sank back on to the bunk and

 lifted both pistols. They wavered uncertainly and she realized that her

 hands were shaking.

 With a tremendous effort she stilled them. The door slimmed open and

 Mungo St. John stooped into the cabin, and then stopped as he saw the

 dark figure and the twin barrels that menaced him. They are loaded and

 cocked, she said huskily. "And I will not hesitate. "I see. " He

 straightened slowly, so the dark head just brushed the deck overhead.

 Close the door, she said, and he pushed it closed with his foot, his

 arms folded on his chest, and that mocking half-smile on his lips. It

 made her forget her carefully rehearsed speech, and she stuttered

 slightly, and was immediately furious with herself. You are a slaver,

 she blurted, and he inclined his head, still smiling. "And I have to

 stop you. "How do you propose doing that? " he asked with polite

 interest. I am going to kill you. "That should do it, " he admitted,

 and now he smiled, a flash of white teeth in the gloom. "Unfortunately

 they would probably hang you for it, if my crew didn't tear you to

 pieces before that. "You assaulted me, she said. She glanced at her

 torn drawers lying near his feet and then with the butt of one pistol

 touched her torn bodice. A rape, by God! Now he chuckled aloud, and

 she felt herself blushing vividly at the word. It's no laughing matter,

 Captain St. John. You have sold thousands of human souls into the most

 vile bondage."

 He took one slow pace towards her and she half rose, panic in her voice.

 Don't move! I warn you He took another pace and she thrust both pistols

 towards him, at the full stretch of her arms, I shall fire The smile

 never wavered on his lips and the yellow flecked eyes held hers steadily

 as he took another lazy pace closer. You have the most beautiful green

 eyes I have ever seen, he said, and the pistols shook in her hands.

 Here"

 "he said gently. "Give them to me He took the two gold-worked barrels

 in one hand and turned their muzzles upwards, pointing them at the deck

 above them. With the other hand he gently began to open her fingers,

 untangling them from trigger and butt. This is not why you came here,

 he said, and her fingers went slack.

 He took the pistols out of her hands and uncocked them before laying

 them back in their velvetlined nests within the rosewood case.

 His smile was no longer mockin& and his voice was soft, almost tender as

 he lifted her to her feet. I am glad you came.

 " She tried to turn her face away, but he took her chin between his

 fingers and lifted it. As he brought his mouth down to hers, she saw

 his lips opening, and the warm wet touch was a physical shock.

 His mouth tasted slightly salty, perfumed with cigar smoke. She tried

 to keep her lips closed, but the pressure of his own lips forced them

 gently open and then his tongue was invading her. His fingers were

 still on her face, stroking her cheek, smoothing her hair back from her

 temples, touching lightly her closed eyelids, and she lifted her face

 higher to his touch.

 Even when he slowly unfastened the last hooks of her bodice and eased it

 down off her shoulders, her only response was to feel the strength go

 out of her thighs so she had to lean against his hard chest for support.

 Then he lifted his mouth from hers, leaving it empty, cooling after the

 warmth and she opened her eyes. With a sense of disbelief, she saw that

 his head was bowing to her breast, and she was looking down on the thick

 dark curls that covered the back of his neck. She knew it must stop

 now, before he did what she could hardly believe he was about to do.

 When she tried to protest, it was only a whimper in her throat. When

 she tried to seize his head and thrust it away from her, her fingers

 merely curled into the springing crisp curls the way a cat claws a

 velvet cushion, and instead of thrusting him away, she drew his head

 down and arched her back slightly so that her breasts rose to meet him.

 Yet she was unprepared for the feel of his mouth. It seemed as though

 he were about to suck her very soul out through the swollen, aching

 tips. It was too strong, she tried not to cry out, remembering that the

 last time she had done so, it had broken the spell, but it was too

 strong.

 it was a sobbing choked-up little cry, and now her legs gave way under

 her. Still holding his head she sagged backwards on to the low bunk,

 and he knelt beside the bunk without lifting his mouth from her body.

 She arched her back and raised her buttocks off the bunk at his touch

 and allowed him to draw out her billowing skirts from under her and drop

 them to the deck.

 Suddenly, he pulled abruptly away and she almost screamed to him not to

 go away again, but he had crossed to the door and locked it. Then, as

 he came back to where she lay, his own clothing seemed to fall away from

 his body like morning mist from mountain peak, and she came up on one

 elbow to stare at him openly.

 She had never seen anything so beautiful, she thought. The devil is

 beautiful also. " A tiny inner voice tried to warn her, but it was far

 away and so small that she could ignore it. Besides it was too late,

 far too late to listen to warnings now, for already he was coming over

 her.

 She expected pain, but not the deep splitting incursion that racked her.

 Her head was flung back and her eyes flooded with the tears of it. Yet

 even in the stinging agony of it there was never a thought to reject

 this stretching, tearing invasion and she clung to him with both her

 arms about his neck. It seemed that he suffered with her, for except

 for that single swift deep stroke, he had not moved, trying to alleviate

 her agony by his utter stillness, his body was rigid as hers, she could

 feel the muscles taut to the point of tearing, and he cradled her in his

 arms.

 Then suddenly she could breathe again, and she took in air with a great

 rushing sob, and immediately the pain began to change its shape,

 becoming something she could not describe to herself. It started as a

 spark of heat, deep within her, and flared slowly so she was forced to

 meet it with a slow voluptuous movement of her hips.

 She seemed to break free of earth and rise up through flames, that

 flickered redly through her clenched eyelids.

 There was only one reality, and that was the hard body that rocked and

 plunged above her. The heat seemed to fill her until she could not bear

 it any longer. Then at the last moment when she thought she might die

 of it, it burst within her and she felt herself falling, like a tumbling

 leaf, down, down, at last, to the hard narrow bunk in a half-dark cabin

 in a tall ship on a wind-driven sea.

 When next she could open her eyes his face was very close to hers. He

 was staring at her with a thoughtful, solemn expression.

 She tried to smile, it was a shaky unconvincing effort. Please don't

 look at me like that. " Her voice was even deeper, more husky than it

 usually was. I don't think I ever saw you before, he whispered and

 traced the line of her lips with his fingertip. "You are so different.

 "Different from what? "Different from other women. " His reply gave

 her a pang.

 He made the first movement of withdrawing from her, but she tightened

 her grip on him panic-stricken at the thought of losing him yet. We

 will only have this one night, she told him, and he did not reply. He

 lifted one eyebrow, and waited for her to speak again. You don't

 dispute it, she challenged. There was that mocking little smile

 beginning to curl his lip again, and it annoyed her. No, I was wrong,

 you are like all other women, he smiled. "You have to talk, always you

 have to talk."

 She let him go, as punishment for those words. But as he slithered free

 of her she felt a terrible emptiness and she regretted his going

 fiercely, beginning to hate him for it.

 You have no God, she accused him. Isn't it strange, he chided her

 gently, "that most of the worst crimes in history have been committed by

 men with God's name upon their lips."

 The truth of it deflated her momentarily, and she struggled into a

 sitting position. You are a slaver. "I don't really want to argue with

 you, you know. " But she would not accept that. You buy and sell human

 beings. "What are you trying to prove to me? " He chuckled now,

 further angering her. I'm telling you that there is a void between us

 that can never be bridged. "We have just done so, convincingly, and she

 flushed bright scarlet down her neck on to her bosom. I have sworn to

 devote my life to destroy all you stand for, she said fiercely, pushing

 her face close to his.

 Woman, you talk too much, be told her lazily, and covered her mouth with

 his own, holding her like that while she struggled, gagging her with his

 lips so her protests were muffled and incomprehensible. Then when her

 struggles had subsided he pushed her easily backwards on to the bunk and

 came over her again.

 In the morning when she woke, he was gone, but the bolster beside her

 was indented by his head. She pressed her face into it and the smell of

 his hair and of his skin still lingered, though the heat of his blood

 had dissipated and the linen was cool against her cheeks.

 The ship was in the grip of intense excitement. She could hear the

 voices from the deck above as she scurried down the empty passageway to

 her own cabin, dreading meeting a member of the crew, or more especially

 meeting her brother.

 What excuse could she have for being abroad in the dawn, with her cabin

 unslept in and her clothing torn. and rumpled?

 Her escape was a matter of seconds only, for as she locked and leaned

 thankfully against the door of her cabin, Zouga beat upon it with his

 fist from the far side. Robyn, wake up! Get dressed. Land is in

 sight. Come and see!

 Swiftly she bathed her body with a square of flannel dipped into the

 enamelled jug of cold sea water. She was tender, swollen and sensitive

 and there was a trace of blood on the cloth. The trace of shame, she

 told herself severely, but it was difficult to sustain the emotion.

 Instead she felt a soaring sense of physical well-being and a hearty

 appetite for her breakfast.

 Her step was light, almost skipping as she went up on to the maindeck

 and the wind tugged playfully at her skirts.

 Her first concern was for the man. He stood at the weather rail, in

 shirt-sleeves only, and immediately a storm of conflicting feelings and

 thoughts assailed her, the chief of which was that he was so lean and

 dark and devil-may-care that he should be kept behind bars as a menace

 to all womankind.

 Then he lowered the telescope, turned and saw her by the companionway

 and bowed slightly, and she inclined her head an inch in reply, very

 cool and very dignified.

 Then Zouga hurried to meet her, laughing and excited, and took her arm

 as he led her to the rail.

 The mountain towered out of the steely green Atlantic, a great grey

 buttress of solid rock, riven and rent by deep ravines and gullies

 choked with dark green growth.

 She had not remembered it so huge, seeming to fill the whole eastern

 horizon and reaching up into the heavens, for its summit was covered in

 a thick shimmering white mattress of cloud. The cloud rolled endlessly

 over the edge of the mountain like a froth of boiling milk pouring over

 the rim of the pot, but as it sank so it was sucked into nothingness,

 disappearing miraculously to leave the lower slopes of the mountain

 clear and close, each detail of the rock-face finely etched and the tiny

 buildings at its foot as startling white as the wing feathers of the

 gulls that milled the air about the clipper. We'll dine tonight in Cape

 Town, "Zouga shouted over the wind, and the thought of food flooded

 Robyn's mouth with saliva.

 Jackson, the steward, had the hands spread a tarpaulin to break the wind

 and they breakfasted under its lee, in the sunshine. It was a festive

 meal, for Mungo St. John called for champagne and they toasted the

 successful voyage and the good landfall in the bubbling yellow wine.

 Then Mungo St. John ended it. "The wind comes through there, tunnelled

 down that break in the mountain. " He pointed ahead, and they saw the

 surface at the mouth of the bay seething with the rush of it. "Many a

 ship has been dismasted by that treacherous blast. We'll be shortening

 sail in a few minutes. " And he signalled to Jackon to clear away the

 trestles that carried the remains of their breakfast, excused himself

 with a bow and went back to his quarterdeck.

 Robyn watched him strip the canvas off the upper yards, taking in two

 reefs in the main and setting a storm jib so that Huron met the freak

 wind readily and ran in for Table Bay, giving Robben Island a good berth

 to port.

 When the ship had settled on to its new heading, Robyn went up on to the

 quarterdeck. I must speak with you, she told him, and St. John cocked

 his eyebrow at her. You could not have chosen a better time-" and with

 the eloquent spread of his hands indicated wind and current and the

 dangerous shore close under their bows. This will be the last

 opportunity" she told him , quickly. "My brother and I will be leaving

 this ship immediately you drop anchor in Table Bay."

 The mocking grin slid slowly from his lips. If you are determined, then

 it seems that we have nothing more to say to each other."

 I want you to know why. 1I know why, he said, "but I doubt that you do

 She stared at him, but he turned away to call a change of heading to the

 helmsman and then to the figure at the foot of the mainmast. Mr.

 Tippoo, I'll have another reef on her, if you please He came back to her

 side, but not looking at her, his head tilted back to watch the

 miniature figures of his crew on the mainyards high above them. Have

 you ever seen sixteen thousand acres of cotton with the pods ready for

 plucking? " he asked quietly. Have you ever seen the bales going down

 river on the barges to the mills? " She did not answer, and he went on

 without waiting. I have seen both, Doctor Ballantyne, and no man dare

 tell me that the men who work my fields are treated like cattle. "You

 are a cotton-planter? "I am, and after this voyage I will have a sugar

 plantation on the island of Cuba, half my cargo to pay for the land and

 half of it to work the cane. "You are worse than I thought, she

 whispered. "I thought you were merely one of the devil's minions.

 Now I know you are the devil himself. "You are going into the interior.

 " St. John looked down at her now. "When you get there, if you ever do,

 you will see true human misery. You will see cruelties that no American

 slave-owner would dream of. You will see the slaughter of human beings

 by war and disease and wild beast that will baulk your belief in heaven.

 Beside this savagery, the barracoons and the slave quarters are an

 earthly paradise. "Do you dare suggest that by catching and chaining

 these poor creatures you do them favour? " Robyn demanded, aghast at

 his effrontery. Have you ever visited a Louisiana plantation, Doctor? "

 Then answering his own question, "No, of course, you have not. I invite

 you to do so. Come down to Bannerfield as my guest one day and then

 compare the state of my slaves to the savage blacks you will see in

 Africa, or even to those dAmned souls that inhabit the slums and

 workhouses of your own lovely little green island."

 She remembered those raddled and hopeless human creatures with whom she

 had worked in the mission hospital. She was speechless. Then suddenly

 his grin was wicked again. "Think of it only as forced enlightenment of

 the heathen. I lead them out of the darkness into the ways of God and

 civilization, just as you are determined to do, but my methods are more

 effective. "You are incorrigible, sir.

 "No, ma'am. I am a sea-captain and a planter. I am also a trader in,

 and an owner of, slaves, and I will fight to the death to defend my

 right to be all of those things."

 What right is that you speak of? she demanded. The right of the cat

 over the mouse, of the strong over the weak, Doctor Ballantyne The

 natural law of existence. "Then I can only repeat, Captain St. John,

 that I will leave this ship at the very first opportunityI am sorry that

 is your decision. " The hard fierce look in the yellow eyes softened a

 little. "I wish it were otherwise. "I shall devote my life to fighting

 you and men like you. )And what a waste that will be of a lovely

 woman."

 He shook his head regretfully. "But then your resolve may give us

 reason to meet again, I must hope that is so. "One final word Captain

 St. John, I shall never forgive last nightAnd I, Doctor Ballantyne, will

 never forget it."

 Zouga Ballantyne checked his horse at the side of the road, just before

 it crossed the narrow neck between the crags of Table Mountain and

 Signal Hill, one of its satellite promontories.

 He swung down out of the saddle to rest his mount, for it had been a

 hard pull up the steep slope from the town, and he tossed the reins to

 the Hottentot groom who accompanied him on the second horse. Zouga was

 sweating lightly and there was a residual pulse of dullness behind his

 eyes from the wine he had drunk the night before, the magnificent rich

 sweet wine of Constantia, one of the most highly prized vintages in the

 world, but capable of delivering as thick a head as any of the cheap and

 common grogs they sold in the waterfront bars.

 in the five days since they had disembarked, the friendliness of the

 Cape Colony citizens had almost overwhelmed them. They had slept only

 the first night at a public inn in Buitengracht Street, then Zouga had

 called upon one of the Cape Colony's more prominent merchants, a Mr.

 Cartwright. He had presented his letters of introduction from the

 directors of the Worshipful Company of London Merchants Trading into

 Africa, and Cartwright had immediately placed at their disposal the

 guest bungalow set in the gardens of his large and gracious home on the

 mountain slope above the old East India Company's gardens.

 Every evening since then had been a gay whirl of dinners and dances.

 Had Robyn and Zouga not insisted otherwise, the days would have been

 filled with equivalent frivolity, picnics, sailing and fishing

 expeditions, riding in the forest, long leisurely lunches on the lawns

 under spreading oak trees that reminded him so vividly of England.

 However, Zouga had avoided these diversions and had managed to

 accomplish much of the work of the expedition. Firstly there had been

 the supervising of the unloading of equipment from Huron, in itself a

 major undertaking as the crates had to be swayed up from the hold and

 lowered into lighters alongside before making the perilous return

 through the surf to land on the beach at Ragger Bay.

 Then he had to arrange temporary warehousing for the cargo. Here again

 Mr. Cartwright had been of assistance.

 Still Zouga found himself fiercely resenting his sister's insistence

 that had made all this heavy work necessary. Damn me, Sissy, even Papa

 used to travel in the company of Arab slave-traders when he had to. If

 this fellow St. John is a trader, we would do well to learn all we can

 from him, his methods and sources of supply. No one could give us

 better information for our report to the society."

 None of his arguments had prevailed, and only when Robyn had threatened

 to write home to the Society's directors in London, and to follow that

 up with a frank talk to the editor to the Cape Times, had Zouga acceded,

 with the worst grace possible, to her demands.

 Now he looked down longingly at Huron, lying well out from the beach,

 snubbing around on her anchor cable to point into the rumbustious

 south-easterly wind. Even under bare poles she seemed on the point of

 flight.

 Zouga guessed that St. John would be sailing within days, leaving them

 to await the next ship that might be bound for the Arab and Portuguese

 coasts.

 Zouga had already presented his letter of introduction from the Foreign

 Secretary to the Admiral of the Cape Squadron of the Royal Navy, and

 been promised all consideration.

 Nevertheless, he spent many hours of each morning visiting the shipping

 agents and owners in the port in hope of an earlier passage. Damn the

 silly wench, he muttered aloud, thinking bitterly of his sister and her

 foibles. "She could cost us weeks, even months."

 Time was, of course, of the very essence. They had to be clear of the

 fever-ridden coast before the monsoon struck and risk of malaria became

 suicidal.

 At that moment there was the crack of cannon shot from the slopes of the

 hill above him, and as he glanced up he saw the feather of gunsmoke

 drifting away from the lookout station on Signal Hill.

 The gunshot was to alert the townsfolk that a ship was entering Table

 Bay, and Zouga shaded his eyes with his cap as the vessel came into view

 beyond the point of land. He was not a seaman but he recognized

 instantly the ugly silhouette and single smoke stack of the Royal Naval

 gunboat that had pursued Huron so doggedly. Was it really two weeks

 ago, he wondered, the days had passed so swiftly. Black joke, the

 gunboat, had her boilers fired and a thin banner of dark smoke drifted

 away downwind as she rounded up into the bay, her yards training around

 as she pointed through the wind and she passed within half a mile of

 where Huron was already at anchor. The proximity of the two ships

 raised interesting possibilities of the feud between the two captains

 being revived, Zouga realized, but his immediate feeling was of intense

 disappointment. He had hoped that the vessel might have been a trader

 that could have offered the expedition further passage up the east coast

 - and he turned away abruptly, took the reins from the groom and swung

 up easily into the saddle. Which way? " he asked the servant, and the

 little yellow-skinned lad in Cartwright's plum-coloured livery indicated

 the left branch of the road that forked over the neck and dropped down

 across the dragon's-back of the Cape peninsula to the ocean shore on the

 far side.

 It was another two hours" ride, the last twenty minutes along a rutted

 cart track, before they reached the sprawling thatched building hidden

 away in one of the ravines of the mountain slope behind a grove of

 milkwood trees.

 The slopes behind the building were thick with protea bushes in full

 flower and the long-tailed sugar-birds haggled noisily over the blazing

 blooms. To one side a waterfall smoked with spray as it fell from the

 sheer rock face and then formed a deep green pool on which a flotilla of

 ducks cruised.

 The building had a dilapidated air to it, the walls needed white-washing

 and the thatch hung in untidy clumps from the eaves. Under the milkwood

 trees were scattered items of ancient equipment, a wagon with one wheel

 missing and the woodwork almost entirely eaten away by worm, a rusty

 hand forge in which a red hen was sitting upon a clutch of eggs, and

 mouldering saddlery and ropes hung from the branches of the trees.

 As Zouga swung down from the saddle, a pack of half a dozen dogs came

 storming out of the front porch, snarling and barking around Zouga's

 legs so that he lashed out at them with his riding whip and with his

 boots, changing the snarls to startled yelps and howls. Who the hell

 are you and what do you want? " A voice carried through the uproar, and

 Zouga took one more cut at a great shaggy Boerhound with a ridge of

 coarse hair fully erect between his shoulders, catching him fairly on

 the snout and forcing him to circle out of range, with fangs still bared

 and murderous growls rumbling up his throat.

 Then he looked up at the man on the stoep of the building. He carried a

 double-barrelled shotgun in the crook of his arm, and both hammers were

 at full cock.

 He was so tall that he had to stoop beneath the angle of the roof, but

 he was thin as a blue-gum tree, as though the flesh and fat had been

 burned off his bones by ten thousand tropical suns.

 Do I have the honour of addressing Mr. Thomas Harkness? " Zouga called

 over the clamour of the dog pack. I ask the questions here, the lean

 giant bellowed back. His beard was as white as the thunderhead clouds

 of a summer's day on the highveld and it hung to his belt buckle. Hair

 of the same silver covered his head and flowed down to the collar of his

 leather jerkin.

 His face and his arms were burned to the colour of plug tobacco, and

 were speckled by the raised blemishes like little moles and freckles,

 where years of the fierce African sun had destroyed the upper layers of

 his skin.

 The pupils of his eyes were black and bright as drops of fresh tar, but

 the whites were smoky yellow, the colour of. the malarial fevers and

 the pestilences of Africa. What is your name, boy? " His voice was

 strong and deep. Without the beard he might have been fifty years of

 age, but Zouga knew with certainty that he was seventy-three. He

 carried his one shoulder higher than the other and the arm on that side

 hung at an awkward angle to the joint. Zouga knew that a lion had

 chewed through the shoulder and through the bone of the upper arm,

 before Harkness had been able to reach his hunting knife on his belt

 with the other hand and stab it between the forelegs, up into the heart.

 That had been forty years before and the injury had become the Harkness

 hallmark. Ballantyne, sir. " Zouga shouted to make himself heard above

 the dogs. "Morris Zouga Ballantyne."

 The old man whistled once, a fluting double note that stilled the dogs

 and brought them back around his legs.

 He had not lowered the shotgun and a frown puckered his sharp features.

 Fuller Ballantyne's pup, is it? "That's right, sir. "By God, any son

 of Fuller Ballantyne's is good enough for a charge of my buckshot in the

 rump. Don't cock your butt when you get back on that horse, boy, for

 I'm a man who tempts very easily. "I've ridden a long way to see you,

 Mr. Harkness."

 Zouga smiled that frank and wining smile of his, standing his ground.

 I'm one of your greatest admirers. I've read everything that has ever

 been written about you and everything you have written yourself. "I

 doubt that, " Harkness growled, "they burned most of mine. Too strong

 for their lily livers. " But the hostile glint in his eyes turned to a

 twinkle and he cocked his head as he studied the young man before him. I

 have no doubt that you're as ignorant and arrogant as your Daddy, but

 you've got a fairer turn of speech."

 And he stared again at the toes of Zouga's boots, and let his gaze move

 up slowly. Priest, he asked, "like your Daddy? "No, sir, soldier.

 "Regiment? " 13th Madras Foot. "Rank? Major."

 Harkness" expression eased with each reply until his gaze once more

 locked with Zouga's. Teetotal? Like your Daddy?

 "Perish the thought! Zouga assured him vehemently and Harkness smiled

 for the first time as he let the muzzles of the shotgun droop until they

 pointed at the ground. He tugged at the long spikes of his beard for a

 moment, then reached a decision. Come. " He jerked his head and led

 the way into the house. There was one huge central room, the high

 ceiling of dried reed stern s kept it cool and the narrow windows kept

 it gloomy. The floor was of peach-pip shells set into a plaster of mud

 and cow-dung and the walls were threefoot thick.

 Zouga paused in the threshold and blinked with surprise at the

 collection of strange articles that covered the walls, were piled on

 every table and chair, and packed to the rafters in the dark corners.

 There were books, thousands of books, cloth and leatherbound books,

 pamphlets and journals, atlases and encyclopaedias. There were weapons,

 assegai of'Zulu, shield of Matabele, bow of Bushman with its quiver of

 poisoned arrows and, of course, guns, dozens of them in racks or merely

 propped against the walls. There were hunting trophies, the beautiful

 zigzag-striped hide of zebra, the dark bush of the lion's mane, the

 elegant curved horn of harris-buck, teeth of hippopotamus and wartho&

 and then the Ion& yellow arcs of ivory thicker than a woman's thigh and

 taller than a man's head.

 There were rocks, piles of rocks that glittered and sparkled, crystal

 rocks of purple and green, metallic nodules, native copper redder than

 gold, hairy strands of raw asbestos, all of it covered with a fine layer

 of dust and piled untidily wherever it had fallen.

 The room smelled of skins and dogs and damp, of stale brandy and fresh

 turpentine, and there were stacks of new canvases already stretched in

 their wooden frames, while other canvases stood on their easels with the

 subjects sketched in charcoal outline, or partly blocked in with bright

 oil paint. On the walls were hung some finished pictures.

 Zouga crossed to examine one of them while the old man blew into a pair

 of glass tumblers and polished them on his shirt-tail. What do you

 think of my lions? " he asked, as Zouga studied a huge canvas entitled

 "Lion Hunt on the Gariep River. Feb. 1846'.

 Zouga made an appreciative sound in the back of his throat. Zouga was

 himself a dauber and scribbler, but he considered that the meticulous

 reproduction of the subject was the painter's duty, while these

 paintings had a guileless, almost childlike joy in every primitive line.

 The colours also were gay and made no pretence to imitate nature, while

 the perspectives were wildly improbable. The mounted figure with the

 flowing beard in the background dominated the pride of lions in the

 foreground. Yet Zouga knew that these strange creations had remarkable

 value. Cartwright had paid ten guineas for a fanciful landscape. Zouga

 could only believe it was a fad amongst the colony's fashionable set.

 "They say my lions look like English sheepdogs. "Harkness glowered at

 them; "What do you think, Ballantyne? "Perhaps, Zouga started, then saw

 the old man's expression change. "But tremendously ferocious sheep

 dogs!  " he added swiftly, and Harkness laughed out loud for the first

 time. By God, you'll do! He shook his head as he half-filled the

 tumblers with the dark brown local brandy, the fearsome "Cape Smoke',

 and brought one glass to Zouga. I like a man who speaks his mind. Rot

 all hypocrites."

 He raised his own glass in a toast. "Especially hypocritical preachers

 who don't give a damn for God, for truth or for their fellow men."

 Zouga fancied that he recognized the description, but raised his glass.

 "Rot them! he agreed, and managed to suppress a gasp as the liquor

 exploded in his throat and sizzled behind his eyes. Good, he said

 hoarsely, and Harkness wiped his silver mustache, left and right, with

 his thumb before he demanded, Why have you come? "I want to find my

 father, and I think you may be able to tell me where to search. "Find

 him? " fulminated the old man. "We should all be extremely grateful he

 is lost, and pray each day that he remains that way. "I understand how

 you feel, sir, Zouga nodded. "I read the book that was published after

 the Zambezi expedition."

 Harkness had accompanied Fuller Ballantyne on that ill-fated venture,

 acting as second-in-command, expedition manager and recording artist. He

 had been caught up in the squabbling and blame-fixing that had marred

 the enterprise from the beginning. Fuller Ballantyne had dismissed him,

 accusing him of theft of the expedition stores, trading on his own

 account, artistic incompetence, neglecting his duties to hunt for ivory,

 go and total ignorance of the countryside and its trails, of the tribes

 and their customs and had included these accusations in his account of

 the expedition, implying that the blame for the expedition's failure

 could be laid on Thomas Harkness" uneven shoulders.

 Now even mention of that book brought the colour to the sun-raddled face

 and made the white whiskers twitch. I crossed the Limpopo for the first

 time in the year that Fuller Ballantyne was born. I drew the map that

 he used to reach Lake Ngami. " Harkness stopped and made a dismissive

 gesture. "I might as well try and reason with the baboons barking from

 the tops of the kopjes Then he peered more closely at Zouga. What do

 you know about Fuller? Since he sent you home to the old country, how

 often have you seen him?

 How much time have you spent in his company? "He came home once. "How

 much time did he spend with you and your mother? "Some months, but he

 was always in Uncle William's study writing, or he was up at London, .

 Oxford or Birmingham to lecture. "But you, nevertheless, conceived a

 burning filial love and duty for the sainted and celebrated father?

 Zouga shook his head. "I hated him, he said quietly. I could hardly

 bear the days until he went away again Harkness tilted his head on one

 side, surprised, speechless for a moment, and Zouga drank the last few

 drops of liquor in the glass. I never told anybody that before. " He

 seemed puzzled himself. "I hardly even admitted it to myself. I hated

 him for what he did to us, to me and my sister, but especially to my

 mother."

 Harkness took the empty tumbler from his fingers, refilled it and handed

 it back. He spoke quietly. I also will tell you something that I have

 never told another man. I met your mother at Kurutnan, my God, so long

 ago. She was sixteen or seventeen and I was nearly forty. She was so

 pretty, so shy and yet so filled with a special quality of joy. I asked

 her to marry me.

 The only woman I ever asked. " Harkness stopped himself, turned away to

 his painting, and peered at it. Damned sheep dogs! " he snapped, and

 then without turning back to face Zouga, "So why do you want to find

 your father? Why have you come out to Africa? "Two reasons, Zouga told

 him. "Both good. To make my own reputation and my own fortune."

 Harkness swivelled to face him. "Dan-m me, but you can be direct. "

 There was a tinge of respect in his expression now. "How do you plan to

 achieve those very desirable ends? " Zouga explained swiftly, the

 newspaper sponsorship, that of the Society for the Extinction of the

 Slave Trade. You'll find much grist for your mill, " Harkness

 interjected. "The coast is still rife with the trade, despite what

 you'll hear in London town. "I am also an agent for the Worshipful

 Company of London Merchants Trading into Africa, but I have my own goods

 to trade, and 5,000 cartridges for my Sharps rifle."

 Harkness wandered across the dim room and stopped before one of the

 gigantic elephant tusks propped against the far wall. It was so old and

 heavy that there was very little taper from root to tip, the point worn

 blunt and rounded. One third of its length was smooth and a clear

 lovely butter yellow colour, where it had been buried in the jaw of the

 beast, the rest of it was stained dark with % vegetable juices and

 scarred from the battles and foragings of sixty years. This one weighs

 one hundred and sixty pounds, its value in London is six shillings a

 pound. " He slapped it with his open palm. "There are still bulls like

 that out there, thousands of them. But take a tip from an old dog

 forget your fancy Sharps, and use one of the ten-bore elephant guns.

 They throw a ball that weighs a quarter of a pound, and though they kick

 like the devil himself, they drive better than any of these newfangled

 rifles."

 There was a lightness in the worn old features, a sparkle in the dark

 eyes. "Another tip, get in close. Forty paces at the outside, and go

 for the heart. Forget what you'll hear about the brain shot, go for the

 heart -" He broke off suddenly and waggled his head, grinning ruefully.

 "By God, but it's enough to make a man want to be young again! " He

 came back and studied Zouga directly, and a thought occurred to him with

 a suddenness that struck him like a physical blow, taking him so by

 surprise that he almost spoke it aloud. If Helen had given me a

 different answer, you could be my son. " But he held back the words,

 and asked instead:How can I help you, then? "You can tell me where I

 can start to search for Fuller Ballantyne."

 Harkness threw up his hands, palms uppermost. "It's a vast land, so big

 that you could travel across it for a lifetime. "That's why I have come

 to you."

 Harkness went to the long table of yellow Cape deal that ran nearly the

 fall length of the room and with the twisted arm swept a clear space

 amongst the books and papers and paint pots. Bring a chair, he

 instructed, and when they sat facing each other across the cleared

 space, he recharged both their glasses and placed what remained in the

 bottle between them. Where did Fuller Ballantyne go? " Harkness asked,

 and took a silver tress from the thick beard and began to twist it

 around his forefinger. The finger was long and bony and covered with

 the thick ridges of ancient scar tissue where the recoil of overheated

 or overcharged firearms had driven the trigger guard to the bone. Where

 did Fuller Ballantyne go?

 " he repeated, but Zouga realized the question was rhetorical, and he

 said nothing. After the Zambezi expedition, his fortune was exhausted,

 his reputation all but destroyed, and to a man like Fuller Ballantyne

 that was unbearable. His entire life had been an endless hunt for

 glory. No risk, no sacrifice was too great, his own or others. He

 would steal and lie and, even kill for it."

 Zouga looked up sharply, challenging. Kill, " Harkness nodded.

 "Anybody who stood in his way. I have seen him, but that is another

 tale. Now we want to know where he went."

 Harkness stretched out and selected a roll of parchment from the

 cluttered table-top, checked it quickly and grunted with approval, as he

 spread it between them.

 It was a map of Central Africa, east to west coast, south to the

 Limpopo, north to the lakes, drawn in India ink and the borders were

 illuminated by Harkness characteristic figures and animals.

 Instantly Zouga coveted it with his very soul. All that Harkness had

 accused his father of he felt in his own heart. He had to have this,

 even if it was necessary to steal, or, by God, kill. He had to have it.

 The map was huge, at least five feet square, handdrawn on the finest

 quality linen-backed paper. It was unique, the detail enormous; the

 notations were profuse but succinct, the observations first hand, the

 details precise, written in a tiny elegant script that needed a reading

 glass to be deciphered with ease. Here heavy concentrations of elephant

 herds during June to September. "Here I sampled gold reef in ancient

 workings at two ounces to the ton. "Here rich copper is worked by Gutus

 people. "Here slave convoys depart for the coast in June."

 There were literally hundreds of these notations, each in a neatly

 numbered box, that corresponded to the exact location on the map.

 Harkness watched Zouga's face, with a sly half-smile on his face, and

 then handed him a reading-glass to continue his examination.

 It took Zouga a few minutes to realize that the pink shaded areas

 indicated the "fly corridors" of the high African plateau.

 The safe areas through which domestic animals could be moved to avoid

 the tsetse fly belts. The terrible Ngana disease which the fly carried

 could decimate the herds.

 Knowledge of these corridors had been gathered by the African tribes

 over hundreds of years, and here it was faithfully recorded by Thomas

 Harkness.

 The value of this knowledge was incalculable. Here Mzilikazi's border

 impis kill all travellers. "Here there is no water between May and

 October. "Here dangerous malarial vapours during October to December."

 The areas of greatest hazard were signposted, while the known routes to

 the interior were clearly marked, though there were few enough of these.

 The cities of the African kings were marked, as was the location of

 their military kraals, the areas of influence of each were defined and

 the names of the subservient chiefs noted. Here concession to hunt

 elephant must be obtained from Chief Mara. He is treacherous."

 Harkness watched the young man eagerly poring over the priceless

 document. His expression was almost fond, and he nodded his head once

 as a memory passed like a shadow behind his eyes. He spoke at last.

 Your father would be trying to restore his reputation at a single

 stroke, Harkness mused. "He would have to feed that monstrous ego.

 There are two areas that come immediately to mind. HereV He placed his

 open hand across an enormous area to the north and west of the defined

 shape of Lake Marawi.

 In this area the copious and authoritative notations were replaced by

 meagre, hesitant observations obtained from hearsay or native legend,

 and by speculation followed by a question mark. Sheikh Assab of the

 Omani Arabs reports River Lualaba runs north and west. Possible flow

 into Lake Tanganyika. " The dotted outlines of rivers, instead of crisp

 detail. "Pemba, the Chief of the Marakan, reports huge lake shaped like

 butterfly twenty-five days march from Khoto Khota. Called Lomani.

 Possible source of Luapula and of Herodotus fountain. " The lake was

 sketched in.

 Question. Is Lake Tanganyika connected to Lake Albert?

 Question. Is Lake Tanganyika connected to Lake Lomani? If so, Lomani

 is ultimate source of Nile river? " Harkness touched the two question

 marks with his gnarled and bony finger. Here, said Harkness. The big

 question marks.

 The Nile river. That would attract Fuller. He spoke of it often. "

 Harkness chuckled. "Always with the same introductory words, "of

 course, the fame matters not at all to me". " The old man shook his

 silver head. "It mattered not less than the air he breathed. Yes, the

 source of the Nile river and the fame that it would bring its discoverer

 that would fascinate him."

 Harkness stared for a long time at the empty spaces, dreaming perhaps,

 visions awakening behind the bright black eyes. He aroused himself at

 last, shaking his shaggy head as if to clear it.

 There would be only one other feat that would attract as much attention,

 would be greeted with as much acclaim. " Harkness ran his spread hand

 southwards down the parchment to cover another vast void in the web of

 mountains and rivers. "Here, he said softly. "The forbidden kingdom of

 the Monornatapas."

 The name itself had an eerie quality. Monomatapa.

 The sound of it raised the fine hair on the back of Zouga's neck.

 You have heard of it? " Harkness asked. Yes, " Zouga nodded. "They

 say it is the Ophir of the Bible, where Sheba mined her gold. Have you

 travelled there? " Harkness shook his head. "Twice I started out, he

 shrugged. "No white man has travelled there. Even Mzilikazi's impis

 have not raided that far east. The Portuguese made one attempt to reach

 the Emperor Monomatapa.

 That was in 1569. The party was wiped out, and there were no survivors.

 " Harkness made a sound of disgust. As you could expect of the Ports,

 they abandoned any further attempt to reach Monomatapa. For the 200

 years since then they have been content to sit in their seraglios at

 Tete and Quelimane, breeding half-castes, and picking UP the slaves and

 ivory that filter down out of the interior. "But still there are the

 legends of the Monomatapa. I heard them from my father. Gold and great

 walled cities."

 Harkness stood up from the table with the grace of a man half his age

 and crossed to an iron-bound chest against the wall behind his chair.

 The chest was not locked but the lid required both the old man's skinny

 arms to lift it.

 He came back with a draw-string bag made of softly tanned leather. It

 was obviously weighty for he carried it in both hands. He pulled the

 mouth open, and upended the contents on to the linen map.

 There was no mistaking the lovely yellow metal, it had the deep glowing

 lustre which has bewitched mankind for thousands of years. Zouga could

 not resist the urge to reach out and touch it. It had a marvelous soapy

 feeling against his fingertips. The precious metal had been beaten into

 heavy round beads, each the size of the top joint of Zouga's little

 finger and the beads had been strung on to animal sinew to form a

 necklace. Fifty-eight ounces, " Harkness told him, "and the metal is of

 unusual purity, I have had it assayed."

 The old man lifted the necklace over his own head and let it lie against

 the snowy fall of his beard. It was only then that Zouga realized that

 there was a pendant on the string of golden beads.

 it was in the shape of a bird, a stylized falcon-like shape with folded

 wings. It was seated upon a rounded plinth that was decorated with a

 triangular design, like a row of sharks" teeth. The figure was the size

 of a man's thumb. The gold metal was polished by the touch of human

 skin over the ages so that some of the detail had been lost. The eyes

 of the bird were glassy green chips. It was a gift from Mzilikazi. He

 has no use for gold, nor for emeralds, yes, the stones are emeralds, "

 Harkness nodded. One of Mzilikazi's warriors killed an old woman in the

 Burnt Land. They found the leather pouch on her body."

 Where is the Burnt Land? " Zouga asked. I'm sorry. " Harkness fiddled

 with the little golden bird. "I should have explained. King

 Mzilikazi's impis have laid waste to the land along his borders, in some

 places to a depth of a hundred miles and more. They have killed all who

 lived there and they maintain it as a buffer strip against any hostile

 force. The Boer commandos from the south particularly, but from any

 other hostile invader also. Mzilikazi calls it the Burnt Land, and it

 was here, to the east of his kingdom, that his border guards killed this

 solitary old woman. They described her as a very strange old woman, not

 of any known tribe, speaking a language they did not understand."

 Harkness lifted the necklace from his neck and dropped it carelessly

 back into the bag, and Zouga felt bereft.

 He would have liked to feel the full weight and the texture of the metal

 in his hands for a little longer. Harkness went on quietly:Of course

 you have heard the talk of gold and walled cities, like everybody else.

 But that is the closest I have ever come to corroboration."

 Did my father know about the necklace? " Zouga.

 asked, and Harkness nodded. "Fuller wanted to purchase it, he offered

 me almost twice its gold value."

 They were both silent for a long while, each brooding on his own

 thoughts until Zouga stirred. How would a man like my father try to

 reach the Monomatapa? "Not from the south nor from the west. Mzilikazi,

 the Matabele king, will let no man pass through the Burnt Land. I feel

 that Mzilikazi has some deep superstition attached to the land beyond

 his eastern border. He does not venture there himself, nor does he

 allow others to do so. " Harkness shook his head. "No, Fuller would

 have to try from the east, from the Portuguese coast, from one of their

 settlements. " Harkness began to trace out the possible approach

 marches on the linen chart. "Here there are high mountains. I have

 seen them at a distance and they seemed a formidable barrier. "

 Outside, night had already fallen, and Harkness interrupted himself to

 order Zouga, "Tell your groom to off-saddle the horses and take them to

 the stables. It is too late to return. You will have to stay

 overnight."

 When Zouga returned a Malay servant had drawn the curtains, lit the

 lanterns and laid a meal of yellow rice and chicken cooked in a fiery

 curry, and Harkness had opened another bottle of the Cape brandy. He

 went on talking as though there had been no interruption. They ate the

 meal and pushed the enamelled tin plates away to return to the map, and

 the hours passed unnoticed by either of them.

 In the intimate lantern light, the sense of drama and excitement that

 gripped them both was heightened by the brandy they drank. Once in a

 while Harkness would rise to fetch some souvenir of his travels to

 reinforce a point, a sample of quartz rock in which the seams of native

 gold were clearly visible in the lamplight.

 If there is visible gold, it's rich, Harkness told Zouga. Why did you

 never mine the reefs you found? "I could never stay long enough in one

 place, Harkness grinned ruefully. "There was always another river to

 cross, a range of mountain or a lake that I had to reach or I was

 following a herd of elephant. There was never time to sink a shaft, or

 build a house, or raise a herd."

 When the dawn was rising, peeping into the huge gloomy room around the

 curtains, Zouga exclaimed suddenly, "Come with me. Come with me to find

 Monomatapa! "And Harkness laughed. I thought it was your father you

 were intent on finding. You know better! " Zouga laughed with him.

 Somehow he felt at home with the old man as if he had known him all his

 life. "But can you imagine my father's face when you come to rescue

 him? "It would be worth it, Harkness admitted, and then the laughter

 faded, and gave way to an expression of such deep regret, of such

 consuming sorrow that Zouga felt a compulsion to reach out across the

 table and touch the misshapen shoulder.

 Harkness pulled away from his touch. He had lived alone too long. He

 would never again be able to take comfort from a fellow man. Come with

 me, " Zouga repeated, letting his hand drop to the table-top between

 them. I have made my last journey into the interior, Harkness said

 tonelessly. "Now all I have are my paint pots and my memories."

 He lifted his eyes to the ranks of framed canvas with their brilliant

 joyous images. You are still strong, vital, Zouga insisted. "Your mind

 is so clear. "Enough! " Harkness" voice was harsh, bitter. "I am

 tired now. You must go. Now, immediately."

 Zouga felt his anger rise hotly to his cheeks at the abrupt rejection,

 this sudden change of mood, and he stood quickly. For a few seconds he

 stood looking down at the old man.

 Go! " said Harkness again.

 Zouga nodded abruptly. "Very well. " His eyes slid down to the map. He

 knew he must have it at any price, though he sensed that there was no

 price that Harkness would accept. He must plan and scheme for it, but

 he would have it.

 He turned and strode to the front door, and the dogs that had slept

 around their feet rose and followed him. Gamiet! " Zouga shouted

 angrily. "Bring the horses."

 And he stood in the doorway rocking impatiently on his toes and heels,

 hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders stiff, not looking around

 at the thin stooped figure who still sat at the table in the lamp-light.

 The groom brought the horses at last, and still without turning Zouga

 called roughly, "Good day to you, Mr. Harkness."

 The reply was in a frail old man's quaver that he hardly recognized.

 Come again. We have more to discuss. Come back in two days.

 The stiffness went out of Zouga's stance. He started to turn back, but

 the old man waved him away with a brusque gesture and Zouga stamped down

 the front steps, vaulted into the saddle and whipped his mount into a

 gallop along the narrow rutted track.

 Harkness sat at the table until long after the hoof beats had faded.

 Strange that the pain had receded to the very back of his consciousness

 during the hours that he had sat with the youngster. He had felt young

 and strong, as though he had suckled upon the vigour and the youth of

 the other.

 Then it had come back with a savage rush at Zouga.

 Ballantyne's invitation, almost as if to remind him that his life was no

 longer his, that it was already forfeit to the hyena that lived deep in

 his belly, each day growing stronger, bigger, as it fed upon his vitals.

 When he closed his eyes he could imagine it, the way that he had seen it

 so often in the light of a thousand camp fires, up there in the

 wonderful land that he would never visit again. The thing within him

 had the same furtive slinking presence and he could taste the fetid

 breath of it in his throat. Now he gasped as the full strength of the

 pain returned, as the beast buried its fangs deeper into his gut.

 He knocked over the chair in his haste to reach the precious bottle in

 the back of the cabinet and he gulped a mouthful of the clear pungent

 liquid without measuring it into the spoon. it was too much, he knew

 that, but each day he needed more to keep the hyena at bay, and each day

 the relief took longer to come.

 He clung to the corner of the cabinet and waited for it. "Please, " he

 whispered, "please let it end soon."

 There were half a dozen messages and invitations awaiting Zouga on his

 return to the Cartwright estate that morning, but the one which gave him

 most excitement was on official Admiralty paper, a polite request to

 call upon the Han. Ernest Kemp, Rear-Admiral of the Blue, Officer

 Commanding the Cape Squadron.

 Zouga shaved and changed his clothing, selecting his best jacket for the

 occasion although it was a long dusty ride to Admiralty House. Despite

 missing a night's sleep, he felt vital and alert.

 The Admiral's Secretary kept him waiting only a few minutes before

 showing him through, and Admiral Kemp came around from behind his desk

 to greet Zouga amiably, for the young man came highly recommended and

 Fuller Ballantyne's name still commanded respect in Africa. I have some

 news which I hope will please you, Major Ballantyne. But first, a glass

 of Madeira? " Zouga had to curb his impatience while the Admiral poured

 the syrupy wine. The Admiral's study was decorated richly, with velvet

 furnishings and a fashionable profusion of ornaments, small statues,

 bric-a-brac, stuffed birds in glass showcases, family portraits in

 ornate frames and pretty ceramics, potted plants and the kind of

 paintings which Zouga admired.

 The Admiral was tall but stooped, as though to accommodate his long

 frame to the limited headroom between the decks of one of Her Majesty's

 ships. He seemed old for the responsible appointment he held, guarding

 the Empire's lifeline to India and the East, but the ageing may have

 been caused by ill-health rather than years.

 There were dark-toned pouches of skin below his eyes and other marks of

 sickness carved around his mouth and evident in the distended blue veins

 on the back of his hands as he handed a glass of Madeira to Zouga. Your

 good health, Major Ballantyne. " And then after he had tasted his own

 wine, "I think I have a berth for you. A ship of my squadron anchored

 in Table Bay yesterday, and as soon as she has replenished her coal

 bunkers and revictualled I shall detach her for independent duty in the

 Mozambique channel."

 Zouga knew from his meetings with the directors of the Society for the

 Extinction of the Slave Trade, that one part of the Admiral's standing

 orders read:You are requested and required to dispose the ships of your

 squadron in such manner as most expediently to prevent vessels of

 whatever Christian nation from engaging in the slave trade on the coast

 of the African continent south of the equator."

 Clearly Kemp intended a sweep of the eastern seaboard with elements of

 his squadron, and Zouga. felt awakening delight as the Admiral went on

 genially, "It will not need much of a diversion for my ship to call at

 Quelimane, and to land you and your party! I cannot thank you

 sufficiently, Admiral. " His pleasure was transparent, and Admiral Kemp

 smiled in sympathy. He had put himself out more than his usual wont,

 for the youngster was attractive and likeable, deserving of

 encouragement, but now there were other matters awaiting his attention

 and as he pulled out his gold hunter and consulted it pointedly he went

 on, You should be ready to sail in five days" time. " He returned the

 watch to the fob of his uniform coat.  "I hope we will see you on

 Friday? My Secretary did send you an invitation, did he not? Your

 sister will be with you, I hope."

 Indeed, sir. "Zouga stood in obedience to his dismissal.

 And my sister and I are honoured!

 In fact Robyn had said, "I do not waste my evenings, Zouga, and I have

 no intention of enduring the company of a fleet of tipsy sailors nor of

 suffering the wagging tongues of their wives."

 The Cape wives were agog with the presence in their midst of the

 notorious Robyn Ballantyne who had impersonated a man and invaded,

 successfully, an exclusive masculine preserve. Half of them were

 deliciously scandalized, and the rest were awed and admiring. However,

 Zouga was certain that she would pay this price for their passage to

 Quelimane. Very well then. " Admiral Kemp nodded. "Thank you for

 calling on me. " And then, as Zouga started for the door, "Oh, by the

 way, Ballantyne. The ship is the Black Joke, Captain Codrington

 commanding. My Secretary will give you a letter for him, and I suggest

 you call upon him to introduce yourself and to learn the date of

 sailing."

 The name came as a shock, and Zouga checked his stride as he thought

 quickly of the complication which the choice of ship might bring.

 Zouga was sensitive to any threat to the expedition, and Codrington had

 struck him as being a hot-headed, almost fanatical character. He could

 not afford any slur to his leadership, and Codrington had seen him

 sailing in company with a suspected slaver. He could not be sure what

 Codrington would do.

 It was a delicate decision: accept the berth and risk Codrington's

 denunciation, or refuse the offer of passage and perhaps wait for months

 in Cape Town before another vessel offered them another.

 If they were delayed that Ion& it would mean missing the cooler and

 dryer period between the monsoons, they would have to cross the

 pestilential and fever-ridden coastal lowlands in the most dangerous

 season.

 Zouga made his decision. "Thank you, Admiral Kemp.

 I will call on Captain Codrington as soon as possible!

 Thomas Harkness had asked Zouga to return on the second day, and the map

 was more important even than swift passage to Quelimane.

 Zouga sent Garniet, the Cartwrights" groom, down to the beach with a

 sealed letter addressed to Captain Codrington and with instructions to

 take one of the water boats out to Black joke and deliver it personally

 to Codrington. It was a warnin& couched in the most polite terms, that

 Zouga. and Robyn would call on the Captain the following morning. Zouga

 had become at his sister had an effect on men quite out of aware that

 proportion to her physical appearance, even Admiral Kemp had asked for

 her personally, and he had no compunction in using her to take the edge

 off Codrington's temper. He would have to warn her to exert her charm,

 but now there was more important business.

 He had mounted on Cartwright's big bay gelding and ridden halfway down

 the grovelled drive between the oaks, when a thought struck him and he

 swung the horse's head and cantered back to the guest bungalow again.

 The Naval Colt revolver was on the top layer of his chest, already fully

 loaded and with caps on the nipples. He carried it under the tail of

 his coat while he went back out to the tethered gelding, and then

 slipped the revolver surreptitiously into the saddlebag as he swung up

 into the saddle.

 He knew he had to have the Harkness map at any price, but he

 deliberately refused to think what that price might be.

 He pushed his mount hard up the steep road to the neck between the

 peaks, and gave him only a few minutes to blow before starting down the

 far slope.

 The air of dilapidation which hung over the thatched building in the

 milkwood grove seemed to have deepened. It seemed totally deserted,

 silent and desolate. He dismounted and threw his reins over a milkwood

 branch and stooped to ease the girth. Then he quietly unfastened the

 buckle of the saddlebag and slipped the Colt into his waistband and

 pulled his coat over it.

 As he started towards the stoep, the big ridge-backed Boerhound rose

 from where it had lain in the shadows and came to meet him. In contrast

 to its previous ferocity, the animal was subdued, its tail and ears

 drooping and it whined softly when it recognized Zouga.

 He went up on to the stoep and hammered on the front door with his fist,

 and heard the blows reverberate through the room beyond. Beside him,

 the Boerhound cocked its head and watched him expectantly, but silence

 settled again over the old building.

 Twice more Zouga beat upon the door, before he. tried the handle. it

 was locked. He rattled the brass lock and put his shoulder to the door;

 but it was heavy teak in a solid frame. Zouga jumped down off the stoep

 and circled the house, squinting his eyes at the fierce reflected

 sunlight from the white-washed walls. The windows were shuttered.

 Beyond the farmyard stood the old slave quarters, now used by Harkness"

 servant, and Zouga called loudly for him, but his room was deserted and

 the ashes cold in the cooking place. Zouga went back to the main house

 and stood by the locked kitchen door.

 He knew that he should go back to his horse and ride away, but he needed

 the map, even if just for long enough to make a copy. Harkness was not

 here, and in three days, perhaps less, he would be sailing out of Table

 Bay.

 There was a pile of broken rusted garden tools in the corner of the

 stoep. Zouga selected a hand scythe, and carefully probed the metal

 point of the blade into the crack between jamb and door. The lock was

 old and worn, the tongue slipped back easily under the blade and he

 jerked the door open with his free hand.

 It was still not too late. He paused in the doorway for many seconds,

 and then he took a deep breath and stepped quietly into the gloom of the

 interior.

 There was a long passage leading past closed doors towards the front

 room. Zouga. went down it, opening doors quietly as he passed. In one

 room was a huge fourposter bedstead with the curtains opened and the.

 bed clothes in disorder.

 Quickly Zouga passed on to the main room. It was in semi-darkness and

 he stopped to let his eyes adjust, and immediately was aware of a low

 sound. The hivemurmur of insects seemed to fill the high room. It was

 a disturbing, almost menacing sound, and Zouga felt the skin prickle on

 his forearms. Mr. Harkness! " he called hoarsely, and the hum rose to

 a loud buzzing. Something alighted on his cheek and crawled across his

 skin. He struck it away with a shudder of revulsion and stumbled across

 to the nearest window. His fingers were clumsy on the fastening of the

 shutters. A shaft of white sunlight burned into the room as the shutter

 swung open.

 Thomas Harkness sat in one of the carved wingback chairs across the

 cluttered table, and stared at Zouga impassively.

 The flies crawled over him, big metallic blue and green flies that

 glittered in the sunlight. They swarmed with evident glee upon the deep

 dark wound in the centre of his chest. The snowy beard was black with

 clotted blood, and blood had formed a congealed pool beneath his chair.

 Zouga was rooted by the shock for many seconds, and then reluctantly he

 took a step forward. The old man had propped one of his big-bored

 elephant guns against the table le& reversing the weapon so the muzzle

 pressed into his own chest and his hands were still locked around the

 barrel. What did you do that for? " Zouga demanded stupidly, speaking

 aloud, and Harkness stared back at him.

 Harkness had removed the boot from his right foot, and depressed the

 trigger with his bare toe. The massive impact of the heavy lead ball

 had driven the chair and the man in it back against the wall, but he had

 retained his death grip on the barrel. That was a stupid thing to do. "

 Zouga took a cheroot from his case and lit it with a Swan Vesta. The

 smell of death was in the room, coating the back of his throat and the

 roof of his mouth. Zouga drew deeply on the tobacco smoke.

 There was no reason at all to feel grief. He had known the old man for

 a single day and night. He had come here for one reason only, to get

 the map the best way he was able. It was ridiculous now to have the

 deep ache of sorrow turning his legs leaden and stinging the backs of

 his eyes. Was he mourning the passing of an era perhaps, rather than

 the man himself? Harkness and the legends of Africa were interwoven.

 The man had been history itself.

 Slowly Zouga approached the figure in the chair, and then reaching out

 drew his palm slowly down over the old face, ruined by the elements and

 by pain, closing the lids down over the staring black eyes.

 The old man looked more peaceful that way.

 Zouga hooked one leg over the corner of the cluttered table, and smoked

 the cheroot slowly, in almost companionable silence with Thomas

 Harkness. Then he dropped the stub in the big copper spittoon beside

 the chair and went through to the bedroom.

 He took one of the blankets off the bed and brought it back.

 He brushed the flies away into an angry buzzing circle, and threw the

 blanket over the seated figure. As he drew it up over the head, he

 murmured softly, "Get in close, old man, and go for the heart, the

 advice that Harkness had given him as a farewell. Then he turned away

 briskly to the laden table, and began shuffling through the jumbled

 pieces of canvas and paper, and slowly his impatience turned to alarm,

 and then to panic as he hunted through pile after pile without finding

 the map.

 He was panting when at last he straightened up and glared at the

 blanket-covered figure. You knew I was coming for it, didn't you!

 He left the table and went to the chest, lifted the lid against groaning

 hinges and the leather bag with its golden contents was gone also. He

 ransacked the chest down to its floorboards, but it was not there. Then

 he started to search in earnest, going carefully through any possible

 hiding-place in the crowded room. An hour later he went back and

 perched on the edge of the table once more.

 13-arrin you, for a cunning old bastard, he said quietly.

 He took one more slow look about the room, making certain that he

 overlooked nothing. The painting of the lion hunt was no longer on the

 easel, he noticed.

 Suddenly the humour of the situation struck him, and his scowl

 lightened, he began to chuckle ruefully to himself.

 You had the last joke on the Ballantynes, didn't you?

 By God, but you always did things your way, Tom Harkness, I'll grant you

 that."

 He stood up slowly, and placed his hand on the blanket-covered shoulder.

 "You win, old man. Take your secrets with you then. " He could feel

 the twisted old bones through the cloth and he shook him gently and then

 he went out quickly to his horse for there was much to do.

 It took him the rest of the day to cross the neck again and reach the

 magistrate's court, then to get back with the coroner and his

 assistants.

 They buried Thomas Harkness that evening, wrapped in the blanket, under

 the milkwood grove, for the heat was oppressive in the valley and they

 could not wait for a coffin to be carted out from the city.

 Zouga left the coroner to take charge of the estate, to list the

 equipment and livestock in the yard and put his seals on the doors of

 the old house until the contents could be taken in.

 Zouga rode home in the golden Cape dusk, his boots dusty and his shirt

 sticky with sweat. He was exhausted from the day's exertions, and low

 in spirits, still oppressed by grief for the old man, and angry with him

 for the last trick he had played.

 The groom took his horse in front of the bungalow. Did you deliver the

 letter to Captain Codrington? " Zouga demanded, and hardly waited for

 the reply as he went up into the house. He needed a drink now, and

 while he poured whisky into a cut crystal glass, his sister came into

 the room, and reached up casually to kiss his cheek, wrinkling her nose

 at the tickle of his whiskers and the smell of his sweat. You had best

 change. We are dining with the Cartwrights tonight, Robyn told him. "I

 could not avoid it."

 And then as an afterthought, "Oh, Zouga, a coloured servant delivered

 something for you this morning. just after you had left. I had it put

 in the study. "Who is it from? " Robyn shrugged. "The servant spoke

 only kitchen Dutch and he seemed terrified. He fled before I could find

 someone to question him."

 With the whisky glass in his hand Zouga crossed to the door of the

 study, and stopped there abruptly. His expression changed, and he

 strode through the doorway.

 Minutes later Robyn heard his shout of triumphant laughter, and

 curiously she crossed to the open door.

 Zouga stood beside the heavy carved stinkwood desk.

 On the desk-top lay a draw-string bag of tanned and stained leather from

 which spilled a heavy necklace of gleaming gold; beside the bag was

 spread a magnificently illustrated map on a backing of linen parchment,

 and Zouga stood with his back to her. He held at arm's length a

 flamboyant picture in oils in a large frame, a figure on horseback with

 a band of ferocious wild animals in the foreground, and as she watched,

 Zouga reversed the picture. There was a message freshly carved into the

 wood of the frame.

 For Zouga Ballantyne.  May you find the road to all your Monomatapas,

 would only that I could have gone with you.

 Tom Harkness.

 Zouga was laughing still, but there was a strange quality to the

 laughter and when he turned towards her she realized with a shock that

 her brother's eyes were bright with tears.

 Zouga brushed the crumbs from his lips with the damask table napkin and

 chuckled as he picked up the sheet of newsprint and shook it open again

 at the second page. Damn me, Sissy, I should have known better than to

 leave you alone. " He read further and laughed outright. Did you

 really say that to him? Did you really? "I cannot remember my exact

 words, " Robyn told him primly, "you must remember it was in the heat of

 battle."

 They sat on the terrace of the bungalow under the pergola of vines,

 through which the early sun flicked golden coins of light upon the

 breakfast table.

 The previous day the editor of the Cape Times, with a speculator's eye

 to making a profit on Dr. Robyn Ballantyne's notoriety, had invited her

 on a tour of the military hospital at Observatory, and in innocence,

 Robyn had believed that the visit was at the invitation of the Colony's

 administration and she had welcomed the opportunity to widen her

 professional experience.

 The visit had succeeded beyond the editor's most extravagant

 expectations, for the surgeon-general of the Colony had scheduled a tour

 for the same day and he had walked into the hospital's main operating

 room, followed by his staff, at the moment that Robyn was expressing

 herself on the subject of sponges to the hospital matron.

 The surgeon's sponges were kept in pails of water, clean water from the

 galvanized rainwater tanks at the rear of the building. The pails were

 under the operating table, where the surgeon could reach them readily,

 and after swabbing away blood and pus and other matter the sponge was

 dropped into a collection tray, later to be washed out and returned to

 the original pail of fresh water. I assure you, doctor, that my nurses

 wash the swabs out most thoroughly The matron was a formidable figure

 with the flattened features of a bulldog bitch and the same aggressive

 thrust to her jaw. She stooped, plunged her hand into the pail, and

 selected one of the sponges and proffered it to Robyn. You can see for

 yourself how soft and white they are. Just like the soft white germs

 that swarm in them.

 " Robyn was angry, with red spots of colour in her cheeks. Have none of

 you here ever heard of joseph T-isteiV The surgeon-general answered her

 question from the doorway. The answer to that question, Doctor

 Ballantyne, is NO we have never heard of that person, whoever he may be.

 We do not have time to concern ourselves with the opinions of every

 crank or, for that matter, with male impersonators."

 The surgeon-general had a very good idea of the identity of the young

 woman before him. He had followed the gossip which was the Colony's

 main recreation, and he did not approve of Robyn.

 On the other hand, Robyn had no idea as to the identity of the elderly

 gentleman with the bushy grey whiskers and beetling brows, though by the

 dried blood stains on the front of his frock coat she guessed that he

 was a surgeon of the old school, one who operated in his street clothes

 and let the stains advertise his profession. Here was a much more

 worthy adversary than the hospital matron, and she rounded on him with

 the battle light bright in her eyes. Then, sir, I am amazed that you

 admit so readily your ignorance and your bigotry."

 The surgeon-general spluttered for breath and a ready answer. By God,

 madam, you do not truly expect me to look for dangerous poisons in each

 speck of dust, in each drop of water, on my own hands even. " He held

 them up for her inspection, shaking them in Robyn's face. There were

 dark rinds of dried blood under the nails, for he had operated that

 morning. He pushed his face close to hers, and she drew back a little

 as his spittle flew angrily. Yes, sir, " she told him loudly. "Look

 for them there, and on each breath you exhale, on those filthy clothes."

 The editor scribbled delightedly in his shorthand notebook, as the

 exchanges became more violent, more loaded with personal insult. He had

 not bargained for anything so spectacular, but the climax came when

 Robyn had goaded her adversary until he used an oath as potent as his

 rage. Your choice of words is as foul as these lowly little white

 sponges of yours, she told him, and let him have the sponge full in the

 face, hurling it with all her strength so that water flew and dripped

 from his whiskers on to the front of his frock coat as Robyn marched

 from the operating room. You hit him? " Zouga lowered the newspaper,

 and stared across the table at his sister. "Really, Sissy, sometimes

 you are no lady. "True, " Robyn agreed unrepentantly. "But that is not

 the first time you have made that observation. Besides I had no idea

 that he was the surgeon-general."

 Zouga shook his head in mock disapproval and read to her. "His

 considered opinion of you, as expressed to the editor, is that you are a

 fledgling doctor of dubious qualification very recently obtained from an

 obscure school of medicine, by even more dubious means. "Oh, rich! "

 Robyn clapped her hands. "He's a better orator than a surgeon. "He

 goes on to say that he is considering going to law to obtain redress.

 "For assault with a sponge. " Robyn laughed lightly as she stood up

 from the breakfast table. "A fig for him, but we must hurry if we are

 to keep our appointment with Captain Codrington."

 Her mood was still gay as she stood beside Zouga in the stern of the

 Water lighter when they came alongside the steel side of the gunboat.

 The south-east wind had raked the surface of Table Bay into a

 cottonfield of white caps, and had spread a thick white table-cloth of

 cloud upon the flat-topped mountain. The people of the Colony called

 this windThe Cape Doctor', for without it the summers would have been

 oppressive and enervating. However, it provided a constant hazard to

 shipping and the bottom of the bay was littered with wrecks. Black Joke

 had two men on her anchor watch as she lunged and fretted against her

 cable.

 As the lighter came alongside, the thick canvas hoses were passed down

 and a dozen men on the pumps began to transfer the cargo into the

 gunboat's boiler room tanks, before any attempt was made to take

 visitors aboard.

 As Robyn came up through the entry port to the maindeck she looked

 immediately to the quarterdeck.

 Codrington was in shirt sleeves, he was a head taller than the group of

 warrant officers around him, and his sun-bleached blond hair shone in

 the sunlight like a beacon.

 The group was giving its attention to the coal lighter which was secured

 against the port side of the ship. Have the hands secure a tarpaulin

 over the buckets Codrington shouted down to his boatswain in the

 lighter. "Else you'll have us looking like a party of chimneysweeps.

 " The deck was alive with the purposeful pandemonium of revictualling,

 hunkering and watering, and with Zouga beside her, Robyn picked her way

 through the litter.

 Codrington turned away from the rail and saw them.

 He seemed younger than Robyn remembered, for his expression was relaxed

 and his manner easy. He had an almost boyish air when contrasted to the

 grizzled and weatherbeaten sailors about him, but the illusion was

 dispelled the moment he recognized his visitors. Suddenly his features

 were stern and the line of his mouth altered, the eyes chilled to the

 hardness of pale sapphires.

 IisCaptain Codrington, Zouga greeted him with his most studied charm. "I

 am Major Ballantyne. We have met before, sir, Codrington acknowledged,

 making no effort to return the smile.

 Zouga went on unruffled, "May I present my sister, Doctor Ballantyne? "

 Codrington glanced back at Robyn. "Your servant, ma'am. " It was more

 a nod than a bow. "I have read something of your further exploits since

 our last meeting in this morning's news-sheet. " For a moment the stern

 expression cracked, and there was a mischievous spark in the blue eyes.

 "You have strong views, ma'am, and an even stronger right hand."

 Then he turned back to Zouga. "I have orders from Admiral Kemp to

 convey you and your party to Quelimane. No doubt you will find our

 company dull, after your previous travelling companions. " Deliberately

 Codrington turned and looked across a half mile of wind creamed green

 water to where Huron still lay at her anchor, and for the first time

 Zouga fidgeted uncomfortably as he followed the direction of the

 Captain's eyes. Codrington went on. "Be that as it may, I would be

 grateful if you could present yourselves aboard this ship before noon on

 the day after tomorrow when I expect a fair tide to leave the bay. Now

 you must excuse me. I must attend to the management of my ship. " With

 a nod, not offering to shake hands or make any other civility,

 Codrington turned away to his waiting warrant officers, and Zouga's

 charm deserted him. his face darkened and seemed to swell with anger at

 the abrupt dismissal. The fellow has a damnable cheek, he growled

 fiercely to Robyn. For a moment he hesitated and then with a curt,

 "Come, let us leave, " he turned, crossed the deck, and clambered down

 into the water lighter, but Robyn made no move.

 She waited quietly until Codrington had finished the discussion with his

 boatswain and looked up again, feigning surprise to see her still there.

 Captain Codrington, we left Huron on my insistence.

 That is why we are now seeking other passage. " She spoke in a low

 husky voice, but her manner was so intense that his expression wavered.

 You were correct. That ship is a slaver and St. John is a slave-master.

 I proved it."

 How? " he demanded, his manner altering instantly. I cannot speak now.

 My brother-" She glanced back at the entry port, expecting her brother

 to reappear at any moment. He had given her strict instructions as to

 how he expected her to act towards Codrington.

 I will be at the landing-place at Ragger Bay this afternoon, she went on

 quickly. What time? "Three o'clock, she said, and turned away, lifted

 her skirts above her ankles and hurried to the ship's side.

 Admiral Kemp sat impatiently in the immense carved abbot's chair which

 his junior officers referred to as the throne'. The size of it

 emphasized the thinness of the old man's body. It seemed his shoulders

 were too narrow to support the mass of gold lace which decorated his

 blue uniform. He clasped the arms of the chair to keep from fidgeting,

 for this young officer always made him uneasy.

 Clinton Codrington leaned forward towards him and spoke quickly,

 persuasively, using the finely shaped hands to emphasize each point. The

 Admiral found this much energy and enthusiasm wearying. He preferred

 men with less mercurial temperament, who could be relied on to carry out

 orders to the letter without introducing startling improvisations.

 Officers with a reputation for brilliance he viewed with deep suspicion.

 He had never had that reputation as a young man, in fact his nickname

 had been "SloggerKemp, and he believed that the word brilliance was a

 pseudonym for instability.

 The nature of duty on this station made it necessary for young men like

 Codrington to be detached for months at a time on independent service,

 instead of being kept with the battle fleet under the strict eye of a

 senior officer, ready with a signal of rebuke to check any

 hotheadedness.

 Kemp had an uneasy conviction that he was going to be seriously

 embarrassed by this particular officer before his appointment of

 Commander to the Cape Squadron terminated, and allowed him to collect

 his knighthood and retire to the peace and beloved seclusion of his

 Surrey home. That his future plans had not already been prejudiced by

 young Codrington was only a matter of the utmost good fortune, and Kemp

 had difficulty keeping his expression neutral when he remembered the

 Calabash affair.

 Codrington had run down on the slave barracoons at Calabash on a clear

 June morning so that the five Argentinian slave ships had spotted his

 topsails while he was thirty miles out, and had immediately begun

 frantically re-landing their cargoes of slaves on the beach.

 By the time Black joke reached them, the five captains were grinning

 smugly, their holds empty, and nearly two thousand miserable slaves in

 clear view squatting in long lines on the shore. To add to the slavers"

 complacency they were a good twenty nautical miles south of the equator,

 and therefore at that time beyond the jurisdiction of the Royal Navy.

 The barracoons had been sited at Calabash to take full advantage of this

 provision in the international agreements.

 The slavers" complacency turned to indignation when the Black joke ran

 out her guns, and under their menace sent boats with- armed seamen on

 board them. .

 The Spanish masters, under their Argentinian flags of convenience,

 protested vigorously and volubly the presence of armed boarding parties.

 We are not a boarding party, Codrington explained reasonably to the

 senior captain. "We are armed advisors, and our advice is that you

 begin taking aboard your cargo again, and swiftly."

 The Spaniard continued his protests until the crack of a gun from the

 Black fake drew his attention to the five nooses already dangling from

 the gunboat's yardarm. The Spaniard was certain that the nooses could

 not be put to the use for which they were very obviously intended then

 he looked once more into the chilled sapphire eyes of the very young

 silver-haired English officer and decided not to make any bets on it.

 Once the slaves were re-embarked the Englishman, their self-appointed

 armed advisor, gave them his next piece of unsolicited advice. That was

 that the slave fleet up-anchor and set a course which five hours later

 intercepted the equatorial line.

 Here Captain Codrington made a very precise observation of the sun's

 altitude, consulted his almanac and invited the Spanish captain to check

 his workings and confirm his finding that they were now in o'aS" North

 latitude. Then the Englishman immediately arrested him and seized the

 five vessels; the armed advisors changing their status, without visible

 pain or discomfort, to that of prize crews.

 When Codrington sailed his five prizes into Table Bay, Admiral Kemp

 listened aghast to the Spaniard's account of his capture, and then

 immediately retired to his bed with bowel spasms and migraine headache.

 From his darkened bedroom he dictated first the order confining

 Codrington to his ship and the ship to its anchorage, and then his

 horrified report to the First Lord of the Admiralty.

 This episode, which might so easily have ended with Codrington

 court-martialled and beached for life and with the abrupt termination of

 Admiral Kemp's dogged advance towards his knighthood and retirement, had

 in fact brought both men riches and advancement.

 The sloop carrying Kemp's despatch to the First Lord passed another

 southbound in mid-ocean, which in its turn bore despatches for the

 Admiral Commanding the Cape Squadron from not only the First Lord but

 the Foreign Secretary as well.

 Kemp was requested and required in the future to apply the "equipment

 clause" to the ships of all Christian nations, with the glaring

 exception of the United States of America, in all latitudes, both north

 and south of the equatorial line.

 The despatches were dated four days previous to Codrington's raid upon

 the Calabash barracoons, making his actions not only legal but highly

 meritorious.

 From the very brink of professional disaster, Admiral Kemp had been

 snatched back, with his knighthood assured and a large sum of prize

 money paid into his account at Messrs Coutts of the Strand. The five

 Spaniards were condemned at the next session of the Court of Mixed

 Commission at Cape Town. Kemp's own share of the prize money had

 amounted to several thousand pounds, that of his junior captain to

 nearly twice that amount, and both officers had received personal

 letters of commendation from the First Lord.

 None of this had done anything to increase Kemp's trust or liking for

 his junior, and now he listened with mounting horror to the suggestion

 that he sanction the boarding and search of the American trading

 clipper, which was at present enjoying the hospitality of the port.

 For some sickening moments Kemp contemplated his place in history as the

 officer who had precipitated the second war with the former American

 colonies.  There was nothing equivocal about the view of the American

 Government as to the sanctity of their shipping, and there were specific

 sections of Kemp's Admiralty orders covering the subject. Admiral Kemp,

 Codrington was clearly burning with enthusiasm for the enterprise, "it

 is absolutely beyond question that the Huron is a slaver, and is

 equipped for the trade in terms of the act. She is no longer upon the

 high seas, but lying at anchor within British territorial waters. I can

 be aboard her within two hours, with impartial witnesses, a Supreme

 Court judge even."

 Kemp cleared his throat noisily. He had in fact tried to speak, but so

 appalled was he that the words had not reached his lips. Codrington

 seemed to take the sound as encouragement. This man, St. John, is one

 of the most infamous slavers of modern times. His name is a legend on

 the coast.

 They say he carried over 3,000 slaves one year across the middle

 passage. It's a golden opportunity for us Kemp found his voice at last.

 "I dined at Government House on Wednesday. Mr. St. John was in the

 company as his Excellency's personal guest. I considered Mr. St. John

 to be a gentleman, and I know he is a man of considerable substance and

 influence in his own country, he said flatly, no trace of emotion in his

 voice. His selfcontrol surprised even himself. He is a slaver. "

 Robyn Ballantyne spoke for the first time since she had seated herself

 at the window of the Admiral's study. The two men had forgotten her

 existence, but now they both turned to her. I have been inside the

 Huron's main hold and she is fully equipped for the trade, she said, her

 voice low but clear, and Kemp felt a sour feeling rising within him.

 He wondered that he had thought this young woman enchanting at their

 first meeting. Kemp liked young females and he had personally

 instructed his Secretary to send the invitations to the Ballantynes,

 brother and sister, but now he regretted it. He could see, of course,

 that what he had mistaken for spirit was in fact the mischievousness of

 the born troublemaker, and that far from being pretty she was in fact

 downright plain, with a large nose and heavy jaw. He had found her a

 refreshing change from the simpering and giggling young ladies of the

 Colony, and realized now that the preference had been unwise. He

 wondered if he could have his Secretary withdraw the invitation. I

 would think, Admiral Kemp, that it was your duty to send a search party

 aboard the Huron, Robyn told him, and Kemp leaned back in the big chair

 and breathed heavily through his mouth. As an Admiral of the Blue it

 had been some years since anybody had dared point out his duty for him.

 His grip on his self-control slackened.

 He stared at the young person. Did he detect a peculiar venom in her

 voice? He wondered. She had been a passenger on Huron.

 She had left the ship the instant it reached Table Bay. There was no

 doubt the woman was "fast" and that Captain St. John was a handsome man.

 There was a fine story here, Kemp concluded, as he asked drily, "is it

 true, Miss Ballantyne, that you assaulted the surgeon-general in a fit

 of ungovernable rage? " Robyn gaped at him for a moment, the change of

 direction taking her completely off-balance, and before she could reply

 he went on, You are clearly a highly emotional young lady.

 I would have to consider very carefully committing a hostile act against

 an important citizen of a friendly nation on your unsupported testimony

 He pulled the gold watch from his fob pocket, and consulted it with his

 full attention. Thank you for calling on me, Miss Ballantyne. " Once

 again he did not use her professional title. "We look forward to seeing

 you tomorrow evening. Perhaps you would allow me a private word with

 Captain Codrington."

 Robyn felt her cheeks burning as she rose from the window seat. Thank

 you, Admiral, you have been very kind and patient, she said tightly, and

 swept from the room."

 Kemp was not so mild with Codrington. While the young Captain stood to

 attention before him, he leaned forward in the throne and the veins

 stood out like twisted blue ropes in the back of his hands as he gripped

 the arms of the chair. You were misguided in bringing that young person

 here to discuss navy business, he snapped. Sir, I needed to convince

 you. "That's enough, Codrington. I have heard all you have to say. Now

 you listen to me. "Aye, aye, sir. "You are naive not to take into

 account the changed circumstances in the American administration. Are

 you not aware that Mr. Lincoln is likely to be elected to the

 presidency? "I am, sir. "Then even you may be dimly aware that very

 delicate considerations are in the balance. The Foreign Office is

 confident that the new administration will have a markedly changed

 attitude to the trade."

 Sir! " Codrington agreed stiffly. Can you imagine what it will mean to

 us to have full right of search of American shipping on the high seas?

 "Sir. "We will have that, once Mr. Lincoln takes the oath, and if no

 junior officers of this service take independent action to prejudice the

 attitude of the Americans. "Sir. " Codrington stood rigid, staring

 over the Admiral's head at a painting of a lightly veiled Venus on the

 panelled wall behind him. Codrington, Kemp spoke now with cold menace,

 "you have had one very close shave at Calabash. I swear to you, if you

 let your wild nature get the better of you once more, I will have you

 hounded from the service. "Sir. "You are now under the strictest

 injunction not to approach closer than a cable's length to the trade

 clipper Huron, and if you should encounter her again at sea, you will

 pay her passing honours and give her a wide berth.

 Do I make myself sufficiently clear? Sir. " Only Codrington's lips

 moved, and the Admiral took two long controlled breaths before going on.

 When will you sail for the Mozambique channel? " he asked, his voice

 more reasonable. I have your orders to take the flood on Saturday,

 sirCan you advance that sailing? "Yes, sir, but it would mean leaving

 without fully charged magazines, we expect the powder barge alongside at

 dawn on Saturday Kemp shook his head, and sighed. "I would feel better

 with you at sea, he muttered. "But, very well then, I will look to see

 you flying the Blue Peter at first light on Saturday morning."

 Robyn Ballantyne was waiting for him in the borrowed Cartwright

 carriage, under the portico of Admiralty House.

 Codrington came down the steps, with his cocked hat under his arm and

 climbed stiffly into the buttoned leather seat beside her.

 The Hottentot coachman flicked his whip at the shiny rumps, and they

 swayed in unison as the carriage jerked away down the tree-lined

 driveway.

 Neither of them spoke until they had left the Admiralty grounds, and

 were whirling down the hill towards the Liesbeeck bridge with the

 coachman holding them on a light brake.

 What do we do now? " Robyn asked.

 Nothing, said Clinton Codrington.

 Twenty minutes later as they came around the shoulder of the mountain

 and looked down at the bay where Huron rode at anchor, Robyn spoke

 again. Can't you think of anything to stop this monster? "Can you? "

 he asked sharply, and neither of them spoke again until they reached the

 landing-place.

 The fishing-boats were in and beached already, their catch laid out on

 the sand, a glittering silver and rubyred pile around which the

 housewives and their servants bartered and bargained with the brown

 barelegged fishermen, while the fish horns blared to summon more

 customers down from the town. The two in the parked carriage watched

 the commotion with unnatural attention, avoiding each other's eyes. You

 will be at the Admiralty ball tomorrow night?

 I heard Slogger Kemp say so. "No, Robyn shook her head fiercely. "I

 cannot abide the frivolous chatter and silly behaviour of these

 occasions, and I particularly do not want to be again the guest of that

 man!

 Codrington turned to her for the first time since they had reached the

 landing. She was a fine-looking woman, he thought, with that clear

 lustre to her skin and the thoughtful dark-green eyes under their dark

 curved brows. He liked a tall strong woman, and he had learned enough

 of her spirit to accord her respect, a respect that could easily become

 fascination, he realizedCould I prevail upon you to change your mind? "

 he asked quietly, and she glanced at him, startled. "I would undertake

 to provide sober conversation and a dignified dancing partner. "I do

 not dance, Captain. "That is a great relief, he admitted. "For neither

 do I, when I have a choice. " He smiled. She could not remember seeing

 him smile before. It changed him completely.

 The coldness went from the pale blue eyes and they darkened with

 merriment while two deep laughter lines formed at the corner of his

 mouth and arched up to touch the thin straight nose. Slogger Kemp keeps

 a wonderful chef."

 He was wheedling now. "Fine food and serious conversation."

 His teeth were porcelain white and very regular against the deep-water

 tan. She felt the corners of her own mouth tugging upwards, and he saw

 the change in her and pressed his advantage. I may have further news,

 some further plan for Huron to discuss with you. "That makes it

 irresistible. " She laughed outright at last, with surprisingly

 unforced gaiety that made some of the nearest bystanders glance around

 at her and smile in sympathy. I will call for you. Where? When? " He

 had not realized how attractive she truly was until she laughed. No. "

 She laid her hand on his forearm. "My brother will accompany me, but if

 you are there I look forward to our momentous conversation. " She felt

 the devil in her again, and squeezed his arm, finding pleasure in his

 immediate response, the way the muscles in his forearm corded under her

 finger-tips. Wait, she told the coachman and watched the slim tall

 figure go down the beach to where Black Joke's whaler waited for him.

 He was wearing his dress uniform for the visit to his commanding

 Admiral. The gold lace epaulettes emphasized the breadth of his

 shoulders and his sword belt upped his waist. Abruptly, she wondered

 whether his body hair was as blond as the queue that was twisted up at

 the nape of his neck, and then instantly was shocked and agitated at

 herself. She would never have harboured a thought like that before.

 Before what? she asked. herself, and the answer was clear; before that

 night on Huron. Mungo St. John had much to answer for. Comfortably

 placing blame where it belonged, she pulled her eyes away from the lithe

 figure of Clinton Codrington and leaned forward to tell the coachman,

 Home, please."

 She would not attend the Admiral's ball, she decided, and then she began

 to recite silently to herself the Christian articles of faith.

 However, Zouga prevailed over her good intentions. The two of them

 shared the open carriage with the eldest, unmarried Cartwright daughter,

 for it was one of the balmy nights of a Cape autumn.

 Cartwight and his wife followed in the closed carriage, in serious

 discussion for the entire journey.

 I am sure he is quite taken with Aletta, Mrs. Cartwright had stated. My

 dear, the fellow has no fortune whatsoever. "Expectations, " Mrs.

 Cartwright told him benignly. "I understand he will make thousands from

 this expedition.

 He is one of those young men who will get on in life, I am certain of

 that. "I prefer money in the bank, my dear. "He has created quite a

 stir, I assure you, such a serious and sensible young man, and so very

 attractive. It would be quite a feather in Aletta's cap, and you could

 make a place for him in the firm."

 Every lamp in Admiralty House was lit and a blaze of golden light

 welcomed the guests. There were coloured lanterns hung in the trees to

 illuminate the garden.

 The marine band in scarlet and gold had converted the open gazebo into a

 bandstand, and already there were dancers on the open-air dance floor

 whirling furiously through the opening waltz, waving and calling

 greetings to the late-comers in the carriages as they trotted up the

 curved driveway and took their turn to alight under the portico of the

 main entrance.

 Bewigged footmen in household uniform with silken hose and buckled shoes

 placed the steps and handed down the ladies on to the welcoming red

 carpet.  At the head of the stairs the major domo announced each group

 in a low throaty bellow. Major and Doctor Ballantyne. Miss Cartwright

 Robyn had not grown altogether accustomed to the scandalized ripple of

 feminine interest that followed her entrance to any public gathering

 here in the Colony. The quick exchange of glances, the nods and murmurs

 behind covering fans. It still left her with a heightened pulse and a

 feeling of bitter disdain for all of them. Did you bring your sponge,

 Sissy? They expect you to hit somebody with it, Zouga murmured, and she

 shook his arm to silence him, but he went on: "or to drop your skirts

 and run up the staircase in your breechesYou are wicked. " She felt the

 tension go out of her, and she smiled her thanks at him-in and they were

 into the throng of uniforms, gold lace on navy blue or dress scarlet,

 with, here and there, the dead black of evening dress relieved by the

 high stock and white lace ruffles of silk shirts.

 The women's skirts were taffeta and flounced silk over pyramids of

 petticoats. However, they were at least two years behind the London

 fashions, for only the most daring ladies had bared their shoulders, and

 powdered them dead white.

 Robyn's own dress made no concession to fashion, for it was years old,

 the only one that she possessed even vaguely suitable for the occasion.

 The cloth was wool, the skirt narrow, the bodice adorned with neither

 seed pearls nor sequins. There were neither ostrich feathers nor

 diamantines to sparkle in her hair. She should have been dowdy, but

 instead she was strikingly different.

 When she had told Codrington that she did not dance it was because she

 had never had the occasion, and she regretted it now as she watched

 Zouga lead Aletta Cartwright on to the floor and swirl away in the

 graceful dip and turn of the waltz.

 She knew that nobody would invite her to dance, and that if they did she

 would be awkward and untutored.

 She turned away quickly, seeking a familiar or friendly face, She did

 not want to be left standing alone in the crowd. She began bitterly to

 regret that she had not stood by her resolution to stay away.

 Her relief came with such a rush that she could have thrown her arms

 around his neck and embraced him.

 Instead she said evenly, "Ah, Captain Codrington. Good evening."

 He really was one of the better-looking men in the room, she thought.

 She could sense the resentment of some of the younger women, so quite

 deliberately she took his arm as he offered it, but was surprised that

 he led her immediately through into the garden. He's here! " he said

 quietly, as soon as they were out of earshot of the others.

 She did not have to ask who, and she felt the little jolt of shock that

 kept her silent for a moment. You have seen him? "He arrived five

 minutes before you did, in the Governor's carriage.

 "Where is he now? "He went into Slogger's study, with the Governor."

 Clinton's face was set and hard. "The fellow flaunts himself."

 A servant approached them with a silver tray of champagne flutes.

 Robyn shook her head distractedly but Clinton took a glass and drank it

 in two gulps. The devil of it is that nobody can touch him, " he fumed.

 When the evening turned chill, the Marine band moved on to the

 orchestral balcony above the ballroom floor and punched out the dance

 tunes with a bouncing martial air that set the dancers spinning and

 prancing.

 One dancer stood out above the others, not merely because of his

 physical height. When the others hopped and strained with gasping

 breath and flushed faces, Mungo St. John seemed to turn and dip and

 glide with measured, unhurried grace although he completed a circuit of

 the ballroom floor more swiftly than any other dancer. Always there was

 one of the prettiest women in the room swinging in the circle of his

 arms, laughing up at him, cheeks flushed with excitement, and a dozen

 others watching him with covert envy over the shoulders of their own

 partners.

 Clinton and Robyn watched hi-in also, from the raised and colonnaded

 balcony that surrounded the dance floor.

 They stood in a small circle of Clinton's brother officers and their

 ladies, making no serious effort to contribute to the light chatter

 around them.

 Robyn found herself hoping that St. John would look up at her, would

 catch her eye so that she could flash her hatred at him; but he never

 glanced once in her direction.

 She even thought of suggesting to Clinton Codrington that they should

 dance, despite her earlier protestations, but quickly decided against

 it. She knew that as a dancer, the naval captain would not be able to

 stand comparison with the elegant American.

 When she went in to dinner on Clinton's arm, she saw St. John ahead of

 them. He had a blond woman on his arm, notoriously the Colony's

 prettiest, richest and most voracious widow. Her coiffure was an

 elaborate creation of diamantE and ostrich feathers, her shoulders were

 bared and she showed more of her bosom than she concealed beneath a

 brocaded bodice stiff with seed pearls.

 Mungo St. John wore simple black and white evening dress with more

 panache than any of the most elaborate military uniforms around him.

 Robyn watched the woman tap his shoulder with her fan to attract his

 attention and then reach up on tiptoe to whisper in his ear, while St.

 John stooped gravely to listen. The woman's a brazen whore, Robyn

 hissed, and beside her Clinton covered his shock at the word, and then

 nodded. And he's the very devil himself."

 it was as though St. John heard them, for he glanced up and saw them

 watching him across the room. He bowed and smiled at Robyn.

 It was such an intimate, completely knowing smile that she felt as

 though he had stripped her naked again, the way he had in the stern

 cabin of Huron, and immediately she felt the same feeling of

 helplessness overwhelm her.

 with a huge effort she managed to turn away, but Clinton had been

 watching her. She could not meet his eyes, she felt he would be able to

 read it all if she did.

 Two hours after midnight the Marine band was playing the less strenuous

 airs for the lovers and romantics who still circled the ballroom floor,

 but most of the company had gone up to the cardrooms on the first floor,

 if not to play themselves, then to crowd around the tables and watch

 with hushed attention and the occasional bursts of applause at a

 particularly audacious or successful coup.

 In the largest room the game was whist and the players were Slogger Kemp

 and the older guests. In the second room the younger set were at the

 light-hearted cheminde-fer and Zouga smiled at Robyn as she passed. He

 and Aletta. Cartwright were playing a single hand between them, and the

 girl squealed with glee as she won a handful of silver shillings.

 Robyn and Clinton passed on into the third and smallest salon. Here it

 was the game that had once been popular only in America. Recently,

 however, it had come into sudden vogue at court when the Queen had found

 it fascinating, and in consequence it was all the rage around the empire

 despite the odd name, poker.

 In spite of Her Majesty's interest in it, it was still not considered a

 game for ladies to play in mixed company.

 Only men sat at the green baize, although the ladies fluttered around

 them like bright butterflies.

 Mungo St. John sat facing the doorway so that Robyn saw him the instant

 she stepped into the room. He lazed in his chair, the waves of his dark

 hair unruffled and sleeked down as if carved from polished ebony,

 holding a tight fan of cards low against the snowy lace front of his

 shirt. There was a long black unlit cheroot between his teeth, and as

 Robyn watched the blond widow leaned across his shoulder displaying the

 creamy cleavage between her breasts and held a Vesta to the cheroot.

 St. John sucked flame into the tip of the cheroot, blew a long feather

 of blue smoke and thanked her with a slant of his eyes before he made

 his next bid.

 He was an obvious winner, a careless pile of gold spilled across the

 table in front of him, each coin embossed with the Grecian style head of

 Queen Victoria looking much younger than her forty-one years, and as

 they watched, he won again.

 Excitement seemed to exude from the man like a tangible substance,

 infecting the women about the table so they exclaimed at every wager he

 made, and sighed with disappointment if he folded his cards and declined

 to play a hand. The same excitement spread to the five other men at the

 table. It was obvious in the glitter of the eyes, in the white knuckles

 of the fingers that held their cards, in the rash calls and the

 imprudent urge that made them remain in play long after chance and the

 odds were evidently against them. It was clear that all of them saw St.

 John as the main adversary, and the tension went out of each hand if he

 was not in play.

 Robyn felt herself held by the same fascination, and unconsciously

 tightened her gnip on Clinton's arm as the suspense mounted in each hand

 and the gold coins tinkled in the centre of the table, and she heard

 herself gasp with chagrin or relief at the show of cards that ended each

 hand.

 Unconsciously, she had moved closer to the table drawing Clinton with

 her, so that when one of the players exclaimed with disgust, "Fifty

 guineas is enough for one night. Will you excuse me, gentlemen? "

 gathered his few remaining coins from the table and pushed back his

 chair, they had to stand back to allow him to leave.

 With surprise Robyn felt Clinton disengage her fingers from his arm, and

 then he slipped quietly into the vacant chair. May I join you,

 gentlemen? " There were preoccupied grunts of acknowledgement but only

 St. John looked up and asked civilly, Are you aware of the stakes,

 Captain? " Clinton didn't reply but took a roll of five-pound notes

 from an inside pocket and placed them beside him.

 The amount surprised Robyn, it could not have been less than one hundred

 pounds. Then she remembered that Clinton Codrington had been for many

 years one of the most successful blockade commanders on the slave

 coasts. Her brother had repeated to her the rumour that during that

 period he had won prize money in excess of ten thousand pounds, yet

 somehow she had never thought of him as a rich man.

 Then with sudden intuition Robyn realized that by that gesture Clinton

 had laid down a silent challenge, and with a little smile Mungo St. John

 had accepted it.

 Robyn felt a flare of alarm. She was certain that Clinton Codrington

 had chosen an opponent too experienced and skilled. She remembered that

 Zouga who relied on gambling to eke out his regimental pay, had been no

 match for the man, even with moderate stakes, and in his frustration

 Clinton had been drinking steadily during the evening. She was sure his

 judgement would be faulty even if he had any knowledge of the game.

 Almost immediately St. John subtly altered the style of his play,

 doubling the stakes before the draw, crowding the game, dominating it,

 playing from the strength and confidence of his already considerable

 winnings, and Clinton seemed immediately uncertain of himself, hesitant

 in accepting the doubled stakes, discarding rather than going at risk

 for more than a few guineas, lacking the nerve to meet St. John head on.

 Robyn moved slightly to a position from which she could watch both men.

 Clinton was pale under the deepwater tan, the rims of his nostril

 bloodless and his lips compressed into a thin line, and she remembered

 that he had drunk a dozen glasses of champagne during the evening.

 He was nervous, indecisive, every watcher could sense it, and their

 disappointment was evident. They had hoped for a dramatic confrontation

 when Clinton had made the flamboyant gesture of placing a hundred pounds

 on the table, but when the amount was slowly whittled away by unexciting

 over-cautious play, their interest was transferred to a lively exchange

 between Mungo St. John and one of the Cloete sons, the family that owned

 half the Constantia valley with its fabled vineyards.

 They laughed at the light banter with which the two men made their bets,

 and admired the grace of the loser and the easy manner of the winner.

 The other players at the table were almost forgotten, picking up an

 uncontested ante or falling before the aggression of the leading pair.

 Robyn could only pity Clinton, nervous and pale when he fumbled his

 cards to expose prematurely one of his few winning hands and suffer the

 chuckles of the spectators as he picked up odd guineas instead of the

 fifty that might have been his if he had played it correctly.

 Robyn tried to catch his eye, to make him leave before he was further

 humiliated, but Clinton played on doggedly refusing to look up at her.

 Cloete won a hand with four of a kind and as was his right called for a

 pot to celebrate his good fortune. Three of a kind to open the pot and

 guinea sweeteners, " he announced and grinned across the table at St.

 John. "To your liking, sir? "Very much so, St. John smiled back, and

 the other players tried to cover their discomfiture. It was a dangerous

 game, requiring one of the players to be dealt an initial three of a

 kind to commence the game, but for every unsuccessful deal each player

 had to contribute a guinea to the pot, and when a lucky player achieved

 the minimum requirement, he could advance the stakes by as much again as

 was in the centre of the table. It could amount swiftly to a huge sum,

 and there was no option of withdrawal, a very dangerous game.

 Ten times the deal failed to produce an opening hand, and then with the

 pot at seventy guineas Mungo, St. John announced quietly, She is open,

 gentlemen, as wide open as my motherin-law's mouth."

 Play had stopped at the other tables in the room as St. John went on, it

 will cost you another seventy iron men to stay in the game. " He had

 doubled the pot, and the watchers applauded the bet and then looked

 eagerly to the other players. I am your man, said Cloete, but at last

 there was a breathlessness to his voice. He counted out the notes and

 gold coins and spilled them into the considerable pile in the centre.

 Three other players withdrew, dropping their cards with alacrity,

 clearly relieved to have got out of danger for a mere ten guineas, but

 Clinton Codrington hunched miserably over his cards and St. John had to

 prod him gently for his decision. Please don't hurry, Captain. We have

 all evening."

 And Clinton looked up at him and nodded jerkily, not trusting his voice,

 then pushed a sheaf of notes into the centre of the table. Three

 players, St. John said, and swiftly counted the money in the pot. "Two

 hundred and ten guineasr The next bid could double that amount, and the

 one after could redouble it. The room was silent now, the players at

 the other tables in the room had left their seats to watch as the dealer

 gave two cards to Mungo St. John to replace those he tossed into the

 centre of the table. He was buying honestly, trying to add to the

 triplets with which he had opened the pot, neither faking a flush nor a

 full house. Cloete bought three cards, evidently looking for a third to

 a high pair, and then it was Clinton's turn to request cards. One, he

 mumbled, and held up a single finger. The finger quivered slightly. The

 dealer slid the card across to him and he covered it with his hand

 unable to bring himself to look at it yet. It was all too obvious that

 he was attempting to find the missing card to a flush or straight. The

 opener to bet, " said the dealer. "Mr. St. John."

 There was a pause as St. John fanned open his cards, and then he said

 evenly without a change of expression:The bet is doubled. "Four hundred

 and twenty guineas, " said somebody loudly, and this time nobody

 applauded but every eye swivelled to Cloete as he consulted his cards.

 Then shook his head abruptly, and let them drop. He had not found

 another king to go with the original pair.

 Now everybody looked to the remaining player. A transformation had come

 over Clinton Codrington, it was hard to define it exactly. There was

 just a touch of colour under the tanned cheeks his lips were slightly

 parted and for the first time he was looking directly at St. John, but

 somehow confidence and a barely suppressed eagerness shone from him.

 There was no mistaking it.

 The man positively glowed. Double again, he said loudly. "Eight

 hundred and forty guineas He could hardly contain himself, and every man

 in the room knew he had found the card he needed to transform his hand

 from worthlessness to a certain winner.

 St. John did not have to deliberate more than a few seconds.

 Congratulations, he smiled. "You found what you were looking for, I

 must concede this one to you."

 He dropped his cards and pushed them away from him. May we see the

 cards you required to open the pot? "

 Clinton asked diffidently.

 I beg your pardon. " St. John's tone was lightly ironical, and he

 flipped his hand, face upwards. There were three sevens and two odd

 cards. Thank you, said Clinton. His manner had changed a gain. The

 trembling eagerness, the nervous indecision, both had disappeared. He

 was calm, almost icy as he began to gather in the piles of scattered

 gold and bank notes. What cards did he have? " demanded one of the

 women petulantly. He does not have to show them, her partner explained.

 "He beat the others out without a showdown."

 Oh, I'd die to see them, " she squeaked.

 Clinton paused in gathering his winnings and looked up at her. I beg of

 you, madam, not to do so, Clinton smiled. "I would not wish to have

 your life on my conscience."

 He turned his cards face upwards on the green baize, and it took the

 company many seconds to realize what they were looking at. There were

 cards of every suit, and not one of them matched another.

 There were delighted exclamations, for the hand was utterly worthless.

 It could have been beaten by a single pair of sevens, to say nothing of

 the triple sevens which St. John had discarded.

 With this valueless hand the young naval captain had beaten the

 American, out-smarting him for almost 900 guineas. It was a spectacular

 coup. The company gradually realized how carefully it had been

 engineered, how Clinton had lured his adversary, how he had made a

 pretence at fumbling uncertainly until exactly the right moment, the

 moment when he had struck boldly and decisively. They burst into

 spontaneous applause, the ladies oohing with admiration and the men

 calling congratulation. Oh jolly good play, sir! " St. John held the

 smile, but his lips drew tighter with the effort, and there was a savage

 glitter in his eyes as he stared at the cards and realized how he had

 been duped.

 The applause subsided, some of the spectators were beginning to turn

 away still discussing the hand, and St. John began gathering the cards

 to shuffle when Clinton Codrington spoke. His voice was low but clear,

 so that nobody about the tables could miss a word of it.

 Even a black-birder's luck can run out at last he said. I must admit, I

 would rather have caught you at your dirty slaver's game than beaten you

 out of a few guineas tonight."

 The company froze, with gaping at Clinton expressions of horror and

 comical amazement. The silence in the room seemed impenetrable, the

 only sound was the ripple and click of the cards as Mungo St. John began

 to shuffle them, splitting the pack with a click and then running them

 into each other under his thumbs in a blur of movement.

 He did not look down at his hands as he rippled the cards. He never

 removed his gaze from Clinton's face, and his smile had still not

 slipped, only there was a flush of colour under the dark sun-touched

 skin.

 You like to live dangerously? " St. John smiled the question.

 Oh, no. " Clinton shook his head. "I am in no danger.

 In my experience, slavers are all cowards."

 Mungo St. John's smile disappeared, extinguished instantly, and his

 expression was coldly murderous, but his fingers never broke the rhythm

 of cut and ripple, and the cards flowed under his fingers as Clinton

 went on evenly, "I was led to believe that so-called Louisiana gentlemen

 had some exalted code of honour, he shrugged. "I suggest, sir, that you

 are a living contradiction of that notion."

 Every listener was stunned. Not one of them could doubt what they were

 hearing; the accusation of slave dealing. To an Englishman, there could

 be no worse insult.

 The last English duels had been fought in 1840 when Lord Cardigan shot

 Captain Tuckett, and in 1843 when Munro shot his brother-in-law Colonel

 Fawcett. In consequence of these encounters, the Queen had made her

 desire for reform known, and the articles of war were amended in the

 following year, making duelling. an offence. Of course, gentlemen

 still went abroad, mostly to France, to settle affairs of honour with

 pistol or sword.

 But this was Cape Colony, one of the jewels of the Empire and the Naval

 Captain was one of Her Majesty's commissioned officers. The evening had

 proved diverting beyond any expectations, and now there was the promise

 of blood and violent death charging the gaming-room. Gentlemen, " an

 urgent persuasive voice interrupted them. The Admiral's flag-captain

 had come through from the whist room at the Admiral's orders. "There

 has been some misunderstanding."

 But neither of the two men as much as glanced in his direction. I don't

 think there has been any misunderstanding at all, Mungo St. John said

 coldly, his gaze still locked with Clinton's. "Captain Codrington's

 insults cannot possibly be misinterpreted. "Mr. St. John, may I remind

 you that you are on British soil, subject to Her Majesty's laws. " The

 flag-captain was becoming desperate. Oh, Mr. St. John sets little store

 by laws. He sails his slave ship, fully equipped, into a British

 harbour. " Clinton stared at the American with cold blue eyes. He

 would have gone on, but St. John interrupted him harshly, speaking to

 the flag-captain but addressing the words to Clinton Codrington. "I

 would not dream of abusing Her Majesty's hospitality. In any event I

 will sail with the tide before noon this day, and in four days I shall

 be far beyond Her Majesty's territory, in latitude 31" 38" south. There

 is a wide river mouth there, between tall bluffs of stone, a good

 landing and a wide beach. It is unmistakable. " St. John stood up. He

 had recovered his urbane air, and now he adjusted the ruffles of his

 shirt front and gave the lovely widow his arm. He paused for a moment

 to look down at Clinton. -, Who knows but that you and I may meet

 again, when we must certainly discuss the question of honour once more.

 Until then I give you good morrow, sir."

 He turned away and the spectators fell back ahead of him and seemed to

 form a guard of honour as St. John and his lady sauntered casually from

 the room.

 The flag-captain flung one furious glare at Clinton. The Admiral wishes

 to speak with you, sir, and then he hurried after the departing couple,

 followed them down the curve of the staircase and caught up with them at

 the double doors of carved teak.  Mr. St. John, Admiral Kemp asked me to

 convey his compliments He sets no store by the rash accusations of one

 of his junior captains. If he did, he would be obliged to send a party

 aboard your ship. "None of us would like that, St. John nodded. "Nor

 the consequences. "Indeed, the flag-captain assured him. "Nevertheless

 the Admiral feels that, in the circumstances, you should take advantage

 of the next fair wind and tide to proceed on your passage. "Please

 return my compliments to the Admiral, and convey my assurance that I

 will clear the Bay before noon."

 At that moment the widow's coach came up, and St. John nodded distantly

 to the flag-captain and handed the lady up the steps.

 From the deck of Black Joke they watched the clipper raise her anchor,

 her master skilfully backing and filling his topsails to run up on her

 cable, and break the anchor flukes out of the mud and sand of the bottom

 of the bay.

 As soon as it was free, he piled on his canvas, sail after sail bursting

 out in quick successive explosions of brilliant white, and Huron tore

 eagerly out of Table Bay on the south-east wind.

 She would be out of sight beyond the lighthouse. at Mouille Point for

 almost four hours before Black Joke was ready to follow her out of the

 bay. The Admiralty powder barge was alongside, and all the elaborate

 precautions for taking on explosives were in force. The red

 swallow-tail warning flag at the masthead, the boiler fires in the

 engine room extinguished, the crew barefooted, the decks kept wet with a

 constant stream from the hoses to prevent a chance spark, and each

 powder barrel carefully inspected for leakage as it came aboard.

 While the engineer refired his boilers the last members of the

 Ballantyne expedition came aboard. Once again, Zouga's letters of

 introduction had proved invaluable, and together with his persuasive

 manner had provided him with the most valuable addition so far to his

 expedition.

 Old Tom Harkness had warned him during the long night discussion, "Don't

 try to cross the Chimanimani Mountains without a force of trained men.

 Beyond the narrow coastal belt there is only one law and it is

 promulgated from the muzzle of a gun."

 On the strength of the letters, the commander of the Cape Town garrison

 had allowed Zouga to ask for volunteers from his regiment of Hottentot

 Infantry. "They are the only natives of Africa who understand the

 working of a firearm, Harkness had told him. "They are the devil with

 drink and women, but they can fight and march, and most of them are

 hardened to fever and famine. Pick them carefully and watch them every

 moment, night as well as day."

 Zouga's request for volunteers had been most enthusiastically received.

 By reputation the Hottentots could scent plunder or a willing lady from

 fifty miles, and the pay and rations that Zouga offered were almost

 thrice that of the British army. They had volunteered to a man and

 Zouga's difficulty had been in selecting ten of them.

 Zouga had taken an instant liking to these wiry little men, with their

 almost oriental features, slanted eyes and high cheekbones. Despite

 appearances, they were more African than almost any other breed. They

 were the original inhabitants that the first navigators had found on the

 beach at Table Bay, and they had taken readily to the white min's ways,

 and more than readily to his vices.

 Zouga had solved his problem by making one selection only. This was a

 man with an ageless face, it might have been forty years or -eighty, for

 the skin was the colour and texture of a papyrus parchment, each wrinkle

 seemed to have been eroded into it by wind and driven dust, but the

 little peppercorns of hair that covered his skull were untinged with

 silver.

 I taught Captain Harris to hunt elephant, he boasted. Where was that?

 " Zouga demanded, for Cornwallis Harris was one of the most famous of

 the old African hunters. His book The Wild Sports of Africa was the

 great classic of the African chase.

 I took him to the Cashan mountains. " Harris's expedition to the Cashan

 mountains, which the Boers now called Magaliesberg, was in 1829,

 thirty-one years previously. That would make the little Hottentot

 somewhere between fifty and sixty years old, if he were telling the

 truth. Harris did not mention your name, he said. "I have read his

 account carefully."

 Jan Bloom, that was my name then. " Zouga nodded.

 Bloom had been one of Harris's most intrepid hunterretainers. Why is

 your name Jan Cheroot now? " Zouga asked and the dark eyes had twinkled

 with pixie merriment. Sometimes a man gets tired of a name, like he

 does of a woman, and for his health or his life he changes both The long

 military-issue Enfield rifle was as tall as Jan Cheroot, but it seemed

 an extension of his wizened little body. Pick nine other men. The

 best, Zouga told him, and Sergeant Cheroot brought them aboard while the

 gunboat was working up a head of steam in her boilers.

 Each man carried his Enfield over his shoulder, his worldly possessions

 in the haversack on his back and fifty rounds in the pouches on his belt

 It needed only the "Rogue's March" to welcome them, Zouga thought wryly,

 as he watched them come in through the entry port, each one bestowing

 upon him a beatific grin and a salute so vigorous that it nearly swung

 the donor off his feet.

 Sergeant Cheroot lined them up at the rail. Their original scarlet

 uniform jackets had suffered strange mutations to ten different shades,

 ranging from sunfaded pink to dusty puce, and each peppercorn head wore

 its brimless infantry cap cocked at a different angle from all the

 others. Thin shanks were bound up with grubby puttees, and brown bare

 feet slapped the oak planking of the deck in unison as Cheroot brought

 them to attention, Enfields at the slope and happy grins on each puckish

 face.

 Very well, Sergeant. " Zouga acknowledged the salute. Now let's have

 the packs open, and the bottles over the side."

 The grins wilted, and they exchanged crestfallen glances, the Major had

 looked so young and gullible. You hear the Major, julie klomp dam

 skaape. " Gleefully Jan Cheroot likened them to "a herd of stupid

 sheepin the kitchen Dutch of the Cape, and as he turned back to Zoup

 there was for the first time a gleam of respect in the dark eyes.

 There are two passages from which a ship may choose when sailing the

 southeastern coast of Africa. The master may stay outside the

 100-fathom line which marks the edge of the continental shelf, for here

 the opposing forces of the Mozambique current and the prevailing winds

 can generate a sea which seamen call with awe the "100 year wave', a

 wave over 200 foot from crest to through, which will overwhelm even the

 sturdiest vessel as though it were a drifting autumn leaf. The

 alternative and only slightly less hazardous passage lies close inshore,

 in the shallows where the rocky reefs await a careless navigator.

 For the sake of speed Clinton Codrington chose the inshore passage, so

 that always the land was in sight as they bustled northwards. Day after

 day the shimmering white beaches and dark rocky headlands unreeled ahead

 of Black joke's bows, sometimes almost lost in the smoky blue sea-fret,

 and at other times brutally clear under the African sun.

 Clinton kept steam in his boilers and the single bronze screw spinning

 under his counter with every sail set and trained around to glean the

 smallest puff of the wind, as he drove Black joke on to the rendezvous

 that Mungo St. John had set. His haste was symptom of a compulsion that

 Robyn Ballantyne only began fully to understand during those days and

 nights that they drove east and north, for Clinton Codrington sought her

 company constantly and she spent many hours of each day with him, or all

 of it that could be spared from the management of the vessel, beginning

 with the assembly of the ship's company for morning prayers.

 Most naval captains went through the motions of divine service once a

 week, but Captain Codrington held prayers every morning and it did not

 take Robyn long to realize that his faith and sense of Christian duty

 was, if anything, greater than her own. He did not seem to experience

 the terrible doubts and temptations to which she was always such a prey,

 and if it had not been unchristian to do so she would have felt envy for

 his sense and secure faith. I wanted to go into the church, like my

 father and my elder brother, Ralph, before me, he told her. Why did you

 noWThe Almighty led me into the path He had chosen for me, Clinton said

 simply, and it did not seem pretentious when he said it. "I know now He

 meant me to be a shepherd for His flock, here in this land, and he

 pointed at the silver beaches and blue mountains. "I did not realize it

 at the time, but His ways are wonderful. This is the work He has chosen

 for me."

 Suddenly she realized how deep was his commitment to the war he was

 waging against the trade, it was almost a personal crusade. His whole

 being directed at its destruction, for he truly believed that he was the

 instrument of God's will.

 Yet, like many deeply religious men, he kept his belief closely guarded,

 never flaunting it in sanctimonious posturing or biblical quotation. The

 only time he spoke of his God was during the daily prayers and when he

 was alone with her on his quarterdeck. Quite naturally, he assumed that

 her belief matched, if not outstripped, his own. She did nothing to

 disillusion him, for she enjoyed his patent admiration, his deference to

 the fact that she had been appointed as a missionary, and when she was

 truthful to herself, which was more and more often these days, she liked

 the way he looked, the sound of his voice, and even the smell of him. It

 was a man's smell, like tanned leather or the pelt of an otter she had

 once had as a pet at Kings Lynn.

 He was good to be near, a man, as the pale missionary initiates and

 medical students she had known, had not been men. He was the Christian

 warrior. She found a comfort in his presence, not like the wicked

 excitement of Mungo St. John, but something deeper and more satisfying.

 She looked upon him as her champion, as though the deadly assignation to

 which he was hurrying was on her behalf, to wipe out the knowledge of

 sin and to atone for her disgrace.

 On the third day they passed the settlement on the shore of Algoa Bay,

 where the 5,000 British settlers brought out by Governor Somerset forty

 years before in 1820 had landed and still eked a hard existence from the

 unforgiving African earth. "The white flecks of painted walls looked

 pitifully insignificant in that wilderness of water and sky and land,

 and at last Robyn started to come to some small understanding of the

 vastness of this continent and how puny were the scratches that man had

 made upon it. For the first time she felt a small cold dread at her own

 temerity that had brought her so far, so young and so inexperienced, to

 venture she was not sure what. She hugged her shawl about her shoulders

 and shivered in the cutting wind that poured in off the green sea. The

 Africa she had dreamed of so often seemed harsh and unwelcoming now.

 As Black joke closed swiftly with the rendezvous that St. John had

 appointed, Clinton Codrington became quieter, and was more often alone

 in his cabin. He understood clearly the ordeal that faced him. Zouga

 Ballantyne had discussed it with him on almost every occasion that

 presented itself. Zouga was unwavering in his opposition to the

 meeting. You have chosen a formidable opponent, sir, he told Clinton

 bluntly. "And I mean no offence when I say I doubt you are a match for

 him with either pistol or sword, but he'll choose pistols, you can wager

 on that. "He challenged, " Clinton said quietly. "My weapon is the

 naval cutlass. We will fight with those. "I cannot support you there.

 " Zouga shook his head. "If there was a challenge, and I could make a

 case against that, but if there was one, it came from you, sir. If you

 fight, it will be with pistols."

 Day after day he tried to persuade Clinton to miss the rendezvous. Damn

 it, man. Nobody fights duels any more, especially against a man who can

 split the cheroot in your mouth with either hand, at twenty paces. " Or

 again, There was no challenge, Captain Codrington, I was there, and I

 would stake my honour on it. " At another time, "You will lose your

 commission, sir. You have Admiral Kemp's direct order to avoid the

 meeting, and it is obvious that Kemp is waiting for an opportunity to

 haul you before a court martial. " Then again, "By God, sir, you will

 serve no one, least of all yourself, by being shot to death on some

 deserted and Godforsaken of breakers, in the deep, where the shoal water

 turned from pale green to blue.

 Clinton Codrington examined her carefully through his telescope, then

 without a word passed the instrument to Zouga.

 While he in turn glassed the big clipper, Clinton asked softly, "Will

 you act for me? " Zouga lowered the glass with surprise. I expected

 one of your own officers. "I could not ask them. " Clinton shook his

 head. "Slogger Kemp would mark their service records if he ever heard

 of it. "You do not have the same qualms about my career, Zouga pointed

 out. You are on extended absence from your regiment, and you have not

 been expressly ordered, as I and my officers have been."

 Zouga thought quickly, duelling was not so seriously considered in the

 army as it was in the Royal Navy, in fact the army manuals still

 maintained no express prohibitions, and a chance to meet with St. John

 was also a last chance to avert this ridiculous affair that so seriously

 threatened the continuance of his expedition.

 I accept, then, " Zouga said shortly. I am extremely grateful to you,

 sir, said Clinton as shortly. Let us hope you are as grateful after the

 business is over, Zouga told him drily. "I had best go across to Huron

 right away. It will be dark in an hour."

 Tippoo caught the line as it was thrown from the gunboat's whaler, and

 held it while Zouga gathered his cloak and jumped the gap of surging

 green water to the boarding ladder, clambering up before the next swell

 could soak his boots.

 Mungo St. John waited for him at the foot of the mainmast. He held

 himself unsmiling and aloof, until Zouga hurried to him and offered his

 right hand, then he relaxed and returned the smile.

 ISODamn it, Mungo, cannot we make an end to this nonsense? "Certainly,

 Zouga, Mungo St. John agreed. "An apology from your man would settle

 it. "The man is a fool, Zouga shook his head. "Why take the risk? "I

 don't consider there is any risk, but let me remind you he called me a

 coward. "There is no chance then? " The two of them had become good

 friends during the weeks they had spent together and Zouga felt he could

 press further. I admit the fellow is a prig, but if you kill him,

 you'll make it damned awkward for me, don't you know? " Mungo St. John

 threw back his head and laughed delightedly. "You and I could work

 together, do you know that, Zouga? You are a pragmatist, like I am. I

 make a prophecy, you'll go a long way in this world. "Not very far, if

 you kill the man who is taking me."

 And Mungo St. John chuckled again and clapped a friendly hand upon his

 shoulder. I'm sorry, my friend. Not this time, and Zouga sighed with

 resignation. You have choice of weapons."

 Pistols, said Mungo St. John. Of course, Zouga nodded. "Dawn tomorrow

 on the beach there. " He pointed to the land with his chin. "Will that

 suit you? "Admirably. Tippoo here will act for me. "Does he

 understand the conventions? " Zouga asked doubtfully, as he glanced at

 the half-naked figure that waited near at hand. He understands enough

 to blow Codrington's head off at the shoulders if he levels his pistol a

 moment before the signal. " Mungo St. John flashed that cruel white

 smile. "And that's all he needs to know, as far as I am concerned."

 Robyn Ballantyne slept not a minute during the night and it still lacked

 two hours of dawn when she bathed and dressed. On an impulse she chose

 her old moleskin breeches and man's woollen jacket. There would be the

 need to disembark through the surf from the ship's boat and skirts would

 hamper her, added to which the morning was damp and chill and her jacket

 was of good thick Scottish tweed.

 She laid out her black leather bag, and checked its contents making

 certain she had everything she needed to cleanse and swinch a bullet

 wound, to bind up torn flesh or hold together shattered bone, and to

 reduce the agony of either man.

 All of them had taken it without question that Robyn would be on the

 beach that morning. The gunboat did not rate a surgeon, and neither did

 Huron. She was ready with an hour to wait, and she opened her journal

 and began making the previous day's entry, when there was a light tap on

 her door.

 When she opened it, Clinton Codrington stood in the opening his face

 pale and strained in the smoky lamplight and she knew intuitively that

 he had slept as little as she had. He recovered swiftly from the first

 shock of seeing her in breeches, dragging his eyes up to her face again.

 I hoped I might speak with you, " he muttered shyly. It will be the

 last opportunity before. . ."

 She took his Arm and drew him into the cabin. "You have not

 breakfasted? " she asked sternly. No, ma'am. " He shook his head and

 his eyes dropped to her trousered legs, and then jerked up guiltily to

 her face again.

 The medicine worked? " she asked.

 He nodded, too embarrassed to reply. She had administered a purge the

 evening before, for as a surgeon she could dread the effects of a pistol

 ball through a full bowel or through a belly loaded with breakfast.

 She touched his forehead. "You are warm, you have not taken a chill? "

 She felt protective towards him, like a mother almost, for he seemed

 once again so young and untried. I wondered if we might pray together.

 " His voice was so low that she barely caught the words, and she felt a

 warm, almost suffocating rush of affection for him.

 Come, she whispered, and she took his hand.

 They knelt together on the bare deck of the tiny cabin, still holding

 hands, and she spoke for both of them, and he made the responses in a

 soft but firm voice.

 When they rose stiffly at last, he kept her hand in his for a while

 longer.  Miss Ballantyne, I mean, Doctor Ballantyne, I cannot tell you

 now what a profound effect meeting you has had on my life."

 She felt herself blushing and tried feebly to disengage her hand, but he

 clung to it. I would like to have your permission to talk to you again

 in this vein after, he paused, "if this morning goes as we hope it will.

 "Oh, it will, " she said fiercely. "It will, I know it will."

 Hardly knowing what she was doing she pressed herself swiftly to him and

 reaching up kissed him full on the mouth. For a moment he froze, and

 then clumsily he crushed her to him so that the brass buttons of his

 coat dug into her bosom and his teeth crushed her lips until she felt

 them bruising. My darling, he whispered. "Oh, my darling."

 The strength of his reaction startled her, but almost immediately she

 found she was enjoying the strength of his embrace, and she tried to

 free her arms to return it - but he misunderstood her movements and

 released her hurriedly. Forgive me, he blurted out. "I don't know what

 came over me.

 Her disappointment was sharp enough to turn instantly to Annoyance at

 his timidity. Buttons and teeth notwithstanding, it had felt very

 pleasant indeed.

 Both boats left the two ships at the same time, and they converged

 through the thin pearly morning mist as their crews pulled for the low

 lines of breaking surf and the pale outline of the beach in the dawn.

 they landed within a hundred yards of each other, surfing in on the

 crest of the same low, green wave and the oarsmen leapt out waist-deep

 to run the boats high up the white sand.

 Both parties moved separately over the crest of the sand bar and then

 down to the edge of the lagoon, screened from the boat crews by the

 intervening dunes and the stands of tall fluffy-headed reeds. There was

 a level area of firm damp sand at one edge of the reeds.

 Mungo St. John and Tippoo halted at one end, and Mungo lit a cheroot and

 stood with both hands on his hips staring out at the crests of the

 hills, ignoring the activity about him. He was dressed in black

 tight-fitting breeches and a white silk shirt with full sleeves, open at

 the throat to reveal the dark curls of his body hair. The white shirt

 would give his opponent a fair aiming point, he was observing the

 conventions scrupulously.

 Robyn watched him covertly as she stood beside Clinton Codrington at the

 further end of the clearing. She tried to capture the hatred she felt

 for St. John, to hold on to her outrage at the way he had abused her,

 but it was a difficult emotion to sustain. Rather, she was excited and

 with a strange sense of elation, the satanic presence of this man

 heightened the feeling. She caught herself staring openly and dragged

 her eyes off him.

 Beside her Clinton stood very erect. He wore his blue uniform jacket

 with the gold lace of his rank gleaming even in the soft pink light of

 early dawn. He had scraped the sun-bleached hair back from his forehead

 and temples and bound it at the nape of his neck, leaving clean the

 purposeful line of his jaw.

 Zouga went forward to meet Tippoo who carried under his arm the rosewood

 case of pistols. When they met in the centre of the level ground, he

 opened the case and proffered it, standing straddle-legged and

 attentive, while Zouga took each weapon from its velvet nest and loaded

 it with a carefully measured charge of black powder before ramming home

 the dark-blue leaden ball and setting the cap on the nipple.

 The sight of the long-barrelled weapons reminded Robyn forcefully of

 that night aboard Huront and she bit her lip and shifted uncomfortably.

 Do not fret yourself, Miss Ballantyne. " Clinton mistook her emotion,

 and whispered soothingly to comfort her while he unbuttoned his jacket

 and shrugged out of it. Beneath it he also wore a plain white shirt to

 give St. John a fair aim. He handed her the jacket and would have

 spoken again but Zouga called.

 Will the principals come forward."

 And Clinton gave her another tightly strained smile before he strode

 out, his heels leaving deep prints in the damp yellow sand.

 He faced Mungo St. John, holding his gaze steadily, both of them

 completely expressionless. Gentlemen, I appeal to both of you to settle

 this affair without bloodshed. " Zouga went through the ritual attempt

 at reconciliation. "Captain Codrington, as challenger, will you tender

 an apology? " Clinton shook his head once, curtly. Mr. St. John, is

 there any other way in which we can avoid bloodshed? " I think not,

 sir, St. John drawled as he carefully tapped half an inch of grey ash

 from his cheroot. Very well, " Zouga nodded and went on immediately to

 set the conditions of the meeting. "At the command "Proceed" each of

 you gentlemen will take ten paces, which I will count aloud. Immediately

 after the count of ten I will give the command "Fire" upon which you

 will be at liberty to turn and discharge your weapon."

 Zouga paused and glanced at Tippoo, there was a longbarrelled m-17

 loading pistol thrust into the waistband of his baggy breeches. Both

 seconds are armed. " Zouga laid his right hand on the butt of the Colt

 pistol in his own belt. "If either principal attempts to fire before

 the command to do so, then he will immediately be shot down by the

 seconds."

 He paused again looking from one to the other. "Is that clearly

 understood, gentlemen? " They both nodded. "Do either of you have a

 question? " Zouga waited in silence for a few seconds then went on.

 "Very well, we will proceed. Mr. St. John you have first choice of

 weapon."

 Mungo St. John dropped the cheroot and ground it into the sand with his

 heel, before stepping forward. Tippoo offered him the rosewood case and

 after a momentary hesitation St. John lifted out one of the beautifully

 inlaid weapons. He pointed at the sky and cocked the hammer with a

 sweep of his free hand.

 Clinton took the remaining pistol and weighed it experimentally in his

 hand, settling the butt deeply into the vee formed by thumb and

 forefinger, turning half away and lifting the pistol at full stretch of

 his arm to aim it at one of the black and bright yellow bishop birds

 that chattered in the reeds nearby.

 With relief Robyn watched the familiar ease with which her champion

 handled the weapon, and she felt completely certain of the outcome now.

 Good must triumph, and she started to pray again, silently, only her

 lips moving as she recited the twenty-third psalm. Though I walk

 through the valley of the shadow of death. "Take your positions,

 gentlemen. " Zouga stepped back and gestured to Robyn. Still praying,

 she hurried to where Zouga stood, and fell in a few paces behind him,

 well out on the flank from the lines of fire of the two principals.

 Beside Zouga, Tippoo drew the long, clumsy-looking pistol from the sash

 around his waist and cocked the big ornate hammer, the bore of the

 barrel gaped like a cannon as he lifted it into the "present" position.

 Zouga drew his own Colt revolver and stood quietly while the two

 principals walked the last few paces towards each other and then turned

 back to back.

 Beyond them the early sun was gilding the hilltops with bright gold, but

 leaving the lagoon still in shadow so the still dark waters steamed with

 wisps of mist. In the silence a ghostly grey heron croaked hoarsely and

 then launched into flight from the edge of the reedbank with slow

 wingbeats, its neck drawn back into a snakelike "SI to balance the long

 beak. Proceed! " called Zouga, so loudly that Robyn started violently.

 The two men stepped out, away from each other, with deliberate strides,

 heeling heavily in the yielding sand, pacing to the count that Zouga

 called. Five. " Mungo St. John was smiling softly, as though at some

 secret joke, and his white silk sleeve fluttered like a moth's wing

 around the uplifted arm that held the slim steel-blue barrel pointed at

 the dawn sky. Six. " Clinton leaned forward, stepping out with long

 legs clad in white uniform breeches. His face was set, pale as a mask,

 his lips drawn into a thin determined line. Seven. " Robyn felt the

 beat of her heart crescendo, thumping painfully against the cage of her

 ribs so that she could not breathe. Eight. " She noticed for the first

 time the patches of sweat that had soaked through the armpits of

 Clinton's white shirt, despite the chill of the dawn air. Nine. "

 Suddenly she was deadly afraid for him, all her faith dissolved in a

 sudden premonition of disaster rushing down upon her. Ten! " She

 wanted to scream to them to stop. She wanted to rush forward and throw

 herself into the space between the two men. She didn't want them to

 die, either of them. She tried to fill her lungs but her throat was

 closed and dry, she tried to drive her legs forward but they were locked

 rigidly under her, beyond her control. Fire! " shouted Zouga, his

 voice cracking with the tenSion that gripped all the watchers and out on

 the damp dark-yellow sand both men turned, like a pair of dancers in a

 meticulously rehearsed ballet of death.

 Their right arms out-flung towards each other in a gesture like that of

 parted lovers, the left hand on the hip t to balance, the classic stance

 of the expert marksman.

 Time seemed suspended, the movements of the two men graceful but

 measured, without the urgency of onrushing death.

 The silence was complete, there was no wind to rustle the reeds, no bird

 nor animal called from the looming forest across the lagoon, the

 footfalls of the two men were deadened by the yielding sand, the world

 seemed to hold its breath.

 And then the crash of pistol fire awoke the echoes and sent them

 bounding and booming across the gorge, leaping from cliff to cliff,

 startling the birds into raucous flight.

 The two shots were within one hundredth of a second of each other, so

 that they blended into a single blurt of sound. From the levelling blue

 barrels the dead white powder smoke spurted, and then the barrels were

 flung upwar(s in unison with the shock of discharge.

 Both men reeled backwards, keeping their feet, but Robyn had seen the

 smoke fly from the muzzle of Mungo St. John's pistol a fraction of a

 second earlier, and then an instant liter Mungo's big dark head flinched

 as though he had been struck with an open hand across the cheek.

 Alter that one staggered pace backwards, he steadied, drawing himself to

 his full height, the pistol still smoking in his raised hand, staring at

 his adversary, and Robyn felt -a rush of relief. Mungo St. John was

 unscathed. She wanted to run to him, and then suddenly the joy

 withered, a dark red snake of blood slithered from the thick hair at his

 temple down the smoothly shaven olive skin of his cheek and dripped with

 slow sullen drops on to the white silk of his shirt.

 She lifted her hand to her mouth to cover the cry that rose within her,

 and then her attention was distracted by another movement in the corner

 of her vision and she swung her head with a jerky movement towards

 Clinton Codrington.

 He also had been standing erect, with almost military bearing, but now

 he began to bow slowly forward at the waist. The right hand holding the

 pistol hung at his side and now his fingers opened and the ornate weapon

 dropped into the sand at his feet.

 He lifted the empty hand and placed it across his chest with fingers

 outspread in a gesture that seemed reverential and slowly his body bent

 forward and now his legs gave way under him and he dropped to his knees,

 as though in prayer. Kneeling, he lifted his hand away from his chest

 and examined with an expression of mild surprise the small smear of

 blood that coated his fingers and then he pitched forward face down on

 to the sand.

 At last Robyn could move. She raced forward and dropped to her knees

 beside Clinton's fallen body, and with strength of panic rolled him on

 to his back. The front of the white linen shirt was damp with a little

 blood around the neat puncture in the cloth six inches to the left of

 the line of mother of pearl buttons.

 He had been half-turned to fire and the ball had taken him low and left,

 at the level of the lungs, she saw instantly. The lungs! She felt

 despair overwhelm her. It would mean death, no less certain because it

 was slow and agonizing. She would have to watch this min drown

 inexorably in his own blood.

 Sand crunched beside her and she looked up.

 Mungo St. John stood over her, his shirt a mess of wet blood. He was

 holding a silk kerchief to his temple to staunch the copious flow where

 the pistol ball had stripped a long ribbon of scalp off his skull above

 the ear.

 His eyes were bleak, his expression forbidding and his voice cold and

 distant as he told her quietly. I trust you will be satisfied at last,

 madam. " Then he turned abruptly up the white dune towards the beach.

 She wanted to run after him, to restrain him, to explain to explain she

 knew not what, but her duty was here, with the man more gravely

 stricken. Her fingers shook as she unbuttoned the front of Clinton's

 shirt and saw the dark blue hole punched into the pale flesh from which

 a little thick slow blood oozed. So little blood at the mouth of the

 wound, it was the worst indication - the bleeding would be inside, deep

 inside the chest cavity'Zouga, my bag, she called sharply.

 Zouga came to her, carrying the bag and went down on one knee beside

 her. I am but lightly struck, " murmured Clinton.

 "I have no pain. just a feeling of numbness here Zouga did not reply.

 He had seen a multitude of gunshot wounds in India, pain was no

 indication of the severity. A ball through the hand or foot was

 unbearable agony, another through both lungs was only mildly

 discomforting.

 Only one thing puzzled him and that was why Mungo St. johnos shot had

 been so wide. At twenty paces he would surely have taken the head shot,

 aiming between the eyes with an expectation of the ball deviating less

 than an inch from the point of aim, yet the shot had taken Clinton low

 in the chest.

 While Robyn pressed a dressing over the wicked little blue mouth of the

 wound, Zouga picked the pistol out of the sand. The barrel was still

 warm and there was the peppery whiff of burned powder as he examined it

 and saw instantly why Mungo's shot had struck wide.

 There was a bluish smear of bright new lead on the steel trigger guard.

 Mungo St. John had indeed aimed at the head, but Clinton had lifted the

 pistol to his eye at the same instant directly in the line of sight. St.

 John's ball had struck the metal guard and been deflected downwards.

 That would account for the fact that Clinton's own ball had been high,

 for as a less expert marksman he would surely have aimed at St. John's

 chest. The strike of the ball had thrown his weapon upwards at the

 moment of discharge.

 Zouga looked up and handed the pistol to Tippoo who waited impassively

 close at hand. Without a word, Tippoo took the weapon, turned away and

 followed his master over the dunes.

 By the time four seamen from the gunboat could carry Clinton Codrington

 down the beach using his boat cloak as a hammock, St. John was climbing

 up from the Huron's whaler on to his maindeck, and before they could rig

 a block and tackle to lift the prostrate form of her captain into Black

 joke, Huron had broken out her anchor and was spreading sail before the

 south-westerly breeze and bearing away with the sunrise transformin her

 into a vessel etched in golden fire.

 For twenty-four hours Clinton Codrington surprised Robyn with the

 strength of his recovery. She looked to see blood on his lips, and she

 expected him to experience the agony of breathing as the damaged lung

 collapsed.

 Every few hours she listened with her sounding trumpet to his chest,

 stooping over the bunk in his cabin to catch the hiss and saw of his

 breathing, listening for the bubbling sound of blood, or for the dry

 rubbing of the lung against the rib cage, and was pleased when none of

 these symptoms occurred.

 Indeed Clinton was unaccountably resilient for a patient with ball

 through the chest cavity. He complained only of stiffness reaching up

 into his left armpit and semi-paralysis of that arm, and he was

 vociferous in his advice to his surgeon.

 You will bleed me, of course! he asked. I will not, Robyn told him

 shortly as she cleaned the area around the wound and then lifted him

 into a sitting position to bandage his chest.

 You should take at least a pint, Clinton insisted. Have you not bled

 enough? " Robyn asked witheringly, but he was undaunted. There is

 black rotten blood that must be taken off Clinton indicated the massive

 bruise that was spreading around his chest like some dark parasitic

 plant around the smooth pale trunk. You must bleed me, Clinton

 insisted, for all his adult life he had been exposed to the

 ministrations of naval surgeons. "If you don't, fever is sure to

 follow."

 He offered Robyn the inner curve of his elbow where the thin white scars

 over the blue blood vessels marked where he had been bled before. We no

 longer live in the dark ages, Robyn told him tartly. "This is 1860, and

 she pushed him down on the bolster and covered him with a grey ship's

 blanket against the shivering and chilling nausea which she knew must

 soon accompany such a wound. It did not come, and for the next twenty

 hours he continued to manage the ship from his bunk, and he chafed at

 the restraint she placed on him. However, Robyn knew the pistol ball

 was still in there and that there must be drastic consequences. She

 wished that there was some technique that could enable a surgeon to

 locate the whereabouts of a foreign body accurately, and then allow him

 to enter the rib cage and remove it.

 That evening she fell asleep in the rope chair beside his bunk,

 awakening once to hold the enamel cup of water to his lips when he

 complained of thirst and noting the dryness and heat of his skin, and in

 the morning all her fears were confirmed.

 He was only semi-conscious, and the pain was fierce.

 He moaned and cried out at the smallest movement. His eyes were sunken

 into plum-coloured cavities, his tongue was thickly coated with white

 and his lips were dried and cracked. He pleaded for drink and his skin

 was hot, the heat increasing every hour until it seemed to be burning

 out the core of his being, and he was restless and flushed, tossing in

 the narrow bunk, fighting off the blankets with which she tried to keep

 him covered, and whimpering in his delirium at the agony of movement.

 His breath was sawing painfully in his swollen and bruised chest, his

 eyes were glittering bright, and when Robyn unwound the bandage to

 sponge his body with cool water there was only a little pale fluid

 staining the dressing, but her nostrils flared as she smelled it. It

 was so horribly familiar, she always thought of that stench as the fetid

 breath of death itself.

 The wound had shrunk, but the crust that had formed over it was so thin

 that it cracked at one of Clinton's restless movements and through it

 rose a thick droplet of custard-coloured matter. Immediately the smell

 was stronger. This was not the benign pus of healing, but the malignant

 pus that she so dreaded to see in a wound.

 She swabbed it away carefully, and then with cold seawater sponged his

 chest and the hard hot swollen flesh below his armpit. The bruising was

 extensive and it had changed colour, dark blue as storm clouds, tinged

 with the yellow of sulphur and the virulent rose of some flower from the

 gardens of Hell itself.

 There was one area just below the point of his shoulder blade

 particularly sensitive for he screamed when she touched it, and a sparse

 prickle of sweat broke out across his forehead and amongst the fine

 golden bristles of his unshaven cheeks.

 She replaced the bandage with a fresh dressing and then forced between

 his dry lips four grams of laudanum mixed with a warm draught of

 calomel. She watched while he fell into a restless drug-induced sleep.

 Another twenty-four hours, she whispered aloud, watching him toss and

 mutter. She had seen it so often.

 Soon the pus would suffuse his whole body, building up steadily around

 the ball deep in his chest. She was helpless. No surgeon could enter

 the rib cage, it had never been done before.

 She looked up as Zouga stooped into the cabin. He was grave and quiet,

 standing beside her chair for a moment and placing a hand on her

 shoulder comfortingly.

 He improves? " he asked softly.

 She shook her head, and he nodded as though he had expected the answer.

 You must eat. " He offered her the pannikin. "I brought you some pea

 soup. It has bacon in it, it's very good."

 She had not realized how hungry she was and she ate gratefully, breaking

 the hard ship's bread into the broth and Zouga went on quietly, I loaded

 the pistols with less than a full charge, as little as I dared. " He

 shook his head irritably. "Damned bad luck. After Mungo's ball hit the

 trigger guard, I'd not have expected it to have entered the chest, it

 must have lost most of its power."

 She looked up quickly. "It struck the trigger guard you did not tell

 me."

 He shrugged. "It's not important now. But the ball was deflected."

 She sat very still in her chair for ten minutes after he was gone, and

 then purposefully she stood over the bunk and stripped back the blanket,

 unwound the bandage and examined the wound again.

 Very carefully she began to sound the ribs beneath it, pressing in with

 thumb gently to feel for the give of shattered bone. The ribs were all

 firm, yet that was no proof that the ball had not driven between two of

 them.

 She pressed her thumb into the swelling towards the outside of his

 chest, and although he thrashed around weakly, she thought she felt the

 rasp of bone against bone, as though the rib had been chipped or even as

 if a long splinter had been cracked off it.

 She felt a little flutter of excitement, and extended her examination

 gradually backwards, guided by his delirious cries of pain, until once

 again she reached the lower point of his shoulder and he came upright in

 the bunk with another wild yell of agony, breaking out once more into

 the burning sweat of high fever. But with the tip of her finger she

 thought she had felt something, something that was neither bone nor

 knotted muscle.

 The excitement quickened her breathing. From the angle at which Clinton

 had stood, half-turned away from Mungo St. John, she now believed that

 it was possible that the ball had followed a different path from that

 which she had assumed.

 If the pistol had been undercharged with powder, and if the ball had

 struck the trigger guard, it was just possible that it had not had the

 velocity to penetrate the, rib cage, it had been turned by the bone and

 ploughed along under the skin, skidding along the groove between two

 ribs following the track that she had just probed, and lodging at last

 in the thick bed of the latissimus dorsi and tenes major muscle.

 She stood back from the bunk. She could be very wrong, she realized,

 but if she was he would die anyway, and that very soon. I will cut for

 it, she decided, the decision direct and swift. She glanced up at the

 skylight in the roof of the cabin. There was only an hour or two of

 good daylight left.

 Zouga! she called as she raced from the cabin. "Zouga!

 Come quickly! " Robyn administered another five grams of laudanum

 before they moved Clinton. It was as large a dose as she dared, for he

 had taken nearly fifteen grams in the preceding thirty-six hours. She

 waited as long as she could in the failing light for the drug to begin

 taking effect. Then she passed the word to Lieutenant Denham to shorten

 sail, reduce engine revolutions and make the ship's motion as easy as

 possible.

 Zouga had chosen two seamen to assist them. One was the boatswain, a

 burly and greying sailor, the other was the officers" steward who had

 impressed Robyn with his quiet, controlled manner.

 Now as the three of them half-lifted Clinton and rolled him on to his

 side, the steward spread a sheet of fresh white canvas on the bunk under

 him to receive the spilled blood then Zouga swiftly knotted the lengths

 of soft cotton rope around Clinton's wrists and ankles. He had chosen

 cotton in preference to the coarse hemp which would tear the skin, and

 he made the bowline knots that would not slip under pressure.

 The boatswain helped him to tie down the ends at the head and foot of

 the bunk, stretching out the almost naked white body so that for an

 instant it reminded Robyn of the painting of the crucifixion that stood

 in Uncle William's study at King's Lynn, the Roman legionaries

 spread-eagling Christ upon the cross before driving home the nails. She

 shook her head irritably, driving the memory from her mind,

 concentrating all her attention on the task ahead. Wash your hands! "

 she ordered Zouga, indicating the bucket of almost boiling water and

 yellow lye soap the steward had provided.

 "Y? Do it, she snapped, in no mood to argue. Her own hands were pink

 with the heat of the water and tingled with the harsh soap, as she wiped

 her instruments with the cloth dipped in a mug of the pungent ship's

 rum, laying them out on the shelf above the bunk, and then with the same

 cloth swabbed the hot discoloured flesh at the base of Clinton's

 shoulder blade. He jerked against his bonds and muttered an incoherent

 protest, but she ignored it and nodded to the boatswain.

 He seized Clinton's head, drawing it back slightly, and thrust a thick

 pad of felt, a piece of wadding for the maindeck cannon, between his

 teeth, holding it in place. ZougaV He took Clinton's shoulders and

 locked them in his powerful fingers, preventing Clinton from rolling on

 to his belly. Good."

 Robyn took one of the razor-sharp scalpels from the shelf, and then with

 the forefinger of her other hand probed brutally down to where she had

 felt that hard foreign body.

 Clinton's back arched and he let out a shattering cry that was muffled

 by the wadding, but Robyn felt it clearly this time, hard and unyielding

 in the swollen flesh.

 She cut swiftly, without hesitation, opening the skin cleanly, following

 the direction of the muscle fibre beneath, dissecting down through layer

 after layer of muscle, separating the bluish membrane capsules that

 covered each of the muscles with the hilt of the scalpel, probing deeper

 and deeper with her fingers towards that elusive lump in the flesh.

 Clinton writhed and heaved at his bonds, his breathing rasping in the

 back of his throat, his teeth locked into the felt wadding in a fierce

 rictus so that cords of muscle stood out along his jawline and white

 spittle frothed upon his lips.

 His wild lunges made her task that much more difficult, and her fingers

 were slippery with blood in his hot flesh, but she found the rubbery

 pulsing snake of the lateral thoracic artery and worked past it gently,

 pinching off the smaller spurting blood vessels with the forceps, and

 tying them with a loop of catgut, torn between the need for speed and

 the danger of doing greater damage.

 Finally she had to use the blade again, and she reversed the scalpel and

 paused a moment to locate the lump with the tip of her forefinger.

 She could feel the sweat sliding down her cheek, and she was aware of

 the strained tense faces of the men who held Clinton as they watched her

 work.

 She guided the scalpel down into the open wound, and then cut down

 firmly and a sudden bright yellow fountain spouted up through her

 fingers, and the cloying stomach-twisting stench of corruption that

 filled the hot little cabin made her gasp.

 That sharp rush of pus lasted only a second, and then there was

 something black and sodden blocking the wound. She picked it out with

 the forceps, releasing another lesser welling up of the thick custardy

 matter. The wad, Zouga grunted with the effort of holding down the

 struggling naked body. They all stared at the soft rotten object in the

 teeth of her forceps.

 The patch of cloth had been carried deeply into the flesh by the passage

 of the ball, and Robyn felt a surging lift of relief, she had been

 right.

 Quickly she went back to work, running her finger into the tunnel cut by

 the ball until she felt it with her fingertip. There it is! " She

 spoke for the first time since she had but the metal pellet was slippery

 and heavy, she cut, could not prise it loose and she had to cut again

 and then lock the teeth of the pair of bone forceps over it. It came

 out with reluctant suck of clinging tissue, and she dropped it

 impatiently on the shelf. It made a heavy clunk against the wood. There

 was a temptation to come out immediately, to sew up and bind up, but she

 resisted it and took an extra ten seconds to probe the wound thoroughly.

 She was almost immediately justified, there was another rotting and

 stinking taller of cloth in the wound track. A piece of the shirt. "

 She identified the white shreds, and Zouga's face mirrored his disgust.

 "Now we can come out, " Robyn went on complacently.

 She left a bristle in the wound to allow the remaining pus to drain off.

 It stuck out stiffly between the stitches with which she closed up.

 When she stood back at last she was smugly satisfied with her work.

 There had been nobody at St. Matthew's who could lay down stitches so

 neatly and regularly, not even the senior surgeons could match her.

 linton had collapsed with the shock of deep surgery.

 C His body was wet and slick with his sweat, and the skin at his wrists

 and ankles had been smeared away where he had fought against his bonds.

 Let him loose, " she said softly.

 She felt a vast pride, almost of ownership, in him now, as though he

 were her special creation, for she had dragged him back almost bodily

 from the abyss. Pride was sin, she knew, but it did not make the

 sensation any the less agreeable, and in the circumstances, she decided,

 she had earned the pleasure of a little sin.. . .

 Clinton's recovery was almost miraculous. By the next morning he was

 fully conscious, and the fever had abated to leave him pale and shaky,

 with just enough strength to argue bitterly when she had him carried up

 into the sunshine and laid behind the canvas wind shelter that the

 carpenter had rigged under the poop. Cold air is bad for gunshot

 wounds, everybody knows that And I suppose I should bleed you before

 closing you up in that hot little hell hole you call a cabin, Robyn

 asked tartly.

 A navy surgeon would do so, he muttered. Then thank your Maker that I

 am not one."

 On the second day he was sitting up unaided and eating voraciously, by

 the third he was managing the ship from his litter, and on the fourth

 day he was on his quarterdeck once more, although his arm was in a sling

 and he was still pale and gaunt where the fever had wasted away the

 flesh from his face, but strong enough to keep on his feet for an hour

 at a time before resorting to the rope chair the carpenter had rigged at

 the rail.

 That day Robyn withdrew the bristle from the wound and was relieved at

 the tiny quantity of benign pus that followed it out. They watched the

 little town of Port Natal come up ahead of them, the primitive buildings

 huddled under the whale-backed mountain they called the Bluff like

 chickens under the wing of the hen. Black joke did not call, even

 though this was the furthest outpost of the British Empire on this

 coast, but steamed on briskly into the north, each day becoming

 perceptively warmer with the sun standing higher at noon and the sea

 changing to the darker azure of the tropics beneath Black Joke's bows,

 and once again the flying fish sported ahead of them on filmy silver

 wings.

 The evening before they reached the Portuguese settlement of Lourenco

 Marques on the deep hight of Delagoa Bay, Robyn dressed the stitches in

 Clinton's side, making small cooing and clucking sounds of satisfaction

 and approval as she saw how cleanly they were healing.

 When she helped him into his shirt and then buttoned it for him, like a

 mother dressing her child, he told her gravely, I am aware you have

 saved my life. "Even though you do not approve of my methods? " she

 asked with a twinkle of a smile. I ask your forgiveness for my

 impertinence. " He dropped his eyes. You have proved yourself to be a

 brilliant physician."

 She made a modest murmur of denial, but when he insisted, "No, I truly

 mean that. I think you are gifted, Robyn protested no further, but

 moved slightly to make it easier for him to reach her with his good arm,

 but his declaration of faith in her skills seemed to have exhausted his

 courage for the moment.

 That evening she vented some of her frustration by confiding to her

 journal that, "Captain Codrington is clearly a min that can be trusted

 by a woman, in any circumstances, though a little more boldness would

 make him a great deal more attractive."

 She was about to close the journal and lock it away in her chest, when

 another thought occurred to her, and she thumbed back through the

 preceding pages each crammed with her small neat script, until she

 reached the single sheet that had become a milestone in her life.

 The entry for the day before Huron reached Cape Town she had left blank.

 What words were there to describe it? Each moment of it would be

 engraved forever on her memory. She stared for many minutes at the

 empty sheet, and then she made a silent calculation, subtracting one

 date from another. When she had the answer she felt a chill of

 foreboding, and went over the calculation again, reaching the same

 answer.

 She closed the journal slowly and stared at the lantern flame.

 She had missed her lunar courses by almost a week, and with a prickle of

 dread lilting the fine hair at the nape of her neck she laid her hand

 upon her own belly as if there was something to feel there like the

 pistol ball in Clinton's flesh.

 Black joke called at Lourenq Marques for coal bunkers, despite the

 tovrn's notoriety as a fever port. The swamps and mangroves that

 half-circled the town to the southwards spread the miasmic airs across

 the port.

 Although Robyn had only very limited first-hand experience of the

 peculiar fevers of Africa, she had made a close study of all the

 writings on the subject, the most notable of these being probably those

 of her own father. Fuller Ballantyne had written a long paper for the

 British Medical Association, in which he recognized four distinct types

 of African fever, the recurrent fevers with a definite cycle, he divided

 into three categories, quotidian, tertian and quartan, by the length of

 the cycle.

 These he called the malarial fevers. The fourth type was the black

 vomit, or the yellow jack.

 In his own unmistakable style, Fuller Ballantyne had shown that these

 diseases were neither contagious nor infectious. He had done so by a

 horrifying but courageous demonstration to a group of sceptical brother

 physicians at the military hospital at Algoa Bay.

 While the other physicians watched, he had collected a wine glass of

 fresh vomit from a victim of the yellow jack. Fuller had toasted them

 with the awful draught and then drunk it down at a single swallow. His

 colleagues had waited, with a certain keen anticipation for his demise

 and had some difficulty in hiding their disappointment when he showed no

 ill effects and set off a week later to walk across Africa. Fuller

 Ballantyne was a man it was easier to admire than to like. The episode

 had become part of the legend that surrounded him.

 In his writings her father insisted that the disease could only be

 contracted by breathing the night air of tropical areas, particularly

 those airs released by swamps or other large bodies of stagnant water.

 However, some individuals most certainly had a natural resistance to the

 disease, and this resistance was probably hereditary. He cited the

 African tribes who lived in known malarial areas, and his own family and

 that of his wife who had lived and worked in Africa for sixty years with

 only mild afflictions.

 Fuller wrote of the "seasoning fever', the first of which either killed

 or gave partial immunity to the subject. He used the example of the

 high mortality rate amongst newly arrived Europeans in Africa.

 He quoted the case of Nathaniel Isaacs who in 1832 left Port Natal in a

 party with twenty-one newly arrived white men to hunt hippopotamus in

 the estuary and swamps of St. Lucia river. Within four weeks nineteen

 had perished while Isaacs and the other survivor were so wracked with

 the disease that they were invalids for a a year thereafter.

 These losses were unnecessary, Fuller Ballantyne pointed out. There was

 a preventative and a cure that had been known for hundreds of years

 though under various names, Peruvian bark, or Chinchona bark, more

 recently called essence of quinine when manufactured in powder form by

 the Quaker brothers Luke and John Howard. Taken at the dosage of five

 grains daily it was a highly effective preventative, for even if the

 disease was subsequently contracted, it was in such mild form as to be

 no more dangerous than a common cold and responded immediately to a more

 massive dose of twenty-five grains of quinine.

 of course, Robyn had heard the accusation that her father played down

 the d=gers of the disease to further his grand design. Fuller

 Ballantyne had a vision of Africa settled by colonists of British stock,

 bringing to the savage continent the true God, and all the benefits of

 British justice and ingenuity. His catastrophic expedition to the

 Zambezi had been in pursuit of this vision, for the great river was to

 have been his highway to the high and healthy plateau of the interior

 where his Englishmen would settle, driving out the slavers, bringing the

 warring and godless tribes to order, and taming and cultivating the

 savage earth.

 Part of his vision had died upon the terrible torrents and rapids of the

 Kaborra-Bossa gorge.

 With a sneaking sensation of disloyalty Robyn admitted to herself that

 there was probably some shred of justification in the accusation, for

 she had as a child seen her father in the grip of a makfial fever

 brought out by the cold of an English winter. It had not seemed as mild

 as a common cold then. Despite this, there was no one in the medical

 profession who doubted that Fuller Ballantyne was probably one of the

 world's leading authorities on the disease and that he had a real talent

 in diagnosing and treating it. So she followed his dictates faithfully,

 administering the daily five grains of quinine to herself, to Zouga and

 under protest to Captain Codrington. She had no success with Zouga's

 Hottentot musketeers, however. At the first dose Jan Cheroot had begun

 staggering in circles, clutching his throat and rolling his eyes

 horribly, crying to all his Hottentot gods that he had been poisoned.

 Only a tot of ship's rum saved him, but none of the other Hottentots

 would touch the white powder after that. Not even the thought of a tot

 of rum would tempt them, which was a measure of their opposition to the

 cure. Robyn could only hope that they possessed the resistance to the

 fever that her father spoke of.

 Her store of quinine was meant to last for the duration of the

 expedition, possibly as long as two years, so she had reluctantly to

 refrain from pressing any of it on Black fake's seamen. She stilled her

 conscience with the fact that none of them would be spending a night

 ashore, therefore they would not be exposed to the dangerous airs. She

 prevailed upon Clinton Codrington to anchor in the outer roads where the

 onshore breeze kept the air sweet and, as an added attraction, the

 distance offshore prevented the swarms of mosquitoes and other flying

 insects from coming on board during the night.

 The first night at anchor, the sound of music, of drunken laughter and

 the shrill cries of women at play and at work carried across the still

 waters to the nine Hottentot musketeers in their corner of the

 forecastle, and the lights of the bordels and bars along the waterfront

 were as irresistible to the nine as a candle to a hawk moth.

 Temptation was made unbearable by the weight and heat of the golden

 sovereign that each of them carried in some secret place upon his

 person, the princely advance that Major Ballantyne had made against

 their salaries.

 Sergeant Cheroot woke Zouga a little before midnight, his features a

 mask of outrage.

 They are gone. " He was shaking with anger.

 Where? " Zouga was still more asleep than awake. They swim like rats,

 " stormed Cheroot. "They all go drinking and a-whoring. " The thought

 of it was insupportable. "We must catch them. They will burn their

 brains out on smoke and pox themselves-" His rage was mixed with an

 equal portion of raw envy, and once they we re ashore his enthusiasm for

 the chase was almost a frenzy.

 Cheroot had an unerring instinct that led him directly to the lowest

 dives on the waterfront. You go in, Master, he told Zouga. "I'll wait

 around the back, and he twitched the short oaken club in his hand with

 gleeful anticipation.

 The tobacco smoke and the fumes of cheap rum and gin were like a solid

 wall, but the musketeers saw Zouga the moment he stooped through the

 doorway into the yellow lantern light. There were four of them. They

 overturned two tables and smashed a dozen bottles in their eagerness to

 depart, jamming in a solid knot in the doorway to the rear alley before

 bursting out into the night beyond.

 It took Zouga half a minute to push and wrestle his way through the

 crowd. The women of a dozen rich shades between gold and ebony reached

 out to pluck shamelessly at the more private areas of his anatomy as he

 passed, forcing him to defend himself, and the men deliberately blocked

 his path until he drew the Colt revolver from under his coat tails, only

 then they sullenly opened a way for him to pass. When he reached the

 back door Sergeant Cheroot had the four Hottentots laid out in a row in

 the filth and dust of the alley.

 You haven't killed them? " Zouga asked anxiously. Nee wat! They got

 heads of solid bone. " Cheroot tucked the club back in his belt, and

 stooped to pick up one of the bodies. The strength of his wiry little

 body was out of all proportion to its size. He carried them down to the

 beach one at a time as though they were bags of straw, and dumped them

 head first into the waiting whaler. Now we find the others."

 They ferreted them out, singly and in pairs from the fan-tan parlours;

 and the gin hells, tracking down the ninth and last to the embrace of an

 enormous naked Somali lady in one of the shacks of mud walls and

 corrugated iron roofs behind the waterfront.

 It was almost dawn when Zouga climbed wearily out of the whaler on to

 Black joke's deck and booted the ninth Hottentot down the forecastle

 ladder. He started for his own cabin, red-eyed and irritable, aching

 with fatigue when it occurred to him that he had not noticed Sergeant

 Cheroot amongst the dark figures in the whaler, and his penetrating

 voice and biting sarcasm had been silent on the return from the beach.

 Zouga's mood was murderous as he landed once again, and picked his way

 through the narrow filth-choked alleys to the mud and iron shack. The

 woman made up four of Jan Cheroot. She was a mountain of polished dark

 flesh, gleaming with oil, each of her widespread thighs thicker than his

 waist, her great mammaries each as large as his head, and Jan Cheroot's

 head was buried between them as though he was drowning himself in exotic

 and abundant flesh so that his ecstatic cries were almost smothered.

 The woman looked down at him fondly, chuckling to herself as she watched

 Sergeant Cheroot's upended buttocks. They were skinny and a delicate

 shade of buttercup yellow, but they seemed to blur with the speed of

 movement, and the shock waves they created were transferred into the

 mountain of flesh beneath him, creating ripples and waves that undulated

 through the woman's belly and elephantine haunches, travelling up to

 agitate the pendulous folds that hung from her upper arms, and at last

 breaking in a wobbling heaving surf of gleaming black flesh around

 Sergeant Cheroot's head.

 On the final return to the gunboat, Sergeant Cheroot sat, a small

 dejected figure, in the bows of the whaler.

 His post coital tristesse considerably enhanced by the buzzing in his

 ears and the ache in his head. Only Englishmen had the alarming habit

 of bunching up a hand suddenly, and then hitting with more effect than a

 man wielding a club or hurling a brick. Sergeant Cheroot found his

 respect for his new master increasing daily. You should be an example

 to the men, Zouga growled at him as he hoisted him up the ladder by the

 collar of his uniform jacket. I know that, Master, Cheroot agreed

 miserably.

 "But I was in love."

 Are you still in love? " Zouga demanded harshly. No, Master, with me

 love don't last too long, Cheroot assured him hurriedly. I am a

 modestly wealthy man, Clinton Codrington told Robyn seriously. "Since

 my days as a midshipman I have saved as much of my pay as I did not need

 to live by, and of recent years I have been fortunate in the matter of

 prize money. This, together with the legacy of my mother, would enable

 me to rare very comfortably for a wife."

 They had lunched with the Portuguese Governor at his invitation and the

 vinho Verde that had accompanied the meal of succulent seafood and

 tasteless stringy beef had given Clinton a flush of courage.

 Rather than returning immediately to the ship after the meal, he had

 suggested a tour of the principal city of the Portuguese possessions on

 the east coast of the African continent.

 The Governor's dilapidated carriage rumbled over the rutted roads and

 splashed through the puddles formed by the overflow from the open

 sewers. A raucous flock of ragged child-beggars followed them, dancing

 in their dirty rags to keep pace with the bony, sway-backed mule that

 drew the carriage, and holding up their tiny pinkpalmed hands for alms.

 The sun was fierce but not as fierce as the smells.

 It was not the appropriate setting for what Clinton Codrington had in

 mind, and with relief he handed Robyn down from the carriage, scattered

 the beggars by hurling a handful of copper coins down the dusty street,

 and hurried Robyn into the cool gloom of the Roman Catholic cathedral.

 The cathedral was the most magnificent building in the city, its towers

 and spires rising high above the hovels and shacks that surrounded it.

 However, Robyn had difficulty in concentrating on Clinton's declaration

 in these popish surroundings, amongst the gaudy idols, saints and

 virgins in scarlet and gold leaf. The reek of incense and the

 flickering of the massed banks of candles distracted her even though

 what he was saying was what she wanted to hear, she wished he had chosen

 some other place to say it.

 That very morning she had been taken by a sudden spell of vomiting, and

 a mild nausea persisted even now.

 As a physician she knew exactly what that heralded.

 Before the courtesy visit to we Portuguese Governor'smouldering palace,

 she had tentatively decided that she would have to take the initiative.

 That attack of vapours had convinced her of the urgency of the

 situation, and she had pondered how she could induce Clinton Codrington

 to stake some sort of claim to the burden she was convinced she was

 carrying.

 When Zouga had still lived at King's Lynn with Uncle William, she had

 discovered a cheaply printed novel of a most disreputable type concealed

 amongst the military texts on Zouga's desk. From a furtive study of

 this publication she had learned that it was possible for a woman to

 seduce a man, as well as the other way around. Unfortunately, the

 author had not provided a detailed description of the procedures. She

 had not even been certain if it were possible in a carriage, or whether

 anything should be said during the process, but now Clinton was

 obviating the necessity for experiment by a straightforward declaration.

 Her relief was tinged with shades of disappointment, after having been

 forced into the decision to carry out his seduction she had found

 herself looking forward to the experienceNow, however, she forced

 herself to assume an attentive expression and, when he hesitated, to

 encourage him with a nod or a gesture. Even though I am without

 powerful friends in the service, yet my record is such that I would

 never expect half pay appointment, and although it might sound immodest

 I would confidently look forward to hoisting my own broad pennant before

 I am fifty years of age."

 It was typical of him that he was already thinking twenty five years

 ahead. It required an effort to prevent her irritation showing, for

 Robyn preferred to live in the present, or at least the immediately

 foreseeable future. I should point out that an Admiral's wife enjoys a

 great deal of social prestige, he went on comfortably, and her

 irritation flared higher. Prestige was something she had always

 intended to win at first hand, crusader against the slave trade,

 celebrated pioneer in tropical medicine, writer of admired books on

 African travel.

 She could not contain it longer, but her voice was sweet and demure. "A

 woman can have a career as well as being a wife."

 Clinton drew himself up stiffly. "A wife's place is in the home, he

 intoned, and she opened her mouth, then slowly closed it again. She

 knew she was bargaining from weakness, and when she was silent Clinton

 was encouraged. "To begin with a comfortable little house, near the

 harbour in Portsmouth. Of course, once there are children one would

 have to seek larger premises-, You would want many children? " she

 asked still sweetly, but with colour mounting in her cheeks. Oh yes,

 indeed. One a year, and Robyn recalled those pale drabs with whom she

 had worked, women with brats hanging from both breasts and every limb,

 with another one always in the belly. She shuddered, and he was

 immediately concerned. Are you cold? "No. No, please go on."

 She felt trapped, and not for the first time resented the role that her

 sex had forced upon her. Miss Ballantyne, Doctor Ballantyne, what I

 have been trying to say to you, is that I would be greatly honoured if

 you could find it in yourself to consent to become my wife."

 Now when it came she was not really ready for it, and her confusion was

 genuine. Captain Codrington, this comes as such a surprise-'I do not

 see why. My admiration for you must be apparent, and the other day you

 led me to believe-" He hesitated, and then with a rush, "you even

 allowed me to embrace you."

 Suddenly she was overcome with the urge to burst out laughing, if only

 he had known her further intentions towards him, but she skittered away

 from the subject, her expression as solemn as his.

 When would we be able to marry? " she asked instead. Well, on my

 return to-'There is a British consul at Zanzibar, and you are bound

 there, are you not! she interrupted quickly. "He could perform the

 ceremony."

 Clinton's face lit with slow, deep joy. "Oh Miss Ballantyne, does that

 mean, can I take it that -" He took a pace towards her, and she had a

 vivid image of the tiny house in Portsmouth bursting at the seams with

 little blond replicas of himself, and she took a quick pace backwards

 and went on hurriedly. I need time to think."

 He stopped, joy faded and he said heavily, "Of course. "It means such a

 change in my life, I would have to abandon all my plans. The

 expedition, it's such a big decision. "I could wait a year, longer if

 necessary. Until after the expedition, as long as you wished, he told

 her earnestly, and she felt a flutter of panic deep in her belly. No, I

 mean I need a few days, that is all, and she laid her hand on his

 forearm. "I will give you an answer before we reach Quelimane. I

 promise you that."

 Sheikh Yussuf was a worried man. For eight days the big dhow-rigged

 vessel had lain within sight of land, the single, huge lateen sail

 drooped from the long yard, the sea about her was velvet smooth during

 the day and afire with phosphorus during the long moonless, windless

 nights.

 So deep and utter was the calm that not the slightest swell moved the

 surface. The dhow lay so still that she might have been hard aground.

 The Sheikh was a master mariner who owned a fleet of trading vessels and

 who for forty years had threaded the seaways of the Indian Ocean. He

 knew intimately each island, each headland and the tricks of the tides

 that swirled about them. He knew the great roads that the currents cut

 across the waters the way a post coachman knows each turn and dip of the

 road between his stages, and he could run them without compass or

 sextant, steering only by the heavenly bodies a thousand miles and more

 across open water, making his unerring landfalls on the great horn of

 Africa, on the coast of India and back again on the island of Zanzibar.

 In forty years he had never known the monsoon wind to fail for eight

 successive days at this season of the year.

 All his calculations had been based on the wind standing steady out of

 the south-east, day and night, hour after hour, day after day.

 He had taken on his cargo with that expectation, calculating that he

 could discharge again on Zanzibar Island within six days of loading.

 Naturally, a man expected losses, they were an integral part of his

 calculations. Ten percent losses was the very least, twenty was more

 likely, thirty was acceptable, forty was always possible and even losses

 of fifty percent would still leave the voyage in profit.

 But not this. He looked up at the stubby foremast from which drooped

 the fifteen-foot-long scarlet banner of the Sultan of Zanzibar, beloved

 of Allah, ruler of all the Omani Arabs and, overlord of vast tracts of

 eastern Africa. The banner was faded and soiled as the lateen sail,

 both of them veterans of fifty such voyages, of calms and hurricanes, of

 baking sun and the driving torrential rains of the high monsoon. The

 golden Arabic script that covered the banner was barely legible now, and

 he had lost count of the number of times it had been taken down from the

 masthead and carried at the head of his column of armed men deep into

 the interior of that brooding land on the horizon.

 How many times had that banner wafted out proudly, long and sinuous as a

 serpent on the breeze, as he brought his vessel up under the fort at

 Zanzibar Island.

 Sheikh Yussuf caught himself dreaming again. It was an old man's

 failing. He straightened up on the pile of cushions and precious rugs

 of silk and gold thread, and looked down from his command position on

 the poop deck. His crew lay like dead men in the shade of the sail,

 their grubby robes folded up over their heads against the heat. Let

 them lie, he decided, there was nothing mortal man could do now, except

 wait. It was in the hands of Allah now. "There is one God, he

 murmured. And Mohammed is his prophet. " It did not occur to him to

 question his fate, to rail or pray against it. It was God's will, and

 God is great.

 Yet he could not help feeling regret. It was thirty years since he had

 taken such a fine cargo as this, and at prices that compared with those

 of thirty years before.

 Three hundred and thirty black pearls, each one perfectly formed, young&

 by Allah, not one of them over sixteen years of age. They were of a

 people he had never encountered before, for he had never before traded

 so far south. It was only in this last season that he had heard of the

 new source of black pearl from beyond the Djinn Mountains, that

 forbidden land from which no man returned.

 A new people, well favoured and beautifully formed, strong and tall,

 sturdy limbs, not those stickline legs of the people from beyond the

 lakes; these had full moon faces and good strong white teeth. Sheikh

 Yussuf nodded over his pipe, the water bubbled softly in the bowl of the

 hookah at each inhalation and he let the smoke trickle out softly

 between his lips. It had stained his white beard pale yellow at the

 corners of his mouth, and at each lungful. he felt the delightful

 lethargy steal through his old veins, and take the edge off the cold

 frosts of age which seemed always now to chill his blood.

 There was suddenly a higher pitched shriek, that rose above the low

 hubbub which enveloped the dhow. The sound was part of the ship, day

 and night it came up from the slave hold below the dhow's maindeck.

 Sheikh Yussuf removed the mouthpiece from his lips and cocked his head

 to listen, combing his fingers through his scraggling white beard, but

 the shriek was not repeated. It was perhaps the final cry from one of

 his fine black pearls.

 Sheikh Yussuf sighed, the din from below decks had slowly decreased in

 volume while the dhow lay becalmed, and he was able to judge with great

 accuracy how high his losses were by that volume. He knew he had

 already lost half of them. Another quarter at the very least would

 perish before he could reach Zanzibar, many more would go even after

 they were landed, only the very hardiest would be fit for the market,

 and then only after careful convalescence.

 Another indication of his losses, though not as accurate, was the smell.

 Some of them must have gone on the very first day of the calm and

 without the wind the heat had been blinding. It would be even worse in

 the holds, the corpses would be swollen to twice life-size. The smell

 was bad, he could not recall a worse stench in all his forty years. It

 was a pity that there was no way in which to remove the bodies, but this

 could only be done in port.

 Sheikh Yussuf dealt only in young females. They were smaller and much

 hardier than males of the same-age, and could be loaded more densely. He

 had been able to reduce the clearance between each deck by six inches,

 which meant an entire extra deck could be built into the hold.

 Females had a remarkable ability to go without water for longer periods

 than the males, like the camel of the desert they seemed able to exist

 on the accumulated fat in their thighs, buttocks and bosoms, and to make

 the Mozambique passage even in the fairest conditions of wind and tide

 required five days without water.

 Another consideration was the loss of males destined for China and the

 Far East by the necessary surgery. The Chinese buyers insisted that all

 male slaves be castrated before they would purchase. It was a logical

 precaution to prevent breeding with local populations, but one that

 entailed additional losses to the trader who must perform the operation.

 The final reason that Sheikh Yussuf dealt only in comely young females

 was that they commanded a price almost twice that of a young male slave

 in the Zanzibar market.

 Before Sheikh Yussuf loaded his wares, he allowed them to fatten for at

 least a week in his barracoons, with as much to eat and drink as they

 could force down their throats. Then they were stripped naked, except

 for light chains, and at low tide taken out to the dhow where it lay

 high and dry on the shoaling beach.

 The first girls aboard were made to lie on the bare boards of the hull

 in the bottom of the hold, each on her left side with her knees raised

 slightly so that the knees of the girl behind her could fit against the

 back of her legs, the front of her pelvis against buttocks, belly

 against back, like a row of spoons in a rack.

 At intervals the chains were snapped into the ring bolts already set

 into the deck. This was not only for security but also to prevent the

 layer of human bodies sliding about in rough weather, piling up in heaps

 and crushing those beneath.

 once the bottom of the hold was covered with a layer of humanity, the

 next deck was placed in position over them, so close that they could not

 attempt to sit upright nor roll over. The next layer of girls was laid

 over them, and the next deck over them again.

 To reach the lower decks meant laboriously unchaining and unloading each

 layer of humanity, and lifting the intervening decks. It could not even

 be attempted at sea.

 However, with the trade wind standing fair, it was a straight run down

 the channel, and the wind blowing in through the canvas scoops and

 ports, kept the air below decks breathable, and the heat bearable.

 Sheikh Yussuf sighed again and lifted his rheumy eyes to the unbroken

 blue line of the eastern horizon. This will be my last voyage, " he

 decided, whispering aloud in the way of old men. "Allah has been good

 and I am a rich man with many strong sons. Perhaps this is his sign to

 me. This will indeed be my last voyage."

 It was almost as though he had been overheard, for the scarlet banner

 moved lazily, like an adder emerging from long hibernation, then slowly

 reared its head, and Sheikh Yussuf felt the wind on his scared and

 wrinkled cheek.

 He stood up suddenly, quick and supple as a man half his age, and

 stamped his bare foot on the deck. Up', he cried. "Up, my children.

 Here is the wind at last! And while his crew scrambled to their feet,

 he took the long tiller under his arm and threw back his head to watch

 the sail bulge outwards, and the thick clumsy pole of the mainmast heel

 slowly across a horizon suddenly dark with the scurry of the trade wind.

 Clinton Co&ington caught the first whiff of it during the night. It

 woke him from a nightmare that he had lived through on many other

 nights, but when he lay sweating in his narrow wooden bunk the smell

 persisted and he threw a boat cloak over his bare shoulders and hurried

 up on deck.

 It came in gusts out of the darkness, for minutes at a time the warm

 sweet rush of the trade wind brought only the iodine and salt smell of

 the sea, then suddenly there was another curdled whiff of it. It was a

 smell that Clinton would never forget, like the smell of a cage full of

 carnivorous beasts that had never been cleaned, the stench of excrement

 and rotten flesh, and his nightmare came rushing back upon him in full

 strength.

 Ten years before, when Clinton had been a very junior midshipman aboard

 the old Widgeon, one of the very first gunboats of the anti-slavery

 squadron, they had taken a slaver in northern latitudes. She was a

 schooner Of 300 tons burden, out of Lisbon, but flying a Brazilian flag

 of convenience, with the unlikely name of Hirondelle Blanche, the White

 Swallow Clinton had been ordered into her as prize-master with orders to

 run her into the nearest Portuguese port and deliver her to the Courts

 of Mixed Commission to be condemned as a prize.

 They had made the capture a hundred nautical miles off the Brazilian

 coast, after the Hirondelle Blanche and her five hundred black slaves

 had almost completed the dreaded middle passage. Under orders, Clinton

 had turned the schooner and sailed her back to the Cape Verde Islands,

 crossing the equator to do so and lying three days becalmed in the

 doldrums before breaking from their suffocating grip.

 In the harbour of Praia, on the principal island of Sio Tiago, Clinton

 had been refused permission to land any of his slaves, and they had lain

 sixteen days waiting for the Portuguese president of the Court of Mixed

 Commission to reach a decision. Finally, the president had decided,

 after strenuous representation by the owners of the Hirondelle Blanche

 that he had no jurisdiction in the case, and ordered Clinton to sail her

 back to Brazil and submit the vessel to the Brazilian courts.

 However, Clinton knew very well what a Brazilian court would decide, and

 instead set a course for the British naval station on St. Helena Island,

 once more crossing the equator with his burden of human misery.

 By the time he dropped anchor in Jamestown roads, the surviving slaves

 aboard had made three consecutive crossings of the terrible middle

 passage. There were only twenty-six of them still alive, and the smell

 of a slaver had become part of the nightmares which still plagued

 Clinton ten years later.

 Now he stood on the darkened deck and flared his nostrils, the same

 smell coming to him out of the tropical night, horrible and

 unmistakable. He had to drag himself away with a physical effort to

 give the orders to fire Black joke's furnace and work up a head of steam

 in her boilers, ready for the dawn.

 Sheikh Yussuf recognized the dark shape with a sense of utter disbelief,

 and the dismay of one finally deserted by Allah.

 She was still five miles distant, indistinct in the dusty pink light of

 the dawn, but coming up swiftly, a thick column of black smoke smearing

 away on her beam, carried low over the green waters of the inshore

 channel by the boisterous trade wind. The same wind spread out her

 ensign to full view from the poop of the dhow, and in the field of

 Sheikh Yussuf's ancient brass and leatherbound telescope it snapped and

 flickered, the snowy white field crossed by bold bright scarlet.

 How he hated that fla& the symbol of an arrogant, bullying people,

 tyrants of the oceans, captors of continents. He had seen gunboats like

 this one in Aden and Calcutta, he had seen that same flag flying in

 every far corner of every sea he had ever sailed. Very clearly he knew

 what it all meant.

 He put up the helm, in that gesture acknowledging the final end to a

 disastrous voyage, the dhow came around reluctantly, creaking in every

 timber, the great sail flogging before it could be trimmed to take the

 wind over the stern .

 There had seemed to be so little risk, he thought with weary

 resignation. Of course, the treaty that the Sultan had made with the

 Zanzibar consul of these dangerous infidels allowed his subjects to

 trade in the black pearls, between any of the Sultan's possessions, with

 the proViso that only Omani Arabs loyal to the Sultan could indulge in

 the lucrative traffic. No person of Christian European extraction, not

 even a converted Moslem, could sail under the Sultan's flag, and not

 even an Omani Arab might trade beyond the borders of the Sultan's

 possessions.

 The Sultan's African possessions had been very carefully defined in the

 treaty, and here was he, Sheikh Yussuf, with a cargo of three hundred

 and thirty living, dying and dead slaves at least one hundred and fifty

 miles south of the furthest of the Sultan's borders with a British

 gunboat bearing down upon him. Truly the ways of Allah were wonderful,

 passing the comprehension of man, Sheikh Yussuf thought with only the

 slightest taste of bitterness in his throat, as he hung grimly on to the

 tiller and made his run for the land.

 A gun thumped from the gunboat's bows, powder smoke flew bright as a

 seabird's wing in the first rays of the low sun, and Sheikh Yussuf spat

 passionately over the lee bulwark and said aloud, El Sheetan, the Devil,

 " using for the first time the name with which, in time, Captain Clinton

 Codrington would be known throughout the length of the Mozambique

 channel, and as far north as the great Horn of Africa.

 The bronze screw under Black fake's counter thrashed out a long wide

 wake behind her. She still had main and jib set, but Codrington would

 shorten to "fighting sailjust as soon as he had made the adjustment to

 counter the dhow's turn away towards the land.

 Zouga and Robyn were on the quarterdeck to watch the chase, infected by

 the restrained businesslike excitement which gripped the vessel so that

 Zouga laughed aloud and called, "Gone away! Tally-ho! " as the dhow

 turned, and Clinton glanced at him with a conspiratory grin.

 She's a slaver. Apart from the stink, that turn-away proves it beyond

 doubt."

 Robyn strained forward to watch- the filthy little vessel, with its

 discoloured and patched sail, the unpainted timbers of the hull striped

 with zebra stripes of human excrement and other wastes. It was her

 first view of a slaver actually carrying on its grisly trade, and she

 felt herself filled with a new purpose; she had come so far for this

 moment, and she tried to capture every detail of it all for her journal.

 Mr. Denham, give him a gun, if you please, ordered Clinton.

 The bow-chaser thudded, but the dhow held to her new course. Be ready

 to round up and send the boat away on the instant. " Clinton's

 excitement had given way to obvious anxiety. He turned to look across

 at his boarding party.

 They had been issued with cutlass and pistol, and waited now in the

 waist under the command of a young ensign.

 Clinton would dearly have liked to command the boarding-party himself

 but his arm was still in its sling and the stitches still in the wound.

 To go aboard a dhow in a, rough sea, and fight its crew required both

 hands and the agility which his wound denied him. Reluctantly he had

 put Ferris in charge of the boarders.

 Igo Now he looked back at the dhow, and his expression was grim. He is

 going to beach."

 They were all silent now, staring ahead, watching the slaver run in

 towards the land. But there is a coral reef. " Robyn spoke for them

 all, pointing to the black points that broke the surface a quarter of a

 mile short of the land itself, they looked like a necklace of sharks"

 teeth, and the surf broke and swirled about them as it was driven in

 upon the trade wind. Yes, Clinton agreed. "They will run it up on the

 coral and escape across the lagoon. "But, what about the slaves? "

 Robyn asked, horrified, and nobody answered her.

 Black joke rushed on purposefully, but with the wind almost dead astern

 the dhow trained her long boom around to go on to her best point of

 sailing. The boom was longer than the hull itself, and the huge

 triangular mainsail bulged far out, almost touching the surface of the

 water as she hurled down upon the reef. We may just cut her off, "

 Zouga said loudly, but he did not have the seaman's eye for bearing and

 speed, and Clinton Codrington shook his head angrily. Not this time."

 But it was very finely run. Clinton held his course up until the very

 last moment, and the dhow passed a mere two hundred yards ahead of his

 bows. So close that they could clearly make out the features of the

 helmsman on the vessel's poopdeck, a skinny old Arab in long, flowing

 robe and with the tasselled fez on his head that declared that he had

 made the pilgrimage to Mecca. On his belt glittered the gold filigree

 hilt of the short curved dagger of a sheikh, and his long sciaggling

 white beard fluttered in the wind as be leaned on the long tiller and

 turned his head to watch the high black hull bearing down on him. I

 could put a bullet through the bastard, " Zouga growled. It's too late

 for that, " Clinton told him, for the dhow had passed beneath their bows

 and the gun boat was as close to the menacing fangs of coral as she

 dared go.

 Clinton called to his quartermaster at the gunboat's wheel, "Heave to!

 And bring her head to wind. " Then, spinning on his heel, "Away, the

 boarding-party! " There was a squeal of davits as the crowded whaler

 dropped out of sight towards the choppy green sea alongside, but already

 the dhow was pitching wildly in the lines of seething white surf that

 guarded the reef.

 It was two days since that dead flat calm had broken, and since then the

 trades had worked up a goodly swell.

 It came sweeping in across the inshore channel, in low green humps with

 dark wind-scarred backs, but as soon as they felt the tilt of the land,

 they peaked up eagerly, the crests turning opaque as green jelly,

 shivering and wobbling, and then collapsing on themselves and surging in

 tumultuous white water up on to the black fangs of the reef.

 The dhow caught one of the taller swells, threw up her stern and went

 racing down upon it like a surf boat, with the skinny old Arab at the

 tiller prancing like a trained monkey on the stick of the tiller to hold

 her in the wave, but the dhow was not built for this work, and she dug

 her shoulder rebelliously into the sliding, roaring chute of green

 water, breaching so fiercely to the wave that the water poured aboard

 her in a green wall and she wallowed broadside, half swamped before she

 took the reef with a force that snapped off her single mast at deck

 level and sent yard and sail and rigging crashing over the side.

 In an instant she was transformed into a broken hulk, and clearly the

 watchers on Black Joke's deck could hear the crackle and rending of her

 bottom timbers.  There they go! Clinton muttered angrily, as the dhow's

 crew began to abandon her, leaping over the side and using the swells to

 carry them over the reef into the quieter waters of the lagoon,

 thrashing and kicking until the beach shelved up beneath them.

 They saw the old Arab steersman amongst the survivors. He waded ashore,

 beard and robe plastered against his body with seawater, and then lifted

 his robes to his waist, exposing skinny legs and shrunken buttocks as he

 scampered up the white beach with the agility of a goat and disappeared

 amongst the palm groves.

 Black joke's whaler pulled swiftly into the first line of breakers, the

 Ensign in the stern peering over his shoulder to judge the surf, and

 then catching his wave taking her in with a rush, swinging sharply into

 the lee of the dhow's stranded hull where there was calmer water.

 They watched the Ensign and four of his men go up over the side, pistols

 and cutlasses drawn, but by this time the last of the Arab crew were

 staggering up the beach and into the sanctuary of the palm grove a

 quarter of a mile away across the lagoon.

 The Ensign led his men below decks, and they waited on Black Joke's

 quarterdeck, watching the abandoned dbow through the telescope. A

 minute passed before the Ensign appeared on deck again. He crossed

 quickly to the dhow's rail and leaned against it to vomit over the side,

 then straightened up and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve,

 before shouting an order down to the oarsmen in the whaler.

 Immediately the whaler shot out from the lee of the hull, and pulled

 lustily back through the surf towards Black joke.

 The boatswain came in through the entry port, and knuckled his forehead

 to his captain. Mr. Ferris's compliments, sir, and he needs a carpenter

 to get the slave decks open, and two good men with bolt cutters for the

 chains. " He had gabbled this out on a single breath, and he paused to

 refill his lungs. "Mr. Ferris says as how it's fierce bad below decks,

 and some of them is trapped, and he needs the doctor-', I'm ready to go,

 Robyn cut in. Wait, Clinton snapped, but Robyn had gathered her skirts

 and run. If my sister goes, I'm going too. "Very well, then,

 Ballantyne, I'm obliged for your assistance, Clinton nodded. "Tell

 Ferris we have an incoming tide, full moon tonight, so it will make

 springs. There is a twenty-two foot tidal fall on this coast. He will

 have less than an hour in which to work."

 Robyn appeared on deck again, lugging her black leather valise, and she

 had exchanged skirts for breeches once more. The seamen on deck gawked

 at her legs curiously, but she ignored them and hurried to the ship's

 side. The boatswain gave her a hand and she scrambled down into the

 whaler with Zouga carrying her valise behind her.

 The ride in through the surf was terrifying and exhilarating at the same

 time; the whaler tilted forward at an alarming angle, the water hissing

 and creaming alongside, with a belly-swooping rush that ended alongside

 the dhow's heavily canted side.

 The deck was running with water and listed so steeply that Robyn had to

 crawl up it on her hands and knees, and each time a wave struck the

 hull, it quivered and shook and more water came streaming down over the

 deck.

 The Ensign and his boarding party had ripped the hatches off the main

 hold and as she reached them, Robyn gagged and choked with the solid

 stench that came out of that square opening. She had believed herself

 hardened to the smell of death and corruption, but never had she

 experienced anything like this. Did you bring the bolt cutters? " the

 Ensign demanded, white-faced with nausea and horror.

 The bolt cutters were heavy duty shears, used for cutting the shrouds

 and halyards from a dismasted vessel.

 Two men wielded them now, as they lifted a bunch of small black bodies

 through the hatch, all of them fastened together at wrist and ankle by

 the clanking black steel links. It reminded Robyn of the cut-out paper

 dolls she had amused herself with as a child, fashioning with scissors a

 single figure from the folded sheet, and then pulling out a chain of

 identical dolls. The cutters crunched through the light chain and the

 limp little bodies fell apart. They are children, she cried out aloud,

 and the men around her worked in grim silence, dragging them out of the

 hatch, cutting them free and dropping them on to the tilted wet deck.

 Robyn seized the first of them, a skeletal stick figure, crusted and

 streaked with dried filth, vomit and faeces, head lolling as she lifted

 it into her lap.

 No. "There was no life. The eyeballs had dried already.

 She let the head drop and a seaman dragged it away. No, and "No, and

 "No again. " Some of them were already in an advanced state of

 putrification; at a word from the Ensign, the seamen began dropping the

 wasted corpses over the side, to make room for those still coming up

 from below.

 Robyn found her first live one, there was feeble pulse and fluttering

 breath, but it did not need a physician's instinct to tell that the hold

 on life was tenuous. She worked swiftly, apportioning her time to where

 the chance of life seemed greater.

 Another taller wave struck the dhow, and it tilted sharply, the timbers

 crackled and snapped deep inside her. Tides flooding. Work faster,

 shouted the Ensign. They were into the hull now. Robyn could hear the

 thud of sledge hammers and the rip of irons as they began to tear the

 slave decks out of her.

 Zouga was in there, stripped to the waist, leading the attack on the

 wooden barricades. He was an officer, with the easy way of command and

 his natural leadership was swiftly acknowledged by the seamen around

 him.

 The hubbub reminded Robyn of a rookery at sundown, the shrieks of the

 returning birds and the answering cries from the chicks in the nests.

 The mass of black girls were aroused from the lethargy of approaching

 death by the dhow's wild antics, the crash of breaking timbers and the

 flood of cold salt water into the hold.

 Some of those lying in the bilges were already drowning as the hold

 flooded, and some of them had realized that there was a rescue team

 aboard, and cried aloud with the last strength of waning hope.

 Alongside the slaver, the whaler was moored, and she was almost filled

 with the wasted bodies in which some life still burned, while on the

 surface of the lagoon bobbed a hundred ox more corpses with gas-swollen

 bellies like the corks on a fishing-net. Take them to the ship the

 Ensign shouted down to his oarsmen in the whaler, "and come back for

 more. " As he spoke, another white-crested wave struck the dhow solidly

 and she heeled, but she was pinned down by the spikes of coral driven

 through her bottom timbers, otherwise she would have turned turtle.

 Robyn! " Zouga shouted at her from the hatch. "We need you! " For a

 moment she did not even glance at him, but shook her head at the sailor

 beside her. No, she's gone."

 Expressionlessly the sailor picked up the frail body and dumped it over

 the side.

 Then Robyn scrambled up to the hatch and dropped through it.

 It was a descent into the pit, dark after the brilliant noontide, so

 that she paused for a moment to let her vision adjust.

 The tilting deck beneath her feet was slippery with human waste, so that

 she had to cling for a handhold.

 The air was so thick that for a minute she nearly panicked, as though

 she were being smothered by a stinking damp pillow. She almost fought

 her way back into the sweet sunlight, but then she forced herself to

 take a gulp of it, and though her guts heaved and she tasted the bitter

 flooding into the back of her throat, she kept it down.

 Then her own discomfort was forgotten as she made out the chaos about

 her. That last wave, Zouga grunted as he steadied her with an arm about

 her shoulder, "the decks have collapsed."

 Like a house of cards they had folded in upon each other, raw splinters

 of timber thrusting up out of the gloom, baulks crossed like the blades

 of a scissors, with small dark bodies trapped in the jaws, others

 crushed by the fallen beams, squashed so that they were no longer

 recognizable as human, others dangling head down on their ankle-chains,

 suspended in space, writhing weakly as crippled insects, or hanging

 quietly, swinging to the dhow's movements. Oh, sweet Mother of God,

 where to begin, Robyn whispered. She let go her handhold, starting

 forward and her feet shot out from under her on the slick coated deck,

 and she went plunging down into the hold.

 She struck heavily and pain flared in her back and lower body, but she

 dragged herself on to her knees. Her own pain seemed insignificant in

 this terrible prison. Are you all right! Zouga asked anxiously, but

 she shrugged his hands away.

 There was one girl screaming. Robyn crawled to her.

 Her legs were crushed below the knees, trapped under a baulk of

 hand-hewn timber.

 Can you move that! she asked Zouga. No, she's done for. Come, there

 are others-No Robyn crawled back to where her bag had fallen.

 The pain was bad, but she forced it below the surface of her

 consciousness.

 She had only seen a leg amputation performed once before. When she

 started the girl threw off the seamen who held her and attacked Robyn

 like a tortured wild cat. Her nails raked skin from Robyn's cheek, but

 by the time Robyn had freed the first leg below the knee, the child was

 silent and limp. She died before Robyn had reached the bone of the

 second leg, and Robyn was weeping chokingly to herself as she left the

 body still hanging in the grip of the timber baulk.

 She scrubbed her hands together, they were bloodied to the elbows, her

 palms sticky against each other. She felt consumed by guilt at her

 failure, without the strength to move. Dully, she stared about her now.

 The hold was more than half flooded, the tide pounded remorselessly at

 the ship's hull. We have to get out, " Zouga called to her urgently,

 and when she did not turn her head, he seized her shoulder and shook her

 roughly. "There's nothing more we can do. It will capsize at any

 moment."

 Robyn was staring down into the stinking black waters which sloshed from

 one end of the hold to the other, a single hand broke through the

 surface directly below her, a child's hand with soft pink palm and

 pretty tapered fingers spread in a gesture of appeal. The iron cuff

 seemed too large for the narrow wrist, and weighted it down to the hand

 sank gently disappearing from her sight. She stared after it with

 infinite regret, then Zouga hauled her roughly to her feet. Come on,

 damn it! His face was savage, haunted with the horrors he had

 experienced in this fetid, half flooded hull.

 The next wave hit the swamped hull, and this time it broke the grip of

 the coral. Timber squealed as it twisted and tore, and the dhow began

 to roll, the filthy waters rose up out of the darkness into a steep

 black wave and burst about them, shoulder deep.

 The damaged slave decks broke free, sliding down over each other,

 tumultuous and lethal, releasing a fresh layer of tightly packed black

 bodies to tumble loosely into the flooded depths. Robyn! We'll be

 trapped. " He dragged her up towards the square of brilliant sunlight,

 clambering over timbers and bodies.

 We can't leave them, Robyn resisted.

 They're finished, damn it. The whole thing is going.

 We have to get out."

 She pulled her arm free, stumbled, collapsed backwards, hit something so

 that pain flared through her lower body again and she cried out with the

 strength of it. She was lying on her side, couched on a pile of linked

 bodies, and there was a face a foot from hers. It was alive, she had

 never seen such eyes, cat fierce, falcon bright, the colour of boiling

 honey. This one is strong enough! " Robyn thought, and then she

 shouted. "Help me Zouga. "For God's sake, Robyn."

 She crawled forward and reached the black child, and the deck tilted

 viciously under her, fresh cold water bursting into the hull.

 Leave her, shouted Zouga.

 The fresh flood swirled up around Robyn's head, annd the chained girl

 disappeared below it.

 Robyn lunged for her, groping blindly below the surface, feeling panic

 rise in her when she could not find the child.

 Ducking her head under, choking as the pain in her belly made her gasp

 and she swallowed water, she at last got a grip on the girl's shoulder,

 feeling her struggling as desperately as she.

 Together they came out above the surface, coughing and gasping weakly,

 Robyn holding the girl's mouth just clear of the surface, but when she

 tried to lift her further the chain anchored them both and she screamed.

 Zouga, help me! " Another surge of water, smelling like raw sewage,

 filled her mouth and both of them went under once more.

 She thought she would never come up again, but stubbornly she held on,

 sliding one arm under the girl's armpit, and with the other hand

 gripping her chin, forcing it up so that when they broke out again the

 girl's face was lifted to take another precious breath of the stinking

 air, and Zouga was with them.

 He took a double turn of the chain around his wrists and threw all his

 weight on to it. In the gloom of the hull he towered over them, the

 light from the hatch highlighting the bulging wet muscles in his arms

 and shoulders as he strained at the chain, his mouth opened in a silent

 scream of effort, sinewy cords standing out of his throat.

 Another wave hissed over them, and this time Robyn was not ready for it,

 she felt the burn of it in her lungs and knew she was drowning. She

 need only release her hold on the girl's head and shoulders and she

 would be free to breathe, but she held on stubbornly, determined

 suddenly that she would never let this little soul go. She had seen it

 in the girl's eyes, the fierce will to live. This one she could save,

 this one out of three hundred or more was the only one she could be

 certain of saving.

 She had to have her.

 The wave receded and Zouga was still there, his hair streaming with

 water, slicked down over his face and into his eyes, and now he shifted

 slightly, jamming his legs against one of the heavy timbers and he

 reared back once more against -the chain, and a low bellow. broke from

 his throat in the agony of effort.

 The ring bolt that held the loop of chain to the deck ripped out

 cleanly, and Zouga dragged both women clear of the water, the chain

 slithering after them for ten feet or more before coming up hard against

 the next ring bolt.

 Robyn had never suspected Zouga capable of such strength, she had never

 seen his naked upper body, not since he was a child, had not realized

 that he had the lean hard muscle of a prizefighter. But even so, he

 could not repeat the effort, and the girl was still chained. They had

 won only a temporary respite. Zouga was bellowing now, and the young

 naval Ensign scrambled down through the open hatch. To re-enter the

 doomed hull was an act of courage in itself, Robyn realized, as she saw

 that the Ensign carried the cutting shears, lugging the heavy tool with

 him as he floundered towards the struggling group in the bottom of the

 hold.

 The hull rolled through another five degrees, the water swirling higher

 towards them hungrily, it sucked at their bodies. Had not Zouga given

 them the extra few feet of chain they would be far below the surface

 now.

 Zouga stooped over her and helped her hold the black girl's head above

 the water, while the Ensign groped for the chain links and fed them into

 the jaws of the shears.

 But the blades had been blunted and chipped by the heavy work they had

 already done, and the Ensign was still only a lad. Zouga pushed him

 aside.

 Again muscle bunched in his shoulders and upper arms and the chain

 parted with a metallic clunk. Zouga cut twice at ankle and at wrist,

 then he dropped the shears, picked the frail naked body up against his

 chest and climbed frantically up towards the hatch.

 Robyn tried to follow him, but something tore deep, in her belly, she

 felt it go, tearing like brittle parchment, and the pain was a lance

 that transfixed her. She doubled over it, clutching herself, unable to

 move, and the wave hit her, knocking her down, swirling her over the

 broken timbers into the dark waters, and the darkness began to fill her

 head. There was temptation to let go now, to let the water and darkness

 take her, it would be so easy, but she gathered her anger and her

 obstinacy to her and went on fighting. She was still fighting when

 Zouga reached her, and dragged her up towards the light.

 As they crawled out through the hatch into the sunlight, so the dhow

 rolled all the way, flinging them as though from a catapult over the

 side into the shocking cold of the green waters.

 As the dhow capsized so the last faint cries from within her were

 extinguished, and the hull began to break up under the remorseless

 hammer of the sea.

 When Robyn and Zouga surfaced, still clinging together, the whaler was

 hovering over them, the Ensign risking all to come in over the reef for

 the pick-up.

 Strong hands reached down, and the overladen boat heeled dangerously as

 they were pulled aboard. Then the Ensign swung the bows to meet the

 next boiling line of surf and they climbed its steep side and crashed

 over the top, the seamen pulling frantically to hold her bows on.

 Robyn crawled to where the black girl lay on a heap of other bodies in

 the bottom of the boat, her relief at finding her aboard and still alive

 outweighing the pain of her sodden lungs and the deep ache in her belly.

 Robyn rolled the girl on to her back, and lifted her lolling head to

 cushion it from the pounding of the whaler's hull over the steep swells

 that threatened to crack her skull against the floorboards.

 She saw immediately that the girl was older than she had imagined,

 although the body was desiccated, dried out and wasted. Yet her pelvis

 had the breadth of maturity. She would be sixteen years old at least,

 Robyn thought, and pulled a corner of the tarpaulin over her body to

 screen her from the men's gaze.

 The girl opened her eyes again, and stared at Robyn solemnly. Those

 eyes were still the colour of dark honey, but the ferocity had dimmed to

 some other emotion as she looked up into Robyn's face. Ngi ya bongo,

 the girl whispered, and with a shock Robyn realized that she understood

 the words. She was transported in an instant to another land and

 another woman, her mother, Helen Ballantyne, teaching her those same

 words, repeating them to her until Robyn had them perfected. Ngi ya

 bongo, I praise you! " Robyn tried to find a reply, but her mind was as

 battered as her body, and it had been so long ago that she had learned

 the language, the circumstances so different that the words came only

 haltingly. Velapi wena, who are you and from where do you come?

 The black girl's eyes flew wide with shock. You! " she whispered.

 "You speak the language of the people."

 They had taken on board twenty-eight living black girls.

 By the time Black joke got under way again and turned from the land,

 towards the open sea, the dhow's hull had burst open and the planking

 and timbers swung and pitched end over end as they sawed across the

 exposed reef.

 A squawking raucous flock of seabirds squabbled over the reef, hovering

 above the gruesome remnants that were mixed in the floating debris of

 the wreck, dropping to seize a tidbit and rise again on delicate fans of

 pearly wings.

 in the deeper water along the seaward side of the reef, the shark packs

 were gathering, lashing themselves into a frenzy, the stubby rounded

 triangles of their dorsal fins crisscrossing the green sweep of the

 current, while every few seconds a long torpedo-shaped body would break

 clear of the surface in an ecstasy of greed, falling back heavily with a

 boom like distant cannon as it struck the surface.

 Twenty-eight from three hundred and more was no great haul, Robyn

 thought, as she hobbled along the line of barely living bodies, her own

 bruised limbs protesting every step, and her despair deepened as she

 realized how far gone they were. It was easy to see which of them had

 already lost the will to resist. She had read her father's treatise on

 the sick African, and she knew how important this will to resist was in

 treating a primitive people.

 A perfectly healthy man could will himself to die, and once he did so

 there was nothing that could save him.

 That night, despite Robyn's constant attention, twenty-two of the girls

 died and were carried aft to be dropped over Black Joke's stern . By

 morning all the others were sinking into the coma and fever of renal

 failure, their kidneys, shrivelled and atrophied by lack of fluid, were

 no longer filtering the urinal wastes from the bodies" system's. There

 was only one treatment and that was to force the patient to drink.

 The little Nguni girl resisted strongly. Robyn knew that she belonged

 to the Nguni group of peoples, although she was uncertain of which

 tribe, for many of them spoke variations of the original Zulu, and the

 girl's accent and pronunciation had been strange to Robyn's ear.

 Robyn had tried to keep her talking, keep her conscious and keep the

 will to resist burning in her. She had conceived an almost maternal

 possessiveness for the child, and though she tried to spread her

 attention fairly amongst the other survivors, she always returned to

 where the girl lay under a strip of tarpaulin and held the pannikin of

 weak sugar solution to her lips.

 They shared only a few hundred words in which to converse, as the girl

 rested between each painful sip of fluid. I am called Juba, the child

 whispered, in answer to Robyn's question. Even the sound of it brought

 back to Robyn the memory of the cooing of the plump blue-grey

 ring-necked doves in the wild fig trees that grew above the mission

 cottage in which she had been born. Little Dove. It is a pretty name.

 " And the girl smiled shyly, and went on in that dry tortured whisper.

 Much of it Robyn could not follow, but she listened and nodded,

 realizing with a pang that the sense of it was going, Juba was sinking

 into delirium, that she was talking to phantoms from her past. Now she

 tried to resist when Robyn forced her to drink, muttering and crying out

 in fear or anger, gagging on the tiny mouthfuls of liquid.

 You must rest yourself, " Zouga told Robyn brusquely. You have been

 with her for almost two days without sleeping. You're killing yourself.

 "I am quite well, thank you, Robyn told him, but her face was gaunt and

 white with fatigue and pain. At least let me take you down to your

 cabin."

 By this time Juba was the only black girl still alive, all the others

 had gone over the stern to feed the following shark pack. Very well,

 Robyn agreed, and Zouga carried the child down from the makeshift

 shelter on the aft deck which Robyn had used as a surgery.

 The steward brought a canvas pallet filled with straw and laid it on the

 deck of Robyn's tiny cabin. There was only just room for it, and Zouga

 laid the naked body upon it.

 Robyn was tempted to stretch out on her own narrow bunk to rest for a

 while, but she knew that if she let go now, even for a moment, she would

 fall into a deathlike sleep, and her patient would die of such neglect.

 Alone in the cabin, she sat cross-legged on the straw pallet, wedged her

 back against the sea-chest, and lifted Juba into her lap. Doggedly she

 went on with the task of forcing liquid between the girl's lips, drop by

 drop, hour after hour.

 Through the single port, the light turned to a ruby glow at the short

 tropical sunset and then it swiftly faded. It was almost completely

 dark in the cabin when suddenly Robyn felt a copious warm flood soak

 through her skirts into her lap. and she smelt the strong ammoniacal

 taint of the girl's urine. Thank you, God, " she whispered.

 "Oh, thank you, God! " The girl's kidneys were functioning again, she

 was safe. Robyn rocked the girl in her lap, feeling no revulsion from

 her soaked skirts, welcoming them as the promise of life. You did it, "

 she whispered. "You did, with sheer pluck, my little dove."

 She had just enough strength left herself to wipe down the child's body

 with a cloth soaked in sea water, then she stepped out of her soiled

 dress and collapsed face down on her hard narrow bunk.

 Robyn slept for ten hours, and then the cramps woke her groaning. Her

 knees were drawn up against her chest by the severity of the pain, and

 her belly muscles were hard as stone and it felt as though she had been

 clubbed across the back, a deep bruised sensation that alarmed her

 seriously.

 For many minutes after waking she believed herself seriously stricken,

 and then with a rush of relief and joy that was far stronger than the

 pain she realized what was happening to her. She dragged herself across

 the cabin, doubled over with the pain, and bathed in the bucket of cold

 sea water. Then she knelt beside Juba on the pallet.

 The girl's fever had abated. The skin felt cooler to the touch. Her

 continued recovery added to Robyn's sense of deep pleasure and relief.

 Now she would have to find the right moment to tell Clinton Codrington

 that she would not marry him, and the vision of the little house above

 the Portsmouth harbour receded. Despite the pain, she felt free, light

 of body, like a bird poised on the point of flight.

 She filled the pannikin with water and lifted Juba's head. We will be

 all right now, she told the girl, and Juba opened her eyes. We'll both

 be all right now, she repeated, watching the girl drink thirstily,

 smiling happily to herself.

 Juba's recovery was swift. Soon she ate with a robust appetite. Her

 body filled almost before Robyn's eyes, her skin took on the lustre of

 health and youth again, her eyes regained the sparkle of high spirits,

 and Robyn realized with proprietorial approval that she was a pretty

 girl, no, more than that, she had natural grace and poise, the

 voluptuous curve of bosom and buttock which ladies of high fashion tried

 to achieve with bustle and padded bodice. She possessed also a sweet

 moon-face, the big wide-set eyes and full sculptured lips that were

 exotic and strangely beautiful.

 Juba could not understand Robyn's concern with having her cover her

 breasts and legs, but Robyn had seen the seamen's eyes when the girl

 followed her up on to the deck with only a scrap of canvas covering the

 most vital point of her anatomy and showing no concern at all when the

 wind lifted the canvas and fluttered it like a beckoning flag. Robyn

 commandeered one of Zouga's oldest shirts. It hung to Juba's knees and

 she belted it at the waist with a bright ribbon that had the child

 cooing with the eternal feminine delight in pretty things.

 She followed Robyn about like a puppy, and Robyn's ear tuned to the

 Nguni language. Her vocabulary expanded swiftly, and the two of them

 chatted late every night, sitting side by side on the straw pallet.

 Clinton Codrington began showing acute signs of jealousy. He had become

 used to having more of her company, and Robyn was using the girl as an

 excuse to taper off their relationship, preparing him for the news that

 she must deliver before they reached Quelimane.

 Zouga also disapproved of her growing intimacy with the girl. Sissy,

 you must remember that she is a native. It never pays to let them get

 too familiar, Zouga told her gravely. "I've seen that happen too often

 in India. One has to keep one's reserve. After all, you are an English

 woman. "And she is a Matabele of Zanzi blood, which makes her an

 aristocrat, for her family came up with Mzilikazi from the south. Her

 father was a famous general and she can trace her bloodline back to

 Senzangakhona, the King of the Zulu, and the father of Chaka himself.

 We, on the other hand, can trace our family as far as great grandfather,

 who was a cattle heTd."

 Zouga's expression stiffened. He did not enjoy discussing the family

 origins. We are English. The greatest and most civilized people in the

 world's history. "Grandfather Moffat knows Mzilikazi, Robyn pointed

 out, "and thinks him a great gentleman. "You are being foolish, Zouga

 snapped.  "How can you compare the English race to these blood-thirsty

 savages."

 But he stooped out of the cabin for he did not wish to continue the

 discussion. As usual, Robyn had her facts correct and her logic was

 infuriating.

 His own grandfather, Robert Moffat, had first met Mzilikazi back in . 29

 and over the years the two men had become firm and trusted friends. The

 King relied on Moffat, whom he called Tshedi, for counsel in his

 dealings with the world beyond his borders and for medical treatment for

 the gout which plagued him as he grew older.

 The route northwards to the land of the Matabele always passed through

 Robert Moffat's mission station at Kuruman. A prudent traveller would

 ask for a safe conduct from the old missionary, and the Matabele impis

 guarding the Burnt Land along the border would honour that safe conduct.

 Indeed, the ease with which Fuller Ballantyne had moved through the

 wild, untamed tribes along the Zambezi river as far west as Lake Ngami,

 unmolested and unharmed, was in great part due to his relationship with

 Robert "Tshedi" Moffat. The mantle of protection which the Matabele

 King spread over his old friend extended to his immediate family, and

 was recognized by all the tribes within range of the Matabele long arm,

 an arm that wielded the assegai, the terrible stabbing spear which King

 Chaka of the Zulu had first conceived, and with which he had conquered

 his known world.

 In his pique at Robyn's comparison of the ancestry of his family and

 that of the pretty half-naked black girl, Zouga at first missed the

 significance of what she had told him. When it struck him, he hurried

 back to Robyn's cabin. Sissy, he burst out excitedly. "If she comes

 from Mzilikazi country, why! that's almost a thousand miles due west of

 Quelimane. She must have passed through the land of Monomatapa to reach

 this coast. Get her to tell us about it."

 He regretted his childhood inattention to the language when his mother

 had taught them. He concentrated say agely now as the two girls chatted

 animatedly, and began recognizing some of the words, but it needed Robyn

 to translate the full sense for him.

 Juba's father was a famous Induna, a great warrior who had fought the

 Boers at Mosega, and a hundred other battles since then, his shield had

 been thick with the tassels of cow tails, black and white, each of which

 signified a heroic deed.

 He had been granted the headring of the Induna when he was still a young

 man of less than thirty summers, and had become one of the highest

 elders in the council of the nation. He had fifty wives, many of them

 of pure Zanzi blood like his own, a hundred and twelve sons and

 uncounted daughters. Although all the cattle of the nation belonged to

 the King, yet over five thousand were put in the charge of Juba's

 father, a mark of the King's high favour.

 He was a great man, perhaps too great for his own safety. Somebody

 whispered the word "treason" in the King's ear, and the King's

 executioners had surrounded the kraal in the dawn, and called out Juba's

 father.

 He had stooped out through the low entrance of his thatched beehive hut,

 naked from the embrace of his favourite wife. Who calls? " he cried

 into the dawn, and then he saw the ring of black figures, tall in their

 feather headdresses, but standing motionless, silent and menacing.

 en the King's name, " a voice answered him, and out of the ranks stepped

 a figure he recognized immediately.

 It was one of the King's Indunas also, a min named Bopa a short powerful

 man, with a deep-muscled bare chest and a head so heavy that the broad

 features seemed to have been carved out of a chunk of granite from the

 kopies across the Nyati River.

 There was no appeal, no escape, not that either consideration even

 passed briefly through the old Induna's mind. In the King's name. "

 That was sufficient. Slowly he drew himself to his full height. Despite

 the grey cap of his hair, he was still a finely built warrior with broad

 rangy shoulders and the ridged battle scars crawled across his chest and

 flanks like live serpents. The Black Elephant, he began to recite the

 praise names of his King. "Bayete! The Thunder of the Heavens.

 The Shaker of the Earth. Bayete! " Still calling the King's names he

 went down on one knee, and the King's executioner stepped up behind him.

 The wives and elder children had crawled from their huts now and huddled

 together in dread, watching from the shadows, their voices blending in a

 single cry of horror and sorrow as the executioner drove his short

 thick-bladed assegai between the Induna's shoulder blades, and two hands

 breadth out of his chest. As he withdrew the blade, there was the crude

 sucking sound of steel leaving flesh and the old Induna's life blood

 spurted head high as he fell forward on to his face.

 With his smeared red blade the King's executioner commanded his warriors

 forward, for the sentence of death included the old man's wives, every

 one of their sons and daughters, the household slaves and their

 children, every inhabitant of the large village, three hundred or more

 souls.

 The executioners worked swiftly, but there was a change in the ancient

 ritual of death. The old women, the grey-headed slaves died swiftly,

 not honoured with the blade but clubbed to death with the heavy

 knobkerries that each warrior carried. The infants, and unweaned

 toddlers were snatched up by the ankles, and their brains were dashed

 from their skulls against the trunk of a tree, against the heavy poles

 of the cattle enclosure or against a convenient rock. It was very

 swift, for the warriors were highly trained and disciplined troops and

 this was something they had done many times before.

 Yet this time there was a difference, the younger women, the adolescent

 children, even those on the verge of puberty, were hustled forward and

 the King's executioner glanced at them appraisingly, and with a gesture

 of the bloody spear sent them left or right.

 On the left hand was swift death, while those who were sent right were

 forced into a trot and led away towards the east, towards the sunrise as

 the girl Juba explained it to Robyn. Many days we travelled, her voice

 sinking, the horror of it still in the dark brown eyes. "I do not know

 how long it was. Those who fell were left where they lay, and we went

 on. , Ask her what she remembers of the country, Zouga demanded. There

 were rivers, the girl replied. "Many rivers and great mountains. " Her

 memories were confused, she could make no estimates of distance, they

 had encountered no other people, no villages nor towns, they had seen no

 cattle nor standing crops. Juba shook her head to each of Zouga's

 questions, and when he showed her the Harkness map in a forlorn hope

 that she might be able to point out features upon it, the child giggled

 in confusion. Drawn symbols on parchment were beyond her comprehension,

 she could not begin to relate them to features of landscape.

 Tell her to go on, " he ordered Robyn impatiently. At the end we passed

 through deep gorges in high mountains where the slopes were covered with

 tall trees, and the rivers fell with white spray, until at last we came

 to where the bunu, the white men, waited."

 The white men? " Robyn demanded.

 Then of your people, the girl nodded. "With a pale skin and pale eyes.

 There were many men, some white and others brown or black men, but

 dressed as the white men were dressed, and armed with the isibarriu,

 with guns. " The Matabele people knew well the power and effect of

 firearms, they had encountered enemies armed with them at least thirty

 years before. Even some Of the Matabele Indunas carried muskets,

 although they always handed these to a servant to carry when there was

 serious fighting in the offing. These people had built kraals, such as

 we build for our cattle, but these were filled with people, a great

 multitude of people and with them we were bound with the insimbi, the

 links of iron. " She rubbed her wrists instinctively at the memory, and

 the callouses raised by the slave cuffs still blemished the skin of her

 forearms. Each day that we stayed at this place in the mountains, more

 people came. Sometimes only as many as the fingers on both your hands,

 on other days there were great numbers so we could hear their

 lamentations at a distance. And always there were warriors guarding

 them. Then before the sun one morning, at the time of the horns, Robyn

 recalled the expression for the time of dawning when the horns of the

 cattle first show against the morning sky, "they led us from the kraals,

 wearing the insimbi, and we formed a great snake of people so long that

 the head was out of sight ahead of me in the forest while the tail was

 still up in the clouds of the mountains when we came down the Hyena

 RoadThe Hyena Road, Ndlele umfisi. " It was the first time that Robyn

 had heard the name spoken. It conjured up an image of a dark trail

 through the forests, beaten by tens of thousands of bare feet, with the

 loathsome eaters of dead flesh slinking along beside it, chuckling and

 shrieking their inane chorus. Those that died, and those that fell and

 could not rise again were released from their chains and dragged to one

 side. The fisi have grown so bold along the road, that they rushed out

 of the bushes and devoured the bodies while we passed in full sight. It

 was worst when the body still lived."

 Juba broke off and stared unseeingly at the bulkhead across the cabin.

 Slowly her eyes filled with tears, and Robyn took her hand and held it

 in her lap. I know not how long we followed the Hyena Road, " Juba went

 on, "for each day became as the one before it, and as the one that

 followed it, until at last we came to the sea."

 Afterwards Zouga and Robyn discussed the girl's story. She must have

 gone through the kingdom of Monomatapa, and yet she says there were no

 towns nor signs of occupation. "The slavers might have avoided contact

 with Monomatapa's people. "I wish she had seen and remembered more.

 "She was in a slave caravan, Robyn pointed out. "Survival was her only

 concern. "If only these damned people could even read a map. "It's a

 different culture, Zouga, and he saw the spark in her eye, and sensed

 the drift of the conversation and turned it aside swiftly. Perhaps the

 legend of Monomatapa. is only a myth, perhaps there are no gold mines.

 "The important thing about Juba's story is that the Matabele are dealing

 in slaves, they have never done so before. "Nonsense! " grunted Zouga.

 "They are the greatest predators since Genghis Khan! They and all the

 Zulu splinter tribes, the Shangaan, the Angoni and the Matabele. War is

 their way of life, and plunder is their main crop. Their whole nation

 was built on a system of slave-taking. "But they have never sold them

 before, said Robyn mildly. "At least as far as we know from all that

 grandfather and Harris and the others have written. "The Matabele never

 found a market before, Zouga replied reasonably. "Now they have at last

 made contact with the slavernasters, and found an opening to the coast.

 That was all it lacked before. "We must witness this, Zouga, " Robyn

 spoke with quiet determination. "We have to bear witness to this

 terrible crime against humanity and carry word back to London. "If only

 the child had seen evidence of the Monomatapa, or the gold mines, "

 muttered Zouga. "You must as her if there were elephant. " He pored

 over the Harkness map, lamenting the blank spaces. "I cannot believe

 that it does not exist. There is too much evidence. " Zouga looked up

 at his sister. "One other thing, I seem to have forgotten almost every

 word of the language that mother taught us, except some of the nursery

 rhymes and lullabies. Munya, mabili zinthatu, Yolala umdade wethu, " he

 recited, and then chuckled and shook his head. "I shall have to study

 it again, you and Juba will have to help me."

 The Zambezi comes to the sea through a delta of vast swampland, and a

 hundred confused shallow channels spread out for thirty miles down the

 low featureless coastline.

 Floating islands of papyrus grass break free from the main pastures

 which blanket the waters of the delta and are carried out to sea on the

 dirty brown water. Some of these islands are many acres in extent and

 the roots of the plants so entangled that they can support the weight of

 a heavy animal. On occasions small herds of buffalo are trapped and

 carried twenty miles out to sea before the action of the waves smashes

 up the islands and plunges the great bovine animals into the water, prey

 for the big sharks which cruise the tainted estuary waters for just such

 a prize.

 The muddy smell of the swamps carries far from the land when the wind is

 right, and the same wind carries strange insects with it. There is a

 tiny spider no bigger than the head of a wax Vesta which lives in the

 papyrus banks of the delta. it spins a gossamer web on which it

 launches itself into the breeze in such numbers that the gossamer fills

 the sky in clouds, like the smoke from a raging bushfire, rising many

 hundreds of feet and eddying and swirling in misty columns that are

 touched by the sunset into shades of pink and lovely pale mauve.

 The river pours a muddy brown effluent into the sea, One, two, three, Go

 to sleep my little sister, silt enriched with the bodies of drowned

 animals and birds, and the huge Zambezi crocodiles join the shark packs

 at the feast.

 Black joke found the first of these hideous creatures ten miles from

 land, wallowing in the low swells like a log, the rough scales

 glittering wetly in the sunlight until the gunboat approached too

 closely and the reptile dived with a lash and swirl of its powerful

 ridged tail.

 Black joke steamed obliquely across the multiple mouths of the river,

 none of which offered passage for a vessel of her size. She was headed

 further north for the Congone channel which was the only passage upriver

 to the town of Quelimane.

 Clinton Codrington planned to enter it the following morning, after

 having lain hove-to during the night off the mouth. Robyn knew that she

 must remove the stitches from the wound under his armpit, though she

 would have liked to leave them a few days longer. They must come out

 before she left the gunboat at Quelimane.

 She decided to use the same opportunity to give him the answer for which

 he had waited so patiently. She knew it was going to be painful for him

 to hear that she would not marry him, and she felt guilty that she had

 so encouraged him. it was alien to her nature to inflict suffering on

 another, and she would try to tell him as gently as possible.

 She ordered him to her cabin for the removal of the horsehair stitches,

 seating him on the narrow bunk naked to the waist, with his arm raised.

 She was delighted with the way the wound had healed, and proud of the

 neatness of her work. She cooed over each knot as she snipped it with

 the pointed scissors, then seized it with the forceps and gently tugged

 and worried it free of his flesh. The stitches left twin punctures, one

 on each side of the raised purple welt of the scar and they were clean

 and dry. Only one of them leaked a single drop of blood which she

 swabbed away gently.

 Robyn was training Juba as her assistant, teaching her to hold the tray

 of instruments, and receive the discarded and soiled dressings or

 instruments. Now she stood back and appraised the healed wound, without

 looking at Juba. You may go now, she said quietly. "I will call you

 when I need you."

 Juba smiled like a conspirator, and murmured, "He is truly beautiful, so

 white and smooth, and Robyn blushed pinkly, for that was exactly what

 she had been thinking. Clinton's body, unlike that of Mungo St. John,

 was hairless as a girl's but finely muscled, and the skin had an almost

 marble sheen to it. His eyes are like two moons when he looks at you,

 Nomusa, Juba went on with relish, and Robyn tried to frown at her but

 her lips kept puckering into a smile.

 Go swiftly, she snapped, and Juba giggled. There is a time to be alone,

 and she rolled her eyes lewdly. "I shall guard the door, and hardly

 listen at all, Nomusa. " Robyn found it impossible to be angry when the

 child used that name, for it meant "the daughter of mercy', and Robyn

 found it highly acceptable. She would have had difficulty picking a

 better name for herself, and she was smiling as she hurried Juba from

 the cabin with a gentle slap and a push.

 Clinton must have had some idea of the exchange, for he was buttoning

 his shirt as she turned back to him, and looking embarrassed.

 She drew a deep breath, folded her arms and began. Captain Codrington,

 I have thought unceasingly of the great honour you have done me by

 inviting me to be your wife. "However, Clinton forestalled her, and she

 faltered, the prepared speech forgotten, for her next word would indeed

 have been, "However'. Miss Ballantyne, I mean Doctor Ballantyne, I

 would rather you did not say the rest of it. " His face was pale and

 intense, he really was beautiful now, she thought, with a pang. "That

 way I can still cherish hope."

 She shook her head vehemently, but he lifted a hand. I have come to

 realize that you have a duty, to your father and the poor unhappy people

 of this land. I understand and deeply admire that."

 Robyn felt her heart go out to him, he was so good and so perceptive to

 have understood that about her.

 However, I feel sure that one day, you and I shall. .

 She wanted to spare him pain.

 Captain, she began, shaking her head again. No, he said. "Nothing you

 say will ever make me abandon hope. I am a very patient man, and I

 realize that now is not the time. But I know in the depths of my soul

 that our destiny binds us together, even if I must wait ten or fifty

 years."

 A time-span of that magnitude no longer frightened Robyn. She relaxed

 visibly. I love you, my dear Doctor Ballantyne, nothing will ever alter

 that, and in the meantime I ask only your good opinion, and friendship.

 "You have both, she said, with truth and relief. It had een a great

 deal easier than she had expected, yet strange that a shadow of regret

 lingered.

 There was no further opportunity to speak privately, for Clinton was

 fully occupied with bringing Black joke into the treacherous channel,

 with its shifting banks and uncharted shoals guarding the mouth. The

 channel meandered twenty miles through the mangrove forests to the port

 of Quelimane on the northern bank.

 The heat in the delta was rendered scarcely bearable by the humid

 qeffluxion of mud and rotting vegetation that rose from the mangrove

 forests. The weird shapes of the mangroves fascinated Robyn and she

 stood by the rail and watched them slide past. Each tree stood clear of

 the slick chocolate-coloured mud on its pyramid of roots, like the

 multiple legs of a grotesque insect reaching up to join the thick pulpy

 stern which in turn extended upwards to the roof of poisonous green

 foliage.

 Amongst the roots skittered the purple and yellow fiddler crabs, each of

 them holding aloft a single disproportionably huge claw, and waving it

 in menace or ponderous greeting at the passing vessel.

 Black joke's wake spread across the channel, flopping wavelets on the

 mud banks and startling the small green and purple night herons into

 laborious flight.

 Around a bend in the channel the decaying buildings of Quelimane came

 into view, dominated by the square towers of the stucco church. The

 plaster was falling away in unsightly chunks and the whitewash was

 streaked and splotched with grey and green mould, like a ripening

 cheese.

 This port had once been one of the most busy slave ports on the entire

 African coast. The Zambezi river had acted as a highway to the interior

 for the slave-masters, and the Shire river, its major tributary, led

 directly to Lake Marawi and the highlands which had been the mother lode

 from which hundreds and thousands of black slaves had poured.

 When the Portuguese, under British pressure, had signed the Brussels

 Agreement, the barracoons at Quelimane and Lourenq Marques and

 Mozambique Island had been closed down. However, the slaving dhow that

 Black Joke had intercepted proved that the abominable trade still

 flourished covertly along the Portuguese coast. That was typical of

 these people, Clinton Codrington thought.

 Clinton curled his lip with distaste. In the many hundred years since

 their great navigators had opened up this coast, the Portuguese had

 clung to the narrow unhealthy strip of the littoral, making only one

 halfhearted effort to penetrate the interior and since then, lying here

 like their disintegrating buildings and crumbling empire, content with

 the bribes and extortions of petty officialdom and their seraglios of

 women, tolerant of any crimes or evil as long as there was a little dash

 or profit in it.

 As he worked Black Joke in towards the quay, he could see them gathering

 already, gaudy vultures, in their fool's motley of uniform, tarnished

 gold braid and ornate swords sported by even the lowliest customs

 officer.

 There would be endless forms and declarations unless he was firm, and

 always the open palm and the leering wink. Well, this time there would

 be none of that. This was a ship of the Queen's Navy. Mr. Denham,

 Clinton called sharply, "issue pistols and cutlasses to the anchor

 watch, and nobody comes aboard without the express permission of the

 officer of the watch. He turned away to shake hands briefly with Zouga;

 they had found little in common during the voyage and the parting was

 cool.

 Never thank you enough, sir, " said Zouga briskly. Only my duty, Major.

 " But already Zouga's eyes were following Sergeant Cheroot as he

 assembled his men on the foredeck. They were in full marching order,

 eager to be ashore after the tedious voyage.

 I must see to my men, Captain, Zouga excused himself and hurried

 forward.

 Clinton turned to Robyn and looked steadily into her green eyes.

 I beg a small token of remembrance, " he said quietly.

 In response to his request she reached up and took one of the cheap

 paste earrings from her lobe. As they shook hands, she slipped the

 little ornament into his palm, and he touched it briefly to his lips

 before slipping it into his pocket. I will wait, " he repeated, "ten or

 even fifty years."

 Black Joke had come up-channel on the flood, unloaded the mountainous

 stores of the Ballantyne Africa Expedition on to the stone quay during

 slack water, and two hours later thrown off her mooring ropes and swung

 sharply across the ebb, pointing her high bows down the channel.

 From his position on the quarterdeck, Clinton Codrington stared across

 the widening gap at the slim, tall figure in long skirts standing on the

 very edge of the quay.

 Beyond her, her brother did not look up from his lists as he checked the

 stores and equipment. Sergeant Cheroot stood armed guard with his

 little pug-featured Hottentots, and the idlers and watchers kept well

 clear.

 The Portuguese officials had treated the red wax seals and ribbons which

 decorated Zouga's letters of authority from the Portuguese ambassador in

 London with great respect. However, even more important was the fact

 that Zouga was an officer of Queen Victoria's army, that he had arrived

 in a Royal Navy gunboat, and lastly that there was every reason to

 believe that the same gunboat would remain in the area for the

 foreseeable future.

 The Governor of Portuguese East Africa himself would not have commanded

 greater respect. Already minor officials were scampering about the

 squalid little town arranging the best accommodation, securing

 warehousing for the stores, commandeering river transport for the next

 leg of the journey up-river to Tete, the last outpost of Portuguese

 empire on the Zambezi, drafting orders to have bearers and guides meet

 the expedition at Tete, and doing everything else that the young British

 officer casually demanded as though it was his God-given right In this

 turmoil of activity Robyn Ballantyne stood alone, staring after the

 blue-clad figure on Black Joke's quarterdeck. How tall he was, and his

 hair caught the sunlight in a flash of white gold as he lifted his hand

 in farewell. She waved until Black Joke disappeared behind a palisade

 of mangrove, though her masts and turning smokestack stayed in view for

 a long time after. She watched until they, too, dwindled to

 nothingness, and only the smear of black smoke lay low over the tops of

 the green mangrove.

 Clinton Codrington stood on his deck, hands clasped loosely at the small

 of his back, and an expression of near rapture in the pale blue eyes. In

 this temper the knight-errant of old must have ridden out at chance,

 Clinton thought.

 He did not find the notion at all melodramatic. He felt truly ennobled

 by his love, sensing somehow that be must earn something so precious,

 and that the opportunity to do so lay ahead of him. The earring that

 Robyn had given him was suspended by a thread around his neck, lying

 under his shirt against his skin. He touched it now, peering

 impatiently ahead down the channel. It seemed to him that for the first

 time he had a steady direction in his life, constant as the pole star to

 the navigator.

 This gallant mood was still strong five days later when Black joke

 rounded the headland of Ras Elat and steamed into the anchorage. There

 were eight large dhows keeled over on the exposed sand bar at low tide.

 The tidal fall on this coast at full springs was twenty-two feet. These

 craft were designed to take the ground readily, and it facilitated

 loading. The long ranks of chained slaves were being goaded out to the

 stranded vessels, slipping and splashing through the shallow tidal

 pools, to await patiently their turn to climb the ladder up the side of

 the dhow.

 Black joke's unannounced arrival caused pandemonium, and the beach was

 alive with running stumbling figures, the screams and shrieks of the

 slaves, the pop of the kurbash whips and the frantic cries of the

 slave-masters carried clearly to Black joke's deck as she dropped her

 anchor just beyond the reef and rounded up to the wind.

 Clinton Codrington stared longingly at the heeled vessels and the

 concourse of panicky humanity, the way a slum-child stares at the

 display in the window of a food shop.

 His orders were clear, had been spelled out by Admiral Kemp with painful

 attention to detail. The Admiral remembered with lingering horror his

 young Captain's capture of the slaving fleet at Calabash after forcing

 the masters to load their cargoes and sail north of the equator. He

 wanted no repetition of this type of risky action on this patrol.

 Black Joke's commAnder was strictly adjured to respect the territorial

 integrity of the Sultan of the Omani Arabs, and the exact letter of the

 treaty that the British Consul had negotiated at Zanzibar.

 Clinton Codrington was strictly forbidden to interfere with any subject

 of the Sultan who was engaged in trade between any of the Sultan's

 dominions. He was denied even the right of search of any vessel flying

 the red-andgold flag of Omani on any of the Sultan's recognized trade

 routes, and these were carefully defined for Captain Codrington's

 benefit.

 He was to confine his patrol to intercepting only vessels that did not

 belong to the Sultan, particularly vessels of the European powers.

 Naturally no American vessel might be searched on the high seas. Within

 these limits Captain Codrington had powers of independent action.

 Far from being allowed to seize or search the Sultan's vessels, Clinton

 was ordered to use the first opportunity to make a courtesy call on the

 port of Zanzibar. There he would take counsel from the British Consul

 as how best to use his influence to reinforce the existing treaties, and

 especially to remind the Sultan of his own obligations under those

 treaties.

 So now Clinton paced his deck like a caged lion at feeding time, and

 glowered helplessly, through the pass in the coral reef, at the slaving

 fleet of Omani engaged in legitimate trade, for the Gulf of Elat was

 very much part of the Sultan's possessions, and had so been recognized

 by Her Majesty's Government.

 After the first wild panic ashore, the beach and dhows were now

 deserted, but Clinton was aware of the thousands of watchful eyes upon

 him from the mud-walled town and the shadows of the coconut groves.

 The thought of hauling his anchor and sailing away filled him with

 bitter chagrin, and he stood bare-headed and stared with cold hungry

 blue eyes at the prize spread before him.

 The palace of the Sheikh of Elat, Mohamed Bin Salim, was an unpainted

 mud-walled building in the centre of the town. The only opening in the

 parapeted wall was the gate closed by thick, brass-studded double doors

 in carved teak, which led through to the dusty central courtyard.

 In this courtyard, under the spreading branches of an ancient takamaka.

 tree the Sheikh was in earnest conclave with his senior advisors and the

 emissaries of his supreme sovereign, the Sultan of Zanzibar. They were

 discussing a matter, literally, of life or death.

 Sheikh Mohamed Bin Salim had the plump smooth body of the bon vivant,

 the bright red lips of the sensualist, and the hooded eyes of a falcon.

 He was a very worried man, for his ambition had led him into dire

 danger. His ambition had been quite simply to accumulate the sum of one

 million gold -rupees in his treasury, and he had very nearly satisfied

 that reasonable goal, when his overlord, the omnipotent Sultan of

 Zanzibar, had sent his emissaries to call the Sheikh to account.

 Sheikh Mohamed had begun to satisfy his ambition ten I years previously

 by very gently mulching the Sultan s tithe, and each year since then he

 had increased his depredations. Like all greedy men, one successful

 coup was the signal for the next. The Sultan had known this, for though

 he was old, he was also exceedingly cunning.

 He knew that the missing tithes were safely stored for him in the

 Sheikh's treasure house, to be collected whenever he felt inclined. He

 need only benignly feign ignorance of the Sheikh's manipulations, until

 he was so deeply in the trap that no squirming or squealing would get

 him out again. After ten years that moment had arrived. The Sultan

 would collect not only his due but the Sheikh's own accumulations.

 Further retribution would be a lengthy business. It would begin with a

 beating on the soles of the Sheikh's bare feet, until all those delicate

 little bones were cracked or fractured making it extremely painful for

 the Sheikh to be marched into the Sultan's presence. There, the final

 judgement would be read, and it would end with the knotted strip of

 buffalo hide wound up tighter and tighter around the forehead, until

 first the Sheikh's falcon eyes popped from their sockets and then his

 skull collapsed like a bursting melon. The Sultan truly enjoyed these

 spectacles, and had been looking forward to this particular one for ten

 years.

 Both men knew the ritual, and it had begun with the polite visit of the

 Sultan's emissaries who even now were sitting opposite the Sheikh under

 the takamaka, sipping thick black coffee from the brass thimbles,

 munching the yellow and pink coconut sweetmeats, and smiling at the

 Sheikh with cold passionless eyes.

 It was into this chilling atmosphere that the messengers from the

 harbour came running to fling themselves prostrate and gabble out the

 news of the British warship, whose great guns threatened the harbour and

 the town.

 The Sheikh listened quietly and then dismissed the messengers, before

 turning back to his distinguished guests. This is a serious business, "

 he began, relieved to be able to change the subject under discussion.

 "It would be wise to view this strange vessel. "The Ferengi have a

 treaty with our master, pronounced one greybeard, and they set great

 store by these pieces of paper."

 They all nodded, none of them showing the agitation which filled all of

 their breasts. Although this coast had only received passing attention

 from these brash northern people, still it had been enough to engender

 fear and apprehension.

 The Sheikh deliberated for a few minutes, stroking his thick curly

 beard, hooding his eyes as the ideas began to flow. His mind had been

 almost paralysed with the extent of the disaster which had overtaken

 him, but now it began to work again. I must go out to this warship, "

 he announced.

 There was an immediate hubbub of protest, but he held up his hand to

 silence them. He was still the Sheikh of Elat, and they had, perforce,

 to hear him out. It is my duty to ascertain the intentions of the

 commander and to send word immediately to our master."

 Clinton Codrington had almost resigned himself to give the order to

 weigh anchor. There had been no sign of life on the beach for many

 hours, and there was nothing he could accomplish here. His hope that he

 might catch a European slaver, actually taking on slaves in the

 anchorage, had proved forlorn. He should have sailed hours ago, the sun

 was half way down the. sky already and he did not want to run the

 dangers of the inshore channel in darkness, but some instinct had kept

 him here.

 He kept returning to the. starboard rail, and glassing the flat-roofed

 mud buildings that just showed amongst the palm trees. Each time his

 junior officers stiffened expectantly, then relaxed as he turned away

 without a word or change of expression.

 This time Clinton saw movement, the flash of white robes in the

 deserted, single street of the town, and as he watched through the

 telescope he felt a prickle of excitement and a lift of

 self-congratulation. A small deputation was emerging from the grove and

 coming down the beach. Pass the word to my steward to lay out my number

 ones and sword, he ordered without lowering his glass.

 The party on the beach was led by a portly figure in blindingly white

 robes and a full headdress that gleamed with gold. Behind him a bearer

 carried the long floating banner, scarlet and gold, of the Sultan. We'll

 treat him as a Governor, " Clinton decided. And give him four guns. "

 With that he turned on his heel and went to his cabin to change his

 uniform.

 The Arab climbed out of the little felucca and came in through the entry

 port puffing for breath, assisted by two house-slaves. As his foot

 touched the deck, the first gun of the salute crashed out unexpectedly,

 and the Sheikh let out a whinny like a wild stallion and leapt two feet

 straight up in the air, the high colour flying from his cheeks leaving

 them ashen and trembling.

 Clinton stepped forward, resplendent in cocked hat, blue and gold

 jacket, white breeches and sword and took the Sheikh's arm to steady him

 through the rest of the salute, and to prevent him stampeding back into

 the crazily rocking felucca where the oarsmen were in equal terror.

 Will you step this way, Your Excellency, Clinton murmured, and without

 releasing his iron grip on the Sheikh's pudgy arm, marched him briskly

 down to his cabin.

 Translation was a problem, but one of the Sheikh's entourage had a

 smattering of French and some English.

 it was almost dark before Clinton was able to see through the flowery

 verbiage and the atrocious rendering of his mother tongue. When it came

 it was like a great light filling the cabin, and Clinton found himself

 buoyed up with a savage, warlike glee.

 The fat Sheikh, Governor of Elat, with his soft, red lips, was asking

 for the protection of her Britannic Majesty against the injustices and

 tyrannies of the Sultan of Zanzibar. Dites lui je the peux pas, oh,

 damn it, tell him I can only protect him if he declares Elat free of the

 Sultan's dominions, comprenez vous? "le m'excuse, je the comprends

 pas."

 It was tedious, especially in view of Clinton's eagerness to remove the

 province of Elat from under the sway of Zanzibar.

 The Foreign Office had provided all commanders of the Atlantic

 anti-slavery squadrons with blank treaty forms, drawn up with deference

 to protocol and in correct legal terminology. These were for signature

 of any indigenous chiefs, warlords, petty princes and native kings who

 could be induced to place their mark upon them.

 These documents started with a declaration of mutual recognition between

 Her Majesty's government and the signatory, went on in vague terms to

 promise protection and free trade, and ended in very specific terms with

 a round condemnation of the slave trade and the granting of rights to

 Her Majesty's government to search, seize and destroy all ships engaged

 in such trade within the signatory's territorial waters. Further it

 granted rights to Her Majesty's Navy to land troops, destroy barracoons,

 free slaves, arrest slave-masters and do any such other act as should be

 deemed necessary to the extinction of the trade in all the signatory's

 lands and possessions.

 Admiral Kemp in Cape Town had overlooked the fact that Captain

 Codrington had a good supply of these documents in his possession. They

 had been intended for use entirely on the west African coast north of

 the equator.

 The good Admiral would have been a very worried man indeed if he had

 realized that he had detached his most brilliant but mercurial junior on

 independent patrol armed with anything so explosive. He must sign here,

 " Clinton explained briskly, and I will give him an order on the British

 treasury for a hundred guineas. " The treaty made provision for annual

 tribute to be paid to the signatory. Clinton considered a hundred

 guineas sufficient. He was not sure of what authority he had to write

 treasury orders, but Sheikh Mohamed was delighted. He had negotiated

 for life alone, and received not only the protection of this fine

 warship but the promise of good gold as well. He was smiling happily,

 pursing his red lips as he signed his long signature under his new title

 "Prince and Supreme Ruler of the sovereign possessions of Elat and Ras

 Telfa. "Good, said Clinton briskly, rolling his copy of the treaty and

 slipping the retaining ribbon over it as he hurried to the door of his

 cabin. Mr. Denham, he bellowed up the companionway. "I want a

 landing-party, muskets, pistols, cutlasses and carrying combustibles,

 forty men ready to go ashore at first light tomorrow! " He was grinning

 as he turned back and told the Sheikh's translator, "It would be best if

 His Excellency remained on board tonight. We will see him safely

 installed at noon tomorrow. " And for the first time the Sheikh felt a

 thrill of apprehension. This Ferengi had the cold blue merciless eyes

 of a devil. "El Sheetan, he thought, the very devil. " And made the

 sign against the evil eye. Sir, may I speak? " Mr. Denha Black Joke's

 first Lieutenant looked puzzled in the light of the binnacle.

 It was an hour short of sunrise and he glanced down at the ranks of

 armed seamen squatting on the foredeck. Speak your heart, Clinton

 invited him magnanimously. Lieutenant Denham was not accustomed to this

 jovial mood from his captain, and he expressed himself cautiously. In

 essence Lieutenant Denham's views came very close to those of the

 Admiral in Cape Town. If you would like to make a protest against my

 orders, Lieutenant" Clinton interrupted him cheerfully, "I will be

 pleased to enter it in the ship's log."

 Thus absolved of responsibility for having been party to an act of war

 on the territory of a foreign ruler, Lieutenant Denham was so relieved

 that when Clinton told him, "I am taking command of the landing party.

 You will command the ship in my absence, he shook Clinton's hand

 impulsively.

 Good luck, sir, he blurted.

 They went ashore in two boats, the whaler leading through the pass in

 the reef and the gig following two lengths astern. The moment the keel

 touched, Clinton sprang knee-deep into the blood-warm water and the rush

 of armed men followed him ashore. He drew his cutlass and his shoes

 squelched as he led his team of five men to the nearest dhow at a dead

 run.

 As he jumped down from the ladder on to the dhow's heavily canted deck,

 an Arab watchman ducked out of the stern cabin and aimed a long jezail

 at Clinton's head.

 The range was point blank and Clinton struck out instinctively in an

 underhand parry, just as the gun's lock clicked and smoke and spark shot

 from the pan under the steel and flint.

 His blade clashed against the steel barrel, deflecting it upwards as the

 jezail roared an instant after the snap of the lock and a blinding

 billow of smoke and burning powder struck his face and singed his

 eyebrows, but the chunk of beaten potleg howled inches over his head.

 When his vision cleared the watchman had thrown his empty weapon aside,

 leaped over the side of the dhow and was hopping and hobbling across the

 sand towards the grove of palms. Search her, and then put fire into

 her, Clinton ordered brusquely.

 It was the first chance he had had to look across at the other dhows of

 the fleet. One of them was already on fire, the flames bright in the

 early light, rising straight up with little smoke. The furled mainsail

 was blackening like a dried leaf, and he could hear the crackle of the

 tinder dry timbers of the hull and stern cabin. His seamen were

 spilling out of her and straggling across to the next vessel. She's

 aflame, sir, his boatswain panted, and a hot gust of air struck

 Clinton's cheek at that moment and a quiver of heat hung over the main

 hatch.

 We'd best be getting on, he said mildly, and scrambled down the ladder

 on to the packed damp sand.

 Behind him the flames roared like a cageful of wild animals.

 The biggest dhow, a two-hundred tanner, lay ahead of them and Clinton

 reached it fifty paces ahead of his men. Make sure there is nobody

 below, he ordered, and one of the seamen came back on deck carrying a

 rolled silk prayer rug under his arm. Belay that! snapped Clinton.

 "There'll be no looting Reluctantly the seaman dropped the precious

 burden back into the hatchway, and the flames sucked up in a hot breath

 to accept it as though it was an offering to Baal.

 By the time they reached the tree-line, all eight of the stranded

 vessels were burning fiercely, the stubby masts collapsing as they

 burned through at the base, the furled sails disappearing in bright

 explosions of flame. In one of the burning hulls a keg of powder went

 up with a thunderous crash of sound, and a tall column of dark smoke

 hovered over the beach for a few seconds, shaped like a gigantic grey

 octopus before it drifted slowly out across the reef, leaving the dhow

 shattered, its timbers scattered across the sand, the flames

 extinguished by the shock wave of the explosion. Was there anybody

 aboard her? " Clinton demanded quietly. No, sir. " His boatswain was

 panting beside him, redfaced with excitement, and with a bared cutlass

 in his hand. "All accounted for."

 Clinton hid his relief behind a coot nod, and spent a few precious

 minutes drawing his men into an orderly formation, giving them time to

 regain their breath, and getting them well in hand again. Check your

 muskets, " he ordered, and there was the click of the locks. "Fix

 bayonets. " Metal rattled on metal as the long blades were fitted to

 the barrels of the Enfield rifles. "If there is resistance we'll find

 it in the town, I fancy, " and he ran an eye down the uneven ranks. They

 were neither marines nor lobster-backs, he thought with quick affection.

 They might not be perfect in drill, but they were men with spirit and

 initiative, not paradeground automatons. Come along then. " He waved

 them forward into the dusty street between the mud-brown flat-roofed

 buildings. The town smelled of wood smoke and raw sewage, of rice

 cooked with saffron and of ghee, clarified butter. Shall we burn "em? "

 His boatswain jerked a thumb at the buildings that flanked the deserted

 street. No, we are here to protect them, " Clinton told him stiffly.

 "They belong to our new ally, the Sheikh."

 I see, sir, " the boatswain grunted, looking mildly perplexed, and

 Clinton took pity on him. We are after the barracoons, he explained.

 as they trotted up the street in compact formation. They halted where

 the road branched left and right.

 The heat was oppressive and the silence menacing.

 There was no wind and the coconut groves had stilled the eternal clatter

 of their fronds. From the beach far behind them, came the faint popping

 of burning timbers, and overhead the ubiquitous pied crows of Africa

 circled and cawed raucously, but the buildings and dense coconut groves

 were deserted. I don't like this, " one of the men croaked behind

 Clinton.

 He could understand the man's point of view. A seaman always felt

 awkward when parted from his ship, and there were a mere forty of them,

 out of sight of the beach and surrounded by thousands of unseen but none

 the less savage warriors. Clinton knew he must keep the momentum of

 surprise rolling through the town, yet he hesitated a moment longer

 until he realized that the amorphous sacklike shape lying on the edge of

 the right hand street was a human body, naked and black and very dead.

 One of the slaves trampled in the previous day's panic and left where he

 had fallen.

 That way must lie the barracoons, he decided. "Quiet! " he cautioned

 his men, and cocking his head, listened with all his attention to the

 faint sussuration on the still air. It might have been the wind except

 there was no wind, or the flames, except that the flames were behind

 them. It was the distant sound of human voices, he decided, many

 voices, thousands of voices. This way. Follow me."

 They went forward at a full run, taking the right fork and running

 immediately into the ambush which had been so carefully prepared for

 them.

 The volley of musket fire crashed out from both sides of the narrowing

 track, and powder smoke rolled out towards them and hung like a thick,

 pearly curtain amongst the palm holes and the cashew nut trees.

 Through the smoke danced the ethereal robed figures of the attackers,

 brandishing the long-barrelled jezails or swinging the half-moon-bladed

 scimitars, with wild shrieks of "Allah Akbar, Allah is greatV They

 rushed down on the little band of seamen, caught in enfilade on the

 narrow track. There were at least a hundred of them, Clinton judged

 instantly, and they were pressing in determinedly. Those scimitars were

 glittering, bright bare steel has a particularly chilling effect. Close

 up, Clinton shouted. "We'll give them a volley then take the bayonet to

 them, through the smoke."

 The first rank of racing Arabs were almost on top of the levelled

 Enfields. Incongruously, Clinton noticed that many of them had tucked

 up the skirts of their robes, leaving their legs bared to the thighs.

 Their skins varied from the colour of ivory to tobacco, and there were

 wrinkled grey beards in the front rank, screaming and howling with rage

 and battle-lust. They had just seen their livelihood burned to heaps of

 ash upon the beach. All that remained to them of their wealth was the

 contents of the barracoons set back amongst the groves of cashew nut and

 coconut trees. Fire! " roared Clinton, and the solid blast of sound

 deafened him for a moment. The gun-smoke wiped out all vision ahead of

 him and then hung on the windless morning in an impenetrable fog bank.

 Forward! " howled Clinton and led the charge into the smoke. He

 stumbled over the body of an Arab. The man's turban had unwound and

 come down over his eyes, soaked with blood like the sultan's scarlet

 banner which Clinton could see waving ahead of him above the smoke.

 A figure loomed ahead of him. and he heard the fluting whistle of a

 scimitar blade, like wild goose wings overhead. He ducked. The sharp

 breeze puffed a loose strand of hair into his eyes, as the blade passed

 an inch from his forehead, and Clinton straightened from the knees and

 put his whole body into the counter-lunge.

 The point of his blade went in with a dead, soggy feel, sliding

 grudgingly through flesh until the point grated on bone. The Arab

 dropped his scimitar and clutched the cutlass blade with bare hands.

 Clinton leaned back and jerked the cutlass free of flesh. As the blade

 slid through the Arab's nerveless fingers the tendons parted with a

 faint popping sound, and the man went down on his knees, holding his

 mutilated hands up in front of his eyes with a look of amazement on his

 face.

 Clinton ran on to catch up with his seamen, and found them scattered in

 little groups amongst the grove, laughing and shouting with excitement.

 They've run like steeplechasers, sir, the boatswain called. "Grand

 National, ten to one the field! " He snatched up the fallen banner of

 the Sultan and waved it furiously over his head, completely overtaken by

 excitement. Did we lose anybody? " Clinton demanded. He also felt the

 dizzy euphoria of battle. The killing of the Arab, far from sickening

 him, had elated him. In that moment he was quite capable of turning

 back and taking the man's scalp. However, the question sobered them.

 Jedrow caught one in the belly, but he can walk.

 Wilson got a sword cut in the arm. "Send them back to the beach. They

 can escort each other. The rest of you, come on! " They found the

 barracoons a quarter of a mile further on. The guards had fled.

 The slave-pens stretched out for a half mile along both banks of a small

 stream that provided both drinking water and sewage disposal for the

 inmates.

 They were unlike the barracoons that Clinton had captured and sacked on

 the west coast, for those had been built by European traders with the

 white man's orderly eye. There was no resemblance in these sprawling

 comPounds built of rough, unbarked forest poles, bound together with

 rope made from plaited palm fronds.

 Behind the outer barricades were open godowns with thatched roofs in

 which the chained slaves could find some shelter from sun and rain. The

 only thing the same was the smell. An epidemic of tropical dysentery

 had swept through the barracoons and most of the sheds contained the

 decomposing bodies of the victims. The crows and buzzards and vultures

 were waiting patiently in the palms and cashew trees, misshapen, dark

 silhouettes against the hard bright blue of the morning sky.

 Clinton met the new ruler of the state of Elat, Sheikh Mohamed, at the

 water's edge and escorted him up the beach. The incoming tide was

 dousing the piles of smouldering ash that marked the last resting-places

 of eight fine dhows, and the Sheikh tottered uncertainly, like a man in

 deep shock, relying for support on the sturdy shoulder of one of his

 house-slaves, looking about him with lugubrious disbelief at the carnage

 that had overtaken him. The Sheikh owned one third shares in every one

 of those smoking piles of ash.

 He had to rest when they reached the tree-hne above the beach. A slave

 placed a carved wooden stool in the shade, and another waved a fan of

 plaited palm fronds over his head to keep off the flies and to cool his

 heated brow that was dewed with the heavy sweat of despair.

 His misery was completed by the lecture in broken French and pidgin

 English which "El Sheetan', the mad British sea captain with the devil's

 eyes, was relaying to him through the shocked and incredulous

 interpreter.

 Such things could only be repeated in a hoarse whisper, and the Sheikh

 greeted each new revelation with a soft cry of "WaaW and the upturning

 of his eyes to heaven.

 He learned that the village blacksmiths had been dragged out of the

 bushes and were already knocking the fetters off long rows of perplexed

 slaves. WaaW wailed the Sheikh.

 "Does the devil not realize that those slaves have already been

 purchased and that the tax has been collected."

 Comfortably Clinton explained that once the slaves were freed, they

 would be marched back into the interior, and the Sheikh would send

 guards with them to see them safely home, and to warn any slave caravans

 that they encountered on the down-route that all the ports of Elat were

 now closed to the trade. Waai! " This time the Sheikh's eyes actually

 brimmed with tears. "He will beggar me. My wives and children will

 starve. "El Sbeetan counsels you to enlarge the trade in gumcopal and

 copra, " explained the interpreter in a sepulchral voice. "And as your

 closest ally, he promises to call upon you regularly with his great ship

 of many guns, to make certain that you heed this advice. "Waai! " The

 Sheikh plucked at his beard, so that long curly hairs came out between

 his fingers. This ally makes one long for ordinary enemies."

 Twenty-four hours later Black Joke sailed into Telfa bay, forty miles

 further up the coast. Nobody had thought to warn the slaving fleet that

 was anchored there of the new policies of the state of Elat to which the

 territory now belonged.

 The five dhows in the outer anchorage managed to cut their anchor cables

 and slip away into the maze of shallow coral channels and shoals to the

 north of the bay.

 where Black joke could not follow.

 However, there were another six smaller vessels on the beach and four

 magnificent double-decked ocean-going dhows lying in the inner

 anchorage. Clinton Codrington burned two of them and seized the four

 newest and biggest vessels, put prize crews into them and sent them

 south to the nearest British base at Port Natal.

 Two days later, off the beach at Kilwa, Clinton Codrington exercised his

 ship at gunnery practice. Running out his thirty-two pounders, and

 firing them in broadsides which set the surface of the lagoon seething

 and dancing with foam and white fountains of spray. The thunder of

 gunfire burst against the far hills and rumbled back across the sky like

 cannon balls rolled across a wooden deck.

 The Sultan's local Governor was reduced to a quivering jelly of terror

 by this display of might, and had to be carried bodily into Black joke's

 whaler to be rowed out to a conclave with the gunboat's Captain. Clinton

 had the treaty forms already filled out and ready for signature when

 they carried the Governor aboard to team that he was heir to a kingdom

 to which he had never aspired, and a title which he knew was too

 grandiose not to bring with it certain retribution from somebody whose

 name he did not dare to breathe aloud.

 Admiral Kemp, sitting in his study in the magnificent mansion of

 Admiralty House, overlooking the wide smoky-blue haze of the Cape flats

 to the far mountains of the Hottentots Holland, hopefully dismissed the

 first reports as the wild imaginings of some crazed subordinate who had

 served too long in the godforsaken outpost of Port Natal, and who was

 suffering from the bush madness of "El Cafard" that sometimes affects a

 person so isolated.

 Then the details began to arrive with every despatch from the north, and

 they were too graphic to be lightly dismissed. An armada of captured

 prizes was arriving in the bay of Port Natal, twenty-six sizable dhows

 to date, some of them loaded with slaves.

 The Lieutenant-Governor of Port Natal was desperate for the Admiral's

 advice as to what should be done with the dhows. The slaves had been

 taken ashore, released and immediately been contracted as indentured

 labourers to the hardy and hopeful gentlemen who were attempting to

 raise cotton and sugarcane in the wilderness of the Umgeni valley. The

 shortage of tabour was critical, the local Zulu tribesmen much preferred

 cattle raiding and beer drinking to agricultural labour, so the Governor

 would be delighted to receive as many freed slaves as the Royal Navy

 wished to send him. (The Admiral was not entirely certain of the

 difference between indentured labourers and slaves. ) However, what was

 the Lieutenant-Governor to do with twentysix, no, the latest figure was

 thirty-two captured dhows.

 A further flotilla of six vessels had arrived as the Governor was

 dictating his report.

 Two weeks later, one of the captured dhows, which had been purchased

 into the Colonial Service by the Lieutenant-Governor, arrived in Table

 Bay bearing a further batch of despatches.

 One of these was from Sir John Bannerman, H. M.

 Consul on the island of Zanzibar. Another was from the Sultan of Omani

 in person, with copies to the Foreign Secretary in London and, quite

 remarkably, to the Governor-General in Calcutta. The Sultan evidently

 believed that as the representative of the Queen of England the

 Governor-General would have some jurisdiction in the Indian Ocean, which

 was virtually his front garden.

 Admiral Kemp split the seals on both packets with a queasy feeling of

 impending doom. Good God! " he groaned, as he began reading, and then,

 Oh sweet merciful Jesus, no! " And later, "It's too much, it's like

 some sort of nightmare! " Captain Codrington, one of the most junior

 post-captains on the Admiralty list, seemed to have taken powers unto

 himself which would have made a Wellington or a Bonaparte pause.

 He had annexed to the British Crown vast African territories, which

 hitherto had formed part of the Sultan's dominions. With a high hand he

 had negotiated with various local chiefs and dignitaries of dubious

 title and authority, pledging recognition and good British gold. Good

 God! the Admiral cried again in real anguish, What will that brighter

 Palmerston have to say. " As a staunch Tory, Kemp had no great opinion

 of the new Whig prime minister.

 Since the troubles in India, the sepoy risings of a few years

 previously, the British government was very wary of accepting further

 responsibility for overseas territory and backward peoples. Their

 orders were specific, and Captain Codrington's recent activity went far

 from the essence of those orders.

 The scramble for Africa was still in the future, and the spirit of the

 Little Englanders motivated British foreign policy, of this Admiral Kemp

 was very painfully aware.

 Daunting as this was, yet it was far from the entire story, Kemp

 realized, as he read on into the Consul's despatch, his breath rasping

 hoarsely, his colour rising steadily, and his eyes behind the gold-wire

 framed reading-glasses swimming with tears of rage and frustration.

 When I get my hands on that puppy-" he promised himself.

 Captain Codrington seemed to have declared singlehanded war upon the

 Sultan. Yet even in his outrage the Admiral felt a prickle of

 professional appreciation for the scope of his subordinate's operations.

 There was a formidable list of over thirty separate incidents recited by

 H. M. Consul. The puppy had stormed fortified castles, raided ashore

 to burn and destroy barracoons, released tens of thousands of slaves,

 seized slaving vessels on the high seas, burned others at their

 moorings, and wreaked the kind of chaos worthy of a marauding Nelson

 himself.

 The Admiral's reluctant admiration for Codrington's technical conduct of

 the campaign in no way lessened his determination to exact vengeance for

 the disruption of his life and career that those actions presented.

 Nothing can save him this time. Nothing! " the Admiral rumbled, as he

 turned to study the Sultan's protest. This was obviously the work of a

 professional letter-writer, and every paragraph began and ended with

 incongruous and flowery enquiries after Kemp's health, between which

 were sandwiched cries of anguish, screams of outrage, and bitter protest

 against the broken promises and treaties of Her Majesty's government.

 At the very end the letter-writer had not been able to resist adding a

 prayer for the Admiral and the Queen's prosperity and health in this

 life, and happiness in the one to follow. This detracted a little from

 the tone of injury in which the protests and demands had been couched.

 The Sultan assessed his losses at over fourteen lakhs of rupees, almost

 a million of sterling, in plundered shipping and released slaves, and

 that did not take into account the irreplaceable damage to his prestige,

 nor the break-down of the entire trade along the coast. The confusion

 was such that some ports might never again be opened to the trade. The

 system of gathering slaves in the interior of the continent and the

 network of routes to the coastal ports had been so sadly disrupted that

 they might take years to re-open, to say nothing of the gross shortage

 of shipping resulting from the depredations ofEl Sheetan'.

 Those ports still open to the trade were swamped with patient slaves,

 waiting for the dhows which were already scattered wrecks upon the reefs

 and beaches of the Mozambique channel, or sailing southwards under prize

 crews. Nothing can save him, repeated Admiral Kemp, and then paused.

 His own career was finished also. He realized that, and he felt the

 deep injustice of it. For forty years he had put not a single foot

 wrong, and his retirement was so close, so very close. He shook off the

 lethargy of despair, and began to draft his orders.

 The first was to all ships of his squadron, to detach immediately and to

 steam in search of Black joke. In despair he realized that it might

 take as much as six weeks for his orders to reach his commanders, for

 they were scattered across two oceans. It might also take as long again

 for them to search out the errant gunboat in the maze of islands and

 bays along the Mo ambique channel.

 However, when they did so, Captain Codrington was to be relieved of his

 command with immediate effect.

 Lieutenant Denham was to take over as temporary commander, with orders

 to bring Black joke into Table Bay as soon as possible.

 Admiral Kemp was confident that he could assemble sufficient senior

 officers on the Cape Station to convene an immediate court-martial. It

 might help his own position a little if he could report to the First

 Lord that a savage sentence had already been handed down to Codrington.

 Then there was a despatch to H. M. Consul in Zanzibar, suggesting he

 keep the Sultan reassured and quiescent until the situation could once

 more be brought under control, and until instructions could be forwarded

 from the Foreign Office in London regarding possible redress and

 compensation, although naturally at this stage, no promises or

 commitments were to be given the Sultan, beyond expressions of good

 faith and commiseration.

 Then there was the onerous task of making his report to the Admiralty.

 There were no words to soften the actions of his subordinate, and his

 own responsibility.

 Besides he had been a serving officer too long to make any such attempt.

 Yet when the bare facts were stated, even in the beloved unemotional

 jargon of the navy, they seemed so magnified that Admiral Kemp was

 himself utterly appalled, all over again. The packet-boat was delayed

 five hours while the Admiral completed, sealed and addressed this

 missive. It would be in London in less than a month.

 His last despatch was addressed to the officer commanding Her Majesty's

 ship Black joke in person. And in it Admiral Kemp allowed himself to

 give expression to some of his own bitterness, taking a sour sadistic

 pleasure in weighing the relative effectiveness of such words as

 "corsair" and "pirate', or "malicious" and "irresponsible'.

 He had his little masterpiece of venom written Out in five copies to be

 disseminated in every direction and by every available means that might

 most speedily bring the puppy to heel. Yet when they were sent, all he

 could do was wait, and that was the worst part of the affair.

 Uncertainty and inaction seemed to corrode his very soul.

 He dreaded each new arrival in Table Bay, and whenever the signal gun on

 the hill above the town boomed its brief feather of gunsmoke, his spirit

 quailed and that sour ache of dread stabbed him in his guts.

 Each new despatch lengthened the toll of destruction and depredation,

 until at last there was a report from the culprit himself, sewn up in a

 package of canvas and addressed to Admiral Kemp, delivered by the prize

 crew of a particularly valuable dbow over eighty feet long and of a

 hundred-ton burden.

 The tone in which Captain Codrington listed his achievements infuriated

 the Admiral as much as the deeds themselves. In an almost casual

 opening paragraph, Captain Codrington recorded the addition of some

 million square miles of Africa to the Empire.

 He had the grace to admit that his action may have exceeded his orders,

 and he explained away the discrepancy winningly.

 It had been my firm intention to avoid scrupulously, whilst on this

 service, every act of a political nature.

 However, I was forced to accept the cession of the kingdoms of Elat and

 Telfa by the entreaties of the Sheikh and the Imam, together with that

 of their people, who seek refuge from the inimical and savage acts of

 the Sultan of Zanzibar This was hard fare to serve their Lordships,

 especially the First Lord, Lord Somerset, who had always grudged the use

 of his men and ships to fight against slavery.

 However, much worse was to follow. Captain Codrington went on to

 lecture the Admiral and to deliver a few homilies for their Lordships"

 instruction. By God's providence, an Englishman with no other force

 than the character of his noble nation has brought to these poor people

 salvation. Their Lordships must pardon me for using an unfashionable

 argument, a sneer at the Little Englanders, "however, it is as clear to

 me as the African sun that God has prepared this continent for the only

 nation on earth that has the public virtue sufficient to govern it for

 its own benefit, and for the only people who take the revealed word for

 their moral law."

 Admiral Kemp gulped as he read it, swallowed the wrong way, and was

 prostrated with a coughing fit from which he recovered some minutes

 later to read on. in all the foregoing I have been influenced by no

 personal Motive Or interest, by no desire of vainglory, but my

 endeavours have solely been to use the powers granted me to the honour

 of my God, my Queen and to the benefit of my country and all mankind!

 The Admiral removed his reading glasses and stared at the glass case of

 stuffed songbirds on the wall opposite him.

 To write that, he is either the world's greatest fool or a brave man or

 both, he decided at last.

 Admiral Kemp was wrong in his estimate. In fact, Clinton Codrington was

 having an attack of cockiness and self-importance occasioned by the

 sense of limitless power which this command had given him. He had been

 wielding this power for many months, and his judgement and good sense

 had warped. Yet he still truly believed that he was fulfilling, in this

 order, the will of God, his patriotic duty and the spirit of his orders

 from the Lords of the Admiralty.

 He was also fully aware that he had demonstrated superior professional

 ability in carrying out a series of land and sea actions, nearly always

 against superior numbers, without a single reverse and with the loss of

 only three men killed in action and less than a dozen wounded. There

 was only one area in which Clinton had any reservations regarding the

 success of the patrol up to this time.

 Huron was still on the coast, he had intelligence of her from a dozen

 sources. Mungo St. John was trading, paying top prices for only the

 best merchandise, handpicked by either himself or his mate, the bald

 yellow giant, Tippoo. They were taking only healthy, mature men and

 women fit to withstand the long voyage back around Good Hope and across

 the middle passage, and there was a shortage of this type of

 merchandise.

 For Clinton every dawn brought the hope that Black Joke would once again

 raise that towering pyramid of beautiful white sails, but each day the

 hope faded slowly with the passage of the fierce tropical sun across the

 heavens, to be extinguished each night as the huge red orb plunged into

 the sea, and to be resurrected again with the next dawn.

 Once they missed the big American clipper by a single day. She had

 slipped out of the bay at Lindi twenty-four hours before Black Joke's

 arrival, after taking on fifty prime slaves.  The watchers from the

 beach could not be certain if she had turned north or south, for she had

 made her offing below the horizon, and had been lost to sight from the

 shore before coming around on to her intended course.

 Clinton guessed Huron would go south, and had steamed in pursuit for

 three days, over an empty sea, down a seemingly deserted coast with

 barren anchorages before admitting that St. John had sailed away from

 him again, and he was forced to abandon the hunt.

 At the very least he knew that if Huron had turned north, St. John was

 still trading, and there was always a chance of another encounter. He

 prayed for it every evening. It was all that he needed to make this

 patrol a clean sweep, so that he could fly a broom from his masthead

 when he sailed into Table Bay again.

 This time he had the sworn and witnessed depositions of the men who had

 sold St. John his slaves as proof positive that Huron was trading. He

 did not have to rely on the equipment clause, or the dubious rights of

 search.

 He had his proof and somehow he knew his chance would come.

 The tide was running at full flow for Clinton. He was imbued with a new

 sense of worthiness, a new, ironclad confidence in himself and his own

 good fortune. He carried himself differently, chin higher, shoulders

 squarer, and if his gait was not yet a swagger, it was at least an

 assured stride. He smiled more often and when he did there was a wicked

 curl to his upper lip and a devilish twinkle in the pale blue eyes. He

 had even grown a full mustache, golden and curling that gave him a

 piratical air, and his crew, who had always respected his cold precise

 management of the ship, but felt little affection for him, now cheered

 him when he came back on board from one of his forays ashore. Good old

 Tongs! " It was his new nickname fromHammer and Tongs'. They had never

 had a pet name for him before, but now they were a proud ship, proud of

 themselves, and proud of their twenty-seven-year-old Old Man'. Give "em

 hell, Tongs! " they cheered behind him, as he led them, naked cutlass

 in hand, over the outer stockade of a barracoon with musket smoke

 swirling around his lanky figure. At "em, the Jokers! " they cheered

 themselves, as they leaped the gap between Black fake's rail and the

 deck of a slaving dhow, swinging their cutlasses, pistols popping as

 they drove the slavers down into their own holds and battened the

 hatches down on them, or chased them over the side where the sharks were

 cruising.

 They knew they were creating a legend. Tongs and his jokers sweeping

 the slavers from the Mozambique channel, a hell of a story to tell the

 nippers back home, and a good slice of prize money to prove the tale.

 It was in this mood that Black Joke sailed into Zanzibar harbour, the

 stronghold of the Omani Sultan, little Daniel into the lion's den. The

 gunners on the parapets of the fort, though they stood with the slow

 match burning in their hands, could not bring themselves to touch them

 to the huge bronze cannon as the ugly little gunboat came fussing up the

 Zanzibar roads.

 Black Joke had her yards manned with neatly uniformed seamen. A

 spectacular display, geometrical white ranks of men against the backdrop

 of tropical anvilheaded thunder-clouds.

 Her officers were in cocked hats and full ceremonial dress, uniform,

 swords, white gloves and white breeches, and as she made her turn into

 the inner harbour, Black Joke began firing her courtesy salute, which

 was a signal for most of the population to head for the hills, jamming

 the narrow alleyways of the old city with a lamenting torrent of

 refugees.

 The Sultan himself fled his palace, and with most of his court took

 refuge in the British consulate, overlooking the harbour. I am not a

 coward, the Sultan explained bitterly to Sir John Bannerman, "but the

 Captain of that ship is a madman. Allah himself does not know what he

 will do next."

 Sir John was a large man, of large appetite. He possessed a noble belly

 like the glacis of a mediaeval castle and full mutton-chop whiskers

 around a florid face, but the clear intelligent eyes, and the wide

 friendly mouth of a man of humanity and humour. He was a noted oriental

 scholar, and had written books of travel and of religious and political

 appraisal of the East, as well as a dozen translations of minor Arabic

 poets.

 He was also a confirmed opponent of the slave trade, for the Zanzibar

 markets were held in the square below the windows of his residence and

 from his bedroom terrace he could watch on any morning the slaving dhows

 unloading their pitiful cargoes on the stone wharf they called, with

 cruel humour, the "Pearl Gate'.

 For seven years he had patiently negotiated a series of treaties with

 the Sultan, each one nipping a few more twigs off the flourishing growth

 which he detested, but found almost impossible to prune effectively, let

 alone root out entirely.

 In all the Sultan's territories Sir John had absolute jurisdiction only

 over the community of Hindu traders on the island, for they were British

 subjects, and Sir John published a bulletin requiring them to free all

 their slaves forthwith, against a penalty of Si oo for non-compliance.

 His bulletin made no mention of compensation, so the most influential of

 the merchants sent Sir John a defiance which was the Pushtu equivalent

 of "The hell with you and your bulletins'.

 Sir John, with his one good foot, personally kicked in the merchant's

 door, dragged him out from under his charpoy bed, dropped him to his

 knees with a fullblooded round-house punch, chained him around the neck

 and marched him through the city streets to the consulate and locked him

 in the wine cellar until the fine was paid and the slaves" manumission

 papers signed.

 There had been no further defiance and no takers for the Hindu

 merchant's subsequent, privately circulated offer to pay another Sioo to

 anybody who would stick a knife between Sir John's ribs during one of

 his evening promenades through the old city. Thus it was that Sir John

 was still bluff and hale as he stood on his terrace puffing a cigar, his

 only indisposition was the gouty foot thrust into a carpet slipper. He

 watched the little black-hulled gunboat coming up the channel. She

 behaves like a flagship, he smiled indulgently, and beside him, Said the

 Sultan of Zanzibar, hissed like a faulty steam valve. El Sheetan! "

 His wrinkled turkey neck turned bright red with impotent anger, his bony

 nose beaked like that of an unhappy parrot. "He sails here, into my

 harbour, and my gunners stand by their cannons like dead men.

 He who has beggared me, who has plunged my empire into ruins, what does

 he dare here? " The answer that Clinton "Tongs" Codrington would have

 given him was quite simple. He was carrying out to the letter the

 orders given him in Cape Town many months previously by Admiral Kemp,

 the Commander of the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean Squadron. You are

 further requested and required to take advantage of the first

 opportunity to call into the harbour of Zanzibar, where you will accord

 to his Royal Highness the Sultan of Omani full honours, while taking the

 advice of Her Majesty's Consul, Sir John Bannerman, as to reinforcing

 existing treaties between His Royal Highness and Her Britannic Majesty's

 Government."

 Which, being translated, was an instruction to show the Union Jack

 against a background of thirty-two pounder cannons, and by doing so

 remind the Sultan of his commitments under the various treaties. To

 teach the naughty old beggar to mind his P's and Q's, " as Clinton

 explained cheerfully to Lieutenant Denham with a twirl of his new golden

 mustache. I would have thought, sir, that the lesson had already been

 given', Denham answered darkly. Not at all, Clinton demurred.

 "The treaties with the new sultans on the mainland no longer affect the

 Zanzibar fellow. We still have to ginger this old boy up a little."

 Sir John Bannerman limped up on to Black Joke's deck, favouring his

 gouty foot and cocked a lively eye at the young naval officer who

 stepped forward to greet him.

 Well, sir, you have been busy indeed, he murmured.

 My God, the fellow was little more than a boy, a freshfaced youngster,

 despite the cocked hat and mustache.

 It was difficult to believe that he had created such havoc with this

 tiny ship.

 They shook hands, and Bannerman found himself liking the boy, despite

 the turmoil that he brought into the Consul's normally tranquil

 existence.

 A glass of madeira, sir? " Clinton suggested. Damned decent of you, I

 must say."

 In the small cabin, Bannerman mopped his streaming face, and came

 directly to business. By God, you've put the cat amongst the pigeons,

 he wagged his big head. I don't see. . . "Now, listen to me,

 Bannerman snapped, "and I'll explain to you the facts of life as they

 apply to eastern Africa in general, and Zanzibar in particular."

 Half an hour later, Clinton had lost much of his newfound bumptiousness.

 What should we do? " he asked. Do? innerman asked. "What we do is

 take full advantage of the situation which you have precipitated, before

 these idiots in Whitehall come stumbling in. Thanks to you the Sultan

 is at last in a mood to sign the treaty I have been after for five

 years. I'll trade a handful of these utterly illegal, untenable

 treaties that you have made with non-existent states and mythical

 princes for one that will truss the old goat up the way I've wanted him

 for years. "Excuse me, Sir John, Clinton looked slightly perplexed,

 "from what, you said earlier, I understood that you heartily disapproved

 of my recent actions. "On the contrary, " Sir John grinned at him

 expansively, you have stirred my blood, and made me proud to be an

 Englishman again. I say, do you have a little more of the madeira? "

 He raised the glass to Clinton. "My hearty congratulations, Captain

 Codrington. I only wish that I could do something to save you from the

 fate that so certainly awaits you, once the Admiralty and Lord

 Palmerston catch up with you. " Sir John drank half the glass, smacked

 his lips, "Jolly good stuff, he nodded, set the glass aside and went on

 briskly, "Now, we have to work fast and get the Sultan to sign an

 iron-clad treaty, before Whitehall rushes in with apologies and

 protestations of good faith which will put to naught all the fine work

 you have done to date. Something tells me that won't be very long, he

 added lugubriously, and then more brightly, "You could have your ship's

 guns run out whilst we are ashore. Do wear your sword.  Oh, and one

 other thing, don't take your eyes off the old goat while I do the

 talking. There is already talk about your eyes, that extraordinary

 colour of blue, don't you know, and the Sultan has heard about them

 already. As you probably know, they now call you "El Sheetan" on this

 coast, and the Sultan is a man who sets great store by djinns and the

 occult."

 Sir John's predictions as to the imminent arrival of tiding's from

 higher sources was almost clairvoyant, for as he spoke H. M. sloop

 Penguin, with urgent despatches on board for Sir John Bannerman, for the

 Sultan, and for Captain Codrington, was on a fair wind, which, if it

 held, would bring her into Zanzibar harbour within the next two days.

 Time was shorter than even Sir John believed.

 With some trepidation, the Sultan had moved back into his palace. He

 had only half believed Sir John's assurances, but, on the other hand,

 the palace was half a mile from the harbour where that evil black ship

 was displaying its formidable broadside of carronades, while the

 consulate was on the harbour front, or the front line of fire, depending

 on how one looked at it.

 On Sir John's advice Clinton had come ashore with a bodyguard of a dozen

 picked seamen, who could be trusted to resist the temptations of the old

 city's redlight area, the grog and the women that seamen dream of. It

 was dusk when the party plunged into the labyrinth of narrow alleys,

 where the balconies almost met overhead, led by Sir John who despite his

 game leg set a good pace, picking his way around heaps of noisome

 garbage and avoiding the puddles in the uneven paving that looked like a

 cold minestrone soup and smelled a great deal higher.

 He chatted affably with Clinton, pointing out the various sites and

 buildings of interest, relating the island's history and giving a quick

 perceptive character-sketch of the Sultan and the more important men in

 his empire, including those unfortunate new princes who had signed

 Clinton's blank treaty forms. That's one thing, Sir John. I wouldn't

 want anything to happen to them, Clinton cut in for the first time. "I

 hope they won't be victimized for having, well, how can one say, for

 having seceded from the Sultan's empire-Torlom hope."

 Sir John waggled his head. "Not one of them will be alive by Ramadan.

 The old goat has a nasty streak. "Couldn't we put a clause in the new

 treaty to protect them? "We could, but it would be a waste of paper and

 ink."

 Sir John clapped his shoulder. "Your concern is misplaced. The finest

 collection of ruffians, rogues and assassins south of the equator, or

 north of it, for that matter. One of the side benefits of the whole

 business, getting rid of that lot. Old goat will have a lovely time,

 compensate him for the loss of face when he straps their heads or hands

 them the cup of datura tea. Ghastly death, datura. poisoning. Oh, by

 the way, you must look at these gates. " They had reached the front of

 the palace. One of the most magnificent examples of craftsmanship on

 the island."

 The massive teak doors were fifteen feet high, intricately carved, but

 in accordance with Moslem law the carvings depicted neither human nor

 animal figures.

 They were the only impressive feature of the drab square building with

 its blank walls relieved by the wooden balconies high above street

 level, shuttered against the night air and the gaze of the curious.

 The gates swung open at their approach, and the palace guards armed with

 ancient jezails were the first living beings they had seen since leaving

 the harbour. The city was still deserted, and cowering under the menace

 of Black Joke's guns.

 Clinton noticed, since Sir John had mentioned it, that the guards

 averted their gaze as he passed, one of them actually covering his face

 with the loose tail of his turban. So the business of the eyes was

 true. He was not sure whether to feel insulted or amused. You must see

 these. " Sir John stopped him in the cavernous ante-chamber lit with

 guttering oil lamps suspended in heavy brass chandeliers from a ceiling

 lost in the gloom. "The heaviest recorded specimens in the world, one

 of them over three-hundred-pounds weighc They were a pair of African

 elephant tusks, suspended on the stone wall with retaining bands of

 copper, two incredible curves of ancient ivory, as thick as a girl's

 waist, taller than a man could reach, with hardly any taper from hilt to

 b unt tip, , earning with the lustre of precious porcelain.

 , You have not hunted these beasts? " Clinton shook his head, he had

 never even seen one of them but the huge teeth impressed him none the

 less. Before my foot, I shot them in India and in Africa. No other

 sport to beat that, incredible animals. " He patted one of the tusks.

 "The Sultan killed this one when he was a young man, with a jezail! But

 there aren't any monsters like that around any more, more's the pity.

 Come along, mustn't keep the old goat waiting."

 They went on through half a dozen chambers, each of them Aladdin's caves

 of rare treasures, carved jade, beautifully worked ivory carvings, a

 palm tree and suspended moon, the symbol of Mohamed, in solid gold,

 carpets of silk and thread of gold and silver, a collection of fifty

 priceless Korans in silver and golden containers set with precious and

 semiprecious stones. Look at that shiner! Sir John stopped again, and

 pointed out a native cut diamond in the hilt of an Arabian scimitar.

 The diamond was cushion-shaped and a little out of true, but burning

 with a weird blue and icy fire even in the semi-dark. "Legend says the

 sword was Saladin's I doubt it, but the stone is one hundred and

 fifty-five carats. I weighed it myself. " And then as he took

 Clinton's arm and stumped off again, "Old goat is rich as Croesus. He

 has been milking rupees out of the mainland for forty years, and his

 father for fifty years before that. Ten rupees for every slave, ten for

 every kilo of ivory, God knows how much for copra and gum-copal

 concessions."

 Clinton saw instantly why Sir John called him the old goat. The

 resemblance was startlin& from the white, pointed beard and square

 yellow teeth to the mournful Roman nose and elongated ears.

 He took one look at Clinton, catching his eye for a split part of a

 second, before he looked away hurriedly, blanching visibly, as he waved

 his two visitors to the piles of velvet and silk cushions. Keep the old

 beady eye on him, " Sir John counselled aside, "and don't eat anything!

 He indicated the display of sweetmeats and -sugared cakes on the bronze

 trays. "If they aren't poisoned, they'll probably turn your stomach

 anyway. It's going to be a long night."

 The prediction was accurate, the talk went on hour after tedious hour,

 in flowing Arabic hyperbole and flowery diplomacy, that concealed the

 hard bargaining.

 Clinton understood not a word. He forced himself not to fidget, though

 his buttocks and legs soon lost all feeling from the unusual position on

 the cushions, yet he maintained a stern expression and kept his gaze

 fixed on the Sultan's wrinkled and whiskered visage. Sir John assured

 him later that it had helped greatly to shorten the negotiations, yet it

 seemed a hill round of eternity before Sir John and the Sultan were

 exchanging polite fixed smiles and deep bows of agreement.

 There was a triumphant gleam in Sir John's eye, as he strode out of the

 palace, and he took Clinton's arm affectionately. Whatever happens to

 you, my dear fellow, generations unborn will have reason to bless your

 name. We have done it, you and I. The old goat has agreed. The trade

 will wither and die out within the next few years now."

 On the walk back through the narrow streets, Sir John was as lively and

 cheerful as a man returning from a convivial party rather than the

 bargaining table. His servants were still waiting his coming, and all

 the lamps in the consulate were burning.

 Clinton would have liked immediately to go back aboard his ship, but Sir

 John restrained him with an arm about his shoulder, as he called for his

 Hindu butler to bring champagne. On the silver tray with the green

 bottle and crystal glasses was a small package in stitched and sealed

 canvas. While the uniformed butler poured the champagne, Sir John

 handed Clinton the package. This came in earlier on a trading dhow. I

 did not have the opportunity to deliver it to you before we left for the

 palace."

 Clinton accepted it warily, and read the addressCaptain Clinton

 Codrington, Officer Commanding Her Majesty's Ship Black Joke. Please

 forward to H. M.

 Consul at Zanzibar to await collection."

 The address was repeated in French, and Clinton felt a quick thrill

 kindle his blood as he recognized the bold round script in which the

 package was addressed. It took an effort to restrain himself from

 ripping the package open immediately.

 However, Sir John was handing him a glass of wine, and Clinton suffered

 through the toasts, the loyal toast to the Queen, and that ironical one

 to the Sultan and the new treaty, before he blurted out, "Excuse me, Sir

 John, I believe this to be a communication of importance, and the Consul

 waved him into his study and closed the door after him to give Clinton

 privacy.

 On the leather top of the marquetry desk, Clinton slit the seals and

 stitching of the package with a silver knife from the Consul's desk set.

 From it fell a thick sheaf of closely written notepaper, and a woman's

 earring of paste and silver, the twin to the one that Clinton wore under

 his shirt against his chest.

 Black Joke groped her way out through the dark, unbuoyed channel an hour

 before the first flush of dawn in the eastern sky. Turning southwards

 she set all canvas and worked up swiftly to her best speed.

 She was making eleven knots when she passed the sloop Penguin a little

 before midnight the following night. Penguin bearing her urgent

 dispatches was hull down on the eastern horizon and her running lights

 were obscured by a heavy tropical deluge, the first fanfare of the

 coming monsoon that passed between the two vessels hiding them from each

 other's lookouts.

 By dawn the two ships were fifty nautical miles apart, and rapidly

 widening the gap, while Clinton Codrington paced his quarterdeck

 impatiently, stopping at every turn to peer impatiently into the south.

 He was hurrying to answer the most poignant appeal, the most pressing

 duty of a dutiful man, the call for succour from the woman he loved, a

 woman in terrible and pressing jeopardy.

 The flow of the Zambezi had a majesty that Zouga Ballantyne had seen on

 no other great river, neither the Thames, nor the Rhine, nor the Ganges.

 The water was the almost iridescent green of molten s ag pouring down

 the side o a steel-yard dump, and it formed powerful, slowly turning

 vortices in the angles of the broad bends, while in the shallows it

 seemed to roll upon itself as though the leviathan of all the world

 sported below its dark mysterious surface. Here the main channel was

 more than a mile across, though there were other lesser channels, and

 other narrower mouths beyond the waving banks of papyrus and

 cotton-headed reeds.

 The small flotilla of boats hardly seemed to move against the current.

 In the lead was the steam launch Helen, named after Zouga's mother.

 Fuller Ballantyne had designed the vessel and had it manufactured in

 Scotland for the disastrous Zambezi expedition which had penetrated only

 as far as the Kaborra-Bossa gorge.

 The launch was almost ten years old now, and for most of that time had

 been the victim of the engineering prowess of the Portuguese trader who

 had purchased her from Fuller Ballantyne when the expedition was

 abandoned.

 The launch's steam engine creaked and thudded, leaked steam from every

 pipe and joint, and sprayed sparks and thick black smoke from her

 wood-burning furnace, exerting herself far beyond the dictates of her

 age and maker's specifications as she towed the three deeply laden

 barges against the flow of the mighty river.

 They were making good a mere fifteen miles a day, and it was more than

 two hundred up river from Quelimane to Tete.

 Zouga had chartered the launch and her barges to carry the expedition

 upstream to the jump-off point at Tete.

 He and Robyn rode in the first barge, together with the most valuable

 and delicate equipment: the medical stores, the navigational equipment,

 sextants, barometers and chronometers, the ammunition and firearms, and

 the personal camping gear.

 in the third and last barge, under the bright and restless eye of

 Sergeant Cheroot, were the few porters that had been recruited at

 Quelirnane. Zouga was assured that the additional hundred porters that

 he needed could be procured at Tete, but it had seemed prudent to sign

 on these healthy and vigorous men, as they became available. So far

 there had been no desertions, which was something unusual for the

 beginning of a long safari, when the proximity of home and hearth could

 be expected to exert sudden irresistible attractions on the weaker

 souls.

 in the middle barge, on the tow-line directly behind Zouga, were the

 bulkier stores. In the main these were trade goods, cloth and beads,

 knives and axes, some cheap muskets and lead bars for ball, bags of

 black powder and flints. These were essential commodities with which to

 buy fresh provisions, to bribe local headmen for right to passage, to

 purchase concessions to hunt and prospect, and generally sustain the

 expedition's objects.

 In charge of this middle barge was Zouga's newest and most dubious

 acquisition, who had been hired as.  guide, translator and camp manager.

 His slight admixture of blood showed in his skin, a smooth dark olive

 and his hair, thick and lustrous as a woman's. His teeth were very

 white and he flashed them in a perpetually ready smile. Yet, even when

 he smiled, his eyes were cold and black as those of an angry mamba.

 The Governor in Quelimane had assured Zouga that this man was the most

 famous elephant hunter and traveller in all the Portuguese territories.

 He had ventured further into the interior than any other living

 Portuguese, and he spoke a dozen of the local dialects and understood

 the customs of the local tribes. You cannot travel without him, " the

 Governor assured Zouga. "It would be madness to do so. Even your own

 father, the famous Dr. Fuller Ballantyne, made use of his services. It

 was he who showed your sainted father the way to reach Lake Marawi."

 Zouga had raised an eyebrow. "My father was the first man to reach Lake

 Marawi!

 'The first white man, the Governor corrected him delicately, and Zouga

 smiled as he realized that it was one of the subtle distinctions which

 Fuller Ballantyne used to protect the value of his discoveries and

 explorations.

 Of course, there had been men living on the shores of the lake for at

 least two thousand years, and the Arabs and Mulattos had traded there

 for two hundred years, but they were not white men. That made an

 enormous difference.

 Zouga had at last acceded to the Governor's suggestions when he had

 realized that this paragon was also the Governor's nephew, and that the

 further course of the expedition would be much smoothed by employing

 somebody so well connected.

 He had reason to reconsider this opinion within the first few days. The

 man was a braggart and a bore. He had an endless fund of tales, of

 which he was always the hero, and the evident disregard for the truth

 that these demonstrated made all his facts and information suspect.

 Zouga was uncertain just how well the man spoke the tribal dialects. He

 seemed to prefer to communicate with the toe of his boot or the siambok

 of cured hippopotamus hide which he always carried. As for his hunting

 prowess, he certainly expended a great deal of powder and shot.

 Zouga was sprawled on the barge's afterdeck, in the shade of the canvas

 awning, and he was sketching on the board he held on his knees. It was

 a pastime he had taken up in India, and though he knew that he had no

 great talent, yet it filled the idle hours of camp life and served as a

 useful record of places and persons, of events and animals. Zouga

 intended incorporating some of the sketches and water colours in the

 book describing the expedition. The book which would make his fortune

 and reputation.

 He was trying to capture on paper the river's immensity, and the

 tallness of that aching blue sky set with the afternoon's building

 thunderheads, when there was the sharp crack of a rifle shot, and he

 looked up frowning with annoyance. He is at it again. " Robyn dropped

 her book into her lap and glanced back at the second barge.

 Camacho Nuflo Alvares Pereira sat high on the barge's cargo, reloading

 the rifle, ramrodding the charge down the long barrel. The high beaver

 hat sat on his head like a chimney stack and the bunch of white ostrich

 feathers plumed out above the crown like smoke from the furnace. Zouga

 could not see what he had fired at, but he guessed what would be his

 next target, for the steamer was being pushed out by the current to the

 outside of a broad bend in the river, and it was forced to steer between

 two low sandbanks.

 The sand shone in the sunlight with the peculiar brilliance of an alpine

 snowfield, contrasting with the dark shapes upon it that looked like

 rounded granite boulders.

 As the steamer slowly closed the gap, the shapes resolved into a troop

 of sprawling somnolent hippopotami. There were a dozen of them, one a

 huge scarred bull, lying on his side and exposing the expanse of his

 belly.

 Zouga glanced back from the huge sleeping animals to the figure of

 Camacho Pereira on the second barge.

 Camacho lifted the plumed beaver and waved it in jovial salute. His

 teeth flashing like a semaphore even at that distance. You chose him,

 said Robyn sweetly, following the direction of his gaze.

 That's a great comfort. " Zouga glanced at his sister. They told me he

 was the greatest sportsman and guide on the east coast."

 They both watched Camacho finish loading the rifle and setting the cap

 on its nipple.

 The sleeping hippopotami suddenly became aware of the approaching

 vessels. They scrambled upright with amazing alacrity for such

 clumsy-looking animals, and galloped over the white sand, scattering

 clouds of it under their huge feet and then entered the water in a high

 crashing cascade of thrown spray, disappearing swiftly, and leaving the

 water churned and flecked with foam. Standing in the bows of the first

 barge, Zouga could clearly see the dark shapes below the surface of the

 water, galloping in comical slow motion, their movements inhibited by

 the water. They were silhouetted against the lighter-coloured

 sandbanks, and as he watched them, the ungainly creatures evoked his

 sympathy and amusement.

 He remembered a nursery rhyme that his Uncle William had recited to him

 as a child that began "A hippo, what, ainus? " Zouga was still smiling

 as the bull hippo surfaced fifty paces from the barge's side. The bulky

 grey head broke clear, the flaps of flesh that sealed the nostrils

 flared open as he breathed and the small round ears fluttered like the

 wings of a bird as he cleared them of water.

 For a moment he stared at the strange vessels through pinkly inflamed,

 piggy blue eyes. Then he opened the full gape of his jaws, a cavern the

 colour and the texture of a pink rose. The tusks were yellow and curved

 to murderous cutting edges, quite capable of biting a bullock cleanly in

 half, and he no longer seemed fat and comical. Instead he looked

 exactly what he was, the most dangerous of all African big game.

 Zouga knew that the hippopotamus had killed more human beings than all

 the elephant and lion and buffalo together. With ease they could crunch

 in the fragile hull of a dug-out canoe, the ubiquitous makoro of Africa,

 and then cut in half the terrified swimmers. They would readily leave

 the water to chase and kill any human who they believed threatened a

 calf, and in areas where they had been hunted they would attack without

 provocation.

 However, the steel hulls of the barges were invulnerable even to the

 jaws and tusks of the massive creature, and Zouga could afford to watch

 with complete objectivity.

 From the bull's gaping pink jaws came a challenging series of bellows,

 each mounting in volume and menace as he moved closer to drive off the

 intruders who threatened his females and their young. Camacho put his

 hand up behind his head, and tilted the beaver hat at a jaunty angle

 over one eye. As always, he was smiling as he swung up the rifle and

 fired.

 Zouga saw the strike of the bullet deep in the animal's throat, it

 severed an artery and instantly bright crimson blood gushed against the

 roof of the open mouth, discolouring the gleaming tusks, and pouring in

 a quick flood over the rubbery, bewhiskered lips. The bull's bellow

 rose into a piercing scream of agony, and he lunged half clear of the

 surface in a burst of white water. I keel heem! " roared Camacho, and

 his shout of laughter filled the sudden void of silence as the bull

 dived below the surface, leaving his blood to swirl away down the

 current.

 Robyn had jumped up and was clinging to the barge's rail, a flush

 overlaying her sunbronzed cheeks and throat.

 That was callous butchery, she said quietly. No point in it, Zouga

 agreed. "The animal will die below the surface and be washed out to

 sea.

 ut he was wrong, for the bull surfaced again, closer to the barge. His

 jaws still gaping and streaming gouts of blood, he thrashed and lunged

 in maddened circles, his bellows distorted by blood and water, as his

 death frenzy rose to a crescendo. Perhaps the bullet had damaged his

 brain, making it impossible for him to close his jaws or to control his

 limbs. I keel heem! " roared Camacho, dancing with excitement on the

 foredeck of the second barge, pouring shot after shot into the immense

 grey body, grabbing a rifle from his black gunbearer or from his second

 loader as soon as it was primed.

 His two black servants worked with the expertise of long practice, so

 that it seemed that Camacho always had a loaded rifle ready to snatch

 and waiting hands ready to take the smoking weapon from him the moment

 he had fired.

 Slowly the string of barges drew away upstream, leaving; the stricken

 animal wallowing with increasing feebleness in its own expanding circle

 of blood-tinged waters, until at last it rolled belly upwards, all four

 stubby legs sticking up towards the sky for a moment before it sank at

 last and the blood was diluted and swept away downstream.

 That was sickening, " whispered Robyn. Yes, but he has trained those

 gunbearers of his damned well, said Zouga thoughtfully. "If one is

 going to hunt elephant, that is the way to do it Two hours before sunset

 the Helen edged in towards the south bank. For the first time since

 leaving Quelimane there was some feature on the shore, beyond the

 endless reed swamps and sand-banks.

 The bank was steeper here, rising ten feet above the river, and game

 paths had been cut into the grey earth by thousands of sharp hooves, and

 polished to shiny clay by the sliding wet bellies of the long

 lizard-like shapes of the big crocodiles that came tobogganing down the

 almost vertical slope when they were disturbed by Helen's churning

 propeller. The heavily armoured reptiles with the staring yellow eyes

 set on a hard horny scale atop the long saurian head repulsed Robyn, the

 first African animal to do so.

 There were trees on the bank now, not just waving stands of papyrus.

 Chief of these were the graceful palms with stern s sculptured like a

 claret bottle. Ivory palms, Zouga told her. "The fruit has a kernel

 like a ball of ivory."

 Then far beyond the palms, low against the ruddy evening sky, they could

 make out the first silhouette of hills and kopjes. They were leaving

 the delta at last, and that night the company would camp on firm ground,

 instead of soft white sand, and burn heavy logs on the camp fires rather

 than the pulpy papyrus stern s.

 Zouga checked the sentries that Sergeant Cheroot had placed over the

 irreplaceable cargoes in the barges on which the whole expedition

 depended, then he supervised the siting of the tents before taking the

 Sharps rifle and starting out into the open forest and grassland beyond

 the camp site. I come weeth you, offered Camacho. "We keel

 somethingYour job is to make camp, Zouga told him coolly, and the

 Portuguese flashed his smile and shrugged. I make one damn fine camp,

 you see."

 But as Zouga disappeared amongst the trees, the smile slid off his face,

 and he hawked in his throat and spat in the dust.  Then he turned back

 into the turmoil of men raising canvas on poles, or drawing in branches

 of freshly cut thorns to build the scherm against marauding lions or

 scavenging hyena.

 Camacho lashed out at a bare black back. "Hurry, you one mother,

 twenty-seven fathers. " The man cried out at the pain of the cured

 hippo-hide whip, redoubling his efforts as a purple welt, thick as a

 man's little finger, rose across his sweat-oiled muscles.

 Camacho strode on towards the small grove of trees which Zouga had

 picked as the site for the tents of his sister and himself, and he saw

 that the tents had already been erected and that the woman was busy with

 the evening muster when she treated the ailments of the camp.

 She had been seated at the collapsible camp table, but as Camacho

 approached, she rose and stooped to examine the foot of one of the

 bearers whose axe had slipped and almost severed a toe.

 The Portuguese stopped abruptly. and his throat dried out as he watched

 her. As soon as they had left Quelimane, the woman had taken to wearing

 men's breeches.

 Camacho found them more provocative than naked flesh itself. It was the

 first time he had ever seen a white woman dressed like this, and he

 found it hard to take his eyes off her. Whenever she was in sight, he

 would watch her surreptitiously, waiting hungrily for the moment when

 she stooped or leaned forward and the moleskin stretched over her

 buttocks, as it was now. It lasted too short a time, for the woman

 straightened up and began speaking to the little black girl who seemed

 more of a companion to her than a servant.

 Still Carnacho leaned against the hole of one of the tall urnsivu trees

 and watched her with those black eyes gone velvet and swimming with

 desire. He was carefully weighing the consequences of what he had

 dreamed about every night since they had left Quelimane. He had

 imagined every detail, every expression, every word, each movement and

 each sigh or cry.

 It was not as improbable as it seemed at first. She was an English

 woman, of course, daughter of a famous man of God, both facts should

 have been prohibitive to his intentions. However, Camacho had a canny

 instinct when it came to women, there was a sensuality about her eye and

 in the full soft lips, and she moved with animal awareness of her body.

 Carnacho stirred restlessly and thrust his hands into his pockets,

 kneading and tugging gently at himself.

 He was fully aware that he was a magnificent specimen of masculinity,

 those thick tresses of black hair, the gypsy feyness of eyes, the

 blazing smile, and powerful and well-proportioned body. He was

 attractive, perhaps irresistibly so, for more than once he had

 intercepted a quizzical appraising look from the woman.

 Often the admixture of his blood was attractive to white women, it was

 an exoticism, the attraction of the forbidden and dangerous, and he

 sensed in this woman a rebellious disregard for the rules of society. It

 was possible, no more than possible, Carnacho decided, and there was

 unlikely to be a better opportunity than now. The cold stiff English

 brother was out of camp, would be so f or another hour or more, and the

 woman had finished attending the little group of sick bearers. A

 servant had brought a kettle of boiling water to her tent, and she was

 closing the fly.

 Cim-echo had watched this little ritual every evening.

 Once the oil lamp had cast her shadow upon the canvas, and he had

 watched her silhouette lowering those tantalizing breeches, and then

 using the sponge to, he shuddered deliciously at the memory, and pushed

 himself away from the tree trunk.

 Robyn mixed the hot water from the kettle into the enamel basin. It was

 still scalding hot, but she liked it so that it reddened the skin and

 left her feeling glowing with cleanliness. She began to unbutton the

 flannel shirt, sighing with pleasant weariness, when something scratched

 on the fly of the tent. Who is it? " she called sharply, and felt a

 faint stir of alarm as she recognized the low voice. "What do you want?

 " I want talk you, missus. " Camacho's tone was conspiratorial. Not

 now, I am busy. " The man repelled her, and yet in a contrary manner,

 fascinated her as well. She had found herself staring at him more than

 once, as she would at a beautiful but poisonous insect. She was annoyed

 that he had noticed and was vaguely aware that it was unwise to show

 even the vaguest interest in a man like that. Come back tomorrow. " It

 suddenly occurred to her that Zouga was not in the camp, and she had

 sent little Juba on an errand. I cannot wait. I am sick."

 That was one appeal she could not deny. Oh very well. Wait, she

 called, and buttoned her shirt, and then as an excuse perhaps to delay

 the moment turned her attention to her instruments still spread on the

 table that had been carried into the tent.

 It reassured her to touch them, and rearrange the bottles and pots of

 medicines. Enter, " she called at last, and faced the entrance of the

 tent.

 Camacho stooped through the entrance, and for the first time she

 realized bow tall he was. His presence in the small tent was almost

 overpowering, and his smile seemed to light up the interior. His teeth

 were startlingly white and perfect, she found herself staring again,

 like a chicken at the dancing cobra perhaps. He was beautiful in a

 decadent, overblown way, he was bare-headed, all dark dancing hair and

 scalding eyes. What is the trouble? " she asked, trying to sound brisk

 and businesslike. I show you."

 Very well, " she nodded, and he unbuttoned his shirt.

 His skin had the sheen of wet marble, but was deep olive in colour, and

 his body hair grew in crisply springing whorls. His belly was moulded

 like that of a greyhound and his waist narrow as a girl's. She ran her

 eyes down his body, quite certain that her gaze was level and

 professional, but there was no denying the fact that he was an

 extraordinary animal. Where is it? " she asked, and with a single

 movement he had unclinched and lowered the light duck trousers that were

 all he wore on his lower body. Where? " she asked, and realized that

 her voice croaked, and she could not go on with the question, for

 suddenly it dawned upon her that she had been the victim of a carefully

 planned ruse, and she was in a potentially dangerous position.

 Is that where it hurts? " she found her voice was still a husky

 whisper. Yes, his voice was A whisper also, and he made a slow stroking

 movement. "You can fix, maybe. " He took a step towards her.  I can

 fix, certainly, she said softly, and her hand dropped on to the array of

 surgical instruments. She actually experienced a twinge of real regret,

 for it was a superior example of nature's art, and afterwards she was

 relieved that she had selected a needle probe, and not one of the

 razorlike scalpels that she had reached for.

 The instant before she stabbed, he realized what was about to happen and

 an expression of utter terror blanched his swarthy, handsome face. He

 tried frantically to return it to whence it had come, but fear had

 slowed his hand.

 He screamed like a teenage girl as the probe plunged into him, and kept

 on screaming as he spun around on the same spot as though one foot had

 been nailed to the ground. Now he was using both hands to hold himself,

 and once again, with cool professional interest, Robyn noticed the quite

 miraculous change that had taken place.

 She advanced the probe once more into the ready position, and Camacho

 could no longer stand his ground.

 He snatched up his trousers, and with a last terrified howl, launched

 himself head-first into the tent pole. The collision checked him only a

 moment, and then he was gone, and Robyn found herself trembling

 violently and yet she was strangely elated. It had been an unusual and

 instructive experience. However " she would have to use her own

 personal code when describing it in her journal.

 From that evening onwards the Portuguese kept well away from Robyn, and

 she was relieved not to have those hot dark eyes caressing her wherever

 she turned. She thought of telling Zouga of the incident, but decided

 that the embarrassment to both of them and the difficulty of finding the

 correct words was not worth it. Then there would be the extreme

 reaction which Zouga would almost certainly have, or that she expected

 he would have. She had learned never to expect the obvious reaction

 from her brother, behind the cool and reserved exterior she suspected

 there existed mysterious passions and dark emotions. After all, they

 were full-blooded brother and sister, and if she was so afflicted, why

 should he not be also?

 On the other hand, she suspected that, like a cornered wild animal, the

 Portuguese could be a grave danger even to an experienced soldier and

 man of action like Zouga.

 She had a horror of forcing her brother into a position which might

 lead, if not to his death. then at least to serious injury. Besides

 which, she had effectively taken care of the man herself. He would be

 no further trouble, she decided comfortably, and she dismissed Camacho

 from her mind, and concentrated instead on the pleasure of the last few

 leisurely days of the voyage up-stream.

 The river had narrowed, and the flow was swifter, so that the rate of

 the convoy's advance slowed even further. The banks provided an

 ever-changing panorama.

 Sitting under the awnin& with Zouga sketching or writing beside her, she

 was able to call his attention to the new birds and trees and animals

 and to have the benefit of his knowledge, gathered to be sure mostly

 from books, but still wide-reaching and interesting.

 The hills of the escarpment rose in a series of cockscombs, so

 two-dimensional that they seemed to be cut out from thin sheets of some

 opaque material that allowed the colours of the sunrise to glow through

 with a weird luminosity. As the sun rose higher, the colours washed out

 to ethereal eggshell blues, and finally faded altogether in the heat

 haze of midday, to reappear in the late afternoon in a new suit of

 totally different colours ale pinks and ash of roses, ripe plum and

 delicate p apricot.

 The hills formed a backdrop to the forests that now ran in a narrow belt

 along the river banks. Tall galleries of trees, with spreading upper

 branches in which the troops of vervet monkeys frolicked. The trunks of

 these trees were daubed with multi-coloured lichens, sulphurous yellows,

 burnt oranges and the blues and greens of a summer sea. The tangled

 ropes of lianas, which as a child Robyn had called "monkey ropes',

 dangled down from the upper branches to touch the surface of the river

 or cascade into the dense dark greens of the undergrowth.

 Beyond this narrow strip of vegetation, there were occasional glimpses

 of a different forest on the higher, drier ground, and Robyn saw again

 with a sharp nostalgic pang the ugly and bloated baobab tree with its

 scrubby bare little branches topping the huge swollen stern . The

 African legends that her mother had repeated to her so often, explained

 how the Nkulu-kulu, the great great one, had planted the baobab upside

 down, with its roots in the air.

 Nearly every baobab had a nest of one of the big birds of prey in its

 bare branches, each a shaggy mass of dried twigs and small branches

 looking like a small, air-borne haystack. often the birds were at the

 nest site, sitting on a look-out branch, with that typical raptorial

 stillness, or soaring above in wide circles, with only an occasional

 lazy flap of the spread wings, and the stiff tip-feathers feeling the

 air currents like the fingers of a concert pianist upon the ivory keys.

 There was very little game along this part of the river, and the rare

 antelope rushed back into cover at the first distant approach, a pale

 blur of movement, with a mere fleeting glimpse of the tall corkscrew

 horns of a greater kudu, or the flirt of the white, powder-puff

 underside of a reedbuck's tail.

 The game close to the river had been heavily hunted, if not by the

 Portuguese themselves then by their armed servants, for nearly two

 hundred years.

 When Zouga asked Camacho, "Do you ever find elephant on this part of the

 river! the Portuguese had flashed his smile and declared, "If I find

 heern, I keel heern."

 A sentiment that was probably shared by nearly every traveller along

 this busy waterway, and which accounted for the timidity and scarcity of

 game in the area.

 Camacho was reduced to firing at the roosting fish eagles on their

 fishing-perches overhanging the water.

 These handsome birds had the same snowy white head, breast and shoulders

 of the famous American bald eagle, and a body of lovely dark russet and

 glistening black.

 When a shout of Carnacho's laughter signalled a hit, a bird would tumble

 untidily over its disproportionately large wings as it fell into the

 green water, reduced from imperial dignity to awkward and ungainly death

 by the strike of the lead bullet.

 Within a few days Camacho had recovered from the peculiar, bow-legged

 and deliberate gait, with which he favoured the injury that Robyn had

 inflicted on him, and his laughter regained its ringing timbre. But

 there were other injuries that did not heal so readily, those to his

 pride and his masculinity. His lust had been changed on the instant to

 burning hatred, and the more he brooded upon it the more corrosive it

 became and the deeper his craving for vengeance.

 However, his personal considerations would have to wait. There was

 still much important work for him to do. His uncle, the Governor of

 Quelimane, had placed great trust in him by assigning him to this task,

 and his uncle would be unforgiving of any failure. The family fortune

 was involved, and to a lesser extent the family honour, although this

 last was a commodity that through constant attrition had lost much of

 its lustre.

 However, the family fortunes had suffered considerably since Portugal

 had been forced to heed the Brussels Treaty. What was left to the

 family had to be protected.

 Gold before honour, and honour only when it does not affect the profits,

 this might have been the family motto.

 His uncle had been perceptive, as always, in recognizing in this English

 expedition a further threat to their interests. It was, after all,

 headed by the son of a notorious.

 troublemaker who could be expected to aggravate the enormous damage done

 by the father. Furthermore, nobody could be sure of the real objects of

 the expedition.

 Major Ballantyne's assertion that it was an expedition to find his

 missing father was, of course, utterly absurd.

 That explanation was much too simple and direct, and the English were

 never simple or direct. This elaborate expedition must have cost many

 thousands of English pounds, a huge sum of money, far beyond the means

 of a junior army officer, or the family of a missionary whose futile

 effort to navigate the Zambezi had ended in disgrace and ridicule, a

 sick old man who must have perished years ago in the uncharted

 wilderness.

 No, there was another motive for all this activity and the Governor

 wanted to know what it was.

 It was, of course, possible that this was a clandestine reconnaissance

 by an officer of the British army ordered by his overbearing government.

 Who knew what outrageous designs they had upon the sovereign territory

 of the glorious Portuguese empire? The avarice of this impudent race of

 shopkeepers and tradesmen was scarcely to be believed. The Governor did

 not trust them, despite their traditional alliance with Portugal.

 On the other hand, it might indeed be a private expedition, but the

 Governor never lost sight of the fact that it was led by the son of that

 notorious old busybody who had possessed the scavenging eye of a

 vulture.

 Who knew what the old devil had stumbled upon out there in the unknown

 land, a mountain of gold or silver, the fabled lost city of Monomatapa

 with all its treasures intact: anything was possible. Of course, the

 old missionary would have sent news of the discovery to his own son. If

 there was a mountain of gold out there, then the Governor would be very

 pleased to know about it.

 Even if there were no new treasures to discover, there were certainly

 old ones to protect. It would be Camacho Pereira's duty to steer the

 expedition away from certain areas, to prevent it stumbling on secrets

 known not even to the Governor's masters in Lisbon.

 Camacho's orders were clear: distract the Englishman by accounts of the

 insurmountable difficulty of travel in certain directions, the swamps,

 the mountain ranges, the disease, the savage animals and even more

 savage men, and contrast that with the friendly people in pleasant

 lands, rich with ivory, that lay in other directions.

 If this was unsuccessful, and Major Ballantyne had all the earmarks of

 arrogance and intractability peculiar to his nation, then Camacho was to

 use what other means of persuasion came to hand. This was a euphemism

 perfectly understood by both the Governor and his nephew.

 Camacho had almost convinced himself that this was really the only

 sensible course of action. Beyond Tete there was no law, except that of

 the knife, and Camacho had always lived by that law. Now he savoured

 the thought. He had found the Englishman's unconcealed contempt as

 galling as the woman's rejection had been painful.

 He had convinced himself that the reason for the attitude towards him of

 both brother and sister was his Mulatto blood. This was a sensitive

 area of Camacho's self-esteem, for even in Portuguese territories where

 miscegenation was almost universal practice, mixed blood still carried a

 stigma. He would enjoy the work ahead, for not only would it wipe out

 the insults he had suffered, but it would bring rich pickings, and even

 after they had been shared out with his uncle, and others, there would

 still be much profit in it for himself.

 The equipment that the expedition carried represented, in Camacho's

 view, a vast fortune. There were barge-loads of excellent trade goods.

 Camacho had taken the first opportunity to check secretly the contents

 of the packs. There were firearms, and valuable instruments,

 chronometers and sextants, and there was a forged-steel field-safe that

 the Englishman kept locked and guarded. The merciful God alone knew how

 many golden English sovereigns it contained, and if He did not know,

 then his good uncle the Governor knew less. It would make the division

 of spoils more in Camacho's favour. The more he brooded upon it, the

 more he looked forward to the arrival at Tete, and the jump-off into the

 unexplored territory beyond.

 To Robyn the tiny town of Tete marked her real arrival in Africa, and

 her return to the world for which she had trained so assiduously and

 yearned so deeply.

 She was secretly glad that Zouga had used the unloading of the barges as

 an excuse not to accompany her. You find the place, Sissy, and we'll go

 there together tomorrow."

 She had changed back into skirts, for small and isolated as it was, Tete

 was still a backwater of civilized behaviour and there was no point in

 giving offence to the local inhabitants. Though she found the heavy

 folds about her legs annoying, she soon forgot them as she walked the

 single, dusty street of the village where her father and mother must

 have walked together for the last time, and peered at the mud-walled

 trading stores built haphazardly along a rough line with the bank of the

 river.

 She stopped at one of these little duka's and found that the storekeeper

 could understand a mixture of her basic Swahili, English and Nguni

 language, enough anyway to direct her on to where the village street

 petered out in a mere footpath that meandered off into the acacia

 forest.

 The forest was hushed in the heat of the noon, even the birds were

 silent and the mood weighed on Robyn, depressing her and awakening the

 memories of long-ago mourning.

 She saw a flash of white amongst the trees ahead, and stopped, reluctant

 to go on to what she knew she would find. For a moment she was

 transported to girlhood again, to a grey November day standing beside

 her Uncle William waving upwards at the passenger decks of the departing

 ship, her eyes so dimmed with tears that she could not make out at the

 crowded rail the beloved face for which she searched, while the distance

 between ship and quay opened like the gulf between life and death.

 Robyn shook the memory away and went on. There were six graves amongst

 the trees, she had not expected , that, but then she recalled that there

 had been heavy mortality amongst the members of her father's

 KaborraBassa.

 expedition, four of disease, one drowned and a suicide.

 The grave for which she searched stood a little apart from the others.

 It was demarcated by a square of whitewashed river stones and at the

 head was a cross built of mortar. It also had been whitewashed. Unlike

 the other graves, it had been kept cleaned of grass and weed, and the

 cross and stones freshly painted. There was even a small bunch of

 wilted wild flowers standing in a cheap blue china vase. They were not

 more than a few days old. That surprised Robyn.

 Standing at the foot of the grave she read the still fully legible

 lettering on the plaster cross: In loving memory of Helen beloved wife

 of Fuller Morris Ballantyne.

 Born August 4th i8I4. Died of fever December i6th i852.

 God's will be done.

 Robyn closed her eyes and waited for the tears to come up from deep

 inside, but there were no tears, they had been shed long ago. instead

 there were only the memories.

 Little fragments of memory played over and over in her mind, the smell

 of strawberries as they gathered them together in Uncle William's

 garden, standing on tiptoe to place one of the lush red fruit between

 her mother's white teeth and then eating the half that was left

 especially for her; lying cuddled under her bedclothes as she listened

 drowsily to her mother's voice reading aloud to her in the candlelight;

 the lessons at the kitchen table in winter, under the elm trees in

 summer and her own eagerness to learn and to please; her first pony

 ride, her mother's hands holding her in the saddle, her legs too short

 for the stirrups; the feel of the soapy sponge down her back as her

 mother stooped over the iron hipbath; the sound of her mother's

 laughter, and then at night the sound of her weeping beyond the thin

 partition beside her cot; then the final memory of the smell of violets

 and lavender as she pressed her face to her mother's bodice. Why must

 you go, Mama? "Because your father needs me. Because your father has

 sent for me, at last."

 And Robyn's own terrible consuming jealousy at the words, mingled with

 the sense of impending loss.

 Robyn knelt in the soft cushion of dust beside the grave, and began to

 pray, and as she whispered, the memories came crowding back, happy ones

 and sad ones together, and she had not felt so close to her mother in

 all the intervening years.

 She did not know how long she had knelt there, it seemed an eternity,

 when a shadow fell across the earth in front of her and she looked up,

 jerked back to the present with a little gasp of surprise and alarm.

 A woman and child stood near her, a black woman, with a pleasant, even

 pretty, face. Not young, in her middle thirties possibly, though it was

 always difficult to guess an African's age. She wore European-style

 clothing, cast-offs probably, for they were so faded that the original

 pattern was hardly visible, but starched and fastidiously clean. Robyn

 sensed that they had been donned for the occasion.

 Although the child wore the brief leather kilt of the local Shangaan

 tribe, he was clearly not a full-blooded African. He could not have

 been more than seven or eight years of age, a sturdy boy, with a head of

 dustycoloured curls and oddly pale-coloured eyes. There was something

 vaguely familiar about him that made Robyn stare.

 He carried a small bunch of the yellow acacia flowers in his hands, and

 smiled shyly at Robyn before hanging his head and shuffling his feet in

 the dust. The woman said something to him and tugged at his hand and he

 came hesitantly to Robyn and handed her the flowers. Thank you, she

 said automatically, and raised the bouquet to her nose. They were

 faintly, but sweetly perfumed.

 The woman hiked her skirts and squatted beside the moved the wilted

 flowers and then handed the grave, re little blue china vase to the boy.

 He scampered away towards the river-bank.

 While he was gone the woman plucked out the first green sprouts of weeds

 from the mound of the grave and then rearranged the whitewashed stones

 carefully. The familiar manner in which she performed the chore left no

 doubt in Robyn's mind that she was responsible for the upkeep of her

 mother's grave.

 Both women maintained a friendly, comfortable silence, but when their

 eyes met they smiled and Robyn nodded her thanks. The child came

 trotting back, muddy to the knees and slopping water from the vase, but

 puffed up with self-importance. He had clearly performed this task

 before.

 The woman took the vase from him and set it carefully on the grave, then

 both of them looked expectantly towards Robyn and watched her while she

 arranged the acacia flowers in the vase. Your mother? " said the woman

 softly, and Robyn was startled to hear her speak English. Yes, " she

 tried to hide her surprise. "My mother. "Good lady. "You knew her?

 "Please? " After the valiant opening, the woman had very little

 English, and their communication was halting, until Robyn, out of the

 habit of talking to little Juba said something in Matabele. The woman's

 face lit'with pleasure and she answered swiftly in a language which was

 obviously one of the Nguni group, and whose inflection and vocabulary

 differed very little from that to which Robyn was accustomed.

 You are Matabele? " Robyn demanded. I am Angoni, the woman put in

 hastily, for there was rivalry and hostility between even the closely

 related tribes of the Nguni.

 Her tribe, the Angoni, had swept northwards from their origins in the

 grassy hills of Zululand, and crossed the Zambezi river thirty years

 before, she explained in her lilting musical dialect. They had

 conquered the land along the northern shores of Lake Marawi. It was

 from there that the woman had been sold to one of the Omani

 slave-masters, and had come down the Shire river in chains.

 Unable to keep up with the slave caravan, reduced by starvation, and the

 fevers and hardships of the long journey, she had been freed of her

 chains and left for the hyenas beside the slave road. It was there that

 Fuller Ballantyne had found her and taken her into his own small camp.

 She had responded to his rough nursing and when she was recovered,

 Fuller had baptized her with the Christian name of Sarah. So my

 father's detractors are mistaken, Robyn laughed, and spoke in English.

 "He made more than one convert."

 Sarah did not understand but laughed in sympathy. By now it was almost

 dusk and the two women, followed by the half-naked child, , left the

 little cemetery and started back along the footpath, with Sarah still

 telling how when Robyn's mother, summoned at last by Fuller Ballantyne,

 arrived in Tete with other members of the Kaborra-Bossa expedition,

 Sarah had been presented to her by Fuller as a personal servant.

 By now they had stopped at a fork in the path, and after a moment of

 hesitation Sarah invited Robyn to her village which was only a short way

 off the path. Robyn glanced up at the sun and shook her head, it would

 be dark in an hour and Zouga would be certain to turn out the camp to

 search for her if she had not returned by then.

 f She had enjoyed the hours spent with the young woman and the bright

 sweet child, and when she saw Sarah's obvious disappointment, she said

 quickly, Although I must go, I will return tomorrow at the same time. I

 wish to hear all you can tell me of my mother and my father."

 Sarah sent the little boy with her as far as the buildings of the

 village. and after the first few yards Robyn quite naturally took the

 boy's hand, and he skipped along beside her, chattering gay childish

 nonsense, which helped to lift her sombre mood until Robyn laughed and

 chattered with him.

 Before they reached the outskirts of Tete, Robyn's fears were confirmed.

 They met Zouga and Sergeant Cheroot. Zouga was armed with the Sharps

 rifle and angry with relief the moment he saw her. Damn me, Sissy, but

 you have had us all beside ourselves. You've been missing for five

 hours."

 The child stared at Zouga with wide eyes. He had never seen anything

 like this tall lordly man with the imperious manner and sharp commanding

 voice. He must be a great chief, and he slipped his hand out of

 Robyn's, retreated two paces, then turned and darted away like a sparrow

 from the circling hawk.

 Some of Zouga's anger left him as he watched the child go, and a small

 smile touched his lips. For a moment I thought you'd picked up another

 stray. "Zouga, I found Mama's grave. " Robyn hurried to him and took

 his arm. "It's only a mile or so."

 Zouga's expression changed again and he glanced up at the sun that was

 already on the tops of the acacia trees and turning deep smouldering

 red. We'll come back tomorrow, " he said. "I don't like to leave the

 camp after dark, there are too many jackals lurking about, two legged

 jackals. " Firmly. he led her back towards the village, continuing his

 explanation as they walked. We are still having a great deal of

 difficulty obtaining porters, despite the fact that the Governor in

 Quelimane assured me they would be readily available, and the good Lord

 knows there are any amount of able-bodied men hereabouts. Yet that

 strutting poppinjay Pereira finds obstacles at every turn. " The frown

 made him look much older than his years as did the full beard which he

 had allowed to grow since disembarking from Black fake. "He says that

 the porters refuse to contract until they know the direction and

 duration of the safari. "That seems logical, Robyn agreed. "I know I

 wouldn't carry one of those huge packs, unless I knew where I was going.

 "I don't think at all that it's the porters, there is no reason why the

 destination should worry them. I am offering top wages, and not a

 single man has come forward. "What is it, then? "Pereira has been

 trying to wheedle our intentions out of me, ever since we left the

 coast. I think this is a form of blackmail, no porters until I tell

 him. "Then why don't you tell him? " Robyn asked, and Zouga shrugged.

 Because he is too damned insistent. It's not a casual interest, and

 instinct warns me not to trust him with any information which it is not

 essential for him to know."

 They walked on in silence until they reached the perimeter of the camp.

 Zouga had laid it out on the lines of a military base, with an outer

 stockade of acacia thorn branches, a Hottentot guard at the gate and the

 boma for the porters separated from the stores depot by the tent lines.

 It looks like home already, Robyn congratulated him, and would have left

 him for her own tent when Camacho Pereira hurried forward. Ah! Major,

 I wait for you with good news."

 That's a pleasant change, Zouga murmured drily. I find man who has seen

 your father, not eight months ago."

 Robyn turned back instantly, her excitement matching that of the

 flamboyant Portuguese and she spoke directly to him for the first time

 since the incident in her tent. Where is he?

 Oh, this is wonderful news. "If it's true, " qualified Zouga, with

 considerably less enthusiasm. I bring the man, damned quick, you see! "

 Carnacho promised, and hurried away towards the porters" boma, shouting

 as he went.

 Within ten minutes he returned dragging with him a skinny old man

 dressed in greasy tatters of animal skins, and with his eyes rolling up

 into his head with terror.

 As soon as Camacho released him, the old man prostrated himself before

 Zouga who sat in one of the canvas camp chairs under the awning of the

 dining tent, and gabbled replies to the queries that Carnacho shouted at

 him in hectoring tones. What dialect is that he speaks? " Zouga

 interrupted within the first few seconds. Chichewa, Camacho replied.

 "He no speak other."

 Zouga glanced at Robyn, but she shook her head. They had to rely

 entirely on Camacho's rendition of the old man's replies.

 It seemed that the old man had seen "Manali', the man with the red

 shirt, at Zimi on the Lualaba river. Manali had been camped there with

 a dozen porters, and the old man had seen him with his own eyes.

 How does he know it was my father? " Zouga asked.

 Everybody knew "Manah', the old man explained, he was a living legend

 from the coast to "Chona longa', the land where the sun sets. When did

 he see Manali?

 One moon before the coming of the last rains, which made it in October

 of the previous year, as Camacho had said, about eight months

 previously.

 Zouga sat lost in thought, but his gaze fixed with such ferocity on the

 unfortunate who grovelled before him that the old man suddenly burst out

 on a plaintive note that made Carnacho's handsome face darken with anger

 and he touched the skeletal ribs with the toe of his boot, a threatening

 gesture that quieted the old man instantly.

 What did he say? " Robyn demanded. He swears he speak the truth only,

 Camacho assured her, resurrecting his smile with an effort.

 What else does he know of Manali! Zouga asked. He speak with the

 porters of Manah, they say they go follow the Lualaba river."

 It made some sense, Zouga thought. If Fuller Ballantyne was indeed

 seeking the source of the Nile river to recover his lost reputation,

 then that is where he would have gone. The Lualaba, which was reputed

 to run directly northward, was one of obvious choices for the source

 river.

 Camacho questioned the old man for another ten minutes, and would have

 taken the hippo-hide whip to jog his memory, but Zouga stopped him with

 a gesture of annoyance. It was obvious that there was nothing further

 to learn from him. Give him a bolt of merkani cloth and a khete of

 beads and let him go, Zouga ordered and the old man's gratitude was

 pathetic to watch.

 Zouga and Robyn sat later than usual beside the camp fire, while it

 collapsed slowly upon itself in spasmodic torrents of rising sparks and

 the murmur of sleepy voices from the porters" boma died into silence. If

 we go north, Robyn mused, watching her brother's face, "we will be going

 into the stronghold of the slave trade, from Lake Marawi northwards.

 From that area into which no white man, not even Pater, has ever

 ventured must come all the slaves for the markets of Zanzibar and the

 Omani Arabs-'What about the evidence of the trade to the south, Zouga

 glanced across the clearing at the silent figure of Juba, waiting

 patiently by the entrance to Robyn's tent.

 "That girl is the living proof that a new trade is flourishing south of

 the Zambezi. "Yes, but it seems to be nothing compared to the activity

 north of here. "The northern trade has been fully documented.

 Father reached Marawi and followed the slave caravans down to the coast

 fifteen years ago, and Bannerman at Zanzibar has written a dozen reports

 on the Zanzibar market, " Zouga pointed out, nursing a precious tumbler

 of his fast-dwindling supply of whisky, and staring into the ashes of

 the fire. "Whereas nobody knows anything about the trade with the

 Monomatapa and the Matabele south of here."

 Yes, I acknowledge that, Robyn admitted reluctantly. However, in his

 Missionary Travels father wrote that the Lualaba was the source of the

 Nile and he would one day prove it by following it from its headwaters.

 Besides which, he has been seen in the north."

 Has he, though? " Zouga asked mildly.

 That old man. . Was lying. Somebody put him up to it, and I don't need

 more than one guess, Zouga finished.

 How do you know he was lying? " Robyn demanded. If you live long

 enough in India you develop an instinct for the lie, Zouga smiled at

 her. "Besides why would father wait eight years after he disappeared to

 explore the Lualaba river. He would have gone there directly, if he had

 gone north. "My dear brother, Robyn's voice was stinging, "it would not

 be the legend of Monomatapa that makes you so stubbornly determined to

 go south of the river, would it? Is that gleam in your eye the gleam of

 gold? "That is a mean thought, Zouga smiled again. "But what does

 intrigue me is the determination of that great guide and explorer,

 Camacho Pereira, to discourage any journey to the south, and instead to

 lead us northwards."

 Long after Robyn had disappeared into her tent and the lantern within

 was extinguished Zouga sat on beside the fire, nursing the whisky in the

 tumbler and staring into the fading coals. When he reached his decision

 he drained the last drop of precious golden brown spirit in the glass

 and stood up abruptly. He strode down the lines to where Camacho

 Pereira's tent stood at the furthest end of the camp.

 There was a lantern burning within even at this late hour, and when

 Zouga called out, a squeak of alarm in feminine tones was quickly hushed

 with a man's low growl and a few minutes later Camacho Pereira pulled

 the fly aside and peered out at Zouga warily.

 He had thrown a blanket over his shoulders to cover his nudity, but in

 one hand he carried a pistol and relaxed only slightly as he recognized

 Zouga.  I have decided, Zouga told him brusquely, "that we'll go north,

 up the Shire river to Lake Marawi, and then on to the Lualaba river."

 Camacho's face shone like the full moon as he smiled. That is very

 good. Very good, much ivory, we find your father, you see, we find him

 damn soon."

 Before noon the following day Camacho, with a great deal of shouting and

 swishing of the kurbash, marched a hundred strong healthy men into the

 camp. "I find you porters, " he announced. "Plenty porters, damn good,

 hey? " The Christian girl Sarah was waiting beside the grave again when

 Robyn came down through the acacia forest the following afternoon.

 The child saw her first and ran to greet her, he was laughing with

 pleasure, and Robyn was struck once again by the familiarity of his

 face. It was something about his mouth and his eyes. The resemblance

 to somebody she had known was so forcible that she stopped dead and

 stared at him, but could not recapture the memory before the boy took

 her hand and led her to where his mother waited.

 They went through the little ritual of changing the flowers on the grave

 and then settled side by side on a fallen acacia branch. It was cooler

 in the shade and in the branches above their heads a pair of shrikes

 hunted little green caterpillars. The birds were black and white across

 the back and wings, but their breasts were a striking shade of crimson

 that glowed like the blood of a dying gladiator, and Robyn watched them

 with rare pleasure while she and Sarah talked quietly.

 Sarah was telling her about her mother, how brave and uncomplaining she

 had been in the terrible heat of the Kaborra-Bossa where the black

 ironstone cliffs turned the gorge into a furnace. It was the bad

 season, Sarah explained. "The hot season before the rains break. "

 Robyn recalled her father's written account of the expedition in which

 he had laid the blame for the delays upon his subordinates, old Harkness

 and Commander Stone, so that they had missed the cool season, and

 entered the gorge in the suicide month of November. Then when the rains

 came, the fever came with it, Sarah went on. "It was very bad. The

 white men and your mother became sick very quickly. " Perhaps her

 mother had lost much of her immunity to malaria during the years in

 England while she waited for her husband's summons. "Even Manali

 himself became sick. it was the first time I had seen him sick of the

 fever. He was filled with the devils for many days, the expression

 described vividly the delirium of malaria] fever, Robyn thought. "So he

 did not know when your mother died."

 They were silent again. The child, bored by the interminable talk of

 the two women, threw a stone at the birds in the acacia branches above

 their heads, and with a flash of their marvelous crimson breasts the two

 shrikes winged away towards the river, and again the child engaged

 Robyn's attention. It was as if she had known that face all her life.

 My mother? " Robyn asked, still watching the child. Her water turned

 black, " said Sarah simply. The blackwater fever, Robyn felt her skin

 prickle. When malaria changed its course, attacking the kidneys and

 transforming them into thin-walled sacks of clotted black blood, that

 could rupture at the patient's smallest movement.

 The blackwater fever, when the urine changed to dark mulberry-coloured

 blood, and few, very few victims, ever recovered. She was strong, Sarah

 went on quietly. "She was the last of them to go. " She turned her

 head towards the other neglected graves. The curly pods of the acacia

 were scattered thickly over the unadorned mounds. "We buried her here,

 while Manali was still with his devils.

 But later, when he could walk he came with the book and said the words

 for her. He built the cross with his own hands."

 Then he went away again? " Robyn asked.

 No, he was very sick, and new devils came to him.

 He wept for your mother. " The thought of her father weeping was

 something so completely alien that Robyn could not imagine it. "He

 spoke often of the river that had destroyed him."

 Through the acacia trees there were glimpses of the wide green river,

 and both their heads turned towards it naturally. He came to hate that

 river as though it was a living enemy that had denied him a road to his

 dreams. He was like a man demented, for the fever came and went. At

 times he would battle with his devils, shouting his defiance the way a

 warrior giyas at the enemy host. " The giya was a challenge dance with

 which the Nguni warrior baits his adversary. "At other times he would

 speak wildly of machines that would tame his enemy, of walls that he

 would build across the waters to carry men and ships up above the gorge.

 " Sarah broke off, her lovely dark moon face stricken with the memory,

 and the child sensed her distress and came to her, kneeling on the earth

 and laying his dusty little head in her lap. She stroked the tight cap

 of curls with an absentminded caress.

 With a sudden little chill of shock Robyn recognized the child. Her

 expression changed so drastically that Sarah followed the direction of

 her gaze, looking down with all her attention at the head in her lap,

 then up again to meet Robyn's eyes. It did not really need words to

 pass, the question was posed and answered with silent exchange of

 feminine understanding, and Sarah drew the child towards her with a

 protective gesture. It was only after your mother. . . " Sarah began

 to explain and then fell silent, and Robyn went on staring at the little

 boy. It was Zouga at the same age, a dusky miniature Zouga. It was

 only the colour of his skin which had prevented her from seeing it

 immediately.

 Robyn felt as though the earth had lurched beneath her feet, then it

 steadied again and she felt a strange sense of release. Fuller

 Ballantyne was no longer the godlike figure hewn from unforgiving,

 unbending granite that had overshadowed her entire life.

 She held out both her hands to the child and he went to her

 unhesitatingly, trustingly. Robyn embraced him, and his skin was smooth

 and warm as she kissed him.

 He wriggled against her like a puppy, and she felt a deep glow of

 affection and of gratitude to the child. He was very sick, said Sarah

 softly, "and alone. They had all gone or died, and he was sad, so that

 I feared for his life."

 Robyn nodded understanding. "And you loved him? "There was no sin in

 it, for he was a God, said Sarah simply. No, thought Robyn with intense

 relief. "He was a man, and I, his daughter, am a woman."

 In that moment she knew that she never need again feel shame and guilt

 for her body and the demands and desires which sprang from it. She

 hugged the child who was proof of her father's humanity, and Sarah

 smiled with relief.

 For the first time in her life Robyn was able to fate the fact that she

 loved her father, and she understood part of the compulsion that over

 the years had grown stronger rather than dwindling.

 The longing she had felt for the father had been submerged completely by

 the awe and majesty of the legend.

 Now she knew why she was here, on the banks of this majestic river, on

 the very frontier of the known world.

 She had come not to find Fuller Ballantyne, but to discover rather the

 father and the self that she had never known before. Where is he,

 Sarah, where is my father? Which way did he go? " she demanded

 eagerly, but the woman dropped her eyes. I do not know, she whispered.

 "I woke one morning and he was gone. I do not know where he is, but I

 will wait for him, until he returns to me and his son. " She looked -up

 quickly. "He will come back? " she asked pathetically. "If not to me

 then for the child? "Yes, Robyn answered with certainty that she did

 not feel. "Of course he will come back."

 The selection of porters was a lengthy business, and after Zouga had

 signalled his choice with a slap on the shoulder, the men were sent to

 Robyn's tent to be examined for signs of disease or infirmity that might

 prevent them performing their duties.

 Then came the allocation of packs.

 Although Zouga had already made up and weighed each pack, making sure

 that not one of them exceeded the stipulated eighty pounds weight, the

 newly engaged porters had to watch the loads reweighed publicly, and

 then there was interminable haggling over the size and balance of the

 burden that each of them would carry for months, perhaps even years

 ahead.

 Although Zouga brusquely forbade Pereira to hasten the selection process

 with his kurbash, and entered goodnaturedly into the spirit of banter

 and bargain, he was, in fact, using the occasion to assess the spirit of

 his men, to pick out the malcontents who would sour that spirit in the

 hardships ahead, and also to select the natural leaders to whom the

 others turned instinctively for decision.

 The following day when planning the order of march, Zouga used the

 knowledge he had gained in this way.

 To begin with, seven of the more obvious trouble-makers were given a

 khete of beads each and ordered out of the camp without explanation or

 apology. Then Zouga called out five of the brightest and best and made

 them captains of divisions of twenty porters each.

 They would be responsible for maintaining the pace of the march, for

 preventing pilfering of the loads, making and breaking camp,

 distributing rations, and acting as the spokesmen of each division,

 presenting complaints to and transmitting orders from Zouga.

 When the roll was complete there were one hundred and twenty-six names

 upon it, including Sergeant Cheroot's Hottentots the porters who had

 come up from Quelimane, Camacho Pereira and the two principals Robyn and

 Zouga himself.

 it would be a slow and unwieldy caravan unless properly organized, that

 was bad enough, but on the march it would also be very vulnerable. Zouga

 gave much thought to defence of the column, and he and Sergeant Cheroot

 shared the last quarter bottle of whisky as they pooled their experience

 and planned the order of march.

 Zouga, with a small party of local guides and personal bearers, planned

 to travel independently of the main caravan, reconnoitering the terrain

 ahead of the march, and making himself free to prospect and hunt as the

 opportunity arose. He would return most nights to rejoin the caravan,

 but would be equipped to spend many days out of contact.

 Camacho Pereira with five of the Hottentot musketeers would lead the van

 of the main column, and even when Robyn chaffed him lightly, Zouga saw

 nothing ludicrous in Camacho marching under the Union Jack. . It's an

 English expedition, and we will carry the flag, " Zouga replied stiffly.

 Rule, Britannia, " Robyn laughed irreverently, and Zouga ignored her and

 went on describing the order of march.

 The divisions of porters would remain separate but closed up, and

 Sergeant Cheroot with the remainder of his musketeers would form the

 rear guard of the column.

 There was a simple system of signals to control the movements of the

 column, a prearranged series of blasts on the kudu-horn trumpets would

 sound the "march" or halt', the "close up" or "form square'.

 For four days Zouga. exercised the column in these evolutions and

 though proficiency would only come much later, at last he felt that they

 were ready to make a start, and he told Robyn so. But how are we to

 cross the river? " she asked looking across at the north bank.

 The river was half a mile wide, and the heavy rainfalls over millions of

 square miles had drained into it. The flow was swift and powerful. If

 they were going northwards to the Shire river and Lake Marawi they would

 need a flotilla of dugout canoes and many days to make the crossing to

 the north bank.

 The steam launch Helen had long ago departed on the flood of the river,

 making good at least twenty knots with the current pushing her, so she

 would already be back in Quelimane. All the arrangements have been

 made, Zouga told her, and she had to be satisfied with that.

 On the last day Robyn allowed Juba to accompany her to the cemetery for

 the first time, and both of them were laden with gifts. Bolts of trade

 cloth and a thirty-fivepound bag of ceramic beads, the most sought-after

 scarlet sam-sam variety.

 It was as much as she dare ask for from the expedition's stores without

 arousing Zouga's ire and interest.

 She had thought of telling Zouga of Sarah and the child, but had wisely

 decided against it.

 Zouga's reaction to finding a half-brother of mixed blood was too

 terrible to contemplate. Zouga had acquired his opinions on caste and

 colour in the hard school of the Indian army, and to find that his own

 father had trespassed against these iron rules would be too much of a

 shock. Instead, Robyn had mentioned that she had met one of her

 father's former servants, who tended their mother's grave over the

 years. The gift would have to be in proportion to these services.

 Sarah and her child were waiting by the grave, and she accepted the

 gifts with a gracious little curtsy and her palms held together at the

 level of her eyes. We leave tomorrow, Robyn explained, and saw the

 immediate regret in Sarah's eyes, followed by acceptance. It is God's

 will, and Robyn could almost hear her father saying it.

 Juba and the child soon became involved in collecting the pods from a

 kaffir boom tree nearby and stringing together the pretty scarlet lucky

 beans, each with its little black eye at the end to make necklaces and

 bracelets. The two of them, girl and boy, made a delightfully

 uninhibited pair, their laughter and shrill happy voices a pleasant

 background to the talk under the acacia tree.

 Robyn and Sarah had become friends in the short time they had known each

 other. Her father had written -in his Missionary Travels that he

 preferred the company of black people to white, and certainly all the

 evidence seemed to point that way. It seemed that Fuller Ballantyne had

 done nothing but squabble with his own kind.

 Contact with other white men seemed to bring out in him all the

 pettiness, suspicion and jealousy of his complex nature; while he had

 spent the greater part of his life with black men, and received from

 them trust and honour and lasting friendships. His relationship with

 Sarah was only a natural extension of those feelings, Robyn realized.

 She contrasted these feelings with those of her brother, and knew that

 he could never cross the dividing line. A black man could possibly earn

 Zouga's liking and even his respect, but the gulf was too wide.

 For Zouga they would always be "those people', and she guessed that he

 could never change in that. If he lived on in Africa for another fifty

 years, he would never learn to understand them, while she, within weeks,

 had made real friendships. She wondered if, like her father, she would

 come one day to prefer them to her own kind. It didn't seem possible

 now, but she recognized in herself the capacity for adjustment and

 change.

 Beside her, Sarah was speaking, so softly, so shyly that Robyn had to

 make an effort to tear herself away from her own thoughts and ask:What

 was that you said? "Your father, Manali, will you tell him about the

 boy when you find him? "He did not know? " Robyn was stunned, and

 Sarah shook her head. Why did you not go with him then? " Robyn

 demanded. He did not wish it. He said the journey would be too hard,

 but in reality, he is like an old bull elephant who does not like to

 stay too long with his cows but always must follow the wind."

 Camacho Pereira towered above the wiry little tribesmen, checking off

 their names against the camp register.

 This evening he wore a jerkin of kudu skin that was decorated with fancy

 stitching and trade beads, and unfastened down the front to expose

 bulging hairy chest and the flat belly with its ridged muscles like the

 patterns in the sand of a windswept beach. We feed them too much, he

 told Zouga. "Fat nigger is lazy nigger. " He chuckled when he saw

 Zouga's expression, for that word had already been the cause of

 dissension. Zouga had forbidden him to use it, particularly in front of

 the expedition's black servants, for some of them it was the only word

 of English they understood. Feed small, kick heavy and they work hard,

 Camacho went on with relish.

 Zouga ignored these gems of philosophy. He had heard them before, many

 times. Instead he turned to the captains of divisions, and watched them

 finish the rationing.

 Two of them, their arms floury to the elbows, dipped into the bags of

 meal and doled it out to the shrinking line of porters. Each man had

 his calabash or chipped enamel basin to receive the scoop of

 stone-ground redbrown grain. Then one of the other captains slapped a

 split and smoked river fish on top of the pile. The fish looked like

 Scotch kippers, but their odour punched like a prize-fighter. Weevils,

 maggots and all, they were a delicacy that the porters would miss once

 they left the river.

 Pereira suddenly hauled a man out of the line and hit him a lusty clout

 across the back of the head with the stock of his kurbash. He come

 twice, try for double, he explained cheerfully, and took a playful kick

 at the man as he ran. if it had landed it would have knocked him off

 his feet, but all the porters had come to anticipate Camacho's flying

 boots.

 Zouga waited until the last porter had been rationed, then he called to

 the captains. Indaba! Tell the men, indaba."

 It was the call to council, to discuss affairs of consequence, and the

 whole camp left the cooking fires and came hurrying, agog with

 excitement.

 Zouga paced up and down before the ranks of intent squatting black men,

 drawing out the moment, for he had come quickly to realize the African

 love of the theatrical. Most of them could understand the basic Nguni

 which Zouga now spoke with some fluency, for many of them were Shangaans

 or Angoni.

 Now he spread his arms to his audience, paused for a second and then

 announced portentously, Kusasa isufari, tomorrow the march begins! There

 was a hive murmur of comment and excitement, and then one of the

 captains rose from the front rank. Phi? Phi? Where? Which way? "

 Zouga lowered his arms, and let the suspense build up for a few moments,

 and then he stabbed out towards the far blue southern hills with a

 bunched fist. Laphaya! That way! " They roared with approval, just as

 they would have done if Zouga had pointed north or west for that matter.

 They were ready to go now. The direction was not important. The

 captains of divisions, the indunas, were shouting out the translation to

 those who had not understood and the first roar of the crowd settled to

 a boisterous rumble of comment and speculation, but it died away

 suddenly, and Zouga. turned quickly.

 Camacho Pereira had stepped beside Zouga, and his face was swollen and

 dark with rage. This was the first time he had heard Zouga's intention

 to go southwards so that when he started to speak, it was so forcefully

 that droplets of spittle flew from his lips. He was using one of the

 local dialects, and speaking so swiftly that Zouga understood only a

 word here and there. The sense was unmistakable, however, and he saw

 the shock on the faces of the men who squatted before them.

 Carnacho was warning them of the dangers beyond the southern hills.

 Zouga. heard the word "Monomatapa" and knew that he was speaking of the

 terrible armies of the legendary empire, merciless legions whose

 favourite sport was to cut off a man's genitals and force him to eat

 them himself. The shock of the listening black faces was changing

 swiftly to terror and Camacho had been speaking for only a few seconds,

 a minute more and nothing would induce the caravan to march, two minutes

 more and most of his porters would have deserted by morning.

 There was nothing to be gained by arguing with the Portuguese except an

 unseemly, shouting match, which would be watched with interest by the

 entire assembled camp. one thing that Zouga had learned was that the

 Africans, like the Asians he had come to know well in India, were

 immensely respectful of a victor and impressed by success. He could

 demonstrate neither qualities by becoming embroiled in an undignified

 wrangle in a language that none of the spectators could understand.

 Pereira! " he snapped, in a tone that cut through the Portuguese's

 torrent of words, and for an instant stilled them. Zouga had the

 Englishman's peculiar sense of fair play which made him warn an enemy

 before an attack.

 As the Portuguese turned to face him, Zouga swung in towards him with

 two light steps and he flicked his left hand at Camacho's eyes, forcing

 him to throw up both hands to protect his face. As he did so, Zouga

 slammed his fist into his belly, just under the ribs, with a force that

 doubled him in the middle, his breath whooshing out of his gaping mouth

 in an agonized explosion of sound and his hand dropping to cover his

 injured belly, leaving his face open for the next blow.

 It was a short chopping left-handed shot that took Camacho cleanly under

 the right ear, on the hinge of the jaw. The plumed beaver hat spun off

 his head. His eyes rolled up into his skull, leaving the whites glaring

 madly, and Camacho's knees gave way under him. He pitched forward,

 making no effort to cushion his fall and dropped face down on to the

 grey sandy soil.

 The silence lasted only a second, and then a shout went up from the

 watchers. Most of them had felt Camacho's boots or his kurbash, and

 they hugged one another happily. The trepidation that Carnacho's little

 speech had raised was completely lost in wonder at the swiftness and the

 effect of those two blows. Most of them had never seen a man strike

 with a bunched hand, and the novelty of this form of combat impressed

 and delighted them.

 Casually, Zouga turned his back on the prone figure.

 Not a trace of anger showed on his face, in fact he was smiling slightly

 as he strolled down the front rank of men and lifted one hand to quieten

 them. There axe soldiers who travel with us, he told them, in a low

 voice that yet reached clearly to every one of them, "and you have seen

 them shoot. " He had made sure they had, and that news of the prowess

 in weapons of Sergeant Cheroot's men would travel ahead of them.

 You see that flag? " He flung one hand dramatically at the red and

 white and blue jack floating above the main tent on its improvised flag

 pole. "No man, no chief nor warrior dare. . . . "Zouga! shrieked

 Robyn. To the terrible urgency of her tone Zouga reacted instantly,

 spinning aside with two dancing paces, and the crowd exploded with a

 single word, a deep drawn-out JeeV It is a blood-chilling sound, for it

 is the cry with which an African warrior encourages himself or another

 in the fatal moments of a battle to the death.

 Camacho's stroke'had been aimed at the small of Zouga's back. He-was a

 man who had fought with the knife many times before, and he had not

 taken the more tempting target between the shoulder blades, where the

 point could turn against the ribs. He had gone for the soft area above

 the kidneys, and even with Robyn's warning, Zouga was not quite quick

 enough. The point raked his hip, slitting the cloth of his breeches in

 a six-inch rent, beneath which skin and flesh opened cleanly and the

 bright blood spread swiftly to the knee.

 Jee! " The deep sonorous chant of the watchers as Camacho reversed the

 stroke of his extended right hand, cutting sideways at Zouga's belly.

 The blade twinkled and hissed like an angry cobra, ten inches of

 tempered steel, and Zouga threw up his hands and sucked in his belly

 muscles as he jumped back. There -was a sharp tug as the point caught

 in his shirt, but it did not touch the skin.

 Jee! " again as Camacho lunged. His face was bloated and mottled with

 purple and white, the eyes squinting with rage and the after-effects of

 the blow to, his jaw.

 Zouga felt the sting of the wound on his hip pulling open as he swayed

 back out of the path of the blade, and the stronger flood of warm blood

 down his leg.

 He paused out of range of the knife for Zouga had heard the snap of a

 weapon being cocked and from the corner of his eye he saw Sergeant

 Cheroot levelling the Enfield, waiting for a clear shot at the

 Portuguese. No! Don't shoot!

 Zouga called urgently. He did not relish a bullet in his own belly, for

 he and Camacho were dancing close together, with the weaving point of

 the knife seeming to bind them to each other. Don't shoot, Sergeant! "

 There was another reason why he could afford no interference. There

 were a hundred men judging him now, men with whom he would march and

 work in the months and years ahead. He needed their respect.

 Jee! sang the watchers, and Camacho was panting with rage. Again the

 blade in his right hand whispered like the wing of a swallow in flight,

 and this time Zouga over-reacted, blundering back half a dozen paces,

 and then losing his balance for a moment he dropped on one knee and put

 a hand to the ground to steady himself.

 But as Camacho charged again, he rebounded to his feet and arched his

 hips aside, the way a matador swings out of the line of the bull's run.

 In the hand that had touched the ground, Zouga held a handful of the

 coarse grey sand.

 His eyes were locked to those of the Portuguese, it was the eyes not the

 knife hand that would signal Camacho's intentions. They flickered left,

 while the hand feigned the other way, and Zouga moved in past the blade,

 and was ready again when Camacho rounded.

 They faced each other, shuffling in a slow cycle that stirred wisps of

 pale dust around their feet. Camacho kept the knife low, and stirred it

 gently as though he was conducting a slow passage of music, but Zouga

 studying his eyes saw the first small nervous flickers of uncertainty.

 He jumped in, launching himself off the right foot.

 fee! "roared the watchers, and for the first time Camacho broke ground,

 falling back and then turning hurriedly as Zouga checked and feinted to

 his open side.

 Twice more Zouga drove him back with threats, until it needed only a

 feint with his upper body to make Camacho scramble away. The watchers

 were laughing now, mocking shouts of glee every time he gave ground, and

 the rage that had flushed Camacho's face had given way to fear, the

 angry purple mottling had chilled to white.

 Zouga was still watching his eyes, as they darted from side to side

 seeking an escape, but the knife kept weaving between them, bright and

 razor sharp, broad as three fingers and grooved along its length to

 break the suction of clinging wet flesh once it was buried.

 Camacho's eyes flickered away once more and Zouga moved, pulling the

 knife hand around as he crossed the man's front, holding out his empty

 hand for the eyes to follow, keeping the other low and moving in as

 close to the knife as he dared, then at the moment that Camacho lunged,

 using the momentum of his avoiding turn, he hurled the handful of coarse

 sand into Camacho's eyes blinding him, and still in the same movement

 reversing his direction, and going straight in on the knife, chancing it

 all on locking the wrist before the man could see again.

 Jee! " the crowd roared as Camacho's wrist slapped into Zouga's palm,

 and he locked it down with all his strength.

 Tears were already streaming from Camacho's eyes, and his lids

 fluttered, grinding the sharp grains across the unseeing eyeballs. He

 could not judge nor meet Zougals weight as, still locked grimly to the

 wrist, he threw him off-balance. As Camacho went over, Zouga reared

 back, resisting with all his strength, holding the knife arm against the

 fall. Something went with a loud rubbery popping sound in Camacho's

 shoulder and he screamed, as he sprawled again, face down, with the arm

 twisted up behind him.

 Once again Zouga jerked viciously, and this time Camacho screeched like

 a girl and the knife dropped from his fingers. He made a feeble effort

 to snatch it with the other hand, but Zouga. trod down on the blade

 with a booted foot, then scooped it up, released the damaged arm and

 stepped back holding the heavy weapon in his right hand. Bulala!

 "chanted the watchers. "Bulala! Kill him! Kill him! " They wanted to

 see the blood, for that was the fitting end and they hungered for it.

 Zouga stabbed the blade deeply into the trunk of the acacia tree and

 then wrenched against the steel. It snapped at the hilt with a crack

 like a pistol shot, and he dropped the hilt contemptuously. Sergeant

 Cheroot, he said, "get him out of this camp. "I should shoot him, " the

 little Hottentot told him as he came up, and thrust the muzzle of the

 Enfield rifle into the fallen man's belly.

 If he tries to enter the camp again, you can shoot him.

 But now just get him out. "Big mistake, " Sergeant Cheroot's pug face

 took on a theatrically mournful expression. "Always stamp on the

 scorpion, before he stings."

 You are hurt. " Robyn was running towards him. It's a scratch."

 Zouga unwound the bandanna from around his throat and pressed it to the

 wound in his hip as he strode away towards his tent, forcing himself not

 to favour it with a limp. He had to get away quickly for the reaction

 was on him, he felt dizzy and nauseated, the wound stung abominably, and

 he did not want anybody to see that his hands were trembling. I reset

 the shoulder, Robyn told Zouga as she bound up his hip wound. "I don't

 think there is anything broken, and it went in again very neatly, but

 you, " she shook her head, "you won't be able to march with that. Every

 step will pull against the stitches."

 She was right, it was four days before the march could begin, and

 Camacho Pereira put that time to good use.

 He had left an hour after Robyn reset his dislocated shoulder, four

 paddlers taking a dugout canoe down the Zambezi with the current. When

 they would have pulled into the bank to make camp, Camacho snarled at

 them from the bows where he crouched, hugging the injured arm, that even

 after being set and strapped into a sling, still ached so fiercely that

 it lit little white sparks of agony behind his closed eyelids every time

 he tried to doze.

 He also would have liked to rest, but his hatred drove him onwards, and

 the dugout canoe arrowed down-current under a fat yellow moon that paled

 slowly at the coming of the new day.

 Camacho went ashore on the south bank of the Zambezi at noon at the

 small native village at Chamba, a hundred miles below Tete.

 He paid off the crew of the dugout and he hired two bearers to carry his

 rifle and blanket roll. Then he set off again immediately along the

 network of narrow foot paths that crisscross the entire African

 continent like the blood vessels of a living body, laid down by

 wandering men and migrating animals over the centuries.

 Two days later he reached the Hyena Road that runs from the mountains of

 Dismay, Inyangaza, to the sea.

 The Hyena Road was a secret track. Although it paralleled the old road

 from the coast to Vila Monica, it kept forty miles north of it,

 following the course of the Pungwe river so that there would be water

 for the multitudes who unwillingly used the road on their long, last

 journey from their homeland to other lands, other continents.

 Vila Monica was the last outpost of the Portuguese administration in

 East Africa. A decree by the Governor in council forbade any man, black

 or white, Portuguese or foreigner, to journey beyond that clay-walled

 fort towards the haunting range of mountains with the chilling name. It

 was for this reason that the Hyena Road had been secretly opened by

 enterprising men, and pushed up through the dense forests of the lower

 slopes to the bleak and open grasslands atop the mountains.

 The march from Chamba to the Pungwe river was a hundred and fifty miles.

 To make it in three days with the agony of a healing shoulder was good

 going, and once they reached it, the temptation to rest was almost

 irresistible. But Camacho kicked his two bearers to their feet and

 drove them with stinging words and lash along the deserted road towards

 the mountains.

 The road was twice as wide as any of the other footpaths they had

 followed to reach it, wide enough for a double column rather than the

 Indian file that was the usual order of African travel. Although the

 surface had been beaten hard by the passage of thousands of bare feet,

 it was a source of satisfaction to Camacho that the road had clearly not

 been used for many months, except by the occasional herd of antelope,

 and once, perhaps a week before, by an old bull elephant, whose huge

 piles of dung had long dried out. The caravan has not passed yet,

 Camacho muttered, as he scanned the trees ahead for the shapes of the

 vultures and searched without success for the sly skulking shapes of

 hyena in the undergrowth beside the road.

 True there were human bones scattered along the route, here and there

 the thick knuckle of the thigh bone that had defied even the iron jaws

 of the scavengers, or other splintered fragments that they had

 overlooked, but even these were dried out and bleached white. They were

 the debris of the previous caravan that had passed this way three months

 before.

 He had reached the road in time, and now he hurried along it, pausing

 now and then to listen or to send one of the bearers up a tree to search

 ahead.

 However, it was two days later that they heard the first faint sound of

 many voices, and this time Camacho himself climbed to the highest fork

 of one of the umsisa trees beside the track, and peering ahead he saw

 the vultures circling, a wide slow wheel of tiny black specks turning

 against the silver and blue ranges of cloud, as though caught in a

 hidden vortex of the high heavens.

 He sat in the fork thirty feet above the ground, while the sound of

 voices grew stronger, became the sound of singing. This was no sound of

 joy, but a terrible mourning dirge, slow and heartbreaking rising and

 fading as flukes of the breeze and folds of the ground blanketed the

 sound, but each time it came back a little stronger, until Camacho could

 make out far away the head of the column, like the head of a maimed

 serpent writhing out of the forest into an open glade a mile ahead.

 He slid down the trunk of the umsisa, and hurried forward. There was an

 armed party ahead of the main column, five blacks dressed in the tatters

 of cast-off European-style clothing and carrying muskets, but at their

 head was a white man, a little man with a face like a vicious gnome,

 wrinkled and burned darkly by the sun.

 The thick drooping black mustache was laced with grey, but he stepped

 out with a bouncing elastic stride and he recognized Camacho from two

 hundred paces and snatched his hat off his head and waved it.

 He shouted "Camacho! " and the two men ran to embrace, and then hold

 each other at arm's length, laughing with pleasure. It was Camacho who

 sobered first, the laughter changing to a scowl as he said, Alphonse, my

 beloved brother, I have bad tidings the worst possible. "The

 Englishman? " Alphonse was still smiling, he had a tooth missing from

 the front of his upper jaw, which made the cold humourless smile seem

 less dangerous than it really was. Yes, the Englishman, " Camacho

 nodded. "You know of him? "My father sent a message. I know. "

 Alphonse was the Governor of Quelimane's eldest surviving son,

 fullblooded Portuguese by the lawfully wedded bride who had come out

 forty years previously from Lisbon, a pale sickly mail-order bride, who

 had borne three sons in swift succession, the first two of which had

 succumbed to malaria and infantile dysentery even before the appearance

 of the little wizened yellowed mite whom they had named Alphonse Jose

 Vila y Pereira, and expected to bury with his brothers before the end of

 the rains. However, it was the mother they had buried in the end, and

 the child had flourished at the breast of a black wet nurse. He did not

 go north, then? " Alphonse demanded, and Camacho, dropped his eyes

 guiltily, for he was speaking to the eldest, full-blooded and legitimate

 son.

 Camacho himself was a bastard and a half-breed, son of one of the

 Governor's once beautiful Mulatto concubines, now fat and faded and

 forgotten in one of the back rooms of the seraglio. He was not even

 recognized as a son, but had to bear the ignominious title of nephew.

 This in itself was enough for him to show respect for the other, but

 added to this Alphonse was as determined as their father had been at the

 same age, though even crueller and harder. Camacho had seen him sing a

 plaintive fado as he flogged a man to death, accompanying the

 traditional love song with the flute and percussion of the lash.

 He did not go north, Camacho agreed uneasily. You were told to see that

 he didI could not stop him. He is English, " Camacho's voice croaked a

 little, "he is stubborn. "We will speak again of that, " Alphonse

 promised coldly. "Now, swiftly tell me where he is and what he plans to

 do."

 Camacho recited the explanation he had prepared, skirting delicately

 around the most offensive parts of the story, and dwelling on. subjects

 such as the wealth that the Ballantyne expedition carried with it rather

 than his own brutal beating at the Englishman's hands.

 Alphonse had thrown himself down in the shade of a tree beside the track

 and listened broodingly, chewing at the straggling ends of his mustache,

 filling in for himself the conspicuous gaps in his half-brother's

 recital, and speaking again only at the end. When will he leave the

 valley of the Zambezi? " Soon, Camacho, hedged, for the unpredictable

 Englishman might already be half-way to the escarpment. Although I cut

 him deeply, it may be he has had himself carried in a mushila (litter).

 "He must not be allowed to enter the Monomatapa, Alphonse said flatly,

 and came to his feet with a single lithe movement. "The best place to do

 the business would be in the bad ground below the rim of the valley."

 He glanced back along the winding road. The head of the column was a

 mile away still, across a glade of open golden grass. The shuffling

 double rank of bowed creatures, yoked at the neck, did not seem human,

 though the singing was sad and beautiful. I can spare fifteen men."

 It will not be enough, " Carnacho cut in swiftly. It will be, said his

 brother coldly, "if you do the business in the night. "Twenty men,

 Camacho pleaded. "He has soldiers with him, trained soldiers and he is

 a soldier himself."

 Alphonse was silent, weighing risk and advantage but the worst part of

 the Hyena Road already lay behind the column, and each mile nearer the

 coast, the land was tamer, the risk diminished and the need for guards

 less pressing.

 Twenty! "he agreed abruptly, and turned to Carnacho. But not one of

 the foreigners must escape. " Looking into his brother's cold black

 eyes, Camacho felt his skin crawl. "Leave no sign, bury them deep, so

 the jackal and hyena do not dig them out. Use the porters to carry the

 expedition's equipment to the place in the hills, and when they have

 done so, kill them also. We will bring it down with the next caravan to

 the coast. "Si. Si. I understand.

 "Do not fail us again, my beloved cousin-brother."

 Alphonse made the endearment a threat, and Camacho swallowed with a

 nervous little gulp. I will leave as soon as I have rested. "No,

 Alphonse shook his head. "You will leave immediately.

 Once that Englishman enters the land beyond the mountains, there will

 soon be no more slaves. It is bad enough that there has been no gold

 for twenty years and more, but if the river of slaves were to dry up,

 both my father and I would be displeased, very displeased."

 At Zouga's order the long mournful blast of the kuduhom trumpet

 shattered the silence of the utterly dark hour before the dawn.

 The Indunas took up the cry "Safari! We march! " and they prodded the

 sleeping porters off their reed sleepingmats. The camp fires had burned

 down to dim red mounds of coals smothered in the soft grey powder of

 their own ash. As fresh logs were thrown upon them they flared up in a

 false dawn that lit the underside of the umbrella-shaped acacia trees

 with wavering yellow light.

 The smell of roasting ropoko cakes rose on tendrils of pale smoke

 straight into the windless dark sky. The muted voices became louder,

 more cheerful as the flames drove away the chills and the nightmares.

 Safari! The cry was taken up, and the divisions assembled, ghostly

 figures in the gloom, emerging more clearly as the growing dawn light

 paled the sky and snuffed out the stars. Safari! And the mass of men

 and equipment resolved itself and order grew out of chaos.

 Like those long columns of big shiny black serowe ants that endlessly

 cross and re-cross the African earth, the stream of porters moved

 steadily away into the still gloomy forest.

 As each of them passed Zouga and Robyn standing together at the gate of

 the thorn scherm, they shouted a greeting and executed a few prancing

 steps to demonstrate their loyalty and enthusiasm, while Robyn laughed

 with them and Zouga called encouragement. We no longer have a guide,

 and we don't know where we are going. " She took Zougals arm. "What is

 to become of us? "If we knew, it would take all the fun out of it. "At

 least a guide. "While you thought I was hunting I went out as far as

 the escarpment which is further than that swaggering Portuguese ever

 went, further than any white man, except of course Pater, has ever been.

 Follow me, Sissy, I am your guide."

 She looked up at him now in the strengthening light of coming dawn.

 I knew you were not hunting, she told him. The escarpment is rugged and

 very broken, but I have examined two passes through the telescope that I

 think will go-'And beyond that? " He laughed, "We will find out. "

 Then he squeezed her around the waist. "That is the whole fun of the

 thing."

 She studied his face with full attention for a few moments. The new

 full beard emphasized the strong, almost stubborn, lines of his jaw.

 There was a piratical devil-may-care lift to the corner of his lips, and

 Robyn realized that no man of conventional mind would have proposed and

 engineered this expedition. She knew he possessed courage, his exploits

 in India had proved that beyond doubt, and yet when she looked at his

 sketches and water colours and read the rough notes he was making for

 the book, she discovered a sensitivity and an imagination she had never

 before suspected. He was a difficult person to know and understand.

 Perhaps she could have told him about Sarah and the child or even about

 Mungo St. John, and that night in the main cabin of Huron, for when he

 laughed like this, the stern features softened with humour and humanity,

 . and green lights sparkled in his eyes. That's what we are here for,

 Sissy, the fun of it all. "And the gold, she teased, "and the ivoryYes,

 by God, the gold and ivory as well. Come on, Sissy, this is where it

 truly begins, and he limped after the column as its tail disappeared

 into the acacia forest, favouring his injured leg and using a freshly

 cut staff to move across the sandy earth. For a moment Robyn hesitated

 and then she shrugged aside her doubts and ran to catch up with her

 brother.

 That first day the porters were rested and eager, the valley floor flat

 and the going easy, so Zouga ordered tirikeza, the double march, so that

 even at their slow pace the column left many miles of dusty grey earth

 behind them that day.

 They marched until the heat came up in the middle of the morning and the

 merciless sun dried the sweat the moment it burst through their pores

 and left tiny salt crystals on the skin, that sparkled like diamond

 chips. Then they found shade and lay like dead men through the heat of

 noon, stirring again only when the lowering sun gave the illusion of

 cooling the air and the blast of the kudii-horn trumpet forced them to

 their feet again.

 The second stage of the tirikeza lasted until sunset when it became too

 dark to see the ground under their feet.

 The fires were dying and the voices of the porters in their thorn bush

 scherms had slowly descended through the occasional mutter and soft

 murmur to ultimate silence before Zouga left his tent and limped

 silently as a night creature out of the camp.

 He carried the Sharps rifle slung over his shoulder, the staff in one

 hand and a bull's eye lantern in the other, while the Colt revolver hung

 in its holster upon his belt.

 Once clear of the camp, he stepped out as briskly as his leg would allow

 two miles along the freshly beaten footpath that the column had made

 that afternoon until he reached the fallen tree trunk that was the

 agreed rendezvous.

 He stopped and whistled softly, and a smaller figure stepped out from

 the undergrowth into the moonlight, carrying a rifle at high-port. The

 jaunty step and alert set of head on narrow shoulders was unmistakable.

 All is well, Sergeant.

 "We are ready, Major."

 Zouga inspected the ambush positions that Sergeant Cheroot had chosen

 for his men astride the path. The little Hottentot had a good eye for

 ground and Zouga found his trust and liking for him increasing with

 every such display of competence. A puff? " Jan Cheroot asked now,

 with the clay pipe already in his mouth. No smoking, " Zouga shook his

 head. "They will smell it. " And Jan Cheroot reluctantly buttoned the

 pipe into his hip pocket.

 Zouga had chosen a position in the centre of the line, where he could

 make himself comfortable against the trunk of the fallen tree. He

 settled down with a sigh, his leg thrust out stiffly ahead of him, after

 the tirikeza it was going to be a long wearying night.

 The moon was a few days short of full, and it was almost light enough to

 read the headlines of a newspaper. The bush was alive with the scurry

 and rustle of small animals, and it kept their nerves tightened and

 their ears strained to catch the other sounds for which they waited.

 Zouga was the first to hear the click of a pebble striking against

 another. He whistled softly and Jan Cheroot snapped his fingers,

 imitating the sound of a black scarab beetle to show that he was alert.

 The moon had dropped low upon the hills, and its light through the

 forest trees laid silver and black tiger stripes upon the earth and

 played tricks with the eye.

 Something moved in the forest, and then was gone, but Zouga picked up

 the whisper of bare feet scuffling the sandy disturbed earth of the

 path, and then suddenly they were there, and very close, man shapes in

 file, hurrying, silent, furtive. Zouga counted them, eight, no nine.

 Each of them straight-backed under the bulky burden he carried balanced

 upon his head. Zouga's anger simmered to the surface and yet at the

 same time he felt a grim sense of satisfaction that he had not wasted

 the night.

 As the leading figure in the file came level with the fallen tree trunk,

 Zouga pointed the muzzle of the Sharps rifle straight into the air and

 pressed the trigger. The crash of the shot broke the night into a

 hundred echoes that bounced and rebounded through the forest, and the

 silence magnified it until it seemed like the thunder of all the heaven.

 The echoes had not dispersed, and the nine dark figures were still

 frozen with shock when Jan CherOUE-S Hottentots fell upon them from

 every direction in a shrieking pack.

 The sound of their cries was so shrill, so inhuman, that it even

 startled Zouga, while the effect on the victims was miraculous. They

 let fall the burdens they carried, and dropped to earth in a paralysis

 of superstitious awe, adding their walls and screams to the pandemonium.

 Then the thud and clatter of cudgels against skull and cringing flesh

 mingled with it all, and the screams and howls rose to a new pitch.

 Jan Cheroot's men had spent much time and care on selecting and cutting

 their clubs and now they wielded them with a lusty glee, making up for a

 night of discomfort and boredom. Sergeant Cheroot himself was in the

 thick of it, and in his excitement he had almost lost his voice. He was

 yipping squeakily like a demented fox terrier with a cat up a tree.

 Zouga knew he would have to stop it soon, before they killed or

 seriously maimed somebody, but the punishment was richly earned, and he

 gave it a minute more.

 He even joined in himself when one of the prostrate figures scrambled to

 its feet and tried to dart away into the undergrowth. Zouga swung his

 staff and brought him down again with a blow to the back of his knees,

 and when he sprang up again as though he were on springs, Zouga dropped

 him in the dust with a short right-handed punch to the side of the head.

 Then, stepping back out of the fray, Zouga took one of his few remaining

 cheroots from his top pocket, and lit it from the chimney of the

 lantern, inhaling with deep satisfaction, while around him the

 enthusiasm of his Hottentots flagged a little as they tired and Jan

 Cheroot regained his voice and became coherent for -the first time. Slat

 hulle, kerels! Hit them, boys! " It was time to stop it, Zouga decided

 and opened the shutter of the lantern. That's enough, Sergeant, he

 ordered, and the thuds of blows became intermittent and then ceased

 while the Hottentots rested on the cudgels, panting and streaming with

 the honest sweat of their exertions.

 The deserting porters lay moaning and whimpering in pitiful heaps, with

 their loot scattered about them. Some of the packs had burst open, and

 trade cloth and beads, flasks of gunpowder, knives, mirrors and glass

 jewellery were strewn about and trodden into the dirt. Zouga's fury

 returned at full strength when he recognized the tin box which contained

 his dress uniform and hat. He delivered a last kick at the nearest

 figure and then growled at Sergeant Cheroot, Get them on their feet and

 clean it up."

 The nine deserters were marched into camp, roped together and bearing

 not only the heavy burdens which they had stolen, but also an impressive

 set of contusions, cuts and bruises. Lips were swollen and split, some

 teeth were missing, a good many eyes were puffed closed and most of

 their heads were as lumpy as newlypicked Jerusalem artichokes.

 More painful than their injuries, however, was the ridicule of the

 entire camp which turned out to a man to jeer and mock them with

 laughter.

 Zouga lined up the captives, with their booty piled in front of them,

 and in the presence of their peers made a speech in limping but

 expressive Swahili in which he likened them to sneaking jackals and

 lurking hyena and fined them each a month's wages.

 The audience was delighted with the show, and hooted at every insult

 while the culprits tried physically to shrink themselves into

 insignificance. There was not one of the watching porters who would not

 have done the same thing. in fact, had the escape succeeded, most of

 them would have followed the next night, but now that it had been

 foiled, they could enjoy the vicarious pleasure of having escaped

 punishment, and the discomfort of their companions who had committed the

 sin of being caught.

 During the noon rest that divided the two stages of the next day's

 tirikeza, the clusters of porters chatting in the shade of the mopani

 groves agreed that they had found a strong master to follow, one whom it

 would not be easy to cheat, and it gave them all confidence for the

 future of the safari. Coming directly after his defeat of the

 Portuguese, the recapture of the deserting porters added immeasurably to

 Zouga's standing.

 The four indunas of the divisions agreed that it was fitting that such a

 man have a praise-name. They conferred at length, and after considering

 many suggestions, finally decided on "Bakela'. Bakela" means "the

 one-who-strikes-with-the-fist', for this was still. the one of Zouga's

 many accomplishments which impressed them most.

 Where Bakela led, they were now prepared to follow, and though Zouga

 spread a dragnet of his faithful Hottentots behind the column each of

 the following nights, no more fish swam into it. How many? " Zouga

 whispered, and Jan Cheroot rocked on his heels, sucking softly on the

 empty clay pipe and squinting his oriental eyes thoughtfully, before he

 shrugged, "Too many to count. Two hundred, three hundred, perhaps even

 four."

 The ground had been ploughed up into soft fluffy dust by the multitude

 of huge cloven hooves, and the dark pats of dung were round and shaped

 in little concentric circles, completely indistinguishable from those of

 domestic cattle, and the rank smell of cattle was heavy on the heated

 air of the Zambezi valley.

 For an hour they had followed a small herd through the open mopani

 forest, stooping under the low branches with the thick shiny double

 leaves, each of them shaped like the cloven spoor that they followed,

 and now where the spoor emerged from the forest it had been joined by

 another much larger herd. How close? " Zouga asked again, and Jan

 Cheroot slapped his own neck where one of the buffalo flies had settled.

 It was the size of a honey bee, but dull black and the long needle of

 its proboscis stung as though it was white hot. We are so close that

 the flies that follow the herd still linger, and he pushed his

 forefinger into the nearest pat of wet dung, "and the body heat is still

 in the dung, but, Jan Cheroot went on as he wiped his finger on a

 handful of dry grass, "but they have gone into bad ground-" and he

 pointed ahead with his chin.

 A week before they had reached the escarpment of the valley, but each of

 the possible passes that Zouga had examined through the telescope had

 proved on closer inspection to be dead-ends, the gorges pinching out

 into abrupt rock faces, or falling off into some terrifying abyss.

 They had turned westwards, following the edge of the escarpment, Zouga

 ranging ahead with his small scouting party. Yet day after day those

 impassable heights loomed at their left hand, rising sheer into the

 unknown.

 Even below the main escarpment, the ground was tortured and riven by

 deep gorges and ravines, by cliffs of dark rock and hills of enormous

 tumbled boulders. The ravines were choked with the drab grey stands of

 thorn, so densely interwoven that a man would have to crawl in on hands

 and knees, and his vision would be limited to a few feet ahead, yet the

 herd of many hundreds of buffalo that they were following had

 disappeared into one of these narrow gorges, their thick hides

 impervious to the cruel red-tipped thorn.

 Zouga took the telescope from his haversack carried by his bearer, and

 carefully scanned the ground ahead. It had a wild and menacing beauty

 and for the hundredth time in the last few days he wondered if there was

 a way through this maze to the empire of Monornatapa. Did you hear

 that? " Zouga demanded, lowering the glass suddenly. It had sounded

 like the distant ]owing of the milk herd as it returned to the farmyard.

 Ja! " Sergeant Cheroot nodded, as again the mournful sound echoed

 against the black ironstone cliffs, and was answered by the bleat of a

 calf. "They are lying up in the jessie bush. They won't move again

 until sunset."

 Zouga glanced up at the sun. It was four hours or so from its zenith.

 He had over a hundred mouths to feed, and they had rationed out the last

 of the dried fish two days before. We will have to go in after them" he

 said, and Jan Cheroot removed the stern of the pipe from between yellow

 teeth and spat reflectively in the dust. I am a very happy man, he

 said. "Why would I want to die now? " Zouga lifted the glass again,

 and while he scanned the ridges of higher ground about the choked

 valley, he imagined what it would be like in there. When the first shot

 was fired, the jessie bush would be filled with huge, furiously charging

 black animals.

 The fluky breeze coming down the steep narrow valley brought with it

 another powerful whiff of the herd smell before it faded.

 The wind is down the valley, " he said. They have not smelled us,

 Cheroot agreed, but that was not what Zouga had meant. Again he

 examined the nearest ridge of high ground. A man could work his way

 along the edge of it, up towards the head of the narrow valley.

 Sergeant, we are going to flush them out, he smiled, like spring

 pheasant."

 Zouga had found the native names of his personal bearers hard to

 pronounce, and tiresome to remember. There were four of them, he had

 selected them with care, rejecting half a dozen others in the process,

 and he had rechristened them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They had

 earned enormous prestige by being so honoured, and had proved keen and

 willing to learn their duties. In a few days they were already

 proficient at reloading, though not yet of the same standard as Camacho

 Pereira's gunbearers, but that would come.

 Zouga carried the Sharps rifle, but each of the four bearers had one of

 the heavy four-to-the-pound elephant guns that Harkness had recommended

 to Zouga. At any time he had only to reach back over his shoulder and a

 loaded and primed weapon would be thrust into his hand.

 Apart from the elephant guns, his bearers carried his blanket roll,

 water bottle, canvas food bag, spare ball and powder, and the little

 clay fire pot from which a smouldering ball of moss and wood pulp could

 be blown into flame in a few seconds. It was wise to conserve the

 amenities of civilization, such as Swan Vestas, for the months and years

 ahead.

 Zouga relieved Luke, the quickest and most wiry of the four, of all his

 equipment except the fire pot, pointed out the path along the cliff, and

 explained carefully to him what he was to do.

 All of them listened with approval, even Sergeant Cheroot nodded sagely

 at the end. "My old mother tells me, before she throws me out, "Jan",

 she says, "remember it's brains what counts."

 " In the mouth of the valley, where it debauched out into the mopani

 forest, was a low outcrop of rock, the black ironstone boulders had been

 split into strange shapes by sun and erosion, and they formed a natural

 redoubt, with chest-high walls behind which a man could crouch. A

 hundred paces directly ahead, the dense palisade of iron-grey thorn

 blocked the valley, but the ground between was fairly open, with a few

 stunted second-growth mopani bushes and clumps of coarse dried razor

 grass as high as a man's shoulder.

 Zouga moved his party into the lee of the rocks, and himself scrambled

 onto the highest point to follow through his glass the progress of the

 almost naked bearer as he picked his way cautiously along the rim of the

 cliff. Within half an hour he had worked so far up the escarpment that

 he had disappeared from Zouga's view.

 it was another hour before, from the head of the valley, a thin tendril

 of pure white smoke rose gently into the heated air, and then bent into

 the elegant shape of an ostrich plume before the gentle breath of the

 breeze.

 With miraculous suddenness the rising column of white smoke was

 surrounded by another living cloud, hundreds of tiny black specks that

 weaved and darted about and around it. The faint but excited bird cries

 carried down to where Zouga waited, and through the glass he could make

 out the rainbow, turquoise and sapphire plumage of the blue jay as they

 rolled and dived for the insects put to flight by the flames. Competing

 with them for the feast, were the iridescent black drongas with their

 long, forked tails catching the sunlight with metallic glitter as they

 swirled above the spreading smoke clouds.

 Luke was doing his job well. Zouga grunted with satisfaction, as new

 columns of smoke rose at intervals, sealing off the valley from side to

 side as they spread to meet each other. Now there was a solid wall of

 smoke from one cliff to the other, and as the smoke turned dirty black,

 billowing upwards, spinning upon itself, carrying flaming fragments of

 leaves and twigs within it, it began to roll ponderously down the

 valley.

 It reminded Zouga of a snow avalanche he had watched in the high

 Himalayas, the slow majestic progress gathering weight and momentum,

 building up its own wind storm as it sucked the valley of air.

 He could see the tops of the flames now, leaping above the thorn, and

 hear the sound of them, like the whispering waters of a distant river.

 The alarm bellow of a bull buffalo rang like the blast of a war trumpet

 from the ironstone cliffs, and the whisper of flames rose swiftly to a

 dull crackling roar.

 The smoke clouds rose across the sun, plunging them into an unnatural

 gloom, and Zouga felt a sharp. drop in his spirits at the extinction of

 the bright morning sun, that internal swirling pall of dun smoke seemed

 to hold a world of menace.

 From the edge of the jessie bush broke a herd of kudu, led by a

 magnificent bull with his corkscrew horns laid flat along his back. He

 saw Zouga standing on the pinnacle of rock, and snorted with alarm,

 swinging away out of easy shot with his cows flying big-eared and scary

 behind him, their fluffy white tails flickered away amongst the mopani

 groves.

 Zouga scrambled down from his too obvious position, and propped himself

 comfortably against the rock, checked the nipple on the cap of the

 Sharps and then cocked the big hammer.

 Ahead of the flames, a pale white dust cloud was rising over the tops of

 the jessie bush, and another sound was added to the roar of flames. It

 was a low thunder that made the earth tremble under their feet. They

 are coming, Jan Cheroot muttered to himself, and his little eyes

 sparkled.

 A single buffalo burst from the palisade of thorn. He was an old bull,

 almost bald across the shoulders and rump, the dusty grey skin

 crisscrossed by a thousand ancient scars and scabby with the bites of

 bush ticks.

 The big bell-shaped ears were torn and tattered, and one thickly curved

 horn was broken off at the tip. He came out at a crabbing gallop, dust

 exploding at each hoof beat like miniature mortar bursts.

 He was on a line to pass the rocky redoubt at twenty paces, and Zouga

 let him come on to twice that distance before he threw up the Sharps

 rifle.

 He aimed for the fold of thick skin under the throat that marked the

 frontal aiming point for the heart and its complex of arteries and blood

 vessels. He hardly noticed the recoil nor the blurt of the shot as he

 watched for the strike of the lead bullet. There was a little spurt of

 dust off the grey hide precisely on his aiming point, and the sound of

 the hit was exactly like his headmaster swinging the malacca cane

 against his own schoolboy backside, sharp and meaty.

 The bull took the bullet without a stumble or lurch, instead it swung

 towards them, and seemed immediately to double in size as it lifted its

 nose into the high attitude of the charge.

 Zouga reached for his second gun, but he groped in vain. Mark, his

 number two, showed the whites of his eyes in a flash of terror, let out

 a squawk, hurled the elephant gun aside, and went hounding away towards

 the mopani grove.

 The bull saw him and swerved again, thundering ten feet past Zouga as it

 went after the fleeing bearer.

 Waving the empty Sharps, Zouga shouted desperately for another rifle,

 but the bull was past him in a grey blur and it caught Mark as he

 reached the tree line.

 The great bossed head dropped until the snout almost touched the earth,

 and then flew up again in a powerful tossing motion that bunched the

 muscle in the thick black neck. Mark was looking back over his

 shoulder, his eyes wide and glaring white in the black face, rivulets of

 sweat pouring down his naked back, his mouth a pink gape as he screamed.

 Then he was in the air. Legs and arms tumbling wildly, he went up like

 a rag doll thrown by a petulant child and disappeared into the thick

 green canopy of mopani foliage overhead. Without missing a stride, the

 bull drove on into the forest, but that was all that Zouga saw, for a

 cry from Sergeant Cheroot made him turn again. Hier kom hullel Here

 they come! " Across their whole front, the earth seemed to move as

 though racked by the convulsions of an earthquake.

 Shoulder to shoulder, nose to rump, the main herd broke from cover,

 flattening the Thorn bush under the great wave of bodies, filling the

 valley from side to side.

 They lifted behind them a dense curtain of pale dust, from which the

 front ranks seemed endlessly to emerge, their great bossed heads nodding

 in unison as they pounded on, long silver strings of saliva dangling

 from open jaws as they bellowed in alarm and anger, and the roar of

 their hooves drowned the sound of the flames.

 Matthew and John, Zouga's two remaining bearers, had stood their ground,

 and one of them snatched away the empty Sharps and thrust the thick

 stock of an elephant gun into Zouga's hand.

 The weapon seemed heavy and unbalanced after the Sharps, and the sights

 were crudely fashioned, a blunt cone for the foresight, and a deep vee

 for the backsight.

 The solid wall of bodies was bearing down upon them with frightening

 speed. The cows were a dark chocolate colour, and their horns were more

 delicately curved. The calves that raced at their flanks were sleek

 russet with crowns of reddish curls between the rudimentary little horn

 spikes. The herd was so tightly packed that it seemed impossible that

 they could split open to pass the rock. There was a tall rangy cow in

 the leading rank, coming straight on to Zouga.

 He held half a beat aiming into the centre of her chest, and squeezed

 off the shot. The firing cap popped with a tiny puff of white smoke,

 and a heartbeat later the elephant gun vomited a deafening gust of

 powder smoke and bright flame, the burning patches went spinning away

 over the heads of the charging buffalo, and Zouga felt as though one of

 them had kicked in his shoulder.

 He staggered backwards, the barrel thrown high by the recoil, but the

 big red cow seemed to run into an invisible barrier. A quarter of a

 pound of mercury-hardened lead drove into her chest, and brought her

 down in a rolling sliding tangle of hooves and horns. Tom Harkness!

 That one was yours! " Zouga shouted, offeringthe kill to the memory of

 the old white bearded hunter, and he grabbed the next loaded rifle.

 There was a prime bull, big and black, a ton of enraged bovine flesh. It

 had seen Zouga, and was coming in over the rocks in a long scrambling

 leap, hunting him out, so close that Zouga seemed to touch it with the

 gaping muzzle of the four-to-the-pound. Again the great clanging burst

 of sound and flame and smoke, and half the bull's head flew away in a

 gust of bone chips and bloody fragments. It reared up on its hind legs,

 striking out with fore hooves, and then crashed over in a cloud of dust.

 Impossibly, the herd split, galloping down each side of their rocky

 bide, a heaving, grunting, forked river of striving muscle and bone. Ian

 Cheroot was yipping shrilly with the fever of the chase, ducking down

 behind the rock to reload, biting open the paper cartridge with powder

 dribbling down his chin, spitting the ball into the muzzle and then

 plying the ramrod in a frenzy, before bobbing up again to fire into the

 solid heaving press of gigantic bodies.

 It lasted for two minutes, which seemed to take a round of eternity, and

 then they were left choking and gasping in the swirling clouds of dust,

 surrounded by half a dozen huge black carcasses, with the drum-beats of

 the herd fading away into the mopani forest, and a louder more urgent

 din roaring down on them from in front.

 The first tongue of heat licked across them, and Zouga heard the lock of

 suribleached hair that hung on his forehead frizzle sharply and smelt

 the stink of it. At the same instant, the dust cloud fell abruptly

 aside, and for seconds they stared at a spectacle which deprived them of

 power of movement.

 The jessie bush was not burning, it was exploding into sheets of flame.

 Run! " shouted Zouga. "Get out of here!

 The sleeve of his shirt charred, and the air he breathed scorched his

 lungs painfully. As they reached the edge of the mopani forest, the

 shiny green leaves about their heads shrivelled and yellowed, curling

 their edges in the heat, and Zouga felt his eyeballs drying out as the

 dark smoke clouds rolled over them. He knew that they were experiencing

 only the heat and smoke carried on the wind, but if the flames were able

 to jump the gap, then they were all doomed. Ahead of him, the

 Hottentots and the other bearers were shadowy wraiths, staggering

 forward but weakening and losing direction.

 Then, as suddenly as they had been engulfed by them, the billowing smoke

 clouds lifted. The flames had not been able to jump the open ground,

 and the heat came only in gusts. A ray of sunshine pierced the thick

 gloom overhead, and a puff of sweet fresh air came through.

 They sucked at it gratefully, and huddled in awed silence, beating at

 their clothing which still smouldered in patches. Zouga's face was

 blackened and blistered, and his lungs still convulsed in spasms of

 coughing. As he caught his breath, he grunted hoarsely, Well the meat

 is cooked already, " and he pointed back at the buffalo carcasses.

 At that moment something fell limply out of the dense top branches of a

 mopani tree, and then picked itself up and limped painfully towards

 them. Zouga let out a husky growl of laughter. Oh, thou swift of foot,

 he greeted Mark, the bearer, and the others took up the mockery. When

 you fly, the eagles are put to shame, Jan Cheroot hooted. Your true

 home is in the treetops, Matthew added with relish, "with your hairy

 brethren."

 By evening they had hacked the buffalo carcasses into wet red chunks,

 and spread these on the smoking racks.

 The racks were waist high, cross-poles set in forked branches, with a

 slow smoking fire of wet mopani wood smouldering under it.

 Here was meat for the caravan that would las them many weeks.

 Carnacho Pereira had no doubts that by simply following the line of the

 escarpment, keeping just below the bad broken ground, he must at last

 cut the spoor of the caravan. A hundred men, in column, would blaze a

 track that even a blind man would trip over.

 His certainty dwindled with each day's march through the quiverin&

 breathless heat that seemed to rebound from black kopjes and the

 ironstone cliffs which glittered in the aching sunlight like the scales

 of some monstrous reptile.

 Of the men that his half-brother, Alphonse, had given him, he had

 already lost two. One had stepped on something that looked like a pile

 of dried leaves, but which had transformed itself instantly into six

 feet of infuriated gaboon adder, thick as a man's calf, with a

 repulsively beautiful diamond-patterned back, and a head the size of a

 man's fist. The gaping mouth was a lovely shade of salmon pink, and the

 curved fangs three inches long. It had plunged them into the man's

 thigh and squirted half a cupful of the most toxic venom in Africa into

 his bloodstream.

 After blowing the serpent to shreds with volleys of rifle fire, Camacho

 and his companions had wagered all their expectations of loot on exactly

 how long it would take the victim to die. Camacho, the only one who

 owned a watch, was elected timekeeper, and they gathered around where

 the dying man lay, either urging him to give up the useless struggle or

 pleading with him raucously to hang on a little longer.

 When he went into back-arching convulsions, with his eyes rolled up into

 his skull, his jaws locked into a grinning rictus and he lost control of

 his sphincter muscle, Camacho knelt beside him, holding a bunch of

 smouldering tambooti leaves under his nostrils to shock him out of it,

 and crooning, "Ten minutes more, hang on for just ten minutes more for

 your old friend MachitoV The last convulsion ended with a dreadful

 gargling expulsion of breath, and when the heart beat faded completely,

 Carnacho stood and kicked the corpse with disgust. He always was a

 dung-eating jackal."

 When they began to strip the corpse of all items of any possible value,

 five coins, heavy golden mohurs of the East India Company, fell out of

 the folds of his turban, There was not one man in all that company who

 would not have willingly sold his mother into slavery for a single gold

 mohur, let alone five.

 At the first gleam of gold, all their knives came out with a sardonic

 metallic snickering, and the first man to snatch for the treasure reeled

 away, trying to push his intestines back into the long clean slice

 through his stomach wall. Leave them lie, " Camacho shouted. "Don't

 touch them until the lots are drawn! " Not one of them trusted another,

 and the knives stayed out while the lots were cast, and grudgingly the

 winners were allowed one at a time to claim their prize.

 The man with the belly wound could not march without his stomach falling

 out, and because he could not march, he was as good as dead. The dead,

 as everybody knows, have no need of personal possessions. The logic was

 apparent to all. They left him his shirt and breeches, both torn and

 badly stained anyway, but stripped him of all else as they had stripped

 the first corpse. Then, with a few ribald pleasantries, they propped

 him against the base of a morula tree, with the naked corpse of the

 snake-bite victim beside him for company, and they marched away along

 the line of the escarpment.

 They had gone a hundred yards when Camacho was overcome by a rush of

 compassion. He and the dying man had fought and marched and whored

 together for many years. He turned back.

 The man gave him a haggard grin, his dry crusted lips cracking with the

 effort. Camacho answered him with that marvelous flashing smile as he

 dropped the man's loaded pistol in his lap. It would be better to use

 it before the hyena find you tonight, he told him. The thirst is

 terrible, the man croaked, a tiny bead of blood appeared on his deeply

 cracked lower lip, bright as an emperor's ruby in -the sunlight. He

 eyed the twogallon water bottle on Carnacho's hip.

 Carnacho resettled the water bottle on its strap so it was out of sight

 behind his back. The contents sloshed seductively.

 Try not to think about it, he counselled.

 There was a point where compassion ended and stupidity began. Who knew

 where and when they would find the next water? In this God-blasted

 desolation, water was an item not to be wasted on a man who was "already

 as good as dead.

 He patted the man's shoulder comfortingly, gave him a last lovely smile

 and then swaggered away amongst the grey ironthorn scrub, whistling

 softly under his breath with the plumed beaver cocked over one eye.

 Camachito went back to make sure we had forgotten nothing. " The

 one-eyed Abyssinian greeted him as he caught up with the column, and

 they shouted with laughter. Their spirits were still high, the

 water-bottles more than half filled and the prospects of immense loot

 danced like a will-o-the-wisp down the valley ahead of them.

 That had been ten days ago, the last three of which without water, for

 you could not count the cupful of mud and elephant piss they had from

 the last puddled water-hole. Apart from the lack of water, the going

 had become appalling. Camacho had never marched through such broken and

 harsh terrain, toiling up one rocky slope and then battling down through

 tearing Thorn to the next dry river course, and then up again.

 Also, it now seemed highly probable that either the Englishman had

 changed his mind and gone north of the Zambezi river after all, in which

 case they had lost him, or else, and Camacho's skin crawled at the

 thought, or else they had crossed the spoor of the caravan in the early

 dawn or late evening when the light was too bad to make it out clearly.

 It was an easy mistake to make, they had crossed hundreds of game tracks

 each day, and the spoor could have been wiped by a herd of game, or one

 of the fierce short-lived little whirlwinds, the dust devils which

 ravaged the valley at this season of the year.

 To cap all Camacho's tribulations, his band of noble warriors was on the

 point of mutiny. They were talking quite openly about turning back.

 There never had been an Englishman and a caravan of riches, even if

 there had, he was now far from here and getting further every day.

 They were exhausted by these switchback ridges and valleys and the water

 bottles were nearly all of them dry, which made it hard to maintain

 enthusiasm for the venture. The ringleaders were reminding the others

 that in their absence, their share of the profits of the slave caravan

 were blowing in the wind. Fifty slaves, for certain, were worth a

 hundred mythical Englishmen. They had many excellent reasons for

 turning back.

 Carnacho, on the other hand, had nothing to return for, apart from his

 half-brother's ire. He also had a score to settle, two scores. He

 still hoped that they might manage to take the Englishman and his sister

 alive, especially the woman. Even in the thirst and the heat, his groin

 swelled at the memory of her in men's breeches. He jerked himself back

 to reality, and he glanced over his shoulder at the straggling line of

 ruffians who followed him.

 Soon it would be necessary to kill one of his men, he had decided hours

 ago. Dung-eaters all of them, it was the only language they truly

 understood. He must make an example to stiffen their backbones, and

 keep them slogging onwards.

 He had already decided which one it would be. The one-eyed Abyssinian

 was the biggest talker, the most eloquent apostle of the return to the

 coast, and what made his choice even more attractive was that his left

 side was blind. The problem was that the job must be done properly. The

 others would be impressed by the knife but not the gun. However, the

 Abyssinian allowed no man into that blind spot. Without making it too

 obvious, Camacho had twice sidled up on his left, but each time the

 Abyssinian had swung his head with its frizzed-up halo of dense curly

 hair towards him, and given him a grin with a slow trickle of a tear

 running down his cheek from that obscenely empty eye-socket.

 However, Camacho was a persistent man, and an inventive one, for he

 noticed that whenever he moved out of the Abyssinian's blind spot, the

 man relaxed, and immediately became more verbose and arrogant. Twice

 more Camacho tried an approach from the left, and twice more was met

 with a single cold beady stare. He was establishing a pattern, teaching

 the victim that threat came only from the left, and when they halted in

 the middle of the morning, he ostentatiously squatted on the right. The

 Abyssinian grinned at him as he wiped the spout of his almost empty

 water bottle on his sleeve. This is the place. I go no further. " The

 one-eyed man announced in fluent Portuguese. "I make the oath on

 Christ's sacred wounds. " And he touched the Coptic gold cross that

 hung around his neck. "Not another step forward. I am going back."

 Fanning himself with the beaver hat, Camacho shrugged, and answered the

 cold grin with his own sunny smile. "Let's drink to your going then

 With his free hand, he lifted his own water bottle, and shook it

 slightly. There was a cupful, no more. All their eyes went

 instinctively to the bottle. Here water was life, even the Abyssinian's

 single eye fastened on it.

 Then Camacho, let it slip from his fingers. It looked like an accident,

 the bottle rolled to the Abyssinian's feet with clear water glugging out

 on to the baked earth, and, with an exclamation, the man stooped for it

 with his right hand, his knife hand.

 Nobody really saw Camacho move. He had been holding the knife in the

 lining of the beaver hat. Suddenly it seemed to reappear behind the

 Abyssinian's right ear, just the carved bone handle protruding the blade

 completely buried.

 The Abyssinian lifted his hand with a mystified expression and touched

 the hilt of the knife, blinked his single eye rapidly, opened his mouth

 and then closed it firmly and fell forward on top of the water bottle.

 Camacho was standing over them, a cocked pistol in each hand. Who else

 wishes to make an oath on Christ's sacred wounds? " he smiled at them,

 his teeth very big and white and square. "Nobody? Very well then, I

 will make an oath. I make it on the long-lost maidenheads of your

 sisters which they sold a hundred times for an escudo the bunch Even

 they were shocked by such blasphemy, I make it on your flaccid and puny

 manhoods which it will be my great pleasure to shoot off, he was

 interrupted, and broke off in mid-sentence.

 There was a faint popping sound on the hushed heated morning, so

 distant, so indistinct, that for a moment none of them recognized it as

 the sound of gunfire. Camacho recovered first, he thrust the pistols

 into his waistband. They were no longer needed, and he ran to the crest

 of the rocky kopie on which they sat.

 There was a column of dun-coloured smoke rising into the washed-out blue

 sky far ahead. In this terrain, it lay a day's march away against the

 steep and fearsome edge of the escarpment.

 Around him his men, once again loyal and filled with fire, were laughing

 and hugging each other with delight.

 It was a pity about the Abyssinian, Camacho conceded, like all his

 people he had been a good fighter, and now they had found the

 Englishman, he would be missed.

 Camacho cupped the cheroot in both hands and inhaled deeply. Holding

 the smoke in his lungs, he squinted his eyes against the flat glare of

 rising noon. The sun had bleached all colour from the landscape, only

 the shadows were cut clearly, very sharp-edged and black below each tree

 and rock.

 Across the narrow valley the long column of men he was watching moved at

 the pace of the slowest. Camacho doubted if they were making a single

 mile in an hour.

 He removed the beaver hat from his head and blew the smoke into it

 gently, so that it dispersed into nothingness instead of standing in the

 still air to draw the eye of a watcher.

 Camacho saw nothing odd in that the leading Hottentot musketeer in the

 column carried an English flag.

 Even in this barren, forsaken corner of the earth, although its gaudy

 folds were already dulled with dust and the ends shredded by grasping

 Thorn, it was the promise of protection, a warning to those who might

 check their passage. All caravans in Africa went under a banner.

 Camacho dragged on the black cheroot and considered once again how

 infallible was the advice of his brother Alphonse. The night was the

 only time to do the business. Here the column was spread out for more

 than a mile, there were wide gaps between each of the four divisions,

 and with himself he had eighteen men left. If he attacked in daylight,

 he would be forced to concentrate them on the detachments of Hottentot

 musketeers at the head and tail of the caravan. He imagined vividly

 what might happen at the first shot. One hundred porters would drop

 their packs and scatter away into the bush, and when the fighting was

 over he would have nobody to carry the loot.

 It was necessary, furthermore, for him to wait until the Englishman

 rejoined the caravan. He guessed that Zouga Ballantyne was scouting or

 hunting, but that he would rejoin the column before nightfall.

 The woman was there. He had another glimpse of her at that moment as

 she stepped up on to a log that lay across the path; for a moment she

 balanced there, longlegged, in those maddening breeches, and then jumped

 down off the log. Camacho passed a pleasant few minutes in erotic

 imaginings. He had been twenty days without a woman and it had put a

 razor edge to his appetite which even the hot hard trek had not dulled.

 He sighed happily, and then squinted his eyes again as he concentrated

 on the immediate problems. Alphonse was right, they would have to wait

 until night. And tonight would be a good night for it, three days after

 the full moon, and yet the moon would rise very late, an hour or so

 after midnight.

 He would let the Englishman come in, let the camp settle down, let the

 fires die, and let the Hottentot sentries drowse off. Then when the

 moon rose and the vitality of the camp was at its lowest ebb, he and his

 men would go in.

 Every one of his men was good with the knife, the fact that they had

 lived so long showed that, Camacho smiled to himself, and they would

 have an opportunity to prove it again tonight. He personally would mark

 the position of the sentries while it was still light. They would start

 with them, Camacho did not expect more than three or four. Alter the

 sentries, then the Hottentot musketeers that were sleeping. They were

 the most dangerous, and after them there would be time for indulgence.

 He would go to the woman's tent himself, he squirmed slightly at the

 thought and adjusted his dressing. it was just a terrible pity that he

 could not take care of the Englishman as well. He would send two of his

 best men to do that work. He had dreamed of driving a long wooden spike

 up between the Englishman's buttocks, and then taking wagers on how long

 he would take to die, amusing himself and the company while regaining

 some of his previous losses at the same time.

 Then reluctantly, and prudently, he had decided not to chance such

 pleasures, not with a man like that. Best to cut his throat while he

 still slept. They could have their fun with the woman instead, Camacho

 decided firmly.

 His single regret was that he would have only a short time with her,

 before the others demanded their turns, though a few minutes would

 probably be enough for him. Strange how months of craving could be

 satiated so swiftly, and after that brief out-pouring become

 indifference and even distaste. . . . 1at was a very philosophical

 thought, Camacho realized. Once again he had astonished himself with

 his own wisdom and sensitivity to things of the mind. He had often

 thought that if he had ever learned to read and write he could have been

 a great man, like his father the Governor. After all, the blood in his

 veins was that of aristocrats and Dons, only slightly diluted.

 He sighed, yes, five minutes would suffice and then the others could

 have her, and when they also had finished they could play the betting

 game with the long wooden stake, and, of course, there was a more

 amusing place to put it. He chuckled aloud at the thought and took a

 last draw on the cheroot, and the stub was so short that the ember

 scorched his fingers. He dropped it and crushed it under his heel. He

 moved like a panther, slipping quietly over the skyline and circling out

 stealthily to get ahead of the creeping caravan.

 Zouga had left his bearers tending the smoking-racks, feeding the fire

 with chips of wet wood, and turning the hunks of red meat so they cured

 evenly. It was wearisome work, for the racks had to be guarded at all

 times from the hyena and jackals, the crows and kites which hung about

 the camp, while there was always wood to cut and the baskets of mopani

 bark to weave in which the smoked meat would be carried.

 Jan Cheroot was happy to escape with Zouga as he marched back to find

 the main caravan and guide it to the buffalo camp. Even the tsetse fly

 could not repress his high spirits. They had been in "fly-country" for

 a week or more now. Tom Harkness had called these importunate little

 insects the guardians of Africa" and certainly they made it impossible

 for man to move his domestic animals through vast tracts of country.

 Here they were one of the many reasons why the Portuguese colonization

 had been confined to the low coastal littoral. Their cavalry had never

 been able to penetrate this deadly screen, nor had their draught animals

 been able to drag their war trains up from the coast.

 They were the reason, also, why Zouga. had not attempted to use waggons

 or beasts of burden to carry his stores. There was not even a dog with

 the caravan, for only man and wild game were immune to the dreadful

 consequences of the bite.

 in some areas of the "fly-belt" there were so few of the insects as to

 cause little Annoyance, but in others they swarmed like hiving bees,

 plaguing and persecuting even during the moonlight periods of the night.

 That day on the march back to rejoin the column, Zouga and Jan Cheroot

 suffered the worst infestation of fly they had yet met with in the

 valley of the Zambezi.

 They rose from the ground to sit thickly upon their legs, and clustered

 on the backs of their necks and between their shoulder blades, so that

 he and Jan Cheroot took turns to walk behind each other and brush them

 off with a freshly cut buffalo tail.

 As suddenly as they had entered it, they found themselves out of the

 fly-belt" and with blessed relief from the torment they settled down to

 rest in the shade.

 Within half an hour they heard distant singing, and as they waited for

 the caravan to come up, they smoked and chatted in the desultory fashion

 of the good companions they had become.

 During one of the long pauses in their talk Zouga thought he saw vague

 movement on the far side of the shallow valley in front of them.

 Probably a herd of kudu or a troop of baboon, both of which were

 plentiful in the valley, but apart from the buffalo herd the only game

 they had encountered since leaving Tete.

 The approaching caravan would have alarmed whatever it was, Zouga

 thought, removing his cap and using it to drive away the persistent

 cloud of tiny black mopani bees which hovered around his head "

 attracted by the moisture of his eyes and lips and nostrils. The

 movement in the forest opposite was not repeated. Whatever it was had

 probably crossed the ridge. Zouga turned back to listen to Jan Cheroot.

 The rains only stopped six weeks ago, Jan Cheroot was musing aloud. "The

 water-holes and rivers up on the high ground will still be full, not

 here, of course, this ground drains too steeply. " He indicated the dry

 and rocky water course below them. "So the herds spread out, and follow

 their old roads. " He was explaining the complete lack of elephant, or

 even recent evidence of elephant herds in the valley, and Zouga listened

 with attention, for here was an expert speaking. "The old elephant

 roads, they used to run from the flat mountain of Good Hope to the

 swamps of the far Sud, he pointed north. But each year they shrink as

 we, the rasters (hunters), and men like us, follow the herds and drive

 them deeper and deeper into the interior."

 Jan Cheroot was silent again, and his pipe gurgled noisily as he sucked

 on it. My father told me that he killed the last elephants south of the

 Olifants river, the river of elephants when he was still a young man. He

 boasted that he killed twelve elephants that day, he alone with his old

 roer (muzzle-loader) that was too heavy to hold to the shoulder. He had

 to rest it on the crutch of a forked stick he carried for it. Twelve

 elephants in one day, by one man. That is a feat. " He gurgled his

 pipe again, and then spat a little yellow tobacco juice. "But then my

 father was even more famous as a liar than he was as a hunter, Jan

 Cheroot chuckled and shook his head fondly.

 Zouga smiled, and then the smile vanished and his head jerked up. He

 narrowed his eyes, for a tiny dart of reflected sunlight had struck his

 eye coming from the same place across the valley. Whatever he had seen

 was still there, and it was neither kudu nor baboon. It had to be a

 man, for only metal or glass could have shot that reflection. Jan

 Cheroot had noticed nothing and he was musing on. When I rode with

 Cornwallis Harris, we found the first elephant on the Cashan mountains,

 that's a thousand miles further north of where my father killed his

 herd. There was nothing in between, it had all been hunted bare. Now

 there are no elephant in the Cashan mountains. My brother Stephan was

 there two years ago.

 He tells me that there are no elephant south of the Limpopo river. The

 Boers graze their herds where we hunted ivory, perhaps we will find no

 elephant even up there on the high ground, perhaps there are no elephant

 left in all the world."

 Zouga was not really listening any more. He was thinking about the man

 on the opposite side of the valley. It was probably somebody from the

 caravan, a party sent ahead to cut firewood for the night's bivouac, yet

 it was still early to think of making camp.

 The singing of the bearers was louder now. There was a single voice

 carrying the marching song. Zouga recognized it. The man was a tall

 Angoni, with a fine tenor voice, and a poet who improvised his own

 verses, adding to them and altering them on the march. Zouga, cocking

 his head, could make out the words.

 Have you heard the Fish Eagle cry above Malawi?

 Have you seen the setting sun turn the snows of Kilimanjaro to blood?

 " And then the chorus coming in after him, those haunting African

 voices, so beautiful, so moving, Who will lead us to these wonders, my

 brother?

 We will leave the women to weep, We will let their sleeping mats grow

 cold, If a strong man leads, we will follow him, my brother."

 Zouga smiled at the next verse, as he recognized his name.

 Bakela will lead us like a father leads his children, Bakela will give

 you a khete of sam-sam beadsBakela will feed you upon the fat of the

 hippopotamus and meat of the buffalo-Zouga closed his mind against the

 distraction, concentrating on the man across the valley. Here, a

 hundred miles from the nearest habitations of men, it must have been

 somebody from the caravan, woodcutter, honeyhunter, deserter, who knew?

 Zouga stood up and stretched, and Jan Cheroot knocked out his pipe and

 stood with him. The head of the column appeared amongst the trees lower

 down the slope, the red, white and blue banner flapped lazily open and

 then drooped again dejectedly.

 Zouga glanced once more at the opposite slope, it seemed deserted again.

 He was tired, the soles of his feet felt as though he had marched across

 burning embers, for they had been going hard since dawn, and the barely

 healed knife wound in his hip ached dully.

 He should really go up that slope to check what he had seen, but it was

 steep and rocky. It would take another half an hour of scrambling to

 reach the crest and return. They went down to meet the caravan, and

 when Zouga saw Robyn striding along with that easy coltish grace of hers

 behind the standard bearer, he lifted his cap and waved it above his

 head.

 She ran to meet him, laughing like a child with delight. He had been

 gone three days.

 Below a polished face of smooth black rock, that when the river was in

 spate would be a roaring cascade, there was a bend in the dry water bed

 filled with pure white sand.

 On the banks above it the wild mahogany stood tall and vigorous, its

 roots in water and the baboon had been scratching in the sand below the

 bank.

 Robyn and Zouga sat together on the edge of the dry waterfall, watching

 the men that Zouga had set to digging for water. I pray there will be

 enough. " Robyn watched them with interest. "I have not used my bath

 since we left Tete. " Her enamelled hip bath was the expedition's

 single bulkiest item of equipment. I'll be satisfied with enough for a

 pot of tea, Zouga replied vaguely, but he was clearly distracted.

 Something is worrying you? " she asked. I was thinking of a valley in

 Kashmir. "Was it like this? "Not really, it is just that, he shagged.

 In that far away valley, when he had been a young ensign leading a

 patrol ahead of the battalion, he had seen something as he had today.

 Something of no account, a stray movement, a glint of light that might

 have been off a gunbarrel, or the horn of a wild goat.

 Then, as now, it had been too much trouble to check it. That night he

 had lost three men, killed while they fought their way out of the

 valley. The fight had earned praise from his Colonel, but the men

 remained dead.

 He glanced up at the slanting sun, there was an hour of light left. He

 knew he should have climbed that slope.

 While Robyn watched him with a puzzled expression, he wavered a few

 seconds longer and then with an exclamation of exasperation stood up

 wearily. His feet still ached abominably and he rubbed his hip where

 the knifewound throbbed.

 It was going to be a long walk. back down the valley.

 Zouga used a deep and narrow ravine to get out of the camp

 unobtrusively, and once clear he scrambled out and kept to the thicker

 bush just above the river-bed until he reached a tangled barrier of

 driftwood carried down during the recent rains which blocked the dry

 water-course from bank to bank.

 He used this to cover his crossing, and started up the far slope. He

 went very carefully, dodging from one tree to another and watching and

 listening before each move.

 On the crest there was a faint movement of cooler air, the evening

 breeze coming down the escarpment that cooled the sweat on his neck and

 almost made the hard climb worth-while. It seemed that was all the

 reward he would get. The stony ground was too hard to carry sign, and

 it was deserted of life, animal or human. However, Zouga was determined

 to make up for his previous sloth.

 He stayed too long. It would be fully dark before he reached the camp

 again, moon-rise was late, and he risked a broken leg moving over this

 sort of terrain in the pitch dark.

 He turned to go back, and he smelt it before he saw it, and the hair

 prickled along his forearms and he felt his belly muscles contract, yet

 it was such a commonplace smell. He stooped and picked up the small

 squashed brown object. He had smoked the last of his own cheroots two

 days before, perhaps that was why his nose was so sensitive to the smell

 of tobacco.

 The cigar had been smoked down to a thin rind, and crushed out so it

 resembled a scrap of dried bark. Without the smell to guide him, he

 would never have found it. Zouga shredded it between his fingers, and

 there was still a little residual dampness of saliva in the chewed end.

 He lifted his fingers and sniffed them. He knew where he had smelled

 that particular scented type of Portuguese tobacco before.

 Camacho left fifteen of his men well back off the crest, in a tumble of

 rock that looked like a ruined castle, and whose caves and overhangs

 gave shade and concealment.

 They would sleep, he knew, and he grudged it to them.

 His own eyelids were drooping as be lay belly down in cover, on the

 other side of the ridge watching the caravan making camp.

 He had only two of his men with him to help him mark the sentries and

 scherms, the watch fires and the tent sites. They would be able to lead

 the others in, even in the complete darkness before the moon, if that

 should become necessary. Carnacho hoped not. In the dark mistakes

 could be made, and it needed only a shot or a single shout. No, they

 would wait for the moon, he decided.

 The Englishman had come into camp earlier, just before the caravan

 halted. He had the Hottentot with him, and they both hobbled stiffly

 like men who had made long, hard marches. Good, he would sleep soundly,

 was probably doing so already, for Carnacho had not seen him in the last

 hour. He must be in the tent beside the woman s. He had seen a servant

 carrying a steaming bucket of water to her.

 They had watched the Hottentot Sergeant set only two sentries. The

 Englishman must be feeling very secure, two sentries merely to watch

 against lions. They would probably both be fast asleep by midnight.

 They would never wake again. He, personally, would cut one of them. He

 smiled in anticipation, and he would send a good knife to cut the other.

 The remaining Hottentots had built their usual leanto shelter and

 thatched it in a rudimentary fashion.

 There was no chance of rain, not at this season and not with that

 unblemished eggshell-blue sky. It was almost two hundred paces from the

 tents, a groan or a whimper would not carry that far. Good, Camacho

 nodded again.

 It was working out better than he had hoped.

 As always, the two tents were set close together, almost touching. The

 gallant Englishman guarding the woman, Camacho smiled again, and felt

 his drowsiness lifting miraculously as his groin charged once more. He

 wished the night away, for he had already waited so long.

 Night came with the dramatic suddenness of Africa, within minutes the

 valley was filled with shadows, the sunset made its last theatrical

 flare of apricot and old gold light and then it was dark.

 For an hour more Carnacho could see the occasional dark figure

 silhouetted by the flames of the camp fires.

 Once the sound of singing carried softly and sweetly to the ridge, and

 the other camp sounds, the clank of a bucket, the thud of a log thrown

 on the fire, the drowsy murmur of voices, showed that the routine was

 unaltered, and the camp completely unaware.

 The noises faded and the fires died. The silence and the darkness was

 disturbed only by the piping lament of a jackal across the valley.

 The star patterns turned slowly across the sky marking the passage of

 the hours, and then gradually paled out before the greater brilliance of

 the rising moon. Fetch the others, Camacho told the man nearest him,

 and rose stiffly to his feet, stretching like a cat to relieve numbed

 muscles. They came silently, and gathered close about Camacho, to

 listen to his final whispered instructions.

 When he finished whispering he looked from one. to the other in turn.

 Their faces in the bright moonlight had the pale greenish hues of

 freshly exhumed corpses, but they nodded their agreement to his words,

 and then followed him down the slope, dark silent shapes like a troop of

 wolves; they reached the dry water course. in the gut of the valley,

 and split into their prearranged groups.

 Camacho moved up the newly beaten path towards the camp. He carried his

 knife in his right hand and his musket in the other, and his feet made a

 barely audible brushing sound through the short dry grass. Ahead of

 him, beneath the outspread branches of a mukusi tree, he could make out

 the shape of the sentry, where he had been placed six hours before. The

 man was asleep, curled like a dog on the hard earth. Camacho nodded

 with satisfaction and crept closer. He saw the man had pulled a dark

 blanket over his head. The mosquitoes had bothered him also, Camacho

 grinned and knelt beside him.

 With his free hand he felt softly for the man's head through the

 blanket, then the hand stilled. He gave a little grunt of surprise, and

 jerked the blanket aside. It had been arranged over the exposed roots

 of the mukusi tree to look like the shape of a sleeping man, and Camacho

 swore quietly but with great vehemence.

 The sentry had chosen the wrong time to sneak away from his post. He

 was probably back in the lean-to shelter snoring happily on a mattress

 of dry grass. They would get him with the others, when they cleaned out

 the shelter. Camacho went on up the slope into the camp. In the

 moonlight the canvas of the tents shone ghostly silver, a beacon on

 which his lust could concentrate. Camacho slipped the sling of the

 musket over his shoulder as he hurried forward, towards the left-hand

 tent, and then checked as another dark figure emerged from the shadows,

 the knife in his right hand instinctively came up and then he recognized

 his own man, one of those whom he had sent to cut the Englishman's

 throat.

 The man nodded jerkily, all was well so far and they went forward

 together, separating only as they approached the two tents. Carnacho

 would not use the fly opening of the woman's tent, for he knew it would

 be laced closed, and if there were any surprises they would be at the

 entrance. He slipped around the side of the tent, and stooped to one of

 the hooded ventilator openings. He ran the point of the blade into it

 and then drew it upwards in a single stroke. Although it was heavy

 canvas, the blade had been whetted expertly, and the side wall split

 with only a whisper of sound.

 Carnacho stepped through the opening, and while he waited for his

 eyesight to adjust to the deeper darkness of the interior, he fumbled

 with the fastening of his breeches, grinning happily to himself as he

 made out the narrow collapsible cot and the little white tent of the

 muslin mosquito net. He shuffled towards it slowly, careful not to trip

 over the cases of medical stores that were piled between him and the

 cot.

 Standing over the cot, he ripped the muslin netting aside violently, and

 lunged full length on to the cot, groping for the womAn's head to

 smother her cries, the loose ends of his belt flapping at his waist, and

 his breeches sagging around his hips.

 For a moment he was paralysed with shock at the fact that the cot was

 empty. Then he groped frantically over every inch of it, before coming

 to his feet again and hoisting his breeches with his free hand. He was

 confused, disconnected, and wild ideas flashed through his mind.

 Perhaps the woman had left the cot to answer a call of nature, but then

 why was the fly carefully laced closed.

 She had heard him and was hiding behind the cases, armed with a scalpel,

 and he swung round panicking to lash out with the knife, but the tent

 was empty.

 Then the coincidence of the missing sentry and the empty cot struck him

 with force, and he felt deep and urgent concern. Something was

 happening that he did not understand. He charged for the rent in the

 canvas, tripped and sprawled over one of the cases and rolled on to his

 feet again, nimble as a cat. He ran out, clinching his belt and looking

 about him wildly, unslinging his musket and only just preventing himself

 from calling aloud to his men.

 He ran to the Englishman's tent, just as his man came running out of the

 long dark tear in the canvas side, brandishing his knife, his face pale

 and fearful in the moonlight. He saw Camacho, screamed and struck out

 at him wildly with the long silver blade.

 Silence, you fool, Camacho snarled at him. He's gone, the man panted,

 craning to stare about into the deep shadows that the moon cast under

 the q trees. "They've gone. They've all gone. "Come! " snapped

 Camacho, and led him at a run down towards the lean-to that the

 Hottentot musketeers had built.

 Before they reached it they met their companions running towards them in

 a disorderly bunch.

 Machito? " somebody called nervously. Shut your mouth, Camacho growled

 at them, but the man blurted on. The scherm is empty, they have gone.

 "The Devil has taken them. "There is nobody."

 There was an almost superstitious frenzy of awe on them all, the

 darkness and the silent empty camp turned them all into cowards.

 Carnacho found himself, for once, without an order to give, uncertain of

 what to do. His men crowded around him helplessly, seeming to take

 comfort from each other's physical presence, cocking and fiddling with

 their muskets and peering nervously into the shadows. What do we do

 now? " A voice asked the question that Camacho had feared, and somebody

 else threw a log from the pile on to the smouldering watch fire in the

 centre of the camp. Don't do that, " Camacho ordered uncertainly, but

 instinctively they were all drawn to the warmth and comfort of the

 orange tongue of flame that soared up brightly, blowing like a dragon's

 breath.

 They turned their backs towards it, forming a half circle and faced

 outwards into the dark which in contrast to the flames was suddenly

 impenetrably black.

 It was out of this darkness that it came. There was no warning, just

 the sudden thunderous burst of sound and flame, the long line of

 spurting muzzle flashes, blooming briefly and murderously, and then the

 sound of the striking balls in their midst, like a handful of children's

 MATbles hurled into a mud puddle, as the musket balls slogged into human

 flesh.

 Immediately men were hurled lightly about by the heavy lead slugs, and

 the little band about the watch fire was thrown into struggling,

 shouting confusion.

 One of them flew backwards, at a run, doubled in the middle where a ball

 had taken him low in the belly. He tripped over the burning log and

 fell full length into the blazing watch fire. His hair and beard flared

 like a torch of pine needles and his scream rang wildly through the tree

 tops.

 Carnacho himself threw up his musket, aiming blindly into the night from

 whence the Englishman's voice was chanting the ritual infantry orders

 for mass volley fire. Section One.

 Reload. Section Two. Three paces forward. One round volley fire."

 Camacho realized that the devastating blast of close range musketry that

 had just swept them, would be repeated within seconds. With naild

 derision Camacho had watched on many a hot afternoon as the Englishman

 drilled his double line of red-jacketed puppets, the front rank

 levelling and firing on command, then the second rank taking three paces

 forward in unison, stepping through the gaps in the first rank and in

 their turn levelling and firing. The same evolutions which, when

 magnified ten thousand times, had broken the charge of French cavalry up

 the slope at Quatre Bras, now filled Camacho with unutterable terror,

 and he flung up his musket and fired it unsighted into the darkness, in

 the direction of the cool, precise English voice. He fired at the same

 instant as one of his own men who had been knocked down by the first

 volley scrambled to his feet only lightly wounded, directly in front of

 Camacho's musket muzzle. Carnacho shot him cleanly between the shoulder

 blades at a range of two feet, so close that the powder burn scorched

 the man's shirt. It smouldered in little red sparks as he sprawled at

 full length on his face once more, until the glowing sparks were

 quenched by the quick flow of the man's heart blood.

 Tool! " Camacho howled at the corpse, and turned to run. Behind him

 the English voice called, "FireV Camacho threw himself down on to hard

 earth, howling again as his hands and knees sank into the hot ash of the

 watch fire and he felt his breeches char and his skin blister.

 The second volley swept over his head, and around him more men weie

 falling and screaming, and Camacho rebounded to his feet at a dead run.

 He had lost both his knife and musket. Section One, three paces

 forward, one round volley fire."

 The night was suddenly filled with running, shouting figures, as the

 porters burst out of their encampment.

 There was no direction or purpose in their flight. They ran like

 Camacho, driven by gunfire and their own terrible panic, scattering away

 into the surrounding bush, singly and in small groups.

 Before the command ordering the next volley of musket fire, Camacho

 ducked behind the hillock of porters" packs, which had been piled close

 to the Englishman's tent and covered with waterproof tarpaulin.

 Camacho was sobbing with the agony of his scorched hands and knees, and

 with the hurmiliation of having walked so guilelessly into the

 Englishman's trap.

 He found his terror giving way to bitter and spiteful hatred. As little

 groups of terrified porters stumbled towards him out of the darkness, he

 drew one of the pistols from his belt and shot the leader in the head

 and then leapt up howling like a demented ghost, they ran and he knew

 they would not stop until, miles away in the trackless wilderness, they

 dropped with exhaustion, easy prey for lion or hyena. It gave him a

 moment's sour satisfaction, and he looked around for some other damage

 he could wreak.

 The pile of stores behind which he crouched and the dying fire in front

 of the Englishman's deserted tent caught his attention. He snatched a

 brand from the fire, blew it into flame and tossed it flaring brightly

 on to the high canvas-covered pile of stores and equipment, then

 flinched as another volley crashed out of the darkness, and he heard the

 Englishman's voice. As a line of skirmishers, take the bayonet to them

 now, men."

 Camacho jumped down into the dry river-bed, and blundered through the

 crunching sugary sand to the far bank, where he scrambled thankfully

 into the dense riverme bush.

 At the re-assembly point on the ridge there were three of his men

 already waiting, two of them had lost their muskets and all three were

 as shaken and sweaty and breathless as Camacho himself.

 Two more came in while they regained their breath and power of speech.

 One was badly hit, his shoulders shattered by a musket ball. There

 won't be any others, he gasped, "those little yellow bastards caught

 them with bayonets as they were crossing the river."

 They'll be here any minute. " Camacho dragged himself to his feet

 again, looking back down into the valley.

 He saw with grim satisfaction that the pile of stores was blazing

 brightly, despite the efforts of half a dozen tiny dark figures to beat

 out the flames. He had only moments to enjoy the spectacle, for lower

 down the slope came the thin, but warlike cries of the Hottentot

 musketeers and the thud and flash of their musket fire. Help me, cried

 the man with the shattered shoulderDon't leave me here, my friends, my

 comrades, give me an arm, he pleaded, trying to struggle back on to his

 feet, but he was speaking to the empty night, and as the rush of

 footsteps down the far slope of the hill dwindled, his knees buckled

 under him and he sank back on to the rock earth sweating with pain and

 the terror which lasted only until one of the Hottentots drove the point

 of a bayonet into his chest and out between his shoulder blades.

 Zouga strode angrily through the camp in the rising heat and bright

 sunlight of morning. His face and arms were blackened with soot, his

 eyes still red and smarting from the smoke of the fires, his beard was

 scorched and his eyelashes burned half away from fighting the flames.

 They had lost most of their stores and equipment for the fire had run

 away through the tents and thatched shelters. Zouga paused to glance at

 the charred and trodden scraps of canvas that were all that were left of

 the tents; they would miss them when the rains broke, but that was the

 very least of their losses.

 He tried to make a mental list of the most grievous damage they had

 suffered. There were firstly only fortysix porters left out of more

 than one hundred. Of course, he could expect Jan Cheroot and his

 Hottentots to bring in a few more. They were at this moment scouring

 the valleys and hills around the camp for scattered survivors.

 He could still hear the kudu-horn trumpets calling in the stragglers.

 However, many would have risked the long and dangerous journey back to

 Tete rather than a recurrence of the night's attack, and they would have

 seized the opportunity to desert. Others would be lost after their

 midnight flight and panic. They would fall prey to wild animals or

 succumb to thirst. Half a dozen had been killed by random musketry fire

 and by the retreating brigands who had deliberately fired into the

 masses of unarmed porters. Four others were so badly wounded that they

 would die before nightfall.

 That was the most serious loss, for without porters they were helpless.

 Without porters to carry them, what remained of the carefully selected

 equipment and trade goods were as useless to them as if they had left

 them in London or dumped them overboard from Huron's deck.

 Of the equipment itself, it would take them hours to count their losses,

 to find what had burned and what they could salvage from the stinking,

 smouldering mass of cloth and canvas, what they could pick out of the

 trodden and dusty mess scattered down the rock hillside.

 The scene reminded Zouga forcefully of so many other battlefields, the

 terrible destruction and waste affronted him, as it had done before.

 The few remaining porters were already at work, picking over the field

 like a line of harvesters, retrieving anything of value from the ash and

 the dust. Little Juba was with them concentrating on the search for

 Robyn's medical stores, and books and instruments.

 Robyn herself had set up an emergency clinic under the wide green

 branches of the mukusi tree in the centre of the camp, and when Zouga

 paused to look at the wounded men who still awaited her attention, and

 at the dead bodies laid out in a neat row and covered with a blanket or

 a scrap of charred and dirty canvas, he was angry with himself all over

 again.

 Though what alternative had there been for him, he wondered.

 If he had turned the camp into an armed fortress, it would have meant

 enduring a long drawn-out siege with Camacho's wolves skulking around

 the perimeter, sniping and harrying them until their opportunity came.

 No, he had been right to set the trap and end it at a single stroke. At

 least now he could be certain that the Portuguese were still in full

 flight for the coast, but the price had been too high, and Zouga was

 still angry.

 The expedition, so well conceived and lavishly equipped, had ended in

 disaster before it had achieved a single one of its objectives. The

 loss of equipment and life had been heavy, but that was not what burned

 so acidly in Zouga's stomach as he paused at the perimeter of the

 devastated camp and lifted his eyes longingly towards the high broken

 ground of the southern escarpment. It was the idea of having to give

 up, before he had begun, and when he was so close, so very close.

 Twenty, fifty, not more than a hundred miles ahead of him lay the

 frontier of the empire of Monornatapa. Behind him, one hundred miles to

 the north was the dirty little village of Tete, and the wide river which

 was the beginning of the long ignoble road back to England, back to

 obscurity, back to a commission in a third-rate regiment, back to

 conformity and the wearying discipline of the cantonments of the Indian

 army. Only now that he was doomed to return to that life did he realize

 how deeply he had hated and resented it, just how much the desire to

 escape it had brought him here to this wild untouched land. Like a

 long-term prisoner who has tasted one day of sweet freedom, so the

 prospect of return to his cage was that much more painful, now. The

 pain of it cramped his chest, and he had to breathe deeply to control

 it.

 He turned away from the southern vista of ragged peaks and savage black

 rock cliffs, and he walked slowly to where his sister worked quietly in

 the shade of the mukusi. She was pale, with dark smudges of fatigue and

 strain under her green eyes. Her blouse was speckled with spots of her

 patients" blood, and her forehead appeared blistered with tiny beads of

 perspiration.

 She had started work in the darkness, by the light of a bull's eye

 lantern and now it was midmorning.

 She looked up wearily as Zouga stood over her. We won't be able to go

 on, he said quietly. She stared at him a moment without change of

 expression, and then dropped her eyes and went on smearing salve on the

 badly burned leg of one of the porters. She had treated the worst cases

 first, and was now finishing with the burns and abrasions. We've lost

 too much vital equipment, Zouga explained. "Stores that we need to

 survive. " Robyn did not look up this time, "And we've not enough

 porters to carry what is left Robyn began bandaging the leg with her

 full attention. Papa made the Transversa with four porters, she

 observed mildly. Papa was a man, Zouga pointed out reasonably, and

 Robyn's hands stilled ominously and her eyes narrowed, but Zouga had not

 noticed. "A woman cannot travel or survive without the necessities of

 civilization, he went on seriously. "That is why I am sending you back

 to Tete.

 I'm sending Sergeant Cheroot and five of his Hottentots to escort you.

 You'll have no difficulty, once you reach Tete. I will send with you

 what remains in cash, a hundred pounds for the launch down river to

 Quelimane and a passage to Cape Town on a trader. There you can draw on

 the money I deposited in Cape Town to pay for a passage on the

 mailship."

 She looked up at him. "And you? " she asked.

 Until then he had not made the decision. "The important thing is what

 happens to you, he told her gravely, and then he knew what he was going

 to do. "You will have to go back and I am going on alone. "It'll take

 more than Jan Cheroot and five of his damned Hottentots to carry me, she

 told him, and the oath was a measure of her determination. Be

 reasonable, Sissy."

 Why should I start now? " she asked sweetly.

 Zouga opened his mouth to reply angrily, then closed it slowly and

 stared at her. There was a hard uncompromising line to her lips, and

 the prominent, almost masculine, jaw was clenched stubbornly.

 I don't want to argue, he said. Good, " she nodded. That way you won't

 waste any more of your precious time. "Do you know what you are letting

 yourself in for? " he asked quietly.

 As well as you do, she replied.

 We won't have trade goods to buy our way through the tribes. " She

 nodded. "That means we'll have to fight our way through if anyone tries

 to stop us."

 He saw the shadow in her eyes at that, but there was no wavering of her

 determination. No tents for shelter, no canned food, no sugar or tea."

 He knew what that meant to her. "We will live straight off the land,

 and what we can't scavenge or kill or carry, we go without. We'll have

 nothing but powder and shot. "You'd be a fool to leave the quinine, she

 told him quietly, and he hesitated. The bare minimum of medicines, he

 agreed, "and remember, it won't be for just a week or a month. "We'll

 probably go a. great deal faster than we have so far, she answered

 quietly, as she stood up and brushed off the seat of her breeches.

 The choice of what to take and what to leave had been nicely balanced,

 Zouga thought, as he listed and weighed the new loads.

 He had chosen paper and writing equipment in place of sugar and most of

 the tea. His navigational instruments in place of spare boots, for the

 boots they wore could be resoled with raw buffalo hide. Quinine and

 other medicines together with Robyn's instruments in place of the extra

 clothing and blankets. Powder and shot in place of trade beads and

 cloth.

 The pile of abandoned equipment grew steadily, cases of potted jams,

 bags of sugar, canned foods, insect nets, folding camp chairs and cots,

 cooking pots, Robyn's enamel hip bath and her flowered chamber pot,

 trade goods, merkani cloth and beads, hand mirrors and cheap knives.

 When the pile was complete, Zouga put fire into it, a token of finality

 and of determination. Yet they watched it burn with trepidation.

 There were two small concessions Zouga had made: a single case of Ceylon

 tea for, as Robyn pointed out, no Englishman could be expected to

 explore undiscovered territories without that sovereign brew, and the

 sealed tin which contained Zouga's dress uniform, for their very lives

 might depend on impressing a savage African potentate. Otherwise they

 had divested themselves of all but the very essentials.

 Chief of these essentials was the ammunition, the sacks of first-grade

 Curtis and May black powder and the ingots of soft lead, the bullet

 moulds, the flask of quicksilver to harden the balls and the boxes of

 copper caps. Out of the remaining forty-six porters, thirty of them

 carried this powder and shot.

 Jan Cheroot's musketeers were horrified when they were informed that

 their field packs would in future hold two hundred, and not fifty,

 rounds of Enfield ammunition. We are warriors, not porters, " his

 Corporal told him loftily. Jan Cheroot used the metal scabbard of his

 long bayonet to reason with him, and Robyn dressed the superficial

 wounds in the Corporal's scalp. They now understand the need for

 carrying extra ammunition, Major, " Jan Cheroot reported to Zouga

 cheerfully.

 It truly was interesting to realize how much fat they could shed, Zouga

 mused, as he watched the shorter, more manageable column start out. It

 was less than a hundred and fifty yards from head to tail, and the pace

 of its march was almost doubled. The main body nearly matched the speed

 of Zouga's advance party, falling only a mile or so behind during the

 first day's march.

 That first day they reached the scene of the buffalo hunt before noon,

 and found more than bark baskets of cured black buffalo meat awaiting

 there. Zouga's head gunbearer, Matthew, came running to meet him

 through the forest and he was so excited as to be almost incoherent. The

 father of all elephant, " he gibbered, shaking like a man in fever, "the

 grandfather of the father of all elephants! " Jan Cheroot squatted

 beside the spoor and grinned like a gnome in a successful piece of

 sorcery, his slant eyes almost disappearing in the web of wrinkles and

 folds of yellow skin. Our luck has come at last, he exulted. "This is

 indeed an elephant to sing about."

 He took a roll of twine out of the bulging pocket of his tunic and used

 it to measure the circumference of one of the huge pad marks. It was

 well over five feet, close to six feet around. Double that is how high

 he stands at the shoulder, " Jan Cheroot explained. "What an elephant,

 Matthew had at last controlled his excitement enough to explain how he

 had awoken that dawn, when the light was grey and uncertain, and seen

 the herd passing close to the camp in deathly silence, three great grey

 ghostly shapes, moving out of the forest and entering the blackened and

 barren valley through which the fire had swept.

 They were gone so swiftly, that it had seemed that they had never

 existed, but their spoor was impressed so clearly into the soft layer of

 fire ash that every irregularity in the immense footprints, the whorls

 and wavy creases of the horny pads, were clearly visible. There was one

 of them, bigger and taller than the others, his teeth were long as a

 throwing spear and so heavy that he held his head low and moved like an

 old man, a very old man."

 Now Zouga also shivered with excitement, even in the stultifying heat of

 the burned-out valley, where it seemed the blackened earth had retained

 the heat of the flames. Jan Cheroot, mistaking the small movement,

 grinned wickedly around the stern of his clay pipe. My old father used

 to say that even a brave man is frightened three times when he hunts the

 elephant, once when he sees its spoor, twice when he hears its voice and

 the third time when he see the beast, big and black as an ironstone

 kopje."

 Zouga did not trouble to deny the accusation, he was following the run

 of the spoor with his eyes. The three huge animals had moved up the

 centre of the valley, heading directly into the bad ground of the

 escarpment rim.

 We will follow them, he said quietly. Of course, Jan Cheroot nodded,

 "that is what we came for."

 The spoor led them over the cold grey ash, amongst the blackened and

 bared branches of the burned-out jessie bush and up the rising funnel of

 the narrow valley.

 Jan Cheroot led. He had discarded his faded tunic for a sleeveless

 leather jerkin with loops for the Enfield cartridges across the chest.

 Zouga followed him closely, carrying the Sharps. and fifty extra

 rounds, together with his two-gallon water bottle. His gunbearers, in

 strict order of seniority backed him, each with his burden of blankets

 and water bottles, food ha& powder flask and ball pouch, and of course

 the big smooth-bored elephant guns.

 Zouga was anxious to see Jan Cheroot work. The man talked a very good

 elephant hunt, but Zouga wanted to know if he was as good on the spoor

 as he was at telling about it around the camp fire. The first test came

 swiftly when the valley pinched out against another low cliff of

 impassable rock, and it seemed as though the great beasts they followed

 had taken wing and soared away above the earth. Wait, " said Jan

 Cheroot and cast swiftly along the base of the cliff. A minute later he

 whistled softly and Zouga went forward.

 There was a smudge of dark ash on a block of ironstone, and another

 above it, seeming to lead directly into sheer rock face.

 Jan Cheroot scrambled up over the loose scree at the foot of the cliff,

 and disappeared abruptly. Zouga slung his rifle and followed him. The

 blocks of ironstone had fractured in the shape of a giant's staircase,

 each step as high as his waist so that he had to use a hand to climb.

 Even the elephants would have extended themselves to make each step,

 rising on their back legs as he had seen them do at the circus, for an

 elephant is incapable of jumping. They must keep two feet on the earth

 before they can heave their ungainly bulks upwards.

 Zouga reached the spot where Jan Cheroot had disappeared and stopped

 short in amazement at the threshold of the stone portals, invisible from

 below, which marked the beginning of the ancient elephant road.

 The portals were symmetrically formed in fractured rock, and had eroded

 through the softer layers, leaving straight joints so they seemed to

 have been worked by a mason. The opening was, so narrow that it seemed

 impossible that such a large animal could pass through, and looking

 above the level of his own head, Zouga saw how over the centuries their

 rough skin had worn the stone smooth as thousands upon thousands of

 elephant had squeezed through the pp. He reached up and plucked a

 coarse black bristle, almost as thick as a Swan Vesta, from a crack in

 the face. Beyond the natural gateway, the gap in the cliffs widened and

 rose at a more gentle pitch. Already Jan Cheroot was four hundred yards

 up the pathway.

 Come! " he called, and they followed him up.

 The elephant road might have been surveyed and constructed by the corps

 of engineers, for never was the gradient steeper than thirty degrees and

 when there were natural steps they were never higher than a man or an

 elephant could comfortably negotiate, although it seemed there were

 always accidents, for within a quarter of a mile they found where one of

 the big animals had missed his footing and struck the tip of one tusk

 against the ironstone edge.

 The tusk had snapped above the point, and twenty pounds-of ivory lay in

 the path. The fragment was worn and stained, so thick around that Zouga

 could not span it with both hands, but where it had sheared the fresh

 ivory was a lovely finely grained porcelain white.

 Jan Cheroot whistled again when he saw the girth of the fragment of

 tusk. "I have never seen an elephant so big, "he whispered, and

 instinctively checked the priming of his musket.

 They followed the road out of the rocky pass on to forested slopes,

 where the trees were different, more widely spaced, and here the three

 old bulls had paused to strip off long slabs of bark from the msasa

 trunks before moving on. A mile further along the road, they found the

 chewed balls of bark still wet and smelling of elephant saliva, a rank

 gamey smell. Zouga held one of the big stringy balls to his nostrils

 and inhaled the elephant smell.

 It was the most exciting odour he had ever known.

 When they rounded a shoulder of the mountain, there was a terrifying

 drop of open blue space before them in which the tiny shapes of vultures

 soared. Zouga was sure that it was the end of the road.

 , comev Jan cheroot whistled and they stepped out on to the narrow

 secret ledge, with the deep drop close at hand and followed the road

 that had been smoothed for them by tens of thousands of roughly padded

 feet over the centuries.

 zouga at last was allowing himself to hope, for the road climbed always,

 and there seemed to be a definite purpose and direction to it, unlike

 the meandering game trails of the valley. This road was going

 somewhere, climbing and bearing determinedly southwards.

 Zouga paused a moment and looked back. Far behind and below the sunken

 plain of the Zambezi shimmered in the blue and smoky haze of heat. The

 gigantic baobab trees seemed like children's miniatures, the terrible

 ground over which they had laboured for weeks seemed smooth and

 inviting, and far away just visible through the haze the serpentine belt

 of darker, denser vegetation marked the course of the great wide river

 itself.

 Zouga. turned his back upon it and followed Jan Cheroot up around the

 shoulder of the mountain, and a new and majestic vista opened around him

 as dramatically as though a theatre curtain had been drawn aside.

 Another steep slope stretched away above the cliffs, and there were

 luxuriant forests of marvellously shaped trees, the colours of their

 foliage was pink and flaming scarlet and iridescent green. These lovely

 forests reached up to a rampart of rocky peaks that Zouga was certain

 must mark the highest point of the escarpment.

 There was something different with this new scene, and it took Zouga

 some moments to realize what it was.

 Then suddenly he drew a deep breath of pleasure. The air fanning down

 from the crest was sweet and cool as that on a summer's evening on the

 South Downs, but carrying with it the scent of strange shrubs and

 flowers and the soft exotic perfume of that beautiful pink and red

 forest of msasa trees.

 That was not all, Zouga realized suddenly. There was something more

 important still. They had left the tsetsefly-belt" behind them. It was

 many hours and a thousand feet of climbing since he had noticed the last

 of the deadly little insects. The land ahead of them now was clean,

 they were entering a land where man could live and rear his animals.

 They were leaving the killing heat of that harsh and forbidding valley

 for something softer and cleaner, something good, Zouga was certain of

 it, at last.

 He stared about him with delight and wonder. Below him in the void a

 pair of vultures came planing in on wide-stretched pinions, so close

 that he could see every individual feather in their wingtips. and above

 the shaggy mound of their nest that clung Precariously to a fissure in

 the sheer rock cliff they beat at the air, hovering, before settling

 upon the nest site. Clearly Zouga heard the impatient cries of the

 hungry nestlings.

 On the rock shelf high above his head a family of hyrax, the plump

 rabbit-like rock dassie, sat in a row and stared down at him with patent

 astonishment, fluffy as children's toys, until at last they took flight

 and disappeared into their rocky warrens with the speed of a conjurer's

 illusion.

 The sun, sinking through the last quadrant of its course, lit it all

 with richer and mellower light, and turned the cloud ranges to

 splendour, tall mushroomshaped thunderheads of silver and brightest

 gold, touched with fleshy pink tongues and the tinge of wild roses.

 Now at last Zouga could not doubt where the elephant road was leading

 him and he felt his spirits soaring, his body wearied from the climb was

 suddenly recharged with vigour, with vaulting expectations. For he knew

 that those rugged peaks above him were the threshold, the very frontiers

 of the fabled kingdom of Monomatapa.

 He wanted to push past Jan Cheroot on the narrow track, and run ahead up

 the broad beautiful forested slope that led to the crest, but the little

 yellow Hottentot stopped him with a hand upon his shoulder. Look! he

 hissed softly.

 "There they are! "

 zouga followed his outflung arm and saw instantly.

 Far ahead amongst those magical red and pink groves something moved,

 vast and grey and slow, ethereal and insubstantial as a shadow. He

 stared at it, feeling his heartbeat quicken at this, his first glimpse

 of an African elephant in its savage habitat, but the slow grey movement

 was immediately screened by the dense foliage. My telescope. " He

 snapped his fingers urgently behind his back, never taking his eyes from

 the spot where the huge beast had disappeared, and Matthew thrust the

 thick cylinder of cool brass into his hand.

 With fingers that shook slightly he pulled out the sections of the

 spy-glass, but before he could lift it to his eye the tree that had

 screened the elephant's body began to tremble and shake as though it had

 been struck by a whirlwind, and faintly they heard the rending crackle

 of tearing timber, the squealing protest of living wood, and slowly the

 tall tree leaned outwards and then toppled with a crack that echoed off

 the cliffs like a cannon shot.

 ZOUP lifted the telescope and rested it on Matthew's patient shoulder.

 He focused the eye-piece. Abruptly, in the rounded field of the glass,

 the elephant was very close. His head was framed by the foliage of the

 tree he had uprooted. The vast ears seemed wide as a clipper's mainsail

 as they flapped lazily and he could see the puffs of dust that their

 breeze raised from the massive grey withers.

 Clearly he could see the dark wet tear-path from the little eye down the

 sered and wrinkled cheek, and when the animal raised its head, Zouga

 drew breath sharply at the unbelievable size of the double arches of

 stained yellow ivories. One -tip was foreshortened, broken off cleanly,

 and the ivory was brilliant snowy white in the fresh break.

 As Zouga watched, the bull used his trunk, with its rubbery fingers of

 flesh at the tip, to pluck a handful of the delicate new leaves from the

 fallen tree. He used his trunk with the finesse of an expert surgeon,

 and then drooped open his triangular lower lip and thrust the leaves far

 down his own throat, and his rheumy old eyes wept with slow contentment.

 An urgent tap on his shoulder disturbed Zoup and irritably he lifted his

 eye from the telescope. Jan Cheroot was pointing further up the slope.

 Two other elephants had drifted into view from out of the forest. Zouga

 refocused upon them and then gasped.

 He had thought the first elephant massive, and here was another bull

 just as big, yet it was the third elephant which daunted his belief.

 Beside him Jan Cheroot was whispering with suppressed tension making his

 voice hoarse and his slanted black eyes shine.

 The younger bulls are his two askari, his indunas.

 They are his ears and his eyes. For in his great age he is probably

 almost deaf and more than half blind, but look at him. is he not still

 a king?

 The oldest bull was tall and gaunt, taller by almost a head than his

 proteges, but the flesh seemed to have wasted off the ancient frame. His

 skin hung in baggy folds and creases from the massive framework of

 bones.

 He was thin in the way that some old men are thin; time had eroded him,

 seeming to leave only skin and stringy sinew and brittle bone. Matthew

 had been right in his description, the bull moved the way an old man

 moves, as though each joint protested with rheumatic pangs, and the

 weight of ivory he had carried for a hundred years was at last too much

 for him.

 The ivory had once been the symbol of his majesty, and it was still

 perfect, flaring out from the lip and then turning in again so the

 points almost met. The gracious curves seemed perfectly matched, and

 the ivory was a lovely, butter yellow, unblemished despite the dominance

 battles he had fought with them, despite the forest trees that the bull

 had toppled with them and stripped of their bark or the desert roots he

 had dug from stony soil with them.

 But now, at last, these great tusks were a burden to him, they wearied

 him and he carried his head low as they ached in his old jaws. It had

 been many years now since he had used them as fearsome weapons to keep

 control of the breeding herds. it had been as many years since he had

 sought the company of the young cows and their noisy squealing calves.

 Now the long yellow ivories were a mortal danger to him, as well as a

 source of discomfort and pain. They made him attractive to man, his

 only enemy in nature.

 Always it seemed that the hunters were camped upon his spoor, and the

 man-smell was associated with the flash and thudding discharge of

 muzzle-loading firearms, or the rude stinging intrusion of sharpened

 steel into his tired old flesh.

 There were pieces of beaten iron pot-leg and of round hardened lead ball

 deep in his body, the shot lying against the bone castle of his skull

 had become encysted -with gristle and formed lumps as big as ripe apples

 beneath the skin, while the scars from arrows and stabbing spears, from

 the fire-hardened wood spikes of the dead-fall-trap had thickened into

 shiny grey scars and become part of the rough, folded and creased mantle

 of p his bald grey hide.

 Without his two askari he would long ago have fallen to the hunters. It

 was a strangely intimate relationship that knit the little herd of old

 bulls, and it had lasted for twenty years or more. Together they had

 trekked tens of thousands of miles, from the Cashan mountains in the far

 south, across the burning, waterless wastes of the Kalahari desert,

 along the dry river beds where they had knelt and with their tusks dug

 for water in the sand.

 They had wallowed together in the shallow lake of Ngami while the wings

 of the water fowl darkened the sky above them, and they had -stripped

 the bark from the forests along Linyati and Chobe, and crossed those

 wide rivers, walking on the bottom with just the tips of their trunks

 raised above the surface to give them breath.

 Over the seasons they had swung in a great circle through the wild land

 that lay north of the Zambezi, feasting on the fruits of different

 forests scattered over a thousand miles, timing their arrival as each

 crop of berries came into full ripening.

 They had crossed lakes and rivers, had stayed long in the hot swamps of

 the Sud where the midday heat, reaching 120, soothed the aches in the

 old bull's bones. But then the wanderlust had driven them on to

 complete the circle of their migration, south again over mountain ranges

 and across the low alluvial plains of the great rivers, following secret

 trails and ancient passes that their ancestors had forged and which they

 had first trodden as calves at their mother's flank.

 In these last dozen seasons, however, there were men where there had

 never been men before. There were white-robed Arabs in the north around

 the lakes, with their long-barrelled jezails. There were big bearded

 men in the south, dressed in dark rough homespun and hunting from tough

 shaggy little ponies, while everywhere they met the tiny little bushmen

 with their wicked poisoned arrows, or the Nguni regiments hunting a

 thousand strong, driving the game into set positions where the plumed

 spearmen waited.

 With each round of the seasons, the elephant ranges were shrinkin& new

 terrors and new dangers waited in the ancient ancestral feeding grounds

 and the old bull was tired and his bones ached and the ivory in his jaws

 weighed him down. Still he moved on up the slope to the head of the

 pass with slow determination and dignity, driven on by his instincts, by

 the need for space about him, by the memory of the taste of the fruits

 he knew were already ripening in a distant forest on the shores of a

 far-away lake. We must hurry. " Jan Cheroot's voice roused Zouga, for

 he had been mesmerized by the sight of the regal old animal, filled with

 a strange feeling of dejd-vu, as though he had lived this moment before,

 as though this meeting was part of his destiny. The old bull filled him

 with awe, with a sense of timelessness and grandeur, so he was reluctant

 to return to the reality of the moment. The day dies fast, Jan Cheroot

 insisted, and Zouga glanced over his shoulder to where the sun was

 setting like a mortally wounded warrior bleeding upon the clouds. Yes,

 he acknowledged, and then frowned as he realized that Jan Cheroot was

 stripping off his puttees and breeches, folding them and stuffing them

 together with his blanket and food bag into a crevice in the rock face

 beside him. I run faster like this, he answered Zouga's silent enquiry

 with a twinkling grin.

 Zouga followed his example, leaving his own pack and pulling off the

 webbing belt from which hung knife and compass, stripping down to good

 running order, but he stopped short of removing his breeches. Jan

 Cheroot's skinny naked yellow buttocks were totally devoid of dignity

 and his dangling penis played hide-and-seek from under his shirt tails.

 There were some conventions that an officer of the Queen must observe,

 Zouga decided firmly, and one was to keep his breeches on in public.

 He followed Jan Cheroot along the narrow ledge, until they stepped off

 it on to the forested slope and immediately their forward vision was

 limited to a dozen yards by the lichen-covered tree trunks. From higher

 up the slope, however, they could hear the crackle and the ripping sound

 as the bull with the broken tusk fed on the uprooted tree.

 Jan Cheroot worked out swiftly across the slope to avoid the askari, to

 circle around him and come at the lead bull. Twice he paused to check

 the wind. It held steadily down the slope into their faces and the

 colourful leaves above their heads quivered and sighed at its passing.

 They had gone a hundred yards when the sounds of the feeding bull ceased

 abruptly; again Jan Cheroot paused and the little group of hunters froze

 with him, every man instinctively holding his breath as they listened,

 but there was only the sound of the wind and the singing whine of a

 cicada in the branches above. He has moved on to join the others, " Jan

 Cheroot whispered at last.

 Zouga was also certain that the bull could not yet have suspected their

 presence. The wind was steady, he could not have scented them. Zouga

 knew that the eyesight of the elephant was as weak as his hearing and

 sense of smell were acute, but they had made no sound.

 Yet this was a clear demonstration of the benefits that the three old

 bulls derived from their association. It was always difficult for the

 hunter to place each of them accurately, especially in thick forest such

 as this, and the two askaris seemed always to take station on the lead

 bull to cover and protect him. To come at him, the hunter must

 penetrate the screen they threw around him.

 Standing now, listening and waiting, Zouga wondered if a genuine

 affection existed between the three animals, whether they derived the

 pleasure of companionship from each other, and whether the askaris would

 mourn or pine when the old bull fell at last with the musket ball in his

 brain or his heart. Come! Silently Jan Cheroot made the open-handed

 signal to advance and they went on up the slope, stooping under the low

 trailing branches, Zouga keeping four paces out on the Hottentot's flank

 to open his field of vision and fire, concentrating his whole being in

 his eyes and his ears. Far up the slope there was the snap of a

 breaking twig and it stopped them dead once more, breathing shallowly

 with the tension, but the sound fastened all their attention ahead so

 none of them saw the askari.

 The elephant waited with the stillness of granite, his sered bide grey

 and rough as the lichen-covered tree trunks, the shadows thrown by the

 low sun barred him and broke up the shape of his great body so he

 blended into the forest, grey and unearthly as mist, and they tiptoed

 past him at twenty paces without seeing him.

 He let the hunters pass him and get up above the wind and when the acrid

 stench of carnivorous man was borne thickly down to him through the

 forest, he took it in his trunk and lifted it to his mouth and sprayed

 the tainted air over the little olfactory organs under his upper lip,

 and his smell buds flared open like soft wet pink rose buds and the

 askari bull squealed.

 It was a sound that seemed to bounce against the sky, and ring from the

 peaks above them, it was an expression of all the hatred and pain, the

 terrible memories of that acrid min-smell from a hundred other

 encounters, and the askari bull squealed again and launched his huge

 body up the slope to destroy the source of that evil odour.

 Zouga spun to the piercing din, his shocked eardrums still buzzing with

 the sound, and the forest shook with the bull's charge. The dense shiny

 vegetation burst open, like a storm surf running on to rock, and the

 bull came through.

 Zouga was not conscious of his own movements, he was aware only that he

 was looking at the bull over the open sights of the Sharps rifle, and

 the blast of shot seemed muted and far off after the ringing squeal that

 initiated the charge. He saw dust fly from the bull's forehead in a

 brief little pLff, saw the grey skin ripple like that of a stallion

 stung by a bee, and he reached back and found the stubby wooden stock of

 one of the big elephant guns in his hand. Again, there was no awareness

 of conscious movement, but over the crude vee of the sight the elephant

 appeared much closer. Zouga seemed to be leaning back to look up at the

 gigantic head and the long shafts of yellow ivory reached out over him,

 blotting out the sky. Clearly he could see the bright white porcelain

 break in one point of the left-hand tusk.

 He heard Jan Cheroot beside him, and heard his excited shrieks. Skiet

 horn! Shoot himV Then the heavy weapon leapt against his own shoulder,

 driving him back a pace, and he saw the tiny fountain of bright blood

 squirting out of the elephant's throat like a lovely scarlet flan-dngo

 feather. He reached back for the next loaded gun, although he knew

 there would be no time to fire again.

 He was surprised that he felt no fear, although he knew he was a dead

 man. The elephant was on him, his life was forfeit, there could be no

 question, yet he went on with the motions of living, hefting the new

 gun, thumbing back the clumsy hammer as he swung the barrel up. The

 shape of the huge animal above him had altered, it was no longer so

 close, and he realized with a thrill that the bull was turning, it had

 been unable to endure the fearful punishment of the heavy-bored guns.

 He was turning, passing by them with blood streaming down his head and

 chest. As he passed, he exposed his neck and flank, and Zouga shot him

 a hand's span behind the joint of his shoulder on the line of the lungs

 and the ball slogged into his rib cage.

 The bull was going, crashing away up the slope, and with the fourth gun

 Zouga. hit him high in the back, aiming for the bony knuckles of the

 spine where they showed through the scabby grey hide of the sloping back

 and the bull whipped his thick tufted tail at the agony of the strike

 and disappeared into the forest, gone like a wraith in the failing light

 of the sunset.

 Zouga and Ian Cheroot stared at each other speechlessly, each of them

 holding a smoking weapon at high port across his chest, and they

 listened to the run of the bull up the slope ahead of them.

 Zouga found his voice first, be turned to his gunbearers. Load! " he

 hissed at them, for they also were paralysed by the close passage of

 violent, thundering death, but his command liberated them and they each

 snatched a handful of black powder from the bag slung at their sides and

 poured it into the still-hot muzzles of the guns. The lead bull and the

 other askari will run, lamented Jan Cheroot, himself frantically busy

 with the ramrod of his Enfield. We can still catch them before the

 summit, Zouga told him, grabbing the first loaded gun. An elephant goes

 on a steep uphill at a very measured pace that a good ninner can gain

 upon, but downhill he goes like a runaway locomotive, nothing can catch

 him, not even a good horse. We must catch them before the crest, Zouga.

 repeated, and launched himself at the slope. Weeks of hard going over

 bad terrain had toughened him, and the driving lust of the hunter was

 the spur. He flew at the slope.

 Awareness of his own lack of experience that had resulted in such poor

 shootin& made Zouga more fiercely determined to close with the lead bull

 and vindicate himself. He guessed that as a complete novice he had

 failed to find the vitals with any of the balls he had fired, he had

 missed brain and heart and lungs by inches, inflicting pain and

 mutilation, instead of the quick kill for which the true huntsman

 strives. He wanted desperately to have another chance to end it

 cleanly, and he pelted up the slope.

 Before he had gone two hundred yards, he had evidence that his shooting

 had not been as wide as he had at first believed. He checked at a spot

 where it looked as though someone had thrown a bucket of blood across

 the stony earth. The blood was a peculiarly bright scarlet, and it

 frothed with tiny bubbles, lung blood. There was no question, that last

 ball fired into the bull's back as he went away up the slope must have

 raked the lungs. It was a killing shot, but a slow killer. The old

 bull was drowning in his own bright arterial blood, desperately trying

 to rid himself of it by squirting it out through his trunk as it bubbled

 up into his throat.

 He was dying, but it would take time still, and Zouga raced on after

 him.

 He had not expected the bull to stand again. He expected him to run

 until he dropped, or until the hunters caught up with him. Zouga knew

 the folly of attributing human motives and loyalties to wild animals,

 even so it seemed that the stricken bull had determined to sacrifice

 himself in order to allow the lead bull and the second askari to escape

 across the pass at the crest of the mountains.

 Up the slope, he was waiting for Zouga, listening for him with those

 vast grey ears spread wide, his chest with the girth of a Cognac cask of

 Limousine oak racked and strained to force air into his torn lung.

 He charged as soon as he heard the man. His huge ears cocked back and

 rolled at the tips, trunk curled at his chest, shrilling and squealing,

 blowing a fine red mist of blood from his trunk, pounding through the

 forest so the earth trembled with each massive footfall and the branches

 crackled and broke like a discharge of musketry.

 Panting, Zouga stood to meet the charge, ducking his head and weaving

 for a clean shot through the thick forest. At the last moment the bull

 broke off the charge, and swerved up the slope again. Each time the

 hunters began to move forward, he launched another thunderous

 mock-attack, forcing them to stand to meet him, and then breaking off

 again.

 Minutes passed between each charge, and the hunters were pinned down in

 the thick forest, fretting with the knowledge that already the lead bull

 and his surviving protege must have reached the crest and gone away in a

 rush like an avalanche down the far side.

 Zouga was learning two hard lessons: the first, as old Tom Harkness had

 tried to teach him, was that only a novice or a fool under-guns an

 elephant. The light ball of the Sharps might be highly effective on

 American bison, but the African elephant has ten times the body weight

 and resistance. Standing in the msasa forests, listening to the

 squealing and crashing of the wounded monster, Zouga. determined never

 again to use the Ught American rifle on heavy game.

 The second lesson he was learning was that if the first ball does not

 kill, then it seems to numb and anaesthetize heavy game to further

 punishment. Kill cleanly, or the subsequent shots into heart and lungs

 seem to be without effect. it was not only anger and provocation which

 made a wounded animal so dangerous, it was also this shock-induced

 immortality.

 After standing down half a dozen mock charges, Zouga abandoned caution

 and patience, and he ran forward shouting to meet the next charge. Wh(a

 there! " he called. "Come on then, old fellow! " This time he got in

 close, and crashed another ball through the bull's rib cage as he turned

 away. He had controlled his first wild excitement, and the ball struck

 precisely at the point of aim. He knew it was a heart shot, but the

 bull came again squealing, and Zouga fired a last time before the angry

 trumpeting and shrilling turned to a long sad bellow, that echoed off

 the peaks and rang out into the blue void of sky beyond the cliffs.

 They heard him go down, the impact of the heavy body against the earth

 made it shiver under their feet.

 Cautiously, the little group of hunters went forward through the forest

 and they found him kneeling, his forelegs folded neatly under his chest,

 his long, yellow ivories propping up the dusty wrinkled old head, still

 facing down the slope as though defiant even in death.

 Leave him, shouted Jan Cheroot. "Follow the others.

 And they ran on past him.

 Night caught them before they reached the crest of the slope, the sudden

 impenetrably black night of central Africa, so they lost the spoor and

 missed the pass. We will have to let them go, " Jan Cheroot lamented in

 the darkness, his yellow face a pale blob at Zouga's shoulder. Yes,

 Zouga agreed. "This time we must let them go."

 But somehow he knew there would be another time. The feeling that the

 old bull was part of his destiny was still strongly with Zouga. Yes,

 there would be another time, of that he was certain.

 That night for the first time Zouga ate the hunter's greatest delicacy:

 slices of elephant heart threaded on to a green stick with cubes of

 white fat cut out from the chest cavity, salted and peppered, and

 roasted over the slow coals of the camp fire, eaten with cold cakes of

 stone-ground com and washed down with a mug of tea, steaming hot,

 bitter, strong and unsweetened. He could not remember a finer meal, and

 afterwards Zouga lay down on the hard earth, covered by a single blanket

 and protected from the chill of the wind by the huge carcass of the old

 bull, and slept as though he also had been struck down, without dreams,

 without rolling over even once in his sleep.

 In the morning, by the time they had chopped out one of the tusks and

 laid it under the rnsasa trees, they could already hear the singing of

 the porters as the main body of the caravan filed along the narrow

 ledge, rounding the shoulder of the mountain and then came up on to the

 slope.

 Robyn was a hundred paces ahead of the standardbearer, and when she

 reached the carcass of the bull she stopped.

 'We heard the gunfire last evening, she said. He's a fine old bull,

 Zouga told her, indicating the freshly chopped tusk. it was the

 unbroken right-hand ivory, taller than Zouga, but a third of its length

 had been buried in the skull. This portion was smooth, unblemished

 white, whereas the rest of it was stained by vegetable juices. it will

 weigh almost a hundred pounds, he went on, touching the tusks with the

 toe of his boot. "Yes, he's a fine old bull. "Not any more, he isn't,

 Robyn told him quietly, watching Jan Cheroot and the gunbearers hacking

 away at the enormous mutilated head. Little chips of white bone flew in

 the early sunlight, as they whittled away the heavy skull to free the

 second tusk. Robyn watched the butchery for a few seconds only before

 going on up the slope towards the crest.

 Zouga was irritated and angry with her, for she had detracted from his

 own vaulting pleasure in his first elephant hunt.

 So, an hour later when he heard Robyn calling to him from higher up the

 slope, he ignored her cries.

 However, she was persistent, as always, and at last with an exclamation

 of exasperation, he followed her up through the forest. She came

 running down to meet him, with the unrestrained infectious joy of a

 child shining on her face. Oh Zouga. " She seized his hand, and began

 to drag him impetuously up the slope. "Come and see, you must come and

 see."

 The old elephant road crossed the saddle, through a deep pass, guarded

 on each hand by grey buttresses of rough grey rock and as they took the

 last few paces over the highest point a new and beautiful world opened

 below and ahead of them. Zouga gasped involuntarily, for he had not

 anticipated anything like this.

 Low foothills fell away from beneath their feet, regular as the swells

 of the ocean, covered with stately trees whose trunks were tall and grey

 as the oaks of Windsor Park, and then beyond the hills the undulating

 lightly forested grasslands, golden as fields of ripe wheat, spread to a

 tall blue horizon. There were streams of clear water meandering through

 the glades of pale grass, where herds of wild game drank or lazed upon

 the banks.

 There were buffalo everywhere Zouga looked, black bovine shapes,

 standing shoulder to shoulder in dark masses under the umbrella branches

 of the acacia trees.

 Closer at hand a troop of sable antelope, that loveliest of all

 antelope, jet black above but with snowy bellies, their long symmetrical

 curve of horn. extended backwards almost to touch the haunches,

 followed the herd bull in long file to the water, pausing unafraid to

 stare curiously at the interlopers, forming a frieze of stately, almost

 Grecian, design.

 The endless stretch of land was dotted with hills like ruined natural

 castles of stone, seeming to have been built in past aeons by giants and

 ogres from mammoth blocks of stone, and tumbled now in fantastic shapes,

 some with fairy turrets and spires, others again flat topped,

 geometrically laid out as though by a meticulous architect with

 plumb-line and theodolite.

 This lovely scene was lit by a peculiar pearly luminosity of the morning

 light, so that even the furthest hills, probably more than a hundred

 miles distant, were sharply silhouetted through the sweet clear air.

 It's beautiful, Robyn murmured, still. holding Zouga's hand. The

 kingdom of Monomatapa, Zouga answered her, his own voice husky with

 emotion. No, " Robyn answered softly. "There is no sign of man here,

 this is the new Eden."

 Zouga was silent, letting his eyes rove across the scene, searching for,

 but not finding, any evidence of man. it was a land untouched,

 unspoiled. A new land, there for the taking! " he said, still holding

 Robyn's hand. They were as close, in that moment, as they had ever been

 or would ever be again, and the land awaited them, wide, limitless,

 empty and beautiful.

 At last, reluctantly, he left Robyn at the head of the pass and went

 back through the grey rock portals to bring on the caravan. He found

 the second tusk removed, and both of them bound up with bark rope on to

 the carryingpoles of newly cut rnsasa wood, but the porters had laid

 aside their packs and were indulging in an orgy of fresh meat, and that

 most sought-after of African spoils, thick white globs of elephant fat.

 They had cut a trapdoor into the belly of the elephant carcass, and

 pulled out the entrails, and these glistened in the early sunlight, huge

 rubbery tubes of purple and yellow guts, already swelling and ballooning

 with the trapped gases they contained.

 Half a dozen porters, stripped mother-naked, had crawled into the

 interior of the elephant's carcass, disappearing completely from view

 and wading almost waist-deep in the clotting, congealing bath of trapped

 blood. They crawled out, painted with it from head to foot, eyes and

 grinning teeth startlingly white in the grisly shining wet red visages,

 their arms filled with tidbits of liver and fat and spleen.

 These delicacies were hacked into pieces with the blade of an assegai

 and thrown on the glowing coals of one of half a dozen fires, then

 snatched up again, black on the outside and more than half raw within to

 be wolfed down with every appearance of ecstatic pleasure.

 There would be no moving them until they were satiated, Zouga realized.

 So he left instructions to Jan Cheroot, himself already potbellied with

 the meat he had gorged, to follow as soon as the carcass had been either

 eaten or packed up for carrying, and taking the Sharps rifle returned

 back up the slope to where he had left Robyn.

 He called for her, fruitlessly, for almost half an hour, and was really

 becoming concerned for her safety when her reply echoed off the cliffs,

 and looking upwards he saw her standing on a ledge a hundred feet above

 him, waving him to come up to her.

 Zouga climbed up swiftly to where she stood on the ledge, and checked

 the rebuke that he had ready for her when he saw her expression. She

 was pale, a sickly greyish colour, under the gilding of the sun, and her

 eyes were reddened and still swimming with tears. What is it, Sissy? "

 he asked with quick concern, but she seemed unable to reply, the words

 choking in her throat so she had to swallow thickly, and motion him to

 follow her.

 The ledge on which they stood was narrow, but level - and was cut back

 under the cliff, forming a low long cavern. The cavern had been used

 before by other men, for the rocky roof was blackened with the sooty

 smoke of countless cooking-fires, and the back wall was decorated with

 the lyrically childlike paintings of the little yellow bushmen who over

 the centuries must have used this as a regular camp during their endless

 wanderings.

 The paintings lacked both perspective and accurate form, but they

 captured the essential nature of all they recorded, from the graceful

 sweep of, the giraffe's neck, to the bulky shoulders of the Cape buffalo

 with the mournful drooping horns framing the lifted nose.

 The bushman artist saw himself and his tribe as frail, sticklike

 figures, with drawn bows, dancing and prancing about the quarry, and

 again, out of all proportion to the rest of the paintin& each little man

 sported a massively erect penis. Even in the heat of the chase, such

 was the universal conceit of all mate kind, Zouga thought.

 Zouga was enchanted by the frozen cavalcade of man and beast which

 covered the walls of the cave, and he had already determined to camp

 here so that he could have more time to study and record this treasure

 house of primitive art, when Robyn was calling him again.

 He followed her along the ledge until they reached the point where it

 ended abruptly, forming a balcony over the dreaming land ahead of them.

 Zouga's attention was torn between this fresh vista of forest and glade

 and the cave art at his shoulder, but Robyn summoned him again

 impatiently.

 There were strata of multi-coloured rock running horizontally through

 the rock face of the cliff. The different layers of rock varied in

 hardness, and the erosion of a softer layer had formed the long low

 cavern beyond the ledge.

 This layer of rock was a soapy green colour, where it had not been

 painted over by the bushmen artists or discoloured with the smoke of

 their fires, and here at the point overlooking the empire of Monomatapa

 someone had used a metal tool to scrape a smooth square plaque into the

 green soapstone. The freshly cut surface stood out rawly as though it

 had been done that very day, but the words gave the lie to that

 impression.

 There was a simple Christian cross chiselled deeply into the stone, and

 below it the name and the date, the lettering very carefully cut and

 designed by an expert penman. FULLER MORRIS BALLANTYNEZouga exclaimed

 aloud at seeing his father's name, so clearly rendered by his father's

 own hand.

 Despite the apparent freshness of the cut, the date was seven years

 previously, 2, 0th July, i853. After that single exclamation they were

 both speechless, staring at the inscription, each of them gripped by

 differing emotion, Robyn by a resurgence of filial love and duty, by a

 crushing desire to be with her father again after so many years, the

 vast empty place in her life aching more excruciatingly at the prospect

 of being soon filled. Her eyes refilled with tears, and they broke from

 her eyelids and ran down her cheeks. Please, God, she prayed silently,

 "lead me to my father. Dear God, grant me that I am not too late."

 Zouga's emotions were as strong, but different. He felt a corroding

 resentment that any other man, father or not, should have preceded him

 through these rocky gates into the kingdom of Monomatapa. This was his

 land, and he did not want to share it with another. Especially, he did

 not want to share it with that monster of cruelty and conceit that was

 his father.

 He stared coldly at the inscription that followed the name and date, but

 inwardly he seethed with anger and resentment. In God's Holy name. "

 The words were carved below his father's name.

 It was typical of Fuller Ballantyne that he should carve his own name

 here with cross and credentials as the Lord's ambassador, as he had on

 trees and rocks at a hundred other places across the continent which he

 regarded as a personal gift from his God. You were right, Zouga dear.

 You are leading us to him, as you promised. I should never have doubted

 you."

 If he had been alone Zouga. realized that he might have defaced that

 inscription, scraped the rock bare with his hunting knife, but as he had

 the thought, he realized how futile it would be, for such an action

 would not wipe out the ghostly presence of the man himself.

 Zouga turned away from the rock wall and its taunting plaque. He stared

 out over the new land, but somehow his heady pleasure in it had been

 dimmed by the knowledge that another man had passed this way ahead of

 him.

 He sat down with his feet dangling over the sheer drop to wait for Robyn

 to tire of staring at her father's name.

 However, the caravan of porters came before she did that. Zouga heard

 the singing from the forested slope behind the pass long before the head

 of the line crossed the saddle. The porters had voluntarily doubled

 their own loads, and they struggled up the slope under the enormous

 weight of elephant meat and fat and marrow bones, bound up in baskets of

 green rnsasa leaves and bark rope.

 if Zouga had asked them to carry that weight of trade cloth or beads, or

 even gunpowder, he would have had an immediate mutiny to deal with, he

 thought grimly, but at least they were carrying the tusks. He could see

 them near the head of the line. Each tusk slung on a long pole, a man

 at either end, but even here they had hung extra baskets of meat on the

 same pole as the tusk.

 The total weight must have been well over three hundred pounds, and they

 struggled up the slope uncomplainingly, even cheerfully.

 Slowly, the caravan wound out of the forest and entered the gut of the

 pass, beginning to move directly under where Zouga sat, the figures of

 the porters and of Jan Cheroot's Hottentot musketeers foreshortened by

 the angle. Zouga rose to his feet, he wanted to order Jan Cheroot to

 camp just beyond the point where the pass debauched on to the foothills.

 From where Zouga stood, he could see a patch of green grass against the

 foot of the cliffs far below him, and a pair of pale grey herons hunting

 flogs in this verdant marshy area. There was certainly a spring, and

 with the meat upon which they had gorged, his servants would be burning

 with thirst by nightfall.

 The spring would be a good place to camp, and it would allow him the

 following morning to copy and record the Bushman paintings in the

 cavern. He cupped his hands to his mouth to hail Jan Cheroot, when a

 crash like the broadside from a ship-of-the-line filled the pass with

 thunder that echoed and bounced back and forth between the cliffs.

 For many seconds Zouga could not understand what was happening for the

 thunderous bursts of sound were repeated, almost drowning the thin

 screams of his porters. They were throwing down their burdens and

 scattering like a flight of doves under the stoop of the falcon.

 Then another movement caught his attention, a large round shape went

 bounding down the scree slope below the cliffs, charging straight at his

 panic-stricken caravan.

 For a moment Zouga believed it was some sort of living predator that was

 attacking his servants, and, running along the lip of the ledge, he

 unslung the Sharps rifle, ready to fire down into the pass as soon as he

 could get a sight on one of the dark bounding shapes.

 Then he realized that at each leap the thing struck sparks and fine grey

 smoke from the scree slope, and he could smell the faint smell, like

 burnt salt-petre that the sparks left in the air. He realized abruptly

 that they were giant rounded boulders rolling down upon his caravan, not

 one but a dozen or more, each weighing many tons, an onslaught which

 seemed to spring from the very air itself, and he looked wildly about

 for its source, goaded by the screams of his men and the sight of the

 rolling boulders smashing open packs of his precious irreplaceable

 provisions and scattering them across the rocky ground of the saddle.

 Far below him, he heard the thudding report of an Enfield rifle, and

 glancing back he saw the tiny figure of Jan Cheroot aiming almost

 directly upwards at the sky, and following the direction of his rifle

 Zouga saw movement, just a flicker of movement on the edge of the cliff,

 outlined against the blue soaring vault of the heavens.

 The deluge of huge boulders was coming from the very top of the cliff,

 and as Zouga stared, another and then another came raining down into the

 pass. Zouga squinted his eyes, head thrown back, as he studied the

 cliff rim. There was some animal up there. Zouga did not at first

 think of man, for he had already convinced himself that this new land

 was devoid of human presence.

 He felt an almost superstitious chill of horror that some pack of giant

 apes was on top of the cliff, bombarding his men with huge rocks, then

 he shook himself free of the feeling, and looked quickly for some way to

 get higher up his side of the pass, to reach a position from where he

 could fire across the rocky gateway at the attackers on the opposite

 cliff and give some protection to his servants.

 Almost immediately he discovered another ledge rising at a steep angle

 from the one on which he stood.

 Only a soldier's eye would have picked it out. The tiny feet of the

 little rock hyrax that used it had put a light sheen on the rock and it

 was this that had drawn Zouga's attention to the narrow pathway. Stay

 here! he shouted at Robyn, but she stepped in front of him. Zouga,

 what are you going to do? " she demanded, and then before he could

 answer. "Those are men up there!

 You cannot fire upon them! " Her cheeks were still smeared with tears,

 but her pate face was set and determined.

 Get out of the way, he snapped at her. Zouga, it will be murder.

 "That's what they are trying to do to my men. "We must bargain with

 them. " Robyn caught at his arm as he pushed past her, but he shook her

 off and ran to the higher ledge. It will be murder! Robyn's cry

 followed him, and as he climbed, Zouga was reminded of the words of old

 Tom Harkness. The accusation that his father would not stop at killing

 anybody who stood in his way. This was what he had meant, Zouga. was

 suddenly sure of it. He wondered if his father had fought his way

 through this pass, just as Zouga. himself was about to do. if the

 champion of the Almighty can do it, then what a fine example to follow,

 " he muttered to himself as he went up the steep ledge.

 Below him the Enfield rifle thudded again, the sound muted by distance,

 almost lost in the roar of a new avalanche of murderous rock. Jan

 Cheroot could only hope to discourage his attackers with rifle fire from

 that angle; only if one of them actually leaned far out over the edge of

 the cliff would he be vulnerable to fire from the gut of the pass.

 Zouga climbed in cold anger, stepping unhesitatingly over dangerous

 spots in the narrow ledge where small pieces of rock crumbled under his

 boots and went rattling down into the pass hundreds of feet below.

 Abruptly he came out on to a broader ledge, formed by the strata of

 rock, which rose at a gentler pitch so that now Zouga could run along it

 without fear of losing his footing. He climbed swiftly, it was less

 than ten minutes since that first boulder had come crashing down into

 the pass; the attackers were continuing the bombardment, the hills

 reverberated with the crash and rumble of flying boulders.

 Ahead of Zouga. on the ledge, a pair of tiny grey klipspringer went

 bouncing up over broken rock, seeming to flit on the tips of their

 elongated hooves, terrified by the men and the rumble of falling rock.

 They reached the corner of the ledge and one after another they made

 what seemed suicidal leaps out into space, phenomenal leaps that carried

 them forty feet to the next sheer wall of rock, rock which seemed devoid

 of foothold, but they clung to it like flies and scrambled swiftly up

 out of sight over the top of the cliff.

 Zouga envied them that birdlike agility as he toiled up the steep

 incline, sweat soaking his shirt and streaming stingingly into his eyes.

 He could not stop to rest, for far below him a thin wailing scream of

 agony told him that at least one of the flying boulders had struck down

 a porter.

 He turned another steep corner in the goat track, scrambled over the

 rim, and was suddenly out upon the flat table-like summit, dotted with

 little clumps of broom-bush and sparse stiff yellow grass, like hedgehog

 quills.

 Zouga threw himself down on the edge of the plateau, heaving and

 straining for breath and he struck the sweat from his eyes, peering

 across the deep void of the pass at the cliffs on the opposite side. He

 found himself on a level with the heights opposite. It was three or

 four hundred yards across, easy range for the Sharps, though one of the

 smooth-bore four-to-the-pounds would have been hopelessly inaccurate at

 that distance.

 While he primed the rifle, he studied the ground opposite him and saw

 almost immediately why the attackers had chosen that side of the pass in

 preference to the one on which Zouga lay.

 They were on a flat-topped pinnacle of sheer rock, with no visible

 access to it from any direction, what path there was would be secret and

 highly defensible. The attackers had an inexhaustible supply of

 missiles for the rounded boulders were scattered everywhere upon the

 heights, varying in size from that of a man's head to that of an

 elephant carcass, and as Zouga watched them they were using heavy raw

 timber baulks to lever one of these over the edge of the cliff.

 Zouga's hands were shaking and he fought to bring them under control,

 but the Sharps rifle wavered as he tried to take a sight on the little

 group of men across the open void of space. There were not more than

 two dozen of them, all of them naked except for a brief kilt of leather,

 their dark skins polished with a sheen of sweat in the sunlight.

 He was regaining his breath swiftly, and now he wriggled forward on his

 belly and propped the stock of the Sharps rifle on a rock in front of

 him. it was a dead rest, and as he levelled his gaze over the open

 sights the group of men succeeded in working the huge boulder over the

 edge of the cliff.

 It went with a brief grating that carried clearly to Zouga, and then it

 fell with the soft rushing of eagle's wings until it struck again in the

 pass two hundred feet below, and once again the hills rang and rumbled

 to the force and weight of it.

 The little group of black men had drawn back from the edge of the cliff,

 resting a moment before they selected another missile. Only one of them

 wore a headdress.

 It looked like a cap made from the mane of a male lion, long tawny hair

 tipped with black. It made the man taller than his companions, and he

 seemed to be giving orders to them, gesticulating and pushing those

 nearest to him.  You'll do, my beauty" Zouga whispered. He had regained

 his breath now, and the sweat was cooling his back and his neck. He

 pushed up the leaf of his backsight to its 300-yard adjustment and then

 settled down on his elbows to peer over it. The rifle was rock-steady

 on its rest, while he took a fine bead on the man with the lion

 headdress.

 He touched off the shot, and while the crack of it still stung his

 eardrums he saw a tiny chip of rock fly from the lip of the cliff across

 the valley. "Low, but very nicely on line, he told himself, opened the

 breech of the Sharps and forced the paper cartridge into it.

 The shot had startled the little group of men. They peered about them,

 mystified, not certain of what it was or from where it had come. The

 tall figure in the headdress moved cautiously forward to the edge of the

 cliff and stooped to examine the fresh chip on the ironstone rim,

 touching it with one finger.

 Zouga set the cap, and thumbed back the hammer.

 He gave it a full bead, and aimed at the waving yellow headdress, set

 the hair-trigger and then with a lover's touch stroked the curved

 trigger.

 The bullet told loudly, a meaty slap like a housewife beating a carpet,

 and the man in the lion headdress spun round sharply, his arms jerking

 out wide, his legs shuffling in a grotesque little dance, they collapsed

 under him and he flopped on the very edge of the cliff like a harpooned

 catfish.

 His companions stood frozen, making no effort to help him as he slid

 towards the edge of the cliff, and a final spasmodic jerk of his legs

 tumbled him into the void.

 He fell for a long time, his outspread limbs spinning like the spokes of

 a wagon wheel, and there was another meaty thump as he landed at last on

 the broken scree slope far below.

 Zouga fired again, into the tight knot of men, not attempting to single

 out one of them, and he hit two of them with a single bullet, for even

 at that range the Sharps could drive the hardened lead ball through a

 man's body with hardly any loss of velocity, and the group was bunched

 up.

 As the ball whacked into them, they split into separate racing figures,

 their yells of fright carrying clearly to where Zouga lay, and before he

 could fire again, they had disappeared into a narrow rocky gulley with

 the miraculous speed of a troop of little furry hyrax.

 The silence was sudden and startling after the uproar of falling

 boulders and heavy gun fire and it lasted for many minutes, broken at

 last by the shrill voice of Jan Cheroot calling up from the deep gut of

 the pass. Zouga stood up, and hanging on to the branch of a monkey

 orange tree, leaned out over the edge of the cliff. Take the caravan

 through, Sergeant. " He pitched his voice to carry, and the echoes

 mocked him with his own words. "Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant-'I will

 cover you, cover you, cover you, I taunted the echoes.

 Zouga called the little Matabele maiden from the fireside where she

 knelt beside Robyn, helping her treat one of the porters who had been

 struck by a flying splinter of rock during the attack, and whose

 shoulder had been laid open to the bone. Juba, he told her, "I want you

 to come with me."

 And the girl glanced back at Robyn, hesitating to obey him.

 Zouga's irritation flared again. He and Robyn had not spoken again

 since Zouga. had broken up the attack with rifle fire, and Ian Cheroot

 had reassembled the caravan and led it out of the deadly trap of the

 gorge to where it was camped now in the foothills beyond the pass. Come,

 " Zouga repeated, and the child dropped her eyes at his tone and

 followed him submissively as he started back towards the pass.

 Zouga moved back cautiously, pausing every fifty paces or so to survey

 the clifftops suspiciously, although, he was fairly certain that there

 would be no renewal of the boulder rolling. However, he kept in close

 under the sheer rock face so that any boulder would fall beyond them.

 The going was difficult over the loose scree, and through the thick

 scrub that covered it. It took them nearly an hour to get back to the

 spot where Zouga had marked the fall of the body of the warrior in the

 lion headdress, and then they had to search for nearly as long again

 before they found the corpse.

 He had fallen into a deep crevice between two rocks, and he lay at the

 bottom of it on his back. The body appeared unmarked except for the

 small black bullet hole low on the left side of his naked chest.

 The eyes were still wide open, but he had lost his headdress.

 After a moment Zouga turned to Juba enquiringly. Who is he? Of what

 tribe is he? " he asked, and the child showed no concern at the

 presence of violent death. She had seen very much worse in her short

 life. Mashona! " she told Zouga scornfully. Juba was Matabele of

 Zanzi blood, and there was no more noble breeding outside the kraal of

 King Mzilikazi himself. She felt nothing but contempt for all the other

 tribes of Africa, especially for these people. Mashona! " she

 repeated. "Eaters of dirt."

 It was the ultimate term of denigration that the Matabele applied to all

 the tribes that they have taken into slavery, or driven to the very

 point of extinction. It is always the way these baboons fight. " She

 indicated the dead man with a toss of her pretty head. "They stand on

 the hilltops and throw down stones."

 Her dark eyes sparkled. "It becomes more difficult each year for our

 young men to blood their spears, and until they do so the King will not

 give them leave to marry."

 She broke off, and Zouga smiled ironically. The child'sresentment was

 clearly not so much at the Mashona's alleged lack of sportsmanship, but

 at the havoc that this wrought on the Matabele marriage markets.

 Zouga scrambled down into the rocky crevice, and stooped over the dead

 warrior. Despite Juba's contempt, the man was well formed, with

 straight strong limbs, and handsome intelligent features. For the first

 time Zouga felt a twinge of regret at having fired the ball which had

 caused that innocuous-looking little wound.

 It was a good thing that the warrior lay upon his back for the exit

 would have been ghastly. A soldier should never examine the bodies of

 the men he kills in the heat of battle. Zouga had made that discovery

 long ago in India, for afterwards there was always this moment of guilt

 and remorse. He shrugged it away, for he had not come either to gloat

 over the kill or to torture himself with it, but to merely identify his

 enemy.

 Why had these warriors attacked the caravan without warning, he

 wondered? Were they the border guards of the fabled Monomatapa? It

 seemed the most likely explanation, though, of course, they could be

 ordinary bandits, like the dacoits of India wit i W. iom he had made

 bitter acquaintance.

 Zouga stared moodily down at the corpse. Who had he been? And how much

 danger did his tribe still present to Zouga's caravan? But there was

 nothing more to learn and Zouga began to straighten up again when he

 noticed the necklace around the corpse's throat. He knelt again to

 examine it.

 It was made of cheap trade beads on a thong of gut, a gaudy little

 trifle except for the pendant that had hung on to his chest but had

 slipped back under the armpit, half concealed so that Zouga noticed it

 now for the first time.

 He pulled it free, examined it a moment and then slipped the entire

 necklace off over the man's head. When he put his hand around the back

 of the dead man's head to lift it he felt the pieces of skull grate

 together deep in his head like shards of broken pottery under his

 fingers.

 He lowered the shattered head and stood up with the necklace twined

 about his fingers, examining the pendant.

 It had been carved from ivory that had yellowed with age, and tiny black

 cracks formed a fine web across its polished surfaces. Zouga held it to

 catch the sunlight, and turned it between his fingers to study it from

 every angle.

 He had seen another figurine that was almost a twin to this one, a

 golden figurine that was now in a bank vault in Cape Town where he had

 deposited it before they had sailed on board the gunboat Black joke.

 This was the same stylized bird-like shape, perched on a round plinth.

 The plinth was decorated with the same triangular shark's-teeth pattern,

 and the bird had the same swelling chest and short, sharply pointed

 wings folded across its back. It could have been a pigeon or a dove,

 except for one detail. The beak was the curved and hooked weapon of a

 raptor.

 It was a falcon, be knew it beyond any doubt, and it was certain that

 the heraldic bird had some deep significance. The golden necklace that

 Tom Harkness had left him must have belonged to a king or a queen or a

 high priest. The choice of material, gold, was an indication of that.

 Now here was the same shape, worn by a man who seemed to be a chieftain,

 and once again the shape was faithfully copied in a precious material,

 ivory.

 The falcon of Monomatapa, Zouga wondered, studying the ancient pendant,

 ancient it must be, for the ivory had acquired a deep patina and lustre.

 Zouga looked up at the little Matabele girl, standing almost naked above

 him, and watching him with interest.

 Do you see this? " he asked. It is a bird. "Have you seen it before?

 " Juba shook her head, and her fat little breasts joggled at the

 movement. It is a Mashona thing, " and she shrugged. What would a

 daughter of the sons of Senzangakhona and Chaka want with such a

 nonsense?

 On an impulse Zouga lifted the necklace and dropped it over his own

 head, letting the ivory falcon fall inside the vee of his flannel shirt,

 where it nested against the darkly springing curls of his body hair.

 Come! " he told Juba.

 "There is nothing more -for us here, and he led the way back towards the

 camp beyond the pass.

 The land into which the old bull had led them by the secret road through

 the pass was an elephant kingdom.

 Perhaps the pressure of the hunters moving up from the far southern tip

 of the continent had driven them into this unpeopled world. The herds

 were everywhere. Each day Zouga and Jan Cheroot hunting far ahead of

 the main caravan came up with the huge grey- pachyderms, and they shot

 them down.

 They shot and killed forty-eight elephant the first month and almost

 sixty the second, and Zouga meticulously recorded each kill in his

 journal, the circumstances of the hunt, the weight of each tusk, and the

 exact location of the cache in which they buried them.

 His small band of porters could not carry even a small part of such a

 mass of ivory, and the distance and direction which they must still

 travel was uncertain. Zouga buried his treasure, always near a readily

 recognizable landmark, a distinctive tree, or an unusual rock, a hilltop

 or a confluence of rivers, to enable him to find it again.

 He would return one day for it, and when he did, it would have dried off

 its excess moisture and be easier for the porters to carry.

 In the meantime, he spent all his daylight hours in pursuit of the

 quarry, walking and running great distances until his body was hard and

 fit as that of a highly trained athlete, and his arms and face a deep

 mahogany brown, even his full beard and mustache gilded to shades of

 gold by the bright sunlight.

 Every day he learned from Jan Cheroot the tricks of bush-lore, until he

 could run a difficult spoor over rocky ground without a check. He

 learned to anticipate the turns and the twists that the driven herds

 made to get below the wind and take his scent. He learned to anticipate

 the pattern of their movements so that by cutting across the circuitous

 spoor he could save many hours of dogged pursuit. He learned to judge

 the sex and size and age and ivory of a beast by the mark of its rounded

 pads in the earth.

 He found that if the herd was allowed to settle into that swinging gait

 between a trot and a canter, then they could keep it -up for a day and a

 night without pause whereas if they were taken in the full heat of noon,

 he could run them hard for the first five miles, winding them, bringing

 the tiny calves to a standstill so the cows stopped with them, flapping

 their huge ears to fan themselves, thrusting their trunk down their own

 throat to suck the water out of their belly and spray it over their head

 and neck.

 He learned to find the heart and the brain, the lungs and the spine

 hidden in that amorphous mountain of grey hide and flesh. He learned to

 break the shoulder when the beast stood broadside, dropping him as

 though he had been struck by lightning, or to take the hip-shot as he

 ran choking in the dust cloud behind the herd, shattering the hip joint

 and pinning the beast for an unhurried coup-de-grice.

 He hunted the herds on the hilltops where they had climbed to catch the

 soothing evening breeze. At dawn he hunted in the thick forests and the

 open glades, and at noon he hunted them in the old overgrown gardens of

 a vanished people. For the land that he had first believed devoid of

 human presence was not, and had never been so, for unnumbered thousands

 of years.

 Beyond the abandoned gardens where once man had planted his crops, but

 where now the elephant herds had returned to reclaim their heritage,

 Zouga found the remains of huge native cities, the long deserted

 keystones of a once-flourishing civilization, though all that remained

 were the circular outlines of the thatch-anddaub huts on the bare earth,

 the blackened hearth stones, and the charred fence poles of the cattle

 enclosures which must once have penned great herds. judging by the

 height of the secondary growth in the ancient gardens, no man had farmed

 here for many decades.

 It seemed strange to find these great grey herds of elephant ranging

 slowly through the ruined towns and fields. Zouga was reminded of a

 line from that strange exotic poetry that had been published in London

 the previous year, and which he had read just before sailing.

 They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamshyd gloried

 and drank deep: And Bahrain, that great Hunter, the Wild Ass Stamps o'er

 his Head, and he ties fast asleep.

 Zouga scratched amongst foundations of the huts and found the deep ash,

 which must once have been the wooden walls and thatched roofs. In one

 ancient village Zouga counted a thousand such dwellings, before giving

 up the count. A numerous people, but where had they gone?

 He found a partial answer in an ancient battlefield on the open ground

 beyond the thousand huts. The bones were white as daisies in the

 sunlight bleached and dried out, most of them half buried in the rich

 red soil or covered by the dense fields of waving fluffy-topped grass.

 The human remains covered an area of many acres and they lay in clumps

 and chains like newly-cut wheat awaiting the reavers. Nearly every one

 of the skulls had been crushed in as if by a fierce blow with a club or

 mace.

 Zouga realized that it was not so much a battlefield as a killing

 ground, for such slaughter could not be called warfare. if this toll

 had been repeated at each of the ruined towns he had stumbled upon, then

 the final total of the dead must have been in the tens or even hundreds

 of thousands. It was small wonder that what human presence remained was

 in tiny scattered groups, like the handful of warriors that had tried to

 prevent them crossing the pass of the elephant road. There were others.

 Occasionally, Zouga spied the smoke from a cooking fire rising from the

 highest point of one of the strangelyshaped rock hillocks that dotted

 the land in all directions. If these were the survivors of the vanished

 civilization, then they still lived in terror of the fate that had

 overtaken their forbears.

 When Zouga and his hunting party approached any of these tiny elevated

 settlements, they found the crests were fortified with built up walls of

 rock, and they were greeted with a hail of boulders rolled down the

 slope upon them, that forced them to retreat hurriedly. Often there

 were small cultivated gardens on the level ground below the fortified

 hill tops.

 In the gardens grew millet, ropoko and big sweet yams, but most

 important for Zouga, dark green native tobacco.

 The soil was rich, the ropoko grew twice the height of a man and the

 corn sprays were loaded with red grain.

 The tobacco leaves were thick-stern med, the size of an elephant's ear.

 Zouga rolled the tip leaves into powerful cigars that had a rich

 distinction of taste and as he smoked them, he pondered bow the plant

 had reached this distant land from its far origins. There must once

 have been an avenue of trade between these people and the coast. The

 trade beads on the necklace he had taken from the body at the pass, and

 now these exotic plants proved that, as did the tamarind trees, native

 of India, which grew amongst the ruins of the ancient villages.

 Zouga wondered what a colony of British settlers with their industry and

 sophisticated agricultural technique, plough and crop rotation, seed

 selection and fertilization, might make of this lush rich soil, as he

 moved on slowly through the sparsely populated, well-timbered land that

 abounded with game and game birds, and was fed by strong clear streams

 of water.

 Whenever he returned to the main body of the caravan, he made his

 meticulous observations of the sun and worked with chronometer and

 almanac to compute his exact positions, to add them, and his own

 succinct descriptions, to the map that old Tom Harkness had bequeathed

 him. The map increased in value, as new rivers were marked in, new

 boundaries set to the flybelts and the fly-corridors" extended, as

 Zouga's observations of the terrain, of soil and vegetation types began

 to cover the blank portions of the old parchment.

 If he was not immersed in his map, then he worked as long as the light

 was good enough on his journal and the manuscript which was an adjunct

 to it, and while he did so, Jan Cheroot and the porters brought in the

 latest harvest of ivory, only just beginning to stink, and buried it.

 Totalling the harvest from the lists in his journal, Zouga found that he

 had over twelve thousand pounds of tusks cached along his route. They

 were worth six shillings a pound in London, nearly four thousand pounds

 sterling. The trick was to get it to London. Zouga grinned to himself

 as he completed the calculation, a dozen wagons, or five hundred

 porters, and two thousand miles to carry it, that was all it required.

 At each river-crossing Zouga took the flat black iron pan, which doubled

 as laundry tub and cooking pot, and for miles in each direction along

 the river bed he worked the gravel. He would fill the pan from a likely

 spot under the bank in the bend of the river, and then set the contents

 swirling awash, dipping and turning the pan, spilling a little of the

 lighter gravel at each turn, refilling with water and spinning it again

 until at last he was left with a smear of the finest and heaviest

 material lying around the bottom of the pan in a "tail'. Always the

 tail was dark and uninteresting, without the golden sparkle for which he

 longed so ardently.

 When he detailed all these activities in his journal, only one thing

 gave Zouga a pause, and that was what to call this new and beautiful

 land. So far there was no evidence at all that it was the empire of

 Monornatapa, or even that Monomatapa existed. The timid, scattered and

 demoralized people he had so far encountered were certainly not the

 warriors of a powerful emperor. One other consideration decided him not

 to use that name.

 If he did so, it was tacit acknowledgement that the land had already

 been claimed, and each day that he travelled through the empty

 wilderness the dreams of himself claiming it for a queen and a nation

 seemed less farfetched. Zouga began to use the name "Zambezia', the

 land below the Zambezi river, and that was how he wrote it in his

 journal and in the thick bundle of pages of his manuscript.

 With all this work to impede progress, the pace of the caravan was

 leisurely, or, as Robyn told Zouga furiously, You would make a snail

 look like a Derby-winner. " For although Zouga might cover two hundred

 miles in the sweeping circular patterns of the hunt, the caravan camped

 and waited for his return, and then waited another four or five days as

 Jan Cheroot and the porters ferried in the loads of wet ivory. For all

 you know, Morris Zouga, your own father might be dying out there

 somewhere for want of a handful of medicine, while you. . . "If he

 has survived eight years already, the old devil is unlikely to turn up

 his toes for another few days."

 Zouga's light tone covered the irritation he felt. Since he had killed

 the Mashona at the pass on the elephant road, the feeling between

 brother and sister had been strained to the point where each of them

 found it difficult to maintain a civil tone of voice on the few

 occasions when they spoke together.

 Zouga's long and quent a senses from the main body were not entirely on

 account of his dedication to the chase and exploration of the

 surrounding countryside. He found it less wearying on the nerves to be

 away from his sister. That ecstatic mood when they had stood like two

 children on Christmas morning, hand in hand, upon the heights of the

 escarpment, was months in the past.

 Brooding beside his solitary camp fire, with the hyena giggling and

 shrieking over the freshly killed elephant carcasses in the nearby

 forest, Zouga thought how it was really a miracle that two such definite

 personalities as his and Robyn's whose objects were so widely divergent,

 should have come this far without serious disagreement.

 It had been too good to last indefinitely, and now he wondered how it

 might end. He should have followed his instincts and sent Robyn back to

 Tete and Cape Town when he had the excuse to do so, for the collision

 course on which they were so clearly set could only end in disaster for

 the entire expedition.

 When he rejoined the main body the following day he would have it out

 with her, one way or the other. She would have at last to accept that

 he was the leader of the expedition and as such, his decisions were

 final. If she did so, then he could make some concession to her wishes,

 though the hunt for Fuller Ballantyne was very low on Zouga's list of

 priorities. It would probably be best for all of them, Fuller

 Ballantyne not excluded, if he had long ago been laid by his faithful

 bearers in a hero's grave.

 The thought gave Zouga a prick of guilt, and he knew he would never

 write it, not even in the most private pages of his journal, nor would

 he voice it to his sister.

 But the idea persisted, even while he rolled into his blanket, with a

 small fire at his feet and another at his head to break the thick

 crunching white frost which would cover the earth and grass at dawn,

 serenaded by Jan Cheroot's snores which took the basso profunda to the

 soprano of the hyena packs. Zouga fell asleep at last.

 Having made the decision to assert his authority, Zouga rolled out of

 his blanket in the frosty dawn determined on a forced march that would

 take them back to where he had left Robyn and the caravan twelve days

 previously. He reckoned it was forty miles, perhaps a little less, to

 the main camp site and he set a cruel pace, not even taking the usual

 noon break, but pushing on remorselessly.

 Zouga had deliberately left the main body encamped below a distinctively

 shaped kopje, whose rocky spires could be clearly seen from many miles

 around and which Zouga had named "Mount Hampden" in memory of a

 childhood visit to that castle.

 They were still far out when Zouga had his first misgivings. There was

 no smoke rising from the base of the hills, and there should have been.

 He had left almost a ton of elephant meat curing on the smoking-racks,

 and on the outward march he had been able to look back and see the

 rising column of smoke long after the crests of the hills had

 disappeared below the tops of the forest trees. There is no smoke! "

 he told Jan Cheroot, and the little Hottentot nodded. I did not want to

 be the first to say that. "Can Carnacho have followed us this far?

 "There are other man-eating animals out here beside the Portuguese, Jan

 Cheroot said, and cocked his head at an inquisitive bird-like angle as

 Zouga began swiftly to strip down to light mnning order. Then, still

 without another word, Jan Cheroot followed his example, and handed his

 breeches and other traps to the bearers. Follow as fast as you can! "

 Zouga told them, snatching a spare powder-bag from Matthew and turning

 away and breaking into a run.

 Jan Cheroot fell in at his shoulder and they ran As they had run so

 often before, at the driving pace which could bring a breeding herd of

 elephant to a winded standstill within a few miles. All Zouga's

 feelings of antagonism towards his sister were swept away in the rush of

 deep concern for her safety. A series of horrific images flashed

 through his mind, of a sacked camp site, of mutilated bodies lying in

 the bloody trampled grass, shattered by the balls of the Portuguese

 muskets, or stabbed to death by the broad-bladed assegais of plumed and

 kilted warhors.

 He found himself praying for her safety, repeating the formulas of his

 childhood which he had used so seldom since then, and unconsciously he

 increased the pace, until Jan Cheroot grunted a protest at his shoulder,

 and then slowly fell back, as Zouga forged powerfully ahead.

 He reached the foot of the hill a mile ahead of Jan Cheroot, and turned

 to face the lowering red orb of the sun as he skirted the rocky base,

 crested a low rise and stopped there, hunting for breath, his chest

 swelling and subsiding and the sweat running down into his beard.

 He stared down at the shaded dell, under the tall mukusi trees where he

 had left the caravan and his heart plunged. He felt physically

 nauseated with horror. The camp site was deserted, the fires were cold

 black ash and the thatched lean-to shelters had already acquired that

 dejected air of all deserted habitation. Still fighting for breath,

 Zouga plunged down the gentle slope into the abandoned camp, and looked

 about him wildly, for the bodies. There were none, and his first

 thought was of slavers. They would have taken them all, and he

 shuddered with horror at the thought of what Robyn must have suffered.

 Zouga ran to her hut first. It was totally devoid of any trace of her.

 He ran to the next hut and the next, all of them were empty, but in the

 last hut he found a single body. It was curled on the sandy floor of

 the primitive shelter, and wrapped in a blanket. The blanket was drawn

 up over the head and wound tightly around the trunk.

 Reluctant to discover his sister's horribly mutilated corpse, Zouga

 knelt beside it. Sweat half-blinded him as be reached out a hand that

 trembled with dread and exhaustion and gently drew back the fold of a

 grey blanket that covered the still head.

 The corpse came to life with a howl of fright and leapt two feet into

 the air, gibbering wildly, trying to throw off the blanket and lashing

 out with feet and fists to defend itself. Hellhound! " Zouga had so

 christened the laziest of his porters, a skinny fellow with a vast

 appetite for meat and less enthusiasm for anything that involved

 physical exertion. "What has happened? Where is Nomusa? " Hellhound,

 once he had been quieted and had sufficiently recovered from shock, had

 a brief note to answer his questions. The single scrap of paper torn

 from Robyn's journal was double-folded and sealed with a splash of red

 wax, it read: Dear Zouga, I am of the opinion that further delay will

 seriously prejudice the interests of the sponsors of this expedition.

 Accordingly, I have decided to move on at a speed better suited to

 achieving our objects before the onset of the rainy season.

 I leave Hellhound to await your eventual return. Do follow at your own

 speed.

 Your affectionate sister, Robyn.

 The note was dated ten days previously, and it was all she had left him.

 There was not even a pouch of salt or a bag of tea leaves, both of which

 commodities Zouga had been without for days.

 Zouga's numbing shock lasted until Jan Cheroot reached the deserted

 camp, but by the time his exhausted bearers came, black rage had begun

 to replace all other emotion. He would have made a night march of it in

 pursuit of the caravan, but though be kicked their ribs as they lay and

 cursed them coldly, his bearers were so exhausted that they could not

 rise from where they had thrown themselves down.

 Robyn had great difficulty getting the bearers to break camp and take up

 their packs. Her first efforts to do so were greeted with amusement and

 light laughter, for none of them believed she was serious. Even Juba

 could not understand that Nomusa, a woman, was taking command of the

 caravan.

 When all argument failed, Robyn took the hippo-hide kurbash whip to the

 little yellow Hottentot Corporal, whom Jan Cheroot had left in command

 of his musketeers. The Corporal shouted frantic orders to his men from

 the upper branches of the mukusi where Robyn had him treed.

 They were on the march within the hour, but the light laughter had given

 way to scowls and sulks. They were all convinced that the safari was

 now doomed, for who had ever heard of a woman, a young woman, worst of

 all a young white woman, leading into the unknown.

 Within half a mile most of the porters were complaining of thorns in the

 feet or bad blood behind the eyes, afflictions common only to porters

 reluctant to advance.

 Robyn got them to their feet again by firing a shot from the big naval

 Colt revolver over their heads, it almost sprained her wrist, but proved

 an amazingly effective cure for both feet and eyes, and finally they

 made a fair day's march of it, south and west, ten miles, as Robyn

 reckoned it as she marked her journal that night.

 Despite the brave countenance she put on before the porters and

 musketeers, Robyn had her own doubts. She had watched closely as Zouga

 plotted a course with the prismatic compass, and she had mastered the

 technique of sighting a distant hill or other feature and marching upon

 it, before again sighting ahead on another feature.

 It was the only way to maintain a direct line of march in this rolling

 forested country.

 She had studied, whenever she had the opportunity, the Harkness map, and

 had seen the wisdom of Zouga's choice of direction. He was aiming to

 traverse this wide unexplored land he had called Zambezia, and

 eventually to hit the road that their grandfather, Robert Moffat, had

 pioneered from his mission station at Kurunian to the town of the

 Matabele king, Mzilikazi, at Thabas Indunas.

 However, Zouga's intention had been to cut south of the frontiers of the

 Matabele kingdom, avoiding the Burnt Land where, according to Tom

 Harkness, the rapacious border impis of Mzilikazi killed all trave ers.

 Neither she nor Zouga could trust to their relationship to Moffat to

 protect them.

 Once they gained the wagon road to Kuruman, they would be back in the

 known world, and the road would lead them to the series of waterholes

 that grandfather Moffat had marked. At Kuruman, after the family

 reunion, the road to Cape Town was long and wearying, but well travelled

 and in less than a year they could be back in London. The delicate part

 was to grope the way south of Matabele land, through the untold hazards

 still ahead and to reach the road.

 Robyn did not truly anticipate that she would be called upon to perform

 this feat of navigation entirely on her own. It could only be a matter

 of days before Zouga reached Mount Hampden camp and then hurried to

 catch up with the main body. There would be an interesting clash of

 wills then. However, at the end of it, she was certain that Zouga would

 be convinced that their father's whereabouts and safety were more

 important than the slaughter of animals, whose teeth could probably

 never be retrieved from their burial mounds.

 This was a gesture of defiance only, soon Zouga would be with her once

 more. In the meantime, however, she had an unpleasantly hollow and

 lonely sensation beneath her ribs as she strode along in her

 tight-fitting breeches, the Hottentot standard-bearer carrying the

 grubbied and tattered Union Jack a few paces behind her, and a sullen

 line of porters straggling along behind that again.

 They camped the second night on the edge of a river that had been

 reduced to a string of still green pools in the sugary white sand of the

 river bed. On the steep bank stood a small grove of strangler figs, the

 smooth pale trunk and branches had crept up like thick and sinuous

 pythons to smother the host trees. The parasites were now taller and

 more robust than the rotting remains that supported them had ever been,

 and the clusters of ripening figs covered their branches. Fat green

 pigeons came to feed on the fruits, flicked their wings and whistled

 their shrill cry, unlike that of any other pigeon, that to Robyn sounded

 like "Oh well, oh very well! " and they cocked their heads to peer down

 through the green leaves at the men camped below.

 The porters had cut the scherms of Thorn branches and lit the cooking

 fires when they all heard the lion roar.

 The sound checked the murmur of voices for only a few seconds, for it

 was very faint and distant, seeming to come from miles downstream, and

 it was a sound to which they had all long grown accustomed.

 There had hardly been a night since they had crossed the pass on the

 elephant road that they had not heard the lions, and in the morning

 found the pug marks, sometimes almost the size of a soup plate, in the

 soft earth around the camp where the big inquisitive cats had circled

 them during the night.

 However, Robyn had never seen one of them for they are almost entirely

 nocturnal, and her first tremors of trepidation had long turned to

 indifference. She felt quite secure behind the scherm of thornbush, and

 now at the distant muttering rumble she hardly bothered to look up from

 her journal in which she was exaggerating only slightly the competent

 manner in which she had directed the day's march. We are making as good

 a time as we ever did when Z was leading, she wrote smugly, but did not

 go on to mention the mood of the porters.

 The lion roared only once, and when it was not repeated, the sullen talk

 around the cooking fires was resumed and Robyn bowed her head once more

 over her journal.

 A few hours after the setting of the sun the camp settled for the night,

 and lying under her hastily thatched shelter with Juba curled on the

 mattress of freshly cut grass beside her, Robyn listened to the

 melodious African voices of her porters fade gradually into silence. She

 sighed once, deeply, and fell instantly asleep, to wake with a confusion

 of sound and movement all around her.

 She knew that it was late by the frostiness of the air, the utter

 darkness and her own sleep-drugged stupor.

 The night rang with the terrified shouts of men and the rush of their

 feet. Then there was the thudding report of a musk. et, the crash of

 heavy logs being thrown on the watch fires and then, heart-stoppingly,

 the screams of Juba close to her head. Nomusa! Nomusa! " Still groggy

 with sleep, Robyn struggled up. She was not certain what she was

 dreaming and what was reality. What is it?

 "A devil! " shrieked Juba. "Devils have come to kill us all."

 Robyn flung off her blanket, and ran out of the shelter bare-footed,

 dressed -only in her flannel nightgown with ribbons in her hair.

 At that moment the new logs blazed up on the watch fire, and she saw

 naked yellow and black bodies, and terrified faces, whites of rolling

 eyes and open shouting mouths.

 The little Hottentot Corporal, stark naked, pranced beyond the fire,

 brandishing his musket, and as Robyn ran towards him he fired it blindly

 into the darkness.

 Robyn caught his arm as he began to reload.

 What is it? " she shouted into his ear. Leeuw! Lion! " His eyes were

 glittering with fright and bubbles of spittle ran from the corners of

 his mouth. Where is it?

 "It has taken Sakkie! It pulled him out of his blankets. "Quiet! "

 Robyn shouted. "Keep quiet all of you! " Now, at last, they all turned

 instinctively to her for leadership. Quiet! " she repeated, and the

 gabble of fright and uncertainty died swiftly. Sakkie! " she called in

 the silence, and the missing Hottentot's voice answered her faintly from

 below the steep bank of the river-bed. Die leeuw het my! The lion has

 me! Die duiwel goon my dood maak, the devil is going to kill me, and he

 broke off with a shriek of agony.

 Above the high-pitched shriek they all clearly heard the crunch of bone,

 and the muffled growl like that of a dog with food in its jaws. With a

 rush of horror that raised goose pimples along her arms, Robyn realized

 that she was listening to the sounds of a man being eaten alive not

 fifty yards from where she stood. Hy vreet my bene, the voice out of

 the darkness rang with unbearable agony. "He is eating my legs, and the

 gruesome cracking, tearing sounds made Robyn's gorge rise to choke her.

 Without thinking, she snatched a burning brand from the fire and holding

 it aloft shouted at the Hottentot Corporal. "Come on! We must save

 him! " She ran forward to the lip of the bank before she realized she

 was alone, and unarmed.

 She looked back. Not one of the men around the fire had followed her.

 They stood in a tight group, shoulder to shoulder, clutching muskets or

 axes or assegais, but rooted where they stood. He is finished The

 Corporal's voice shook with fright. "Leave him. It's too late. Leave

 him."

 Robyn hurled the burning brand she held down into the river-bed below

 her feet, and before its flames faded and pinched out she thought she

 saw something big and dark and terrifying on the edge of the shadows.

 Robyn ran back to the group and snatched a musket from one of the

 Hottentots. Thumbing back the hammer, she ran once more to the river

 bank and peered down into the dry bed. It was utterly dark, until

 suddenly there was somebody at her shoulder, holding high a burning

 branch from the fire. Juba" Go back" Robyn snapped at the child. Juba

 was completely naked except for a single string of beads about her hips,

 and the firelight glinted on her sleek black body.

 She could not answer Robyn, for tears were rolling down her plump cheeks

 and her throat was closed with terror, but she shook her head fiercely

 at the order to retreat.

 Below them, outlined against the white sand of the dry river, was that

 grotesque dark shape. and the screams of the dying man blended with the

 grisly wet growls of the animal.

 Robyn lifted the musket, but hesitated for fear of hitting the

 Hottentot. Disturbed by the light, the lion rose, becoming huge and

 black; swiftly it dragged the weakly wriggling body, dangling between

 its forelegs back into the darkness beyond the feeble circle of light

 from the flames.

 Robyn drew a deep breath and the heavy musket shook in her hands, but

 she lifted her chin in a gesture of decision and holding up the skirts

 of her long nightdress in one hand, went down the path into the

 river-bed. Juba followed her like a faithful puppy, pressing so hard

 against her that they nearly lost their balance, but she kept the

 burning brand on high, though it shook, and the flames wavered smokily.

 Brave girl! Robyn encouraged her.

 "Good brave girl!

 They stumbled through the loose white sand that covered the ankles of

 their bare feet at each pace.

 Ahead of them, at the extreme limit of their vision, moved the menacing

 black shadow, and the deep muttering growls seemed to fill the night

 around them. Leave it! Robyn shouted, her voice quavering and

 breaking. "Drop it, this instantV Unconsciously she was using the same

 commands as she had given her terrier as a child when it refused to

 deliver the rubber ball.

 Ahead of her in the darkness Sakkie heard her, and bleated feebly. "Help

 me, for God's love, help me. " But the lion pulled him away, leaving a

 long wet drag mark through the sand.

 Robyn was tiring rapidly, her arms ached from the weight of the heavy

 weapon, each breath burned her throat as she panted, but she could not

 seem to get enough air, for an iron band of fear cramped her chest.

 She sensed that the lion would only retreat a certain distance before it

 lost patience with the shouting and harassment, and her instinct was

 right.

 Suddenly she made out the full shape of the lion ahead of them. it had

 dropped the maimed body and stood over it now like a tomcat with its

 mouse, but it was as big as a Shetland pony, with the dark ruff of its

 mane fully erect, seeming to double its size.

 In the light of the flames, its eyes glowed a bright ferocious gold, and

 it opened its jaws and roared. The very air dinned upon Robyn's

 eardrums, causing her actual physical pain as that great gust of sound

 struck her. it rose to an unbearable pitch, so that involuntarily she

 reeled backwards with Juba clinging to her. The child wailed with

 despair, losing control of her body so that in the light of the flames

 her urine shot in sharp little spurts down her legs, and as the lion

 launched into its charge she dropped the torch into the sand, plunging

 them all into complete darkness.

 Robyn lifted the musket in front of her, as a defensive reflex rather

 than a planned act of aggression, and when the barrel was at waist-level

 she pulled the trigger with all her strength. The cap flashed, flaring

 brightly in the blackness and for an instant she saw the lion. It was

 so close that the long barrel of the musket seemed to touch its huge

 shaggy head. The mouth was wide open, still emitting those shattering

 gusts of sound, and the fangs that lined the deep, meat-red gape of jaws

 were long and white and cruel. The eyes burned yellow as living flames,

 and Robyn found that she was screaming, but the sound was lost

 completely in the roaring of the enraged animal.

 Then an instant after the flash of the cap the musket fired, bucking so

 savagely in her hands that it almost tore itself from her grip, and the

 butt, not anchored against her shoulder, was driven back into her

 stomach with a force that expelled the air from her lungs, and sent her

 reeling in the loose white sand. Juba, clinging to her legs and wailing

 with despair, tripped her and she went over backwards, sprawling full

 length at the same moment that the full weight of the lion lunged into

 her.

 If Robyn had not fallen, the charge would have stove in her ribs, and

 snapped her neck, for the lion was over four hundred pounds weight of

 driving bone and muscle.

 As it was, it knocked her out of her senses for she never knew how long,

 but she became conscious again, with the strong cat-reek of the lion in

 her nostrils, and an immense weight crushing her into the sand. She

 wriggled weakly, but the weight was suffocating her, and gouts of hot

 blood, so hot it seemed to scald "her, were spurting over her head and

 neck. Nomusa! " Juba's voice, high with anguish and very close, but

 those shattering roars were silent. There was just the unbearable

 weight and the rank smell of lion.

 Robyn's strength came back to her with a rush, and she struggled and

 kicked, and the weight above her rolled loosely aside, slithering off

 her, and she dragged herself free of it. Immediately Juba clung to her

 again, throwing her arms about Robyn's neck.

 Robyn comforted her as though she were an infant, patting her and

 kissing her cheek that was wet and hot with tears. It's over! There,

 now. It's all over, she mumbled, aware that her hair was sodden with

 the lion's blood, and that a dozen men, led cautiously by the Hottentot

 Corporal, had lined the high riverbank, each of them holding aloft a

 torch of burning grass.

 In the dim yellow light the lion lay stretched out beside Robyn in the

 sand. The ball from the musket had struck him full in the nose, passed

 cleanly through the brain and lodged in the base of his neck, killing

 the great cat in midair, so the lifeless body had pinned Robyn to the

 sand. The lion is dead! Robyn quavered as she called to the men, and

 they came down in a close bunch, timidly, at first and then boldly when

 they saw the huge yellow carcass. It was the shot of a true huntress,

 announced the Corporal grandly. "An inch high and the ball would have

 bounced off the skull, an inch lower and it would have missed the brain.

 "Sakkie, " Robyn's voice still shook, "where is Sakkie? " He was still

 alive, and they carried him in his blanket up into the camp. His wounds

 were fearsome, and Robyn knew there was not the smallest chance of

 saving him.

 One arm from wrist to elbow had been chewed so that not a piece of bone

 bigger than the top joint of her finger remained. One foot was gone

 just above the ankle, bitten clean off and swallowed in one piece. He

 had been bitten through pelvis and spine, while through a tear in his

 diaphragm below the ribs the mottled pink of his lungs swelled out with

 each breath.

 Robyn knew that to attempt to cut and sew that dreadfully torn flesh or

 to saw the splintered bone stumps would be inflicting futile agony on

 the little yellow man.

 She had him laid close to the fire, she plugged the worst holes gently,

 and then covered him with blankets and fur karosses. She administered a

 dose of laudanum so powerful as to be almost lethal in itself. Then she

 sat next to Sakkie and held his hand.

 A doctor must know when to let a man die with dignity, her professor at

 St. Matthew's had once told her.

 And a little before dawn Sakkie opened his eyes, the pupils dilated

 widely by the massive dose of the drug and smiled at her just once

 before he died.

 His brother Hottentots buried him in a small cave in one of the granite

 kopjes and they blocked the opening with boulders that the hyena could

 not roll aside.

 When the Corporal and his Hottentots came down from the hill, they

 indulged in a brief ritual of mourning which consisted mainly of

 emitting loud theatrical cries of anguish and firing their muskets in

 the air to speed Sakkie's soul on its journey, after which they ate a

 hearty breakfast of smoked elephant meat, and the Corporal came to

 Robyn, dry eyed and grinning broadly. We are now ready to march,

 Nomusa! " he told her, and with a stamp of his right foot, which began

 with the knee lifted under his chin, he gave her one of those widely

 extravagant salutes, a mark of deep respect that up to that date had

 been reserved exclusively for Major Zouga Ballantyne.

 During that day's march, the porters sang again for the first time since

 leaving Zouga's camp at Mount Hampden. She is your mother and your

 father too, She will dress your wounds She will stand over you while you

 sleep We, your children, greet you, Nomusa, The girl child of mercy."

 It was not only the caravan's rate of advance under Zouga. that had

 irritated and annoyed Robyn. It was also their complete failure to make

 contact with any of the indigenous tribes, with any of the inhabitants

 of the scattered and fortified villages.

 To her it seemed completely logical that the only way that they would be

 able to trace Fuller Ballantyne through this wilderness was by asking

 questions of those who must have seen him pass, and almost certainly had

 spoken and traded with him.

 Robyn could not believe that her father would have adopted the same

 high-handed actions to force a passage past anybody or anything that

 stood in the way of the caravan as Zouga. had done.

 When she dosed her eyes she could still see clearly in her mind's eye

 the tiny falling body of the black man in the tall headdress, shot down

 ruthlessly by her brother.

 She had rehearsed in her mind how she or her father would have passed

 through the elephant road without gunfire and slaughter. The tactful

 withdrawal, the offering of small gifts, the cautious parley and

 eventual agreement. It was plain bloody murder! " she repeated to

 herself for the hundredth time. "And what we have done since then has

 been blatant robbery Zouga had helped himself to the standing crops of

 the villages they had passed, to tobacco, millet and yams, not even

 bothering to leave a handful of salt or a few sticks of dried elephant

 meat as token payment. We should try to communicate with these people,

 Zouga, she had remonstrated. They are a sullen and dangerous people.

 "Because they expect you to rob and murder them and, as God is my

 witness, you have not disappointed them, have you? The same argument

 had run its well-worn course many times, neither of them relenting, each

 holding stubbornly to their own view. Now at least she was free to

 attempt to establish contact with these people, Mashona, as Juba called

 them disparagingly, without her brother's impatience and arrogance to

 distract her and alarm the timid black people.

 on the fourth day after leaving Zouga's camp, they came in sight of an

 extraordinary geological formation.

 It was as though a high dam wall had been constructed across the

 horizon, a great dyke of rock running almost exactly north and south to

 the very limit of the eye.

 Almost directly in their line of march was the only breach in this

 rampart, and from the altered vegetation, the denser growth and deeper

 green, it was clear that a river flowed through the gap. Robyn ordered

 a small adjustment in their line of march and headed for the pass.

 When they were still some miles distant Robyn was delighted to make out

 the first signs of human habitation that they had come across since

 leaving Mount Hampden.

 There were fortified walls on the cliffs above the breach in the long

 low hill, high above the river bed, and as they drew closer, Robyn could

 see the gardens on the banks of the river, defended by high brush and

 Thorn barriers with little thatched look-out huts standing high on

 stilts in the centre of the dark luscious green stands of young millet.

 We will fill our bellies tonight, the Hottentot Corporal gloated. That

 corn is ripe enough to eat."

 We will camp here, Corporal, Robyn told him firmly. But we are still a

 mile. . ."

 Here! Robyn repeated.

 They were all puzzled and resentful when Robyn forbade entry to the

 tempting gardens, and confined them all to the perimeter of the camp,

 except for the water and wood parties. But resentment turned to genuine

 alarm when Robyn left the camp herself, accompanied only by Juba, and as

 far as they could see completely unarmed.

 These people are savages, " the Corporal tried to intercept her. They

 will kill you, and then Major Zouga will kill me.

 The two women entered the nearest garden, and carefully approached the

 look-out hut. On the earth below the rickety ladder that rose to the

 elevated platform a fire had burned down to ash, but flared again when

 Robyn knelt and fanned it. Robyn threw a few dry branches upon it and

 then sent Juba for an armful of green leaves. The column of smoke drew

 the attention of the watchers on the cliff above the gorge.

 Robyn could see their distant figures on the skyline, standing very

 still and intent. It was an eerie feeling to know that so many eyes

 were upon them, but Robyn was not relying entirely on the fact that they

 were women, nor was she relying on their patently peaceful intentions,

 nor even upon the prayers which she had offered up so diligently to

 protect them. On the principle that the Almighty helps those who show

 willing, she had Zouga's big Colt pistol stuffed into the waistband of

 her breeches and covered by the tail of her flannel shirt.

 Next to the smoking beacon fire, Robyn left a half pound of salt in a

 small calabash gourd, and a bundle of sticks of black smoked elephant

 meat which was the last of her stock.

 Early the next morning Robyn and Juba again visited the garden and found

 the meat and salt had been taken, and that there were the fresh

 footprints of bare feet overlaying their own in the dust. Corporal,

 Robyn told the Hottentot with a confidence she did not feel, "we are

 going out to shoot meat."

 Corporal grinned beatifically. They had eaten the last of the smoked

 meat, weevils and all, the previous evening, and he flung her one of his

 more flamboyant salutes, his right arm quivering at the peak of his cap,

 his fingers spread stiffly, the stamp of his right foot raising dust,

 before he hurried away shouting orders to his men to prepare for the

 hunt.

 Zouga had long ago declared the Sharps rifle to be too light for

 elephant, and left it in camp, favouring the big four-to-the-pound

 smooth bores to the more expensive breech-loading rifle. Robyn took it

 now and inspected it with trepidation. Previously she had only fired it

 at a target, and now in the privacy of her grass hut she rehearsed

 loading and cocking the weapon. She was not sure that she would be

 capable of cold-bloodedly aiming it at a living animal, and had to

 reassure herself of the absolute necessity of procuring food for the

 many mouths and stomachs that now depended upon her. The Corporal did

 not share her doubts, he had seen her shoot a charging lion between the

 eyes, and trusted her now implicitly. Within an hour's walk they found

 a herd of buffalo in the thick reed beds along the river. Robyn had

 listened to Zouga talking of the hunt with enough attention to know the

 necessity of keeping below the wind, and in the reeds with visibility

 down to a few feet and with the commotion created by two hundred cows

 and bleating calves they crept up to a range at which nobody could miss.

 Her Hottentots blazed away with their muskets, while Robyn herself fired

 grimly into the galloping bellowing bodies that charged wildly past her

 after the first shot had startled them.

 After the dust had settled and the thick bank of powder smoke had

 drifted away on the faint breeze, they found six of the big black

 animals lying dead in the reedbeds. Her entourage were delighted,

 hacking the bodies into manageable chunks which they slung on long poles

 and carried singing up to the camp. Their delight turned to amazement

 when Robyn ordered that an entire haunch of fresh buffalo be taken out

 and left next to the hut in the millet garden. These people are eaters

 of roots and dirt, Juba explained patiently. "Meat is too good for

 them. "To kill this meat we have risked our lives, the Corporal began

 his protest, then caught the look in Robyn's eye, broke off and coughed

 and shuffled his feet. Nomusa, could we not give them a little less

 than a haunch? The hooves make a good stew, and these people are

 savages, they will eat anything, he pleaded. "A whole haunch. . ."

 She sent him away muttering and shaking his head sorrowfully.

 During the night, Juba woke her, and the two of them sat and listened to

 the faint throb of drums and the singing that carried down from the

 hilltop village, clearly the sounds of feasting and jubilation. They

 have probably not seen so much meat at one time in all their lives, "

 Juba murmured sulkily.

 In the morning Robyn found, in place of the buffalo meat, a bark basket

 containing fifteen hen's eggs the size of pigeons eggs, and two large

 earthen pots of millet beer.

 The look of the bubbling thin grey gruel almost turned Robyn's stomach.

 She gave the beer to the Corporal to distribute, and her followers drank

 it with such obvious relish, smacking their lips and nodding over it

 like connoisseurs over an ancient bottle of claret, that Robyn

 controlled her heaving stomach and tasted some; it was tart and

 refreshing and strong enough to set the Hottentots chattering and

 laughing raucously.

 With Juba following her, each of them carrying a bundle of half-dried

 buffalo meat, Robyn returned to the gardens, certain that the exchange

 of gifts had proved it possible to establish friendly contact. They sat

 under the shelter and waited. The hours passed without a sign of the

 Masbona appearing. The hushed heat of noon gave way to long, cool

 shadows of evening, and then, for the first time, Robyn noticed a gentle

 stir amongst the millet plants that was neither wind nor bird.

 Do not move, she cautioned Juba.

 Slowly a human shape showed itself, a frail bent figure dressed in

 tatters of a skin kilt. Robyn could not tell whether it was man or

 woman, and she didn't dare stare openly at it, for fear of frightening

 it away.

 The figure emerged from the stand of millet, crouched down on its

 haunches, and it hopped hesitantly towards them, with long pauses

 between each tentative hop. It was so thin and wrinkled and dried out

 that it looked like one of the unbandaged mummies that Robyn had seen in

 the Egyptian section of the British Museum.

 It was definitely a man, she realized at last, sneaking a glance in his

 direction, for with each hop his shrivelled and stringy genitals flapped

 out from under the short kilt.

 Closer still, Robyn saw that his cap of woolly hair was pure white with

 age, and in the seamed and pouched sockets his eyes wept slow tears of

 fright, as though these were the last drops of liquid that his

 desiccated old body contained.

 Neither Juba nor Robyn moved or looked directly at him until he squatted

 a dozen paces from them, then slowly Robyn turned her head towards him.

 The old man whimpered with fear.

 It was clear to Robyn that he had been selected as an emissary because

 he was the least valuable member of the tribe, and Robyn wondered what

 threats had been made to force him to come down from the hilltop.

 Moving very slowly and calmly, as though she were dealing with a timid

 wild creature, Robyn held out a stick of half-cured buffalo meat. The

 old man stared at it, fascinated. As Juba had told her, these people

 probably existed almost entirely on their meagre crops and such roots

 and wild fruit as they could glean in the forest.

 Meat was a rare treat, and such an unproductive member of the tribe

 would be given only a very little of what there was.

 The way he stared at the piece in Robyn's hand made her believe that the

 old man had not had so much as a taste of the buffalo haunch. He was

 more than half starved. He rolled his tongue loosely around in his

 toothless mouth, gathering his courage, and then shuffled close enough

 to hold out the claws of his bony fingers, palms cupped upwards in the

 polite gesture of acceptance. There you are, dearie. " Robyn placed

 the stick in his hands and the man snatched it to his mouth, sucking

 noisily upon it, worrying it with his smooth gums, drooling silver

 strings of saliva as his mouth flooded, his eyes streaming again, this

 time with pleasure rather than fear.

 Robyn laughed with delight, and the old man rapidly blinked his eyes and

 then cackled around the stick of meat, the sound so comical that Juba

 laughed also, the laughter of the two younger women rippling and

 tinkling without restraint. Almost immediately, the dense leaves of the

 millet garden stirred and rustled, as other dark, half-naked figures

 came slowly forward, their anxiety relieved by the sound of laughing

 women.

 The hilltop settlement consisted of not more than a hundred individuals

 men, women and children, and every one of them came out to stare and

 laugh and clap as Robyn and Juba climbed the steep twisting path. The J

 old silver-headed man, almost unbearably proud of his achievement, led

 Robyn by the hand possessively, screeching out explanations to those

 around, pausing every now and then to perform a little shuffling dance

 of triumph.

 Mothers held up their infants to look at this marvelous being, and the

 children ran forward to touch Robyn's legs and then squeal with their

 own courage, skipping away ahead of her up the path.

 The pathway followed the contours of the hillside, and it passed between

 defensive gateways and under terraced walls. Above the path at every

 steep place were piled boulders, ready to be hurled down upon an enemy,

 but now Robyn's ascent was a triumphant progress, and she came out into

 the village surrounded by a welcoming throng of singing, dancing women.

 The village was laid out in a circular pattern of thatched and

 windowless huts. The walls were o p astered clay with low doorways and

 beside each hut was a granary of the same materials but raised on poles

 to protect it from vermin. Apart from a few diminutive chickens, there

 were no domestic animals.

 The space between the huts, and the central courtyard was swept, and the

 whole village had an air of order and cleanliness. The people

 themselves were handsome, though none of them carried any excess flesh

 or fat.

 Robyn was reminded by their slim, lithe bodies that they were almost

 exclusively vegetarian.

 They had alert and intelligent faces, and the laughter and singing with

 which they welcomed her was easy and unaffected. These are the people

 whom Zouga shot down like animals, " she thought, looking around her

 with pleasure.

 They had set a low carved stool in the shade for her and Juba squatted

 beside her. As soon as Robyn was seated, the old man squealed

 importantly and a giggling young girl brought her a pot of the millet

 beer. Only when she had drunk a mouthful of the beer did the crowd fall

 silent, and draw aside to let a commanding figure come through.

 On his head was a tall headdress of animal fur, similar to the one worn

 by the chieftain on the elephant road pass. He wore a cloak of leopard

 skin over his shoulders, the skins so worn that they must have been very

 old, probably the heredity symbol of his chieftainship. He sat down on

 another stool facing Robyn. He was a man of middle age, with a pleasant

 humorous face, and a lively imagination, for he followed Robyn's sign

 language with attention, and then acted out his own replies with facial

 expressions and gestures that Robyn understood readily.

 This way he asked her from where she came and she showed him the north

 and made a circle of her hands towards the sun for each day's travel. He

 wanted to know who was her husband and how many children she had. That

 she was both unmarried and childless was a source of amazement to the

 whole village.

 More beer was brought out in the clay pots and Robyn felt slightly

 light-headed, and her cheeks turned pink and her eyes shone. Juba was

 contemptuous of their hosts.

 They do not have even a goad" she pointed out scornfully. Perhaps your

 brave young men have stolen them all, Robyn answered tartly, and raised

 her beer pot in salute to the chief.

 The chief clapped his hands, signalling his drummers to stoop to their

 instruments. The drums were hollowed tree trunks, beaten with a pair of

 short wooden clubs. to a frantic rhythm that soon had the drummers

 running with rivulets of sweat and glassy-eyed with the mesmeric effects

 of the beat. The chieftain threw off his leopaid-skin cloak and

 launched himself into the dance, swirling and leaping until his

 necklaces and bracelets jangled and rattled.

 On his chest he wore a pendant of ivory, snowy-white polished ivory, and

 it caught the firelight, for by now the sun was long set. Robyn had not

 noticed the ornament before for it had been covered by the cloak, but

 now she felt her eye drawn repeatedly to the bouncing white disc.

 The disc seemed too perfectly shaped, and as the chief came bounding up

 to her stool to perform a solo pass before her Robyn saw that it was

 decorated with a regular pattern around its border. The next moment her

 heart raced with excitement for the decoration was writing, she was not

 sure in what language, but it was Latin script, that was certain. Then

 the chief had gone, leaping away to prance in front of his drummers,

 exhorting them to greater efforts.

 Robyn had to wait until the chief exhausted himself, and staggered

 panting back to his stool to quaff a pot of the thick grey beer, before

 she could lean forward and get her first close look at the ornament.

 She had been mistaken. It was not ivory but porcelain, and its perfect

 shape and whiteness was immediately accounted for. It was an item of

 European manufacture, the lid of a small pot, the type in which

 tooth-powder or potted meats are sold. The writing was English, printed

 in neat capitals were the words: O PATUM PEPERIUM, THE GENTLEMAN'S

 RELISH."

 She felt her skin go clammy with excitement. Clearly she remembered her

 father's rage when the pantry at King's Lynn had been bare of this

 delicacy. She remembered as a small girl running down the village

 street in the rain to the grocer to buy another pot. It is my one

 weakness, my only weakness, she remembered her father's exact words

 while he spread the savoury paste on his toast, his anger mollified so

 that he came near to making a joke of it. "Without my Gentleman's

 Relish, I doubt I would have had strength for the Transversa."

 When Robyn's mother left for Africa on that last illfated voyage, there

 had been a dozen cases of the relish in her luggage. There was only one

 possible way that the porcelain lid could have reached here.

 Robyn stretched out a hand and touched it, but the chief's expression

 changed instantly and he jumped back, out of reach. The singing and

 drumming came to an abrupt halt, and the consternation of the entire

 village made Robyn realize that the porcelain lid was a charm of great

 personal magic, and that it was a disaster that another hand had touched

 it.

 She made an attempt to mollify the chief, but swiftly he covered himself

 with his leopard cloak and stalked away to his hut at the end of the

 village. The festivities were clearly ended. The rest of the villagers

 were subdued and crept away after the chief, leaving only the

 silver-haired toothless ancient, possessive as ever, to lead Robyn to

 the hut which had earlier been set aside for her.

 She lay awake most of the night on the plaited reed sleeping-mat,

 excited at the evidence that her father had passed this way, and worried

 that she had ruined her relationship with the Mashona chief and would

 learn no more of the ornament and, through it, of her father.

 She did not have an early opportunity to meet the chief again, and make

 amends for her breach of manners. The villagers kept away from her,

 obviously hoping she would go, but she stayed on stubbornly in the

 hilltop village, attended only by the faithful old man. For Robyn was

 the most important thing that had ever happened in his long life, and he

 was not going to relinquish her for the chief or for anybody else.

 In the end, there was nothing for it but to send the chief an

 extravagant gift. She used the last khete of samsam beads and one of

 the double-bladed axes.

 The chief could not resist such princely bribes, and though his attitude

 was cooler and more reserved than at first, he listened attentively

 while Robyn asked her questions, acting out little charades, which the

 chief discussed seriously with his elders, before giving his answers.

 The answer was southwards again, south for five circles of the sun, and

 the chief would send somebody to guide Robyn. He was obviously pleased

 to be rid of her at last, for, though her gifts were welcome, the chief

 was still deeply troubled by the ill-fortune that her sacrilegious

 action must bring upon the tribe.

 For a guide the chief chose the silver-headed old man, ridding himself

 of a useless mouth and an unwelcome visitor at one stroke.

 Robyn had doubted that her guide's thin legs could carry him either very

 fast or very far. However, the old man surprised her. He armed himself

 with a long throwing spear which looked as old and frail as he did

 himself and on his head he balanced a rolled sleeping-mat and a clay

 cooking pot, these clearly constituted his total worldly possessions. He

 girded up his tattered kilts and set off southwards at a pace that had

 Robyn's porters grumbling again. Robyn had to restrain him.

 It took a little time to get the old man to understand that he was now

 her language tutor. As they marched she pointed at herself, and

 everything around them, naming them clearly in English, and then looking

 at him enquiringly. He returned the look with equal enquiry in his

 rheumy old eyes. However, she persevered, repeating her own name

 "Nomusa" as she touched her chest, and suddenly he understood.

 He slapped his own chest. "Karanga, "he squeaked. "Karanga! " Once

 again his enthusiasm for this new activity was such that she had to

 restrain him. Within a few days Robyn had dozens of verbs and hundreds

 of nouns which she could begin stringing together, much to old Karanga's

 delight.

 However, it was four days before Robyn realized that there had been an

 initial misunderstanding. Karanga was not the old man's name, but the

 name of his tribe. It was too late to rectify, because by that time

 everybody in the caravan was calling him "Karanga', and the old man

 answered to it readily. It was difficult to get him to leave Robyn's

 side. He followed her wherever she went, much to Juba's disgust and

 undisguised jealousy. He smells, she told Robyn virtuously. "He smells

 very bad. " Which was true, Robyn had to admit. But after a while you

 do not notice it, so much. " There was one thing, however, which could

 not be so readily overlooked, it appeared from under the old man's kilts

 whenever he squatted which he did whenever at rest.

 Robyn solved this by giving old Karanga a pair of Zougals woollen

 underwear and taking her chances with her brother's wrath later. The

 underwear filled old Karanga with almost unbearable pride. He preened

 and strutted like a peacock, as they flapped around his long thin legs.

 Old Karanga led them cautiously wide of every occupied village along

 their route, although he assured Robyn they were also of the same tribe.

 There seemed to be no trade nor commerce between these settlements, each

 perched on its fortified hilltop in suspicious and hostile isolation.

 By this time, Robyn could speak enough of the language to find out from

 Karanga more about the great wizard, from whom the chief had received

 the magical porcelain talisman, and the story filled her with excitement

 and anticipation.

 Many rainy seasons ago, old Karanga was not sure how many, at his age

 every season blurred into the one before or the one after, anyway, at

 some not too far distant date an extraordinary man had come out of the

 forest, even as she had come, and like her he had been fair skinned.

 However, his hair and beard were the colour of flames (he showed her the

 camp fire), and he was without doubt a magician and prophet and

 rainmaker, for the day he arrived the long drought had broken with

 thunderous storms that filled the rivers for the first time in many

 years.

 This pale wizard had performed other rare and wonc erful feats,

 transforming himself first into a lion and then into an eagle, raising

 the dead from the grave, and directing the lightning with a wave of his

 hand. The tale had

 lost nothing in the retelling Robyn noted wryly.

 Did anybody speak to him? " Robyn asked. We were all too afraid,

 Karanga admitted, shaking theatrically with terror, "but I myself saw

 the wizard as an eagle fly over village and drop the talisman from the

 sky. " He flapped his skinny old arms in pantomime.

 The strong anchovy smell would have attracted the bird to the discarded

 pot, Robyn reflected, but when it proved inedible the bird would have

 dropped it, by chance over Karanga's village. The wizard stayed a short

 time near our village and then went away to the south. We have heard

 that he travelled swiftly, obviously in his guise as a lion. We heard

 of his miracles, the word shouted from hilltop to hill-top or tapped out

 by the drums. How he cured others sick to death, how he challenged the

 ancestral spirits of the Karanga in their most sacred places shouting

 abuse at them so all who heard him trembled.

 rWe heard also how he slew the high priestess of the dead, an Umlimo of

 vast power in her own stronghold.

 This strange pale magician slew her and destroyed her sacred relics."

 In fact he had raged through the land like a man-eating lion, which of

 course he was, until finally he came to rest upon a dark hilltop far to

 the south, the mountain of iron Thaba Simbi, where he stayed to perform

 diverse curses and miracles so that the people came to him from far and

 wide to buy his services with corn and other offerings.

 Is he still there? " Robyn demanded.

 Old Karanga rolled his watery eyes and shrugged. "It is always

 difficult and dangerous to predict the comings and goings of wizards and

 magicians, that eloquent gesture seemed to say.

 The journey was not so straightforward as Robyn had hoped, for the

 further he went from his own village the less certain old Karanga became

 of his direction, or of the exact location of the Iron Mountain, which

 he had told her of.

 At the beginning of each day's march, he informed Robyn confidently that

 they would reach their destination that day, and as they went into camp

 each evening he told her apologetically that it would be the next day

 for certain.

 Twice he pointed out rocky kopies, That is indeed the Iron Mountain',

 but each time they were driven off with a hail of boulders and throwing

 spears from the heights. I was mistaken, Karanga mumbled, "there is a

 darkness in my eyes sometimes, even under the noonday sun. "Have you

 verily and truly seen this mountain? " Robyn demanded sternly, almost

 at the end of her patience, and Karanga hung his silver-wrinkled head

 and with great industry picked at his nostrils with a bony finger to

 hide his discomfiture. It is true that I have not personally seen this

 place, not with my own eyes, but I have been told by one who spoke with

 a man who himself. . . " he admitted, and Robyn was so angry that she

 shouted at him in English. You naughty old devil, why did you not say

 so beforeV Old Karanga understood the tone, if not the words, and his

 misery was so apparent that she could not sustain her anger for more

 than an hour, his gratitude when she once more allowed him to carry her

 water bottle and food bag was pathetic to see.

 Robyn was now consumed with impatience. She had no way of knowing how

 far behind her was Zouga and his hunting-party. He might have returned

 to the camp at Mount Hampden and found her note the very day after her

 departure, or he might still be killing elephant a hundred miles away,

 completely unaware that she had marched without him.

 Her disapproval of her brother, and her anger at his recent actions, had

 gradually evoked a sense of competition in her.

 She had come so far and accomplished so much on her own, from the

 contact with the Karanga village to following the traces of her father

 so far and so doggedly, that she fiercely resented the idea of his

 arrival when she was at the very point of making the prayed-for and

 long-delayed reunion with Fuller Ballantyne. She guessed how the tale

 would be told in Zouga's journal, and in the book that would follow it.

 She knew who would get all the credit for the arduous search, and its

 brilliantly successful conclusion.

 Once she had thought that fame and praise meant little to her, she

 believed she would be content to leave that to her brother. She had

 believed that her own reward would be her father's embrace, and the deep

 personal knowledge that she had brought some comfort or some surcease to

 the surf ering black peoples of her Africa. I still do not know myself

 all that well, she admitted, as she called the third successive

 tirikeza, double-marching her porters relentlessly to keep ahead of

 Zouga wherever he might be.

 I want to find Pater, I want to find him alone, and I want the world to

 know I found him."

 Pride is sinful, but then I have always been a sinner.

 Forgive me, Sweet Jesus, I will make it up in a thousand other ways.

 Only forgive this one small unimportant sin, she prayed in her rude

 grass shelter, and as she did so she listened with one ear for the

 shouts of Zouga's bearers coming into camp, and her heart tripped at

 each sudden noise. She was tempted to break camp and call a night march

 towards the next distant hill they had seen on the horizon at sunset and

 which old Karanga had once again confidently declared to be the Iron

 Mountain.

 The moon was full and would rise in an hour, that one march might be all

 that was necessary to keep ahead of her brother.

 However, her porters were exhausted, even Juba was complaining of thorns

 in her feet. It seemed that only she and old Karanga were able to

 maintain this pace for day after day. She must let them rest.

 The next morning she had them away when the grass was still bent under

 the weight of dew drops, and before she had gone a mile her breeches

 were soaked to the thighs. During the last few days, march the

 character of the land had altered. The elevated plateau of rolling

 grassland and open forest across which they had marched so long now

 seemed to be dipping southwards, and the single peak which she had seen

 the night before slowly evolved into a whole series of hills stretching

 across her horizon from west to east, and she felt her spirits sag.

 What chance would she ever have of finding one man's camp, one single

 hilltop, amongst so many? But she slogged on doggedly, and she and

 Karanga reached the first foothills before noon well ahead of the

 column. She checked Zouga's barometer nestling in its velvet-lined

 wooden case, and found that the altitude was still well over 1,200 feet,

 though they had dropped two hundred feet in the last two days, march.

 Then, followed closely by Karanga, and at a little distance by Juba, she

 climbed the roc; shoulder of one of the foothills an from its height had

 a clearer view ahead over the con used an ground. She could see that

 the hills descended sharply into the south. Perhaps they had crossed

 the highlands and before them lay the descent to one of the known rivers

 that Tom Harkness had marked upon his map. She tried to remember the

 names, Shashi and Toti and Madoutsi.

 Suddenly she was starting to feel very lonely and uncertain again. The

 land was so vast, she felt like a tiny insect pinned to an endless plain

 beneath the high pitiless blue sky.

 She turned and looked back into the north, using the long, brass-bound

 telescope to search for any signs of Zouga's party. She was not certain

 if she was relieved or disappointed to find none. Karanga! " she

 called, and he scrambled to his feet readily and looked up at her on the

 pinnacle of rock on which she stood. His expression was trusting as

 that of a petdog. Which way now? " she demanded, and he dropped his

 eyes and stood on one bird-thin leg, scratching his calf with the other

 foot as he pondered the question. Then with an apologetic gesture he

 indicated the nearest half dozen promontories along the skyline ahead

 with a hesitant all-embracing gesture, and Robyn felt her heart sink

 further. She had to admit at last that she was lost.

 She knew then that she would have to do one of two things. Either camp

 where she was until Zouga came up, or turn back along her own spoor

 until she met him.

 Neither alternative was attractive, and she put off the decision until

 the morrow.

 There was water in the river-bed below her, the usual shallow warm green

 pools, foul with bird and animal droppings.

 Suddenly she felt very tired. While the expectations of success had

 buoyed her up she had not noticed it, but now she felt deflated and the

 marrow of her bones ached with weariness. We will camp here, she told

 the Corporal. "Take two men and find meat."

 They had marched so hard and long since leaving Karanga's village that

 there had been no time to hunt. By this time the last of the dried

 buffalo meat smelt like badly cured hides and was full of bacon beetles.

 She could only eat it in a strong curry and the curry powder was almost

 finished. They needed fresh meat desperately, but she was too

 dispirited to lead the hunting partyThe porters had not finished

 thatching the low leanto roof that would be her home for the night when

 she heard a fusillade of musket fire dose by in the forest, and an hour

 later the Corporal came into camp. They had found a large herd of the

 lovely sable antelope, Harris buck, as Zouga insisted on calling them,

 and had succeeded in bringing down five fat chocolate-coloured COWS. The

 porters, chattering happily, left en masse to help bring in the meat,

 and Robyn wandered listlessly down the river-bed, accompanied only by

 Juba, until she found a secluded pool. I must smell as good as old

 Karanga, she thought, scrubbing herself with handfuls of white sand for

 she had weeks previously used the last of her soap. She washed out her

 clothing and spread it to dry on the smooth, water-worn rocks around the

 pool. Then, still naked, she sat in the sunlight and Juba knelt behind

 her and combed out her hair so that it could dry.

 Juba was obviously pleased to have Robyn to herself again, without old

 Karanga hovering nearby. Even though Robyn was silent and dejected,

 Juba loved to play with her hair and delighted in the reddish lights

 that flared in the sunlight as the comb stroked through it.

 She chatted merrily as she worked and gurgled with laughter at her own

 sallies, so that neither of them heard the footsteps in the sand, and it

 was only when the shadow fell at Robyn's feet that she realized that

 they were not alone. With a cry of alarm she rose, snatching UP her

 still wet breeches and holding them to her breast to cover her nudity.

 The woman who stood before her was unarmed, nervous as she was and shy.

 Not a young woman, though her skin was smooth and unlined and she had

 all her teeth still. She was almost certainly Mashona with the finer,

 more Egyptian features than the Nguni, and she wore the short kilt that

 left her upper body bare. Her naked breasts were large, out of

 proportion to the slim upright body, the nipples were raised and

 drawn-out as though she had recently been nursing an infant. I heard

 the guns, " she whispered shyly, and Robyn felt a lift of relief when

 she understood the language. It was Karanga. "I came when I heard the

 guns. I came to lead you to Manali."

 Robyn felt the quick rush of tears scald her eyes at the name, and the

 leap of her heart made her gasp aloud.

 Manali, the man who wears a red shirt, her father had always stoutly

 maintained that the colour red discouraged tsetse fly and other stinging

 insects, and that good thick flannel staved off the ague of fever.

 Robyn jumped to her feet, completely oblivious now of her nudity and

 rushed to the woman, seizing her arm and shaking it.

 Manali! " she cried, and then in English. rWhere is he?

 Oh, take me to him this instant."

 it was more than mere chance, and old Karanga's faltering guidance, that

 had led her, Robyn decided exultantly as she followed her new guide

 along one of the narrow winding game paths. It was blood calling to

 blood.

 Instinctively, like a migrating swallow, she had flown straight to her

 father.

 She felt like shouting aloud, singing her joy to the forest while the

 woman went swiftly ahead of Robyn, her narrow, smoothly muscled back and

 shoulders hardly moved above the gliding roll of her hips, that graceful

 walk of the African woman trained from childhood to carry a burden upon

 her head so smoothly that not a drop spills from a brimming pot.

 She did not move swiftly enough for Robyn's expectations. Already Robyn

 could imagine the powerful figure of her father striding towards her,

 the great flaming bush of his beard, the deep compelling voice as he

 called her name, and swung her high as he had when she was a child, then

 the crushing embrace of his arms.

 She imagined his joy matching hers, and after the first heady moments of

 reunion, then the serious hours of discussion, the recital of the long

 years between, the growing trust and intimacy between them that they had

 lacked before, so that finally they could march together to a common

 goal. In the long years ahead, he could hand the torch to her confident

 that his faith and work would go forward in loving and loyal hands.

 What would be his first words when he saw and recognized her? How

 immense his surprise? She laughed aloud breathlessly, of course, he

 would he deeply touched and grateful that she had come so far, so

 determinedly to be with him, and she, Robyn, knew that she would not be

 able to hold back her own tears of joy, she could imagine her father

 tenderly wiping them away. The tone of his voice would betray the

 pent-up love of all the intervening years that had parted them, and

 which would be so sweet that she could hardly bear it.

 Ahead of her, in the fading light of a dying day the Mashona woman led

 them on to a steep pathway, climbing at a traverse across the western

 slope of the highest hill. Robyn laughed again when she realized that

 it was the same hill that old Karanga had pointed out from twenty miles

 away. He had been right in the end, she must praise him lavishly for

 that. In her own happiness she wanted to give joy to all the world.

 The path came out on a level shelf just below the crest, with a shallow

 cliff at the back of it and the slope of the hill falling away steeply

 towards the sunset, and a breathtaking view across the forest and

 savannah. The entire land turned pink and gold in the low sun and the

 stupendous flat-topped thunderheads of cloud rose along the dark blue

 horizon. The setting was right for this magical moment, but Robyn

 glanced at it only once and then her full attention fastened on what lay

 ahead of her.

 in the face of the cliff was the mouth of a low cave, the slanting rays

 of the sun struck fully into it showing that it was not very deep, but

 had been occupied for a long time. The roof and walls were blackened

 with the soot of the cooking fire, the floor had been swept bare except

 for the fire at the entrance, with its circle of blackened hearth stones

 and a small clay pot standing upon them.

 The clearing in front of the cave was bare also, trodden by feet over

 many years, and there was the offal of human occupation scattered about

 it, the bare bones of small animals, scraps of fur, chips of wood and

 shards of broken pottery. There was the odour of rotting food

 fragments, unwashed leather garments, wood smoke and human excrement

 that confirmed the other evidence that men had lived here for a long

 time.

 There was a single human figure crouched over the smoky little fire, an

 old crone, bowed by age, a mere bundle of filthy fur blankets,

 moth-eaten and ragged, looking more like an ancient ape than a human

 being.

 It did not stir, and Robyn barely glanced at it for something else held

 her attention.

 In the back of the cave, lit by the last fleeting sunlight stood a bed.

 It was made of rudely cut poles, and to together with bark rope, yet it

 stood on four legs in European style, not the African sleeping-mat, and

 it was piled with a stained fur kaross that might have contained a human

 shape.

 On a ledge directly above the bed stood a brass telescope, a teak box

 similar to the one that held Zouga's sextant and chronometer, but

 scarred and battered with age, and a small cheap tin chest. The chest

 was much battered also, most of the original paint chipped away so the

 bare metal showed.

 Robyn remembered that box so vividly, open in Uncle William's study at

 Kings Lynn, the papers from it overflowing on to the desk top and her

 father bowed over them, steel-rimmed spectacles on the end of his beaked

 nose, tugging at his thick red beard as he worked.

 Robyn gave a little choking cry, and ran forward passing the old crone

 sitting at the fire, crossing the cave, and flinging herself on her

 knees beside the crude bedstead. Pater! " Her voice husked over with

 emotion rasped her own throat. "Pater! It's me, Robyn There was no

 movement beneath the fur blanket and she put out a hand, then stopped

 before it touched. He is dead, she thought miserably. "I am too late!

 She forced her hand to move again, and touched the malodorous pile of

 old furs. They collapsed under her touch, and it took her seconds to

 realize that she had been mistaken. The bed was empty, the discarded

 blanket had fallen in the shape of a man, but the bed was empty.

 Bewildered, Robyn rose to her feet and turned back towards the entrance

 of the cave. The Karanga woman stood by the fire, watching her

 expressionlessly, while little Juba hung back fearfully at the far side

 of the clearing. Where is he? " Robyn spread her hands to emphasize

 the question. "Where is Manali?

 The Karanga woman dropped her eyes. For a moment Robyn did not

 understand, and then she too looked down at the grotesque figure that

 crouched by the fire at her feet.

 She felt a cold steel band lock about her chest and squeeze her heart so

 that it took an effort of will to force her feet to move back across the

 swept floor of the cave.

 The Mashona woman was watching Robyn expressionlessly. She had clearly

 not understood the English question, but she waited with the endless

 patience of Africa.

 Robyn was about to appeal to her again, when the skeletal figure across

 the smoky little fire started to rock from side to side agitatedly, and

 a querulous slurred old man's voice began to chant some strange litany,

 like a magical incantation.

 it took Robyn some moments to realize that the accents were faintly

 Scots and the words, though blurred and jumbled, were a parody of the

 23rd psalm. Yea! Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of

 death, I shall fear no evil."

 As suddenly as it had begun the chanting broke off, and the rocking

 ceased. The frail figure froze into stillness and silence again. Across

 the fire, the Mashona woman stooped and gently as a mother with a child,

 she drew back the kaross from the head and shoulder of the figure at her

 feet.

 Fuller Ballantyne had shrivelled, his face lined and roughened like the

 bark of an old oak. It seemed as though the smoke of the fire had

 etched his skin, collecting in the creases, crusting it with soot.

 His hair and beard had fallen out in clumps, as though from some

 disgusting disease, and what was left of it was pure white but stringed

 and darkened with dirt to a tobacco yellow at the corners of the mouth

 and at the nostrils.

 only his eyes still seemed to live, they rolled in their sockets, and it

 needed only one look at them for Robyn to realize that her father was

 mad. This was not Fuller Ballantyne, this was not the great explorer,

 the powerful evangelist and enemy of slavery. He had gone long ago,

 leaving a filthy shrivelled lunatic in his place. Pater, " she stared

 at him in disbelief, feeling the world spin and lurch beneath her.

 Pater, she repeated, and across the fire the crouched figure gibbered

 with abrupt falsetto girlish laughter, and then began to rave

 incoherently, snatches of English giving way to a half-dozen dialects of

 Africa, the cries becoming more agitated, his thin pale arms thrown

 wildly in the air. I have sinned against thee, my God, he screamed and

 clawed at his own beard, a tuft of the thin pale hair coming away in the

 hooked fingers. "I am not worthy to be thy servant. " He tore at

 himself again this time leaving a thin livid scratch down the pouched

 and wrinkled cheek, though it seemed that the wasted body had no blood

 left to shed.

 The Mashona. woman leaned over him and caught the bony wrist,

 restraining him. The action was so familiar that she must have

 performed it often. Then gently she stooped and lifted him. The body

 seemed to weigh no more than that of a child for she carried him without

 visible effort to the crude pole bed. One of his legs was bound up in a

 rudimentary splint and stuck straight out ahead of him.

 Robyn stayed on beside the fire, hanging her head. She found that she

 was still shivering, until the woman came back to her, touching her arm.

 He is very sick."

 Only then could Robyn force back her revulsion. and her horror. She

 stood, hesitated only a moment longer, and then went to her father. With

 Juba and the Mashona woman helping her, she began her examination,

 taking refuge behind her professional rituals and procedures while she

 regained control of her emotions. He was thinner than she had ever seen

 a living human body, thinner than the starved brats of gin-soaked slum

 sluts. There has been little food, said the woman, "and what there is,

 he will not eat. I have had to feed him like a small baby. " Robyn did

 not then understand what she meant, but she went on grimly with her

 examination.

 The starved body was verminous, the bunches of little white nits hanging

 like grapes in the thin white pubic hair, and his whole body was crusted

 with filth and traces of his own incontinence.

 Feeling under the staring rib cage her fingertips encountered the hard

 distended shape of liver and spleen, and Fuller Ballantyne screamed when

 she did so, The swelling and extreme tenderness were certain indications

 of massive malarial infection of long duration, and evidence of terrible

 neglect. Where is the medicine, the umuthi, of Manali? "It was long

 ago finished, together with the powder and shot for the gun. Everything

 was finished long ago, the woman shook her head, "long, long ago, and

 when it was finished, the people no longer came with gifts to feed us. "

 It was suicidal to remain in a malarial area without supplies of

 quinine. Fuller Ballantyne of all people knew that. The acknowledged

 world expert on malarial fever and its treatment, how could he have

 neglected his own often-repeated advice. She found the reasons almost

 immediately, as she opened his mouth, forcing open his lower jaw despite

 his feeble protests.

 Most of his teeth had been rotted out by the disease, and his throat and

 palate were covered by the characteristic lesions.

 She released his jaw, allowing him to close the ruined mouth, and gently

 she touched the bridge of his nose, feeling the soggy collapsing bone

 and gristle.

 There could be no doubt at all, the disease was far advanced, had long

 ago begun its final assault upon the once magnificent brain. It was

 syphilis, in the terminal stages, the general paralysis of the insane.

 The disease of the lonely man that led inevitably to this lonely

 madman's death.

 As Robyn worked, so her horror and revulsion gave way swiftly to the

 compassion of the healer, to the sympathy of one who had lived with

 human weakness and folly and had come far along the road of

 understanding.

 She knew now why her father had not turned back when his supplies of

 vital medicines ran perilously low, the half-destroyed brain had not

 recognized the dangers which he had previously described so clearly.

 She found herself praying for him as she worked, praying silently but

 with the words coming more readily than they usually did. Judge him as

 he was, Oh Lord, judge him by his service in your name, not by his small

 sins, but by his great achievements. Look not upon this ruined pathetic

 thing, but on the strong and vital man who carried your work forward

 without flinching."

 As she prayed, she lifted the heavy kaross off his legs, and the smell

 of corruption made her blink and the frail figure began immediately to

 struggle with renewed strength, that needed of Ju a an t Mashona woman

 to control.

 Robyn stared at the legs, and realized the other reason why her father

 had never left this land. He had been physically unable to do so. The

 splints that held the leg had been whittled out of native timber. The

 leg had been fractured, probably at more than one place below the hip.

 Perhaps the hip joint itself had gone, that vulnerable neck of the

 femur. But what was certain was that the breaks had not mended cleanly.

 Perhaps the bindings of the splints had been too tight, for the deep

 suppurating ulcerations went down to the very bone, and the smell was a

 solid jarring thing.

  

 Quickly she covered his lower body, there was nothing she could do until

 she had her medical chest and instruments, and now she was merely

 inflicting unnecessary pain and humiliation. Her father was still

 struggling and bleating like a petulant child, rolling his head from

 side to side, the toothless mouth darkly agape.

 The Mashona woman leaned over him, and took one of her own dark tight

 breasts in her hand, squeezing out the nipple between her fingers, and

 then she paused and looked up shyly, imploringly at Robyn.

 Only then did Robyn understand, and respecting the privacy of woman and

 the poor maimed thing that had been her father, she dropped her eyes and

 turned away towards the entrance of the cave. I must fetch my umuthi. I

 will return here later tonight."

 Behind her, the childlike bleats gave way abruptly to small snuffling

 sounds of comfort.

 Robyn felt no shock or outrage as she went down the steep pathway in.

 the moonlight. Instead she felt immense pity for Fuller Ballantyne who

 had made the full circle back to infancy. She felt also a deep

 gratitude to the woman, and a sense of wonder at her loyalty and

 dedication. How long had she stayed on with Fuller Ballantyne after all

 reason for staying was gone?

 She remembered her own mother, and her devotion to the same man, she

 remembered Sarah and her child still waiting patiently beside a far-off

 river. And then there was Robyn herself, come so far and so

 determinedly.

 Fuller Ballantyne always had the power to attract as powerfully as he

 could repel.

 Holding Juba's hand for her own comfort as well as that of the child,

 Robyn hurried along the moonlit path on the bank of the river, and with

 relief saw the glow of the camp fires in the forest ahead of her. On

 the return journey she would have bearers to carry her medical chest,

 and armed Hottentot musketeers as escort.

 Her relief was short-lived, for as she answered the challenge of the

 Hottentot sentry and entered the circle of firelight, a familiar figure

 rose from beside the camp fire and came striding to meet her, tall and

 powerful, goldenbearded and handsome as a god from Greek mythology, and

 every bit as wrathful. Zouga! " she gasped. "I didn't expect you.

 "No, he agreed icily. "I'm sure that you did not. "Why? " she thought

 desperately. "Why must he come now? Why not a day later, when I have

 had time to clean and treat my father? Oh God, why now? Zouga will

 never understand, Never! Never! Never! " Robyn and her escort could

 not hope to keep pace with Zouga. They fell swiftly behind him as he

 climbed the pathway in the night, months of hard hunting had toned him

 to the peakof physical condition and he ran at the hill.

 She had not been able to warn him. What words were there to describe

 the creature in the cave on the hilltop.

 She had told him simplyI have found Pater."

 It had deflected his anger instantly. The bitter accusations shrivelled

 on his tongue, and the realization dawned in his eyes.

 They had found Fuller Ballantyne. They had accomplished one of the

 three major objectives of the expedition. She knew that Zouga was

 already seeing it in print, almost composing the paragraph that would

 describe the moment, imagining the newspaper urchins shouting the

 headlines in the streets of London.

 For the first time in her life she -came close to hating her brother,

 and her voice was crisp as hoar-frost as she told him, "And don't you

 forget it was me. I was the one who made the march and broke trail, and

 I was the one who found him."

 She saw the shift in his green eyes in the firelight. Of course, Sissy.

 " He smiled at her thinly, an obvious effort. "Who could ever forget

 that? Where is he? "First I must assemble what I need."

 He had stayed with her until they reached the foot of the hill, and then

 had been unable to restrain himself.

 Ri that none of them He had gone at the slope at a pace had been able to

 equal. Robyn came out in the little clearing in front of the cave. Her

 heart was racing and her breathing ragged from the climb so that she had

 to pause and fight for breath, holding one hand to her breast.

 The fire in front of the cave had been built up to a fair blaze, but it

 left the depths of the cave in discreet shadow. Zouga. stood in front

 of the fire. His back to the

 cave.

 As Robyn regained her breath, she went forward. She saw that Zouga's

 face was deathly pale, in the firelight his sun-bronzing had faded to a

 muddy tone. He stood erect, as though on the parade ground, and he

 stared directly ahead of him. Have you seen Pater? " Robyn asked. His

 distress and utter confusion gave her a sneaking and spiteful pleasure.

 There is a native woman with him, Zouga whispered, in his bed. "Yes, "

 Robyn nodded. "He is very sick. She is caring for him. "Why did you

 not warn me? " That he is sick? " she asked. That he had gone native.

 "He's dying, Zouga. "What are we going to tell the world? "The truth,

 she suggested quietly. "That he is sick and dying. "You must never

 mention the woman. " Zouga's voice, for the first time that she could

 remember, was uncertain, he seemed to be groping for words. "We must

 protect the family. "Then what must we tell about his disease, the

 disease that is killing him? " Zouga's eyes flickered to her face.

 "Malaria? "The pox, Zouga. The French sickness, the Italian plague,

 or, if you prefer it, syphilis, Zouga. He is dying of syphilis."

 Zouga flinched, and then he whispered, "It's not possibleWhy not, Zouga?

 " she asked. "He was a man, a great man, but a man nevertheless She

 stepped past him. "And now I have work to do."

 An hour later when she looked for -him again, Zouga had gone back down

 the hill to the camp beside the river pools. She remained to work over

 her father for the rest of that night and most of the following day.

 By the time she had bathed and cleaned him, shaved off the infested body

 hair and trimmed the stringy beard and locks of yellowed treated the

 ulcerations of his le& she was exhausted both physically and

 emotionally.

 She had seen approaching death too many times not to recognize it now.

 She knew that all she could. hope for was to give comfort and to smooth

 the lonely road that her father must travel.

 When she had done all that was possible, she covered him with a clean

 blanket and then tenderly caressed the short soft hair which she had so

 lovingly trimmed. Fuller opened his eyes. They were a pale empty shade

 of blue, like an African summer sky. The last sunlight of the day was

 washing the cave, and as Robyn leaned over him, it sparkled in her hair

 in chips of ruby light.

 She saw something move in the empty eyes, a shadow of the man who had

 once been there, and Fuller's lips parted. Twice he tried to speak and

 then he said one word, so husky and light that she missed it. Robyn

 leaned closer to him.

 What is it? " she asked.

 Helen! " This time clearer.

 Robyn felt the tears choke up her throat at the sound of her mother's

 name. Helen. " Fuller said it for the last time, and then the flicker

 of comprehension in his eyes was gone.

 She stayed on beside him, but there was nothing more.

 That name had been the last link with reality and now the link was

 broken.

 As the last light of the day faded, Robyn lifted her eyes from her

 father's face and for the first time realized that the tin chest was

 missing from the ledge at the back of the cave.

 Using the lid of his own writing-case as a desk, screened from the camp

 by the thin wall of thatch, Zouga worked swiftly through the contents of

 the chest.

 His horror at the discovery of his father had long ago been submerged by

 the fascination of the treasures which the chest contained. The

 disgust, the shame, would return again when he had time to think about

 it, he knew that. He knew also that there would be hard decisions to

 make then, and that he would have to use all his force of personality

 and of brotherly superiority to control Robyn, and make her agree to a

 common version of the discovery of Fuller Ballantyne and a tactful

 description of the circumstances to which he had been reduced.

 The tin chest contained four leather and canvas-bound journals, each of

 five hundred pages, and the pages were covered on both sides either with

 writing or with hand drawn maps. There was also a bundle of loose

 sheets, two or three hundred of them tied together with plaited bark

 string. and a cheap wooden pen case with a partition for spare nibs,

 and cut-outs for two ink bottles.

 One bottle was dry, and the pen nibs had obviously been sharpened many

 times, for they were almost worn away.

 Zouga sniffed the ink in the remaining bottle. It seemed to be an

 evil-smelling mixture, of fat and soot and vegetable dyes that Fuller

 had concocted when his supplies of the manufactured item were exhausted.

 The last journal and most of the loose pages were written with this

 mixture, and they had faded and smeared, making the handwriting that

 much more difficult to decipher, for by this stage Fuller Ballantyne's

 hand had deteriorated almost as much as his mind. Whereas the first two

 journals were written in the small, precise and familiar script, this

 slowly turned into a loose sloping scrawl as uncontrolled as some of the

 ideas expressed by it. The history of his father's madness was plotted

 therein with sickening fascination.

 The pages of the leatherbound journals were not numbered, and there were

 many gaps between the dates of one entry and the next, which made Zoup's

 work easier.

 He read swiftly, an art he had developed when acting as regimental

 intelligence officer with huge amounts of reading, reports, orders and

 departmental manuals, to get through each day.

 The first books of writing were ground that had been travelled before,

 meticulous observations of celestial position, of climate and altitude,

 ed up by shrewdly observed descriptions of terrain and population.

 Sandwiched between these were accusations and complaints about

 authority, whether it were the directors of the London Missionary

 Society, or "The Imperial Factor" as Fuller Ballantyne referred to the

 Foreign Secretary and his department in Whitehall.

 There were detailed explanations of his reasons for leaving Tete and

 travelling south with a minimally equipped expedition, and then, quite

 suddenly, " two pages devoted to an account of a sexual liaison with an

 exslave girl, an Angoni girl whom Fuller had christened Sarah" and who

 he suspected was about to bear his child.

 His reasons for abandoning her at Tete were direct and without pretence.

 "I know that a woman, even a hardy native, carrying a child would delay

 me. As I am on God's work, I can brook no such check."

 Although what Zouga had seen on the hilltop should have conditioned him

 for this sort of revelation, still he could not bring himself to terms

 with it. Using his hunting-knife, whetted to a razor edge, he slit the

 offending pages from the journal, and as he crumpled them and threw them

 in the camp fire he muttered, "The old devil had no right to write this

 filth."

 Twice more he found sexual references which he removed from the journal,

 and by then the handwriting was showing the first deterioration, and

 passages of great lucidity were followed by wild ravings and the dreams

 and imaginings of a diseased mind.

 More often Fuller referred to himself as the instrument of God's wrath,

 his blazing sword against the heathen and the ungodly. The weirdest and

 patently lunatic passages Zouga cut from the journal and burned. He

 knew he must work swiftly, before Robyn came down from the hilltop. He

 knew that what he was doing was right, for his father's memory and place

 in posterity and also for those who would have to live on after him,

 Robyn and Zouga himself, and their children and children's children.

 It was a chilling experience to see his father's great love and

 compassion for the African people, and the very land itself changing and

 becoming a bitter unreasoning hatred. Against the Matabele people, whom

 he referred to as the Ndebele, or the Amandebele, he railed:These

 leonine peoples who acknowledge no God at all whose diet consists of the

 devil's brew and half-cooked meat, both in vast quantities, and whose

 greatest delight is spearing to death defenceless women and children,

 are ruled over by the most merciless despot since Caligula, the most

 grossly blood-besotted monster since Attila himself."

 Of the other tribes he was at least as scornful. "The Rozwis are a sly

 and secret people, the timid and treacherous descendants of the

 slave-trading and gold-mad kings they called the Mambos. Their

 dynasties destroyed by the marauding Ndebele and their monstrous Nguni

 brothers the Shangaans of Gungundha and the bloodsmattered Angoni."

 The Karangas were "cowards and devil-worshippers, lurking in their caves

 and hilltop fortresses, committing unspeakable sacrilege and offending

 in the face of the Almighty by their blasphemous ceremonies in the

 ruined cities where once their Monomatapa held sway'.

 The reference to Monomatapa and ruined cities checked Zouga's eyes in

 the middle of the page. Then he read on eagerly, hoping for elaboration

 of the mention of ruined cities, but Fuller's mind had flown on to other

 ideas, the theme of suffering and sacrifice which has always been the

 spine of Christian belief. I thank God, my Almighty Father, that he has

 chosen me as his sword, and that as the mark of his love and

 condescension he has made his mark upon me. This dawn when I awoke

 there were the stigmata in my feet and hands, the wound in my side, and

 the bleeding scratches from the crown of thorns upon my forehead. I

 have felt the same sweet pain as Christ himself."

 The disease had reached that part of his brain that affected his eyes,

 and sense of feeling. His faith had become religious mania. Zouga cut

 out this and the following pages and consigned them to the flames of the

 camp fire.

 Ranting madness was followed by cool sanity, as though the disease had

 tides which ebbed and flowed within his brain. The next entry in the

 journal was dated five days after that claiming the stigmata. It began

 with a celestial observation that placed him not far from where Zouga

 sat reading the words, always making allowances for the inaccuracy of a

 chronometer that had not been checked for almost two years. There was

 no furtherSo I rose, and God's hand held me up and carried me onwards."

 How much of this was fact, and how much was the ranting of madness,

 fantasy of a diseased brain, Zouga could not know, but he read on

 furiously. And the Almighty guided me until I came at last alone to the

 foul city where the devil-worshippers commit their sacrilege. My

 bearers would not follow me, terrified of the devils. Even old Joseph

 who was always at my side could not force his legs to carry him through

 the gateway in the high stone wall. I left him cringing in the forest,

 and went in alone to walk between the high towers of stone. As God had

 revealed to me, I found the graven images of the heathen all decked with

 flowers and gold, the blood of the sacrifice not yet dried, and I broke

 them and cast them down and no man could oppose me for I was the sword

 of Zion, the finger of God's own hand."

 The entry broke off abruptly, as though the writer had been overwhelmed

 by the strength of his own religious fervour, and Zouga. flipped

 through the next one hundred pages of the journal searching for further

 reference to the city and its gold-decked images, but there was none.

 Like the miraculous blooming of the stigmata upon Fuller's hands and

 feet and body and brow, perhaps this was also the imaginings of a

 lunatic.

 Zouga returned to the original entry, describing Fuller's meeting with

 the Umlimo, the sorceress whom he had slain. He wrote the latitude and

 longitude into his own journal, copied the rough sketch map and made

 cryptic notes of the text, pondering it for clues that might lead or

 guide him. Then, quite deliberately, he cut out the pages from Fuller's

 own journal and held them one at a time over the fire, letting them

 crinkle and brown, then catch and flare before he dropped them and

 watched them curl and blacken. He stirred the ashes to dust with a

 stick before he was satisfied.

 The last of the four journals was only partially filled, and contained a

 detailed description of a caravan route running from "the blood-soaked

 lands where Mzilikazils evil impis hold sway" eastwards five hundred

 miles or more "to where the reeking ships of the traders surely wait to

 welcome the poor souls who survive the hazards of this infamous road'. I

 have followed the road as far as the eastern rampart of mountains, and

 always the evidence of the passing of the caravans is there for all the

 world to see. That grisly evidence which I have come to know so well,

 the bleaching bones and the circling vultures. Is there not a corner of

 this savage continent which is free from the ravages of the traders? "

 These revelations would interest Robyn more than they did him. Zouga

 glanced through them swiftly and then marked them for her attention.

 There was a great deal on slavery and the traders, a hundred pages or

 more and then the penultimate entry. We have today come up with a

 caravan of slaves, winding through the hilly country towards the east. I

 have counted the miserable victims from afar, using the telescope and

 there are almost a hundred of them, mostly half-grown children and young

 women. They are yoked together in pairs with forked tree trunks about

 their necks in the usual manner. The slave-masters are black men, I

 have been unable to descry either Arabs or men of European extraction

 amongst them. Although they wear no tribal insignia, no plumes nor

 regalia, I have no doubt they are Amandebele, for their physique is

 distinctive, and they come from.

 the direction of that tyrant Mzilikazi's kingdom. They are furthermore

 armed with the broad bladed stabbing spear and long ox-hide shields of

 that people, while two or three of them carry trade muskets. At this

 moment they are encamped not more than a league from where I lie, and in

 the dawn they will continue their fateful journey towards the east where

 the Arab and Portuguese slave-masters no doubt wait to purchase the

 miserable human cattle and load them like cargo for the cruel voyage

 half across the world. God has spoken to me, clearly I have heard his

 voice as he enjoined me to go down, and, like his sword, cut down the

 ungodly, free the slaves and minister to the meek and the innocent.

 Joseph is with me, that true and trusted companion of the years, and he

 will be well able to serve my second gun. His marksmanship is not of

 the best, but he has courage and God will be with us."

 The next entry was the last. Zouga had come to the end of the four

 journals. God's ways are wonderful and mysterious, passing all

 understanding. He lifteth up and he casteth down. With Joseph beside

 me I went down, as God had commanded, to the camp of the slave-masters.

 We fell upon them, even as the Israelites fell upon the Philistines. At

 first it seemed that we must prevail for the ungodly fled before us.

 Then God in all his knowing wisdom deserted us.

 One of the ungodly leapt upon Joseph while he was reloading, and though

 I put a ball through his chest he impaled poor Joseph from breast bone

 to spine with that terrible spear, before himself falling dead. Alone I

 carried on the fight, God's fight, and the slavemasters scattered into

 the forest before my wrath. Then one of them turned and at extreme

 range fired his musket in my direction. The ball struck me in the hip.

 I managed, I do not know how, to drag myself away before the

 slave-masters returned to slay me. They did not attempt to follow me,

 and I have regained the shelter which I left to make the attempt.

 However, I am sorely smitten and reduced to dire straits. I have

 managed to remove the musket ball from my own hip, but I fear the bone

 is cracked through and I am crippled. In addition I have lost both my

 firearms, Joseph's musket lies with him where he fell, and I was so

 badly hurt as to be unable to carry my weapon off the field. I sent the

 woman back to find them, but they have been carried away by the

 slave-traders. My remaining porters, seeing the state to which I have

 been reduced and knowing that I could not prevent it, have all deserted,

 but not before they had looted the camp and carried away almost

 everything of value, not excluding my medicine chest. Only the woman

 remains.

 I was angry at first when she attached herself to my party, but now I

 see God's hand in this, for although she is a heathen, yet she is loyal

 and true beyond all others, now that Joseph is dead. What is a man in

 this cruel land without a musket or quinine? Is there a lesson in this

 for me and posterity, a lesson that God has chosen me to teach? Can a

 white man live here? Will he not always be the alien, and will Africa

 tolerate him once he has lost his weapons and expended his medicines? "

 Then a single poignant cry of agony. Oh God, has this all been in vain?

 I came to bring your Word and nobody has listened to my voice. I came

 to change the ways of the wicked and nothing is changed. I came to open

 a way for Christianity, and no Christian has followed me. Please, my

 God, give me a sign that I have not followed the wrong road to a false

 destination."

 Zouga leaned back and rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands. He

 found himself deeply moved, his eyes stinging not only from fatigue.

 Fuller Ballantyne was an easy man to hate, but a hard man to despise.

 Robyn chose the place with care. The secluded pools on the river, away

 from the main camp, where nobody could overlook or overhear them. She

 chose the time, in the heat of midday, when most of the Hottentots and

 all the porters would be asleep in the shade. She had given Fuller five

 drops of the precious laudanum to quiet him, and left him with the

 Mashona girl and Juba to care for him while she went down the hill to

 Zouga.

 They had barely exchanged a dozen words during the ten days since he had

 caught up with her. in all that time he had not returned to the cave on

 the hilltop, and she had seen him only once when she had gone down to

 the river camp for supplies.

 When she had sent Juba down with a tersely worded note, demanding the

 return of Fuller's tin chest of papers, he had sent a porter with it

 immediately. In fact, with such alacrity that Robyn was immediately

 suspicious.

 This distrust was a symptom of their rapidly deteriorating relationship.

 She knew that she and Zouga must talk, must discuss the future, before

 the opportunity to talk was past.

 He was waiting for her beside the green river pools, as she had asked

 him to be, sitting in the mottled shade beneath a wild fig tree, quietly

 smoking a hand-rolled cheroot of native tobacco. He stood up

 courteously as soon as he saw her, but his expression was reserved and

 his eyes guarded.

 I do not have much time, Zouga dear. " Robyn tried to lessen the

 tension between them by using the small endearment, and Zouga nodded

 gravely. "I must get back to Pater. She hesitated. "I did not want to

 ask you to come up the hill since you find it distasteful. " She saw

 the green sparks in his eyes kindle immediately, and went on quickly.

 "We must decide what we should do now. Obviously we cannot stay on here

 indefinitely. "What do you suggest? "Pater is much stronger. I have

 subdued the malaria with quinine and the other disease, she worded it

 tactfully, "has responded to the mercury. It is only the leg that truly

 worries me now. "You told me he was dying. " Zouga reminded her

 levelly, and she could not help herself, despite her good intentions she

 flared at him. Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, then Zouga's face

 stiffened into a handsome, bronzed mask.

 She could see the effort it took him to control his own temper, and his

 voice was thick with it as he answered. That's not worthy of you. "I'm

 sorry, she agreed, and drew a deep breath.

 "Zouga, he has rallied strongly. Food and medicine, care and his own

 natural strength have made an immense difference.

 I am even convinced that if we could get him to civilization to a

 skilled surgeon, we could cure the ulceration of his leg, and possibly

 even induce the bone to mend!

 Zouga was silent for a long time, and though his face was

 expressionless, she could see the play of emotion in his eyes.

 He spoke at last. "Father is mad She did not answer. Can you cure his

 mind? "No. " She shook her head. "That will get worse, but with care

 and skilled attention in a good hospital, we can improve his body and he

 could live for many years still To what purpose? " Zouga insisted. He

 would be comfortable and perhaps happyAnd all the world would know that

 he was a syphilitic madman, Zouga went on quietly for her. "Would it

 not be kinder to let the legend stand untarnished? No, more than that,

 to add to it by our own account, rather than drag back this poor

 diseased and demented thing for all his enemies, his numerous enemies,

 to mock? "Is that why you tampered with his journals? " Robyn's voice

 was shrill, even in her own ears. That's a dangerous accusation.

 " He was losing his control also. "Can you prove it? I don't have to

 prove it; we both know it's so. "You cannot move him. " Zouga changed

 direction. "He is crippled! He could be carried on a litter. We have

 more than enough porters."

 Which way would you take him? " Zouga demanded. He would never survive

 the route over which we have travelled, and the route southwards is

 uncharted."

 Pater himself has charted the slave road in his journal.

 We will follow that. It will lead us directly to the coast."

 With the major objectives of the expedition unfulfilled? " Zouga.

 asked quickly. The major objectives were to find Fuller Ballantyne, and

 report on the slave trade, both of which we can accomplish if we march

 down the slave road to the sea."

 Robyn broke off, and then made a show of dawning comprehension. "Oh

 dear, how silly of me, you mean the gold and the ivory. Those were the

 major objectives all along, were they not, my dear brother? " We have a

 duty to our sponsors! And none to that poor sick old man up there? "

 Robyn flung out one hand dramatically, and then spoiled the effect by

 stamping her foot. Angry with herself as well as with him, she yelled

 at him. "I am taking Pater down to the coast, and quickly as I can. "I

 say you are not. "And I say the hell with you, Morris Zouga Ballantyne!

 " The oath gave her a dark pleasure, and she turned and strode away from

 him, long-legged in her tight-fitting breeches.

 Two days later Robyn was ready to march. All exchanges between Zouga.

 and herself since their final meeting at the river had been in the form

 of written notes, and Robyn realized that her brother would be keeping

 copies of all this correspondence to justify his actions later.

 She had briefly repudiated his written command not to attempt a march

 with the sick man. Zouga had listed half a dozen reasons, each neatly

 enumerated, why she should remain. once he had her written defiance,

 his next note sent up the hill in Juba's sweating little hand was

 magnanimous, written for future readers other than herself, Robyn

 decided sourly. If you insist on this folly, he began and he went on to

 offer her the protection of the entire force of Hottentot musketeers,

 with the exception of Sergeant Cheroot who had expressed a desire to

 remain with Zouga. Under the Corporal they would form an escort

 capable, as Zouga worded it "of bringing you and your charge safely to

 the coast, and protecting you from any hazards upon the way'.

 He insisted that she take most of the remaining porters. He would keep

 five porters to carry his essential stores, together with his four

 gunbearers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

 He also ordered her to take the Sharps rifle and all the remaining

 stores, "leaving me only sufficient powder and shot, and the bare

 minimum of medicines to enable me to complete the further objectives of

 this expedition Which I deem to be of prime importance'.

 His final note reiterated all his reasons for keeping Fuller Ballantyne

 on the hilltop, and asked her once more to reconsider her decision.

 Robyn saved him the trouble of making fair copies by simply turning over

 the note and scribbling on it. "My mind is made up. I will march at

 first light tomorrow for the coast Then she dated and signed it.

 The next morning, before sun-up, Zouga sent a team of porters up the

 hill, carrying a litter of mopani poles.

 The poles had been peeled of their rough bark and bound together with

 raw-hide strips from the green hide of a freshly killed roan antelope,

 and the body of the litter was made from the same interwoven hide

 strips. Fuller Ballantyne had to be strapped into the litter to prevent

 him throwing himself out of it.

 When Robyn brought them down again, walking beside the litter to try and

 calm the crazy old man on it, the Hottentot escort and the porters were

 ready to join her on the march. Zouga was waiting also, standing a

 little aside as though he had already dissociated himself, but Robyn

 went to him directly.

 At least we know each other now, " she said huskily. We may not be able

 to rub along together, Zouga. I doubt we ever could have, or ever will

 be able to, but that does not mean I do not respect you, and love you

 even more than I respect you."

 Zouga flushed and looked away. As she should have known, such a

 declaration could only embarrass him. I have made sure that you have a

 hundred pounds of gunpowder, that is more than you could ever need, he

 said. Do you not wish to say farewell to Pater? " Zouga nodded

 stiffly, and followed her to the litter, avoiding looking at the Mashona

 woman who stood beside it and spoke formally to Fuller Ballantyne.

 Good-bye, sir. I wish you a swift safe journey and a speedy return to

 good health."

 The wizened toothless face, revolved towards him upon its scrawny neck.

 The shaven head had a pale porcelain gloss in the grey dawn light, and

 the eyes were bird-bright, glittering with madness. God is my shepherd,

 I shall fear no evil, Fuller cawed, mouthing the words so they were

 barely understandable. Quite right, sir, Zouga nodded seriously. "No

 doubt at all about that. " He touched his cap in a military salute and

 stepped back. He nodded to the porters and they lifted the litter and

 moved away towards the pale orange and yellow sunrise.

 Brother and sister stood side by side for the last time watching the

 column of escort and porters file past, and when the last of them had

 gone and only little Juba remained beside her, Robyn reached up

 impulsively and threw her arms around Zouga's neck, embraced him almost

 fiercely. I try to understand you, won't you do the same for me? " For

 a moment she thought he might unbend, she felt the hard erect body sway

 and soften, and then Zouga straightened again. This is not good-bye, he

 said. "Once I have done what is necessary, I shall follow you.  We'll

 meet again Robyn dropped her arms to her sides, and stood back. Until

 then, she agreed wistfully, sad that he had not been able to make even a

 show of affectionUntil then, she repeated, and turned away. Juba

 followed her away into the forest, after the departing column.

 Zouga waited until the singing of the porters dwindled, and the only

 sound was the sweet wild bird chorus that greets each dawn in Africa,

 and the distant melancholy whooping of a hyena slinking away to its

 earth.

 There were many emotions warring in him. Guilt that he had let a woman,

 however well supported, attempt the journey to the coast; worry that

 once she reached it, her accounts would be the first to reach London;

 doubt as to the authenticity of the clues which Fuller Ballantyne had

 left for him to follow, but overlying it all a sense of relief and

 excitement that he was at last answerable only to himself, free to range

 as fast and far as hard legs and harder determination would take him.

 He shook himself, a physical purging of guilt and doubt, leaving only

 the excitement and soaring sense of anticipation. and he turned to

 where Sergeant Cheroot waited at the perimeter of the forlorn and

 deserted camp. When you smile, your face makes the children cry, Zouga

 told him, "but when you frown. . . What troubles you now, oh mighty

 hunter of elephants? " The little Hottentot lugubriously indicated the

 bulky tin box that contained Zouga's dress uniform and hat.

 Say not another word, Sergeant, " Zouga warned him. But the porters

 complain, they have carried it so far. "And they will carry it to the

 gates of hell itself, if I say so. Safari! " Zouga raised his voice,

 elated with the sense of excitement still strongly upon him. "We march!

 " Zouga was prepared for wide discrepancies in the positions that his

 father had fixed by celestial observation, and his own. A few seconds

 of error in the chronometers would put them many miles out.

 So he treated with suspicion the terrain features which he saw ahead and

 which seemed to match with uncanny accuracy the sketch maps he had

 copied from Fuller's journals.

 Yet as each day's march that he made opened up country that fitted his

 father's descriptions, he became more confident, more certain that the

 Umlimo and the ruined city were real and that they lay not many days

 march ahead.

 It was beautiful country they passed through, though the air was more

 sultry as they descended the sloping plateau towards the south and west.

 The long dry season, now drawing to its close, had scared the grasslands

 to the colour of fields of ripening wheat, and turned the foliage of the

 forests to a hundred shades of plum reds and soft apricots. Many of the

 trees were bare of all leaves, lifting arthritically contorted limbs to

 the sky as if beseeching it for the relief of rain.

 Each day the thunderheads built up, tall silver ranges of cloud turning

 purple and sullen leaden blue, threatening rain, but never making good

 that threat, though the thunder muttered, and in the evenings the

 lightning flickered low on the horizon as though great armies were

 locked in battle far to the east.

 The big game was concentrated on the remaining water, the deeper river

 pools and the strongest waterholes, so that each day's march was through

 a wonderland of wild animals.

 In one herd Zouga counted thirty-two giraffe, from the old slink-bull

 almost black with age, his long neck taller than the trees on which he

 fed, to the pale beige splotched calves on their disproportionately long

 legs, galloping away in that slow rocking gait with their long tufted

 tails twisted up over their backs.

 Every clearing had its family of rhinoceros, the cows with the

 distinctively long slender nose horn, running their calves ahead of

 them, guiding them with a touch of the horn on the flank. There were

 herds of Cape buffalo, a thousand strong, flowing in a black dense mass

 across the open glades, steaming with pale dust like the lava from an

 active volcano.

 Then there were elephant. There was not one day they did not cut fresh

 spoor, veritable roads through the forest, tall trees pushed down or

 still standing but stripped of their bark so the trunks were naked and

 weeping with fresh sap, the earth beneath them strewn with chewed twigs

 and bunches of picked leaves only just beginning to wither, the huge

 piles of fibrous dung standing like monuments to the passing of the

 great grey beasts, and the baboon and the plump brown pheasant

 scratching and foraging enthusiastically in them for the half digested

 wild nuts and other tidbits.

 Zouga could seldom resist him when Jan Cheroot looked up from his

 examination of the pad marks and said, "A big bull, this one, walking

 heavy in the front quarters. Good teeth, I'd stake my sister's virtue

 on it. "A commodity which was staked and lost many years ago, Zouga

 observed drily. "But we will follow, none the less."

 Most evenings they could cut teeth and, having buried them, carry the

 bleeding heart to where they had left the porters, two men to carry the

 forty-pound hunk of raw flesh slung on a pole between them, a feast for

 the whole party. Because of the hunt, progress was slow and not always

 direct, but steadily Zouga identified and passed the landmarks that his

 father had described.

 Then at last, knowing he was close, Zouga withstood the temptation to

 hunt, for the first time refusing to follow the fresh spoor of three

 fine bulls, and disappointing Jan Cheroot most grievously by doing so.

 You should never leave a good elephant, or a warm and willing lady, he

 advised dolefully, "because you never know where or when you are going

 to meet the next one."

 Jan Cheroot did not yet know the new object of their quest and Zouga's

 behaviour puzzled him. Zouga often caught him watching him with a

 quizzical sparkle in his bright little slitty eyes, but he avoided the

 direct question diplomatically and accepted Zouga's orders to abandon

 the spoor with only a little further grumbling, and they went on.

 it was the porters who first baulked. Zouga never knew how they

 guessed, perhaps old Karanga had spoken of the Umlirno around the camp

 fire, or perhaps it was part of their tribal lore, although the

 gunbearers and most of the porters were from the Zambezi many hundreds

 of miles to the north. Yet Zouga had learned enough of Africa by now to

 recognize the strange, almost telepathic knowledge of far events and

 places. Whatever it was, and however they had acquired forewarning,

 there were thorns in the porters" feet for the first time in months.

 At first Zouga was angry, and would have lived up to his nickname of

 "Bakelal, the Fist, but then he realized that their reluctance to

 continue towards the range of bald hills that showed above the horizon

 was confirmation that he was on a hot scent and close to his goal.

 In camp that night, he drew Jan Cheroot aside and, speaking in English,

 explained what he was seeking and where. He was unprepared for the

 sickly expression that slowly spread over Jan Cheroot's wizened yellow

 features. Nie wat! Ik lol me met daai goed nieP The little Hottentot

 was driven in his superstitious terror to fall back on the bastard Cape

 Dutch. "No what! I don't mess around with that sort of thing, he

 repeated in English, and Zouga smiled tauntingly across the camp fire at

 him. Sergeant Cheroot, I have seen you run, with a bare backside, right

 up to a wounded bull elephant, and wave your hat to turn him when he

 chargedElephants, said Jan Cheroot without returning the smile, "is one

 thing. Witches is another thing Then he perked up and twinkled like a

 mischievous gnome. Somebody must stay with the porters or they'll steal

 our traps and run for home."

 Zouga left them camped near a muddy little waterhole, within an hour's

 match of the northernmost granite kopje. At the water-hole he filled

 the big enamelled water bottle, and wet its thick covering of felt to

 keep the contents cool, slung a freshly charged powder sack on one hip

 and a food bag on the other, and, with the heavy smooth-bore elephant

 gun over his shoulder set out alone while the shadows were still long on

 the earth, and the grass wet with the dew.

 The hills ahead of him were rounded domes of pearly grey granite, smooth

 as a bald man's pate and completely free of vegetation. As he trudged

 towards them across the lightly forested plain, his spirit quailed at

 the task ahead of him.

 With each step the hills seemed to rise higher and steeper, the valleys

 between them deeper and more sheer, the thorny bush that choked the

 gorges and ravines more dense.

 It could take months to search all of this broken wilderness, and he did

 not, have a guide as his father had had. Yet, in the end, it was so

 easy that he was irritated with his own lack of foresight.

 His father had written in the journals "Even Mzilikazi, that sanguine

 tyrant, sends gifts for her oracle."

 He struck the well-defined road, leading out of the west, broad enough

 for two men to walk along it, and aimed directly into the maze of

 smooth, granite hills. It could only be the road used by the emissaries

 of the Matabele king.

 it led Zouga up the first gentle slope of ground, and then turned

 abruptly into one of the gorges between peaks. The path narrowed, and

 jinked between huge round granite boulders, the bush so thick on each

 side that he had to duck below the thorny branches that interlinked to

 form a gloomy tunnel overhead.

 The valley was so deep that the sunlight did not penetrate to the floor,

 but the heat was thrown out by the granite as though it had been baked

 in an open fire, and the sweat soaked Zouga's shirt and slid in cool,

 tickling drops down his flanks. The bush thinned and the valley

 narrowed, and then pinched out into a narrow neck between the converging

 rock walls. It was a natural gateway where a few good spearsmen could

 have held a regiment. On a ledge high above was a small thatched watch

 hut, and beside it an idle blue tendril of smoke rising from a watchfire

 into the still hot air. But if there had been a guard he had deserted

 his post at Zouga's approach.

 Zouga grounded the butt of his elephant gun, and leaned upon it to rest

 from the climb and at the same time surreptitiously to search the cliffs

 above him for a hidden enemy, or for the spot from which one could send

 the familiar boulders bounding and clanging down upon him.

 The gorge was silent, hot and deserted. There was not even the

 chattering of birds or the murmur of insects in the undergrowth. The

 silence was more oppressive than the heat, and Zouga threw back his head

 and hallooed up at the deserted watch-hut.

 The echoes, boomed grotesquely back and forth across the gorge, and then

 descended through confused whispers to the same foreboding silence. The

 last white man to pass this way was the Sword of God, in person, intent

 on decapitating the oracle, Zouga thought bitterly. He could not expect

 a hero's welcome.

 He shouldered the gun again and went into the natural granite gateway,

 his instinct telling him that the bold approach was the only one open to

 him. The narrow passageway was floored with crunching grey sand, full

 of mica chips that sparkled like diamonds even in the subdued light. The

 passage curved gently until he could see neither the entrance behind him

 nor the end of it. He wanted to hurry, for this was like a cage, or a

 trap, but he controlled his feet and showed neither fear nor indecision

 in his tread.

 Around the curve the passageway fanned open, and from one wall a small

 freshet rippled down the granite cliff, spilled with a tiny liquid

 gurgle into a natural basin of rock and then overflowed to run down into

 the hidden valley beyond. Zouga came out of the natural gateway and

 paused again to stare about him. It was a pleasant valley, probably a

 mile long and half as wide. The rivulet watered it, and the grass was

 cool green.

 In the centre of the valley was a huddle of neatly thatched huts, around

 which scratched a few scrawny fowls. He went down to them. The huts

 were all deserted, although there was everywhere evidence of very recent

 occupation, even the porridge in the cooking pot was still hot.

 Three of the largest huts were crammed with treasures, leather bags of

 salt, tools and weapons of iron, ingots of smelted red copper, a pile of

 small ivory tusks, and Zouga guessed that these were the tributes and

 gifts sent by petitioners and supplicants to the oracle. Payments made

 for her intercession with the rain gods, fees for a spell cast upon an

 enemy, or to soften a coquette's heart.

 The fact that these treasures were left unguarded was proof of the

 Umlimo's power, and her own belief in that power. However, if Fuller

 Ballantyne's journal was the truth "the foul and midnight hag" as he

 referred to her was long ago dead, and her severed skull crunched by the

 hyenas or bleaching somewhere in the hot African sun.

 Zouga stooped out through the low entrance of the last hut, into the

 sunlight once more. He called again, but again there was no answer.

 There were people here, many of them, but to make contact with them, and

 then to learn from them the location of the "burial place of the kings"

 was going to be more difficult than he expected.

 Leaning on the long gun he turned his attention to the steep side of the

 valley, and again it was the pathway that caught his eye and led it to

 the entrance of the cave.

 For the path continued beyond the village, running down the centre of

 the valley and climbed the far slope of the valley, then came to an

 abrupt end against the granite cliff. The mouth of the cave was low and

 wide, a narrow horizontal gash in the base of the cliff like a toad's

 mouth and the path led directly into it.

 Zouga climbed the gentle slope to the cave entrance.

 He had left his food bag and water bottle at the village, and, lightly

 burdened, he strode upwards, tall and lithe, his beard sparkling like

 gold thread in the sunlight, so that any hidden watcher could not have

 doubted that this was a chieftain and warrior to treat with respect.

 He reached the cave entrance and checked, not from fatigue, for the

 climb had not taxed him, but merely to take his bearings. The cave

 entrance was a hundred paces or so wide, and the roof so low that he

 could reach up and touch the rough rock.

 There was a guard wall built to close off the opening, a wall of dressed

 granite blocks, fitted so closely that it would have been impossible to

 drive a knife blade between the joints, clearly the work of skilled

 masons, but done long ago for in places the wall had tumbled, the blocks

 piled upon each other in disarray.

 The path led into one of these gaps, and disappeared into the gloom

 beyond. It was a most unwelcoming entrance. Going in he would have the

 light at his back, and his eyes would be unaccustomed to the poor light,

 there would be many places where a man could wait with spear or axe.

 Zouga felt his first ardour cooling as he peered into that forbidding

 opening, and he called again in the Matabele language. I come in peace!

 " He was answered almost immediately, in a childish piping voice

 speaking the same language, close behind his shoulder, so close that his

 heart tripped, and he whirled. White is the colour of mourning and

 death, piped the voice, and Zouga looked about him in confusion. There

 was no child, no human, no animal even, the valley behind him was

 deserted, silent. The voice had emanated from the very air.

 Zouga felt his mouth drying, and the skin on his forearms and at the

 base of his skull crawled with the loathsome little insects of fear, and

 while he stared another voice screeched from the cliff above him. White

 is the colour of war.

 " It was the voice of an old woman, a very old woman, quavering and

 shrill. Zouga's heart jumped again, and then raced as he looked up. The

 cliff face was bare and smooth. His heart was fluttering against his

 ribs like a trapped bird, and his breath rasped and sawed in his throat.

 White is the colour of slavery, sang a young girl's voice, filling the

 air about his head, having no direction and no substance, sweet and

 liquid as the burble of running water. She spoke in the voices of

 Belial and Beelzebub, the hideous voices of Azazel and Behar, all

 Satan's myriad alter-egos, " his father had written, and Zouga felt the

 slow leaden spread of superstitious terror weighing down his legs.

 Another voice, roaring like a bull, boomed from the mouth of the cave.

 "The white eagle has cast down the stone falcons."

 He took a long slow breath, to bring his mutinous body under control,

 and he cast his mind back deliberately to a childhood memory. Brighton

 pier on August bank holiday, the small boy clutching his Uncle William's

 hand and staring up in wonder at the magician on the stage who made a

 doll come to life and speak in a quaint piping voice, answering the

 voice from the box too small to contain even a rabbit. The memory

 steadied him, and he laughed. It was a clear firm laugh, surprising

 himself even. Keep your tricks for the children, Umlimo. I come in

 peace to speak with you as a man."

 There was no reply, though he thought he caught the silken whisper of

 bare feet on stone, coming from the darkness beyond the turned stone

 wall. See me, Umlirno! I lay aside my weapons."

 He unslung the powder bag and dropped it at his feet, and then he laid

 the elephant gun across it and holding his empty hands before him

 advanced slowly into the cave.

 As he reached the step in the wall, there was the crackling spitting

 snarl of an angry leopard from the shadows just ahead of him. It was a

 terrible sound, fierce and real, but Zouga had himself in hand now. He

 did not miss a pace but stooped under the sill through the gap, and

 straightened on the far side.

 He waited for a minute while his eyes adjusted, and he could make out

 shapes and planes in the gloom.

 There were no other voices or animal sounds. There was a faint source

 of light somewhere ahead of him in the depths of the cave, and he could

 now make out a way among St. the scree and fallen rock that choked the

 cave, in some places as high as the low roof.

 Zouga began to pick his way carefully forward. The light grew stronger,

 and Zouga realized that it was a single beam of sunlight, shining

 through a narrow crack in the roof.

 Looking up, he stumbled and put out a hand to save himself. it was not

 rock that he touched but something sticklike that moved beneath his

 touch. There was a rattle, and a loose dry rush of debris. Zouga

 caught his balance and glanced down. A disembodied human skull gaped up

 at him from empty black eye sockets, the cheekbones still covered with a

 parchment of dried skin.

 With a jolting little shock Zouga realized that what he had taken for

 loose scree and rock was instead piles of human remains, dried and

 desiccated corpses, lying in mounds and heaps, choking the passages and

 deepest recesses of the cave, here and there a single body, crouched or

 sprawled alone, bone shining dully from gaps in its covering of dark

 dried skin or through the rotting leather garments. That reeking

 charnel house, Fuller Ballantyne had called it.

 Instinctively Zouga wiped the hand that had touched the long-dead

 skeleton, and then went on towards the light. There was the smell of

 smoke now, and of human presence, and another sweet mousy odour that was

 hauntingly familiar but which Zouga could not place at that moment. The

 floor of the cave sloped downwards under his feet, and he turned a rocky

 shoulder and looked down into a small natural amphitheatre, with a floor

 of smooth granite.

 In the centre of the floor burned a low fire of some aromatic wood, the

 smoke spiced the air and rose in a slow spiral towards the crack in the

 rocky roof, clouding the beam of sunlight with milky blue. There seemed

 to be other fingers of the cave leading further into the hillside, like

 the adits of a mine shaft, but Zouga's attention was focused on the

 figure that sat across the fire from him.

 Zouga went slowly down on to the floor of the stone amphitheatre without

 taking his eyes from the figure. That foul and midnight hag, his father

 had called the Umlimo but this was no hag. She was young, in full

 physical prime, and as she knelt facing him Zouga realized that he had

 seldom seen such a fine-looking woman, certainly not in India or Africa,

 and very seldom, if ever, in the northern lands.

 She had a long regal neck on which her head balanced like a black lily

 on its stern . Her features were Egyptian, with a straight fine nose

 and huge dark eyes above high moulded cheekbones. Her teeth were small

 and perfect, her lips chiselled like the flutes of a pink seashell.

 She was naked, her body slim, her limbs long and fine, her hands and

 feet narrow and delicately shaped with tapered fingers and pate pink

 palms. Her small breasts rode high and were perfectly round, her waist

 narrow but flaring into tight hard buttocks and hips like the curve of a

 Venetian vase. Her sex was a wide triangle, deeply cleft, the inner

 lips bursting out unashamedly, like the wings of a dark exotic butterfly

 emerging from its woolly chrysalis.

 She was watching him with those huge dark eyes, and when he stopped

 across the fire from her, she made a slow gracious gesture with those

 delicately long fingers.

 Obediently Zouga squatted down opposite her and waited.

 The woman took up one of the calabash gourds from the array beside her,

 holding it between the palms of her hands and poured from it into a

 shallow earthen bowl.

 It was milk. She set the calabash aside, and Zouga expected her to

 offer him the bowl, but she did not. She continued to watch him

 inscrutably. I come from the north, Zouga said at last. Then call me

 Bakela."

 Your sire slew the one before me, said the woman.

 Her voice was compelling, for although the fluted lips barely moved, it

 was thrown with the power and timbre of the skilled ventriloquist. The

 sound of it seemed to quiver in the air long after she finished speaking

 and he knew now with certainty who had spoken in the voice of child and

 maid, of warrior and wild animal. He was a sick man, Zouga replied, not

 questioning the source of her knowledge. Not querying how she had known

 that he was the son of the father.

 Her words explained much to Zouga, and it was logical that the Urnlimo

 was a hereditary duty, the office of high priestess being passed on down

 the years. This magnificent woman was the latest bearer of the title.

 My father was driven mad by the sickness in his blood. He did not know

 what he did, Zouga explained. It was part of the prophecy. " The

 Umlimo's statement shimmered against the cave walls, but she did not

 stir while the silence spun out over many minutes. These, Zouga spoke

 at last, indicating the dusty, crumbling piles of dead, "who were they,

 and how did they die? "They are the people of the Rozwi, " said the

 woman, and they died by fire and smoke."

 Who laid the fire? " Zouga persisted. The black bull from the south.

 The Angoni."

 Zouga was silent again imagining the tribe fleeing here, to their holy

 place, their refuge, the women carrying the children, running like

 driven game ahead of the beaters, looking back over their shoulders for

 a glimpse of the waving tufts on the crowns of the warshields and the

 plumed headdresses of the Angoni arnadoda.

 He imagined them lying here in the darkness listening to the ring of

 axes and shouts of the besieging warriors as they cut the timber and

 piled it in the mouth of the cave, and then the crackle of the flames as

 they put fire to it and the first choking acrid clouds of smoke boiled

 into the cave.

 He could hear again in his imagination the screams and cries of the

 choking, dying victims, and the shouts and the laughter of the men

 beyond the flaming, smoking barricade of timber. That too was part of

 the prophecy, " said the Umlirno and was silent. In the silence there

 was a soft rustling sound like a leaf blown by the breeze across the

 tiles at midnight, and Zouga's eyes turned towards the sound.

 A dark thing flowed out of the shadows at the back of the cave, like a

 trickle of spilt blood, black in the gloom but catching the firelight in

 pinpricks of reflected light.

 It rustled softly across the stone floor, and Zouga felt his skin crawl

 and his nostrils flare at the sweetish mousy odour which he had noticed

 before, but which he recognized now.

 It was the smell of snake.

 Zouga stared at it, frozen with fascinated horror, for the reptile was

 as thick as his wrist and the full length of it was lost in the recesses

 of the cave. The head slid into the circle of orange firelight. The

 scales glittered with a marble lustre, the lidless eyes fixed Zouga with

 an unblinking stare and from the slyly grinning lipless mouth the silken

 black tongue vibrated as it tasted his scent upon the air. Sweet

 Christ! Zouga whispered hoarsely and dropped his hand to the hilt of

 his hunting-knife on his belt, but the Urnlimo did not move.

 The snake lifted its head from the stone and dipped it over the bowl of

 milk. It began to drink.

 It was a mamba, a black mamba, the most venomous of all the reptiles,

 the death it could inflict was swift but agonizing beyond all nightmares

 of pain. Zouga had not believed that a mamba could grow to such

 dimensions, for as he watched it drink half its length was still lost in

 the shadows.

 After a minute the monstrous reptile lifted its head from the bowl and

 turned towards the Umlirno, it began to slide forward, the muscles under

 the glittering scales convulsing in little waves that came running down

 its length towards the broad spatulate head.

 It touched the woman's bare knee with the flickering black tongue,

 seeming to use the tongue like a blind man uses his cane to grope its

 way along her thigh, licking briefly at the lips of her bulging sex, and

 then lifting itself up over her belly, over her breasts, still licking

 at her smoothly oiled skin, it rose up around her neck and then slid

 down over the other shoulder until it came to rest at last suspended

 around her neck, the head reaching out the length of a man's arm ahead

 of her at the level of her breasts; swaying slightly, it fixed Zouga

 once more with that cold ophidian stare.

 Zouga licked his lips, and relaxed his grip on the hilt of the knife.

 I have come to seek wisdom, he said hoarsely. I know what you seek, "

 replied the Urnlirno. "But you will find more than you seek. "Who will

 lead me? "Follow the little seeker of sweetness in the treetops. "I do

 not understand. " Zouga frowned, still watching the huge snake, and the

 Umlirno did not reply. Her silence was clearly an invitation to ponder

 the reply, and Zouga did so in silence, but found no explanation. He

 memorized the words, and would have asked another question but there was

 a silken rush out of the darkness near him, and he started half to his

 feet as a second snake slid swiftly past him.

 It was another mamba, but a smaller snake, not much thicker than his

 thumb, and as long as twice the stretch of his arms. Half its length

 was raised arrow-straight in the air, and it sailed on its tail up to

 the kneeling woman with her grotesque living necklace.

 The woman did not move, and the smaller snake stood before her, swaying

 gently from side to side, lowering itself gradually until it touched

 tongue to darting black tongue with the thick reptile around her neck.

 Then it slid forward and began to roll itself around the body of the

 other snake, throwing turn after turn like a sailor lashing a sheet

 about a mast, and each time it rolled, it showed its soft white

 pulsating underbelly with the narrow scales reaching from flank to

 flank.

 Neither the woman nor the bigger snake moved, nor removed their

 steadfast gaze from Zouga's fascinated pale face. The thinner

 lighter-colonred body of the second snake began a slow rhythmical and

 sensual movement, expanding and contracting about the thicker and darker

 body of the other and Zouga realized that they were a mating pair.

 Two-thirds of the way down the underbelly of the male were the elongated

 scales that guarded the genital sac. As the male's excitement mounted

 so the scales gaped apart and the penis began to extrude. It was the

 colour and shape of the bloom of a night-flowering cactus, a pale lilac

 belled flower that gleamed like wet satin.

 insistently the male caressed the thick, dark body, and gradually his

 ardourlwas rewarded. The female rolled a portion of her own length, the

 white belly throbbing softly in acquiescence, exposing the scaled

 genital purse.

 With a long shuddering movement the male slid his length down hers,

 white belly pressed to belly, and the swollen lilac flower prised open

 the female sexual purse, distorting the lips. The female mamba opened

 her mouth wide, and her throat was a lovely buttercup yellow. In her

 top jaw the small bony needles of her fangs were erect, each tipped with

 a pearly drop of venom, and she emitted a low sibilant hiss of ecstasy

 or pain as the male locked his penis deeply into her.

 Zouga found he was sweating. A droplet slid down from his temple into

 his beard. The bizarre courtship and copulation had taken only minutes

 during which neither he nor the Umlimo had moved, but now she spoke. The

 white eagle has stooped on the stone falcons, and cast them to earth She

 paused. "Now the eagle shall lift them up again and they will fly

 afar."

 Zouga leaned forward, listening intently, There shall be no peace in the

 kingdoms of the Mambos or the Monomatapa until they return. For the

 white eagle will war with the black bull until the stone falcons return

 to roost."

 While she spoke, the slow convulsing copulation of those inter-locked

 bodies continued, giving to her words an obscene and evil weight.

 Generation will war with generation, the eaglet will strive against the

 bull calf, white against black, and black against black, until the

 falcons return. Until the falcons return."

 The Umlirno raised her narrow pink-palmed hands, and lifted the garland

 of intertwined serpents from off her own neck. She laid them gently on

 the stone floor of the cave and with a single flowing movement, she

 stood erect, and the firelight glinted upon her oiled satin body. When

 the falcons return, " she spread her arms, and the round breasts changed

 shape at the movement, when the falcons return, then once again the

 Mambos of Rozwi and the Monomatapa of Karanga will hold sway in the

 land. " She lowered her arms and her breasts sagged weightily. "That

 is the prophecy. That is the whole prophecy, she said, and turned away

 from the fire and, with a gliding walk, moved across the irregular stone

 floor, her back straight and her naked buttocks swaying in stately

 rhythm.

 She disappeared into the dark shadows that shrouded one of the fingers

 of the cave beyond the amphitheatre. Wait! " Zouga called after her,

 scrambling to his feet and starting after her.

 The huge female mamba hissed sharply, like the steam of a boiling

 kettle, and rose up as high as Zouga's head.

 The butter yellow mouth gaped again, and a crest of dark glittering

 scales came angrily erect down the length of her neck.

 Zouga froze, and the snake hissed again and flared a little higher, the

 raised body arching gently into a taut is) shape. Zouga backed off, one

 pace and then another.

 The crest of scales subsided a little. He took another step backwards

 and the tense bow of the serpentine body relaxed, the head lowered a few

 inches. He moved steadily backwards towards the entrance of the cave,

 and before the amphitheatre was obscured by the shoulder of rock he saw

 the huge snake coiled in a knee-high pile of glinting scales still

 locked in sexual congress with her deadly consort.

 The prophecy of the Umlimo, cryptic and unrevealed, stayed with Zouga

 during the long march back to where Jan Cheroot waited with his porters.

 That night, by the firelight, Zouga copied it word for word into his

 journal, and afterwards the sweet smell of snakes hiunted his

 nightmares, and lingered in his nostrils for long days after.

 . . .

 Now the wind turned fickle, sometimes completely still in the enervating

 bush and heat of noon, at other times dancing in the tall swaying vortex

 of the dust devilsacross the plains, lifting leaves and dried blades of

 grass hundreds of feet in the yellow columns of dust, then again it

 gushed in turn from every point of the compass, one minute firm out of

 the north and the next as firmly from out of the south.

 It was impossible to come up with elephant while the wind played so

 loosely. Often when the spoor was hot and true, and they had already

 laid aside their heavy traps and stripped down to light running order,

 Zouga would feel the cool touch of the breeze upon the back of his

 sweating neck and almost immediately afterwards hear the alarm squeal of

 an elephant ahead of them in the forest, and after that first alert, it

 was impossible to close with the herd, for they went into that long

 sloping gait that they could keep up for mile upon mile, hour upon hour,

 day upon night, that would kill a man who tried to match it for more

 than a few miles.

 Thus they killed no elephant in the days following Zouga's meeting with

 the Umlimo, and once, when they had a good spoor which would have led

 them back into the north, away from the direction in which Zouga was

 convinced lay his quest, it was Zouga himself who called off the hunt.

 Jan Cheroot muttered bitterly for the rest of that day and the next

 while they made those seemingly aimless casts, eastward and then

 westward again, through the unmarked and uncharted wilderness.

 Each day now the heat became fiercer, for the suicide month that ushers

 in the rains was upon them. Not even Zouga could march during the hours

 before and after noon. They would find the best shade and throw

 themselves down under it, sweating out the worst of the heat, trying to

 sleep when the buffalo flies would let them, but it was an effort to

 speak, an effort to wipe away the sweat that welled up on their bodies,

 and dried in white crystals on their skin and clothing. The salt rotted

 the fabric of Zouga's shirt and breeches so they tore like paper at the

 first touch of thorn or rock, and Zouga was gradually reduced to a

 beggar's rags, patched and stitched until little of the original

 material remained.

 His boots had been resoled more than once with the raw-hide peeled from

 the inner surface of an elephant's ear, and his belt and webbing, the

 sling of his elephant gun renewed with uncured buffalo hide.

 He made a strange gaunt figure, for hard hunting had burned all the fat

 and loose flesh from his body and limbs. His height was enhanced by his

 leanness and the breadth of his bony shoulders tapering sharply to his

 waist. The sun had burned his skin dark, yet bleached his hair and

 beard to white gold. His pale hair hung to his shoulders, and he tied

 it at the back of his neck with a leather thong. He kept his beard and

 whiskers trimmed neatly, using scissors to cut and the heated blade of

 his hunting knife to singe them.

 The sense of well-being from his superb physical condition, together

 with the vaunting anticipation of a successful outcome to his search

 drove him onwards so that the days seemed too short for him and yet when

 the night fell he lay down on the hard earth and slept the deep

 dreamless refreshing sleep of a child, to awake again long before the

 dawn's first glimmerin& impatient for what the new day would bring

 forth.

 However, the time was passing. After each hunt, the powder bags were

 lighter, and though he dug the spent musket balls from the carcasses of

 his victims and recast them, there was always wastage.

 The precious little store of quinine dwindled as swiftly, and the rains

 were coming. No white man could survive the rains without ammunition

 and quinine. Soon he would have to abandon the search for the ruined

 city with its idols decked in gold. He would have to march to beat the

 rains, south and west, five hundred miles or more, if his observations

 were still accurate, to cut his grandfather's road and follow it down to

 the mission station at Kurunian, which was the nearest outpost of

 European civilization.

 The later he left it, the harder would he the march when he made it.

 Hard and fast, stopping for nothing, neither elephant nor gold, until he

 was out into the drier, safer land to the south.

 The thought of leaving depressed him, for he knew with a certain deep

 gut feeling that there was something here, very close to where he now

 lay, and it irked him terribly that the oncoming rains would frustrate

 his search. But then he consoled himself that there would be another

 season, and he knew with the same deep gut certainty that he would

 return. There was something about this land, an insistent, irritating

 sound interrupted his thoughts. He pushed the cap up from his eyes and

 looked into the dense branches of the morula tree under which he lay.

 The harsh cries were repeated, and the drab little bird that uttered

 them hopped agitatedly from branch to branch, flirting its wings and

 tail with a sharp whirring. The bird was the size of a starlin& its

 back dull brown and its chest and belly a muddy yellow.

 Zouga rolled his head and saw that Jan Cheroot was awake also.

 Well? " he asked. I haven't tasted honey since we left Mount Hampden,

 Jan Cheroot answered. "But it's hot, and perhaps the bird is a liar,

 perhaps he will lead us to a snake or a lion. "He only leads you to a

 snake if you cheat him of his share of the comb, Zouga told him. So

 they say, Jan Cheroot nodded and then they were silent, considering the

 effort involved in following the honey guide, and weighing it against

 the possible rewards. The bird will very often lead a badger or a human

 being to a wild hive, and wait for its share of the wax and honey and

 bee grubs. The legend is that if his payment is not made, then next

 time he will lead the man who cheated him to a venomous snake or a

 maneating lion.

 fan Cheroot's sweet tooth got the better of him. He sat up and the

 bird's cries were immediately shriller and more excited. It flashed

 away across the clearing to the next tree, flitting wings and tail

 noisily, calling them impatiently, and when they did not follow it

 darted back to the branches above them and continued its display.  All

 right then, old fellow, Zouga agreed resignedly, and stood up. Jan

 Cheroot took an axe from Matthew and the clay fire pot in its plaited

 bark carrying net. Make camp here, Jan Cheroot told the bearers. "We

 will bring you honey to eat tonight."

 Salt and honey and meat, the three greatest delicacies of the African

 bush. Zouga felt a twinge of guilt at wasting so much of the time that

 remained to him on this frivolous side-journey, but his men had worked

 hard and travelled fast and honey would revive their flagging spirits.

 The little brown and yellow bird danced ahead of them, burring and

 rattling with a sound like a shaken box of Swan Vestas, darting from

 tree to bush, turning immediately it settled to make sure they were

 following.

 For almost an hour it led them along a dry river course, and then it

 turned and crossed a rocky ridge of ground.

 At the saddle, they looked down into a heavily wooded valley bounded by

 the familiar rocky kopjes and hillocks. The bird is teasing us, Jan

 Cheroot grumbled. "How much further will he make us dance? " Zouga

 shifted his elephant gun to the other shoulder. I think you are right,

 he agreed, the valley ahead of him was forbidding, the floor choked with

 tall stands of the razor-edged elephant grass, higher than a man's head.

 It would be even hotter down there, and the dried seeds of the grass had

 arrowheads to them that could work themselves into the skin and cause

 festering little wounds. It comes to me that I am not so fond of honey

 as I thought I was, Jan Cheroot cocked his head at Zouga. We will turn

 back, he agreed. "Let the bird find another dupe. We, will look for a

 fat kudu cow on the way back, meat instead of honey."

 They started back down the ridge and instantly the bird flashed back,

 and renewed its entreaties above their heads. Go and find your friend

 the rattel (honeybadger)! " Jan Cheroot shouted at it, and the bird's

 contortions became frantic. It dropped lower and lower, until it was in

 the branches barely an arm's length above their heads, and its cries

 were irritating and distracting. Voetsakl" Jan Cheroot yelled at it.

 The bird's cries would alert all wild game for miles about to the

 presence of man, and thwart any chance of killing an animal for the

 night's meal. "Voetsak! " He stooped and picked up a stone to shy at

 the bird. "Go away and leave us, little sugar mouth The name stopped

 Zouga in his tracks. Jan Cheroot had used the bastard Dutch, "k1em

 Sulker bekkie', and now he drew back his right arm to hurl the stone.

 Zouga caught his wrist. "Little sugar mouth, he repeated, and the

 Umlimo's voice rang in his ears, that strange shimmering tone that he

 had memorized, "the seeker of sweetness in the treetops."

 wait, he told Jan Cheroot, "Do not throw It was ridiculous, of course it

 was. He would not make himself ludicrous by repeating the Unihmols

 words -to Jan Cheroot. He hesitated a moment. "We have come so far,

 already, he told the Hottentot reasonably, "and the bird is so excited

 that the hive cannot be far, It could be another two hours, Jan Cheroot

 growled, but lowered his throwing arm. "That makes six hours back to

 camp. "You don't want to grow fat and idle, Zouga said. Jan Cheroot

 was lean as a whippet that had been coursing rabbit all season, and he

 had walked and run a hundred miles in the last two days. He looked

 pained at the accusation, but Zouga went on remorselessly, shaking his

 head in mock sympathy. "But when a man grows older, he cannot march as

 far or as fast, and he is slower with the women too."

 Jan Cheroot dropped the stone, and went back up the ridge at a furious

 pace with the bird flitting and screeching ecstatically ahead of him.

 Zouga followed him, smiling at the little man and at his own folly in

 placing any store on the words of that naked witch. Still the honey

 would be welcome, he consoled himself.

 An hour later, Zouga was convinced that Jan Cheroot had been correct.

 The bird was a liar, and they were wasting what remained of the day, but

 there would be no turning Jan Cheroot now, he had been deeply insulted

 by Zouga's gibes.

 They had crossed the valley, blundering through the stands of elephant

 grass, for the bird did not pick one of the game trails to follow. It

 moved on a direct line, and as they followed, the grass seeds showered

 upon them, working their way down the backs of their shirts and the

 sweat of their bodies activated them, as the first rains should have

 done, so that they began to worm like living things, trying to pierce

 the skin.

 The view ahead was cut off by the tall grass, and they reached the far

 side of the valley with little prior warning. Suddenly there was a

 smooth rock cliff looming over them, almost obscured by the tall leafy

 trees of the forest, and by its own covering of lianas and dense

 climbing plants.

 It was not a very high prominence, perhaps forty feet, but it was sheer.

 They stopped below it and peered upwards.

 The wild beehive was almost at the top of the cliff.

 The honey guide fluttered triumphantly above it, twisting its head to

 look down at them with a single bright bead like eye.

 The rock below the opening to the hive was stained with a dark dribble

 of old melted wax and the detritus of the hive, but it was almost

 entirely masked by a lovely creeping plant. The stem of the plant

 climbed the cliff, branching and twisting and doubling on itself, its

 pale leaves a cool green, but its flowers a lovely shade of cornflower

 blue.

 The bees leaving and returning to the hive caught the sunlight like

 golden dust-motes, but their trajectory was swift and straight through

 the hot still air. Well, Sergeant, there is your hive, Zouga said. "The

 bird did not lie. " He felt a deep sense of disappointment.

 Although he had told himself to place no store on the Umlirno's words,

 yet there had been a sneaking anticipation, the forlorn hope persisting

 against common sense, and now that sense had prevailed, there was this

 regret.

 Zouga leaned his gun against the hole of a tree, shed his traps, and

 threw himself down to rest and watch Jan Cheroot making his preparation

 to rob the hive. Jan Cheroot cut a square of bark from a mukusi tree,

 and rolled it into a smoking tube. He filled it with wood pulp scraped

 from a dead tree trunk.

 Then he swung the clay fire pot on its carrying sling of bark rope,

 fanning it until the smouldering moss and wood chips that it contained

 burst into flame. He transferred fire to the smoking tube, and when it

 had fairly taken he hooked his axe over one shoulder and began climbing

 the interwoven branches of the flowering creeper up the sheer cliff.

 The first of the defender bees buzzed fiercely about his head when he

 was a few feet from the opening to the hive, and pausing, Jan Cheroot

 lifted the bark tube to his mouth and blew a gentle stream of blue smoke

 towards his attacker. The smoke drove the insect away, and he resumed

 the climb.

 Lying under the mukusi tree, idly swatting at the buffalo flies, picking

 at the grass under his shirt, and harbouring his disappointment, Zouga

 watched the Hottentot work.

 Jan Cheroot reached the hive, and blew another stream of smoke over the

 hole in the cliff, stupefying the bees which had now formed a swirling

 defensive cloud about him. One of them darted in, despite the smoke,

 and stung him in the soft of the neck. Jan Cheroot swore bitterly, but

 he did not make the mistake of slapping at the attacker, or of trying to

 scratch away the barbed sting lodged in his flesh. He worked on calmly,

 unhurriedly, with the smoke tube.

 Minutes later, the hive was sufficiently smoke-drugged to allow him to

 begin cutting away the screen of flowering branches that hid the

 entrance, and he balanced on a fork of the creeper, using both hands to

 swing the axe, perched like a little yellow monkey forty feet above

 where Zouga lay. What the thunder. . , "He stopped after a dozen axe

 blows, and stared at the cliff face that he had exposed. Master, there

 is devil's work here."

 The tone of his voice alerted Zouga, and he scrambled to his feet. What

 is it? " Jan Cheroot's body obscured the object of his amazement, and

 impatiently Zouga crossed to the foot of the cliff and climbed hand over

 hand up the serpentine stern of the creeper.

 He reached Jan Cheroot's side and clung to a handhold.

 Look! " Jan Cheroot exhorted him. "Look at that! He pointed at the

 stone face that he had exposed with the axe.

 it took Zouga a few seconds to realize that the entrance to the hive was

 through a geometrically perfect, sculptured aperture, one of a series

 which pierced the cliff face in a broad horizontal band, that seemed to

 extend unbroken in both directions along the cliff face.

 The decorated band was in chiselled stone blocks, arranged in a chevron

 pattern, a lattice work that was without question the work of a skilled

 stonemason.

 The realization jolted Zouga so that he almost missed his hand-hold, and

 immediately afterwards he saw something else that up to that moment had

 been hidden by the dense covering of climbing plants and the thick

 coating of old outpouring wax from the beehive.

 The entire cliff face was formed of perfect blocks of dressed stone,

 small blocks, so neatly fitted that they had appeared on casual

 inspection to be a solid sheet of rock. Zouga and Jan Cheroot were

 suspended near the top of the massive stone wall, forty feet high, so

 thick and long that it had seemed to be a granite hillock.

 It was a monumental work of stonemasonry, to compare with the outer wall

 of Solomon's temple, a vast fortification which could only be the

 periphery of a city, a city forgotten and overgrown with trees and

 creepers, undisturbed over the ages. Nie wat! " whispered Jan Cheroot.

 "This is a devil's place, this is the place of Satan himself. Let us

 go, master, he pleaded. "Let us go far away, and very fast."

 The circuit of the walls took Zouga almost an hour, for the growth was

 thicker along the northern curve of the stone rampart. The wall seemed

 to be laid out in an almost perfect circle, and without openings. At

 two or three likely points, Zouga hacked away the growth and searched

 the foot of the wall, looking for a postern or a gateway. He found

 none.

 The decorative chevron pattern did not seem to extend around the entire

 circumference, but covered the eastern quadrant. Zouga wondered at the

 significance of that.

 The immediate explanation seemed to be that the decoration would face

 the rising sun. It seemed likely that the peoples who had built this

 massive edifice had been sunworshippers.

 Jan Cheroot trailed him reluctantly, prophesying the wrath of the devils

 and hobgoblins who guarded this evil place, while Zouga. hacked and

 chopped his way around the walls, completely oblivious of his advice.

 There must be a gateway, he grumbled. "How did they get in and out? "

 Devils got wings, Jan Cheroot pointed out broodingly. They fly. Me, I

 wish I had wings also, to fly the hell away from here."

 They came again to the point in the wall where they had discovered the

 beehive, and by then it was almost dark, the sun had disappeared below

 the treetops. We'll search for the gate in the morning, " Zouga

 decided. We are not going to sleep here? " Jan Cheroot demanded,

 horrified.

 Zouga ignored the protest. "Honey for supper, he suggested mildly, and

 for once he did not sleep that deep hunter's sleep, but lay under his

 single blanket, his imagination filled with golden idols and treasure

 houses built out of massive worked stone blocks.

 Zouga resumed the search again when it was light enough to see the top

 of the wall silhouetted against the misty pearl sky of dawn. The

 previous day he had been blinded by his own eagerness and careless in

 his haste.

 He had missed the area, only a few yards from where they were camped,

 where the creepers covering the wall had once been hacked away and then

 had regrown, even more thickly than before. Now, however, a lopped

 branch beckoned him like a finger, the clean cut unmistakably made by an

 axe.

 Jan Cheroot, Zouga called him from the cooking fire. Clean out this

 rubbish. " Zouga showed him the dense secondary growth, and Jan Cheroot

 sauntered away to fetch his axe.

 While he waited for him to return, Zouga decided that only one person

 could possibly be responsible for these old overgrown and healed cut

 marks on the stems of the vine. Once again Fuller Ballantyne had been

 his guide, yet this time he did not resent it so fiercely; the

 experience of treading squarely in his father's footsteps was no longer

 new, and he had his excitement and anticipation to lessen the sting of

 it.

 Hurry, he called to Jan Cheroot. It's been here a thousand years.

 It's not going to fall down now, Jan Cheroot answered saucily, and spat

 on his palms before hefting the axe.

 The little Hottentot was a great deal happier this morning. He had

 survived a night under the wall, without being assailed by even a single

 hobgoblin, and Zouga had passed the unsleeping hours in describing to

 him the treasures that might lie beyond that wall. Jan Cheroot's

 temporarily paralysed avarice had revived sufficiently to imagine

 himself with his pants filled with gold coin seated in his favourite

 tavern. on the Cape Town dockside with a dozen butter yellow Hottentot

 beauties crowding close to him to hear the story, while the bartender

 prised the wax seal off another bottle of Cape Smoke. Now his

 enthusiasm almost matched that of Zouga himself.

 He worked swiftly and when Zouga stooped and peered into the passage

 that he had cut through the dense secondary growth that had sprung up

 behind Fuller Ballantyne's axe, he saw the outline of the curved portals

 of the gateway, and the chiselled granite steps that led up to the

 narrow opening.

 The steps had been worn into a smooth dish shape by the passage of

 thousands of feet over the centuries, but the gateway Had been

 deliberately blocked with stone and rubble, not the neat stonework of

 the main wall, but a careless and hurried attempt to seal the entrance,

 probably in the face of an advancing enemy, Zouga thought.

 Somebody, probably Fuller Ballantyne, had pulled down this barrier

 sufficiently to enter. Zouga followed his tracks, the loose stone

 rolling under foot, he squeezed his way through the gateway, and found

 that it turned abruptly to the left, into a narrow vegetation-choked

 passage, between high walls open to the sky.

 his disappointment was intense. He had hoped that once he forced the

 gateway, all the city and its wonders and treasures would lie before

 him. instead there were many hours of hard sweating labour facing him.

 It had been years, four years at least, since Fuller Ballantyne had

 entered through this gate and passageway, and it was as though he had

 never been.

 Where the stonework had collapsed, Zouga clambered over it gingerly, the

 thought and dread of snakes was very much with him since the cave of the

 Umlimo. The long narrow passage, obviously constructed as a defensive

 measure against intruders, followed the curve of the main wall until

 abruptly it opened into a clear space, again choked with dense green

 thorny growth, and dominated by a tall cylindrical tower of

 lichen-covered granite blocks. The tower was immense, seeming in

 Zouga's excitement to reach to the very clouds.

 Zouga started across the intervening courtyard, hacking impatiently at

 the bush and creepers, and halfway across he saw that there was a second

 tower, an identical twin to the first that had until that moment

 obscured it.

 Now his heart was pounding fiercely against his ribs, not from the

 exertion of swinging the axe, but with an intuitive belief that the

 towers were the centre of this strange ancient city, and that they held

 the key to the mystery.

 He stumbled in his haste, and went down on his knees, tearing another

 long rent in his breeches and abrading a strip of skin from his shin, so

 he swore in his impatience and his pain. He had lost the axe but when

 he groped for it in the tangled roots and interwoven branches, he found

 it almost immediately, and at the same time, uncovered the stone that

 had tripped him.

 It was not the granite of which the walls and tower had been

 constructed. That fact caught his attention, and still on his knees he

 used the axe to clear the bush around the stone. He felt his nerves

 thrill as he realized that it was a work of sculpture.

 Jan Cheroot had come up behind him, and now he knelt also and tore at

 the plants with his bare hands then the two of them rocked back on their

 heels, and still squatting examined the statue that they had uncovered.

 It was not large, probably weighed less than a hundredweight. It was

 carved in satiny, greenish soapstone, sitting on that familiar

 ornamental plinth, the simple pattern of triangles, like a row of

 shark's teeth.

 The head was smashed off the statue, seemingly by a blow from a sledge

 hammer, but more likely from a rock used as a hammer. The body of the

 statue was still intact, the body of the raptor, with the folded pointed

 wings of a bird of prey, crouching on the point of flight.

 Zouga slipped his hand into the opening of his shirt and drew out the

 little ivory charm on its leather thong, that he had taken from the body

 of the Mashona chieftain he had killed at the pass of the elephant road.

 He let it nestle in the palm of his hand, comparing it with the statue.

 Beside him Jan Cheroot murmured, "It is the same bird! "Yes, " Zouga

 agreed softly. "But what does it mean? "

 He dropped the ivory charm back inside his shirt. It is from long ago.

 " Jan Cheroot shrugged. "We will never know. " And dismissing it thus,

 he would have risen to his feet again, but something else caught his

 beady bright eye and he darted forward, his hand pecking at the loose

 earth beside the statue like a greedy hen, and held it up between thumb

 and forefinger to catch the slanted morning light.

 It was a perfectly round bead of metal pierced for the string of a

 necklace, a tiny bead only slightlyitly bigger than the head of a wax

 Vesta, and it was irregular in shape, as though beaten out under the

 hammer of a primitive smithy, but the colour was red-yellow, and its

 surface was undulled by either tarnish or corrosion; there is only one

 metal that has that peculiar lustre and sheen.

 Zouga held out his hand for it almost reverently, and it had the weight

 and the warmth of a living thing. Gold! " said Zouga, and beside him

 Jan Cheroot giggled ecstatically, like a young bride at her first kiss.

 Gold, he agreed.

 "Good yellow gold."

 Zouga was always aware of the very limited time left to him, and every

 hour or so as they worked he would lift his head to the sky with the

 sweat streaming down his face and neck, and greasing the flat hard

 muscles of his naked upper body, and always the clouds were taller and

 blacker, the heat more punishing, and the wind sullen as a captive tribe

 on the point of rebellion.

 In the night he would start awake, breaking up through the drugged

 surface of exhausted sleep, to lie and listen to the thunder growling

 below the horizon like a man-killing monster.

 Each dawn he shook his men from their blankets and drove them in a

 suppressed frenzy of impatience to their labour, and when Matthew, the

 gunbearer, refused to rise again after the short rest which Zouga

 allowed them in the hottest hour of the day, Zouga dragged him to his

 feet and hit him once, a short, perfectly timed chopping blow that sent

 him spinning backwards full length into his own excavation. Matthew

 crawled out again with blood dribbling from his chin, and picked up the

 crude sieve of plaited split bamboos with which he was sifting the earth

 from the digging, and began again working over the piles of loose earth

 and rubble.

 Zouga drove himself harder than he drove his small band of temple

 plunderers. He worked shoulder to shoulder with them as they cut out

 all the undergrowth from the courtyard below the twin stone towers,

 exposing the broken cobbles, and piles of loose rubble amongst which lay

 the fallen statues.

 He found six more of the bird carvings virtually undamaged, except for

 minor chips and the attrition of the ages, but there were the fragments

 of others that had been broken with a savagery which could only have

 been deliberate, so that he was uncertain of the original number of

 statues. Zouga spent little time puzzling over them. The loose earth

 and rubble on which they lay was rich ground for his band to pick over,

 though they were handicapped by the lack of tools. Zouga would have

 paid a hundred guineas for a set of good picks and spades and buckets.

 However, they had to make do with sharpened wooden stakes, the tips

 hardened in the fire, to dig out the loose stuff, and Jan Cheroot wove

 baskets of split bamboo, like the flat baskets used by the African women

 to winnow the stamped corn meal, and with these they sieved the fine

 earth after picking over it by hand.

 It was tedious, back-breaking work, and the heat was murderous, but the

 harvest was rich. The gold was in small pieces, mostly in the pierced

 round heads, from which the string had long ago rotted away, but there

 were flakes and flecks of thinly beaten foil, which might once have been

 used to decorate a votive wooden carving, there were coils of fine gold

 wire, and more rarely small ingots of the metal the size and thickness

 of a child's finger.

 Once the green stone birds must have stood in a circle, facing inwards

 like the granite columns of Stonehenge, and the gold had probably formed

 some part of the offerings and sacrifices made to them. Whoever had

 thrown down the statues had scattered and trampled the sacrifice, and

 time had corroded all except that lovely yellow incorruptible metal.

 Within ten days of first hacking away the undergrowth that choked the

 inner courtyard, the temple yard, as Zouga called it, they had gleaned

 over fifty pounds weight of native gold, and the interior of the stone

 courtyard had been gutted, the earth rutted and harrowed as though a

 troop of wild bush pig had rooted it out.

 Then Zouga turned his full attention to the twin towers. He measured

 them around the base, over a hundred paces, and inspected each joint in

 the masonry for a secret opening. There was none, so he built a rickety

 ladder of raw timber and bark rope and risking neck and limb reached the

 top of the tallest tower. From this vantage point he could look down

 into the roofless passageways and courtyards of the city. It was a

 maze, all of it choked with growth, but there was no other part as

 promising as the temple courtyard of the bird statues.

 He turned his attention back to the tower on which he stood. There was

 again no sign of a secret opening, although he searched diligently for

 one. It puzzled him that the ancient architect would have built such a

 solid structure with no apparent use or motive, and the possibility

 occurred to him that it might be a sealed treasure house, built around

 an inner chamber.

 The work of trying to penetrate the massive stonework, daunted even

 Zouga, and Jan Cheroot declared the attempt to be madness. But Zouga

 had exhausted the digging below the tower, and this seemed to be the

 only fruitful area left to him.

 Complaining bitterly, a small team led by Matthew climbed the rickety

 ladder, and under Zouga's supervision began prising loose the small

 blocks from the summit of the tower. However, such was the skill and

 dedication of the original masons that progress in the demolition was

 painfully slow, and there was a long pause between each crash of one

 loose block into the courtyard below and the next. It needed three

 days" unremitting toil to break a jagged aperture through the first

 layer of dressed blocks and to discover that the interior of the tower

 consisted merely of a fill of the same grey granite.

 Standing beside him on the summit of the tower, Jan Cheroot voiced

 Zouga's own disappointment. We are wasting our time.

 It's stone and more stone."

 He spat over the side of the tower and watched the speck of phlegm float

 down into the ransacked courtyard. What we should look for is the place

 the gold came from."

 Zouga. had been so obsessed by his search and plunder of the ruined and

 deserted city that he had paid no thought to the mines which must lie

 somewhere beyond the walls. Now he nodded his head thoughtfully. No

 wonder your mother loved you, he said. "Not only are you beautiful, but

 clever too. JA! Jan Cheroot said smugly. "Everybody tells me that."

 At that moment a fat weighty drop of rain struck Zouga's forehead, and

 ran down into his left eyeball so that his vision blurred. The drop was

 warm as blood, warm as the blood of a man racked by malarial fever. .

 Beyond the high walls there were other ruins, none of such proportions

 or importance as the inner city, however, and all of them so scattered,

 so overgrown and thrown down as to make detailed exploration of them out

 of the question in the time still available to Zouga.

 The kopjes around the city had been fortified, but were deserted, the

 caves empty as the eye-sockets of a long dead skull, smelling of the

 leopards and rock rabbits who were the latest tenants, but Zouga

 concentrated his search on the ancient mine workings which he had

 convinced himself had formed the backbone of this vanished civilization.

 He imagined deep shafts driven into a hillside, and dumps of loose rock

 like the ancient Cornish tin mines, and he scoured the densely wooded

 country for miles in each direction, eagerly checking each irregularity

 of ground, each eminence that could possibly be an abandoned mine dump.

 He left Jan Cheroot to oversee the scratching and sweeping up of the

 last tiny scraps of gold in the temple yard, and all the men profited by

 the new relaxed supervision. They shared views with Jan Cheroot on the

 role of menial work in the life of a warrior and hunter.

 The first spattering of rain had been only a warning of the fury to

 come, and it had barely wet Zouga's shirt through to the skin before

 passing, but it was a warning that Zouga realized he was ignoring at his

 own peril. Yet still the hope of the ancient mine workings with their

 fat golden seams of the precious metal tantalized him, and he spun out

 the days until even Jan Cheroot began to worry. If the rivers spate, we

 will be trapped here, " he brooded beside the camp fire. "Besides we

 have taken all the gold.

 Let us now live to spend it. "One more day, Zouga promised him as he

 settled into his single blanket, and composed himself to sleep. "There

 is a valley just beyond the southern ridge, it will take me only another

 day to search it, the day after tomorrowhe promised sleepily.

 . . . -A Zouga smelled the snake first, the sweet sickening stench of

 it filled his nostrils, so he drew each breath with difficulty, yet

 trying not to gasp or choke lest he called the snake's attention. He

 could not move, he was pinned under an immense dark weight which

 threatened to crush his ribs and the smell of snake suffocated him.

 He could barely turn his head towards the place from which he knew the

 snake would come, and it came flowing sinuously, coil upon thick

 undulating coil. Its head was lifted, its eyes were unblinking and

 glassily fixed in the cold and deadly reptilian stare, the ribbon of its

 tongue flickered in a soft black blur through the icy smile of its thin

 curved lips. Its scales scratched softly across the earth, and they

 glittered with a soft metallic sheen, the colour of the polished gold

 foil that Zouga had gleaned from the temple courtyard.

 Zouga could not move nor cry out, his tongue had swollen with terror to

 fill his mouth and choke him, but the snake slid past him, close enough

 to touch if he had had command of his arms to reach out. It slid on

 into the circle of soft wavering light, and the shadows drew back so the

 birds emerged from the darkness, each on its elevated perch.

 Their eyes were golden and fierce, the cruel yellow curve of their beaks

 echoed by the proud pout of their russet-flecked breasts and the long

 pinions folded across their backs like crossed blades.

 Though Zouga knew they were hunting falcons with belled tresses on their

 legs, yet they were the size of golden eagles. They were decked with

 garlands of flowers, crimson blossoms of King Chaka fire, and the snowy

 virginal white of arum lilies. They wore necklaces and chains of

 brightest gold about their arrogant necks, and as the serpent slid into

 the midst of the circle they stirred upon their perches.

 Then as the serpent raised its glittering head with the crest of scales

 erect upon the back of its neck, the falcons burst into thunderous

 flight and the darkness was filled with the roar of their wings and the

 plaintive lament of their wild hunting cries.

 Zouga lifted his hands -to shield his face, and great wings beat all

 about him, as the flock of falcons took flight and the presence of the

 snake was no longer of significance, what was important was the

 departure of the birds. Zouga felt a tremendous sense of doom, of

 personal loss, and he opened his mouth, able to utter again. He shouted

 at the birds to call them back to roost.

 He shouted into the darkness, after the soaring, buffeting thunder of

 the birds" wings and his own shouts and the cries of his servants woke

 him from the coils of the nightmare.

 He woke to find the night was thunderous with the wind of the storm that

 swept down upon the camp. The trees tossed and thrashed their branches

 overhead, showering them with leaves and small twigs. and the rush of

 air was glacially cold. It stripped the thatch from their crudely built

 huts and it scattered ash and live coals from the fire. The coals,

 fanned into new life, were the only source of light, for overhead, the

 stars were obscured by the thick rolling banks of cloud that pressed

 close upon the earth.

 Shouting to each other above the wind, they scrambled to collect their

 scattered equipment. Make sure the powder bags are kept dry, Zouga

 bellowed, naked except for his tattered breeches, and barefooted as he

 groped for his boots. "Sergeant Cheroot, where are you? " The

 Hottentot's reply was lost in the cannon's roar of thunder that drove in

 their eardrums, and the flash of lightning that followed immediately

 scared their eyeballs, and imprinted on Zouga's vision the unforgettable

 picture of Jan Cheroot dancing stark naked on one foot, a red hot coal

 from the scattered fire stuck to the sole of the other, his wild curses

 lost in the drawn-out roll of the thunder and his face contorted like

 that of a gargoyle on the parapet of Notre Dame cathedral. Then the

 darkness fell on them again, like an avalanche, and out of it came the

 rain.

 It came in cutting horizontal sheets like the blade of a harvester's

 scythe, so thick that it filled the air with water so they coughed and

 gasped like drowning men, it came with such hissing force that it stung

 their naked skins as though coarse salt had been fired at them from a

 shotgun barrel, and the cold chilled them to the bone, so that they

 crawled into a forlorn huddle, crowding together for comfort and warmth

 with the sodden fur blankets pulled over their heads, and stinking like

 a pack of wet dogs.

 The cold gloomy dawn found them still huddled from the silver streams of

 falling rain, under the swollen bruised sky that pressed down upon them

 like the belly of a pregnant sow. Scattered and sodden equipment

 floated or was submerged in the ankle-deep flood of water that poured

 through the wind-shattered camp. The lean-to shelters had been wrecked,

 the camp fire was a muddy black puddle of ash, there was no prospect of

 rebuilding it, and with that went any chance of hot food or comfort for

 their stiff cold bodies.

 Zouga had wrapped the powder bags in strips of oilskin, and he and Jan

 Cheroot had held them in their laps, like ailing infants, during the

 night. However, it was impossible to open the bags and check the

 contents for damp, for the rain still teemed down out of the low grey

 sky in long thin silver lances.

 Slipping and sloshing in the muddy footing, Zouga drove his men to make

 up their loads for the outward march, while he made his own final

 preparations. In the middle of the morning they ate a miserable and

 hasty meal of cold millet cakes and the last scraps of smoked buffalo

 meat. Then Zouga stood, with a cloak of halfcured kudu skin draped over

 his head and shoulders, the rain dripping from his beard and plastering

 his patched clothing to his body. Safari! he shouted. "We march! "And

 not too damned soon either, muttered Jan Cheroot, reversing his musket

 on its sling so the barrel pointed at the ground and the rain could not

 rim into the muzzle.

 it was then that the porters discovered the extra burden that Zouga had

 for them. It was lashed to carrying poles of mopani wood with bark

 rope, and protected by a plaited covering of e lant grass. They are not

 going to carry it, Jan Cheroot told him, squeezing the rain from his

 woolly eyebrows with his thumb. "I told you they would refuse. "They'll

 carry it. " Zouga's eyes were cold and green as cut emeralds, and his

 expression was fierce. "They carry it, or they'll stay here with it,

 deadV He had carefully selected the best specimen of the carved stone

 birds, the only one that was completely undamaged and the one on which

 the carving was the most artistically executed, and he had packed and

 prepared it for porterage himself.

 For Zouga the carving was physical proof of the existence of the ancient

 abandoned city, proof that could not be denied when even the most

 cynical critic read his account in far-away London. Zouga guessed that

 the intrinsic value of this relic probably surpassed the equivalent

 weight in pure gold. The value of the artefact was not the most

 important consideration in Zouga's determination to carry the carving

 out to civilization. The stone birds had come to have a special

 superstitious significance to him.

 They had come to symbolize for him the success of his endeavours, and by

 possessing one of them he had in some strange manner taken possession of

 this entire savage and beautiful land. He would return for the others,

 but he must have this single perfect specimen. It was his talisman.

 You and you. " He picked two of his strongest and his usually most

 willing porters, and when they still hesitated, he unslung the heavy

 elephant gun from his shoulder. They saw his expression and knew that

 his intention was serious, deadly serious. Sulkily they began breaking

 down their own loads and distributing them amongst their comrades. At

 least let us leave this other thundering piece of rubbish The rain and

 the cold had affected Jan Cheroot as much as the others, and he

 indicated the tin box that contained Zouga's dress uniform with a hatred

 and contempt usually reserved for animate objects. Zouga did not bother

 to reply, but gestured to Matthew to take it UP. It was noon before the

 bedraggled little column struggled through the long sodden grass that

 choked the valley floor and began to climb the far side, slipping and

 cursing in the mud.

 It rained for five days and five nights, sometimes in thick drumming

 bursts that seemed to fall in solid sheets of water from the sky, at

 other times it was a cold drizzling mist, that swirled gently about them

 as they trudged on in the soft treacherous footing, a fine silver mist

 that blanketed and muted all sound except the eternal dripping of the

 forest and the soft sighing passage of the wind in the upper branches.

 The fever vapours seemed to rise from the very ground, entering their

 lungs with each breath, and in the icy cold mornings they writhed and

 twisted like the wraiths of tormented souls down in the hollows of the

 valleys. The porters were the first to show the symptoms of the

 disease, for the fever was in their bones and the cold rain brought it

 out so they shivered in uncontrollable spasms and their teeth chattered

 in their jaws until it seemed they might crack like porcelain. However,

 they were seasoned to the rigours of the disease and they were still

 able to march.

 The bulky statue in its ungainly packing of grass and bark was borne

 painfully up the rocky ridges and down the other side by half-naked men

 staggering like drunks from the fever boiling in their veins, and when

 they reached the bank of another water course they dropped it gratefully

 and fell in the mud to rest without the will to cover themselves from

 the relentless rain.

 Where there had been dried river-beds, with drifts of white sand shining

 like alpine snowfields in the sun, with quiet pools of still green

 water, and with steep high banks in which the brilliant kingfisher and

 little jewelled bee-eaters burrowed to nest, there were now maddened

 torrents of racing brown water, which brimmed over the high banks and

 carved out the roots of tall trees, toppling them into the flood and

 whisking them away as though they were mere twigs.

 There was no possible means by which a man could cross these racing,

 foaming deluges; the corpse of a drowned buffalo with bloated pink belly

 and its limbs sticking stiffly into the air was borne downstream at the

 speed of a galloping horse, while Zouga stood morosely on the bank, and

 knew that he had left it too late. They were trapped by the spate. We

 will have to follow the river, " he grunted, and wiped his streaming

 face on the sleeve of his sodden hunting jacket. It goes towards the

 west, Jan Cheroot pointed out with morbid relish, and it was not

 necessary for him to expand on the -thought.

 To the west lay the kingdom of Mzilikazi, King of the Matabele, and

 already they must be close to that vaguely defined area that old Tom

 Harkness had marked on his map. The Burnt Land, here Mzilikazi's impis

 kill all travellers.

 "What do you suggest, my ray of golden Hottentot sunshine? " Zouga

 demanded bitterly. "Have you got wings to fly this? " He indicated the

 broad expanse of wild water, where the curled waves stood as stationary

 as carved sculptures as they marked the position of submerged rocks and

 hidden snags. "Or what about gills and fins? " Zouga went on. "Let me

 see you swim, or if you have neither wings nor fins, then surely you

 have good advice for me? "Yes, Jan Cheroot answered as bitterly. "My

 advice is that you listen to good advice when first it is given, and

 second that you drop those in the river. " He indicated the bundled

 statue and the sealed uniform box. Zouga did not wait for the rest of

 it, but turned his back and shouted. Safari! On your feet, all of you!

 We march!

 They worked slowly west and a little south, but too much westward for

 even Zouga's peace of mind, though his route was dictated by the network

 of rivers and flooded valleys.

 On the sixth day the rain relented, and the clouds broke open, revealing

 a sky of deep aquamarine blue and a fierce swollen sun that made their

 clothing steam, and stilled the fever shakes of the porters.

 Even with the accuracy of his chronometer in doubt, Zouga was able to

 observe the meridian passage that local noon and establish his latitude.

 He was not as far south as he had calculated by dead reckoning, so he

 was probably even further west than his suspect calculations of

 longitude suggested. The land of the Mzilikazi is drier, Zouga consoled

 himself, as he wrapped his navigational instruments in their oilskin

 covers, "and I am an Englishman, and the grandson of Tshedi. Not even a

 Matabele would dare deny me passage, despite what old Tom writes. " And

 he had his talisman, the stone bird, to add its protection.

 Resolutely he faced west again, and drove his caravan onwards. There

 was one other misery to add to their sufferings. There was no meat, and

 there had been none since the day they left the abandoned city.

 With the first onslaught of the rains, the great herds of game that had

 been concentrated upon the last few pools and waterholes had been freed

 to scatter widely across the vast land where every ditch and

 irregularity was now at last brimming with fresh sweet water and where

 the baked and sun-scared plains were already blooming green with the

 tender first shoots of new growth.

 in five days" march in the rain, Zouga had seen only one small herd of

 waterbuck, the least palatable of all African game with its rank

 turpentine-scented musk which permeates the flesh. The heavily built

 bull, in his shaggy plum-brown coat led his small troop of hornless

 females at a frantic gallop across Zouga's front with his wide

 lyre-shaped horns cocked high and the perfect white circle over his

 buttocks flashing with each bound.

 He tore through the drizzling rain and dense wild ebony bush not twenty

 paces from Zouga. Zouga threw up the heavy gun and led on his driving

 shoulder.

 Behind him his hungry, exhausted porters yipped like a pack of hunting

 dogs with anticipation, and Zouga held his aim for an instant to make

 deadly certain and then squeezed off the trigger.

 With a sharp crack, the cap exploded under the falling hammer, but there

 was not the long spurt of flame from the muzzle and the great clangour

 of the shot, followed by the heavy thumping impact of the lead ball into

 flesh.

 The gun had misfired and the handsome antelope led his harem away at

 full-gallop, disappearing almost immediately into the bush and rain

 while the dwindling clatter of their hooves mocked Zouga. He swore with

 frustration as he laboriously drew the ball and charge with the

 corkscrew tool fitted to his ramrod, and found that the insidious rain

 had somehow entered the barrel, probably through the nipple and that the

 powder was as wet as though he had dipped it in the raging brown flood

 waters.

 Those few hours of fierce sunlight on the sixth day gave Zouga and Jan

 Cheroot an opportunity to spread the coarse grey contents of their

 powder bags on a flat rock and dry it out so there would be less chance

 of another disastrous misfire, and while they did so the porters let

 drop their packs and limped off to find a dry spot to stretch their

 aching limbs.

 Then too swiftly the sunlight was blotted out once more, and hurriedly

 they scooped the powder back into the pouches and as the fat raindrops

 began to hiss and splat about them they wrapped them in the worn

 oilskins, tucked them under their voluminous leather capes and resumed

 the westward trudge, heads bowed, silent and hungry and cold and

 miserable, Zouga's ears singing with the quinine-buzz, the first

 apparent side-effect of massive doses of the drug taken over long

 periods. The quinine-buzz that can lead to eventual, irreversible

 deafness.

 Despite the heavy daily doses of the bitter powder, the morning arrived

 at last when Zouga. woke with the deep ache in the marrow of his bones,

 the dull weight like a heavy stone lying behind his eyes and by midday

 he was shaking and shivering with the alternate flood of fierce heat and

 deathly sepulchre cold through his veins. The seasoning fever, Jan

 Cheroot told him philosophically, "it kills you, or hardens you. "Some

 individuals would appear to have a natural resistance to the ravages of

 this disease, his father had written in his treatise, The Malarial

 Fevers of Tropical Aftica: Their Causes, Symptoms and Treatment, "and

 there is evidence to suggest that this resistance is hereditary.

 "We'll see now if the old devil knew what he was talking about, Zouga

 mumbled through chattering teeth, hugging the stinking wet leather coat

 around his shoulders. it never occurred to him even briefly to halt for

 his affliction; he had not accorded that courtesy to any of his men, and

 he did not expect it himself.

 He trudged on grimly, with his knees giving a rubbery little bounce at

 each pace, his vision blurring and starring into little pinwheels of

 light, then emerging again though phantom worms and gnats still wriggled

 across his sight. Every now and then a touch upon his shoulder from the

 little Hottentot who marched behind him directed Zouga's stumbling feet

 back on to the path from which they had strayed.

 The nights were hideous with the nightmares of his fever-inflamed brain,

 they were filled with the buffeting thunder of dark wings and the sickly

 stench of snakes so that he would wake panting and screaming, often to

 find Jan Cheroot holding him with a comforting arm around his shaking

 shoulders.

 The lifting of that first bout of his seasoning fever coincided with the

 next brief break in the rains. It seemed that the bright sunlight,

 magnified by the lingering moisture in the air, burned away the mists

 from his mind and the poisonous miasma from his blood, leaving him

 clear-headed, with a fragile sense of well-being but a weakness in his

 legs and arms and a dull ache up under the right-hand side of his rib

 cage where his liver was still swollen and hard as a rock, the typical

 after-effect of the fever. You will be all right, Jan Cheroot

 prophesied. "You threw it off as quickly as I've seen any man with his

 first hit of the fever. Ja! You are a man of Africa, she will let you

 live here, my friend."

 It was while be still walked on wavering legs, lightheaded, so that it

 felt as though his feet did not touch the muddy earth but danced inches

 above it, that they cut the spoor.

 The weight of the great bull had driven the spoor a foot deep into the

 sticky red mud, so that it was a series of deep pot-holes, strung across

 the earth like beads on a necklace. The exact impression of the huge

 pads had been cast in the holes as though in plaster of Paris, each

 crack and fissure in the skin of the sole, each irregularity, even the

 outline of the blunt toe nails were there in precise detail, and at one

 place where the soft earth had been unable to bear his weight and the

 elephant had sunk almost belly deep, he had left the impression of his

 long thick ivories in the earth when he had used them to push himself

 free. It is him! " breathed Jan Cheroot, without looking up from the

 enormous spoor. "I would know that spoor anywhere. " He did not need

 to say more to identify the great old bull that they had last seen so

 many months before on the high pass of the elephant road on the

 escarpment of the Zambezi river. Not an hour ahead of us, Jan Cheroot

 went on in a reverential whisper, like a man at prayer. And the wind

 stands fair.

 " Zouga found he was whispering also. He remembered his premonition

 that he would encounter this animal again. Almost fearfully he looked

 up at the sky. In the east the storm clouds were rolling ponderously

 towards them once more, the brief respite was almost over. The next

 onslaught of the storm promised to be as fierce, and even those deep and

 perfect prints would soon dissolve into liquid mud and be washed into

 oblivion. They are feeding into the wind, he went on, trying to put the

 threat of rain out of his mind and concentrating his still fever-dulled

 wits to the problem of the hunt.

 The old bull and his remaining consort were feeding and moving forward

 with the wind into their faces. That way they would not walk into

 trouble. Yet these two old veterans, with their decades of accumulated

 experience, would not hold steadily into the wind for long, they would

 turn at intervals to get below the wind of a possible tracker.

 Every minute now was of vital consideration, if the hunt was to succeed,

 for despite the weakness in his legs and the silliness in his head,

 Zouga had not for a single moment considered letting the spoor go. They

 might be a hundred miles within the borders of Mzilikazi's country with

 a Matabele impi of border guards closing swiftly, and the hours lost in

 following the two old bulls might make all the difference between

 escaping from these fever-haunted forests or leaving their bones here

 for the hyena to crunch, but neither Zouga nor Jan Cheroot hesitated.

 They began to shed their unnee equipment, they would not need water

 bottles for the land was overflowing the food bags were empty anyway,

 and the blankets sodden They would shelter tonight against the old

 bull's massive carcass. Follow at your best pace, Zouga shouted to his

 heavily burdened porters, dropping his unwanted equipment into the mud

 for them to pick up. "You can fill your bellies with meat and fat

 tonight, if you put your feet to it now."

 They had to gamble all Zouga's remaining strength on the opening play,

 using speed to beat the rain and to reach the bulls before they made a

 turn into the wind and took the scent. They ran at the spoor, going

 hard from the first, knowing that even a healthy man could not hold that

 pace beyond an hour or two at the most before his heart broke.

 In the first mile Zouga's vision was starring and fragmenting again,

 sweat drenched his lean body and he reeled like a drunkard as his legs

 threatened to give under him.

 Run through it, Jan Cheroot counselled him grimly.

 He did it, by a sheer effort of will. He drove himself through to that

 place beyond the pain. Quite suddenly his vision cleared and though

 there was no feeling at all in his legs they drove on steadily under him

 so he seemed to float over the ground without effort.

 Running at his side Jan Cheroot recognized the moment when Zouga broke

 the shackles and went clear of his own weakness. He said nothing but

 glanced sideways at him, eyes bright with admiration and he nodded once.

 Zouga did not see that nod, for his head was up and his dreaming gaze

 was fixed far ahead.

 They ran the sun to its zenith, Jan Cheroot not daring to break the

 rhythm for he knew that Zouga would drop like a man shot through the

 heart if they stopped to rest.

 They ran on as the sun began to drop, pursued by the ponderous cohorts

 of the o that ricoming storm threatened it with extinction, and their

 own shadows danced ahead of them along the deeply driven elephantspoor.

 In a tight bunch behind Zouga, his four gunbearers matched him pace for

 pace, ready to hand him a weapon at the instant he required it.

 The hunter's instinct warned Jan Cheroot. He twisted his head every few

 minutes to look back along the trail they had already run. That was how

 he picked them up.

 They were two grey shadows, merging softly into the darker acacia

 shadows below the dripping trees, but they were moving with steadfast

 purpose, circling to strike their own spoor again, throwing a loop about

 their pursuers an taking the wind from them.

 The bulls were half a mile away, moving with that swinging deceptively

 leisurely gait that would bring them, within minutes, full on to the hot

 trail with which the small band of hunters had overlaid their own huge

 pug marks; the trail would be reeking with the rank odour of man, the

 air thick with it.

 Jan Cheroot touched Zouga's arm, turning him back upon their own run

 without checking him nor breaking the driving rhythm of his numbed legs.

 We have to catch them before they cut our spoor, he called softly. He

 saw Zouga's eyes come back into focus and the colour flare in his waxen

 pale cheeks as Zouga turned and saw for the first time the two huge

 shapes cruising serenely through the open forest, under the tall

 umbreRa-shaped acacias, moving with a stately deliberation down towards

 the string of reeking man-prints in the red mud.

 The big bull was leading, his gaunt frame too tall and bony for the

 wasted flesh over which the skin hung in deep folds and bags. The huge

 yellow tusks were too long and heavy for the ancient head, and his ears

 were ripped and torn into scarred tatters that dangled on to his creased

 cheeks. He had been wallowing in a mud hole and his body was slick and

 shining with wet red mud.

 He stepped out on his long, heavily boned legs around which the thick

 loose skin bagged and drooped like a badly tailored pair of breeches,

 and close behind him strode his askari, a big heavily toothed elephant,

 but dwarfed by his leader.

 Zouga and Jan Cheroot ran together, stride for stride, their breath

 hissing and gasping in their throats, as they spent their last reserves

 to get in gunshot range before the bulls took the scent.

 They traded all stealth, any attempt at concealment for speed, trusting

 that the weak eyesight of the old bulls would betray them. This time,

 the vagaries of the weather favoured them, for as they ran, the storm

 burst about them again.

 It had held off just long enough to allow them to come up, and now the

 thick streamers of pale grey rain were drawn across the forest like lace

 curtains. he had light beneath the thick cloud banks gave them cover to

 cross the last few hundred yards unseen, and the tapping rain and the

 rush of the wind in the branches of the acacias muffled their

 racing-footfalls.

 A hundred and fifty yards ahead of Zouga the old bull hit the man spoor,

 and it stopped him as though he had run into the side of an invisible

 cliff of glass. He flared back on his hind quarters, his back humping

 and his wrinkled ivoried head flying up high, the ragged banners of his

 ears filling like the mainsail of a tall ship, and clapping thunderously

 as he flapped them against his shoulders.

 He froze like that for a long moment, groping at the tainted earth with

 the tip of his trunk, then he lifted it to his mouth and sprayed the

 scent into the open pink buds of his olfactory organs. The dread and

 hated odour struck him like a physical force and he went back another

 pace, then his trunk lifted straight into the air above him, and he

 wheeled and like a well-trained pair of coach horses his tall askari

 wheeled with him, shoulder to shoulder, and flank to flank, they began

 to run, and Zouga was still a hundred yards behind them.

 Jan Cheroot dropped on to one knee into the mud, and flung up his

 musket. At the same instant, the askari checked slightly and swung

 left, crossing his leader's rear. Perhaps it was unintentional, but

 neither Zouga nor Jan Cheroot believed that. They knew that the younger

 bull was drawing fire, protecting the other with his own body. You want

 it? Take it then, you thunder! " Jan Cheroot shouted angrily, he knew

 he had lost too much ground by pausing to fire.

 Aiming for the younger bull, Jan Cheroot took the hip shot, and the bull

 staggered to it, flecks of red mud flying from his skin where the ball

 struck, and he broke his stride, favouring the damaged joint, swinging

 out of the line of his run, broadside to the hunters, while the great

 bull ran on alone.

 Zouga could have killed the crippled bull with a heart shot, for the

 animal was down to a dragging, humpbacked trot and the range was less

 than thirty paces, but Zouga ran straight past him, never checking,

 hardly glancing at him, knowing he could leave Jan Cheroot to finish

 that business. He ran after the big bull, but despite his utmost

 endeavour, losing ground to him steadily.

 Ahead of them, the ground dipped into a shallow open and beyond that it

 rose to another ridge on which saucer, the wild teak trees stood like

 sentinels in the grey rain.

 The bull went down into the saucer, still in his initial burst of speed,

 stretching out so that his padfalls sounded like the steady beat of a

 bass drum, opening the gap between himself and his hunter, until he

 reached the bottom of the dip, and then be was almost halted.

 His weight broke the surface of the swampy ground, and he sank through

 almost to his shoulders, and had to lunge for each step, with the

 glutinous mud sucking and squelching obscenely at each of his frantic

 movements.

 Swiftly Zouga closed the range, and his spirits took wing, his

 exultation driving back his weakness and fatigue. He felt intoxicated

 with battle lust. He reached the swampy ground, and leapt from tussock

 to tussock of coarse swamp grass, while the bull struggled on ahead of

 him.

 Closer and closer still Zouga came up to him, almost point-blank range,

 less than twenty yards and at last he stopped and balanced on one of the

 little islands of grass roots.

 just ahead of him the bull had reached the far side of the swamp, and

 was heaving himself out on to the firm ground at the foot of the slope.

 The bull's front legs were higher than his still-bogged hindquarters,

 the whole slope of his back was exposed to Zouga, the knuckles of his

 massive spine -stood out clearly through the mudpainted skin and the

 arched staves of his rib cage were like the frames of a Viking longboat.

 Zouga fancied he could actually see the pounding rhythm of the great

 heart beating against them.

 There could be no mistake this time. In the months since their first

 encounter, Zouga had become a skilled huntsman, he knew the soft and

 vital places in the mountainous bulk of an elephant's body. At this

 range and from this angle, the heavy ball would shatter the spine

 between the shoulder blades without losing any of its velocity, and it

 would go on deep, to the heart, to those thick serpentine arteries that

 fed the lungs.

 He touched the hair trigger, and with a pop like a child's toy the gun

 misfired. The great grey beast heaved himself clear of the mud, and

 went away up the slope, now at last settling into the swinging

 ground-eating gait which would carry him fifty miles before nightfall.

 Behind him Zouga reached the firm ground and flung down the useless

 weapon, dancing with impatience as he screamed at his bearers to bring

 up the second gun.

 Matthew was fifty paces behind him, slipping and staggering in the

 swampy ground. Mark, Luke and John were strung out behind him. Come

 on! Come on! " screamed Zouga, and snatched the second gun from

 Mathew, an dashed away up the slope. He had to catch the bull before he

 reached the crest of the slope, for down the other side he would go like

 an eagle on the wind.

 Zouga ran now with all his heart, with all his will and the very last

 dregs of his strength, while behind him Matthew stopped, snatched up the

 misfired weapon from where Zouga had thrown it down, and, acting

 instinctively in the heat and excitement of the chase, he reloaded it.

 He poured another handful of black powder on top of the charge and ball

 already in the barrel and tamped down a second quarter-pound ball of

 lead on top of it all.

 In so doing he changed the gun from a formidable weapon to a lethal bomb

 that could maim or even kill the man who attempted to fire it. Then

 Matthew slipped another percussion cap over the nipple and ran on up the

 slope after Zouga.

 The bull was nearing the crest of the ridge, and Zouga was coming up on

 him, but slowly, the difference in their speed just barely discernible.

 At last Zouga's strength was failing, he could keep this pace for

 minutes more and he knew when he finally stopped he would be on the

 verge of total physical collapse.

 His vision was swimming and wavering, and his feet stumbled and slipped

 on the wet lichen -covered rocks of the slope, and the rain beat into

 his face, almost blinding him. Sixty yards ahead of him the bull

 reached the crest, and there he did something that Zouga had never seen

 a hunted elephant do before, he turned broadside, flaring his ears, to

 look at his pursuers.

 Perhaps he had been pushed too hard, perhaps he had been hunted too

 often and the hatred had accumulated like weed below the waterline of an

 old ship, perhaps this was his last defiance.

 For a moment he stood tall, and glistening black with mud and rain,

 silhouetted against the low grey sky, and Zouga hit him in the shoulder,

 the gun ringing like a bronze cathedral bell, and the long lick of red

 flame blooming briefly in the gloom.

 Both man and beast reeled to the shot, Zouga driven off-balance by the

 recoil and the bull taking the hardened lead ball through the ribs and

 going back on his haunches, the rheumy old eyes clenching tightly to the

 shock of it.

 The bull kept his feet, though he was hard hit, and he opened his eyes

 and saw the man, that hated, evil-smelling and persistent animal that

 had persecuted him so relentlessly down the years.

 He launched himself back down the slope, like an avalanche of dark grey

 granite, and his repeated blood squeals rang against the low sky, and

 Zouga turned and ran from the charging bull, while the earth trembled

 beneath his feet at the weight and nearness of the stricken beast.

 Matthew stood his ground, even in the terrible press of the moment.

 Zouga loved him for that. He stood to do his duty, to deliver the

 second gun to his master.

 Zouga reached him, just ahead of the charging bull, dropped his smoking

 weapon, snatched the second gun from Matthew, never suspecting that it

 had been doubleshotted, and as he turned -he thumbed the hammer back and

 swung up the long thick barrel.

 The bull was on top of him, blotting out the rainsodden sky, the long

 yellow ivories raised like roofbeams over his head, and the trunk

 already uncoiling to reach down and snatch Zouga up.

 Zouga pressed the hair trigger, and this time the gun fired. With a

 shattering roar the barrel burst, the metal opening like the petals of a

 flower, and burning powder flew back into Zouga's face, singeing his

 beard and blistering the skin of his face. The hammer was blown clean

 off the barrel and it hit Zouga in the cheek, just under the right eye,

 cutting a jagged wound clean down to the bone. The shattered weapon

 flew out of his grasp, and slammed back into his shoulder with such

 force that he felt the ligaments and tendons tearing. Zouga was hurled

 into a backward somersault that carried him just beyond the grasp of the

 bull's questing trunk.

 He fell heavily behind a pile of loose stone chips, and for a moment the

 elephant checked, going back on its hind legs to avoid the flashing

 flame and smoke of the explosion, blinded and unsighted for a moment,

 and then it saw the gunbearer still standing.

 Matthew started to run, poor, loyal, brave Matthew, but the bull had him

 before he had gone a dozen paces.

 It took him about the waist with a single coil of its long trunk, and it

 threw him into the air as though he were light as a child's rubber ball.

 Matthew went up forty feet, with his arms and legs windmilling, his

 scream of terror unheard in the deafening squeals of the elephant. It

 sounded like the whistle of a steam engine blown by a crazed engineer,

 and Matthew seemed to rise very slowly into the air, hang for a long

 moment and then drop just as slowly downwards.

 The bull caught him in midair and threw him again, this time even

 higher.

 Zouga dragged himself into a sitting position. His right arm hung

 limply on its torn muscles and tendons, blood streamed from his ripped

 cheek into his beard and his eardrums were so tortured by the explosion

 that the elephant's squeals seemed muted and far off. He looked up

 groggily and saw Matthew high in the air, beginning to fall, saw him hit

 the ground, and the elephant begin to kill him.

 Zouga dragged himself to his knees, and began to creep over the mound of

 loose stone towards the empty gun, the gun from which he had fired the

 first shot and which he had dropped when he snatched the double-shotted

 gun from Matthew, the gun which now lay five paces from him, five paces

 which seemed an infinite distance to drag his maimed body.

 The elephant placed one foot on Matthew's chest and his ribs crackled

 like dry sticks in a fierce fire. It took his head in its trunk and

 plucked it from Matthew's shoulders, as easily as a farmer kills a

 chicken.

 The elephant tossed Matthew's head aside and as it trundled down the

 slope close to where Zouga sat, he saw that Matthew's eyelids were

 blinking rapidly over his bulging eyeballs and that the nerves flickered

 under the skin of his cheeks.

 Tearing his eyes from the gruesome object, Zouga lifted the empty gun

 into his lap and began to reload it.

 He had no use or feeling in his right arm, which still hung limply at

 his side.

 Twenty paces away the elephant knelt over Matthew's decapitated body and

 drove one of the long yellow ivories through his belly.

 Painfully Zouga poured a handful of powder into the gun muzzle, trying

 not to be distracted from his task.

 Matthew hung impaled through the middle from the bloody tusk like a wet

 shirt on a laundry line, the elephant's trunk came up and coiled

 python-like about his battered body.

 Zouga dropped a ball from his pouch into the barrel of the gun, and

 one-handed tamped it home with the ramrod.

 The elephant tore an arm from the body, and Matthew slid from the point

 of the tusk and dropped once more to earth.

 Moaning softly with the pain of each movement, Zouga primed the gun and

 hauled back the hammer against the powerful tension of the spring.

 The elephant was kneeling with both front legs on what remained of

 Matthew, grinding him into a red mush against the rocky earth.

 Dragging the gun with him, Zouga crawled back to the mound of rock chips

 behind which he had fallen. Using only his left hand, he balanced the

 stock of the big elephant gun over the top of the mound.

 The elephant was still squealing in unabated fury as it crushed

 Matthew's corpse.

 Grovelling flat on his belly, Zouga sighted over the thick barrel, but

 with only one hand it was almost impossible to hold the clumsy weapon

 true, and his vision swam and wavered with pain and exhaustion.

 For an instant the shaking foresight aligned with the crude vee of the

 backsight, and he let the shot fly, in flame and a billowing cloud of

 burnt powder smoke.

 The elephant's squeals stopped abruptly. As the powder smoke was blown

 aside on the cold breeze, Zouga saw that the bull had hoisted himself

 wearily upright and was swaying slowly from foot to foot. The massive

 head dropped under the weight of its blood-smeared tusks and its trunk

 hung as limply as Zouga's own damaged right arm.

 The elephant was making a strange mournful humming sound deep in his

 chest, and from the second bullet wound just behind his bony shoulder

 joint, his heart blood spurted in short regular jets, to the beat of the

 huge heart, and poured down his body in a honey-thick stream.

 The bull turned towards where Zouga lay, and shuffling like an old and

 very weary man came towards him, the tip of his trunk twitching with his

 last fading warlike instincts.

 Zouga tried to drag himself away, but the bull came on faster than he

 could crawl, and the trunk reached out, touched Zouga's ankle, the vast

 bulk of the elephant filled the sky above Zouga, and he kicked out

 frantically but the trunk tightened its grip on his ankle with agonizing

 unbearable strength, and Zouga knew that it would tear his leg out of

 its socket at the hip.

 Then the elephant groaned, a shuddering exhalation of air from the torn

 lungs, the grip on Zouga's ankle relaxed and the old bull died on his

 feet, his legs collapsed under him and he went down.

 He fell with a weight and force that made the earth bounce and tremble

 under Zouga's prostrate body and with a thud that Jan Cheroot, who was

 crossing the swamp, heard clearly from a mile away.

 Zouga. dropped his head against the earth and closed his eyes, and the

 darkness overwhelmed him.

 Jan Cheroot made no attempt to move Zouga from where he lay beside the

 old bull's carcass. He built a rough shelter of saplings and wet grass

 over him and then coaxed smoky flames from a fire at his head, and from

 another at his feet. This was all he could do to warm him until the

 porters came up with the blankets at sunset.

 Then he helped Zouga into a sitting position and between them they

 strapped the damaged arm. God Almighty, croaked Zouga, as he prepared

 the needle and thread from his sewing kit, "I'd give both the tusks for

 a dram of good malt whisky."

 Jan Cheroot held the hand mirror, and using one hand only Zouga stitched

 the flap of his torn cheek back into place, and as he pulled the last

 knot tight and snipped the thread, he collapsed back into his damp and

 stinking fur kaross.

 I will die rather than march again, he whispered. That is your choice

 exactly, Jan Cheroot agreed, without looking up from the chunks of

 elephant liver and heart that he had begun wrapping in yellow fat before

 stringing them on a green twig. "You can march or die here in the mud."

 Outside the hut the porters were wailing and chanting the mourning dirge

 for Matthew. They had gathered the fragments of his horribly mutilated

 body and made a package of them, wrapping them in Matthew's own blanket

 and binding it up with bark rope.

 They would bury him the following mornin& but until then they would keep

 up the haunting cries of mourning.

 Jan Cheroot scraped coals from the fire and began. to grill the kebab

 of liver and fat and heart over them, "They will be useless until they

 have buried him, and we must still cut the tusks. "Give Matthew a night

 of mourning at least, Zouga whispered. "He stood the bull down. If he

 had run with the second gun. . . " Zouga broke off, and groaned as a

 fresh stab of pain transfixed his shoulder. Using his good left hand,

 he scratched under the skin blanket on which he lay, moving the lumps of

 stone which had caused the discomfort.

 He was good, stupid, but good, Jan Cheroot agreed. A wiser man would

 have run. " He turned the kebab slowly over the coals. "It will take

 all day tomorrow to bury him and then cut the tusks from both elephants.

 But we must march the day after that."

 Jan Cheroot had killed his bull down on the plain, under the outspread

 branches of a giant acacia. Looking through the low opening of the hut

 Zouga could see the carcass of his own bull lying on its side not twenty

 feet away. Already it was swelling with trapped gas and the upper legs

 thrust out stiffly above the grey balloon of the belly. The tusks were

 unbelievable. Even as he stared at them Zouga thought they must be a

 fantasy of his exhaustion and agony. They were as thick as a girl's

 waist, and the spread of them must have been twelve feet from tip to

 tip. How much will they weigh? " he asked Jan Cheroot, and the

 Hottentot looked up and shrugged. I have never seen a bigger elephant,

 " he admitted. "We will need three men to carry each of them. "Two

 hundred pounds? " Zouga asked, the conversation distracted him from the

 agony in his shoulder. More, Jan Cheroot decided. "You will never see

 another like him. "No, Zouga agreed. "That is true. There will never

 be another like him. " Deep regret blended with his pain, making it

 more intense. Regret for the magnificent beast and sorrow for the brave

 man who had died with him.

 The pain and the sorrow would not let him sleep that night, and in the

 dawn when they gathered in the rain to bury Matthew, Zouga strapped his

 damaged arm into a bark sling and had two men help him to his feet, then

 he walked unaided but slowly and stiffly up the slope to the grave,

 using a staff to balance himself.

 They had wrapped Matthew's body in his fur blanket and placed his

 possessions with him, his axe and spear, his food bowl and beer

 calabash, to serve him on the long journey ahead.

 Singing the slow mournful song of the dead, they packed the rock over

 and around him so that the hyena would not dig him out. When they had

 finished, Zouga felt drained of strength and emotion. He staggered back

 to his hut and crawled under the dank blanket. He had only that day to

 gather his strength for the march that must be resumed in the dawn. He

 closed his eyes, but could not sleep for the thud of the axes into bone

 as Jan Cheroot supervised the chopping of the tusks from the casket of

 the old bull's skull.

 Zouga rolled on to his back, and once again a loose rock chip dug into

 his aching body. He reached back and pulled it from under the blanket,

 was about to throw it aside when something caught his attention and he

 arrested the movement.

 The rock was as white and as crystalline as the candied sugar that Zouga

 had loved so as a boy, a pretty little fragment, but that was not what

 had stopped his hand.

 Even in the subdued light of the hut, the thin irregular seam of metal

 that wavered uncertainly between quartz crystals flicked a pin-prick of

 bright gold into his eyes.

 Zouga stared at it numbly, twisting the lump of quartz to catch the

 light and make it twinkle. There was a sense of unreality about the

 moment, as there always is when something sought for and longed for is

 at last held in the hand.

 He found his voice at last, a hoarse croak through his swollen,

 blistered, powder-scorched lips, and Jan Cheroot came almost

 immediately. The grave, he whispered urgently, "Matthew's grave, it was

 dug so swiftly in such rocky soil. "No, Jan Cheroot shook his head. "It

 was there. There are other holes like it along the ridge."

 Zouga stared at him for a long moment, his face lopsided with the

 scabbed and stitched wound, his one eye a mere slit in the puffed and

 bruised flesh. He had let himself sink low from the wound. It had been

 under his nose and he had almost missed it. He started to drag himself

 out of his blanket. Help me! " he ordered. "I must see them.

 Show me these holes."

 Leaning on Jan Cheroot's shoulder, stooped to favour his shoulder, he

 dragged himself along the ridge in the rain, and when at last he was

 satisfied, he limped back to the hut and used the last feeble light of

 that day to scrawl in his journal, holding it in his lap and bowing over

 it to protect the pages from the drip of rain through the rough

 thatching, using his left hand so the writing was barely decipherable. I

 have named it the Harkness Mine, for this must be very similar to the

 ancient workings that old Tom described. The reef is white sugar quartz

 and runs along the back of the ridge. It would appear to be very narrow

 but rich, for there is visible gold in many of the samples.

 My injury prevents me crushing and panning these, but I would estimate

 values well in excess of two ounces of fine gold to the ton of quartz.

 The ancient miners have driven four shafts into the hillside. There may

 be more that I overlooked, for they are heavily overgrown and an attempt

 has been made to refill the shafts, possibly to conceal them. The

 shafts are large-enough to admit a small man crawling on hands and

 knees. Probably they used childslaves in the diggings and the

 conditions of labour in these rabbit warrens must have been infernal. In

 any event they were only able to go down as far as the water table, and

 without sophisticated machinery to pump the flooded working, they would

 have been abandoned. This is probably what happened here at the

 Harkness Mine and there is almost certainly a great amount of

 goldbearing ore to be recovered by modern methods. The rock dump on

 which stands my rude hut is composed almost entirely of the gold matrix,

 awaiting crushing and refining, and the miners were probably driven away

 by an enemy before they could complete their labours. I am couched upon

 a mattress of gold, and like King Midas all around me is the precious

 metal. Like that unfortunate King. there seems to be little profit in

 it for me that I can perceive at this moment-, Zouga. paused, and laid

 his pen aside, warming his icy hands at the smoky fire. He should have

 felt wildly elated. He picked up his pen once again. He sighed and

 then wrote tortuously, I have a huge store of ivory, but it is spread

 across this land, buried in small caches. I have fifty pounds and more

 of native gold in ingot and nugget, and I have discovered the mother

 lode of untold fortune, but it cannot buy me a pound flask of gunpowder

 nor an unguent for my grievous injuries. I will not know until tomorrow

 if I have the strength remaining to me to continue the march to the

 south, or if I am destined to remain here with Matthew and the great

 elephant as my only companions Jan Cheroot shook him awake. It took a

 long time.

 Zouga seemed to be swimming up from great depths through cold and murky

 water, and when at last he Surfaced, he knew immediately that his gloomy

 prophecy written in the journal the previous evening had become reality.

 There was no feeling or strength in his legs. His shoulder and arm were

 bound rock hard with spasmed muscle. Leave me here, he said to Jan

 Cheroot, and the Hottentot heaved him to a sitting position, snarling at

 him when Zouga cried out at the agony of each movement, and forced him

 to drink the steaming hot soup made from elephant marrowbones.

 Leave one gun with me, Zouga whispered. Here. " Jan Cheroot ignored

 the order and instead made him take the bitter white powder. Zouga

 gagged on the quinine.

 it took two porters to get him on his feet. I am leaving that stone.

 " Jan Cheroot pointed to the packaged statue. "We cannot carry both of

 you. "NO! Zouga whispered fiercely. "if I go, the bird must go with

 me. "How? "

 Zouga shrugged off their hands.

 I will walk, he said. "Carry the bird."

 They made less than five miles that day, but the following day the sun

 emerged again to cheer them on. Once it warmed Zouga's abused muscles,

 he could increase thee pace.

 That night he logged ten miles in his journal when they camped in open

 grassland. In the dawn Zoga was able to crawl from his blankets and

 gain his feet unaided.

 His injuries still stiff, he used the staff to leave the thorn scherm by

 its single gate and limp to the periphery of the camp. When he urinated

 his water was a dark amber colour from the fever and the quinine, but he

 knew now that he was going to be able to continue the march.

 He looked up at the sky. It would rain again soon. They should start at

 once. He was about to turn back to the camp and rouse the porters when

 movement in the tall grass caught his attention.

 For a moment he thought it might be a troop of wild ostrich passing the

 camp, then suddenly he realized that the whole plain was alive with

 swift but stealthy movement, the fluffy grass tops rustling and nodding

 with the passage of many bodies, only now and again there was a brief

 glimpse of ruffled plumes above the grass. The movement spread swiftly

 around both sides of the small camp, where Zouga's men still slept.

 Zouga stared uncomprehendingly, leaning on his staff, still muzzy with

 sleep and fever and anchored by his injuries, he did not move until the

 swift encircling movement had been completed, and then the stillness and

 silence descended again so for a moment he believed he had been

 imagining phantoms.

 Then there was a soft fluting whistle, like a blast on Pan's pipe, sweet

 and hauntingly melodious in the dawn, and immediately there was movement

 again, an encroaching movement, like a strangler's hand upon the throat.

 Zouga saw the ostrich plumes clearly now, snowy white and dead black

 they swayed and danced above the grass tops, and immediately afterwards

 he saw the war shields, long oval shields of dappled black and white

 cowhide. The long shields, the Matabele.

 Dread was a cold, heavy lump under his ribs, yet instinct warned him

 that to show it would mean death, just when he had once again believed

 in life.

 There were a hundred, he calculated swiftly as he glanced around the

 closing ring of warriors. No, there were more than that, at least two

 hundred Matabele amadoda in full war plumage, only the plumes and their

 eyes showing above the tops of the long dappled shields.

 The grey dawn light glinted on the broad-bladed stabbing spears, held

 underhand so the points protruded beyond the ring of shields. The ring

 was unbroken, shield overlapped shield, the encircling horns of the

 bull, the classic tactics of the Matabele, the finest and most ruthless

 warriors that the continent of Africa had ever spawned. Here

 Mzilikazi's border impis kill all travellers, Tom Harkness had written.

 Zouga drew himself up and stepped forward, holding up his one good arm

 with the palm extended towards the ring of shields. I am an Englishman.

 A commander of the great white Queen, Victoria. My name is Bakela, son

 of Manali, son of Tshedi, and I come in peace."

 From the ranks stepped a man. He was taller than Zouga and his tossing

 ostrich plumes turned him into a giant. He swept aside his shield, and

 he was lean and muscled like a gladiator. On his upper Arms he wore the

 tassels of cow tails, each one awarded him by his King for an act of

 valour. The cow tails were thick bunches, layer upon layer. His short

 kilt was of spotted civet cat tails, and there were more cow tails bound

 around his calves just below the knees. He had the handsome smooth

 moonface of the true Nguni, with a broad nose and full sculptured lips.

 His bearing was noble, the carriage of his head proud.

 He looked at Zouga slowly and with grave attention.

 He looked at his tattered rags, at the untidy bindings that held his

 damaged arm, the staff on which he leaned like an old man.

 He studied Zouga's singed beard, and powder-burned cheeks, the blisters

 on his lips and the black scabs that clung obscenely on his swollen

 discoloured cheek.

 Then the Matabele laughed. It was a deep musical laugh, and then he

 spoke. And I he said, "am Matabele. An Induna of two thousand. My

 name is Gandang, son of Mzilikazi, son of the high heavens, son of Zulu,

 and I come with a bright spear and a red heart."

 Robyn Ballantyne realized within the first day's march that she had

 seriously miscalculated her father's strength and resilience when she

 made the decision to try for the coast. Perhaps Zouga had divined

 instinctively what she a trained physician should have known. That

 thought made her angry with herself. She found that since parting with

 Zouga her hostility and sense of rivalry towards him had, if anything,

 increased. It made her angry that he should have given the correct

 advice.

 By noon of that first day Robyn had been forced to call a halt and to go

 into camp. Fuller Ballantyne was very weak, weaker than he had been

 when first she found him. His skin was burning hot and dry to the

 touch. The movement of the litter, the jolting and bumping over uneven

 ground had aggravated Fuller's leg. It was grotesquely swollen, and so

 tender that he screamed and fought at the lightest touch upon the

 discoloured skin.

 Robyn had one of the bearers begin work on a cradle of green twigs and

 bark to place over the leg and keep the fur blanket off it, and then she

 sat by the litter applying a damp, cool cloth to her father's forehead

 and speaking to little Juba and the Mashona woman, not expecting nor

 receiving advice from them, but taking comfort from the human contact.

 Perhaps we should have stayed at the cave, she fretted.

 "At least he would have been more comfortable there, but then for how

 long could we have stayed? " She spoke her thoughts aloud. "The rains

 will be on us soon.

 We could not have stayed, and even if we march as slowly as this, we

 will still be trapped here by them. We simply must increase the pace,

 and yet I do not know if he can survive it."

 However, on the following day Fuller seemed stronger again, the fever

 had cooled, and they made a full day's march, but in the evening when

 they went into camp he had once more sunk very low.

 When Robyn removed the dressing from the leg, it seemed to be less

 sensitive, and she was relieved, until she saw the colour of the skin

 around the ulceration.

 When she lifted the soiled dressing to her nose and sniffed it, she

 caught the taint that her professor of medicine at St. Matthew's had

 taught her to watch for. It was not the usual taint of benign pus, but

 a more pervasive odour, the smell of a decomposing Corpse. Her alarm

 flared, and she threw the dressing on the fire and with dread returned

 to her examination of the leg.

 From the inside of the groin, down the wasted thigh muscles there were

 the unmistakable scarlet lines beneath the thin pale skin, and the

 extreme sensitivity of the area seemed to have passed. It was almost as

 though Fuller had no further feeling in the leg.

 Robyn tried to console herself that the change and mortification in the

 leg was unconnected with having carried him two days in a litter over

 rough ground. But what other reasons were there? She could find no

 answer.

 Before the move, the ulceration had been stabilized, for it was almost

 eighteen months since the slaver's ball had shattered the bone.

 The movement in the litter must have precipitated some serious change in

 the limb, and this was the result.

 Robyn felt herself culpable. She should have listened to Zouga. She

 had brought this on her own father. Gasgangrene. She could only hope

 that she was wrong, but she knew she was not. The symptoms were

 unmistakable. She could only continue the march and hope they would

 reach the coast and civilization before the disease swept to its

 inevitable climax, but she knew that hope was futile.

 She wished that she had been able to develop the same philosophical

 acceptance that most of her fellow physicians cultivated in the face of

 disease or injury which were beyond their training and ability to

 alleviate. But she -knew she never could, always she would be victim of

 this helpless sense of frustration, and this time the patient was her

 own father.

 She bound up the leg in a hot compress and knew that it was a pathetic

 gesture, like trying to hold back the tide with a child's sand-castle.

 In the morning the leg felt cooler to the touch, and the flesh seemed to

 have lost resilience so that her fingers left depressions as though she

 had touched unleavened bread. The smell was stronger.

 They made a full day's march, and Fuller was silent and comatose in the

 litter as Robyn walked beside it. He no longer chanted psalms and wild

 exhortations to the Almighty, and she thanked God that at least there

 was no pain.

 In the late afternoon they met a broad pathway, well travelled and

 running east and west as far as Robyn could see it. It fitted exactly

 the description and the location that her father had, written of in his

 journal. Little Juba burst into tears and was rendered almost helpless

 with terror when she saw the road.

 They found an encampment of deserted and dilapidated huts, that might

 have been those used by the slavetraders, and Robyn ordered camp there.

 she left the Mashona woman and the still snivelling and shivering Juba

 to tend Fuller Ballantyne, and she took only old Karanga with her. He

 armed himself with his long spear, and strutted like an ancient peacock

 to be so honoured.

 Within two miles, the pathway climbed steeply to pass through a saddle

 in a line of low hills.

 Robyn was seeking evidence that this was indeed the slave road, the

 Hyena Road, as Juba called it tearfully.

 She found her evidence on the saddle, lying in the grass a few paces

 from the edge of the track. It was. a double yoke, hewn from a forked,

 tree trunk and roughly dressed with an axe.

 Robyn had studied the sketches in her father's journal, and she

 recognized it immediately. When the slave-masters did not have chains

 and cuffs, they used these yokes to bind their captives around their

 necks; two slaves linked together and forced to do everything in

 concert, march, eat, sleep and defecate, everything except escape.

 Now all that remained of the slaves who had once worn the yoke were a

 few fragments of bone that the vultures and hyena had overlooked. There

 was something terribly sad and chilling about that roughly carved fork

 of wood, and Robyn could not bring herself to touch it. She said a

 short prayer for the unfortunate slaves who had died on that spot and

 then, with her knowledge that she was on the slave road confirmed, she

 turned back towards the camp.

 That night she held counsel with the Hottentot Corporal, old Karanga and

 Juba. This camp and road have not been used for this many days, Karanga

 showed Robyn both hands twice with fingers spread, twenty days. "Which

 way did they go?  " Robyn asked. She had come to have confidence in the

 old man's tracking ability. They were moving along the road towards the

 sunrise, and they have not yet returned, " quavered Karanga. It is even

 as he says, Juba agreed, and it must have been an effort to agree with

 somebody for whom she had such disdain and jealousy. "The slavers will

 make this the last caravan before the rains. There will be no trading

 after the rivers are full, and the Hyena Road will grow grass until the

 dry season comes again. "So there is a caravan of slavers ahead of us,

 Robyn mused. "If we follow the road we may overtake them."

 The Hottentot Corporal interrupted. "That will not be possible, madam.

 They are weeks ahead of us. "Then we will meet them returnin& after

 having sold their slaves."

 The Corporal nodded and Robyn asked him, "Will you be able to defend us,

 if the slavers decide to attack our column? " The and my men, the

 Corporal drew himself to his full height, "are a match for a hundred

 dirty slavers, he paused and then went on, "and you shoot like a man,

 madamV Robyn smiled. "All right, she nodded. "We will follow the road

 down to the sea."

 And the Corporal grinned at her. "I am sick of this country and its

 savages, I long to see the cloud on Table Mountain and wash the taste of

 dust from my throat with good Cape Smoke once again The hyena was an old

 male. There were patches of fur missing from his thick shaggy coat, and

 his flat, almost snakelike head was covered with scars, his ears ripped

 away by thorns and a hundred snapping, snarling encounters over the

 decomposing carcasses of men and animals.

 His lip had been torn up into the soft of the nostril in one of these

 fights and had healed askew, so that the yellow teeth in one side of his

 upper jaw were exposed in a hideous grin.

 His teeth were worn with age, so that he could no longer crush the heavy

 bones that made up the bulk of hyena diet, and unable to compete, he had

 been driven from the hunting-pack.

 There had been no human corpses along the trail since the slave column

 had passed weeks before, and game was scarce in this dry country. Since

 then the hyena had subsisted on scrapings, the fresh dung of jackal and

 baboon, a nest of field mice, the long-abandoned and addled egg of an

 ostrich which had burst in a sulphurous geyser of gas and putrefied

 liquid when he pawed at it.

 However, even though the hyena was starving, he still stood almost three

 foot high at the shoulder and weighed

 140 pounds.

 His belly under the matted and scruffy coat was concave as that of a

 greyhound. From high ungainly shoulders, his spine slanted back in a

 bony ridge to his scraggy hindquarters.

 He carried his head low, snuffling at the earth for offal and scourings,

 but when the scent came down on the wind to him, he lifted his head on

 high and flared his deformed nostrils.

 There was the smell of wood smoke, of human presence, which he had grown

 to associate with a source of food, but sharper, clearer than all the

 others was a smell that made the saliva run from his twisted, scarred

 jaws in drooling silver ropes. He went galloping into a swayin& uneven

 trot up into the wind following the tantalizing drift of that odour. The

 scent that had attracted the old dog hyena was the cloyingly sweet taint

 of a gangrenous leg.

 The hyena lay on the outskirts of the camp. It lay like a dog, with its

 chin on its front paws and its hindlegs and its bushy tail drawn up

 under its belly, flat behind a clump of coarse elephant grass. it

 watched the activity about the smoking watch fires.

 Only its eyes rolled in their sockets, and the ragged stumps of its ears

 twitched and cocked to the cadence of human voices, and the unexpected

 sounds of a bucket or an axe on a stump of firewood.

 Once in a while a puff of wind would bring a whiff of the scent that had

 first attracted the hyena, and it would snuffle it, suppressing with

 difficulty the little anxious cries that rose in its throat.

 As the evening shadows thickened, a human figure, a half-naked black

 woman, left the camp, and came towards its hiding-place. The hyena

 gathered itself to fly but before she reached the place where it lay,

 Juba paused and looked about her carefully without seeing the animal,

 then she lifted the flap of her beaded apron, lowered herself and

 squatted. The hyena cringed and watched her. When she stood and

 returned to the camp, the creature, emboldened by the oncoming " night,

 crept forward and wolfed down that which Juba had left.

 Its appetite was piqued and as the night fell, it inflated its chest,

 curled its bushy tail up over its back and uttered its drawn-out

 haunting cry, ascending sharply in key, "Oooo-auw! Oooo-auw! ", a cry

 so familiar to every man and woman in the camp that hardly one of them

 bothered to look up.

 Gradually the activity about the camp fires subsided, the sound of human

 voices became drowsy and intermittent, the fires faded, the flames

 sinking and the darkness crept in upon the camp, and the hyena crept in

 with it.

 Twice a sudden loud voice put it to trembling flight and it galloped

 away into the bush, only to gather its courage at the renewed silence

 and creep back. It was long after midnight when the beast found a weak

 place in the protective schenn of thorn branches about the camp and

 quietly, furtively pushed its way through the opening.

 The smell led it directly to an open-sided, thatched shelter in the

 centre of the enclosure, and with its belly low to the earth the huge

 dog-like animal slunk closer and fearfully closer.

 Robyn had fallen asleep beside her father's litter, still fully dressed

 and in a sitting position; she merely let her head fall forward on to

 her crossed arms and then overwhelmed by fatigue and worry and guilt she

 at last succumbed.

 She awoke to the old man's shrill shrieks. There was complete darkness

 blanketing the camp, and Robyn thought for a moment that she was blinded

 by a nightmare. She scrambled wildly to her feet, not certain where she

 was and she stumbled over the litter. Her outflung arms brushed against

 something big and hairy, something that stank of death and excrement, a

 smell that blended sickeningly with the stench of her father's leg.

 She screamed also, and the animal growled, a muffled sound through

 clenched jaws like a wolfhound with a bone. Fuller's shrieks and her

 screams had roused the camp, and somebody plunged a torch of dried grass

 into the ashes of the watch fire. It burst into flames, and after the

 utter blackness the orange light seemed bright as noonday.

 The huge hump-backed animal had dragged Fuller from his litter in a

 welter of blankets and clothing. It had a grip on his lower body, and

 Robyn heard the sharp crack of bone splintering in those terrible jaws.

 The sound maddened her and she snatched up an axe that lay beside the

 pile of firewood and struck out at the dark misshapen body, feeling the

 axe strike solidly, and the hyena let out a choking howl.

 The darkness and its own starvation had emboldened it. It had the taste

 in its mouth now, seeping through the blankets into its locked jaws and

 it would not relinquish its prey.

 It turned and snapped at Robyn, its huge round eyes glowing yellow in

 the light of the flames and those terrible yellowed fangs clashing like

 the snap of a steel man-trap, closing on the axe handle inches from her

 fingers, jerking it out of her hand. Then it turned back to its prey,

 and once more locked its jaws onto the frail body. Fuller was so wasted

 that he was light as a child and the hyena dragged him swiftly towards

 the opening in the thorn scherm.

 Still screaming for help, Robyn stumbled after them and seized her

 father's shoulders, while the hyena had him by the belly. The woman and

 the animal fought over him the blunted yellow teeth ripping and tearing

 through the lining of Fuller's belly as the hyena strained back on its

 hindquarters, the neck stretched out at the pull.

 The Hottentot Corporal dressed only in unlaced breeches, but brandishing

 his musket, ran towards them in the firelight. Help me, screamed Robyn.

 The hyena had reached the thorn fence, her feet were slipping in the

 loose dust, she was not able to hold Fuller. Don't shoot! Robyn

 screamed. "Don't shooo, The danger from the musket was as great as from

 the animal.

 The Corporal ran forward, reversing the musket and swung the butt at the

 hyena's head. It struck with a sharp crack of wood on bone, and the

 hyena released its grip. Finally, its natural cowardice overcame its

 greed. it turned and shambled through the opening in the thorn hedge

 and disappeared into the night. Oh, sweet merciful God, Robyn whispered

 as they carried Fuller back to the litter, "has he not suffered enough?

 Fuller Ballantyne lived out that night, but an hour after dawn that

 tenacious and tough old man at last relinguished his grip on life

 without having regained consciousness. It was as though a legend had

 passed, and an age had died with him. It left Robyn feeling numbed and

 disbelieving and she washed and dressed the frail and rotting husk for

 burial.

 She buried him at the foot of a tall mukusi tree and carved into the

 bark with her own hand: FULLER MORRIS BALLANTYNE 3rd Nov. I788 I7th

 Oct. i86oIn those days there were giants upon the earth."

 She wished that she had been able to cut the words in marble. She

 wished that she had been able to embalm his body and carry it back to

 rest where it belonged in the great Abbey of Westminster. She wished

 that he had recognized and known who she was just once before he died,

 she wished she had been able to allay his suffering, and she was

 consumed with grief and guilt.

 For three days she maintained the camp astride the Hyena Road, and she

 spent those days sitting listlessly beside the mound of newly turned

 earth under the mukusi tree. She drove old Karanga and even little Juba

 away, for she needed to be alone.

 On the third day she knelt beside the grave and she spoke aloud. "I

 make an oath to your memory, my dear father. I swear that I will devote

 my entire life to this land and its people, just as you did before me."

 Then she rose to her feet and her jaw-line hardened.

 The time for mourning was past. Now her duty lay plain before her, to

 follow this Hyena Road to the sea, and then to bear witness before all

 the world against the monsters who used it.

 When the lions are hunting, the prey animals seem able to sense it. They

 are seized by a restlessness and will graze for only seconds at a time

 before throwing up their homed heads and freezing into that peculiar

 antelope stillness, only the wide trumpet-shaped ears moving

 incessantly; then, skittering like thrown dice, they rearrange

 themselves upon the grassy plains, snorting and nervous, aware of danger

 but uncertain of its exact source.

 Old Karanga had the same instinct bred into him for he was Mashona, an

 eater of dirt, and as such he was natural prey. He was the first to

 become aware that there were Matabele somewhere close at hand. He

 became silent, nervous and watchful, and it infected the other bearers.

 Robyn saw him pick a broken ostrich plume from the grass beside the path

 and study it gravely, puckering his lips and hissing quietly to himself.

 it had not fallen from the wing of a bird.

 That night he voiced his fears to Robyn. They are here, the stabbers of

 women, the abductors of children-" He spat into the fire with a bravado

 that was hollow as a dead tree-trunk. You are under my protection,

 Robyn told him. "You and all the people in this caravan."

 But when they met the Matabele war party, it was without further

 warning, in the dawn when the Matabele always attack.

 Suddenly they were there, surrounding the camp, a solid phalanx of

 dappled shields and nodding plumes, the blades of the broad stabbing

 assegai catching the early light. Old Karanga had gone in the night,

 and with him had gone all the other porters and bearers. Except for the

 Hottentots the camp was deserted.

 Karanga's warning had not been in vain, however, and behind the thorn

 scherm all the Hottentot guards were standing to their muskets, with

 their bayonets fixed.

 The encircling Matabele stood silent, and still as statues carved from

 black marble. There seemed to be thousands upon thousands of them,

 though common sense told Robyn that it was merely a trick of her heated

 imagination and the poor light. A hundred, at the most two hundred, she

 decided.

 Beside her Juba whispered, "We are safe, Nomusa. We are beyond the

 Burnt Land, beyond the border of my people. They will not kill us."

 Robyn wished she was as confident, and she shivered briefly, not merely

 from the dawn chill. See, Nomusa, Juba insisted.

 "The baggage boys are with them, and many of the amadoda carry their

 isibamu (firearms). If they intended to fight, they would not so burden

 themselves."

 Robyn saw that the girl was right, some of the warriors had rusty trade

 muskets slung upon their shoulders, and she remembered from her

 grandfather's writings that whenever the Matabele intended serious

 fighting they handed their muskets, which they neither trusted nor used

 with any accuracy, to the baggage boys and relied entirely upon the

 weapon that their ancestors had forged and perfected, the assegai of

 Chaka. Zulu. The baggage boys carry trade goods, they are a trading

 party, Juba whispered. The baggage boys were the young apprentice

 warriors, and beyond the ranks of fighting men they were still in

 column. As soon as Robyn recognized the boxes and bundles that the

 baggage boys carried balanced on their heads, her last qualms faded to

 be replaced by anger.

 They were traders, that she was sure of now, and returning along the

 road from the east there was little doubt in Robyn's mind as to what

 they had traded for these paltry wares. Slavers! " she snapped. "In

 God's name and mercy, these are the slavers we seek, returning from

 their filthy business. Juba, go and hide immediately, she ordered,

 Then, with her Sharps rifle tucked under her arm, she stepped out

 through the opening in the wall of Thorn bush, and the nearest warriors

 in the circle lowered their shields a little and stared at her

 curiously. This small change in attitude confirmed Juba's guess, their

 intentions were not warlike. Where is your Induna? " Robyn called, her

 voice sharp with her anger, and now their curiosity gave way to

 astonishment, Their ranks swayed and rustled, until a man came from

 amongst them, one of the most impressive men she had ever laid eyes

 upon.

 There was no mistaking his nobility of bearing, the arrogance and pride

 of a warrior tried in battle and covered in honours. He stopped before

 her and when he spoke his voice was low and calm. He did not have to

 raise it to be heard. Where is your husband, white woman? " he asked.

 "Or your father? II speak for myself, and all my peopleBut you are a

 woman, the tall Induna contradicted her. And you are a slaver, Robyn

 flared at him, "a dealer in women and children The warrior stared at her

 for a moment, then lifted his chin and laughed, it was a low clear

 musical sound. Not only a woman, he laughed, "but an insolent one

 also."

 He shifted his shield on to his shoulder and strode past her. He was so

 tall that Robyn had to Ifft her chin to look up at him. He moved with a

 sinuous balance and assurance of carriage. The muscles in his back

 shone as though they were covered in black velvet, the tall plumes of

 his headdress nodded and the war rattles on his ankles whispered with

 each pace.

 Swiftly he moved through the gap in the thorn hedge and at Robyn's

 gesture the Hottentot Corporal lifted the point of his bayonet into the

 "present" position and stepped back to let the Induna pass.

 With a sweeping gaze the Induna took in the condition of the camp and

 laughed again. Your bearers have run, he said. "Those Mashona jackals

 can smell a real man a day's march away Robyn had followed him into the

 camp and now she demanded with anger that was not feigned, By what right

 do you enter my kraal and terrify my people!

 The Induna turned back to her. I am the King's man, he said. "On the

 King's business. " As though that was all the explanation that was

 necessary.

 Gandang, the Induna, was a son of Mzilikazi, the King and Paramount

 Chief of the Matabele and all the subservient tribes.

 His mother was of pure Zanzi blood, the old pure blood of the south, but

 she was a junior wife and as such, Gandang would never aspire to his

 father's estate.

 However, he was one of his father's favourites. Mzilikazi, who

 mistrusted nearly all of his sons, and most of his hundreds of wives,

 trusted this son, not only because he was beautiful and clever and a

 warrior without fear, but because he lived in strict accordance with the

 law and custom of his people, and because of his unquestioned and

 oft-proven loyalty to his father and his King.

 For this and for his deeds, he was covered in honours to which the

 ox-tail tassels on his arms and his legs bore witness. At four and

 twenty summers, he was the youngest indoda ever to be granted the

 head-ring of the Induna and a place on the high council of the nation,

 where his voice was listened to with serious attention even by the old

 grey pates.

 The ageing King, crippled with gout, turned more and more towards this

 tall and straight young man when there was a difficult task, or a bitter

 battle in the offing.

 So when Mzilikazi learned of the treachery of one of his Indunas, a man

 who commanded the border guards of the south and eastern strip of the

 Burnt Land, he had not hesitated before summoning Gandang, the trusted

 son. Bopa, son of Bakweg, is a traitor."

 It was a mark of Gandang's favour that his father condescended to

 explain his orders as he issued them. At first, as he was ordered, he

 slew those who trespassed in the Burnt Land, then he grew greedy.

 Instead of killing, he took them as cattle and sold them in the east to

 the Putukezi (Portuguese) and the Sulumani (Arabs) and sent word to me

 that they were dead. " The old King shifted his swollen and painful

 joints and took snuff, before going on, Then because Bopa was a greedy

 man, and the men with whom he deals are greedy also, he began to seek

 other cattle to trade. On his own account, and secretly, he began to

 raid the tribes beyond the Burnt Land Gandang, kneeling before his

 father, had hissed with astonishment. It was contrary to law and

 custom, for the tribes of the Mashona beyond the Burnt Land were the

 King's "cattle', to be raided only at the King's direction.

 For another to usurp the powers and gather the booty that belonged to

 the King was the worst form of treason.

 Yes, my son, the King agreed with Gandang's horror. But his greed was

 without frontiers. He hungered for the baubles and the trash which the

 Sulumani brought him, and when this supply of Mashona "cattle" was not

 enough, then he turned upon his own people The King was silent and his

 expression one of deep regret, for though he was a despot with powers

 that were subject to neither check nor limitation, although his justice

 and his laws were savage, yet within those laws he was a just man. Bopa

 sent to me messengers accusing our own people, some of them nobles of

 Zanzi blood, one of treachery, another of witchcraft, another of

 stealing from the royal herds, and I sent the messengers back to Bopa

 ordering him to slay the offenders. But they were not slain. They, and

 all their people were taken along the road that Bopa had opened to the

 east. Now their bodies will not be buried in this land and their

 spirits will wander homelessly for all time That was a terrible fate,

 and the King lowered his chin upon his chest, and brooded on it. Then

 he sighed and lifted his head. It was a small neat head and his voice

 was high-pitched, almost womanish, not that of a mighty conqueror and a

 warrior without fear. Take your spear to the traitor, my son, and when

 you have killed him, return to me."

 When Gandang would have crawled from his presence, the King halted him

 with one finger raised. When you have killed Bopa, you and those of

 your arnadoda who are with you when the deed is done may go in to the

 women."

 It was the permission for which Gandang had waited for so many years,

 the highest privilege, the right to go in to the women and take wives.

 Gandang shouted his father's praises as he crawled backwards from the

 royal presence.

 Then Gandang, the loyal son, had done what his father commanded. He had

 carried his spear of retribution swiftly across all of Matabeleland,

 across the Burnt Land, and along the Hyena Road until he had met Bopa

 returning from the east laden with the spoils he so dearly coveted.

 They had met at a pass through a line of granite hills, not a day's

 march from where Gandang now confronted Robyn Ballantyne.

 Gandang's Inyad impi (buffalo) in their ostrich plumes and civet-tail

 skirts, carrying the dappled black and white oxhide shields had

 surrounded the slave-guards formed from selected warriors of Bopa's

 Inhlambene impi (the Swimmers). The slavers wore white egret plumes and

 kilts of monkey tails, while their war shields were of chocolate-red

 oxhide, but right was on the side of the Inyati, and after the swift

 jikela (encirclement) they raced in to crush the guilty and confused

 slaveguards in a few terrible unholy minutes of battle.

 Gandang himself had engaged the grizzle-headed but powerfully built

 Bopa. He was a wily, scarred fighter and veteran of a thousand such

 conflicts. Their shields, the one dappled black and the other red,

 collided with a thud like charging bulls, and they wrestled for the

 advantage until Gandang, the younger and stronger, with a shift of

 weight and feet had hooked the point of his shield under the red shield

 of Bopa and prised it aside to open his enemy's flank. Ngidla, I have

 eaten! " Gandang sang out as he sent the broad blade cleaving between

 Bopa's ribs, and when it was withdrawn against the reluctant cling of

 flesh with a sucking noise like a man walking in thick ankledeep mud,

 Bopa's heart blood burst out behind it and splattered against Gandang's

 shield, drenching the ox tail tassels on his arms and his legs.

 Thus it was for good reason that Gandang had laughed when Robyn called

 him "Slaver'. I am on the King's business, he repeated. "But what do

 you do here, white woman? " He knew very little of these strange

 people, for he had been a child when the impis of Mzilikazi had fought

 them in the land to the south, and had been driven by them northwards

 into what was now Matabeleland.

 Gandang had met only one or two of them. They had been visitors to his

 father's great kraal at Thabas Indunas, travellers and traders and

 missionaries who had been "given the road" by the King and allowed to

 cross the strictly guarded frontiers.

 Gandang was suspicious of them and their gaudy trade goods. He

 distrusted their habit of breaking pieces off the rocks along their

 path, he disliked their talk of a white man who lived in the sky and

 seemed to be in serious competition with the "Nkulu-kulul, the great God

 of the Matabele.

 Had he met this woman and her followers in the Burnt Land, he would have

 followed his orders without hesitation, and killed them all.

 However, they were still ten days'march from the frontier and his

 interest in them was casual; he was impatient to return to his father

 and report to him the success of his expedition. He would not waste

 much further time. What is your business, woman? " I come to tell you

 that the Great Queen will no longer allow human beings to be sold like

 cattle for a few beads.

 I come to put an end to this evil business That is man's work, Gandang

 smiled. "And besides, it has already been seen to."

 The woman amused him, at another time he might have enjoyed bantering

 with her.

 He would have turned and strode from the camp when suddenly a small

 movement seen through a gap in the thin thatch of one of the temporary

 shelters caught his attention. With uncanny speed for such a big man,

 he ducked into the hut and pulled the girl out by her wrist; holding her

 at arm's length he studied Juba gravely. You are of the people, you are

 Matabele, he said flatly.

 Juba hung her head and her face had a pale greyish sheen of terror. For

 a moment Robyn thought that Juba's legs would no longer bear her weight.

 Speak, Gandang commanded in that low but imperious. voice. "You are

 Matabele! " Juba looked up at him and her whisper was so soft that

 Robyn hardly caught it. Matabele, she agreed, "of Zanzi blood."

 The warrior and the maid considered each other carefully. Juba lifted

 her chin, and the greyness vanished from her face.

 Your father? " Gandang asked at last. I am Juba, daughter of Ternbu

 Tebe. "He is dead, and all his children, at the King's orders."

 Juba shook her head. "My father is dead, but his wives and his children

 are in the land of the Sulumani beyond the sea. I alone escaped. "Bopa!

 " Gandang said the name as though it were a curse. He considered a

 moment. "It is possible that your father was wrongly sentenced, for

 Bopa sent false accusation to the King."

 Juba made no reply, but in the silence that followed, Robyn saw a subtle

 change coming over the girl, something altered in the carriage of her

 head, she shifted her weight, thrusting out one hip, a small but

 provocative movement.

 Her eyes, when she looked up at the tall Induna, grew wider and softer,

 and her lips were held slightly apart so that the pink tip of her tongue

 just showed between them. What is this white woman to you? " Gandang

 asked, and there was just a trace of huskiness in his own voice.

 He held her wrist still, and she made no effort to pull away. She is as

 my mother was, Juba replied, and as the Induna looked down from her face

 to her sweet young body the ostrich plumes fanned softly about his head,

 and Juba changed the angle of her shoulders slightly, offering up her

 breasts to his gaze. You are with her by your own will? " Gandang

 insisted, and Juba nodded. So be it. " It seemed to require an effort

 for the warrior to break his gaze, but he dropped Juba's wrist and

 turned back to Robyn. His smile was mocking once more. The slavers you

 seek are not far from here, white woman. You will find them at the next

 pass in the road."

 He went as swiftly and as silently as he had come, and his warriors

 followed him in a dense black column.

 Within minutes the last of them had disappeared along the winding narrow

 trail into the west.

 Old Karanga was the first of the servants to return to the camp. He

 came in through the thorn scherm like a bashful stork on his thin legs.

 Where were you when I needed you? " Robyn demanded. Nomusa, I could

 not trust my temper with those Matabele dogs, old Karanga quavered, but

 he could not meet her eyes.

 Within the hour the other porters and bearers had crept down from the

 hills and out of the forest, all of them now endowed with amazing

 enthusiasm to continue the march in the opposite direction to that of

 the Inyati impi.

 Robyn found the slavers where Gandang had promised her she would. They

 were scattered over the neck of the pass, they lay in knots and

 windrows, like leaves after the first storm of autumn. Nearly all of

 them had their death wounds in the chest or throat, proof that at the

 end they had fought like Matabele.

 The victors had slit open the dead men's bellies to allow their spirits

 to escape, a last courtesy to men who had fought gallantly, but the

 vultures had used the openings to enter the belly pouches.

 The birds hopped and flapped and squabbled raucously over the cadavers,

 tugging and dragging at them so that their dead limbs kicked and

 twitched as though they were still alive, and dust and loose feathers

 flew around them. The croaking and squawking of the birds was

 deafening.

 In the trees and on the cliffs above the pass, the birds that had

 already gorged crouched somnolently, puffing out their feathers and

 hunching their naked scaly heads and necks upon their shoulders,

 digesting the contents of their bulging crops before returning to the

 feast.

 The little caravan passed slowly, in fascinated horror at the carnage,

 speechless in the raucous chorus of the scavengers, stepping carefully

 over the ragged, dust-covered remains of brave men, reminded by them of

 their own mortality.

 Once they had crossed the pass they hurried down the far slope with

 fearful backward glances. There was a stream at the bottom of the

 slope, a tiny trickle of clear water springing from the slope and

 threading its way from pool to small shaded pool. Robyn went into camp

 A upon the bank, and immediately called Juba to follow her.

 She had to bathe herself, she felt as though death had touched her with

 its putrid fingertips and she needed to wash away the taint of it. She

 sat under the trickle of clear water, waist deep in the pool below the

 waterfall and let the stream flow over her head, her eyes closed trying

 to blank out the horrors of the battlefield. Juba was not so affected,

 she was no stranger to death in its most malevolent forms, and she

 splashed and played in the green water, completely absorbed in the

 moment.

 At last Robyn waded to the bank, and pulled her shirt and breeches over

 her still-wet body. In that heat, her clothes would dry upon her within

 minutes, and while she twisted her wet hair into a rope on top of her

 head she called to Juba to come out of the pool.

 In a mischievous and rebellious mood the girl ignored her, and remained

 rapt in her own game, singing softly as she picked wild flowers from a

 creeper that hung over the pool and plaited them into a necklace over

 her shoulders. Robyn turned away and left her, climbing back along the

 bank towards the camp, and the first turn hid her from view.

 Now Juba looked up and hesitated. She was not certain why she had

 refused to obey, and she felt a little chill of disquiet at being alone.

 She was not yet accustomed to this new mood of hers, this strange and

 formless excitement, this breathless expectancy for she knew not what.

 With a toss of her head she returned to her song and her play.

 Standing above the bank, half screened by the trailing creeper and

 mottled like a leopard by the slanting dappled sunlight through the

 leaves of the forest, a tall figure leaned against the hole of a wild

 fig tree and watched the girl.

 He had stood there, unseen and unmoving since he had been led to the

 pool by the sound of splashing and singing. He had watched the two

 women, comparing their nakedness, the bloodless white against the

 luscious dark skin, the skinny angular frame against sweet and abundant

 flesh, the small pointed breasts tipped in the obscene pink of raw meat

 against the full and perfect rounds with their raised bosses, dark and

 shiny as newwashed coal, the narrow hips of a boy against the proud wide

 basin which would cradle fine sons, the mean little buttocks against the

 fullness and glossiness that was unmistakably woman.

 Gandang was aware that by returning along the trail he was for the first

 time in his life neglecting his duty.

 He should have been many hours" march away from this place, trotting at

 the head of his impi into the west, yet there was this madness in his

 blood, that he had not been able to deny. So he had halted his impi and

 returned alone along the Hyena Road. I am stealing the King's time,

 just as surely as Bopa stole his cattle, he told himself. "But it is

 only a small part of a single day, and after all the years I have given

 to my father, he would not grudge me that. " But Gandang knew that he

 would, favourite son or not, Mzilikazi had only one punishment for

 disobedience.

 Gandang was risking his life to see the girl again, he was risking a

 traitor's death to speak a few words to a stranger, daughter of one who

 had himself died a traitor's death. How many men have dug their graves

 with their own umthondo, he mused, as he waited for the white woman to

 leave the pool, and when she had covered her skinny boy's body with

 those stiff and ugly garments and called to the lovely child in the pool

 to follow her, Gandang tried to reach out with his own will to hold Juba

 there.

 The white woman, clearly piqued, turned and disappeared amongst the

 trees and Gandang relaxed slightly, giving himself once more to the

 pleasure of watching the girl in the water. The wild flowers were a

 pale yellow against her skin, and the waterdrops clung to her breasts

 and shoulders like stars against the midnight sky. Juba was singing one

 of the children's songs that Gandang knew so well, and he found himself

 humnng the chorus under his breath.

 Below him the girl waded to the bank and standing in the sugar-white

 sand began to wipe the water from her body; still singing she bent

 forward to wipe her legs, encircling them with long shin pink-lined

 fingers and running her hands slowly down from thigh to ankle. Her back

 was to Gandang, and as she stooped he gasped aloud at what was revealed

 to him, and instantly the girl flew erect and spun to face him. She was

 trembling like a roused fawn, her eyes huge and dark with fright. I see

 you, Juba, daughter of Tembu Tebe, he said, there was a husky catch to

 his voice as he came down the bank to her.

 The expression in her eyes changed, they glowed with golden lights like

 sunshine in a bowl of honey. I am a messenger of the King, and I demand

 the right of the road, he said, and touched her shoulder. She shivered

 under his fingers. He saw the little goose bumps rise upon her skin.

 The "right of the road" was a custom from the south, from the old

 country beside the sea. It was the same right which Senzangakhona had

 demanded of Nandi, the sweet one', but Senzangakhona had not respected

 the law, and he had penetrated the forbidden veil. From this

 transgression one had been born, the bastard "Chakal, the worm in the

 belly', who had grown to become both the King and the scourge of

 Zululand, the same Chaka from whose tyranny Mzilikazi had flown with his

 tribe to the north. I am a loyal maiden of the King, Juba answered him

 shyly, "and I cannot refuse to comfort one who follows the road on the

 King's business! Then she smiled up at him. It was neither bold nor

 provocative, but so sweet, so trusting and filled with admiration, that

 Gandang felt his heart squeezed afresh.

 He was gentle with her, very gentle and calm and patient, so that she

 found herself impatient to render the service he desired, found herself

 desiring it as strongly as he so evidently did. When he showed her how

 to make a nest for him between her crossed thighs, she responded

 instantly to his word and touch, and there was something wrong with her

 throat and her breathing, for she was unable to answer him aloud.

 While she held him in this nest she felt herself gradually overwhelmed

 by a strange wildness of heart and body. She tried to alter the angle

 of her pelvis, she tried to unlock her tightly crossed thighs and spread

 them for him, she strove to engulf him for she could no longer bear that

 dry and tantalizing friction against the inside of her upper legs. She

 wanted to feel him breast the warm and welcoming flood that she sent

 down for him and she wanted to feel him gliding upon it deeply up inside

 her. But his resolve, his respect for custom and law, was as powerful

 as that muscular body that drove above her, and he held her captive

 until the moment when she felt his grip break and his seed spring

 strongly from him to waste itself in the white sand beneath them.

 At that moment she felt such a sense of loss that she could have wept

 aloud.

 Gandang held her still, his chest heaving and the sweat forming little

 shiny runners across that smooth dark back and down the corded neck.

 Juba clung to him with both arms wrapped tightly about him, her face

 pressed into the hollow between his shoulder and his neck, and for a

 long time neither of them spoke.

 , YOU are as soft and as beautiful as the first night of the new moon,

 Gandang whispered at last. And you are as black and as strong as the

 bull of the Chawala festival, she instinctively chose the simile that

 would mean most to a Matabele, the bull as the symbol of wealth and

 virility and the Chawala bull the most perfect specimen of all the

 King's herds.

 You will be only one of many wives, Robyn was horrified at the thought.

 Yes. " agreed Juba. "First of all of them, and the others will honour

 me. "I would have taken you with me to teach you many things and show

 you great wonders. "I have already seen the greatest wonder, You will

 do nothing but bear children."

 Juba nodded happily. "If I am truly lucky, I will bear him a hundred

 sons. "I will miss you, I would never leave you, Nomusa, my mother, not

 for any person nor reason in the world, except this one. "He wants to

 give me cattle. "Since the death of my family, you are my mother,

 explained Juba, "and it is the marriage price. "I cannot accept

 payment, as though you were a slave."

 Then you demean me. I am of Zanzi blood and he tells me that I am the

 most beautiful woman in Matabeleland. You should set the lobola as one

 hundred head of cattle."

 So Robyn called the Induna to her. The marriage price is one hundred

 head of cattle, Robyn told him sternly.

 You make a poor bargain, " Gandang answered loftily. She is worth many

 times that amount. "You will keep the cattle at your kraal, against my

 coming. You will tend them carefully and see that they multiply. "It

 will be as you say, amekazi, my mother. " And this time Robyn had to

 return his smile, for it was no longer mocking and his teeth were so

 white and he was, as Juba had said, truly beautiful. Look after her

 well, Gandang."

 Robyn embraced the young woman and their tears mingled and smeared both

 their cheeks. Yet when she left Juba did not look back once, but

 trotted behind Gandang's tall erect figure carrying her rolled

 sleeping-mat balanced upon her head, and her buttocks jiggled merrily

 under the short beaded apron.

 Man and woman reached the saddle of the pass and disappeared abruptly

 from view.

 The Hyena Road led Robyn and her little party into the mountains, into

 the mist and the strangely desolate valleys of heather and fantastically

 shaped grey stone. It led her to the slave stockades which Juba had

 described to her, the meeting-place where the white man and black man

 made their trade for human life, where the slaves exchanged their carved

 yokes for cuff and chains. But now the stockades were deserted, the

 thatch already sagging and falling in untidy clumps, only the sour smell

 of captivity lingered, and the swarming vermin that infected the empty

 buildings. In a futile gesture, Robyn put fire to the buildings.

 From the misty mountains the road led on, down through dark gorges and

 at last to the low littoral where once more the heat clamped down upon

 them from a sullen overcast sky and the grotesque baobab trees lifted

 their twisted arthritic branches to it like crippled worshippers at a

 healing shrine.

 The rains caught them here upon the coastal plain.

 The flood swept three men away at a ford, four more, including one of

 the Hottentots, died of fever and Robyn herself was smitten with the

 first onslaught of the disease.

 Shivering, half demented by the phantoms of malaria, she toiled on along

 the rapidly overgrown trail, slipping and stumbling in the mud, and

 cursing the fever miasma that rose from the brimming swamps and hung

 like a silver wraith in the sickly green glades of fever trees through

 which they hurried.

 Fever and the rigours of the last stage of the journey had tired and

 weakened them all. They knew that they were, at the most, only a few

 days" march from the coast, deep into Portuguese territory and therefore

 under the protection of a Christian king and a government of civilized

 men. It was for these reasons that the Hottentot sentries slept beside

 the smouldering watch fire of damp wood, and it was there that they

 died, their throats slit with a blade sharp enough to cut off the least

 cry.

 So Robyn woke to rough hands upon her, twisting her arms up between her

 shoulder blades and a bony knee in the small of her back, while steel

 cuffs clicked coldly about her wrists. Then the hands released her and

 she was wrenched cruelly to her feet, and dragged from the leaky hut

 beside the Hyena Road.

 The previous evening she had been too tired and feverish to undress, so

 now she was still clad in a stained and rumpled flannel shirt and

 patched moleskin breeches.

 She had even kept the cloth cap on her head, covering her hair, thus in

 the darkness her captors did not realize that she was a woman.

 She was bound with her own porters and Hottentots, forced to wear the

 light marching chains which were proof, if proof was needed, as to who

 her captors were.

 The dawn revealed them to be half-breeds and blacks, all of them dressed

 in the cast-off finery of European style, but carrying modern weapons.

 These were the men she had crossed half a continent to meet, but now she

 cowered in the rags that were her only disguise. She shuddered to think

 on her fate if they should discover her sex, and she berated herself for

 having so blithely believed that she and her entourage would be safe

 from these predators merely because she was white and English. Their

 prey was human flesh, of whatever colour and condition and that was all

 she was now, human flesh on the hoof. A chained creature, of little

 real value, a few dollars on the auction block, and she knew that her

 captors would think nothing of taking their pleasure upon her, or of

 leaving her beside the road with a ball through the temple if she

 provoked them in any way. She kept silent and obeyed instantly the

 least word or gesture from her captors. Slipping and dragging in the

 mud they were marched on eastwards, forced to carry their remaining

 stores and equipment which had now become slavers" booty.

 They were closer to the coast than Robyn had calculated, they smelt the

 iodine and salt of the sea from afar, and later as night began to fall,

 they caught the smell of woodsmoke and the unmistakable odour of captive

 humanity. Then at last they saw the firelight flickering in the

 darkness ahead, and the awful loom of the barracoons.

 Their captors marched between the dark stockades of pole and daubed mud,

 from which the chilling dirge rose of men without hope singing of a land

 they would never see again.

 At last they came into the central square around which the barracoons

 were built. It was an open area of trampled mud where a raised platform

 of rough-sawn planks had been built. Its purpose was immediately clear,

 for the first of Robyn's servants was dragged up the steps and stood

 upon the platform, while the fires around the clearing were heaped with

 dry wood to light the scene. The platform was the auction block, and it

 seemed that the sale was to take place immediately.

 The auctioneer was clearly of pure Portuguese stock, a little man with

 the wrinkled, sun-browned face of a vicious gnome. He had the bland

 smile and the unblinking eyes of a serpent. He was dressed in elegantly

 cut jacket and breeches, and his boots and belt were of the finest

 Iberian leather, ornately tooled and with solid silver buckles. He

 carried a pair of expensive pistols in his belt, and wore the

 wide-brimmed flat-crowned hat of a Portuguese gentleman upon his small

 wrinkled head.

 Before climbing up on the block, he sent one of his personal slaves with

 a casual kick and cuff to the carved wooden drum at the edge of the

 clearing. On it the slave began pounding out a summons to the buyers.

 The slave went to it lustily, his bare torso gleaming with sweat and

 raindrops in the firelight.

 And in answer to the urgent staccato rhythm of the drum, men came from

 out of the shadows of the grove and from the living huts between the

 barracoons. Some of them had been drinking, they came arm in arm

 brandishing their rum bottles and bellowing in drunken chorus, others

 came singly and silently, but they came from every direction and

 gathered in a circle about the auction block.

 The men who formed the circle seemed to be of every hue that the human

 skin is capable of assuming, from le black through all the shades of

 brown and yellow purp to dead shark's belly white, and their features

 were African and Arabic, Asian and European. Even their dress differed

 widely, from the flowing robes of Arabia to the faded finery of

 embroidered jackets and high boots. They had only one thing in common,

 the hawk-fierce eyes and merciless mien of those who deal in human

 misery.

 One at a time Robyn's servants were prodded up on to the block, and

 their ragged clothing was ripped away to expose their physique to the

 buyers. One of these might come forward to feel the muscle tone, or

 force open a slave's mouth to examine the teeth, like a gypsy

 horsedealer at the fair.

 Then, when the buyers had satisfied themselves as to the quality of the

 wares on offer, the small Portuguese would step lightly to the front of

 the block and begin the bidding.

 The men in the circle below him called him Alphonse and though they

 exchanged coarse banter with him, yet they all treated him with wary

 respect, there could be no clearer proof of the man's reputation than

 fear and respect from these men.

 Under his control the sale went swiftly. The Hottentots, small wiry

 men, butter yellow and with flat puglike features attracted little

 interest from the circle of buyers, knocked down for a few silver rupees

 apiece, while the porters, taller men and well muscled from many months

 of hard marching and porterage, fetched better prices, until they came

 to old Karanga, ancient and toothless, hobbling on to the block on

 storklike legs, seeming barely able to support the weight of his chains.

 The laughter was derisive, and the little Portuguese pleaded in vain for

 a single bid before dismissing the old man with disgust. It was only

 when he was hauled down off the block and dragged away into the darkness

 beyond the fires that Robyn realized what was about to happen to him

 and, forgetting her resolve not to draw attention to herself, "No, let

 him go! " Hardly one of them glanced in her direction, and the man who

 held her chain hit her a careless open-handed blow across the side of

 her face that blinded her for a moment. She dropped to her knees in the

 mud, and through the buzzing in her ears beard the thud of a pistol shot

 from the darkness.

 She began quietly to weep, and still weeping she was hoisted to her feet

 and in her turn dragged forward into the circle of firelight and hoisted

 by her chain on to the block. A young skinny one, said the Portuguese.

 "But white enough to make a choice bum-boy for the harems of Omani, once

 he has had his knockers clipped. Who will give me ten rupees? "Let's

 have a look at him, " a voice shouted from the circle, and the

 Portuguese turned to Robyn, hooked a finger into the top button of her

 flannel shirt and ripped it down to the level of her belt buckle.

 She doubled over, trying to conceal her upper body, but the man behind

 her twisted the chain and forced her upright. Her breasts pushed out

 pertly through the torn shirt, and the ring of watchers growled and

 moved restlessly, the mood changing instantly.

 Alphonse touched the butt of one of the pistols in his belt

 significantly, and the growl of comment died, the ring of men drew back

 a little.

 Ten rupees? " Alphonse Pereira asked.

 From across the circle a powerfully-built man swaggered into the

 firelight. Robyn recognized him instantly.

 He wore a tall beaver hat tilted back on his head, and from under the

 brim curled thick shiny black hair. His teeth, when he opened his

 mouth, sparkled in the light of the flames. His face was flushed with

 excitement, his voice was thick with it. Gold, he shouted. "I'll bid

 gold, a gold mohur of the East India Company, and a plague on any of you

 that goes above thatA gold mohur, called Alphonse, the slave-master. "A

 gold mohur bid by my brother Camacho Pereira, and good luck to him, he

 chuckled. "Come now, who wants to deny my brother Camacho a fair tup at

 the wench? " One of his men slapped Camacho's back. Sweet Christ, you

 always were a hot one, at that price you can have my turn on top of

 her."

 And Camacho laughed delightedly and came to the front of the block to

 stare up at Robyn, tipping the beaver hat forward he whispered, I've had

 to wait a long time-Robyn felt the little insects of loathing crawling

 over her skin, and she backed away to the limit of her chain. Come now,

 Alphonse called. "Who will go beyond a gold mohur for a fine

 piece-'She's mine, Camacho told his brother.

 "Strike the bargain."

 His brother lifted his hand to knock down the sale, when another voice

 stopped him. A double eagle, sir. Twenty golden dollars American bid.

 " The voice was not raised, yet it carried clearly to every man there,

 as it could carry from quarterdeck to maintop in a force eight gale.

 Robyn started, and swung her chains disbelievingly in that direction;

 she would have known that lazy drawling inflectionif she had not heard

 it for a lifetime. He stood at the very edge of the firelight, but as

 every head in the circle turned to him, he stepped forward.

 The smile had frozen on Alphonse's face, and he hesitated. Call the

 bid! " The advancing figure in plain white shirt and dark breeches made

 the men about him seem small and grubby, and after a moment's

 hesitation, Alphonse obeyed him. A double eagle bid, he said harshly.

 "Captain Mungo, St. John of the clipper Huron bids a double golden

 eagle."

 Robyn felt her legs start to sag under her with relief, but the men

 behind her jerked her upright by her chain.

 Camacho Pereira had whirled to face the American, and to stare at him

 furiously. Mungo St. John answered him with a smile, indulgent and

 patronizing. Robyn had never seen him look more handsome and dangerous,

 his dark wavy hair catching the firelight, and the gaze of his

 yellow-flecked eyes level and unflinching in the face of Carnacho's

 fury. A thousand rupees, Carnacho, he said softly. "Can you match it?

 " Carnacho hesitated, and then turned back quickly to his own brother,

 his voice low and urgent.

 Stake me? " he asked, and Alphonse laughed. I never lend money."

 To a brother? " Camacho insisted. Especially not to a brother,

 Alphonse answered. "Let the wench go, you can buy a dozen better for

 fifty rupees each. "I must have her. " He whirled back to face Mungo

 St. John. "I must have her. It is a matter of honour. Do you

 understand? He took the beaver from his head, and spun it away. One of

 his men caught it, and Camacho ran both hands through his thick black

 locks, and then stretched his arms down at his sides, fleidng the

 fingers like a conjurer about to perform a sleight of hand. I will make

 one more bid, he said ominously. "I bid one mohur of gold, and ten

 inches of Toledo steel. " The knife seemed to appear in his hand from

 out of the air he lifted the point to the level of Mungo St. John's belt

 buckle. Walk away, Yankee, or I will take the woman and your gold

 double eagle."

 The watchers growled, a low blood-thirsty sound, and swiftly rearranged

 themselves into a ring about the two men, jostling for a better view.

 One hundred rupees says Machito slits the Yankee's guts. "Done! And

 there was a rising hubbub as the wagers were called and accepted.

 Mungo St. John had not stopped smiling, but now he held out his right

 hand without once taking his eyes off the Portuguese's face.

 Out of the ranks of the watchers emerged a large, toadlike figure with a

 head as round and bald as a cannon ball. Tippoo moved with reptilian

 speed to Mungo St. John's right side. He placed a knife in the

 outstretched hand, and then unknotted the embroidered sash from his

 waist and handed that to his Captain. Mungo wrapped the sash around his

 left forearm, still smiling softly to himself.

 He had not once looked up at Robyn, though she had not been able to tear

 her own eyes from his face.

 He seemed godlike to her at that moment, everything about him, the

 darkly classical features, the wide shoulders under the white cloth of

 his shirt, the narrow waist clinched with a broad belt of polished

 leather, the strong straight legs in tightly fitted breeches and soil

 leather boots, seemed to have come down directly from Olympus. She

 would have gladly thrown herself at his feet and worshipped him.

 just below Robyn, Camacho was stripping off his own jacket and wrapping

 his guard arm with it. Then with the long knife in his right hand he

 made a low swift cut, forehand and then backhand, so the steel whispered

 as it dissolved into a silver blur like the wing of a dragonfly in

 flight. At each stroke he ducked his head slightly and flexed his

 knees, loosening and warming his muscles like an athlete before the

 contest.

 Then he moved forward, stepping lightly in the treacherous mud and

 weaving the point of the knife to distract and intimidate his adversary.

 The smile went from Mungo St. John's lips, to be replaced by a grave and

 attentive expression, like a mathematician considering a complex

 problem. He kept his own knife low, advancing his wrapped forearm, and

 balancing easily, stood his full height and turned gently to face the

 Portuguese as he circled. It reminded Robyn of the night she had

 watched him on the dance floor at Admiralty House, so tall and graceful,

 so balanced and controlled in each movement.

 Now at last the watchers were silent, straining eagerly for the first

 glimpse of blood, but when Carnacho charged they roared the way the

 crowd roars when the bull first bursts into the ring. Mungo St. John

 barely seemed to move, swaying his body at the hips so the knife slid

 past him, and then he was facing Camacho again.

 Twice more the Portuguese attacked, and both times Mungo St. John moved

 effortlessly aside, but each time he gave a little ground, until he was

 backed up to the first rank of watchers, they began to fall back to give

 the American room to fight, but Camacho saw his opportunity as Mungo,

 was crowded like a prize-fighter against the ropes and he swung back to

 attack. At the same moment, almost as though it had been rehearsed, a

 booted foot shot out from the crowd.

 Nobody was sure whose foot it was, for the throng was closely packed and

 the light uncertain, but the kick to the back of Mungo St. John's heel

 almost brought him down sprawling in the mud, he lunged to catch his

 balance, but before he could do so, Camacho hit him with the long bright

 blade. Robyn screamed and Mungo St. John spun away from the sting of

 the steel with scarlet spreading wetly down his shirt-front like rich

 Burgundy wine spilled on a damask tablecloth, and his own knife flicked

 out of his hand and was lost in the red mud.

 The crowd bellowed, and Camacho swarmed in eagerly, following the

 wounded man the way a good dog hunts a pheasant with a broken wing.

 Mungo was forced to give him ground, falling back, clutching the wound,

 dodging and weaving, catching a forehand slash on his wrapped guard arm

 so the embroidered cloth split almost to the flesh beneath it.

 Skilfully Camacho herded him towards the auction block, and when Mungo,

 felt the poles catch in the small of his back, he froze for a moment as

 he realized that he was trapped. Camacho drove in at him, going for the

 belly, his lips drawn back baring his perfect white teeth.

 Mungo St. John caught the knife on his guard and then snatched a grip on

 the wrist with his right hand. The two men stood chest to chest, their

 arms entwined like vines on a trellis, swaying slightly as they strained

 together, and the effort brought a fresh flood of bright blood from

 Mungo's wound, but slowly he forced Camacho's knife hand upwards,

 bending it at the elbow, until the point was no longer aimed at Mungo's

 belly but at the night sky above them.

 Mungo shifted his feet, gathering himself and then his face darkened,

 his jaw clenched and his breath sobbed with effort. Slowly Camacho's

 wrist gave to the pressure, and his eyes widened as the point of his own

 knife reversed towards him.

 Now he also was wedged against the side of the auction block and could

 not break away, and infinitely slowly but inexorably, the long blade

 moved towards his own chest. Both men stared down at it, their hands

 and arms interlocked, pitting their strength to hold each other, but the

 point touched Carrincho's chest, a drop of blood welled up at the tiny

 prick.

 On the block beside Robyn, Alphonse Pereira drew the pistol from his

 belt with a furtive movement, but before she could shout a warning there

 was a blur of movement and Tippoo the mate towered beside him, his own

 huge smooth-bore pistol pressed to the side of Alphonse's skull. The

 little Portuguese rolled his eyes sideways at Tippoo, and then hurriedly

 returned the weapon to his obyn could watch again with fascinated horror

 belt, and the contest at her feet.

 Mungo St. John's face was congested with dark blood, every muscle in his

 shoulders and arms raised in knots under the thin shirt, his whole

 existence concentrated on the knife, and he slid his left foot back

 until it was anchored against the auction block, and then using it as a

 pivot hurled all his weight forward on to the knife, the final effort

 like the matador going over between the horns for the kill.

 For a moment longer Camacho resisted him, and then the blade resumed its

 forward movement entering Camacho's chest as slowly as a python swallows

 a gazelle.

 Camacho's mouth opened in a cawing burst of despair, and suddenly his

 fingers opened as all resistance and strength went out of them. His own

 blade with Mungo St. John's full weight behind it shot its length into

 his chest with such force that the cross piece of the hilt struck

 against his ribs with a sharp thump.

 Mungo St. John released his grip and let him fall, face forward into the

 mud, while he himself caught at the edge of the auction block for

 support. Only then did he lift his chin to look up at Robyn. Your

 servant, ma'am, he murmured, and Tippoo rushed forward to catch him

 before he fell.

 Huron's seamen all of them armed, formed a guard about them, and Tippoo

 led them holding aloft a bull'seye lantern which he shone into the

 shadows as they hurried down the path.

 Mungo St. John was on his feet, but supported by Nathaniel, his bosun,

 and Robyn had bound up the wound roughly with a strip of linen torn from

 a seaman's shirt and had used the rest of the shirt to make a sling for

 Mungo's right arm.

 Through a grove of mangroves they reached the bank of the creek on which

 the barracoons had been built and in the centre of the stream, her bare

 masts and yards silhouetted against the starry sky, lay the lovely

 clipper.

 She had lanterns in her rigging and an alert anchor watch, for at

 Tippoo's first hail the whaler swung away from her side and was rowed

 swiftly to the bank where they stood.

 Mungo climbed the ship's side unaided, but sank down with a grateful

 sigh on to his bunk in the stern cabin, the bunk that Robyn remembered

 so vividly.

 She tried to force the memory from her mind, and keep her manner brisk

 and businesslike. They have taken my medical chest she said as she

 rinsed her hands in the porcelain basin at the head of the bunk. Tippoo.

 " Mungo looked up at his mate, and the bald, scarred head bobbed once

 and then Tippoo ducked out of the cabin. Mungo and Robyn were alone,

 and she tried to remain remote and professional as she made her first

 examination of the wound in good lantern light.

 It was narrow, but very deep. She did not like the angle of the thrust,

 just below the collar bone but angled in towards the point of the

 shoulders. Can you move your fingers? " she asked. He lifted his hand

 towards her face and touched her cheek lightly. Yes, he said, as he

 stroked her. "Very easily."

 Don't, she said weakly. You are sick, he said. "So thin and pale.

 "It is nothing, lower your arm, please."

 She was terribly conscious of her matted hair and filthy mud-stained

 clothing, of the yellow tinges of fever on her skin and the dark smudges

 of fatigue and terror under her eyes. Fever? " he asked quietly, and

 she nodded as she went on working on the wound. Strange, he murmured.

 "It makes you seem so young, so fragile, he paused, so lovely."

 I forbid you to talk like that. " She felt flustered, uncertain of

 herself. I said I would not forget you, " he ignored the instruction,

 "and I did not. "If you don't stop, I will leave immediately. "When I

 saw your face tonight in the light of the fires I could not believe it

 was you, and at the same time i; was as though all our lives we had a

 rendezvous to keep here tonight. As though it had been destined from

 the moment of our births. "Please, she whispered, "please stop. "That's

 better, please is better. Now I will stop."

 But he watched her face attentively as she worked. In the ship's

 medical chest which he kept in the locker below his bunk Robyn found

 most of what she needed.

 He neither flinched nor grimaced as she laid the stitches in the wound,

 but went on watching her. You must rest now, she said as she finished,

 and he lay back on the bunk. At last he looked tired and drained, and

 she felt a rush of gratitude, of -pity, and of that other emotion which

 she had believed that she had long ago subdued. You saved me. " She

 dropped her eyes, no longer able to look at him and busied herself with

 repacking the ship's chest. "I will always be grateful for that, just

 as I will always hate you for what you are doing here."

 What am I doing here? " he challenged her lightly. Buying slaves, "

 she accused. "Buying human lives, just as you bought me on the slaving

 block. "But for a much lower price, " he agreed as he closed his eyes.

 "At twenty dollars gold a head there is not much profit in it, I assure

 you."

 She awoke in the small cabin, the same cabin in which she had sailed the

 length of the Atlantic Ocean and in the same narrow uncomfortable bunk.

 It was like homecoming, and the first thing she saw after her eyes had

 adjusted to the harsh beam of sunlight through the skylight were the

 chests of her medical instruments, her remaining medicines and her few

 personar possessions.

 She remembered the unspoken command that Mungo had given to the mate the

 previous evening. Tippoo must have gone back ashore during the night,

 and she wondered what price he had paid or what threat he had made to

 get them back for her.

 She rose swiftly from her bunk, ashamed of her sloth; whoever had left

 the chests, had also filled the enamel jug with fresh water. With

 relief she washed away the mud and filth and combed the tangles of her

 hair before finding worn. but clean clothing in her chest. Then she

 hurried from her cabin down to the master's quarters. If Tippoo had

 been able to find her chests, then he might be able to find and free her

 people, the Hottentots and porters who had gone upon the auction block

 in the firelight.

 Mungo's bunk was empty, the vest and bloodstained shirt bundled and

 thrown into a corner of the cabin, and the bedclothes in disarray. She

 turned swiftly for the deck, and as she came out into the sunlight she

 saw that it would be only a temporary respite from the monsoon, for

 already the thunderclouds were boiling up over the horizon.

 She looked about her quickly. Huron lay in the centre of a broad

 estuary, with mangroves on each bank, and the bar and the open sea was

 not in sight, though the tide was ebbing, rustling down the ship's hull

 and leaving the mud flats half exposed.

 There were other vessels in the roadstead, mostly big dhow-rigged

 buggaloos typical of the Arab coastal traders, but there was another

 fully rigged ship at anchor half a mile further downstream, flying the

 flag of Brazil at her peak. Even as Robyn paused to watch her, there

 came the clank of her capstan, and men ran up the ratlines and spread

 out along her yards. She was getting under way. Then Robyn realized

 that there was unusual activity all about her. Small boats were plying

 from the shore to the anchored dhows, and even on Huron's deck there was

 a huddle of men on the quarter-deck.

 Robyn turned towards them, and realized that the tallest of them was

 Mungo, St. John. His arm was in a sling and he looked drawn and pale,

 but his expression was forbidding, the dark curved brows drawn together

 in a frown, and the mouth a thin cruel line as he listened attentively

 to one of his seamen. So absorbed was he that he did not notice Robyn

 until she was only a few paces away. Then he swung towards her, and all

 the questions and demands stayed behind her lips for his voice was

 harsh. Your coming was an act of God, Doctor Ballantyne, he said. Why

 do you say that? "There is a plague in the barracoons, he said. "Most

 of the other buyers are cutting their losses, and leaving."

 He glanced downstream to where the Brazilian schooner had set reefed

 main and jib and was running down towards the bar and the open sea, and

 there was activity aboard most of the other vessels. But I have over a

 thousand prime blacks afattening ashore, and I'll be damned if I'll run

 now. At least, not until I know what it is."

 Robyn stared at him. Her mind was a whirl of doubts and fears. "Plague"

 was a layman's word, it covered everything from the Black Death to

 syphilis, the grand pox, as it was called. I will go ashore

 immediately, she said, and Mungo St. John nodded. I thought you would

 say that, he said, "I will go with you. "No. " Her tone brooked no

 argument. "You will aggravate that wound, and in your weakened

 conditionyou will be easy prey to this plague, whatever it is. " She

 glanced at Tippoo, and his face split laterally into that broad toadlike

 grin and he stepped up beside her. By God, ma'am, I've had them all,

 said Nathaniel, the little pockmarked bosun. "And none of them killed

 me yet And he stepped up to her other hand.

 Robyn sat in the stern while Tippoo and Nathaniel handled the oars, and

 as they pulled across the ebb towards the shore the bosun explained what

 they would find ashore. Each of the traders has his own barracoon built

 and guarded by his own men, he told Robyn. "He buys from the Portos as

 the blackbirds are brought in."

 As Robyn listened to Nathaniel, she realized the answers to questions

 that had worried her and Zouga.

 This was the reason why Pereira had tried so desperately to persuade

 them not to bring the expedition south of the Zambezi river, and why,

 when all else had failed, he had attacked it with his armed brigands and

 the to destroy it. He had been protecting his brother's trade routes

 and selling area. It was not mere avarice and lust, but a logical

 attempt to preserve this lucrative enterprise from discovery.

 L She went on listening to Nathaniel. -1 "Each trader fattens his wares

 ashore, like pigs for the market. That way they are stronger for the

 crossing, and he makes sure that they are healthy and not going to bring

 sickness aboard with them. There are twenty-three barracoons here, some

 small ones with twenty blacks or so, belonging to the small traders,

 right on up to the big ones like Huron's, with a thousand and more prime

 blackbirds in the cage. We have the slave-decks set up in Huron's hold,

 and we would have begun taking them aboard any day, but now-Nathaniel

 shrugged, and spat on the horny calloused palms of each hand in turn,

 and then plied himself to the oars once more.

 Are you a Christian, Nathaniel? " Robyn asked softly. That I am,

 ma'am, " he said proudly. "As good a Christian as ever sailed out of

 Martha's Vineyard. "Do you think God approves of what you are doing

 here to these poor people? "Hewers of wood, ma'am, and drawers of

 water, like the Bible says, the weather-beaten sailor told her, so

 glibly that she knew that the reply had been put in his mouth, and she

 guessed by whom.

 Once they were ashore, Tippoo led the small party with Robyn in the

 centre and Nathaniel carrying her chest in the rear.

 Captain Mungo St. John had chosen the best site available for his

 barracoon, on a rise of ground at a distance from the river. The sheds

 were well built, with floors of sawn timber raised above the mud and

 good roofs thatched with palmetto leaves.

 Huron's guards had not deserted, proof of the discipline which Mungo St.

 John maintained and the slaves in the barracks had evidently been

 carefully chosen.

 They were all well set up men and women, and the copper cookers were

 filled with boiling farina so that their bellies bulged and their skins

 were glossy.

 At Robyn's direction they were lined up and she passed swiftly down the

 ranks. There were some mild ailments, which she singled out for later

 treatment, but she found none of the symptoms which she so dreaded.

 There is no plague here, " she decided. "Not yet."

 Come! " said Tippoo.

 He led her through the palm groves, and the next barracoon had been

 deserted by the traders who had built it and stocked it. Already the

 slaves were hungry and confused by their sudden liberation. You are

 free to go, " Robyn told them. "Go back to your own land."

 She was not certain that they understood her. They squatted in the mud

 and stared at her blankly. It was as though they had lost all power of

 independent thought or action, and she knew that they would never be

 able to make their way back along the Hyena Road, even if they survived

 the coming epidemic.

 With a flash of horror Robyn realized that without their slave-masters

 these poor creatures were doomed to a lingering death by starvation and

 disease. Their masters had cleared out the store rooms before they

 left, there was not a cupful of farina or corn meal left in any of the

 barracoons they visited that morning.

 We will have to feed them, " Robyn said. We have food for our own, that

 is all, Tippoo told her impassively. He is right, ma'am, Nathaniel

 confirmed.  rWe feed them, then we'll starve our own blackbirds,

 besides, most of them are poor goods, not worth the price of a cup of

 farina."

 In the second barracoon Robyn thought that she had at last discovered

 the first plague victims, for the low thatched sheds were crammed with

 rows of prostrate naked figures, and their low moaning and whimpering

 was a heart-breaking sound, while the smell of corruption was thick and

 oily on the palate.

 It was Tippoo who corrected her. "China birds, he grunted, and for a

 moment Robyn did not understand, and she stooped over the nearest body,

 then straightened immediately. Despite her training cold blisters of

 sweat formed on her forehead.

 By Imperial Decree from Peking, no black African slave could be landed

 on the shores of China unless he had been rendered incapable of

 reproducing his own kind. The Emperor was concerned that future

 generations would not be plagued by the growth of an alien population in

 their midst. The traders found it expedient to castrate their purchases

 in the barracoons, so that losses caused by the operation could be

 absorbed before the expense of the long voyage was incurred.

 It was crudely done, a tourniquet applied to the root of the scrotum and

 then the entire scrotal sack removed at a single knife stroke and the

 wound cauterized immediately with a heated iron or a daub of hot pitch.

 About sixty percent would survive the shock and subsequent

 mortification, but their price per capita was so enhanced that the

 trader could face forty percent losses with equanimity.

 There was nothing that Robyn could do for so many, she felt overwhelmed

 by the suffering and misery all around her, and she stumbled out on to

 the muddy pathway, blinded by her own tears. In the next barracoon, the

 one nearest to the central auction block, she found the first plague

 victims.

 Once again the sheds had been deserted by the slavemasters, and the

 dimly lit thatched sheds were filled with naked figures, some squatting

 motionlessly, others lying on the damp earthen floor, knees drawn up,

 shaking with the cold of fever, and powerless to lift themselves out of

 their own bodily wastes. The sound of delirium and suffering was

 murmurous as of insects in an English orchard on a hot summer's day.

 The first sufferer that Robyn touched was a young girl, just beyond

 puberty, and her skin was burning hot. She rolled her head from side to

 side, endlessly and senselessly, mouthing snatches of gibberish. Swiftly

 Robyn ran her fingertips down the girl's naked bulging stomach and

 immediately she felt the tiny lumps under the hot skin, like pellets of

 buckshot. There could be no doubt.

 Smallpox, she said simply, and Tippoo drew back fearfully. Wait

 outside, she told him, and he went swiftly and with obvious relief. She

 turned to Nathaniel. She had noticed the little pitted scars in his

 folded sun-toughened skin, and now there was no fear in his expression.

 When? " she asked. When I was a boy, " he said. "It killed my old ma

 -and my brothers."

 We have work to do, she told him.

 In the gloomy stinking shed the dead were piled with the living, and on

 some of the wracked and furnaceheated black bodies the plague had

 already burst into full flower. They found it in all its stages.

 Papules beneath the skin had erupted into vesicles, bubbles of clear

 thin fluid that thickened into pustules, which in turn burst and

 released a custard-thick trickle of matter. These will live, " Robyn

 told Nathaniel. "The plague is purging from their blood. " She found a

 man whose open pocks had already crusted over.

 While Nathaniel held the man from moving, Robyn scraped away the crusty

 scabs with a spatula and gathered them in a wide-mouthed glass bottle

 that had once held quinine powder.

 , This strain of the disease has been attenuated, Robyn exp lamed

 impatiently, and for the first time she saw fear in the flecked eyes of

 Mungo St. John. "The Turks first used this method two hundred years

 ago. "I would prefer to sail away from it, Mungo St. John said quietly,

 staring at the stoppered bottle which was half filled with damp yellow

 matter in which were s mall flecks of blood. It would be no use. The

 infection is already aboard-."

 Robyn shook her head firmly. "In a week or less Huron would be turned

 into a stinking plague-ship filled with dying men."

 Mungo turned away from her and went to the ship's rail. he's stood

 there one hand clasped -into a fist behind his back, the other still in

 its sling staring at the shore where the thatched roofs of the

 barracoons just showed above the mangroves.

 You cannot leave those poor wretches, " Robyn said. They will starve.

 I alone could never find food to feed that multitude. You are

 responsible for them."

 He did not answer her for a moment, then he turned back to study her

 curiously. if Huron sailed, with her holds empty, would you stay here

 on this fever and smallpox-ridden coast to tend this multitude of doomed

 savages? " he asked. Of course. " She was still impatient, and he

 inclined his head. His eyes no longer mocked, but were sober, perhaps

 even filled with respect. If you will not stay for common humanity,

 then stay for self-interest. " She scorned him with her tone. "A

 million dollars" worth of human cattle, and I will save them for you."

 . "You would save them to be sold into captivity? " he insisted.

 Even slavery is better than death, she replied.

 Again, he turned away from her, taking a slow turn of the quarterdeck,

 frowning thoughtfully, puffing on the long black cheroot so that

 wreathes of tobacco smoke drifted behind him, and Robyn and half Huron's

 crew watched him, some fearfully, others with resignation. You say that

 you have yourself undergone this, this thing. " His eyes were drawn

 back, with loathing fascination, to the little bottle that stood in the

 centre of his chart table.

 For answer Robyn lifted the sleeve of her shirt and showed him the

 distinctive deeply pocked scar on her forearm.

 A minute longer he hesitated, and she went on persuasively, "I will give

 you a strain of the disease that is "passant" that has been weakened and

 attenuated by passage through another man's body, rather than the

 virulent form of the plague which you will breathe on the very air and

 which will kill most of you. There is no risk? " She hesitated and

 then replied firmly, "There is always risk, but one hundred, nay a

 thousand times, less risk, than if you take the disease from the air

 With an abrupt gesture Mungo St. John ripped open the sleeve on his left

 arm with his teeth and offered it to her. Do it, he said. "But in

 God's name do it quickly, before my courage fails."

 She drew the point of her scalpel across the smooth deeply tanned skin

 of his forearm and the tiny crimson droplets rose behind it. He did not

 flinch, but when she dipped the scalpel into the bottle and scraped up a

 speck of the noisome yellow stuff, he blanched and made as if to jerk

 his arm away, then with an obvious effort controlled himself.

 She smeared the pus over the tiny wound, and he stepped back and turned

 from her. All of you. " His voice was rough with his horror and

 disgust. "Every last one of you, he told the gaping terrified seamen.

 With Nathaniel, the bosun, there were three others who had survived the

 disease, and were speckled by the small dimpled scars which were its

 stigma.

 Four men were not enough to help Robyn care for a thousand slaves, and

 her losses were much higher than she had expected. Perhaps this strain

 of the disease was more virulent, or perhaps the black men from the

 interior did not have the same resistance as the Europeans whose

 forbears had for generations been exposed to smallpox.

 She introduced the crusted pus into the scratches on their limbs,

 working in the noon sunlight on into the gloom of dusk and then by the

 lantern's gleam, and they submitted with dumb resignation of the slave

 which she found pitiful and repugnant, but which none the less made her

 work much easier.

 The reaction began within hours, the swelling and fever and the

 vomiting, and she went out into the other deserted barracoons to gather

 more of the loathsome pus from the bodies of those who had survived the

 smallpox and were now dying of starvation and neglect, resigning herself

 to the fact that she had only the strength and time to care for those in

 Huron's barracoons, resigning herself to the fact that there was farina

 to feed them only, and closing her mind to the cries and entreaty, to

 the silent dying stare from wizened faces that streamed pus from open

 pocks.

 Even in her own barracoon the four of them working hour after hour,

 night and day, could give only perfunctory attention to each of the

 slaves, a handful of the cold pasty farina and a mugful of water once a

 day during the period of the most violent reaction to the inoculation.

 Those who survived this were left to care for themselves, to crawl to

 the water bucket when they could or to wolf a lump of farina from the

 spadeful that Nathaniel left on a wooden platter at intervals between

 the rows of supine figures.

 Then when they were strong enough to stand they were put to work at

 piling the rotting bodies of their less fortunate peers upon a gun

 carriage and dragging them out of the barracoon. There was not the

 remotest chance of either burying or burning the bodies, and there were

 too many for the bloated vultures. They piled the corpses in heaps in

 the coconut grove, well downwind of the barracoon and went back for

 more.

 Twice a day Robyn went down to the edge of the creek and hailed the

 anchor watch on Huron's deck and had the whaler row her out to the ship,

 and she spent an hour in the stern cabin.

 Mungo St. John's reaction had been frighteningly severe, perhaps he had

 been weakened by the knife wound. His arm had swollen to almost twice

 normal size, and the scratch Robyn had inflicted turned into a hideous

 canker with a thick black crusty scab. His fever was intense, his skin

 almost painfully hot to the touch, and the flesh seemed to melt off his

 big-boned frame like candle wax under the flame.

 Tippoo, himself suffering from a raging fever, his own arm swollen

 grotesquely, could not be made to leave the side of Mungo's bunk.

 Robyn felt easier knowing that Tippoo was there, strangely gentle,

 almost like a mother with a child, to care for Mungo while she must go

 back ashore to the suffering multitude that choked the barracoons.

 on the twelfth day when she went aboard Huron, Tippoo met her at the

 companionway with that wide toadlike grin which she had not seen for so

 long, and when she hurried into the cabin she saw why.

 Mungo was propped up on the bolsters, thin and pale, his lips dry and

 dark purple bruises under his eyes, as though he had been beaten with a

 heavy club, but he was lucid and his skin cool. God's breath, he

 croaked. "You look awful! " And she felt like weeping with relief and

 chagrin.

 When she had bathed and bandaged the shrinking canker on his forearm and

 was ready to leave, he took her wrist. You are killing yourself, he

 whispered. "When did you last sleep, and for how long? " only when he

 spoke did she realize the depth of her exhaustion, it had been two days

 previously and then only for a few hours that she had slept, and she

 felt Huron's deck swing and lurch under her feet as though she rode a

 high sea and was not lying quietly at anchor in a placid creek.

 Mungo drew her down gently beside him on to the bunk, and she did not

 have either the strength or will to resist. He made a cradle for her

 head on his shoulder, and almost immediately she was asleep, her last

 memory was the feel of his fingers smoothing back the dank ringlets from

 her temples.

 She awoke with a guilty start, not sure how long she had slept, and

 still fuzzy with sleep struggled out of Mungo St. John's arms brushing

 the hair out of her eyes Z with her fingers, trying ineffectually to

 straighten her rumpled and sweat-dampened clothing. I must go! she

 blurted groggily, still exhausted and half asleep. How many had died

 while she slept, she wondered. Before he could prevent it, she was

 stumbling up the companionway to the deck calling for Nathaniel to row

 her ashore.

 The few hours of rest had refreshed her so that she looked about the

 estuary with a new and lively interest again. It was the first time

 that she became aware that one other vessel, besides Huron, was still

 lying at anchor in the river. It was one of the small dhow-rigged

 buggaloos, the coastal slavers similar to the one from which she had

 rescued Juba. On impulse, she had Nathaniel row her alongside, and when

 nobody answered her hail, she went aboard. The vessel had clearly been

 overwhelmed by the plague before she could flee, perhaps she was the

 vessel from which the original infection had been carried ashore.

 Robyn found the same conditions prevailing aboard as there were ashore,

 the dead, the dying, and those who would recover. Although they were

 slavers she was still a physician, and she had taken the Hippocratic

 oath.

 What she could do was very little, but she did it and the Arab captain,

 stricken and weakened, thanked her from his sleeping-mat on the open

 deck. May Allah walk beside you, he whispered, "and may he give me the

 opportunity to return this kindness one day. , And may Allah show you

 the error of your ways, Robyn told him tartly. "I will send some fresh

 water, before nightfall, but now there are others more deserving."

 In the days that followed, the plague ran its inexorable course, the

 weaklings died, some of them consumed by the terrible thirsts of fever

 crawled from the abandoned barracoons on to the mud flats of the estuary

 to fill their bellies with the salt water. Their bodies were twisted

 into grotesque contortions by the cramps of the salt in their blood, and

 their insane rantings were like the cries of seabirds across the water,

 extinguished at last by the incoming tide. The surface of the river was

 troubled by the swirl and splash of the crocodile and the big sharks

 that had come upstream to gather this grisly harvest.

 Others had crawled away into the forest and groves; they lay under every

 bush and even before they died they were covered with a red mantle of

 the fierce safari ants that overnight picked the skeleton to gleaming

 whiteness.

 Some of those that survived, encouraged by Robyn, crept weakly away

 towards the west. Perhaps a few would complete the long hazardous

 journey back to their razed villages and devastated countryside, she

 hoped.

 However, most of the survivors of the plague were too weak and confused

 and demoralized to move. They stayed on in the squalid stinking

 barracoons, pathetically dependent upon Robyn and her tiny band of

 helpers for every mouthful of water and farina, watching her with the

 eyes of dumb and suffering animals.

 All this time the piles of corpses in the palm groves grew taller, and

 the stench more penetrating. Robyn knew too well what would happen

 next. The battlefield plagues, she explained to Mungo St. John. "They

 always follow when the dead are left unburied, when the rivers and wells

 are choked with bodies. If they strike now, then none will survive. All

 of us are weakened, we would be unable to resist the typhoid and enteric

 plagues. Now is the time to leave, for we have saved all those who are

 for saving. We must fly before the new onslaught, for unlike the

 smallpox, there is no defence against them."

 IrMost of my crew are still sick and weakThey will recover swiftly out

 on the open ocean."

 Mungo St. John turned to Nathaniel to ask, "How many slaves have

 survived? IMore than eight hundred, thanks to the missus here."

 We will begin to take them aboard at dawn tomorrow, he decided.

 That night Robyn came back to his cabin after dark. She could not stay

 away, and he was waiting for her, she could tell by his expression and

 the quickness of his smile. I was beginning to fear that you preferred

 the company of eight hundred plague-ridden slaves, " he greeted her.

 Captain St. John, I wish to make one more appeal to you. As a Christian

 gentleman, will you not release these poor creatures and have them

 escorted and fed on the Tourney back to where they cameHe interrupted

 her, his tone light and that smile hovering on his lips. And will you

 not call me Mungo, rather than Captain St. John?

 She ignored the interruption, and went on. "After all they have

 suffered, that terrible march down from the highlands, the error and

 humiliation of slavery and now this plague. If you would consent to

 release them, I would lead them back to their homes."

 He rose from the canvas chair and came to stand over her. His leanness

 and pallor made him seem even taller.

 Mungo! " he insisted. God would forgive you, I am sure of that, he

 would forgive you the sins that you have already committed against

 humanity-, Mungo! " he whispered, and placed his hands upon her

 shoulders. She felt herself begin to tremble uncontrollably.

 He drew her to his chest. She could feel his ribs, he was so thin, and

 her voice choked up in her throat when she tried to continue her appeal.

 Slowly he stooped over her, and she closed her eyes tightly, her arms

 stiff at her sides, her fists clenched. Say Mungo! he commanded

 quietly, and his lips were cool and soft on hers. Her trembling became

 uncontrolled shaking.

 Her lips opened under his, and her arms went up around his neck. Mungo,

 " she sobbed. "Oh, Mungo, Mungo."

 She had been taught that her naked body was shameful, but it was the one

 lesson that she had learned imperfectly, and much of her shame had been

 mitigated, firstly in the lecture rooms and dissection rooms of St.

 Matthew's, and secondly in the company of Juba, the little Matabele

 dove, whose unaffected delight in her nudity she had transmitted to

 Robyn. Those childlike I romps together in the cool green pools of an

 African river had served to blow away most of the cobwebs of shame.

 Now Mungo St. John's delight in and admiration for her body gave her joy

 and, far from shame, brought her pride that she had never known before.

 Their lovemaking was no longer accompanied by pain, there were - so

 locked together I no longer barriers between them they could ride the

 dips and swings of emotion from Himalayan heights where the great winds

 blew, down to the sweet languorous depths where they seemed to be

 drowning in honey, each movement slowed, every breath drawn out as

 though it would last forever, their bodies damp and hot, pressed

 together and without form, like clay in the hands of a child.

 The night was too short, while the wick of the lantern guttered and

 smoked, neglected and untrimmed. In the dawn, their loving seemed to

 have filled them with new strength, to have driven away the weakness of

 fever and the exhaustion of the past weeks.

 It was only the sound of the first slaves coming aboard that roused

 Robyn and brought her back from that far frontier to the hot and cramped

 little cabin on a slave ship in a fever creek on a wild and brutal

 continent.

 She heard the whisper of bare feet and the clank and drag of slave

 chains, the sound of men's voices raised, hectoring and impatient, on

 the deck above.

 Hurry them, or we load for a week. " Tippoo's voice.

 Robyn raised herself on her elbow and looked down at Mungo. His eyes

 were closed but he was not asleep, she knew. Now, she whispered. "Now

 you cannot but release them. After last night, I know that something

 has changed in you."

 She felt a strange joy, the zeal of the prophet looking down upon a

 convert for whose soul she had wrestled with the devil and won. Call

 Tippoo, " she insisted, "and give him the order to free the slaves."

 Mungo opened his eyes, even after the long night in which neither of

 them had slept, his eyes were clear.

 There was the shadow of new beard, dense and dark, carpeting his bony

 jawline. He was magnificent and she knew then that she loved him. Call

 Tippoo, she repeated, and he shook his head, a little gesture of

 perplexity. You still do not understand, " he answered her. "This is

 my life. I cannot alter that, not for you nor for anybody. "Eight

 hundred souls, she pleaded, "and you have their salvation in your

 handsNo. " He shook his head again. "You are wrong, not eight hundred

 souls but eight hundred thousand dollars that is what I have in my

 hands."

 Mungo! His name still felt awkward on her lips.

 Jesus has said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of

 a needle than that a rich man should enter the kingdom of Heaven. Let

 them go, you cannot judge human lives in gold."

 He laughed and sat up, With eight hundred thousand bucks, I can bribe my

 way into Heaven, if I want to, but between us, my dear, it sounds an

 awfully dull place. I think the devil and I might have more to talk

 about."

 The mocking gleam was back in his eye again, and he swung his legs out

 over the edge of the bunk, and naked crossed to where his breeches hung

 on a wooden peg from the bulkhead. We have lain too long abed, he said

 briskly. "I must see to the loading, and you had best begin your own

 preparations for the voyage. " He belted his breeches and stuffed his

 shirt into them. "it will take us three days to load, I would be

 obliged if you would test the water barrels. " He came to sit on the

 edge of the bunk and began dragging on his boots, talking the while in

 crisp businesslike fashion, detailing the preparations that she should

 make for the welfare of the slaves during the voyage. We will have less

 than a full cargo, which will make it easier to exercise them on deck

 and keep the holds clean. " He stood up and looked down at her.

 With a rush like a roused fawn she threw off the blanket that covered

 her and knelt on the edge of the bunk, seizing him about the waist with

 both arms.

 IMungo, she whispered urgently, "you cannot torture us so. " She

 pressed the side of her face to his chest, feeting the harsh springing

 curls of his body hair even through the linen of his shirt. "I cannot

 offend further against my God and my conscience, unless you free these

 poor damned souls, then I can never marry you."

 His expression changed swiftly, becoming tender and concerned. He

 lifted his hand to stroke the dense russet locks of her hair, still damp

 and tangled from the loving of the night. My poor darling, his lips

 formed the words, soundlessly, but her face was still pressed to his

 chest and she could not see his lips. He drew a deep breath, and though

 his eyes were still marked with regret and his expression sober, his

 tone was light and casual. Then it is just as well that I have no

 intention of freeing a single one of them, for what would my wife say

 otherwise? " The words took many seconds to make sense to Robyn, and

 then her whole body spasmed, her grip around his waist tightened and

 then slowly relaxed. She released him. Slowly she sat back on her

 heels, naked in the midst of his disordered bunk, and she stared at him

 with an expression of desolation and disbelief. You are married? "

 Robyn's voice echoed strangely in her own ears, as though from the end

 of a long bare corridor, and Mungo nodded. These ten years past, he

 answered quietly.

 "A French lady of aristocratic birth, a cousin of Louis Napoleon. A

 lady of great beauty who with the three fine sons she has borne me

 awaits my return to Bannerfield. " He paused and then went on with

 infinite regret. "I am sorry, my dear, I never dreamed that you did not

 know. " And he reached out to touch her cheek, but she cringed away as

 though he held a poisonous serpent in his hand.

 Will you go away, please, she whispered.

 Robyn-" he began, but she shook her head violently. No, she said.

 "Please don't say any more. just go. Go away! Please go away."

 Robyn locked the door of her cabin and sat down at the sea chest which

 she used for a desk. There were no tears.

 Her eyes felt dry and burning as though blasted by a wind off the

 desert. She had very little paper left and had to tear the end sheets

 from her journal. They were speckled with mildew and distorted from the

 heat and dryness of the highlands and the humidity of the monsoonridden

 littoral.

 She smoothed out the first sheet carefully on the lid of her writing

 case, dipped her pen in the remaining half inch of India ink and headed

 the sheet with a hand that was calm and unshaken.

 16th November, 1860.

 Aboard the Slaver Huron.

 And then in the same clear unhurried script began to write: My Dear

 Captain Codrington, My trust in an all-merciful Providence and my belief

 in the true and one God, and in his gentle son and our Saviour Jesus

 convinces me that this will come into your hands while there is still

 time for you to act.

 Through a series of incredible adventures and misfortunes I now find

 myself devoid of friends or protectors, in the power of the notorious

 American Slave Master and trader Mungo St. John. Against both my will

 and my conscience I am being forced to act as the physician for this

 infamous vessel which is at this moment preparing for the voyage around

 the Cape of Good Hope, across the Atlantic Ocean for a port in the

 Southern States of America.

 As I write, I can hear the doleful sounds from the deck above me, and

 from the hold below where the poor creatures, eight hundred forsaken

 souls in all, wearing only their chains are being brought aboard and

 incarcerated for the voyage which many of them will not survive.

 We are lying at anchor in a hidden creek, concealed from the open sea by

 a sweep of the channel and the mangrove swamps, a perfect hide-away for

 the nefarious business in hand.

 However, I have been able to study the ship's chart and from the

 navigator's markings learn the name of the estuary and its exact

 position. The river is the Rio Save, and it lies 20* s8" south latitude

 and 35" 03" east longitude.

 I will do all in my power to delay the sailing of this vessel, though at

 this moment I cannot think what that will be. If this letter reaches

 you in time, there will be no difficulty for an officer of your courage

 and experience to blockade the river mouth and seize this slave ship

 when she attempts to leave the river.

 If we have sailed before your arrival, then I implore you to follow in

 the same course as the Captain of the Huron must set to round Good Hope,

 and I will pray for adverse winds and weather that will enable you to

 come up with us.

 Robyn went on pouring out the tale of her capture, of the plague that

 had swept through the barracoons of her fear and hatred of the slavers,

 the detailed accounts of their barbaric practices and cruelties, and

 suddenly she realized that she had filled many pages with her account,

 and she began her last paragraph.

 You were gracious enough to express your belief that our destinies were

 linked in some mysterious way. I know that you share with me the same

 hatred of this abominable trade, and for these reasons I have made bold

 enough to appeal to you, confident that you will hearken to my anguished

 cry.

 Robyn paused again, and then searched swiftly in her pen case and found

 the pair of the earring which she had given to Clinton Codrington so

 many months ago.

 I enclose with this letter a token of my friendship and trust which I

 hope you will recognize, and I will search every day to see the topsails

 of your fine ship hurrying to give succour to myself and to the other

 unfortunates who are my ship-mates on this cursed and iniquitous voyage.

 She signed it with her bold, rounded signature and stitched the folded

 pages and the single item of cheap jewellery into a square of duck

 canvas.

 There was only one address that she had for it. Clinton had told her

 that he was under orders to call at Zanzibar Island, and she knew that

 Her Majesty's Consul on the island was a man of substance and integrity,

 a staunch adversary of the slave trade, one of the few men that her

 father, Fuller Ballantyne, had ever written about with respect and

 affection.

 When she had finished, she tucked the small canvas package up under her

 skirts, and went up on deck.

 Mungo St. John was on his quarterdeck, gaunt and lean and pale, and he

 took a step towards her, but she turned from him immediately. Nathaniel,

 she called to the bosun. "I wish to visit the buggaloo. " She

 indicated the Arab dhow which was still anchored downstream from Huron.

 She's making ready to sail, ma'am. " Nathaniel knuckled his forehead.

 "She'll be gone before we can get across'She will if you continue

 talking, " Robyn told him briskly. "I must see if there is aught they

 need, the poor devils, before they sail."

 Nathaniel glanced at his Captain, and after a moment's hesitation,

 Mungo, nodded his assent and turned back to watch the stream of slaves

 coming aboard through the entry port.

 The Arab Captain of the dhow, just strong enough to take his place at

 the tiller, greeted her respectfully and listened attentively while she

 spoke.

 Nathaniel was waiting in the gig, out of sight below the level of the

 dhow's deck, and Robyn made sure that they were shielded from a casual

 watcher on Huron's deck before she passed the canvas package to the

 Arab, and followed it with a gold English sovereign. There will be

 another sovereign for you, from the man You deliver it to, she told him,

 and the Arab bit the coin, and smiled wanly as he tucked it into a fold

 of his turban.

 And I am Matabele. Induna of two thousand. My name is Gandang, son of

 Mzilikazi, son of Zulu, and I come with a bright spear and a red heart."

 Zouga understood the words with difficulty, for they were spoken

 rapidly, in accents that were strange to his ears, but there was no

 misunderstanding the Induna's intention. His tone was clear, the

 murderous determination in his voice evident, and around him the circle

 of long black shields was unbroken and steadfast.

 Unconsciously Zouga had straightened, forcing his aching muscles erect,

 and he held the Induna's gaze without flinching.

 They stared at each other, and Zouga found himself exerting all his

 will, all the force of his personality, trying to stay the Induna's

 spear arm. He knew it needed only for the bright broad blade to drop

 and two hundred amadoda would sweep into the rudimentary camp. It would

 be over so swiftly, the resistance that Zouga and his tiny band could

 offer would be so puny that they would not even earn the compliment of

 disembowelment from the victors.

 He knew that only his steady gaze and the corn pletely fearless mien

 that he offered to the Matabele had so far stayed the spear arm, but the

 silence was drawing out.

 At any second the spell would snap. He must choose his next action and

 words as though his life depended upon them, as indeed they did.

 Gandang watched the strange pale man before him with his features

 impassive, yet for possibly the first time in his life while on his

 father's service, he was uncertain.

 The man who called himself Bakela had spoken familiar names. Tshedi and

 Manali, they were names that his own father revered, yet that in itself

 would not have been enough to stay his hand, for the King's orders were

 clear: all who entered the Burnt Land must die. It was more than that.

 He knew who this man was. The maiden who he would soon take as wife had

 spoken of him. This was the brother of the white woman who had

 delivered Juba to his care, and who he had called amekazi, mother.

 Juba had spoken of the man Bakela as she lay beside him on her

 sleeping-mat. She had spoken of him with admiration and awe, as a

 mighty hunter of elephant, as a warrior honoured by an all-powerful

 Queen who lived far beyond great waters. Juba had spoken of this man

 Bakela as a friend and a protector.

 So Gandang paused before giving the order "Bulala!

 Kill themV A Matabele Induna is never influenced by the words of a

 woman, if he has fifty wives their voices are still as the chattering of

 the waters over the rocks in the shallow rapids of the Nyati river, and

 a man does not heed them, or rather it must never be apparent that he

 heeds them.

 Juba had travelled to strange places and spoken of wonders and witchery,

 and Gandang while seeming not to listen had indeed listened and been

 impressed. The girl was not only comely and high bred, but sensible far

 beyond that mere simpering giggling sexuality to which he was accustomed

 in other girls of her age.

 Gandang was learning that a Matabele Induna is never influenced by the

 whims and words of a woman, unless those words are spoken and the whims

 expressed on the privacy of the sleeping-mat, by a senior wife whose

 good sense has been proven.

 Then it is folly not to hearken, for a senior wife can make a man's life

 unbearable, even if that man is an Induna of two thousand, and the

 favoured son of the most powerful monarch in Africa.

 Behind the dark impassive mask of his handsome face, Gandang was

 thinking furiously. Instinct and Juba's words had warned him that it

 would be folly to slay this man, yet the warriors at his back knew his

 orders, and if he failed to carry them out, that failure would

 immediately be construed as weakness, and his treason reported to the

 King.

 Before him the tattered figure took a pace forward, his whole being

 ludicrously arrogant. Gandang could see no trace of fear in the steady

 gaze of his strangely coloured eyes. I come as an emissary to the great

 King Mzilikazi, ruler of the Matabele people, and I bring greeting from

 the White Queen from across the waters At the words Gandang felt a small

 warm flame. of relief. The fact that the white man spoke the language

 of the people, albeit with a strange accent, made it more plausible that

 he was indeed an emissary. It was plausible, also, that this Queen of

 his would want to seek the protection and favour of a king as powerful

 as his father, and that she should be so ignorant as to send her

 emissary through the Burnt Land instead of along the open road from the

 south. Zouga saw the shift of mood in the Induna's eyes, that tiny

 crack in his determination.

 Wait, he said. "There is something that I have for you. , In Zouga's

 writing-case still reposed the impressive handwritten letters, with

 seals of wax and scarlet ribbon, that had been provided him by the

 Under-secretary at the Foreign Office, in the usual form.

 In the name of Her Britannic Majesty, Ruler of Great Britain and

 Ireland, Defender of the Faith, To the representatives of all foreign

 governments or to whosoever it may concern, We do, by these presents,

 request and require that our beloved Morris Zouga Ballantyne be allowed

 to pass freely without let or hindrance and that he be afforded that

 assistance of which he may stand in need.

 Zouga turned his back on the silent menacing ranks of spears-men, and

 walked back slowly through the gap in the scherm of cut thorn branches.

 Jan Cheroot was waiting for him, his face the colour of the watch-fire

 ash. He and the gunbearers were crouched below the thorn barrier,

 staring through the chinks with expressions of such utter terror that

 Zouga felt emboldened in comparison. Lay down those guns, " he snapped,

 for all the weapons were cocked and primed and a nervous finger on a

 hairtrigger could let fly the shot that brought a solid black wave of

 Matabele sweeping through the camp.

 Gandang suddenly found himself in a position of uncertainty. From being

 the merciless bearer of the King's justice, he found himself waiting

 like a timid suitor outside the gate in the thorn barrier, and every

 second detracted from his dignity.

 Behind him he heard the stir of one of his men, the soft tap of assegai

 spear on hide shield. His men were growing restless already, sensing

 the passing of, advantage to the little group of ragged starvelings they

 had surrounded. Gandang turned slowly, and his stony gaze passed over

 the ranks. They froze once more into utter stillness.

 Gandang, son of Mzilikazi, Induna of two thousand.

 Come forward The hail from beyond the thorn barrier was unexpected and

 startlingly loud, but it came the moment before Gandang reached the

 limit of his patience and loosed his eager warriors. Gandang moved

 forward to the gateway.

 His plumes nodding about his head, his tread dignified, his carriage

 proud, so that no men might guess at his uncertainty. At the gateway he

 paused, and though his expression did not alter nor his gaze waver, he

 experienced a profound relief that his own wisdom and the words of his

 little dove had stayed his blade.

 Before him stood a figure of almost incredible beauty.

 It took him many seconds to recognize the ragged individual of a few

 minutes previously. The figure wore cloth of that same peculiarly rich

 shade of red of the bushshrike's chest, brighter than the colour of

 freshly spilled blood. Though this was enough to stop a man's breath,

 it was not all. Bright metal ornaments on breast and shoulders sparkled

 in the morning sunlight, the belt buckle was of the same metal. The

 belt and cross-straps were of the same blinding whiteness as an egret's

 wing.

 The tall shako swept down to an elegant point between the eyes, and the

 helmet badge blazed like a sunrise upon the man's forehead.

 There was no doubt now in Gandang's mind that here was indeed an

 important man, and a soldier of repute, as Juba had warned him, and he

 made a silent resolution to listen to her words in future with even

 greater attention. He felt a little shiver of dismay at the thought

 that he might have followed his first instincts and had this man cut

 down as though he was a worthless Mashona, a mere eater of dirt.

 The magnificent figure took one pace towards him and lifted a hand to

 the peak of that beautiful helmet in a formal gesture that Gandang

 answered instinctively with a sweeping salute of his stabbing spear. I,

 Bakela, request that my token be conveyed to your father, the honoured

 and victorious Mzilikazi, and that he be informed that I request from

 him the right of the road, " said the man in his atrocious Sindebele and

 Gandang accepted the token from his hand, the small package with strange

 signs and marks upon it, bound up with strips of coloured cloth so

 beautiful that they would have delighted the heart of even the most vain

 and spoiled woman.

 It shall be done, he agreed.

 In the moments of his confrontation with Gandang, Zouga had been

 thinking as furiously as the Matabele and making his own calculations of

 survival. Now that he had fallen in with a border impi he knew he must

 put aside any thought of escaping southwards. Apart from the fact that

 they were completely surrounded and heavily outnumbered, he knew that no

 unmounted man could run ahead of these warriors. They were like

 machines built for the pursuit and the annihilation of an enemy.

 The meeting had not taken him completely unprepared. There had been

 many a night in the preceding weeks when he had woken in the darkest

 hours, and he had lain on the hard earth and dreaded a moment such as

 this.

 He had mentally rehearsed his actions, from the concealment of any fear

 while he won time to don his dress uniform, to the demand to be taken to

 the King's kraal.

 When it had gone as he planned it, when the tall Induna had agreed, "It

 shall be done, it had taken another enormous extension of Zouga's will

 not to show relief. He had stood aloof, disinterested, while Gandang

 had picked and called out five of his swiftest runners and had recited a

 long message that they must memorize, and take to Mzilikazi.

 It began with a long recitation of the King's praises which began, Great

 black elephant who shakes the earth with his tread -" went on to list

 the deeds that Gandang had performed since leaving the great kraal at

 Thabas Indunas, the march eastward, the battle at the pass and the

 slaying of Bopa, the slave master, right up to this day's encounter with

 the white man. After a flowery description of the man's magnificent

 finery (which Gandang knew would intrigue his father), it ended with a

 repetition of Bakela's request to be "given the road" to Thabas Indunas.

 The chosen messengers, each in turn repeated the long message, and

 though he showed no change of expression

 Zouga was amazed that each of them had it word-perfect.

 It was an impressive demonstration of the developed memory of people who

 do not have the art of writing and reading.

 Gandang handed them the sealed parchment envelope that contained Zouga's

 letter of credentials, and the messengers sprang to their feet from

 where they had squatted, saluted their Induna, formed file and trotted

 away towards the west.

 Gandang turned back to Zouga. "You will stay encamped here until the

 King sends word. "When will that be? " Zouga asked, and Gandang

 answered him sternly. Whenever the King is pleased to do so."

 Zouga's little party was left unmolested. Although there were a dozen

 Matabele amadoda positioned about the camp, guarding it day and night,

 not one of them attempted to enter the gateway in the thorn scherm.

 Until the moment when they might slaughter them, the persons and

 property of their prisoners were inviolate.

 The main body of the impi camped a quarter of a mile downstream. Each

 evening the tall Induna visited Zouga and they sat for an hour or so

 across the fire from each other, speaking gravely and seriously.

 As the days of waiting became weeks so the two men developed each for

 the other a deep respect, if not actual friendship. They were both

 warriors, and they had common ground when they spoke of old campaigns

 and of skirmishes and battles fought. They recognized in each other the

 strengths, the essential decencies of men who live by and respect the

 laws of their society, though those laws might diverge widely. I

 account him a gentleman, " Zouga wrote in his journal. "One of nature's

 own."

 While Gandang, speaking to Juba on the sleeping-mat said merely,

 "Bakela. is a man."

 Gandang allowed Zouga's bearers to leave the enclosure, to cut and bring

 in thatch and timber to strengthen and improve the buildings, so that at

 last Zouga could sleep dry and warm. This, together with the rest and

 respite from endless marching brought an immediate improvement in

 Zouga's health. The deep wound in his cheek healed cleanly, leaving a

 pink shiny scar. The shoulder mended, the bruising abated, and he no

 longer needed a staff or a sling for his arm. Within a week he knew he

 was well enough to shoot the heavy four-tothe-pound.

 One evening he proposed to Gandang that they hunt together, and the

 Induna. who by this time was finding the waiting as tedious as Zouga

 was, agreed with alacrity. Gandang's amadoda surrounded a herd of Cape

 buffalo, and drove them down in a bellowing, stampeding black wave to

 where they waited. Zouga saw the tall Induna rise from cover and race

 in, bare-footed, shieldless, and kill a mature bull buffalo with a

 single thrust of the broad-bladed assegai through the ribs behind the

 heaving shoulder. Zouga knew that he lacked both the skill and courage

 to emulate that feat.

 Gandang watched when Zouga. stood to meet the squealing, thunderous

 charge of an enraged bull elephant, and when the beast went down to the

 crash of the shot, dropping on to its knees in a storm of dust, Gandang

 stepped past Zouga and touched the little black hole that punctured the

 elephant's thick grey hide an inch above the first crease at the top of

 the trunk.

 Gandang inspected the smear of blood on the tip of his forefinger, and

 said "Hau! " quietly but with force, which is an expression of deep

 amazement. For Gandang, himself, owned a musket, a Tower Musket

 manufactured in London in i837. When he first acquired the weapon,

 Gandang had fired it at buffalo, elephant and Mashona, all of whom had

 fled headlong but unscathed.

 Gandang understood that when firing it was necessary to close the eyes

 and the mouth firmly, to hold the breath and at the moment of discharge

 to shout a rebuke to the devil who lived in the gunpowder smoke,

 otherwise the devil could enter through the eyes or mouth and take

 possession of the marksman. In order to throw the musket ball to any

 distance, it was also necessary to pull the trigger with sudden and

 brutal force, as in hurling a spear.

 Furthermore, to minimize the recoil of the weapon, the butt should not

 touch the shoulder, butbe held a hand's span from it. Despite all these

 precautions, Gandang had never succeeded in hitting the target at which

 he aimed, and had long abandoned the weapon to rust away, while he kept

 his assegai polished brightly.

 Thus Gandang appreciated to the full the magnitude of the feat that

 Zouga performed with such apparent ease. So their mutual respect

 deepened with each day spent in each other's company, and became almost

 friendship. Almost, but not quite, there were chasms of culture and

 training between them that could never be bridged, and always the

 knowledge that on any day a swift runner might come from the west with a

 message for Gandang from his father. Bulala umbuna! Kill the white

 man! " And both of them knew that Gandang would hesitate not an instant

 longer.

 Zouga had much time alone in camp, and he spent it planning his audience

 with the King. The longer he dwelt upon that the more ambitious became

 his plans.

 The memory of the ancient disused mine-shafts returned to plague these

 idle hours, and at first merely to amuse himself, and then with truly

 serious intent, Zouga began to draw up a document which he

 headed:Exclusive Concession to mine gold and hunt ivory in the Sovereign

 territory of Matabeleland."

 He worked on it each evening polishing and reshaping it in the gibberish

 that the layman takes for legal jargon and which he fondly believes will

 dignify his creation. Whereas 1, Mzilikazi, ruler of Matabeleland,

 hereinafter referred to as the party of the first partZouga had

 completed this document to his entire satisfaction when a fatal flaw in

 his plans became evident.

 Mzilikazi could not sign his name. Zouga pondered this for a day and

 then the solution occurred to him. Mzilikazi should by this time have

 in hand the sealed package.

 The crimson wax seals must surely impress him, and in his writing-case

 Zouga had two full sticks of sealing wax.

 Zouga began to design a great seal for King Mzilikazi.

 He sketched the design on the back cover of his journal, and the

 inspiration came from the first of the King's praise names. Great Black

 Elephant who shakes the earth."

 In Zouga's design the centre of the field depicted a bull elephant, with

 long tusks raised and ears spread wide.

 The upper border bore the legend, "Mzilikazi Nkosi Nkulu'. And the

 -lower border carried the translation, Mzilikazi, King of the Matabele'.

 He started experimenting with various materials, clay and wood, but the

 results did not please him, and the following day he asked Gandang for

 permission to send a party of his porters under Ian Cheroot back to the

 ancient workings at the Harkness mine to retrieve the ivory buried

 there.

 It took two days of careful consideration for Gandang to agree, and when

 he did, he sent fifty of his men to accompany the caravan, with orders

 to kill them all at the first hint ofilight or treachery. Jan Cheroot

 returned with the four huge tusks from the two bull elephants, and Zouga

 had not only the material from which to carve the King's great seal, but

 a gift fitting the King's importance.

 Ivory was a treasure of which the Matabele had long ago realized the

 value in trade. It was, however, a scarce commodity, for even the

 bravest of men cannot kill a bull elephant with a stabbing spear. They

 had to rely on pick-ups from animals that had died of natural causes, or

 the very occasional victim of the pitfall.

 Gandang's amazement when he saw the span and weight of the four tusks

 decided Zouga. The largest and most pleasingly shaped tusk would be

 Zouga's gift to Mzilikazi, if he were ever allowed to reach the great

 kraal at Thabas Indunas alive.

 Not only was the threat of the King's wrath still hanging over him, but

 his supply of quinine powder was reduced to a few ounces. All around

 the camp steamed the swampy ground, fed each day by the interminable

 rains, and in the night he cou even smell the evil feverbearing vapours

 rising from the stagnant waters to waft over the camp. Yet he was

 forced to reduce his daily preventative dose of the bitter powder to

 perilously s mall quantities in an attempt to eke it out.

 The inactivity and the dual threat of spear and disease wore on Zouga's

 nerves, until he found himself toying with suicidal plans to make an

 attempt to avoid the guarding impi and to escape on foot southwards. He

 thought of seizing Gandang and holding him as hostage, or using the

 remaining fifty pounds of black powder to manufacture a combustible with

 sufficient power to destroy the entire impi host at a blast.

 Reluctantly, one after another, he recognized these as plans of folly

 and abandoned them.

 Gandang's impi came again in the dawn. Zouga was awakened by a

 stentorian voice calling him out of the Thorn scherm. Zouga threw a fur

 kaross over his shoulders and went out into the grey and icy drizzle of

 rain, sloshing through the red mud to the gate, and he knew at a single

 glance that the King had at last sent his reply. The ranks of silent

 Matabele surrounded the camp, still as statues carved from the black

 wild ebony.

 Zouga judged how swiftly he could reach the loaded gun beside his cot in

 the little thatched hut behind him, and guessed that he would probably

 be cut down before he could fire a single shot, yet he knew he would

 still make the attempt. I see you Bakela, Gandang stepped from the dark

 and silent ranks. I see you Gandang. "The King's messenger has

 arrived-" Gandang paused a moment, solemn and stern , and then his

 perfectly square white teeth gleamed in the grey of dawn as he smiled.

 "The King has given you the road, and bids you attend him at Thabas

 Indunas."

  

 The two men grinned at each other with relief, for both of them it meant

 life. The King had determined that Gandang had done his duty and

 correctly interpreted his commands, while Zouga had been accepted as an

 emissary and not as an enemy. We will march at once, Gandang smiled

 still. "Before the sun! " The King's summons brooked of no hesitations

 or delays. Safari! Zouga roused his camp. "We march at once! " A

 natural delicacy and tact had made Gandang keep little Juba out of sight

 and hearing of Zouga's camp, nor had he mentioned the girl's name to

 Zouga while sentence of death still hung over the white man. However,

 that first night of the journey to Thabas Indunas after they had camped,

 he brought Juba to Zouga's hut, and she knelt and greeted him as

 "Babo-father" and then with Gandang seated between them and listening

 attentively, he allowed them to talk for a short while.

 Zouga was avid for news of his sister, and he listened in silence to the

 account of Fuller Ballantyne's death and his burial. It was better this

 way, and Zouga was already preparing his own fulsome tributes to the

 memory of his father.

 While relieved also to hear that Robyn was safe, Zouga was less happy

 with the swift progress she seemed to be making. It must have been

 nearly three months since Juba last saw her, almost within sight of the

 eastern mountain range, and by this time Robyn must have surely reached

 the coast, and could be on board a Portuguese trade ship, well on her

 way to Good Hope and the Atlantic.

 He did not know how long he would be delayed by the Matabele King, and

 then how long the overland journey down half the length of Africa might

 take him.

 Robyn's manuscript could be in London a year or even more before his

 own.

 Zouga had exchanged one worry for another, and on the following day's

 march he chivvied his porters, heavily laden though they were, to keep

 up with their captors. It was of little avail, and they struggled along

 behind the trotting impi until Zouga demanded of Gandang that his own

 bearers be ordered to help with the load of ivory and the even greater

 weightier package of bark and plaited grass which contained the granite

 bird which Zouga had plundered from the tomb of the Kings.

 With each day's travel towards the west, so the land became drier, and

 the forests thinned out and gave way to level pasturage with sparsely

 dotted acacias, graceful, mushroom-shaped trees from whose branches hung

 the big protein-rich, bean-shaped pods so dearly loved by game and

 domestic animals alike.

 The relief from the driving and endless rain-storms lifted their

 spirits, and the impi sang on the march, winding like a thick black

 serpent through the lovely park-like lands below the bald and rounded

 kopjes of granite.

 Soon they came across the first of the King's herds.

 The small hump-backed cattle whose origins lay far back beyond the veils

 of history, perhaps it had taken them and their drovers four thousand

 years to travel down from the valley of the Nile or from the fertile

 plains enclosed by the twin rivers of the Euphrates and the Tigris.

 The cattle were sleek, for the grass was dense and sweet, even here in

 the drier lands the rains had been good. The animals were of every

 colour and pattern, chocolate-red and black and white and yellow,

 piebald and skewbald, solid black or pure snowy white. They watched

 with a blank bovine stare as the column of men trotted past, and the

 small herd boys, naked except for the tiny apron of the beshu, came

 scampering to stare in silent wide-eyed awe at the fighting men in plume

 and tassel, for they were already pining for the day that they would be

 called into their own regiments and in turn follow the warriors" road.

 They reached the first of the Matabele towns. It was situated on the

 banks of the Inyati river. Gandang explained that it was the

 headquarters of his own impi, the Inyati impi, and that it was not the

 largest of the regimental towns. The settlement was laid out around the

 central cattle-pen, a vast enclosure large enough to hold ten thousand

 head of the King's herds. The dwellings were of identical thatched

 beehive construction in the tradition that the wandering tribe had

 preserved since leaving their native Zululand. The outer stockade was

 of cut mopani poles, set deep in the earth and forming a stout defensive

 wall. The villagers streamed out to welcome the returning impi, lining

 both sides of the route, a singing, clapping and laughing thron& mostly

 of women and children. Most of the men and the marriageable maidens

 have left already for Thabas Indunas. In the full of this moon, the

 Chawala dance begins, and all the nation will assemble at the King's

 kraal. We will rest here only one night and then take the road again to

 reach Thabas Indunas before the moon."

 The road from the Inyati westwards was now a populous highway, as the

 nation went in towards the King's capital city to celebrate the festival

 of the first fruits.

 The men marched in their regiments, their distinctive dress and

 ornaments, the colour of their war shields identifying each from afar,

 from the scarred and silverheaded veterans who had fought the Basuto,

 the Griquas and the Boer in the south, to the young bloods eager for

 their first kill, eager to learn in which direction the King would hurl

 his war-spear at the conclusion of the Chawala, for that was the

 direction in which they would find their reputation, their manhood,

 their glory and possibly their deaths.

 The regiments of young unmarried women, interspersed those of the

 warriors, and as they passed each other on the road, the girls preened

 and giggled, casting languorous sloe-eyes at the unmarried men, and the

 men pranced and leapt in the pantomime of battle, the Giya, showing bow

 they would wash their spears in blood and earn the privilege to go in to

 the women" and to wives.

 With each day's march towards Thabas Indunas the roads became more

 congested, and their pace was reduced by the throng. They might wait

 half a morning to take their turn across a ford of the river, for the

 regiments drove the cattle which were their food supply ahead of them

 and dragged their baggage train behind.

 Each warrior's finery, his tassels and plumes and feathers, were

 carefully packed and carried by the young apprentice who was his

 personal bearer.

 At last in the sweltering noon of high summer, Zouga's little party,

 still borne along on the river of humanity, came over a crest of ground

 and saw laid out ahead of them the great kraal and capital city of the

 Matabele.

 It was spread out over many square miles of open p below the bald-headed

 granite hills that gave it its name The Hills of the Chieftains'. The

 furthest hill was the evil, "Place of Killing', Bulawayo, and from its

 sheer cliffs those condemned to die were cast down.

 The stockades formed concentric circles, dividing the city into its

 separate parts. Always the huge open cattlepens were the centre of

 Matabele life, their cattle the source and store of their wealth, and

 now that the outlying herds had been brought in for the festival, every

 pen was filled with the multi-coloured herds of fat beasts.

 Standing at Zouga's shoulder, Gandang used his stabbing-spear to point

 out with pride the city's features.

 There were sections for the unmarried girls, and the unblooded

 regiments, and another huge area for the married quarters; the huts were

 uniform in size and laid out in orderly patterns, the thatched roofs

 shining golden yellow in the sunlight. The earth between them was swept

 clean and beaten hard by the passage of bare feet. There is the King's

 hut. " Gandang pointed out a single huge conical structure in its own

 separate enclosure. And that is the compound of the King's wives, a

 hundred other huts, within a high guarding stockade, and it is death to

 any man who enters that gate."

 Gandang led Zouga down to a small grove of acacia trees outside the main

 stockade. There was a stream within a few yards of it, and for the

 first time in days they were free of the close press of humanity.

 Although the plain without the city walls was thick with the temporary

 dwellings of the visiting impis, the area around the grove was empty, as

 if it had been placed out of bounds to the common people.

 When will I see the King? " Zouga asked.

 Not until after the festival, Gandang answered. There is ritual and

 cleansing that the King must undergo but he has sent you gifts, you are

 much honoured. " And he pointed with his blade at the line of young

 maidens that left a gate in the stockade. Each girl carried a large

 earthenware pot balanced easily upon her head, and she did not use a

 hand to maintain that balance.

 The girls moved with that peculiar straight-backed grace, hips swinging

 in lazy rhythm, the hard unripe fruits of their breasts bouncing and

 jostling at each pace.

 They came in to Zouga's little camp in the grove and knelt to offer the

 gifts they bore.

 Some pots contained thick millet beer, tart and effervescent, others the

 clotted and soured cow's milk, imaas, that was so much a staple of the

 Nguni diet, and others again, big chunks of fatty beef, roasted on the

 open coals. You are much honoured by these gifts, Gandang repeated,

 apparently himself surprised by the King's generosity. "Yet Tshedi,

 your grandfather, was always his good and trusted friend."

 Once the camp was set up, Zouga found himself again the victim of

 idleness, with long days of waiting to fill.

 Here, however, he was free to roam about the city and its surrounds,

 save only the forbidden areas of the royal enclosure and women's

 quarters. He sketched the fascinating bustle of preparation for the

 festival. During the heat of the day the banks of the rivers were lined

 with men and women, their velvety black skins shimmering with water as

 they bathed and cleansed themselves for the dances. Every tree for

 miles about was hung with the kilts and furs, the feathers and plaited

 ornaments that were airin& the creases and rumples of travel and packing

 were being allowed to drop out of them as they billowed and flapped in

 the light breeze.

 He passed groups of young girls plaiting each other's hair, smearing and

 rubbing each other's bodies with oil and coloured clays, and they

 giggled and waved at Zouga as he passed.

 At first the problem of hygiene that this huge assembly presented

 puzzled Zouga, until he realized that there was an area of thick

 undergrowth beyond the city walls where both men and women went at dawn

 and in the short twilight. This area had its own population of crows

 and kites, of jackal and hyena that served as the city's cleansing

 service.

 Interested further in the running of the city, he found that all bathing

 and washing of clothing was allowed only below a certain spot on the

 riverbanks marked by a distinctively large tree or other feature, and

 that the women filled the water pots for drinking and cooking above this

 point.

 Even the huge cattle-pen in its very heart helped to keep the city

 clean. It acted as a vast fly-trap. The insects laid their eggs on the

 fresh cattle dung, but before they could hatch most of them were deeply

 trampled'by the hooves of the milling herds. The brilliant sunlight and

 the untainted wind completed the process of keeping the area relatively

 clean and the smells interesting but not Unbearable.

 Zouga should have been content to have reached this haven, instead of

 leaving his assegai-riven corpse for a hyena's feast in the wilderness,

 but he was not.

 He set himself tasks to fill the waiting days. He drew sketches and

 maps of the city, noting weaknesses in the fortifications, and where an

 attack would have the best chance of penetrating these and reaching the

 King's private quarters.

 He sketched the uniforms of the various impis. He noted the colours of

 their shields and other means of identifying them in the field. Asking

 innocentseeming questions of Gandang, he was able to estimate the number

 of warriors each regiment contained, the ages and battle experience of

 the warriors, the names and personal idiosyncrasies of their Indunas,

 and the location of their regimental towns.

 He found that much had changed in Matabeleland since old Tom Harkness

 had drawn his map, and Zouga noted these changes and drew his

 conclusions from them.

 As a further exercise to pass the waiting days he began drawing up a

 battle plan for a campaign against the old King Mzilikazi, the

 requirements in men and weapons, the logistics of supply and resupply,

 the lines of march, and the most expedient methods of bringing the impis

 to battle, for Zouga was a soldier, a soldier with a dream which might

 one day become reality only through military action.

 Unsuspecting, Gandang was flattered by Zougals interest and he answered

 every question with pride. in his nation's might and its achievements.

 Despite this work Zouga had given himself, the days dragged past. The

 King will not give you audience until after the festival, Gandang

 repeated, but he was wrong.

 The evening before the festival began, two elderly Indunas, blue heron

 feathers nodding above the silvery woollen caps of close-cropped hair,

 entered the camp in the acacia grove and Gandang greeted them with deep

 respect, listened to them attentively, and then came to Zouga. They

 have come to take you to the King, he said simply.

 There were three small fires burning before the King's hut, and over the

 middle one crouched a wizened apelike figure, who crooned a low

 incantation through toothless gums, rocking on his haunches and

 occasionally adding a pinch of powder, or a sprig of herb into one of

 the large earthenware pots that bubbled over the flames.

 The witchdoctor was festooned with the grisly accoutrements of his

 profession, the dried skins of reptiles, the claws of eagle and leopard,

 the inflated bladder of a lion, the skull of ape and the teeth of

 crocodile, small stoppered gourds of potions and powders, the horn of

 duiker to be used as a blooding cup, and other unidentifiable charms and

 elixirs.

 He was the orchestrator of the entire festival, the most important event

 in the Matabele calendar, the gathering of the first fruits of the

 harvest, the blessing of the nation's herds, and the setting of the

 warlike campaigns which would occupy the amadoda during the coming dry

 season. Thus the assembled Indunas watched his preparations with

 attention and awe.

 There were thirty or so men in the squatting circle of elders, the

 senior Indunas of the nation, the King's privy council. The small

 courtyard was crowded. The tall thatched sloping side of the King's hut

 towered thirty feet or so above them all, the top of it lost in

 darkness.

 The thatching was skilfully done, with intricate patterns worked into

 the grass, and before the low doorway stood an armchair of European

 design and construction.

 With a small prick of recognition Zouga realized that this must be the

 same chair given to the King by his own grandfather Moffat, Tshedi,

 nearly twenty years before. Bayete!

 Mzilikazi, the bull elephant of the Matabele."

 Gandang had coached Zouga in the correct etiquette, the formal greetings

 and the behaviour which the King would expect.

 As Zouga crossed the narrow yard of bare earth, he intoned the King's

 praise names, not shouting them aloud, not crawling on his kneel; as a

 subject would have done, for he was an Englishman and an officer of the

 Queen.

 Nevertheless, at a distance of ten feet from the King's chair Zouga

 squatted down, his own head below the level of the King's, and waited.

 The figure in the chair was much smaller than he had expected for a

 warrior of such fearsome reputation, and as his eyes adjusted to the

 gloom, Zouga saw that the King's feet and hands were small and

 delicately shaped, almost feminine, but that his knees were grotesquely

 swollen and distorted by the gout and arthritis that was attacking them.

 The King was an old man now, nobody knew how old, but he had been a

 fighting warrior at the turn of the century. His once fine muscles had

 sagged so that his belly bulged out on to his lap, the skin stretched

 and riven with stria like that of a pregnant woman His head seemed too

 big for the narrow shoulders, and the neck hardly strong enough to

 support it, but the eyes which watched Zouga intently from the seams of

 wrinkles and loose, bagged skin, were black and bright and lively. How

 is my old friend Tshedi? " the King asked in a piping high-pitched

 voice.

 Zouga had last seen his maternal grandfather twenty years previously;

 the only memory that persisted was of a long flowing white beard.

 hHe is well and happy, Zouga replied. "He sends You his greeting and

 respect."

 The old man in the armchair nodded the big ungainly head contentedly.

 You may present your gifts, he said, and there was a buzz of comment

 from the Indunas, and even the witchdoctor at the fire looked up as the

 ivory tusk was carried in by three of Gandang's warriors, staggering

 under its weight, and laid before the King's chair.

 The witchdoctor clearly resented this interruption of the ritual

 cleansing and the diversion of interest and attention from himself, and

 now with two of his assistants to help him he made an officious show of

 carrying one of the steaming pots from the fire and placing it between

 the King's feet.

 Then he and his assistants raised a large kaross of stitched leopard

 skins and spread it like a tent over the King and his chair so the steam

 from the pot was trapped beneath it. Within a minute, there was a

 paroxysm of gasps and coughing from under the fur blanket, and when at

 last the witchdoctor removed it, the King was streaming sweat and

 choking for breath, his eyes inflamed and pouring tears, but any demons

 had been expelled by the coughing, and impurities washed away by the

 sweat and tears.

 The gathering waited in respectful silence, while the King recovered his

 breath, and the witchdoctor withdrew to prepare the next potion. With

 his breath still wheezing and whistling in his throat, Mzilikazi reached

 into the small chest beside his chair and brought out the sealed package

 which Zouga had sent him. Speak the words. " The King handed it to

 Zouga, demanding that he read the letter.

 Although he was illiterate, the King understood clearly the uses of the

 written word. For twenty years he had corresponded with Zouga's

 grandfather, who always sent one of his mission students to deliver his

 letters, to read them to the King, and to record the King's reply.

 Zouga stood erect and opened the package. He read aloud, translating

 from the English as he went along, and adding a few small embellishments

 to the original text.

 When he had finished, there was a respectful silence from the tribal

 elders, and even the King studied the tall and magnificently attired

 figure before him with new attention. The firelight danced on the

 burnished brass buttons and badges of Zouga's dress uniform, the scarlet

 cloth of his coat seemed to glow like the very flames of the fire.

 The witchdoctor would have intervened again, coming forward with a brew

 of steaming medicine for the King to swallow, but Mzilikazi waved him

 away irritably.

 Knowing that this was the moment when the King's interest was at its

 zenith, Zouga asked smoothly, "Does the King see these signs of my

 Queen? They are her special marks, and every ruler should have such a

 mark to prove his power and the rocklike nature of his words Zouga

 turned and beckoned the bearer who knelt in the gateway behind him and

 the terrified man crawled to Zouga's feet, not daring to look up at the

 King, and handed to Zouga the small tea caddy that contained the carved

 ivory seal and the sticks of wax. I have prepared one of these for the

 King, that his dignity and power may be known to all men Mzilikazi was

 unable to contain his interest; he craned forward in his chair and

 called Zouga closer. Kneeling before him, Zouga prepared the wax,

 melting it on to the lid of the tea caddy with a taper lit from the

 fire. Then.

 he made the impression of the seal upon it, and when it had hardened,

 handed it up to the King. It is an elephant. " The King recognized the

 beast with unconcealed amazement. The great black bull elephant of the

 Matabele, Zouga agreed. Speak the words. " The King touched the

 lettering on the border, and commanded Zouga to translate it. Mzihkazi,

 Nkosi Nkulu! " The King clapped his hands with delight, and passed the

 seal to his senior Induna. Soon they were all clucking and exclaiming

 over the imprint, the wax impression passing from hand to hand. Bakela,

 " the King told Zouga, "you must come to me again on the day following

 the Chawala ceremony. You and I have much to discuss."

 Then with a wave of his hand he dismissed the splendid young man from

 his presence, and patiently, resignedly, gave himself up to the

 ministrations of the hovering doctor.

 The full moon rose well past midnight, and the fires were stacked with

 new logs to welcome it, and the singing; and drumming began. No man nor

 woman had dared to pick a single grain of corn from the harvest before

 this moment, for the rise of the moon heralded the Chawala, the dance of

 the first fruits, and the entire nation gave itself up to rejoicing.

 The ceremony began in the middle of the first morning. The massed

 regiments assembled before their King, filing in column into the vast

 arena of the cattle stockade, and the earth shook to the crash of bare

 feet lifted in unison, twenty-five thousand at a time, lifted to the

 level of the shoulder and then brought down with the full force of the

 muscular, hardened bodies of highly trained warriors.

 Bayete! " they greeted the King with the royal salute.

 Bayete! " the crash of feet once more.

 Bayete! " a third time, and then the dancing began.

 One regiment at a time coming forward in swaying, singing ranks, to

 perform before Mzilikazi's armchair throne. The perfect timing and

 execution of the intricate steps made it seem as though they were a

 single living organism, the shields interlocking and revolving and

 twisting together like the scales of some gigantic reptile, the dust

 rising and swirling through their ranks like smoke so that they appeared

 as wraiths, and their cloaks of furs and their kilts of civets" tails

 and monkeyskins, of the pelts of foxes and cats, swirled about their

 legs so they appeared to be divorced from earth, suspended above it on

 the moving cloud of dust and the soft waves of fur.

 From the ranks sprang the great champions and the heroes of each

 regiment, to giya in their pride. Leaping as high as their own heads,

 and stabbing furiously at the air, screaming challenge and triumph, the

 sweat greased their muscles and flew in explosive droplets in the

 sunlight.

 Mzilikazi was caught up in the building sea of excitement, and he

 quaffed from the beer pots that the maidens brought him until his eyes

 rolled in his head and he could not contain himself further. He

 struggled from his chair, and hobbled out on his swollen and deformed

 legs, and the champions fell back to give him place. My father is the

 finest dancer in all of Matabeleland, said Gandang, squatting beside

 Zouga.

 The old King tried to leap, but his feet did not leav the ground. He

 shuffled back and forth, making little pawing gestures, hacking at the

 air with his toy war spear. Thus I struck down Barend the Griqua, and

 thus his sons died."

 The nation roared. The bull elephant dances, and the earth shakes."

 And the slamming of ten thousand feet goaded the King to circle in a

 painful and pathetic parody of the young champions" wild gyrations. Thus

 I spurned the tyrant Chaka, and thus I cut the plumes from the headdress

 of his messengers and sent them back to him, squealed Mzilikazi. Bayete!

 " thundered the nation.

 "THe father of the world."

 Exhausted within minutes, the ancient King sank into the dust, and

 Gandang and two other of the King's sons leapt to their feet from the

 half circle of Indunas and raced to his side.

 Gently they bore him up and carried him back to his chair, and

 Lobengula, the King's senior son, held a beer pot for him to drink from.

 The beer dribbled from his chin and ran down the King's heaving chest.

 Let the nation dance, gasped the King, and Gandang returned to Zouga's

 side and squatted beside him. After war, my father loves best the

 dance, he explained.

 The maidens came, rank upon lovely rank, their naked skin shimmering in

 the glaring sunlight of noon. The tiny beaded apron that barely covered

 their little triangular sex was all they wore, and their singing was

 sweet and clear.

 Mzilikazi hoisted himself from his chair once more, and hobbled out to

 dance with them, passing along the foremost rank, directing the singing

 with his ritual warspear pointed to the skies. The King danced until he

 dropped once more, and was again carried back to his chair by his sons.

 By nightfall, Zouga was exhausted. His sweaty neck was chafed by the

 high stock of his dress coat, and sweat had soaked through the thick

 scarlet serge in dark patches. His eyes were bloodshot and inflamed

 from the dust and the glare, his head ached from the cacophony of drums

 and the roar of Matabele voices, his tongue felt thick and furry from

 the draughts of sorghum beer that had been pressed upon him and his back

 and legs ached from the unfamiliar squatting attitude he had been forced

 into all that day, but the King was still dancing, bobbling and prancing

 and squeaking on those twisted and deformed legs of his.

 The following morning Mzilikazi was on his throne again, so undaunted by

 the previous day's exertions, that when the Chawala bull was loosed into

 the arena his sons had bodily to restrain him from rushing out to slay

 it with his bare hands.

 A champion from each regiment had been chosen, and stripped down to a

 loincloth. They waited in squatting ranks on each side of Mzilikazi's

 chair.

 The bull came into the ring at the charge, homed head held high, red

 dust spurting from under his hooves, and his wild eyes glaring. He was

 pure, untainted black, with a huge humped back and glossy burnished

 hide.

 Carefully picked from all the King's herds, he was the finest animal in

 the whole of Matabeleland and he made an arrogant circuit of the arena,

 stepping high, snorting and dropping his head to hook with curved horns

 at anything in his path.

 The King, held by his sons, but struggling against their grip, was

 almost incoherent with excitement, and now he lifted his spear and his

 arms shook violently as he screamed, Tulala inkunzi! Kill the bull! "

 The waiting men leapt to their feet, saluted the King, and then raced

 out, spreading into a half-moon-shape line, instinctively adopting the

 fikela, the movement of encirclement.

 The black bull swung to meet them, came up short on locked front legs,

 his head swinging as he measured his charge; then the great rounded

 quarters bunched under him and he surged forward, picking a man in the

 centre of the line and thundering down on him.

 The man he had chosen stood his ground, spreading his arms in a

 welcoming gesture and the bull dropped his head and hit him. Clearly

 Zouga heard the brittle snap of bone as the warrior absorbed the shock

 of impact against his chest, and then locked his arms around the

 animal's neck and held on.

 The bull tried to toss him, hooking and throwing his head high, but the

 man held on, and was cruelly thrown about, but his body blocked the

 bull's sight and brought him to a halt. The racing line closed about

 him instantly, and abruptly the bull's great humped body was smothered

 by the rush of naked black men.

 For long seconds the bull struggled to remain upright, but they bore him

 down and tore his legs out from under him so he hit the dusty earth with

 a heavy thump and a groaning bellow. A dozen men seized the long horns,

 and, using their leverage, began to twist them against the massive inert

 weight of his pinned body. Slowly, sweating and straining, they forced

 his head around, and the bull kicked his hooves in the air, his bellows

 becoming more desperate and strangled.

 The King leapt up and down in his chair, screaming with excitement, and

 the roar of voices was like the sound of surf on a gale-driven coast of

 rock.

 inch by inch, the huge homed head revolved, and then suddenly there was

 no longer resistance. Zouga heard the crack of the vertebrae, sharp as

 a musket shot even above the thunder of the assembled nation. The homed

 head flicked through another half turn, the legs stiffened skywards for

 a moment, and the bull's bowels voided in a liquid green stream.

 The sweat-drenched warriors lifted the carcass shoulder high and bore it

 bodily across the arena to lay it at Mzilikazi "s feet.

 On the third and -last day of the ceremony, Mzilikazi stalked out into

 the centre of the cattle-pen. He made a frail and bent figure in the

 vast open space, and the noon sun burned down from above so that there

 was almost no shadow under him. The nation was quiet, forty thousand

 human beings watching one old man and there was not a whisper, nor a

 sound of breathing.

 in the centre of the arena Mzilikazi paused and raised his war-spear

 above his head. The watching ranks stiffened as he revolved slowly, and

 then stopped facing towards the south. He drew back his spear arm,

 poised for a moment while the tension in the watchers was a palpable

 emanation from forty thousand charged bodies.

 Then the King gave a little hop, and began slowly to revolve, the crowd

 sighed and swayed and then grew silent as again the King poised with his

 blade pointed towards the east. Then another little hop as he teased

 them deliberately, drawing out the moment with the timing of a natural

 showman.

 Then suddenly his spear arm shot forward and the tiny toylike weapon

 flew from his hand in a high sparkling parabola, and dropped to bury its

 point in the baked earth. To the north! " thundered the nation.

 "Bayete! The great bull has chosen the north! "We go northwards to

 raid the Makololo, Gandang told Zouga. "I will leave with my impi in

 the dawn. " He paused, and then smiled briefly. "We will meet again,

 Bakela. "If the gods are kind, " Zouga agreed, and Gandang laid one

 hand on his shoulder, squeezed briefly, and then turned away.

 Slowly, without looking back, Gandang walked away into the darkness

 which was clamorous with the singing and the sound of the drums.

 "Your guns would be terrible weapons if they did not have to be

 reloaded, Mzilikazi piped in his querulous old man's voice. "But to

 fight with them a man must have a fast horse, so that he may fire and

 then gallop away to reload."

 zouga squatted by the King's chair in the royal enclosure as he had for

 almost thirty successive days. The King sent for him each day, and he

 must listen to Mzilikazi's wisdom and eat huge quantities of half-raw

 beef washed down by pot after pot of beer. Without a horse my warriors

 will overrun them before they can reload, even as we did to the Griquas,

 and afterwards we picked up over three hundred of their precious guns

 from the battlefield."

 Zouga. nodded his agreement, smiling inwardly as he imagined the

 amadoda trying those tactics on a square of British infantry.

 Mzilikazi broke off to lift the beer pot. and then as he lowered it the

 sparkle of one of Zouga's tunic buttons caught his eye, and he leaned

 across to pluck at it.

 Resignedly Zouga took the clasp knife from his pocket and carefully cut

 the threads that held the button. He handed it to the King, and

 Mzilikazi grinned with pleasure and held it to the sunlight. Only five

 to go, Zouga thought ironically. He felt like the Christmas turkey

 being plucked a feather at a time.

 His lapel badges and field officer's pips had long since been taken by

 the King, as had his belt buckles and helmet badge. The paper, Zouga

 started and the King waved airily, dismissing the reference to the

 concession.

 He might be on the verge of senility and certainly he was an alcoholic,

 drinking seven gallons of beer each day, by Zouga's count, but still

 Mzilikazi possessed a cunning and devious intellect with a natural grasp

 of his own bargaining weaknesses and strengths. He had teased Zouga for

 thirty days, just as he had teased the watching nation on the third day

 of the Chawala, while they had waited for him to burl the war-spear.

 Now the King turned away from Zouga. at the mention of the concession,

 and transferred his attention to the young couple who knelt before him.

 They had been accused, and come before the King for judgement.

 That day, in between chatting with Zouga, Mzilikazi had received

 emissaries bearing tribute from two of his vassal chieftains, he had

 rewarded a young herdboy for saving his herd from a marauding lion, he

 had sentenced to death another who had been seen drinking milk directly

 from the udder of one of his charges, he had listened to the reports of

 a messenger from the impis campaigning in the north against the

 Makololo, and now his attention was on the accused couple before him.

 The girl was a lovely creature, with long delicately formed limbs and a

 sweetly rounded face with full flaring lips over small very white teeth.

 She kept her eyes tightly closed, so as not to look upon the King's

 wrath, and her body was shaken with tremors of terror as she knelt

 before him. The man was a finely muscled young warrior, from one of the

 unmarried regiments, who had still to win the honour of being allowed to

 "go in to the women. Rise up, woman, that the King may see your shame,

 the voice of the accuser rang out, and hesitantly, timidly, still with

 her eyes tightly closed, the girl lifted her forehead from the dusty

 earth, and sat back on her heels.

 Her naked stomach, drum tight and round as a ripening fruit, bulged out

 above the tiny beaded apron.

 The King sat hunched in his chair, brooding silently for many minutes,

 then he asked the warrior, Do you deny this thing?

 "I do not deny it, Nkosi Nkulu. "Do you love this wench? As I love

 life itself, my King. " The man's voice was low and husky, but firm and

 without a quaver to it.

 The King brooded again.

 Zouga had sat by and watched the King give judgement on a hundred such

 occasions. Sometimes the decision had been worthy of a black Solomon,

 at others Zouga had been appalled by the barbaric savagery of the

 sentence.

 Now the King stared at the man before him, and he fiddled with the toy

 spear in his right hand, frowning and shaking his head softly, then he

 reached a decision, and leaning forward he proffered the weapon to the

 man who knelt before him. With this blade, open the womb of the woman

 you love, take out from it that which offends against law and against

 custom, and place it in my hands."

 Zouga did not sleep that night, and once he threw off his blankets and

 hurried to the fringe of the acacia grove to retch and heave, vomiting

 up his horror at what he had witnessed.

 In the morning the memory of the girl's screams had not faded but the

 King was jocular and garrulous, pressing pot after pot of sour beer on

 Zouga's rebellious stomach, recounting episodes from his long and

 eventful life, describing vividly the scenes from his childhood and

 youth in far-off Zululand with a certain old man's wistful nostalgia.

 Then suddenly, without any prior hint that he would do so, he commanded

 Zouga, "Speak the words of your paper."

 He listened silently as Zouga translated the terms of the concession he

 was seeking, and at the end he mused a moment. To hunt elephant and to

 dig a hole, " he mumbled at last. "It is not so very much you wish for.

 Write that you will do these things only in the land below the Zambezi,

 east of the Inyati River and above the Limpopo."

 Not quite convinced that the King was this time serious, Zouga quickly

 added the proviso to the foot of his home-grown legal document.

 Then he directed the King's trembling hand to form the big uncertain

 cross below it. Alzilikazi: his mark."

 The King's pleasure in affixing the wax seal beside his mark was

 childlike and unaffected. After it was done he passed it to his Indunas

 to admire, and leaned forward towards Zouga. Now that you have what you

 want from me, you will wish to leave. " There was regret in the rheumy

 eyes, and Zouga felt a pang of guilt, but he replied directly. I cannot

 hunt in the rains, and there is much work for me to accomplish in my own

 land across the sea. I must go, but I shall return, Nkosi Nkulu. "I

 give you the road to the south, Bakela the Fist. Go in peace and return

 to me soon, for your presence pleases me, and your words are wise for

 one still so youngStay in peace, Great Elephant. " Zouga rose and left

 the King's courtyard, and his step was as light as his spirits were gay.

 He had the concession buttoned into the breastpocket of his tunic,

 fifty-six pounds of native gold in his chest, the stone bird of

 Zimbabwe, and three fine tusks of ivory to buy his way. The road to the

 south, to Good Hope and to England lay open before him.

 The wind was offshore, a faint backlash of the monsoon, but the sky was

 low and grey and the twisting squalls of rain fell from it like pearl

 dust.

 Ensign Ferris, Black joke's most junior officer, was taking his sights

 off the traverse board as the gunboat closed the land, calling them

 quietly to the signals yeoman who swiftly worked out the distance

 offshore, and wrote this down on the navigation slate, so that any

 moment the Captain could glance down at it to confirm his own

 observations.

 There was a man in the bows with a leadline, chanting the depth as he

 read it from the markings on the line, then twirling the weight and

 hurling it out ahead of Black joke's creeping bows, letting it sink and

 then reading the mark again as the ship passed over it. By the deep

 six."

 Clinton Codrington was conning his ship in by the leadsman's chant, by

 the angles that Ferris was shooting off the land features which they had

 identified, by the colour shadings of the water, by the break and swirl

 of the tide on shoal and bank, and by a seaman's instinct.

 The chart surveyed thirty years previously by Captain Owen, R. N he

 trusted not at all. Bring her around a point, he told the bel quietly,

 and as the ship swung towards the land, they smelt it on the wind. Slave

 stink! exclaimed Denham fiercely, and as he said it the masthead

 lookout sang out sharply, Smoke! Smoke from the right bank of the

 river. "How far up stream? "Two miles or more, sir!

 " For the first time since sailing from Zanzibar harbour, Clinton

 allowed himself to believe that he was in time, that he had reached the

 Rio Save in time to answer the heartrending appeal of the woman he

 loved. We will clear for action, if you please, Mr. Denham, but don't

 run out the guns. " He kept his voice level and formal, but his

 Lieutenant grinned at him. A fair cop, by Jove.

 Congratulations, sir, and the crew laughed and skylarked as they lined

 up at the arms chest to receive their pistol and cutlass.

 As Black Joke breasted the breaking white water of the bar, touched sand

 bottom for a moment and then broke the grip of it, and surged forward

 into the dark green and still waters of the estuary, Clinton nodded at

 Denham. You may run out the guns now."

 He had delayed until this moment to avoid altering the ship's trim

 during the critical passage of the bar.

 With the carriages rumbling ominously, Black joke bared her fangs and

 under fighting sail, her bronze propeller thrashing exultingly, her crew

 armed and eager, she went into the labyrinth of the Rio Save like a

 ferret into the warren.

 Clinton took her around the first bend, following the deep green sweep

 of the channel between the paler sandbanks. it was two hours past low

 tide and the flood was pushing strongly, the leadsman calling good

 bottom and Clinton was trying to conceal his impatience and eagerness by

 the calm controlled tone in which he called his orders to the helm.

 Would you just look at that! exclaimed Ferris, and pointed over the

 side. Beside them floated what looked like an ebony log. It was only

 as they passed and it bobbed and rolled in their wake that Clinton

 realized that it was a human corpse, stomach distended, round and shiny

 with gas and limbs twisted like the branches of a tree blasted by

 lightning. Clinton transferred his attention back to the ship, with a

 small grimace of distaste. Meet her, he told the hehnsman and then as

 they tore around the broad curve of water between the mangrove forests

 and the full stretch of the estuary opened ahead of them, he said,

 "Midships! " His voice was flat, unemotional, neither triumphant nor

 dejected. Smoke rose from the bank of the river, and through his glass

 he could see the smouldering remains of a series, of long low buildings,

 roofs burned through and collapsed inwards. They seemed to have been

 deliberately fired.

 in the smoke soaring and circling on spread wings rose a host of birds,

 buzzards and kites and vultures and the carrion-eating marabou storks.

 They seemed to reach up with the smoke to the belly of the lowering

 monsoon clouds, dimming the light of day with their wings. The

 oppressive towering silence was broken only by the faint high cries of

 the birds, and the river was empty.

 Clinton and his officers stared silently at the wide deserted sweep of

 the Rio Save, green and smooth from bank to mangrove-clad bank. No one

 spoke as Black Joke bore on, close in to the ruined and blackened

 barracoons.

 They stared at the piles of corpses, their faces stiff and

 expressionless, concealing their horror at the foul plague that lurked

 there in the palm groves, concealing also their disappointment and

 chagrin at finding the anchorage deserted and Huron gone. Stop engine,

 Clinton broke the silence. "Let go port anchor."

 Denham and Ferris turned to look at their Captain their carefully

 controlled expressions cracking with disbelieving dread; he was going to

 send a party ashore. They would come back aboard carrying the plague

 with them, they would all be doomed.

 The bow anchor hit the mud of the estuary bottom, and Black Joke turned

 sharply, the flow of the tide swinging her across the narrow channel in

 her own length, the anchor holding her head until she was pointed

 directly back down the river towards the sea. Immediately Clinton gave

 the order, "Slow ahead, and, as the ship breasted the tide, "Up anchor,

 and the steam winch clattered merrily. The officers relaxed visibly,

 and Denham allowed himself to smile with relief. The Captain had used

 the anchor merely to turn the ship as swiftly as possible without going

 through the dangerous business of backing and filling in the narrow

 channel against the push of the tide.

 As the anchor came back aboard with the gluey black mud clinging to its

 flukes, Clinton gave another series of orders. Half ahead. " That was

 as fast as he dared push for the open sea. Secure from action

 stations."

 There was no enemy to fight and as the heavy longbarrelled thirty-two

 pounder guns were run in, Black Joke handled more easily. Mr. Ferris,

 we will fumigate the ship."

 The smoke from the pails of burning sulphur would redden all their eyes

 and for days would taint the food and water, but Clinton's dread of

 smallpox outweighed such small considerations as comfort, and, besides,

 he smiled wryly to himself, any change to the taste of Black lake's

 bullied beef and hard bread could only be an improvement.

 The smile was fleeting. He was sickened by his brief glimpses of the

 barracoons, and his anger was a cold sharp thing like the blade of the

 cutlass on his belt. Mr. Denham, he said quietly, "please plot a course

 for Good Hope. We'll come on to it the moment we clear the land He

 moved to the rail, half his mind on the job of conning Black Joke out of

 this stinking green river into the open sea, the other half of his mind

 running swiftly over the problem of bringing his ship into action

 against Huron.

 How long was the start that the tall clipper had over his gunboat? Robyn

 Ballantyne's letter had been dated 16th November, today was the 27th

 November. Eleven days. That was too much. He could only hope that

 Robyn had been able to delay the sailing, as she had promised.

 Clinton glanced back over his shoulder at the blue smoke column that

 blurred the horizon. How long had those fires in the barracoons been

 burning? Not more than three or four days, he guessed, with more hope

 than conviction. Yet even that was still too long a start. He had seen

 Huron on a wind and she was swift as a swallow, and light as a witch.

 Even with eight hundred slaves in her holds, and her water casks filled,

 she would toy with Black joke in any wind better than a light breeze.

 His only advantage would be in the offing that Huron must make to get on

 the trades and weather the bulge of the continent, while Black joke

 could cut across the other arm of the triangle, hugging the land. It

 was small advantage, a few hundred leagues, and in the end it would all

 depend on the wind.

 Clinton found he was pounding his clenched fist on the ship's rail, that

 he was glaring ahead with such ferocity that the idle hands of the lee

 rail were watching him curiously.

 With an effort he forced his features to relax, and linked his hands at

 the small of his back, beneath the tails of his uniform coat, but his

 eyes still glittered pale sapphire blue and his lips were chalky with

 stress. It seemed too long for his patience before he could at last

 bring Black Joke on to her true course, and bend to the engine room

 voice-tube.

 I want all the speed you can squeeze out of her, he told his engineer.

 "There is twenty thousand pounds of prize money just below the horizon,

 but it's running like a fox and I'll need every pound of steam you can

 give me."

 He straightened up and the wind whipped his pale golden hair against his

 sun-gilded cheeks and forehead.

 He glanced up at the sky and saw the ponderous roll of the monsoon

 clouds on the wind.

 Huron would have it full and boisterous on her port beam, with that hull

 and rigging it was probably her best point of sailing.

 He knew that there was not the remotest chance of finding the clipper on

 the open sea, there were millions of square miles of ocean to cover, not

 even a battle fleet with a full squadron of frigates ideally placed

 ahead of the fugitive would have much chance of finding a single ship in

 that infinity of water.

 Clinton knew that his only chance was to reach the southern tip of the

 continent ahead of Huron and to take up station athwart the narrow

 shipping-lane that was threaded around Cape Point. However, once Huron

 rounded the southern cape, the whole of the wide Atlantic would lie

 ahead of her and she would be gone again.

 Clinton's jawline clenched spasmodically at the thought of the American

 escaping into that limitless expanse of sea. If she had indeed eleven

 days, lead on him with this wind holding fair, she could even at this

 moment be raising the rocky cliffs of Cape Point. He put the thought

 from his mind and concentrated on coaxing every inch of speed from his

 ship over the long days and nights ahead.

 Robyn had searched in vain for a subterfuge to delay Huron's departure

 from the Rio Save, even though she knew that if she succeeded she would

 be endangering the lives of all aboard her. However, Mungo St. John had

 swiftly regained his energy and determination as his wound healed and

 the effects of the inoculation passed.

 Affected by Robyn's warning about the danger of battlefield plagues, he

 forced the pace of his crew in loading the slaves. They worked through

 the night by the light of tar-dipped rope torches, as well as by day,

 the crew every bit as eager as their Captain to be away from, this

 cursed river. Four days after the loading began, Huron's slave-decks

 were in place and her cargo of slaves aboard, and that evening at the

 full of the tide, using the last of the light and the first gusts of the

 offshore night breeze, Huron slipped over the bar, shook out her reefs

 and settled down to make her offing during the night.

 At dawn they caught the steady push of the trades and Mungo brought her

 round on to a more southerly heading, close-hauled to make good their

 eastings before running for the bulge of Agulhas with the wind on the

 beam.

 The sweet clean air of the open sea that had travelled thousands upon

 thousands of miles since last having touched land, swept through the

 ship, cleansing it of the dreadful stench of the plague barracoons, and

 Mungo's strict hygienic discipline helped to keep the holds free of the

 slave stink and impressed even Robyn, though reluctantly, with his

 forethought and his precautions.

 By sacrificing a single slave deck, raising the space between each from

 the traditional 20 inches to 32 inches, he allowed not only greater

 comfort but easier access. In these mild conditions of wind and sea,

 the slaves were exercised during all of the daylight hours, the higher

 headroom and wider ladderways enabled even those in the lowest decks to

 be brought up on deck in batches of fifty at a time. On the maindeck

 they were forced to dance to the rhythm of a tribal drum beaten by a

 tattooed naked tribesman, the rattle and clink of their chains made a

 mournful background music to the drum and the sweet sound of the singing

 slaves. Funny business, that tattooing. " Nathaniel stopped to chat

 with Robyn as she stood watching the dismal show. They started

 tattooing their children to make them repulsive to us slavers, some of

 them file or knock out their teeth like that one there. " He pointed at

 a muscular black man in the circle of dancing slaves whose teeth had

 been filed to sharp points like those of a shark. Some of them put

 bones through the noses of their daughters, and others stretch their

 tits, begging your pardon at the plain speaking, ma'am, or they put

 rings of copper around their necks until they look like giraffes, all so

 the slavers will leave them alone. They do say now that these have

 become marks of beauty amongst the heathen. No accounting for taste, is

 there, ma'am? " Robyn saw how the extra space and regular exercise

 would affect the well-being of the slaves, and while they were up on the

 maindeck, in the open air, their empty slave decks were flushed out with

 sea water from the ship's pumps and then scrubbed down with a strong lye

 mixture. Though even this was not enough to prevent the slave stink

 slowly impregnating the ship.

 Each slave spent two hours on deck each second day, and while they were

 there, Robyn held clinic and examined each of them for any signs of

 disease or injury.

 Before going below once more, they were each forced to drink a decoction

 of molasses and lime juice to supplement the plain diet of boiled farina

 and water, and to ward off the dreaded scourge of the scurvy.

 The slaves responded well to this treatment, and, incredibly, began to

 put on the weight that they had burned off during the fevers that were

 the result of the inoculation against the smallpox. The mood of the

 slaves was resigned and compliant, although there were isolated

 incidents.

 One morning, while a batch of slaves were being brought up, one of them,

 a fine-looking naked woman, managed to work free the shackle of her

 chain and the moment she reached the deck she rushed to Huron's side and

 leapt over it, into the creaming blue wake of the racing clipper.

 Despite the fact that she still wore the iron cuffs on her wrists, she

 managed to keep afloat for many long minutes; her struggles were pitiful

 to watch as she was slowly drawn down lower and lower in the water.

 Robyn had run to the rail to watch the woman's efforts, expecting Mungo

 to heave-to and lower a boat to rescue her, but he remained detached and

 silent on his quarterdeck, barely glancing over the stern before

 occupying himself once more with the management of his ship, while Huron

 tore away and the woman's head dwindled to a speck on the blue water,

 then was drawn inevitably below the surface by the weight of her iron

 cuffs.

 Although Robyn realized that it would have been impossible to stop the

 clipper and reach the woman before she drowned, yet she glared at Mungo

 across the length of the deck, wishing that there were words to express

 her fury and indignation.

 That night she lay awake in her tiny cabin, hour after hour, xacking her

 imagination for some ruse that could be used to delay the tall clipper's

 full flight towards the Southern Cape.

 She thought of stealing one of the ship's boats and casting herself

 adrift during the night, forcing Mungo to turn back and to search for

 her. It took only a few minutes" reflection to realize that it would

 take a dozen strong men to free the whaler from its lashings and lower

 it on its davits over the ship's side, and even if she managed to

 accomplish that, it was far from certain that Mungo would delay even a

 minute. He was more likely to sail away and leave her, as he had left

 the slave woman.

 She thought of setting fire to the ship, overturning a lantern in the

 mainsail locker, and creating so much damage that Huron would be obliged

 to call at the nearest port, Loureng Marques or Port Natal, to effect

 repairs, and to give Black joke an opportunity to come up with her. Then

 she imagined eight hundred chained slaves burning to death in the hold

 when the fire got out of control, and she shuddered, thrust that idea

 from her and hopelessly composed herself to a sleep which would not

 come.

 In the end her opportunity came from a most unexpected source, Tippoo.

 The huge mate had a weakness, a single weakness that Robyn could

 observe. He was a trenclierman and, in his own taste, a gourmet. Half

 the lazaretto was filled with delicacies that Tippoo had hoarded and

 which he shared with no others. There were dried and smoked meats and

 sausages, cheeses the smell of which brought tears to the eyes, and

 wooden crates of cans and bottles of preserved foods, though as a strict

 Moslem, he took no alcohol. He made up what he lacked in the glass with

 his spoon.

 His appetite was one of the ship's jokes, and Robyn had heard Mungo

 chaffing him across the wardroom table. Were it not for the tucker you

 brought aboard, Mr. Mate, we'd have room for another hundred blackbirds

 in our hold. "I'll wager that belly of yours costs you more to sustain

 than a harem of extravagant wives. "Sweet merciful heavens, Mr. Tippoo,

 but whatever you are eating should have been given a Christian burial a

 month ago."

 One of Tippoo's favourite appetizers was a particularly virulent bloater

 paste, packed in half-pound tins. The instruction printed on the tin

 read "Spread thinly on biscuit or toast', and Tippoo would spoon it

 directly from the tin, consuming the entire half pound without once

 breaking the rhythmic dip and lift of his soup spoon, his eyes half

 closed and a cherubic smile buckling the wide line of his toad's mouth.

 The fourth night out of the Rio Save he began his dinner with a can of

 bloater paste, but as he pierced the lid with his clasp knife, there was

 a sharp hiss of escaping gas, and Mungo St. John glanced up from his own

 plate of pea soup.

 It is blown, Mr. Tippoo. I would not eat it if I were you. "No, Tippoo

 agreed. "But you not me."

 They called Robyn a little before midnight. Tippoo was in convulsions,

 doubled up with agony, his belly swollen and hard as a yellow agate

 boulder. He had vomited until now he was retching only a little

 blood-flecked bile.

 It's ptomaine poisoning, Robyn told Mungo St. John.

 It was the first time she had spoken directly to him since that morning

 in the Rio Save, and her voice was cool and formal. "I do not have the

 medicines to treat it. You will have to put into a port where he can

 receive treatment. There is a military hospital at Port Natal. "Doctor

 Ballantyne, Mungo answered her as formally, but his infuriating smile

 lurked behind the gold-flecked eyes. "Mr. Tippoo's mother was an

 ostrich, he can digest stones, nails and lumps of broken glass. Your

 concern, touching as it may be, is entirely misplaced. He will be ready

 to fight, flog, or devour an ox by noon tomorrow. "And I tell you that

 without proper treatment he will be dead in a week."

 However, Mungo's prognosis proved to be correct, for by morning the

 vomiting and retching had abated and Tippoo seemed to have purged his

 bowels of the poisoned fish. Robyn was forced to a decision which she

 made on her knees in her cabin. Forgive me, oh Lord, but there are

 eight hundred of your children chained below decks in this foul prison,

 and I will. not kill him, at least, with your help, I will not kill

 him."

 Then, off her knees she went briskly to work. She used a solution of

 peppermint tincture to disguise the taste, and let fall fifteen drops of

 essence of ipecacuanha into the medicine glass, which was three times

 the recommended dosage for the most powerful emetic known to the medical

 science. Drink it down, she told Tippoo. "It will soothe your stomach,

 and cure the diarrhoea."

 Late that afternoon she repeated the dose, but the wardroom steward had

 to help her lift Tippoo's head from the bolster and pour the draught

 down his throat. The effect was enough to alarm even Robyn.

 An hour later she sent for Mungo, and the steward came back with the

 message, "Captain says as how the ship's safety demands all his

 attention at the moment, begging your pardon, Doctor."

 When Robyn herself went on deck, Mungo was at the weather rail, sextant

 in hand, waiting for the sun to appear in a gap in the clouds.

 Tippoo is dying, she told him. And this will be my first sight of the

 day mungo replied without taking his eye from the eyepiece of the

 instrument. I at last believe that you are a monster with no human

 feelings, she whispered fiercely, and at that moment blazing sunlight

 struck the deck, as the sun showed briefly through the ragged hole in

 the cloud. Stand by the chronometer, " Mungo called to the signals

 yeoman, and then "Mark! as he brought the sun's image down to bounce

 lightly as a green rubber ball on the dark line of the horizon.

 Excellent, he murmured with satisfaction, as he lowered the sextant and

 read off the height of the sun, and called it to the yeoman to mark on

 his slate. Only then did he turn back to Robyn. I am sure you have

 misjudged the severity of Tippoo's ailment See for yourself, " she

 invited. That is my intention, Doctor."

 Mungo stooped into Tippoo's cabin, and paused. His expression changed,

 suddenly the light mocking smile was gone. It was evident that Tippoo

 was indeed dangerously ill. How are you, old friend? " Mungo asked

 quietly. It was the first time Robyn had ever heard him use that form

 of address. He lifted his hand and laid it on the mate's sweat-headed

 forehead.

 Tippoo rolled the bald yellow cannon ball of his head towards Mungo, and

 he tried to smile. It was a brave effort. Robyn felt a terrible guilty

 pang, at the suffering she was inflicting and at being the witness to

 this private, and strangely intimate, moment between these two hard and

 dangerous men.

 Tippoo tried to lift himself, but the effort brought a long dragging

 groan rattling up his throat, and he clutched at his stomach with both

 hands, drawing his knees up with agony, and then desperately twisting

 his head as a fresh bout of heaving and retching racked his body.

 Mungo snatched the bucket off the deck and with one arm around Tippoo's

 shoulders held it for him, but all that Tippoo could bring up was a

 little splash of blood and brown bile, and when he fell back on the bunk

 he was gasping unevenly, bathed in fresh sweat and his eyes rolled back

 in his skull until only a little half moon of the iris still showed.

 Mungo stood beside his bunk for a full five minutes, bowed and

 attentive, swaying slightly to the ship's movement, but otherwise still

 and silent. His brow was creased with thought and his gaze remote, and

 watching him, Robyn knew he was making the dire decision, the throw of

 the dice of life, friendship against the loss of his ship and perhaps

 even his own liberty, for to go into a British port with slaves in his

 holds was an awful risk.

 Strange, now that he was showing this gentler side of his nature, that

 her affection came flooding back at full strength, she felt mean and

 cheap for playing on his deepest emotions, and for torturing the huge

 yellow Moslem on the narrow bunk.

 Mungo swore quietly but decisively, and, still stooped under the low

 deck, strode from the cabin.

 Robyn's affection turned to disgust and disappointment. Disgust that

 even the LIFE of an old and loyal friend meant nothing to this cruel and

 merciless man whom she was doomed to love, and intense disappointment

 that her ruse had failed, that she had inflicted this dangerous

 suffering on Tippoo to no avail.

 She sank down wearily and bitterly beside his bunk, took a cloth soaked

 in sea water and bathed the sweatbasted yellow head.

 During their long voyage down the Atlantic, Robyn had grown sensitive to

 all Huron's moods, to the feel of the deck underfoot at every point of

 sailing, and to the sounds that her hull made in different sea and wind

 conditions, and now abruptly she felt the deck cant sharply beneath her.

 She heard the stamp of bare feet on the deck above as her yards were

 trained around and Huron's action became easier, the sounds of her hull

 and rigging muted as she took the wind in over her stern quarter and

 rode more easily. He's altered course towards the west, she breathed as

 she lifted her head to listen. "It worked. He is going in to Port

 Natal. Oh thank you Lord, it worked."

 Huron anchored well offshore, out on the thirty-fathom line of the

 shelving coast, so that she could not benefit from the shelter of the

 huge whale-backed bluff that protected Port Natal's natural harbour.

 Even with a powerful telescope, a watcher on the shore would be unable

 to make out any significant details of Huron's cargo, nor of her true

 occupation. However, the ship paid for her offshore berth by taking the

 unfettered scend of the sea and the wind. She pitched and she rolled

 and she jerked at her anchor chain.

 At her peak she flew the stars and stripes of her country, and below

 that the yellow "Quebec', the plague flag which warned, "Stay away from

 me! I have plague on board! " Mungo St. John placed an armed watch on

 both sides of the ship and others at her bow and stern , and, despite

 Robyn's strident protest, she was confined to her cabin for the duration

 of the ship's call, with another armed guard outside her door. You are

 very well aware of the reason, Doctor Ballantyne. " Mungo answered her

 protests calmly. "I do not wish you to have any communication

 whatsoever with your countrymen ashore."

 The whaler, when it took Tippoo ashore, was rowed by men that Mungo

 selected personally, and they were instructed to inform the Harbour

 Master that there was smallpox aboard, and to request that no other

 vessel be allowed near Huron. I can only wait three days for you. "

 Mungo stooped over the litter on which Tippoo was carried on deck.

 That is all I can risk. If you are not sufficiently recovered by then,

 you will have to stay here until my return.

 That cannot be more than five months. " He tucked a leather draw-string

 purse under Tippoo's blanket. "And that will pay your expenses in the

 meanwhile. Get well, Mr. Tippoo, I need you."

 Robyn had administered another dose of the peppermint and ipecacuanha a

 few minutes previously, and Tippoo could reply only in an agonized

 whisper.

 I will wait for you, Captain Mungo, as long as she takes Mungo's voice

 was husky as he straightened and spoke to the seamen carrying the

 litter. Handle him easy, you hear me."

 For three days Robyn sweated and fretted in the stuffy little cabin,

 trying to occupy her time with writing up her journals but distracted by

 any loud noise from the deck above, her heart pounding as she both hoped

 for and dreaded the hail from a British gun-boat, or the rush of a

 boarding-party coming in over Huron's side.

 On the third morning Tippoo was rowed back to the ship, and he climbed

 up the side and in through the entry port unaided. Without further

 doses of ipecacuanha, his recovery had amazed the military surgeons

 ashore, but he was so thin that the skin hung in folds from his jowls

 like a bulldog, his belly had shrunk so that he had tied his breeches

 with a length of rope to keep them from sinking down past his flattened

 belly, but still they flapped around his shrunken buttocks.

 His skin was the pale yellow of ancient ivory, and he was so weak he had

 to pause to rest when he reached the deck. Welcome aboard, Mr. Tippoo,

 " Mungo called from the quarterdeck. "And if you have finished your

 holiday ashore, I'll thank you to get this ship under way immediately

 Twelve days later, having struggled with flukey and variable winds,

 Mungo St. John played the field of his glass down the open gaping maw of

 False Bay. On his right hand rose the distinctive curved black peak of

 Hangklip, shaped from this angle like a shark's dorsal fin, and directly

 opposite it across the mouth of the bay the southernmost tip of the

 African continent, Cape Point, with its lighthouse perched high above

 the steep wet Cliffs.

 It was a magnificent Cape summer's day, a light and fickle breeze

 scratching dark patches on the surface of the rolling dark blue sea,

 leaving the rest of it with a satiny gloss. There were seabirds

 working, their wings twinkling like flurrying; snow flakes in the

 sunlight, huge flocks of them that stretched low across the horizon.

 Creeping along on the breeze, lying for minutes at a time completely

 becalmed, Huron took half a day to round the point and came on to

 west-northwest and a point north, the course that would carry her up the

 Atlantic, across the equator and finally into Charleston Roads.

 Once they were on their new course, Mungo St. John had leisure to

 inspect the other sails that were in sight.

 There were nine, no, ten other vessels in view now, for there was

 another far out to sea, just her topsails showing. They were small

 fishing craft out from Hout Bay and Table Bay, and the seabirds clouded

 the air about them, most of them were between Huron and the land, and

 all of them were bare-masted or under working sail as they plied their

 lines or their nets. Only the vessel furthest out was carrying

 topsails, and though she was hull down she gave to Mungo's seaman's eye

 the impression of being a bigger ship than the rest of the fishing

 fleet. There's a ship for you! " Tippoo exclaimed, touching Mungo's

 arm to draw his attention and when he swung his glass back towards the

 land Mungo murmured with pleasure as a square-rigged East Indiaman came

 into view around the headland that guarded the entrance to Table Bay

 itself.

 She was as splendid a sight as Huron was herself, canvas piled to the

 sky and her paintwork glearrung in snowy white and Burgundy red, the two

 lovely ships on reciprocal courses passed each other by two

 cableslength, the officers eyeing each other through their telescopes

 with professional interest and appraisal as they paid passing honours.

 Robyn was also at Huron's rail, pining towards the land. The proximity

 of the beautiful ship interested her hardly at all, it was that

 flat-topped mountain from which she could barely tear her gaze. It was

 so very close, marking as it did her one hope of succour, her friends

 there, the British Governor and the Cape Squadron, if they only knew

 that she was a prisoner aboard this slave ship.

 The thought was interrupted by an abrupt movement that she caught from

 the corner of her eye, strange how receptive she was to Mungo St. John's

 smallest movement, to his slightest change of expression, and now she

 saw that he had turned his back on the East Indiaman as she dwindled

 away astern, and instead he was peering intently over Huron's port side,

 his expression rapt, his whole body seemed charged with latent energy,

 and the hands that gripped the barrel of the telescope were ivory

 knuckled with tension.

 Quickly she followed his gaze, and for the first time noticed a tiny

 shred of white on the horizon that did not fade like the white caps of

 the waves, but stood constant and bright in the sunlight, though even as

 she watched it seemed to alter its shape slightly and, was it her

 imagination, or was it a thin dark wavering line that seemed to appear

 behind it and spread slowly away in the direction of the wind? Mr.

 Tippoo, what do you make of that sail?

 She heard the timbre of concern and alarm in Mungo St. John's tone, and

 her heart leapt wildly, with hope and a Judas dread.

 For Clinton Codrington it had been a desperate run down the eastern

 coastline of southern Africa, long days and sleepless nights of

 unceasing strain, when hope and despair pendulumed against each other.

 Each shift or change in the wind either alarmed or encouraged him, for

 it would either aid or hinder the tall clipper ship he was racing to

 head. The calms elated him, and the revival of the south-easterly

 prevailing winds sent his spirits plunging.

 On the last days there was another worry to plague him. He had burned

 his coal like a spendthrift on the long thousand-mile run southwards,

 and his engineer came up on deck, a small red-headed Scot with the

 grease and coal-dust etched into his skin so that he seemed to be

 suffering from some debilitating and incurable disease. The stokers"

 shovels be hitting the bottom of the bunkers already, he told Clinton

 with mournful relish. "I warned ye, sir, that we'd not make it if you-

 Burn the ship's furniture if you must, Clinton snapped at him. "You can

 start with my bunk, I'll not be needing it."

 And when the engineer would have argued further Clinton added, "I don't

 care how you do it, Mr. MacDonald, but I want a full head of steam on

 your boiler until I reach Cape Point, and another full head of steam

 when I bring this ship into action."

 They raised the Cape Point lighthouse a few minutes after midnight the

 following night, and Clinton's voice was hoarse with fatigue and relief

 as he stooped over the voice pipe. Mr. MacDonald, you can let your

 fires damp down, but keep your furnaces warmed and ready to stoke. When

 I ask for steam again, I'll need it in a hurry. "You'll be calling at

 Table Bay to take on fresh bunkers, of course, sir? "I'll let you know

 when, Clinton promised him, and snapped the lid of the speaking tube

 closed and straightened up.

 The Cape naval base, with all its amenities lay only a few hours

 steaming away. By dawn he could be filling Black fake with coal and

 water and fresh vegetables.

 However, Clinton knew that within minutes of dropping anchor in Table

 Bay, Admiral Kemp or one of his representatives would be on his way out

 to the ship, and Clinton's term of independent command would be over.

 He would revert to being a very junior commander, whose recent actions

 needed a great deal of explanation.

 The closer that Clinton drew to Admiralty House, the louder the warnings

 of Sir John Bannerman rang in his ears, and the more soberly he was

 forced to review his own position. The excitement of storming Arab

 barracoons and of seizing slave-laden dhows on the high seas had long

 ago cooled, and Clinton realized that once he entered it he would not be

 able to escape again from Table Bay for weeks, or possibly months. It

 would not even suit his immediate plans to be seen and recognized from

 the land, for a boat would immediately be sent out by Admiral Kemp to

 order him in to face judgement and retribution.

 Clinton felt not the least trepidation about the Navy's ultimate

 judgement, he was so- indifferent to the threat hanging over his career

 that he surprised even himself.

 There was only one desire, one object in his mind, that overshadowed all

 else. He must have his ship in position to intercept Huron as she

 rounded the Cape, if she had not already done so. Nobody and nothing

 must prevent him from doing so. After that he would face his accusers

 with complete equanimity. Huron and Robyn Ballantyne first, beside them

 all else was pale and insignificant. Mr. Denham, he called his

 Lieutenant across the dark deck. "We will take up night patrol station

 ten miles off Cape Point, and I am to be called immediately the lights

 of any ship are sighted."

 As Clinton threw himself down, fully dressed and booted, upon his bunk,

 he experienced the first peace of mind since leaving Zanzibar harbour.

 He had done all that was in his power to reach Cape Point ahead of

 Huron, and now the rest was in the hands of God, and his trust in God

 was implicit.

 He fell asleep almost instantly, and his steward woke him again an hour

 before dawn. He left the mug of coffee to grow cold beside his bunk and

 hurried on deck, reaching it a few seconds ahead of Lieutenant Denham.

 No ships during the night, sir, Ferris, who had the watch, saluted him.

 Very well, Mr. Ferris, Clinton acknowledged. "We will take up our

 daylight patrol station immediately."

 By the time the light was strong enough for a watcher on the shore to

 make out any details, Black joke had retreated tactfully below the

 horizon and it would have taken a sharp eye to pick out the occasional

 flash of her topsails, let alone to identify the gunboat and to speed a

 report to Admiral Kemp that his prodigal had returned.

 From Black joke's masthead the land was a low irregular distortion Of

 the horizon, but a ship rounding the Cape would be many miles closer

 than the land.

 Huron's mainmast was almost one hundred and fifty feet tall, her sails

 would shine like a flaming beacon and as long as the fog did not come

 down, which was unlikely at this season of the year, Clinton was

 confident that she could not slip by him.

 The only disquiet that scratched him like a burr as he paced his deck,

 and the gunboat settled down into the regular four-sided box-patterried

 legs of her patrol, was that Huron had long ago flown northwards on this

 fine wind that at last bore steadily out of the south-east at almost

 gale force, and that she was already lost in the endless watery green

 wastes of the southern Atlantic Ocean, leaving Black joke to guard the

 gate of an empty cage.

 He was not left long to brood, the first sighting was called down to the

 deck from the look-outs in the crow's nest at the main peak, and

 Clinton's nerves jumped tight and his expectations flared.

 What do you make of her? " he called up through the voice trumpet.

 Small lugger-" and his expectations plunged. A fishing-boat out of

 Table Bay, there would be many of them, but each time he could not

 control the wild surge of excitement when another sail was sighted, so

 that by nightfall his nerves were ragged, and his body ached with

 exhaustion as he gave the order for Black joke to take up her inshore

 patrol station for the night.

 Even then be could not rest, for three times during the night he was

 called from his bunk, and he stumbled owleyed on deck as Black Joke went

 down to investigate running lights that winked ruby red and emerald

 green out of the darkness.

 C Each time the same leap of expectation, the steeling of nerves for

 instant orders and swift action, and then the same let down as the

 lights proved to belong to small trading vessels, and the gunboat

 sheered away quickly, test she be recognized and her presence off the

 Cape be reported in Table Bay.

 In the dawn, Clinton was on deck again, as the gunboat moved further

 offshore to take up her daylight patrol station. He was distracted by

 the sighting reports as his masthead look-out picked up the first sails

 of the fishing fleet coming out for the day's business, and by the

 lugubrious report of his coal-stained Scottish engineer.

 Ye'll not last out the day, sir, MacDonald told him. Even though I am

 burning just enough coal to keep the furnace warm, we've not more than a

 bucket or two left. "Mr. MacDonald, Clinton interrupted him, trying to

 keep his temper under control and to disguise his exhaustion. "This

 ship will stay on station until I give the order, I don't care what you

 burn, but you are to give me steam when I ask for it, or kiss good-bye

 to the fattest bundle of prize money that will ever come your way."

 Despite this brave promise and threat, Clinton's hopes were sinking

 swiftly. They had been on station for more than a day and a night

 already, he could not bring himself to believe that he had beaten the

 swift clipper to the Cape by that margin, not unless she had been

 somehow miraculously delayed, and every hour increased the certainty

 that she had run clear away from him, taking her cargo and the woman be

 loved out of his life for ever.

 He knew he should go below to rest, but his cabin was stifling in the

 rising summer heat, and in it he felt like a trapped animal. He stayed

 on deck, unable to keep still for more than a few moments at a time,

 poring over the chart table and fiddling with the navigational

 instruments before throwing them down and resuming his nervous pacing,

 shooting quick glances up at the masthead, and then roaming the ship so

 obviously intent on finding fault or criticizing the ship's running that

 his officers followed his lanky figure with troubled expressions, while

 the watch on deck was silent and subdued, not one of them daring to

 glance in his direction until Clinton's voice rose in a coldly furious

 cry that froze them all. Mr. Denham, " the Lieutenant almost ran to the

 summons, "this deck is a pig-sty. What animal is responsible for this

 filth? " On the white holystoned deck planking was a brown splash of

 tobacco juice, and Denham stared at it for an instant before wheeling

 away to bellow a series of orders that had a dozen men scampering. The

 activity was so intense, the atmosphere electric, as Captain and

 Lieutenant stood over four men on their knees scrubbing furiously at the

 offending stain while others carried buckets of sea water and still

 others rigged the deck pump, that the hail from the masthead was almost

 ignored, It was left to Ferris to acknowledge it, and to enquire through

 the voice trumpet, What do you make of her? "She's bull down, but she's

 a four-masted ship, square rigged-The activity on the deck ceased

 instantly, every head hfting as the look-out went on elaborating on his

 sighting. She's on a course to weather the Cape, now she's coming round

 on to a heading of north-northwest or thereabouts."

 Clinton Codrington was the first to move. He snatched the telescope out

 of Lieutenant Denham's hand and ran to the ratlines. With the telescope

 tucked in his belt he began to climb, hand over hand.

 He went up steadily, never pausing nor faltering, not even when he

 reached the futtock shrouds and for a few moments hung over backwards

 one hundred feet above the swaying deck. However, when he reached the

 crow's nest at the main peak and tumbled into it thankfully, his breath

 was sawing dryly in his throat and the blood sang in his ears. He had

 not climbed like that since he had been a midshipman.

 The look-out tried to make himself as small as possible, for they were

 crowded together in the canvas bucket, and he pointed out the ship to

 his Captain. There she be, sir."

 Black joke's roll was emphasized up here on the tall pendulum of the

 mast, and the horizon swung giddily through the field of Clinton's

 telescope as he tried to keep it focused. It was an art that he had

 never completely mastered, but that was of little consequence for the

 first time the little regular white pyramids popped up in the field of

 his glass the last doubts were dispelled, and Clinton felt his heart

 leap fiercely against his ribs.

 His voice was strangled with triumphant emotion as he shouted down at

 the tiny foreshortened figures on the gleaming white quarterdeck far

 below. Bring her round to due east, Mr. Denham. Order a full head of

 steam on the boiler-Though he had not yet fully recovered his breath, he

 threw himself out of the crow's nest and scrambled down faster than he

 had climbed. In his haste he slid the last fifty feet down the backstay

 and barely noticed the rough hempen rope scorching the palms of his

 hands.

 By the time his feet hit the deck, Black joke was coming around on to

 her new heading, and in anticipation of Clinton's next order, Denham had

 already called the watch below, and they came boiling out on to the

 deck. And we will clear for action, Mr. Denham, if you please, gasped

 Clinton, his face dark with blood under his deepwater tan and the

 sapphire eyes alight with battle lust.

 All Black joke's officers carried swords on their belts, only Clinton

 had selected a cutlass, for he preferred the stouter and heavier weapon,

 and he fiddled with the hilt even now as he spoke to them quietly and

 seriously. Gentlemen, I have documented proof that the ship ahead of us

 has a cargo of slaves aboard her."

 Denham coughed nervously and Clinton forestalled him. "I am also aware

 that she is an American vessel, and in ordinary circumstances we would

 be helpless to oppose her passage. " Denham nodded with relief, but

 Clinton went on remorselessly, "However, I have received an appeal from

 one of Her Majesty's subjects, Dr. Robyn Ballantyne whom you all know

 well, who is being abducted aboard the Huron against her will. I am

 certain what my duty is in these circumstances. I intend to board her,

 and if she resists me, I intend to fight her."

 He paused and their faces were shocked, strained. "Those of you who

 have objections to this course of action should immediately note them in

 the ship's log, and I will sign them."

 Their relief and gratitude was immediate, few other captains would he so

 lenient.

 He. signed his name neatly beneath the entry in the ship's log, and

 then returned the pen to its holder. Now that the formalities have been

 seen to, gentlemen, shall we get on with earning our hire? "And Clinton

 was smiling for the first time since they sailed from Zanzibar harbour

 as he indicated the pile of snowy white sails that was now clearly

 visible from the deck ahead of Black joke's bows, and as he spoke there

 was an eruption of dark tarry-smelling smoke from the tall single stack

 above them, and the engine telegraph clanged sharply as the pointer

 moved to "Engine Standing Byposition on the repeater. Black joke had

 steam in her boiler.

 Clinton stepped to the telegraph, thrust the handle fully around the

 dial to the "Full ahead" position, and the deck vibrated under his feet

 as the propeller shaft began to spin and Black Joke lunged forward

 eagerly, breaking the swells off her shoulders in explosions of white

 spray. By God, he's got us pinned against the land -1 Mungo drawled the

 words out nonchalantly, even smiling slightly at Tippoo as he lowered

 the glass from his eye for a moment and polished the Lens on his

 shirt-sleeve. We'll have to run like the very devil to get round him,

 and make the open sea. Mr. Tippoo, will you be good enough to shake out

 every last reef and crack on all the sail we can carry right up to the

 sky sails? " He lifted the glass to his eye again as Tippoo began

 bellowing the orders. "It's a little bit too much luck for any one man,

 " Mungo murmured aloud. "It's too much coincidence that the one man I

 would not wish to meet be lying in the one place on all the oceans where

 I would not wish to meet him. " Again he lowered the glass and strode

 to the poop rail to look down on to the maindeck.

 Robyn Ballantyne was at the ship's side, staring out across the indigo

 blue waters at the sail and the smear of dark smoke, still far out to

 sea, but every moment converging on them, beaded to a point far ahead of

 Huron's elegant bows where the courses of the two ships would meet. She

 sensed Mungo's eyes upon her, and she lifted the shawl off her head so

 that her dark russet hair tumbled out and snapped and danced around her

 cheeks.

 Her skirts were flattened against her legs by the wind, so that she had

 to lean slightly forward to balance herself.

 She lifted her chin and stared up at Mungo, her expression defiant and

 she watched him as he carefully bit the end off one of his long thin

 black cheroots and cupped his hands around the sulphurous flare of the

 Vesta match and lit the cheroot without once breaking the steady gaze

 that held her own.

 Then he sauntered easily down the poop-ladder to her side. A friend of

 yours, Doctor Ballantyne? " The smile was on his lips alone. His eyes

 were frosty. I have prayed every night for him to come. Ever since I

 sent the letter that summoned him. "You do not deny the betrayal?

 "I am proud I was able to perform my Christian duty. "Who carried your

 letter? "No member of your crew, sir. I sent it by the master of the

 Omani buggaloo. "I see. " His voice was low, but stinging as dry ice.

 "And what of Tippoo's illness, would a physician, perchance, stoop to

 poisoning a patient? " She dropped her eyes, unable to meet that

 accusation. Will you be so kind, Doctor Ballantyne, as to return to

 your cabin immediately and stay there until I give you permission to

 leave it. There will be an armed guard at the door."

 I am to be punished? "No man would blame me for dropping you over the

 side, and leaving you to be picked up by your countrymen. However, it

 is your safety I am thinking of. This deck could become an unhealthy

 spot in the very near future, and we will all be too much occupied to

 care for YOU.

 His attention left her, and he was staring ahead, and then glancing back

 at Black Joke's smoke, judging speeds and angles with a seaman's eye.

 Then he smiled. Before you go, I would like you to know that all your

 efforts have really been a fine waste of time, look there! He pointed

 ahead along the sheer and mountainous coastline, and following his arm

 she saw for the first time that ahead of them the sea was as black and

 broken as new coal cut from the face, glittering with wild jumping

 wavelets, each flecked with pretty white crests. There is the wind, "

 Mungo said. "That's where it comes through the mountains, and we will

 be into it before you are safely tucked up in your cabin. " He chuckled

 now comfortably, confidently. "Once we get on that wind, there are few

 ships on all the oceans, either steam or sail, that would match Huron

 for a moment, and God knows, there are none who could run her down. "

 He gave her a small mocking bow, parody of gracious southern manners.

 "Take a good look at that ugly little steam packet, before you go,

 ma'am, you'll not be seeing her again. And now, if you'll be good

 enough to excuse meHe turned from her and ran lightly back up the

 poopladder.

 Tears of anger dimming her eyes, Robyn clutched the rail and stared

 across the narrowing strip of sea at the bustlin& puffing little

 gunboat, already she could catch glimpses of the hull, and its painted

 chequer-board gunports. She began to hope that Mungo St. John's boast

 had been mere bravado, for Black Joke seemed to be keeping pace with the

 tall clipper, the wind was still a long, long way ahead.

 There was a respectful touch on Robyn's shoulder, and old Nathaniel

 stood beside her. Captain's orders, ma. I am, and I am to see you safe

 in your cabin."

 Clinton leaned forward, all his weight on the balls of his feet, almost

 as though he were trying to urge his ship on by the balance of his body,

 the way a rider leans forward into the jump. He also had seen the wind

 pattern on the surface of the sea, and knew what it heralded.

 The tall clipper ship looked lazy now, indolent in her flounces and

 ruffles as a lady of high fashion, and Black Joke was snorting and

 snuffling busily down the short leg of the triangle. If they both

 maintained this speed and course they would meet about eleven nautical

 miles ahead. Clinton could visualize the exact spot clearly just beyond

 the spit of land marked on his chart as "Bakoven Point'.

 Huron was committed to her present course. She could not bear up for

 the land lay close under her weather rail, and the chart showed breaking

 shoals well offshore there was one of them now, close on her starboard

 beam, showing its round black granite back and blowing like a whale.

 Huron was in a trap, and her only escape would be to find the extra turn

 of speed which would carry her away out of gunshot range, and there it

 was, the wind, less than three miles ahead of her.

 There was a loud banging from the deck below Clinton's feet and he

 glanced irritably at Ferris. See what that is, he snapped, and turned

 his full attention back to the clipper. Three short miles she had to

 go, but even as Clinton stared at her through his glass he saw her huge

 square mainsail quiver and then shake gently as she luffed in the flukey

 airs below the mountains. Please God! " Clinton whispered, and Huron's

 speed bled off perceptively, all her sails were losing their taut clean

 shape and she checked away, baulking like a weary animal. She's found a

 hole in the wind, " Lieutenant Denham called exultantly. "We've got her

 now, by God! "I'll thank you not to blaspheme on this quarterdeck, Mr.

 Denham, Clinton told him sharply, and Denham's expression was instantly

 crestfallen. I beg your pardon, sir. " At that moment Ferris arrived

 breathlessly back on deck. The stokers, sir, be panted. "They are

 knocking out all the furniture from the officers" quarters. Your bunk's

 gone, sir, and your desk also."

 Clinton barely glanced at him, he was studying the clipper, evaluating

 each yard of difference in their speeds, judging as finely as he dared

 the angle of his interception.

 Yes, he decided, with Huron's loss of speed, he could edge in a touch

 more. Bring her up a point to starboard, he told the helmsman, and then

 he glanced up at his own sails that were helping the big bronze screws

 under the stern to hurl Black joke forward. The alteration of course

 had affected them. Mr. Ferris, see to the trim of your jib, if you

 please."

 Ferris bellowed an order to the foredeck watch, and watched critically

 as they hardened up the long triangular sail.

 All Huron's sails shivered, and then refilled, once more taking on their

 true shape, and she spurted away, a curl of white sparkling under her

 bows. The dark windswept water was much closer ahead of her.

 It had been Denham's unnecessary blasphemy, Clinton was sure of it, and

 he glanced darkly at his Lieutenant, and then reluctantly gave the

 order. Let her fall off a point."

 Huron was head-reaching again. If Black joke held on she would be

 aiming to cut behind the clipper's stern . The alteration was an

 acknowledgement of the advantage changing hands once again.

 The engine voice pipe squealed, and it was a relief to have even the

 small distraction. Engine room, Captain, " he snapped into the

 mouthpiece. "Coal long ago gone, sir. Pressure down to 100 pounds,

 sir, and falling. "Burn everything you can find. "Wood goes up like

 paper, sir. No body to it, and it chokes the flue. " MacDonald seemed

 to relish the gloomy news, and Clinton felt his irritation turn to

 anger. Do your best, man, nobody can ask more than that, and he snapped

 the voice pipe closed.

 Was he close enough yet to try a shot with his bowchaser, he wondered?

 The long sixteen-pounder had almost twice the range of the big

 thirty-two pounders that made up Black joke's main armament. A lucky

 shot might carry away one of the clipper's spars, might even bring down

 a yard, and at that moment he distinctly felt the change in the engine

 vibrations coming up through the deck, Black joke was faltering, the

 steam in her boilers losing pressure. Mr. Ferris, break out the

 colours, if you please."

 As the Ensign unfurled at the peak, spread gloriously against the pale

 blue sky, crimson and silky white, shouting a challenge on the wind,

 Clinton felt that tightness in his chest, that swell of pride which

 never failed him. Huron's replying, Denham muttered, and Clinton lifted

 his glass, and watched the American's colours k bloom like a flower high

 above her shimmering piles of white canvas. And be damned, Denham

 interpreted the show of colours. Huron was scorning their challenge.

 Mr. Ferris, we'll give her a gun now, Clinton decided grimly. "Put one

 over her bows. " And Ferris scrambled away to the bows to supervise the

 loading and laying of the bow-chaser.

 The shot when it came was a puny little pop of sound, muted by the wind

 and the long spurt of grey powder smoke was whipped-away almost before

 it could form.

 Though they were all watching avidly through the telescopes, not one of

 them could spot the fall of shot, and Denham spoke aloud for all of

 them. She's not altering. She's ignoring us. "Very well. " Clinton

 kept his voice low. "We'll try one into her rigging."

 The sixteen-pounder banged again, like an unlatched door in a high wind,

 and this time they both exclaimed in unison. A pinprick of light

 appeared in one of the Huron's studding sails, pierced by shot; it held

 its shape for an instant and then burst like a paper packet and was

 blown to tatters.

 Clinton saw the bustle of Huron's seamen on the decks and yards, and

 before the bow-chaser could be reloaded, the ruined sail was hauled down

 and another clean new sail spread open in its place. The speed with

 which the sail change was made impressed even Clinton. The devil is a

 good sailor, I'll grant him that-, And then he broke off, for Huron was

 turning boldly, seeming to aim to cut the gunboat's bows, and Clinton

 realized what her Captain was doing. He was anticipating the rush of

 the wind, and as Clinton watched it struck her.

 It came roaring aboard the clipper, howling through her rigging, like a

 pack of hunting wolves, and the tall ship heeled and seemed almost to

 crouch, gathering herself like a blood stallion feeling the cut of the

 lash, and then she hurled herself forward and was away.

 The dark wind-scoured sea burst open before the long lithe knifing hull,

 and joyously Huron tossed the dashing white spray over her bows. She's

 making twenty knots, Denham cried with disbelief, as Black Joke seemed

 to come up dead in the water, a wallowing log when compared to the swift

 and lovely ship that cut daringly across her bows, just out of cannon

 shot, and dashed away into the open Atlantic Ocean.

 Through his glass Clinton saw that the seamen who lined Huron's yards

 were gambolling and waving their caps, mouths wide open and they cheered

 and jeered, and then he focused the glass on Huron's deck.

 There was a tall figure at Huron's near rail, clad in a plain dark blue

 jacket. Clinton could not make out the man's features at this distance,

 but he recognized the set of wide shoulders, the arrogant carriage of

 head, that he had last seen over the sights of a duelling pistol.

 The acid bile of hatred rose to scald his throat as the figure lifted a

 hand in a laconic salute, a taunting gesture of farewell, and then

 turned away from the rail unhurriedly.

 Clinton snapped his telescope closed. stern chase! he ordered.

 "We'll keep after her!

 He did not dare look at his officers" faces, lest one of them wore an

 expression of pity.

 Lying on her bunk, her arms held stiffly at her sides and hands clenched

 painfully, Robyn heard the creak and squeal from the deck below her that

 meant Huron was altering course, and that the eight-inch thick

 rudderlines were running through their blocks as the helmsmin spun the

 wheel. It was a sound she had long become accustomed to, and she braced

 herself instinctively as the rudder lines attached to the panties

 trained around the enormous wooden rudder under Huron's stern and the

 ship altered her action through the water.

 Seconds later there was a thunderous commotion from the deck above her,

 the blustering roar of the gale socking into the rigging, the crash of

 tackle coming up taut, the slam of the great sails as their awesome

 power was transferred into the hull, and Robyn was almost hurled from

 her bunk as Huron heeled wildly.

 Then the cabin was filled with the exultant tbnlrnming of the bull

 through water, as though she were the body of a violin as the bow was

 drawn across the bass strings, and Huron trembled with life, lifting and

 dropping to the new urgency of her run.

 Very faintly Robyn could hear above it all the sound of men cheering.

 She jumped from the bunk and clutching for handholds crossed the cabin

 and pounded her fist upon the door.  Nathaniel, " she called. "Answer

 me this instant.

 "Captain says as how I'm not to talk to you. " His voice was muffled.

 You cannot torment me so, " Robyn yelled back. "What is happening? " A

 long pause while Nathaniel considered his duty and then weighed it

 against his affection for this spirited young woman. We are on the

 wind, ma'am, " he told her at last. "And going like all the devils of

 hell with a crackerjack tied to their tails. "What of Black joke? "

 she pleaded. "What of the British gunboat? "Ain't nothing will catch

 us now. Reckon the puffing Billy will be out of sight before nightfall.

 From here she looks like she's dropped her anchor."

 Slowly Robyn leaned forward until her forehead pressed against the

 planking of the door. She closed her eyes very tightly, and tried to

 fight down the black waves of despair that threatened to overwhelm her.

 She stayed like that for a long time until Nathaniel's voice roused her.

 It was rough with concern. Are you all right then, missus? "Yes, thank

 you, Nathaniel. I'm just fine, she replied tightly, without opening her

 eyes. "I'm going to take a little nap now. Don't let anybody disturb

 me. "I'll be right here, missus. Ain't nobody going to get past me, he

 assured her.

 She opened her eyes and went back to the bunk, and knelt before it and

 began to pray, but for once she could not concentrate. jumbled images

 kept intervening, and, when she closed her eyes, the face of Clinton

 Codrington was there, with those pale beautiful eyes in the darkly

 tanned mahogany of his face that accentuated the sun bleached platinum

 of his hair. She longed for him as she had never done before, he had

 become a symbol for her that was good and clean and right.

 Then her mind darted away and it was that distant mocking smile, the

 taunting gold-flecked eyes of Mungo St. John. She trembled with

 humiliation, the man who had violated her and turned her own emotions

 traitor, who had dallied with her and allowed her to hope, nay, to pray

 that she could bear his children and become his wife. Her despair

 turned to hatred once again, and hatred armed her. Forgive me, Lord,

 I'll pray later, but now I have to do something! " She started to her

 feet, and the cramped little cabin was a cage, suffocating and

 unbearable. She hammered her fists on the door and Nathaniel replied

 immediately. Nathaniel, I cannot bear it in here a moment longer."

 she cried. "You must let me out."

 His voice was regretful but firm. "Can't do that, missus. Tippoo would

 have a look at my back boneV She flung away from the door, angry,

 confused, her mind in a turmoil. I cannot let him carry me away to-"

 She did not go on, for she could not imagine what awaited her at the end

 of this voyage unless, and she had a vivid mental image of Huron coming

 into dock, while standing on the quay was a beautiful tall and

 aristocratic French woman in crinolines and velvets and pearls with

 three small sons standing at her side waving up at the tall arrogant

 figure on Huron's quarterdeck.

 She tried to close her mind to it, and she concentrated instead on the

 sound that Huron made as she bore away joyously on the wind, the

 drumming of her hull, and the pop and creak of her planking, the clatter

 of tackle and the stamp of bare feet on her deck as a party of seamen

 walked away with a fall, training one of the yards more finely to the

 wind. From beneath her feet came another muted squeal, like a rat in

 the cat's jaws, as the helmsman made a small-adjustment to Huron's

 heading, and the rudder tackle ran protestingly through the blocks.

 The sound triggered a memory, and Robyn froze, trembling again, but this

 time with anticipation. She remembered Clinton Codrington describing to

 her how as a young Lieutenant he had been in command of a cuttingout

 party sent into a river estuary that was crammed with small slaving

 craft, buggaloos and dhows. I didn't have enough men to take them all

 as prize at once, so we jumped from one to the other, cut their rudder

 lines and left them drifting, helplessly, until we could pick lem up

 later, those that hadn't gone aground, that is."

 Robyn roused herself from the memory and rushed to the corner of her

 cabin. She had to wedge her back against the bulkhead and push with

 both her feet to move her wooden chest into the centre of the cabin.

 Then she dropped to her hands and knees.

 There was a small trap-door in the deck, so neatly fitted that its

 joints were knife edges, but there was a small iron ring let flush into

 the woodwork. Once on the long voyage down the Atlantic, she had been

 disturbed. by a very apologetic carpenter's mate and she had watched

 with interest while he had dragged her chest aside and opened the hatch,

 to descend through it with a grease pot.

 She tried now to open it, but the hatch was so tightfitting, that it

 resisted her efforts. She snatched a woollen shawl from her chest, and

 threaded it through the iron ring. Now she could get a fairer purchase.

 Once more she strained back, and the hatch moved inchingly and then

 abruptly flew open with a crash that she was sure must have alerted

 Nathaniel. She froze again, listening for a half minute, but there was

 no sound from beyond the cabin door.

 On her hands and knees again she peered into the open hatchway. There

 was a faint breeze of air coming up out of the dark square hole, and she

 could smell the thick grease, the reek of the bilges and the awful slave

 stink that not all the lye and scrubbing had been able to cleanse, her

 gorge rose at the taint. As her eyes adjusted, she made out the low and

 narrow tunnel that housed Huron's steering gear. It was just high

 enough for a man to crawl along, running fore and aft along the hull.

 The rudder lines came down from the deck above, ran through heavy iron

 blocks bolted into one of Huron's main frames, and then changed

 direction and ran directly astern down the narrow wooden tunnel. The

 pulley wheels of the blocks were caked with black grease, and the rudder

 lines were of new yellow hemp. They seemed as thick as a man's leg, and

 she could sense the enormous strain on them, for they were as rigid as

 steel bars.

 She looked around for a means of damaging them, a knife, one of her

 scalpels, perhaps, and almost immediately realized the futility of

 anything so puny. Even a strong man with a double-headed axe would be

 hard pressed to hack his way through those cables, and there was no room

 in which to swing an axe in that narrow tunnel. Even if a man had

 succeeded in severing one of them, he would have been cut to bloody

 tatters as the cable whiplashed.

 There was only one means, one sure means, and she quailed at the thought

 of what would happen if it got out of control, and if Black Joke was not

 very swiftly alongside to render assistance with her steam-driven pumps

 and hoses. She had once already rejected the idea of using fire, but

 now with help so close astern, with the last chance rapidly fading, she

 was ready to accept any risk.

 She reached across and pulled off the wooden bunk one of her grey

 woollen blankets and wadded it into a bundle, then she stood up and

 lifted the oil lamp from its gimbals in the deck above her. Her fingers

 were clumsy with haste as she unscrewed the cap of the oil reservoir in

 the base of the lamp.

 She soaked the blanket, and then looked round for anything else that was

 inflammable, her journals? No, not them, but she pulled her medical

 manuals out of the chest and ripped the pages out of them, crumpling

 them so they would burn more readily, and she made a sack of the

 oil-soaked blanket and wadded the paper into it.

 She stuffed it down the hatch and it fell across the straining rudder

 lines, and entangled itself in the iron pulleys.

 The mattress on the bunk was filled with coir, the dry coconut fibre

 would burn fiercely; she dragged it off the bunk and pushed it into the

 hatch. Then the wooden slats off the bunk followed it, then the

 navigational books from the narrow bookshelf behind the door. She

 looked about her swiftly, but there was nothing else in the cabin that

 would burn.

 The first Swan Vesta that she dropped burning down the hatchway

 flickered once and then went out. She tore the end sheet out of her

 journal and twisted it into a spill, when it was blazing strongly she

 let it fall into the dark square opening, and as it floated down it

 illuminated the gloomy recesses of Huron's bilges, and the rough

 planking of her underbelly.

 The burning spill landed on the oil-soaked blanket, and pale blue flames

 fluttered over it as the evaporating gases flashed off, then a crumpled

 ball of paper caught and little orange flames peaked up and danced

 merrily over the blanket and the linen covering of the mattress.

 A rush of heat came up through the hatchway, scorching Robyn's cheeks,

 and the sound of the flames was higher than that of the rushing seas

 along the outside of the hull.

 Using all her strength, Robyn swung the hatch cover over and let it drop

 back on to its seating with a thump that alarmed her anew, but

 immediately the sound of the flames was cut off.

 Panting with the effort and a savage excitement, Robyn backed away and

 leaned against the bulkhead to rest. Her heart was pounding so fiercely

 that the blood in her ears nearly deafened her, and suddenly she was

 afraid.

 What if Black joke had abandoned the unequal contest, and there was

 nobody to rescue the eight hundred miserable souls chained below Huron's

 decks before the flames reached them?

 That first wild assault of the wind, as it came boiling down off the

 mountains, had settled to a steady blast, not so furious, but constant

 and reliable.

 There will be no flukes or holes in this gale of wind, Mungo thought

 with satisfaction, pausing in his pacing to look up at the small

 scudding wind-torn shreds of cloud that seemed to scrape the tops of his

 masts, and then turning to survey an indigo Atlantic that stretched to

 every corner of the horizon, dark with the wind rush and dappled with

 the prancing white horses that curled from every wave crest.

 His leisurely survey ended over Huron's stern rail. The land was

 already out of sight, so swiftly had Huron run the great flat-topped

 mountain below the horizon, and Black joke was hull down. Only her

 topsails showed, not a trace of furnace smoke.

 The absence of smoke puzzled Mungo a little and he frowned, considering

 it, and finding no plausible answer, he shrugged and resumed his pacing.

 Black Joke would be out of sight, even from Huron's towering masthead,

 before sunset, and Mungo was planning the evolutions he would make

 during the night to confuse thoroughly any pursuit, before settling on

 to his final course to run through the doldrums and cross the equator.

 Deck, masthead. " A faint hail reached him, breaking his line of

 thought, and he stopped again, threwback his head and with both hands on

 his hips stared up at the masthead as it dipped and swung across the

 sky.

 Tippoo answered the hail with a bull bellow, and the look-out's voice

 was strained, his anxiety evident even against the wind and at that

 remove. Smoke! "Where away? " Tippoo's voice was angry, the reply

 should have given both distance and bearing from Huron already every man

 on Huron's deck was twisting his head to sweep the horizon. Dead

 astern. "That will be the gunboat, Mungo thought comfortably. "She's

 got her boiler going again, and much good may it do her. " He dropped

 his fists from his hips and took one more pace before the look-out's

 voice rang out again. Smoke dead astern, we are trailing smoke! "

 Mungo stopped dead in his tracks, his foot still an inch from the deck.

 He felt the icy spray of fear chill his guts.

 Fire! " bellowed Tippoo.

 It was the one most dreaded word to men who lived their lives in the

 tinder hulls of wooden ships, whose seams were caulked with tar and

 pitch, and whose sails and rigging would burn like straw. Mungo

 completed that suspended pace, spinning on the ball of his foot as it

 struck the deck, and the next pace carried him to Huron's rail. He

 leaned far out, peering back over the stern , and the smoke was a pale

 wisp, thin as sea fret, lying low against the dark blue sea, drifting

 away behind them, and dissipating even as he watched it.

 Dry oak planks burn with a fine clean flame and little smoke, Mungo knew

 that, he knew also that the first thing he must do was starve the flames

 of air, heave the ship to, to reduce the wind of her passage while the

 extent of the flames could be explored and the ship's pumpsHe turned

 again, his mouth opening to begin shouting his commands. The

 quartermaster and his mate stood directly ahead of him, both of them

 balancing easily before the massive mahogany and brass wheel. Larger

 than the driving-wheel on a steam locomotive, it required the strength

 of two men to hold Huron's head in this wind and on this point of

 sailing, for the huge spread of her canvas was opposed by the massive

 oak and copper rudder under her stern .

 Down in the steering tunnel, the flames were being fed by the strong

 breeze that the canvas scoops on Huron's foredeck were directing down

 into her own slave-decks in an attempt to keep them sweet.

 The draught forced its way through the companionways and ladderways,

 through the ports and cracks in Huron's bulkheads, and this steady

 breeze at last found its way into the long narrow tunnel that housed her

 steering-gear.

 The bright rustling flames were almost smokeless, but intensely hot.

 They frizzled the loose fibres of hemp off the thick hairy rudder lines,

 and then swiftly blackened the golden brown cords, began to eat through

 them so that here a strand parted with a snap that was lost in the

 rising crackle of burning timbers and the strand unravelled, spinning

 upon itself and bursting in another tiny new explosion of light.

 The two quartermasters were ten feet from where Mungo, stood, poised to

 give his commands, composing the orders in his head, when suddenly the

 massive wheel no longer resisted the thrust of the brawny men who held

 it over.

 Deep down in Huron's hull, in the long wooden tunnel that had been

 turned into a raging blast furnace, the rudder lines had burned through,

 and as they snapped, they snaked and whipped viciously, smashing through

 the burning deck timbers, scattering flaming brands into the hold below,

 and letting in a fresh whistling gush of air that forced the flames

 higher.

 Under the helmsman's hands the wheel dissolved in a spinning blur of

 glittering brass and the quartermaster was hurled the length of the

 deck, striking the bulwark with jarring force that dropped him to the

 planking wriggling feebly as a crushed insect. his mate was less

 fortunate, his right arm was caught in the polished mahogany spokes of

 the wheel and it twisted like a strip of rubber, the bone of his forearm

 breaking up into long sharp splinters whose points thrust out whitely

 through the tanned skin, and the head of the long humerus bone was

 plucked from its socket in the scapula and the whole upper arm screwed

 up in a twist of rubbery flesh.

 With the press of the rudder under the stern no longer controlling the

 rush of Huron's hull through the water, the tremendous pressure of the

 wind in her sails took over unopposed, and Huron became a giant's

 weathercock.  She spun in almost her own length, her bows flying up into

 the wind and every man on her deck was hurled to the planking with

 stunning force.

 The yards came crashing about, tackle snapping like cotton, one of the

 upper yards tearing itself loose, falling in a twisted web of its own

 canvas and rigging, and Huron was taken full aback, the neat geometrical

 pyramids of her sails disintegrating into flapping, fluttering chaos,

 wrapping around the stays and halyards, flogging against their own yards

 and masts.

 With the gale of wind flying fully into the front of the sails, from the

 diametrically opposite direction to that for which they had been

 designed, the tall masts flexed and arched dangerously backwards, the

 backstays; drooping slackly, adding to the confusion of sail and

 rigging, while all the forestays were humming with unbearable tension,

 and one of them parted with an ear-laming crack and the foremast shifted

 a few degrees and then hung askew.

 Mungo St. John dragged himself to his feet and clung to the rail. The

 screams of the maimed helmsman dinning in his ears, he looked, about

 him, and disbelief turned to bitter despair, as he found his beautiful

 ship transformed to an ungainly shambles. Wallowing drunkenly, Huron

 was beginning to make sternway, as the wind pushed her backwards and the

 waves came tumbling aboard her.

 For long seconds Mungo stared about him numbly.

 There was so much damage, so much confusion, and so much mortal danger,

 that he did not know where to begin, what his first order must be. Then

 over Huron's heaving bows, in the opposite direction to which he had

 last seen it, the distant but suddenly dreadfully threatening speck that

 was Black fake's topsails showed in a pale flash above the horizon, and

 it galvanized Mungo. Mr. Tippoo, Mungo called. We'll reef the mains

 and send down all her top hamper."

 The logical sequence of orders began to arrange themselves in his mind,

 and his voice was calm and clear, without the strained and panicky

 timbre they had expected. Mr. O'Brien, go below and give me a fire

 report, quick as you like. "Bosun, rig port and starboard pumps, and

 stand by to hose down the fire. "Mr. Tippoo, send a party to batten all

 her hatches and strike the air scoops. " They must try to prevent air

 reaching the flames, he was sealing the hull. Coxswain, have the whaler

 off her davits and launch her. " He would attempt to tow the heavy boat

 astern, to act as a drogue, a sea-anchor. He was not sure that it would

 provide a solution, but he intended to work Huron's bows around with the

 delicate use of her forward sails, and with the drogue holding her tail

 in place of the rudder, he might be able to run directly before the

 wind. It was not his optimum course, and it would be fine and dangerous

 work with the deadly risk of gibing and broaching, but at the least it

 would give him respite while he rigged the emergency steering tackle to

 her useless rudder, and get Huron under control once more.

 He paused for breath, but once more glanced forward.

 Huron was moving rapidly astern, dipping and staggering into the swells

 so they came flurrying aboard her in spray and solid green gouts of

 water, while over her bows the British gunboat was closer, so close that

 Mungo glimpsed a little sliver of her painted hull, and it seemed that

 her action through the water was more boisterous and cocky, like a game

 rooster erecting its coxcomb and ruffling its feathers as it bounces

 across the sandy floor of the cockpit.

 Unable to endure the company of his junior officers a moment longer,

 stifled and filled with a sense of helplessness by his inability to

 prevent the tall American clipper from romping away from him, desperate

 for some activity to help his nerves from fraying further, Clinton

 Codrington had taken his telescope and gone forward into Black joke's

 bows.

 Oblivious to the spray that splattered over him, soaking the thin linen

 shirt and chilling him so that his teeth chattered even in the brilliant

 sunlight, Clinton clutched for a hand hold in the ratlines, balancing on

 the narrow bulwark and staring ahead through eyes that swam not only

 with the stinging spray and wind, but as much with humiliation and

 frustration.

 Just perceptibly, Huron's tower of canvas was sinking below the

 irregular watery horizon, by sunset she would be gone. She and Robyn

 Ballantyne. His chance had come and he had missed it. His spirits

 could sink no lower.

 To add to his suffering, his streaming eyes were playing him false, and

 what he could still make out of the clipper became distorted, changing

 shape as he still stared after her. Then the hail from the look-out

 high above him broke the grip of his despair, Chase is altering! "

 Clinton could not yet believe the high-pitched shriek from the masthead.

 "She's coming about! The hail was almost incoherent with excitement and

 surprise.

 Clinton whipped the telescope to his eye, and once again doubted his

 eyesight. Huron's masts had been almost dead in line, but now they

 showed individually She was coming about, already Huron was almost

 broadside, and Clinton stared. For a few moments more the orderly mass

 of sails retained their perfect snowy shape, and then the pattern began

 to break up. The ponderous belly of the mainsail wobbled and trembled,

 then began to flutter and shake like a pennant in the gale, it spilled

 its wind and collapsed like a bursting paper bag and lashed itself in a

 petulant fury around its own mast.

 Huron was a shambles. Through the glass Clinton could see her beginning

 to tear herself to pieces, sails ripping, yards tumbling, her foremast

 sagging out of true, and he still could not believe it was happening.

 She's taken full aback. " He heard Denham's triyell, and of ier voices

 took up the cry. She fast in irons! "We've got her, by God, we've got

 her now! " Though his vision blurred and the wetness running down his

 cheeks was not all splattered spray, Clinton went on staring

 incredulously through the telescope. There is smoke, she's on fire!

 Denham again, and Clinton picked up the fine pale mist of smoke

 spreading away from her; and at that moment a fresh burst of spray over

 the bows drenched the lens of his telescope, and he lowered it.

 He took a silk bandanna from his hip pocket, and wiped his face and eyes

 of spray and the other wetness, then he blew his nose noisily, stuffed

 the handkerchief back into his pocket, jumped on to his deck and strode

 back to his quarterdeck. Mr. Ferris, he said crisply, "please send up a

 flag hoist under Huron's nAme and make the following "I am sending a

 boarding party to you. "" The pale sapphire eyes shone with a zealot's

 intensity. "'If you resist I shall fight you."

 It was a long message, and while Ferris called for the pennants from the

 flag locker, Clinton turned to Denham. His voice shook with passion.

 Please clear the ship for action, Mr. Denham, and we'll run out our guns

 now."

 Above the gale Clinton heard the clatter of the opening gunports, the

 rumble of the gun carriages, but all his attention was concentrated

 ahead upon the crippled slave ship.

 He saw and understood the desperate attempts that her Captain was making

 to get her before the wind. He knew what a feat it had been to take

 down that tangled mast of canvas and rope in such a short time, yet he

 felt no admiration, only cold fighting fury.

 Huron was showing only a storm jib.

 St. John was clearly trying to break the grip of the gale upon her for

 she was fast "in irons', her bows to the wind, and he was attempting to

 bring her round, but the tall ship that was usually so compliant and

 obedient was baulking, resisting him, and every minute Black Joke was

 swarming down upon her, closer and still closer. She's got serious

 structural damage, Denham gloated aloud. "I'd hazard a guess that she's

 lost her rudder."

 Clinton did not answer him, he strained ahead, half exultant, half

 fearful that St. John's efforts would succeed and he would watch

 helplessly as Huron turned her stern to him once more, and went plunging

 away at the speed which Black Joke could never hope to match.

 Then, as he watched, it happened. Huron swung her long, low length

 nearly broadside to him, beam on to the wind once again, and hung there

 for infinite seconds, then she shuddered and shook herself free of the

 gale's grip and went through the eye of the wind. Instantly the scraps

 of sail on her foremast snapped open, she came around presenting her

 stern to Black fake and was sailing again.

 Even in his bitter chagrin, Clinton could at last feel admiration for

 that barely credible feat of seamanship, but beside him his officers

 were struck dumb, paralysed with disappointment to see their prey

 slipping away from them once more.

 More sails bloomed upon her tall bare masts, and the gap between the two

 ships was no longer narrowing; instead, it began to widen once more;

 slowly, infinitely slowly, Huron was forging away, and the night was

 coming. She's streaming a warp behind her, Denham lamented quietly.

 It's a small ship's boat, Ferris corrected him.

 They were already close enough to make out such details, Huron was only

 three or four nautical miles ahead of them, all her bull was in plain

 sight and they could even make out the tiny human figures on her decks

 with the naked eye. "Damned clever, what! Ferris went on with

 professional interest. "Who would have believed it would work. Like as

 not the damned Yankee has the legs of us still Clinton's chagrin turned

 to anger at his junior's unnecessary commentary. Mr. Ferris, instead of

 chattering like a washerwoman, will you not read the signal Huron is

 flying? " Huron's signal flags were blowing almost directly away from

 the watchers on Black Joke's deck, making them difficult to spot and

 interpret, and Ferris, who had been fixing all his attention on the

 towing whaler, started guiltily, and then dived for his signal book and

 began busily scribbling on his slate. Huron sends under our name, "Stay

 clear of me, or I will fire upon you. "'Good. " Clinton nodded and

 drew an inch of bare steel from the scabbard of his cutlass to make sure

 the weapon was free before thrusting it back to the hilt. "Now we all

 know where we stand! " But, slowly, inexorably, Huron even partially

 crippled, and steering only by the sails on her foremast, was drawing

 away from them, and she was still far out of random cannon shot. The

 fire has taken hold in the steering-gear under the doctor's cabin. "

 The third mate came hurrying back on deck to make his damage report. "I

 got her out of there."

 He jerked a thumb as Robyn came up on deck clutching her black leather

 valise into which she had hastily crammed her journals and other small

 valuables. It's got through into the cable her and the lazaretto, it

 will be into the stern quarters in a minute. " The mate's arms and face

 streamed with oily sweat, and the soot had blackened them like a chimney

 sweep. Put the hoses in through the poop companionway Mungo, told him

 calmly. "And flood the stern section abaft the main hold."

 The mate hurried away and within seconds there was the tolling clangour

 of the pumps as a dozen men threw their combined weight on the handles

 and the canvas hoses filled and stiffened, ejaculating solid jets of

 seawater down the stifling ladderways where already the air was

 trembling with heat like a desert mirage. Almost immediately hissing

 clouds of white steam began to boil from the ports and stern lights.

 Satisfied, Mungo turned away, shot one glance over the stern to make

 sure that the gunboat was still falling away behind the limping clipper,

 then let his gaze linger a moment longer on the thick hawser that was

 secured to the port stern stanchions and ran through the fairlead to the

 bobbing whaler that Huron was dragging half a cable's length astern. The

 whole complex arrangement of the wind and sails and drogue was critical

 and unstable, the slightest change might upset it. He decided he could

 not risk hoisting another square inch of canvas, nor could he send a

 party below to rig a jury tackle on the useless rudder until the fire

 was brought under control.

 He lit a cheroot, frowning with concentration over the simple and

 familiar task, and then he raised his eyes to look directly at Robyn for

 the first time since she had come up on deck.

 For a second they stared at each other, and then Robyn looked astern at

 the ugly little gunboat that was still plugging along after them. I

 keep making the mistake of trusting you, " Mungo said beside her. I

 only made that mistake once, with you, she replied, and he inclined his

 head slightly, accepting the riposte. How did you get into the steering

 gear, he began to enquire, then snapped his fingers irritably at his own

 oversight. "Of course, the inspection hatch. Yet, your ingenuity,

 Doctor, has been of no avail. Your friends still cannot hold us and as

 soon as it is dark, I will have the rudder cables repaired."

 For the last minute Muago had been studying her face, oblivious to the

 sea and the ship and the gale. He did not see the fresh squall racing

 down upon Huron. When it struck, there was no helmsman to hold her. She

 saw the flash of alarm in his eyes, the realization of danger.

 His voice, as he yelled an order down the length of the deck, had for

 the first time the crack of fear in it. Get the sails off her, Mr.

 Tippoo. Quick as you can! " For the squall had upset the nice balance

 of Huron's drogue and sail. The ship lunged forward sharply, the long

 bellied length of cable trailing astern. lifted itself above the broken

 surface of the sea, straightening and coming under such strain that the

 seawater spurted from the hemp cords in tiny feathery jets.

 The empty whaler, with her tarpaulin cover still lashed down over her in

 an attempt to keep her dry, was at that instant canted steeply over the

 crest of a breaking swell. The shattering impact transmitted by the

 taut cable to her bows pitched her forward and heaved her clear of the

 crest, so that for a moment she was airborne, like a leaping porpoise

 and then she struck bows first and was snatched below the surface.

 For an instant Huron staggered to the enormous increase in drag upon the

 trailing cable, and then the whaler disintegrated in a boiling flurry of

 white disturbed water. Her broken planking popped to the surface and

 the cable freed of its wearying weight flicked high in the air like the

 tail of an angry lioness. Without restraint, Huron gibed fiercely,

 spinning once more across the wind, and this time being blown flat, her

 tall bare masts swinging over almost parallel to the sea's surface.

 The lee rail dug deeply into the sea, and the water came aboard her in a

 sweeping torrent, like a bursting dam wall.

 It caught Robyn and hurled her against Mungo St. John's chest; if it had

 not done so, she would have been carried overboard, but he caught her to

 him and held her as they were tumbled down the steeply canted deck and

 then Huron was righting herself again, the water cascading off her in

 silver spouts.

 She wallowed helplessly, taking the gale-driven seas on her beam, her

 desperate rolling accentuated by the pendulum of her high bare masts,

 but at least that drenching wall of sea water had poured into her hull

 through every opening and had extinguished her fires on the instant.

 Mungo St. John dragged Robyn by the wrist across the flooded deck,

 sloshing and slipping knee deep with loose tackle slithering and

 floating around them.

 At the break of the poop he stopped, both of them panting for breath,

 their clothing and hair streaming sea water, the deck heaving and

 dropping crazily under them so he had to cling to the weather rail for

 support. He stared across at Black Joke.

 The race was run. The gunboat was crowding down upon them exultantly,

 so close that he could see the cannon protruding from her open ports and

 the heads of the gunners above the bulwarks. Her challenging flag hoist

 still flew in her riggin& gaudy and gay as Christmas decorations.

 She would be up to the wallowing clipper in minutes, long before Mungo

 could ever hope to get his ship sailing again.

 Mungo shook the water from his sodden dark locks like a spaniel coming

 ashore, and he filled his lungs. Mr. O'Brien, a pair of slave cuffs

 here, he bellowed, and Robyn, who had never heard him raise his voice,

 was stunned by the volume of sound that came up out of that muscular

 chest. She was still dazed and confused as she felt the cold kiss of

 iron on her wrists.

 Mungo snapped the cuff on her left wrist, took two swift turns of chain

 around Huron's rail and then snapped the second cuff on her right wrist.

 I have no doubt your friends will be delighted to see you, in the

 cannon's mouth, he told her, his face still set with anger, the rims of

 his nostrils white as bone china. He turned from her, running his

 fingers through his dark curls, throwing the hair back from his forehead

 and eyes. Mr. O'Brien, muskets and pistols to every hand. Run out the

 guns and load with ball, we'll change to grape as the range closes. "

 The mate shouted his orders as he ran, and the crew scattered from the

 futile task of attempting to bring the clipper under control. They

 stumbled across the wave-swept deck, dodging fallen and broken tackle,

 hurrying to arm themselves and to man Huron's guns.

 Mr. Tippoo! Mungo's voice cut through the cacophony of gale and shouted

 orders. Captain MungoVBring up the first deck of slaves. "We

 deep-sixing them? " Tippoo asked, for he had served before under slave

 captains, who, when capture by a naval vessel was imminent, would

 deep-six their cargo of blackbirds, drop them overboard, chains and all,

 and rid themselves of the most damning evidence against them. We'll

 chain "em to the weather rail, Mr. Tippoo, with the woman. " Mungo used

 neither Robyn's title nor her name. "Make the limejuicer think a spell

 before he opens fire. " And Tippoo let an explosive chuckle of laughter

 come bouncing up his throat as he bounded away on those thick bowed

 legs, to get the gratings off the main hatch. Sir! " Denham's voice

 was incredulous, shocked. "Sir! "Yes, Mr. Denharn, Clinton answered

 him quietly, without lowering his telescope. "I have seen it-'But, sir,

 that's Doctor Ballantyne-'And black slaves. " Ferris could hold his

 tongue no longer. "They're chaining them to the rail. "What manner of

 man is that Yankee! "Denham burst out again.

 A damned clever one, " Clinton answered him quietly.

 He was watching the woman he had come to rescue through the glass. He

 could already recognize her features. Her eyes seemed too large for her

 deathly white face, her sodden and rumpled clothing stuck to her body.

 Through a rent in her blouse he could see the pale skin of her shoulder

 and upper arm gleaming with a pearl-like lustre in the sunlight. Mr.

 Denham, Clinton went on speaking. "Warn the crew that we will be

 receiving fire in about five minutes, and we will be unable to return

 it."

 He watched the ranks of naked black slaves still coming up on to the

 clipper's main deck and taking their place along the rail, their gaolers

 fussing about them, chivvying them into place and securing their chains.

 We are fortunate in having a gale of wind, so we will be exposed to fire

 for a short period, but warn the men to lie flat upon the deck below the

 bulwark."

 Black joke's fragile eggshell plating would give some protection at

 extreme range, but as they closed with the slave ship, he could expect

 even grape shot to penetrate their sides. One blessing, they would be

 spared the lethal flying splinters that were so much dreaded in wooden

 ships. I am going to lay her alongside the Yankee's stern , Clinton

 went on. That way she would be exposed to the clipper's broadsides

 while the two ships were bound to each other. "But she stands taller

 than we do. I want your best men with the grappling irons, Mr. Denham.

 " Huron's maindeck was ten feet higher than the gunboat's. There would

 be nice work ahead when they leapt the gap, and scrambled up Huron's

 stern with its pronounced tumble home. By God! She's running out her

 guns. She means to fight us after all, Denham cut in, and then,

 penitently, I beg your pardon, sir. " He excused himself for the

 interruption and the blasphemy.

 Clinton lowered the telescope. They were so close now that he no longer

 needed it.

 The clipper had six light cannons on each side of her, mounted on the

 maindeck. The barrels were almost twice as long as Black joke's own

 heavy carronades. However, the bore of the muzzles was much smaller in

 diameter, and as Clinton watched, they began to train around towards

 him, one at a time beginning at the stern .

 Even without the glass, Clinton could make out the tall lean figure in

 the plain jacket moving at a deceptivly leisurely pace one gun to the

 next, laying each of them personally gestuning at the gun crews to

 strain on the tackles and traverse the long cannonon to their target.

 Clinton saw St. John reach the bow kgun and make a careful adjustment,

 working over it A few seconds longer than he had the others, and then he

 leapt to the clipper's bulwark and balanced there with, the assurance of

 an acrobat against the rudderless hull's unpredictable movements.

 The scene engraved itself upon Clinton's mind, it it seemed so

 theatrical, like the cast of a stage production lined up at the end of

 the performance to receive the applause of the spectators. The file of

 naked black bodies, standing almost shoulder to shoulder with their arms

 extended in unison, like the trained *. chorus, their wrists locked to

 the teak rail by the slave cuffss. Then the principal, the figure of

 the woman, slim AM somehow delicate and tiny in their midst. The bodice

 of her dress, a buttercup yellow, was a gay spot ofcolour that drew

 Clinton's eye irresistibly. It was & distraction that he could not

 afford at this moment.

 The American seemed to be watching Clinton, seemed to have singled him

 out from the group of officers, and even across the wide stretch of

 water that still separated them, Clinton was aware of the mesmeric pull

 of those golden-flecked eyes, the eyes of a predator, a leopard perhaps,

 poised with a lithe and patient gram upon the bough above the waterhole,

 awaiting the moment when the prey moved beneath him.

 At the level of Mungo St. John's knees were the heads of his gun crews,

 little knots of pale tense faces, contrasting starkly with the quiescent

 rank of black slaves. They crouched over their weapons, - and the long

 slim barrels were reduced to small dark circles as Clinton stared

 directly down the bores.

 at a deceplaying crews to on to There were men also in Huron's rigging,

 roosting in the cross-trees of the yards and masts, and the long barrels

 of their muskets were clear to see against the backdrop of the

 wind-driven sky.

 They would be picked marksmen, Huron's best, and their preferred and

 special target would be the small group of officers on the gunboat's

 quarterdeck. Clinton hoped that the clipper's wild action in the gale

 would throw out their aim. Gentlemen, I advise you to take cover until

 we can bring the ship into action, he told Denham and Ferris quietly,

 and felt a little prick of pride when neither of them moved. It was the

 tradition of Drake and Nelson not to flinch from the coming storm of

 fire, and Clinton himself went on standing at his ease, hands clasped at

 the small of his back, calling a small adjustment to the helm as Black

 joke drove in eagerly, the terrier going for the hold on the bull's

 nose.

 He saw the American move his head, a final judgement of range,

 considered against the clipper's rolling and beside him Ferris murmured

 the age-old blasphemy which Clinton this time could not find it in him

 to resent, for it was also a part of the great tradition. For what we

 are about to receive-" said Ferris, and as if he had heard the words,

 the American drew the sword from the scabbard on his belt, and raised it

 above his head. Involuntarily all three naval officers drew breath

 together and held it. Huron was at the bottom of her roll, her cannon

 pointing down into the sea close alongside, then she was coming up, the

 barrels rising levelled, and the sword arm fell.

 The six cannon leaped together, in perfect concert, and the startling

 white gusts of smoke shot fifty feet from her sides, completely silent,

 for the sound had not reached them, and for a fleeting part of a second

 they could believe that Huron had not loosed her broadside.

 Then the very air beat in upon them, shocking the eardrums, seeming for

 a moment to suck their eyeballs from the sockets with the vast

 disruption of air caused by passing shot, and close above Clinton's head

 a stay parted with a whiplash crack.

 That was one ball high, but under Clinton's feet, the deck jumped with

 the multiple impact of ball into her, and the bull rang like the strokes

 of a gigantic brass gong.

 A single ball came through at deck level. it struck a burst of sparks

 from the steel hull, like Brocks fireworks at Crystal Palace, brilliant

 orange even in the strong sunlight, and the hole it tore through Black

 Joke's plating was fringed with bare jagged tongues of metal like the

 petals of a silver sunflower.

 A seaman in striped vest and baggy canvas breeches, who was kneeling

 behind the bulwark, took the ball full in his chest.

 his severed limbs were strewn untidily across the gunboat's spotless

 deck and the ball went on to strike the foot of Black Joke's mast,

 shivering it like a tall tree struck by lightning, and tearing a long

 white splinter from the seasoned Norwegian pine. Then, with its force

 mainly spent the ball rolled the length of the deck, smoking and

 stinking of scorched metal until it thumped into the scuppers and rolled

 idly back and forth. Only then, seconds after the broadside struck, did

 the crash of the discharge reach their ears across the turbulent waters

 that separated the two vessels. Not bad shooting for a Yankee, " Ferris

 grudged them, raising his voice above the gun thunder, and Denham had

 his watch out and was timing how long it took for the clipper's gun

 crews to reload. Forty-five seconds, Denham intoned, "and not a single

 gun run out again. A bunch of fairground tinkers could do better."

 Clinton found himself wondering if it was ely brainer vado, or complete

 indifference to danger and violent death which allowed the two younger

 officers to chat so casually, while the seaman's severed arms still

 twitched on the deck, not twenty feet away.

 Clinton was afraid, afraid of death and afraid of failing in his duty

 and afraid of being seen to be afraid, but then he was older than they,

 for despite their manly airs Ferris was a boy and Denham barely twenty,

 so perhaps it was not courage but ignorance and lack of imagination.

 Fifty-five seconds! "Denham grunted scornfully, as the next ragged

 broadside crashed into Black joke's iron hull, and somebody started to

 scream below decks, a high mindless keening like steam from a kettle.

 Send somebody to stop that fellow, " Ferris murmured to the seaman who

 crouched nearby, and doubled over still the man hurried away. Seconds

 later the screaming stopped abruptly. Good work, Ferris told the seaman

 as he took his place at the bulwark again. Dead, sir, he is, poor

 devil."

 Ferris nodded without change of expression, and moved closer to listen

 to his Captain.

 Mr. Denham, I am going to lead the boarding-party.

 You are to be ready to sheer off and leave us to it, should there be any

 danger to the ship-" There was a sharp fluting sound, like the flight of

 a giant insect past their heads, and Clinton glanced up irritably. The

 marksmen in Huron's rigging had opened fire, the pop of their muskets

 seemed muted and without menace. Studiedly Clinton ignored them and

 went on issuing his final orders, raising his voice to compete with the

 crash and roar of shot and the strike of it into the gunboat's hull.

 As Clinton finished speaking, Denham blurted abruptly, "It's hell not

 being able to reply. " He was staring across at the clipper whose

 silhouette was blurred with a bank of pale gunsmoke that even the gale

 could not disperse rapidly enough. "It's bad for the men, he corrected

 himself swiftly, and Clinton had his answer.

 Denham was afraid as he was, and the knowledge gave him no comfort at

 all. If only they could do something, anythin& instead of having to

 stand here in the open and make studied conversation, while Black lake

 tore across the last few hundred yards of white crested sea that still

 separated them.

 The crash of cannon shot tearing into Black joke's vitals was almost

 continuous now as the fastest gunners aboard Huron outstripped the

 others. The bow cannon that the American Captain was supervising and

 laying was firing three times to the other's twice, Clinton had been

 counting the plumes of muzzle smoke, this would be the sixth ball they

 sent into the little gunboat since the American had given the order to

 fire as many minutes ago.

 He watched the gunsmoke bloom again from the cannon's maw, and this time

 the gunboat's deck was swept as if by hail stones, but leaden hail

 stones as big as ripe grapes that pierced the thin steel bulwarks with

 pricks of sunlight and clawed chunks of wood from the maindeck, a deck

 that was now threaded with meandering scarlet snakes of blood and slick

 little puddles of it that spread from beneath the inert and crumpled

 figures that seemed to be scattered in purposeless profusion wherever

 Clinton looked.

 Black Joke was taking merciless punishment, perhaps already more than

 she could afford, but they were close now, very close, seconds only left

 to go.

 He could hear the cheering of the clipper's gun crews, the terrified

 wailing of the slaves who were huddled down in pathetic little heaps

 upon Huron's decks, he could clearly hear the rumble of the

 sixteen-pounders run out against the straining tackles, and hear the

 shouted commands of the gun captains.

 The girl at the rail still stood rigidly erect, staring white-faced

 across at him, and she had seen and recognized him now.

 She tried to raise a hand to wave a greeting, but the iron slave cuff on

 her wrist hampered the movement. As Clinton stepped forward the better

 to see her, something tugged sharply at the sleeve of his jacket and

 behind him Ferris gasped.

 Clinton looked down at his arm, the sleeve was torn and the white lining

 showed in the tear, it was only then he realized that it was a musket

 ball fired from Huron's crosstrees which might have struck him squarely

 had he not moved, and he turned quickly to Ferris.

 The boy was pressing a wadded handkerchief to his chest, standing very

 upright. You are wounded, Mr. Ferris, said Clinton. "You may go below.

 "Thank you, sir, " wheezed Ferris. "But I'd just as soon not miss the

 kill. " As he spoke, a droplet of blood formed in the corner of his

 mouth, and with a chilling little jolt, Clinton realized that the boy

 was probably mortally struck, blood in the mouth would almost certainly

 mean a lung hit. Carry on then, Mr. Ferris, he said formally, and

 turned away. He must not let the doubts assail him now, he must not

 question whether his decision to board Huron had been correct, or if his

 execution of the attack had been properly carried out, or if he was

 responsible for those dismembered corpses that littered Black joke's

 deck, or for the dying lad who still determinedly kept erect. He must

 not let his resolve weaken.

 Instead he slitted his eyes against the lowering sun that outlined

 Huron's bare masts with golden haloes, and stared across at her with

 true hatred. It was then he realized suddenly that at last her bow

 cannons could no longer bear, the terrible battering of close-range

 grape shot was abating as they sailed into Huron's stern quadrant. Bring

 her up two points, he snapped, and the Black joke cut in sharply under

 Huron's stern . She loomed suddenly high above them and there was no

 more cannon fire from her while the clipper's tall hull shielded them

 from the gale. The sudden silence was ghostly, unnerving, as though the

 cannon fire had damaged his ears and he was rendered deaf.

 Clinton shook off the sense of dreamlike unreality, and strode down the

 length of his deck. Up the jokers! " he shouted, and his crew rose

 from where they had been crouching under the fragile bulwark. You've

 shown you can take it, boys, now let's show those damned Yankees we can

 hand it outA tiger for Tongs! " yelled a voice, and suddenly they were

 all cheering, crowding the gunboat's side, so he had to cup his hands to

 his mouth to give the order. Helm a lee, let fly all! " and Black fake

 spun up sharply under Huron's counter, spilling her wind, while the

 seamen in her rigging stripped the canvas off her.

 The two ships came together with a rending crackling crash, the gnashing

 of steel plate against timber and the shattering of glass in Huron's

 stern lights.

 A dozen of Black Joke's sailors hurled the three-pronged grappling hooks

 high over the clipper's gunwale with the lines snaking up after them,

 and then heaved them up tight and made them fast to the portside cleats,

 and a swarm of seamen cheering wildly went up Huron, s stern , like a

 troop of vervet monkeys pursued into the trees by a hunting leopard.

 Take command, Mr. Denham, " Clinton shouted above the hubbub. Aye, aye,

 sir, Denham's lips moved and he saluted as Clinton thrust his cutlass

 back into his scabbard and headed the next rush of his men, those who

 had been freed by the heaving-to of her sails.

 The two hulls were working against each other as viciously as

 millstones, grinding and bumping, the gap opening and closing as the

 wind and the seas tore at them.

 At Huron's rail a dozen of her crew were hacking at the grappling lines

 with axes, the clunking of the blades into her timber blended with the

 popping of pistols and muskets as their mates blazed down on the swarm

 of seamen climbing up from the gunboat's deck.

 one of Black joke's sailors climbed swiftly hand over hand, pushing off

 with his feet from the clipper's raked stern like a mountaineer, and he

 had almost reached the rail when an American sailor appeared above him,

 an axe held high and then sent thudding down into the woodwork, severing

 the line at a single blow.

 The sailor dropped like a windblown fruit from the bough into the gap

 between the hulls. He floundered for an instant in the surging water

 and then the two ships came together again, with the shriek of rending

 timbers, chewing the man like a pair of monstrous jaws. More lines,

 Clinton howled, and another grappling hook flew over his head, thrown by

 a stout British arm, and the line whipped around Clinton's shoulders.

 He seized it, heaved once upon it to set the hook and then swung across

 the gap and his boots thudded on Huron's stern . He had seen his seaman

 drop on the severed line, so he climbed with the strength and agility of

 terror and desperation, and only as he swung one leg over Huron's rail

 did the battle rage seize him, the world changed colour before him, seen

 through a reddish haze of hatred and fury, hatred for the slave stink

 that rose to offend his soul and fury for the death and punishment that

 his ship and his seamen had suffered.

 His cutlass sprang from its scabbard with metallic rasp, and there was a

 man rushing down upon him, and the man naked to the waist with a bulging

 hairy belly and thick heavily muscled arms. He was brandishing a double

 bladed axe above his head, and Clinton uncoiled his lanky frame as

 though it were the "S" in an Adder's body, straightening as it strikes.

 He drove the point of the cutlass through the axe man's furry silvered

 beard and the axe flew from his raised hands and went sliding away

 across the deck.

 Clinton stood over the man he had killed, placed his foot on his chest

 and yanked the cutlass blade out of his throat. A bright scarlet

 carotid fountain followed the blade out, splattering Clinton's boot.

 Half a dozen of his seamen had reached Huron's deck ahead of Clinton,

 and without a word of command spoken, they bunched to guard the

 grappling lines over the stern , holding off Huron's axe men with

 cutlass and point-blank pistol fire. Behind them, Black joke's men came

 swarming aboard, unopposed, surging forward, their cheers rising into a

 triumphant chorus. At "em the jokers! "All together, boys, howled

 Clinton, the madness had taken complete hold of him now. There was no

 fear, no doubts, not even conscious thought. The madness was

 infectious, and his men howled with him, hunting as a pack like the wolf

 or the wild dog they swept across Huron's deck to meet the wave of her

 own seamen rushing back from Huron's bows.

 The two waves of running, screaming men met just below the break of the

 poop, were transformed into a struggling mass of closely locked

 humanity, and their cries and curses mingled with the animal howl of

 terrified slaves. The pistols and muskets had all been discharged and

 there was no chance to reload. It was steel against steel now.

 Black joke's crew were battle-hardened, they had fought together fifty

 times in the past year, they had stormed glacis and barracoon and

 withstood fire and steel. They were blooded fighting men and proud of

 it.

 Huron's men were commercial seamen, not warriors, most of them had never

 swung a cutlass nor fired a pistol at another man before, and the

 difference was evident almost immediately.

 For a minute or less the closely engaged mass of men swayed and churned

 like the meeting of two strong currents at the tidal line of the ocean,

 and then Black joke's sailors began to forge forward.

 Up the Jokers! " They sensed their advantage. Hammer and tongs, boys.

 Give "em heUV At only one point was the tide of British sailors checked,

 at the foot of Huron's mainmast two men stood almost shoulder to

 shoulder.

 Tippoo seemed immovable on the solid foundation of those massive bared

 legs. Like a Buddha carved from solid rock, he spurned the press of men

 around him, and their ranks parted and drew back.

 His loin-cloth was drawn up between his legs, and his smooth belly

 bulged over it, again as hard as mountain rock, with the deep cyclops

 eye of his navel in its centre.

 The golden thread of his embroidered gilet sparkled in the sunlight, and

 he held his great round head low on his shoulders as he swung a

 double-bladed axe as easily as though it were a lady's parasol, and the

 axe hissed fiercely at every stroke and Black Joke's seamen gave him

 ground.

 A pistol ball had nicked the scarred flesh of his bald head, and blood

 poured copiously from the shallow wound, turning his face to a glaring

 gory mask.

 His wide toad's slit of a mouth opened as he laughed and shouted his

 contempt of the men who swarmed about him like pygmies about an ogre.

 Beside him fought Mungo St. John.  He had stripped off his blue jacket

 to free his sword arm, and his white linen shirt was open to the belt,

 the buttons torn from their threads by a clutching enemy hand. He had

 knotted a silk bandanna around his forehead to keep the sweat from

 running into his eyes, but sweat poured down his naked chest, and had

 soaked through his shirt in patches.

 He had a sword in his right hand, a weapon with a plain silver steel

 guard and pommel, and he cut and parried and thrust without a break in

 the rhythm of his movements.

 He was unmarked, the droplets of thrown blood that stained the full

 sleeve of his white shirt and which had been diluted by his sweat to a

 dirty brown, were not his blood.

 $St. John! " Clinton called to him. They were both tall enough to look

 over the heads of the men between them, and they stared at each other

 for a moment.

 Clinton's eyes were pate fanatical blue, and his lips white with fury.

 Mungo's expression was grave, thoughtful almost, and his gaze troubled,

 almost grieving, as though he knew he had lost his ship and that his

 life and the lives of most of his crew were forfeit. Fight me! Clinton

 challenged him, his voice strident, ringing with triumph. Again? "

 Mungo asked, and the smile touched his lips fleetingly, then was gone.

 Clinton shouldered his way roughly through the press of his own men. The

 last time it had been pistols, Mungo St. John's choice of weapon, but

 now Clinton had the familiar weight and balance of a naval cutlass in

 his right hand, his weapon, that he had first swung as a midshipman of

 fourteen years old, and the whip cord muscles in his long right arm were

 seasoned to the use of the blade, and every evolution in its use, every

 trick and subterfuge had been drilled until they were instinctive.

 As they came together, Clinton feinted and cut backhanded and low, going

 for the hip to cripple and bring the man down. As the stroke was

 parried he felt the strength of Mungo's sword arm for an instant before

 he disengaged, and switched his attack fluidly, going on the thrust

 leading with his right foot, a full stroke, and again the parry was

 strong and neat, but only just strong enough to hold the heavier,

 broader steel of the cutlass.

 Those two brief contacts were enough for Clinton to judge his adversary

 and find his weakness, the wrist. He had felt it through the steel the

 way a skilled angler feels the weakness of the fish through line and

 rod, it was the wrist. St. John did not have the steely resilience that

 comes only from long and dedicated exercise and practice.

 He saw the flare of alarm in St. John's strangely flecked eyes. The

 American, too, had felt his own inadequacy, and he knew he did not dare

 to draw out the encounter.

 He must try to end it swiftly, before the Englishman's superiority could

 wear him down.

 With the swordsman's instinct, Clinton translated the little flicker of

 the golden yellow eyes. He knew that Mungo St. John was going on the

 attack, so that as the stroke came an instant later, he caught it on the

 broad curved blade of the cutlass; then he shifted his weight forward

 and, with a twist of his own iron wrist, prevented the disengagement,

 forcing St. John to roll his own wrist, the two blades milling across

 each other, the steel screeching sharply on a harsh abrasive note that

 set their teeth on edge. Clinton forced two and then three turns, the

 classic prolonged engagement from which Mungo St. John could not break

 without risking the thunderbolt of the riposte, and Clinton felt the

 other's wrist give under the strain. He lunged his weight against it,

 slid the guard of the cutlass high up the blade and used the rolling

 momentum of two blades and the leverage of his wrist and the curved

 guard of the cutlass to tear the hilt out of Mungo St. John's fingers

 The American's sword clattered to the deck between them, and Mungo St.

 John threw up both hands, sucked in his belly and flung himself back

 against the mainmast in an attempt to avoid the thrust of the heavy

 cutlass blade which he knew would follow. In the buy of hatred that

 possessed Clinton, there was no thought of giving quarter to the man

 whom he had disarmed.

 The thrust was full-blooded, driven by all the strength of wrist and

 arm, of shoulder and of Clinton's entire body weight, the killing

 stroke.

 Clinton's whole being had been concentrated on the man before him, but

 now there was movement in the periphery of his vision. Tippoo had seen

 his Captain disarmed in the same instant that he had just completed a

 swing with the axe. He was off balance, it would take only a shaded

 instant to recover that balance, to raise the axe again, but that

 instant of time would be too long, for he saw the cutlass stroke already

 launched, and Mungo St. John trapped helplessly against the mainmast,

 his belly unprotected and his empty hands held high.

 Tippoo opened his huge paws and let the axe go spinning away, like a

 cartwheel, and then he reached out and seized the gleaming cutlass blade

 in one bare hand.

 He felt the blade run between his fingers and the terrible sting of the

 razor-sharp edge cutting down to the bone, still he heaved with all his

 weight, pulling the point away from the helpless man against the

 mainmast, deflecting it but unable to hold it for the tensed tendons in

 his lacerated fingers parted, and the blade ran on driven by the full

 weight of the tall platinum-headed naval officer.

 Tippoo heard the point of the cutlass scrape over one of his ribs, and

 then a numbness filled his chest, and he felt the steel guard of the

 hilt strike his rib cage, a thud like that of a butcher's cleaver

 striking the chopping board, as the cutlass blade reached the limit of

 its travel.

 Even the savage force of that blow was not enough to knock Tippoo off

 his feet, though it drove him back a pace. He stood solidly. His eyes

 screwed up into slits of skin, staring down at the blade that transfixed

 his chest, his bleeding hands still clutching the guard of the cutlass.

 , Only when Clinton leaned back and pulled the blade from his flesh, did

 Tippoo begin to sag slowly forward, his knees buckling, and he fell, his

 body slack and unresisting.

 Clinton freed his cutlass blade, and it was thinly smeared along its

 full length, so that it blurred redly as he went on to the forehand cut,

 going once more for the man who was still pinned against the mainmast.

 Clinton did not complete the stroke. He arrested it in midair, for

 Mungo St. John had been borne to the deck beneath a wave of struggling

 British seamen.

 Clinton stepped back and rested on his cutlass. The fight was over, all

 around him m the crew of Huron were throwing down their weapons.

 Quarter, for the love of God, quarter! " They were dragging Mungo St.

 John to his feet, two seamen on each of his arms. He was unwounded, and

 Clinton's hatred was unabated. It took an enormous effort to prevent

 himself driving the point of the cutlass into Mungo's belly. Mungo was

 struggling to throw off the hands of the men who held him, straining to

 reach the massive body of the half-naked Moslem mate that lay at his

 feet. Let me free, Mungo cried. "I must see to my mate."

 But they held him remorselessly, and Mungo looked up at Clinton. In the

 name of mercy, he was pleading, and Clinton had never expected that. He

 took a deep ragged breath, the madness began to fade. I give you my

 word, sir, Mungo was stricken, there was no mistaking his consuming

 grief, and Clinton hesitated. "I am your prisoner, " Mungo told him.

 "But this man is a friend-Clinton let out his breath slowly, and then he

 nodded to the seamen who held Mungo St. John. He has given his word.

 "And then to Mungo, "You may have five minutes. " And the seamen

 released him.

 Mungo sank swiftly to his knees beside the inert figure. Old friend, "

 he whispered, as he tore the bandanna from off his own head and pressed

 it to the obscene little slit between Tippoo's ribs, "old friend."

 Clinton turned away, slipping the cutlass back into its scabbard and he

 ran across the deck to the weather rail.

 Robyn Ballantyne saw him coming and she strained towards him, unable to

 lift her arms for the slave cuffs that still bound her, but as he

 embraced her she put her face against his chest and her whole body

 trembled and shook as she sobbed. Oh, I give thanks to God-'Find the

 keys, Clinton ordered brusquely, and as the cuffs fell from Robyn's

 wrists he snatched them up and handed them to one of his men. "Use

 these on the slaver's Captain, he ordered.

 With that gesture, the last of his madness was gone. Forgive me, Doctor

 Ballantyne. We will speak later, but now there remains much to be done.

 " He bowed slightly and hurried away calling his orders. Carpenter's

 mate, go below immediately, I want the damage to this ship repaired at

 once. Bosun, disarm her crew, and have them sent below under lock and

 key with a guard on the companionway. Two men on her wheel, and a prize

 crew to work her. We'll sail her into Table Bay with the dawn, my boys,

 and there'll be prize money for your fancy. " His men were still drunk

 on excitement and battle lust, and they cheered him hoarsely as they

 rushed to obey the string of orders.

 Rubbing her chafed wrists, Robyn picked her way across the littered deck

 and through the throngs of bustling British seamen as they hustled their

 captives and the still-chained files of slaves below.

 Almost timorously she approached the ill-assorted pair at the foot of

 the ship's mainmast. Tippoo lay on his back, the mound of his naked

 belly pressing upwards like a woman in labour, the soiled bandanna

 hiding the wound. His eyes were wide, staring up at the mast that

 towered above him, and his lower jaw sagged.

 Mungo St. John held the huge bald cannon-ball head on his lap. He sat

 with his legs thrust out straight ahead of him, his back against the

 mast and as Robyn approached, he closed the lids over Tippoo's staring

 eyes, one at a time, with his thumb. His head was bowed, his hands

 gentle as those of a mother with her infant as he lifted the bandanna

 and used it to bind up the sagging jaw.

 Robyn went down on one knee and reached out to Tippoo's chest, to feel

 for the heart beat, but Mungo St. John raised his head and looked at

 her.

 Don't touch him, he said softly. I am a doctor-'He no longer needs a

 doctor, " Mungo's voice was low and clear, "especially if that doctor is

 you. "I am sorry. "Doctor Ballantyne, he told her, "you and I have no

 reason to apologize to each other, nor for that matter to speak to each

 other, ever again."

 She stared at him, and his face was cold and set, the eyes that stared

 back at her were devoid of all emotion, and it was in that moment she

 knew she had lost him, irrevocably and forever. She had thought that

 was what she wanted, but now the total knowledge left her devastated,

 without the strength to break her gaze, without the power of speech, and

 he stared back at her remotely, hard and unforgiving.

 "Mungo, she whispered, finding at last the strength and will to speak.

 "I did not mean this to happen, as the ALmighty is my witness, I did not

 mean it."

 Rough hands dragged Mungo St. John to his feet, so that Tippoo's dead

 head slipped from his lap and the skull thumped against the wooden deck.

 Captain's orders, me old cock, and you are to "ave a taste of your own

 chains."

 Mungo St. John did not resist as the slave cuffs were fastened on his

 wrists and ankles. He stood quietly, balancing to Huron's wild

 gale-driven lunges, looking about the fire-blackened ship with its decks

 covered with fallen and tangled rigging, stained with the blood of his

 crew, and though his expression did not change, there was a limitless

 grieving in his eyes. I am sorry, whispered Robyn, still kneeling

 beside him. "I am truly sorry."

 Mungo St. John glanced down at her, his wrists fastened at the small of

 his back by the cold black links of chain. Yes, he nodded. "So am I!

 And a seaman thrust the palm of a horny hand between his shoulder

 blades, shoving him away towards the Huron's forecastle, and the slave

 chains clanked about his ankles, as he staggered.

 Within a dozen paces he had recovered his balance, and shrugged off the

 hands of his gaolers. He walked away with his back straight and his

 shoulders thrown back, and he did not look back at Robyn kneeling on the

 blood-stained deck.

 Mungo St. John blinked at the brilliant sunlight as he followed the

 scarlet uniform coat and white cross-straps of his escort out into the

 courtyard of the Cape Town castle.

 He had not seen the sun for five days; the cell in which he had been

 confined since he had been escorted ashore, had no external windows.

 Even in midsummer, the dark and chill of the past winter still lingered

 in the thick stone walls, and the air that entered through the single

 barred opening in the oaken door was stale and sullied by the gaol

 odours, the emanations from the dozen or so prisoners in the other

 cells.

 Mungo filled his lungs now, and paused to look up at the ramparts of the

 castle. The British flag spread jauntily above the Katzenellenbogen

 redoubt, and beyond it the seagulls planed and volleyed on the fresh

 south-easterly wind.

 Force five and standing fair for a ship to clear the bay and make the

 open Atlantic, Mungo noted instinctively. This way please. " The young

 Subaltern who commanded the prison escort urged him on, but Mungo

 hesitated a moment longer. He could hear the murmurous song of the

 surf-break upon the beaches just beyond the castle walls, and from the

 ramparts he would have a clear view across Table Bay to Bloubergstrand

 on the far curve.

 Huron would be lying at anchor close inshore, still under her prize

 crew, and he longed for just a single glimpse of her, longed to know if

 the stern quarters were still smoke-blackened and gutted, or if O'Brien

 had been allowed to make the repairs to her hull and her steering gear.

 If only Tippoo, he began the thought, and then stopped himself, shivered

 briefly in the sunlight not only from the prison chill in his bones. He

 squared his shoulders and nodded to the Subaltern. Please lead the way,

 he agreed, and the hobnailed boots of the escort gnashed the cobbles as

 they crossed the courtyard and then climbed the broad flight of steps to

 the Governor's suite of offices. Prisoner and escort, halt."

 Upon the portico a naval Lieutenant waited to receive them in his

 navy-blue and gold jacket, white breeches and cocked hat. Mr. St. John?

 " asked the Lieutenant. He was old for his rank, grey and worn-looking,

 with a weary disinterested eye, and Mungo nodded disdainfully.

 The Lieutenant turned to the officer of the escort. Thank you, sir, I

 will take over from here, " and then to Mungo. "Kindly follow me, Mr.

 St. John."

 He went in through the magnificent teak doors, carved by the master

 craftsman Anreith, into the Governor's antechamber with its polished

 floors of butter-coloured Cape deal, the high hewn rafters of the same

 timber, and with the thick walls hung with the treasures of the Orient

 gathered so assiduously by that great plunderer, the Dutch East India

 Company, which had in turn succumbed to an even more powerful predator.

 The Lieutenant turned right, avoiding the brass and mahogany double

 doors of the Governor's private office to which Mungo had expected to be

 led; instead they went to a less pretentious single door set in a corner

 of the antechamber. At the Lieutenant's knock, a voice bade them enter,

 and they went in to a small office, clearly belonging to the Governor's

 Aide-decamp whom Mungo had met before.

 The Aide-decamp sat at the plain oak desk facing the door, and he did

 not rise nor did he smile as Mungo entered. There were two other men in

 the room, both seated in armchairs.

 You know Admiral Kemp, said the Aide-decamp. Good morning, Admiral.

 " Slogger Kemp inclined his head, but made no other gesture of

 recognition. And this is Sir Alfred Murray, Chief justice of the

 Supreme Court of the Cape Colony. "Your servant, sir. " Mungo neither

 bowed nor smiled, and the judge leaned forward slightly in his armchair,

 both hands on the gold and amber handle of his walkingstick, and stared

 at Mungo, from under beetling white brows.

 Mungo was pleased that an hour previously his gaoler had provided him

 with hot water and razor and that he had been allowed to contract with

 the ex-slave Malay washerwoman who laundered for the castle's officers.

 His breeches were clean, his boots polished and his shirt crisply ironed

 and snowy white.

 The Aide-decamp picked up an official document from the desk before him.

 You are the Captain and owner of the clipper Huron? " , I am. 1The ship

 has been seized as prize by the Royal Navy under Articles Five to Eleven

 of the Treaty of Brussels, and presently lies under prize crew in

 British territorial waters."

 That did not need reply, and Mungo stood silently. The case has been

 considered by the Courts of Mixed Commission for the colony, under the

 presidency of the Chief justice, and after hearing evidence from the

 Officer Commanding the Cape Squadron and others, the Court has

 determined that as the Huron was taken on the high seas, the Cape Colony

 has no jurisdiction in this matter.

 The Chief justice has recommended to His Excellency, the Governor of

 Cape Colony, that the, ahem-" the Aide-decamp paused significantly, "the

 cargo of the clipper ship Huron be impounded by Her Majesty's

 Government, but that the clipper be released under the command and

 connaissance of its owner and that the owner be ordered to proceed with

 all despatch to place himself and his vessel under the jurisdiction of a

 properly constituted American Court and there to answer such charges as

 the President of the United States deems fit to bring against him."

 Mungo let out a long slow breath of relief. By God's breath, the Limeys

 were going to duck the issue! They were not about to chance the wrath

 of the new American President-elect. They had taken his slaves, eight

 hundred thousand dollars worth, but they were giving him back his ship

 and they were letting him go.

 The Aide-decamp went on reading without looking up. The Governor of

 Cape Colony has accepted the Court's recommendation and has so decreed.

 You are required to make your ship ready and safe for the voyage with

 all speed. In this respect, the officer commanding the Cape Squadron

 has agreed to place at your disposal the repair facilities of the Naval

 Station. "Thank you, Admiral."

 Mungo turned to him, and Slogger Kemp's brows came together, his face

 mottled with passion, but his voice was very quiet and clear. Sixteen

 of my men dead, and as many maimed by your actions, sir, each day the

 smell of your filthy ship blows in to the windows of my office. "

 Admiral Kemp lifted himself with an effort from his armchair, and glared

 at Mungo St. John. "I say rot you, and your thanks, Mr. St. John, and

 if I had my way we wouldn't be playing coy and cute with Mr. Lincoln,

 and I would have you swinging at the mainyard of a British man-of-war

 rather than sailing out of Table Bay in your stinking slaver."

 Slogger Kemp turned away and went to stare out of the single window,

 into the courtyard of the castle where his carriage waited.

 The Aide-decamp seemed not to have noticed the outburst. He went on

 smoothly, A representative of the Royal Navy will accompany you aboard

 your ship and remain there until he determines that your vessel is

 seaworthy."

 The Aide-decamp reached back and tugged the bellpull behind his

 shoulder, and almost immediately the door opened and the naval

 Lieutenant reappeared. Just one other thing, Mr. St. John, the Governor

 has declared you to be an undesirable alien and you will immediately be

 arrested if you are ever again so rash as to set foot in Cape Colony."

 The tall figure came striding up the yellow gravel pathway, under the

 avenue of tall date palms, and Aletta Cartwright called gaily across the

 rose garden, Here comes your beau, Robyn. He is early today."

 Robyn straightened, the basket full of rose blossoms hanging on her arm,

 the wide straw hat shading her face from the flat glare of the Cape

 noonday. She watched Clinton coming towards her with the warmth of

 affection. He looked so gangling and boyish and impetuous, much too

 young ever to have led that rush of fighting seamen over Huzon's stern .

 She had grown accustomed to him over the past weeks while she had been a

 guest once more of the Cartwright family, and each afternoon Clinton had

 walked up the hill from his modest lodgings in Waterkant Street. She

 looked forward to his visits, to their serious conversations after the

 frivolity and inconsequences of the Cartwright daughters. She found his

 admiration and his adoration flattering and deeply comforting. She felt

 it was something that would never change, something constant, a

 pole-star in the confusion and uncertainty that had been her life to

 this time.

 She had learned to value his good sense, and his judgement. She had

 even allowed him to read the manuscript which was occupying most of her

 days now, and his comments and criticisms were always well based.

 Then she had found that he filled a part of her life that had been empty

 for much too long. She needed something or someone to cherish and

 protect and comfort', somebody who needed her, someone on whom to lavish

 the bounty of her compassion. I do not believe I could ever live

 without you, my dear Doctor Ballantyne, he had told her. "I do not

 believe I could have endured this terrible period of my life without

 your help.

 " She knew it was probably true, not just the hyperbole of the love-sick

 swam, and Robyn was entirely unable to resist the appeal of anybody in

 pain or in suffering.

 It was many weeks since that heady day when Black joke had sailed into

 Table Bay with her bulwarks and upperworks riddled with shot, her

 rigging in heroic and picturesque ruins, and her huge captive, blackened

 with smoke and limping under jury rigging and makeshift steering-gear,

 herded submissively under the menace of her carronades to an anchorage

 close inshore at Ragger Bay.

 How the townsfolk had swarmed to the beachfront to gawk and exclaim, and

 how the other naval vessels in the bay had lined their rails and yards

 with seamen to cheer them in.

 She had been standing at Clinton Codrington's side when the two

 contingents of naval officers from the Cape Squadron's headquarters had

 been rowed out to Black Joke's anchorage. The first had been headed by

 a naval Commander, some years junior to Clinton. Captain Codrington, he

 saluted. "I am under orders to take over command of this ship from you

 forthwith, sir."

 Clinton accepted this without change of expression. Very well, sir, I

 will have my gear removed, and in the meantime we should complete the

 formalities, and I will introduce you to the remaining officers When

 Clinton had shaken hands with his officers and his sea chest was at the

 entry port, the second longboat which had been lying on its oars a few

 yards off, now came alongside and a senior Captain came aboard. Everyone

 on Black Joke's deck knew what was about to happen, and Denham stepped

 close to Clinton and said softly, "Good luck, sir, you know you can

 count on me when the time comes."

 They both knew what he was referring to, the day they would meet again

 in the court-martial chamber. Thank you, Mr. Denham, Clinton replied,

 then he went forward to where the senior Captain waited. Captain

 Codrington, it is my duty to inform you that you have been called upon

 by the Officer Commanding the Squadron to answer certain charges

 concerning the conduct of your duties. Therefore, you are to consider

 yourself under open arrest and to hold yourself in readiness to answer

 those charges as soon as a court martial can be convened. "I

 understand, sir."

 Clinton saluted him, and then preceded him through the entry port and

 down the ladder into the waiting boat.

 A single voice called out, "Give "em. hell, Tongs."

 And suddenly they were all cheering. Black joke's crew lined her side

 and hung in her rigging and they cheered as though their throats would

 crack.

 Hammer and Tongs! " They tossed their caps on high. At "em the jokers!

 " As the boat pulled away and rowed for the beach, Clinton Codrington

 stood in the stern and stared back at them without expression, and his

 bare head shone like a beacon fire in the sunlight.

 That had been so many weeks ago. Still the opportunity of assembling

 enough senior officers in a small station like the Cape Colony to act as

 his judges might not occur for weeks still or even months.

 Clinton had spent his nights in the cheap lodgings on Waterkant Street.

 Ostracized by his brother officers, he had spent most of his days alone

 upon the waterfront staring out at the little gunboat that was making

 her repairs at the anchorage, and at the bare-masted clipper.

 He had watched while the slaves were brought ashore from Huron's holds,

 and their chains were struck off by a blacksmith from the castle. He

 had seen the bewildered blacks put their marks upon the indenture

 contracts, and then be led away by the Dutch and Huguenot farmers to

 learn their new duties, and he had wondered at this other fate to which

 he had delivered them.

 Then in the afternoons he had climbed the hill to the Cartwright mansion

 set in its green and pleasant garden to pay his court to Robyn

 Ballantyne.

 This day he was early, the noonday gun banged from the top of Signal

 Hill as Clinton came striding up the pathway, almost breaking into a run

 when he saw Robyn in the rose garden. He left the pathway and cut

 across the velvety green carpet of the lawn. Robyn! Doctor Ballantyne!

 " His voice was strange, and his pale eyes wild. What is it? " Robyn

 handed the basket to Aletta and hurried across the lawn to meet him.

 What is it? " she repeated with concern, and he seized both her hands

 in his. The slaver! he was stuttering with the force of his emotion,

 "The American, HuronPYes? " she demanded. "Yes? "She is sailing, they

 are letting her go!

 It was a cry of outrage and despair, and Robyn froze, her face suddenly

 pale. I do not believe it. "Come! said Clinton.

 "I have a carriage at the gate."

 The coachman whipped the horses at the slope, with Clinton shouting to

 him to hurry still, and they came out on the crest of Signal Hill in a

 lather, with froth splattered on their chests and forelegs.

 The moment the coach braked, Clinton jumped down and led Robyn to the

 side of the roadway facing down the steep hillside out over the bay. The

 tall American clipper slid silently and gracefully over a green sea that

 was speckled by the dancing white caps of the southeasterly wind.

 As she cleared the low dark shape of Robben Island, she altered her

 heading a fraction and more sail bloomed upon her yards, white as the

 first flowers of spring. Silently, the man and the woman stared after

 the beautiful ship, and neither of them spoke as she merged with the

 milky sea fret, became a ghostly silhouette, and then quite suddenly was

 gone.

 Still in silence the couple turned back and climbed into the waiting

 carriage, and neither of them spoke until it drew up before the gates of

 the Cartwright estate.

 Clinton looked at her face. It was completely bloodless, even her lips

 were ivory white and quivering with suppressed emotion.

 I know how you feel. After all we endured, to see that monster sail

 away. I share your distress, " he said quietly, but she shook her head

 once vehemently and then was still again. I have other news, he told

 her when at last he judged she had recovered, and a little colour had

 returned to her cheeks. There is a Rear-Admiral on the passenger list

 of the East Indiaman that anchored in the bay yesterday. Slogger Kemp

 has asked him to make up the numbers at the court-martial. It begins

 tomorrow."

 Immediately she turned to face him, her expression softening with

 concern and alarm. Oh, I will pray for you every moment. " She reached

 out her hand impulsively, and he seized it with both of his, and clung

 to it.

 It was as though the contact had loosened something in her that she had

 locked away tightly and at last the tears welled up in her hot dry eyes.

 Oh my dear Doctor Ballantyne, Clinton whispered. Please do not fret for

 me. " But through the tears Robyn was still seeing the ghostly image of

 a tall and beautiful ship fading away into the pearly curtain of sea

 fret, and the first sob shook her body.

 The floor of the ballroom of Admiralty House was laid out in chessboard

 squares of black and white marble, and the human characters like chess

 pieces were ranged upon it haphazard, as though by the vagaries of a

 hard-fought end-game.

 Robyn Ballantyne in skirt and blouse of sober green stood by the head of

 the board, a solitary queen, while arranged opposite her were the rooks

 of the legal council: two naval officers in full uniform and sword who

 were playing the roles of prosecutor and defender. They had been chosen

 arbitrarily, and neither of them relished the unfamiliar task.

 They had isolated themselves from the rest of the company, and each of

 them busied himself with the sheaf of documents he carried, not looking

 at the man who they were destined to save or condemn, depending on the

 deliberations of the senior officers who were even now closeted behind

 the tall double doors at the far end of the ballroom.

 The other witnesses, Denham of Black Joke bearing the ship's log under

 his arm, MacDonald the engineer hiding his grey coal-stained hands

 behind his back, the colony's agent and Honorary Consul for the Sheikh

 of Omani, a prosperous Asian trader, were like the scattered pawns of

 the game around the edge of the board.

 Only the officer accused and on trial for his life was not at rest.

 Captain Clinton Codrington paced at random about the ballroom floor, his

 heels clicking on the marble slabs, his cocked hat clasped under one

 arm, his pale blue eyes staring dead ahead. He paced without pattern

 like the roving knight of the chess board.

 The tension seemed to charge even this huge room, increasing rather than

 lessening with every minute. Only the two red-coated marines on each

 side of the double doors seemed totally unaffected.

 They stood stolidly, their musket butts grounded beside the polished toe

 caps of their right boots, their expressions blank and their eyes fixed

 directly ahead.

 Once Clinton stopped in front of Robyn and drew his watch.

 Fifty minutes, he said.

 It could be hours yet, she answered quietly. I can never thank you for

 the evidence you gave. "It was nothing but the truth. Yes, he agreed.

 "But without it-" He broke off, and resumed his restless pacing.

 The prosecuting officer who had attempted for the two previous days to

 damn him and send him to the gallows, glanced up at Clinton, and then

 hurriedly, almost guiltily, returned his eyes to the documents he held

 in his right hand. Robyn was the only one who watched him openly, and

 her eyes were dark with worry and concern, yet when he caught her eye

 again a few minutes later, she smiled at him bravely, trying to hide her

 doubts.

 The four senior officers, before whom she had given her evidence, had

 listened attentively, but she had seen no warmth nor compassion in their

 faces. Madam, " Admiral Kemp had asked her at the end, "is it true that

 you obtained a medical degree by impersonating a man, and if your answer

 is "Yes', would you not then believe us justified in doubting your

 allegiance to the truth?

 Robyn had seen the faces of the senior officers flanking Kemp harden,

 their eyes become remote. The Sultan's agent had been blatantly

 hostile, as the prosecuting officer had led him dutifully through a long

 list of aggressions and warlike acts against his master's sovereign

 territory and against his subjects.

 Denham and MacDonald could only recite the facts, and their own

 repudiation of their Captain's orders was recorded in the ship's

 logbook.

 The only thing that surprised Robyn was that the court had deliberated

 so long, and then she started involuntarily as, with a crash that echoed

 around the walls of the empty ballroom, the double doors were thrown

 open, and the two marine guards stamped to attention.

 Through the doors she could see the naval officers seated down the

 length of the long dining-room table facing the ballroom. Their

 fragging and epaulettes gleamed with gold lace and Robyn was too far to

 be certain of their expressions. Though she took a step forward and

 craned to see the polished top of the table in front of the grim line of

 judges, she could not be certain of the hilt and point of the single

 weapon that lay upon it, and then her view was blocked by the backs of

 the three men who lined up facing the doors.

 Clinton was in the centre with the prosecution and the defending

 officers flanking him. At a muttered command, they marched briskly

 through the open doors. The doors closed behind the trio, and still

 Robyn could not know which way the naval dirk on the table was pointing,

 whether it was in its sheath or if the blade was naked.

 Clinton had explained to her the significance of that weapon. it was

 only placed upon the table when the judges had reached their decision.

 If the blade was sheathed, and if the hilt was pointed towards the

 prisoner when he entered, then the judgement was "not guilty, .

 When the bare blade was pointed towards him, then he knew that the wrath

 of the service was about to descend upon him, and he might be called to

 pay his penalty upon the flogging grating, or upon the gallows itself.

 Clinton kept his gaze fixed upon a point above Admiral Kemp's head,

 while the doors were banged closed behind him, and he and the officers

 flanking him came to attention five paces from the long polished table

 behind which sat his judges.

 Only then did he allow himself to glance down at the dagger upon the

 table top. The bare blade glinted a bluish-silver in the late sunlight

 that slanted in from the tall french windows, and the bright point was

 aimed at Clinton's stomach.

 He felt the cold drive of despair in his guts, as though the dagger had

 been plunged through them. The shock of the injustice of the verdict,

 the disbelief that his whole life had been brought down at a single

 stroke, the shame and disgrace of a career shattered and a reputation

 indelibly besmirched, left him numbed and blind to all but the wicked

 blade before him, and deaf to all but the voice of Admiral Kemp. Guilty

 of flagrant disregard of the orders of his superior officer. "Guilty of

 acts of piracy upon the high seas.

 "Guilty of destroying the property of the subjects of a friendly power.

 "Guilty of flouting the terms of a treaty between her Britannic

 Majesty's Government and the Sultan of the Omani Arabs."

 it must he death, Clinton realized, the verdict was too detailed, the

 list of his transgressions too long and his guilt too serious. It must

 be death by the noose.

 He lifted his eyes from the accusing weapon, and he stared out of the

 french windows beyond his judges. The high stock of his uniform collar

 felt as tight as the hangman's noose as he tried to swallow.

 I have never feared death, Lord, he prayed silently. There is only one

 thing I will regret, that I must leave the woman that I love."

 To be deprived of honour, and of life was sufficient punishment, but to

 lose his love as well was the final injustice. The Court has

 deliberated at length on the sentence, Admiral Kemp paused and shot a

 sideways glance at a lean, tanned and silver-haired Rear-Admiral beside

 him, the passenger from the visiting East Indiaman, "and has heard and

 been swayed by the eloquent arguments of Admiral Reginald Curry."

 He paused again and puffed out his lips, indicating clearly that he did

 not agree with those eloquent arguments, before going on. The sentence

 of this Court is that the prisoner be stripped of all rank, privileges

 and pay and that the Queen's Commission which he holds shall be

 withdrawn, and that he be dishonourably discharged from the naval

 service."

 Clinton steeled himself, the stripping of rank and discharge would

 precede the main body of the sentence.

 Furthermore, Kemp paused and cleared his throat. Furthermore it is the

 sentence of the Court that the prisoner be taken from here to the castle

 and that he be there -The castle was the place of execution, the gallows

 would be erected on the parade ground before the main gates. That he be

 there imprisoned for a period of one year."

 The judges were standing up, were filing out of the room. As the lean

 silver-haired Admiral came level with Clinton, a small conspiratorial

 smile touched his lips, and for the first time Clinton realized that it

 was not death. A year, said the Lieutenant who had prosecuted, as the

 door closed, "not a flogging, nor a hanging, damned generous, I'd say."

 Congratulations. " Clinton's defending officer was grinning

 incredulously. "It was Curry, of course, he commanded the west coast

 anti-slavery squadron himself.

 What a stroke of luck to have him on the'Board Pale, voiceless, swaying

 slightly on his feet, Clinton was still staring blindly through the open

 windows. Come on, my dear fellow, a year will soon be past the

 defending officer touched his arm, "and after that, no more bully beef

 and hard bread, do pull yourself together."

 Twenty miles a day since leaving grandfather Moffat's mission-station at

 Kuruman, Zouga had pushed the mules and his servants hard all the way,

 and now at the crest of the pass he reined in the tall sway-backed mule

 and stared out across the sweeping panorama of the Cape peninsula.

 Directly below him was that strange pale hill of smooth rock, Die Paarl

 as the Dutch burghers had named it, "the Pearl', and it shone with an

 almost translucent lustre in the Cape sunlight of high summer.

 Beyond that the wheatlands and vineyards dotted the flat land that

 stretched away to the Paarde Berg, the Horse Mountains, where once the

 wild mountain zebra had roamed, and the Tyger Berg. The leopard to the

 Dutch burghers was a tiger and the zebra was a horse. Nearly home now,

 Sergeant, Zouga called to Jan Cheroot. Just look at that-'The little

 Hottentot pointed to the smoky blue flat-topped mountain that stood up

 tall and massive against the southern horizon. We will be there before

 dark tomorrow night."

 Jan Cheroot puckered his lips and blew a kiss towards it. "Pull the

 cork and tell the Cape Town ladies that my mama didn't call me big

 cheroot for nothing."

 his mule flicked its long hairy ears to the sound of his voice and gave

 a little half-hearted buck. "You feeling it too, you old thunder! "

 Jan Cheroot chuckled. "Let's go then! " and he whipped the animal up

 and went clattering away down the steep and rocky roadway.

 Zouga stayed to watch the battered little two-wheeled Cape cart follow

 him at a more sedate pace, carrying its precious burden of ivory and

 sculptured green soapstone, as it had for a thousand miles and more.

 it was a month before Robyn was allowed to pay her first visit to the

 castle. After the guard at the gates inspected her pass, she was led to

 a small whitewashed guard room, devoid of all furniture except three

 highbacked uncushioned chairs.

 She remained standing for ten minutes before the low door opposite her

 was opened and Clinton stooped through it. He stopped, facing her, and

 she was struck instantly by the prison pallor of his skin. His

 deepwater tan had faded to a tobacco stain of yellow, and the roots of

 his hair, no longer bleached by salt and strong sunlight, had darkened.

 He looked older, tired and dejected. You at least have not deserted me

 in my disgrace, he said simply.

 The Subaltern of the guard took the third chair and tried to look as

 though he was not listening to their conversation. Robyn and Clinton

 sat facing each other stiffly, on the uncomfortable chairs, and their

 conversation was at first as stilted, a polite series of enquiries after

 each other's health.

 Then Robyn asked, "Have you received the newspapers. Yes. The warder

 has been good to me. "Then you have read what the new American

 President has promised at his inauguration. "Lincoln was always a

 staunch enemy of the trade, Clinton nodded. He has granted the ships of

 the Royal Navy the right of search at last."

 And six of the Southern States have seceded already, Clinton told her

 grimly. "There will be fighting, if he tries to force it. "It's so

 unfair, Robyn cried. "Just a few short weeks and you would have been a

 hero instead of a-" she broke off with her hand to her mouth, "I am

 sorry, Captain Codrington."

 Captain no longer, he said. I feel so much to blame, had I not sent

 that letter-'You are so kind, so good, then he blurted abruptly, $and so

 beautiful that I can scarcely bear to look at you."

 Robyn found herself blushing hotly, and she glanced at the listening

 guard officer. He was studying the rough plaster ceiling of the cell.

 Do you know what I thought when I entered the chamber and saw the dirk

 pointed at me? " Clinton went on, and she shook her head. "I thought I

 was going to lose you. That they would hang me and I would never see

 you again. " His voice was shaking with such emotion, that the

 listening officer rose to his feet. Doctor Ballantyne, I will leave the

 room for five minutes, he said. "Do I have your word that you will not

 attempt to pass a weapon or a tool to the prisoner in my absence? "

 Robyn nodded jerkily and whispered, "Thank you."

 The moment the door closed, Clinton launched himself across the gap

 between them and dropped to his knees before Robyn. He encircled her

 waist with both arms and pressed his cheek to her bosom. But now I have

 nothing to offer you, I have nothing to share with you but my disgrace."

 Robyn found herself stroking his hair as though he were a child. Soon I

 will go back to that beautiful land below the Zambezi river. I know now

 that is where my destiny lies, " she said quietly. "To minister to the

 souls and the bodies of those who live there."

 She paused a moment and looked down fondly on the dense pale locks of

 his hair. You say you have nothing to offer, nothing to share, but I

 have something to offer you, and to share with you!

 He raised his head and looked up at her questioningly, hope starting to

 dawn in his pale sapphire eyes. Will you not offer yourself to be

 ordained in God's service as a missionary, and come with me into the

 wilderness, to the land of Zarnbezia? "To share my life with you, and

 with God. " His voice was hush and choked. "I never dreamed I was

 worthy of such an honour. "The fellow is a prig, said Zouga firmly.

 "And, damn me, but now he is a gaol-bird to boot. Neither of you will

 be able to hold up your heads in society. "He has a true and noble

 spirit, and now he has found his true calling in God's service, Robyn

 replied hotly. Neither of us intend spending much of our time in

 society, you may be certain of that."

 Zouga shrugged and smiled. "Of course, that is your affair. At least

 he has made a pretty packet of prize money which they can't take away

 from himI assure you that money had nothing to do with my decision. "I

 will believe that. " Zouga's smile infuriated her, but before she could

 find a scathing enough retort, he turned away and sauntered the length

 of the long veranda under the trellised vines and stood with his hands

 thrust into his pockets, staring out across the Cartwrights" gardens to

 the far glimpses of blue bay seen through the oaks and the rustling

 palms.

 Robyn's anger subsided and gave way to regret. It seemed now that the

 two of them must always be squabbling, their desires and their motives

 always directly opposed.

 At first her relief at his safety had been almost as strong as her

 sisterly delight at seeing him again. She had barely recognized him as

 he rode the bony swaybacked mule up the path to the Cartwright mansion.

 It was only when he dismounted and lifted the stained old hat from his

 head that she screamed with joy, leapt up from the luncheon table and

 ran down off the terrace to hug him.

 He was so lean and hard and bronzed, and somehow endowed with new

 authority, charged with purpose and presence, that she glowed with pride

 as he recounted his experiences and all the company hung avidly on each

 word. He is like a Greek god! " Aletta Cartwright had whispered to

 Robyn, which was not an original description but then Aletta did not run

 much to original thought, and Robyn had to agree that in this case it

 was accurate.

 She had followed his description of the land of the Matabele, and of the

 long trek southward with all her attention, asking such acute questions

 that Zouga had asked sharply, I hope that you will not be using any of

 this in your own account, Sissy? "Of course not, " she assured him, but

 still that had been the first sour note, and he had not spoken further

 of his adventures, except to give her the greetings and news of their

 grandfather, Robert Moffat at Kururnan. You would never believe that he

 was seventy-five years old this past December. He is so bright and

 alive that he has just finished translating the Bible into the Sechuan

 language. He gave me every courtesy and help, and it was he who

 arranged for mules and for the cart which made the last portion of the

 journey so much easier. He remembered you as a little girl of three

 years old, and he has received your letters and gave me this in reply. "

 It was a thick packet. "He tells me that you have asked him about

 leading a missionary expedition to Zarnbezia or Matabeleland. "That is

 correct. "Sissy, I do not think that a woman on her own, he had begun,

 but she had forestalled him. I shall not be alone. Captain Clinton

 Codrington has decided to seek ordination as a missionary, and I have

 consented to become his wife."

 That had led to the explosion which had once more marred their

 relationship. As her anger faded, she made another determined effort to

 avert the new clash of temperament.

 Zouga, she went down the length of the terrace and took his arm. I

 would be grateful if you would consent to give me away at the wedding."

 Some of the hardness went out of his arm as his muscles relaxed. When

 will that be, Sissy? "Not for seven months.

 Clinton has that much longer of his sentence."

 Zouga shook his head. "I will not be here. I have booked passage on

 the & steamer that sails for home at the beginning of next month. "

 They were both silent, and then Zouga went on, "But I wish you joy and

 happiness, and I apologize for the remark I made about your future

 husband. "I understand. " She squeezed his arm. "He is a different

 kind of man from you."

 Zouga almost exclaimed, "Thank God for that, but caught the blasphemy

 before it reached his lips, and again they were silent.

 Zouga was considering the problem that had concerned him so intimately

 since his return to Cape Town - how to find out from Robyn what she had

 written in her manuscript, and if possible to influence her into

 amending those portions of it which might offend the family reputation.

 Now that he had learned that she would not be returning to England, the

 natural opportunity had presented itself. Sissy, if your manuscript is

 prepared, I will be happy to take it with me and to make certain that it

 is delivered safely to Oliver Wicks."

 The voyage to England would give Zouga ample opportunity to study

 Robyn's work, and if the delivery was delayed for a month or so after

 his arrival, then Zouga's own published account of the expedition would

 skim the cream off the pool of interest and critical literary attention.

 Oh, did I not mention it to you? " Robyn lifted her chin, and her smile

 was spiced with a little spiteful relish. "I sent my manuscript on the

 mail steamer a month before your arrival here. It will be in London

 already, and I should not be surprised if Mr. Wicks has not published it

 already. I expect he will have sent the reviews, and we will have them

 on the next mailship."

 Zouga jerked his arm out of her grip, and his eyes were steely as he

 glared down at her.

 I really should have mentioned it, she added sweetly.

 His reaction confirmed her suspicions. and she knew that what last

 small chance they had was finished. From now on they would be enemies,

 and somehow she knew that the centre of their enmity would always be the

 land and peoples of that faraway country between two great rivers which

 Zouga had named Zambezia.

 At the end of the Woodstock road, on the bank of the Liesbeeck river,

 not far from the domed roof of the Royal Astronomical Observatory,

 stands the Cartwright warehouse. It is a rambling whitewashed building

 of a burnt Kimberley brick with a corrugated iron roof.

 Against the rear wall of the main storeroom stood three articles left

 there in storage and for later collection by Major Morris Zouga

 Ballantyne, presently on passage aboard the Peninsular and Orient

 Steamship- S. S.

 Bombay from India to the Pool of London. The three bulky articles were

 almost completely screened by the bays and hillocks of bales and crates,

 and of barrels and bags, which reached almost to the high ceiling.

 The two huge elephant tusks formed a perfect frame with their curved

 yellow ivories for the third package.

 The carved soapstone figure was still contained in its protective

 covering of plaited elephant grass and twisted bark rope. It stood

 upright on its wide heavy base, and it was merely chance that it faced

 towards the north.

 The grass covering had been torn away from the head by careless handling

 and long months of travel on the shoulders of porters and on the

 buckboards of an unsprung Cape cart.

 The cruel proud head of the bird of prey protruded from its wrappings.

 The stony sightless eyes stared across forest and mountain and desert,

 one thousand five hundred miles, to a walled and mined city and the

 words of the Umlimo's prophecy seemed to hover in the air above the

 graven head of the bird like living things. The white eagle has stooped

 on the stone falcons and cast them to earth. Now the eagle shall lift

 them up again and they will fly afar. There shall be no peace in the

 kingdoms of the Mambos or the Monomatapas until they return. For the

 white eagle will war with the black bull until the stone falcons return

 to roost.

 <BookMark>