Men of Men [047-066-4.9]

 By: Wilbur Smith.

 synopsis

 Zouga never saw the command, probably the toe of her boot on the far

 side of Shooting Star's heaving chest; he had certainly not expected a

 show horse to have learned the low tricks of a polo pony. Shooting

 Star's huge sweat-streaked shoulder crashed into Tom, taking him in the

 short ribs with a force that drove the air out of him in a belching

 grunt, and as he was spun aside Tom chopped desperately to keep from

 falling, twisting and dropping to his knees, his nose on the ground, too

 tired and taken too unawares to meet the power of that ferocious baarge.

 It is the age of empire, of blood and conquest, of boundless excitement

 and possibility. Striding in the footsteps of the pioneers is Zouga

 Ballantyne. His dream begins in the danger and drudgery of the diamond

 pits and ends on the rich grasslands of Matabeleland, but not before a

 king and a proud warrior nation has paid the price of history..

 This book is for my wife, Danielle, with all my love for ever

 A Mandarin Paperback MEN OF MEN First published in Great Britain 1981

 by William Heinemann Ltd

 This edition published 1991 by Mandarin

 Paperbacks an imprint of Reed International Books Ltd Michelin House, 81

 Fulham Road, London SW3 6RB and Auckland, Melbourne, Singapore and

 Toronto

 Reprinted 1991, 1992 (four times), 1993 (three times), 1994

 (twice), 1995 (twice), 1996 (twice), 1997

 Copyright Q Wilbur Smith 1981

 A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British

 Library

 ISBN 0 7493 0373 5

 Photoset by Intype, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox &

 Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

 This book is sold subject to the condition

 that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired

 out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in

 any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published

 and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed

 on the subsequent purchaser.

 It had never been exposed to the light of day, not once in the 200

 million years since it assumed its present form, and yet it seemed in

 itself to be a distilled drop of dirtied sunlight.

 it had been conceived in heat as vast as that of the sun's surface, in

 those unholy depths below the earth's crust, in the molten magma that

 welled up from the earth's very core.

 in those terrible temperatures all impurity had been burned from it,

 leaving only the unadulterated carbon atoms, and under pressures that

 would have crushed mountains these had been reduced in volume and packed

 to a density beyond that of any other substance in nature.

 This tiny bubble of liquid carbon had been carried up in the slow

 subterranean river of molten lava through one of the weak spots in the

 earth's crust, and it had almost, but not quite, reached the surface

 before the laval flow faltered and finally stopped.

 The lava cooled over the ensuing millennium, and it altered its form and

 became a mottled bluish rock, composed of gravelly fragments loosely

 cemented in a solid matrix. This formation was naturally unassociated

 with the country rock which surrounded it, and filled only a deep

 circular well whose mouth was shaped like a funnel almost a mile in

 diameter and whose tail descended sheer into the uncounted depths of the

 earth.

 While the lava was cooling the purged bubble of carbon was undergoing an

 even more marvellous transformation. It solidified into an eight-faced

 crystal of geometrical symmetry the size of a green fig, and so

 thoroughly had it been purged of impurity in the hellish furnace of the

 earth's core that it was transparent and clear as the sun's own rays. So

 fierce and constant had been the pressures to which the single crystal

 had been subjected and so evenly had it cooled that there was no

 cracking or shearing within its body.

 It was perfect, a thing of cold fire so white that it would appear

 electric blue in good light, but that fire had never been awakened, for

 it had been trapped in total darkness across the ages, and no single

 glimmer of light had ever probed its lucid depths. Yet for all those

 millions of years the sunlight had been no great distance away, a matter

 only of two hundred feet or less, a thin skin of earth when compared to

 the immense depths from whence its journey to the surface had begun.

 Now, in the last wink of time, a mere few years out of all those

 millions, the intervening ground had steadily been chipped and whittled

 and hacked away by the puny, inefficient but persistent efforts of an

 antlike colony of living creatures.

 The forebears of these creatures had not even existed upon this earth

 when that single pure crystal achieved its present form, but now with

 each day the disturbance caused by their metal tools set up faint

 vibrations within the rock that had been dormant so long; and each day

 those vibrations were stronger, as the layer between it and the surface

 shrank from two hundred feet to a hundred and then to fifty, from ten

 feet to two, until now only inches separated the crystal from the

 brilliant sunlight which would at last bring to life its slumbering

 fires.

 Major Morris Zouga Ballantyne stood on the lip of the aerial rope-way

 high above the deep circular chasm where once a small hillock had risen

 above the flat and dreary landscape of the African continental shield.

 Even in the fierce heat he wore a silk scarf at his throat, the tail of

 which'was tucked into the buttoned front of his flannel shirt. Though

 recently washed and pressed with a heated stroking-iron, his shirt was

 indelibly stained to a dull reddish ochre colour.

 It was the pigment of the African earth, red earth, almost like raw

 meat, where the iron-shod wheels of the wagons had cut it or the shovels

 of the diggers had turned the surface. Earth that rose in dense red dust

 clouds when the hot dry winds scoured it, or turned to bleeding

 glutinous red mud when the thunderstorms thrashed its surface.

 Red was the colour of the diggings. It stained the hair of dogs and

 beasts of burden, it stained the clothing of the men and their beards

 and the skin of their arms, it stained their canvas tents and coated the

 corrugated iron shanties of the settlement.

 Only in the gaping hole below where Zouga stood was the colour altered

 to the soft yellow of a thrush's breast.

 The hole was almost a mile across, the rim of it nearly a perfect

 circle, and its bottom already two hundred feet deep in places. The men

 working down there were tiny insect-like figures, spiders perhaps, for

 only spiders could have spun the vast web that glittered in a silvery

 cloud over the entire excavation.

 Zouga paused a moment to lift the wide-brimmed hat, its pointed peak

 stained by his own sweat and the blown red dust. Carefully he mopped the

 beads of sweat from the smooth paler skin along his hairline, and then

 inspected the damp red stain on the silk bandanna and grimaced with

 distaste.

 His dense curling hair had been protected by the hat from the fierce

 African sunlight and was still the colour of smoked wild honey, but his

 beard had been bleached to pale gold and the years had laced it with

 silver strands.

 His skin was dark also, baked like a crust of new bread, only the scar

 on his cheek was porcelain white where the elephant gun had burst so

 many years before.

 There were little creases below his eyes from squinting at the

 sunlight at far horizons, and harsh lines cut his cheeks from the corner

 of his nose and ran down into the beard, lines of hardship and

 heartbreak. He looked down into the gaping pit below him and the green

 of his eyes clouded as he remembered the high hopes and bounding

 expectation that had brought him here, was it ten years before? It

 seemed like a day and an eternity.

 He had first heard the name Colesberg kopje, when he had stepped out of

 the burn-boat onto the beach at Rogger Bay below the vast square

 monolithic bulk of Table Mountain, and the sound of it had made his skin

 tingle and raised the hair at the nape of his neck.

 "They have struck diamonds at Colesberg kopje, diamonds big as grapeshot

 and so thick they'll wear out the soles of your boots just walking

 across them!"

 In a clairvoyant flash he had known that this was where his destiny

 would lead him. He knew that the two years he had just spent in old

 England, trying desperately to raise backing for his grand venture in

 the north, had been marking time for this moment.

 The road to the north began in the diamond gravels of Colesberg kopje.

 He knew it with certainty as he heard the name.

 He had one single wagon left, and a depleted span of draught oxen.

 Within forty-eight hours they were plodding through the deep sands that

 clogged the track across the Cape Flats, northwards six hundred miles to

 that kopje below the Vaal river.

 The wagon carried all his possessions, and there were precious few of

 these. Twelve years following a grandiose dream had wasted his substance

 all away. The considerable royalties from the book that he had written

 after his travels to the unexplored lands below the Zambezi river, the

 gold and ivory that he had brought back from that remote interior, the

 ivory from four more hunting expeditions to that same haunting and yet

 sadly flawed paradise, all of it was gone. Thousands of pounds and

 twelve years of heartbreak and frustration, until the splendid dream had

 become clouded and soured and all he had to show for it was a tattered

 scrap of parchment on which the ink was beginning to yellow and the

 folds were almost worn through so that it had to be glued to a backing

 sheet to hold it together.

 That parchment was "The Ballantyne Concession" title for one thousand

 years to all the mineral wealth of a huge tract of the wild African

 interior, a tract the size of France which he had cajoled from a savage

 black king.

 In that vast territory Zouga had panned red native gold from the

 outcropping quartz reef.

 it was a rich land and all of it was his, but it needed capital, huge

 amounts of capital, to take possession of it and to win the treasures

 that lay below it. Half his adult life had been spent in struggle to

 raise that capital, a fruitless struggle, for he had not yet found a

 single man of substance to share his vision and his dream with him.

 Finally, he had in desperation appealed to the British public. He had

 journeyed to London once more to promote the formation of the "Central

 African Lands and Mining Co." to exploit his concession.

 He had designed and had printed a handsome brochure, extolling the

 riches of the land he had named Zambezia.

 He had illustrated the pages with his own drawings of fine forests and

 grassy plains abounding with elephant and other game. He had included a

 facsimile of the original concession, with the great elephant seal of

 Mzilikazi, King of the Matabele, at its foot. And he had distributed the

 brochure throughout the British Isles.

 He had travelled from Edinburgh to Bristol lecturing and holding public

 meetings, and he had backed up this campaign with full-page

 advertisements in The Times and other reputable newspapers.

 However, the same newspapers that had accepted his advertising fees had

 ridiculed his claims, while the attention of the investing public was

 seduced by the flotations of the South American railway companies which

 unhappily coincided with Zouga's promotion. He had been left with the

 bill for printing and distribution of the brochure, the fees for

 advertising and for the lawyers and the expenses of his own travelling,

 and when he had paid them and his passage back to Africa there remained

 only a few hundred sovereigns from what had once been considerable

 wealth.

 The wealth was gone, but the responsibilities remained. Zouga looked

 back from the head of the span of dappled black oxen.

 Aletta sat on the wagon box. Her hair was still pale gold and silky in

 the sunlight, but her eyes were grave and the line of her lips no longer

 sweet and soft, as though she had set herself against the hardships that

 she knew lay ahead.

 Looking at her now it seemed impossible that she had once been a pretty

 carefree butterfly of a girl, the pampered darling of a rich father,

 with no thought in her head beyond London fashion newly arrived on the

 mailship and the preparations for the next ball in the glittering social

 whirl of Cape society.

 She had been attracted by the romance surrounding young Major Zouga

 Ballantyne. He was the traveller and adventurer in far places of the

 African continent. There was the legend of the great elephant hunter

 that surrounded him, the glamour of the book that he had recently

 published in London. All Cape Town society was agog with this young man

 and envied her his suit.

 That had been many years ago, an the egend ad tarnished.

 Aletta's delicate breeding had not been equal to the rigours of the

 savage interior beyond the gentle and temperate airs of the Cape

 littoral, and the rough country and rougher peoples had appalled her.

 She had succumbed swiftly to the fevers and pestilences which had

 weakened her so that she suffered repeated miscarriages.

 All her married life she seemed to be in child-bed, or lost in the mists

 of malarial fever, or waiting interminably for the golden-bearded,

 godlike figure whom she worshipped to return from across an ocean or

 from the hot and unhealthy hinterland to which she could no longer

 follow him.

 On this journey to the diamond fields, Zouga had taken it for granted

 that she would once again remain at her father's home at the Cape, to

 guard her failing health and to care for their two boys, fruit of the

 only pregnancies which she had succeeded in bringing to full term.

 However, she had suddenly shown an uncharacteristic determination, and

 none of his arguments to make her remain behind had prevailed. Perhaps

 she had some premonition of what was to follow, "I have been alone too

 long," she answered him, softly but stubbornly.

 Ralph, the eldest boy, was old enough by then to ride ahead of the wagon

 with his father and take his shot at the springbuck herds which drifted

 like thin pale brown smoke across the scrubby plains of the wide Karroo.

 Already he sat his rugged little Basuto pony with the panache of a

 hussar and he shot like a man.

 Jordan, the younger boy, would sometimes take his turn at leading the

 fore oxen of the span, or wander away from the wagons to chase a

 butterfly or pick a wild flower; but mostly he was content to sit beside

 his mother on the wagon box while she read aloud from a small

 leather-bound book of romantic poetry, his green eyes sparkling with the

 thrilling sound of the words that he was still too young properly to

 understand and the brilliant Karroo sunlight turning his golden curls

 into an angel's halo.

 It was six hundred miles from Good Hope to the fields, a journey that

 took the family eight weeks. They camped each night on the open veld and

 the night sky was clear and cold and brilliant with white stars that

 shone like the diamonds that they were certain awaited them at the end

 of the journey.

 Sitting beside the watch-fire with his two sons flanking him, Zouga

 would talk in that magnetic compelling tone that had the two small boys

 rigid with attention.

 He spun descriptions of great elephant hunts and ancient ruined cities,

 of graven idols and red native gold in the land to the north, the land

 to which he would one day take them.

 Listening quietly from across the fire, wrapped in a shawl against the

 night chill, Aletta would find herself enchanted with the romantic

 dream, as she had been as a girl, and she wondered again at herself and

 the strange attraction of this intense golden-bearded man who was her

 husband of so many years and still so often seemed a stranger to her.

 She listened as he told the boys how he would fill their caps with

 diamonds, fat glistening diamonds, and then at last they would set out

 on the final journey northwards.

 She found herself believing it all again, though she had long ago

 experienced the first disillusion. He was so persuasive, so vital and

 strong and convincing, that the failures and the frustrations seemed of

 no account, only a temporary check on the destiny he had set for all Of

 them.

 The days rolled by at the leisurely pace of the wagon wheels and became

 weeks, weeks in which they travelled across a great sun-washed plain

 that was furrowed by steep dry watercourses and studded with the dense

 dark-green camel-thorn trees in whose branches hung the enormous

 communal nests of thousands of dry-land weaver birds, each nest the size

 of a haystack, growing until it snapped off the sturdy branch that

 supported it.

 The monotonous line of the horizon was relieved by the occasional low

 hillock, the kopje of the African continent, and the track led them

 directly towards one of these.

 Colesberg kopje. It was only weeks after they had arrived at it that

 Zouga heard the story of how the diamond hillock had been discovered.

 A few miles north of Colesberg kopje the plain was broken by the bed of

 a wide shallow river, along whose banks the trees were taller and

 greener. The trek Boers had called it the Vaal river, which in the

 African Dutch taal means "the grey river", the colour of its sluggish

 waters. From its bed and from the alluvial gravels of the flood plains

 along its course, a small colony of diamond diggers had for years been

 gleaning the odd sparkling stone.

 It was dreary, back-breaking work and after the first rush of hopeful

 diggers only the hardiest had remained.

 These doughty souls had known for years that it was possible to pick up

 an occasional small diamond of inferior quality on the dry ground thirty

 miles south of the river, in fact the surly old Boer named De Beer who

 owned the ground in that area was selling licences to diamond claims on

 his property, although he favoured diggers of his own people and was

 notoriously prejudiced against granting "briefies" to Englishmen.

 For these reasons, and also for the more pleasant living conditions

 along the river, the diggers had not taken too much interest in the "dry

 diggings" to the south.

 Then one day a Hottentot servant of one of the river diggers rendered

 himself blind falling-down drunk with Cape Smoke, the fierce Cape

 brandy, and while in that state accidentally set fire to his master's

 tent and burned it to the ground.

 When he was once again sober, his master beat him with a sjambok whip of

 cured rhinoceros-hide until he was once more unable to stand. When he

 recovered from his treatment, his master ordered him, still in disgrace,

 to go into the dry country "and dig until you find a diamond".

 Chastened and still wobbly on his feet, the Hottentot had shouldered his

 shovel and pack and limped away.

 His master promptly forgot him, until he returned unannounced two weeks

 later and placed in his master's hand half a dozen fine white stones,

 the largest the size of the first joint of a lady's little finger.

 "Where?" demanded Fleetwood Rawstome, the single word all that he could

 choke through a throat suddenly parched and closed with excitement.

 Minutes later, Fleetwood galloped furiously out of camp, a cartload of

 scrapings from the river bed left untreated and his diamond "cradle"

 abandoned halfway through the process of concentrating the heavier

 diamondiferous gravel. Daniel, the Hottentot servant, hung from his

 stirrup leather, his bare feet kicking up little puffs of dust as they

 skimmed the dry earth, and the red woollen cap that was the insignia of

 Fleetwood's party blowing back from his bald head to flap like a flag

 beckoning others to follow.

 Such behaviour instantly precipitated a wild panic amongst the fiercely

 competitive little community of diggers along the river. Within an hour

 a tall column of red dust rose above the flat dry land; a headlong

 column of horsemen flogged their mounts while behind them the Scotch

 carts rumbled and the less fortunate stumbled and slipped in the sandy

 footing as they ran the miles back southwards to old man De Beer's

 barren hard-scrabble little farm on which rose another bald stony little

 kopje, just like ten thousand others, that studded the plains.

 The kopje was that same day in the bleak, dry winter of 1871 named

 "Colesberg" kopje, for Colesberg was Fleetwood Rawstorne's birthplace,

 and De Beer's New Rush came swarming out of the dusty sun-bleached

 distances towards it.

 It was almost dark when Fleetwood reached the kopje, only just ahead of

 his followers. His horse was blown, lathered with sweat and white froth,

 but the Hottentot servant clung to the stirrup leather still.

 Master and servant flung themselves from the heaving staggering animal

 and ran at the slope. Their scarlet caps bobbing above the scrub thorn

 could be seen from a half mile distance, and a hoarse excited cheer went

 up from the ragged column that pursued them.

 On the crest of the hill, the Hottentot servant had burrowed a shaft ten

 feet into the hard earth, a tiny scratch when compared to what was to

 follow. Frantic with haste, casting fearful glances down the hillside at

 the horde that raced up towards him, Fleetwood drove the centre line of

 his claim pegs across the narrow mouth of the shallow prospect shaft.

 Night fell over a battlefield on which brawny diggers cursed each other

 and swung punches and pick-handles to clear the ground and drive their

 own claim pegs. By noon the next day, when farmer De Beer rode across

 from his primitive two-roomed dwelling to begin writing out the

 "briefies", which was taal for "letters", the entire kopje was covered

 with claim pegs; even the flat plain for a quarter of a mile below the

 slopes was bristling with pegs.

 Each claim was thirty feet square, its centre and corners marked with a

 sharpened wood stake cut from a camel-thorn branch. On payment of an

 annual fee of ten shillings to farmer De Beer, the digger received his

 written "briefie" which entitled him to hold and work the claim in

 perpetuity.

 Before nightfall that first day the lucky diggers who had pegged the

 centre of the new rush had merely scratched the stony earth, but had

 turned up over forty stones of the first water; and already horsemen

 were away southwards carrying the word to the world that Colesberg kopje

 was a mountain of diamonds.

 When Zouga Ballantyne's single wagon creaked the last few miles down the

 rutted red earth track towards Colesberg kopje, it was already half

 demolished, eaten away as though by the maggots in a rotten cheese, and

 men still swarmed over what remained. On the dusty plain below it were

 encamped almost ten thousand souls, black and brown and white. The smoke

 from their cooking fires blurred the high china-blue sky with dirty

 grey, and for miles in each direction the diggers had almost denuded the

 plain of the beautiful camel-thorn trees to feed those fires.

 The settlement was strewn about under dirty weatherworn canvas, although

 already some sheets of the ubiquitous corrugated iron had been

 laboriously transported from the coast and knocked up into boxlike

 shanties.

 Some of these, with a fine sense of order, had been arranged in an

 approximation of a straight line, forming the first rudimentary streets.

 These belonged to the "kopie-wallopers", the previously nomadic diamond

 buyers who had until recently roamed the diggings, but who had now found

 it worth their while to set up permanent shop below the crumbling

 remains of Colesberg kopje. According to the infant diamond laws of the

 Boer Free State, each licensed buyer was obliged to display his name

 prominently. This they did in crudely lettered signs upon the little

 iron sweatbox offices, but most of them went further and flew a

 disproportionately large gaudy and fancifully designed flag from a mast

 on the roof to announce to the diggers that the incumbent was in office

 and ready to do business. The flags lent a carnival air to the

 settlement.

 Zouga Ballantyne walked beside the offside lead ox of his team,

 following one of the narrow meandering rutted tracks that ran through

 the settlement. Occasionally the team had to be swung to avoid the

 tailings that had spilled into the track from one of the recovery

 stations, or to avoid a deep morass formed by spilled sewerage and

 washings from the sorting-tables.

 The settlement was densely crowded upon itself, that was the first

 impression that struck Zouga. He was a man of the plains and savannah

 forests, accustomed to long uninterrupted horizons, and the crowding

 jarred upon his senses. The diggers lived within touching distance of

 each other, every man attempting to get as close to his claim as he

 could so that the gravel that he won from it would not have to be

 carried too far to the place where he would process it.

 Zouga had hoped to find an open space upon which to outspan his wagon

 and erect the big bell tent, but there was no open space within a

 quarter of a mile of the kopje.

 . He glanced back at Aletta on the box. She was sitting very still,

 moving only as the wagon jolted, looking straight ahead as though

 oblivious of the almost naked men, many wearing merely a scrap of trade

 cloth about the loins, who milled the crunchy lumps of yellow gravel and

 then shovelled it into the waiting cradles. Swearing or singing as they

 worked, all of them oiled with their own sweat in the cruel white

 sunlight.

 The filth appalled even Zouga, who had known the kraals of the Mashona

 in the north and had lived in a bushman settlement with the little

 creatures who never bathed in their entire lifetimes.

 Civilized man generates particularly loathsome wastes, and it seemed

 that every square inch of the dusty red earth between the tents and the

 shanties of the settlement was covered with a litter of rusty bully beef

 tins, broken fragments of bottles and porcelain that glittered in the

 sunlight, a snowstorm of paper scraps, the decomposing corpses of stray

 kittens and unwanted dogs, the scrapings from the cooking pots, the

 excrement of those too lazy to dig a latrine in the hard earth and

 screen it with a thatch of the silvery Karroo grass, and all the other

 unidentifiable offal and castings with which ten thousand human beings

 without control or sanitary regulations had surrounded themselves.

 Zouga caught Aletta's eyes and smiled at her reassuringly, but she did

 not return the smile. Her lips were set bravely, but her eyes were huge

 and brimming with tears that lapped at her lower lids. Zouga did not

 look back again at Aletta.

 They squeezed past a transport rider who had brought up a wagonload of

 goods from the coast, six hundred miles, and had set up shop from the

 tailboard of his wagon, displaying a sign on which he had chalked up a

 price list: Candles, 1 pound a packet Whisky, 12 pounds a case Soap, 5

 shillings a piece.the prices were twenty times higher than those

 prevailing at the coast.

 De Beer's New Rush was probably at that moment the most expensive spot

 on the surface of the globe. The remaining sovereigns in the wide

 leather money-belt around Zouga's waist seemed suddenly feather light.

 By noon that day they had found space to outspan the wagon on the

 periphery of the huge circular encampment. While Jan Cheroot, Zouga's

 Hottentot retainer, drove the cattle away to find grazing and water,

 Zouga hurriedly erected the heavy canvas tent, Aletta and the boys

 holding the guy ropes while he drove the pegs.

 "You must eat," Aletta mumbled, still not looking at him as she squatted

 over the smouldering cooking fire and stirred the cast iron stew pot

 that contained the remains of a springbuck that Ralph had shot three,

 days before.

 Zouga went to her, stooped and with his hands on her shoulders lifted

 her to her feet. She moved stiffly as an old woman, the long hard

 journey had taken a heavy toll of her frail body.

 "It will be all right," he told her, and still she would not look at

 him, perhaps she had heard that assurance too often. He cupped her chin

 and lifted her face, and the tears broke at last and slid down her

 cheeks, leaving little Funnels through the red dust that powdered her

 skin. The tears angered Zouga unreasonably, as though they were an

 accusation. He dropped his hands and stepped back from her.

 "I will be back before dark," he told her harshly and, turning from her,

 he strode away towards the ruined sillhouette of the Colesberg kopje

 which stood out starkly, even through the stinking miasma of smoke and

 dust that hovered over the camp.

 Zouga might have been a wraith, a thing of air, invisible to human eyes.

 They hurried by him on the narrow track, or remained stooped over mill

 and cradle while he passed, without an inclination of head or even a

 casual glance, an entire community living for one thing only, completely

 absorbed and obsessed.

 From experience Zouga knew there was one place where he might be able to

 establish human contact, and through it glean the information he so

 desperately needed. He was looking for a canteen that sold hard liquor.

 Below the kopje there was an open space, the only one in the camp.

 It was roughly square in shape, bordered by shacks of canvas and iron,

 cluttered with the wagons of the transport riders.

 Zouga selected one of the shacs that grandly announced itself as "The

 London Hotel" and on the same board advertised:

 Whisky 7,"6. Best English Beer 5,"- a schooner.

 He was picking his way across the littered, rutted market square towards

 it when ragged cheers and a bellowed chorus of "For he's a jolly good

 fellow" from the direction of the kopje checked him. A motley band of

 diggers came stamping through the dust carrying one of their number upon

 their shoulders, singing and yelling, their faces brick red with dust

 and excitement. They shouldered their way into the rickety bar ahead of

 Zouga, while from the other canteens and from the parked wagons men came

 running to find the cause of the excitement.

 "What happened?" the question was yelled.

 "Black Thomas pulled a monkey," the reply was hurled back.

 It was only later that Zouga learned the diggers" parlance. A "monkey"

 was a diamond of fifty carats or more, while a "pony" was that

 impossible diggers" dream, a stone of one hundred carats.

 "Black Thomas pulled a monkey." The reply was picked up and called

 across the square and through the encampment, and soon the crowd

 overflowed the rickety canteen so that the frothing schooners of beer

 had to be passed overhead to the men on the fringes.

 The fortunate Black Thomas was hidden from Zouga's view in the crowd

 that pressed about him, everybody trying to draw close as though some of

 the man's luck might rub off onto them.

 The kopje-wallopers heard the excitement, hastily lowered their flags

 and hurried across the square, gathering like carrion birds to the

 lion's kill. The first of them arrived breathless on the fringe of the

 revellers, hopping up and down for a glimpse of the man.

 "Tell Black Thomas that Lion-heart Werner will make an open offer, pass

 it on to him."

 "Hey, Blackie, Lion-arse will go open." The offer changed shape as it

 was yelled through the packed doorway. An "open offer" was firm and the

 digger was free to tout the other buyers. If he received no higher bid

 for his diamond, he was entitled to return and close with the open

 offer.

 Once again Black Thomas was raised by his fellows until he could see

 over their heads. He was a little gypsydark Welshman and his moustache

 was rimmed with beer froth. His voice had the sweet Welsh lilt as he

 sang his defiance: "Hear me, then, Lion-arse the robber, I would

 soonerwhat he proposed to do with his diamond made even the rough men

 about him blink and then guffaw with surprise "-rather than let you get

 your thieving paws on it., His voice rang with the memory of a hundred

 humiliations and unfair bargains that had been forced upon him.

 Today Black Thomas with his "monkey" was king of the diggings, and

 though his reign might be short, he was determined to reap all the

 sweets that it promised.

 Zouga never laid eyes on that stone; he never saw Black Thomas again;

 for by noon the following day the little Welshman had sold his diamond,

 and sold too his "briefies", and taken the long road south on the

 beginning of his journey home to a fairer, greener land.

 Zouga waited in the press of hot sweat-stinking bodies that filled the

 canteen, choosing a man with care while he listened to the voices grow

 louder and the chaff coarser as the schooners went down.

 He selected one who by his comportment and speech was a gentleman, and

 home-bred rather than colonial born. The man was drinking whisky, and

 when his glass was empty Zouga moved closer and ordered it refilled.

 "Very decent of you, old man," the man thanked him.

 He was in his twenties still and remarkably good-looking, with fair

 English skin and silky sideburns. "The name is Pickering, Neville

 Pickering," he said.

 "Ballantyne, Zouga Ballantyne." Zouga took the proffered hand and the

 man's expression altered.

 "Good Lord, you are the elephant hunter." Pickering raised his voice. "I

 say, fellows, this is Zouga Ballantyne.

 You know, the one who wrote Hunter's Odyssey."

 Zouga doubted half of them could read, but the fact that he had written

 a book made him an object of wonder. He found the centre of interest had

 shifted from Black Thomas to himself.

 It was after dark when he started back to the wagon.

 He had always had a strong head for liquor and there was a good moon, so

 he could pick his way through the ordure that littered the track.

 He had spent a few sovereigns on liquor, but in return he had learned a

 great deal about the diggings. He had learned of the diggers"

 expectations and fears. He knew now the going price for "briefies", the

 politics and economics of diamond pricing, the geological composition of

 the strike and a hundred other related facts.

 He had also made a friendship that would alter his whole life.

 Although Aletta and the boys were already asleep in the wagon tent, Jan

 Cheroot, the little Hottentot, was waiting for him, squatting beside the

 watch-fire, a small gnome-like figure in the silver moonlight.

 "There is no fresh water," he told Zouga morosely. "The river is a full

 day's trek away, and the thieving Boer who owns the wells sells water at

 the same price as they sell brandy in this hell-hole." Jan Cheroot could

 be relied upon to know the going price of liquor ten minutes after

 arriving in a new town.

 Zouga climbed into the wagon body, careful not to jolt the boys awake;

 but Aletta was lying rigidly in the narrow riempie bed. He lay down

 beside her and neither of them spoke for many minutes.

 Then she whispered. "You are determined to stay in this," her voice

 checked, then went on with quiet vehemence, "in this awful place."

 He did not reply, and in the cot behind the canvas screen across the

 body of the wagon Jordan whimpered and then was silent. Zouga waited

 until he had settled before he replied.

 "Today a Welshman named Black Thomas found a diamond. They say he has

 been offered twelve thousand pounds by one of the buyers."

 "A woman came to sell me a little goat's milk while you were away."

 Aletta might not have heard him. "She says there is camp fever here. A

 woman and two children have died already and others are sick."

 "A man can buy a good claim on the kopje for one thousand pounds."

 "I fear for the boys, Zouga," Aletta whispered. "Let us go back. We

 could give up this wandering gypsy life for ever. Daddy has always

 wanted you to come into the business." Aletta's father was a rich Cape

 merchant, but Zouga shuddered in the darkness at the thought of a high

 desk in the dingy counting-room of Cartwright and Company.

 "It is time the boys went to a good school, else they will grow up as

 savages. Please let us go back now, Zouga."

 "A week," he said. "Give me a week, we have come so far."

 "I do not think I can bear the flies and filth for another week."

 She sighed and turned her back to him, careful not to touch him in the

 narrow cot.

 The family doctor in Cape Town, who had attended Aletta's own birth, the

 birth of both boys and her numerous miscarriages, had warned them

 ominously.

 "Another pregnancy could be your last, Aletta. I cannot be responsible

 for what may happen." For the three years since then she had lain with

 her back to him, on those occasions when they had been able to share a

 bed.

 Before dawn Zouga slipped out of the wagon while Aletta and the boys

 still slept. In the darkness before first light he stirred the ashes and

 drank a cup of coffee crouching over them. Then in the first rosy glow

 of dawn he joined the stream of carts and hurrying men that moved up for

 the day's assault on the hill.

 In the strengthening light and rising heat and whirls of dust he moved

 from claim to claim, looking and assessing. He had long ago trained

 himself as an amateur geologist. He had read every book that he could

 find on the subject, often by candlelight on the lonely hunting veld;

 and on his infrequent returns home he had passed days and weeks in the

 Natural History Museum in London, much of the time in the Geological

 Section. He had trained his eye and sharpened his instinct for the lie

 of the rock formations and for the grain and weight and colour of a

 sample of reef.

 At most of the claims his overtures were met with a shrug and a turned

 back, but one or two of the diggers remembered him as the elephant

 hunter" or the "writer fellow" and used his visit as an excuse to lean

 on their shovels and talk for a few minutes.

 "I've got two briefies," a digger who introduced himself as Jock Danby

 told Zouga, "but I call them The Devil's Own. With these two hands," he

 held up his huge paws, the palms studded with raised calluses, the nails

 chipped away and black with dirt, "with my own hands I've shifted

 fifteen thousand tons of stuff, and the biggest stone I've pulled is a

 two. That there," he pointed to the adjoining claim, "was Black Thomas's

 claim. Yesterday he pulled a monkey, a bloody fat stinking monkey, only

 two feet from my side peg. Christ!

 It's enough to break your heart."

 "Buy you a beer." Zouga jerked his head towards the nearest canteen, and

 the man licked his lips then shook his head regretfully.

 "My kid is hungry, you can see the ribs sticking out of the little

 bugger and I have to pay wages by noon tomorrow." He indicated the dozen

 half-naked black tribesmen labouring with pick and bucket in the bottom

 of the neatly squared off excavation with him. "These bastards cost me a

 fortune every day."

 Jock Danby spat on his callused palms and hefted the shovel, but Zouga

 cut in smoothly.

 "They do say the strike will pinch out at the level of the plain."

 At this point the kopje had been reduced to a mere twenty feet above the

 surrounding plain. "What do you think?"

 "Mister, it's bad luck to even talk like that." Jock checked the swing

 of his shovel and scowled heavily up at Zouga on the roadway above him,

 but there was fear in his eyes.

 "You ever thought of selling out?" Zouga asked him, and immediately

 Jock's fear faded to be replaced by a sly expression.

 "Why, mister? You thinking of buying?" Jock straightened. "Let me give

 you a little tip for free. Don't even think about it, not unless you got

 six thousand pounds to do the talking for you."

 He peered up at Zouga hopefully, and Zouga stared back at him without

 expression.

 "Thank you for your time, sir, and for your sake I hope the gravel

 lasts."

 Zouga touched the wide brim of his hat and sauntered away. Jock Danby

 watched him go, then spat viciously on the yellow ground at his feet and

 swung the shovel at it as though it were a mortal enemy.

 As he walked away Zouga felt a strange sense of elation. There was a

 time when he had lived by the turn of a card and the fall of a dice, and

 he felt the gambler's instinct now. He knew the gravel would not pinch

 out.

 He knew it sank down, pure and rich into the depths.

 He knew it with a deep unshakable certainty, and he knew something else

 with equal certainty.

 "The road to the north begins here." He spoke aloud, and felt his blood

 thrill in his veins. "This is where it begins."

 He felt the need to make an act of faith, of total affirmation, and he

 knew what it must be. The price of livestock on the diggings was vastly

 inflated, and his oxen were costing him a guinea a day to water. He knew

 how to close the road back.

 By midafternoon he had sold the oxen: a hundred pounds a head, and five

 hundred for his wagon. Now he was committed, and he felt the currents of

 excitement coursing through his body as he paid the gold coin over the

 raw wooden counter of the tin shack that housed the branch of the

 Standard Bank.

 The road back was cut. He was chancing it all on the yellow gravel and

 the road northwards.

 "Zouga, you promised," Aletta whispered when the buyer came to Zouga's

 camp to collect the oxen. "You promised that in one week -" Then she

 fell silent when she saw his face. She knew that expression. She drew

 the two boys to her and held them close.

 Jan Cheroot went to each of the animals in turn and whispered to them as

 tenderly as a lover, and his stare was reproachful as he turned to Zouga

 while the span was led away.

 Neither man spoke, and at last Jan Cheroot dropped his gaze and walked

 away, a slight, bare-footed, bowlegged little gnome.

 Zouga thought he had lost him, and he felt a rush of distress, for the

 little man was a friend, a teacher and a companion of twelve years.

 It was Jan Cheroot who had tracked his first elephant, and stood

 shoulder to shoulder with him as he shot it down. Together they had

 marched and ridden the breadth of a savage continent. They had drunk

 from the same bottle and eaten from the same pot at a thousand camp

 fires. Yet he could not bring himself to call him back. He knew that Jan

 Cheroot must make his own decision.

 He need not have worried. When "dop" time came that evening, Jan Cheroot

 was there to hold out his chipped enamel mug. Zouga smiled and, ignoring

 the line that measured his daily ration of brandy, he filled the mug to

 the brim.

 "It was necessary, old friend," he said, and Jan Cheroot nodded gravely.

 "They were good beasts," he said. "But then I have had many fine beasts

 go from my life, fourlegged and two-legged ones." He tasted the raw

 spirit.

 "After a little time and a dram or two, it does not matter so much."

 Aletta did not speak again until the boys were asleep in the tent.

 "Selling the oxen and the wagon was your answer," she said.

 "It cost a guinea a day to water them, and the grazing has been eaten

 flat for miles about."

 "There have been three more deaths in the camp. I counted thirty wagons

 leaving today. It's a plague camp."

 "Yes." Zouga nodded. "Some of the claim holders are getting nervous. A

 claim that I was offered for eleven hundred pounds yesterday was sold

 for nine hundred today."

 "Zouga, it's not fair to me or the children," she began, but he

 interrupted her.

 "I can arrange a passage for you and the boys with a transport rider. He

 has sold his stock and he leaves in the next few days. He will take you

 back to Cape Town."

 They undressed in darkness and silence, and when Aletta followed him

 into the hard narrow cot the silence continued until he thought she had

 fallen asleep. Then he felt her hand, smooth and soft, touch his cheek

 lightly.

 "I am sorry, my darling." Her voice was as light as her touch, and her

 breath stirred his beard. "I was so tired and depressed."

 He took her hand and held the tips of her fingers to his lips.

 "I have been such a poor wife to you, always too sick and weak when you

 needed someone strong." Timidly she let her body touch his. "And now

 when I should be a comfort to you, I do nothing but snivel."

 "No," he said. "That's not true." And yet over the years he had resented

 her often enough for just those reasons.

 He had felt like a man trying to run with shackles on his ankles.

 "And yet I love you, Zouga. I loved you the first day I laid eyes on

 you, and I have never ceased to love you."

 I love you too, Aletta," he assured her, yet the words came

 automatically; and to make up for the lack of spontaneity, he placed his

 arm around her shoulders and she drew closer still and laid her cheek

 against his chest.

 "I hate myself for being so weak and sickly," she hesitated, "for not

 being able to be a real wife any more."

 "Shh! Aletta, do not upset yourself."

 I will be strong now, you will see."

 "You have always been strong, deep inside."

 "No, but I will be now. We shall find that capful of diamonds together,

 and afterwards we shall go north." He did not reply, and it was she who

 spoke again. "Zouga, I want you to make love to me, now."

 "Aletta, you know that is dangerous."

 "Now," she repeated. "Now, please." And she took his hand down and

 placed it under the hem of her nightdress against the smooth warm skin

 of her inner thigh. She had never done that before, and Zouga found

 himself shocked but strangely aroused, and afterwards he was filled with

 a deep tenderness and compassion for her that he had not felt for many

 years.

 When her breathing had become regular once more, she pulled his hands

 away gently and slipped out of the cot.

 Leaning on one elbow he watched her light the candle and then kneel by

 the trunk that was lashed to the foot of the cot. She had plaited her

 hair with a ribbon in it, and her body was slim as a young girl's. The

 candlelight flattered her, smoothing out the lines of sickness and

 worry. He remembered how lovely she had been.

 She lifted the lid of the trunk, took something from the interior and

 brought it to him. It was a small cask with an ornate brass lock. The

 key was in the lock.

 "Open it," she said.

 In the candlelight he saw that the cask contained two thick rolls of

 five-pound notes, each bound up with a scrap of ribbon, and a

 draw-string pouch of dark green velvet. He lifted out the pouch and it

 was heavy with gold coin.

 "I was keeping it," she whispered, "for the day it was really needed.

 There is almost a thousand pounds there."

 "Where did you get this?"

 "My father, on our wedding day. Take it, Zouga. Buy that claim with it.

 This time we will make it all right.

 This time is going to be all right."

 In the morning the purchaser came to claim the wagon. He waited

 impatiently while the family moved their meagre possessions into the

 bell tent.

 Once Zouga had removed the cots from the tented half of the wagon body

 he was able to lift the planking from the narrow compartment over the

 rear wheel truck. Here the heavier goods were stored to keep the

 vehicle's centre of gravity low. The spare trek chain, the lead for

 moulding into bullet, axe heads, a small anvil, and then Zouga's

 household god which he and Jan Cheroot strained to lift from its padded

 bed and lower to the ground beside the wagon.

 Between them they carried it to the tent and set it upright against the

 far screen of the bell tent.

 "I've lugged this rubbish from Matabeleland to Cape Town and back,"

 complained Jan Cheroot disgustedly as he stood back from the graven

 birdlike figure on its stone plinth.

 Zouga smiled indulgently. The Hottentot had hated that ancient idol from

 the very first day they uncovered it together in the overgrown ruins of

 an ancient walled city, a city they had stumbled on while hunting

 elephant in that wild untamed land so far to the north.

 "It's my good-luck charm," Zouga smiled.

 "What luck?" Jan Cheroot demanded bitterly. "Is it luck to have to sell

 the oxen? Is it luck to live in a tent full of flies amongst a tribe of

 white savages?" Muttering and mumbling bitterly, Jan Cheroot stamped out

 of the tent and snatched up the halters of the two remaining horses to

 take them down to water.

 Zouga paused for a moment in front of the statue. It stood almost as

 high as his head on its slim column of polished green soapstone. Atop

 the column crouched a stylized bird figure on the edge of flight. The

 cruel curve of the falcon beak fascinated Zouga, and in a habitual

 gesture he stroked the smooth stone and the blank eyes stared back at

 him inscrutably.

 Zouga opened his lips to whisper to the bird, and at that moment Aletta

 stooped into the triangular opening of the tent and saw what he was

 doing.

 Quickly, almost guiltily, Zouga dropped his hand and turned to face her.

 Aletta hated that stone image even more bitterly than did Jan Cheroot.

 Now she stood very still. Her arms were filled with a pile of neatly

 folded linen and clothing, but her eyes were troubled.

 "Zouga, must we have that thing in here?"

 "It takes up no room," he told her lightly, and came to take her burden

 from her, place it on the truckle bed, and then turn back to take her in

 his arms.

 "I will never forget what you did last night," he told her, and felt the

 rigidity go out of her body. She swayed against him and lifted her face

 to his. Once again he felt his chest squeezed with compassion as he saw

 the lines of sickness and worry at the corners of her eyes and mouth,

 saw the grey patina of fatigue on her skin.

 He bowed his head to kiss her lips, feeling awkward at such unaccustomed

 demonstration of affection; but at that moment the two boys burst into

 the tent, raucous with laughter and excitement and dragging between them

 a stray puppy on a string, and Aletta broke hurriedly from Zouga's

 embrace and, flushing with embarrassment, adjusted her apron, beginning

 to scold her offspring fondly.

 "Out with it! It's covered in fleas."

 "Oh please, Mama!"

 "Out, I say!"

 She watched Zouga set off into the sprawling settlement, striding down

 the dusty track with his shoulders squared and the old jaunty spring in

 his step, then she turned back to the cone of soiled canvas set on a

 bleak dry plain under the cruel blue African sky, and she sighed. The

 weariness came upon her again in waves.

 In her girlhood there had been servants to perform the menial tasks of

 cooking and cleaning. She still had not mastered the smoky fluttering

 open flames of the camp fire, and already a fine red coating of dust had

 settled upon everything, even the surface of the goat's milk in its

 earthenware jug. With an enormous effort of will, she gathered her

 resolve and stooped determinedly into the tent.

 Ralph had followed Jan Cheroot down to the wells to help with the

 horses. She knew that the two of them would not return until the next

 mealtime. They made an incongruous pair, the wizened little old man and

 the handsome reckless child already taller and more sturdy than his

 inseparable protector and tutor.

 Jordan stayed with her. He was not yet ten years of age, but without his

 companionship she doubted that she could have borne the terrible journey

 across those bonebreaking miles, the burning dusty days and the frosty

 nights of aching cold.

 Already the child could cook the simple camp dishes, and his unleavened

 bread and griddle scones were family favourites at every meal. She had

 taught him to read and write, and given to him her love of poetry and

 fine and beautiful things. He could already darn a torn shirt and wield

 the heavy coal-filled stroking iron to smooth a shirt. His sweet piping

 tones and angelic beauty were constant sources of intense joy to her.

 She had grown his golden curls long for once, resisting her husband when

 he wanted to scissor them short as he had done Ralph's.

 Jordan stood below her now, helping her to string a canvas screen across

 the tent that would divide the sleeping and living areas. She was

 suddenly compelled to lean down and touch those soft fine curls.

 At the touch he smiled sweetly up at her, and abruptly her senses spun

 dizzily. She swayed wildly on the rickety cot, trying to keep her

 balance and, as she fell, Jordan struggled to hold and steady her. He

 did not have the strength and her weight bore them both to the ground.

 Jordan's eyes were huge and swimming with horror.

 He helped her half crawl, half stagger back to the cot and collapse upon

 it.

 Waves of heat and nausea and giddiness broke over her.

 Zouga was the first customer at the office of the Standard Bank when the

 clerk opened the door onto Market Square. Once he had deposited the

 contents of Aletta's casket and the clerk had locked it in the big green

 iron safe against the far wall, Zouga had a balance of almost 2,500

 pounds to his credit.

 That knowledge armed his resolve. He felt tall and powerful as he strode

 up the ramp of the central causeway.

 The roadways were seven feet wide. The mining commissioner, after the

 lesson of the diggings at Bultfontein and Dutoitspan, had insisted that

 these access roads be left open to service the claims in the centre of

 the growing pit. The workings were a mosaic of square platforms, each

 precisely thirty feet square. Some of the diggers, with more capital and

 better organization, were sinking their claims faster than others, so

 that the slower workers were isolated on towers of golden yellow earth,

 high above their neighbouring claims, while the fastest miners had sunk

 deep square shafts at the bottom of which toiled the naked black

 labourers.

 For a man to move from one claim to another was already a laborious and

 often downright dangerous journey: crossing rickety board walks above

 the dizzying shaft of a deep claim, scrambling up high swaying rope

 ladders or down the steps of a pole ladder, lengths of native timber

 lashed together with cross-steps that creaked and gave with a man's

 weight.

 Standing on the crumbling roadway with the workings gaping below him,

 Zouga wondered what would be the outcome if the strike continued to

 great depth. It already required a level head and strong stomach to

 chance the uneven pit, and he wondered again at man's determination to

 accumulate wealth against any odds, in the face of any danger.

 He watched while from the bottom of the workings a leather bucket,

 brimming with broken lumps of the compacted yellow gravel, was hauled

 up, swinging at the end of a long rope, two sweating black men dipping

 and swinging over the windlass, their muscles swelling and subsiding in

 the bright sunlight.

 The bucket reached the lip of the roadway, and they seized it, lugged it

 to the waiting cart with its patient pair of mules, and dumped the

 contents into the halffull body. Then one of them dropped the empty

 bucket over the side of the roadway to the waiting men fifty feet below.

 At hundreds of points along the fourteen causeways the same operation

 was being repeated, endlessly the loaded buckets came swinging up and

 were dropped back empty.

 Occasionally, breaking the monotonous rhythm, the seam of a leather

 bucket would burst showering the men below with jagged chunks of rock,

 or a worn rope would snap and, with warning shouts, the toilers at the

 bottom of the pit would hurl themselves aside to avoid the plunging

 missile.

 There was an impatient humming excitement that seemed to embrace the

 entire workings. The urgent shouted commands between pit and roadway,

 the squeal of rope sheaves, the thudding jar of pick and swinging

 shovel, the rich lilting chorus of a gang of Basuto tribesmen singing as

 they worked, small wiry little mountaineers from the Dragon Range.

 The white diggers, bullying and bustling, scrambled down the swaying

 ladderworks or stood over their gangs on the pit floor, hawk-eyed to

 forestall a "pick-up': the possibility of a valuable diamond being

 exposed by a spade and swiftly palmed by one of the black workers, to be

 slipped into the mouth or other body opening at the first opportunity.

 Illegal diamond selling and buying was already the plague of the

 diggers. In their eyes, every black man was a suspect. Only men with

 less than one quarter black blood were allowed to hold and work claims.

 This law made it easier to apportion blame, for a black face with a

 diamond in his possession was guilty without appeal.

 However, this law could not control the shady white men that hung around

 the diggings, ostensibly travelling salesmen, actors or proprietors of

 infamous drinking canteens but in reality all I.D.B., Illegal Diamond

 Buyers.

 The diggers hated them with a ferocity that sometimes boiled over in a

 night of rioting and beating and burning in which innocent merchants, as

 well as the guilty, lost all their possessions in the flames, while the

 mob of diggers danced about the burning shacks chanting: I.D.B! I.D.B!"

 Zouga moved cautiously out along the crest of the roadway, at times

 pushed perilously close to the edge by a passing cart laden with

 diamondiferous earth.

 He reached the point above Jock Danby's claims from which he had spoken

 to the friendly digger the previous day.

 The two claims were deserted, the leather bucket and rope coils

 abandoned, a pick handle standing upright with its point driven into the

 earth far below the level of the roadway.

 There was a big bearded digger working the adjoining claim, and he

 scowled up in response to Zouga's hail.

 "What you want?"

 "I'm looking for Jock Danby."

 "Well, you are looking in the wrong place."

 The man turned and aimed a kick at the nearest labourer. "Sebenza, you

 black monkey!"

 "Where will I find him?"

 "Other side of Market Square, behind the Lord Nelson."

 The man answered offhandedly without turning his head.

 The dusty pitted open square was as littered with filth as the rest of

 the settlement, and crowded with the wagons of the transport riders and

 the carts of farmers who had come in to sell milk or produce and of the

 water sellers, peddling the precious stuff by the bucket.

 The Lord Nelson was stained red dusty canvas over a wooden frame. Three

 of the previous night's drinkers were laid out like embalmed corpses in

 the narrow alley beside the canteen, while the single bar-room was

 already filling with the early morning customers.

 A pariah-dog sniffed the breath of one of the unconscious drunks, and

 recoiled with shock before slinking away to raid the open drum that

 served as a rubbish bin behind the shack.

 Zouga stepped over the sprawling bodies and gingerly made his way into

 the noisome slum beyond. He had to make half a dozen further enquiries

 until he found Jock Danby's hut. So obsessed were the diggers with their

 own race for the hidden glitter of wealth, and so transient the

 population of the diggings, that a man seemed to know only the names of

 his immediate neighbours. It was a community of strangers, every man

 caring only for himself, completely uninterested in the other human

 beings about him, except in as much as they could either hinder or help

 him in his quest for the bright stones.

 Jock Danby's hut was hardly distinguishable from a thousand others. Two

 rooms built of adobe bricks and covered with thatch and tattered canvas.

 There was a lean-to at one end, with a smoking cooking fire on which

 stood a sooty black three-legged pot.

 In the cluttered dusty yard stood the inevitable diamond sorting-table,

 a low structure with sturdy wooden legs, the top covered with a sheet of

 flat iron which was scoured shiny bright by the diamondiferous pebbles

 that had brushed over the surface. The wooden scrapers lay abandoned on

 the table top, and a heap of sieved and washed gravel formed a

 glittering pyramid in the centre of the table.

 A two-wheeled cart stood in front of the main door of the hut, two

 somnolent donkeys still in the traces, flicking their ears at the

 swarming black cloud of flies. The cart was piled with lumps of yellow

 earth, but the yard was deserted.

 Incongruously there were a few straggling scarlet geraniums growing in

 galvanized one-gallon syrup cans on each side of the doorway. There were

 also dainty lace curtains in the single window, so freshly washed that

 they had not yet turned ochre red with dust, nor become speckled with

 the excrement of the swarming flies.

 The touch of a woman was unmistakable, and to confirm Zouga's guess

 there was the faint but harrowing sound of a woman weeping from the open

 doorway.

 As Zouga hesitated in the yard, disconcerted by the sounds of grief, a

 brawny figure filled the doorway and stood blinking in the sunlight,

 shading his eyes with a gnarled and dirt-ingrained hand.

 "Who are you?" Jock Danby demanded, with unnecessary roughness.

 "I spoke to you yesterday," Zouga explained, "up at the pit., "What do

 you want?" the digger demanded, showing no sign of recognition, his

 features screwed up in an truculence and something else, some other

 emotion which Zouga did not immediately recognize.

 "You spoke of selling your briefies," Zouga reminded him.

 Jock Danby's face seemed to swell and turn dark ugly red; the veins and

 cords stood out in his throat as he ducked his head down on the thickly

 muscled shoulders.

 "You filthy bloody vulture," he choked, and he came out into the

 sunlight with the heavy irresistible crabbing rush of a gut-shot buffalo

 bull.

 He was taller than Zouga by a head, ten years younger and fifty pounds

 heavier. Taken completely by surprise, Zouga was a hundredth part of a

 second late in ducking and spinning away from the man's charge. A fist

 like a cannon ball smashed into his shoulder, a glancing blow but with

 the force to send Zouga reeling to sprawl on his back across the

 sorting-table, scattering diamondiferous gravel across the dusty yard.

 Jock Danby charged again, his swollen face working, his eyes mad, his

 thick stained fingers hooked as they reached for Zouga's throat. Zouga

 jack-knifed his legs, drawing himself into a ball, tense as the arch in

 an adder's neck at the moment before it strikes, and he drove the heels

 of his boots into the man's chest.

 The breath whistled out of Jock Danby's throat, and he stopped in

 mid-charge as though hit in the chest with a double charge of buck-shot.

 His head and arms snapped forward, nerveless as a straw-man, and he flew

 backwards, crashing into the unbaked brick wall of the hut and beginning

 to slide down onto his knees.

 Zouga bounded off the tabletop. His left arm was numb to the fingertips

 from the unexpected blow, but he was light on his feet as a dancer, and

 the quick rush of cold anger armed and strengthened him. He closed the

 gap between them with two swift strides and hooked Jock Danby, high in

 the side of his head just above and in front of his ear; the shock of

 the punch jarred his own teeth but sent the man spinning along the wall

 to slump on his knees in the red dust.

 Jock Danby was stunned and his eyes were glazing over, but Zouga jerked

 him to his feet and propped him against the side of the cart, setting

 him up carefully for the next punch. His anger and outrage driving him

 on to revenge that unprovoked and senseless attack, Zouga shifted his

 weight, holding Jock Danby steady with his left hand and pulling back

 the right fist for a full-blooded swing.

 Then he froze. He never threw the punch. Instead he stared

 incredulously. Jock Danby was blubbering like a child, his heavy

 shoulders shaking uncontrollably, tears greasing down the sunraddled

 cheeks into the dusty beard.

 It was somehow shocking and embarrassing to see a man like this weep,

 and Zouga felt his anger swiftly extinguished. He dropped his fist and

 unclenched it at his side.

 "Christ -" Jock Danby choked hoarsely. "What kind of man are you to try

 and make a profit of another man's grief !" Zouga stared at him, unable

 to answer the accusation.

 "You must have smelt it, like a hyena or a fat bloody vulture."

 "I came to make you a fair offer, that's all," Zouga replied stiffly. He

 took the handkerchief from his jacket pocket and handed it to Jock

 Danby. "Wipe your face, man," he ordered gruffly.

 Jock smeared his tears and then studied the stained linen. "You didn't

 know then?"he whispered. "You didn't know about the boy?" He looked up

 and studied Zouga's face sharply and, seeing his answer, he handed back

 the handkerchief and shook his head like a spaniel shaking off the water

 from its ears, trying to steady his reeling senses. "I'm sorry," he

 grunted. "I thought somehow you had learned about the boy, and come to

 buy me out."

 "I don't understand," Zouga told him, and Jock Danby started for the

 door of the shack.

 "Come," he said, and led Zouga through the hot stuffy little front room.

 The chairs covered with dark green velvet were too bulky for the size of

 the room, and the family treasures, Bible and faded ancestral

 photographs, cheap cutlery and a porcelain dish commemorating the

 Queen's wedding to Prince Albert, were on display upon the central

 table.

 in the door of the back room Zouga paused, and felt a sickening little

 lurch in the pit of his stomach. A woman knelt beside the bed. She had a

 shawl spread over head and shoulders. Her hands clasped before her face

 were roughened and reddened by the drudgery of labour over the diamond

 sorting-table.

 She lifted her head and looked at Zouga in the doorway. She might once

 have been a pretty girl, but the sun had coarsened her skin and her eyes

 were swollen and reddened with grief. The wisps of hair that hung lankly

 from under the shawl were greasy and prematurely greyed.

 After that one glance she lowered her head again and her lips moved

 silently as she prayed.

 A child lay upon the bed, a boy no older than Jordan.

 His eyes were closed, his features very pale, bloodless as candlewax,

 but infinitely peaceful. He was dressed in a clean nightshirt, his limbs

 neatly arranged, the hands folded on his chest.

 It took Zouga a full minute to realize that he was dead.

 "The fever," whispered Jock at Zouga's side. He broke off and stood dumb

 and massive as an ox awaiting the butcher's stroke.

 Zouga took Jock Danby's cart down to Market Square and . purchased a

 dozen rough-sawn planks of lumber, paying the transport rider's price

 without haggling.

 In the dusty yard in front of Dariby's shack he stripped to his

 shirtsleeves and planed the raw planks, while Jock sawed and shaped

 them. They worked in silence except for the whicker of plane and saw.

 The rough coffin was ready before noon, but as Jock lifted his son's

 body into it Zouga caught the first whiff of corruption; it happens very

 swiftly in the African heat.

 Jock's wife rode on the battered cart with the coffin and Zouga walked

 beside Jock Danby.

 The fever was ravaging the camp. There were two other carts already at

 the burial ground, a mile beyond the last tents on the Transvaal road,

 each surrounded with a silent knot of mourners; and there were graves

 ready dug, and a grave-digger to demand his guinea.

 On the way back from the burial ground Zouga stopped the cart in front

 of one of the canteens that fronted the market square, and with the

 remaining coins in his pocket he bought three bottles of Cape brandy.

 He and Jock sat facing each other on the over-stuffed green velvet

 chairs, with an open bottle and two tumblers on the table between them.

 The tumblers were embossed with cheery gold letters:

 "The Queen, God Bless Her."

 Zouga half-filled the tumblers and pushed one across to Jock.

 The big man studied the contents of the tumbler, holding it in his huge

 fists between his knees, hunching his shoulders and drooping his head.

 "It was so quick," he muttered. "Yesterday evening he ran to meet the

 cart, and rode home on my shoulder."

 He took a swallow of the dark liquor and shuddered. His voice was husky

 as he went on. "He was so light. No meat on his little bones."

 They drank in unison.

 "There was a jinx on me from the moment I drove my first peg on these

 bloody claims." Jock shook his great shaggy head. "I should have stayed

 on the river-diggings, like Alice told me."

 outside the single lace-covered window the sun was already setting, a

 lurid red show through the dust clouds; and as the gloom gathered in the

 room, Alice Danby came through and placed a smoky hurricane lantern on

 the table between them and followed it with two bowls of Boer-meal

 porridge swimming in a thin and oily mutton stew. Then she disappeared

 silently into the back room and, from time to time during the long

 night, Zouga heard her gentle sobs through the thin dividing wall. In

 the dawn Jock Danby lolled in the green velvet armchair, his shirt open

 to the navel and his hairy stomach bulging out of it. The third bottle

 was half empty.

 "You are a gentleman," Jock slurred unevenly. "I don't mean a swell or a

 toff but a bloody gentleman, that's what you are."

 Zouga sat upright, grave and attentive; except for a slight reddening of

 his eyes he seemed totally unaffected by the night's drinking.

 "I wouldn't want to wish the Devil's Own on a gentleman like you." Zouga

 said quietly, "If you're going, you have to sell to someone."

 "They're jinxed, those two claims," mumbled Jock.

 "They've killed five men already, they've broken me, they've given me

 the worst year of my life. I've seen men on each side of me pull big

 stones; I've seen them become rich, while me --" he made a drunken

 gesture that encompassed the sordid little shack, "look at me."

 The canvas that screened the connecting doorway was jerked aside and

 Alice Danby stood bareheaded beside her husband. It was evident by her

 drawn grey features that she had not slept either.

 "Sell them," she said. "I cannot stay here another day.

 Sell them, sell everything, let's go, Jock, let's get away from this

 dreadful place. I cannot bear to spend another night here."

 The mining commissioner was a dour little magistrate appointed by

 President Brand of the fledgling Boer Free State, who laid claim to the

 diggings.

 Brand was not the only one to have done so. Old Waterboer, the chief of

 the Griqua Bastaards, made cross claim to the and plains where his

 people had lived for fifty years and more. In London, Lord Kimberley,

 Secretary of State for the Colonies, had only just awakened to the

 potential wealth of the diamond diggings, and for the first time was

 listening attentively to the pleas of the Imperialists to support old

 Nicholaas Waterboer's claim and take Griqualand into the sphere of

 British influence.

 In the meantime the Free State mining commissioner was trying, with only

 qualified success, to maintain some order over the unruly diggers. just

 as his roadways were crumbling into the surrounding pits on Colesberg

 kopje, so his authority was eroding before the onrush of events with the

 gathering of national interests and the emergence from obscurity of the

 first powerful figures as the financial aristocracy of the fields.

 Zouga and Jock Danby found the commissioner bewailing his task over a

 liquid breakfast in the bar of the London Hotel and, supporting him by

 each elbow, they escorted him back across Market Square to his office.

 By midmorning that day, the commissioner had copied the details of the

 Devil's Own, claims Nos 141 and 142 held under perpetual quit-rent

 letter, from J. A. Danby, Esq. to Major M. Z. Ballantyne, and noted

 payment in full in the sum of 2,000 pounds by cheque drawn on the

 Standard Bank.

 An hour after noon, Zouga stood at the corner of Market Square, and

 watched the cart piled high with the green velvet armchairs and the

 brass bedstead pull away towards the northern corner of the square. Jock

 Danby led the team, and his wife sat thin and erect upon the load.

 Neither of them looked back at Zouga, and the moment they disappeared

 into the maze of narrow alleys and shanties Zouga turned towards the

 kopie.

 Despite the night of sleep that he had missed, he felt no fatigue, and

 his step was so light that he almost ran out along the narrow causeway

 that intersected the jumble of claims and workings.

 The Devil's Own were deserted, two forlorn patches of raw yellow earth,

 neatly squared off and littered with abandoned equipment. Jock Danby's

 black workers had gone, for there was always a desperate shortage of

 labourers on the diggings. When Jock had not mustered them the previous

 dawn they had simply wandered away to take daily hire with one of the

 other diggers.

 Most of the mining gear left on the claims seemed worn out, the buckets

 on the point of bursting and the ropes furry as fat yellow caterpillars.

 Zouga would not trust them with his own weight.

 Gingerly he climbed down the swaying ladder, his cautious movements

 alerting the diggers on the neighbouring claims that he was an outsider.

 "Those are Jock Danby's briefies, man," one of them shouted a challenge.

 "You breaking the diggers" law.

 That's private ground. You better clear out, and bloody quick, at that."

 "I bought Jock out," Zouga shouted back. "He left town an hour ago."

 "How do I know that?"

 "Why don't you go up to the commissioner's office?" Zouga asked. The

 challenger scowled up at him uncertainly, the level of his claim twenty

 feet below the Devil's Own.

 Men had stopped work along the length of the irregular pit, others had

 lined the causeway high above, and there was an ugly mood on all of

 them, that was broken by a clear young voice speaking in the cadence and

 intonation of a refined English gentleman.

 "Major Ballantyne, that is you, is it not!"And, peering up at

 thecauseway, Zouga recognized Neville Pickering, his drinking companion

 from the first day in the London Hotel.

 "It is indeed, mister Pickering."

 "That's all right, fellows. I'll vouch for Major Ballantyne. He is the

 famous elephant hunter, don't you know?"

 Almost immediately they lost interest and turned away to become absorbed

 once more in their own race to get the buckets of gravelly yellow stuff

 to the surface.

 "Thank you," Zouga called up to the man on the causeway above him.

 "My pleasure, sir." Pickering flashed a brilliant smile, touched the

 brim of his hat and sauntered away, a slim and elegant figure in the

 press of bearded dust-caked diggers.

 Zouga was left alone, as alone in spirit as he had ever been in any of

 his wanderings across the vast African continent. He had spent almost

 the last penny he owned on these few square feet of yellow earth at the

 bottom of this hot and dusty pit. He had no men to help him work it, no

 experience, no capital, and he doubted that he would recognize an uncut

 diamond if he held one in the palm of his hand.

 As suddenly as it had descended upon him, the gambler's elation, the

 premonition of good fortune that awaited him here evaporated. He was

 instantly overwhelmed by his own presumption and by the enormity of the

 gamble he was taking.

 He had risked it all on claims that so far had not yielded a single good

 stone, the price of diamonds was plummeting, the "pool goods", small

 splints of half a carat or less which formed the vast bulk of stones

 recovered, were fetching only five shillings each.

 It was a wild chance, and his stomach slid sickeningly as he faced the

 consequences of failure.

 The sun was almost directly overhead, burning down into the bottom of

 the workings; the air around him wavered with the heat and it came up

 through the leather of his boots to scorch the soles of his feet. He

 felt as though he were suffocating, as though he could not bear it

 another moment, as though he must scramble up out of this loathsome pit

 to where the air was cooler and sweeter.

 He knew then he was afraid. It was an emotion to which he was not

 accustomed. He had stood down the charge of a wounded bull elephant, and

 taken his chance , man to man, steel to steel, on the frontiers of India

 and in the wild border wars of the Cape.

 He was not accustomed to feeling fear, but the waves of panic rose up

 out of some dark place in his soul and he fought to control them. The

 sense of impending disaster crushed down upon him. Under his feet he

 could almost feel the sterility of the baking earth, the barren earth

 which would cripple him at last, and destroy the dream which had been

 the fuel on which his life had run for all these years.

 Was it all to end here in this hot and hellish pit?

 He took a deep breath, and held it for a moment, fighting off the waves

 of blind panic, and slowly they receded, leaving him feeling weak and

 shaken as though from a heavy dose of malarial fever.

 He went down on one knee and took a handful of the yellow stuff, sifting

 it through his fingers, and then examined the residue of dull and

 worthless pebbles. He let them drop and dusted his hand against his

 thigh.

 He had beaten back the engulfing panic, but he was left with a terrible

 sense of despondency, and a weariness that ached in his bones so that he

 hardly had strength enough to climb the swaying rope ladder and his feet

 dragged and scuffed the ochre-red earth of the track, while around him

 the encampment swam and wavered in the heat and dust as he started back

 towards the outspan.

 Above the hubbub of the camp a clear childish voice rang, and Zouga

 lifted the golden beard from his chest, his mood lightening as he

 recognized his son's sweet piping tones.

 "Papa! Oh Papa!" Jordan was racing towards him, wild abandon in every

 frantic pace, his arms pumping and his feet flying over the rutted

 track, while the mass of silken curls flew about his lovely face.

 "Oh Papa, we have searched for you, all night, all day."

 "What is it, Jordan?" The child's distress alarmed Zouga afresh, and he

 started forward.

 Jordan reached him and threw both arms about Zouga's waist, he pressed

 his face to Zouga's coat front so that his voice was muffled and he

 trembled like a frightened little wild animal.

 "It's Mama! Something has happened to Mama! Something terrible has

 happened."

 The delirium of typhoid fever came upon Aletta. in hot grey fog banks

 that blotted out reality and filled her head with phantoms and fantasies

 which cleared abruptly, leaving her too weak to sit upright, but with

 her senses enhanced so that her hot skin was hypersensitive to the touch

 of the clammy flannel against her face and the oppressive weight of her

 clothing threatened to smother her.

 Her vision was sharp and the images enlarged as though seen through a

 fine reading glass. She could study each long curved eyelash that made

 up the dense fringe about Jordan's beautiful green eyes. She could see

 each individual pore in the satiny skin of his cheeks, could delight in

 the texture of his perfectly bowed lips that trembled now with his

 agitation and fear as he stooped over her.

 She was lost in wonder at her son's beauty, and then the roaring started

 in her ears again and the beloved child's face receded, until she was

 looking at it down a long narrow tunnel through the roaring darkness.

 She clung desperately to the image, but it began to turn, slowly at

 first like the wheel of a carriage, then faster still until Jordan's

 face blurred dizzily and she felt herself tumbling down into the humid

 darkness again like a leaf upon the roaring wind.

 Again the darkness opened, a veil drawn aside in some deep place in her

 head, and with joy she sought the boy's face again, but instead she saw

 the falcon high above her.

 It was the bird figure of the graven idol that had always been a part of

 her life since Zouga had come into it. At every cottage, at every

 outspan or room that they had called home for a day or a week or a

 month, that stone idol seemed to have been there with them, silent,

 implacable, heavy with a brooding and ancient malevolence.

 She had always hated that idol, had always sensed the aura of evil that

 surrounded it, but now her hatred and her fear could focus fully upon

 the stone bird that stood tall above the cot on which she lay.

 She cursed it weakly, silently, lying on her back on the narrow, cot,

 the robe she wore clinging damply to her skin with the fever-sweat; and

 she mouthed her hatred at the stone image that towered above her on its

 polished green soapstone column. Again her vision narrowed, became

 concentrated so that the falcon head was her whole existence.

 Then miraculously the blank stone eyes began to glow with a strange

 golden light; they revolved slowly in the sockets of the polished stone

 skull, and suddenly they were looking down at her. The pupils were black

 and glossy, alive and seeing, but cruel and so truly evil that she

 quailed in terror, staring up at the bird.

 The curved stone beak opened, the tongue was sharp as an arrow-head, and

 from its tip was suspended a single perfect ruby drop of blood in which

 a star of light glowed , and Aletta knew it was the blood of the

 sacrifice. The darkness about the bird was filled with moving shadows,

 the wraiths of the sacrificial victims, the shades of the falcon-priests

 dead these thousand years, gathering again to reinforce the powers,

 gathering again to welcome her She screamed, again and again, her terror

 ringing insanely in her own ears, and then firm hands were shaking her

 gently, tenderly. Her vision cleared again, but not completely.

 Everything was dim and blurred, so she screwed up her eyes, still

 panting wildly from her screams.

 "Ralph, is that you?" The strong dark features, already taking on the

 set of manhood, so different from the sweet angel face of his brother,

 were close above her.

 "Don't take on so, Mama., "Ralphie, why is it so dark!"she mumbled.

 "It's night time."

 "Where is jordie?"

 "He is asleep, Mama; he could not keep awake. I sent him to sleep."

 "Call Papa," she whispered.

 "Jan Cheroot is searching for him, he will come soon., "I'm cold."

 She was trembling violently, and felt him draw the rough blanket up

 beneath her chin before she sank back into the darkness.

 In the darkness she saw the shapes of men hurrying forward, pressing

 about her; she caught their urgency, the passion of their terrible

 purpose, and she saw their arms glint in the shadows, the flash of white

 steel, bared and honed for war. She heard the snick of breech-block, the

 rattle of bayonet in the scabbard, and here and there in the press she

 recognized a face, faces she had never seen before but which she

 recognized instantly with a clairvoyant flash of intuition. One was a

 man full grown, bearded, strong, who was her son, riding into war, and

 others, so many others, her blood, her flesh, her bones going forward in

 that awful expectant throng. She was consumed with terrible grief for

 them, but she could not weep. Instead, she lifted her eyes and saw the

 falcon on high, clear in the single brilliant shaft of sunshine that

 pierced the sombre and ominous clouds that rolled from horizon to

 horizon, the dun and terrible clouds of war.

 The falcon hovered on outstretched pinions against the belly of the

 clouds, twisting the cruelly beautiful head to peer down, then the long

 pointed wings folded and the bird dropped in a stoop like the lightning

 bolt, the great talons reaching forward in the strike. She saw them hook

 into living flesh, saw the grimace on the face that she had never seen

 before but knew as deeply as she did her own.

 And she screamcd again. Then strong arms held her, the familiar beloved

 arms for which she had waited so long. She looked up at him. The clear

 emerald eyes so close to hers, the powerful jut of his jaw-line

 halfmasked by the full golden-streaked beard.

 "Zouga," she breathed.

 "I am here, my love."

 The phantoms receded, the terrible nightmare world of her delirium was

 gone, and she found herself in a tent upon a dusty plain beneath a

 half-ruined hillock, and the bright African sunlight through the tent

 opening cut a stark slash of white light across the powdered red dust

 floor. She was mildly amazed by the swift transition from night to

 noonday, from fantasy to reality, and her mouth and throat were filled

 with the dry chalk of terrible thirst.

 "I am thirsty," she whispered huskily.

 He held the pitcher to her cracked lips, and the coolness and the

 sweetness of the liquid in her throat made her vision swim with delight.

 But immediately afterwards, the memory of the nightmares assailed her

 and she darted a fearful glance across the tent at the silent statue. It

 seemed suddenly harmless, insignificant, the image blind and dumb, but a

 flicker of the night's terror remained.

 "Beware the falcon," she whispered, and she saw in his green eyes that

 he thought her words were still fever ravings. She wanted to convince

 him but she was terribly, deadly tired, and she closed her eyes and

 slept in his arms.

 When she awoke, the sun's rays had mellowed to a glorious orange light

 that filled the whole tent and lit little stars in Zouga's beard and

 curls. She was filled with a deep sense of peace. His arms were so

 strong, so all encompassing.

 "Look after my babies," she said softly, but very clearly, and then she

 died.

 Aletta's grave was just another mound of red dirt in the long, neat row

 of freshly turned mounds.

 After he had buried her, Zouga sent the boys back to the outspan with

 Jan Cheroot. Jordan was weeping inconsolably, his lovely face smudged

 with grief. Ralph sat behind his brother on the back of the gaunt bay

 gelding, holding the smaller child with both arms clasped about his

 waist. Ralph was silent, stoic, but his body was rigid with controlled

 emotion, and his eyes, the same clear deep green of his father's,

 smouldered with unexpressed grief.

 Jan Cheroot led the bay, and the two boys seemed as frail and forlorn as

 swallows left on a fence rail long after the others had flown the

 oncoming winter.

 Zouga stood beside the grave with military bearing, as expressionless as

 his elder son had been, but behind the handsome mask he was stunned by

 his own sorrow and pervading sense of guilt.

 He wanted to speak aloud, to tell Aletta that he was sorry, that he knew

 that he was responsible for this lonely grave so far from her loving

 family and the beautiful forested mountains of Good Hope which he had

 loved so dearly. He wanted to ask for forgiveness for sacrificing her to

 a dream, an impossible grandiose dream. Yet he knew that words were

 futile and the red earth stopped Aletta's ears.

 He stooped and with his bare hand dressed the mound where the earth had

 collapsed at one corner.

 With the first diamond I will buy the headstone, he promised himself

 silently. The red earth had stained under his fingernails, little

 half-moons the colour of blood.

 With a supreme effort he overcame his sense of futility, overcame the

 self-consciousness sufficiently to speak aloud to someone who could not

 hear.

 "I will look after them, my dear," he said. "That is my last promise to

 you."

 "Jordie will not eat, Papa." Ralph greeted him as he stooped into the

 tent, and Zouga felt the leap of alarm swamp his sorrow and his guilt.

 He strode to the cot on which the child lay, facing the canvas wall of

 the tent with his knees drawn up to his chest.

 Jordan's skin was burning hot as the sun-scorched rocks that littered

 the plain outside the tent, and his silken cheeks smeared with tears

 were flushed a furious fever red.

 By morning Ralph was feverish also, both boys tossing and muttering in

 delirium, their bodies hot as two little furnaces, the blankets sodden

 with their sweat and the tent reeking with the carrion stench of fever.

 Ralph fought the fever.

 "Ja, just look at him." Jan Cheroot paused fondly in the act of sponging

 down the robust strong-boned body. "He takes the sickness like an enemy,

 and struggles with it."

 Helping him, kneeling on the opposite side of the cot, Zouga felt the

 familiar glow of pride surface through his concern as he looked down at

 him. Already there were little smoky wisps of hair under Ralph's arms,

 and a darker explosion of curls at the base of his belly; and his penis

 was no longer the little wormlike appendage with a childish cap of

 wrinkled loose skin. His shoulders were squaring and filling with

 muscle, and his legs, were straight and sturdy.

 "He will be all right," Jan Cheroot repeated, and Ralph thrashed out

 angrily in his delirium, his features scowling and dark with

 determination.

 The two men drew the blanket up over him and turned to the other cot.

 Jordan's long thick lashes fluttered like the wings of a beautiful

 butterfly, and he whimpered pitifully, unresisting as they stripped and

 sponged him. His little body was as sweetly formed as his features, but

 clad still in its puppy-fat so that his buttocks were round as apples

 and plump as a girl's; but his limbs were delicately boned and shapely,

 his feet and hands long and narrow and graceful.

 "Mama," he whimpered. "I want my Mama."

 The two men nursed the boys, taking turns day and night, everything else

 neglected or forgotten, an hour snatched here to water and tend the

 horses, another hour for a hurried journey into the camp to purchase

 patent medicine from a transport rider or scramble for the few

 vegetables offered for sale on the farmers" carts. But diamonds were

 forgotten, never mentioned in the hot little tent where the struggle for

 life went on, and the Devil's Own claims were abandoned and deserted.

 In forty-eight hours Ralph had regained consciousness, in three days he

 was sitting up unaided and wolfing his food, in six days they could no

 longer keep him in his cot.

 Jordan rallied briefly on the second day, becoming lucid and demanding

 his mother fretfully, and then remembered that she was gone, began

 weeping again and immediately began to sink. His life teetered, the

 pendulum swinging erratically back and forth, but each time he fell back

 the presence of death grew stronger in the baking canvas tent, until its

 stench overpowered the odour of fever.

 The flesh melted from his body, burned away by the fever, and his skin

 took on a pearly translucent sheen, so that it seemed in that uncertain

 light of dusk and early dawn that the very outline of the delicate

 bonestructure showed through.

 Jan Cheroot and Zouga nursed him in turns, one sleeping while the other

 watched, or, when neither could sleep, sitting together, seeking comfort

 and companionship from each other, trying to discount their helplessness

 in the face of onrushing death.

 "He's young and strong," they told each other. "He will be all right

 also."

 And day after day Jordan sank lower, his cheekbones rising up out of his

 flesh, and his eyes receding into deep cavities the colour of old

 bruises.

 Exhausted with guilt and sorrow, with helpless worry, Zouga left the

 tent each dawn before sunrise to be the first at Market Square, perhaps

 there was a transport rider freshly arrived with medicines in his

 chests, and certainly there would be Boer farmers with cabbages and

 onions and, if he was lucky, a few wizened and halfgreen tomatoes, all

 of which would be sold half an hour after dawn.

 On the tenth morning, as Zouga hurried back to the tent, he paused for a

 moment at the entrance, frowning angrily. The falcon statue had been

 dragged from the tent, and there was a long furrow scraped by its base

 in the loose dust. It stood now at a careless angle, leaning against the

 trunk of the scraggy camel-thorn tree that gave meagre shade to the

 camp.

 The branches of the tree were festooned with black ribbons of dried

 springbuck meat, with saddlery and trek gear, so that the statue seemed

 to be part of this litter.

 There was one of the camp's brown hens perched on the falcon's head, and

 it had dropped a long chalky smear of liquid excrement down the stone

 figure.

 Still frowning, Zouga ducked into the tent. Jan Cheroot squatted beside

 Ralph's cot, and the two of them were deeply involved in a game of five

 stones, using polished pebbles of agate and quartz for the counters.

 Jordan lay very still and pale, so that Zouga felt a lurch of dismay

 under his ribs. It was only when he stooped over the cot that he saw the

 rise and fall of Jordan's chest and caught the faint whisper of his

 breathing.

 "Did you move the stone falcon?"

 Jan Cheroot grunted without looking up from the shiny stones. "It seemed

 to trouble Jordie. He woke up crying again, and kept calling to it."

 Zouga would have taken it further, but suddenly it did not seem worth

 the effort. He was so tired and dispirited.

 He would bring the statue back into the tent later, he decided.

 "There are a few sweet potatoes, nothing else," he grunted as he took up

 the vigil beside Jordan's cot.

 Jan Cheroot made a stew of dried beans and mutton, and mashed this with

 the boiled potatoes. It was an unappetizing mess, but that evening, for

 the first time, Jordan did not roll his head away from the proffered

 spoon, and after that his recovery was startlingly swift.

 He asked only once more after Aletta, when he and Zouga were alone in

 the tent.

 "Has she gone to heaven, Papa?"

 "Yes." The certainty in Zouga's tone seemed to reassure him.

 "Will she be one of God's angels?"

 "Yes, Jordie, and from now on she will always be there , watching over

 you."

 The child thought about that seriously and then nodded contentedly, and

 the next day he seemed strong enough for Zouga to leave him in Ralph's

 charge while he and Jan Cheroot went up to the kopje and walked out

 along number 6 Roadway to look down on the Devil's Own claims.

 All the mining equipment, shovels and picks, buckets and ropes, sheave

 wheels and pulleys had been stolen.

 At the prices the transport riders were charging it would cost a hundred

 guineas to replace them.

 "We will need men," Zouga said.

 "What will you do when you have them?" Jan Cheroot asked.

 "Dig the stuff out."

 "And then?" the little Hottentot demanded with a malicious gleam in his

 dark eyes, his features wrinkled as a sour windfallen apple. "What do

 you then?" he insisted.

 "I intend to find out," Zouga replied grimly. "We have wasted enough

 time here already."

 "My dear fellow," Neville Pickering gave him that charming smile. "I'm

 delighted that you asked. Had you not, then I should have offered. It's

 always a little problematic for a new chum to find his feet," he coughed

 deferentially, and went on quickly, "not that you are a new chum, by any

 means, " That was a term usually reserved for the fresh-faced hopefuls

 newly arrived on the boat from "home". "Home' was England, even those

 who were colonial-born referred to it as "home".

 "I'd bet a fiver to a pinch of giraffe dung that you know more about

 this country than any of us here."

 "African born," Zouga admitted, "on the Zouga river up north in Khama's

 land; accounts for the odd name Zouga."

 "By jove, didn't realize that, I must say!"

 "Don't hold it against me." Zouga smiled lightly, but he knew that there

 were many who would. Home born was vastly superior to colonial born. It

 was for that reason that he had insisted that Aletta should make the

 long sea voyage with him when it seemed that her pregnancies would reach

 full term. Both Ralph and Jordan had been born in the same house in

 south London, and both had arrived back at Good Hope before they were

 weaned. They were home-born, that was his first gift to them.

 Pickering glossed over the remark tactfully. He did not have to declare

 his own birth. He was an English gentleman, and nobody would ever

 mistake that.

 "There are many parts of your book that fascinated me.

 I'll teach you what I know about sparklers if you'll answer my

 questions. Bargain?"

 Over the days that followed they bombarded each other with questions,

 Zouga demanding every detail of the process of raising and sorting the

 yellow gravel from the deepening pit, while Pickering kept turning the

 conversation back to the land to the north, asking about the tribes and

 the gold reefs, about the rivers and mountains and the wild animals that

 swarmed upon the plains and in the lonely forests that Zouga had

 conjured up so vividly in Hunter's Odyssey.

 Each morning an hour before the first light, Zouga would meet Pickering

 at the edge of the roadway above the workings. There would be an

 enamelled kettle bubbling on the brazier and they drank black coffee

 that was strong enough to stain the teeth, while around them in the

 gloom the black mine-workers gathered sleepily, still hugging their fur

 karosses over their shoulders, their voices muted but musical, their

 movements stiff and slow with sleepiness and the dawn chill.

 At a hundred other points around the growing pit the gangs assembled,

 waiting for the light; and when it glimmered on the eastern horizon the

 men went swarming down into the workings, like columns of ants along the

 board walks and down the swaying ladders, spreading out on the chequer

 board of claims, the hubbub rising, the chant of tribesmen, the squeal

 of ropes, the hectoring shouts of the white overseers, and then the

 rattle of bucket loads of yellow gravel into the waiting carts upon the

 roadway.

 Pickering was working four claims, which he owned in partnership.

 "My partner is down in Cape Town. Heaven knows when he will be back."

 Neville Pickering shrugged with that deceptively indolent air which he

 cultivated. "You'll meet him one of these fine days, and it will be an

 experience, memorable but not necessarily enjoyable."

 It amused Zouga to see how Neville contrived to maintain his foppish

 elegance of dress, how he could walk the length of the number 6 Roadway

 without the dust hazing the shine of his boots; how he could scramble

 across the ladderworks without dampening his shirt with sweat, or

 exchange a flurry of blows with a brawny digger who was encroaching on

 his claims without it seeming to affect the drape of his Norfolk jacket.

 His casual sauntering gait carried him from one end of the diggings to

 the other, at a pace which had Zouga stretching his own legs.

 The four claims were not in a single block, but each separated from the

 others by a dozen or so intervening claims, and Pickering moved from one

 to the other coordinating the work, pulling a gang of half-naked black

 men from one claim and leading them across to another where the work had

 fallen behind.

 Abruptly he was on the roadway, checking the loading of the carts, and

 then again, just as abruptly, at the fenced-off plot beyond Market

 Square where his black workers were rocking the cradles of gravel.

 The diamond cradles were like giant versions of the old-fashioned baby

 cradles from which they took their name. Standing on their

 half-moon-shaped feet, a man on each side kept them swinging easily from

 side to side while a third worker shovelled the yellow gravel into the

 top deck of the cradle from the mound that the cart had dumped. The top

 deck was a coarse steel sieve, with inch and a half openings in the

 mesh.

 As the cradle rocked rhythmically, the gravel tumbled and bounced across

 the sloping sieve, the finer stuff under one and a half inches in

 diameter dropping through onto the second deck of the cradle while the

 coarse pebbles and waste rolled over under the surveillance of the two

 cradle men, who watched for the highly unlikely flash of a diamond too

 big to fall through onto the second deck.

 A diamond more than one and a half inches across would be the

 fortune-maker, the finder's passport to great wealth, the almost

 impossible "pony" of the diggers' dreams, a stone heavier than one

 hundred carats.

 on the second deck the mesh was much finer, halfinch square, and a

 yellow dust blew away like smoke as the cradle agitated it, while on the

 third deck the mesh was finer still, allowing only the worthless

 tailings to drop to waste, stuff smaller than the crystals of refined

 sugar.

 From the third deck the gravel was gathered with reverential care, and

 this was washed in a tub of precious water, every drop of which had been

 transported thirty miles from the Vaal river.

 The gravel was washed in a circular sieve of the number 3

 mesh, the finest of all. The worker agitating and dipping over the tub,

 muddy to the elbows. Finally the contents of the sieve, cleansed of mud,

 were dumped onto the flat metal surface of the sorting-table, and the

 sorters began picking over it with the flat wooden blades of their

 scrapers.

 Women were far away the best sorters, they had the patience, the manual

 dexterity and the fine eye for colour and texture that was needed. The

 married diggers kept their wives and daughters at the sorting-table from

 the minute the mellow morning light was strong enough until the dusk

 faded each evening.

 Pickering was not lucky enough to have women working his tables, but the

 Africans he had were carefully trained, although never trusted.

 "You would never credit what they do with a good stone to try and get

 away with it. I smile sometimes at what the Duchess would think if she

 knew that the shiner hanging around her neck had been up the tail end of

 a big black Basuto," Pickering chuckled. "Come, I'll show you what to

 look for."

 The wiry little black sorter at the head of the table advertised his

 superior status by his European finery, embroidered waistcoat and Derby

 hat, but his feet were bare and he carried his snuff-horn in the pierced

 lobe of his ear. He vacated his seat at the table cheerfully, and

 Neville Pickering took up the scraper and began to sift through the

 gravel, a few pebbles at a time.

 "There!" he grunted suddenly. "Your first wild diamond, old man!

 Take a good look at it, and let's hope it isn't your last."

 Zouga was surprised. It was not what he had expected, and then his

 surprise was replaced immediately by disappointment. It was a drab

 little chip of stone, barely the size of one of the sand fleas which

 swarmed in the red dust of the camp.

 It lacked the fire and flash that Zouga had expected, and its colour was

 a dingy yellow: the colour of champagne perhaps, but without that wine's

 sparkle.

 "Are you sure?" Zouga asked. "It doesn't look like a diamond to me. How

 can you tell?"

 "It's a splint-chip, probably a piece of a larger stone. It will go ten

 points, that's a tenth part of a carat, and we will be lucky to get five

 shillings for it, but it will pay the wages of one of my men for a

 week."

 "How do you tell the difference between that, and those?" Zouga

 indicated the mound of gravel in the centre of the table, still wet from

 the washing-tub, glistening in a thousand different shades of red and

 gold, anthracite black and flesh pinks, the gaudy show of diamondiferous

 gravel.

 "It's the soapiness," Pickering explained, "the soap texture. You will

 train your eye to it soon, don't bother about the colour, look for the

 soap." He took the stone in the teeth of a pair of wooden tweezers and

 turned it in the sunlight. "A diamond is unwettable, it repels water; so

 in the wet gravel it stands out, and the difference is that soapy look."

 Neville proffered the stone. "There, I tell you what, you keep it as a

 gift, your first diamond."

 They had been hunting for nearly ten days now, and had gradually moved

 farther and farther north.

 Twice they had sighted quarry, small groups, but each time the quarry

 had scattered at the first approach.

 Zouga was getting desperate. His claims were lying abandoned in the New

 Rush workings, the level of the surrounding claims would be sinking

 swiftly, making his more difficult to work and every day increasing the

 danger of rock slide. Those claims had already killed five men. Jock

 Danby had warned him.

 He was lying now, belly down, on a tiny rocky kopje fifty miles north of

 the Vaal river, eighty miles from New Rush, and he was still not certain

 when he could finish this business and turn southwards again.

 Jan Cheroot and the two boys were farther down the slope with the

 horses, holding them in a shallow ravine that was choked with scrub

 thorn. Jordan's girlish tones carried to where Zouga sat, blending with

 the cries of circling birds, and Zouga lowered the binoculars to rest

 his eyes and to listen to his son's voice.

 He had worried about taking the boy on this rough journey, especially so

 soon after that bout of camp fever, but there had been no alterative, no

 safe place to leave him. Once again Jordan's stamina had belied his

 delicate looks. He had ridden hard and kept up well with his brother, at

 the same time recovering the flesh that the fever had burned from his

 body; and in the last days the deathly pallor of his skin had been

 gilded to velvety peach.

 Thinking about Jordan led directly to memories of Aletta, memories still

 so filled with sorrow and raw guilt that he could not bear them and he

 lifted the binoculars again and raked the plain, seeking distraction. He

 found it with relief.

 There was unusual movement far out on the wide plain. Through the lens

 Zouga picked up a herd of a hundred wildebeest, the "wild cattle" of the

 Boers. These ungainly animals, with their mournful Roman noses and

 scraggly beards, were the clowns of the veld. They chased each other in

 aimless circles, nose to earth and heels kicking at the sky, then

 abruptly they ceased this lunatic cavorting and stood snorting at one

 another with wild-eyed expressions of amazement.

 Beyond them Zouga caught a flicker of other movement: until that moment

 it had been hidden by the dust kicked up by the splayed wildebeest

 hooves. Carefully he adjusted the bevelled focus ring of his binoculars,

 and the heat mirage trembled and melted before his gaze, turning the

 movement into a serpentine wriggle that seemed to float above the plain

 on a lake of silver shimmering water.

 ,"Ostriches!" he thought disgustedly. The distant shapes seemed to

 wriggle like long black tadpoles in the watery wavering mirage of

 distance. The long-legged birds seemed to float free of the earth,

 blooming miraculously in the tortured air above the plain. Zouga tried

 to count them, but they changed shape and coagulated into a dark

 wavering mass, their plumed backs bobbing.

 Suddenly Zouga sat up. He dropped the binoculars and polished the lens

 with the tail of the silk bandanna around his throat, then quickly

 lifted them to his eyes again. The grotesque dark shapes had separated,

 the lumpy wriggling bodies fined down, the elongated legs had assumed

 normal proportions.

 "Men!" whispered Zouga, and counted them eagerly, as eagerly as he had

 ever made a first sighting of the huge ivory-carrying grey bull

 elephants in the hunting veld.

 He reached eleven before another layer of heated air intervened and

 altered the distant man-shapes to grotesque unsteady monsters once

 again.

 Zouga slung the binoculars over his shoulder and went down the slope

 with the loose scree rolling under his boots. Jan Cheroot and the boys

 lay in the bottom of the ravine on their saddle blankets, their saddles

 propped behind them as bolsters.

 Zouga slid down the bank and landed between them before they had

 returned from the fairyland that Jan Cheroot had been spinning for them.

 "A good bunch," he told Jan Cheroot.

 Zouga reached down and withdrew the short Martinihenry carbine from the

 leather bucket of Ralph's saddle.

 He levered the breech-block down and checked the weapon was empty.

 "We aren't after springbuck. Don't you load until either Jan Cheroot or

 I tell you," he ordered sternly.

 Jordan was still too little to handle the heavy rifle, but he rode well

 enough to make the encircling sweep with which they would try to close

 the net.

 "Remember, Jordie, that you stay close enough to Jan Cheroot to hear

 what he tells you," Zouga told him, glancing up at the sun as he did so.

 It was well past noon; he would have to move fairly soon, for if they

 could not surround the little band of black men at the first attempt, if

 they did not achieve surprise, then it would be the old time-consuming

 business of spooring them down individually. So far attempts at doing so

 had always been interrupted by the sudden African nightfall.

 "Saddle up," Zouga ordered, and they scrambled to their horses.

 Zouga swung up onto the bay gelding and glared sternly at Ralph.

 "Now you do what you are told, or I'll warm your tail feathers for you,

 young man."

 He swung the horse's head and pointed it down the ravine, while behind

 his back Ralph grinned at Jan Cheroot conspiratorially, his face flushed

 with excitement, and the little Hottentot closed one eyelid briefly but

 kept his flat wrinkled oriental features expressionless.

 Zouga had chosen the kopje with care; from it a ravine meandered out

 across the plain in an approximate east to west direction, and he

 followed it now, slouching in the saddle to keep his head below the

 level of the banks and keeping the gelding down to a walk so as not to

 raise dust.

 After half a mile he removed the wide-brimmed hat from his head and

 raised himself cautiously in the stirrups until his eyes were just above

 the bank, and he darted a quick glance into the north and then

 immediately ducked down again.

 "Station here," he told Ralph. "And don't move until I do."

 They moved on down the ravine, while Zouga placed Jan Cheroot and Jordan

 side by side in a bend of the ravine where the bank had collapsed and

 formed an easy ramp up which they could launch their charge.

 "Keep Jordie close," Zouga cautioned Jan Cheroot, and swung the gelding

 around with the saddlery creaking as the animal turned in the narrow gut

 of the ravine; then Zouga trotted back until he was in the centre. of

 the waiting line, and there he halted and contained his impatience,

 glancing up repeatedly at the lowering sun.

 There would probably not be another chance for many days, and each day

 was vital for those untended claims.

 Zouga jerked the rifle from the leather bucket at his knee, selected a

 cartridge from the bandolier around his waist and slipped it into the

 breech. Then he returned the weapon uncocked to the bucket. It was

 merely a precaution, but he had no means of knowing what manner of men

 those approaching figures were.

 Even if their intentions were peaceable, and their ultimate object

 identical to Zouga's own, yet they would be armed and nervous, so

 nervous that they had avoided the road from the north and were

 travelling over the open veld. They were in company for defence, and

 Zouga knew they would have been harassed often along the way, by black

 men and white: the black men trying to rob and cheat them of their

 meagre possessions, the white men of something infinitely more valuable,

 their right to contract their labour to the highest bidder.

 On the day that Zouga thanked Neville Pickering for his tuition and

 began preparing to work the Devil's Own claims for his personal account,

 he had faced the problem that was already wracking the entire

 sub-continent.

 Only black men could stand the conditions of physical labour in the

 diggings. Only black men would work for a wage that made the diggings

 profitable, and even that beggarly wage was many times more than the

 Boer f armers of the surrounding backveld republics could afford to Day.

 The diamond diggings had denuded the countryside of labourers for five

 hundred miles around; and the Boers resented that as fiercely as they

 resented the nest of adventurers and fortune seekers that the diggings

 supported.

 The diamonds had caused an upheaval in the Boers' traditional way of

 life; not only were the miners threatening the supply of cheap labour,

 which only just allowed a diligent and frugal farmer to eke out a living

 for himself and his family from the savage land, but the diggers were

 doing something else that from the Boer point of view was unforgivable,

 that went against all their deeply held beliefs and threatened not just

 their livelihood but their very physical existence.

 The diamond diggers were paying the black tribesmen with guns. The Boers

 had fought the tribes at Blood River and Mosega, they had stood to the

 laager in ten thousand threatening dawns, the favourite hour of attack.

 They had seen the smoke rising from their burning homesteads and crops,

 they had ridden out on commando on the spoor of their stolen herds, and

 they had buried the pale coipses of their children, the blood drained

 from the frail bodies through the gaping and terrible wounds of the

 assegai. They had buried them at Weenen, the Place of Weeping, and at

 other accursed and abandoned grave sites across the land.

 The payment of black men with guns went against every one of their

 instincts; it flew full in the face of their laws and offended the

 memories of their dead heroes.

 For these reasons Boer commandos from the little backveld republics were

 sweeping the land and patrolling the lonely roads from the north to try

 and prevent the tribesmen reaching the diggings and instead press them

 to work upon the land.

 However, five shillings a week and a musket at the end of a three years"

 contract were a lure that brought the tribesmen, on foot, against a

 hundred hazards, on a journey of hundreds of miles, daring the commandos

 and all else, to reach the diggings.

 They came in their hundreds, but still not enough of them arrived to

 fill those hungry diamond pits. In vain Zouga and Jan Cheroot had ridden

 the workings. Every black man was signed on contract, and jealously

 guarded by his employer.

 Zouga had told Jan Cheroot, "We'll offer seven shillings and sixpence a

 week."

 They signed five men that same day at the higher wage, and the next day

 there were a dozen deserters waiting outside Zouga's camp, eager for the

 new coin.

 Before Zoug2. could sign them, Neville Pickering sauntered up. "Official

 visit, old man," he murmured apologetically. "As a member of the jolly

 old Diggers" Committee, I have to tell you the rate is five shillings

 not seven and six." When Zouga opened his mouth to protest, Pickering

 smiled easily and held up his hand.

 "No, Major. I'm sorry. It's five shillings, and not a penny more."

 Zouga was already in no doubt about the sweeping powers of the Diggers"

 Committee. An edict from the elected body was enforced firstly by a

 warning, then a beating, and finally by the full aggression of the

 entire community of diggers which could end in a burning or even a

 lynching.

 "What do I do for a gang, then?" Zouga demanded.

 "You do what we all do; you go out and find a gang, before another

 digger or a Boer commando grabs them."

 "I might have to go as far north as the Shashi river," Zouga snapped

 sarcastically, and Pickering nodded in agreement.

 "Yes, you might."

 Zouga smiled thinly at the memory of his first lesson in digger labour

 relations, and now he settled his hat firmly and gathered up his reins.

 "All right," he muttered, "let's go recruiting!" And he put his heels

 into the gelding's flanks and went lunging up the bank of the ravine

 onto the open plain.

 The tribesmen were five hundred yards dead ahead, and he counted

 swiftly: sixteen of them, If he could take them all he could start back

 for New Rush in tomorrow's dawn. Sixteen men were sufficient to work the

 Devil's Own, and at that moment they had, for Zouga, the same value as a

 fifty-carat diamond. They were in single file, moving swiftly, the

 trotting gait of the fighting impis of Zulu, no women or children with

 them.

 "Good," grunted Zouga as the gelding stretched out under him, and he

 held him back in an easy canter as he glanced right.

 Jan Cheroot was tearing across the plain, Jordan plugging along in his

 dust fifty strides behind. At this distance Jordan did not look like a

 child; they might have been a pair of armed riders, and Jan Cheroot was

 swinging wide, trying to get behind the little group of men, pinning

 them before they scattered, pinning them long enough for Zouga to get

 within hail.

 Zouga glanced left and scowled as he saw that Ralph was at full gallop,

 leaning low over his horse's neck, brandishing the Martini-Henry rifle,

 and Zouga hoped it was still unloaded, wished that he had specially

 ordered Ralph not to show the rifle, and yet even in that moment of

 anger he experienced a little prickle of pride as he watched his son

 ride; the boy was born to the saddle.

 Zouga checked the gelding again, bringing him down to a trot, giving his

 flank men time to complete the circle, and at the same time trying to

 reduce the dramatic effect of his approach. He knew that they would

 appear to the tribesmen to be an armed commando, their intentions

 warlike, and he tried to soften this by lifting his hat and waving it

 over his head.

 Then suddenly Jan Cheroot was reining in, gesturing to Jordan to do the

 same. They had got behind the band, and opposite them, facing them

 across the wide circle, Ralph was wheeling his filly and bringing her up

 sharply on her hind legs, rearing and shaking out her mane theatrically.

 In the centre the tribesmen had moved swiftly, and with the concerted

 action of trained fighting men.

 They had dropped the rolled bundles of sleeping-mat, cooking-pot and

 leather grain bag that they had been carrying on their heads, and they

 had bunched into a defensive circle shoulder to shoulder, war shield

 overlapping war shield, while above them the steel of their assegais

 flicked little pinpricks of sunlight.

 They did not wear the full regalia of their fighting regiments, the

 kilts of monkey tails, the cloaks of desert fox furs, the tall headdress

 of ostrich and widow-bird feathers they were travelling with weapons

 only; but the shields they presented to the approaching horseman and the

 glint of steel told Zouga all he wanted to know. The shields gave the

 tribe its name, the Matabele, the people of the long shields.

 The little group of men who stood impassively in the sunlight and

 watched Zouga ride up were the finest warriors that Africa had ever

 spawned. Yet they were almost five hundred miles south of the borders of

 Matabeleland.

 "I set for a covey of partridge," Zouga smiled to himself, "and I have

 trapped a brood of eagles."

 A hundred yards from the ring of shields, Zouga reined in; but the

 gelding, infected by the tension, fidgeted under him.

 The long shields were made of dappled black and white oxhide, every

 regiment of the Matabele carried a distinctive shield.

 Zouga knew that black dappled with white was the regimental colour of

 the Inyati, the Buffaloes Regiment, and again he felt a twist of

 nostalgia.

 Once the induna who commanded the Inyati had been a friend; they had

 travelled together across the mimosaclad plains of Matabeleland; they

 had hunted together and shared the comfort of the same camp fires.

 It was all so long ago, on his first visit to the land below the Zambezi

 river, but Zouga was carried back so vividly that it required an effort

 of will to shake off the memory.

 He lifted his right hand, fingers spread in the universal gesture of

 goodwill.

 "Warriors of Matabele, I see you," he called to them, speaking their

 language as fluently as one of them, the words returning to his tongue

 readily.

 He saw the small stir behind the war-shields, the shift of heads with

 which they greeted his words.

 "Jordan!" Zouga called, and the child circled out and reined in his pony

 at Zouga's side. Now the difference in size between man and boy was

 apparent.

 "See, warriors of King Lobengula, my son rides with me." No man took his

 children to war. The ring of shields sank a few inches so Zouga could

 see the dark and watchful eyes of the men behind them; but as Zouga

 pushed the gelding a few paces forward, the shields were immediately

 lifted again defensively.

 "What news of Gandang, induna of the Inyati Regiment, Gandang who is as

 my brother?" Zouga called again persuasively.

 At the mention of the name one of the warriors could no longer contain

 himself, swept aside his shield and stepped from the ring of spears.

 "Who calls Gandang brother?" he demanded in a clear firm voice, a young

 voice, yet with the timbre and inflection of one used to authority.

 "I am Bakela, the Fist," Zouga gave his Matabele name, and he realized

 that the warrior facing him was still a youth, barely older than Ralph.

 But he was lean and straight, narrow in the hips and with muscle in the

 shoulder and arms built up in the games of war. Zouga guessed he had

 probably already killed his man, washed his spear in blood.

 Now he crossed the open ground towards Zouga, his stride lithe, his legs

 long and shapely beneath the short leather kilt.

 "Bakela," he said, as he stopped a dozen paces from the gelding's head.

 "Bakela." He smiled, a brilliant show of white even teeth in the broad

 and handsome Nguni face.

 "That is a name I took with the first draught of my mother's milk, for I

 am Bazo, the Axe, son of the same Gandang whom you call brother, and who

 remembers you as an old and trusted friend. I know you by the scar on

 your cheek and the goid in your beard. I greet you, Bakela."

 Zouga swung down off the gelding, leaving the rifle in the saddle

 scabbard, and, grinning broadly, went to clasp the youth's upper arms in

 an affectionate salute.

 Then, turning with his fists on his hips, still smiling, Zouga shouted

 to Ralph. "Go and see if you can shoot a springbuc or better even, a

 wildebeest; we'll need plenty of meat for tonight."

 Ralph let out a whoop at the command, and provoked the filly with his

 heels, forcing her to rear again and then come down in full run, mane

 flying, hooves pounding as she bore away. Without being ordered, Jan

 Cheroot shook his bony mare into a canter and followed the flying filly.

 The two riders returned in the dusk, and the hunt had gone well. They

 had found rare quarry, a bull eland so old that his neck and shoulders

 had turned blue with age and the swinging dewlap almost swept the dusty

 earth between his stubby forelegs.

 He was as big as a prize stud bull, with a chest round as a brandy cask

 of Limousine oak, and Zouga guessed he would weigh not much under a ton,

 for he was fat and sleek; there would be a tubful of rich white lard in

 the chest cavity, and thick layers of yellow fat beneath the glossy

 hide. He was a prize indeed, and the little band of Matabele drummed

 their assegai against the hide shields and shouted with delight when

 they saw him.

 The bull snorted at the hubbub and broke into a lumbering gallop, trying

 to break away, but Ralph swung the filly to head him off and within a

 hundred yards the bull changed the gallop for a short winded trot and

 allowed himself to be turned back towards the group of waiting men.

 Ralph reined in the filly, kicked his feet from the stirrups and jumped

 easily to the earth, throwing up the carbine as he landed cat-like on

 his toes and seeming to fire in the same instant.

 The bull's head flinched at the shot, blinking the huge shining eyes

 convulsively as the bullet slammed into his skull between them, and he

 collapsed with a meaty thud that seemed to tremble in the earth.

 The Matabele streamed out like a pack of wild dogs, swarming over the

 mountainous carcass, using the razor edge of their war-assegai as

 butchers" knives, going for the tidbits, the tripes and the liver, the

 heart and the sweet white fat.

 The Matabele gorged on fat eland meat, grilling the tripes over the

 coals, threading garlands of liver and fat and succulent heart onto wet

 white mimosa twigs from which they had peeled the bark, so that the

 melting fat sizzled and bubbled over the layers of meat.

 "We have killed no game since we left the forests," Bazo explained their

 ravenous appetites. Though the desert teemed with springbuck herds, they

 were not the type of game that a man on foot, armed only with a stabbing

 spear, could run down easily.

 "Without meat a man's belly is like a war drum, full of nothing except

 noise and wind."

 "You are far from the land of the Matabele," Zouga agreed. "No Matabele

 has been this far south since the old king took the tribe north across

 the Limpopo, and in that time even Gandang, your father, was a child."

 "We are the first to make this journey," Bazo, agreed proudly. "We are

 the point of the spear."

 In the firelight the warriors about him looked up and their expressions

 echoed his pride in their achievement.

 They were all youths, the eldest only a few years older than Bazo, not

 one of them over nineteen years of age.

 "Where does this long journey take you?" Zouga asked.

 "To a wonderful place in the south from which a man returns with great

 treasures."

 "What manner of treasures?" Zouga asked again.

 "These." Bazo reached across the circle to where Ralph leaned against

 his saddle, using it as a pillow, and Bazo touched the polished wooden

 butt of the Martini-Henry that protruded from the gun bucket.

 "Isibamu, guns!" said Bazo.

 "Guns?" Zouga asked. "A Matabele indoda with a gun?"

 His voice mildly derisive. "Is not the assegai the weapon of the true

 warrior?"

 Bazo looked uncomfortable for a moment and then recovered his aplomb.

 "The old ways are not always the best," he said. "The old men tell us

 that they are, so that young men will consider them wise." And the

 Matabele in the circle about the fire nodded and made little sounds of

 agreement.

 Although he was certainly the youngest of the group, Bazo was clearly

 their leader. Son of Gandang he was therefore the nephew of King

 Lobengula, grandson of old King Mzilikazi himself. His noble birth

 assured him preference, but it was clear that he was quick and clever

 also.

 "To earn the guns you covet a man must work hard, in a deep pit in the

 earth," Zouga said. "He must milk himself of his sweat by the calabash

 full every day for three years, before he is paid with a gun."

 "We have heard these things," Bazo nodded.

 "Then you shall have your guns, each of you a fine gun, at the end of

 three years. 1, Bakela, the Fist, give you my word on it."

 it was a custom of the diggings, a ceremony of initiation, that when a

 gang of raw tribesmen arrived at New Rush the established black

 labourers would rush to line each side of the track, most of them

 dressed in castoff European finery as a badge of their sophistication.

 They would jeer their newly arrived brethren: "Behold, the baboons have

 come down from the hills."

 "Nay! Baboons are cunning; these cannot be baboons."

 And they pelted the newcomers with pieces of filth as well as insults.

 Bazo's group were the first Matabele to reach the diggings. The Matabele

 language is almost identical to that of Zululand, and very closely

 associated to the Southern Xhosa. Bazo understood every word of the

 banter, and he gave a quiet but grim order to his little group.

 His men dropped their sleeping-mats and the long shields rattled one

 against the other, the broad bright assegais whispered in the sunlight

 as they were bared, and the taunts and derisive laughter dried on the

 instant, to be replaced with expressions of astonishment and real

 dismay.

 "Man e! Now!" hissed Bazo. The ring of shields exploded outwards, and

 the crowd fled before it in disordered panic.

 From the back of the gelding, Zouga had a grandstand view of the charge,

 and he had no illusions as to the danger of the moment. Even such a tiny

 war party of Matabele amadoda on the rampage through the camp could

 cause chaos and frightful slaughter amongst the unarmed black labourers.

 "Bazo! Kawulisa! Stop them!"he roared, spurring across the front of the

 murderous rank of rawhide shields and steel.

 The erstwhile tormentors ran with their heads twisted backwards, yelling

 with terror and eyes popping. They knocked each other down and the

 fallen grovelled in the dust. A portly black man, dressed in grubby duck

 breeches many sizes too small and a frock coat many sizes too large, ran

 into the side of one of the shacks lining the track, the home of one of

 the less affluent diggers, and the canvas wall burst open before the

 power of his run, the thatch roof collapsed on top of the fugitive,

 covering him completely with a haystack of dried grass and probably

 saving his life, for the point of a Matabele assegai had been inches

 from the straining seam of his bulging breeches at the moment the shack

 collapsed.

 Bazo gave a single blast on the buckhorn whistle that hung on a thong at

 his throat, and the spearsmen froze.

 The charge stopped dead on the instant, and the Matabele trotted back to

 where they had dropped their baggage, all of them grinning with delight;

 as they formed up again, Bazo sang the first line of the Inyati

 regimental war chant in a high ringing voice: "See the war shields black

 as midnight, white as the high storm clouds at noon And the men behind

 him came crashing in with the chorus: "Black as the Inyati bull, white

 as the egrets that he carries upon his back The entry of the little band

 of warriors to the New Rush diggings became a triumphal procession.

 Riding at their head Zouga felt like a Roman emperor.

 Yet not one of the young warriors had ever swung a pick or hefted a

 shovel. Jan Cheroot had to place the tools in their hands, positioning

 their fingers correctly on the handles, all the while muttering his

 disdain of such ignorance. However, they had the knack of it within

 minutes, and the velvety black muscles, forged in war and the training

 for war, changed the mundane tools into lethal weapons; they attacked

 the yellow earth as though it were a mortal adversary.

 Confronted with a wheelbarrow for the first time, two of them lifted it

 bodily and walked away with it and its contents. When Ralph demonstrated

 the correct use of the vehicle, their wonder and delight was childlike,

 and Bazo told them smugly: "I promised you many wonders, did I not?"

 They were a highly disciplined group of young men, accustomed since

 childhood firstly to the strict structure of family life in the kraals

 and then from puberty to the communal training and teamwork of the

 fighting regiments.

 They were also fiercely competitive, delighting in any challenge to pit

 their strength or skill against one another.

 Zouga, knowing all these things, organized them in four teams of four

 men, each named after a bird, the Cranes, the Hawks, the Shrikes and the

 Khorhaans, and each week the team with the best performance in lashing

 the gravel was entitled to wear the feathers of their adopted bird in

 their hair and to a double ration of meat and mealie-meal and twala, the

 African beer fermented from millet grain. They turned the work into a

 game.

 There were some small adjustments to be made. The Matabele were

 cattle-men, their whole lives devoted to raising, protecting and

 enlarging their herds, even if these expansions were often at the

 expense of their less warlike neighbours. Their staple diet was beef and

 maas, the calabash-soured milk of the Nguni.

 Beef was an expensive item on the diggings, and it was with patent

 distaste that they sampled the greasy stringy mutton that Zouga

 provided. However, hard physical labour builds appetites, and within

 days they were eating this new diet if not with relish at least without

 complaint.

 Within those same few days the labour was apportioned and each man

 learned his task.

 Jan Cheroot could not be inveigled down into the workings.

 "Ek is near meerkat nie," he told Zouga loftily, reverting to the

 bastard Dutch of Cape Colony. "I am not a mongoose; I do not live in a

 hole in the ground."

 Zouga needed a trusted man on the sorting-tables, and that was where Jan

 Cheroot presided. Squatting like a yellow idol over the glittering piles

 of washed gravel, the triangular shape of his face was emphasized by the

 scraggy little beard on the point of his chin, by the high oriental

 cheekbones and slanted eyes, each in their spider-web of wrinkles.

 He was quick to pick out the soapy sheen of the noble stones in the

 piles of dross, but there was another pair of eyes sharper and quicker.

 Traditionally the women made the best sorters, but little Jordan proved

 immediately to have an uncanny talent at picking out diamonds, no matter

 what their size or colour.

 The child picked the very first stone from the very first sieveful. It

 was a minute stone, twenty points, a fifth part of a carat, and the

 colour was a dark cognac brown, so that Zouga doubted its integrity. But

 when he showed it to one of the kopje-wallopers, it was a veritable

 diamond and the buyer offered him three shillings for it.

 After that nobody questioned Jordan, instead a doubtful stone was passed

 to him for judgement. Within a week he was the Devil's Own chief sorter.

 He sat opposite Jan Cheroot at the low metal table, almost the same size

 as the Hottentot. He wore a huge sombrero of platted maize stalks to

 protect his delicate peachlike skin from the sun, and he sorted the

 gravel as though it were a game of which he never tired. Competing with

 Jan Cheroot avidly, a high-pitched shriek of excitement signalled each

 discovery, and his neat little hands flew over the gravel like those of

 a pianist over the ivory keyboard.

 Zouga had found a woman to give both Ralph and Jordan their lessons. The

 wife of a Lutheran preacher, she was a plump-breasted, sweet-faced woman

 with irongrey hair swept up into an enormous bun at the back of her

 head. missis Gander was the only schoolmistress within five hundred

 miles, and for a few hours each morning she gave a small group of

 diggers" children their reading, writing and arithmetic in the little

 galvanizediron church at the back of Market Square.

 It was a daily ritual to which Ralph had to be driven by his father's

 threats, and to which Jordan hurried with the same enthusiasm as he did

 to the sorting-table after school was out. With his angelic looks, and

 the intense interest in the written word that Aletta had germinated in

 him, Jordan was instantly missis Gander's darling.

 She made no effort to conceal her preference. She called him

 "Jordie-dear" and gave to him the task of wiping clean the blackboard,

 which immediately made it an honour for which the dozen other children

 in the class would have scratched out his lovely densely-lashed angel

 eyes.

 There was a pair of twins in missis Gander's class. The tough sons of a

 tough out-of-luck digger from the Australian opal fields, they were a

 matched pair, with shaven heads to inhibit the breeding of lice,

 bare-footed, for their father was working a poor claim on the eastern

 edge of the diggings, their braces supporting patched canvas breeches

 over faded and frayed shirts. Henry and Douglas Stewart made a

 formidable pair, acting in complete concert, quick with a cruel jibe too

 soft for missis Gander to hear or a crafty jab with the elbow or a tug

 of the hair too quick for her to see.

 Jordan was natural prey. "Jordie-girl" they christened him, and his soft

 curls felt good between their fingers, and his tears were enormously

 satisfying, especially when they realized that Jordan for some strange

 reason of pride would not appeal to his big brother for protection.

 "You tell Goosie-Gander that I've a belly ache," Ralph instructed

 Jordan. "And that Papa says I am too sick to come to class."

 "Where are you going?" Jordan demanded. "What are you going to do?"

 "I'm going to the nest, I think the chicks may be ready." Ralph had

 discovered a lanner falcon's nest on the top ledge of a rocky kopje five

 miles out on the Cape road. He was planning to take the chicks and train

 them as hunting falcons. Ralph always had exciting plans; it was one of

 the many reasons why Jordan adored him.

 "Oh, let me come with you. Please, Ralph."

 "You're still just a baby, Jordie."

 "I'm nearly eleven."

 "You're only just ten," Ralph corrected him loftily, and from experience

 Jordan knew there was no profit in arguing.

 Jordan delivered Ralph's lie for him in such sweet piping tones and with

 such a guileless flutter of the long lashes, that it never occurred to

 missis Gander to doubt it, and the Stewart twins exchanged a quick

 glance of complete accord.

 There was a latrine at the back of the church, a sentry box of

 corrugated iron, a boxwood seat with an oval cut from it suspended over

 a galvanized steel bucket. The heat in the tiny room was ovenlike and

 the contents of the bucket ripened swiftly. The twins trapped Jordan

 there in the midmorning break.

 They had hold of an ankle each and were standing on the wooden seat, the

 hole between them, and Jordan was dangling upside down, clinging

 desperately to the boxwood seat as they tried to force his head and

 shoulders through the opening and into the brimming bucket.

 "Stamp on his fingers," Douglas panted. Jordan had offered unexpected

 opposition. Douglas had a red scratch down his neck, and they had had to

 pry Jordan's jaws open to release their grip on Henry's thumb. The

 injuries had changed the mood of the twins. They had started out with

 laughter, spiteful laughter, but laughter all the same; now they were

 angry and vicious, their self-esteem smarting as much as their injuries.

 "Shut up, you little sissy," blurted Henry, as he obeyed his brother and

 brought down his horny heel on Jordan's white knuckles. Jordan's shrieks

 of agony and horror and terror reverberated in the tiny iron shed as he

 kicked and fought.

 Against their combined strength, Jordan's wildest efforts were

 ineffectual. His fingernails scratched white splinters from the wooden

 seat, and his shrieks mounted hysterically, but his head was forced

 down. The stench was suffocating, the disgust choked his throat and

 strangled his cries.

 At the moment that he felt the cold wet filth soaking into his golden

 curls the door of the shed was wrenched open and missis Gander's

 motherly bulk filled the opening.

 For a moment she stared incredulously, and then she began to swell with

 outrage. Her right arm, muscled from kneading bread and pounding wet

 washing, flew out in a round open-handed blow that knocked both twins

 flying into a corner of the latrine, and she gathered Jordan up, holding

 him at arms" length. With her flushed face wrinkling at the smell of his

 soaked curls, she rushed out with him, shouting to her husband to bring

 a bucket of precious water and a bar of the yellow and blue mottled

 soap.

 Half an hour later Jordan reeked of carbolic soap and his curls were

 fluffing out again as the sun dried them into a shining halo, and from

 behind the closed doors of the vestry the yells of pain emitted by the

 twins were punctuated by the clap of the Reverend Gander's Malacca cane

 walkingstick as his wife urged him on to greater endeavour.

 Around the whittled remains of Colesberg kopje had grown up a miniature

 range of man-made hillocks. These were the tailings from the diamond

 cradles, dumped haphazardly on the open ground beyond the settlement.

 Some of these artificial hills were already twenty feet high, and they

 formed a wasteland where no tree nor blade of grass grew. A maze of

 narrow footpaths laced the area, made by the daily pilgrimage of

 hundreds of black workers to the pit.

 The shortcut between the Lutheran church and Zouga's camp followed one

 of these footpaths, and in the heat-hushed hour of noon, the labourers

 were still in the workings and the hills were deserted. The sun directly

 overhead threw only narrow black strips of shade below the mounds of

 loose gravel as Jordan hurried along the dusty path, his eyes still

 red-rimmed with weeping the tears of humiliation and stinging from the

 foam of carbolic soap.

 "Hello jordie-girl." Jordan recognized the voice instantly, and it

 stopped him dead, blinking his swimming eyes in the sunlight, peering up

 at the summit of one of the gravel mounds beside the path.

 one of the twins stood silhouetted against the pale blue noon sky.

 His thumbs hooked into his braces, his shaven head thrust forward, his

 eyes with their thin colourless lashes as vicious as those of a ferret.

 "You told, Jordie-girlie," the twin accused flatly.

 "I never told," Jordan denied, his voice squeaking uncertainly.

 "You screamed. That's the same as telling, and now you are going to

 scream again, but this time there isn't going to be anyone to hear you,

 jordie-girl."

 Jordan spun around, and in the same movement he was running with all the

 desperation and speed of a gazelle pursued by a hunting cheetah; but he

 had not gone a dozen frantic paces when the second twin slid down the

 sloping bank, the gravel hissing around his bare feet, full into the

 narrow pathway ahead of Jordan, his arms spread in welcome, his mouth

 twisted into a grin of anticipation.

 They had laid the trap with care. They had caught him in a narrow place,

 where the gravel banks were highest, and behind him the first twin slid

 adroitly down to block the path, keeping his balance on the little

 avalanche of rolling gravel under his bare feet until he hit the level

 pathway.

 jordie-dear," called one twin.

 jordie-girl," echoed the other, and they closed from each side, slowly,

 tantalizing themselves, so that Henry giggled almost breathlessly.

 "Little girls shouldn't tell tales."

 "I'm not a girl," whispered Jordan, backing away from him.

 "Then you shouldn't have curls; only girls have curls."

 Douglas groped in his pocket and brought out a bonehandled clasp knife.

 He opened the blade with his teeth.

 "We are going to turn you into a boy, jordie-girl."

 "Then we are going to teach you not to tell tales."

 Henry brought out his hand from behind his back. He had cut a

 camel-thorn branch, and stripped the bunches of lacy leaves, but not the

 thorns. "We are going to do the same to you as old Goosey-Gander did to

 us. Fifteen cuts each. That's thirty for you, jordie-girl."

 Jordan's gaze fastened on the branch with sickened fascination. It was

 twice as thick as a man's thumb, more a club than a cane, and the thorns

 were half an inch long, each on a little raised knob of rough black

 bark.

 Henry swung it in an experimental cut and it hissed like an adder.

 The sound galvanized Jordan, he whirled and flew at the high bank of

 gravel beside him; it slid treacherously under his feet so that he had

 to use his hands to, claw his way towards the summit.

 Behind him the twins yipped with excitement, like the hunting call of a

 pack of wild dogs, and they raced after him, scrambling up the soft

 collapsing bank.

 Their weight buried them at each pace above the ankles, so that Jordan,

 lighter and buoyant with terror, reached the top of the bank ahead of

 them, and he raced silent and white-faced across the flattened table of

 the summit, opening the gap further.

 Henry snatched up a stone as he ran, a lump of quartz as big as his own

 fist, and he used his own momentum to hurl it. It flew an inch past

 Jordan's ear, and he flinched and whimpered, losing his balance,

 stumbled at the far edge of the dump, and went tumbling down the steep

 slope.

 "Stop him," yipped Douglas, and launched himself over the edge.

 at the bottom Jordan rolled to his feet, dusty and wildly dishevelled,

 his curls bushed out and dangling in his eyes. He wasted a second,

 glancing about desperately, and then darted away along the narrow

 footpath through the gut of the pass between the gravel dumps.

 "Catch him. Don't let him get away." The twins yelled at each other,

 panting with laughter, like two cats with a mouse, and here on the flat

 their longer legs quickly narrowed Jordan's lead.

 He heard their bare feet slapping on hard earth in a broken rhythm close

 behind him, and he twisted his head back over his shoulder, almost

 blinded with his own sweat and dancing curls, his breath sobbing, his

 skin white as bone-china and his huge brimming eyes seeming to fill his

 whole face.

 Henry steadied himself, poised with his right arm held back at full

 stretch and then he threw the thorn stick, cartwheeling it low over the

 ground so that it slammed into the back of Jordan's knees, the thorns

 ripping the soft bare skin, raising deep parallel scratches as though

 from the slash of a cat's claws.

 Jordan's legs folded under him and he went down, sliding on his belly,

 the wind driven from his lungs as he hit the baked earth of the pathway.

 Before he could raise himself, Douglas landed with all his weight

 between Jordan's shoulder blades and shoved his face, cheek down,

 against the ground, while Henry snatched up the thorn branch and danced

 about them, looking for an opening, the branch held in both hands above

 his head.

 "His hair first," gasped Douglas, choking with laughter and his own

 excitement. "Hold his head."

 Henry dropped the cane and stooped over Jordan, grabbing a double

 handful of the fine curls and leaning back against it with all his

 weight so that Jordan's neck was stretched out. Douglas was still

 perched between Jordan's shoulder blades. Pinning him against the earth

 and brandishing the open clasp knife, he told his twin, "Hold him

 still." The fine golden hair was stretched like the strings of a violin

 and Douglas hacked at it.

 It came away in tufts in Henry's fists, some of it cut through, some of

 it torn out at the roots, like feathers from the carcass of a

 slaughtered chicken, and he threw it high in the air, shouting with

 laughter as it sparkled in the sunlight.

 "Now you will be a boy!"

 All the resistance went out of Jordan. He lay crushed against the earth,

 shaken only by his own sobs, and Henry grabbed another handful of his

 curls.

 "Cut closer," he ordered his twin, and then shrieked with shock and

 pain.

 The thin tapered end of a rhinoceros-hide riding whip curled with a snap

 around the seat of Henry's breeches, over the fresh bruises raised by

 the Reverend Gander's Malacca cane, and Henry shot erect clutching at

 his own buttocks with both hands and hopping up and down on the same

 spot.

 A hand closed on the collar of his shirt and he was yanked into the air

 and held suspended, kicking, a foot above the ground, still clutching

 the seat of his breeches that felt as though they were filled with live

 coals.

 His brother looked up from his seat on Jordan's back.

 In the excitement of tormenting the smaller boy, neither of the twins

 had eard or seen the horseman. He had walked his horse around the bend

 in the footpath between the gravel heaps and come across the squirming

 yelling knot of small bodies in the middle of the path.

 He recognized the twins immediately; they had earned quick notoriety on

 the diggings, and it had taken only another second to guess the cause of

 the commotion, to understand who were the attackers and who the victim.

 Douglas was quick to realize the changed circumstances as he looked up

 at his twin, dangling like a man on the gallows from the horseman's

 fist. He scrambled to his feet and darted away, but the horseman turned

 his mount with his heels and, like a polo player, cut backhanded with

 the long rhino-hide sjambok, and the agony of it paralysed Douglas. But

 for the thick canvas breeches it would have opened his skin.

 Before he could begin to run again the horseman stooped in the saddle,

 seized his upper arm and lifted him easily. On each side of the horse,

 the twins wriggled and whimpered with the sting of the lash and the

 rider looked down at them thoughtfully.

 "I know you two," he told them quietly. "You are the Stewart brats, the

 ones who drove old Jacob's mule into the barbed wire."

 ,"Please, sir, please," blubbered Douglas.

 "Keep quiet, boy," said the rider evenly. "You are the ones that cut the

 reins on De Kock's wagon. That cost your daddy a penny, and the Diggers"

 Committee would like to know who set fire to Carlo's tent then," "It

 weren't us, Mister," Henry pleaded. It was clear they both knew who

 their captor was, and that they were truly afraid of him.

 Jordan crawled to his knees and peered up at his rescuer. He must be

 somebody very important, perhaps even a member of the committee he had

 mentioned.

 Even in his distress Jordan was awed by that possibility.

 Ralph had explained to him that a committee member was something between

 a policeman, a prince and the ogre of the fairy tales which their mother

 used to read to them.

 Now this fabulous being looked down at Jordan as he knelt in the

 pathway, with his cheek smeared with dust and tears, his shirt torn and

 the buttons dangling on their threads, while the backs of his knees were

 crisscrossed with bloody welts.

 "This little one is half your size," the horseman said.

 His eyes were blue, a strange electric blue, the eyes of a poet, or of a

 fanatic. "It was just a game, sir," mumbled Henry; the collar of his

 shirt was twisted up under his ear.

 "We didn't mean nothing, Mister."

 The horseman transferred that glowing blue gaze from Jordan to the two

 wriggling bodies in his hands.

 "A game, was it?" he asked. "Well, next time I catch you playing your

 games, you and your father had better have a story for the committee, do

 you hear me?"

 He shook them roughly. "Do you understand me clearly?"

 "Yes, sir "So you enjoy games, do you? Well then, here is a new one, and

 we shall play it every time you so much as lay a finger on a child

 smaller than you are."

 He dropped them unexpectedly to earth, and before the twins could

 recover their balance had cut left and right with the sjambok, starting

 them away at a run, and then he cantered easily along behind them for a

 hundred yards or so, leaning from the saddle to flick the whip at the

 back of their legs to keep them at their best speed. then abruptly he

 let them go and wheeled the horse, cantering back to where Jordan stood

 trembling and pale in the pathway.

 "If you are going to fight, then one at a time is the best policy, young

 man," said the rider and stepped down easily from the stirrup and threw

 the reins over his shoulder as he squatted on his haunches facing

 Jordan.

 "Now where does it hurt most?" he asked.

 It was suddenly terribly important to Jordan that he did not appear a

 baby. He gulped noisily as he fought his tears, and the man seemed to

 understand.

 "Good fellow," he nodded. "That's the spirit." And he drew a cotton

 handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the muddy tears.

 "What's your name?"

 Jordie, Jordan," he corrected himself and sniffed noisily.

 How old are you, Jordan?"

 "Almost eleven, sir."

 The sting of his injuries and of his humiliation began to recede, to be

 replaced by a warm flood of gratitude towards his rescuer.

 "Spit!"ordered the horseman, proffering the handkerchief, and Jordan

 obeyed, dampening a corner of the cloth with his saliva.

 The man turned him with a hand on his shoulder, and with the

 handkerchief cleaned the bloody lines on his legs. It was perfunctory

 treatment, and the man's touch was masculine and ungentle, but Jordan

 was powerfully reminded of his mother by the attention, and that empty

 place inside him ached so that he almost began weeping again. He held

 back the tears, and twisted his neck to watch the man work on his

 injured legs.

 The fingers were square and powerful, but a little uncoordinated. The

 nails were big and strong and even, cut short, with a pearly translucent

 lustre. The back of his hands were covered with fine golden hairs that

 caught the sun.

 The man glanced up from his task at Jordan. His face was fair, the skin

 was smooth-shaven and unblemished except for the small fine moustache.

 His lips were full, high-coloured, sensual. His nose was large, but not

 too large for the big round head and the thick waves of lightbrown hair.

 He was young, probably ten years older than Jordan, though he had such a

 powerful presence, such a sense of maturity and of power seemed to

 invest him, that he appeared much older.

 Yet there was something else about him that seemed to contradict the

 first appearance. The high colour in his lips and cheeks was not the

 flush of health and the open air life. It was a shade hectic, and though

 the skin was unlined, there were the subtle marks of suffering and pain

 at the corners of his eyes and mouth, while behind that penetrating

 gaze, that compelling intensity, there was a tragic shadow, a sense of

 sadness that was perhaps only readily apparent to the uncomplicated view

 of a child.

 For a moment the man and the boy looked into each other's eyes, and

 something twisted almost painfully deep in Jordan's soul, a sweet pang,

 gratitude, puppy love, compassion, hero-worship, it was all of those and

 something else for which he would never have words.

 Then the man stood; he was tall and big built, over six foot in his

 riding boots, and Jordan only reached as high as his ribs.

 "Who is your father, Jordan?" And Jordan was grateful that he did not

 use the diminutive . The rider nodded at his reply.

 "Yes," he said. "I have heard of him. The elephant hunter. Well, then,

 we had best get you home."

 He stepped up into the stirrup and from the saddle reached down, took

 Jordan by the arm and swung him up onto the horse's rump. Jordan sat

 sideways, and as the horse started forward, he put both arms round the

 rider's waist to balance himself.

 Jan Cheroot came hurrying from the sorting-table as they trotted into

 Zouga's camp, and when the rider reined in, he reached up and lifted

 Jordan down.

 "He has been in a fight," the rider told Jan Cheroot.

 "Put a little iodine on his cuts, and he'll be all right. The boy has

 spirit."

 Jan Cheroot was obsequious, almost cringing, far from his usual acerbic

 and cynical self. He seemed to be rendered speechless by the direct and

 startling gaze of the big man on the rangy horse. He held Jordan with

 one hand and with the other lifted the old regimental cap from his head

 and held it against his chest, nodding in servile agreement with the

 orders the man gave him.

 The rider transferred his steady gaze back to Jordan, and for the first

 time he smiled.

 "Next time pick on somebody your own size, Jordan," he advised, took up

 the reins and trotted out of the camp without looking back.

 "You know who that was, Jordie?" Jan Cheroot asked portentously, staring

 after the rider and not waiting for Jordan's reply. "That's the big boss

 of the Diggers" Committee, that's the most important man on New Rush,

 Jordie -" he paused theatrically, and then Announced, "That's mister

 Rhodes."

 "mister Rhodes." Jordan repeated the name to himself, "mister Rhodes."

 It had a heroic sound to it, like some of the poetry that his mother had

 read to him. He knew that something important had just happened in his

 life.

 Every member of Zouga's family and following quickly found his place in

 the work, almost as though a special niche had been reserved for each of

 them: Jan Cheroot and Jordan at the sorting-table, the Matabele amadoda

 in the open diggings, and, naturally there was only one place for Ralph,

 in the diggings with them.

 So they found the stones; they won them from the tiny squares of ground

 in the depths of the growing pit, and carried them to the surface in the

 swinging buckets, and carted them out along the rotten crumbling

 roadways which each day became more dangerous and they washed and sieved

 them, until at last Jan Cheroot or Jordie could pounce upon them on the

 sorting-table.

 Then in the evening there might be three or four of Zouga's Matabele

 workmen waiting under the camelthorn tree beside Zouga's tent.

 "Let me see," Zouga would grunt, and with a deal of showmanship the man

 would unknot a scrap of grubby cloth to display a chip of stone or a

 small transparent crystal.

 These were the "pick-ups" from the claims. As the Matabele handled the

 stuff, shovelling it and emptying the leather buckets, a glitter or

 shine of a pebble may catch their eye, and there was a reward for a

 diamond "picked up" and handed in.

 Most of these "pick-ups" were not veritable diamonds, for they took

 anything that sparkled, or anything pretty and unusually coloured.

 They brought in agate and quartz, feldspar and rock crystal, jasper and

 zircons, and once in a while a diamond; and then for each diamond, large

 or small, clear or discoloured, Zouga would hand over a golden sovereign

 from his dwindling hoard and add the diamond to the contents of the

 little chamois leather drawstring bag that he carried buttoned into his

 breast pocket, and which was under his pillow when he slept at night.

 Then each Saturday morning, while Jan Cheroot and the two boys gathered

 around the camp table under the camel-thorn tree beside the tent, Zouga

 would carefully tip the contents of the leather bag onto a sheet of

 clean white paper, and they examined and discussed the week's recovery;

 and always Zouga tried to cover his disappointment, tried to ignore the

 nauseating bite of worry in his guts as he looked at the tiny,

 discoloured and flawed diamonds which the Devil's Own so reluctantly

 yielded up.

 Then with the chamois bag buttoned into his pocket once again, his

 riding boots freshly waxed and polished by Ralph, his frayed shirt

 collar neatly darned and the buttons replaced by Jordan, and the gelding

 curried to a gloss by Jan Cheroot, Zouga would ride into the settlement,

 putting on the best face he could muster, smoking a cigar to show how

 little he really needed the money, and he would hitch the gelding at the

 door of the first diamond-buyer's galvanized iron shack.

 "The Devil's Own." The first kopje-walloper was a Hollander, and his

 accent was difficult to understand, but Zouga's brave show did not

 deceive him, and he sucked his teeth and shook his head dismally over

 Zouga's offering. "The Devil's Own," he repeated. "It killed five men,

 and broke three others. Jocky Danby was lucky to get out at the price

 you paid him."

 "What's your offer?" Zouga asked quietly, and the buyer prodded the

 scattering of tiny stones.

 "You want to see a real diamond?" he asked, and without waiting for

 Zouga's reply, swivelled his chair" and opened the iron safe on the wall

 behind his desk.

 Reverently he unfolded a square of white paper and displayed the

 beautiful flashing crystal, almost the size of a ripe acorn.

 "Fifty-eight carats," he whispered, and Zouga stared at it with the sour

 acid of envy in the back of his throat. "I bought it yesterday."

 "How much?" he asked, hating himself for the weakness.

 "Six thousand pounds!" said the buyer and carefully refolded the paper,

 placed the diamond back in the safe, locked the thick iron door, hung

 the key on his watch chain and glanced at Zouga's stones.

 "Forty pounds," he said offhandedly.

 "The lot!" Zouga asked quietly. He had sixteen men to pay and feed and

 he needed new rope, and he would have to pay the piratical prices of the

 transport riders for it.

 "The price of pool goods is right down." The buyer shrugged. "Every

 digger south of the Vaal is bringing in rubbish like this."

 Zouga refilled the bag and stood up.

 "I made you that price as a favour," warned the buyer.

 "If you come back later, it will be thirty pounds."

 "I'll take that chance." Zouga touched the brim of his hat and strode

 out into the sunlight.

 The second buyer he visited poured the diamonds into the bowl of the

 diamond balance and then carefully added weights to the other arm until

 the scale was in balance.

 "You should have stuck to elephant hunting," he said, as he wrote down

 the weights and made his calculations in a leather notebook. "The

 diamond market is flooded.

 There is a limit to the number of rich ladies who want to hang baubles

 round their necks, and here on the Vaal diggings we have mined more

 stones in a few years than were found in the six thousand years before

 that."

 "They are using them in watch movements, and tools for cutting glass and

 steel," Zouga said quietly.

 "A fad," the buyer waved his hands in dismissal. "Diamonds are finished.

 I'll give you fifty-five pounds for this lot and that's generous."

 One morning Zouga found Ralph working side by side with Bazo in the

 bottom of the pit, swinging the pick in rhythm with the Matabele chant.

 He stood there watching for a few minutes, saw the shape of mature

 muscle emerging from the soft flesh of childhood, saw the breadth of

 shoulder. Ralph's belly was greyhound slim and the cloth of his

 breeches, that were suddenly many sizes too small, strained over neat

 round buttocks as he stooped to break the point of the pick from the

 compacted yellow earth.

 "Ralph," he called him at last.

 "Yes, Papa." His throat was greasy with sweat, and it had cut little

 runners down through the dust that coated his upper body, fat glistening

 drops clung in the little nest of fine dark curls that had abruptly

 appeared in the centre of his chest.

 "Put your shirt on," Zouga ordered.

 "Why?" Ralph looked surprised.

 "Because you are an Englishman. By God's grace and, if necessary, the

 strength of my right arm you are going to be a gentleman as well."

 So Ralph worked booted and buttoned to the throat beside the naked

 Matabele, and he earned firstly their respect and then their affection

 and friendship.

 From the first day when they had met in the open veld, the Matabele had

 been impressed with his horsemanship, and with the marksmanship which

 had brought down the old eland bull. Now they began to accept him

 amongst them, first in the patronizing manner of elder brothers, then

 gradually on more and more equal terms, until Ralph was competing with

 them in all they did, their work and their sport. He was not yet as tall

 or strong as the Matabele, so he won very seldom; and when he failed or

 was beaten, he scowled until his face darkened and the heavy brows met

 above the big nose.

 "A good sportsman knows how to lose graciously," Zouga told him.

 "I don't want to be a sportsman, I don't want to learn how to lose,"

 Ralph replied. "I want to learn how to win., And he threw himself back

 at the task with fiercely renewed determination.

 It seemed that his strength grew with each day in the diggings, the

 puppy fat was burned away, and he made that final spurt to his full

 height without outstripping his strength. And he learned how to win.

 He began to win the contests with Bazo at lashing gravel, frenziedly

 filling bucket after huge leather bucket so that the yellow dust flew in

 choking clouds. He won one of the dangerous races down the ladderworks

 from the roadway to the bottom of the pit, scorching his palms on the

 ropes and swinging out over the drop to pass another man on the reverse

 side of the ladder, using the pole of a gantry to cross a deep void

 between two claims, running across it upright, like a tight-rope walker,

 without looking at his feet or the hundred-foot drop beneath him. Even

 Bazo shook his head and said "Hau!" which is an exclamation of deep

 amazement, and Ralph stood panting in the bottom of the pit, looking up

 at Bazo, and shouted with triumphant laughter.

 Then Ralph learned to use the fighting sticks the hard way, for this was

 the game the Matabele had played since their first day as herd boys in

 the veld. Before he mastered the art of the sticks he had, perforce, to

 learn how to staunch a bleeding cut in his own scalp inflicted by Bazo's

 stick by plugging it with a handful of dust snatched in the midst of the

 contest.

 A week short of his sixteenth birthday, Ralph beat Bazo for the first

 time. They fought behind the thatched beehive huts that the Matabele had

 built on the open veld beyond Zouga's camp.

 it started lightheartedly, Bazo the instructor, hectoring his pupil,

 executing the weaving steps of the traditional combat with indolent

 grace like a sleepy black panther, a fighting stick held in each hand

 and flourished with studied artistry of movement to form a fluid screen

 from which a vicious cutting attack could be launched with either hand.

 Ralph turned to face him so that they revolved smoothly as a balanced

 wheel, like a pair of trained dancers, and when they taunted each other

 Ralph's repartee was in fluent and colloquial Matabele. He was stripped

 to the waistband of his riding breeches, and his torso, which had at

 Zouga's orders been so long protected from the sun, was creamy pale;

 only his arms and the deep V at his throat were sun dark.

 "I once had a pet baboon," Bazo told him. "It was an albino baboon,

 white as the moon, and so stupid it never learned even a simple trick.

 That baboon reminds me of somebody, though I cannot think who."

 Ralph smiled with his lips only, exposing square white teeth, but the

 black brows were joined above his nose. "I am only surprised that a

 Matabele thought he could teach a baboon, surely it should be the other

 way around."

 Bazo jumped back and hooted, beginning the giya the challenge dance of

 the warrior, leaping high and making the kerries sing in the air until

 they blurred like the wings of a sunbird in flight.

 "Let us see if your sticks are as quick as your tongue," he shouted;

 a-.id then suddenly he was attacking, the song of the fighting sticks

 rising to a shriek as he cut for Ralph's knee, the shriek ending with a

 crack like a rifle shot as Ralph caught it on his guard; and instantly

 Bazo cut with the other hand, for the elbow and, crack again as Ralph

 warded off the blow with his own kerrie.

 The sticks clattered against each other in a rising tempo, and the

 circle of Matabele watchers encouraged them with the deep drawn-out

 Jee!" as a stroke was skilfully countered and turned into a hissing

 riposte to be countered in its turn.

 Bazo broke first, jumping back with a light sheen of sweat turning his

 muscles to black velvet, his chest swelling and subsiding, his chuckle

 only slightly hoarse.

 There should be a pause now, as the combatants circled each other again,

 in that stylized shuffling dance, trading light insults, catching

 breath, stooping to dry their hands in the dust to improve their grip on

 the sticks, but, not this time, for as Bazo broke and jumped back and

 for an instant dropped his right hand, so Ralph went in.

 Even the pretence of a smile was gone from Ralph's mouth. His jaw was

 clenched, lumps of muscles knotted with determination beneath his ears.

 Bazo's right guard had dropped, and his attention had switched to the

 audience of Matabele faces, for whose benefit he was already composing

 the next jibe.

 Jee!" They shouted encouragement and warning, and Bazo tried desperately

 to raise his guard and swivel to face the unexpected attack. He managed

 a touch of stick against stick, just enough to cushion the blow,

 otherwise it would have broken bone. Ralph's kerrie smashed into the

 point of his shoulder, and abruptly it was no longer a game.

 The blow to Bazo's shoulder raised a welt as thick as a finger across

 the muscle, and almost paralysed the arm to the fingertips. So as he

 caught Ralph's next cut he felt the kerrie jerk and turn in his numb

 fingers, almost breaking his grip, and the shock of it was transferred

 into the abused muscle so that he grunted involuntarily, a little grunt

 of agony that seemed only to goad Ralph.

 His sun-dark features were a mask of fighting fury, his eyes cold and

 green, and little droplets of sweat flew from his long black hair with

 the force of every blow that he swung.

 The Matabele had never seen him like this, but they recognized the

 killing madness, for they had themselves all been in battle and killed,

 and it infected them so that they danced and stamped with excitement and

 spurred Ralph with their voices.

 ,"Jee!" they sang, and Bazo fell back, giving ground to Ralph's attack

 as the sticks cracked and rattled. His mouth was wide open now as he

 gasped for air and his throat was a deep pink cavern. Blood ran in a

 thin shining slick down behind his ear, spreading over his straining

 throat and then onto his right shoulder like a mantle.

 A glancing blow above his eye had not opened the flesh, but had formed a

 blister of black blood as large as a walnut under the skin. It hung from

 Bazo's forehead like some bizarre bloodsucking leech, and still the

 blows hissed and cracked about him, thick as tropical rain, falling on

 his guard so that the shock was carried through arm and shoulder and

 jarred his head upon the thick black column of his neck.

 Then another blow went through and the ivory flash of Bazo's teeth was

 dulled with a film of blood that snaked down from one nostril into his

 mouth, and another blow went through, on the line of his thigh, the

 swelling rising instantaneously, the skin stretched glossy and black,

 and almost crippled Bazo who was pinned by the injured leg, and Ralph

 was still attacking, instinctively swinging him against the bad leg so

 that Bazo was slow and clumsy in the turn, and again one of Ralph's

 sticks fluted and thumped into rubbery muscle and Bazo reeled and almost

 went down, recovering with an immense effort, his counter-stroke loose

 and lacking power, so that Ralph spurned it aside and used his point.

 He drove the end of his right-hand kerrie through Bazo's guard, using it

 as though it were a sword rather than a club, and Bazo was not ready for

 it. With all Ralph's weight behind it, the kerrie tore into Bazo's belly

 muscles, up under the heavy ribcage, and the Matabele doubled over the

 blow, one kerrie flying from his hand the other dropping to dangle

 uselessly at his side.

 He dropped on his knees, head bowed to expose the back of his neck, the

 knuckles of his spine standing out between the ridges of hard black

 muscle.

 Ralph's eyes were fastened on the unprotected neck, and they were glazed

 over with the same soapy sheen as an uncut diamond, his movements too

 swift to be anything but instinctive. He threw the kerrie on high and

 shifted his weight from the back foot to the leading foot, and all his

 strength flowed into his back and shoulders as he went into the killing

 stroke.

 "Jee!" roared the watchers, themselves carried beyond the frontiers of

 sanity on the hot wave of fighting madness, crowding forward for the

 death.

 Ralph froze like that, right arm high, his entire body arched like a

 drawn bow, the fallen Matabele at his feet and then slowly the tension

 went out of his limbs and he shook his head with the fumbling

 uncertainty of a man awaking from a nightmare. He looked about him with

 stunned disbelief, blinking his eyes as though to clear them of that

 opaque glittering madness, and suddenly his legs were trembling, unable

 to hold his weight.

 He sank down in front of Bazo, knelt facing him and put out one arm and

 wrapped it around the Matabele's neck, and laid his cheek against

 Bazo's.

 "God," he whispered. "Oh God, I nearly killed you."

 Their blood and their sweat mingled, and both of them were pumping for

 air, their chests heaving, their bodies racked for the precious stuff.

 "Never teach an albino baboon a trick," Bazo spoke at last, his voice

 was husky and unsteady. "He might learn it a little too well.," Then

 they were dragged to their feet by the laughing, hooting Matabele and

 carried to the nearest hut.

 Ralph drank first from the calabash of gruel, thick bubbling millet

 beer, and then handed it across to Bazo.

 Bazo washed the blood from his mouth and spat it on the ground, then he

 drank with his head tilted back, a dozen deep swallows before he lowered

 the gourd and looked at Ralph.

 For a moment they were grave, green eyes holding the gaze of smouldering

 black, and then suddenly they were both laughing, great gusts of shaking

 uncontrolled laughter, so that the men that squatted in the circle about

 them began to chuckle also, and then to laugh with them.

 Still laughing, Bazo leaned across and gripped Ralph's right forearm

 briefly. "I am your man," he said, through his laughter, and through the

 blood in his mouth.

 When Zouga stepped off the ladder in the bottom level of the Devil's

 Own, the heat was already enough to bring out a dark patch of sweat

 between the shoulder blades of his blue flannel shirt. He lifted his hat

 to mop the dewdrops along his hairline and then paused and frowned

 quickly.

 "Ralph!" he snapped, and his son sank the pickhead into the yellow

 gravel, let it stand like that and then straightened with his hands on

 his hips.

 "Just what do you think you are doing?" Zouga demanded.

 "I've worked out a new way of doing it," Ralph told him. "First Bazo's

 gang breaks rock, then Wengi comes along behind and,"

 "You know what I'm talking about." Zouga cut in impatiently. "It's

 Monday; you are supposed to be at school."

 "I'm sixteen now," Ralph told him. "And besides, I know how to read and

 to write."

 "Don't you think you might have mentioned your decision," Zouga asked

 with deceptive mildness, "if only in passing?"

 "You were busy, Papa, I didn't want to worry you with something so

 unimportant. You've got enough to worry about without that."

 . Zouga hesitated. Was that just his usual clever twisting, or did Ralph

 truly realize how finely stretched they were, just how much Zouga truly

 did have to worry about?

 Ralph sensed his advantage. "We need every pair of hands we can get, and

 these are free." He held them up, and Zouga noticed for the first time

 that they were powerful and broad with yellow callouses on the palms.

 "Just what is this new idea of yours?" Zouga's scowl smoothed away, and

 Ralph grinned as he realized that he was no longer a schoolboy; and he

 began to explain, gesturing with spread hands while Zouga nodded.

 "All right," he said at last. "It makes sense. We'll try it., Zouga

 turned and walked away, and Ralph spat on his hands and shouted in

 Matabele.

 "Come on, you are not a bunch of women hoeing for yams; let's break

 ground."

 On Claim number 183 an American digger named Calvin Hine hit an

 enrichment, a tiny pocket, and in a single bucket he took out two

 hundred and sixteen diamonds, the biggest over twenty carats. In a

 stroke he was transformed from a ragged, bearded sun-blackened beggar

 grovelling in the yellow dust into a rich man.

 Calvin was there that night when Diamond Lil climbed up onto the wooden

 counter of her grog-shop, with her ostrich feathers swirling and her

 sequins aglitter in the lamplight. She asked in Cockney that chimed like

 Bow Bells: "Will some sporting gent name me a price for these fancy

 goods?" and squeezed out her own big round breasts between painted red

 fingertips, so that they bulged over the top of her crimson velvet

 bodice, the skin smoother than the velvet and the big pink coin of a

 nipple coming up like the dawn over the horizon of her neckline.

 "Come on, dearies, one night of paradise, one little glimpse of heaven,

 me loves."

 "Termer, Lil darling. Ten iron men," shouted a digger at the back of the

 bar, and Lil turned and flipped up the back of her skirts at him.

 "Shame on you, for a mean little man," she chided him over her white

 shoulder; and the laced and beribboned pantaloons beneath her rustling

 skirts had no crotch to them, so for a fleeting part of a second they

 saw what she was selling, and bellowed like trek-oxen five days in the

 desert when they smell the waterhole.

 U1, my beauty." Calvin climbed unsteadily onto the packing case that

 acted as a table. He had been drinking since noon when he left the

 kopje-walloper's office. "Lily, the moon of my soul," he crooned, "every

 night for a year and more I dreamed of this moment."

 He dug into the back pocket of his coat and held up a fistful of

 crumpled five-pound notes.

 . "I don't know how much that is," he blurted, "but it's yours."

 For a moment Lily's plucked and pencilled eyebrows contracted as she

 made a rapid calculation of the proffered wad of banknotes; and then she

 smiled so that the tiny diamond set in her front tooth sparkled like the

 evening star.

 "You beautiful boy," she sang. "Tonight I am your bride.

 Take me in your arms, my lover."

 The next day someone took a thirty carat stone on the eastern section, a

 lovely white stone of the first water, and the day after that a huge

 champagne-coloured diamond came from Neville Pickering's block.

 "You'll be leaving now?" Zouga asked him when they met on the roadway

 above the Devil's Own, and he hoped that the envy did not show in his

 smile.

 "No." Pickering shook his head, and answered with his own charming sunny

 smile. "I always bet on a winning streak. My partner and I are staying

 in the game."

 It seemed that the diamond god was intent on showering sudden largesse

 on the New Rush, and a fever of expectation and excitement gripped them

 all so that the great pit at noon sounded like a hive of wild bees when

 the acacia forests are in yellow bloom. Three great finds in three days;

 nobody had seen it happen before.

 At night around the camp fires, and in the lantern-lit grog-shops and

 canteens, the wild theories were aired by dusty diggers drunk on bad

 liquor and reborn hope.

 "It's a stratal enrichment," pontificated one. "It's a layer of fat

 babies right across the kopje. You mark my words, somebody will take a

 pony before the week is out."

 "Hell no," argued another. "The stones are lying in potholes. Some lucky

 bastard is going to scoop the pot again, like Calvin's two one six or

 Pickering's monkey."

 Thursday night of the crazy week it rained. Here on the fringes of the

 Kalahari desert the rainfall was less than twenty inches a year.

 They had almost half of that on that single night.

 The rain was a slanting curtain of silver arrow shafts in the brilliant

 crackling blue flare of the lighting. The clouds piled to the heavens

 banged against one another like fighting bulls, mountainous in the

 lightning bursts, and the thunder jarred the earth while the rain hissed

 down.

 In the dawn it was still raining, and at another time the diggers might

 have stayed out of the pit and waited for it to dry out. But not on this

 day, not with the fierce excitement that gripped the entire settlement.

 That day nothing would keep them out of the pit.

 The diggings were greasy with yellow mud. The lowest claims were knee

 deep with the insidious clinging stuff.

 It coated the bare legs of the black workmen to the thigh; it built up

 in mud bricks on the boots of the white overseers, weighing them down

 like convicts shackled to a ball and chain.

 The thick red mud on the roadways clogged the wheels of the gravel carts

 and had to be prised clear with the point of a crowbar. They shovelled

 the slush into the buckets and as they were hoisted the thin watery mud

 cascaded down on the men below, so that it was no longer possible to

 tell black man from white behind their slick and glistening yellow

 masks.

 What none of the men in the workings realized was that, apart from the

 discomfort and filth that the downpour of the night's thunderstorms had

 brought to the pit, they had created a less obvious but infinitely

 graver change in the riddled remains of Colesberg kopje.

 The rushing rivulets had found a fissure at the neck of number 6 Roadway

 and had poured into it, carving and cutting and weakening; and the slimy

 yellow mud had hidden the deep vertical cracks in the hundred-foot high

 earthen embankment.

 There were sixteen mule carts crowded onto the causeway, most of them

 fully laden with the first load of the morning, the drivers swearing at

 each other, the long trek whips firing explosively as they tried to

 clear a path to get their load out to the waiting cradles.

 Down on the Devil's Own the Matabele teams were working side by side,

 but the icy sting of the rain on bare shoulders and backs slowed the

 swing of the picks, and at each forward pace they slithered and slipped

 in the treacherous footing. The work chant sounded like a dirge; Zouga

 snarled at them to keep them moving and the mood was ugly.

 Up on the roadway an overladen gravel cart began to slide sideways in

 the mud, and the wheeler mule was pulled down on his knees, unable to

 hold it. The off wheel dropped over the edge, and the cart sagged

 drunkenly and then hung out over the pit. The team slewed across the

 narrow causeway in tangled traces while the unequal weight of gravel

 snapped the outer axle of the cart. Zouga's cart was directly behind the

 stranded team, facing in the same direction, and Ralph jumped down off

 the driver's seat and shouted furiously.

 "You damned fool, you've jammed us in."

 "You cheeky puppy," the driver of the bogged-down vehicle yelled back.

 "You need a lick of the whip across your backside."

 Immediately half a dozen diggers were joining in, taking sides, shouting

 advice or abuse.

 "Cut the traces, get those bloody animals off the roadway."

 "Dump the gravel out, you're overloaded."

 "You don't touch my rig," yelled the driver of the stricken cart. Ralph

 had drawn the sheath knife from his belt and run forward.

 "That's the ticket, Ralph."

 "That little brighter needs a lesson."

 Men and vehicles and mud-smeared beasts formed an angry, unstable knot

 at the top of the high earthen wall.

 In the bottom of the diggings, Zouga threw his head back and cupped his

 hands to his mouth.

 "Ralph!" he bellowed. He could see how dangerous the tangle had become.

 Tempers were flaring; he could sense how close they were to mortal

 danger as fighting men lost control of panicking animals.

 In the uproar Zouga's voice was almost drowned, and if Ralph heard him,

 he gave no sign of doing so. He was kneeling beside the downed wheel

 hacking at the thongs of the traces with his sheath knife.

 "Get away from there," howled the driver, and reared back, the long trek

 whip flying out high above his shoulders and then snaking forward,

 twenty feet-long, whispering like the wing of a wild duck in flight.

 Ralph saw it, and ducked behind the mule's heavy barrel-like body; the

 lash exploded in the air like a bursting grenade, and the mule lunged

 wildly, swinging the disselboom of the cart across the causeway so that

 the broken axle collapsed before the snapping of the halfsevered leather

 thongs allowed the mule to regain its feet and then gallop away down the

 muddy track to firmer ground.

 Ralph leaned out and ran to his own team. He called to his wheeler mule,

 "Pull, Bishop!" The wheels sucked and farted in the mud as Ralph drove

 them at the narrow gap, the stranded cart on one side, sprawled half

 across the track, on the other the sheer unguarded drop into the open

 workings.

 "Ha, Rosie!" Ralph grabbed the bridle of the lead mule and, running at

 her head, guided her into the gap.

 "Ralph, damn you!" Zouga roared. "Stop! Do you hear me, stop!"

 But he was a helpless spectator. It would take five minutes or longer to

 reach the causeway across the complicated system of ladderworks and

 board walks. There was nothing he could do to prevent the developing

 tragedy.

 The infuriated owner of the stranded cart was still on the body of the

 vehicle, brandishing his long whip and howling with anger and

 frustration. He was not a big man, an inch or so shorter than Ralph, but

 heavy in the shoulder, and his hands on the stock of the whip were rough

 as oak bark, baked by the sun and scoured by gravel and the haft of pick

 and shovel.

 "I'll settle your account, you little bugger," he shouted, and again

 threw back the whip; again Ralph ducked under the flailing lash, but it

 caught the sleeve of his faded and patched shirt, splitting the rotted

 material and opening the skin of Ralph's upper arm in a thin red razor

 cut from which the bright blood bloomed instantly.

 Rising from his crouch in the mud, Ralph placed one hand on the wheel

 mule's withers and used his own impetus and the leverage of his arm to

 leap high in the air. It was a trick that Jan Cheroot had taught him,

 the way a good teamsman crosses from one side of the span to another. In

 mid-air Ralph tucked his legs and swung his body, vaulting cleanly over

 the mules' backs and landing on the far side of the team alongside the

 leading wheel. His next jump carried him onto the truck of the cart, and

 with the same movement he had snatched his own long trek whip from its

 slot beside the brake handle.

 The handle was ten feet long, and the tapered lash another twenty.

 A skilled teamsman could cut a fly off the tip of the lead mule's ear

 with the lash, and Jan Cheroot had trained Ralph: he was good with the

 whip, very good.

 Ralph's lips were a thin chalky white line, his eyes green and furious.

 The sting of the whip had driven him into murderous, unthinking rage.

 "Ralph!" Zouga shouted vainly. He had seen his son like this before. It

 frightened him. "Ralph! Stop!"

 Standing high on the cart bed Ralph shot the lash out to full stretch

 behind him. It was an easy graceful movement like a salmon fisherman

 putting up the fly, and in the same action he brought the tip of the

 whip stock forward, all wrist and shoulders, and the lash whined and

 reached out to the other driver.

 It cut him like a sword stroke, from breast to belt buckle, and only the

 heavy wet oilskin he wore protected him from serious injury. The torn

 fabric flapped about his body, and the rain diluted the dribble of blood

 from the shallow wound.

 Ralph's mules swung from the crack of the whip, and the off wheel hooked

 that of the stranded cart, locking both vehicles hopelessly in the soft

 mud.

 Ralph was too close now to the other driver to stretch the lash, and he

 reversed the whip stock, using it like a club, and swung it at the man's

 head.

 Below them in the diggings, the Matabele were encouraging their

 favourite with the fighting "jee!" and it goaded Ralph. He was quicker

 than the other driver, nimble to avoid his swinging stock, using his own

 like the fighting sticks with which he had trained so assiduously.

 The mules were panicked by the uproar, the crack of whips, the Matabele

 war chant, the shrieked insults and the bellow of the watchers.

 Rosie reared and cut with her fore-hooves, whinnying hysterically, and

 her team mate lunged and struggled against the jammed off wheel.

 Bishop shirked the yoke, turned from it; his hind legs scrabbled on the

 crumbling edge of the causeway and he went over, hanging in the tangle

 of reins and chains, kicking and pawing at the air and shrieking wildly.

 Then quite gently, like a sleeper awaking from deep slumber, the yellow

 earthen causeway shook itself.

 The movement started below the wheels of the locked carts and the

 trampling hooves of the terrified mules and then it rippled along the

 embankment to the neck where it joined the rim of the pit, and at that

 point a deep vertical crack opened miraculously in the muddy yellow

 wall. It opened with only a soft wet sound like an infant suckling at

 the breast, but it silenced the shouting, chanting men who watched.

 Suddenly the only sound in the open diggings was the rustle of the

 falling rain and the shrieks of the dangling mule. On the cart Ralph

 stood poised like a Greek statue of an athlete, the whip stock thrown

 back, the cords in his throat relaxing, the insane rage in his green

 eyes clearing to leave a bemused expression of disbelief; for beneath

 his feet the earth was moving.

 "Ralph!" This time Zouga's voice reached him clearly, and he looked down

 into the pit, saw their faces, the shock, the terror upon them.

 "Run!" shouted Zouga, and the urgency galvanized Ralph. "Get off the

 roadway."

 Ralph threw the whip aside and jumped down off the cart. The sheath

 knife in his hand again.

 The rein that held Bishop, the big grey mule, was stretched tight as an

 iron bar. It parted cleanly to the touch of the blade and the mule

 dropped free, twisting in the air so that the men below scattered away,

 and the heavy body smacked into the mud. Then the beast scrambled to its

 feet and stood trembling miserably, belly deep in the yellow mud that

 had saved it.

 The earth trembled like jelly under Ralph's feet as he hacked at the

 traces that held the other three mules and the moment they were free of

 the trapped cart he drove them ahead of him along the causeway, yelling

 them into a gallop. The yellow mud shook and tilted as the cracks yawned

 open, and the entire causeway began to sag.

 "Run, you bloody fool," Ralph panted at the man he had been fighting, as

 he stood in the rain and looked about him, the tattered oilskins

 dangling about his legs, his expression bewildered.

 "Come on, run," and Ralph grabbed his arm and dragged him after the

 galloping mule team.

 one after another the gantries that lined the roadway, some of them with

 the huge buckets still hanging from the sheaves, began to topple over

 into the pit, the timber crackling and twisting, the ropes tangling and

 snapping like strands of cotton.

 Ahead of Ralph the three yoked mules reached firm ground and galloped

 away, whisking their tails and kicking out skittishly at relief from

 their burden.

 The causeway tilted and sagged, so that suddenly Ralph seemed to be

 running up a steep hill. The driver beside him missed his footing and

 went down on his knees, and then as he started to slide backwards he

 threw himself face down and spread his arm as though to hug the earth.

 "Get up." Ralph checked his own run, and stood over him.

 Behind them the earth growled like a voracious animal, moving gravel

 grinding upon itself; and there were still fourteen carts out on the

 collapsing causeway.

 Half a dozen of the drivers had abandoned their teams and were running

 back along the trembling, sagging roadway, but they had left it too

 late. They stopped in a little group. Some of them fell flat and clung

 to the earth. One turned and leapt boldly from the edge into the gaping

 pit.

 He plugged into the mud, and three black workers seized him and dragged

 him to safety, a broken leg twisting and slithering over the mud behind

 him.

 One of the laden carts, with four mules in the traces, toppled over and,

 as it hit the bottom of the diggings, the weight of gravel shattered it

 to ragged splinters of raw white wood, and a shaggy black mule impaled

 on the disselboom screamed with shockingly human agony and kicked

 wildly. tearing out its own entrails from the gaping wound in its flank.

 Ralph stooped and dragged the driver to his feet, pulling him up the

 steepening incline, but the man was semi-paralysed by terror and

 hampered by the flapping tails of his heavy oilskins.

 The centre of the roadway cracked through abruptly and a hundred feet of

 it collapsed sideways with a swift rumbling rush, hurling carts and

 animals into the pit as though from some gigantic catapult.

 Ralph glanced once over his shoulder at the terrifying carnage and saw

 that the whole roadway was going starting from that centre point and

 running swiftly towards him, a breaking wave of soft yellow earth

 seeming to be of some thick and viscid fluid, breaking with that

 grinding whisper.

 "Come on," Ralph grunted at the man on his arm, and suddenly the earth

 beneath their feet lunged the other way, throwing them forward towards

 the rim of the pit and safety.

 They went forward with a rush, the driver clutching at Ralph's shoulder

 for support. A dozen paces to go to firm ground, and Ralph did not look

 back again. The hideous sounds from the pit were unnerving, and he

 sensed that another glimpse of that onrushing wave of collapsing earth

 might paralyse his own legs.

 "Come on," he gasped. "We'll make it, almost there.

 Come on!" And as he said it the earth opened in front of their feet as

 though from a giant's axe stroke. It opened with a smacking sound, as of

 kissing lips, and the mouth of it was sheer, eighty feet deep and three

 feet across, but in the brief seconds that they tottered on the edge it

 gaped wider, six feet, eight feet, and the causeway tilted sideways, the

 final convulsion.

 Jump!" said Ralph. "Jump for it, man." And he shoved the driver at it,

 forcing him at that frightful crack that seemed to split the earth to

 its very core.

 The man stumbled off balance, his arms waving wildly for control, and

 then he made a clumsy scrambling leap out over the drop. The torn

 oilskins tangled with his limbs and fluttered about his head. He hit the

 far lip of the crack with his chest, his legs hanging into the drop and

 kicking hopelessly, and clawed at the muddy lip. But there was no

 purchase and inexorably he began to slide backwards.

 Ralph knew there was no chance of making a run-up to the jump. He had to

 take it from a standstill, and it was gaping wider with every second,

 ten feet or more now, and the quivering bank of collapsing earth was an

 unstable platform.

 He sank on one knee, steadied himself with a clenched fist against the

 earth, and then straightened his legs and body in a sudden burst of

 energy like a released coilspring, jumping high because the causeway had

 already sagged below the level of the rim.

 The power of that leap surprised even Ralph; he cleared the driver's

 wriggling body and landed deep, on firm and rock-steady ground, stumbled

 with his own forward impetus and then ran on half a dozen paces.

 Behind him the driver wailed and slid back a few inches, and around his

 spread fingers opened a mesh of smaller cracks, running parallel to the

 gaping sheer line.

 Ralph spun and ran back. He threw himself flat and reached for the

 driver's wrist. It was greasy with mud, slippery as a freshly netted

 trout, and he knew he could not hold him for long.

 Over the driver's head Ralph stared down into the diggings. He watched

 the final collapse of the causeway, a massive rush of earth, some of it

 liquid mud, mixed with huge chunks of compacted gravel that ground

 together like the jaws of some mindless monster, crushing and smothering

 men and animals between them.

 The entire number 6 Roadway was gone, and across the floor of the pit,

 deep dark cracks spread out like a grotesque spider's web.

 In the bottom of the diggings the figures of men seemed frail and

 insectlike, their cries feeble and without consequence, their pathetic

 scurrying without purpose.

 Ralph suddenly recognized his father. He alone was standing firm, his

 head thrown back, and even across that dizzy space Ralph could feel the

 strength of his gaze.

 "Hold on, boy!" Zouga's voice carried faintly above the pandemonium.

 "They're coming. Hold on!"

 But under Ralph's belly the earth whispered and shrugged impatiently and

 the driver's weight pulled him another inch towards the drop.

 "Hold on, Ralph!"

 Across that aching breathless space Zouga was reaching out with both

 hands, a gesture that was more eloquent than any words, a gesture of

 suffering and helpless love.

 Then suddenly Ralph felt rough hands seize the ankles of his muddy

 boots, the shouts of many men behind him, the rasp of a hairy manila

 rope against his cheek, the noose dangling in front of his face, and

 with a huge surge of relief he saw the dangling driver thrust his free

 arm through the noose and saw it drawn tight.

 Ralph could let the muddy wrist slip from his grip, and he crawled back

 from the edge.

 He looked down at his father. It was too far for either of them to see

 the expression on each other's face.

 For a moment longer Zouga stared up at him. Then he turned away

 abruptly, his stride businesslike, his gestures imperative as he ordered

 his Matabele forward to the rescue work.

 The rescue went on all that day. For once every digger on New Rush was

 united by a common purpose.

 The Diggers" Committee closed the workings and ordered every man out of

 the unaffected areas. The five other roadways that had not collapsed

 were declared out of bounds to all traffic and they stood high and

 menacing in the silver clouds of drifting rain.

 On the churned and collapsed remnants of number 6 Roadway the -rescuers

 swarmed. These were the men who had been trapped on the floor by the

 severed ladderworks and the fallen system of gantries.

 There were no members of the Committee in the number 6 area, and Zouga

 Ballantyne with his natural air of authority was quickly accepted as the

 leader. He had marked the position of the gravel carts and drivers on

 the roadway at the moment of the cave-in, and he split the available men

 into gangs and set them to digging where be guessed men and vehicles

 were buried. They attacked the treacherous shapeless mass of earth with

 a passion which was a mixture of hatred and stale fear, an expression of

 their own relief at having escaped that smothering entombing yellow

 cascade.

 For the first hour they dug men out alive, some miraculously protected

 by an overturned cart or the body of a dead mule. one of &these

 survivors rose shakily to his feet unaided when the earth was shovelled

 away, and the rescuers cheered him with a kind of wild hysteria.

 Three mules had survived the drop (one of these was Zouga's old grey

 Bishop) but others were fearfully mutilated by the wrecked carts.

 Someone lowered a pistol and a packet of cartridges from the ground

 level and Zouga slipped and slid from one team to the other and shot the

 unfortunate beasts as they lay screaming and kicking in the mud.

 While this was going on there were teams of men busy above them at

 ground level. Under the direction of the Diggers" Committee they were

 rigging rope ladders and a makeshift gantry to bring up the dead and the

 injured.

 By noon that day they could begin taking the injured out, strapped to

 six-by-three timber boards and hoisted on the new gantry, swaying up the

 high wall of the pit.

 Then they began to find the dead men.

 The last of the missing men was locked like a foetus into the cold muddy

 womb of the earth. Zouga and Bazo stooped shoulder to shoulder into the

 mouth of the excavation, seized the limp wrist that protruded from the

 bank and, straining together, freed the corpse. It came out in a rush of

 slippery mud, like the moment of birth, but the man's limbs were

 convulsed in rigor mortis and his eye sockets packed with mud. Other

 hands lifted the corpse and carried it away, and Zouga flexed his back

 and groaned. Cold and weariness had tied knots in his muscles.

 "We are not finished yet," he said, and the young Matabele nodded.

 "What is there still to do?" he asked simply, and Zouga felt a rush of

 gratitude and -affection towards him. He placed his hand on Bazo's

 shoulder and for a moment they considered each other gravely, then Bazo

 asked again, "What must be done?"

 "The roadway is gone. There will be no work on these claims, not for a

 long time," Zouga explained, his voice dulled and his hand dropping

 wearily from Bazo's shoulder. "If we leave any tools or equipment down

 here, they will be stolen."

 They had lost the gravel cart, the hoist with its iron sheave wheels and

 valuable rope, and the gravel buckets.

 Zouga sighed, and the fatigue swept over him like a cold dark wave.

 There was no money to replace those essentials. "We must save what we

 can from the vultures."

 Bazo called to his men in their own language and led them along the

 shapeless bank of broken earth from which protruded shattered pieces of

 equipment and tangles of sodden rope, to the deserted Devil's Own

 claims.

 The fallen roadway had buried the eastern corner of number 142, but the

 rest of the claims were clear. However, a pressure crack had opened in a

 deep zigzag across the floor and some of Zouga's equipment had fallen

 into it and lay half submerged in muddy water.

 Bazo clambered down into the fissure and groped for the mess of rope and

 tools, passing it up to the Matabele on the bank above his head. Here

 Zouga supervised them as they tied the tools into bundles and then

 staggered away with them to the high eastern bank, there to wait their

 turn for the single functioning gantry to hoist the bundles out to

 ground level.

 As they worked the last pale rays of the sun pierced the mass of low

 cloud and struck down into the huge man-made pit.

 In the bottom of the fissure Bazo found the last missing pick, passed it

 up, and then leaned against the bank to rest for a few moments. He felt

 that he no longer had the strength to climb out of the deep crack. The

 cold lio had numbed his legs and softened his skin until it was wrinkled

 and water-logged like that of a drowned man.

 He shivered and laid his forehead on his arm, bracing himself against

 the bank of yellow earth. He felt that if he closed his eyes he would

 fall asleep on his feet.

 He kept them open with an effort, and stared at the earth in front of

 his face. A trickle of rainwater was still running down from the level

 above his head; it had cut a narrow runnel a few inches wide and deep.

 Most of the mud had settled out of this little streamlet, and it was

 almost clear, only slightly milked with colour.

 At one point in its trickle down the mud wall it had encountered an

 obstacle, and was pouring over it, forming a little plume of running

 water.

 Suddenly Bazo was thirsty. His throat was rough and dry. He leaned

 forward, and let the trickle flow over his lips and tongue, and then

 slurped a mouthful.

 The watery sun touched the bank, and a strange brilliant light flared

 inches from Bazo's face. It came pouring up, powerful and pure and

 dancing white, from the tiny freshet from which he was drinking.

 He stared at it dully, and slowly it dawned upon him that the

 obstruction over which the water was pouring was something embedded in

 the gravel bank, something that glowed and flickered as the random beam

 of sunlight played upon it, something that seemed to change shape and

 substance through the trickling yellow-tinged waters.

 He touched it with his forefinger, and the cold water ran down his

 forearm and dripped from his elbow. He tried to work it loose, but it

 was firmly implanted, and soapy feeling in his raw numb fingers so that

 he could not get a fair grip upon it.

 He took the buckhom whistle from around his neck and used the point to

 prise the pretty fiery object loose, and it dropped heavily into the raw

 pink palm of his hand, almost filling it.

 It was a stone, but a stone such as he had never seen before. He held it

 under the trickle of rainwater, and with his thumb rubbed off the

 clinging mud until it was clean. Then he looked at it again, turning it

 curiously in the weak sunlight.

 Until Bazo had arrived at New Rush he had never thought about rocks and

 stones as being different from one another, any more than one drop of

 water differed from another or one cloud in the sky was more valuable or

 useful than the others. The Matabele language did not differentiate

 between a granite pebble and a diamond, they were both simply "imitshe".

 Only the white men's maniacal obsession with stones had made him look at

 them afresh.

 In all these months he had spent toiling in the diggings, he had seen

 many strange things and learned much of the white men and their ways. At

 first he had not been able to believe the extraordinary value they

 placed on the most trivial items. That a single pebble could be

 exchanged for six hundred head of prime cattle seemed some grotesque

 madman's dream, but at last he had seen that it was true and he and his

 little band of amadoda had become fanatical gatherers of pebbles.

 Every sparkling or coloured stone they had pounced upon like magpies and

 carried proudly to Bakela for their reward.

 This initial enthusiasm had swiftly waned, for there was neither logic

 nor system in the white man's mind.

 The showiest stones were discarded contemptuously.

 Lovely shiny red and blue pebbles, some of them shot through with

 different colours like ceramic beads, Bakela handed back to them with a

 grunt and a shake of the head. While occasionally, very occasionally, he

 would select some dull and uninteresting little chip and hand the

 delighted finder a gold coin.

 At first, payment in coin had confused the Matabele, but they learned

 fast. Those little metal discs could be exchanged in their turn for

 anything a man desired, as long as he had enough of them he could have a

 gun, or a horse, a woman or a fine ox.

 Bakela had tried to explain to Bazo and his Matabele how to recognize

 the stones for which he would pay a red gold coin. Firstly, they were

 small, never much bigger than the seed of the camel-thorn tree.

 Bazo considered the stone in his palm. It was huge; he could barely

 close his fingers over it. The stones that Bakela wanted were usually of

 a certain shape, a regular shape with eight sides, one for every finger

 less the thumbs. This huge stone was not so shaped. It had one clean

 side, as though cut through with a knife blade, and the rest of it was

 rounded and polished to a strange soapy sheen.

 Bazo held it under the trickle of rainwater again, and when he brought

 it out the film of water that covered the surface instantly coagulated

 into little droplets and shrank away, leaving the stone dry and

 glittering.

 That was strange Bazo decided, but the stone was the wrong colour.

 Bakela had explained that they must look for pale lemon, or glossy grey,

 even brown colour. This stone was like looking into a clear pool in the

 mountains. He could see the shape of his own hand through it, and it was

 full of stars of moving light that hurled little darts of sunlight into

 his eyes as he turned it curiously. No, it was too big and much too

 pretty to be of value, Bazo decided.

 "Bazo! Checha!" Bakela was calling him. "Come on, let's go where we can

 eat and sleep."

 Bazo dropped the stone into the leather pouch at his waist and scrambled

 up out of the open fissure. Already the file of Matabele workers led by

 Zouga were plodding away through the mud, each of them bowed under a

 bundle of spades or picks, one of the big leather buckets or a coil of

 sodden muddy rope.

 "He has the lives Of six men on his hands. I was there, digger with a I

 saw it all happen. He drove his team into Mark Sander son's gravel

 bucky., The accuser was a tall huge shaggy head of greying hair, heavy

 shoulders and heavier paunch. He was working himself up into a boil Of

 righteous indignation, and Zouga saw that it was infectious, the crowd

 was beginning to growl and surge restlessly around the wagon body.

 The New Rush Diggers" Committee was in public session. Ten minutes

 previously they had formed themselves into a Board of Enquiry into

 the cave-in of number 6

 Roadway.

 A wagon had been dragged into the centre of Market Square to provide a

 platform for their deliberations, and around it was a solid packed crowd

 of diggers from the Number-6 Section. Since the cave-in, they had not been

 able to get back into the diggings to work their claims and they had

 just come from the mass funeral of the six men that had been crushed to

 death by the treacherous yellow gravel. Most of them had begun the wake

 for their mates and were carrying uncorked green bottles.

 Mixed with the diggers were all the loafers of New Rush, the transport

 riders and merchants; even the kopie-wallopers had closed their offices

 for the meeting.

 This was something that affected all their futures directly.

 "Let's have a look at the little brighter," somebody yelled out at the

 back of the crowd, and there was a menacing growl of agreement.

 "Right, let's see him."

 Zouga stood beside the tall back wheel of the wagon, hemmed in by the

 press of bodies, and he glanced at Ralph who stood at his shoulder.

 "He no longer had to look down at his son, their eyes were on a level.

 "I'll go up and face them" Ralph whispered huskily.

 Under the dark tan" his skin was grey and his eyes dark green and

 worried. He knew as well as Zouga did how grave was his position: he was

 to be tried by a mob that was angry and vindictive and mostly filled

 with cheap liquor.

 The collapse of the roadway had destroyed the value of their claims.

 They could no longer get the gravel out; their claims were isolated, cut

 off from ground level, and they were spoiling to place the blame and

 extract vengeance. That vengeance would be brutal.

 Ralph put one hand on the spokes of the wagon wheel, ready to climb up

 onto the wagon body where the dozen members of the Committee were

 already waiting.

 "Ralph." Zouga stopped him with a hand on his arm.

 "Wait here."

 "Papa-" Ralph began to protest quietly, the fear still dark in his eyes.

 "Stay" ZOUGA repeated softly, and vaulted up onto the wagon body

 lightly.

 He nodded briefly to the members of the Committee and then turned to

 face the mob. He was bare-headed, his beard catching the sunlight and

 jutting accessibly as he placed his clenched fists on his hips and" set

 his feet easily apart.

 "Gentlemen," he said, and his voice carried clearly to the last row of

 the crowd, "my son is only sixteen years old. I am here to answer for

 him."

 "If. he's old enough to kill six men, then he's old enough to face the

 music himself."

 "He killed nobody," Zouga answered coldly. "If you look to place the

 blame, then put it on the rain. Go down to the pit, and you will see

 where it undercut the bank "

 "He started fighting" the shaggy-headed accuser bellowed. "I saw him

 use his whip on Mark Sanderson , "There is a fight on one of the

 causeways every hour of every day," Zouga shot at him. "I've seen you

 throwing punches out there, and getting your arse whipped at that."

 There was a ripple of laughter, a lightening of the mood, and Zouga took

 his advantage.

 "In the name of all that's holy, gentlemen, there is not one of us here

 who does not protect his rights. My son was doing that, against a man

 older and stronger than himself, and if he's guilty for that, then so

 are all of you."

 They liked that, liked being told they were tough and independent, proud

 of being hard fighters and hard livers.

 "Are you telling me that one boy with a trek whip brought down the

 number 6 causeway all on his own? If so, then I'm proud that boy is my

 son."

 They laughed again, and on the wagon behind Zouga the tall blond

 untidily dressed man with the cleft chin and pale blue eyes smiled

 thoughtfully and murmured to the Committee member beside him.

 "He's good, Pickling," using Neville Pickering's familiar nickname. "He

 talks as well as he writes, and that's well enough."

 "No, gentlemen," Zouga changed pace. "That causeway was a death-trap,

 ready to go off before the first gravel bucky went out on it Friday

 morning. The collapse was nobody's fault; we had just dug too deep, and

 there was too much rain."

 Heads were nodding now, their expressions concerned and grave as Zouga

 went on.

 "We are too deep on the New Rush, and unless we work out a new system of

 getting the stuff out of our claims, then there are going to be a lot

 more dead men for us to bury."

 Zouga glanced down as one of the diggers shouldered his way through the

 crowd and climbed up onto the disselboom of the wagon.

 "Now you pay attention, you bunch of dirt-hounds," he yelled.

 "The chair acknowledges Mister Sanderson," Neville Pickering murmured

 sarcastically.

 "Thanking you, Guv." The digger lifted his battered Derby hat, finery

 that he had donned especially for this meeting, then turned and scowled

 at the crowd. "This nipper of Zouga Ballantyne's is going to be a bad

 one to mess with, and a good one to have at your side when things get

 hard." Still scowling, he turned and called to Ralph. "You come up here,

 young Ballantyne."

 Still pale and worried, Ralph hung back, but rough hands pushed him

 forward and hoisted him onto the wagon.

 The digger had to reach up to put his arm around Ralph's shoulder.

 "This boy could have let me drop into the pit like a rotten tomato, and

 squash the same way when I hit the bottom." He made a vaguely obscene

 squelching sound with his lips to illustrate his own demise. "He could

 have run and left me, but he didn't."

 "That's "cause he's young and stupid," someone called.

 "If he had any sense he'd have given you a shove, you miserable

 bastard."

 There was a hubbub of cheers and hooted derision.

 "I'm going to buy this boy a drink," announced Sanderson belligerently.

 "That will be some sort of record. You ain't never bought nobody a drink

 yet."

 Sanderson ignored them haughtily. "Just as soon as he turns eighteen,

 I'm going to buy him a drink."

 The meeting started to break up in a storm of friendly catcalls and

 laughter, the diggers streaming away across the square to the canteens.

 It was obvious to even the most bloody-minded of them that there wasn't

 going to be a lynching, and hardly any of them bothered to wait for the

 Committee's verdict. it was more important to get a good place at the

 bar.

 "Which doesn't mean we approve of your behaviour, young man," Pickering

 told Ralph severely. "This isn't Buitfontein or Dutoitspan. Here on New

 Rush we try to set an example to the other diggings. In future, do try

 and behave like a gentleman. I mean fists are one thing, but whips-" He

 raised one eyebrow disdainfully and turned to Zouga. "If you have any

 ideas about how we are going to work the number 6 area now that the

 causeway has gone, we'd like to hear them, Major Ballantyne."

 Hendrick Naaiman would have called himself a "Bastaard", and would have

 used the term with a deep sense of pride. However, the British Foreign

 Office had found the word awkward, possibly the double "A" in the

 spelling offended the proper order of official correspondence and

 treaties, especially if one of those treaties should ever be laid for

 signature before Queen Victoria. So the nation was now referred to as

 Griqua, and the land on which New Rush stood was renamed Griqualand

 West, a definition which made it easier for Whitehall to champion old

 Nicholaas Waterboer, the Bastaard captain's claim to the area, over that

 of the Boer presidents of the backveld republics which also claimed the

 area as part of their dominions.

 It was remarkable how before the discovery of the bright stones nobody,

 and especially not Great Britain, had shown the slightest interest in

 this desolate and and plain, no matter what it was called.

 In Hendrick Naaiman's veins flowed the rich intermingled blood of

 numerous peoples.

 Its basis was that of the Hottentot the sturdy goldenskinned, dark-eyed

 people who had met the first Portuguese circumnavigators of the globe

 when they stepped onto the gleaming white beach sands of Good Hope.

 Added to the Hottentot was the blood of the captured yellow bushman

 girls. Tiny doll-like creatures whose buttery yellow skins and dainty

 triangular faces with orientally slanted eyes and flattened pug features

 were only part of their attraction. To a people who regarded a large

 female posterior as a mark of beauty, the buttocks of the bushmen girls

 were irresistible, a bountiful double bulge that stood out behind them

 like the hump of a camel and in the and deserts of the Kalahari served

 the same purpose.

 To this blood mixture was added the contribution of outcast Fingo and

 Pondo tribesmen, fugitives from the wiles of their own cruel chiefs and

 merciless witchdoctors, and Malayan slaves, escaped from their Dutch

 burgher masters, who had found their way through the secret passes of

 the mountains that defended the Cape of Good Hope like the turreted

 walls of a great castle.

 They also joined the bands of wandering Griquas on the vast plains of

 the interior.

 This blood mixture was compounded with that of little English girls,

 orphaned survivors of shipwrecked East India men that had perished on

 the treacherous rocks scoured by the Agulhas current, and taken to wife

 at puberty by their darker-skinned rescuers. And there was other

 northern blood, that of British seamen, pressed into the Royal Navy's

 service in the time of Napoleon's wars and desperate to exchange that

 harsh duty even for the life of deserter in such a wild and desert land

 as Southern Africa. Others had fled into the same wilderness, escaped

 convicts from the transport ships that had called at Good Hope to

 reprovision for the long eastern leg of the voyage to Australia and

 penal settlement of Botany Bay.

 Then came travelling Jewish pedlars, Scottish missionaries taking God's

 injunction "Be fruitful" as their text for the day, riders on commando,

 collecting slaves and taking others of the traditional spoils of war in

 a dusty donga or behind a thorn bush under the inscrutable African sky.

 The old hunters had passed this way at the century's turn, and had

 paused in their pursuit of the great elephant herds to take on more

 tender game at closer range.

 These were Hendrick Naaiman's ancestors. He was a Bastaard and proud of

 it. He had dark gypsy ringlets that dangled to the collar of his tanned

 buckskin jacket. His teeth were square and strong and starred with tiny

 white specks from drinking the lime-rich waters of the Karroo wells

 since childhood.

 His eyes were black as tarpits, and his toffee-coloured skin thickly

 sown with the darker coin-like scars of smallpox, for his white

 ancestors had bestowed upon the tribe many of the other virtues of

 civilization: gunpowder, alcohol and more than one variety of the pox.

 Despite the scarring, Hendrick was a handsome man, tall,

 broadshouldered, with long powerful legs, flashing black eyes and a

 sunny smile. He squatted across the fire from Bazo now, with his

 wide-brimmed hat still on his head; the ostrich feathers nodded and

 swirled above the flat crown as he gestured widely, laughing and talking

 persuasively.

 "Only the ant-bear and "the meercat dig in the earth for no reward more

 than a mouthful of insects." Naaiman spoke in fluent Zulu, which was

 close enough to their own tongue for the Matabele to follow him readily.

 "Do these hairy white-faced creatures own all the earth and everything

 upon and beneath it? Are they then some kind of magical creature, some

 god from the heavens that they can say to you "I own every stone in the

 earth, every drop of water in the-"

 " Hendrick paused, for he was about to say oceans, but he knew that his

 audience had never seen the sea, every drop of water in the rivers and

 lakes." Hendrick shook his head so that the ringlets danced on his

 cheeks. "I tell you then to see how, when the sun burns away their skin,

 the red meat that shows through is the same coloured meat as yours or

 mine. If you think them gods, then smell their breath in the morning or

 watch them squatting over the latrine pit. They do it the same way as

 you or me, my friends."

 The circle of black men listened fascinated, for they had never heard

 ideas like these expressed aloud.

 "They have guns," Bazo pointed out, and Hendrick laughed derisively.

 "Guns," he repeated, and patted the Enfield in his own lap. "I have a

 gun, and when you finish your contract you also will have a gun.

 Then we are gods also, you and me. Then we own the stones and the rivers

 also."

 Cunningly Hendrick used "we" and "ours", not "me" and mine", although he

 despised these naked black savages as heartily as did any of the other

 bigots on New Rush.

 Bazo took the stopper from his snuff-horn and poured a little of the

 fine red powder onto the pink palm of his hand, a palm still riven and

 scabbed from the rescue in number 6 Section, and he closed one nostril

 with his thumb and with the other sniffed the powder deep, left and

 right, and then sat back blinking deliciously at the ecstatic tears

 before passing the snuff-horn on to Kamuza, his cousin, who sat beside

 him.

 Hendrick Naaiman waited with the patience of a man of old Africa, waited

 for the snuff-horn to complete the circle and come into his own hands.

 He took a pinch in each nostril and threw back his head to sneeze into

 the fire, then settled into silence again, waiting for Bazo to speak.

 The Matabele frowned into the living coals, watching the devils form and

 fade, the figures and faces of strange men and beasts, the spirits of

 the flames, and he wished they had counsel for him.

 At last he lifted his gaze to the man across the fire, once again

 studying the laced velskoen on his feet, the breeches of fine corduroy,

 the Sheffield-steel knife on this brass-studded belt, the embroidered

 waistcoat of beautiful thread and velvet and the flaming silk at his

 throat.

 He was without doubt an important man, and a rogue.

 Bazo did not trust him. He could almost smell the deceit and cunning

 upon him.

 Why does a great chief, a man of worth, like yourself, come to tell us

 these things?"

 "Bazo, son of Gandang," Hendrick intoned, his voice becoming deep and

 laden with portent, "I dreamed a dream last night. I dreamed that under

 the floor of your hut he buried certain stones."

 For a moment the eyes of every Matabele warrior swivelled from

 Hendrick's face to the mud-plastered floor at the back of the low, smoky

 thatched hut, the darkest area of the circular room, and Hendrick

 suppressed the smile that crowded his lips.

 Treasure was always buried under the floor of the hut, where a man could

 spread his sleeping-mat over it at night and guard it even in his sleep.

 It had not been difficult to guess where, the only question had been

 whether or not the gang of Matabele had yet learned the value of

 diamonds and begun gathering their own, as every other gang on the

 diggings was doing. Those furtive, guilty glances were his answer, but

 he let no trace of satisfaction show as he went on quietly.

 "In my dream I saw that you were cheated, that when you took the stones

 to the white man, Bakela, he gave you a single gold coin with the head

 of the white queen upon it." Hendrick's broad handsome face darkened

 with melancholy. "My friend, I come to warn you. To save you from being

 cheated. To tell you that there is a man who will pay you the true value

 of your stones, and that you will have a fine new gun, a horse with a

 saddle, a bag of gold coins; whatever you desire will be yours."

 "Who is this man?" Bazo asked cautiously, and Hendrick spread his arms

 and for the first time smiled.

 "It is me, Hendrick Naaiman, your friend."

 "How much will you give? How many white queens for these stones?"

 Hendrick shrugged. "I must see these stones. But one thing I promise, it

 will be many, many times more than the single coin that Bakela will give

 you."

 Again Bazo was silent.

 "I have a stone," he admitted at last. "But I do not know if it has the

 spirit you seek, for it is a strange stone, like none other we have ever

 seen."

 "Let me see it, my old friend," Hendrick whispered encouragingly. "I

 will give you the advice of a father to his favourite son."

 Bazo took the snuff-horn and turned it over and over between his

 fingers, the muscles in his shoulders and arms bulged and subsided and

 his smooth regular features, knitted now in thought, seemed to be carved

 from the wood of the wild ebony.

 "Go," he said at last. "Return when the moon sets.

 Come alone, without a gun, without a knife. And know you that one of my

 brothers will stand always at your back ready to drive the blade of his

 assegai out of your breastbone if you so much as think a treacherous

 thought."

 When Hendrick Naaiman crawled through the low doorway again it was past

 midnight; the fire had sunk to a puddle of ruddy ash, the smoke swirled

 like grey phantoms in the light of the bull's-eye lantern he carried,

 and the naked blades of the short broad stabbing spears flickered blue

 and deadly in the shadows.

 He could smell the nervous sweat of the men that wielded those dreadful

 weapons, and the vulture wings of death seemed to rustle in the dark

 recesses of the hut.

 Hendrick knew how close that dark presence could crowd about him, for

 frightened men are dangerous men.

 it was part of his trade, this ever-present threat of death, but he

 could never accustom himself to it, and he heard the quaver in his own

 voice as he greeted Bazo.

 The young Matabele sat as he had last seen him, facing the single door

 of the hut, his back protected by the thick mud wall and his assegai at

 his side, the shaft ready to his hand.

 "Sit," he instructed the Griqua, and Hendrick squatted opposite him.

 Bazo nodded to two of his men and they slipped away as silently as

 hunting leopards to stand guard in the starlight, while two others knelt

 at Hendrick's back, their assegais in their right hand, the points

 merely inches from his cringing spine.

 There was the weird "woo woo" call of a nightjar out in the starlight,

 clearly the signal for which Bazo waited; one of his Matabele assuring

 him that they were unobserved. Hendrick Naaiman nodded in approval, the

 young Matabele was clever and careful.

 Now Bazo lifted into his lap a small cloth-wrapped package on which

 fresh earth still clung in little yellow balls. He unwrapped it swiftly

 and, leaning forward across the smouldering fire, placed the contents in

 Hendrick's cupped hands.

 The big Griqua sat paralysed like that, his cupped hands before his

 face, his dark pock-marked features frozen in an expression of

 disbelief, of utter astonishment. Then his hands began to tremble

 slightly, and quickly he placed the huge glittering stone on the

 hardpacked mud floor as though it had burned his fingers, but his

 tar-dark eyes seemed to bulge from their deep sockets as he stared at it

 still.

 Nobody spoke or moved for almost a minute, and then Hendrick shook

 himself as though he were waking from deep sleep, but his eyes never

 left that stone.

 "It is too big," he whispered in English. "It cannot be."

 Then suddenly he was hasty; he snatched up the stone and dipped it and

 his hand wrist-deep into the calabash of drinking water which stood

 beside the fire; then, holding it up in the lantern light, he watched

 the great stone shed water as though it had been greased, as though it

 were the feather of a wild goose.

 "By my daughter's virgin blood," he whispered again, and the men

 watching him stirred darkly into the shadows. His emotions had infected

 them with restless excitement.

 Hendrick reached for the side pocket of his buckskin coat, and

 immediately the point of the assegai pricked the soft skin behind his

 ear.

 "Tell him!" Hendrick blurted, and Bazo shook his head.

 The prick of steel ceased and Hendrick took from his pocket a shard of

 curved dark green glass, part of a shattered champagne bottle discarded

 in the veld behind one of the grog-shops.

 Hendrick set it firmly on the floor of the hut, pressing the sharp

 points of glass into the clay. Then he closely examined the stone for a

 moment. One plane of the crystal had sheared through cleanly, leaving a

 sharp ridge around the rim, and the curved upper surface fitted neatly

 into Hendrick's cupped hand.

 He placed the sharp ridge of the stone against the polished dark green

 curve of the broken bottle, then pressed down with the full strength of

 his right forearm and began to draw the edge across the glass. There was

 a thin abrasive screech that set his big white-starred teeth on edge,

 and behind the moving edge of the glittering stone a deep white groove

 appeared in the green glass, the stone had cut it as a hot knife cuts

 cheese.

 Reverently the Griqua placed the stone in front of him, on the bare

 floor, and it seemed to be moving as the light played within its limpid

 depths, turned to magical stars of mauve and green and flaming crimson.

 His voice had dried, his throat cleaved closed, he could barely breathe

 for iron bands of avarice had bound his chest, but his eyes glittered

 like a wolf in the firelight.

 Hendrick Naaiman knew diamonds as a jockey knows fine horse flesh or a

 tailor the feel of good tweed cloth between his fingers. Diamonds were

 his salt, his bread, his very breath, and he knew that before him on the

 swept mud floor of this smoky little thatched hut lay something that

 would one day repose in the treasure house of the palace of some great

 king.

 It was a living legend already: something that only a king could buy,

 something whose value, when converted to gold pounds or dollars, would

 stun even a rich man.

 "Has this stone the spirit you seek?" Bazo asked quietly, and Hendrick

 swallowed before he could talk.

 "I will give you five hundred gold queens for this stone," he answered,

 and his voice was hoarse, ragged as though he were in pain.

 His words struck the dark group of Matabele the way the east wind off

 the sea strikes the forests of Tzikhama, so that they swayed and rustled

 with the shock.

 "Five hundred," repeated Hendrick Naaiman. "Which will buy you fifty

 guns or many fine cattle."

 "Give the stone to me," Bazo ordered, and when Hendrick hesitated, the

 assegai pricked him again so that he started violently.

 Bazo took the stone and stared at it broodingly, then he sighed.

 "This is a heavy matter," he said. "I must think on it.

 Go now and return tomorrow at the same time. I will have an answer for

 you then."

 Long after the Griqua left, the silence persisted in the darkened hut,

 broken at last by Kamuza.

 "Five hundred gold pieces," he said. "I long to see the hills of Matopos

 again; I long for the sweet milk of my father's herds again. With five

 hundred gold queens we could leave this place."

 "Do you know what the white men do to people who steal these stones?"

 Bazo asked softly.

 "Not their stones. The Bastaard told us "No matter what the yellow

 Bastaard told you, you will be a very dead Matabele if the white men

 catch you.,"

 "One man they burned alive in his hut. They say he smelled like a

 roasting joint of warthog meat," one of the others murmured.

 "Another they tied by his heels and dragged behind a galloping horse as

 far as the river. When they were finished, he no longer looked like a

 man at all."

 They thought about these atrocities a while, not shocked by them for

 they had seen men burned alive before. on one of the cattle raids to the

 east of Matabeleland their own regiment had chased two hundred Mashona

 men and women and children into the maze of caves that honeycombed the

 kopjes above their village.

 It would have been a tedious task to hunt them out of the dark belly of

 the hills, so they had packed every entrance to the underground passages

 with branches of mopani trees and then put in fire. At the end some of

 the Mashona had run out through the flames, living torches of shrieking

 flame.

 "Fire is a bad way to die," said Kamuza, and uncorked his own

 snuff-horn.

 "And five hundred pieces is a great deal of gold," one of his friends

 answered him across the fire.

 "Does a son steal the calves from his father's herd?" Bazo asked them,

 and now they were shocked indeed. To the Matabele the great herds of

 cattle were the nation's wealth, and the harsh laws and penalties that

 governed the management of the herds they had learned as part of their

 existence as "mujiba", the apprenticeship as herd boys which every

 Matabele boy must serve.

 "It is death even to squirt the milk of another man's cow into your

 mouth," Bazo reminded them; and they all remembered how they had taken

 that chance at least once in the solitude of the bush, spurting it

 directly from the teat so that it dribbled down their chins onto their

 naked chests, risking their lives for a mouthful of warm sweet milk and

 the respect of their peers.

 "It is not a calf," Kamuza reminded, "but a single little stone."

 "Gandang, who is my father, looks upon the white man Bakela as a

 brother. If I take anything from Bakela, then it is as taking from my

 own father."

 "If you take this stone to Bakela he will give you a single coin. If you

 take it to the Bastaard he will give you five hundred."

 "It is a heavy matter," Bazo agreed. "I will think on it."

 And long after all the others had curled on their reed sleeping-mats

 under the karosses of fur, he sat alone over the dying fire with the

 great diamond burning coldly in his right hand.

 Three men rode into Zouga's camp that Monday morning, and Zouga stooped

 out of his tent to meet them, standing bareheaded in the sunlight.

 Neville Pickering led the party, and as he stepped down from the

 stirrup, he said, "I hope we do not disturb you, Major, but I'd like you

 to meet some friends of mine."

 "I know mister Hayes." Zouga shook the hand of the lanky Texan engineer

 and then turned to the third man.

 "And of course I know mister Rhodes by sight and reputation."

 Rhodes" hand was cool, the skin dry and the knuckles large and bony. It

 had the feel of strength, although his grip was quick and light. Zouga

 found the pale blue eyes on a level with his. The man was tall, and

 startlingly young, he could be very little older than twenty, young to

 have earned such a formidable reputation.

 "mister Rhodes." Nobody, not even Pickering, used his Christian name. It

 was said he even signed his letters to his own mother "Your affectionate

 son, C. J. Rhodes".

 "major Ballantyne." Zouga was startled again, for Rhodes had a slight

 voice, pitched high and with a breathless quality. "I am delighted to

 meet you at last. Of course, I have read your book, and there are many

 questions I should like to ask you., "Jordan, take the horses," Zouga

 called, and began to lead his guests towards the scant shade of the

 camelthorn tree. But Rhodes paused as Jordan scurried from the tent,

 obedient to his father's order.

 "Good morning, young Jordan," he said, and the child stopped abruptly

 and stared up at him speechlessly, beginning to blush a deep pink with

 transparent heroworship, overcome at being recognized and addressed by

 name.

 "I see you have taken to reading rather than fisticuffs now."

 In his haste Jordan still carried a book in his hand.

 Rhodes stooped and took it from him.

 "Good Lord -" he said. "Plutarch! You have cultivated taste for one so

 young."

 "It's a fascinating book, sir."

 "Indeed it is, one of my favourites. Have you yet read Gibbon?"

 "No, sir," Jordan whispered shyly, the blush subsiding to leave him only

 faintly pink. "I do not know where I could find a copy."

 "I will lend you one, when you have finished this." He handed the

 battered dog-eared copy of Plutarch's Lives back to Jordan. "Do you know

 where my camp is?"

 "Oh, yes, mister Rhodes."

 Every day of his life Jordan made a detour on his way back from his

 lessons in the church, a detour that passed the tented and thatched camp

 where Pickering and Rhodes kept a bachelor mess, and Jordan passed with

 dragging footsteps. Twice he had glimpsed his idol at a distance and

 each time overcome with shyness had scampered away.

 "Good. Call in when you are ready for it." For a moment longer he

 studied the angelic child, and then turned and followed the other men to

 the shade of the tree.

 There were empty packing cases and logs to sit on, and the four men

 arranged themselves in a casual circle.

 Zouga was relieved that it was too early to offer his guests liquor. He

 had barely sufficient money to buy food for his family, let alone to

 afford whisky, and he guessed that a bottle would not last long in this

 company; all three guests were drinking men.

 They sipped coffee and swapped the news of the settlement for a few

 minutes before Pickering brought up the real business of their visit.

 "There are only two schemes we have come up with to get the number 6

 area back to work," he said. "The first is the ramp "I'm against that,"

 Rhodes said brusquely, impatiently.

 "Within months we'll be back at the same problem, just too damned deep!"

 "I would agree with mister Rhodes," said Hayes, the engineer. "At best

 it would be only a temporary measure. Then the ramp itself would start

 collapsing."

 "Major Ballantyne's idea is the only one worth considering," Rhodes cut

 in, and Zouga was struck forcibly by the man's manner of cutting through

 unnecessary discussion and getting to the core of a problem. "The idea

 of building stagings on the rim of the workings, and running wires to

 the floor of the diggings is the only one that will beat the problem of

 depth. Hayes, here, has done some drawings."

 The engineer unrolled the plans he carried, spread them on the dusty

 earth at his feet and anchored the corners with diamondiferous pebbles

 from Zouga's tailing dump which had spilled into and was threatening to

 engulf the entire camp.

 "I have considered a cantilever design." Hayes began to explain the

 drawings in crisp technical terms, and the others moved their seats

 closer and bowed over the plans. "We will have to use hand winches, and

 perhaps horse whims, until we can get a steam engine to do the haulage."

 They discussed it quietly, asking penetrating questions and, when the

 answers were obscure, cutting down for them with sharp minds and quick

 words. There was no waste of words, no repetitions, no drawn-out

 discussion and the work went swiftly.

 The stagings would be tall scaffoldings built on the edge of the pit,

 and they would house the haulage winches.

 "We will have to use steel hawsers. Manila will never do the job," Hayes

 told them. "There will have to be a single wire to each individual

 claim. A lot of wire."

 "How long to get it out?"

 "Two months to Cape Town."

 "How much is this going to cost?" Zouga asked the question which had

 been burning his lips all morning.

 "More than any of us can afford," smiled Pickering. A man with a

 thousand guineas in his pocket was a rich man on New Rush in these days.

 "What we cannot afford is not to do it," Rhodes answered him without a

 smile.

 "What about those diggers who cannot afford their share of the

 stagings?" Zouga persisted, and Rhodes shrugged.

 "Either they find the money, or they will not have a wire down to their

 claims. From now on it's going to take capital to work a claim on New

 Rush."

 "Those who haven't got it, will have to sell out, it's as easy as that."

 "Since the cave-in the price of claims in the number 6 has dropped to

 100 pounds," Zouga said. "Anybody who sells now is going to take a hell

 of a knock."

 "And anybody who buys at 100 pounds is going to make a killing," Rhodes

 answered him, and lifted his pale blue eyes from Hayes" plans, and for a

 moment held Zouga's gaze significantly. He was giving advice, Zouga

 realized, but what impressed Zouga was the strength and determination

 behind that level gaze. He no longer wondered why somebody so young

 commanded such widespread respect on the diggings.

 "Are we all agreed, then?" he asked.

 With less than twenty pounds cash in the world and his claims cut off

 eighty feet below ground level and partially covered by the earth fall

 of the roadway, Zouga hesitated.

 "Major Ballantyne." They were all looking at him. "Are you in?"

 "Yes," he nodded firmly. "Count me in." He would find the money,

 somewhere, somehow.

 They all relaxed, and Pickering chuckled. "It's never easy to play it

 all on one card." He understood.

 "Pickling, didn't I hear your saddle-bag clink when you dismounted?"

 Rhodes asked, and Pickering laughed again and went to fetch the bottle.

 "Cordon Argent," he said as he pulled the cork. "The right juice for

 such an occasion, gentlemen."

 They swished the coffee grounds from their mugs and held them out for a

 dram of the cognac.

 "The number 6 stagings, fast may they rise and long may they stand!"

 Pickering gave them the toast, and they drank together.

 Hayes wiped his whiskers with the back of his hand and stood up. "I'll

 have the quantities ready to send off on the noon coach tomorrow," he

 said, and hurried to his mount. Men who worked for Rhodes were always in

 a hurry. But neither Pickering or Rhodes moved to follow him.

 Instead, Rhodes stretched out his long legs in the stained white cricket

 flannels and crossed his dusty riding boots at the ankles, at the same

 time offering his coffee mug to Pickering.

 "I'll be damned if we don't have something else to celebrate this day,"

 he said as Pickering glugged cognac into their mugs.

 "The Imperial Factor," Pickering suggested.

 "The Imperial Factor," Rhodes agreed, and when he smiled the cleft in

 his smooth chin deepened and the melancholy line of his full lips under

 the fair moustache relaxed. "Even this awful creature Gladstone has not

 been able to halt the march of Empire northwards through Africa. The

 Foreign Office has moved at last.

 The Griquas are to be recognized as British subjects, and Waterboer's

 request has been granted. Griqualand West is to become part of Cape

 Colony, and of the Empire.

 We have lord Kimberley's assurance on it."

 "That's wonderful news," Zouga interrupted.

 "You think so?" The pale blue eyes sought and held Zouga's.

 know it to be so," Zouga told him. "There is only one way to bring peace

 and civilization to Africa and that is under the Union Jack."

 immediately there was a relaxation of the relationship between the three

 men, an unspoken accord, so that even without moving they seemed to have

 drawn closer, and their talk was easier, more intimate.

 "We are the first nation in the world and anything less than our total

 duty is unworthy of us," Zouga went on, and Rhodes nodded. "We destroyed

 the slave trade on this continent; that was only a beginning.

 When you have seen the conditions that still exist, the savagery and

 barbarism, to the north of us, only then can you appreciate how deep

 that duty still is."

 "Tell me about the hinterland," Rhodes demanded in that thin, almost

 querulous voice that so ill-suited his big loose-knit frame.

 "The hinterland." It was an unusual term, but it stuck like a burr, and

 Zouga heard himself use it as he described that wilderness through which

 he had travelled and hunted and prospected.

 Rhodes sat on a log of firewood, the shaggy leonine head sunk forward,

 brooding and silent, only his eyes quick and attentive, listening with

 an almost religious fervour, rousing himself every few minutes, lifting

 his head to ask a question and then letting it sink again to the answer.

 Zouga spoke of the wide slow rivers that ran in their deep valleys where

 the cream of tartar trees grew upon the banks and in the green shallows

 herds of hippopotamus challenged the traveller with gaping pink mouths

 and curved white tusks.

 He described the deadly malarial swamps, vast stands of papyrus reeds

 swaying like dancers from horizon to horizon, where the sky pressed

 down, smothering the world under a heavy blue blanket sodden with steamy

 vapours, and he told of the relief of climbing the steep rocky

 escarpments to the cool high plateau of golden grasslands.

 With words he showed them the vast and empty spaces, the plains dotted

 with moving herds of wild game, the cool green forests of standing

 timber, the streams of sweet water, crystal cold, from which a man could

 water his herds or his homestead.

 He talked of vanished kingdoms of long dead kings, the Mambo and the

 Monornatapa, who had built cities of massive grey stone and left them to

 the smothering vines, their idols thrown down and shattered, the

 foundations of the walls menaced by the twisted grey python roots of the

 wild fig trees which found the joints in the stonework and forced them

 inexorably apart.

 He told them of the square mine shafts that these vanished people had

 driven into the matrix and then abandoned, leaving the gold-bearing

 quartz where they had piled it before they fled.

 "Visible gold,"he told them, "thick as butter in the reef.

 Lying out there in the bush."

 He spoke of the people, the remnants of the subjects of the Monornatapa,

 their glories long past, decimated by war. He told them of the

 conquerors, the Matabele, the cruel legions from the south, calling the

 subservient tribes "cattle" and, contemptuously, "Mashona, eaters of

 dirt", taking them as slaves, killing them as sport, to prove their

 manhood, or merely on the king's whim.

 He described the wealth of the Matabele, their uncountable herds of

 cattle, thousands upon tens of thousands of fine beasts, glossy

 hump-backed bulls whose blood lines ran back to Egypt and the land

 between the Tigris and Euphrates, big rangy animals with widespread

 horns and hides of every colour from unrelieved black to purest white.

 He told them of deep and secret caverns in the hills where the priests

 of the vanished kings still conducted their mysteries and sustained the

 oracle, weaving a gossamer net of witchcraft and magic which enfolded

 even their proud and arrogant Matabele overlords.

 Then, as the day wasted away and the sun began to set behind a flaming

 curtain of red dust, Zouga told them of the kraals of the Matabele, the

 impis trained into the most merciless killing machine Africa had ever

 brought forth, racing barefoot into battle behind their tall rawhide

 shields, the plumes nodding and streaming from their dark heads and the

 dazzle of their assegais lighting the plains as the stars light the

 night sky.

 "How would you fight them, Ballantyne?" Rhodes fired the question

 harshly, and it checked Zouga in full lyrical flow. They stared at each

 other for a moment, but a moment that was fraught with portent, a moment

 in which the lives of many thousands black men and white teetered in the

 balance. Then slowly the arm of the balance came down on one side, and

 the destiny of a continent moved, like a fiery planet shifting its orbit

 through the universe.

 "I would thrust for the heart," Zouga said, suddenly his eyes cold and

 green, "a small mobile force of mounted men, "

 "How many men?"

 And suddenly they were talking war as the sun fell below the dusty mauve

 and purple plain, leaving the sinister shadows to draw in around the

 little group under the camel-thorn tree.

 Jan Cheroot threw logs on the fire and they sat on in the ruddy wavering

 light and the talk was of gold and of war, diamonds and gold and war,

 Empire and war, and their words conjured columns of armed and mounted

 men from the night, dark phantoms riding into the future.

 Suddenly Zouga checked in the middle of a sentence, his expression

 changed as though he had seen a ghost or recognized an old implacable

 enemy in the shadows under the camel-thorn tree.

 "What is it, Ballantyne?" Rhodes asked sharply, swivelling the big

 untidy head to follow the direction of Zouga's gaze.

 A Against the bole of the thorn tree stood the tall green soapstone

 bird-statue. Unnoticed until now, hidden by the welter of harness and

 loose equipment that festooned the branches around it, some trick of the

 flames, the fall and flare of one of the burning logs, had illuminated

 it with sudden and dramatic firelight.

 It stood taller than the seated men, seeming to preside over their

 counsels, listening to and directing the talk of gold and of blood. The

 falcon head, timeless as evil itself, as ancient as the hills of the far

 land from which it had been hewn, stared back at Zouga with sightless,

 yet somehow all-seeing, blank eyes, the cruel curve of the beak seemed

 on the point of opening to emit the falcon's hunting cry, or to bury

 itself in living flesh. To Zouga it seemed that in the darkness above

 the statue the words of the prophecy, spoken so long ago in that deep

 cavern of the Matopos hills by the beautiful naked witch who was the

 Umlimo of Monomatapa, still persisted, hovering in the shadows like

 living things: The stone falcons will fly afar ... There shall be no

 peace in the kingdoms of the Marnbos or the Monomatapas until they

 return. For the white eagle will war with the black bull until the stone

 falcons return to roost.

 In his memory Zouga heard the words again, spoken by that silken voice,

 and they seemed to echo against the dome of his skull and fill the drums

 of his ears.

 "What is it, my dear fellow?" Pickering repeated the question and

 something slithered along Zouga's spine and crawled upon the skin of his

 forearms so that the hair came erect and he had to shudder to free

 himself of it.

 "Nothing," he answered, huskily. "It's nothing; a grey goose walked over

 my grave." But he stared still at the statue and Rhodes followed his

 gaze.

 "By Jove. Isn't that the bird you wrote about in the book?"

 Rhodes sprang to his feet.

 Eagerly he strode to where it stood and paused before it for a long

 silent moment before he reached out and touched the head.

 "What an extraordinary piece of work," he said softly, and went down on

 one knee to examine the shark-tooth pattern that was carved into the

 plinth. In that attitude he seemed like a worshipper, a priest

 conducting some weird rite before the idol.

 Again Zouga felt that superstitious flutter of nerves crawl like insects

 upon his skin, and to break the mood he called loudly for Jan Cheroot to

 bring a lantern.

 In the lantern's beam they scrutinized the polished greenish stone, and

 as Rhodes ran his big large-knuckled hand over it his expression was

 rapt, the gaze of those strange pale eyes remote, like a poet hearing

 words in his head.

 Long after Pickering and Zouga had returned to their seats by the log

 fire, Rhodes stood alone under the camel-thorn tree with the falcon, and

 when at last he left it to join them once more, his tone was brittle

 with accusation.

 "That thing is a treasure, Ballantyne. It is unforgivable to leave it

 lying out under a tree."

 "It's lain in worse conditions for hundreds, perhaps thousands of

 years," Zouga replied drily.

 "You are right." Rhodes sighed, his attention straying back to the bird.

 "It's yours to do with as you wish." And then, impulsively, "I wish to

 purchase it from you. Name a price."

 "It's not for sale," Zouga told him".

 "Five hundred pounds," said Rhodes.

 The sum startled Zouga, but his reply was immediate.

 "No., "A thousand., "I say," Pickering intervened. "You can pick up ten

 claims in number 6 Section for that."

 Rhodes did not glance at him, but he nodded. "Yes, you could, or Major

 Ballantyne could pay for his share of the new stagings with a thousand

 pounds."

 A thousand pounds. Zouga felt himself tempted. A thousand pounds would

 see him clear.

 "No." He shook his head. "I'm sorry." He felt he had to explain. "It has

 become the household god, my personal good-luck symbol."

 "Good luck!" snorted Jan Cheroot from across the fire, and all three of

 them turned their heads in his direction.

 None of them noticed him sitting on the edge of the shadows like a

 wizened little yellow gnome.

 "Good luck!"the Hottentot repeated scornfully. "Since we picked up that

 verdamned bird we haven't seen a day's good luck." He spat into the

 fire, and his phlegm sizzled and exploded in a little puff of steam.

 "That bird has put blisters on our feet and rubbed the skin from our

 backs, it has broken the axles of our wagons and lamed our horses. It

 has brought us fever, and sickness and death. Miss Aletta died looking

 at that bird, and Jordie would have followed her if I hadn't thrown the

 verdamned thing out."

 "That's nonsense," Zouga snapped sharply. "That's an old Hottentot

 maid's superstition."

 "Ja," Jan Cheroot challenged him hotly. "Is it an old Hottentot

 superstition that we are sitting in the dust of this hell-hole, swatting

 flies and rubbing empty bellies?

 Is it superstition that all around us they are pulling fat diamonds and

 we find only the droppings and manure?

 Is it superstition that the earth has fallen on our claims and that it

 nearly swallowed Ralph? Is that your good luck that you boast the bird

 brings you, Master Zouga?

 If it is, then hear the words of old Jan Cheroot and take the thousand

 pounds that mister Rhodes offers you; take it with both hands, and thank

 him for getting rid of that that -" Jan Cheroot ran out of words and

 glared across the fire at the birdshape under the thorn tree.

 "Damn me," Pickering smiled. "But you nag like a wife."

 None of them were surprised at the familiar address between servant and

 master. In Africa relationships like this were common; the servant

 considering himself to be part of the family with a voice in the affairs

 of the family, and his claim was accepted by all.

 "Jan Cheroot has hated the idol since the day we discovered it."

 "Tell me about that day, Jan Cheroot," ordered Rhodes brusquely; and Jan

 Cheroot puffed up visibly with selfimportance. There were few things he

 enjoyed more than an important and attentive audience and a good story

 to tell them. While he made a show of packing his clay pipe with black

 Magaliesberg shag tobacco and lighting it with an ember from the fire,

 the two boys crept out of the tent drawn by the prospect of a story.

 They glanced cautiously at Zouga and, when he made no move to send them

 back, they were emboldened.

 Jordie sat next to Jan Cheroot and leaned his curly golden head against

 the Hottentot's shoulder, while Ralph came diffidently to sit with the

 men beside the fire.

 "We had been one year in the bush," Jan Cheroot began, tone year without

 seeing a civilized man, one year trekking and hunting-" And the boys

 settled down with delicious anticipation. They had heard the story a

 hundred times before and enjoyed each telling more than the last.

 "We had killed two hundred great elephant since leaving the Zambezi

 river, and we had fought bad men and savages. Our porters had mostly

 deserted or died of disease and wild animals, our provisions were long

 finished, no salt, no tea, no medicine and little gunpowder. Our clothes

 were rags, our boots worn through and repaired with the wet hide of

 buffalo.

 "It had been a killing journey, over mountains with no passes and rivers

 with no names " and ordinary men would long ago have fallen and the

 birds would have picked their bones white. Even we were tired and sick

 and we were lost. Around us, as far as our eyes could see, there was

 nothing but wild hills and bad bush through which only the buffalo could

 pass."

 "And you needed honey for your strength," Jordie burst out, unable to

 contain himself, and knowing the story word perfect. "Otherwise you

 would have died in the bush."

 "And we needed honey for our strength or we would have died in the

 bush," Jan Cheroot agreed solemnly.

 "Out of the bush came a little brown honey guide, and he sang thus -"

 Jan Cheroot imitated the high-pitched burring call and fluttered his

 fingers in an uncanny imitation of the bird."

 "Come!" he called to us. "Come, follow me, and I will lead you to the

 hive."

 "But he wasn't a real honey-bird, was he, Jan Cheroot?"

 Jordie cried excitedly.

 "No, Jordie, he wasn't a real honey-bird."

 "And you followed him!"

 "And we followed him for many days through bad country. Even when Master

 Zouga, your father, would have turned back, old Jan Cheroot was firm. We

 must go on, I told him, for by this time I, who have a deep knowledge

 and understanding of ghosts and spirits, realized that this was not a

 real honey-bird but a hobgoblin in the guise of a bird."

 Zouga smiled softly. He remembered the incident differently. They had

 followed the bird for some hours, and it was Jan Cheroot who had lost

 interest in the hunt and had to be prodded and cajoled to continue.

 "Then suddenly -" Jan Cheroot paused and flung out both hands

 theatrically, "- before our eyes, a wall of grey stone rose out of the

 bush. A wall so high it was like a mountain. With my axe I chopped away

 the vines and found a great gateway, guarded by fierce spirits

 "Spirits?" Zouga smiled.

 "They were invisible to ordinary eyes," Jan Cheroot explained loftily.

 "And I put them to flight with a magical sign."

 Zouga winked at Pickering, but Jan Cheroot ignored their smiles.

 "Beyond the gateway was a temple yard, in which lay the falcon statues,

 cast down, some of them shattered, but all of them covered with heaps of

 gold, mountains of gold."

 Zouga sighed. "Fifty pounds weight to be exact. Fragments and tiny

 pieces which we had to sift from the soil.

 How I wish it had been a mountain."

 "We gathered the gold from where it lay, and we took up that statue on

 our shoulders and carried it one thousand miles,"

 "Complaining every step of the way," Zouga pointed out.

 "until we reached Cape Town again."

 It was after midnight when Jan Cheroot brought the saddled horses to the

 camp fire, and as Rhodes took the reins he paused in the act of

 mounting.

 "Tell me, Major, this land to the north, this Zambezia as you call it in

 your book, what is it that keeps you from it? What are you doing here?"

 "I need money," Zouga told him simply. "And somehow I know that the road

 to the north begins here. The money to take and hold Zambezia will come

 from the workings of New Rush."

 "I like a man who thinks big, a man who counts not in ones and twos but

 in tens of thousands," Rhodes nodded approval.

 "At this moment I count my fortune in ones and twos."

 "We could change that." Rhodes shot a pale piercing glance towards the

 bird carving, but Zouga chuckled and shook his head.

 "I would like first refusal," Rhodes persisted.

 "If I sell, it will be to you," Zouga agreed, and Rhodes stepped up in

 the stirrup, swung a leg over the horse's rump, settled in the saddle

 and rode out of the camp.

 Pickering edged his mount closer to Zouga and leaned down from the

 saddle to tell him seriously: "He will have it from you, in the end he

 will have it. "I think not." Zouga shook his head.

 But Pickering smiled. "He always gets what he sets his heart on.

 Always."

 He saluted Zouga with the hand that held the reins and then started his

 horse into a canter and followed Rhodes out onto the dusty starlit

 track.

 "Give the stone to the yellow man," Karnuza urged quietly. "Five hundred

 gold queens, and we will return to our own people with treasures. Your

 father, the induna of Inyati, will be pleased, even the king will call

 us to the great kraal at Thabas Indunas for audience. We will become

 important men."

 "I do not trust the Bastaard."

 "Do not trust him. Trust only the yellow coins he brings."

 "I do not like his eyes. They are cold and he hisses like a yellow cobra

 when he speaks."

 They were silent then, a circle of dark figures in the smoky hut,

 squatting around the diamond as it lay on the clay floor and flickered

 with weird lights in the reflection of the fire.

 They had argued since the sunset had released them from their labours.

 They had argued over the meal of stringy mutton with its rind of greasy

 fat and maize porridge baked until it was stiff as cake.

 They had argued over the snuff-horn and beer pot, and now it was late.

 Soon, very soon, there would be a scratching at the door of the hut as

 the Bastaard came for his answer.

 "The stone is not ours to sell. It belongs to Bakela.

 Does a son sell the calves from his father's herds?"

 Karnuza made a clucking sound of exasperation.

 "Surely it is against law and custom to steal from the tribe, from the

 elders of the tribe, but Bakela is not Matabele. He is buni, white man,

 it is not wrong doing to take from him any more than it is against law

 and custom to send the assegai through the heart of a Mashona dog, or to

 mount his wife in sport, or to take the cattle of a Tswana and put fire

 into his kraal to hear his children squeal. Those are natural and right

 things for a man to do."

 "Bakela is my father, the stone is his calf, given into my care."

 "He will give you a single coin," Karnuza lamented, and Bazo seemed not

 to hear him.

 He picked up the diamond again and turned it in his hand.

 "It is a large stone," he mused aloud, "a very large stone." He held it

 to his eye and looked into the stone as though it were a mountain pool,

 and he watched with awe the fires and shapes move within it.

 Still holding it to his eye, he said, "If I bring my father a newborn

 calf, he will be happy and give me a reward.

 But if I bring him one hundred calves how much greater will be his joy,

 and one hundred times greater the reward that he will give me."

 He lowered the stone and gave a series of orders that sent his men

 hurrying out into the night, to return immediately with the tools Bazo

 had sent them to fetch.

 Then in silence they watched him make his preparations.

 Firstly he spread a kaross of silver jackal pelts on the earth floor and

 then in the centre of the fur he placed a small steel anvil at which he

 had watched Zouga shaping horse-shoes and working the iron hoops to

 repair the wagon wheels.

 On the anvil Bazo placed the diamond, and then he threw aside his cloak

 so that he stood stark naked in the firelight, tall and lean and hard,

 his belly muscles standing up in concentric ridges under the dark satiny

 skin and the wide rangy shoulders overdeveloped by practice with shield

 and spear.

 With his legs braced wide, he stood over the anvil, and hefted the

 sweat-polished handle of the pick, feeling the balance and weight of the

 steel head that had become so familiar.

 Bazo narrowed his eyes, measuring his stroke, and then he reared back

 with the pick almost touching, the thatched roof. He drove his body

 weight into the stroke, and the steel pick head came hissing down from

 on high.

 The point caught the diamond exactly on the high centre of its curved

 upper surface, and the great stone exploded as though a bucketful of

 mountain water had been dashed to the earth. The sparkling drops, the

 shattered fragments, the glowing chips of priceless crystal, seemed to

 fill the whole hut with a burst of sunlight.

 They pattered against the thatched walls, stung the naked skins of the

 watching Matabele, kicked little puffs of grey ash as they fell into the

 fire, and scattered on the lustrous fur of the silver jackal kaross,

 shining there like live fish in the net.

 "Son of the Great Snake," hooted Kamuza joyously. "We are rich men." And

 the laughing Matabele flung themselves into the task of gathering up the

 fragments.

 They picked them from the ashes, swept them up from the earthen floor,

 shook them out of the jackal skin kaross, and piled them into Bazo's

 cupped hand until it was filled to overflowing. Even then they missed

 some of the tiny chips that had fallen into the dust or the fire and

 were lost for ever.

 "You are a wise man," Kamuza told Bazo with unaffected admiration.

 "Bakela has his stones, a hundred calves , and we will have more coins

 than the yellow Bastaard would give us."

 There was no work in the collapsed number 6 Section, no need to rise

 before dawn, so the sun was clear of the horizon when Zouga strode out

 of the tent, clinching his belt as he joined Jan Cheroot and the two

 boys under the camel-thorn tree.

 The table was a packing-case, the lid stained with candle grease and

 spilled coffee, and breakfast was maize-meal porridge in chipped enamel

 bowls, unsweetened, for the price of sugar had recently risen to a pound

 a pound on the diamond fields.

 Zouga's eyes were red-rimmed, for he had slept little the previous

 night, but had lain awake worrying and scheming, going over and over in

 his mind every detail of the plans for the new staging, and coming back

 each time to the most important detail, the one for which there seemed

 to be no solution: the cost, the enormous cost of it all.

 The two boys saw his face, recognized his mood, and were immediately

 silent, applying themselves with complete absorption to the unappetizing

 grey gruel in their bowls.

 A shadow fell across the group, and Zouga looked up irritably, squinting

 into the early sunlight with the spoon half raised to his lips. "What is

 it, Bazo?"

 "Pick-ups, Bakela." The tall young Matabele used the English words.

 "Pick-ups." Zouga grunted.

 "Let me see it." Zouga was immediately uninterested.

 Almost certainly it would be a worthless chip of quartz or rock crystal.

 But Bazo placed a small bundle wrapped in a dirty scrap of cloth beside

 Zouga's bowl.

 "Well, open it," Zouga ordered; and Bazo picked the knot, and spread the

 cloth.

 "Glass!" thought Zouga disgustedly. There was almost a handful of it,

 chips and pieces, the biggest not much bigger than the head of a wax

 Vesta.

 "Glass!" and he made the gesture of sweeping it away, and then stayed

 his hand as the sunlight fell on the pile and a shaft of it pricked his

 eyes in a rainbow burst of colours.

 Slowly, disbelievingly, he changed the gesture of dismissal and reached

 hesitantly, almost reverently for the glittering heap, but Jordan

 forestalled him.

 With a shriek of joy the child's small graceful fingers danced over the

 pile.

 "Diamonds, Papa," he screamed. "They are diamonds, real diamonds."

 "Are you sure, Jordie?" Zouga asked the question unnecessarily, his

 voice hoarse, realizing it was too good to be true. There must be many

 hundreds of precious stones in the pile, small, very small, but of what

 superb colour, white, ice-white, seeming to crackle like lightwng they

 were so bright.

 Still hesitantly Zouga took one of the largest stones from Jordan's

 fingers.

 "Are you sure, Jordie?" he repeated.

 "They are diamonds, Papa. All of them."

 Zouga's last doubts faded, to be replaced immediately by a deeper

 uncertainty.

 "Bazo," he said. "There are so many-" And then something else puzzled

 him. Quickly he picked out twenty of the largest stones and stood them

 in a row across the top of the packing case.

 "The same colour, they are all the same colour, exactly!"

 Zouga shook his head, frowning, confused; and then suddenly the shadows

 in his eyes cleared.

 "Oh my God," he whispered, and slowly all blood drained from his face,

 leaving the skin dirty yellow like a man ten days gone in malaria fever.

 "The same; they are all the same. The breaks are clean and fresh."

 Slowly he lifted his eyes to Bazo's face. "Bazo, how big -" his voice

 roughened and dried, so that he had to clear his throat, "how big was

 the stone before, before you cracked it?"

 "This big." Bazo clenched and showed his fist. "With my pick I made it

 into many stones, for you, Bakela, knowing how you value many stones."

 Zouga's voice was still a husky whisper. "I will kill you," he said in

 English. "For this, I will kill you."

 The scar across his cheek turned slowly into an ugly inflamed weal, the

 stigmata of his rage, and now he was shaking, his lips trembling as he

 rose slowly to his feet.

 "I will kill you." His voice rose to a bellow, and Jordan shrieked

 again, this time with terror. He had never seen his father like this

 before; there was a terrifying maniacal quality about him.

 "That was the stone I was waiting for, you bastard, you black bastard,

 that was it. That was the key to the north."

 Zouga snatched the Martini-Henry rifle from where it leaned against the

 bole of the camel-thorn tree beside the falcon carving. The steel

 clashed and snickered as he pumped a cartridge into the chamber and in

 the same moment swung up the barrel.

 "I'm going to kill you," he roared, and then checked.

 Ralph had jumped to his feet, and now he faced his father, stepping

 forward until the muzzle of the loaded and fully cocked rifle almost

 touched the entwined brass snakes of his belt buckle.

 "You will have to kill me first, Papa," he said. He was as pale as

 Zouga, his eyes the same deep haunted green.

 "Get out of the way." Zouga's voice sank into that croaking, husky

 whisper and Ralph could not answer him, but he shook his head, his heavy

 jaw clenched so determinedly that his teeth grated audibly.

 "I warn you, stand aside," Zouga choked, and they stood confronting each

 other, both trembling with tension and outrage.

 Then the muzzle of the heavy rifle wavered in Zouga's hands, lowered

 slowly until it pointed to the dusty red earth between the toes of

 Ralph's boots.

 The silence went on for many seconds; then Zouga took a full breath and

 the barrel of his chest swelled under the faded blue flannel shirt.

 With a gesture of utter frustration he hurled the rifle against the

 treetrunk and the butt snapped through.

 Then he sank back into his seat at the packing-case table and his golden

 head sank slowly into his hands.

 "Get out." All the fire and fury had gone from his voice; it was quiet

 and hopeless. "Get out, all of you."

 Zouga sat on alone under the thorn tree. He felt burned out with emotion

 and anger, empty and blackened and devastated within, like the veld

 after fire has swept through it.

 When at last he lifted his head the first thing he saw was the falcon

 squatting opposite him on its greenstone plinth. It seemed to be

 smiling, a cruel and sardonic twist to the predator's beak, but when he

 stared at it Zouga saw that it was merely a trick of shadow and sunlight

 through the thorn branches.

 The kopje-walloper was a small man, with legs so short that his polished

 high-heeled boots did not touch the floor when he sat on the swivel

 piano stool behind his desk.

 The desk filled most of the tiny galvanized-iron hut, and it was

 furnace-hot in the room; the heat quivered and danced down from the

 roof. On the raw deal planks of the desk stood the accoutrements of the

 kopie-walloperys trade. The whisky bottle and shot-glasses to mellow the

 man with stones to sell; the sheet of white paper on which to examine

 the goods for colour; the wooden tweezers, the jeweller's eye-glass, the

 balance and scales, and the cheque book.

 The cheque book was the size of a family Bible, each cheque form

 embossed in gold leaf and printed in multicolours, the border depicting

 choirs of heavenly angels, sea nymphs riding in half clam shells drawn

 by teams of leaping dolphins, the Queen as Britannia with helmet, shield

 and trident, twisting cornucopia from which poured the treasures of

 Empire and a dozen other patriotic symbols of Victorian might.

 The cheque book was by far the most impressive item in the hut, not

 excepting the buyer's flowing silk Ascot tie and the yellow spats that

 covered his boots. It was unlikely that a digger would be able to refuse

 payment offered in such flamboyant style.

 "How much, mister Werner?" Zouga asked.

 Werner had swiftly sorted the glittering heap of diamond chips into

 separate piles, grading them by size alone for each stone was of the

 same fine white colour.

 The smallest stones were three points, three hundredth parts of a carat,

 barely bigger than a grain of beach sand, the largest was almost a

 carat.

 Now Werner laid aside his tweezers. and ran his hand through his dark

 locks.

 "Have another whisky," he murmured, and when Zouga refused, "Well, me,

 I'm having one now."

 He poured both glasses full to the brim, and despite Zouga's frown

 pushed one across to him.

 "How much?" Zouga persisted.

 "The weight?"Werner sipped the whisky and smacked his thick

 liver-coloured lips. "Ninety-six carats, all told.

 What a diamond it must have been. We will never see the likes again-'

 "How much in cash?"

 "Major, I would have offered you fifty thousand pounds, if that had been

 a single stone."

 Zouga winced and blinked his eyes closed for an instant, as though he

 had been slapped across the face with an open hand.

 With fifty thousand pounds he could have taken Zambezia, money for men,

 horses and guns, money for wagons and bullock teams, machinery to mine

 the reef and mill the gold, money for the farms, the seed and

 implements. He opened his eyes again.

 "Damn you, I'm not interested in what might have been," he whispered.

 "Just tell me how much you will pay for that."

 "Two thousand pounds; that's my top price, and it's not an "open"

 offer."

 The stone had splintered into almost two hundred chips. That meant a

 "pick-up" payment to Bazo of that many sovereigns. Zouga would intensely

 resent having to make that payment, but he owed it and he would make it.

 Of what remained after paying Bazo, at least a thousand would go for his

 share of the new stagings on the number 6 Section.

 Eight hundred left, and it cost him a hundred a week to work his claims,

 so he had won himself two months.

 Sixty days, instead of a land. Sixty days instead of a hundred thousand

 square miles of rich land.

 "I'll take it," he said quietly, picked up the whisky glass and drained

 it. It burned away the bitter taste at the back of his throat.

 Ralph's bird was a lanner, one of the true members of the family Falco,

 long-winged and perfect for hunting the open plains of Griqualand. At

 last, after many attempts, he had found her and taken her for his own, a

 falcon and therefore bigger than the male bird, which was not a falcon

 but a tercel or, in the case of a lanner, a "lanneret".

 She was "eyas", the falconers" term for a wild bird taken at the nest

 when almost full-fledged. Ralph had climbed to the nest high on the top

 branches of a giant acacia and brought the bird down in his shirt,

 bleeding where she had raked him with her talons across his belly.

 Bazo had helped him fashion the hood and jesses of soft glove leather

 for the proud head, but it was Ralph who walked her on his hand, hour

 after hour, day after day, stroking and gentling her, calling her

 "darling" and "beauty" and "lovely" until she would eat from his fist

 and greet him with a soft "Kweet! Kweet!" of recognition when she saw

 him. Then he introduced her to the lure of stuffed pigeon feathers,

 teaching her to hit it as he swung it on its long cord.

 Finally, in the traditional ritual of the falconer, he sat up all night

 with the bird on his fist and a candle burning beside him. He sat with

 her in the trial of wills which would prove his domination over her,

 staring into her fierce yellow eyes, in the candlelight, hour after

 hour, outlasting her until the lids closed over her eyes and she slept

 perched upon his fist and Ralph had won. Then at last he could hunt her.

 Jordan loved the bird for her beauty, and once she was trained Ralph

 occasionally let him carry her and stroke the hot sleek plumage under

 his gentle fingers. It was Jordan who found her name. He took it from

 Plutarch's Lives, which he was re-reading, and so the falcon was named

 Scipio, but Jordan accompanied the hunt only once, disgracing himself

 irretrievably by bursting into tears at the moment of the kill.

 Ralph never invited him again.

 The same rains that had undermined the number 6 causeway had flooded

 every depression and vlei for a hundred miles around the New Rush

 diggings. Slowly, in the hot dry months since that deluge, the shallower

 pools and swamps had dried out; but five miles south on the Cape Road,

 halfway to the low line of blue Magersfontein hills, there was still a

 wide body of open water, and already reed-beds had grown up around its

 perimeter and colonies of scarlet and ebony bishop birds had woven their

 hanging basket nests on the nodding reed staffs.

 Amongst the reeds Ralph and Bazo built their blind.

 They drew the long, leafy fronds down over their own heads, careful not

 to slice their hands on the razor-edged leaves; the fluffy white silks

 snowed down on them from the laden seed heads of the reeds, and they

 plaited the roof of stems in place, concealing themselves from the open

 sky.

 Ralph scooped a handful of black mud and smeared it over his face.

 He knew that his white face turned upwards would shine like a mirror,

 catching the eye of even a high-flighted bird.

 "You should have been born Matabele, then you would not need mud."

 Bazo chuckled as he watched him, and Ralph made an obscene sign at him

 with his fingers before they settled down to wait.

 It was fascinating to see how Scipio, blind under the leather hood,

 could still pick up the beat of approaching wings long before the men

 could see or hear them, and they were alerted by the set of her head and

 the anticipatory stretch of her talons.

 "Not yet, darling," Ralph whispered. "Soon now, darling."

 Then Bazo whistled sharply and pointed with his chin.

 Across the swamp, still two miles out, very high against the empty sky,

 Ralph saw them. There were three of them, big black wings curving on the

 downbeat in that characteristic unhurried, weighty action.

 "Here they come, my love," Ralph murmured to Scipio, and touched the

 russet-dappled breast with his lips and felt the beat of the fierce

 heart against his face.

 "God, but they are big," Ralph murmured, and the tiny shapely body on

 his arm was feather light. He had never flown her against geese before,

 and he was torn with doubts.

 The V-shaped flight of geese went far out across the swamp in a

 leisurely descending circle and then they were coming back, low, flying

 into the sun; It was perfect. Scipio would have the sun behind her when

 she towered, and Ralph thrust his doubts aside.

 He slipped the soft leather hood off Scipio's beautiful dove-grey head,

 and the yellow eyes opened like full moons, focusing swiftly. She shook

 out her feathers, swelling in size for a moment, puffing out her breast

 until she saw the thick black skein of geese against the sky, and her

 plumage flattened, going sleek and polished, steely in the early

 sunlight, and she crouched forward on Ralph's wrist.

 Turning with her to follow the flight of the geese, Ralph could feel the

 rapier points of her talons through the cuff of his leather gauntlet and

 sense the tension of the small neat body. She seemed to vibrate like a

 violin's strings as the bow is drawn lightly across them.

 With his free hand he broke the quick-release knot that secured the

 jesses to Scipio's leg.

 "Hunt!" he cried, and launched her, throwing her clear of the reed; and

 she went on high like a javelin, towering swiftly for the sun on wings

 shaped like the wicked blades of a pair of fighting knives.

 The geese saw her instantly, and stalled back on great wings that were

 suddenly ungainly with shock. Their tight V-formation broke up as each

 bird turned away two of them rising, driving hard for height while the

 third bird swung north again towards the river, dropped height steeply

 to pick up the speed he had lost in the initial stall of shock, and then

 levelled out low and winged hard, neck outstretched, webbed feet tucked

 up under his tail.

 Scipio was still towering, going up on wings that blurred with speed and

 turned to golden discs in the early slanting sunlight.

 Her tactics were those of the instinctive killer. She needed every inch

 of height that she could achieve. She needed it to exchange for speed

 when she began her stoop, her body weight was many times lighter than

 the huge birds she was hunting, and she had to kill with shock and

 speed.

 Even as she went up her head was twisted to the side, watching, judging,

 as the game scattered away below her.

 "Don't duck, my sweeting," Ralph called to her.

 There was very real danger of it, for though Scipio was hungry to hunt,

 she had never been flown against birds such as these. Geese were not her

 natural prey; nature had not equipped her for the shock of binding to

 something so massive.

 As she climbed so the difference in size of hunter and hunted was

 emphasized; and then abruptly Scipio was at the height she judged

 sufficient and she hovered, ten beats of Ralph's own heart as he watched

 her standing in the air.

 She was daunted, the game was too big, she was going to duck.

 "Hunt, darling, hunt!"he called to her and she seemed to have heard him.

 She screamed that terrible death cry of the falcon, high and shrill and

 fierce, and then she folded her wings and dropped into her stoop.

 "She's taking the low bird," Ralph shouted his triumph; she was not

 going to duck, she had selected the goose that had dropped close to

 earth and was now crossing her front at an acute angle.

 "There is the liver of a lion in that small body." Bazo's voice was full

 of wonder as he stared upwards at the tiny deadly dart that fell against

 the blue.

 They could hear the wind hissing through her halfcocked wings, see the

 infinitesimal movements of her tip feathers with which she controlled

 that terrible headlong plunge.

 The goose flogged at the air, heavy, massive, black flashed with frosty

 white, its panic evident in every beat of its frantic wings.

 The speed with which Scipio closed was chilling.

 Ralph felt the hair on the nape of his neck come erect as though an icy

 wind had touched him as Scipio reached forward with her steely talons.

 This was the moment for which he and the bird had worked and trained so

 long. The supreme moment of the kill, an involuntary cry burst from his

 throat, a primeval and animal sound, as Scipio bound to the great goose

 and the sound of the hit was like a single beat of a bass drum that

 seemed to shake the very air about Ralph's head.

 The goose's spread wings spun like the spokes of a wheel, and a burst of

 black feathers filled the air as though a shrapnel shell had been fired

 from a heavy cannon; and then the goose's body collapsed under the

 shock, one wing snapped and trailed down the sky as it fell, the long

 serpentine goose neck was arched back in the convulsion of death, and

 Scipio was bound to the gigantic black body, her talons locked deep into

 the still frantically beating heart. The impetus of Scipio's stoop had

 shattered bone in the big body and burst the pulsing blood vessels

 around the goose's heart.

 Ralph started to run, whooping with excitement, and Bazo was at his

 shoulder, laughing, head thrown back, watching the birds fall, leaving a

 tracery of feathers like the plume of a comet in the sky behind them.

 A hawk binds to its prey, from the moment of strike unto the earth. A

 falcon does not. Scipio should break, and let the goose fall, but she

 had not; she was still locked in, and Ralph felt the first frost of

 worry cool his excitement. Had his bird broken bone, or otherwise

 injured herself in that frightful impact?

 "Beauty!" he called to her. "Unbind! Unbind!" She could be caught under

 the heavy goose and crushed against the earth. It was not her way to

 hold on all the way in.

 "Unbind!" he screamed again, and saw her flutter, stabbing at the air

 with those sharp-bladed wings. She was stunned, and the earth rushed up

 at her.

 Then suddenly she lunged, unbinding, breaking loose from her kill,

 hovering, letting the goose go on to thud into the rocky earth beyond

 the swamp, only then sinking, dainty and poised, and settling again upon

 the humped black carcass. Ralph felt his chest choked with pride and

 love for her courage and her beauty.

 "Kweet," Scipio called, when she saw Ralph. "Kweet," the recognition

 call, and she left the prize that she had risked her life to take and

 came readily to Ralph's hand.

 He stooped over her, his eyes burning with pride, and kissed her lovely

 head.

 "I won't make you do it again," he whispered. "I just had to see if you

 could do it, but I won't ever make you do it again."

 Ralph fed the goose's head to Scipio, and she tore it to pieces with her

 curved beak, between each morsel pausing to stare at Ralph.

 "The bird loves you," Bazo looked up from the fire over which he was

 roasting chunks of fat goose, the grease dripping onto the coals and

 frizzling sharply. Ralph smiled, lifted the bird and kissed its bloody

 beak.

 "And I love her."

 "You and the bird have the same spirit. Kamuza and I have spoken of it

 often."

 "Nothing is as brave as my Scipio."

 Bazo shook his head. "Do you remember the day that Bakela would have

 killed me? In the moment that he took the gun to me he was mad, mad to

 the point of killing."

 Ralph's expression changed. It was many months since he had intervened

 to save the young Matabele from the wrath of his father.

 "I have not spoken of it before." Bazo held Ralph's eyes steadily. "It

 is not the kind of matter about which a man chatters like a woman at the

 water hole. We will probably never speak of it again, you and I, but

 know you that it will never be forgotten -" Bazo paused, and then he

 said it solemnly. "I shall remember, Henshaw."

 Ralph understood immediately. "Henshaw, the hawk."

 The Matabele had given him a praise name, a thing not lightly done, a

 mark of enormous respect. His father was Bakela, the Fist, and now he

 was Henshaw, the Hawk, named for the brave and beautiful bird upon his

 wrist.

 "I shall remember, Henshaw, my brother," repeated Bazo, the Axe. "I

 shall remember."

 Zouga was never entirely sure why he kept the rendezvous; certainly it

 was not merely because Jan Cheroot urged him to do so, nor the fact that

 the payment of 2000 pounds for the shattered chips of the great

 Ballantyne diamond had not lasted him as long as he had hoped, nor that

 the cost of the new stagings was rising all the time. His share looked

 to be more like two thousand than a thousand pounds. Sometimes in his

 least charitable moods Zouga suspected that Pickering and Rhodes and

 some other members of the committee were content to see the costs of the

 stagings rise and the pressure begin to squeeze out the smaller diggers.

 The going price of claims in the collapsed number 6 Section continued to

 drop as the cost of the stagings rose; and somebody was buying, if not

 Rhodes and his partners, then it must be Beit or Wemer, or even the

 newcomer, Barnato.

 Perhaps Zouga kept the rendezvous to distract himself from these grave

 problems, perhaps he was merely intrigued by the mystery that surrounded

 it all, but when he looked at himself honestly it was more likely the

 prospect of profit. The whole affair reeked of profit, and Zouga was a

 desperate man. He had very little left to sell apart from the claims

 themselves. To sell the claims was to abandon his dream. He was ready to

 explore any other path, to take any risks, rather than that.

 "There is a man who wishes to speak with you." Jan Cheroot's words had

 started it, and something in his tone made Zouga look up sharply. They

 had been together many years and there was little they did not know of

 each other's moods and meanings.

 "That is simple enough," Zouga had told him. "Send him to the camp."

 "He wishes to speak secretly, at a place where no other eyes will be

 watching."

 "That sounds like the way of a rogue," Zouga frowned.

 "What is the man's name?"

 "I do not know his name," Jan Cheroot admitted, and then when he saw

 Zouga's expression, he explained. "He sent a child with a message."

 "Then send the child back to him, whoever he is. Tell him he will find

 me here every evening, and anything he has to discuss I will be pleased

 to listen to in the privacy of my tent."

 "As you wish," Jan Cheroot grunted, and the wrinkles on his face

 deepened so that he looked like a pickled walnut. "Then we will continue

 to eat maize porridge And they did not discuss it again, not for many

 weeks, but the worm was planted and it gnawed away at Zouga until he was

 the one who asked.

 "Jan Cheroot, what of your nameless friend. What was his reply?"

 "He sent word that it was not possible to help a man who refused to help

 himself," Jan Cheroot told him airily.

 "And it is clear to all the world that we have no need of help. Look at

 your fine clothes, it is the fashion now to have the buttocks hanging

 out of the pants., Zouga smiled at the hyperbole, for his breeches were

 neatly patched. Jordan had seen to that.

 "And look at me," Jan Cheroot went on. "What reason do I have for

 complaint? I was paid a year ago,"

 "wasn't,"

 "Six months ago," Zouga corrected him.

 "I cannot remember," Jan Cheroot sulked. "The same way I have forgotten

 what beef tastes like."

 "When the stagings are completed -" Zouga began, and Jan Cheroot

 snorted.

 "They are more likely to fall on our heads. At least then we won't have

 to worry about being hungry."

 Serious defects had shown up in the design of the stagings. They had

 been unable to support the weight of cable. The cables between them

 weighed over three hundred tons and they had to be stretched to

 sufficient tension to carry the gravel buckies without sagging

 excessively.

 The very first day of operation the stagings at the north end of the

 section gave under the strain. Two winches tore loose and the wires fell

 twanging and snaking into the diggings. There had been a gravel bucky on

 the rope, carrying five black workmen down to the floor of the workings

 to begin re-opening the long deserted claims. They screamed the whole

 way down as the bucky spun and twisted, throwing them clear, and the

 tangle of snapping silver cables caught them up like the tentacles of

 some voracious sea-monster.

 it took the rest of the day to bring out the fearfully mutilated bodies,

 and the Diggers" Committee closed the number 6 Section again while

 modifications were made to reinforce the stagings.

 The number 6 Section was still closed.

 Zouga had one bottle of Cape brandy leftwhich he had been saving but now

 he fetched it from his locker, pulled the cork with his teeth and poured

 into their two mugs.

 He and Jan Cheroot drank in moody silence for a while, and then Zouga

 sighed.

 "Tell your friend I will meet him," he said.

 Pale dust chalked the sky above the plain, so that the distances drifted

 away, dreamlike and insubstantial, to an indefinite horizon.

 There was no living thing, no bird nor vulture in the milky blue sky, no

 ripple of flocks nor smoky drift of springbuck herds through the low

 scrub.

 In this loneliness the little cluster of buildings stood forlorn, long

 deserted, roofs sagging and the adobe plaster falling from the walls in

 chunks exposing the unsawn timber frames beneath.

 Zouga touched the reins and brought the gelding down to a walk, while he

 slouched in the saddle, riding with long stirrups and the disinterested

 mien of a man on a long and boring journey, but his eyes under the brim

 of the wide hat were quick and restless.

 He was uncomfortably aware of the empty rifle scabbard under his right

 knee.

 "Unarmed." The invitation had been unequivocal. "You will be watched."

 The man had chosen an ideal rendezvous. There was no approach to this

 deserted farmhouse except across miles of bare veld, no cover higher

 than a man's knee and it was good shooting light, with the sun in the

 west.

 Zouga shifted his weight restlessly in the saddle, and the big ungainly

 Colt revolver under his coat dug into his side, a pain he did not

 resent, although the comfort it gave him was illusory. A man with a

 rifle could pick his shot and take his time as Zouga rode in.

 The sheep kraal was part of the homestead, unplastered stone walls, and

 there was a well in front of the house, again with a stone coping.

 Beside the well lay the remains of a wagon, three wheels and the

 disselboom missing, the paint dried and cracked away, the weed growing

 up through the wagon bed.

 Zouga touched the gelding's neck and he stopped beside the wagon. He

 dismounted swiftly, dropping off on the side farthest from the building,

 using the horse as cover, and while he made a show of adjusting the

 girth, he studied the empty building again.

 The windows were dark empty holes, like missing teeth, and there could

 be an unseen marksman standing well back in the gloomy interior. The

 front door was blanched by the sun; Zouga could see the light through

 the cracks. It banged aimlessly and unrhythmically in the wind, and the

 wind hooted and moaned in the eaves and through the empty windows.

 Behind the gelding's body Zouga loosened the revolver in his belt,

 making certain that it was ready to hand. He tied the gelding's reins to

 the wagon body with a slippery knot that would come undone at a tug, and

 then he consciously steeled himself, drew breath and squared his

 shoulders and stepped out from behind the horse.

 He began to walk towards the front door, but his right hand was on his

 hip, under the tail of his jacket, almost touching the checkered grip of

 the revolver.

 He reached the doorway, keeping clear of the entrance, and then

 flattened his back against the wall.

 With faint surprise he realized that his breathing was rough, as though

 he had been running. Then another surprise, he was enjoying his own

 fear, the feeling of heightened sensitivity of his skin, the enhanced

 clarity of vision, the singing of the adrenalin in his blood, the

 nervous tension of his sinew and muscle, the awareness of being alive in

 the threat of death. He had been too long without this stimulant.

 He placed one hand on the sill of the window and vaulted through it

 lightly, dropping to the earthen floor as he landed and rolling swiftly

 to his feet again in the corner, facing the room. It was small and

 empty, bunches of dusty cobwebs hung from the rafters, and the floor was

 scattered with the white-flecked droppings of gecko, lizards.

 Zouga moved down the wall, keeping his back covered, and stepped through

 into the second room. The kagel fireplace was blackened with soot, and

 the smell of dead ash caught in his throat. He looked through the open

 doorway into the sunlit sheep kraal beyond. There was a riderless horse

 tethered in the angle of the wall. A grey, dappled quarters, uncropped

 dark mane and full tail almost sweeping the ground.

 The rifle scabbard on the saddle was empty, and Zouga's nerves fizzed.

 The unknown rider must have the gun with him.

 Zouga loosed the long barrel of the Colt revolver in his belt, peering

 out into the sunlight.

 "Keep your hand away from that gun." The voice came from behind him,

 from the empty front room through which Zouga had just passed. "Don't

 draw it, and don't turn around."

 The voice was quiet, controlled and very close. Zouga obeyed it,

 standing awkwardly with his right hand under his coat, and he felt the

 touch of steel between his shoulder blades. It had been well done; the

 man had been lying outside, had let him walk through the house and then

 had come in behind him.

 "Now very slowly bring out the gun and put it on the floor between your

 feet. Very slowly, please, Major Ballantyne. I don't want to have to

 kill you, but if I hear the hammer cocked I will, believe me, I will."

 Slowly Zouga freed the heavy pistol and stooped to place it on the

 littered kitchen floor. He glanced back between his own legs and saw the

 man's feet. He was wearing velskoen of tanned kudu hide and leather

 leggings, big feet, big man, strong legs.

 Zouga straightened up, holding his hands well away from his body.

 "You should not have brought a gun, Major. That is very distrustful of

 you, and dangerous for both of us." He could hear the relief in the

 man's tone, and the voice was familiar, he searched his memory. That

 strange accent, where had he heard it? The footsteps retreated across

 the kitchen.

 "Slowly now, Major, very slowly, you may turn around."

 The man stood in the gloom of the soot-darkened walls, but the shaft of

 sunlight from the high window fell on his hands and the weapon they

 held.

 It was a shotgun. Both big fancy hammers were at full cock,-and the

 man's fingers were hooked around the triggers.

 "You!" said Zouga.

 "Yes, Major, me!" The pockmarked Griqua Bastaard smiled at him, white

 teeth in the darkly handsome face and the gypsy ringlets dangling to his

 collar. "Hendrick Naaiman, at your service, once again."

 "If you are buying cattle, it's a hell of a way to do business."

 The Griqua was the one who had bought Zouga's bullock team the money he

 had used to buy the Devil's Own.

 "No, Major, this time I am selling." And then sharply, "No, Major, do

 not move, and keep your hands there, where I can see them. I have loaded

 with Big Loopers lion-shot, Major. At this range it will cut you in

 half."

 Zouga lifted his hands away from his sides.

 "What are you selling?"

 "Wealth, Major, a new way of life for you, and for me."

 Zouga smiled bleakly, sarcastically.

 "I am truly grateful for your kindness, Naaiman."

 "Please call me Hendrick, Major, if we are to be partners."

 "We are?" Zouga inclined his head gravely. "I am honoured."

 "You see, you have something I need and I have something you need., "Go

 on."

 "You have two excellent claims, they are truly excellent claims in all

 except they yield very few diamonds."

 Zouga felt the scar on his cheek heating up, but he kept his expression

 neutral.

 "And as you know, Major, my ancestry, the touch of the tarbrush, I think

 is the polite term, or more succinctly my kaffir blood, precludes me

 from owning claims."

 They were silent then, regarding each other warily across the darkened

 kitchen. Zouga had abandoned any idea of going for the shotgun. He was

 starting to become intrigued by the articulate and persuasive voice of

 the tall Griqua.

 "For that reason I cannot sell you my claims, not even at gunpoint,"

 Zouga said quietly.

 "No, no, you do not understand. You have the claims but no diamonds,

 while I have no claims but Hendrick drew a drawstring tobacco bag from

 his inner pocket and dangled it by its string from his forefinger.

 "-But I have diamonds." He finished the sentence and tossed the bag

 across the room.

 Instinctively Zouga reached out one hand and caught it. The bag crunched

 in his hands like a bag of humbugs, bringing back childhood memories. He

 held it, staring still at Hendrick Naaiman.

 "Open it, please, Major."

 Slowly Zouga obeyed, pulling open the mouth of the cloth bag, and then

 peered into it.

 The light was bad, but in the bag something gleamed like the coils of a

 sleeping serpent.

 Zouga felt the diamond thrill close its fist upon his chest. It never

 failed, he thought, always that choking feeling when the stones shine.

 He tipped the bag and spilled a small rush of uncut diamonds into his

 hand. He counted them quickly; there were eight of them altogether.

 One was a canary bright stone, twenty carats if it was a point. Two

 thousand pounds" worth, Zouga estimated.

 "These are just samples of my wares, Major, a week's takings."

 There was another perfect eight-sided crystal, slick and soapy

 silver-grey, bigger than the yellow diamond, at least three thousand

 pounds" worth.

 Another of the stones was a symmetrical triangular shape, like those

 throat lozenges that tasted of liquorice, more childhood memories. A

 clear silver stone, limpid and lovely. Zouga picked it up between thumb

 and forefinger and held it to the light of the high window.

 "These are I.D.B?" he asked.

 "Dirty words, Major; they offend my delicate breeding.

 Do not concern yourself further with where they come from, or how I get

 them. just be certain that there will be more, many more, every week

 there will be a parcel of first water stones."

 "Every week?" Zouga asked, and heard the greed in his own voice.

 "Every week," Hendrick agreed, watching Zouga's expression, and he knew

 the fly had touched the sticky strands of his web. He let the barrel of

 the shotgun sag towards the mud floor and he smiled that flashing

 flamboyant smile. "Every week you will have a parcel like this to seed

 into your own cradle, to throw out on your own sorting-table."

 There was another stone in his palm. At first Zouga had thought it to be

 black boart, the almost worthless industrial diamond; but his heart

 bounced suddenly as the poor light caught it and he saw the deep emerald

 colour flash from its heart. His fingers trembled slightly as he lifted

 it.

 "Yes, Major." Hendrick Naaiman nodded approval. "You have a good eye;

 that's a green dragon."

 A freak stone, a green diamond, a "fancy" in the parlance of the

 kopje-wallopers. There were fancy diamonds the colour of rubies, or

 sapphires or topaz, and fancies commanded whatever the trade would bear.

 It was not impossible that this green dragon would fetch ten thousand

 pounds, and end up in the crown jewels of an emperor.

 "You said partners?" Zouga asked softly.

 "Yes, partners," Hendrick nodded. "I will find the stones. Let me give

 you an example. I paid three hundred to one of my men for that green

 dragon. You put it across your table and register it from the Devil's

 Own, " Zouga was staring at him fixedly, hungrily, his hands still

 trembling, and Hendrick stepped towards him confidently.

 You should get four thousand pounds for a stone like that, a profit of

 three thousand seven hundred; and we share that fiftyfifty, because I am

 not a greedy man.

 Equal partners, Major, eighteen fifty for you and eighteen fifty for

 me."

 Zouga poured the glittering stones into his left hand.

 His eyes had not left Hendrick Naaiman's lips.

 "What do you say, Major? Equal partners." Hendrick transferred the

 shotgun to his left hand and reached out with his right.

 "Equal partners," he repeated. "Let's shake hands on it."

 Slowly Zouga stretched out his own right hand, fingers open, palm

 upwards. And then, as their fingers touched, he hurled the handful of

 diamonds into Hendrick Naaiman's face. All Zouga's strength was behind

 the throw, all his anger at being so sorely tempted, all his outrage at

 this devilish assault upon his own self-esteem.

 The diamonds tore into Hendrick Naaiman's flesh, one sharp-sided crystal

 ripped open his smooth olive-skinned forehead above the right eye,

 another sliced his lip.

 Involuntarily Hendrick threw up his hands, lifting the shotgun muzzle

 high before his face as he staggered back from this unexpected assault,

 but at the same instant his right hand closed over the pistol grip and

 his forefinger hooked for the triggers. The gun was still at full cock,

 each barrel loaded with lion-shot. Hendrick started to drop the muzzles,

 pointing for Zouga's belly.

 Zouga grabbed the barrel six inches below the gaping muzzles and forced

 the gun upwards, grasping with his left hand for Hendrick's right wrist.

 The big Griqua jerked backwards with both arms, and Zouga made no effort

 to resist him; instead he lunged forward, thrusting the gun into

 Hendrick's own face. The blue steel barrels cracked against his

 cheekbone, and Hendrick gasped at the blow and reeled backwards. Zouga

 drove at him again, forcing him into the soot-blackened wall so that he

 grunted with pain, pinned there for a moment with the shotgun pointing

 at the roof. In these seconds Zouga reached with his left hand, hooked

 his thumb through the trigger guard and jerked back against the

 triggers.

 Both barrels fired simultaneously.

 The burst of gunfire in the tiny confined kitchen was deafening. The

 bright orange muzzle flashes lit the gloom like a lightning strike, and

 the charges of shot crashed through the rotten roof, blowing gaping

 holes through which the sun shot long bright shafts of light.

 The massive recoil of the double-shotted gun drove the butt back into

 Hendrick's own belly, and he doubled over with a gasp of shock and

 agony.

 The gun was empty, harmless. Zouga let it go and dived full length

 across the dusty floor. At full stretch his fingers touched the cool

 checkered grip of the ugly black Colt revolver. As he fumbled for it

 desperately, he heard the light crunch of footsteps across the earthen

 floor behind him, and rolled right, flicking over on his back without

 raising his head.

 Hendrick was over him, the empty shotgun raised above his head with both

 hands like an executioner's axe, and he had already launched the stroke.

 The gun swung down in a wide arc, the blue steel glittering sullenly in

 the gloom and the hiss of it like the sound of a goose's wing. Zouga

 rolled again flipping his body aside.

 But the butt of the shotgun caught him.

 It was only a touch, high in the shoulder, but it jerked his head so

 that his teeth clashed in his skull, and his right arm was instantly

 nerveless, numb from his shoulder to fingertips. The Colt revolver went

 flying from his grip, spinning away across the kitchen floor until it

 hit the far wall.

 Instantly Hendrick turned to chase the pistol, and Zouga kicked out at

 the back of his knee, landing solidly with the heel of his boot.

 Hendrick's leg folded under the blow, and he would have gone down but

 the wall was there to hold him. He fell against it, pinned for a moment

 by his crippled leg, and Zouga rolled to his feet.

 He stabbed with his good left hand, feeling the solid shock of the

 Griqua's jawbone under his fist. Then again Zouga caught him with the

 left and heard the gristle in the beaky nose give with a crunch like

 chewing on a ripe apple, and the fresh blood from Hendrick's nostrils

 gave him a fierce joy.

 He was going to beat this man to a bleeding pulp.

 "Wait!" Hendrick shouted. "Please! Don't hit me again."

 The appeal was so frantic, the terror on the Griqua's bloody face so

 pitiful, that even in his own cold killing anger, Zouga checked.

 He stepped back and lowered his hands, and the Griqua hurled the empty

 shotgun at Zouga's face. It was completely unexpected, Zouga was

 off-guard, and even as he started to duck, Zouga knew it was too late,

 and he hated himself for a fool.

 It felt as though somebody had slammed a door behind Zouga's eyes, and

 his vision was suddenly narrowed and dimmed with blood. He hurled

 himself forward, and dived again for the revolver. He got a hand on the

 barrel, and as he touched it the full weight of Hendrick's charging body

 crashed into his back, driving him into a heap against the doorjamb. But

 he still had a grip on the pistol barrel, and he struck out blindly

 using it like a club.

 He felt the steel butt sock into flesh, and he hit again and again, some

 of the blows dying in the air, others thudding into the floor, but

 others cracking against bone.

 He was sobbing and panting, blinded by his own blood, and for seconds he

 did not realize that Hendrick no longer clutched and tore at him.

 Zouga shrank back against the wall and wiped the blood from his eyes.

 Then he peered like an old man through the red film. Hendrick was beside

 him. He was on his back, his arms flung wide as a crucifix and the blood

 snored and bubbled from his nostrils. He lay very still, his breathing

 the only sign of life.

 Zouga lowered the pistol, and used the wall to hoist himself to his

 feet. He stood there swaying, his head hanging, the pistol dangling from

 his hand that was suddenly so weak that he could barely support its

 weight.

 "Master Zouga!" Jan Cheroot dashed into the yard, panting from his run,

 carrying the Lee-Enfield rifle at high port across his chest, sweat

 streaking down from under his brimless pillbox infantry cap and his face

 crumpling with dismay as he saw Zouga's bloody torn face.

 "You took your time," Zouga accused him huskily, still clinging to the

 door for support. He had left Jan Cheroot with the rifle hidden in a

 ravine half a mile out across the dusty plain.

 "I started running as soon as I heard the shots."

 Zouga realized that the fight had lasted only a few minutes, as long as

 it takes a man to run half a mile.

 Jan Cheroot unslung the water bottle from his shoulder and tried to wash

 a little of the blood from Zouga's face.

 "Leave that." Zouga pulled away brusquely. "See if there is a rope in

 the Bastaard's saddle bags, something to tie him, a knee halter,

 anything."

 There was a coil of braided rawhide rope on the pommel of the grey

 mare's saddle. Jan Cheroot hurried back with it and then paused in the

 door of the derelict shanty.

 "I know him." He stared at Hendrick Naaiman's bloody snoring face. "I

 think I know him, but you made such a mess of him."

 "Tie him," Zouga whispered, and drank from the water bottle. Then he

 unwound the silk scarf from around his throat and wetted it from the

 bottle before tenderly wiping away the blood and dust from his cuts and

 scratches.

 The worst injury was in his hairline, where the breech of the broken

 shotgun had caught him; by the feel of it, it needed to be stitched.

 Jan Cheroot was muttering insults and abuse at Hendrick Naaiman as he

 worked.

 "You yellow snake." He rolled the Griqua onto his back. "You got shoes

 on your feet and pants covering your black arse, and you think you are a

 gentleman."

 He pulled Hendrick's arms up behind him and trussed them, quickly and

 expertly, at wrist and elbow.

 "You'd give a vulture a bad name." Jan Cheroot looped the rawhide around

 his ankles and pulled it up tight.

 "Even the hyenas wouldn't eat dung alongside of you, my beauty."

 Zouga capped the water bottle and picked up the empty tobacco bag.

 Then he hunted for the diamonds.

 They had been kicked and scattered about the kitchen.

 The eighth and last was the green dragon, dark and inconspicuous In one

 gloomy corner.

 Zouga tossed the bag to Jan Cheroot, and he whistled as he peered into

 it.

 IDB," he muttered, his wrinkled brown face puckering into a sculpture of

 pure avarice. "The yellow snake was I.D.B."

 "He wanted us to run those stones across our sortingtables."

 "What shares?" Jan Cheroot demanded, playing with the stones.

 "Half shares."

 "That's a good deal. We could be rich in six months and get out of this

 god-damned and blasted desert for ever."

 Abruptly Zouga snatched the bag back again. He had been through the

 temptation once already.

 "Get his horse," he ordered angrily.

 They hoisted the Griqua's inert body and threw it over the grey's

 saddle. As Jan Cheroot was tying the Griqua to the horse, Hendrick

 kicked his legs weakly and tried to raise his head, twisting his neck to

 peer blearily at Zouga.

 "Major," he croaked, only half conscious. "Major, let me explain.

 You don't understand."

 "Shut your mouth," Zouga growled at him.

 "Major. I am not a thief, let me explain about those diamonds."

 "I told you to hold your mouth," Zouga warned, and wrenched the Griqua's

 jaw open, roughly digging his thumbs into the sallow bloody cheeks; then

 he thrust the bag of diamonds into his slack mouth.

 "Choke on your bloody diamonds, you thieving, treacherous bastard," he

 told him grimly as he bound the man's mouth closed with his scarf,

 jamming the bag in place, while Hendrick squawked and rolled his eyes,

 jerking his head from side to side, his cries muffled and his spittle

 soaking the gay band of silk.

 "That will keep you quiet until we get you in front of the Committee."

 Jan Cheroot sat up behind the trussed Griqua on the grey's back and

 followed Zouga on the gelding.

 He sucked his teeth mournfully, sighed and shook his head.

 "What a waste!" he grumbled just loud enough for Zouga to hear. "That

 bag would take us back to the north."

 He rolled his eyes sideways at Zouga, but there was no reaction.

 "The Committee is going to see this yellow bastard lynched anyway.

 He is as good as vulture breakfast already Hendrick wriggled helplessly

 and snuffled through his swollen nose.

 If we just did the job for them, nice and quietly, a bullet in the head,

 and leave him for his brothers and sisters, the jackals and the hyena,

 man, nobody will ever know."

 He glanced hopefully at Zouga again. "What's in that bag will take us

 north again, as far as we want to go."

 Zouga kicked the gelding into a canter, and ahead of them the iron roofs

 and dusty tent cones of New Rush glowed ruddily in the slanting rays of

 the sunset. Jan Cheroot sighed, swatted the double-laden grey across the

 quarters and followed Zouga into the camp.

 Pickering and Rhodes messed with a few other bachelor diggers directly

 beyond Market Square, at the edge of the main tailing dumps. There were

 two good spreading acacias to give them shade, and they had planted a

 hedge of milkbush around the cluster of iron huts and walled shanties.

 Every member of the mess owned good claims and was recovering stones; he

 had to do so to afford the mess bills for champagne and old cognac that

 seemed to form the group's staple diet. One of them was the younger son

 of a belted earl, another was a baronet in his own right, although

 merely of the Irish aristocracy. Most of them were members of the

 Diggers" Committee, and their style had earned the group the title of

 "The Swells".

 When Zouga rode into their camp, half a dozen of the Swells were

 lounging under the acacia trees, dining on Veuve Cliquot champagne,

 although the sun was still above the horizon, and wrangling amiably over

 the heavy wagers that they were placing against how many flies would

 settle on the sugar lumps that each had on the camp table in front of

 him.

 Pickering looked up, his fair open features for once puckered in

 astonishment, as Zouga rode into the camp.

 "Gentlemen," Zouga announced grimly. "I have something for you."

 He leaned out of his saddle and cut the thongs that secured Hendrick

 Naairnan's heels to the saddle girth of the grey mare, and then tipped

 him off the horse, letting him fall head-first into the dust in front of

 the seated group of Diggers" Committee members.

 I.D.B.," Zouga told them, as they stared at him.

 Pickering moved first. He jumped to his feet.

 "Where are the diamonds, Major?" he asked.

 "In his mouth."

 Pickering went down on one knee next to the Griqua, and he undid the

 scarf.

 He worked the saliva-drenched bag out of Hendrick's broken mouth, and

 poured the contents onto the camp table amongst the flies and sugar

 lumps and champagne bottles.

 "Eight," Rhodes counted them swiftly, and looked immensely relieved.

 "They are all there."

 "I told you not to worry. I bet fifty guineas on them all being there.

 Don't forget it."

 Pickering smiled at Rhodes and turned back to the Griqua, who was

 flapping around in the dust like a trussed chicken.

 Pickering helped him solicitously to his feet.

 "My dear fellow," he asked. "Are you all right?"

 "He nearly killed me," Hendrick bleated bitterly. "He's a madman!"

 "I told you to be careful," Pickering agreed. "He's not a man to trifle

 with. "He patted the Griqua's back. "Well done, Hendrick; you did a good

 job."

 Then Pickering turned to Zouga. "We owe you a little apology, Major." He

 spread his hands and smiled winningly.

 Zouga had been staring at him, unable to speak, his face so pale that

 his scratches and gouges stood out lividly. But now the scar under his

 eyes began to glow and he found his voice.

 "A trap!" he whispered. "You set a trap for me."

 "We had to be sure of you," Rhodes explained reasonably. "We had to know

 what kind of man you really were before we got you onto the Diggers"

 Committee."

 "You swine," Zouga husked. "You arrogant swine."

 "You came out of it with flying colours, sir," Rhodes told him stiffly.

 He was not accustomed to being addressed in those terms.

 "If I had fallen for your trap, what would you have done?"

 Rhodes shrugged his heavy shoulders. "The question doesn't arise.

 You acted like a true English gentleman."

 "You will never know how close it was," Zouga told him.

 "Oh yes, I do. Most of us here have been tested."

 Zouga turned to Pickering. "What would have happened, a lynching party?"

 "Oh, my dear fellow, probably nothing so theatrical.

 You just might have slipped on the roadway and taken a tumble into the

 diggings, or had the misfortune to be standing under a gravel bucky when

 the rope parted." He laughed merrily, and the men at the table laughed

 with him.

 "You need a glass of Charlie Champers, Major, or something stronger

 perhaps."

 "Do join us, sir," cried another, making room for him at the table. "An

 honour to drink with a gentleman."

 "Come along, Major." Pickering smiled. "I'll send for the quack to see

 to that cut on your head."

 Then Pickering stopped and his expression changed.

 Zouga had kicked his feet loose from the stirrups and jumped down to

 face him. They were of an even height, both big men, and the group at

 the camp table was instantly enchanted. This would be more diverting

 than watching blue-bottles settling on sugar lumps.

 ,"By God, he's going to bang Pickling's head."

 "Or Pickling his."

 "Ten guineas the elephant hunter to win."

 "I don't approve of brawling," murmured Rhodes, "but I'll take Pickling

 for ten."

 "I say, the other horse has run a fair chase already. I do think you

 might offer some odds."

 Pickering's smile had turned frosty, and he was on his toes, his fists

 clenched, and his guard half raised.

 Zouga dropped his own guard and turned disgustedly to the group under

 the acacia.

 "I've provided you with enough amusement for one day," he told them

 coldly. "You can take your bloody diamonds, and your damned Committee

 and you can, " There was a burst of clapping and laughing cheers to

 cover Zouga's outburst. Zouga swung back onto the gelding's back and

 kicked him into a gallop, and the ironical applause followed him out of

 the camp.

 "I hope we haven't lost him." Pickering lowered his fists and stared

 after Zouga. "God knows, we need honest men."

 "Oh, don't worry," Rhodes told him. "Give him time to simmer down and

 then we'll square him."

 "Henshaw." Bazo held the woven reed basket on his lap and peered into it

 mournfully.

 "Henshaw, she is not ready to fight again so soon."

 They sat in a circle about the cooking fire in the centre of the

 thatched beehive. Ralph felt more at home here than in the tent under

 the camel-thorn tree. Here he was with friends, the closest friends he

 had ever known in his nomadic life, and here also he was beyond the

 severe and unrelenting surveillance of his father.

 Ralph dipped into the communal three-legged black pot with his left hand

 and scooped up a little of the stiff fluffy white maize porridge. While

 he rolled it into a ball between his fingers he argued with the Matabele

 princeling opposite him.

 "If it were you to decide, she would never fight again," Ralph told him,

 and dipped the maize ball into the flavouring of mutton gravy and wild

 herbs.

 "Her new leg is not strong enough yet," Bazo shook his head.

 Ralph popped the morsel and chewed as he talked.

 "The leg is hard and bright as a knife."

 Bazo puffed out his cheeks and looked even more lugubrious, and on her

 perch in the shadows behind him Scipio, the falcon, shook out her

 feathers and "kweeted' softly as though in sympathy with him.

 Bazo's decision, although heavily influenced by Ralph's arguments and by

 the urgings of the other young Matabele, would be final. For it was Bazo

 who had made the original capture of the animal under discussion.

 "Every night that she does not fight, we, your brothers, are the

 poorer," Kamuza came in to support Ralph. "Henshaw is right. She is

 fierce as a lioness and ready to earn us all many gold queens."

 "Already you speak and think like a white man," Bazo replied loftily.

 "The yellow coins fill your head day and night."

 "What other reason for that," Kamuza shuddered slightly as he pointed at

 the basket, "that thing. If it stings you, the spear of your manhood

 will shrivel like a rotten fruit until it is no bigger than the finger

 of a new born baby."

 "What a shrivelling that would be," Ralph chuckled.

 "Like a bull hippopotamus shrivelling into a striped field mouse."

 Bazo grinned and made the gesture of placing the tiny basket on Kamuza's

 lap. "Come, let her suckle a little to give her strength for the

 conflict," he suggested, and the circle exploded with a roar of

 delighted laughter at Kamuza's patent horror as he yelled and leapt

 violently away.

 The noisy jeers covered their own uneasiness at the close proximity of

 the basket, and they were immediately silent as Bazo cautiously lifted

 the lid.

 They craned forward with sickly fascination, and in the bottom of the

 basket something dark and furry and big as a rat stirred.

 "Hau! Inkosikazi!" Bazo greeted it, and the creature reared up on its

 multiple legs, raising the front pair defensively, and the rows of eyes

 glittered in the softly wavering firelight. Bazo lifted his own right

 hand to return the salute of long hairy legs.

 "I see you also, Inkosikazi."

 Bazo had named her Inkosikazi, the queen, for, as he explained to Ralph,

 "She is right royal in her rage, and as thirsty for blood as a Matabele

 queen."

 He and Ralph had been unloading timber baulks at the eastern end of the

 new stagings, and as one load had swung upwards in the slings the great

 spider had come out from its nest between the sawn planks, and, raising

 its swollen velvety abdomen, had scampered over Ralph's arm and leapt

 ten feet to the ground.

 The spider was the size of a dinner plate when its legs were extended.

 Its hirsute appearance and its extraordinary jumping prowess had given

 the species the common name of baboon spider.

 "Get him, Bazo!" Ralph yelled from the top of the loaded wagon.

 For now that Griqualand West and the New Rush diggings were part of Cape

 Colony and the British Empire there had been changes.

 New Rush had been re-named Kimberley, after Lord Kimberley, the Colonial

 Secretary in London, and the town of Kimberley was starting to enjoy the

 benefits of British civilization and Victorian morality, amongst which

 was the total ban on cock fighting which was strictly enforced by the

 new administrator. The diggers, always eager for distraction, had not

 taken long to find an alternative sport. Spider fighting was the rage of

 the diggings.

 "Don't let him get away!" Ralph vaulted down from the wagon, ripping off

 his shirt, but Bazo was quicker.

 He whipped the loincloth from his waist and flared it at the spider like

 a matador caping the bull, bringing the huge arachnid to bay on its hind

 legs, threatening him with its waving arms, then, naked and triumphant,

 Bazo had flipped the cloth over it and swiftly bundled it into a bag.

 Now he slowly but deliberately extended his own hand into the basket,

 and the spider raised itself higher, the wolflike mandibles chewing

 menacingly, and between them the single curved red fang rising from its

 shallow sheath, a pale droplet of venom shining upon the needlesharp

 tip.

 There was not even the sound of breathing in the dark hut, and the soft

 tick and rustle of the ashes sounded deafening in the silence as they

 watched Bazo's open hand draw closer and closer to the creature.

 Then he touched it with his fingertips and began to stroke the soft

 furry carapace. Slowly the spider subsided from her threatening posture,

 and the watchers sighed and began to breathe again.

 Inkosikazi had fought five times, and five times she had killed,

 although in the last conflict against another huge and ferocious female

 she had lost one of her legs, chewed through at the elbow joint. That

 had been almost three months previously; but the severed limb had now

 regenerated itself, and the new leg was lighter coloured than the others

 like the fresh shoots on a rose bush.

 Slowly Bazo turned his hand palm upwards and the spider scuttled up into

 it and crouched there, filling it completely without extending her many

 jointed legs.

 "A queen," he said, "a veritable queen. "And then, frowning, he told

 her, "Henshaw would like to see you fight again." He glanced up at

 Ralph, and there was a mischievous twist to his full lips.

 "Go to Henshaw and tell him if you will fight or no."

 And he offered the spider to Ralph.

 Ralph felt the crawling of the tiny feet of horror across his skin as he

 stared at the spider crouching like a hairy toad before his face.

 "Come, Henshaw,"Bazo smiled. "Talk to her."

 It was a challenge, and the watchers stirred with anticipation. If the

 challenge was not taken up, then their mockery would be merciless. Ralph

 tried to force himself to move, but his loathing was a cold nauseating

 lump under his ribs, and the sheen of sweat on his forehead was suddenly

 glacially cold.

 Bazo was still smiling, but the challenge in his direct gaze was slowly

 changing to taunting disdain. With an enormous effort Ralph raised his

 hand, and at the movement the spider lifted itself and the soft bloated

 abdomen seemed to pulse softly, obscenely.

 Only one person had ever handled Inkosikazi, and her reaction to a

 strange touch was totally unpredictable; but Ralph forced himself to

 reach out towards her.

 Slowly his fingertips drew closer, six inches, two inches from the hairy

 body, and then the spider sprang. It launched itself in a high parabola,

 and landed on Ralph's shoulder.

 The circle of watchers broke up in comic panic, yelling with terror and

 falling over one another to reach the single low doorway. Only Bazo and

 Ralph had not moved. Ralph sat with his hand still extended and the

 spider squatted massively on his shoulder. Infinitely slowly Ralph

 cocked his head and peered down at it, and it began to move; lifting the

 long bristled legs with a chilling daintiness, it crept sideways into

 the hollow of Ralph's neck, so that he could no longer see it but

 suddenly he felt the sharp points of its feet scratching the soft of his

 throat.

 There was a horrified yell locked in the back of Ralph's throat, but he

 kept it there with a total effort of will.

 The spider climbed his chin and hung upside down for a moment like a

 huge hairy bat, and Ralph did not move.

 Instead he lifted his gaze and held that of the Matabele opposite him.

 The mockery was gone from Bazo's eyes, and behind him the other watchers

 drew closer, fascinated and fearful. Perhaps for a minute they sat like

 that, and then Ralph lifted his hand. The gesture was so calm, so

 controlled, that the spider showed only perfunctory symptoms of alarm,

 and then quite willingly scuttled onto the inviting fingers and Ralph

 transferred her gently back into her basket.

 Ralph wanted to leap up and run out into the darkness, to be alone while

 he vomited up his horror, but he forced himself to sit and stare

 impassively at Bazo until the Matabele lowered his eyes.

 "She will fight,"he said softly. "As you wish, Henshaw, she will fight

 again tomorrow." And he closed the lid of the basket.

 Inkosikazi had not fought for almost three months, and the punters,

 always fickle, had forgotten her. Other champions had emerged in her

 absence and commanded the fanatic loyalty of their followers. They

 gathered four deep around the handlers, trying to peer into the baskets

 and assess the fighting metal of the caged creatures, as they waited for

 the first bout of the afternoon.

 Although lantern-lit contests were held each evening behind Diamond

 Lil's canteen, Sunday afternoon was the one event of the week when every

 digger in Kimberley was free to crowd the western corner of Market

 Square and pick his fancy.

 The arena was a square wooden structure, six feet by six and three deep,

 covered by a sheet of clear glass. This sheet of glass was the largest

 in Griqualand; originally intended as a display window for a ladies"

 dress shop on Main Street, it had miraculously survived the long wagon

 journey from the coast, and was now probably one of the most cherished

 items in Kimberley. Without it the sport would die, and Sunday

 afternoons would be tedium indeed.

 The sheet of glass and the wooden arena were owned by a onetime

 kopje-walloper who had found there was more money in spiders than in

 diamonds. Ownership of the glass gave him a monopoly of the game and

 allowed him to charge a cruel entrance fee, and take a lion's share of

 the winnings.

 Half a dozen wagons had been drawn up in a square around the arena to

 make grandstand accommodation for the crowds. The canteens around the

 square provided al fresco service, their waiters staggering under trays

 laden with foaming schooners of beer to quench the raging thirsts that

 men had built up during a week in the pit.

 The female population had doubled and re-doubled since Kimberley had

 become part of the Empire, and the ladies used the occasion to show off

 a pretty hat and a nicely sculptured ankle. Their delighted squeals of

 horror when the fighting spiders were released into the arena added to

 the feverish air of excitement.

 In one of the alleys that led into the square, Ralph and his Matabele

 were huddled in solemn discussion.

 "I do not know what that name means," Bazo was protesting to Ralph.

 "It is the name of a dangerous woman, who danced so beautifully that

 "when she asked for it the king cut off a man's head and gave it to

 her."

 They all looked impressed. It was the kind of story which appealed to a

 Matabele.

 "What is the name again?"Bazo asked thoughtfully.

 "Salome, "

 "But why cannot she fight under her real name?" Bazo glanced down at the

 basket under his arm. "Why must we change Inkosikazi's name for this

 fight? It is not a good omen."

 Ralph looked exasperated. "If we use that name they will know it is the

 same Inkosikazi who has already killed five times. If we call her

 Salome, why, one spider looks like another. They will not recognize her.

 They will believe her to be unblooded, and we shall win more money."

 "That is a good reason," Kamuza cut in, and Bazo ignored him.

 "Who found this name?" Bazo insisted.

 Jordie. He found it in the big book." That decided it.

 Bazo had vast respect for the lovely gentle boy and his knowledge of

 books.

 "Salome." He nodded. "It is agreed, but only for today., "Good."

 Ralph rubbed his palms together briskly. "Now where is the money?"

 And they all looked to Kamusa. He was the treasurer of the group. In

 their years of unbroken labour the gang of young Matabele had

 accumulated a hoard of gold and silver coin, for to their wages they had

 added the bounty on "pick-ups". Then of course there were the

 considerable winnings from Inkosikazi's previous bouts.

 Kamuza kept this treasure buried under the floor of the communal hut,

 but he had reluctantly exhumed part of it the evening before, and now he

 produced a soft furry white bag, made from tanned scrotal skin of a

 springbuck ram, and reluctantly counted out coins into Ralph's hand. No

 white bookmaker would accept a wager from a black man, so Ralph was

 frontman for the Matabele syndicate.

 "Make a book," Kamusa said, and Ralph scribbled a receipt for sixteen

 sovereigns on a page of his notebook, tore it out and handed it to

 Kamuza, who examined it minutely. He trusted Ralph without question. He

 could not read, but the rituals of European commerce fascinated Kamuza

 and he had seen white men passing slips of paper whenever they exchanged

 coin.

 "Good." He tucked the receipt into the springbuckskin wallet.

 "I have four gold queens of my own." Ralph displayed his life savings.

 "I will pay my share of the entrance fee and bet the rest of it."

 "May the gods go with us all, Henshaw," said Bazo, and handed Ralph the

 precious little basket.

 Ralph adjusted his cap to an angle that would hide as much of his face

 as possible. It was unlikely that his father would be amongst the crowd,

 and if he was, the cap would hardly disguise his firstborn sufficiently

 for him not to be recognized, so the gesture was instinctive, as was his

 fear of his father's wrath.

 "I will wait here for the money," Kamuza told him.

 "If she wins," Ralph agreed.

 "She will win," said Bazo darkly. "Would that I could serve her with my

 own hands."

 There was no law to prevent a black man entering a fancy in the lists,

 but none of them had ever done so.

 The niceties of this complex society were unwritten but understood by

 all.

 Ralph slipped out of the alley and mingled with the crowd, working his

 way through the press until he was on the outskirts of the group of

 handlers, each of them with his woven basket, as they waited to enter

 their fancy.

 "Ah, young Ballantyne." Chaim Cohen looked up from his register, the

 wire-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose, sweating jovially in the

 dust and blazing sun.

 "Haven't seen you in some time."

 "Didn't have a fancy, mister Cohen. Caught a new one now," Ralph lied

 glibly.

 "What happened to, what did you call her, some kaffir name?"

 "She died. Lost a leg and died after her last fight."

 "What is your new lady's name?"

 "Salome, sir."

 "Salome it is, then. That will be two pounds, young Ballantyne."

 The coins disappeared with uncanny speed into the enlarged pocket that

 Cohen had sewn into the inside of his long frock coat, and with relief

 Ralph sidled into the crowd, trying to lose himself until the draw was

 announced.

 He found a place near the tailboard of one of the wagons, where he was

 partly concealed and from where he could watch the ladies in the crowd.

 Some of them were young and pretty, and they knew it. Every few minutes

 one would pass close enough to Ralph for him to hear the frou-frou of

 her petticoats and to smell her, for the heat brought out the subtle

 musk of womankind that was emphasized and not concealed by the sweet

 reek of French perfume. It seemed to catch in Ralph's throat, too

 poignant to breathe, and there was a hollow aching place at the base of

 his belly and weird thoughts in his head.

 The fruity smell of cognac suddenly blotted out that French perfume and

 a hoarse voice close to his ear put the imaginings to flight.

 "You are fighting a new fancy, I see, young Ballantyne."

 "Yes, sir. That's right, sir, mister Lennox."

 mister Barry Lennox was a big man, a brawler with a reputation for quick

 fists that was respected as far as the river workings. He was a plunger,

 who had bet a thousand guineas on a single cock fight, and won. That was

 in the days before civilization had reached the diggings, but now he

 chanced as much on the spider fights. He was a rich man by the standards

 of New Rush, for he owned eighteen claims in the number 4 Roadway block.

 He had the red-veined cheeks and husky voice of the heavy drinker, but

 what intrigued Ralph most about this man was that he employed three

 young women, not one but three women to keep house for him. One was a

 pretty pug-faced daffodil-yellow Griqua girl, another a boldeyed

 Portuguese mulatto from Mozambique, and the third a mulberry black

 Basuto with haunches on her like a brood mare. Whenever Ralph thought

 about this dusky trio, which was often, his imagination conjured up a

 garden of forbidden delights.

 Of course, neither Ralph's father nor any other member of the Committee

 would acknowledge Lennox's existence and cut him elaborately on the

 street. Lennox's application to join the Kimberley Club had been met

 with a record-breaking fifty-six black balls. But Ralph removed his cap

 respectfully now, as Lennox asked throatily: "What happened to

 Inkosikazi? I made a bundle on her."

 "She died, mister Lennox. Old age, I suppose."

 "Baboon spiders live nearly twenty years and more," Lennox grunted.

 "Let's have a look at your new lady."

 "I don't like to unsettle her, not just before a bout, sir."

 "Does your daddy know where you spend your Sunday afternoons, young

 Ballantyne?"

 "All right, sir." Ralph capitulated swiftly and lifted the lid of the

 basket a crack. Lennox cocked a bloodshot but knowledgeable eye at it.

 "That looks like a strong left front, new grown."

 "No, sir. Well, it might be. Caught her just the other day. Don't know

 her history, mister Lennox."

 "Boy, you wouldn't be running a ringer, would you!

 "Fess up now." Lennox looked sternly into Ralph's eyes, and Ralph

 dropped them.

 "You don't want to go up before the Diggers" Committee, do you?

 The shame you would bring on your daddy.

 It might break his heart."

 it might not break Zouga Ballantyne's heart, but it would certainly

 break Ralph's head.

 Miserably Ralph shook his head. "Very well then, mister Lennox. It's

 Inkosikazi, she grew a new leg. I thought I'd get better odds, but, I'll

 withdraw her now. I'll go tell mister Cohen I lied."

 Barry Lennox leaned so close that his lips touched Ralph's ear and the

 smell of fine old cognac on his breath almost overpowered him.

 "You don't do anything so stupid, Ralph, my lad. You fight your fancy,

 and if she wins there will be a special treat for you. That's a promise.

 Barry Lennox will, see you right, and then some. Now, if you will excuse

 me, I've got some business to attend to." Lennox twirled his cane and

 drove a wedge into the crowd with his bowfronted belly.

 Chaim Cohen climbed up onto the disselboom of the nearest wagon to the

 arena and began chalking up the draw on a greenruled board, and the

 bookmakers craned for the matchings and then began calling their odds

 for each bout.

 "Threes on mister Gladstone in the first."

 "Dreadnought even money. Buttercup fives in the second."

 Ralph waited as bout after bout was drawn, and each time that

 Inkosikazi's name was omitted his nerves stretched tighter. There were

 only ten bouts, and mister Cohen had finished chalking the ninth

 already.

 "Bout number 10," he called as he wrote. "This is a biblical match,

 gentlemen and ladies, a diamondiferous bout straight out of the Old

 Testament." Chaim Cohen used the adjective "diamondiferous" to describe

 anything from a thoroughbred horse to a fifteen-year-old whisky. "A pure

 diamondiferous match, the one and only, the great and deadly, Goliath!"

 There was a burst of applause and whistles of approval. Goliath was the

 champion spider of the diamond fields, with twelve straight kills to her

 credit. "Matched against your favourite is a pretty little newcomer,

 Salome!"

 The name was greeted with indifference as the punters scrambled to get

 money onto the champion.

 "I'm giving tens on Salome," called one desperate bookie as he tried to

 stem the flow of wagers. They were taking Goliath at odds on, and Ralph

 shared his distress.

 Leaden-footed he traipsed back to the alleyway.

 Kamuza had heard the draw announced.

 "Give us back the sixteen queens," he greeted Ralph; but the demand

 stung Bazo: "Inkosikazi will drink her blood "The other is a giant

 "Inkosikazi is quick, fast as a mamba, brave as a honey badger."

 Bazo chose the most fearless and indomitable fighters of the veld as

 comparisons for his fancy.

 They argued while the sudden roar of voices from the Square signalled

 the beginning of the first bout, and the squeals of the ladies told that

 the kill had been swiftly made.

 They argued fiercely, Bazo becoming so agitated that he could no longer

 sit still. He leapt up and began to giya, the challenge dance of the

 Matabele warrior preparing for battle.

 "Thus Inkosikazi sprang, and thus she drove her assegai into the chest

 of Nelo,"Bazo shouted, as he imitated the death stroke of his fancy; but

 the Matabele always found difficulty in pronouncing the letter "R", and

 the Roman Emperor's was mutilated in the recounting of the battle.

 "You must decide," Ralph broke in on his heroics, and Bazo abruptly

 ended his giya and looked at Kamuza.

 In matters of money Kamuza was without question the leader of the group,

 just as Bazo was in all else.

 "Henshaw," Kamuza asked gravely. "Are you risking your four queens

 against this monster?"

 "Inkosikazi is risking her life," Ralph replied, without hesitation.

 "And I am risking my money for her."

 "So be it, then. We will follow you."

 There were only minutes left before the tenth bout of the afternoon.

 Already Chaim Cohen was upending his schooner of beer and, considerably

 refreshed, wiping the froth from his whiskers. At any moment he would

 climb back onto the wagon and call for the handlers to bring their

 fighters to the arena for the final bout.

 Ralph still had five sovereigns to place.

 "You said twelves," he argued desperately with the ferret-eyed bookmaker

 in the flowing Ascot tie.

 "if you are betting your own fancy, then it's tens."

 "That's welshing."

 "Life is all a welsh," the bookie shrugged. "Take it or leave it."

 "All right, I'll take it." Ralph snatched the slip and pushed towards

 the circle of wagons, and once again found his way blocked by the grand

 belly of Barry Lennox.

 "Are you betting her yourself?"

 "With everything I've got, sir."

 "That's all I wanted to know, Ralph me boy." And he strode to the

 nearest bookmaker, pulling his purse from his hip pocket just as Chaim

 Cohen crowed from his perch on the wagon.

 "Lovely ladies and sporting gentlemen! The tenth and final bout of the

 day! The mighty Goliath meets the dancing lady Salome!"

 Goliath crabbed into the glass-topped arena. Her four pairs of legs

 undulated sinuously so that her progress was stately and deliberate.

 She was a huge beast, newly moulted, for her chintyl armoured covering

 was a lustrous coppery colour and the long hairs that covered her

 abdomen and legs were burnished like newly spun gold wire. She left a

 double necklace of tiny stippled footprints in the swept sand of the

 arena floor, and the crowd cheered her. Their inhibitions had long been

 lost in the primeval conflicts in the little arena, and most of them had

 been drinking since noon: there was a peculiar ring of ferocity and

 cruelty in their voices.

 "Kill her!" screamed a pretty blond girl with gold ringlets and flowers

 in her hat. "Rip her to pieces!" Her face flushed feverishly and her

 eyes were glittering.

 "All right, mister Ballantyne. Put your fancy in," Chaim Cohen

 commanded, raising his voice to be heard above the uproar. But Ralph

 delayed a few seconds longer, letting the other spider complete its

 circuit and face away from his side of the cage. Then he lifted the

 sliding door and tapped the basket to rouse Inkosikazi.

 She crawled forward cautiously, lifting her abdomen clear of the sand,

 stepping on the spiked toes of her ranked legs, and then freezing as she

 saw her adversary across the cage. Her multiple jewelled eyes were

 sparkling like chips of black diamond.

 Goliath sensed her presence and leaped high, turned in the air and

 landed facing her. The two spiders confronted each other across the

 smoothly swept floor of white river sand, and only now was the

 difference in their sizes apparent. Goliath was enormous, swelling in

 rage, the long silken mane of burnished hair rising like the quills of a

 porcupine to enhance her size as she began to dance her challenge to her

 smaller adversary.

 Immediately Inkosikazi replied to the challenge, raising and lowering

 her abdomen in time to the rhythmic swaying of her carapace, lifting her

 legs in pairs and weaving them with an awful grace, like the many-armed

 Hindu god, Shiva.

 An utter silence had fallen on the watchers as they strained to catch

 every nuance of this stylized dance of death, and then a lust-choked

 roar burst from them as Goliath sprang.

 She exploded into flight, soaring with her talons fully extended,

 clearing the length of the arena without effort and landing precisely

 where Inkosikazi had stood a thousandth part of a second before.

 Inkosikazi had evaded that flashing leap with a bouncing side jump of

 her own, and now she faced the huge enraged creature and danced her

 defiance.

 The dazzling agility of these great spiders was, the essential

 attraction that drew such a following of eager spectators. There was no

 preliminary bracing or crouchigo ing to herald one of those swallowlight

 bounds. The spiders fired themselves like bullets, suddenly and

 unerringly at their rival, and reacted as swiftly to the counterattack.

 Then between each onslaught that mesmeric and chilling dance resumed.

 Jee! Jee!" The tightly drawn silence was interrupted by the chilling,

 killing cry of a Matabele warrior.

 "Jee! Jee!"The deep hissing chorus that had carried a black wave of

 naked bodies across a continent, a wave crested by the plumes of the war

 bonnets and lit by the glitter of the bright silver assegais.

 Bazo had not been able to skulk in the alley beyond the square. He had

 edged forward into the crowd until he reached the wagons, but as the

 conflict mounted, so had his warrior passions. He thrust forward through

 the packed ranks and now he was in the forefront, and he could not

 contain himself further.

 Jee! Jee!"He hissed his battle cry, and Ralph found himself echoing it.

 Inkosikazi was fighting instinctively, reacting mindlessly to the

 presence of another female in deadly sexual rivalry. It was the waving

 arms of the gigantic female across the cage which infuriated her, and it

 was mere coincidence that her first attacking leap was synchronized with

 the war chant.

 Twice she launched herself, and twice Goliath gave her ground. and then

 on her third leap Inkosikazi vaulted too high and touched the glass roof

 of the arena. The impact broke the perfect parabola of her flight, and

 she fell short and out of balance, scrabbling frantically in the fine

 white sand as Goliath saw her chance and flew in for the kill.

 The men howled with cruel glee, the women trilled with delicious horror

 as the two huge furry bodies came together chest to chest and entangled

 each other's limbs in a hideous octopus embrace.

 The impetus of Goliath's leap sent them rolling across Igi the arena

 like an india-rubber ball, until they struck the far wall and wrestled

 in a flurry of serpentine limbs. Both their long hooked fangs were fully

 erect, and they slashed at each other with their hairy wolf mouths, the

 needle points of the fangs striking the impenetrable shiny armour of

 carapace and jointed legs, glancing off the polished surface and leaving

 minute dribbles of colourless honey-thick venom on each other's chests.

 Instinctively they were holding their vulnerable abdomens clear, while

 straining to tear from the embrace for a chance to strike into the soft

 skin of the other. They came up on their hind legs and wrestled

 together, and immediately Goliath's weight began to take effect.

 With a sharp crackling sound, like a walnut in the jaw of a silver

 nutcracker, one of Inkosikazi's legs was torn bodily from the joint of

 her carapace, and she jerked convulsively, contracting her soft belly in

 a dreadful spasm.

 "Kill her! Rip her to pieces!" screamed the pretty blond girl, and tore

 at her perfumed silk handkerchief, shredding it between her fingers. Her

 face was swollen and inflamed and her eyes wild.

 Goliath shifted the grip of her many legs, groping for a soft spot into

 which to plunge the jerking red fang.

 "Jee! Jee!"sang Bazo, his eyes bloodshot with passion, and Inkosikazi

 strained with all her remaining legs to break the grip that was slowly

 smothering her under the huge hairy body. Again there was that grisly

 crackling, one of her front legs broke off in a little spurt of body

 juices, and instinctively Goliath lifted the severed limb to her mouth.

 The distraction was sufficient, and Inkosikazi tore herself free and

 bounded halfway across the arena, landing in an unbalanced sprawl, her

 body fluids oozing from the leg stumps, but gathering herself swiftly.

 Goliath was still worrying the severed legs, the smell of her opponent's

 blood enrapturing her so that she mouthed the twitching limbs, striking

 at them with her fang, her full attention upon them, and Inkosikazi

 rebounded like a rubber ball thrown against a brick wall.

 She dropped lightly onto Goliath's broad furry back, locked in with her

 remaining legs, and then plunged the long blood-red fang into Goliath's

 abdomen, her head pumping as she forced a steady gush of poison into the

 bloated body.

 Goliath's body arched, her long jointed legs straightened into an

 agonized rictus, and the balloon of her belly spasmed and convulsed as

 the venom pulsed into her.

 Crouched upon her back like some grotesque incubus, Inkosikazi squirted

 in the fatal fluid until the bigger creature's limbs wilted and crumpled

 under her and her belly sagged gradually to the white sand of the arena.

 In the roaring consternation of disappointed punters and squeaks of

 women, both loathing and gloating at the same time, Ralph and Bazo

 rushed together and embraced with whoops of triumph. In the glassed

 arena Inkosikazi slowly withdrew the long curved hypodermic fang. Her

 venom not only paralysed and killed but also liquefied the body tissue

 of her prey. Her jaws opened and then locked into the jelly-soft passive

 body beneath her, and her own abdomen began to swell and subside as she

 sucked her vanquished adversary's fluids from her while she still lived.

 Ralph broke from the embrace of Bazo's thickly muscled arms.

 "Get her out of the cage," he told him. "I'll go and get the money."

 Bazo bore the basket high on the return from the conflict. His

 bare-chested Matabele ran behind him, in that floating stylized gait,

 half dance, half trot, and they brandished their fighting sticks and

 sang the praise song which Kamuza had composed in Inkosikazi's honour:

 "See with your thousand eyes, Hold hard with many arms of steel, Kiss

 with your long red assegai, Taste the blood, is it not richer than the

 milk of Mzilikazi's herds?

 Taste the blood, is it not sweeter than the wild honey in the comb?

 Bayete! Bayete!

 Royal greetings, Black Queen, Loyal greetings, Great Queen."

 Ralph dearly wanted to run with them in that triumphant procession, but

 he knew what his father would say if he heard that his son had joined

 such a barbaric display through the dusty streets, past the very portals

 of the Kimberley Club where Zouga Ballantyne was almost certainly

 passing his Sunday afternoon.

 Ralph followed them in a fashion that better suited Zouga's idea of how

 a young English gentleman should comport himself, but his cap was on the

 back of his head, his hands were thrust deeply into pockets jingling the

 gold coin, and there was a beatific grin on his face.

 The smile broadened further as a familiar big-gutted figure rolled out

 through the doors of Diamond Lil's canteen.

 "mister Ballantyne," bellowed Barry Lennox across the street. "mister

 Ballantyne, will you do me the very great honour of taking a glass with

 me?"

 "Enchanted indeed, sir." Ralph felt cocky enough to reply facetiously,

 and Lennox guffawed and flung an arm around Ralph's shoulders and led

 him into the canteen.

 Ralph looked about him quickly; it was the first time he had ever

 entered a place such as this. He hoped to see naked women dancing on the

 tables and gamblers in flowered waistcoats fanning open hands full of

 aces and kings and sweeping up pots of gold sovereigns.

 The only partially nude figure was that of Charlie, the undertaker,

 snoring on the sawdust floor with his shirt open to his hairy belly

 button; and the gamblers were all familiar faces, men beside whom Ralph

 worked every day on the stagings or in the pit. They were dressed in

 their work clothes and the cards were dog-eared and greasy and the pot

 was a small pile of copper and worn silver.

 "Ralph," said one of them, looking up. "Your daddy know where you are?"

 "Does yours?" Ralph shot back, the cockiness unabated.

 "And do you know who he is?"

 There was a hoot of laughter from the others, and the man grinned

 good-naturedly. "Damn me, but the boy has a sharp enough tongue."

 "Give my sporting friend a beer," Lennox told the barman, and he looked

 dubious.

 "How old is your sporting friend?"

 "He will be forty years old on one of his future birthdays. However,

 sir, I consider that question to be a direct slur on my sporting

 friend's honour. I have broken jaws that asked less impertinent

 questions."

 "Two beers coming up, mister Lennox."

 Barry Lennox and Ralph saluted each other with the schooners, and Lennox

 gave them a toast.

 "To a lady of our mutual acquaintance, bless her bright eyes and all her

 lovely legs."

 The beer was faintly warm and tasted like soap and quinine, but Ralph

 forced down a mouthful and smacked his lips appreciatively. He would

 have much preferred a cool green bottle of ginger beer with a pop up

 marble in the neck.

 "Cigar?" Lennox opened his silver case, and Ralph hesitated only a

 moment, then selected one of the thick Havanas and bit off the end in a

 faithful imitation of Zouga Ballantyne.

 He sucked from the Vesta that Lennox held for him, and cautiously held

 the smoke in his mouth. That was the last draw he took, and after that

 he used the cigar like a conductor's baton, waving it airily and

 creating about himself a cloud of perfumed blue without actually

 touching it to his lips again. Somehow he was able to impart the

 impression of swagger while standing at the rough-sawn bar counter.

 I mean, anybody knows the classic Zulu battle tactics. They wait for bad

 ground and thick bush, there are few soldiers who use cover and defilade

 the way they do." Ralph sipped his beer and waved his cigar as he

 discussed Lord Chelmsford's current campaign against the Zulu King

 Cetewayo. The views he was expressing were those of Zouga Ballantyne,

 learned by heart and unadulterated; so though his listeners winked and

 nudged at his pretensions, they could not fault his logic. "The device

 of decoying Chelmsford's flying column out of the camp and then doubling

 back to destroy the base with its depleted defences is as old as Chaka

 Zulu himself.

 Chelmsford was at fault, there, no doubt on it."

 There was a gloomy shaking of heads, as there always was when anyone

 mentioned the catastrophic reversal of British arms that Chelmsford had

 been manoeuvred into at the Hill of the Little Hand, Isandhlwana, across

 the Buffalo River in Zululand.

 The corpses of seven hundred British dead, militia and regular

 regiments, had already lain for six months on the bleak grassland below

 the little hill. Lord Chelmsford had abandoned the field, and his dead

 lay where they had fallen, their bellies ripped open by Zulu assegais to

 allow their souls to escape, the litter of wagons and broken equipment

 scattered about them, their flesh taken off the bone by vulture and

 jackal and hyena.

 The thought of leaving British soldiers unburied on the battlefield

 seemed to threaten the very foundation of the greatest empire the world

 had ever known.

 "Chelmsford must retake the field," said one of the men at the bar.

 "No, sir," Ralph shook his head firmly. "That will be inviting another

 disaster for a sentimental gesture."

 "What do you propose, mister Ballantyne?" the man asked sarcastically.

 "A page from the Boer book." Ralph had an audience of grown men

 listening to him, perhaps not with respect, but at least with attention.

 This was heady stuff, even though the ideas were his father's, and Ralph

 threw in an oat . "By God! those boers know ow to fight the tribes.

 Mounted men as a screen around a column of wagons that can be thrown

 into laager within minutes.

 Go for the heart of the Zulu nation, their cattle herds pull the impis

 into the open, make them come in across good shooting ground against the

 laagered wagons -" Ralph did not finish his plan of battle; abruptly he

 lost his sequence of ideas and began to stutter like an idiot, a blush

 darkening his tanned, handsome young face.

 Barry Lennox followed the direction of Ralph's gaze, and then he grinned

 delightedly.

 Diamond Lil had entered the canteen through the rear door. It was six

 o'clock in the evening and an hour before she had risen, stretching and

 yawning like a sleepy leopard, from the brass bed in the darkened room

 behind the canteen.

 A servant had filled the enamelled hip bath with buckets of steaming

 water, and Lil had poured in a vial of perfume before stepping into the

 bath and settling luxuriously into the fragrant water, shouting for her

 canteen manager.

 She listened attentively, a small frown cracking the perfect pale skin

 of her forehead, as he recited the figures of the previous night's take,

 his eyes averted from the white skin of her shoulders and the tight

 pink-tipped bosom that peeked through the hot suds. Then she had

 dismissed him with a wave of her hand and stepped naked from the bath,

 glowing pinkly from the hot water, her steam-damp hair dangling down the

 sleek white body. She poured a little gin into a coloured Venetian glass

 and sipped it neat as she started the powdering and the painting,

 rolling her eyes at herself in the mirror, practising her professional

 smile with the tiny diamond twinkling in the centre of the wide display

 of white teeth, then, at last, considering herself levelly and

 appraisingly.

 She was twenty-three years old, and she had come a long hard way from

 the house in Mayfair where Madame Hortense had sold her maidenhood to an

 elderly Whig minister of state for one hundred guineas. She had been

 thirteen years old then, only ten years ago, but it seemed like a dozen

 lifetimes.

 The house in Mayfair was truly the only home she had ever known, and she

 often thought back with nostalgia to those days. Madame Hortense had

 treated her more like a daughter than a house girl. There was always a

 pretty bonnet or a new dress on her birthday and at Christmas, and she

 had had special privileges. Lil would ever be grateful for what she

 learned about men and money and power from Hortense.

 Then one Saturday evening a half dozen young officers from a famous

 cavalry regiment, celebrating their orders for foreign service, had

 visited the house in Mayfair.

 Amongst them was a young captain, dashing, rich and beautiful; he saw

 Lil across the salon the moment he entered. Ten days later Lil had

 sailed with him for India on the Peninsular and Orient mailship, while

 Madame Hortense wept on the quay and waved until the ship cleared the

 pool of London and disappeared beyond the first bend of the river. Forty

 days later Lil found herself abandoned by her protector.

 From an upper window of the Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town she watched

 her cavalry captain's ship clear Table Bay for Calcutta, her sorrow at

 parting alleviated by the luxurious surroundings in which her protector

 had left her. Lil shrugged off her grief, drank a glass of igs gin,

 bathed and re-painted her face, then sent for the manager.

 "i cannot pay my bill," she told him and, taking his hand " led him

 unprotestingly into the bedroom of her suite.

 "Madame, may I give you some advice?" he asked a little later as he

 retied his Ascot and shrugged into his waistcoat.

 "Good advice is always welcome, sir."

 "There is a place called New Rush five hundred miles north of here and

 there are five thousand diggers there, each with a pocket full of

 diamonds."

 Now Lil entered her canteen. It was still early for a Sunday. It was one

 of the things she had learned from Madame Hortense, always be there long

 before you are expected. It keeps clients satisfied and employees

 honest.

 Quickly she checked her clientele. It was the usual Sunday afternoon

 crowd. It would be better soon. She stooped and counted the bottles

 under the bar counter, examining the wax seals to make certain they had

 not been tampered with.

 "Never be greedy, darling," Hortense had taught her.

 "Water the beer, they expect that, but keep good whisky."

 She straightened and opened the huge ornate cash register with a chime

 of bells, making certain that it flagged the correct price, and then

 touched the line of gold sovereigns in their special slotted drawer. The

 metal had a marvellous feel under her fingertips, and she picked up a

 coin as though merely to feel the weight and take pleasure from it. Gold

 was the only thing in all the world she trusted. Her barman was watching

 her in the mirror as he swabbed the counter top; she pretended to

 replace the sovereign in its slot, letting it clink and then palmed it

 smoothly and closed the drawer of the register. The barman was new. It

 would be interesting to see if he covered the shortage or reported it,

 little things like that had made her rich at the age of twenty-three.

 She glanced up into the mirror, once again appraising her own face and

 shoulders in the less flattering sunlight that streamed into the

 canteen. Her eyes were sharp as a stropped razor, but the skin around

 them was clear and fresh as rose petals without the first sign of

 wrinkling.

 "You will wear well, my dear," Hortense had told her, "if you use the

 gin and don't let it use you." She had been right, Lil decided. She

 looked as she had when she was sixteen years old.

 She shifted her gaze from her own face, and swept the canteen. The

 mirror was imperfect, and the silvering was beginning to go in dark

 spots, slightly distorting the young face that was watching her

 intently. Her gaze flicked over it, and then came back.

 The boy was blushing as he studied her avidly, that was the only thing

 that had caught her attention. Now when she looked at him again she

 realized he was probably under-age, and she already had trouble with the

 Committee. He wore a boy's cloth cap on the back of his head and he was

 very obviously still growing, his Norfolk jacket straining around the

 sturdy arms and across the shoulders.

 Too young and certainly penniless. She had to get him out fast, and she

 turned quickly, her fists on her hips, her blond head cocked

 aggressively.

 "Good afternoon, Miss Lil." Ralph was stunned by his own audacity at

 addressing this heavenly presence directly. "I was about to buy my

 friends a round of drinks. We should be honoured if you would take a

 glass with us, ma'am." Ralph slapped the counter with a sovereign, and

 Lil uncocked her head and raised one hand from her hip to touch her

 hair.

 "I like a big spending gent." She flashed the little diamond in her

 front tooth at him and nodded to the barman. He would pour from her

 special bottle labelled Booth's Gin but filled with rain water from the

 galvanized tank beside the backdoor.

 Suddenly she realized that the boy was bonny, with a strong jaw and good

 white teeth. Now that his blush had subsided, his skin was clear and

 smooth as her own, and his eyes a penetrating emerald green. And the

 eagerness and freshness that he exuded was so different from that of the

 hairy diggers, caked with red dirt and smelling like goats, that formed

 her usual clientele.

 Let the boy pay for his round of drinks, and there would be time to get

 rid of him after that. In the meantime his transparent adoration . was

 amusing and flattering.

 "Lill, me darling." Barry Lennox leaned across the counter and she did

 not flinch from his breath. "Give me your pearl-like little ear."

 Smiling her bright smile she held her ear to his lips, and cupped her

 hand in an exaggerated pantomime of secrecy.

 "Are you working tonight, Lill? "I'm always ready for a quick rattle of

 the dice with YOU, my sweet. You want to go right now or finish your

 drink?"

 "No, darling, not me. How would you like to be first to put the saddle

 on an unbroken colt?"

 Her eyes flicked to Ralph's face again, and her hard bright smile

 softened thoughtfully. He was a lovely boy, and for the first time since

 her cavalryman had left her in Cape Town she felt the prickle of her

 loins and bitter sweet catch in her throat, so that she did not trust

 her voice entirely.

 "It's still early, Lil, and business isn't good this time on Sunday, Lil

 dearie." Barry Lennox wheedled and chuckled beerily at the same time.

 "He is a pretty boy, and I should charge you for the pleasure, but I'll

 just let you make me a special price instead."

 Lil's throat cleared instantly and the languid expression disappeared.

 Her reply was crisp.

 "I'll not charge you school fees, Barry Lennox, just the usual ten

 guineas."

 Lennox shook his head. "You are a hard one, Lil. I'll send him to you,

 love. But just one thing, make it good, make it something that he will

 remember if he lives a hundred years."

 "I don't teach you to dig diamonds, Barry Lennox," she said, and without

 looking back swept from the canteen.

 They heard the door of her bedroom bang, and Ralph stared after her in

 dismay, but Barry Lennox put an arm around his shoulders and as he

 talked quietly, punctuating each sentence with a throaty lewd chuckle,

 all the colour fled from Ralph's face.

 "Come in." Her voice reminded Ralph of the gentle contented cooing that

 the plump wild pigeons made at sunset in the top branch of the

 camel-thorn tree above Zouga's camp.

 With his hand on the brass doorknob, he lifted his feet one at a time

 and polished the toe-cap of his boots against the back of his trouser

 leg. He had doused his head under the tap of the rainwater tank and

 combed his hair while it was still wet, sleeking it away from his

 forehead, and the droplets had run down his neck, turning the dust on

 his darned shirt collar into damp red mud.

 He glanced down at his hand on the doorknob, saw the black rinds under

 his finger nails and lifted it quickly to his mouth, trying desperately

 to pick out the dirt with his eye tooth.

 "Come in!" The command was repeated; but this time there was no cooing

 of pigeons, but a sharp imperious command, and Ralph lunged for the door

 handle. There was no resistance, the door flew open, and Ralph went with

 it. He entered Diamond Lil's boudoir like a cavalry charge, tripped on

 the frayed edge of a cheap oriental carpet and sprawled headlong across

 the brass bed.

 There was a Chinese lacquer screen across one corner of the small

 violently furnished room, and over the top of it rose Diamond Lil's

 magnificently sculptured blond coiffure.

 "Oh," she said sweetly, the sharp slanted eyes widening with amusement.

 "Are you going to start without me then darling?"

 Ralph scrambled untidily to his feet like a puppy with oversized paws

 and stood to attention in the middle of the floor, holding his cloth cap

 to his stomach with both hands.

 From behind the screen came the most evocative sounds he had ever heard.

 The rustle of lace and cloth, the clink of china and the gurgle of water

 poured from a The lacquer screen was ornamented with oriental lug

 figures, women bathing in a willow-screened pool with a waterfall in the

 background. The women were all naked, and the artist had lingered on

 their physical charms. Ralph felt his ears and neck heating again, and

 hated himself for it.

 He wished he had kept the cigar, as a proof of his manhood. He wished

 that he had worn a fresh shirt, he wished, but then there was no further

 time for wishing.

 Lil stepped out from behind the screen. She was barefooted, and her toes

 were chubby and rosy pink like those of a little girl.

 "I have seen you on the street, mister Ballantyne," Lil told him

 quietly. And I have admired your manly disposition. I am so glad we have

 had an opportunity to meet."

 The words worked a miracle. Ralph felt himself growing in stature, the

 trembling in his legs stilled and they felt strong and sure under him.

 "Do you like my robe?" Lil asked, and took the long skirts in her hands,

 turning to make them flare.

 Ralph nodded dumbly, his new-found strength had not yet reached his

 tongue, but his eyes were wide and feverish.

 She came to him and without her heels she stood only as high as his

 shoulder. "Let me help you with your coat."

 And when he was in his shirtsleeves, she said, "Come and sit on the

 sofa." She took his hand and led him across the room.

 "Do you like me, mister Ballantyne?"

 At last he could speak, "Oh yes. Oh yes!"

 "May I call you Ralph? I feel I know you so well."

 Very early one January morning long ago she had left the Mayfair house,

 and reached the deserted park where it had snowed during the night. The

 snow lay white and smooth and unmarked. She left the gravelled path, and

 the snow crumbled like sugar under her feet. When she looked back her

 tiny footprints were strung out across the unblemished snow, as though

 she were the first and only woman in the world. It gave her an

 extraordinary feeling of her own importance. Now as she lay on the wide

 bedstead beside the lad, she experienced that same feeling.

 He was not a lad, but she thought of him as that. His body was fully

 matured, but his innocence made him as vulnerable as an unweaned infant,

 and his body was like the snow which no other feet had trodden.

 The sun had stained his throat in a deep V down onto his chest, but the

 skin of his chest and flat belly were the lustrous white of watered

 marble or of freshly fallen snow. She touched it with her lips and when

 his little dusty rose nipples puckered and started her own skin crawling

 deliciously, she took his hands. His palms were rough and callused from

 work on the stagings and in the pit. The fingernails were torn and

 cracked, with ingrained dirt beneath them. But it was honest dirt, and

 the hands were shapely, long and graceful. She had learned to judge men

 by the shape of their hands, and now she lifted Ralph's to her lips and

 kissed them lightly, watching his eyes as she did so.

 Then slowly she took his hands down and cupped them over her own soft

 breasts. She felt the rough skin rasp her own nipples, and they popped

 out like full moons, pale pink and tense.

 "You like that, Ralph?" She asked that same question five times, and the

 last time was when the room was almost dark and he was convulsed and

 shaking within the circle of her arms and her pliant thighs, drenched

 with his own sweet young sweat, and breathing in little choking sobs.

 "You like that, Ralph?" And his reply was broken and ragged: "Oh yes. Oh

 yes, Miss. Suddenly she was sad. The snow was trodden, the magic was

 passing, just as the power she had wielded was transitory.

 She had not cried in ten long hard years, not since that first evening

 in the Mayfair house, but now she was shocked to find the constriction

 in her throat and the burning behind her eyes.

 "What is there to cry for?" she wondered desolately.

 "It's far too late for tears."

 She rolled Ralph expertly onto his back, his body limp and unresisting,

 and for a moment she stared at him hatefully. He had touched something

 in her which had hurt unbearably. Then the hating passed and there was

 only the sadness.

 She kissed him once more, softly and regretfully.

 "You must go now, Ralph," she said.

 He lingered at the door, with his jacket over his arm and his cap in his

 hand.

 "I will come and see you again, Lilly."

 She formed a bow with her lips and painted them with quick deft strokes

 before she replied, but while she worked she was watching him in the

 mirror.

 He was altered already, she saw. He stood four-square, his shoulders

 wide and his neat young head proud on the column of his sun-tanned neck.

 The sweet diffidence was gone, the appealing shyness evaporated. An hour

 before he would have said: "Please can I come and see you again, Miss

 Lill?"

 She smiled at him in the mirror, that bright burnished smile, and the

 diamond in her tooth winked sardonically.

 "You come any time, dearie, any time you have saved ten guineas."

 It was only surprising that the full report of Ralph's foray into the

 lilac fields of Venus took so long to reach Zouga, for Barry Lennox had

 repeated the story with zest and embroidery to anyone who would listen,

 and the chaff and banter had flown like a Kalahari dust-storm every

 evening in Diamond Lil's canteen.

 "Gentlemen, you are speaking about the eldest son of one of the pillars

 of Kimberley Society," Lil admonished them saucily. "Remember that Major

 Ballantyne is not only a member of the Kimberley Club, but a respected

 ornament of the Diggers" Committee." She knew that one of them would

 soon succumb to the temptation to take the story to Zouga Ballantyne. "I

 would love to hear what that cold-bellied, stuck-up prig will say when

 he hears," she told herself secretly. "Even the iced water in his veins

 will boil."

 "Whores and whore masters," said Zouga. He stood on the wide verandah,

 in the shade of the thatched roof which had replaced the original tent

 of the first camp.

 Ralph stood below him in the sunlight, blinking up at his father.

 "Perhaps you have no respect for your family, for the name of

 Ballantyne, but do you have none for yourself and for your own body?"

 Zouga was barring the front door to the cottage of raw unbaked brick. He

 was bare-headed, so that his thick dark gold hair shone like a war

 helmet and his neatlycropped beard emphasized the jut of his heavy jaw,

 and the long black tapered hippohide kurbash whip hung from his right

 hand, touching the floor at the toe of his riding boot.

 "Do you have an answer?" Zouga's tone was quiet, and deadly cold.

 Ralph was still dusty as a miller from the pit. The dust was thick and

 red in his hair, and outlined the curl of his nostrils and ran like

 tears from the corners of his eyes. He wiped his forehead on his

 shirtsleeve, an excuse to break the gaze of his father's eyes, and then

 examined the muddy smear with attention.

 "Answer me," Zouga's voice did not alter. "Give me a reason, just one

 reason why I should not throw you out of this home, for ever."

 Jordan could bear it no longer, the thought of losing Ralph overcame his

 terror of his father's wrath.

 He ran down the length of the verandah, and seized the arm that held the

 whip.

 "Papa! Please, Papa, don't send him away."

 Without glancing at Jordan, Zouga lashed out and the blow caught Jordan

 across the chest and hurled him back against the verandah wall.

 "Jordie did nothing," said Ralph, as quietly as his father had spoken.

 "Oh, you do have a tongue?" Zouga asked.

 "Get out of it, Jordie," Ralph ordered. "This is not your business."

 "Stay where you are, Jordan." Zouga still did not look at him, his gaze

 was riveted on Ralph's face. "Stay here and learn about whores and the

 kind of men who lust after them."

 Jordan was stricken, his face like last night's camp-fire ashes, his

 lips dry and white as bone. He knew what they were talking about, for he

 had listened while Bazo and Ralph wove their fantasies aloud, and with

 his interest piqued, he had questioned Jan Cheroot furtively and the

 replies had disgusted and terrified him.

 "Not like animals, Jan Cheroot, surely not like dogs or goats."

 Jordan's questions to Jan Cheroot had been generalized , men and women,

 not any person he knew or loved or respected. It had taken him days

 fully to appreciate Jan Cheroot's reply, and then the terrible

 realization had struck, all men and women, his father who epitomized for

 him all that was noble and strong and right, his mother, that sweet and

 gentle being who was already a fading wraithlike memory, not them,

 surely not them.

 He had been physically sickened, vomiting and wracked by excruciating

 bowel cramps so that Zouga had dosed him with sulphur and treacle

 molasses.

 Now they were talking about that thing, that thing so dreadful that he

 had tried to purge his memory of it.

 Now the two most important people in his world were talking about it

 openly, using words he had only seen in print and which had even then

 shamed him. They were mouthing those words and the air was full of shame

 and hatred and revulsion.

 "You have wallowed like a pig where a thousand other pigs have wallowed

 before you, in the foetid cesspool between that scarlet whore's thighs."

 Jordan crept away along the wall, and reached the corner of the stoep.

 He could go no further.

 "If you were not ashamed to muck in that trough, did you not give a

 thought to what those other rutting boars had left there for you?"

 His father's words conjured up vivid images in Jordan's mind. His

 stomach heaved, and he covered his mouth with his hand.

 "The sickness a harlot carries there is the curse of God upon venery and

 lust. If you could only see them in the pox hospital at Greenwich,

 raving idiots with their brains eaten half away by the disease, drooling

 from empty mouths, their teeth rotted out, their noses fallen into black

 festering holes, blind eyes rolling in their crazed skulls, " Jordan

 doubled over, and sicked up on his own rawhide boots.

 "Stop it," said Ralph. "You have made Jordie sick."

 "I have made him sick?" Zouga asked quietly. "It is you who would make

 any decent person sick."

 Zouga came down the steps into the dusty yard, and he swung the whip,

 cutting the air with it, across and back and the lash fluted sharply.

 Ralph stood his ground, and now his chin was up defiantly.

 "If you take that whip to me, Papa, I shall defend myself."

 "You challenge me," Zouga stopped.

 "You only use a whip on an animal."

 "Yes," Zouga nodded. "An animal, that's why I take it to you."

 "Papa, I warn you."

 Gravely Zouga inclined his head and considered the young man before him.

 "Very well. You claim to be a man, make good that claim."

 Zouga tossed the hippohide whip casually onto the verandah, and then

 turned back to his son.

 Ralph was prepared, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet,

 although his hands were held low before him, they were balled into

 fists.

 He never saw it. For a moment he thought that someone else had used a

 club on him from behind. The crack of it seemed to explode under the

 dome of his skull. He reeled backwards, his nose felt numb and at the

 same time swollen horribly. There was a tickling warmth on his upper lip

 and dumbly he licked it. It tasted of coppery salt, and he wiped at it

 with the back of his hand and then stared at the smear of blood on the

 back of his wrist.

 His rage came on him with startling ferocity, as though a beast had

 pounced upon his back, a black beast that goaded him with its claws. He

 heard the beast growl in his ears, not recognizing his own voice, and

 then he rushed forward.

 His father's face was in front of him, handsome, grave and cold, and he

 swung his fist at it with all his strength, wanting to feel the flesh

 crush under his knuckles, the gristle of that arrogant beaked nose break

 and crackle, the teeth snap out of that unforgiving mouth.

 His fist spun through air, meeting no check, swinging high about the

 level of his own head, and the blow died there, the sinews of his

 shoulder wrenched by the unexpected travel of his arm.

 Again that burst of sound in his skull, his teeth jarring, his head

 snapping back, his vision starring momentarily into pinpoints of light

 and areas of deep echoing black, and then clearing again so that his

 father's face floated back towards him.

 Until that instant the only feelings he had ever had for Zouga were

 respect and fear and a weighty monumental love, but suddenly from some

 deep place in his soul rose a raging unholy hatred.

 He hated him for a hundred humiliations and punishments, he hated him

 for the checks and frustrations with which he filled each precious day

 of Ralph's life, he hated him for the reverence and deep respect in

 which other men held him, for the example that he knew he would be

 expected to follow faithfully all his life and doubted that he could. He

 hated him for the enormous load of duty and devotion he owed him and

 which he knew he could never discharge. He hated him for the love he had

 stolen from him, the love his mother had given unstintingly to his

 father and which he wanted all for himself.

 He hated him because his mother was dead, and his father had not

 prevented her going.

 But most of all he hated him because he had taken something which had

 been wonderful and made it filthy, had taken a magical moment and made

 him ashamed of it, sick and dirty ashamed.

 He rushed back at Zouga, swinging wildly with both fists meeting only

 air, and the blows that landed on his own head and face sounded as

 though somebody far away was chopping down a tree with a steel axe.

 Zouga fell away neatly before each charge, swaying his head back or to

 the side, deflecting a blow with his arms, ducking carefully under a

 flying fist, and counter-punching only with his left hand, flicking it

 in with deceptive lightness, for at each shot Ralph's head snapped

 backwards sharply and the blood from his nose and his swollen lips

 slowly turned his face into a running red mess.

 "Stop it, oh please stop it!"Jordan crouched against the verandah wall

 with the yellow vomit staining his shirt front. "Please stop it!"

 He wanted to cover his face with his hands, to blot out the violence and

 the blood and the terrible black hatred, but he could not. He was locked

 in an awful fascination, watching every stinging cruel blow, every

 droplet of flung blood from his brother's face.

 Like a corrida bull Ralph came up short at last, and stood with his feet

 wide apart, his knees giving like reeds overweighted with dew, trying

 feebly to shake the blackness from his head and the blood from his eyes,

 his fists bunched up still but too heavy and weak to lift above his

 waist, his chest heaving for air, swaying and catching his balance every

 few seconds with an uncontrolled stagger, peering blindly about him for

 his tormentor.

 "Here," said Zouga quietly, and Ralph lurched towards the voice and

 Zouga used his right hand for the first time. He chopped him cleanly

 under the ear, a short measured blow, and Ralph flopped face forward

 into the dust and snored into it, blowing little red puffs with each

 breath.

 Jordan flew down the steps and dropped to his knees beside his brother,

 turning his head to one side so he could breathe freely and dabbing

 ineffectually at the blood with his fingers.

 "Jan Cheroot," Zouga called. He was breathing deeply but slowly; there

 was colour in his cheeks above his beard, and he touched a few beads of

 perspiration on his forehead with the kerchief from around his throat.

 "Jan Cheroot!"he called again irritably, and this time the little

 Hottentot roused himself and hurried down the steps.

 "Get a bucket of water," Zouga told him.

 Jan Cheroot dashed the contents of a gallon bucket into Ralph's face,

 washing away the bloody mask, and Ralph gasped and snorted and tried to

 crawl to his knees.

 Jan Cheroot dropped the bucket and grabbed his arm; Jordan stooped and

 got his head under Ralph's other armpit and between them they lifted him

 to his feet.

 They were both much smaller than Ralph and he hung between them like a

 dirty blanket on a washline, with the mixture of water and blood

 dripping to form pale pink rosettes on his shirt front.

 Zouga lit a cheroot, studied the ash to be sure it was drawing evenly,

 then replaced it between his teeth.

 He stepped up to his eldest son. With his thumb he pulled down each

 lower eyelid in turn and peered into his pupils, then grunted with

 satisfaction. He studied the cut in Ralph's eyebrow, then took his nose

 between his fingers and moved it gently from side to side to check it

 for damage, then finally he pulled back Ralph's lip and inspected his

 teeth for chips or breakage and stepped back.

 "Jan Cheroot, take him down to Jameson's surgery. Ask Doc to stitch that

 eye and give him a handful of mercury pills for the pox."

 Jan Cheroot started to lead Ralph away but Zouga went on, "Then on your

 way back stop at Barnato's Gymnasium and sign him up for a course of

 boxing lessons.

 He'll have to learn to fight a bit better than that or he's going to get

 his head beaten in even before he dies of the clap."

 on the way back from Market Square Jan Cheroot and Ralph walked with

 their heads together, talking seriously.

 "Why do you think they call him Bakela, the Fist?" Jan Cheroot asked,

 and Ralph grimaced painfully.

 His face was lumpy and the colour was coming up in his bruises, deep

 plum and cloudy blue like summer thunderclouds. The horsehair stitches

 stuck up stiffly out of his eyebrow and lip, and the cuts were

 soft-scabbed like cranberry jam.

 Jan Cheroot grinned and clucked with sympathy, and then asked the

 question that had burned his tongue since first he had learned the cause

 of Zouga's wrath.

 "So how did you like your first taste of pink sugar?"

 The question stopped Ralph in his tracks while he considered it

 seriously, then he answered without moving his damaged lip.

 "It was bloody marvellous," he said.

 Jan Cheroot giggled and hugged himself with delight.

 "Now you listen to me, boy, and you listen good. I love your daddy, we

 been together so many years I can't count, and when he tells you

 something you can believe it, nearly every time. But me, I have never in

 my life assed up a chance for a slice of that warm stuff, never once,

 old or young or in between, ugly as a monkey or so pretty it would break

 your heart, whenever it was offered and lots of times when it wasn't,

 old Jan Cheroot grabbed it, boy."

 "And it never killed you." Ralph supplied the summation.

 "I guess I would have died without it."

 Ralph started walking again. "I hope Bazo will fight his fancy again

 next Sunday. I'm going to need ten guineas pretty badly by then."

 The moon was hpping the horizon, putting the stars to pale shame. It was

 still a few days short of full, but on the stoep of Zouga's cottage it

 was light enough to read the headlines of a crumpled copy of the Diamond

 Fields Advertiser that lay beside Zouga's empty riempie chair.

 The only sounds were the distant baying of a mooncrazy hound, and the

 flirt of bats" wings as they spun high parabolas in the moonlight or

 came fluttering in under the overhang of the verandah roof to pick a

 moth from the air. The front door was stopped wide open to allow the

 night's cool to penetrate the inner rooms of the cottage. Jordan crept

 through it timidly.

 He was bare-footed, and the old flannel shirt he wore as a nightdress

 was one of Zouga's cast-offs. The tails flapped around his bare knees as

 he moved down the verandah and stopped before the tall falcon-headed

 carving that stood on its pedestal at the end of the covered stoep.

 The slanting moonlight lit the graven bird image from the side, leaving

 half of it in black mysterious shadow.

 Jordan stopped before the image. The clay floor was cold on his bare

 soles, and he shivered not entirely from the cold, and looked about him

 surreptitiously.

 Zouga's camp slept, that deep pre-dawn sleep.

 Jordan's curls, bushed wildly from the pillow, sparkled like a halo in

 the moonlight, and his eyes were in shadow, dark holes like those of a

 skull. All night he had lain rigid in his narrow bed and listened to his

 brother's heavy breathing through his swollen nose.

 Lack of sleep made Jordan feel light-headed and fey.

 He opened the little twist of newspaper which he had hidden under his

 pillow when he went to bed.

 it contained half a handful of rice and a thin slice of cold roasted

 lamb. He laid it at the foot of the soapstone column, and stepped back.

 Once more he looked about him to make sure that he was alone and

 unobserved. Then he sank down to his bare knees with the book held

 against his chest, and bowed his head.

 The book was bound in blue leather with gold leaf titling on its spine:

 Religions of the American Indians.

 "I greet you, Panes," Jordan whispered, his swollen eyelids tightly

 closed.

 "The Indians of California, the Acagchemem tribe adore the great buzzard

 Panes." The book Jordan held to his breast had become far and away the

 most precious of all his possessions. He did not like to remember how he

 had obtained it. It was the only thing he had ever stolen in his life,

 but he had been forgiven for that sin.

 He had prayed to the goddess and been forgiven.

 "The Panes was a woman, a young and beautiful woman, who had run off

 into the mountains and been changed into a bird by the god

 Chinigchinich."

 Jordan knew with all his being whom this description depicted. His

 mother had been young and beautiful, and she had run away to the black

 mountain of Death without him.

 Now he opened the book and bowed his head over it.

 It was not light enough to read the fine print of the text, but Jordan

 knew the invocation to the goddess by heart.

 "Why did you run away?" he whispered. "You would have been better with

 us. Are we not the ones who love you? "It was better that you stayed,

 for now you are Panes. If we make you a sacrifice of rice and meat, will

 you not come back to us? See the sacrifice we set for you, great Panes."

 The morning wind stirred, and Jordan heard the branch of the camel-thorn

 scrape upon the roof before the wind touched him. It was a warm, soft

 wind, and it ruffled his hair.

 Jordan clenched his eyes even tighter, and the little insects of awe

 crawled upon his skin. The goddess had many ways of showing her

 presence. This was the first time she had come as a soft warm wind.

 "Oh great Panes, I don't want to wallow in filth like Ralph. I don't

 ever want to smell the trough where a thousand pigs have wallowed. I

 don't want to go mad, and have my teeth rot out of my mouth." He

 whispered softly but ardently, and then the tears began to squeeze out

 from between his lids.

 "Please save me, great Panes." He poured out all his horror and disgust

 to the sacred bird-woman. "They were hitting each other. They were

 hating each other, and the blood, oh the blood At last he was silent,

 head bowed, shivering, and then he rose to his bare feet, and for the

 first time looked at the image.

 The bird stared back at him stonily, but Jordan cocked his lovely golden

 head as though he were listening, and the moonlight silvered his skin.

 He turned, still clutching the book, and crept back along the verandah.

 As he turned the far corner there was a furry rush of dark bodies out of

 the shadows, and the soft squeals of the bush rats as they squabbled

 over the sacrifice.

 Jordan pushed open the door of the kitchen and it smelled of woodsmoke

 and curry powder and carbolic soap.

 He stooped to the ashbox of the black iron stove, and when he blew

 lightly through the grating the ashes glowed.

 He pushed a long wax taper through the bars and blew again and a little

 blue flame popped into life. He carried it carefully across the kitchen,

 sheltering it with his cupped hand, and transferred the flame to the

 stump of candle in the neck of the dark green champagne bottle.

 Then he blew out the taper and placed the bottle on the scrubbed yellow

 deal table and stepped back.

 For a few seconds longer he hesitated, then he took the skirts of the

 faded and patched nightshirt, lifted them as high as his shoulders and

 looked down at his body.

 The puppy fat had disappeared from his belly and hips.

 His navel was a dark eye in the flat clean plain of his trunk, and his

 legs were gracefully shaped. His buttocks lean and tight, like immature

 fruit.

 His body was smooth and hairless except for the golden wisps at the

 juncture of his legs. It was not yet thick enough to curl, and was

 sparse and fine as silk thread freshly spun upon the cocoon.

 From the centre of this cloudy web his penis hung down limply. It had

 grown alarmingly in the last few months, and in Jordan's horrified

 imagination, he foresaw the day when it would be thick and heavy as his

 arm, a huge shameful burden to carry through life.

 At this moment it looked so soft and white and innocent, but when he

 woke in the mornings it was hard as bone, hot and throbbing with a

 sinfully pleasurable ache.

 That was bad, but in these last weeks that terrible swelling and

 stiffening had come upon him at the most unexpected times: at the dinner

 table with his father seated opposite him, in the schoolroom when the

 new schoolmistress had leaned over him to correct his spelling, seated at

 the sorting-table beside Jan Cheroot, on the gelding's back when the

 friction of the saddle had triggered it, and that awful stiff thing had

 thrust out the front of his breeches.

 He took it in his hand now and it seemed helpless and soft as a newborn

 kitten, but he was not deceived. He stroked it softly back and forth and

 instantly he felt it change shape between his fingers. He released it

 quickly.

 The joint of mutton that the family had dined off the previous evening

 stood on the deal table, under a steel mesh fly-cover. Jordan lifted the

 cover, and the leg was hacked down to the bone.

 His father's hunting knife lay beside the cold joint.

 The handle was stag-horn and the blade was nine inches long, sweeping up

 to a dagger point, and the white mutton fat had congealed upon the

 blade.

 Jordan picked up the knife in his right hand.

 The previous evening he had watched his father flicking the edge of the

 blade across the long steel. It always fascinated him, because Zouga

 held the razor edge towards his own fingers as he worked.

 The proof of his father's expertise with the steel was the way in which

 the heavy knife seemed to glide effortlessly through the meat of the

 joint. It was wickedly sharp.

 Jordan looked down again at that long white thing that stuck out of his

 body. The loose skin at the tip was half retracted so that the pink

 acorn pushed out from beneath it.

 He tucked the tail of his shirt under his chin to free both hands and

 seized himself at the root, enclosing within the circle of his fingers

 the wrinkled bag with its tender marbles of flesh, and he pulled it out,

 stretching it out like the neck of the condemned man upon the headsman's

 block, while with the other hand he brought the knife down and laid the

 blade against his own belly, just above the fine golden fluff of pubic

 hair.

 The blade was so cold that he gasped, and the mutton fat left a little

 greasy smear on his belly. He took a long breath to steel himself, and

 then slowly began to draw the blade downwards, to free himself for ever

 of that shameful wormlike growth.

 "Jordie, what are you doing?" The voice from the doorway behind him

 startled him so that he cried out aloud.

 He threw the knife onto the table and at the same time dropped the shirt

 to cover himself.

 "Jordie!"

 He turned swiftly, breathing in sharp little gasps, and Ralph came

 towards him from the kitchen door. He wore only a pair of baggy shorts,

 and there were goose-bumps on the smooth bare skin of his chest from the

 pre-dawn chill.

 "What were you doing?" he repeated.

 "Nothing. I wasn't doing anything." Jordan shook his head wildly.

 "You were whacking your old winker, weren't you?" Ralph accused and

 grinned. "You dirty little bugger."

 Jordan let out a choking sob and fled past him to the door, and Ralph

 chuckled and shook his head.

 Then he picked up the stag-handled knife and cut a thick slab of mutton

 off the joint, dipped the blade into the stone pot and smeared a gob of

 yellow mustard over the meat, and munched it as he went about building

 up the fire in the stove and setting the coffee water to boil.

 The following Sunday afternoon on the white sand of the fighting arena,

 Inkosikazi, the spider, died an agonizing death in the ghastly embrace

 of a smaller more agile adversary.

 Bazo mourned her as he would a lover, and Kamuza sang the dirge with him

 just as sadly, for the Matabele syndicate had lost twenty sovereigns

 with her passing.

 The return from Market Square to Zouga's camp resembled Napoleon's

 retreat from Moscow, headed by Ralph and Bazo bearing between them the

 basket and its sorry contents.

 Opposite Diamond Lil's canteen, Ralph halted the cortege for a moment

 and wistfully contemplated the painted windows across the street, and

 listened for a moment to the sounds of laughter from beyond the green

 door, imagining that he could distinguish Lil's tinkling chimes.

 When they reached the thatched beehive communal hut, Kamuza passed Ralph

 the clay pot of bubbling millet beer.

 "How much did you lose, Henshaw?"

 "Everything," Ralph replied tragically. "The very reason for living." He

 took a long swallow of the thick gruellike beer.

 "That is bad; only a foolish man keeps all his cows in the same kraal."

 "Kamuza, your words are always a great solace," Ralph told him bitterly.

 "But I am unworthy of such wisdom.

 Keep those treasures for yourself alone."

 Kamusa looked smug and turned to Bazo. "Now you know why I would not lay

 fifty gold queens, as you bid me."

 Bazo shot a glance at Ralph, and they acted together.

 Ralph draped a seemingly brotherly arm over Kamuza's shoulders, but it

 was a steely yoke that held him helpless, and with the other hand he

 pulled open the front of Kamuza's loincloth, and Bazo scooped the soft

 furry carcass of the great spider out of the basket and dropped it into

 the opening.

 As Ralph released him, Kamuza went up into the air, rearing like an

 unbroken stallion feeling the saddle and spur for the first time,

 whinnying wildly with horror, beating at his own loins with both hands.

 If Ralph had not caught him, Bazo, in a shaking paralysis of mirth,

 might have fallen into the fire in the centre of the hut.

 Kamuza had been gone almost three years.

 When Bazo and the other Matabele had signed their contracts for a third

 period, Kamuza alone had asked Bakela to "Bala Isitupa", to write off

 the contract as complete, and he had taken the road north back to

 Matabeleland.

 Bazo had missed him deeply. He had missed the spiked tongue and shrewd

 acerbic counsel. He had missed Kamuza's intuitive understanding of the

 white man's ways of thinking, ways which Bazo still found unfathomable.

 Even though Henshaw was his friend, had worked at Bazo's shoulder for

 all those long years, though they had hawked and hunted together, dipped

 into the same baking of maize porridge and drunk from the lip of the

 same beer-pot, though Henshaw spoke his language so easily that sitting

 in the darkness when the fire had burned down to embers it might have

 been a young Matabele buck talking, so faithfully did Henshaw echo the

 deep cadence of the north, so complete was his command of the

 colloquial, so poetic the imagery he used yet Henshaw would never be

 Matabele as Kamuza was Matabele, could never be brother as Kamuza was,

 had never shared the initiation rites with Bazo as Kamuza had, had never

 formed the "horns of the bull" with him as the impi closed for the kill,

 and had never driven the assegai deep and seen the bright blood fly as

 Kamuza had.

 Thus Bazo was filled with joy when he heard the word.

 "Kamuza is amongst us again."

 Bazo heard it first whispered by another Matabele as they formed a line

 at the gate of the security compound.

 "Kamuza comes as the king's man," they whispered around the watch-fires,

 and there was respect, even fear, in their voices. "Kamuza wears the

 headring now."

 Many young Matabele had come to work at Umgodi Kakulu, "The Big Hole",

 these last few years, and each month more came down the long and weary

 road from the north, small bands of ten or twenty, sometimes only in

 pairs, or threes and occasionally even a man travelling alone.

 How many had reached Kimberley? There was nobody to keep a tally, a

 thousand certainly, two thousand perhaps, and each of them had been

 given the road southwards by the great black elephant, each of them had

 the king's permission to journey beyond the borders of Matabeleland, for

 without it they would have been speared to death by the bright assegais

 of the impis that guarded every road to and from the king's great kraal

 at Thabas Indunas, the Hills of the Chiefs.

 Even in exile these young Matabele formed a closeknit tribal

 association. Each newcomer from the north carried tidings, long messages

 from fathers and indunas, repeated verbatim with every nuance of the

 original. just as every Matabele who left the diamond fields, whether he

 had worked out his three-year contract or was bored and homesick or had

 fallen foul of the white man's complicated and senseless laws and was

 deserting, carried back with him messages and instructions that he had

 committed to the phenomenal memory of a people who did not have the

 written word.

 Now the word passed swiftly from Matabele to Matabele.

 "Kamusa is here."

 Kamuza had never warranted such attention before. He had been one

 amongst a thousand; but now he had returned as the king's man, and they

 lowered their voices when they spoke his name.

 Bazo looked for him each day, searching the faces on the high stagings

 and on the running skips. He lay sleepless on his mat beside the cooling

 watch-fire, listening for Kamuza's whisper in the darkness.

 He waited for many days and many nights, and then suddenly Kamuza was

 there, stooping through the low entrance and greeting Bazo.

 "I see you, Bazo, son of Gandang., Bazo stifled his joy and replied

 calmly.

 "I see you also, Kamuza."

 And they made a place for Kamuza in the circle, not pressing him too

 closely, giving him space, for now Kamuza wore the simple black tiara

 upon his close-cropped pate, the badge of the Councillor, the induna of

 the king of Matabeleland.

 They called him "Baba", a term of great respect, and even Bazo clapped

 his hands softly in greeting and passed him the beer pot.

 only after Kamuza had refreshed himself could Bazo begin to ask the

 questions of home, disguising his eagerness behind measured tones and an

 expression of calm dignity.

 Kamuza was no longer a youth, neither of them were; the years had sped

 away and they were both in the full flowering of their manhood. Kamuza's

 features were sharper than the true Matabele of Zanzi blood, the old

 blood from Zululand, for his was mixed with Tswana, the less warlike but

 shrewd and cunning peoples of King Khama.

 Kamuza's grandmother had been captured as a maiden, still short of

 puberty, by one of King Mzilikazi's raiding impis, and taken to wife by

 the induna who commanded her captors. From her Kamuza had inherited his

 mulberry black skin and the Egyptian slant of his eyes, the row nostrils

 and the thin and knowing twist of his nar lips.

 There were very few Matabele who could still trace their bloodline back

 to the pure Zanzi, to the line of Chaka and Dingaan, the Zulus, the Sons

 of Heaven, and Bazo was one of those. Yet it was Kamuza who wore the

 ring of the induna on his head now.

 in the time of Mzilikazi, a man would have the hoar frost of wisdom and

 age powdering his hair, and the cowtails bound about his elbows and

 knees would proclaim his deeds in battle to the world before the king

 ordered him to take the isicoco. Then his wives would plait and twist

 the headring into his own hair and cement it permanently into place with

 gum and clay and ox blood, a permanent halo of honour that entitled the

 wearer to his seat on the Council of the Matabele nation.

 However, the old times were changing. More cunning than fierce,

 Lobengula, son of Mzilikazi, looked for cunning in those about him.

 Mzilikazi had been a warrior and lived by the white flash of the

 assegai. Lobengula, though he had blooded his spear, had never been a

 warrior, and he scorned the warriors" simpleness of thought and

 directness of action. As his father's greybeards faltered, he replaced

 them with men who thought as swiftly as the old ones had stabbed.

 He had no patience with the old men's preoccupation with a world that

 was passing, and he sought out the young ones with clear fresh eyes, men

 who could see with him the dark clouds gathering on the southern borders

 like the soaring thunderheads of high summer.

 Men who could sense the change and terrible events which his wizards and

 his own divinations warned him would soon rush down upon him like the

 fires that sweep the papyrus beds of the Zambezi swamps at the end of

 the dry season.

 Lobengula, the great Black Elephant, whose very tread shakes the earth's

 foundations, and whose voice splits the skies, was choosing young men

 with eyes to see and ears to hear.

 Thus Kamuza now wore the isicoco of the induna and, as he spoke over the

 fire in his dry whisper, his slanted eyes black and bright as those of a

 mamba in the firelight, men listened, and listened with great attention.

 It was a measure of the gravity of the news he carried from the north

 that Kamusa began the council, the indaba, with a recital of the history

 of the Matabele nation. Each of them had heard it first with their

 mother's breast in their mouths, had drunk it in with her milk, but they

 listened now as avidly as then, reinforcing their memories so that when

 the time came they would be able to repeat it perfectly in each detail

 to their own children, that the story might never be lost.

 The history began with Mzilikazi, war chief of the impis of Zulu,

 warrior without peer, beloved comrade and trusted intimate of King Chaka

 himself. it told of the black sickness of King Chaka, driven mad with

 grief at the death of his mother Nandi, the Sweet One. Chaka ordering

 the year of mourning in which no man might sow seed, on pain of death;

 in which the milk from the cows must be thrown upon the earth, on pain

 of death; in which no man might lie with his woman, on pain of death.

 Mad Chaka brooded in his great hut and looked for cause to strike down

 all around him, even the most trusted, even the most beloved.

 So it was that Chaka's messengers came to Mzilikazi, the young war

 chieftain. They found him in the field with. his impis about him, five

 thousand of Zululand's bravest and finest, all of them still hot from

 battle, driving before them the spoils they had taken, the captured

 herds, the young and comely girls roped neck to neck.

 The king's messengers wore the long tail feathers of the stately blue

 cranes in their headdress, token of their solemn mission.

 "The king accuses the induna Mzilikazi," began the first messenger, and

 looking into his arrogant face Mzilikazi knew that he looked upon the

 face of death. "The king accuses Mzilikazi of stealing the king's share

 of the spoils of war."

 Then the second messenger spoke, and his words were an echo of the

 king's black madness, so that the words of King Chaka stood in the air

 above Mzilikazi's impis the way that the vultures circle above the

 battlefields on wide and motionless pinions.

 if the sentence of death had been upon him alone, Mzilikazi might have

 gone to his king and met it with courage and dignity. But his five

 thousand fighting men were doomed also, and Mzilikazi called them his

 children.

 So Mzilikazi reached out and seized the king's messengers, and for a

 moment the earth seemed to lurch in its courses, for to touch these who

 wore the blue crane feathers was to touch the person of the king

 himself. With the razor edge of his assegai, Mzilikazi slashed the blue

 feathers from their heads, and threw them into the faces of the

 grovelling messengers.

 "That is my reply to Chaka., who is no longer my king.

 Thus began the great exodus towards the north and, seated over the

 watch-fire, Kamuza, the king's man, related it all again.

 He told the battle honours of Mzilikazi, the renegade.

 He told how Chaka sent his most famous impis after the fleeing five

 thousand, and how Mzilikazi met them in the classic battle tactics of

 the Nguni, how he waited for them in the bad ground.

 Kamuza told how Mzilikazi threw the "horns of the bull" around the impis

 of Chaka, and how his young men shouted "Ngi Ala! I have eaten!"

 as they drove in the steel; and the listeners in the dark hut murmured

 and moved restlessly, and their eyes shone and their spear hands

 twitched.

 When it was over, the survivors of Chaka's shattered impi came to

 Mzilikazi and, on their knees, swore allegiance to him, to Mzilikazi who

 was no longer a renegade, but a little king.

 Kamusa told how the little king marched north with his swollen impi, and

 how he defeated other little kings and became a great king.

 Kamusa told how after Chaka was murdered by his brothers, Dingaan, the

 new leader of the Zulu nation, did not dare to send out more impis to

 pursue Mzilikazi.

 So Mzilikazi flourished, and like a ravaging lion he ate up the tribes.

 Their warriors swelled his fighting impis, and his Zanzi, the

 pure-blooded Zulu, bred upon the bellies of the captured maidens and the

 Matabele became a nation and Mzilikazi became a black emperor whose

 domain overshadowed even that of Chaka.

 The men about the fire listened and felt their hearts swell with pride.

 Then Kamusa told how the buni, the strange white men, crossed the river

 in their little wagons and outspanned upon the land that Mzilikazi had

 won with the assegai. Then Mzilikazi paraded his impis, and they danced

 with their war plumes aflutter, and their long shields clashing as they

 passed before him.

 After he had reviewed the might of his nation, Mzilikazi took the little

 ceremonial spear of his kingship, and he poised before his impis and

 then hurled the toy-like weapon towards the banks of the Gariep river on

 which the white men had outspanned their wagons.

 They took them in the hour before dawn, at the time of the horns, when

 the horns of the cattle can first be seen against the lightening sky.

 The front ranks of racing black warriors received the first volley of

 the long muzzle-loading guns, absorbing it as though it were a handful

 of pebbles thrown into a stormy black sea.

 Then they stabbed the bearded men as they worked frantically with

 powderhom and ramrod. They stabbed the white women as they ran from the

 wagons in their rughtdresses, trying to carry the second gun to their

 men.

 They snatched the infants from their cradles on the wagonbed, and dashed

 out their brains against the tall steel-shod wheels of the wagons.

 Oh, it was a rare feast that they set for Mzilikazi's chickens, the

 grotesque naked-headed vultures. They believed it was an ending, but it

 was only a beginning, for the Matabele were about to learn of the

 persistence and the dour courage of these strange pale people.

 The next wave of white men came out of the south, and when they found

 the abandoned wagons and the jackal-chewed bones on the banks of the

 Gariep, theirs was a fury such as the Matabele had never encountered in

 all their wars.

 So the buni met the impis on the open ground, refusing to be drawn into

 the ravines and thorn scrub. They came in pitifully small squadrons on

 shaggy ponies to dismount and discharge their volleys in a thunder of

 blue powder smoke. Then they went up into the saddle to wheel away from

 under the wall of charging rawhide shields and reload and circle back to

 let loose the thunder again into the mass of half-naked bodies

 glistening with oil and sweat.

 The buni built fortresses on the open plain, fortresses with their

 wagons" bodies which they lashed wheel to wheel; and they let the impis

 come to die upon the wooden walls of the fortress, while their womenfolk

 stood close behind them to take the gun while the barrel was still hot

 and pass up the second gun, charged and primed.

 Then when the impis drew back, mauled and shaken, the wagons uncoiled

 from their circle, like a slow but deadly puffadder, and crawled forward

 towards the kraal of Mzilikazi. And the dreadful horsemen galloped ahead

 of them, firing and circling, firing and circling.

 Sadly Mzilikazi counted his dead and the price was too high, the red mud

 through which the iron-shod wheels churned was puddled with the blood of

 Zanzi, the blood of Heaven.

 So he called his nation, and the herd boys brought in the herds, and the

 women rolled the sleeping-mats, and the little girls balanced the clay

 cooking-pots upon their heads, and Mzilikazi put fire into his kraals

 and led the Matabele nation away. A vast throng of people and animals

 were guarded by the depleted impis, while the white men on their sturdy

 ponies drove them and pointed them the way the sheepdog works the flock.

 Mzilikazi led them northwards until they crossed the great river into a

 new land.

 "Now the white birds are gathering again," Kamuza told the young men

 about the watch fire. "Each day they come up the road to Thabas Indunas,

 and they bring their dry gifts and the little green bottles of madness.

 Their words are sweet as honey on the tongue, but they catch in the

 throat of those who try to swallow them as though they were the green

 bile of the crocodile."

 "What is it they seek from the king?" Bazo asked the question for all

 those who listened, and Kamuza shrugged.

 "This one asks for the right to hunt elephant and take the teeth, this

 one asks for the young girls to be sent to his wagon, another wants to

 tell the nation of a strange white god that has three heads, another

 wishes to dig a hole and look for the yellow iron, yet another wishes to

 buy cattle. One says he wants only this, and another only that, but they

 want it all. These people are consumed by a hunger that can never be

 appeased, they burn with a thirst that can never be assuaged. They want

 thing they see, and even that is never enough for them. They take the

 very earth, but that is not enough, so they tear it open like a man

 tearing a child from the mother's womb. They take the rivers, and that

 is not enough, so they build walls across them and turn them into lakes.

 They ride after the elephant herds and shoot them down, not just one or

 two, not just the big bulls, but all of them, the breeding cows and the

 calves with ivory no longer than your finger. Everything they see they

 take; and they see everything, for they are always moving and searching

 and looking."

 "Lobengula must eat them up,"Bazo said. "He must eat them up as

 Mzilikazi his father would have eaten them."

 "Hau!"Kamuza smiled his thin twisted smile. "Such wisdom from my

 brother. He recalls how Mzilikazi ate the white men on the banks of the

 Gariep, and lost a land. Listen to Bazo, my children. He counsels the

 King Lobengula to throw the war spear and loose his impis as Cetewayo

 the King of Zulu did at the Hill of the Little Hand. How many Englishmen

 did Cetewayo slay? There was no counting, for their red jackets lay one

 upon the other like the snows of the Dragon Mountains when the sunset

 turns them to fire, and their blood fed the land so that the grass still

 grows greener and thicker and sweeter upon the slopes of the Little Hand

 to this day. Oh a fine killing, my children, a great and beautiful

 stabbing , and afterwards Cetewayo paid for it with the spear of his

 kingship. He paid for it with his royal herds, he paid for it with the

 liver and heart of his young men, with the grassy hills of Zululand. For

 after the avengers had made the great slaughter at Ulundi they took it

 all, and they placed chains of iron upon Cetewayo's wrists and ankles

 and they chained his indunas and his war captains and led them away. Now

 Bazo, the wise, would have you know what a good bargain King Cetewayo

 made, and he urges Lobengula to make the same bargain with these white

 men."

 Bazo's expression remained grave and dignified while Kamuza chided and

 mocked him but he twisted the snuff-horn between his fingers and once he

 glanced to the dark corner of the thatched hut where the long war

 shields and the broad assegai were stacked.

 But when Kamuza finished, Bazo shook his head. "No one here dares

 counsel the king; we are his dogs only.

 No one here doubts the might and resolve of the white men, we who live

 each day with their strange and wonderful ways. All we ask is this: what

 is the king's word?

 Tell us what Lobengula wishes, for to hear is to obey."

 Kamusa nodded. "Hear then the king's voice, for the king has travelled

 with all his senior indunas, Babiaan and Somabula and Gandang, all the

 indunas of the house of Kurnalo, they have gone into the hills of

 "Matopos to the place of the Umlimo A superstitious tremor shook the

 group, a little shiver as though the name of the wizard of the Matopos

 had crawled upon their skins like the sickle-winged tsetse fly.

 "The Umlimo has given the oracle," Kamuza told them, and then was

 silent, the pause theatrical, to pique their attention, to dramatize the

 effect of his next words.

 "On the first day the Umlimo repeated the ancient prophecy, the words

 that have come down from the time of Monomatapa. On the first day the

 Umlimo spoke thus: "The. stone falcons will fly afar. There shall be no

 peace in the kingdoms of the Marnbos or the Monornatapas until they

 return. For the white eagle will war with the black bull until the stone

 falcons return to roost.

 They had all of them heard the prophecy before, but now it had a new and

 sinister impact.

 "The king has pondered the ancient prophecy, and he says thus: "The

 white birds are gathering. Eagle and vulture, all of them white, they

 roost already upon the roof of my kraal."

 " rwhat is the meaning of the stone falcons?" one of his listeners

 asked.

 "The stone falcons are the bird gods that the ancient ones left at the

 burial place of the old kings, Zimbabwe."

 "How will stone birds fly?"

 "One has flown already,"Bazo answered this time. "One of the stone

 falcons stands close by us now. It stands under the roof of Bakela, the

 Fist. It was he who took the falcon, and carried it away."

 "When the other birds fly, then war will sweep over Matabeleland,"

 Kamuza -affirmed. "But listen now to the oracle of the Umlimo." And

 their questions were stilled.

 "On the second day the Umlimo prophesied thus: "When the midnight sky

 turns to noon, and the stars shine on the hills, then the fist will hold

 the blade to the throat of the black bull."

 "This was the prophecy of the second day."

 Again they were silent as they pondered the words then, mystified, they

 looked to Kamuza for the meaning of the prophecy.

 "Lobengula, the Black Elephant, alone understands the meaning of the

 prophecy of the second day. Is he not versed in the mysteries of the

 wizards? Did he not pass his childhood in the caves and secret places of

 the wizards? Thus says Lobengula. "This is not yet the time to explain

 the words of the Umlimo to my children, for they are momentous words

 indeed, and there will be a time for the nation to understand." Bazo

 nodded and passed his snuff-horn. Kamuza took it and drew the red powder

 up into his nostrils with two sharp inhalations of breath and, watching

 him, Bazo did not dare to voice his own suspicion that perhaps

 Lobengula, the mighty thunder of the skies, was as mystified by the

 prophecy of the second day as was the little group around the fire.

 "Was this all the oracle?" Bazo asked instead, and Kamuza shook his

 head.

 "On the third day the Umlimo prophesied for the last time: "Sting the

 mamba with his own venom, pull down the lion with his own claws, deceive

 the clever chacma baboon with his own trickery."

 "This was the prophecy of the third and final day."

 "Does the king intend that we, his humble cattle, should know the

 meaning of the prophecy of the third day?"

 "Thus spoke Lobengula: "We the Matabele cannot prevail until we arm

 ourselves as our adversary is armed, until we gather to ourselves the

 strength that is found only in the yellow coins and shining stones.

 For it is these things which have made the white man strong.,"," Nobody

 interrupted the silence that followed, for they all sensed that there

 was more to come.

 "Thus the king summoned me to the royal kraal and bid me carry his word

 to all the Matabele who live beyond the borders of the king's domains.

 For thus spoke the king: "Bring me guns to answer the smoke of the white

 man's guns. Bring me diamonds and bring me the yellow coins that I may

 grow as strong as the white Queen who lives beyond the sea. For then her

 soldiers will not dare to come against me." Bazo replied for them all.

 "Let Lobengula know that what he requires of us he shall have. Guns he

 shall have, for it is part of our contract with the white man. Each of

 us will carry a gun when we return to Matabeleland, some of us who have

 worked out two Isitupa will carry two guns when we return. Some of us

 will bring three guns."

 "That is known," Kamusa nodded.

 "Lobengula will have gold coins, for we are paid in coin, and what we

 bring home to Thabas Indunas belongs to the king."

 "That is right and proper."

 "But diamonds?" Bazo asked. "The diamonds belong to the white man. They

 are fierce for them as a lioness is fierce for her cubs. How are we to

 bring diamonds to the king?"

 "Listen to me," whispered Kamuza. "There will be no more "pick-ups".

 When one of you turns up the shine of a diamond in the yellow gravel,

 then that diamond belongs to Lobengula."

 "It is against the law."

 "Against the white man's law only, not against the law of Lobengula, who

 is your king."

 "To hear is to obey," Bazo grunted, but he thought of Bakela, the Fist,

 who was his father, and Henshaw, the Hawk, who was his brother, and he

 did not relish stealing the stones for which they laboured as hard as

 Bazo did himself.

 "Not only in the pit," Kamuza went on. "Each of you will watch for the

 chance on the sorting-tables, you, Donsela. -" He picked out a Matabele

 across the fire from him, a young man with a deep intelligent brow and

 strong jaw. "You have been chosen to work in the new grease house."

 "The tables are guarded," Donsela. replied. "They are covered with a

 steel screen."

 They had all of them heard Donsela. speak of the marvel of the new

 grease house.

 Once again the ingenuity of the white men had put the diamond's unique

 qualities to his own advantage.

 The diamond was unwetable, shedding moisture like the body feathers of a

 goose. So while wet gravel would roll across a steel table smeared with

 thick yellow grease, the dry diamond would stick fast.

 The pipeline from the Vaal river had at last reached Kimberley, and this

 water supply was augmented by the subterranean water pumped up from the

 depths of the vast excavation. There was water enough now to wash the

 gravel, instead of laboriously dry-sorting it, water enough to wash the

 sieved gravel over the slanting grease tables. The diamonds stuck like

 fat little blisters, half embedded in the grease, ready to be scraped

 off with a steel spatula at the end of each shift.

 "There is a steel screen over the tables," Donsela repeated, and Kamuza

 smiled and passed him a thin reed, cut from the riverbank. On the tip of

 the reed was a little lump of beeswax.

 "The reed will pass through the mesh of the screen," Kamuza told him.

 "The diamond will stick more firmly to the wax than to the grease."

 Donsela examined the reed cautiously. "Last week a Basuto was found with

 a stone. That same day he fell from the skip as they were bringing him

 out of the pit.

 Men who steal stones have accidents. Those accidents always kill them."

 "A warrior's duty is to die for his king," Kamusa told him drily.

 "Do not let the overseer catch you, and pick out only the biggest and

 brightest stones."

 In the three years between Kamusa's departure from Kimberley and his

 abrupt return, Ralph had reached his full growth. Only months short of

 his twenty-first birthday, he stood as tall as Zouga; but unlike his

 father, he was cleanshaven except for the thick dark moustache which he

 allowed to curl down at the corners of his mouth.

 At rare intervals he was still able to gather together the ten gold

 sovereigns necessary to keep his surreptitious friendship with Diamond

 Lil alive. Then suddenly that was no longer relevant, for Ralph fell in

 love.

 It happened in the street outside that exclusive institution, already

 the most famous in Africa south of the equator, membership of which

 conferred enormous prestige and a semi-mystical entre to the elite band

 of men who wielded the growing wealth and burgeoning power of the

 diamond fields.

 Yet the Kimberley Club was merely a single-storeyed wood-and-iron

 building as drab as any on the diggings.

 True it boasted a billiard room with a full-sized table, a picket fence

 of ornate cast iron and a stained-glass front door, but it was situated

 in the noisiest street just off Market Square, and it enjoyed its fair

 share of the flies and the all-pervading red dust.

 It was midmorning and Ralph was bringing one of the gravel carts back

 from the blacksmith who had replaced the iron tyres on the wooden-spoked

 wheels.

 There was a stir in the street ahead of him. He saw men run from the

 canteens and kopje-wallopers" offices, most of them bareheaded and in

 shirtsleeves.

 A vehicle came bowling out of the Square, an extraordinary vehicle,

 light and fast, with high narrow wheels, so cunningly sprung that it

 seemed to float behind the pair that drew it. They were matched, a

 strange pale.

 brazen colour, softer than the colour of honey, and their manes were

 white blond.

 Both horses were martingaled to force them to arch their necks, and the

 long-combed platinum maines flew like the battle colours of a famous

 regiment.

 The driver, either by chance, but more probably by skill, had them

 leading with their off fores in perfect unison, and their gait was an

 exaggerated trot in which they threw their forehooves so high that they

 seemed almost to touch the shining heads as they nodded to the rhythm of

 their run.

 Ralph was stabbed by such a pang of envy that it was a physical pain. He

 had never seen anything so beautiful as those pale glistening animals

 and the vehicle that they drew, until he raised his eyes to the driver.

 She wore a tricom hat of midnight blue, set at a jaunty angle over one

 eyebrow. Her eyebrows were jet black, narrow and exquisitely arched over

 huge drop-shaped eyes.

 As she came up to the plodding gravel cart she barely lifted the gloved

 hand that held the reins, and the plunging pair of pale horses swerved

 neatly and the elegant vehicle flashed past so close that, had he dared,

 Ralph might have reached up and touched one of those slim ankles in its

 high-buttoned patent leather boot which just showed under the tailored

 skirt of moire taffeta.

 Then she dropped her hand again, and the matched pair swung the carriage

 in neatly before the wrought-iron gate of the Kimberley Club and

 stopped, shaking out their manes fretfully and stamping their forefeet.

 "Bazo, take them," Ralph called urgently. "Go on to the stagings.

 I'll follow you."

 Then he darted across the street and reached up to seize the head of the

 nearest thoroughbred.

 He was only just in time, for half a dozen other loiterers had raced him

 to it. Ralph removed his cap and looked up at the woman on the buttoned

 leather seat of the carriage. She glanced down at him and fleetingly

 smiled her thanks, and Ralph saw that her eyes were the same midnight

 blue as the hat on her head. Those eyes touched him for only an instant

 and then went back to the stained-glass front door of the club, but

 Ralph felt a physical shock from her gaze like a blow in the chest, so

 that he could not catch his breath.

 Ralph was aware of voices, men's voices, from the direction of the club,

 but he could not tear his eyes from that lovely face. He was absorbing

 each fine detail, the braid of her hair, the colour of freshly-washed

 coal, thick as the tail of a lioness, which dropped from under the hat

 over her shoulder and hung to her waist. The fine peppering of dark

 freckles high on her cheekbones seemed to emphasize the purity of the

 rest of her skin.

 Her small pointed ears were set at an alert listening angle which gave a

 peculiar vivacity to her face. The dark !"of the widow's peak below the

 brim of her hat Pointed up the depth of forehead. Her nose was narrow

 and straight with elegantly flared nostrils that gave her expression an

 hauteur that was instantly belied when she smiled, as she was smiling

 now, but not at Ralph.

 She was smiling at the group of men who came out onto the porch of the

 club, chatting animatedly as they adjusted their hats.

 "A splendid lunch, sir." The only stranger to Ralph in the group thanked

 his host and then led them down the short walk to the street.

 He was a tall, well-proportioned man. His dress was sober. The cut was

 not English but he wore it with a dash that made the dark colours appear

 flamboyant.

 He wore a dark patch over one eye, and it gave him a piratical air. His

 beard was trimmed to a point, and touched with silver.

 "He is at least forty years old," Ralph thought, bitterly, as he

 realized that the woman was smiling directly at this man.

 At his right hand was a small neat figure, a man with an unremarkable

 face and thin receding hair, a small moustache of indeterminate colour,

 but eyes so intelligent and humorous that they altered the man's

 appearance, made it striking and interesting.

 "Ah, Ralph," this man murmured, as he noticed the young man standing at

 the horse's head; but Ralph could not meet his eyes.

 Doctor Leander Starr Jameson was an intimate friend of his father's, and

 privy to Ralph's shame and disgrace.

 It was he who had administered the mercury tablets, and washed them down

 with a stern admonition to avoid in future the snares of harlotry. For a

 moment Ralph wondered if the doctor would impart his vile secret to the

 lovely lady on the seat of the carriage, and the thought burned his soul

 like hoar frost.

 On the bearded man's other hand was mister Rhodes, big and serious, his

 dress untidy, the knot of his tie slipping and his breeches baggy, but

 with that sense of determination and certainty about him that always

 awed Ralph.

 Behind them all followed the stooped scholarly figure of Alfred Beit,

 like mister Rhodes, shadow.

 The four men paused in a group beside the carriage, and the tall

 stranger reached up and took the woman's hand.

 He touched her fingers to his lips.

 "Gentlemen, may I present my wife, missis Sint John. "The big man's

 accent was unmistakable, even Ralph recognized the soft drawl that

 emanated from the Southern States of America.

 However, it was the title the man used and not the accent which struck

 like a fiery dart into Ralph's breast.

 @- missis Sint John, my wife, missis Sint John."

 While Ralph stood rigid at the horse's head, destroyed by his adoration

 which he now knew was hopeless, the group ignored him and the men made

 their bows.

 "Louise, my dear, this is mister Rhodes of whom you have heard so much,

 " The formal phrases might have been spoken in a foreign language as far

 as Ralph was affected by them.

 Her name was Louise, and she was married. That is all that he

 understood.

 General Sint John climbed up beside his wife. He moved lithely for such

 a big man, and one so old, Ralph conceded reluctantly, and hated him

 anew for that. Sint John took the reins from Louise's gloved hand,

 lifted his hat to the three men and started the horses. Ralph had to

 jump back to avoid being knocked down, and Louise was talking animatedly

 to the General. Neither of them glanced at Ralph again, and the carriage

 whirled away, down the street.

 Ralph stared after it wistfully.

 Jordan decorated the borders of the menus with romanticized scenes of

 the diggings: the stagings soaring above the gaping pit, heroic figures

 working on the walls of yellow earth, a sorter at his table, and at the

 head of the sheet a man's cupped hands overflowing with uncut diamonds,

 and he coloured the illustrations with water paints.

 "What's Veloute de la Nouvelle Ruee?" Ralph asked.

 "Soup New Rush," Jordie told him without looking up from his artistic

 labours.

 "What's going to be in it?

 "Marrow bones and pearl barley."

 "- And what's Quartier de Chevreuil Diamant Bleu?"

 "Haunch of springbuck in the style of a blue diamond."

 "I don't know why we can't just speak English," Ralph complained.

 "What's the style of a blue diamond, anyway?"

 Tart with bacon fat, marinade it in olive oil and cognac with wild

 garlic, and then bake it in a pie crust."

 Ralph swallowed his saliva. Jordan's culinary skills were always a

 source of delight to him.

 "All right, I'll eat it."

 Jordan licked his brush, leaving a streak of Prussian blue on his

 tongue, and then looked up at his brother.

 "You are going to serve it, not eat it -" Jordan paused portentously,

 "mister Rhodes is coming to lunch," as though that explained it all.

 "Well, if I'm not good enough to sit at the same table as your famous

 mister Rhodes, I'll be damned if I'll play waiter. You can get Donsela.

 For a shilling Donsela will spill soup on mister Rhodes, for a shilling

 Donsela would throw soup on King Lobengula himself. I'm going to bribe

 him."

 However, in the end curiosity and Jordan's promise of the leftovers

 prevailed and Ralph dressed himself in the ridiculous monkey-jacket that

 Jordan had designed and tailored for him and carried the tray of Veloute

 out on the wide verandah of Zouga's camp, and there nearly dropped it.

 "Madame, you remind me of the heroine from mister Longfellow's poem,"

 Neville Pickering complimented Louise Sint John, and she smiled back at

 him from her seat at the centre of the luncheon table.

 "Thank you, sir."

 Her jacket was in pale creamy buckskin with tasselled sleeves, and the

 bodice was crusted with bright-coloured beads in bold geometrical

 patterns. Louise had parted her thick black hair in the centre, braided

 a blue ribbon into each of the thick tresses, bound them with a band

 about her forehead, and then let them hang onto her bosom.

 The soft tanned buckskin was divided into ankle-length culottes, and her

 boots were also of soft beaded leather.

 Louise was the only woman at the long trestle table on the open verandah

 of Zouga's camp. The men seated on each side of her were already

 emerging as the most influential subjects on this continent of an

 omnipotent queen. Like the men that another English queen had sent out

 to the corners of the earth, these were the new Elizabethans, most of

 them already rich, all of them restless and consumed with their lust for

 power, for wealth, for land. Each with a separate dream that he would

 follow relentlessly all his life, every one of them driving, ruthless

 men.

 Ballantyne. Beit. Jameson. Rhodes. Robinson. The list of names read like

 a roll-call for a regiment of filibusters, and yet here they were

 listening to a discourse on women's fashion as though it were a company

 report on tonnage treated and cartage recovered.

 Only Zouga Ballantyne was not smiling. The woman offended Zouga. Her

 beauty was too flamboyant, her colouring too vivid. Zouga preferred the

 pale gold blond hair and the complexion of sugared cream and

 strawberries. An Englishman's idea of beauty.

 This woman's dress was outrageous, the styling of her hair pretentious.

 Her gaze was too direct, her eyes too blue, her conversation too easy

 and her style of address too familiar. Of course American women had the

 reputation of affecting masculine manners, but Zouga found himself

 wishing that Louise Sint John had kept those manners on the other side

 of the Atlantic Ocean where they belonged.

 it was enough that she had galloped into his camp ahead of her husband,

 riding astride, and dismounted by freeing both of her narrow booted feet

 from the stirrups and vaulting lightly to the ground; but then she had

 come up onto the stoep with an assured stride and smile, her right hand

 out like a man, and without waiting for her husband to introduce them

 had said: "You must be Zouga Ballantyne. I'd recognize you anywhere by

 Mungo's description of you."

 Her hand was narrow, the skin warm but dry, but the grip of her fingers

 was unfemininely firm, the grip of a skilled horsewoman.

 These leisurely Sunday luncheons at Zouga's camp were his one

 extravagance, and they had become one of the traditions of Kimberley,

 when excellent fare and good liquor and the company of intelligent men

 made for memorable afternoons.

 Women were very seldom invited to these gatherings, and Louise Sint John

 would not have been there if Zouga had been able to have her husband

 come alone, but Mungo Sint John had replied pointedly to the invitation,

 "General and missis Sint John have pleasure in accepting. The friendship

 between Sint John and Zouga had begun many years previously, and he was

 the kind of man whom Zouga could admire: a man like himself, hard and

 determined, one who lived by his own code without compromise. One who

 expected no preference nor favour, but whose triumphs were of his own

 engineering and whose disasters were met with fortitude, without plea or

 excuse, even when occasioned by cruel circumstances beyond his control.

 In the late "fifties Sint John had built up a commercial empire, a fleet

 of trading vessels which had carried the black ivory of slaves from the

 African continent to that of North America. Legend was that in three

 voyages, in the course of a single period of twelve months, across the

 notorious middle passage of the Atlantic, he had transported almost two

 million dollars" worth of slaves, and with those profits he had acquired

 vast estates in Louisiana.

 It was at this time that Zouga had first met him.

 Zouga had travelled as a passenger on Sint John's magnificent clipper

 Huron out of the Port of Bristol in southern England to the Cape of Good

 Hope. The irony of that voyage had been that Zouga at the time had not

 been aware that Sint John was engaged in the trade, and Zouga had been

 accompanied on the voyage by his only sister, Robyn Ballantyne, a

 medical missionary whose declared goal in life was the extinction of the

 trade on the African continent.

 When Robyn Ballantyne had discovered that Sint John was not sailing to

 Africa to barter beads and copper wire for ivory and ostrich feathers,

 for gumcopal and alluvial gold dust from the kingdom of Monomatapa, but

 was seeking richer, living black cargo, her hatred was rendered more

 implacable by her shame at having travelled in company with such a man.

 It was Robyn Ballantyne who had called up the avenging spectre of the

 Royal Navy. She had been the chief instrument in delivering Sint John

 and his beautiful clipper Huron, with her cargo of five hundred prime

 slaves, to the gunboats of the British anti-slavery squadron.

 Sint John, as was his right as an American captain, had resisted the

 British boarders, and in the savage action that followed, half his crew

 had been killed or maimed and his lovely ship so badly mauled that she

 had to be towed into Table Bay by her captors.

 Though after imprisonment in Cape Town castle, the British governor had

 finally released Sint John and allowed him to sail away, still his cargo

 of slaves were seized and released from their chains, and the African

 coast was closed for ever to his ships.

 It was then that Zouga had lost contact with him; but after Zouga's book

 A Hunter's Odyssey had been published, Sint John had written to him care

 of his London publishers, Messrs Rowland Ward, and since then they had

 corresponded at irregular intervals. Indeed it was Zouga's description

 of the diamond fields in one of these letters that was responsible for

 Sint John's presence here now.

 Through the exchange of letters Zouga had been able to follow Sint

 John's career, and he learned how after his release from the Cape Town

 castle, Sint John had returned to Fairfields, his cotton and sugar

 estates near Baton Rouge, only weeks before the first cannon shots were

 fired at Fort Sumter.

 Louisiana had voted for secession from the Union, and when the war

 began, Mungo raised his own force of irregular cavalry and led them in a

 brilliant series of hitand-run raids against the supply lines and rear

 bases of the Federal army. So successful were these depredations that

 the northeners christened him "Murdering Mungol, declared him an outlaw

 and placed a reward of fifty thousand dollars on his head. Promoted to

 major-general, he was later struck in the left eye by a red-hot splinter

 of shrapnel and dragged over a mile when his horse bolted.

 By the time he was discharged from the hospital, Vicksburg had fallen.

 Recognizing this as a fatal stab in the heart of the Confederacy, he had

 limped back along the empty road to Fairfields.

 The reek of fermenting sugar juices mingled with that of charred flesh

 was more revolting than any battlefield Mungo had ever smelled. Four

 colonnades stood above the ashes of his homestead, like monuments to all

 his dreams.

 Now, all these years later, Sint John had come up the road from Good

 Hope, driving a pair of magnificent pale gold horses with flowing white

 manes that he called "Palaminos", a long black cigar between his white

 teeth, an eagle gleam in his single eye and this strangely disturbing

 woman on the seat of the phaeton beside him.

 Sint John's first act in Kimberley had been to walk into the office of

 the Standard Bank on Market Square and present a letter of credit to the

 flabbergasted clerk. The letter of credit was on heavy, expensive paper,

 the printing embossed in rose and gold, the wax seal that of Messrs

 Coutts and Co. in the Strand, and the sum for which it was drawn was

 half a million of sterling.

 Sint John had drawn a modest hundred pounds against that formidable

 total, and taken rooms for himself and his wife at the Craven Hotel,

 Kimberley's most fashionable and comfortable.

 When he recovered from his shock, the bank-clerk had excitedly begun to

 spread the news. There was an American general on the fields who

 disposed of a half million Pounds in cash.

 The following noon Sint John had casually accepted an invitation to

 lunch at the Kimberley Club and smiled indulgently as his name was

 proposed for membership by mister C. J. Rhodes and seconded by Dr

 Leander Starr Jameson. There were men, rich and influential men, who had

 tried in vain since the foundation of the Club to obtain membership.

 Sint John was smiling that same indulgent smile now as he leaned back in

 his chair, twisting the stem of his champagne glass between his fingers

 and watching the other guests at the table fawning over his wife.

 Even mister Rhodes, who was famous for his immunity to female wiles, and

 who usually bluntly terminated any frivolous conversation, was

 responding to her artless questions and chuckling at her sallies.

 With an effort, Zouga tore his own attention from Louise and turned to

 Mungo Sint John. Quite pointedly he changed the discussion from the

 split skirts which allowed his wife to ride astride to Mungo's own

 doings since their last meeting.

 The reason for the change of subject was not missed by Louise. She shot

 a sharp speculative glance at Zouga, but then smiled graciously and

 relapsed into dutiful silence while the conversation became at last

 serious and important.

 Sint John had been in Canada and Australia, and without being specific

 they all understood that both journeys had been rewarding, for Sint John

 spoke of wheat and opals and wool and gold, and they listened avidly,

 shooting their questions like arrows and nodding to the deft replies,

 until at last Sint John ended: "Well, then I heard from my dear friend

 Zouga what you gentlemen have been doing here, and thought it was time

 to come and have a look."

 Almost on cue Ralph came down the verandah carrying the scrubbed carving

 board with its cargo of roasted venison enclosed in a crisp brown

 envelope of pastry.

 The company applauded with exclamations of delight and approbation.

 Zouga stood up to carve the roast and while he stropped the hunting

 knife against steel, he glanced at Ralph who still lingered on the

 verandah.

 "Are you feeling well?" he asked out of the side of his mouth, and Ralph

 roused himself, tearing his adoring gaze from Louise Sint John.

 "Oh yes, Papa, I'm fine."

 "You don't look fine. You look as if you have a belly ache. Better get

 Jan Cheroot to give you a dose of sulphur and treacle."

 Jan Cheroot, dressed in his old regimental jacket with burnished buttons

 and his scarlet cap set at a rakish angle, brought in fresh bottles of

 champagne, the buckets packed with crushed white ice.

 "Ice!" Louise clapped her hands with delight. "I never expected such

 sophistication here."

 "Oh, we lack very little, madam," Rhodes assured her.

 "My ice-making factory has been in operation for a year or more. In a

 year or so the railway line will reach Kimherley and then we shall

 become a city, a real City."

 "And all this on woman's vanity." Louise shook her long black tresses in

 mock dismay. "A lady's baubles, a city built on engagement rings!"

 Despite Zouga's best efforts, the focus of attention had shifted again.

 They were all hanging on her words with that slightly bemused expression

 which overcomes even the most sensible of men when he looks at a

 Beautiful woman." It was the first time Zouga had acknowledged that

 fact, even to himself, and for some reason it increased his resentment

 of her.

 "Do you know, mister Rhodes," she leaned across the table

 confidentially, "I have been here for five days now, and although I have

 searched the sidewalks diligently, I have not seen a single diamond, and

 I was assured the streets of Kimberley were paved with diamonds."

 They all laughed, more heartily than the witticism warranted, and Rhodes

 murmured a few words to Pickering before turning back to Louise.

 We shall do what we can to remedy that, missis Sint John," and while he

 spoke Pickering scrawled a note and then summoned one of the Coloured

 grooms who was lolling and smoking in the shade of the camel-thorn tree.

 "Major, may I borrow one of your champagne buckets?" Pickering asked,

 and when Zouga agreed, he handed the empty bucket and the note to the

 groom.

 Zouga was carving seconds off the roast when the groom returned. He was

 followed by a nondescript white man with an uncertain seat on his placid

 steed. He came up on to the verandah carrying the bucket as though it

 were filled with mister Alfred Nobel's newfangled blasting gelatine.

 He placed the bucket on the table in front of Rhodes with a timid

 flourish, and then seemed to disappear from sight. With his thin

 colourless hair and myopic eyes behind pebble-lens wire-rimmed

 spectacles, his dark jacket shiny with wear at elbows and cuffs, he

 blended like a chameleon with his background.

 "Where is young Jordan?" Rhodes asked. "That boy loves diamonds as much

 as any of us do., Jordan came from the kitchen in his apron and with his

 colour high from the heat of his stove. He greeted Rhodes shyly.

 "Ladies and Gentlemen, mister Jordan Ballantyne is not only the finest

 chef on the diggings, but he is also one of the best diamond sorters

 that we have." Rhodes was expansive as few of them had ever seen him.

 "Come and stand by me, Jordan, where you can have a good view., When

 Jordan was beside his chair, Rhodes tipped the bucket carefully and even

 Zouga heard himself gasp with shock, while Louise Sint John cried out

 aloud.

 The bucket was filled to the brim with uncut diamonds, and now they

 cascaded onto the white tablecloth in a sullenly glowing pyramid from

 which random darts of light sped to astound the eye.

 "All right, Jordan. Tell us something about them," Rhodes invited. And

 the boy stooped over the fabulous pile of treasure, his long tapered

 fingers flying lightly over the stones, spreading and sorting them into

 piles.

 While he worked he talked, and his voice was as lovely as his face, low

 and melodious. Fluently he explained the shapes of the crystals, pointed

 out the flaws in one, placed two side by side to compare the colours,

 twisting one to the light to bring up its smouldering fires.

 Zouga was puzzled. This little act was too theatrical to be Rhodes"

 usual style, and he would never go to such lengths to impress a woman,

 even a beautiful one; for by jumbling up a bucket of stones he had given

 his own sorters many days of extra work. Every one of those stones would

 have to be re-graded and appraised and returned to its own little white

 envelope.

 "Here is a perfect stone," Jordan picked a diamond the size of a green

 pea. "Look at that colour, blue as a bolt of lightning and as full of

 fire."

 Rhodes took it from him, considered it a moment, holding it between

 thumb and forefinger, then he leaned across the table and placed it

 before Louise Sint John.

 "Madam, your first diamond. I sincerely hope not your last," said

 Rhodes.

 "mister Rhodes, I cannot accept such a generous gift," said Louise, her

 eyes wide with delight, and she turned to Mungo Sint John. "Can I?"

 "If I agreed with you, you would never forgive me," Mungo Sint John

 murmured, and Louise turned back to Rhodes.

 "mister Rhodes, my husband insists, and I can find no words to express

 my gratitude."

 Zouga watched the scene attentively; there was so much happening here,

 so many nuances, so many undercurrents.

 it was on the surface merely a demonstration of the remarkable effect

 that these bright hard pebbles had upon a woman. That was their true

 value, perhaps their only value. When he looked at Louise Sint John's

 face he could see that it was not avarice that lit it so, but a mystical

 emotion not far removed from love, the love of a living thing, a child,

 a horse, a man, a warming thing to watch.

 Quite suddenly Zouga found himself wishing that he had been the author

 of such joy. That it had been he and not Rhodes who had made the gift

 which had transformed her, and it took a moment for him to free himself

 of that desire, so that he almost missed the glance that Rhodes shot

 beyond the woman's face.

 . Suddenly it was clear to Zouga. Rhodes was not baiting for the woman;

 he was fishing for the man. That display of treasure was for Mungo Sint

 John, the man with half a million sterling to dispose of.

 Rhodes needed capital. When a man sets out to buy every single claim on

 the Kimberley field, and when he is in a desperate hurry to do it, he

 must always be starved of capital. Rhodes" ambition was no secret.

 Zouga himself had been present at the long bar of the Kimberley Club

 when Rhodes had made the declaration of his intent.

 "There is only one way to stabilize the price of the goods -" Rhodes"

 euphemism for diamonds, "and that is an orderly, centralized marketing

 policy. There is only one way to stop the stealing of goods by the

 I.D.B., and that is through the institution of a rigorous security

 screen; and there is only one way to achieve both these objects, and

 that is to have every claim on the fields owned by one company! Everyone

 listening to him had known who Rhodes intended that the head of that

 company should be.

 That had been a year previously, and now the bucket of diamonds on

 Zouga's luncheon table was proof of how far Rhodes had made good his

 threat and had eaten up the field. Already he was more than halfway

 towards his goal, but he had been forced to take in partners and still

 he was short of capital, desperately short.

 For the serious obstacle that stood between him and complete ownership

 of the field was Barney Barnato's company. He would need millions,

 literally millions of sterling, for that final step.

 So the reason for the little charade was clear to Zouga now, and he was

 about to turn his head to study General Mungo Sint John's reaction to it

 when the tableau at the far end of the table struck him forcibly.

 The untidily dressed young man, heavy in the shoulders, hunched forward

 in his chair, unruly curling hair spilling over onto the broad forehead

 above the florid meaty face, thick arms and square powerful hands

 enclosing a glittering mound of treasure. At his shoulder the slim and

 graceful figure of the boy with the bright and lovely face, and behind

 them both, towering above them, holding them both in its thrall, the

 graven statue of the falcon god.

 Zouga shivered, touched for the first time in the presence of the falcon

 by a superstitious chill. For the first time he was aware of the sense

 of evil that the old Hottentot had immediately detected in the statue's

 stony eyes. For one horrifying instant Zouga was convinced that the bird

 was about to spread its sharp blade-shaped wings and hold them like a

 possessive canopy over the two human figures beneath it, and then the

 moment was past. The tableau broke up.

 Rhodes was sweeping the gems back into the bucket, talking quietly to

 Jordan.

 ,"Are you still studying the book of mister Pitman's shorthand that I

 sent you, Jordan?"

 "Yes, mister Rhodes."

 "Good, you'll find it of great value one day."

 The boy understood the dismissal and slipped away down the verandah to

 his kitchen, while Rhodes casually handed the bucket of diamonds to his

 clerk and addressed General Sint John directly.

 "In the section of the workings that we own we are recovering an average

 of ten carats to each ton of gravel that we process, to that we must add

 at least another two carats a ton which is being stolen by the labourers

 between the pit floor and the grading room. As our security system

 becomes more efficient and as we have better laws to control the I.D.B.

 we can expect to eliminate that wastage -" Rhodes was talking in that

 high-pitched voice so incongruous in such a big man, gesturing with

 strong square hands, persuasive and articulate. Reeling off figures for

 production costs and anticipated recovery, the expectations of profits

 on tonnage worked, returns on capital outlaid, he was addressing himself

 to one man only, the erect bearded figure with the black eye-patch, yet

 his manner was so persuasive that every one of them was listening with

 full attention, even Louise Sint John.

 Zouga glanced at her and saw that she was concentrating on the confusing

 jumble of figures, and that she seemed to be able to absorb them. She

 proved that immediately.

 "mister Rhodes, you said earlier that working costs on the number 9

 Section were ten shillings and sixpence; now you use a new figure,

 twelve shillings?" She challenged unexpectedly, and Rhodes paused, gave

 a little nod of recognition for her perception before he replied.

 "At the deeper levels the costs rise. Ten and six is our present cost,

 twelve shillings our projected cost for twelve months hence."

 His voice had a new note of respect. "I am flattered that you have

 followed my discourse so closely, madam." Then he turned back to Sint

 John. "From this you will see, General, that the returns on capital

 invested are about the best you will find anywhere: ten percent is

 certain, fifteen percent is possible."

 Sint John had been holding an unlit cigar between his teeth; now he

 removed it and stared hard at Rhodes with his single eye.

 "So far, mister Rhodes, you have not mentioned the blue."

 "The blue." Every single one of them at the long table froze.

 "The blue." it was as if Sint John had spoken a gross obscenity,

 shocking them all into silence.

 "The blue" was the main reason why Rhodes was hungry for capital.

 "The blue" was the reason why the banks were calling on all diggers who

 had borrowed against the collateral of their claims to reduce their

 overdrafts by fifty percent; and Rhodes had borrowed a million pounds

 to finance his attempt to acquire every single claim on the New Rush

 field. As he had acquired each block, Rhodes had immediately used it as

 security to borrow money to buy the next block, pyramiding loan upon

 loan, debt upon debt.

 Zouga was one of the few who so far had resisted Rhodes" advances,

 resisted with pain and heart-searching an offer of 5,000 pounds for his

 claims on the Devil's Own.

 The offer had been made six months before, before those dreaded words

 "the blue" were whispered in the inner sanctum of the long bar of the

 Kimberley Club.

 Nobody would offer ZOUGA 5,000 pounds for his claims now.

 On the contrary, a week after he first heard those two dreaded words,

 the manager of the Standard Bank had sent a note asking him to call.

 "Major Ballantyne, in view of recent developments, the bank has been

 forced to review the value of collateral securing our clients"

 overdrafts. We have calculated the present market value of your claims

 as five hundred pounds each."

 "That's ridiculous, sir."

 "Major, the blue has shown on the claims of the orphen Company."

 The bank manager did not have to elaborate. The Orphen block was only

 separated from the Devil's Own by a dozen intervening claims. "I don't

 enjoy doing this, Major, but I must ask you to reduce our overdraft to

 one thousand pounds."

 "The blue" was the reason why many of the town's merchants were running

 down their stocks, preparing themselves to pull out.

 "The blue" was the reason why many of the transport riders were

 re-routing their wagons to the new goldfields at Pilgrims" Rest.

 "What is the blue?" asked Louise Sint John, and when none of the others

 spoke, Zouga's duty as host placed the burden of reply upon him.

 "The blue is the diggers, name for a type of rock formation, missis Sint

 John. A volcanic conglomerate, dark blue in colour and very hard, too

 hard to work easily." Zouga picked up his champagne glass, sipped the

 yellow wine and then studied the rising pinpricks of bubbles.

 "Is that all?" Louise asked quietly.

 "It has zircons in it, small zircons the size of sugar grains, but there

 is no market for zircons," Zouga went on grudgingly.

 "What is the significance of this, blue?" Louise persisted.

 Zouga paused to pick his words with care.

 "The diamondiferous earth is a friable yellow gravel friable means

 crumbling., "Thank you," Louise smiled without rancour. "I do know the

 word."

 "Well, then, on some of the deeper claims in the northern section the

 yellow gravel has pinched out, and we have come up short against this

 hard blue floor, hard as marble and just as sterile."

 "That hasn't been proved," Rhodes cut in sharply, and Zouga inclined his

 head in acceptance.

 "No, it hasn't been proved, but that is what we all fear.

 That we have come to the end. That the fields are worked out., They were

 all silent then, contemplating that terrifying eventuality.

 "When will you know for certain?" Mungo Sint John asked. "When will you

 know that this blue ground underlies the entire field, and that there

 are no diamonds in it?"

 "It will be many months still before the shallower claims can be worked

 down to the level of those that have run into the blue," Rhodes

 answered. "Then if we do find it covers the whole field, we will have to

 drive pot-holes through it to make sure that it is not a thin layer, and

 that the yellow gravel does not recur below it., "I see," Sint John

 nodded. "It seems that I was fortunate to delay my visit to Kimberley

 until after this blue ground was encountered, or I might have found

 myself the owner of a mountain of blue marble and no diamonds."

 "You have always been a fortunate man, Mungo."

 Louise flashed a smile at him, and he replied to it gravely.

 "You, my dear, are the greatest of all my good fortunes."

 With obvious relief the company abandoned the subject of the dreaded

 blue ground and turned to lighter topics. Only Rhodes did not join them,

 but sat silent and brooding at the head of the long table.

 Though Zouga smiled and nodded at the repartee, he also was distracted

 by the talk of lurking disaster, and his thoughts were a barrier between

 him and the company, so that Louise Sint John had to repeat his name to

 gain his attention.

 "Is that possible, Major Ballantyne?"

 Zouga roused himself and turned to her. "Forgive me, missis Sint John.

 Will you repeat the question?"

 Louise was not accustomed to having a man's thoughts wander when she was

 talking to him. This cold and correct Englishman was truly beginning to

 irritate her, and she found herself wanting to shock some natural

 reaction out of him. She had thought of including a man's word, one of

 Mungo's soldier's words, in her conversation, but good sense warned her

 that he would merely raise an eyebrow at such gaucherie. She had thought

 of ignoring him, but intuition warned her that he would probably welcome

 that treatment. The best course open to her was to direct her queries at

 him and force him to recognize her existence, and let it nettle him.

 "I was led to understand that you were the Chairman of the Kimberley

 Sporting Club?"

 "I have that honour," Zouga agreed.

 "I have heard also that your steeplechases or pointto-point races, I am

 never quite sure of your British terminology, are the most popular

 diversions on the diamond fields."

 Zouga shook his head and smiled. "I'm not sure of the terminology

 myself. They certainly are not steeplechases, we are critically short of

 steeples out here, and they are not point-to-point exactly, for we throw

 in a little rifle drill. So, we prefer to call them rough rides.

 A fairly accurate description, I think."

 "i thought to enter one of my horses, in a rough ride," Louise said.

 "We would welcome your participation," Zouga agreed.

 "I could prepare a list of our better riders from which you could

 choose."

 "I prefer to ride myself," Louise shook her head.

 "I am afraid that would not be possible, missis Sint John., "Why now

 "Because you are a woman., Her expression gave Zouga his first truly

 satisfying moments in her company. She had turned waxen pale so that the

 freckles stood out boldly on her cheeks and her eyes glowed a lighter,

 brighter, angry blue.

 Zouga waited for her retort, but she sensed his anticipation and, with a

 huge effort, denied him the satisfaction. Instead she turned to her

 husband.

 "It's after three o'clock. It has been a very pleasant luncheon, but I

 should like to return to the hotel now."

 She stood up quickly, and Mungo Sint John shrugged resignedly and stood

 up beside her.

 "Please do not let us break up this delightful gathering., his smile and

 his tone asked their indulgence for a womanly whim.

 The groom brought her horse to her and she caressed its pale silken

 muzzle. Then she gathered the reins, looked up at the group of men on

 the stoep, held Zouga's eye for a moment, before deliberately turning

 away.

 She placed one neat gloved hand on the stallion's withers where the long

 white mane rose into the crest of the shoulders, and then in the next

 instant she was seated on the broad and powerful back, her small feet

 thrust deeply into the silver-starred Mexican-type stirrups.

 Zouga was astounded. He had never seen a woman vault to the saddle.

 Usually it took a groom to hold the head and another to form a bridge of

 linked fingers to boost her to the height of the horse's back.

 Louise Sint John had gone up so lightly and easily that she might have

 flown, and the movement of her left hand that made the stallion rear was

 only apparent to someone looking for it.

 The huge horse went up on its hind legs, walking backwards in a circle,

 cutting at the air with its forehooves, until it faced the five-foot

 barbed-wire fence that marked the division between Zouga's camp and the

 public road.

 Then Louise moved her hand again and the stallion dropped into a dead

 run, straight at the fence.

 The watching men exclaimed in alarm for the stallion had a bare twenty

 strides to build up momentum for the jump, yet he flew at it with his

 pink nostrils flaring and the serpentine veins beneath the burnished

 skin of his cheeks swelling with the pumping of the great heart.

 Louise's thick black braids were flung out behind her head by the power

 of the stallion's acceleration, and then she lifted him into the jump

 with her knees and her hands.

 For an instant of time the horse and the tiny figure upon its back

 seemed to hang suspended against the pale blue of the sky, the horse

 with its forefeet drawn up beneath its noble head and the woman rising

 in the saddle to cushion the shock of take-off and landing, and then

 they were over.

 The stallion landed neatly, with his rider in perfect balance, and the

 golden body flowed smoothly into the continuation of his run.

 There was a soft involuntary sigh from the group on the verandah, and

 Zouga felt a surge of relief as powerful as the driving leap of the

 stallion. He had had a mental image of the woman caught up in the bloody

 strands of barbed wire, like a wild bird in the trapper's net, with torn

 body and broken wings.

 Zouga stood on top of the central stagings. He was as high above the

 level of the plain as a three-storey building, and from his vantage

 point he could see as far north as the Vaal river. The dark-green stain

 of the lusher scrub and grass along its course looked like cloud shadow

 upon the dust-pale earth, but there were no clouds in the high vault of

 the sky, and the brutal sun threw stark shadows below the high stagings,

 geometrical patterns that parodied in two-dimensional plan the intricate

 structure of timber and iron and steel wire. The stagings clung

 perilously to the sheer precipice that fell into the depths.

 It was as though a gigantic meteor had ploughed into the yellow earth,

 gouging this bowl-shaped dish through the earth's crust. In the deepest

 sections it was almost two hundred feet deep already, and each spadeful

 of gravel had been dug out by hand, lifted to the surface and

 laboriously picked over before being discarded in the mountainous waste

 dumps. It was a monument to the persistence of those antlike creatures

 that swarmed down there on the pit floor.

 Zouga wiped the black grease off his hands with a wad of cotton waste,

 and nodded to the Matabele winchman who threw in the gear lever of the

 steam winch.

 Once again the numbing clatter hammered against Zouga's skull and the

 slender thread of shining steel cable slithered in over the drums. The

 winch and steam boiler had cost Zouga over a thousand pounds, the entire

 winnings of an unusually productive week's labour when Jordan had picked

 eleven good diamonds off the sortingtable. That week's recovery had been

 one of the false promises that the Devil's Own had whispered to him,

 like an unfaithful wife.

 Zouga moved to the front of the stagings to escape the painful sound of

 the winch. He was on an unguarded wooden balcony with the drop sucking

 seductively at him, but he ignored it.

 He had ten minutes to rest now, the time that it took the gravel skip to

 travel up from the claims to the surface. He could see it lifting off

 the floor below like a fat spider creeping up its individual silken

 thread towards him, still too deep for him to recognize for certain the

 human figure riding on the enormous steel bucket.

 Zouga lit a cheroot, and it tasted of engine grease from his fingers. He

 looked down again, and decided that instead of an ant's nest the pit

 reminded him more of a beehive. Even at these deep levels the precise

 shape of each claim had been maintained, and the geometrical shapes were

 like the individual cells in a honeycomb.

 if only mine would yield a little more honey," he thought.

 The skip was close enough now for there to be no doubt of the tall young

 figure standing casually on the lip of the steel bucket, balancing

 easily with both hands on his hips as the drop grew steadily deeper

 under him.

 it was a matter of pride amongst the younger diggers to ride the skip in

 the most casual or spectacular manner possible. Zouga had forbidden

 Ralph to dance on the skip, a fad that had been started by a young Scot

 who had once danced between the floor and the stagings, accompanying

 himself on the bagpipes.

 Ralph drew steadily closer, rising up through the glistening web of

 steel cables that hung over the pit like a silver cloud. Hundreds of

 cables, one for each individual claim, every strand polished by the

 pulley wheels, by the friction over the winding drums, until they caught

 the sunlight and shimmered into a silver mist that hung like an aura

 over the pit, ethereal and lovely, hiding the harsh reality of that

 gouged raw earth, with its dangers and disappointments.

 While he waited for the skip to reach him, Zouga cast his mind back to

 that first day when he had led the single oxen into the sprawling

 encampment with Aletta on the wagon box beside him, and they had looked

 up at the riddled and torn kopje.

 So much earth had been moved since then, so many men had died in this

 terrible pit where that kopie had once stood and so many dreams had

 perished with them.

 Zouga lifted the wide-brimmed hat. Carefully he mopped the beads of

 sweat from the smoother paler skin along his hairline, and then he

 inspected the damp red stain on the silk bandanna and grimaced with

 distaste.

 It looked like blood.

 He re-knotted the silk about his throat, still peering down into the

 depths, and his eyes clouded with disenchantment as he remembered the

 high hopes and bounding expectation that he had brought with him on that

 day, was it really ten years ago? It seemed like a day and an eternity.

 He had found himself dreaming, the random events from those lost years

 replaying through his mind, the sorrows and the joys magnified by his

 imaginings and by the passage of time.

 Then, after a few minutes, Zouga roused himself.

 Dreaming was an old man's vice. The past was beyond regret; today was

 all that counted. He straightened his shoulders and looked down at Ralph

 in the swinging skip. Something jarred him, scattering the last of his

 dreams.

 The skip was riding differently, it did not have the accustomed weight

 to it, he could not yet make out the heaped yellow gravel, which,

 despite his orders, Ralph usually over-loaded high above the steel sides

 of the skip.

 It was empty, and Ralph was alone. He was coming up without the Matabele

 gang to help run the skip over the bars and up-end its burden of gravel

 into the chute, down which it would be carried to the waiting cart.

 Zouga cupped his hands to his mouth to shout his enquiry, but the words

 stayed in his throat.

 Ralph was close enough now for Zouga to see the expression on his face.

 It was tragic, stricken with some terrible emotion.

 Zouga lowered his hands and stared at his son in anticipation. The skip

 hit the end bars with an iron clasp and the winchman threw out the gear

 lever, expertly, braking the steel skip against the bars.

 Ralph jumped lightly across the narrow gap onto the platform, and stood

 there, still staring at Zouga.

 "What is it, my boy?" Zouga asked quietly, fearfully and for answer

 Ralph turned away and glanced down int the empty body of the skip.

 Zouga stepped up beside him, and followed his glance He saw that he had

 been mistaken, the skip was not empty.

 "It has taken us all morning to hack that out of the east face," Ralph

 told him.

 It looked like a roughly cut gravestone, before the inscription was

 chiselled in, as wide as the stretch of man's arms and imperfectly

 squared up, the marks of the steel wedges and pickaxe still fresh upon

 it.

 "We broke three pick handles on it," Ralph went on grimly, "and we only

 got it out because there was natural fracture line that we could crack

 open with wedges."

 Zouga stared at the ugly cube of stone, not wanting to believe what it

 was, trying to close his ears against his son's voice.

 "Underneath it's the same, solid, hard as a whore heart, no faults, no

 cracks."

 The lump of stone was a dull ugly mottled thing across which the steel

 tools had left paler weals and furrows.

 "Sixteen of us," Ralph went on. "We worked on it all morning." He opened

 his hands, and showed them palms upwards. The horny yellow calluses had

 been torn open, the raw flesh beneath was mushy and caked with dust and

 earth. "All morning we broke our hearts and our picks on it, and that

 bloody little chip weighs less than half a ton."

 Slowly Zouga stooped over the edge of the skip and touched the stone. it

 was as cold as his heart felt, and its colour was dark mottled blue.

 "The blue," Ralph confirmed quietly. "We have hit the blue."

 "Dynamite or blasting gelatine," Ralph said. "That's the only way we'll

 ever move it."

 He was stripped to the waist, a polish of sweat on his arms, and little

 drops of it hanging like dew in the thick hair of his chest.

 The tombstone of blue marble lay at his feet, and Ralph rested on the

 shaft of the sledgehammer. The blows he had swung at the rock had raised

 bursts of sparks and tiny puffs of white dust that stung their nostrils

 like pepper, but had not cracked the rock through.

 "We cannot blast in the pit," Zouga said tiredly. "Can you imagine two

 hundred diggers firing away dynamite, every one doing it when and how he

 wanted?" He shook his head.

 "There is no other way," Ralph said. "No other way to get it out."

 "And if you do get it out? Jordan asked from the verandah where he had

 stood without speaking for the past hour.

 "What do you mean?" Zouga demanded. He could hear the strain in his own

 voice, and knew how close, his anger and frustration were to the

 surface.

 "What will you do with it when you do get it out?

 Jordan persisted, and they all stared at the awful blue lump.

 "There are no diamonds in that stuff." Jordan said it for them.

 "How do we know that?" Ralph snapped at him, his voice rough and ugly

 with the same tension that gripped Zouga.

 "I know it," Jordan said flatly. "I can sense it, just look at it. It's

 hard and bleak and bare."

 Nobody replied to that, and Jordan shook his curls .regretfully. "Even

 if there were diamonds in it, how would you free them from the blue? You

 can't smash them out with sledgehammers. You'd end up with diamond

 dust."

 "Ralph," Zouga turned away from Jordan, "this stuff, this blue, it's

 only on the east face, isn't it?"

 "So far." Ralph nodded. "But, "

 "I want you to cover up the east face," Zouga told him bluntly. "Shovel

 gravel over the exposed rock. Nobody else must see it. Nobody else must

 know."

 Ralph nodded, and Zouga went on, "We will keep on raising the yellow

 gravel from the other sections as though nothing has happened; and

 nobody, not one of you, is to say a word about, about Us having struck

 the blue." He looked directly at Jordan. "Do you understand, not a word

 to anybody."

 Zouga sat easily in the saddle, riding with the long stirrups of a Boer

 hunter or of a born colonial.

 He knew that Rhodes was leaving in the next few weeks, to keep his term

 at Oxford University. Perhaps his imminent departure would make his

 judgement hasty.

 "Let's hope so, anyway." And his mount flicked his ears back to listen

 to his voice.

 Steady, old man." Zouga touched his withers, feeling a quick twist of

 guilt at his intentions. He knew he was going to try and sell faulty

 goods, and he steeled himself against his own conscience.

 He touched his mount's flank with his knee and turned him off the rutted

 dusty track through the break in the milkwood fence and into Rhodes"

 camp.

 Rhodes sat with his back to the mud wall of the shack, a mug in his

 hand, the big shaggy leonine head cocked to something that Pickering was

 saying.

 The talk of the diggings was that he was already a multimillionaire, at

 least on paper, and Zouga had seen the champagne bucket of uncut

 diamonds poured out onto his lunch table. Yet here Rhodes was sitting on

 a soap box in the dusty yard, dressed in shabby ill-fitting clothes,

 drinking from a chipped enamel mug.

 Zouga dropped his reins and his horse stopped obediently, and when he

 slipped off its back there was no need for him to tether it. It would

 stand as long as Zouga wanted it to.

 He crossed the yard towards the small group of men, and Zouga smiled to

 himself. Rhodes mug might be chipped, but it contained a twenty-year-old

 cognac. Rhodes' seat might be a soapbox, but he sat it as though it were

 a throne, and the men that sat around him like courtiers or supplicants

 were all rich and powerful men, the new aristocracy of the diggings.

 One of these rose now and came to meet Zouga, laughing lightly and

 brandishing a rolled newspaper.

 "By god, Major, they say you need only speak of the devil." He clapped

 Zouga's shoulder. "I hope you are taking this assault on our masculine

 pride as seriously as we are, and have come to offer to champion our

 cause."

 "I don't understand." Zouga's protest was lost in the laughter and

 friendly pummelling as they came to crowd around him. Only Rhodes had

 not left his seat against the wall, but even he was smiling.

 "Let him read it for himself, Pickling," Rhodes suggested mildly, and

 Pickering handed Zouga the news sheet with a flourish.

 It was a copy of the Diamond Fields Advertiser, so newly printed that

 the ink smudged beneath Zouga's fingers.

 "Front page," said Pickering gleefully. "The headline."

 GAUNTLET THROWN DOWN LADY INSULTED SEEKS SATISFACTION This morning your

 editor was privileged to receive a visit from a beautiful and

 distinguished visitor to Kimberley. missis Louise Sint John is the wife

 of a hero of the American Civil War, and in her own right a noted

 equestrienne.

 Her stallion "Shooting Star" is a remarkable example of the recently

 developed American breed known as Palqminumber He is a former Louisiana

 champion of breed, and quite one of the most magnificent animals ever to

 be seen on the Diamond Fields.

 missis Sint John attempted to enter her mount in the regular

 point-to-point meetings organized by the Kimberley Sporting Club, but

 was informed by Major Ballantyne, the Club President, that she was

 barred from riding Zouga skipped quickly over the next few paragraphs:

 "Simply because I happen to be a woman ... insufferable masculine

 arrogance."

 He smiled and shook his head.

 ,"Challenge the good major to ride against me over any course of his

 choice for any purse he stipulates."

 Now Zouga laughed delightedly, and tossed the paper back to Pickering.

 "The lady has good bottom", he admitted, "in both senses of the word."

 "I will lend you King Chaka,"Beit promised. He was a strong hunter,

 English and Arab blood, from one of the famous Cape studs. Beit had paid

 three hundred guineas for him.

 Zouga shook his head and shot an affectionate glance at his own hunting

 horse standing across " the yard. "That won't be necessary, I shan't be

 riding."

 There was a howl of jovial protest from them all.

 "By God, Ballantyne, you can't let us down."

 "This damned vixen will say you funked it, old man."

 "My wife will crow for a week, you'll ruin my marriage."

 Zouga held up his hands. "I'm sorry, gentlemen. This is merely a bit of

 female nonsense, and you can quote me.

 You won't ride, then?"

 "Certainly not." Zouga was smiling, but his voice had a brittle edge. "I

 have more serious matters to concern me.

 "You are right, of course." Rhodes" piping voice stifled them all into

 respectful silence. "That pale brute is a flying devil and the lady

 rides like a witch, we have all seen that."

 "The scar on Zouga's cheek turned pale pink, and there was a sudden

 green glint in his eye; but the smile stayed on his lips.

 "That fancy high-stepper moves well on the flat, I grant you, but over

 the course I would choose she would be lucky to finish, let alone win.,

 "You'll ride then?" They were clamouring again immediately.

 "No, gentlemen. That's my final word."

 Long after the others had left, the three of them sat on: Pickering,

 Rhodes and Zouga. The sun had set, and just the orange glow of the fire

 lit their faces. The first bottle of cognac was empty and Pickering had

 opene another. Now Rhodes was staring into his mug, and spoke without

 lifting his eyes.

 "So, Major, at last you are ready to sell, and I ask myself a question,

 a simple little question, why?"

 Zouga did not reply, and after a moment Rhodes lifte his head.

 "Why, Major?"he repeated. "Why now suddenly?"

 Zouga found that the lie he had prepared would not come to his lips.

 He was dumb, but he held the gaze of those pale blue eyes, and it was

 Rhodes who broke the silence.

 "I have trusted very few men in my life," and involu tarily his eyes

 flickered to Pickering and then back to Zouga, "but now, Major, you are

 one of them."

 He picked up the cognac bottle and spilled a little of the honey-dark

 liquor into Zouga's mug.

 "Once you were offered a hundred thousand pounds: illicit diamonds, and

 you couldn't bring yourself to take them." Rhodes was speaking so softly

 that Zouga had to lean forward to catch the words. "Yesterday your son

 brought up the first hunk of blue ground from the Devils Own, and still

 you could not bring yourself to lie."

 "You knew!" Zouga whispered, and Rhodes nodded and then sighed.

 "By God, I wish I knew more like you." He shook the big curling head and

 his voice was becoming brusque and businesslike. "Once I offered you

 five thousand poun for your claims. All right, I will make the same

 price, "and he lifted one meaty hand to still Zouga, "Wait! Listen to

 the rest of it, before you thank me. the"

 bird goes with the claims."

 "What?" For a moment Zouga did not understand.

 "The stone bird, the statue. It becomes part of the deal "Damn it!"Zouga

 half rose from the log on which he was sitting.

 "Wait!"Rhodes stopped him again. "Listen, before you refuse," and Zouga

 sank back. "You'll ride for it."

 Zouga shook his head, not understanding.

 You'll ride against this woman, Sint John, on her terms, and if you win

 you keep the claims and the bird and my five thousand., The silence

 stretched out for a full minute, and then Zouga asked with a harsh

 gravelly sound in the back of his throat: "And if I lose?"

 "You yourself have said there is little chance of that," Rhodes reminded

 him.

 "And if I lose?" Zouga persisted.

 "Then you leave these fields as you came, with nothing."

 Zouga looked away to the horse standing at the edge of the shadows. He

 had named him Tom, after a friend, the old hunter who had first told

 Zouga about the land to the north and how to reach it, Tom Harkness, now

 dead these many years.

 The horse was part of Zouga's dream of the north, the mount that would

 carry him back to Zambezia. Zouga had selected him with more care than a

 man usually gives to choosing his wife, and beauty was the last thing he

 looked for.

 Tom was a mixture of many bloodlines, the wide nostrils and big chest of

 the Arab for staying power, the sturdy legs and sure feet of the Basuto,

 the canny eye and hammer head of a wild Mustang, the heart and strength

 of an English hunter. However, Tom was a drab unrelieved dun-colour. His

 coat was long and thick, brushed but not curried, protection from the

 night frost and the noon sun, from flying pebbles thrown by frantic

 hooves of the quarry in a stem chase or from the zip of red-tipped

 "wait-a-bit" thorns.

 Tom had proved that the intelligent gleam in his eye was no illusion. He

 learned swiftly and well. He learned to stand when the reins were

 dropped on his neck, giving his rider both hands for the rifle, and he

 remained stonestill while gunfire crashed about his head, only the

 twitching of his ears signalling his consternation.

 When Zouga took him out into the open veld to continue his training Tom

 displayed nimble feet on the rocky slopes of the kopje and a buffalo

 skin through the thorn bush; he learned to hunt, and seemed to enjoy it

 the way a good polo pony revels in the crack of the bamboo root and the

 riotous chase.

 He seemed instinctively to understand stalking, keeping his own body

 between Zouga and the game, angling off his approach, never heading

 directly at the quarry, and the herds of springbuck let the seemingly

 riderless horse walk up into easy rifle shot. Then Tom would carry the

 freshly killed carcass on his back, without shying and fussing about the

 blood.

 Tom was ugly, with a Roman nose, ears a little too long, legs a little

 too short, and he ran with an awkward hump-backed gait, which he could

 keep up all day, over any ground.

 He was an incorrigible thief. Jordan's vegetable garden had to be

 fenced, but still Tom left tufts of his drab hair on the spikes of the

 barbed wire. He had a trick of plucking the carrots out of the ground

 with a delicate grip between his square white teeth, and then knocking

 the earth off them against his forehooves.

 He learned to push open the kitchen window and reach the fresh loaves of

 bread that were cooling on the marble sink, and once when Jan Cheroot

 left the door to the storeroom off the latch, Tom got in and ate half a

 bag of sugar, at twenty shillings a pound.

 However, he would follow like a dog, and when ordered he would stand for

 hours, and Zouga, who was not sentimental about animals, had come to

 love him.

 Zouga looked back from the horse to the young man across the log fire.

 "Agreed," he said without emphasis. "Do we need to have further

 witnesses?"

 "I don't think so, Major," said Rhodes. "Do you?"

 "At the gun the competitor will ride out to the first flag-" Neville

 Pickering was the steward-in-chief, and his voice through the speaking

 trumpet carried to every member of the huge Sunday crowd that spilled

 out across the dry veld below the Magersfontein hills.

 "At the first red flag they will fire upon the standing targets. When

 they have demolished all four targets to the satisfaction of the

 stewards, they will be free to round the second yellow flag, and

 thereafter to return to the finish line." He pointed to the twin poles

 each with its crown of coloured bunting. "The first rider to pass

 between them will be declared the winner."

 Pickering paused and drew fresh breath before going on.

 "Are there any questions?"

 "Would you recite the rules, please, mister Pickering," Louise Sint John

 called. She looked like a child on the great glistening pale stallion's

 back. She was walking him in circles, leaning forward to pat his neck

 for the crowds had made him nervous. He was chewing the light snaffle

 and sweating in dark patches on the rippling muscled shoulders.

 "There are no other rules, ma'am." Pickering answered her loudly enough

 for those at the back of the crowd to hear.

 "No rules, barging and fouling?"

 "There are no fouls, ma'am," Pickering replied. "Though if one of you

 deliberately shoots an opponent, he or she might have to face criminal

 charges, but not disqualification."

 Louise turned her head towards the figure on the front seat of the

 high-wheeled phaeton which was parked beyond the course markers. Her

 face was pale, the freckles standing out on her cheeks; and her head was

 bared so that the thick dark braid of hair thumped against her shoulder.

 Mungo Sint John smiled back at her over the heads of the crowd, and

 shrugged slightly, so that Louise was forced to turn back to Pickering.

 "Very well, then," she agreed. "But the stake. We have not agreed the

 stake."

 "Major Ballantyne," Pickering called to where Zouga stood at Tom's head.

 "You have laid out the course. Now will you be good enough to name the

 stake."

 Then a strange thing happened. For the first time since Zouga had met

 her, Louise Sint John was uncertain of herself. Nobody else seemed to

 notice it, perhaps it was merely that Zouga had become highly receptive

 to every shade of her voice and expression. But he was certain that he

 saw something dark move in the blue depths of her eyes, like the shadow

 of a shark beneath the surface of the sea, and she took a pinch of her

 soft lower lip between her white teeth and again she glanced almost

 furtively at Mungo Sint John.

 It was not Zouga's imagination. Mungo Sint John did not return Louise's

 glance with his usual amused indulgence.

 He was looking at Zouga and under his calm was a small undercurrent of

 unease, like an eddy at highwater when the tide turns.

 Zouga raised his voice so that it would carry to Sint John.

 "Firstly, the loser will publish at his or her own expense upon the

 front page of the Advertiser in terms dictated by the winner, an

 acknowledgement of defeat."

 "A composition I shall enjoy." Louise had swiftly recovered her poise.

 "And what else, Major?""A payment by the loser to a charity of the

 winner's choice of," Zouga paused, and both man and woman watched his

 face with outward calm, "of the sum of one shilling!"

 "Done!"

 There was a slightly jarring note in Louise's laugh, relief perhaps, and

 though Mungo Sint John's expression did not alter, the tension went out

 of his shoulders.

 "missis Sint John. You are under starter's orders," Pickering called

 through his speaking trumpet. "Be so good as to bring your mount under

 control."

 "He is under perfect control, sir," she called back, and Shooting Star

 put his head down and lashed out with both back hooves towards the

 crowd.

 "If he is under control, Missus, then so is my motherin-law," called a

 wag, and there was a hoot of laughter.

 "On the count of three then," Pickering intoned, his voice hollow and

 solemn through the trumpet. "One."

 Shooting Star backed up against the crowd, and they scattered as he

 bucked.

 "Two."

 He went into a tortured high-stepping circle, so tight that his nose

 almost touched the toe of Louise's boot in the fancy silver stirrup.

 "And three." Louise lifted her left hand. Shooting Star came smoothly

 out of the circle, for the first time facing the start line, beginning

 to pace towards it majestically, and the pistol shot was a brief blurt

 of sound which sent the stallion sweeping away with an irresistible rush

 that made the slight figure on his wide back seem vulnerable and

 childlike.

 There was no horse on the diamond fields that could match that first

 blazing burst of speed, the gap between the two horses opened, but not

 so dramatically as the watchers had expected. Tom's awkward gallop took

 him over the ground at surprising speed, and he was not following

 directly in Shooting Star's tracks.

 "She's going wide, Thomas," Zouga told him with satisfaction, and Tom

 cocked his ears back to listen. "They aren't going to chance the river.

 Well, we didn't really think they would, did we?"

 Directly ahead of Zouga the river started a lazy series of loops,

 symmetrical hairpin turns, winding back upon itself like a dying python.

 Zouga had placed the red flag so that the direct line would cross the

 river-bed twice, and like most southern African rivers the banks were

 sheer, dropping ten feet to the dry sand and isolated rocky pools strung

 along the course. Each crossing was a trap in which a horse could break

 a leg and a rider his neck.

 The alternative to the crossings was to ride wide, taking a circuit out

 beyond the meandering river course; but that almost doubled the distance

 to run to the first flag.

 Already Shooting Star was a distant flying shape far out on the right,

 showing at intervals through gaps in the thorn scrub, marked by a little

 pale feather of dust flung up by his hooves.

 "Here we are," said Zouga, and under Tom's ugly Roman nose the ground

 opened abruptly.

 Zouga gave him a slack rein, and Tom hardly checked on the brink of the

 steep day bank. He sat down, and skidded over the edge on his fat round

 haunches, his forelegs sticking out stiffly ahead of him, and they

 toboganed down into the river bed and hit the sand in a scrambling

 tangle; and then Tom was up and lunging for the far bank, going half up

 before the dried clay crumbled under his hooves and they slid back

 again, Tom stifflegged and trembling with exertion.

 Zouga circled him once in the clinging white sand and then put him to

 the bank again, and he went up in a determined series of buck-jumps,

 shifting his weight before the clay could break under his hooves, and

 they flew out over the top and were running again, the next bend of the

 river a quarter of a mile ahead.

 At the next crossings Tom had the knack of it and they went down the

 bank and out the other side without a check. Under Tom's hooves the

 grass exploded into a whirl of noisy wings, and, with a wild harsh cry

 that would have panicked another horse, a big black-bellied bustard shot

 up into the air. Tom rolled a disdainful eye at the bird, steadied and

 gathered himself on the river bank of the last crossing and went down

 into it in a slide of dust and rolling pebbles.

 As they came up the far bank the red flag was two hundred paces dead

 ahead.

 Zouga swivelled in the saddle and looked out on his right hand.

 "Good for you, Tom," he called. "You'"We made a mile on them."

 Far out across the plain, the golden horse was just swinging wide of the

 last bend of the river, and Louise was bent low on his neck, pushing him

 at reckless speed over the rough going.

 "If she rides like that for a shilling, "Zouga broke off, and himself

 leaned into the rhythm of Tom's gallop. A mile was such a slim margin,

 and the stakes he was riding for were enormous. His fortune, his dream,

 nay his very existence, was at stake.

 "Go, Thomas, go!"Zouga whispered grimly into the long furry ears, and

 Tom stabbed at the earth with his awkward hump-backed gait.

 Zouga did not look back again; he knew the stallion was bearing down on

 them, fast, too fast, but Zouga dismissed them from his attention and

 slid the carbine from the leather boot at his knee and opened the

 breech, checking the load.

 The targets were white china soup plates, the range two hundred yards,

 extreme range after a gallop like this.

 The stewards were waving their hats to guide him up to the firing line.

 "This way, Major."

 Zouga dropped the reins as he reached the low barrier of thorn branches

 that marked the firing line, and Tom came up short. He swung up the

 carbine, and fired as the butt slapped into his shoulder. One of the

 far-off specks of white burst and vanished. He cranked another round

 into the chamber, and glanced over his shoulder.

 The stallion was still half a mile away, but coming on with a war drum

 of hooves.

 Zouga fired again, but Tom was blowing between his knees, heaving with

 the effort of the wild gallop.

 "Damn it to hell."

 Haste would be fatal now, but his fingers fumbled the reload and a shiny

 brass cartridge slipped and struck his boot before it fell into the

 sand. He thrust another into the breech, took a long slow breath, and

 judged Tom's movements beneath him.

 The rifle jumped against his shoulder, and the acrid plume of gunsmoke

 blew into his face. The second target exploded.

 "Two down, Major," one of the stewards shouted, and then as he fired

 again, "Three down, one to go!" Then beside Zouga the golden stallion

 came plunging to a halt, coming back low on glossy bunched quarters.

 Louise vaulted from his back in a swirl of beaded buckskin skirts.

 There was a flash of the silky skin of her upper calf above the boot,

 and the back of a dimpled knee. Even in the press of the moment, he

 found the pale beautiful flesh disturbing enough to spoil his aim and he

 swore as his next shot flew wide.

 Louise was shooting the latest model of the legendary 173 Winchester

 repeater, the original polished brass frame replaced by blued steel, and

 Zouga. knew that the modern centre-fire ammunition drove the heavy lead

 bullet with amazing power and accuracy.

 She threw the stallion's rein over her left shoulder, and braced herself

 to fire from a standing position, leaning forward to absorb the recoil

 of the Winchester, and let her first shot fly.

 She shot in the American style, throwing the rifle to her shoulder and

 firing in the same movement, not holding her aim nor giving the barrel

 time to wander. It was fine shooting.

 "One hit to missis Sint John," yelled the steward. But the crash of the

 shot had startled Shooting Star and he reared wildly and backed off on

 his hind legs, heaving at the reins that were looped over Louise's

 shoulder, jerking her over backwards so that her second shot flew in a

 long spurt of powder smoke towards the sky; and then she was down on her

 back, being dragged away, her skirts tangled about her legs, and the

 Winchester rifle was flung from her hand.

 The stallion came down on his forelegs again. One hoof, sharp as a

 woodman's axe, grazed the tender spot at the nape of Louise's neck, just

 below the thick plait of dark hair, leaving an angry pink blaze on the

 pale skin but not breaking it.

 Zouga felt the sweat on his throat turn so cold that he could not

 swallow. He swung Tom around to head off the stallion.

 For unholy seconds Louise's body was hidden by flying dust and trampling

 hooves; Zouga tried to shout to her ,to let the horse go, but his voice

 had choked, and then abruptly Louise was on her knees.

 She was facing Shooting Star, clinging stubbornly to his reins with both

 hands, and when he reared again she used his strength to let him boost

 her to her feet.

 "Steady!" she called to him. "Steady, I tell you., She was dusty and a

 tendril of dark hair had escaped the plait and hung into her eyes, but

 she was safe and very angry. Her voice crackled like breaking ice.

 Zouga's relief was immediate, but he mocked her as he swung Tom back to

 the firing line for his last target.

 "I advise you to have that animal properly trained, madam."

 "To hell with you, Major Ballantyne!"she told him in the same tone as

 she had quelled her mount. Somehow the oath on her lips was not shocking

 at all, but strangely titillating.

 Zouga gave Tom a few seconds to settle and regulate his breathing, and

 then swung up the rifle, held a full bead on the distant white speck and

 touched off the shot.

 "Four hits, you are free to ride on, Major," shouted the steward.

 Louise was dragging Shooting Star by the reins to a wild plum tree, a

 tree with low and sturdy branches.

 Swiftly she lashed the stallion's reins to a branch, and now she was

 running back holding her skirts up to just below the knee, and the

 stewards gawked at her ankles in the tight-fitting buttoned boots.

 She snatched the Winchester from a clump of sansevieria and ran up

 towards the firing line, reloading as she came. Zouga could see that

 there were little blisters of perspiration across her forehead, and knew

 that she was badly shaken, for when she threw up the rifle she held the

 shot and the heavy weapon wavered unsteadily.

 She lowered it, and her shoulders were trembling. She took two long deep

 breaths and then lifted the Winchester again, firing on the toss up.

 "Hit!" yelled the steward.

 Louise's lower lip was quivering and she bit down on it fiercely, and

 shot again.

 Zouga slid the carbine back into its leather scabbard, touched the brim

 of his helmet to Louise in a cavalier salute. "Good shooting, ma'am."

 He turned Tom's head away from the firing line.

 As they reached the wild plum, Zouga leaned out from the saddle. Louise

 had tied Shooting Star's reins to the branch with a slippery fisherman,

 it was a sailor's knot, a quick-release knot for a fast getaway.

 Zouga twitched the loose end and the knot fell apart, then he slapped

 Shooting Star across the cheek with his open hand. "Go on," he said.

 "Get out of it!" The stallion jerked his head, found that he was free

 and kicked his heels high.

 Zouga looked back as he reached the next low fold in the plain.

 The stallion was grazing head down, but even at that distance it was

 apparent that he was keeping a wary eye on the lonely figure that ran

 after him in hampering skirts. As soon as Louise came within arm's

 length of his bridle, he tossed up his head and trotted away to the next

 clump of grass, leaving her blundering behind.

 "Come, Tom." He turned away, trying not to let his conscience trouble

 him. There were no rules, any rules was acceptable, but it still felt

 bad, until he reminded himself of the stakes. A shilling against all he

 owned and he set Tom to run in earnest.

 Another mile and he glanced back, just in time to see Shooting Star and

 his rider come over the rise. They seemed to fly clear of the earth,

 borne along by the floating carpet of their own dust.

 "Run! Tom! Run!" Zouga swept the hat off his head and slapped it against

 Tom's neck, goading him to his best speed.

 Within another half mile Tom's shoulders were hot and slick with salt

 sweat. Ropes of saliva spilled from the corners of his lips and

 splattered onto Zouga's boots , but the yellow flag was in sight.

 "Not far," Zouga called to him anxiously. "We must beat them to the

 flag."

 He looked back. He could not believe they were so close.

 The stallion's head was driving like a hammer to each stride, and his

 neck and shoulders were black with sweat. She had pushed him fearfully.

 Louise was driving him with her arms and the rhythmic force of her body.

 Her hair was a wild tangle about her face, and her eyes were a blaze of

 blue.

 Yet as she came up to them she straightened in the saddle, her chin

 lifted high, and she looked at Zouga coldly, expressionlessly, the way a

 queen might glance at an urchin running at the wheel of her coach.

 Zouga lifted his right hand to salute her achievement.

 it had been a tremendous run, to make up so much ground. He was turned

 slightly towards her, and her expression of cold disinterest lulled him

 for the vital instant that it took her to bring Shooting Star level with

 Tom's shoulder.

 Zouga never saw the command, probably the toe of her boot on the far

 side of Shooting Star's heaving chest; he had certainly not expected a

 show horse to have learned the low tricks of a polo pony. Shooting

 Star's huge sweat-streaked shoulder crashed into Tom, taking him in the

 short ribs with a force that drove the air out of him in a belching

 grunt, and as he was spun aside Tom chopped desperately to keep from

 falling, twisting and dropping to his knees, his nose on the ground, too

 tired and taken too unawares to meet the power of that ferocious barge.

 Zouga lost a stirrup and was thrown onto Tom's neck.

 He clung desperately, feeling the saddle shift under the unequal

 transfer of weight; then Tom heaved again and Zouga went over, landing

 on his shoulders and the back of his neck.

 He seemed to strike solid rock and blackness crushed down from the dome

 of his skull. When it cleared, he was standing again, swaying like a

 drunk, blinking uncertainly after the pounding stallion as he pulled

 away towards the last flag.

 Zouga pulled Tom to his feet, and checked swiftly for strained sinew or

 broken bone, then threw himself back into the saddle.

 "We're not beat yet," he told Tom "There are still the thorns."

 Far ahead Shooting Star was making the turn around the last flag. From

 there Louise was free to make her way back to the finish line any way

 she wanted, but there were still the thorns.

 Tom was winded, his chest shuddering with the effort of each laboured

 breath, and they reached the flag in an awkward jarring trot and made

 the turn. Ahead of them the thorns stretched in a solid green barrier.

 This was the last obstacle, and beyond it was a clear run to the finish.

 A rider had a choice: go through the thorn, or ride wide.

 "Which way did she go?" Zouga shouted at the stewards below the flag as

 he went past.

 "She's gone for the gap," one of them yelled back, and then Zouga saw

 the little feather of dust a mile or more out on the right subsiding

 only slowly as the stallion sped away.

 The thorn barrier petered out on the rocky slopes of the Magersfontein

 hills, and there was an open gap below the steep ironstone cliffs, that

 was where the stallion was aimed.

 Grimly Zouga swung Tom around the flag and pointed him directly at the

 thorns. This route was almost two miles shorter, but he would need every

 inch of it. Yet he stopped Tom when they reached the edge of the thorns

 and let him breathe as he untied the heavy greatcoat from the pommel of

 his saddle and shrugged into it. He buttoned it high at the throat and

 felt the sweat burst out on his forehead as he pulled on the leather

 gauntlets to protect his hands.

 "Let's go," he whispered, and lay flat on Tom's neck, as they crashed

 into the thorn.

 The red-tipped hooked points of the thorns skidded over Zouga's thick

 felt hat with a rasping tearing sound, and tugged at the shoulders and

 skirts of the greatcoat.

 The brush grew as high as a mounted man's head, the sturdy trunks just

 far enough apart to let a horse pass, but the barbed branches

 intertwined and exacted a cruel toll. However, Tom kept going, swinging

 and chopping from side to side; he dodged between the white barked

 trunks, ducking his head under the branches, his ears flat against his

 skull and his eyes closed to slits, maintaining just the right amount of

 momentum to snap the thorns off their triangular bases and showering

 both himself and Zouga with a confetti of feathery green leaves.

 Every few seconds he snorted at the sting of thorn that had penetrated

 his tough shaggy hide.

 Shooting Star's burnished skin was so thin and finely bred that the

 network of veins and arteries showed through it. The thorns would have

 ripped it to bloody tatters.

 Zouga felt blood trickling down his own neck from where a thorn had

 nicked his ear, but he crouched lower and let Tom pick his own way

 through. "Poor Tom," he encouraged him. "Poor brave Tom." The horse

 whickered with the pain of the stinging red needles, but did not check

 his stride. Yet his breathing was easier now, the slower gait had helped

 him; and the sweat was drying in salty white crystals on his shoulders.

 Then abruptly they burst out of the thorn onto the open plain. Zouga

 tore off the leather gauntlets and threw them away. He ripped at the

 buttons of the greatcoat and let it fly away, flapping like a great

 black crow in the wind of Tom's gallop, and then he stood high in the

 stirrups and shaded his eyes with the brim of his hat.

 Swiftly he searched the open ground, but it was empty as far as he could

 see. the tiny specks of colour in the distance: women's dresses and the

 gay bunting that marked the finish. His heart bounded with relief, and

 under him Tom lunged into a clumsy gallop.

 Still standing in the stirrups, Zouga looked towards the line of hills

 out on his right hand, and he saw them.

 The stallion had turned the far end of the thorn barrier where it ran

 into the hills and was coming down the rocky slope towards the level

 ground in a dangerous scramble.

 The tiny figure on his back was being thrown about brutally. One instant

 she seemed to be on his neck, the next she was flung back onto his

 haunches, as Shooting Star plunged and heaved to keep his balance.

 "We have them now, Tom. There it is. There is the line, right under your

 nose." Zouga pointed his head.

 "They cannot catch us now. Go, old man, go!" Tom's hooves cracked on the

 hard earth like the beat of a joyous drummer. The crossing of the thorns

 had been cruel work, but it had rested him and he was pushing hard now.

 "Waie hole!" Zouga called to him, and Tom flicked his ears

 reproachfully. He had seen it before Zouga had, and he jinked around the

 burrow neatly, while the heads of the curious little ground squirrels

 bobbed out of the earth as they passed.

 The ground was rotten with their warrens, but Tom barely checked his

 gallop, swinging to avoid the mounds of freshly-turned earth, or

 occasionally stretching out to step over an entrance hole.

 The ground squirrels were almost indistinguishable from their northern

 cousins, except for the stripe down their furry backs and their

 terrestrial habit. They stood on their hind legs, like small groups of

 spectators at the entrance of each warren, their expressions comically

 astonished and their long bushy tails curled over their backs as Tom

 pounded past them.

 Zouga looked over his shoulder. Shooting Star was off the steep slope of

 the hills, down onto the open plain, and it was apparent that he was

 burning the last reserves of his great strength, coming on in a blazing

 run, driving with his forelegs, and then bunching up his sweat drenched

 hindquarters to hurl himself into the next stride. Louise was pushing

 him with her arms, like a washerwoman working over the scrubbing board,

 but she was too far behind for Zouga to see the expression on her face.

 Much too far behind, half a mile behind, and there was less than a mile

 to run to the line of gaily coloured bunting that marked the finish.

 Zouga could clearly see the crowds on each side of the posts, thick as

 bees at the entrance to the hive, and others were running for the wagons

 to join them.

 He could hear the faint pop of gunfire, see the little spurts of

 gunsmoke jumping up above the heads of the crowd as his supporters fired

 into the air in jubilation.

 Soon he would hear their voices, catch the sound of their cheers, even

 above the beat of Tom's hooves.

 It was all over. He had won. He had won back his claims, the cherished

 image of the falcon god, and the five thousand pounds with which he

 could take his family away to a new life. He had taken on the gods of

 chance and won.

 He had only one regret, that the courage of the horse and rider behind

 him had been in vain. Careful not to unbalance Tom's heavy unlovely

 gallop, he looked back under his own arm.

 By God, she had not yet accepted defeat. She was driving with all her

 strength and all her heart, pushing the horse as hard as she pushed

 herself, coming on so swiftly that Zouga glanced uneasily over Tom's

 pricked ears to reassure himself as to the proximity of the finish line.

 No, there was no chance, even at that tremendous speed, Shooting Star

 could never catch them.

 Already he could hear the voices of the crowd, make out their individual

 faces, even recognize Pickering, the chief steward, on his seat on the

 wagon, and beside him Rhodes" unmistakable bulk and the mop of unruly

 hair.

 With him to witness it, Zouga's triumph was complete.

 He turned for the last time to look back at Shooting Star, just in time

 to see him fall. It had been much too fast, too uncontrolled, that wild

 gallop across ground rotten with squirrel warrens. Shooting Star's front

 legs went from under him. Zouga imagined he could hear the bone break,

 like the crack of a pistol shot, and the huge horse went down from full

 gallop, shoulder first, neck twisted around in an agonized

 contortion'like that of a dying flamingo; dust flew up in a cloud,

 blanketing them, and above it the stallion's hooves kicked

 spasmodically, convulsively, and then sagged.

 The pale beige dust cloud drifted aside, revealing the tragic tangle of

 horse and rider. Shooting Star lay on his side and, as Zouga reined in

 and swung Tom's nose back the way he had come, the great stallion made a

 feeble effort to lift his head off the ground and then let it fall back

 weakly.

 Louise's body had been flung clear. She lay curled like a sleeping child

 on the bare earth, very still, very small.

 "Ha, Tom, ha!"Zouga urged him to greater speed. He was shocked at the

 sense of utter desolation that assailed him as he galloped back to where

 she lay. There was something so final, so terribly chilling in her

 stillness, in the complete relaxation, the lifelessness of that tiny

 crumpled body.

 "Please God," Zouga spoke aloud, his throat seared by dust and thirst

 and dread. "Please don't let it be."

 He imagined the lovely delicate neck twisted at an impossible angle

 against the shattered vertebrae. He imagined the awful bloodless

 depression in the delicate dome of her skull; he imagined those huge

 dark eyes, open and staring, the inner glow fading, he imagined, oh God,

 he imagined, Then he was kicking his feet clear of the stirrups and

 jumping down even while Tom was at full gallop, stumbling to keep his

 balance and then running to where she lay.

 Louise uncurled her body and rolled lightly to her feet.

 "Come, darling, up darling," she called to Shooting Star, as she ran to

 him. The stallion lunged once, twice and then he was standing, head up.

 "What a clever darling," Louise laughed, but with the huskiness of

 excitement and the tremor of heart-breaking exertion in the sound of it.

 She did not have the strength left to vault for the saddle, and for a

 moment she hopped with one foot in the stirrup before she could find the

 energy to swing her other leg up over Shooting Star's back, while Zouga

 stood and gaped at her.

 From the saddle she looked down at Zouga. "Playing dead is an old

 Blackfoot Indian's trick, Major."

 Louise swung the stallion's head towards the finish line.

 "Let's see you run the last lap on equal terms," she challenged, and

 Shooting Star jumped away at full gallop.

 For a moment Zouga could not bring himself to believe that she had

 taught the stallion to fall so convincingly, and to lie so still. Then

 suddenly his concern for her safety, the desolate feeling of believing

 her dead or maimed turned to fury and outrage.

 As he ran back to where Tom stood, he yelled after her.

 "Madam, you are a cheat, may God forgive you for that."

 She turned in the saddle and waved gaily. "Sir, you are gullible, but I

 will forgive you for that."

 And Shooting Star bore her away towards the finish at a pace that poor

 Tom could never match.

 Zouga Ballantyne was drunk. It was the first time in the twenty-two

 years they had been together that Jan Cheroot had seen him so.

 He sat very erect on the high-backed deal chair, and his face above the

 beard had a strange waxen look to it.

 His eyes were glazed over with the same soapy sheen of uncut diamonds,

 The third bottle of Cape Brandy stood on the green baize of the table

 between them, and as Zouga fumbled for it, he knocked it over. The

 spirit glugged loudly from the mouth, and soaked into the cloth.

 Jan Cheroot snatched it upright, with a shocked oath.

 "Man, if you want to lose the Devil's Own, I don't mind, but, when you

 spill the brandy, that's another thing."

 Jan Cheroot stumbled a little over the words; they had been drinking

 since an hour before sundown.

 "What am I going to tell the boys?" mumbled Zouga.

 "Tell them that they are on holiday, for the first time in ten years. We

 are all on holiday."

 Jan Cheroot poured brandy into Zouga's mug, and pushed it closer to his

 hand. Then he poured a good dram into his own, thought about it for a

 moment, and added as much again.

 "I have lost everything Old Jan."

 "Ja," Jan Cheroot said cheerfully. "And that was not very much, was it."

 "I have lost the claims."

 "Good." jan Cheroot nodded. "For ten years those double-damned squares

 of dirt ate our souls away, and starved us while they were doing it."

 "I have lost the bird."

 "Good again!" Jan Cheroot swigged his brandy, and smacked his lips with

 appreciation. "Let mister Rhodes have his share of bad luck now.

 That bird will finish him, as it nearly finished us. Send it to him as

 soon as you can, and thank God to be rid of it."

 Slowly Zouga lowered his face into his hands, covering his eyes and his

 mouth, so that his voice was muffled.

 "Jan Cheroot. It's all over. For me the road to the north is closed. My

 dream is finished. It's all been for nothing."

 The bibulous grin faded slowly and Jan Cheroot's yellow face puckered

 with deep compassion.

 "it is not finished, you are still young and strong with two strong

 sons."

 "We shall lose them too, soon, very soon."

 "Then you will have me, old friend, like it has always been."

 Zouga lifted his head out of his hands and stared at the little

 Hottentot.

 "What are we going to do, Jan Cheroot?"

 "We are going to finish this bottle and then open another," Jan Cheroot

 told him firmly.

 In the morning they loaded the soapstone idol into the gravel cart, and

 laid it on a bed of straw; then Zouga spread a stained and tattered

 tarpaulin over it and Jordan helped him rope it down.

 Neither of them spoke, until they were finished, and then Jordan

 whispered so softly that Zouga barely caught the words.

 "You can't let it go, Papa." And Zouga turned to look at his younger

 son, truly seeing him for the first time in many years.

 With a small shock he realized that Jordan was a man.

 In imitation of Ralph perhaps, he also had grown a moustache. It was a

 dense coppery gold, and accentuated the gentle line of his mouth, yet,

 if anything, the man was more beautiful than the child had been.

 "Is there no way we can keep it?" Jordan persisted, with a thin edge of

 desperation in his voice, and Zouga went on staring at him. How old was

 he now? Over nineteen years, and yesterday he had been a baby, little

 Jordie.

 Everything was changed.

 Zouga turned away from him, and placed his hand on the tarpaulin-wrapped

 burden in the bottom of the cart.

 "No, Jordan. It was a wager, a matter of honour."

 "But, Mama -" Jordan started and then broke off abruptly as Zouga looked

 back at him sharply.

 "What about Mama?" he demanded, and Jordan looked away and flushed,

 bringing up the colour under the velvety skin of his cheeks.

 "Nothing," he said quickly, and went to the head of the lead mule.

 "I will take the bird to mister Rhodes," he volunteered, and Zouga

 nodded immediately, relieved that he would be spared this painful duty.

 "Ask him when he will be free to sign the transfer of the claims."

 Zouga touched the wrapped statue again as though in farewell and then he

 pulled his hand away, went up the steps onto the verandah and into the

 bungalow without looking back.

 Jordan led the mules out into the rutted road and swung them towards the

 settlement. He walked bareheaded in the sunlight. He was tall and slim

 and he moved with a peculiar grace, stepping lightly and lithely in the

 soft red dust. His chin was up, his eyes focused far ahead, with the

 dreaming, yet all-seeing, gaze of a poet.

 Men and women, especially women, looked after him as he passed and their

 expressions softened, but Jordan walked on as though he were alone on a

 deserted street.

 Though his lips never moved, the words of the invocation to the goddess

 Panes kept running through his mind.

 "- Why did you run away? You would have been better with us -" So many

 times he had called to the goddess, the words were part of his very

 existence. "Will you not come back to us, great Panes?"

 The goddess was going, and Jordan did not believe he could support the

 agony of it. Statue, goddess and mother were all one in his mind, his

 last link with Aletta. Aletta who had become Panes.

 He felt desolate, bereaved as though of his dearest love, and when he

 reached the milkwood fence of Rhodes' camp, he stopped and wild fancies

 seized him. He would take the goddess, run with her into the wilderness,

 hide her in some distant cave. His heart bounded. No, he would take her

 back to the ancient ruined city from which she had come, that far place

 in the north from which his father had stolen her, where she would be

 safe.

 Then with a plunge of his spirits and a slide of despair in his guts he

 knew that these were childish dreamings and that he was no longer a

 child.

 With a light touch on the lead mule's bridle, he guided her into the

 camp, and Rhodes was standing at the front door of his bungalow,

 bareheaded and in shirtsleeves. He was talking quietly, urgently to a

 man below the stoep.

 Jordan recognized him as one of the Central Diamond Company overseers.

 When Rhodes looked up and saw Jordan, he dismissed the overseer with a

 curt word and a nod.

 jordan," Rhodes" greeting was grave, perhaps he sensed the mood of the

 young man before him, "you have brought it?"

 When Jordan nodded, he turned back to the waiting overseer.

 "Bring four of your best men," he ordered. "I want this cart unloaded,

 and carefully. It's a valuable work of art."

 He watched keenly as they untied the ropes that held the tarpaulin in

 place, but cocked the large curly head when Jordan spoke.

 "If we have to lose it, then I'm glad it's you that it goes to, mister

 Rhodes."

 "The bird means something to you also, Jordan?"

 "Everything," Jordan said simply, and then caught himself; that sounded

 ridiculous. mister Rhodes would think him strange. "I mean, it has been

 in my family since before I was born. I don't really know what it will

 be like without that goddess. I don't really want to think about losing

 it."

 "You don't have to lose it, Jordan."

 Jordan looked at him, unable to bring himself to ask the meaning.

 "You can follow the goddess, Jordan."

 "Please don't tease me, mister Rhodes."

 1you are bright and willing, you have studied Pitman's shorthand, and

 you have an excellent pen," Rhodes said.

 "I need a secretary, somebody who knows and loves diamonds as I do.

 Somebody whom I feel easy with.

 Somebody I know and whom I like. Somebody I can trust. Jordan felt a

 vast soaring rush of joy, something sharper, brighter and more poignant

 than he had ever known before. He could not speak; he stood rooted and

 stared into the pale blue and beautiful eyes of the man whom he had

 worshipped for so many years.

 "Well, Jordan, I am offering you the position. Do you want it?"

 "Yes," Jordan said softly. "More than anything on earth, mister Rhodes."

 "Good, then your first task is to find a place to set up the bird."

 The white overseer had pulled the tarpaulin aside to expose the statue,

 and the sheet hung down over the side of the cart.

 "Easy now," he shouted at the gang of black labourers.

 "Get a rope on it. Don't drop it. Watch that end, damn YOU.

 They swarmed over the statue, too many of them for the job, getting in

 one another's way, and Jordan's heady joy at Rhodes" offer was submerged

 in a quick stab of concern for the safety of the bird.

 He started forward to set the ropes himself, but at that moment there

 was the clatter of hooves and Neville Pickering rode into the yard. He

 was astride his mare, a highly bred and finely mettled bay, and he

 reined her down to a walk.

 He shot a glance at Jordan, and his face clouded for an instant, a quick

 show of irritation, or of something else.

 With a sudden intuitive flash Jordan realized that Pickering resented

 his presence here.

 Then as quickly as it had come the shadow passed from Pickering's

 handsome features and he smiled that sunny charming smile of his and

 looked down at the statue in the cart.

 "What have we here?" His tone was gay, his manner carefree and relaxed.

 As always he was elegantly dressed, the drape of broadcloth showing off

 his broad shoulders, the tooled leather belt emphasizing his narrow

 waist, as the polished half boots did the length and shape of his legs.

 The low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat was cocked forward over one eye, and

 he was smiling.

 "Oh, the bird." He looked up at Rhodes on the stoep of the bungalow. "So

 you have it at last, as you said you would. I should congratulate you."

 The day had been still and too hot, it would change soon. The wind

 would-come out of the south and the temperature would plunge, but until

 then the only movements of air were the sudden little dust devils that

 sprang out of nowhere, small but violent whirlwinds that lifted a high

 churning vortex of dust and dry grass and dead leaves a hundred or more

 feet into the still sky as they sped in a wildly erratic course across

 the plain, and then just as suddenly collapsed and disintegrated into

 nothingness again.

 One of these dust devils rose now, on the open ground beyond the

 milkwood hedge. It tore a dense red cloud of spinning dust off the

 surface of the road, then swerved abruptly and raced into the yard of

 Rhodes" camp. Jordan felt his heart gripped in a cold vice of

 superstitious dread.

 "Panes!" The cry was silent in his head. "Great Panes!"

 He knew what that wind was " he knew the presence of the goddess, for

 how many times had she come to his invocation? Suddenly the whole yard

 was filled with the swirling torrents of dust, and the wind battered

 them. It flew into Jordan's face, so that he must slit his eyes against

 it. It flung his soft shiny curls into his face, and it flattened his

 shirt against his chest and his lean flat belly.

 The broad-brimmed hat sailed from Pickering's head, the tails of his

 coat flogged into the small of his back and he lifted one hand to

 protect his face from the stinging sand and sharp pieces of twig and

 grass.

 Then the wind got under the ragged old tarpaulin, and filled it with a

 crack like a ship's mainsail gybing onto the ovvosite tack.

 The harsh canvas lashed the bay mare's head, and she reared up on her

 back legs, whinnying shrilly with panic.

 So high she went that Jordan thought she would go over on her back, and

 through the red raging curtain of dust, he jumped to catch her head; but

 he was an instant too late. Pickering had one hand to his face, and the

 mare's leap took him off balance; he went over backwards out of the

 saddle, and he hit hard earth with the back of his neck and one

 shoulder.

 The rushing sound of the whirlwind, the grunt of air driven from

 Pickering's lungs and the meaty thump of his fall almost covered the

 tiny snapping sound of bone breaking somewhere deep in his body.

 Then the mare came down from her high prancing dance, and she flattened

 immediately into full gallop.

 She flew at the gateway in the milkwood hedge, and Pickering was dragged

 after her, his ankle trapped in the steel of the stirrup, his body

 slithering and bouncing loosely across the earth.

 As the mare swerved to take the gap in the hedge, Pickering was flung

 into the hedge, and the white thorns, each as long as a man's

 forefinger, were driven into his flesh like needles.

 Then he was plucked away, out into the open ground, sledging over rocky

 earth, striking and flattening the small wiry bushes as the mare jumped

 them, his body totally relaxed and his arms flung out behind him.

 One moment the back of his head was slapping against the earth, and the

 next his ankle had twisted in the stirrup and he was face down, the skin

 being smeared from his cheeks and forehead by the harsh abrasive earth.

 Jordan found himself racing after him, his breath sobbing with horror,

 calling to the mare.

 "Whoa, girl! Steady, girl!"

 But she was maddened, firstly terrified by the wind and the flirt of

 canvas into her face, and now by the unfamiliar weight that dragged and

 slithered at her heels.

 She reached the slope of the trailing dumps and swerved again, and this

 time, mercifully, the stirrup leather parted with a twang. Freed of her

 burden, the mare galloped away down the pathway between the dumps.

 Jordan dropped on his knees beside Pickering's inert crumpled body. He

 lay face down; the expensive broadcloth was ripped and dusty, the boots

 scuffed through to white leather beneath.

 Gently, supporting his head in cupped hands, Jordan rolled him onto his

 back, turning his face out of the dust so that he could breathe.

 Pickering's face was a bloodied mask, caked with dust, a flap of white

 skin hanging off his cheek, but his eyes were wide open.

 Despite the complete deathlike relaxation of his arms and body,

 Pickering was fully conscious. His eyes swivelled to Jordan's face, and

 his lips moved.

 Jordie," he whispered. "I can't feel anything, nothing at all. Numb, my

 hands, my feet, my whole body numb."

 They carried him back in a blanket, a man at each corner, and laid him

 gently on the narrow iron-framed cot in the bedroom next door to Rhodes"

 own room.

 Doctor Jameson came within the hour, and he nodded when he saw how

 Jordan had bathed and dressed his injuries and the arrangements he had

 made for his comfort.

 "Good. Who taught you?" But he did not wait for an answer. "Here!" he

 said. "I'll need your help." And he handed Jordan his bag, shrugged out

 of his jacket and rolled his sleeves.

 "Get out," he said to Rhodes. "You'll be in the way here."

 It took Jameson only minutes to make certain that the paralysis below

 the neck was complete, and then he looked up at Jordan, making sure that

 he was out of sight of Pickering's alert, fever-bright eyes, and he

 shook his head curtly.

 "I'll be a minute," he said. "I must speak with mister Rhodes."

 "Jordie," Pickering whispered painfully, the moment Jameson left the

 room, and Jordan stooped to his lips.

 "It's my neck, it's broken."

 "No."

 "Be quiet. Listen." Pickering frowned at the interruption. "I think I

 always knew, that it would be you. One way or the other, it would be you

 He broke off, fresh sweat blistered on his forehead, but he made another

 terrible effort to speak. "I thought I hated you. But not any more, not

 now. There is not enough time left for hate."

 He did not speak again, not that night, nor the following day. But at

 dusk when the heat in the tiny ironwalled room abated a little, he

 opened his eyes again and looked up at Rhodes. It was frightening to see

 how low he had sunk. The fine bones of forehead and cheeks seemed to

 gleam through the translucent skin, and his eyes had receded into dark

 bruised cavities.

 Rhodes leaned his great shaggy head over him until his ear touched

 Pickering's dry white lips. The whisper was so light, like a dead leaf

 blown softly across a roof at midnight, and Jordan could not hear the

 words, but Rhodes clenched his lids closed over his pale blue eyes as

 though in mortal anguish.

 "Yes," he answered, almost as softly as the dying man.

 "Yes, I know, Pickling."

 When Rhodes opened his eyes again they were flooded with bright tears,

 and his colour was a frightening mottled purple.

 "He's dead, Jordan," he choked, and put one hand on his own chest,

 pressing hard as though to calm the beat of his swollen heart.

 Then quite slowly, deliberately, he lowered his head again, and kissed

 the broken, torn lips of the man on the iron-framed cot.

 Zouga thought the voice was part of his dream, so sweet, so low, and yet

 tremulous and filled with some dreadful appeal. Then he was awake, and

 the voice was still calling, and now there was a light tap on the window

 above the head of his bed.

 "I'm coming," Zouga answered, as low as he was called.

 He did not have to ask who it was.

 He dressed swiftly, in total darkness, instinct warning him not to light

 a candle, and he carried his boots in his hand as he stepped out onto

 the stoep of the cottage.

 The height of the moon told him that it was after midnight, but he

 barely glanced at it before turning to the figure that leaned against

 the wall beside the door.

 "Are you alone?" he demanded softly. There was something in the way the

 figure slumped that frightened him.

 "Yes." The distress, the pain, were clear in her voice now that they

 were so close.

 "You should not have come here, not alone, missis Sint John."

 "There was nobody else to turn to."

 "Where is Mungo. Where is your husband?"

 "He is in trouble, terrible, terrible, trouble."

 "Where is he?"

 "I left him out beyond the Cape crossroad."

 For a moment her voice choked on her, and then it came out with a

 forceful rush.

 He's hurt. Wounded, badly wounded."

 "Her voice had risen, so that she might rouse Jan Cheroot and the boys.

 Zouga took her arm to calm and quieten her, and immediately she fell

 against him. The feel of her body shocked him, but he could not pull

 away.

 "I'm afraid, Zouga. I'm afraid he might die." It was the first time she

 had used his given name.

 "What happened?"

 "Oh God!" She was weeping now, clinging to him, and he realized how

 hard-pressed she was. He slipped his arm around her waist and led her

 down the verandah.

 In the kitchen he seated her on one of the hard deal chairs, and then

 lit the candle. He was shocked again when he saw her face. She was pale

 and shaking, her hair in wild disorder a smear of dirt on one cheek and

 her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot.

 He poured coffee from the blue enamel pot at the back of the stove. It

 was thick as molasses. He added a dram of brandy to it.

 "Drink it."

 She shuddered and gasped at the potent black brew, but it seemed to

 steady her a little.

 "I didn't want him to go. I tried to stop him. I was sick of it.

 I told him I couldn't take it any more, the cheating and lying. The

 shame and the running, "

 "You aren't making sense," he told her brusquely, and she took a deep

 breath and started again.

 "Mungo went to meet a man tonight. The man was going to bring him a

 parcel of diamonds, a parcel of diamonds worth one hundred thousand

 pounds. And Mungo was going to buy them for two thousand."

 Zouga's face set grimly, and he sat down opposite her and stared at her.

 His expression intimidated her.

 "Oh God, Zouga. I know. I hated it too. I have lived with it so long,

 but he promised me that this would be the last time."

 "Go on," Zouga commanded.

 "But he didn't have two thousand, Zouga. We are almost broke, a few

 pounds is all that we have left."

 This time Zouga could not contain himself and he broke in.

 "The letter of credit, half a million pounds "Forged," she said quietly.

 "Go on."

 "He didn't have the money to pay for the diamonds and I knew what he was

 going to do. I tried to stop him, I swear it to you."

 "I believe you."

 "He arranged to meet this man tonight, at a place out on the Cape road."

 "Do you know the man's name?"

 "I'm not sure. I think so." She passed her hand over her eyes. "He is a

 coloured man, a Griqua, Henry, no, Hendrick Somebody "Hendrick Naaiman?"

 right! Naaiman, that's it."

 "He's an I.D.B. trap."

 "Police?"

 "Yes, police."

 "Oh sweet God, it's even worse than I thought."

 "What happened?" Zouga insisted.

 "Mungo made me wait for him at the crossroads and he went to the

 rendezvous alone. He said he needed to protect himself, he took his

 pistol. He went on my horse, on Shooting Star, and then I heard the

 gunfire."

 She took another gulp of the coffee and coughed at the burn of it.

 "He came back. He had been shot, and so had Shooting Star. They couldn't

 go any further, neither of them. They were both hard hit, Zouga. I hid

 them near the road and I came to you."

 Zouga's voice was harsh. "Did Mungo kill him?"

 "I don't know, Zouga. Mungo says the other man fired first and he only

 tried to protect himself."

 "Mungo tried to hold him up and take the diamonds, without paying for

 them," Zouga guessed. "But Naaiman is a dangerous man."

 "There were four empty cartridges in Mungo's pistol, but I don't know

 what happened to the policeman. I only know that Mungo escaped, but he

 is hurt very badly."

 "Now keep quiet and rest for a while." He stood up and paced up and down

 the kitchen, his bare feet making no sound, his hands clasped at the

 small of the back.

 Louise Sint John watched him anxiously, almost fearfully, until he

 stopped abruptly and turned to her.

 "We both know what I should do. Your husband is I.D.B. he is a thief and

 by now he is probably a murderer."

 "He is also your friend," she said simply. "And he is very badly

 wounded."

 He resumed his pacing but now he was muttering to himself, troubled and

 scowling, and Louise twisted her fingers in her lap.

 "Very well," he said at last. "I'll help you to get him away."

 "Oh, Major Ballantyne, Zouga He silenced her with a frown. "Don't waste

 time talking. We'll need bandages, laudanum, food, "He was ticking off a

 list on his fingers. "You can't go like that.

 They'll be watching for a woman. Jordan's cast-off clothes will fit you

 well enough, breeches, cap and coat, " Zouga walked at the flank of the

 mule, and the gravel cart was loaded with bales of thatching grass.

 Louise lay silently in the hollow between two bales, with another ready

 to pull over herself if the cart was stopped.

 The iron-shod wheels crunched in the sand, but the night dew had damped

 down the dust. The lantern on the tailboard of the cart swung and

 jiggled to the motion.

 They had just passed the last house on the Cape road, and were drawing

 level with the cemetery when there was the dust-muffled beat of hooves

 from behind them and Louise only just had time to drop down and cover

 herself before a small group of riders swept out of the darkness and

 overtook them.

 As they galloped through the arc of lantern light, Zouga saw they were

 all armed. He stooped and lowered his chin into the collar of his

 greatcoat and the woollen cap was pulled low over his eyes. One of the

 riders pulled up his horse and shouted to Zouga.

 "Hey, you! Have you seen anybody on this road tonight?"

 "Niemand me! Nobody!" Zouga answered in the taal, and the sound of the

 guttural dialect reassured the man.

 He wheeled his horse and galloped on after his companions.

 When the sound of hooves had died away Zouga spoke quietly.

 "That means that Naaiman got away to spread the word. Unless he dies of

 his wounds later, it's not murder."

 "Please God," Louise whispered.

 "It also means that you cannot try to get out on either the Cape road or

 the road to the Transvaal. They will be watched."

 "Which way can we go?"

 if I were you I would take the track north, it goes to Kuruman. There is

 a mission station there, it's run by my grandfather. His name is Doctor

 Moffat. He will give you shelter, and Mungo will need a doctor. Then

 when Mungo is strong enough, you can try to reach German or Portuguese

 territory and get out through Mideritz Bay or Lourenqo Marques."

 Neither of them spoke for a long time as Zouga trudged on beside the

 mule, and Louise crawled out to sit on the bench of the cart, it was she

 who broke the silence.

 "I am so tired of running. We seem to have run out of lands, America,

 Canada, Australia, we cannot go back to any of them."

 "You could go home to France," Zouga said, "to your sons."

 Louise's head jerked up. "Why do you say that?"

 "When Mungo and I first met he told me about you, his wife, that you

 were of a noble French family. He told me that you and he had three

 sons."

 Louise's chin sank onto her chest and Jordan's cloth cap covered her

 eyes.

 "I have no sons," she said. "But oh how I pray that one day I may have.

 I belong to a noble family, Yes, but not French. My grandmother was the

 daughter of Hawk Flies Lightly, the Blackfoot War Chief."

 "I don't understand, Mungo told me "He told you about the woman who is

 his wife, Madame Solange de Montijo Sint John., Louise was silent again,

 and Zouga had to ask: "She is dead?"

 "Their marriage was unhappy. No, she is not dead. She returned with

 their three sons to France at the beginning of the Civil War. He has not

 seen her since."

 "Then she and Mungo are," Zouga hesitated over the unsavoury word,

 "divorced?"

 "She is a Catholic," Louise replied simply; and it was fully five

 minutes before either of them spoke again.

 "Yes," Louise said. "What you are thinking is correct.

 Mungo and I are not married; we could not be."

 "It's not my business," Zouga murmured, and yet what she had said did

 not shock him. He felt instead a strange lightness of spirit, a kind of

 glowing joy.

 "It's a relief to speak completely honestly," she explained. "After all

 the lies. Somehow it had to be you, Zouga. I could never have admitted

 all this to anybody else."

 "Do you love him?" Zouga's voice was rough-edged, brusque.

 "Once I loved him completely, without restraint, wildly, madly."

 "And now?"

 "I do not know, there have been so many lies, so much shame, so much to

 hide."

 "Why do you stay with him, Louise?"

 "Because now he needs me."

 I understand that." His voice was gentler. He did understand, he truly

 did. "Duty is a harsh and unforgiving master. And yet you have a duty to

 yourself also."

 The mules plodded on in the darkness, and the swinging lantern did not

 light the face of the woman on the bench, but once she sighed, and it

 was a sound to twist Zouga's heart.

 "Louise," he spoke at last. "I am not doing this for Mungo, even a

 friendship cannot condone deliberate robbery and premeditated murder."

 She did not reply.

 "Many times you must have seen the way I have looked at you, for, God

 knows, I could not help myself."

 Still she was silent.

 "You did know," he insisted. "You, as a woman, must know how I feel."

 "Yes," she said at last.

 "When I thought you were married to a friend, it was hopeless. Now, at

 least, I can tell you how I feel."

 "Zouga, please don't."

 "I would do anything you asked me to, even protect a murderer, that is

 how I feel for you."

 "Zouga "I have never known anybody so beautiful and bright and brave "I

 am not any of those things "I could put you and Mungo on the road to

 Kuruman and then go back to Kimberley and tell the diamond police where

 to find you. They would take Mungo, and then you would be free."

 "You could," she agreed. "But you never would. Both of us are tied,

 Zouga, by our own peculiar sense of duty and of honour., "Louise, "

 "We have arrived," she said, with patent relief. "The crossroads. Turn

 off the road here."

 From the bench she guided him as he threaded the cart through the

 scattered bush and the high wheels bumped over rock and rough ground. A

 quarter of a mile from the road there stood a massive camel-thorn tree,

 silver and high as a hill in the moonlight. Beneath its spread branches

 the moon shadow was black and impenetrable.

 From the darkness a hoarse voice challenged.

 "Stand where you are! Don't come any closer."

 "Mungo, it's me and Zouga is with me."

 Louise jumped down from the cart, lifted the lantern off its bracket and

 went forward, stooping under the branches. Zouga tethered the mules and

 then followed her. Louise was kneeling beside Mungo Sint John. He lay on

 a saddle blanket, propped on the silver ornamented Mexican saddle.

 "Thank you for coming," he greeted Zouga, and his voice was ragged with

 pain.

 "How badly are you hit?"

 "Badly enough," he admitted. "Do you have a cheroot?"

 Zouga lit one from the lantern and handed it to him.

 Louise was unwrapping the torn strips of shirt and petticoat that were

 bound about his chest.

 "Shotgun?" Zouga asked tersely.

 "No, thank God," Mungo said. "Pistol."

 "You are lucky," Zouga grunted. "Naaiman's usual style is a sawed-off

 shotgun. He would have blown you in half."

 "You know him, Naaiman?"

 "He's a police trap."

 "Police," Mungo whispered. "Oh God."

 "Yes," Zouga nodded. "You are in trouble."

 "I didn't know."

 "Does it really matter?" Zouga asked. "You planned an I.D.B. switch, and

 you knew you might have to kill a man."

 "Don't preach to me, Zouga."

 "All right." Zouga squatted next to Louise as she exposed the wound in

 Mungo's back. "And it looks as though it missed the bloody lymph, set in

 a livid spread of bruise."

 Between them they lifted Mungo into a sitting position.

 "Through and through," Zouga murmured, as he saw the exit wound in

 Mungo's back. "And it looks as though it missed the lung. You are

 luckier than you'll ever know."

 "One stayed in," Mungo Sint John contradicted him, and reached down to

 his own leg. His breeches had been split down the leg, and now he pulled

 the bloodstained cloth aside to reveal a strip of pale thigh in the

 centre of which was another vicious little round opening from which

 fluid wept like blackcurrant juice.

 "The bullet is still in," Mungo repeated.

 "Bone?" Zouga asked.

 "No." Sint John shook his head. "I don't think so. I was still able to

 walk on it."

 "There is no chance of trying to cut the bullet out.

 Louise knows where she can find a doctor, and I have told her how to get

 there."

 "Louise?" Mungo asked with a sardonic twist of his lips.

 She did not look up, concentrating on the task of painting the skin

 around the wounds with iodine. Mungo was staring at Zouga, his single

 eye gleaming, and Zouga felt the scar on his cheek throb and he did not

 trouble to hide his anger.

 "You don't think I am doing this for you," he demanded. "I hate I.D.B.

 as much as any digger on the workings, and I'm not that complacent about

 deliberate robbery and murder." And he took the pistol from the blanket

 where it lay at Mungo's side.

 He checked the load as he walked to where Shooting Star stood, head down

 in the moonlight beyond the camel-thorn tree.

 The stallion lifted his head, and blew a fluttery breath through his

 nostrils as Zouga approached; then he shifted his weight awkwardly and

 painfully on three legs.

 "There, boy. Easy, boy." Zouga ran his hands down the animal's flank. it

 was sticky with drying blood, and Shooting Star whickered as he touched

 the wound.

 Behind the ribs, bullet hole, and Zouga sniffed at it quickly. The

 bullet had pierced the bowel or the intestines, he could smell it.

 Zouga went down on one knee and gently felt the foreleg that the

 stallion was favouring. He found the damage, another bullet wound. It

 had struck a few inches above the fetlock and the bone was shattered.

 Yet the horse had carried Mungo, a big heavy man, and it had brought him

 many miles. The agony must have been dreadful, but the stallion's great

 heart had carried them through.

 Zouga. shrugged off his greatcoat and wrapped it around the pistol in

 his right hand. A shot could alert the searching bands on the not too

 distant road.

 "There, boy," Zouga whispered, and touched the muzzle to the forehead

 between the horse's eyes.

 The cloth muffled the shot. It was a dull blurt of sound, and the

 stallion dropped heavily on his side and never even kicked.

 Louise was still bowed over Mungo, tying the knots in the bandage, but

 Zouga saw that her eyes were bright with tears in the moonlight.

 "Thank you," she whispered. "I couldn't have done it myself."

 Zouga helped her lift Mungo to the cart. Mungo's breath whistled in his

 chest and the sweat of agony drenched his shir t and smelled rancid and

 gamey.

 They settled him into the nest of thatching grass and spread a screen of

 it over him. Then Zouga led the mules on over the veld until they struck

 the track that led nor thwards towards the Vaal river, and beyond it

 Kuruman and the vast Kalahari Desert.

 "Travel at night, and hobble the mules to graze during the day," Zouga

 told her. "There is more than enough meal and biltong; but you will have

 to spare the coffee and sugar."

 "Words cannot thank you enough," she whispered.

 "Don't attempt the main drift of the Vaal."

 "Somehow I know that this is not goodbye." She seemed not to have heard

 the advice. "And when we meet again," she broke off.

 "Go on," he said, but she shook her head and took the reins from his

 hand and led the mules onto the track.

 The cart seemed to merge into the night, and the heels made no sound in

 the thick pale sand. Zouga stood staring after them, long after they had

 disappeared , and then Louise came back.

 She came silent as a wraith, running with a kind of terrible

 desperation, the long tresses of hair had fallen out from under the cap

 and were streaming down her back. Her face was pale and stricken in the

 moonlight.

 The grip of her arms about his neck was fierce, almost painful, and her

 mouth was shockingly hot and wet as it spread over his. But the taste of

 it he would never forget, and her sharp white teeth crushed his lips.

 For seconds only they clung to each other, while Zouga thought his heart

 would burst; then she tore herself from his arms, and with neither a

 word nor a backward glance, she flew into the night, and was gone.

 Ten days after Neville Pickering's funeral, Zouga signed the transfer

 deeds to the Devil's Own claims, and watched while one of Rhodes"

 secretaries registered them in favour of the Central Diamond Company.

 Then he walked out into the cold.

 For the first time in living memory it was snowing over the diamond

 fields. Big soft flakes came twisting down like feathers from a

 shimmering white egret struck by birdshot.

 The snowflakes vanished as they touched the earth, but the cold was a

 vindictive presence and Zouga's breath steamed in the air and condensed

 on his beard as he trudged up to the workings to watch the shift come

 off the Devil's Own claims for the last time. As he walked he tried to

 compose the words to tell Ralph that this was the last shift.

 They were coming up in the skip. Zouga could make out Ralph, for he was

 the only man who wore a coat.

 The other men with him were almost naked.

 Once again Zouga wondered idly that the men had not rebelled against the

 harsh measures of the new Diamond Trade Act, enforced by Colonel John

 Fry of the recently recruited Diamond Police, and aimed at stamping out

 I.D.B. on the fields.

 Nowadays the black workers were compounded behind barbed wire; there

 were new curfew regulations to keep them in the compounds after

 nightfall; and there were spot searches and checks of the compounds, of

 men on the streets even during daylight, and body searches of each shift

 coming out of the pit.

 Even the diggers, or at least a few of them, had protested at the most

 draconian of John Fry's new regurations. All black workers had been

 forced to go into the pit stark naked, so that they would not be able to

 hide stones in their clothing.

 John Fry had been amazed when Zouga and a dozen other diggers had

 demanded to see him.

 "Good Lord, Ballantyne, but they are a bunch of naked savages anyway.

 Modesty, forsooth!"

 in the end, with the cooperation of Rhodes, they had forced him to

 compromise.

 Grudgingly Fry had allowed every worker a strip of seamless cotton

 "limbo" to cover himself.

 Thus Bazo and his Matabele wore only a strip of loincloth each as they

 rode up beside Ralph in the skip. The wind threw an icy noose about

 them, and Bazo shivered as goose-bumps rose upon the smooth dark skin of

 his chest and upper arms.

 Above him stood Ralph Ballantyne, balancing easily on the rim of the

 steel skip, ignoring the wind and the deadly drop below him.

 Ralph glanced down at Bazo crouching below the side of the steel bucket,

 and on impulse slipped the scrap of stained canvas off his own

 shoulders. Under it Ralph wore an old tweed jacket and dusty cardigan.

 He dropped the canvas over Bazo's neck.

 "It's against the white man's law," Bazo demurred, and made as if to

 shrug it off.

 "There are no police in this skip," Ralph grunted, and Bazo hesitated a

 moment and then crouched lower and gratefully pulled the canvas over his

 head and shoulders.

 Ralph took the butt of a half-smoked cheroot from his breast pocket, and

 carefully reshaped it between his fingers; the dead ash flaked away on

 the wind and wafted down into the yawning depths below. He lit the butt

 and drew the smoke down deeply, exhaled and drew again, held the smoke

 and passed the butt to Bazo.

 "You are not only cold, but you are unhappy," Ralph said, and Bazo did

 not answer. He cupped the stubby cheroot in both hands and drew

 carefully upon it.

 "Is it Donsela?" Ralph asked. "He knew the law, Bazo.

 He knows what the law says of those who steal the stones."

 "It was a small stone," murmured Bazo, the words and blue smoke mingled

 on his lips. "And fifteen years is a long time."

 "He is alive," Ralph pointed out and took the cheroot that Bazo passed

 back to him. "In the old days before the Diamond Trade Act, he would be

 dead by now."

 "He might as well be dead," Bazo whispered bitterly.

 "They say that men work like animals, chained like monkeys, on the

 breakwater wall at Cape Town harbour., He drew again on the cheroot and

 it burned down with a fierce little glow that scorched his fingers. He

 crushed it out on the workhardened calluses of his palm and let the

 shreds of tobacco blow away.

 "And you, Henshaw, are you then so happy?" he asked quietly, and Ralph

 shrugged.

 "Happy? Who is happy?"

 "Is not this pit", with a gesture Bazo took in the mighty excavation

 over which they dangled, "is not this your prison, does it not hold you

 as surely as the chains that hold Donsela as he places the rocks on the

 breakwater over the sea?"

 They had almost reached the high stagings and Bazo slipped off his

 canvas covering before he could be spotted by one of the black

 constables who patrolled the area inside the new security fences.

 "You ask me if I am unhappy." Bazo stood up, and did not look at Ralph's

 face. "I was thinking of the land in which I am a prince of the House of

 Kumalo. In that land the calves I tended as a boy have grown into bulls

 and have bred calves which I have never seen. Once I knew every beast in

 my father's herds, fifteen thousand head of prime cattle, and I knew

 each of them, the season of its birth, the twist of its horns and the

 markings of its hide."

 Bazo sighed and came to stand beside Ralph on the rim of the skip.

 They were of a height, two tall young n, well formed, and each, in the

 manner of his race, becomely.

 "Ten times I have not been with my impi when it danced the Festival of

 Fresh Fruits, ten times I did not witness my king throw the war-spear

 and send us out on the red road."

 Bazo's sombre mood deepened, and his voice sank lower.

 "Boys have grown to men since I left, and some Of them wear the cowtails

 of valour on their legs and arms."

 Bazo glanced down at his own naked body with its single dirty rag at the

 waist. "Little girls have grown into maidens, with ripe bellies, ready

 to be claimed by the warriors who have won the honour on the red road of

 war." And both of them thought of the lonely nights when the phantoms

 came to haunt them. Then Bazo folded his arms across his wide chest and

 went on.

 "i think of my father, and I wonder if the snows of age have yet settled

 upon his head. Every man of my tribe that comes down the road from the

 north brings me the words of Juba, the Dove, who is my mother.

 She has twelve sons, but I am the first and the eldest of them."

 "Why have you stayed so long?" Ralph asked harshly.

 "Why have you stayed so long Henshaw?" The young Matabele challenged him

 quietly, and Ralph had no answer.

 "Have you found fame and riches in this hole?" Again they both glanced

 down into the pit, and from this height the off-shift waiting to come up

 in the skips were like columns of safari ants.

 "Do you have a woman with hair as long and pale as the winter grass to

 give you comfort in the night, Henshaw? Do you have the music of your

 sons" laughter to cheer you, Henshaw? What keeps you here?"

 Ralph lifted his eyes and stared at Bazo, but before he could find an

 answer the skip came level with the platform on the first ramp of the

 stagings. The jerk brought Ralph back to reality and he waved to his

 father on the platform above them.

 The roar of the steam winch subsided. The skip slowed and Bazo led the

 party of Matabele workers onto the ramp. Ralph saw them all clear before

 he jumped across the narrow gap to the wooden platform and felt it

 tremble under the combined weight of twenty men.

 Ralph signalled again. Then the winch growled, and the steel cable

 squealed in its sheaves. The heavy-laden skip ran on until it hit the

 striker blocks. Ralph and Bazo drove the jumper bars under it, and threw

 their full weight on them. The skip tipped over, and the load of gravel

 went roaring down the chute into the waiting cart.

 Ralph looked up to see his father's encouraging smile and to hear his

 shouted congratulations.

 "Well done, boy! Two hundred tons today!"

 But the staging was deserted. Zouga had gone.

 Zouga had packed a single chest, the chest that had belonged to Aletta

 and which had come up with her from the Cape. Now it was going back, and

 it was almost all that was going back.

 Zouga put Aletta's Bible in the bottom of the chest, and with it her

 diary and the trinket box which contained the remaining pieces of her

 jewellery. The more valuable pieces had long ago been sold, to support

 the dying dream.

 over these few mementoes he packed his own diaries and maps, and his

 books. When he came to the bundled pile of his unfinished manuscript, he

 paused to weigh it in his hand.

 "Perhaps I shall find time to finish it now," he murmured, and laid it

 gently in the chest.

 On top of that went his clothing, and there was so little of that, four

 shirts, a spare pair of boots, barely an armful.

 The chest was only half-full, and he carried it easily down the steps

 into the yard. That was all that he was taking, the rest of it, the

 meagre furnishings of the bungalow he had sold to one of the auctioneers

 in Market Square. Ten pounds the lot. As Rhodes had predicted, he was

 leaving as he had come.

 "Where is Ralph?" he demanded of Jan Cheroot, and the little Hotten tot

 paused in chaining the cooking-pot and black iron kettle onto the

 tailboard of the cart.

 "Perhaps he stopped at Diamond Lil's. The boy has got a right to his

 thirst, he worked hard enough for it."

 Zouga let it pass, and instead ran an appraising eye over the cart. It

 was the newest and strongest of the three vehicles he owned. One cart

 had gone with Louise Sint John, and she had taken the best mules, but

 this rig would get them back to Cape Town, even under the additional

 burden that he was planning to put into it.

 Jan Cheroot ambled across to Zouga and took the other handle of the

 chest, ready to boost it up into the body of the cart.

 "Wait," Zouga told him. "That first." And he pointed to the roughly-hewn

 block of blue mottled rock that lay below the camel-thorn tree.

 "My mother -" Jan Cheroot gaped. "This I don't believe.

 In twenty-two years I've seen you do some stupid crazy things Zouga

 strode across to the block of blue ground that Ralph had brought up from

 the Devil's Own and put his foot on it. "We'll hoist it up with the

 block and tackle."

 He glanced at the sturdy branch above his head from which the sheave

 block and manila rope hung. "And we'll back the cart up under it."

 "That's it!" Jan Cheroot sat down on the chest and folded his arms.

 "This time I refuse. Once before I broke my back for you, but that was

 when I was young and stupid."

 "Come on, Jan Cheroot, you are wasting time."

 "What do you want with that, piece of ugly bloody stone? With another

 piece of thundering nonsense."

 "I have lost the bird, I need a household god."

 "I have heard of someone putting up a monument to a brave man, or a

 great battle, but to put up a stone to stupidity," Jan Cheroot mourried.

 "Back the cart up."

 "I refuse, this time I refuse. I won't do it. Not for anything. Not for

 any price."

 "When we get it loaded, you can have a bottle of smoke all to yourself

 to celebrate."

 Jan Cheroot sighed, and stood up. "That's my price."

 He shook his head and came across to stand beside Zouga. He glared at

 the block of blue stone venomously.

 "But don't expect me to like it."

 Zouga chuckled, for the first time in weeks, and in an unusual display

 of affection he put one arm around Jan Cheroot's shoulders.

 "Now that you have something to hate again, just think how happy it will

 make you," he said.

 "You have been drinking," Zouga said, and Ralph tossed his hat into the

 corner and agreed.

 "Yes, I have had a beer or two." He went to the black iron stove and

 warmed his hands. "I would have had more, if I had had the money."

 "i have been waiting for you," Zouga went on, and Ralph turned back to

 him truculently.

 "i give you every hour of my day, Papa, let me have a little time at the

 end of it."

 "i have something of great importance to tell you," Zouga nodded to the

 deal chair facing him. "Sit down, Ralph."

 Zouga rubbed his eyes with forefinger and thumb as he collected his

 words. He had tried so often in the last days to find an easy way to

 tell Ralph that it was over, that they were destitute, that all that

 toil and heartbreak had been in vain, but there was no easy way. There

 were only the stark hard words of reality.

 He dropped his hand, and looked at his son, and then slowly and

 carefully he told him, and when he had finished he waited for Ralph to

 speak. Ralph had not moved during the long recital, and now he stared at

 Zouga stonily.

 Zouga was forced to speak again. "We shall leave in the morning. Jan

 Cheroot and I have loaded the number 2

 wagon and we shall need all the mules, double team it's a long haul."

 Again he waited, but there was still no reaction.

 "You will be wondering where we are going and what we shall do. Well,

 once we get back to the Cape we still have the Harkness cottage."

 "You gambled it all." Ralph spoke at last. "Without telling me. You,

 you, who are always preaching to me about gambling, and honesty."

 "Ralph!"

 "It wasn't yours, it belonged to all of us."

 "You are drunk," Zouga said flatly.

 "All these years I have listened to your promises. We shall go north,

 Ralph." He mimicked Zouga with a sudden savagery in his tone. "It's for

 all of us, Ralph. It's yours to share. There is a land waiting for us,

 Ralph. It will be yours as well as mine, Ralph., "It's not over, I still

 have the concession. When we get back to Cape Town-, "You, not me."

 Ralph's voice was flat, angry. "You go back to Cape Town. Go dream your

 old man's dreams. I am sick of them., "You dare to use that tone to me?"

 "Yes, I dare. And by God, I'll dare more than that. I'll dare what you

 are too weak or afraid to dare"

 "You insolent and stupid puppy!"

 "You toothless old dog!"

 Zouga threw himself half across the table, and his right arm lashed out.

 He caught Ralph open-handed across the face, and the crack of palm on

 flesh was stunning as a pistol shot.

 Ralph's head snapped back, and then slowly he brought it upright again.

 "That," he said, "is the last time you will strike me, ever."

 He stood up and strode towards the door, and there he turned. "Go dream

 your dreams I will go live mine out."

 "Go then," said Zouga, and the scar on his cheek was glassy and white as

 ice. "Go and be damned to you., "Remember I took nothing with me, Papa,

 not even your blessing," said Ralph, and stepped out into the night.

 Bazo woke instantly at the touch on his cheek, and reached for the

 assegai at his side, his eyes wide in the faint glow of the ashes. A

 hand closed on his wrist, holding his spear hand from the weapon, and a

 voice spoke softly above him.

 "Do you remember the road to Matabeleland, O Prince of Kurnalo?"

 It took Bazo a moment to gather his wits from where sleep had scattered

 them.

 "I remember every running ford and every green hill, every sweet

 watering place along the way," he whispered back, "as clearly as I

 remember my father's voice and my Mother's laughter."

 "Roll up your sleeping-mat, Bazo, the Axe, and show me the road," said

 Ralph.

 Diamond Lil did not smile so readily these days, not since the tooth

 that held the diamond had turned a dingy grey as the root died, and

 began to ache until Lil wept with the little explosion of agony against

 the top of her skull. The travelling dentist from the Cape had pulled

 the tooth and drained the virulent abscess beneath it.

 Relief had been immediate, but it left a black gap in her smile.

 She had put on flesh also, the consequence of good food and those little

 nips of gin which bolstered her day.

 Her breasts, always generous, had lost their individual definition and

 the cleavage that showed above the richly embroidered bodice was no

 longer a deeply sculptured crevasse but a thin line where abundant flesh

 packed against flesh.

 The hand that held the bone china teacup was pudgy and dimpled over the

 knuckles, the rings that adorned each plump little finger had sunk into

 the flesh, but the diamonds and rubies and emeralds sparkled in a royal

 show of Lil's wealth.

 Her hair was still lustrous gold, and crimped into long dangling

 ringlets with the hot-iron. Her skin was still smooth and rich as Devon

 cream, except around the eyes where it was just beginning to crack into

 little spider webs of lines.

 She sat at the corner of the verandah, on the second floor above the

 street, where the eaves of the roof were of intricate white wrought-iron

 mouldings, pretty as Madeira lace. Although there were other

 double-storeyed buildings in Kimberley these days, not even the offices

 of the Central Diamond Company across the wide unpaved street boasted

 such affluent adornment.

 Lil's chair was high-backed, and magnificently carved in dark red teak

 by oriental craftsmen, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory and carried

 across the eastern oceans by the tall ships of the now long departed

 Dutch East India Company. It had cost her two hundred pounds, but from

 this throne she could watch every movement on the main thoroughfares

 that fed into Market Square, could sense the pulse of the diamond city,

 could check each coming and going, the scurry of a buyer with a good

 scent in his nostrils, the swagger of a digger who had turned up a

 bright one. She could watch the front of the four canteens around the

 square, all of which she now owned, and judge the volume of trade going

 through their doors.

 Similarly, she could glance to her left, down De Beers Road to the

 red-brick cottage behind its white picket fence and discreet sign,

 "French Dressmakers. Haute Couture. Six Continental Seamstresses.

 Specialities for individual tastes." Business was always brisk there

 from noon to midnight. Her girls seldom lasted the pace for more than

 six months or so, before taking the coach southward again, exhausted but

 considerably richer.

 Lil herself worked her old trade only occasionally, perhaps once or

 twice a week with a favoured "regular", just for old times" sake, and

 because it got her blood going and made her sleep better at night. There

 was too much else that required her constant attention.

 Now she poured fresh tea from the rococo silver pot into the pretty bone

 china cups, hand-painted with pink roses and golden butterflies.

 "How many spoons?" she asked.

 Ralph sat on the cane-back chair opposite her. He smelled of shaving

 soap and cheap eau-de-Cologne. His chin shone with a burnish given it by

 the cut-throat razor, his shirt was so crisply ironed and starched that

 it and crackled at each movement.

 Lil studied him speculatively over the rim of her tea cup.

 "Does the good major know your plans?" she asked quietly, and Ralph

 shook his head. Lil thought on that a while and it gave her a ripple of

 pleasure to have the son of a foundation member of the Kimberley Club

 sitting on her verandah. Son of one of the Kimberley gentlemen who would

 not greet her on the street, who had returned her donation towards the

 new hospital, who had not even replied to her invitation to attend the

 stone-laying ceremony of her new building, oh, the list of humiliations

 was too long to recite now.

 "Why did you not go to your father?" she asked instead.

 "My father is not a rich man." Ralph would not say any more, too loyal

 to explain that Zouga was destitute, that he would soon leave Kimberley

 with a cartload of his meagre possessions. He did not want Lil to know

 that he and his father had turned from each other with harsh words.

 Lil studied his face for a moment, then picked up the handwritten sheet

 of cheap notepaper from the tea tray and glanced down the list and the

 figures.

 "Nine hundred pounds for oxen?"

 "A full span of the biggest and best animals," Ralph explained. "The

 road to the Shashi river is sand veld, heavy going. I want to be able to

 haul a full load, eight thousand pounds weight."

 "Trade goods, fifteen thousand." She looked up at him again.

 "Guns, powder, brandy, beads and limbo cloth."

 "What type of guns?"

 "Tower muskets. Five pounds ten shillings each."

 Lil shook her head. "They have seen the breech-loaders. Your muskets

 won't have much pull."

 "I can't afford breech-loaders, and I wouldn't know where to find a

 load."

 "Ralph dearie, I could hire a bunch of Whitechapel hags to run my

 dressmakers" shop and I could get them cheap.

 But I don't. I pick them young and fresh and pretty. If you think small,

 your profits are small. Don't be cheap, Ralph darling, never be cheap."

 She poured a little gin from the silver flask into the empty teacup

 before she went on. "I can get Martini-Henry rifles but they will cost

 us fifteen hundred more." Lil reached across and dipped her pen in the

 ink-well, then scratched out and re-wrote the figure.

 "Brandy?"

 "Cape Smoke in twenty-gallon casks."

 "I have heard that Lobengula likes Courvoisier cognac, and his sister

 Ningi drinks only Piper-Heidsieck champagne."

 "Another five hundred pounds, at least," Ralph mourned.

 "Three hundred," Lil corrected the list. "I can get it at wholesale

 prices. Now, ammunition, ten thousand rounds?"

 "I'll need at least a thousand for my own account, and the rest to trade

 with the rifles."

 "If Lobengula gives you permission to hunt elephant," Lil corrected.

 "My grandfather is one of his oldest friends; my Aunty Robyn and her

 husband have been at Kharni River Mission for almost twenty years."

 "Yes, I know that you have friends at court, Lil pursed her lips

 approvingly. "But I have heard that the elephant have been shot out

 across the whole of Matabeleland., "The herds have been driven into the

 fly belt on the Zambezi."

 "You cannot take horses into the fly and hunting elephant on foot in the

 fly is not work for a white man."

 "My father hunted on foot, and anyway I cannot afford a horse."

 "All right," she agreed reluctantly, and made a tick on the sheet.

 They worked on for an hour longer, going down the list item by item, and

 then starting again at the head and going over it all once more, Lil

 ticking and scratching with the pen, fining it down by ten pounds here

 and a hundred there, until at last she tossed the pen onto the tea tray,

 and then poured a little more gin into her tea cup and sipped it with a

 genteel flourish, her little finger raised, the spirit slurping softly

 through the gap in the front of her teeth.

 All right," she said again.

 "Does that mean you will lend me the money?"

 "Yes."

 "I don't know what to say." He leaned towards her, young and glowing and

 eager. "Lil, I just don't,"

 "Then don't say anything until you have heard my terms." She smiled

 thinly, without lifting her upper lip.

 "Twenty percent per annum. interest on the loan."

 "Twenty percent!" he gasped. "In God's name, that's usury, Lily!"

 "Exactly," she told him primly. "But let me finish.

 Twenty percent interest and half the profits."

 "And half, Lil, that's not usury, that's highway robbery."

 "Right again," she agreed. "At least you are bright enough to recognize

 it."

 "Can't we just -" he started desperately.

 "No, we cannot. Those are my terms." And Ralph remembered Scipio, his

 falcon, with her beautiful pouting breast and fierce cold eyes.

 "I accept," he said, and though she did not smile with her lips, her

 eyes were suddenly soft and merry.

 "Partners," she murmured, and placed her plump white hand on his

 forearm. His muscles were lean and sinewy, the skin brick-coloured from

 the sun. She stroked it slowly, sensually.

 It only remains to seal our bargain," she told Ralph.

 "Come!" She slid her hand down his arm and twined her fingers into his.

 She led him through the stained-glass doors, and when she drew the

 velvet corded curtains it was cool and dark in the room. She turned back

 to him and reached up to unbutton his shirt at the throat. He stood

 still while she worked her way down slowly to his belt buckle, and then

 she placed one hand, palm down, upon his naked right breast.

 "Ralph," her voice was a husky tremor. "I want you to do something for

 me."

 "What is it?" he asked, and she stood on her tiptoes, placed her lips

 against his ear and told him in a whisper.

 She felt him begin to pull back from under her hand.

 "Partners?" she asked, and he hesitated a moment longer and then stooped

 and picked her up, one arm behind her knees, and carried her to the wide

 brass bed with the patchwork quilt.

 "You will find it less arduous than hunting elephant on foot in the

 fly," she told him, and it was dark enough in the room for her not to

 worry about the missing tooth.

 She lifted her arms above her head, opened her mouth and chuckled in

 delicious anticipation.

 "The good thing about life, dearie, is that you can have whatever you

 want, just as long as you are willing to pay the price," she told him,

 still chuckling.

 "These are not bullocks," Bazo told Ralph. "Each one is the son of a

 snake mated with the ghost of a Mashona dog."

 They were all strong oxen, big-boned, heavy in the shoulder, with wide

 straight horns for strength and even yellow teeth, hand-picked by Bazo,

 who was a Matabele and loved cattle, had lived with the great herds

 since he was old enough to toddle after the calves.

 However, Bazo was not a trek man. He had never worked an eighteen-foot

 wagon, with an eight-thousand pound "load aboard. He had never tried to

 put twentyfour trek oxen into the traces.

 The entire Matabele nation owned only a pair of wheeled vehicles, and

 those belonged to King Lobengula. To Bazo cattle were a store of wealth,

 a source of meat and milk, they were not draught animals. The closest

 that either he or Ralph had ever come to putting a team into the traces

 was working the little two-wheel gravel carts.

 Ralph had assumed that the oxen he had purchased were trained and

 amiable, but within minutes of his and Bazo's first attempt to get them

 into span, the animals sensed their incompetence and became as spooky

 and wild as hunted buffalo.

 it took two hours of wild chasing across the bleak grasslands beyond the

 town limits, two hours of running and cursing and whip-cracking to bring

 the bullocks together and get the yokes upon their necks. Half of them

 were badly winded by then and promptly lay down, and the others backed

 out and turned their great homed heads towards the load, tangling the

 trek chain and plunging the entire span into chaos.

 The excitement had brought out most of the loafers and idlers from the

 canteens on Market Square, though they had enough forethought to bring

 their bottles with them. They formed an appreciative and jovial

 audience, greeting each new effort by Bazo and Ralph with delighted

 guffaws and facetious advice.

 Bazo wiped the sweat from his face and chest, and looked broodingly down

 the dusty road to town.

 "Soon Bakela will hear of this and come to see our disgrace," he said.

 Ralph had not seen his father since that stormy night, but he had

 visited Jordan in his tiny office next door to mister Rhodes in the

 magnificent new Central Diamond Company building on De Beers Street.

 Perhaps Zouga Ballantyne had not yet recovered from the shock of being

 deserted by both his sons, but Jordan said that he had not yet left for

 Cape Town.

 The thought of his father witnessing this humiliating scene brought dark

 blood to Ralph's face, and he fired the long trek whip, at least that

 was one trick he had learned, and bellowed at the span.

 "Nkosana!" There was a salutation at the level of Ralph's elbow, the

 mild tone belied by the mocking title.

 "Nkosi'was a chief, and'nkosana was the condescending diminutive,

 usually reserved for a little white boy, an untried child.

 Ralph turned and glared at the speaker, who went on to explain in the

 same condescending tone. "Only one beast in ten will pull in front." He

 pointed out one of the oxen. "That one there is a lead ox.

 Any man who knows oxen can see that with both his eyes closed."

 He was a little black gnome, not as tall as Ralph's shoulder. His face

 was wrinkled and lined like that of a very old man, his eyes were mere

 slits in the merry smiling folds, but his cap of woolly hair and his

 little goatee beard were unmarred by a single strand of grey, and his

 teeth were even and white, the teeth of a man in his full flowering.

 On his head was the polished black ring of the induna, and about his

 waist was a kilt of wild cat tails. Over that he wore a threadbare

 military-type tunic from which all insignia and buttons had been

 stripped, leaving small punctures in the fabric, some of which had

 enlarged into rents from which the lining peaked coyly. In the pierced

 lobe of one ear, he carried an ivory snuff-box, and in the other lobe a

 snuff spoon of the same material and a toothpick of porcupine quill. The

 language he used was lose to Matabele, but it preserved the ancient

 intonvery classic word structures of Zululand.

 an So when Ralph asked Zulu?" the question was redundant, and the littl

 man shot a contemptuous glance at Bazo "Pure Zulu, not the treacherous

 house of Kumalo, of the traitor Mzilikazi who denied a king and whose

 blood is now so watered by Venda and Tswana and Mashona that they can no

 longer tell you if an ox grows horns on its head or on its testicles."

 Bazo bridled instantly. "Hark!" He cocked his head. "Do I hear a small

 baboon barking his boasts from the top of the kopies?"

 The little Zulu grinned at him mirthlessly, and took the stock whip from

 Ralph's sweaty hands. Then he walked to the tangled span with a jaunty

 step.

 He touched the big black ox on the neck. "Hau, Sathan!" he greeted him,

 and at the same time baptized him "Devil".

 The great ox rolled one eye at him, seemed to recognize his assurance

 and immediately quietened. The little Zulu loosed him and took him

 forward, talking to him easily in a bizarre mixture of Zulu, English and

 the Cape Dutch taal, and chained him into the lead position.

 He went back quickly and pulled the red ox out of the tangle by the rein

 about his horns.

 "Dutchman he named him, for no good reason.

 "Come, you red thunder!"

 And he put him into the lead file beside Sathan and called to them

 quietly.

 "Donsa, Sathan, pull. Pakamisa, Dutchman, pick up the chain!"

 Obediently the pair of bullocks straightened their forelegs and leaned

 forward against the yoke, and a miracle happened. The long heavy silver

 chain from the disselboom came up straight and hard as an iron bar, and

 those animals on the ground were forced to lunge up onto their feet,

 those that had backed out were pulled into the span, horns and heads

 pointing forward. In that moment Ralph learned the single most important

 rule of the open road, keep the chain straight and true, and all else is

 possible.

 Now the little Zulu moved with a deceptively casual air along the double

 rank of bullocks, touching and talking and wheedling.

 "Hey! Fransman, I can see by your wise and beautiful eyes that you were

 born to the wheel!" And the sturdy black and white beast was led back to

 his position at the off-wheel.

 It took ten minutes, and then the Zulu put the long lash into the air.

 It hissed like a black mamba and then snaked forward over the ears of

 the team, not touching a single hair as it fired explosively. The heavy

 wagon jolted, the white canvas tent that covered the rear half of the

 long body shook like the unfurling mainsail of a tall ship and then it

 was rolling away smoothly.

 The Zulu crinkled his eyes at Ralph and called a question. "Yapi?

 Where? Which way?"

 "Yakatol" Northr Ralph shouted back joyously, and despite himself Bazo

 snatched up his war shield and assegai and whirled into a frenzied

 challenge dance, leaping and stabbing at a host of imaginary enemies,

 shouting defiance and ecstasy to all the world.

 The road to the Vaal river was the first leg of the journey, and the

 ruts were axle deep, and red soil raw as a fresh wound, the dust a fog

 in the windless air through which it was just possible to make out the

 horns of the two wheeler bullocks. The dust hid from Ralph his parting

 view of the sprawling town, and its high stagings above the gaping hole

 which had been his home and his prison for so many years, and by the

 time that the other traffic on the road had thinned sufficiently for the

 dust cloud to settle, they had made five miles and the stagings might

 have been merely a distant line of dead thorn trees silhouetted against

 the sunset.

 The little Zulu called to his boy who led the front oxen, and the child

 swung them off the road, and the high rear wheels bumped out of the ruts

 and then crunched through crisp winter grass as the wagon rolled towards

 a spreading umbrella-shaped acacia which would "We their shelter and

 firewood for the night.

 Walking at the front wheel Ralph pondered the two unexpected additions

 to his company.

 The child had come out of the curtain of red dust, naked except for the

 little flap of his mutsha in front, cooking-pot and with the roll of

 sleeping-mat balanced upon his head.

 He had placed these meagre possessions on the tailboard of the wagon and

 then, at a nod and a word from the Zulu, had taken the lead rein and

 plodded solemnly ahead of the span, his bare feet sinking ankle-deep in

 the powder dust.

 Ralph wondered how old he was, and decided he could not be more than ten

 years of age.

 What is his name?" he asked the Zulu.

 "A name?" The little man shrugged. "It is not important. Call him

 Umfaan, the Boy."

 And what is your name?" Ralph went on, but the little driver suddenly

 had urgent business at the head of the span and perhaps the dust had

 clogged his ears for he did not seem to hear the question.

 Ralph had to ask the question again, after the outspan, when the Zulu

 was squatting beside the cooking fire watching Urnfaan stir the

 maize-meal in the black pot.

 "What is your name?" And the Zulu smiled as though at a secret thought,

 and then he said: "A name can be dangerous, it can hover over a man like

 a vulture and mark him for death. Before the soldiers came to the royal

 kraal at Ulundi, I was called one thing-' Ralph stirred uncomfortably at

 the reference to the battle that had ended the Zulu War. The tattered

 tunic that the Zulu wore had once been the same dark blue as that of the

 Natal police uniform and one of those rents in the faded cloth might

 have been made by the stabbing blade. Lord Chelmsford had sent the Zulu

 king and most of his indunas in chains to the island of Sint Helena,

 where another emperor had died in captivity. However, some of his

 fighting chiefs had escaped from Zululand and now wandered homeless

 exiles across the vast continent. The driver wore the head-ring of an

 induna.

 It was a name which men once spoke carefully, but I have not heard it

 for so long now that I have forgotten it," the Zulu went on, and again

 Ralph wondered if there was a legend still alive amongst the defeated

 Zulu of a little induna, smaller than the tall warriors he commanded and

 wizened far beyond his years, who had led them in that terrible charge

 into the English camp below the Hill of the Little Hand.

 In the firelight Ralph studied the Zulu's tunic again, and he told

 himself that it was unlikely that it had been taken from the corpse of

 an Englishman on that grisly field; yet he shivered briefly although the

 night was warm.

 "Now you have forgotten that name?" he encouraged, and the Zulu crinkled

 his eyes again.

 "Now I am called Isazi, the Wise One, for reasons that should be clear

 even to a Matabele."

 Across the fire Bazo snorted disdainfully, then stood and walked out of

 the firelight, into the darkness where the jackals piped plaintively.

 "My name is Henshaw," Ralph told him. "Will you stay with me and drive

 my wagon all the way?

 "Why not, Little Hawk?"

 "You do not ask where I am going."

 "i need a road." Isazi shrugged. "The one to the north is no longer or

 harder than the road to the south."

 The jackal yipped again, but much closer this time, and Bazo paused,

 changed the assegai to his right hand, and answered the cry, cupping his

 palm over his mouth to give resonance to the sound; and then he moved on

 to where a small stone kopje shone in the moonlight like a pile of

 silver bullion.

 "Bazo!" The greeting was a whisper, soft as the night wind in the pale

 grass, and a shadow stepped from amongst the moon shadows at the base of

 the kopje.

 "Kamuza, my brother." Bazo went to him and embraced him, open hands upon

 his shoulders.

 "i have a stone in my belly, heavy with sorrow at this parting."

 "We will share the road again, one day, we will drink from the beer pot

 and fight with our shoulders touching-" Kamusa answered him quietly.

 "But now we are both upon the king's business."

 Kamuza slipped the thongs that held his kilt in place, and it sagged

 heavily to his knees, leaving him naked.

 "Hurry," he said. "I must return before the curfew bell."

 Since the Diamond Trade Act, blacks were not allowed on the streets of

 Kimberley once the curfew bell had rung.

 "You were not marked by the police?" Bazo asked, as he removed his own

 kilt and changed it with Kamuza.

 "They are everywhere, like pepper ticks in the new spring grass," Kamuza

 grunted. "But I was not followed."

 Bazo weighed the fur kilt in both hands while Kamuza swiftly belted the

 replacement about his own waist.

 "Show me," Bazo said, and Kamuza took the kilt back from his hands and

 spread it on one of the flat moonwashed boulders.

 He picked at the knotted thong that doubled the waistband, and as it

 came undone he opened the secret pouch of soft tanned leather, crusted

 with ceramic trade beads.

 The pouch ran the full length of the wide waistband, the opening

 concealed by the decorative beadwork, and the interior of the long pouch

 was divided into cells, like a wasp's nest.

 In each stitched leather cell nestled a large pebble that glistened with

 a slick soapy sheen in the moonlight.

 "Count them," Kamuza instructed. "Let us agree on the number, and let

 Lobengula, the great Black Elephant, count the same number into his

 mighty hands when you lay the belt before him at the kraal of

 Gubulawayo, the place of killing., Bazo touched each diamond with his

 fingertip, his lips moving silently. "Amashurni amatatu!"

 "Thirty," Kamuza repeated. "It is agreed."

 And they were all large clean stones, the smallest the size of the first

 joint of a man's little finger.

 Bazo tied the kilt about his waist, the fleecy tails of the bat-eared

 fox dangling to his knees.

 "It looks well upon you" Kamuza nodded, and then went on. "Tell

 Lobengula, the Great Elephant, that I am his dog and I grovel in the

 dirt at his feet. Tell him that there will be more of the yellow coins

 and the bright stones. Tell him that his children labour each day in the

 pit, and there will be more, many more. Every man who takes the road

 north will bring him riches." Kamuza stepped forward and laid his right

 hand on Bazo's shoulder.

 "Go in peace, Bazo the Axe."

 "Stay in peace, my brother, and may the days disappear like raindrops

 into the desert sand until we smile upon each other once more.

 Isazi put the span to its first real test in the drift of the Vaal

 river.

 The grey waters were barely flowing, but they covered the hubs of the

 tall iron-shod rear wheels, and the bottom was broken waterwom rock that

 clanked and rolled under pressure, threatening to jam the wheels and

 denying purchase to the driving hooves of the span.

 Yet they ran the wagon through under load, leaning into the yokes, noses

 down almost touching the surface of the river, and the wagon tent

 jolting and rocking behind them.

 Until, under the steep cut up the far bank, the rear wheels stuck and

 the wagon bed tilted alarmingly. Then Isazi showed his expertise. He

 swung the team wide, giving them a run at it, and when he called to his

 leaders and burst the air asunder with the thirty-foot lash that tapered

 to the thickness of twine they went in stifflegged, jerked her clear,

 and took the load out of the river bed at a canter, while Isazi pranced

 and sang their praises and even Umfaan smiled.

 Ralph ordered an early outspan under the tall trees on the far bank, for

 there was good grass and unlimited water, and the next leg of the road

 to his grandfather Moffat's mission station was a hundred and twenty

 miles, hard and dry going all the way.

 "See, Little Hawk," Isazi was still rapturous over the performance of his

 span. "- See how clever they are. They pick a good patch of grass and

 eat it up; they do not wander from patch to patch, wasting their time

 and strength, as lesser beasts might do. Soon they will settle with the

 cud, and in the morning they will be strong and rested.

 Each of them is a prince among cattle!"

 "From tomorrow we begin night marches," Ralph ordered, and Isazi's smile

 faded and he looked severe.

 "I had already made that decision," he said sternly, "but where did you

 ever hear of night marching, Little Hawk?

 It is a trick of the wise ones."

 "Count me amongst them then, Isazi," Ralph told him solemnly, and walked

 out of camp to find a place upon the riverbank from which to enjoy the

 sunset.

 Here the banks of the Vaal were churned into mounds and irregular

 hollows, the old river workings, picked over by the first diggers and

 now abandoned and overgrown.

 It was a mass burial ground of men's dreams, and looking upon it Ralph's

 high spirits that had buoyed this first day's trek upon the open road

 began to evaporate.

 It was the first day in his life that Ralph had been free and completely

 his own man. Walking at the wheel of his own wagon, he had woven dreams

 of fortune. He had imagined his wagons, fifty, a hundred, carrying his

 cargoes across the continent. He had seen them coming south again,

 loaded with ivory and bars of yellow gold.

 He had seen in his mind's eye the wide lands, the herds of elephant, the

 masses of native cattle, the riches that lay out there in the north

 beckoning to him, warbling the siren call in his ears.

 He had been carried so high that now as his spirits turned they fell as

 low. He looked at the deserted diggings on the banks across the river,

 the vain scratchings where other men had attempted to turn this great

 brown slumbering giant of a continent to their own account.

 Then suddenly he felt very small and lonely, and afraid. His thoughts

 turned to his father, and his spirits plunged lower still as he recalled

 the last words he had spoken.

 "Go then! Go and be damned to you."

 That was not the way he had wanted it. Zouga Ballantyne had been the

 central figure in his life until that day.

 A colossus who overshadowed each of his actions, each of his thoughts.

 Much as he had chafed under the shackles that his duty to his father had

 placed upon him, much as he had resented every one of his decisions

 being made for him, each of his actions ordered, yet now he felt as

 though the greater part of himself had been removed by some drastic

 surgery of the soul.

 Until this moment he had not really thought of losing his father, he had

 not let the memory of their brutal parting cut him too deeply. Now

 suddenly this dirty slow river was the barrier between him and the life

 he had known. There was no going back, now or ever. He had lost his

 father and his brother and Jan Cheroot and he was alone and lonely.

 He felt the acid tears scald his eyelids.

 His vision wavered, played him tricks, for across the wide river course,

 on the far bank was the figure of a horseman.

 The horseman slouched easily in the saddle, one hand on his hip, the

 elbow cocked; and the set of the head upon the broad shoulders was

 unmistakable.

 Slowly Ralph came to his feet, staring in disbelief, and then suddenly

 he was running and sliding down the sheer bank and splashing waist deep

 through the grey waters of the ford. Zouga swung down from Tom's back

 and ran forward to meet Ralph as he came up the bank.

 Then both of them stopped and stared at each other.

 They had not embraced since the night of Aletta's funeral, and they

 could not bring themselves to do so now, though longing was naked in the

 eyes of both of them.

 "I could not let you go, not like that," said Zouga, but Ralph had no

 reply, for his throat had closed.

 ,"It is time for you to go out on your own," Zouga nodded his golden

 beard. "Past time. You are like an eaglet that has outgrown the nest. I

 realized that before you did, Ralph, but I did not want it to be. That

 is why I spoke so cruelly."

 Zouga picked up Tom's reins and the pony nudged him affectionately.

 Zouga stroked his velvety muzzle.

 "There are two parting gifts that I have for you." He placed the reins

 in Ralph's hand. "That is one," he said evenly, but the green shadows in

 his eyes betrayed how dearly that gesture had cost him. "The other is in

 Tom's saddle-bag. It's a book of notes. Read them at your leisure. You

 may find them of interest, even of value."

 Still Ralph could not speak. He held the reins awkwardly, and blinked

 back the stinging under his eyelids.

 "There is one other small gift, but it has no real value.

 It is only my blessing."

 "That is all that I really wanted," whispered Ralph.

 It was six hundred miles to the Shashi river, to the border of

 Matabeleland.

 Isazi inspanned at dusk each evening and they trekked through the cool

 of the night. When the moon went down and it was utterly dark, then

 Umfaan threw the lead rein over Dutchman's head, and the big black ox

 put his nose down and stayed on the track, like a hunting dog on the

 spoor, until the first glimmering of dawn signalled the outspan.

 During a good night's trek they made fifteen miles but when the going

 was heavy with sand they might make only five miles.

 During the days, while the cattle grazed or chewed the cud in the shade,

 Ralph saddled up Tom and, with Bazo running beside his stirrup, they

 hunted.

 They found herds of buffalo along the banks of the Zouga river, the

 river on whose bank Ralph's father had been born, big herds, two hundred

 beasts together.

 The herd bulls were huge, bovine and bald with age, their backs crusted

 with the mud from the wallow, the spread of their arnioured heads wider

 than the stretch of a man's arms, the tips of the polished black horns

 rising into symmetrical crescents like the points of the sickle moon,

 while the bosses above their broad foreheads were massively crenellated.

 they ran them down, and Tom loved those wild flying chases every bit as

 much as his rider.

 They chased the ghostly grey gemsbuck over the smoking red dunes, and in

 the thorn country they hunted the stiff-legged giraffe and sent their

 grotesque but stately bodies plunging and sliding to earth with the

 crack of rifle fire, the long graceful necks twisting in the agony of

 death like that of a swan.

 They baited with the carcasses of zebra, and the coppery red Kalahari

 lions came to the taint of blood, and Tom stood down their charge.

 Though he trembled and snorted and rolled his eyes at the shockingly

 offensive cat smell, he stood for the shot which Ralph had to take from

 the saddle, aiming between the fierce yellow eyes or into the gape of

 rose-pink jaws starred with white fangs.

 Thus, fifty days out from Kimberley they came at last to the Shashi

 river, and when they had made the crossing Bazo was on his native soil.

 He put on his war plumes and carrying his shield on his shoulder he

 walked with a new spring and joy in his stride as he led Ralph to a

 hilltop from which to survey the way ahead.

 "See how the hills shine," Bazo whispered with an almost religious

 fervour. And it was true. In the early sunlight the granite tops gleamed

 like precious jewels.

 Soft, dreaming, ruby, delicate sapphires and glossy pearl shaded like a

 peacock tail into a fanfare of colour.

 The hills rolled away, rising gradually towards the high central plateau

 ahead of them, and the valleys were clad with virgin forest.

 "You never saw such trees on the plains around Kimberley," Bazo

 challenged him, and Ralph nodded. They stood on soaring trunks, some

 scaled like the crocodile, others white and smooth as though moulded

 from potter's clay, their tops sailing in traceries of green high above

 the open glades of yellow grass.

 "See, the buffalo herds, thick as cattle."

 There was other game. There were small family groups of grey kudo, pale

 as ghosts, trumpet-eared, the bulls carrying the burden of their long

 black cork-screw horns with studied grace.

 There were clouds of red impala antelope upon the woven silk carpet of

 golden grasses. There were the darkly massive statues of the rhinoceros

 seemingly graven from the solid granite of the hills, and there were

 the noblest antelope of all, the sable antelope, black and imperial as

 the name implied, the long horns curved and cruel as Saladin's scimitar,

 the belly blazing white, the neck of the herd bull arched haughtily as

 he led his lighter coloured females out of the open glade into the cool

 green sanctuary of the forest.

 "Is it not beautiful, Henshaw?" Bazo asked.

 "It is beautiful."

 There was the same awe in Ralph's voice, and a strange unformed longing

 in his throat, a wanting that he knew could never be satisfied, and

 suddenly he understood his own father's obsession with this fair land:

 "My north," as Zouga called it.

 "My north," Ralph whispered, and then, thinking of his father, the next

 question came immediately to mind.

 "Elephant, Indhlovu? There are no elephant, Bazo.

 Where are the herds?"

 "Ask Bakela, your own father," Bazo grunted. "He was the first to come

 for them with the gun, but others followed him, many others. When

 Gandang, my father, son of Mzilikazi the Destroyer, half brother of the

 great black bull Lobengula, when he crossed the Shashi as a child on his

 mother's hip, the elephant herds were black as midnight upon the land

 and their teeth shone like the stars. Now we will find their bones

 growing like white lilies in the forest."

 In the last hours of daylight, when Bazo and Isazi and Umfaan still

 slept to fortify themselves for the. long night's trek, Ralph took the

 leather-bound notebook out of Tom's saddle-bag.

 By now the pages were dog-eared and grubby from the constant perusal to

 which Ralph had subjected it. It was the gift that Zouga Ballantyne had

 given him on the bank of the Vaal river, and the inside cover was

 inscribed: To my son Ralph.

 May these few notes guide your feet northwards, and may they inspire you

 to dare what I have not dared Zouga Ballantyne The first twenty pages

 were filled with hand-drawn sketch maps of those areas of the land

 between the Zambezi and the Limpopo and the Shashi rivers over which

 Zouga, and before him the old hunter Tom Harkness, had travelled.

 Often the map was headed by the notation: Copied from the original map

 drawn by Tom Harkness in 1851.

 Ralph recognized the unique value of this information, but there was

 more. Page 21 of the notebook bore a terse explanation in Zouga's

 precise spiky hand: In the winter of 1860 while on trek from Tete on the

 Zambezi River, to King Mzilikazi's town at Thabas Indunas I slew 216

 elephant. Lacking porters or wagons I had perforce to cache the ivory

 along my route.

 During my later expeditions to Zambezia, I was able to recover the bulk

 of this treasure.

 There remain fifteen separate caches, containing eighty-four good tusks,

 which I was for various reasons unable to reach.

 Here follows a list of these caches with directions and navigational

 notes to reach them:

 And on page 22 the list began:

 Cache made 16 September 1860.

 Position by sun sight and dead reckoning300 5 5" E. 170 45" S. A granite

 kopje which I named Mount Hampden. The largest for many miles in any

 direction. Distinct peak with three turrets. On the northern face

 between two large ficus natalensis trees there is a rock fissure.

 18large tusks total weight 426 pounds placed in fissure and covered with

 small boulders.

 The current price of ivory was twenty-two shillings and sixpence the

 pound, and Ralph had added the total weights of the ivory still lying

 out in the veld. It exceeded three thousand pounds: a great fortune

 waiting merely to be picked up and loaded on his wagon.

 Still that was not all. The final entry in the notebook read: In my book

 A Hunter's Odyssey I described my discovery of the deserted city which

 the tribes call "zimbabwe a name which can be translated as "The Grave

 yard of the Kings".

 I described how I was able to glean fragments of gold from the inner

 courtyards of the walled ruins, a little over 50 pounds weight of the

 metal in all. I also carried away with me one of the ancient bird-like

 statues. A souvenir which has been with me from that time until very

 recently.

 It is possible that there is precious metal which I overlooked, and

 certainly there remain within the walled enclosures six more bird

 carvings which I was unable to bring away.

 In Hunter's Odyssey I deliberately refrained from giving the location of

 the ancient ruin. As far as I know, it has not been rediscovered by any

 other white Man while a superstitious taboo forbids any African to

 venture into the area.

 Thus there is every reason to believe the statues lie where last I laid

 eyes upon them.

 Bearing in mind that my chronometer had not been checked for many months

 when these observations were made, I now give you the position of the

 city as calculated by myself at that time.

 The ruins lie on the same longitude as the kopje which I named Mount

 Hampden on 30" 55" E., but 175 miles farther south at 20" 0" S. There

 followed a detailed description of the route that Zouga had taken to

 reach Zimbabwe, and then the notes ended with this statement: mister

 Rhodes offered the sum of 1000 pounds for the statue which I rescued.

 The following noon Ralph took the brass sextant from its travel-battered

 wooden case. He had bid ten shillings for it at one of the Saturday

 auctions in the Market Square of Kimberley, and Zouga had checked its

 accuracy against his own instrument and showed Ralph how to shoot an

 "apparent local noon" to establish his latitude. Ralph had no

 chronometer to fix a longitude, but he could guess at it from his

 proximity to the confluence of the Shashi and Macloutsi rivers.

 Half an hour's work with Brown's Nautical Almanac gave him an

 approximate position to compare with the one that his father had given

 in the notes for Zimbabwe.

 "Less than one hundred and fifty miles," he muttered to himself, still

 squatting over his father's map, but staring eastwards.

 "Six thousand pounds just lying there," Ralph said quietly, and shook

 his head in wonder. It was a sum difficult to imagine.

 He packed away the sextant, rolled the map and went to join the

 slumbering trio beneath the wagon for what remained of the drowsy

 afternoon.

 Ralph woke to a stentorian challenge that seemed to echo off the granite

 cliffs above the camp.

 "Who dares take the king's road? Who chances the wrath of Lobengula?"

 Ralph scrambled out from under the wagon. The day was almost gone, the

 sun flamed in the top branches of the forest, and the chill of evening

 prickled his bare chest. He stared about him wildly, but some instinct

 warned him not to reach for the loaded rifle propped against the rear

 wheel of the wagon. Below the trees the shadows were alive, blackness

 moved on blackness, dusky rank on rank.

 "Stand forth, white man," the voice commanded.

 "Speak your business, lest the white spears of Lobengula turn to red."

 The speaker stepped forward, out of the forest to the edge of the camp.

 Behind him the ring of dappled black and white war-shields overlapped,

 edge to edge in an unbroken circle surrounding the entire outspan, the

 "bull's borns" of the Matabele fighting formations.

 There were many hundreds of warriors in that deadly circle, and the

 broad stabbing spears were held in an underhand grip so that the silver

 blades pointed forward at belly height between the shields.

 Above each shield the frothy white ostrich-feather headdress trembled

 and swayed in the small evening breeze, the only movement in that silent

 multitude.

 The man who had broken the ranks was one of the most impressive figures

 that Ralph had ever seen. The high crown of ostrich feathers turned him

 into a towering giant. The breadth of his chest was enhanced by the

 flowering bunches of white cowtails that he wore on his upper arms. Each

 separate tail had been awarded him by his king for an act of valour, and

 he wore them not only on his arms but around his knees also.

 His broad intelligent face was lightly seamed by the passage of the

 years, as though by the chisel of a skilled carpenter, forming a frame

 for the dark penetrating sparkle of his eyes; yet his chest was covered

 with the elastic muscle of a man only just reaching his prime and his

 lean belly rippled with the same muscle as he moved forward.

 His legs were long and straight under the kilt of black spotted civet

 tails, and the war-rattles bound about his ankles rustled softly at each

 pace.

 "I come in peace," Ralph called, hearing the catch in his own voice.

 "Peace is a word that sits as lightly on the tongue as the sunbird sits

 upon the open flower, and as lightly does it fly., There was movement

 beside Ralph, and Bazo came from his bed under the wagon.

 "Baba!" Bazo said reverently, and clapped his hands softly at the level

 of his face. "I see you Baba! The sun has been dark all these years, but

 now it shines again, my father."

 The tall warrior started, took a swift pace forward, and for an instant

 a wonderful smile bloomed upon the sculptured ebony of his face; then he

 checked himself, and drew himself up to his full height again, his

 expression grave, but the feathers of his headdress trembled and there

 was a light in his tar-bright eyes that he could not extinguish. Still

 clapping his hands, stooping with respect, Bazo went forward and knelt

 on one knee.

 "Gandang, son of Mzilikazi, your eldest son, Bazo the Axe, brings you

 the greetings and the duty of his heart."

 Gandang looked down at his son, and at that moment nothing else existed

 for him in all the world.

 "Baba, I ask your blessing."

 Gandang placed his open hand on the short cropped fleecy cap of the

 young man's head.

 "You have my blessing," he said quietly, but the hand lingered, the

 gesture of blessing became a caress, and then slowly and reluctantly

 Gandang withdrew the hand.

 "Rise up, my son."

 Bazo was as tall as his father, and for a quiet moment they looked

 steadily into each other's eyes. Then Gandang turned, and flirted his

 war-shield, a gesture of dismissal, and instantly the still and silent

 ring of warriors turned their own shields edge on, so that they seemed

 to fold like a woman's fan, and with miraculous swiftness they split

 into small platoons and disappeared into the forest.

 Within seconds it seemed as though they had never been. Only Gandang and

 his son still remained at the edge of the camp, and then they too turned

 and slipped away like two shadows thrown by the moving branches of the

 mopani trees.

 Isazi came out from under the wagon, naked except for the sheath of

 hollowed gourd covering the head of his penis, and he spat in the fire

 with a thoughtful and philosophical air.

 "Chaka was too soft," he said. "He should have followed the traitor

 Mzilikazi, and taught him good manners. The Matabele are upstart

 bastards, with no breeding and less respect."

 "Would a Zulu induna have acted that way?" Ralph asked him, as he

 reached for his shirt.

 "No," Isazi admitted. "He would certainly have stabbed us all to death.

 But he would have done so with greater respect and better manners."

 "What do we do now?" Ralph asked.

 "We wait," said Isazi. "While that vaunting dandy, who should wear the

 induna headring not on his forehead but around his neck like the collar

 of a dog decides what should become of us." Isazi spat in the fire

 again, this time with contempt. "We may have long to wait, a Matabele

 thinks at the same speed as a chameleon runs., And he crawled back under

 the wagon and pulled the kaross over his head.

 in the night the cooking fires from the camp of the Matabele impi down

 the valley glowed amber and russet on the tops of the mopani, and every

 time the fickle night wind shifted, the deep melodious sound of their

 singing carried down to Ralph's outspan.

 in the grey dawn Bazo appeared again, as silently as he had disappeared.

 "My father, Gandang, induna of the Inyati Regiment, summons you to

 indaba, Henshaw."

 Ralph bridled immediately. He could almost hear his father's voice.

 "Remember always that you are an Englishman, my boy, and as such you are

 a direct representative of your Queen in this land."

 The reply rose swiftly to Ralph's lips: "If he wants to see me, tell him

 to come to me." But he held the words back.

 Gandang was an induna of two thousand, the equivalent of a general. He

 was a son of an emperor and half brother of a king, the equivalent of an

 English duke, and this was the soil of Matabeleland on which Ralph was

 an intruder.

 "Tell your father I will come directly., And he went to fetch a fresh

 shirt and the spare pair of boots, which he had taught Umfaan to polish.

 "You are Henshaw, the son of Bakela," Gandang sat on a low stool,

 intricately carved from a single piece of ebony. Ralph had been offered

 no seat, and he squatted down on his heels. "And Bakela is a man." Arid

 there was a murmur of assent and a rustle of plumes as the massed ranks

 of warriors about them stirred.

 "Tshedi is your great-grandfather, and in the king's name has given you

 the road to Gubulawayo. Tshedi has the right to do so, for he is

 Lobengula's friend and he was Mzilikazi's friend before that."

 Ralph made no reply. He realized that these statements about his

 great-grandfather, old Doctor Moffat, whose Matabele name was Tshedi,

 were for the waiting warriors rather than for himself. Gandang was

 explaining his decision to his impi.

 "But for what reason do you take the road to the king's kraal?"

 "I come to see this fair land of which my father has told me."

 "Is that all?" Gandang asked.

 "No, I come also to trade, and if the king is kind enough to give me his

 word, then I wish to hunt the elephant."

 Gandang did not smile, but there was a sparkle in his dark eyes. "It is

 not for me to ask which you desire most, Henshaw. The view from a

 hilltop, or a wagonload of ivory."

 Ralph suppressed his own smile, and remained silent.

 "Tell me, son of Bakela, what goods do you bring with you to trade?"

 "I have twenty bales of the finest beads and cloth."

 Gandang made a gesture of disinterest. "Women's fripperies," he said.

 "I have fifty cases of liquor, of the kind preferred by King Lobengula

 and his royal sister Ningi."

 This time the line of Gandang's mouth thinned and hardened. "If it were

 my word on it, I would force those fifty cases of poison down your own

 throat." His voice was almost a whisper, but then he spoke again in a

 natural tone. "Yet Lobengula, the Great Elephant, will welcome your

 load., And then he was silent and yet expectant. Ralph realized that

 Bazo would have reported to his father every detail of his little

 caravan.

 "I have guns," he said simply, and suddenly there was an intense hunger

 in Gandang's expression. His eyes narrowed slightly and his lips parted.

 "Sting the mamba with his own venom," he whispered, and beside him Bazo

 started. It was the Umlimo's prophecy that his father had repeated, and

 he wondered that Gandang could have uttered it in the presence of one

 who was not Matabele.

 "I do not understand," Ralph said.

 "No matter." Gandang waved it away with a graceful pink-palmed hand.

 "Tell me, Henshaw. Are these guns of yours of the kind that swallow a

 round ball through the mouth and place the life of the man that fires

 them in more danger than the man who stands in front?"

 Ralph smiled at the description of the ancient trade muskets, many of

 which had survived Wellington's Iberian campaign and some of which had

 seen action at Bull Run and Gettysburg before being shipped out to

 Africa in trade; the barrel worn paper thin, the priming pan and hammer

 mechanism so badly abused that each shot fired threatened to tear the

 head off any marksman bold enough to press the trigger.

 "These guns are the finest," he replied.

 "With twisting snakes in the barrel?" Gandang asked, and it took Ralph a

 moment to recognize the allusion to the rifling in the barrel.

 He nodded. "And the barrel opens to take the bullet."

 "Bring me one of these guns," Gandang ordered.

 "The price of each is one large tusk of ivory," Ralph told him, and

 Gandang stared at him impassively for a moment longer. Then he smiled

 for the first time, but the smile was sharp as the edge of his stabbing

 spear.

 "Now," he said. "I truly believe that you have come to Matabeleland to

 see how tall stand the trees."

 "I am leaving you now, Henshaw," Bazo said, without lifting his eyes

 from the thick yellow tusk that he had brought from his father in

 payment for the rifle.

 "We knew it was not for ever," Ralph answered him.

 "The bond between us is for ever," Bazo replied, "but now I must go to

 join my regiment. My father will leave ten of his men to escort and

 guide you to Gubulawayo where King Lobengula awaits you."

 "Is Lobengula. not at Thabas Indunas, the Hills of the Chiefs?" Ralph

 asked.

 "It is the same kraal, in the days of Mzilikazi it was Thabas Indunas,

 but now Lobengula has changed the name to Gubulawayo, the Place of

 Killing."

 "I see," Ralph nodded, and then waited for it was clear that Bazo had

 more to say.

 "Henshaw. You did not hear me say this, but the ten warriors who will go

 with you to the king's kraal are not only for your protection. Do not

 look too closely at the stones and rocks along the road, and do not dig

 a hole, even to bury your own excrement, else Lobengula will hear of it

 and believe that you are searching for the shiny pebbles and yellow

 metal. That is death."

 "I understand."

 "Henshaw, while you are in Matabeleland, give up your habit of

 travelling at night. Only magicians and sorcerers go abroad in the

 darkness, mounted on the backs of the hyena. The king will hear of it,

 and that is death."

 "Yes."

 "Do not hunt the hipopotamus. They are the king's beasts. To kill one,

 is death."

 "I understand., "When you enter the presence of the king, be sure that

 your head is always below that of the Great Elephant, even if You must

 crawl on your belly., "You have told me this already."

 "I will tell you again" Bazo nodded. "And I will tell you once more that

 the maidens of Matabeleland are the most beautiful in all the world.

 They light a raging fire in a man's loins, but to take one of them

 without the king's word is death for both man and maiden."

 For an hour they squatted opposite each other, casionally taking a

 little snuff or passing one of Ralph's cheap black cheroots back and

 forth, but always with Bazo talking and Ralph listening.

 Bazo spoke quietly, insistently, reciting the names of the most powerful

 indunas, the governors of each of atabeleland's military provinces,

 listing those who had M the king's ear and should be treated with care,

 explaining how a man should conduct himself so as not to give offence,

 advising how much tribute each would ask and finally accept, trying to

 give it all to Ralph in these last minutes, and then finally glancing up

 at the sky.

 "It is time." He stood. "Go in peace, Henshaw." And he walked out of

 Ralph's camp without looking back.

 As Ralph's wagon, with its escort of warriors, climbed out of the low

 veld, so the heat abated. The air was so sweet and clean that it made

 Ralph feel as though the blood sparkled and fizzed in his veins.

 Isazi was infected by the same elation. He composed new verses to sing

 to his bullocks, lauding their strength and beauty, and occasionally he

 slipped in a reference to a "feathered baboon" or some other fanciful

 and unlovely creature, while rolling his eyes significantly in the

 direction of the bodyguard of Matabele warriors that preceded the wagon.

 The forests thinned as they climbed, becoming open woodlands of shapely

 mimosa trees, the paper-thin bark peeling away to reveal the clear

 smooth underbark, and the branches loaded with the fluffy yellow flower

 heads.

 The grass cloaked the undulating earth, thick and sweet, so that the

 bullocks fleshed out after the enervating heat of the lowlands, and they

 stepped out with a new will against the yoke.

 This was cattle country, the heartland of the Matabele, and they began

 to encounter the herds. Huge assemblies of multi-coloured animals, red

 and white and black and all the combinations of those colours. Smaller

 than the big Cape bullocks, but sturdy and agile as wild game, the bulls

 with the hump and heavy dewlap of their Egyptian forebears.

 Isazi looked at them covetously, and came back to Ralph at the forewheel

 of the wagon to say: "Such were the herds of Zululand, before the

 soldiers came."

 "There must be hundreds of thousands, and they would be worth twenty

 pounds a head."

 "Will you never learn, Little Hawk." Isazi still returned to the

 diminutive when one of Ralph's stupidities exasperated him. "A man

 cannot place a value on a fine breeding cow or a beautiful woman in

 little round coins."

 "Yet, as a Zulu you pay for a Wife."

 "Yes, Little Hawk." Isazi's voice was weary with Ralph's obtuse

 arguments. "A Zulu pays for a wife; but he pays in cattle, not in coin,

 which is what I have been telling you all along." And he ended the

 discussion with a thunderous clap of his long trek whip.

 Small family kraals dotted the wide savannabs, each built around its own

 cattle stockade and fortified against predators, or against marauders.

 As they passed the settlements of thatched beehive-shaped huts, the

 little naked herd boys scampered to alert the kraals, and then the women

 came out, bare-legged and naked-breasted, balancing the clay pots and

 hollowed gourds upon their heads, an exercise that gave them a stately

 dignity of movement.

 Then Ralph's bodyguard of warriors from Gandang's regiment paused to

 refresh themselves on the tart and bubbling millet beer or on the

 delicious soured milk, thick as yoghurt. The young women examined Ralph

 With bold and curious eyes. Totally unaware that he spoke the language,

 they speculated about him in such ntimate terms that his ears turned

 bright red, and he challenged them: "It is easy to speak the lion's name

 and question his size and his strength when he is hidden in the long

 grass, but will you be so brave when he raises himself in his rage to

 confront you face to face?"

 The silence, stunned and incredulous, lasted only a second, then they

 covered their mouths and shrieked with delighted laughter, before the

 bravest came to wheedle coquettishly for a strip of ribbon or a handful

 of pretty beads.

 As they drew closer to the stronghold of Lobengula, so they passed the

 great regimental kraals. Each of them was fifty miles from its

 neighbours, a day's travel at the rate of a marching impi, the

 ground-devouring trot that they could maintain for hour after hour.

 Here there was no exchange of greeting and banter.

 The warriors came swarming from the kraal like bees from a disturbed

 hive, and they lined each side of the track and settled into a deathly

 stillness, watching Ralph's wagon pass in total silence. There was a

 blankness in their eyes, the inscrutable gaze wich the lion watches his

 prey before he begins the stalk.

 Ralph passed between the massed ranks at a measured walk, sitting very

 upright on Tom's back, without deigning to glance left or right at the

 silent menacing ranks; but when they had passed out into the open

 grasslands again, his shirt was wet under the arms and between his

 shoulder blades, and there was a catch in his breathing and a chill in

 the pit of his belly.

 The Khami was one of the last wide rivers to cross before reaching the

 king's kraal at Gubulawayo.

 As soon as Ralph saw the denser and greener growth of mimosa trees that

 marked the river course, he threw the saddle on Tom's back and trotted

 ahead to survey the drift.

 Ports had been cut into the steep sides of the river banks to enable a

 wagon to enter the watercourse, and the sandbank between two tranquil

 green pools had been corduroyed with carefully selected branches, cut to

 length and laid side by side across the softer going to prevent the

 narrow ironshod wheels from sinking.

 Whoever had travelled this road ahead of Ralph had saved him a great

 deal of trouble. Ralph knee-haltered Tom on a patch of good grass and

 went down into the riverbed to check the crossing. It was obviously many

 months since the last wagon had crossed, and Ralph worked his way slowly

 over the corduroyed pathway, repairing the damage that time had wrought,

 kicking the dried branches back into place and refilling the hollows

 scooped by water and wind beneath them.

 It was furnace-hot in the riverbed and the white sand bounced the sun's

 rays back at him so that by the time he reached the far bank he was

 sweating heavily, and he threw himself down in the shade of one of the

 trees and wiped his face and arms with his scarf moistened in the waters

 of the river pool.

 Quite suddenly he was aware of being watched, and he scrambled quickly

 to his feet. There was someone standing on the bank above him at the

 head of the roadway.

 With a shock of disbelief, he realized that it was a girl a white girl,

 and she was dressed all in white: a loose cotton shift that reached to

 her ankle just above her bare feet. It was caught in at the waist with a

 ribbon of blue, and she was so slim that Ralph felt he could lift her

 with one hand.

 The dress was buttoned with mother of pearl to the throat and the

 sleeves reached to her elbows; but the cotton had been washed, ironed

 and bleached so often that it seemed to have less substance than

 gossamer, and the light was behind her.

 Ralph could clearly see the outline of her legs under the skirt, and it

 shocked him again so his breathing tripped. Her legs were long and so

 delicately shaped that he had to exercise his will to tear his eyes from

 them. With his heart still pounding he looked at her face.

 It was pale as bone china, and seemed almost translucent, so that he

 thought he could see the sheen of fragile bone beneath the skin.

 Her hair was pale shining silver blond, brushed into a fine cascade that

 flowed over her shoulders, and shimmered and shook with each breath that

 lifted the tiny girlish breasts under the thin cotton.

 There were flowers on her brow, and a garland of them over her shoulders

 and about the brim of the wide straw hat that she held in her hands at

 the level of her narrow hips, and Ralph felt a sense of unreality. The

 flowers were roses. The girl and the flowers seemed not to belong in

 this wilderness but in some gentle and cultivated English garden.

 She came down the cutting; her bare feet were silent and seemed to glide

 over the sandy earth. Her eyes were huge and luminous blue in her pale

 face, and she was smiling. It was the sweetest smile that Ralph had ever

 seen, and yet it was neither shy nor simpering.

 While Ralph still stood, self-conscious and gawking, the girl lifted her

 slim smooth arms and stood on tiptoe to kiss him full upon the mouth.

 Her lips were cool and soft, delicate as the roses petals at her brow.

 oh Ralph, we are so glad to see you. Nobody has talked of anything else

 since first we heard that you were upon the road."

 "Who, who are you?" Ralph blurted, his surprise and embarrassment making

 him boorish; but she seemed unaffected by the gauche question.

 "Salina" she said, and slipped her hand into the crook of his "elbow to

 lead him up the bank. "Salina Codrington."

 "I don't understand." He pulled against the hand so that she had to turn

 to face him again.

 "Salina -" she repeated, laughing now, and her laughter was warm and

 sweet as her smile. "I'm Salina Codrington." And then when it was

 apparent that the name meant nothing, "I'm your cousin, Ralph. My mother

 is your father's sister, Robyn Codrington, but she was Robyn

 Ballantyne., "Good God" Ralph stared at her. "I didn't know Aunt Robyn

 had a daughter."

 suppose not. Uncle Zouga never was a good correspondent." But suddenly

 the smile was no longer on Salina's lips, and Ralph remembered abruptly

 that he had never taken the trouble to unravel the tangled skein of

 family history, except to comprehend vaguely that there was ill-feeling

 and unsettled scores between Zouga and his Aunt Robyn. Then it came back

 to him, he had overheard his father recalling bitterly how Robyn had

 taken unfair advantage by publishing her own version of their joint

 expedition to the Zambezi months before Zouga's Hunter's Odyssey,

 thereby robbing Zouga of his fair share of critical acclaim, and

 royalties.

 Ralph's touching on the family enmities must account for Salina's quick

 change of mood, but it was fleeting.

 She took his arm again, and was smiling as they came up the bank.

 "Not one daughter, Ralph. We Codringtons will not let you off so

 lightly. There are a whole tribe of us, four of us, all girls." And she

 stopped, lifted the straw hat to shade her eyes and looked down the

 winding overgrown track that meandered away across the grassy savannah.

 "Oh dear!" she exclaimed. "I came ahead to warn you and I was only just

 in time!"

 Down the track towards them pelted three small figures, jostling one

 another for advantage, their faint squeaks of excitement gaining rapidly

 in volume, long hair flying wildly, fluttering skirts of faded and

 patched cloth lifted high above the knees so that bare legs flashed,

 faces freckled and flushed, contorted with exertion and excitement and

 recrimination.

 "Salina! You promised to wait!"

 They bore down on where Ralph stood with the lovely blond girl on his

 arm.

 "Good God!" Ralph whispered again, and Salina squeezed his elbow.

 "That's the second time that you have used the Lord's name, Cousin

 Ralph. Please don't." So that was the reason for her faint displeasure.

 "Oh, I'm terribly sorry." And he remembered too late that Salina's

 parents were pious missionaries. "I didn't mean -" Again he was

 thick-tongued, for suddenly this girl's opinion was the most important

 thing in all the world. "I won't do it again. I promise."

 "Thank you," she said softly, and before either of them could speak

 again they were surrounded by what appeared to be an ocean of small

 females, every one of which was bobbing up and down with remarkable

 rapidity, competing vocally for Ralph's attention and at the same time

 shrieking accusations at their eldest sister.

 "You cheated, Salina. You told us "Ralph, Cousin Ralph, I'm Victoria,

 the eldest twin."

 "Cousin Ralph, we prayed God to speed you to us."

 Salina clapped her hands, and there was a barely noticeable reduction in

 the volume of sound.

 "In order of age!" she said calmly.

 "You always say that because you are the eldest!"

 Salina ignored the protest and picked out a dark-haired child with a

 hand on her shoulder.

 "This is Catherine." She drew her forward to face Ralph. "Cathy is

 fourteen."

 "And a half, almost fifteen," said Cathy, and her manner changed with

 this declaration, becoming ladylike and controlled.

 She was thin, and as flat-chested as a boy, but the young body gave the

 immediate impression of strength and suppleness. Her nose and cheeks

 were peppered with freckles, but the mouth was full and frank, her eyes

 the same Ballantyne green as Ralph's own, and her thick dark brows were

 a frame for their bright intelligent gleam. Her chin was a little too

 large, as was her nose, but they had a determined set and thrust. Her

 thick dark hair was plaited and piled on top of her head, leaving her

 ears expose small and pointed and lying flat against her head.

 "Welcome to Khami, Ralph," she said evenly, and bobbed a small curtsey,

 holding her skirts up as she had obviously been coached; and Ralph

 realized that the skirt was made of old flour bags that had been

 stitched together and dyed a muddy green. The lettering still showed

 through: "Cape Flour Mills".

 Then Cathy reached up and kissed him quickly, and it left a little wet

 spot on Ralph's lips. Kissing was obviously the accepted family

 salutation, and Ralph glanced with trepidation at the eager but grubby

 faces of the twins.

 "I'm Victoria, the eldest., "And I'm Elizabeth, but if you call me

 "baby", I shall hate you, Cousin Ralph."

 "You won't hate anybody," Salina said, and Elizabeth hurled herself at

 Ralph's neck, got a fair grip and hung on as she plastered her mouth to

 Ralph's.

 "I was teasing, Ralph. I shall love you," she whispered fiercely.

 "Always! Always!"

 "Me!" howled Victoria indignantly. "I'm older than Lizzie. Me first."

 Salina led them with that gliding walk which did not move her shoulders

 and barely ruffled the white-gold curtain of her hair, and every once in

 a while she turned to smile at Ralph, and he thought he had never seen

 anything so lovely.

 The twins each had hold of one of Ralph's hands, and they gabbled out

 all the things they had saved up for weeks to tell him, and skipped to

 keep pace with his stride. Cathy came up behind them all, leading Tom.

 She and the pony had formed an immediate accord.

 oh, he's beautiful, Ralph," she had said and kissed Tom's velvety

 muzzle.

 "We don't have a horse," Victoria explained. "Daddy is a man of God, and

 men of God are too poor to have horses."

 The small party straggled over the first low rise beyond the river, and

 Salina stopped and pointed down into the shallow basin ahead of them.

 "Khami!" she said simply, and all of them looked to Ralph for

 approbation.

 There was a notch in the next line of granite hills, a natural divide

 and shed for underground water, which accounted for the spread of lush

 grass that carpeted the valley.

 Like chickens under the hen, the small huddle of buildings crouched

 beneath the hills. They were neatly laid out, thatched with yellow grass

 and painted dazzlingly white with burnt limewash. The largest building

 had a wooden cross set proudly on the ridge of the roof.

 "Daddy and Mummy built the church with their own hands. King Silly Cat

 would not allow any of his people to help them," Victoria explained.

 "Silly Cat?" Ralph asked, puzzled.

 "King Mzilikazi," Salina translated. "You know Mama does not like you

 using fun names for the kings, Vicky," she rebuked the child mildly; but

 Victoria was shaking Ralph's hand excitedly and pointing to a distant

 figure in the valley below them.

 "Daddy!" shrieked the twins in unison. There's Daddy!"

 He was working in the precise geometrically laid out gardens below the

 church, a lanky figure whose shoulders remained stooped even when he

 stood upright and looked towards them, stabbed his spade into the earth

 and came striding up the hill.

 "Ralph!" He swept off the sweatstained hat, and he was bald, like a

 monk, with just a fringe of silky hair forming a halo around his pate at

 the level of his ears. It was immediately apparent from whom Salina had

 inherited her glorious white-gold tresses.

 "Ralph," the man repeated, and he wiped his right hand on the seat of

 his pants and then held it out. Despite the stoop, he was as tall as

 Ralph, his face deeply tanned, his bald dome as shiny as if it had been

 waxed and polished, his eyes pale blue as a summer sky, washed out by

 heat haze; but his smile was like Salina's, calm and tranquil, so that

 as he took the hand Ralph realized that this was the most contented and

 deeply happy man he had ever met in his life.

 "I'm Clinton Codrington," he said. "And I suppose I must count as your

 uncle, though goodness knows I do not feel that old."

 "I would have known you anywhere, sir," said Ralph.

 "Would you indeed?"

 "I have read Aunt Robyn's books, and I have always admired your exploits

 as a Royal Naval officer."

 "Oh dear." Clinton shook his head in mock dismay. "I thought to have

 left that all far behind me., "You were one of the most illustrious and

 courageous officers in the African anti-slavery squadron, sir." Ralph's

 eyes shone with a still boyish hero worship.

 "Your Aunt Robyn's account suffered a dreadful list to port, I'm

 afraid."

 "Daddy is the bravest man in the world," Victoria declared stoutly, and

 she released Ralph's hand and ran to her father.

 Clinton Codrington gathered her up and held her on his hip.

 "And yours, young lady, is probably the most unbiased opinion in

 Matabeleland," he chuckled, and Ralph was suddenly sharply jealous of

 this palpable aura of deep affection and love which welded the little

 group, from which he felt himself excluded. It was something beyond his

 experience, something he had never missed until that moment. Somehow

 Salina seemed to sense his pang of melancholy, and she took the hand

 that Victoria had relinquished.

 ,"come," she said. "Mama will be waiting. And there is one thing you

 will soon learn, Ralph. in this family, nobody keeps Mama waiting."

 They went down towards the church, passing between the beds of growing

 vegetables.

 "You didn't bring any seed?" Clinton asked, and when Ralph shook his

 head, "Well, how were you to know?"

 and he went on to point out with pride his flourishing crops. "Maize,

 potatoes, beans, tomatoes do particularly well here."

 "We divide it this way," Cathy told Ralph, teasing her father. "One for

 the bugs, two for the baboons, three for the bushbuck, and one for

 Daddy."

 "Be good to all God's creatures." Clinton reached out to niffle her dark

 hair, and Ralph realized that these gentle people were always touching

 and kissing one another. He had never experienced anything like it.

 Squatting patiently on the shady side against the wall of the church

 were twenty or more Matabele of all ages and sexes, from a skeleton-thin

 ancient with a completely white cap of wool on his bowed head and both

 his eyes turned to blind orbs of milky jelly by tropical oph thalmia to

 a new-born infant held against its mother's milk-swollen breasts with

 its tiny dark face screwed up with the terrible colic of infant

 dysentery.

 Catherine tethered Tom beside the church door, and they all trooped into

 the cool interior, insulated by thatch and thick walls of unbaked brick

 from the outside heat. The church smelled of homemade soap, and of

 iodine. The pews of rough-hewn timber had been pushed aside to make way

 for an operating table of the same material.

 There was a girl at work over the table, but as they came in she tied

 the last knot in a bandage and dismissed her semi-naked black patient

 with a word and a pat then, wiping her hands on a clean but threadbare

 cloth, she came down the aisle of the church towards them.

 Ralph was certain that she was Cathy's twin, for though she was a little

 taller, she was as slim and as flat-chested; her hair had the same dark

 brown colouring, though shot through with tones of russet and chestnut,

 her skin the same youthful lustre, and her nose and chin the same

 forceful size and thrust.

 Then as she came closer, Ralph realized that he had been mistaken and

 that she was older than Cathy, perhaps even older than Salina, but not

 much.

 "Hello, Ralph," the girl said. "I'm your Aunt Robyn."

 Ralph felt the blasphemy of surprise leap to his lips again, conscious

 of Salina's hand in his he suppressed it.

 "You are so young," he said instead.

 "Bless you for that," she laughed. "You turn a prettier compliment than

 your daddy ever did." She was the only one who made no effort to kiss

 him; instead she turned to the twins.

 "Right!" she said. "I want ten pages of copperplate written out before

 Evensong, and I don't want to see a single blot., "Oh Mama!

 Ralph "Ralph has been your excuse for two weeks. Go, or you will eat in

 the kitchen hut tonight."

 Then, to Cathy: "Have you finished the ironing, young lady?"

 "Not yet, Mama." Cathy followed the twins "Salina, your baking."

 "Yes, Mama."

 Then there were three of them alone in the little church, and Robyn ran

 a professional eye over her nephew.

 "Well, Zouga has bred a likely boy," she gave her opinion. "But I never

 expected anything else."

 "How did you all know I was coming?" Ralph voiced his bewilderment at

 last.

 "Grandpa Moffat sent a runner when you left Kuruman, and Induna Gandang

 passed here two weeks ago on his way to King Lobengula's kraal.

 His eldest son was with him, and Bazo's mother is an old friend of

 mine."

 "I see."

 "Nothing moves in Matabeleland but the whole nation knows of it

 immediately," Clinton explained.

 "Now, Ralph, how is your father? I was terribly distressed to hear of

 the death of Aletta, your mother. She was a lovely person, so good and

 gentle. I wrote to Zouga, but he never replied."

 Robyn seemed determined to catch up on the doings of a decade in the

 first ten minutes, and her questions were quick and incisive; but

 Clinton soon excused himself and left the two of them alone in the

 little church to return to his gardens.

 Ralph replied dutifully to all her questions, while he reassessed his

 first impression of his aunt. Youthful she looked, but childlike she was

 not. Now at last he could understand the remarkable achievements of this

 forceful woman. How she had enrolled at a famous London hospital, one

 which would never accept a female on its student body, by impersonating

 a man. Dressed in breeches, she had kept her terms and been granted her

 doctorate when she was twenty-one years of age. The scandal which

 attended the discovery that a female had invaded an exclusive male

 preserve had rocked all England.

 Then she had accompanied Zouga to Africa, equal partners in the

 expedition to find their father Fuller Ballantyne, who had been missing

 in the unexplored interior for eight years. When she and Zouga had

 fallen out over the conduct of the expedition, she had pushed on, a

 white woman alone with only primitive black tribesmen as companions, and

 achieved the main object of the expedition on her own.

 Her book describing the expedition, entitled Africa in My Blood, had

 been a publishing phenomenon and had sold almost a quarter of a million

 copies, three times as many as Zouga Ballantyne's A Hunter's Odyssey

 published six months later.

 Robyn had signed over all her royalties from the book to The London

 Missionary Society, and that august body had been so delighted by the

 donation that they had reinstated her as a society officer, had ordained

 her husband as her assistant, and had approved her heading a mission to

 Matabeleland.

 Her two subsequent publications had not enjoyed the same success as the

 first. The Sick African, a practical study of tropical medicine, had

 contained ludicrous theories that had earned her the derision of her

 medical peers she had even dared to suggest that malarial fever was not

 caused by breathing the foul night airs of tropical swamps, when this

 fact had been known since the time of Hippocrates.

 Then her further account of her life as a medical missionary, Blind

 Faith, had been too homely in style and too prejudiced in championing

 the indigenous tribes.

 She had firmly embraced the beliefs of lean-Jacques Rousseau and had

 added her own refinements to them. Her round condemnation of all

 settlers, hunters, prospectors and traders, and of their treatment of

 the noble savages, had been too salty for her European readers.

 Indeed, scandal and contention seemed to follow Robyn Codrington as

 vultures and jackals follow the lion, and at each new provocation all

 her previous adventures would be recalled: What decent female missionary

 would provoke men sufficiently to make them fight a bloody duel over

 her?

 Robyn Ballantyne had.

 What God-fearing lady would sail aboard a notorious slaver, unchaperoned

 and with only slavers for company?

 Robyn Ballantyne had.

 What lady would choose for husband a man who had been court-martialled,

 stripped of his naval rank and imprisoned for piracy and dereliction of

 duty? Robyn Codrington had.

 What loyal subject of the Queen would hail the terrible reversal of

 British arms at Isandhlwana, the bloody death of hundreds of Englishmen

 at the hands of the savage Zulus, as a judgement of God, Robyn

 Codrington had, in a letter to the Evening Standard.

 Who, other than Robyn Codrington, would write to Lord Kimberley

 demanding that half the profits of the diamond fields that bore his name

 should go to the Griqua captain, Nicholaas Waterboer?

 Only Robyn Codrington would demand of Paulus Kruger, the newly-elected

 President of the little Transvaal Republic, that he return to Lobengula,

 King of the Matabele, the land below the Cashan mountains from which the

 Boer commandos had driven Mzilikazi, his father.

 She spared no one. Nothing was sacred to her except her God, whom she

 treated rather like a senior partner in the business of running Africa.

 Her enemies, and they were legion, hated her fiercely, and her friends

 loved her with equal passion. It was impossible to be unmoved by her,

 and Ralph found himself fascinated as she sat beside him on the church

 pew and subjected him to an exhaustive catechism that covered every

 aspect of his life and that of the family.

 "You have a brother," she seemed to know it all.

 "Jordan? That is his name, isn't it? Tell me about him."

 It was a comnand.

 "Oh, Jordie is everybody's favourite; everybody loves him."

 Ralph had never met anybody like her. He doubted he could ever bring

 himself to like her, she was far too prickly. That was the exact word to

 describe her, but he would never doubt her strength and her

 determination.

 Clinton Codrington came back into the church as the light outside was

 mellowing into late afternoon.

 "My dear, you really must let the poor fellow go now."

 He turned to Ralph. "Your wagon has come up. I showed your driver where

 to outspan. He seems a first-rate chap, I must say."

 "You will sleep in the guest house," Robyn announced as she stood.

 "Cathy has taken your soiled clothes from the wagon, and she has washed

 and ironed them," Clinton went on.

 "You will want to put on a fresh shirt before Evensong," Robyn told him.

 "We shall not begin the service until you return."

 He had liked it better on the open road, Ralph thought sourly; then he

 had made his own decisions as to when he made his ablutions, as to how

 he dressed and where he spent his evenings, but he went to change his

 shirt as he was bidden.

 The distaff side of the Codrington family filled the front pew. Clinton

 Codrington faced them from the pulpit. Ralph was between the twins;

 there had been a brief but ferocious competition between Victoria and

 Elizabeth to decide who should sit closest to him.

 Apart from the family, there was nobody else in the church, and Victoria

 saw his glance and explained to Ralph in a penetrating whisper, "King

 Ben won't let any of his people come to our church."

 "King Lobengula," Salina corrected her sweetly, "not King Ben."

 Despite the full attendance, Clinton delayed the commencement of the

 evening service, finding and losing his place in the Book of Common

 Prayer half a dozen times and glancing repeatedly towards the rear of

 the tiny church.

 From this quarter there was a sudden commotion. A "iretinue of Matabele

 women had arrived outside church. Clearly they were servants, house

 slaves and the ladies-in-waiting to the imposing female figure in their

 midst. She dismissed them with a royal gesture and came in through the

 doors of the church. Every one of the Codringtons turned their heads and

 their faces lit with pleasure.

 The way in which this matron paced majestically down the aisle left not

 a doubt as to her high breeding and her place in the aristocracy of

 Matabeleland. She wore bangles and bracelets of beaten red copper,

 strings of highly prized sam-sarn beads that only a chief would afford.

 Her cloak was of beautifully tanned leather, ornamented with feathers of

 the blue jay and worked with designs of chipped ostrich shell.

 "i see you, Nomusa," she declared.

 Her huge naked breasts shone with an ointment of fat and red clay; they

 pushed out ponderously from under her tanned cloak and dangled weightily

 to the level of her navel.

 Her arms were thick as a grown man's thigh, her thighs as thick as his

 waist. There were rolls of fat around her belly, and her face was a

 black full moon, the glossy skin stretched tightly over her abundant

 flesh.

 Her merry eyes sparkled from between creases of fat, and her teeth

 flashed like the sunlit surface of a lake as she smiled. All this size

 was evidence to the world of her station, of her amazing beauty, of her

 fecundity. It was also unassailable proof of the high regard of her

 husband, of his prosperity and importance in the councils of

 Matabeleland.

 "I see you, Girlchild of Mercy," she smiled at Robyn.

 "I see you, Juba, the little dove." Robyn answered her.

 "I am not a Christian," Juba intoned. "Let no evil one bear false

 tidings to Lobengula, the Black and Mighty Elephant."

 "If you say so, Juba," Robyn answered primly, and Juba pinioned her in a

 vast embrace while at the same time she called to Clinton in the pulpit.

 "I see you also, Hlopi. I see you, White Head! But do not be deceived by

 my presence here, I am not a Christian." She drew an elephantine breath

 and went on, "I come merely to greet old friends, not to sing hymns and

 worship your God. Also I warn you, fflopi, that if you read the story

 tonight of a man called the Rock who denied his God three times before

 the call of the cock, I shall be displeased."

 "I shall not read that story," Clinton answered. "For by now you should

 know it by heart."

 "Very well, Hlopi, then let the singing begin." And led by Juba in a

 startlingly clear and beautiful soprano, the entire Codrington family

 rollicked into the first verse of "Onward Christian Soldiers", which

 Robyn had translated into the Matabele vernacular.

 After the service Juba bore down on Ralph.

 "You are Henshaw?" she demanded.

 "Nkosikazi!" Ralph agreed, and Juba inclined her head to acknowledge the

 correct style of address to the senior wife of a great chief that Ralph

 had employed.

 "Then you are the one whom Bazo, my first-born son, calls brother," Juba

 said. "You are very skinny and very white, Little Hawk, but if you are

 Bazo's brother, then you are my son."

 "You do me great honour, Umame!" Ralph said, and Juba took him in those

 mammoth arms. She smelled of clarified fat, and ochre and wood-smoke,

 but the embrace was strangely comforting, not at all unlike the feeling,

 only half remembered, that he had once experienced in Aletta's arms.

 The twins knelt side-by-side at the low truckle cot, both in long

 nightdresses, their hands clasped before their eyes which were so

 tightly closed that they seemed to be in pain.

 Salina, also in her nightdress, stood over them to supervise the last

 prayer of the day.

 "Gentle Jesus meek and mild Cathy was already in her own bed, hair

 ribboned for the night, writing the day's entry in her diary by the

 light of the guttering candle made from buffalo fat and cloth wick.

 pity my simplicity -" gabbled the twins, at such a speed that it came

 out as, "Pretty mice, and pretty me!"

 Arriving at the "Amen" in a dead heat, the twins leaped into the bed

 that they shared, pulled the blanket to their chins and watched with

 fascination as Salina began to brush her hair, one hundred strokes with

 each hand, so that it rippled and flamed with white fire in the

 candlelight. Then she came to kiss them, blew out the candle, and the

 thongs of her bed squeaked from across the small thatched hut as she

 climbed into it.

 Tina?" whispered Victoria.

 "Vicky, go to sleep."

 "Just one question, please."

 "All right then, just one."

 "Does God allow a girl to marry her own cousin?"

 The silence that followed the question seemed to hum in the darkened

 bedroom like a copper telegraph wire struck by a sword.

 Cathy broke the silence.

 "Yes, Vicky," she answered quietly. "God does allow it.

 Read the Table of Kindred and Affinity on the last page of your prayer

 book."

 The silence was contemplative now.

 Una?"

 Uzzie, go to sleep."

 "You allowed Vicky to ask a question."

 "All right then, just one."

 "Does God get cross if you pray for something just for yourself, not for

 Daddy or Mama or your sisters, but just for you alone?"

 "I don't think so," Salina's voice was becoming drowsy.

 "He might not give it to you but I don't think He will be cross. Now go

 to sleep, both of you."

 Cathy lay very still, on her back with her hands clenched at her sides,

 staring at the lighter oblong across the hut where the moon defined the

 single window.

 "Please God," she prayed. "Let him look at me the way he looks at

 Salina, just once. Please."

 "What do you think of Zouga's boy?" Robyn took Clinton's arm as they

 stood together on the darkened stoep and looked out at the star-pricked

 black velvet curtain of the African night.

 "He's a powerful lad, and I don't mean merely muscle." Clinton took his

 pipe from between his teeth and peered into the bowl. "His wagon is

 loaded with cases, long wooden cases from which the markings. have been

 burned with a hot iron."

 "Guns?" Robyn asked.

 "I think so."

 "there is no law against trading guns north of the Limpopo Robyn

 reminded him. "And Lobengula needs all the power he can get to defend

 himself."

 "Still, guns! I mean, it does go against the grain." Clinton sucked at

 his pipe, and each puff of smoke he exhaled was denser and ranker. They

 were both silent for a while.

 "He has a hard and ruthless streak, like his father Robyn judged at

 last.

 "A man needs that to survive in this land.

 Robyn shivered suddenly, and hugged her own arms.

 "Are you cold?" Clinton was immediately solicitous.

 "number A grey goose walked over my grave."

 "Let's go off to bed."

 "A moment longer, Clinton. The night is so beautiful."

 Clinton put his arm about her shoulders.

 "Sometimes I am so happy that it frightens me," he said. "So much

 happiness cannot go on for ever."

 His words seemed to precipitate the thick but formless dread that had

 hung over Robyn all this day like the pall of smoke above the winter

 bush fires. It weighed her down with the premonition that something had

 changed in all their lives.

 "May God save us all," she whispered.

 "Amen to that," said Clinton as softly, and took her in out of the

 night.

 The interior of the thatched hall was domed and darkened, so that the

 patterns of latticed branches and lovingly knotted bark rope disappeared

 into the gloom above their heads like the arches of a medieval

 cathedral.

 The only light was from the small fire on the clay hearth in the centre

 of the floor. One of the king's wives threw another handful of dried

 herbs upon it and oily blue tendrils of smoke twisted upwards towards

 the unseen roof.

 Across the fire, on a low platform of dried clay covered with a thick

 mattress of furs, silver-backed jackal and blue monkey, bat-eared fox

 and spotted civet, sat the king.

 He was a mountainous figure, stark naked, and his skin polished with fat

 so that he gleamed like an enormous Buddha carved from a solid block of

 washed anthracite. His head was round as a cannon ball, surmounted by

 the induna's ring. His arms were massive, bulging with muscle and fat,

 but the hands in his lap were strangely dainty, narrow across the pink

 palms, with long tapered fingers.

 His trunk was thickened, his breasts pendulous. All this was flesh which

 he had carefully cultivated. The beer pots and beef dishes stood close

 at hand. The thick millet beer bubbled softly and the cuts of beef each

 had a thick rind of yellow fat. Every few minutes one of his wives

 responded to a nod or a small movement of one graceful hand by

 proffering a dish. Weight and size were the mark of a king. Not for

 nothing was Lobengula called the Great Black Elephant of Matabeleland.

 His manner was slow, imbued with the vast dignity of his size and rank.

 Yet his eyes were thoughtful and deeply intelligent, his features

 despite the burden of fat which blurred them were handsome, lacking

 outward traits of the hideous cruelties which any Matabele king had to

 make part of his life.

 "My people expect me to be strong and harsh. There are always those who

 look for the smallest weakness in me, as the young lions watch the

 black-maned leader of the pride," Mzilikazi had explained to his son.

 "See how my chickens follow me to be fed." He had pointed with the toy

 spear of kingship at the high wheel of tiny specks turning slowly in the

 sky above the hills of Thabas Indunas. "When my vultures desert me, I

 will be as dust."

 Lobengula, his son, had learned the lesson well, but it had not

 brutalized him. Indeed, there was a line to his mouth that was almost

 diffident, and a shadow behind the light of intelligence in his eyes

 that was hesitant, the confusion of a man tugged at by too many currents

 AND winds, a man caught up by his destiny, and uncertain as to how he

 could break away from its remorseless toils.

 Lobengula had never expected to take up his father's spear of kingship.

 He was never the heir apparent, there had been older brothers from

 mothers of higher rank and nobler blood.

 He stared now across the fire at the man that squatted there. A

 magnificent warrior, his body tempered to black steel by long marches

 and savage warfare, his understanding and compassion expanded by close

 and intimate daily contact with common men, his courage and loyalty

 proven to all the world ten thousand times so there could be no doubts,

 not even in his own midnight watches, which is the time of doubts, and

 Lobengula found himself longing to rid himself of this fearsome burden

 of kingship and place it on the other man's shoulders. He found himself

 wishing for that quiet and secret cave in the Matopos hills where he had

 known the only happy days of his life.

 The man opposite him was a half-brother; his blood line, like that of

 Lobengula himself, reaching back unsullied to the Zanzi of Zululand.

 He was a prince of the House of Kumalo, wise and brave and untroubled by

 doubts.

 "Such a one should have been king," Lobengula thought, and his love for

 his half-brother choked his throat so that he coughed. He moved one

 little finger, and a wife held the beer pot to his lips and he swallowed

 once and then signed for it to be taken away.

 "I see you, Gandang." His voice was throaty and low, the sadness still

 in it for he knew that he could not escape that way. He felt like a man

 on a solitary journey through the forest where the lions are hunting.

 His recognition released Gandang from his respectful silence.

 The induna clapped his hands softly and began to recite his

 half-brother's ritual praises, and Loberigula's mind wandered back

 across the years.

 His earliest memory was of the road, the hard road up from the south,

 driven by the mounted men dressed all in brown, riding brown ponies. He

 remembered the popping sound of the guns, which He learned only later to

 fear, and the smell of gunsmoke, spicy and sour as the wind brought it

 down to where he clung to his mother, and he remembered the wailing of

 the women as they mourned the dead.

 He remembered the heat and the dust, trotting naked as a puppy at his

 mother's heels. How tall she had seemed, the muscles of her back

 gleaming with sweat, and Ningi, his sister, in the sling upon her hip,

 clinging to one of his mother's fat jostling breasts with mouth and tiny

 determined fists.

 He remembered toiling up the stony hills with his father's single wagon

 rolling and pitching along ahead of them. On it rode Mzilikazi's senior

 wife, and her son Nkulumane, three years older than Lobengula and heir

 apparent to the kingship of the Matabele. They were the only ones who

 did not walk.

 He remembered how his mother's back had with-tred, the beautiful

 gleaming skin becoming loose and baggy, the ribcage beginning to show

 through as the famine wasted her substance, and Ningi screaming with

 hunger as the rich creamy flow from her teats dried up.

 This was where the memory of "Saala" began; it was mixed up at first

 with the shouting and singing as a band of raiding Matabele returned to

 the fleeing column. He had first seen Saala in the firelight, as the

 warriors slaughtered the captured cattle, and Lobengula could almost

 still feel the hot grease and the bloody juices of the beef running down

 his chin and dripping onto his naked chest as they feasted, breaking the

 long days and months of starvation on cattle taken from the white men,

 the buni.

 Once his belly was bulging tightly with meat, Loberigula had joined the

 circle of curious Matabele princelings and princesses who surrounded the

 captives; but he had stood back from the teasing and jeering and

 prodding of the other children.

 Saala was the eldest of the two little girls. It was only long

 afterwards that Lobengula learned that her name was Sarah, but even now

 he could not pronounce that sound. The Matabele raiding party had

 surprised a small an of Boer wagons, and had killed everybody except

 these two small white children.

 Her whiteness was the first thing that had struck Lobengula. How white

 her face was in the firelight, as white as an egret's wing, and she had

 not wept as her younger sister wept.

 After that the memories grew stronger, Saala walking ahead of him as the

 slow column wound through thick thorn forest. Saala taking the infant

 Ningi from his mother when she slipped and fell with weakness in the

 black mud of the swamps while the mosquitoes formed a dark whining cloud

 over them.

 Exactly where Saala's little sister died, Lobengula could not recall. It

 might have been in the swamps. They left her small naked white body

 unburied, and the column marched on.

 At last Lobengula's own mother fell and could not rise again, and with

 her last strength handed little Ningi to Saala; then she curled up

 quietly and died. All the weak ones died like that, and their infants

 died with them, for no other women would take the orphans, for each of

 them had her own infants to care for.

 However, Saala strapped little Ningi on her own thin white back in the

 way that the Matabele carry their babies, then she took Lobengula's hand

 in hers and they toiled on -after the fleeing nation.

 By now Saala's clothing had long ago fallen off her thin white body, and

 she was as the other Matabele girls who had not yet reached puberty,

 completely naked. She had half forgotten her own language, and spoke

 only the language of the tribe. The sun had darkened her skin, and the

 soles of her bare feet had grown a thick covering, hard as rhinoceros

 skin, so she could march over razor flint and needle thorns.

 Lobengula came to love Saala, transferring everything he had ever felt

 for his mother to her, and she stole extra food for him and protected

 him from the bullying of his older brothers, from Nkulumane the cruel

 one, and from Nkulumane's mother, who hated all that might one day stand

 in the way of her son's claim to the kingship of the Matabele.

 Then the Matabele crossed the Limpopo, the River of Crocodiles, and the

 land beyond was fair, thick with game and running with sweet rivers. The

 wandering nation followed Mzilikazi into the magical hills of the

 Matopos. There on a lonely hilltop the king met the wizard of the

 Matopos, face to face.

 Mzilikazi saw fire spring up at the Umlimo's bidding, and he heard the

 spirits speak from the very air about the Umlimo, a hundred different

 voices, voice of infant and crone, of man and of beast, the cry of the

 fish eagle, the snarl of the leopard, and from that day the Umlimo had

 the reverence and superstitious awe of the king and all his people.

 The Umlimo pointed the way north again, and as the Matabele emerged from

 the broken hills of the Matopos, they saw spread before them a beautiful

 land, rich with grass and tall trees.

 "This is my land," said Mzilikazi, and built his kraal under the Hills

 of the Indunas.

 However, the Matabele had lost nearly all their cattle and many of the

 women and children had died on that cruel journey northwards.

 At Thabas Indunas Mzilikazi left his senior wife, mother of Nkulumane,

 as his regent, and he took five thousand of his finest warriors and went

 out against the tribes, for women and for cattle.

 He went westwards into the land ruled by great Khatna, and there was no

 word from him. The seasons came and changed, the rains followed the long

 dryness, the heat followed the frosts, and still there was no word of

 Mzilikazi.

 Slowly the strict order of Matabele society began to break up, for the

 regent, Mzilikazi's senior wife, was unrestrained in her intercourses,

 and she rutted shamelessly with her lovers.

 Some of the lesser wives followed her example, and then the common

 people took sexual licence, the youths, unblooded and without the royal

 permission to go into the women, lay in wait for the young girls on the

 path to the water-hole, and dragged them giggling into the bushes.

 With the code of morality broken, other vices followed. The remaining

 cattle, the breeding herds, were slaughtered, and the feasting went on

 for months. Loose ess and drunkenness swept through the nation like a

 plague, and in the midst of this debauchery, one of the Matabele patrols

 captured a little yellow Bushman who had wandered in out of the west,

 and the Bushman had momentous tidings.

 Mzilikazi is dead" he told his captors. "I have thrust my own fingers

 into the stab wound in his heart, and watched the hyena wolfing down his

 flesh and cracking his bones."

 The senior wife had her guards boil clay pots of water, and pour them

 over the Bushman until his flesh fell off his bones and he died, which

 is fitting treatment for one who brings news of the death of a king.

 Then she called the indunas into council, and urged them to proclaim

 Nkulumane king in place of his dead father. However, none of the indunas

 were fools. One whispered to the other, "It would take more than a

 Tswana dog to kill Mzilikazi."

 While they procrastinated and talked, the senior wife grew wild with

 impatience and sent for the executioners, determined now that there

 would be no rival for her son.

 Saala was playing outside the queen's hut, moulding little clay oxen and

 figures of men and women for Ningi.

 Through the thatched wall she heard the queen giving her orders to the

 Black Ones. Frantic with terror for the safety of Lobengula, Saala ran

 to the other royal mothers.

 "The Black ones are coming for the royal sons. You must hide them., Then

 Saala left little Ningi, now weaned and strong, with one of the royal

 women who was barren and childless.

 "Look after her," she whispered, and ran out into the grasslands.

 Lobengula was by now ten years of age, and was tending what remained of

 the royal herds: the duty of every Matabele boy, the essential service

 through which he learned the secrets of the veld and the ways of cattle,

 the nation's treasure.

 Saala found him bringing in the herd to water. He was naked except for

 the little flap of leather over his loins, and armed only with two short

 fighting sticks with which he was expected to drive off any predator and

 to hold his owr. in competition with the other herd boys.

 Holding hands again, the Matabele princeling and the little white girl

 fled, and instinctively they turned southwards, back the way they had

 come.

 They lived on roots and berries, on the eggs of wild birds and the flesh

 of the iguana lizards. They competed with the jackals and vultures for

 the remains of the lion kill, and sometimes they went hungry, but at

 last they found themselves in the maze of the Matopos Hills where the

 Black Ones would not follow them. They slept under the single kaross

 that Saala had brought with her, and the nights crackled with frost so

 they slept in each other's arms, clinging together for warmth.

 Early one morning the old man found them thus. He was thin and

 mad-looking, with strange charms and magical objects about his neck, and

 the children were terrified of him.

 Saala pushed Lobengula behind her, and with a show of false courage

 faced the wizard.

 "This is Lobengula. Favourite son of Mzilikazi," she declared stoutly.

 "Who harms him, harms the king."

 The old man rolled his mad eyes, and drooled horribly as he grinned with

 toothless gums. Then suddenly the air was full of the sound of ghost

 voices, and Saala.

 screamed and Lobengula wailed with terror, and they clung to each other

 pitifully.

 The wizard led the children, chastened, shivering and weeping, through

 secret passages and over precipitous trails, deeper and deeper into the

 hills, until at last they came to the caves which honeycombed the rock.

 Here the old man began the instruction of the boy who would be king. He

 taught him many of the mysteries, but not how to control the ghost

 voices, nor how to throw fire by pointing his finger, nor how to see the

 future in a calabash of mountain water.

 Here in the caves of the Matopos, Lobengula learned the scope and power

 of the magical order. He learned how the little wizards, the

 witchdoctors, were spread across the land, performing the small rites,

 making rain and giving charms for fertility and childbirth, smelling out

 the evil-doers, and sending back their reports to the cave in the

 Matopos.

 Here the grand wizards, of which the old man was one, worked the great

 magics, called up the spirits of their ancestors, and looked into the

 mists of time to see what the future would bring. Above them all was the

 Umlimo.

 It was a name only for Lobengula, Umlimo, a name that even after he had

 lived five years in the cave could still make him shiver and sweat.

 Then when he was sixteen, the mad old wizard took him to the cave of the

 Umlimo. And the Umlimo was a woman, a beautiful woman.

 What Lobengula saw in the cave of the Umlimo he would never speak about,

 not even to Saala, but when he came back from the cave there was a

 sadness in his eyes, and the weight of knowledge seemed to bow his young

 shoulders.

 There was a furious thunderstorm the night of Lobengula's return, and

 the blue lightning clanged upon the anvil of the hills with strokes that

 tortured their eardrums as they lay together under the kaross. Then it

 was that the little orphan white girl made the boy into a man, the

 princeling into a king; and when her term was run she gave him a son who

 was the colour of the early morning sunlight on the yellow winter grass,

 and Lobengula knew happiness for the only time in his life.

 In their joy they paid little attention to tidings which the mad old

 wizard brought to their cave.

 He told them how Mzilikazi, great with plunder, fat with cattle, had

 come back to Thabas Indunas, arriving suddenly with the blood barely

 dried on the spears of his impi, and red rage in his art.

 At Mzilikazi's nod the Black Ones gathered all those who had acted as if

 the king were dead. Some they hurled from the cliff of execution, some

 they pegged down upon the sandbanks of the river where the crocodiles

 sunned themselves, others they skewered with bamboo spikes through the

 secret openings of their bodies.

 But when the mother of Nkulumane was led before the king, she wept so

 and tore her own flesh with her nails while she called on all the

 spirits of the dead to witness how faithful she had been to Mzilikazi in

 his absence, how constant had been her belief in his eventual safe

 return and how during his absence she had guarded the other royal sons

 from the Black Ones and even sent Lobengula into the wilderness to save

 him so that Mzilikazi, who at the bottom was only a man, believed her.

 However, the others died in their hundreds, victims of the king's wrath,

 and the nation rejoiced for the king had returned and the good old days

 were back.

 Through all this Lobengula and Saala and their little yellow son stayed

 on in the cave of the Matopos and knew happiness.

 Far away in the south below the Limpopo river, a Hottentot elephant

 hunter stopped to water his horse at the well beside a Boer homestead

 that stood not far from the battlefield where the Boer horsemen had long

 ago first defeated Mzilikazi before driving him out of this country.

 "I saw a curious thing" said the Hottentot to the big, solemn, bearded

 man who was his host. "In the southern hills of Matabeleland, I saw a

 white woman, full grown and naked. She was shy as a wild buck and ran

 into the rocky ground where I could not follow her."

 Two months later, when the Boer farmer took his family into the service

 of Nachtmaal in the new church at Rustenberg, he repeated the strange

 story which the Hottentot hunter had brought from the north. Someone

 recalled the story of the massacre of the Van Heerden family, and the

 two little girls, Sarah and Hannah, taken by the murderous plundering

 savages.

 Then Hendrik Potgieter, that doughty trekker and kaffir-fighter, stood

 up in the pulpit, and thundered: "The heathen have a Christian woman as

 captive!" And the words offended much that the congregation held dear:

 God and their womankind.

 "Commando!" roared Hendrik Potgieter. "I call commando!"

 The women filled the powder-horns and Poured the lead into the bullet

 moulds, and the men picked out their best horses and elected Potgieter

 as their leader.

 Not all of it was for God and womankind; for one whispered to another,

 "Even if there is no white woman, I have heard that there are fine new

 herds in Matabeleland."

 Then the old wizard came to Lobengula's cave and rolled his eyes and

 cackled.

 The buni have crossed the river of crocodiles, riding on the backs of

 strange beasts. Many men, many men!"

 Instinctively Lobengula knew why the Boer commando was coming, and he

 knew also what to do about it. "Stay here, with the child," he ordered

 Saala. "I am going to my father's kraal, and I will lead his impis back

 here."

 But Saala was a woman, with a woman's curiosity, and blood called to

 blood. Vaguely she remembered that these strange white men had once been

 her kin.

 When Lobengula had gone north to Thabas Indunas, she slung the baby on

 her back and crept out of the cave.

 At first the distant sound of gunfire guided her, for the Boer commando

 was living off the abundant herds of wild game. Then later she heard the

 shout of voices, and the whicker of horses, sounds that awakened a

 terrible nostalgia in her breast.

 She crept closer and closer to the bivouac, with all the stealth of a

 wild animal, closer still until she could clearly see the tall

 sun-bronzed men, dressed to throat and wrists in brown homespun, the

 white-brimmed felt hats on their heads, closer still until she could

 hear their voices lifted in praise of their God as they sang their hymns

 around the camp fire.

 She recognized the words, and memories flooded back to her. She was no

 longer Saala but Sarah, and she rose from her place of hiding to go down

 to her people. Then she looked down at her body, and she saw that she

 was naked. She looked at the child on her hip, and saw that it was

 yellow, and its features were neither hers nor yet those of its Matabele

 father.

 The awareness of sin came upon her, as it had done to Eve in another

 Paradise, and Sarah was ashamed.

 She crept away, and in the dawn she stood on the top of one of those

 soaring granite precipices that rend the Matopos hills.

 She kissed her baby and then holding the little mite to her breast she

 stepped out into the void.

 Lobengula found them at the bottom of the cliff. He found them before

 the vultures did, and they were still together, Sarah's grasp on the

 infant had not faltered during the long plunge from the top of the

 precipice.

 Strangely, both she and the child seemed to be merely sleeping, quiet

 and at peace.

 At the memory Lobengula sighed now, and returned his gaze to his

 half-brother, the Induna Gandang who still sat across him from the fire.

 If only he had been able to escape the prophecy of the Umlimo, for she

 had foreseen this destiny for him: Your name is Lobengula, the one who

 drives like the wind. Yet the winds will drive you, high as an eagle.

 "Lobengula will hold the spear of Mzilikazi. Yet again the winds will

 drive you, down, down, down, and your nation with you.

 Those were the words of that strange and beautiful woman of the cave,

 and already the first part of the prophecy had held true.

 Mzilikazi, the mighty warrior, had died like an old woman, riddled with

 arthritis and dropsy and gout and liquor, in his royal hut.

 His widows had wrapped him in the skin of a freshlykilled bull, and sat

 mourning over him for twelve days: until his remains were almost liquid

 with putrefaction in the summer heat.

 After the mourning the regiments had carried his corpse into the Matopos

 Hills, the Sacred Hills, and they had seated Mzilikazi in the cave of

 the king. They placed all his possessions about him: his assegais, his

 guns, his ivory; even his wagon was taken down and the pieces piled in

 the crevices of the cave.

 Then masons closed the opening with blocks of granite, and after the

 feasting and dancing the indunas of Matabele met to decide who would

 succeed Mzilikazi as king.

 The argument and counter-argument lasted many weeks, until the indunas

 led by the princes of Kumalo returned into the Matopos bearing rich

 gifts to the cave of the Umlimo.

 "Give us a king!" they pleaded.

 "The one who drives like the wind!" replied the Umlimo, but Lobengula

 had fled, trying even at the last moment to escape his destiny.

 The border impis captured him, and led him back to Thabas Indunas like a

 criminal to judgement. The indunas came to him one by one, and swore

 their allegiance and loyalty unto death.

 "Black Bull of Matabele, The Thunderer, The Great Elephant. The one

 whose tread shakes the earth., Nkulumane was the first of his brothers

 to crawl before him, and Nkulumane's mother, the senior wife of

 Mzilikazi, followed her son on her knees.

 Lobengula turned to the Black Ones who stood behind him, like hounds on

 the leash.

 "I do not wish to look upon their faces again."

 It was Lobengula's first command, spoken like a true king, and the Black

 Ones took mother and son into the cattle stockade and twisted their

 necks, quickly and mercifully.

 "He will be a great king," the people told one another delightedly.

 "Like his father."

 But Lobengula had never known happiness again. Now with a shudder he

 threw off the terrible burden of the past, and his voice was a deep but

 melodious bass. "Rise up, Gandang my brother. Your countenance warms me

 like a watch-fire in the frosty night."

 They spoke then, easily and intimately, trusted companions of a

 lifetime, until at last Gandang passed the Martini-Henry rifle to his

 king and Lobengula held it in his lap and rubbed the cold blued metal of

 the block with one forefinger and then held the finger to his nose to

 smell the fresh grease.

 "Sting the mamba with his own venom,"he murmured "This is the fang of

 the mamba."

 "The lad, Henshaw, son of Bakela, has a wagon filled with these."

 "Then he will be welcome," Lobengula nodded. "But now let me hear all

 this from the mouth of your own son. Bring him to me."

 Bazo lay face down on the hard clay floor of the king' hut, and he

 chanted the ritual praises with a catch in his throat, and brave as he

 was, he sweated with fear in the king's presence.

 "Rise up, Bazo the Axe," Lobengula broke impatiently. Come closer."

 Bazo crept forward on all fours, and he offered the beaded kilt.

 Lobengula spilled the diamonds from it in a glowing puddle and he

 stirred them with his finger.

 "There are prettier stones than these in every river of my land," he

 said. "These are ugly., "The buni are mad for them. No other stone

 satisfy them, but for these their hunger is so great that they will kill

 any who stand in their way."

 "Tear the lion with his own claws." Lobengula repeat the prophecy of the

 Umlimo and then went on, !" these ugly little stones the claws of the

 lion? Then, they are, let all men see how Lobengula is ready with

 claws."

 And he clapped his hands for his wives to come to him.

 The royal hut was crowded now, rank upon rank of squatting men faced the

 low platform on which Lobengula lay. Every man of them except Bazo wore

 the headring of the induna, and their names were the rolls of glory of

 the Matabele nation.

 There was Somabula, the lion-hearted old warrior, and beside him

 Babiaan, royal prince of Kumalo, and all the others. Their ranks were

 silent and attentive, their faces grave in the light of the fire which

 had been built up and whose flames leapt almost to the high-domed roof

 of the king's hut.

 They were watching the king.

 Lobengula lay on his back on the built-up platform beyond the fire.

 There was a low carved headrest under the nape of his neck. Only the tip

 of his penis was covered by the dried and hollowed-out gourd, otherwise

 he was stark naked. His great belly was mountainous and his limbs were

 like tree trunks.

 Four of his wives squatted about him in a circle, each of them with a

 calabash of rendered white beef fat beside her. They anointed the king

 smearing the fat thickly over his body from his throat to his ankles.

 Then when it was done they rose silently, and stooped out through the

 opening in the back of the hut which led to the women's quarters.

 Singing softly, shuffling and swaying to the song, another ffle of

 younger wives began to wind into the hut; each of them carried upon her

 head a beer pot of fired clay; but these pots were not filled with the

 bubbling millet beer.

 The wives knelt on each side of the king, and at a word from the senior

 wife they dipped into the clay pots and each of them came out with a

 large uncut diamond in her fingers. They began sticking the stones on

 the king's skin, and the thick coating of grease held them in the

 patterns that they built up to ornament Lobengula's gleaming limbs.

 They worked swiftly, for they had done this before, and under their

 fingers Lobengula was transformed. He became a creature of mythology:

 half man, half glittering scaled fish.

 The diamonds caught the beam of the fire, and sent it spinning against

 the thatched walls and high roof, darting insects of golden light that

 flashed in the eyes of the watchers and dazzled them so that they

 grunted with amazement, and their voices went up like a choir in praise

 of their king.

 At last the work was done and the wives crept away and left Lobengula

 lying on the thick soft furs, covered from throat to wrist to ankle in a

 silver burning coat of scail, each link of which was a priceless

 diamond; and as the king's chest and belly rose and subsided to the tide

 of his breathing, so this immense treasure burned and flamed.

 "Indunas of Matabele, Princes of Kurnalo, hail your King."

 "Bayete! Bayete!" The royal salute burst from their throats. "Bayete!"

 Then the silence was complete but expectant, for it had become the

 king's custom that after this ritual display of the contents of the

 nation's treasury, he would dispense honours and rewards.

 "Bazo," Lobengula's voice was sonorous. "Stand forward!"

 The young man rose from his lowly position in the rear-most rank.

 "Bayete, Nkosi,"

 "Bazo, you have pleased me. I grant you a boon. What shall it be.

 Speak!"

 "i crave only that the king should know the depth of my duty and love

 for him. Set me a task, I pray you, and if it should be fierce and hard

 and bloody, my heart and my mouth will sing the king's praises for

 ever."

 On Chaka's royal buttocks, your pup is hungry for glory."

 Lobengula looked to Gandang in the front rank of indunas. "And he shames

 all those who ask for trinkets and cattle and women., He thought a

 moment, and then chuckled.

 "In the direction of the sunrise, two days" march beyond the forests of

 Somabula, on a high hilltop lives a Mashona dog who deems himself such a

 great magician and rainmaker that he is beyond the king's arm. His name

 is Pemba." And there was a hiss of indrawn breath from the squatting

 ranks of elders. Three times in the past season the king had sent impis

 to Pemba's hilltop, and three times they had returned empty-handed. The

 name Pemba mocked them all. "Take fifty men from your old regiment,

 Little Axe, and fetch Pemba's head so that I can see his insolent smile

 with my own eyes."

 "Bayete!" Bazo's joy carried him in a single bound over the grey heads

 of the indunas. He landed lightly in the space before the fire and he

 whirled into the giya, the challenge dance: "Thus will I stab the

 traitor dog and thus will I rip out the bellies of his sons The indunas

 grinned and nodded indulgently, but their smiles were tinged with regret

 for the fury and passion of their youth which had long ago cooled in

 their own breasts.

 Lobengula. sat on the bench of his wagon. It was a big twenty-four-foot

 four-wheeler built in Cape Town from good English oak, but it still

 showed all the marks of punishment from its long trek up from the south.

 it had not moved in many years, so the grass had grown up through the

 wheel spokes and around the axle shafts. The canvas of the tent was

 bleached bone white and crusted with the dung of the hens which roosted

 on the hoops of the tent framework, but the canvas protected Lobengula

 from the sun and the seat on the box elevated his head above the level

 of his courtiers and guards and children and wives and supplicants who

 crowded the enclosed stockade.

 The wagon was Lobengula's throne, and the open stockade his audience

 chamber. Because there would be white men and women in his audience, he

 had donned his European finery for this occasion. The long coat

 encrusted with gold lace had once belonged to a Portuguese diplomat. The

 lace was tarnished and one epaulette was missing, and the front could

 not be buttoned over the King's noble belly not by twelve inches, and

 the sleeves reached only halfway down his forearms. With the toy spear

 of kingship, the shaft of red wild mahogany and the blade of brightest

 silver, in his right hand, he used it to summon a boy from out of the

 crush.

 The child was shaking with terror, and his voice so tremulous that

 Lobengula had to lean forward to hear him.

 "i waited until the leopard entered the goat house; then I crept up and

 closed the door and I barricaded it with stones."

 "How did you kill the beast?" Lobengula demanded.

 "i stabbed him through the chinks in the wall with my father's assegai."

 and The boy crept forward and laid the lustrous gold dappled skin at

 Lobengula's feet.

 "Take your choice of three cows from my black royal herds, little one,

 and drive them to your father's kraal and tell him that the king has

 given you a praise name. From this day you will be known as "The one who

 stares into the eyes of the leopard"."

 The boy's voice cracked in an adolescent squeak as he backed away

 gabbling the praises.

 Next was a Hollander, a big arrogant white man with a querulous voice.

 "I have waited three weeks for the king to decide This was translated

 for Lobengula, and he mused aloud.

 "See how red the man's face becomes when he is angry, like the wattles

 on the head of the black vulture. Tell him that the king does not count

 days, perhaps he will have to wait as long again, who knows?"

 And he dismissed him with a flirt of the spear.

 He took a pull from the bottle of champagne that stood on the wagon seat

 beside him. The wine fizzed and spilled onto the front of his

 gold-frogged jacket. Then suddenly his face lit into a beatific smile,

 but his voice was carping and querulous.

 "I sent for you yesterday, Nomusa, Girlchild of Mercy.

 I am in great pain; why did you not come sooner?"

 "An eagle flies, a cheetah runs, but I am limited to the pace of a mule,

 oh King," said Robyn Codrington, as she picked her way through the offal

 that littered the earthen floor of the stockade, and with the, fly

 switch in her hand cleared a path through the crowd towards the wagon,

 even dealing a stinging cut to one of the king's black-cloaked

 executioners.

 "Out of my way, eater of human flesh," she told him primly. "Be gone,

 child stabber." And the man leaped aside nimbly and scowled after her.

 "What is it, Lobengula?" she asked as she reached the wagon. "What ails

 you this time?"

 "My feet are filled with burning coals., "Gout," Robyn said as she

 touched the grotesquely swollen appendages. "You drink too much beer, oh

 King, you drink too much brandy and champagne., She opened her bag.

 "You would have me die of thirst. You are not well named, Nomusa; there

 is no pity in your heart."

 "Nor yours, Lobengula," Robyn snapped. "They tell me you have sent

 another impi to murder the people of Pemba."

 "He is only a Mashona," Lobengula chuckled. "Save your sympathy for a

 king whose stomach feels as though it is filled with sharp stones."

 "Indigestion," Robyn scolded. "Gluttony killed your father, and it is

 killing you."

 "Now you would starve me also. You want me to be a skinny little man of

 no consequence."

 "A thin live one or a fat dead one," Robyn told him.

 "Open your mouth."

 Lobengula choked on the draught, and rolled his eyes theatrically.

 "The pain is better than the taste of your medicine."

 "i will leave you five of these pills. Eat one when your feet swell and

 the pain becomes fierce."

 "Twenty," said Lobengula. "A box full. I, Lobengula, King of Matabele,

 command it. Leave me a box of these little white pills."

 "Five," said Robyn firmly. "Or you will eat them all at one time, as you

 did before."

 The king rocked with gargantuan laughter, and almost fell from the wagon

 seat.

 "I think I will command you to leave those little white huts of yours at

 Khami, and come to live closer to me."

 "I should not obey."

 "That's why I do not command it," Lobengula agreed, with another shout

 of laughter.

 "This kraal is a disgrace, the dirt, the flies-' "A few old bones and a

 little dog shit never killed a Matabele," the king told her, and then

 was serious and motioned her closer, dropping his voice-so that only she

 could hear.

 "The Dutchman with the red face, you know he wishes to build a trade

 post at the ford of the Hunyani river "The man is a cheat. The goods he

 brings are shoddy, and he will deceive your people."

 "A runner has brought this book." He handed the folded and wafered sheet

 to Robyn. "Read it for me."

 "It is from Sir Francis Good. He wishes--! For almost an hour,

 whispering hoarsely so that no other could hear, Lobengula consulted

 Robyn on fifty different matters ranging from the British Commissioner's

 letter to the menstrual problems of his youngest wife. Then at last he

 said, "Your coming is like the first sweet rain at the end of the long

 dry. Is there aught I can do for your happiness?"

 "You can let your people come to worship in my church."

 This time the king's chuckle was rueful. "Nomusa, you are as persistent

 as the termites that gnaw away the poles of my hut." He frowned with

 thought and then smiled again. "Very well, I will let you take one of my

 people, as long as it is a woman, the wife of an induna of royal blood,

 and the mother of twelve sons. If you can find one of my people who

 meets all those conditions, you may take her and splash water on her and

 make your sign on her forehead; and she may sing songs to your three

 white gods if she so wishes."

 This time Robyn had to answer his sly and mischievous grin. "You are a

 cruel man, Lobengula, and you eat and drink too much. But I love you."

 "And I love you also, Nomusa."

 "Then I will ask one more favour."

 "Ask it,"he commanded.

 "There is a lad, son of my brother "Henshaw."

 "The king knows all."

 "What of this boy?"

 ,"will the king listen to his petition?"

 "Send him to me."

 Even from where he stood Bazo could see that the grain bins were

 overflowing with corn that had been sundried still on the cob. There was

 enough to feed an army, he decided bitterly. There was no chance of

 starving them out.

 The grain bins were cylindrical in shape, their walls of plaited green

 saplings plastered with clay and cow dung. They stood on stilts of

 mopani poles to allow the air to circulate below them, and to keep out

 bush rats and other vermin.

 They were perched on the very edge of the precipice.

 The dog has brought good rains to his own fields," murmured Zama, Bazo's

 lieutenant. "He is fat with corn.

 Rain-doctor as he claims."

 Perhaps he is "Water," Bazo mused, staring up the sheer cliff.

 Beyond the grain bins he could make out. the thatched roofs of the

 tribal huts. "Can we drive them out with thirst?" he asked advice, for

 Zama had been a member of one of the previous abortive raids upon the

 stronghold. "The three other indunas tried that at first," Zama pointed

 out. "But then one of the Mashona. that they captured told them that

 there is a running spring from which they draw all the water they wish."

 The sun was beyond the summit of the hill, so Bazo squinted his eyes

 against it. "There is lush green growth there He pointed to a narrow

 gulley that cleft the top of the cliff like an axe stroke but was choked

 with growth. "That would be it."

 As if to confirm his words the tiny distant figure of a girl appeared

 suddenly out of the gulley. She was foreshortened by her height above

 them, and the ledge along which she climbed was not apparent from where

 they stood.

 She had a calabash gourd balanced on her head, with green leaves stuffed

 into its mouth to stop the water splashing out of it as she moved.

 She disappeared over the top of the cliff.

 "So," grunted Bazo. "We must climb up to them., "It would be easier to

 fly," Zama grunted. "That rock would daunt a baboon, or a klipspringer."

 The rock was pearly grey and marble smooth. There were streaks of lichen

 dashed across it, green and blue and red, like dry paint on an artist's

 palette.

 "Come," Bazo ordered, and they began a slow measured circuit of the

 hill, and as they went so the armed guards on the clifftop above kept

 pace with them, watching every move they made, and if they approached

 too close to the foot of the cliff, a hail of rocks fell upon them,

 striking sparks from the scree slope and caroming viciously past their

 heads, forcing them to shelve their dignity as they retired in haste.

 "It is always the Mashona. way," Zama grumbled, "Stones instead of

 spears."

 In places the cliff was riven by vertical cracks, yet none of these

 reached from base to crest, none of them offered a route to the summit.

 Bazo looked for a place that had been polished by the paws of wild

 baboon or marked by the hooves of the tiny little chamois-like

 klipspringer which might reveal a way up the rock face, but there was

 none. The cliff girded the entire hill, and transformed it into a

 fortress.

 "There!"Zama pointed to a tiny irregularity in the face.

 "That is where two warriors of the swimmers" impi tried to force a road

 to the top. They climbed as far as that little bush." It grew in a crack

 in the face a hundred feet from the base of the cliff. "And there the

 ledge narrowed and gave out. They could not go on, nor could they

 return. They hung there two days and three nights until their strength

 failed and they fell, one after the other, to be crushed like beetles on

 the rocks here where we stand."

 They went on, and as the sun was setting they came back to where they

 had started, the bivouac below the ladderway. Pemba's people had built a

 ladder of long straight mopani poles, bound together with bark rope, and

 they had used it to span the lowest point in the cliff a place where a

 deep gully descended from the summit to within fifty feet of the

 surrounding plain. Like a drawbridge, the massive ladder was cunningly

 counter-weighted with round ironstone boulders, so that it had only to

 be drawn up on its ropes, as it was now, and the mountain stronghold was

 impregnable.

 When the sun set, Bazo was still leaning on his long shield staring up

 the cliff, seemingly oblivious to the faint shouted insults of the

 Mashona that just reached him in the evening silence.

 "Pustules on Lobengula's fat buttocks."

 "Puppies of the rabid dog Lobengula."

 "Dried turds of the spavined Matabele elephant."

 only when it was too dark to make out the top of the cliff did Bazo turn

 away, but even then he sat late beside the watch-fire, and rolled into

 his kaross only after the rise of the big white star over the top of the

 kopje.

 Even then his sleep was troubled with dreams. He dreamed of water, of

 streams and lakes and waterfalls.

 He woke again before light and checked that his sentries were alert

 before he slipped from the camp and under cover of the darkness crept up

 to the base of the cliff, at the point directly below the gulley choked

 with green growth where they had seen the girl carry water the day

 before.

 Bazo heard the liquid chuckling, and his spirits soared.

 Guided by the sound he groped through the darkness, and found the spring

 in the base of the cliff. It filled a small natural basin of grey rock

 and then overflowed to waste itself again in the dry earth of the plain.

 Bazo scooped a handful and it was icy cold and sweet on his tongue. The

 fountain came splashing out of a dark rent in the rock face. Bazo

 explored it in the short time that was left before the strengthening

 light threatened to expose him to the sentries on the cliff above.

 "Up," Bazo shouted as he strode into the bivouac. "All of you, up!" And

 his men came off their sleeping-mats, leopard swift and with the

 stabbing spears in their fists.

 "What is it?" Zama hissed.

 "We are going to dance," Bazo told them, and they looked from one to the

 other in amazed disbelief.

 On the north side of the kopje, farthest from the spring in the rock

 cliff and from the long ladder drawbridge, they danced. While they

 danced, all Pemba's people lined the clifftop to watch them, first in

 puzzled silence and then yelling with ribald laughter, hurling down

 taunts and stones.

 "I count four hundred, without the children," Zama panted, as he stamped

 and leaped and stabbed at the air.

 "There will be enough for each of us," Bazo agreed, and pirouetted with

 his shield high over his head, They danced until the sun was high and

 then Bazo led them back to the camp, and when he stretched out on his

 mat and fell instantly asleep, his warriors looked at Zama with

 exasperation, but Zama could only shrug and turn his eyes to the sky.

 An hour before sunset Bazo woke. He ate a little maize cake and drank a

 small gourd of sour milk, then he called for Zama and spoke quietly with

 him until it was almost dark.

 Zama listened and nodded and his eyes shone, and while he talked, Bazo

 was honing the silver blade of his assegai until the light twinkled like

 tiny stars along its cutting edge.

 At dark Bazo rose to his feet, handed his long dappled war shield to

 Zama and, armed only with his assegai, strode out of the bivouac. At the

 spring in the base of the cliff, Bazo shed his kilt and cloak and

 headdress. He rolled them into a bundle and hid them in a rock crevice.

 Then stark naked with only his assegai tied to his back by a leather

 thong, he waded across the pool. The reflection of the stars on its

 surface exploded into chips of light.

 The water cascaded over him from the fountain in the cliff and he

 shuddered and gasped with the cold and then reached up into the dark

 rocky opening, found a fingerhold, drew a deep breatht and pulled

 himself upwards.

 With a solid black jet of water racing over his head, he held his breath

 and wriggled frantically up into the hole in the cliff. The force of

 water opposed him, and it required all his strength to go against it.

 Inch by inch, his chest throbbing for air, he fought his way upwards and

 then just when he knew he would have to let himself be washed back into

 the pool, his head broke out and he could breathe.

 He sucked air desperately, wedging shoulders and knees against the

 smooth water-polished rock to hold himself in the torrent. It was

 utterly dark, not the faintest glimmering of starlight, and the darkness

 seemed to have physical weight that threatened to crush him.

 He reached as high as he could and found another smoo the fingerhold,

 and with all the strength of his arms gained another few feet, rested a

 moment, and then reached up again. The rock was like glass, and in

 places coated with a thick beard of algae, slippery as an eel's skin.

 The cold was a terrible living thing that invaded his body. His bones

 ached and his fingers were so numbed that he could barely take his

 holds.

 The water tore at him, battering his shoulders, forcing its way into his

 nose and mouth and ears, filling his head with its angry animal roaring.

 Still he went up in the irregular twisting tunnel, sometimes horizontal,

 wriggling forward on his belly, the roof cracking his skull if he lifted

 his head too quickly to find the few precious inches of air trapped

 beneath it. Mostly the tunnel climbed vertically, and he wedged with

 knees and elbows to hold himself against the cascade, while his skin,

 softened with water, was smeared and torn away in slabs against the

 stone; but the inches became yards, and the minutes became hours, and

 still he went up.

 Then the tunnel narrowed so sharply that he was trapped, cold slippery

 rock at each shoulder and hard heavy rock cramming down between his

 shoulderblades. He could not go on, nor could he go back. He was trapped

 in the rocky maw of the mountain, and he screamed with terror, but his

 voice was lost in the thunder of water and the water gushed into his

 throat.

 He fought with the last of his drowning, desperate strength, and

 suddenly he kicked himself forward into a narrow cavern where he could

 breathe again, and where the water swirled into little back-eddies so

 that he could rest a few moments from its drag.

 Even while he coughed and choked on his flooded lungs, he realized that

 he had lost his assegai, and he groped for it until he felt the tug of

 the thong on his shoulder; there was still something tied to the other

 end.

 Hand over hand he drew in the thong and then his fingers closed on the

 familiar shaft and he sobbed with relief and pressed his lips to the

 beloved steel.

 It took time for him to realize that the air in the tiny cavern was

 sweet, and he felt it moving like a lover's fingers on his skin, warm

 and soft, warmth, that was what made his heart soar. Warmth from the

 outside world, beyond this icy roaring tomb of water. He found the shaft

 down which the torrent was sucking air from the surface, and from

 somewhere came the strength to attempt it. He climbed slowly,

 agonizingly, and suddenly there was a white prick of light ahead of him,

 distorted by racing black water.

 He thrust his head forward, and the night wind struck his cheek, and he

 smelled woodsmoke and grass and earth redolent of the lingering warmth

 of the sun, and the great white star stood in the night sky high above

 his head. That dreadful passage had connected the fountain at the base

 of the cliff to the one high above.

 the strength to drag himself more than He did not have a few feet from

 the fountainhead, and there under a bush on the soft bed of leaf mould

 he lay and panted like a dog.

 He must have drifted into an exhausted and cold-drugged sleep, for he

 woke with a start. The sky had paled.

 He could just see the branches of the bush above his head outlined

 against it. He dragged himself out, and he ached down to the bones of

 his spine and found that his skinned elbows and knees burned even at the

 touch of the dawn wind.

 There was a narrow path, well marked by many feet from the fountainhead

 up the last few feet of the crest and as he stepped out onto it he

 looked down and saw far below him the moonsilver forest and the tiny

 sparks that were the watch-fires of his own bivouac. As he moved, he

 felt his muscles easing and unknotting, felt the blood recharging his

 limbs.

 Although he was ready for one, there was no sentry at the top of the

 path, and he peered out cautiously from behind the stone portals of the

 gulley onto the tranquil village.

 "By Chaka's teeth, they sleep like fat and lazy dogs," Bazo thought

 grimly. The doors were all tightly closed, and smoke oozed from every

 chink in the walls. They were half suffocating themselves to keep out

 the mosquitoes. He could hear a man coughing hoarsely in the nearest

 hut.

 He was about to slip out from behind his rocky screen when faint

 movement in the gloom between the huts made him sink gently down again.

 A dark figure scurried on directly towards where he hid. He shifted his

 assegai, but only a few paces from him the figure stopped.

 It was swathed in a skin cloak against the pre-dawn chill, bunched up

 like an old woman, until it straightened and threw off the cloak. Bazo

 felt his breath hiss up his throat and he bit down to stop it reaching

 his lips.

 The naked girl was in that lovely tender stage just past puberty, on the

 very brink of full womanhood. There were the last vulnerable vestiges of

 childhood in the plump little buttocks and in the kitten awkward way she

 stood with toes turned slightly inwards. She was naked and the first

 light touched her sable skin with a lemon glow. Then she turned her

 head.

 She had a long slender neck and the neat little head balanced perfectly

 upon it. The dome of her skull was covered with an intricate pattern of

 closely woven plaits, Her forehead was high and smooth, her cheekbones

 vaulted in the Egyptian way, her lips chiselled into perfect sweeps,

 synuretrical as the wings of a beautiful butterfly, and the light

 glinted briefly in her huge slanted eyes as she looked about her.

 Then she squatted briefly and her water tinkled against the earth.

 It was a sound that unaccountably filled Bazo's chest with a swollen

 tender feeling, for the act was so innocent and so natural.

 She stood, and in the instant before she covered her head once more with

 the cloak, he had one more glimpse of her face. He knew then that he had

 never seen anything so beautiful in all his life, and he stared after

 her as she hurried back between the huts with a peculiar aching hunger

 consuming his very being.

 It took him many minutes to rouse himself, and then as he crept forward

 he found that, hard as he tried, he could not drive the girl's image

 from his mind. The pathway that led from the village to the ladder

 drawbridge was unmistakable. It was broad and its surface beaten smooth.

 There were walls of worked stone on each side of it behind which the

 defenders could meet any thrust. There were piles of stones at intervals

 along the path. placed ready to be hurled down at anybody attempting to

 force the ladder or fight their way up the path.

 The pathway dropped steeply into the gulley, and then ended on a wide

 level stone platform. The light was stronger now and Bazo could see that

 there were sentries here; two of them stood on the lip watching the

 plain fifty feet below the platform, guarding the massive

 counterbalanced ladder. Farther back four other guards squatted around a

 small smoky fire, and Bazo's saliva flooded as he smelled the roasting

 maize cakes. The men were talking in the low sleepy tones of men who had

 stood a long watch, and their backs were turned to the gulley, for they

 would never expect an enemy to come from that direction.

 Bazo crept closer. There was another pile of rocks at the corner of the

 platform, ready for the guards to hurl down the cliff. Bazo crawled into

 the shadows behind it.

 He did not have long to wait. Very faintly on the morning wind he heard

 the singing. Zama had begun the dance below the cliff. The song was the

 fighting hymn of his regiment, and Bazo's blood thrilled in his veins.

 He felt the divine madness begin. it was a feeling that other lesser men

 got only from the hemp pipe.

 He felt the sweat break on his skin, and the madness mount from his

 belly to his heart, felt the blood swell in his throat, felt his eyes

 burn and bulge.

 The guards had left the fire now and crowded the edge of the cliff,

 peering downwards, laughing and pointing.

 "Hear Lobengula's puppies yap!"

 "Look at them dance like virgins at the Festival of First Fruits" The

 signal Bazo had agreed with Zama was the moment the battle song ended,

 but he could barely contain himself that long.

 He rose from his crouch, and his muscles twitched, his head jerked like

 that of a maniac, and in the dawn light his eyes were glazed like shards

 of ceramic pottery, the red rage of the berserker. At that instant the

 distant song ended.

 Bazo's cry froze the men on the edge of the cliff, it was the bellow of

 a heart-struck buffalo bull, the screech of the stooping eagle.

 In the paralysed moment before they could turn, Bazo, struck them.

 He charged with outstretched arms and swept four of them away into the

 void. They twisted and turned in the air as they fell, and they screamed

 the whole way down on a high receding note that was cut off abruptly at

 the end.

 Bazo's charge had been so headlong that he almost followed them over the

 brink; for a giddy moment he tottered there, and then he caught his

 balance and spun to strike underhand at one of the survivors. The blade

 went into the man's belly and out the other side, cleaving his bowels

 and his kidneys, and crunching through his backbone; and when Bazo

 jerked the steel clear, the life blood sprayed hotly onto his forearm

 and his chest. The last sentry ran, silently and desperately, for the

 pathway, and Bazo let him go.

 Bazo bounded along the edge of the cliff and reached the point where the

 top of the ladder was secured. The ropes that held it were of twisted

 and plaited bark, reinforced with liana and leather thongs. They were

 thick as Bazo's arm, and he changed his grip on the assegai to a

 chopping stroke.

 The ropes popped and crackled as he hacked through them. He grunted at

 each Stroke, slitting his eyes against the flying chips of wood and

 bark.

 Behind him he heard the babble of many voices on the pathway. The sentry

 would call them down like hunting dogs, but Bazo scorned to turn until

 the work was done.

 One rope gave, and the massive unwieldy ladder sagged and twisted.

 He cut again, reversing his grip to swing back-handed, and the other

 ropes went.

 The ladder swung outwards and downwards, gathering momentum, and the

 timbers crackled and squealed, drowning out the voices of the men coming

 down behind him. The bottom of the ladder struck the scree below the

 cliff with a shattering crash, and some of the uprights snapped under

 the impact. The head of the ladder was still secured at Bazo's feet, and

 the whole twisted mess hung down like the rigging of a dismasted ship.

 Bazo stood long enough to watch Zama lead his warriors swarming up the

 dangling tangle of rope and timber. Then he turned.

 They were coming down the pathway, a solid phalanx of black bodies and

 sparkling weapons; but their advance was hesitant enough for Bazo to

 race forward and reach the narrow gap in the wall before the leaders

 did. With solid rock to guard his flanks, he laughed at them, and it was

 a sound to stop them dead, those in front pushing back and those behind

 struggling forward.

 one of them threw a long spear and it clashed sparks from the wall at

 the level of Bazo's head. He drove forward and stabbed into the press of

 bodies caught in the narrow gut between the stone walls. The screams and

 moans goaded him, and the blood from the gaping wounds splattered his

 face and sprayed into his open mouth, a ghastly draught that maddened

 him further.

 They broke and fled, leaving four of their number writhing and twisting

 on the pathway.

 Bazo glanced behind him. None of his Matabele had reached the head of

 the ladder yet. He looked back up the pathway and saw that the real men

 were coming.

 These would be the picked warriors, the best spearmen , there was no

 mistaking their superiority over the rabble that Bazo had just

 scattered; they were bigger and more powerful in body, their expressions

 grim and determined, and their formation ordered and controlled.

 They came down in massed ranks to where Bazo stood, their shields

 raised, their spears poised, and at their head danced a skinny wizened

 old man with a face ravaged by some terrible disease, his nose and ears

 rotted away and his cheeks and forehead covered with silver white

 blotches.

 He was hung about the waist and neck with the accoutrements of his

 magical trade, and he shrieked and gibbered like an enraged ape.

 "Kill the Matabele dog."

 Bazo was naked, without a shield, but he hefted the assegai and stood to

 meet them and their horrid master and he laughed again, the wild joyous

 laughter of a man who was living a lifetime in his last few seconds.

 "Bazo!" The cry reached him, even through his rage, and he turned.

 Zama had crawled onto the platform, blown from that long scrambling

 climb up the swinging twisted ladder.

 He rose on his knees and sent the great dappled shield skimming across

 the platform. Like a falcon coming to bate it settled on Bazo's

 shoulder, and Bazo laughed and went springing forward.

 His assegai drove through the wizard's rotting flesh as though it were

 soft as a boiled yam, and Pemba screeched one last time.

 "Bazo, wait! Leave some of them for us!" The shouts of his fifty

 Matabele behind him, as they scrambled onto the platform, and then

 Zama's muscled shoulder was touching his as they locked shields and

 swept the pathway, the way the flash floods of summer scour the dry

 riverbeds.

 It was a beautiful stabbing, a glory which men would sing about. The

 assegais seemed to hold their keen edge no matter how often they were

 buried and the spear arms never tired despite the heavy work. The line

 of Matabele swept the hilltop from end to end, roaring their frustration

 when the last of Pemba's men threw down their spears and leapt out over

 the cliff, grudging them that easy death for the assegais were still

 thirsty and the madness was still on them.

 Then they turned and went back through the village, ransacking the huts,

 throwing a toddling infant high and catching it on the point as it fell,

 or sending the steel full length out between the withered dugs of some

 scurrying crone, for the divine madness does not pass swiftly.

 With his shoulder, Bazo smashed open another hut, and Zama leaped in at

 his side, both of them were painted from throat to knee with red running

 crimson, their contorted faces hideous, blood-glutted masks. Someone

 tried to escape from the dark interior of the hut.

 "Mine!" roared Zama and sped his long steel, and the low early sun

 struck a ray through the open doorway, sparkling on Zama's assegai and

 falling in the same instant on the huge slanted terrified eyes and high

 Egyptian cheekbones of the girl he was killing.

 Zama's steel clashed against Bazo's great shield and was deflected past

 the girl's cheek by the width of a finger, so that the stroke died in

 the air. Before Zama could strike again Bazo stood over the girl,

 spreading the shield over her the way a heron covers its chick with a

 wing, and he snarled at Zama like a leopard whose cub is menaced.

 After the first weary day of the return march, while the long file of

 roped captives was settling exhausted and miserable beneath the grove of

 msasa trees, Bazo strode down the line and stopped beside the girl.

 "You!"he said, and with a careless stroke of his assegai severed the

 thong at her neck. "Cook my meal!"

 While she worked over the fire, Bazo joked loudly with Zama and his men,

 trying to prevent his eyes from straying from their faces. He ate what

 she cooked without showing either pleasure or displeasure, while she

 knelt at a respectful distance and watched every mouthful he took.

 Then suddenly when he had finished eating, she came gliding to his side

 with that disconcerting silent grace, and she lifted the bunch of wilted

 leaves from the swollen and crusted spear wound in Bazo's flank.

 It was an impertinence, and he lifted his hand to strike her, and then

 let the hand fall. She had not flinched and her manner was assured and

 competent.

 She cleaned the wound with deft fingers and then she unstoppered two of

 the little buck-horn containers that she wore on her belt and with the

 powder they contained made a poultice. It burned like fire for a few

 seconds, but then felt much easier.

 Bazo made no acknowledgement, but when one of his Matabele came to rope

 her back with the other captives, Bazo frowned, and the man passed her

 by.

 When Bazo lay on his sleeping-mat, she curled like a puppy at his feet.

 He was ready for her to try to escape once the camp settled, but after

 midnight she had not stirred and he fell asleep.

 In the hour before dawn when he rose to check the sentries, there was

 frost on the grass, and he heard the girl's teeth chattering softly. He

 dropped his fur regimental cloak over her as he passed and she cuddled

 down into it quickly.

 When he called for the day's march to begin, she had his bedding roll

 and cooking-pot balanced on her head, and a dozen times during the

 march, Bazo had to go back along the winding column for no reason that

 he could explain to Zama, and each time his steps slowed as he came up

 behind the girl, and he watched the play of muscle down her back, the

 roll of her plump black buttocks and the joggle of her glossy sable

 breasts. But when she turned her head and smiled shyly at him, his

 hauteur was frosty and he stalked back to the head of the column.

 That night he permitted himself a nod of approval at the first taste of

 her cooking, and when she dressed the wound, he said, "The heat has gone

 from it."

 She did not lift her eyes.

 "Who taught you this skill" he insisted.

 "Pemba, the wizard," she whispered.

 "Why?"

 "I was his apprentice."

 "Why you?"

 "I have the gift."

 "So then, little witch, make me an oracle," Bazo laughed, and she lifted

 her head and he looked into those disconcerting slanted tar-bright eyes.

 "Do not scoff, lord."

 INKOSI, lord," she called him, but Bazo stopped laughing, and felt the

 spirits tickle the hair at the nape of his neck. That night, when he

 heard her shiver, he opened a fold of his kaross and she crept into it.

 Bazo feigned sleep, but his body was tense and he was aware of each tiny

 movement that the girl made as she settled to sleep. It would have been

 so easy to reach out and hold her down with his arm across her chest

 while he forced his knee between hers. The thought made him twitch and

 grunt.

 "Lord?" she whispered. "Something troubles you."

 "What is your name?" he asked, for want of a reply, and found that he

 was whispering also.

 "Tanase."

 He measured it on his tongue, and it fitted "Tanase." well enough,

 although he recognized it was a Rozwl name, one of the splinter tribes

 of the Mashona, and he did not know the meaning.

 "I know your name, everyone speaks it with respect," she said. "Bazo,

 the Axe."

 "I killed your master, Pemba. I struck him down with my own hand." He

 did not know what compelled him to say that.

 "I know," she whispered.

 "Do you hate me for that, little witch?"

 "I praise you for that!" Her voice shook with quiet vehemence, and her

 hip touched his under the kaross.

 "Praise? Did you not love Pemba as a dog loves its master?"

 "I hated him, and when I foresaw his death in the magic calabash, I was

 filled with joy."

 "You saw his death?"

 "I saw his death, as I saw your face, long before you came to take me."

 Bazo shuddered involuntarily, and she felt it.

 "You are cold, lord." She pressed a little closer to him.

 Her flesh was hot and soft, he felt his own flesh respond to its touch.

 "Why did you hate Pemba?"

 "He was evil beyond the telling. The things he forced me to do I will

 never forget., "He used your body?" There was a rough edge to Bazo's

 question.

 "Not even Pemba would dare tamper with the body of one of the chosen

 ones, for to tear the veil of maidenhood is to destroy the gift."

 "The gift?"

 "The gift of foresight which the likes of Pemba value 4 so highly.,

 "What then did he force upon you?"

 "Dark things, midnight things, torture not of the body but of the

 spirit."

 Now it was her turn to shudder, and she turned towards him and clung to

 his broad smooth chest, hiding her face against it so that her voice was

 muffled and he could hardly catch her next words.

 "I did not wish to be chosen, I hate and fear what still lies ahead of

 me if I follow that road."

 "Pemba is dead."

 "You do not understand. Pemba was but a little wizard already he had

 taught me almost all he knew. Then I would have been called by the one

 whose name I dare not speak aloud. That call will still come, and I

 shall not be able to deny it."

 "You are under my protection."

 "There is only one way you can protect me, Bazo Lord."

 "How?"

 "Make me worthless to them. Destroy this gift which is such a terrible

 burden."

 "How?"

 "As you destroyed Pemba with the stabbing spear of steel, destroy it

 with your great spear of flesh, tear my veil and let this thing pass

 from me."

 she felt him, hot and fierce, pressing against her, and her body seemed

 to melt and become pliant and yielding.

 "Ah yes, Lord. Make me as other women, so that I may feel your noble

 belly on mine in the nights, that I may feel your son kick in my womb

 and tug at my breast when I give him suck., "All these things you will

 have, Tanase." Bazo's voice was hoarse with his wanting. "When we reach

 Gubulawayo the king will reward me, and give me leave to go in to the

 women, and take a wife."

 Lord, it is dangerous to wait."

 "i will not rut on you like a slave girl. You will be the first and

 senior of all my wives."

 "Lord,"

 "Enough, Tanase, tempt me no further, for what you feel, hard though it

 may be, is not stone but flesh only."

 INKOSI, you do not know the power of the wizards.

 Save me from them."

 "I know the law and custom of Matabele, and that is all a man should

 know and heed."

 Bazo's scout came in at a dead run, the sweat snaking down his back and

 chest, and he shouted his report the moment he came up to the head of

 the column.

 Bazo whirled and barked three sharp orders. Immediately the column

 closed up, and the captives were forced to squat with a dozen warriors

 standing guard over them.

 The rest of the Matabele formed up behind Bazo and he led them away at

 that gait between a trot and a ran which lifted the dust to their knees.

 Bazo picked his ambush with an unerring eye. He chose a place where

 broken ground and thick bush allowed only one passage through, and the

 single horseman rode into it. The long shields were suddenly all around

 him, fencing him in as his dun-coloured pony snorted and skittered.

 The rifle was half-way drawn from the leather boot at the horseman's

 knee when Bazo stopped him with a shout.

 "Too late for that. You were dead, and the jackals feasting already. You

 grow careless, despite all that I taught you, Henshaw."

 Ralph let the rifle slide back into its scabbard, and he threw up his

 hands, pleasure and chagrin warnng on his face.

 "Shake any tree and a Matabele falls out of it., His voice was

 mock-mournful, and he swung down off Tom's sturdy back and strode to

 meet Bazo.

 "I expected to see the induna's ring on your forehead already, oh mighty

 slayer of Mashona," he laughed as they embraced.

 "Soon, Little Hawk, very soon. But you, I thought your wagon would be

 heavy with ivory "Done, Little Axe, already done." Ralph stepped back

 and looked at him. In the months since they had parted, both men had

 changed.

 In Bazo there remained no trace of the young trim labourer who had

 worked his shifts in the pit and eaten Zouga Ballantyne's rations. Here

 was a warrior and a prince, tall and plumed and proud.

 Ralph was no longer the callow lad, his every action ordered by his

 father. Instead he was a grown man, with a jaunty lift to his chin and a

 self-assured set to his shoulder. Yet though his clothes were

 travel-worn an stained the training of Zouga Ballantyne still showed,

 for they were recently washed and his jaws had been clean shaven that

 very morning. They looked at each other and the affection between them

 was tempered and hardened with respect.

 "I shot a young buffalo cow, not two hours ago."

 "Yes," Bazo nodded. "It was the shot which brought us."

 "Then I am glad of it. The buffalo meat is fat, and there is enough even

 for a hungry Matabele."

 Bazo glanced at the sun. "Though I am in haste, on the king's business,

 my prisoners are in need of rest. We will help you eat your buffalo,

 Henshaw, but in the dawn we will go on."

 "Then there is much to talk about, and little time to do so."

 There was the pop of a trek-whip, and Bazo glanced beyond Ralph's

 shoulder to see the oxen come plodding between the trees and the wagon

 lurching and wallowing behind them.

 "You still keep bad company,"Bazo scolded with a grin as he recognized

 Umfaan at the head of the span and Isazi, the little Zulu, on the flank,

 "but the load you carry is welcome."

 From the wagon box hung the raw quarters and shoulders of the

 freshly-butchered buffalo carcass.

 "We have not tasted fresh meat since we left the king's kraal."

 Ralph and Bazo sat at a separate fire apart from their retinues, where

 they could talk freely.

 "The king agreed to buy the guns and bottles that I carried up from

 Kimberley," Ralph told Bazo, "and he paid me generously., He did not go

 on to describe to Bazo the currency in which he had been paid. He did

 not describe his own astonishment when Lobengula had offered him an

 uncut diamond, a big bright first-water stone.

 His surprise had immediately been tempered by conscience; he had no

 doubts about where that stone had come from. His conscience lasted about

 as long as his surprise, and he haggled with gusto, forcing up the price

 to six stones, which he had picked with an eye trained by many years on

 the diggings. He knew they would be worth 10,000 pounds when he got them

 back to civilization.

 Thus in a single stroke he had paid for the wagon and team, his entire

 debt to Diamond Lil, interest and all and was already many thousands of

 pounds in profit.

 "Then I asked Lobengula to let me hunt elephant, and he laughed and said

 I was too young and that the elephant would eat me up. He kept me

 waiting outside his kraal for ten days."

 "If he kept you such a short time, then you have found favour with the

 king," Bazo interrupted. "Some white men have waited from the beginning

 of the dry season to the middle of the wet, merely for permission to

 take the road out of Matabeleland."

 "Ten days was long enough for me," Ralph granted.

 "But when I asked him in which part of his lands I was allowed to hunt,

 he laughed again and said, "The elephant will be in so little danger

 from you, Little Hawk, that you may go where you wish, and kill as many

 as are stupid or lame enough to let you."

 Bazo chuckled delightedly. "And how many lame stupid elephant have you

 found so far, Henshaw?"

 "I have fifty good tusks in the wagon already., "Fifty!" Bazo's chuckles

 died and he stared at Ralph in amazement; then he stood up and crossed

 to the wagon.

 He untied one of the straps and lifted the canvas cover to peer in at

 the load, while Isazi looked up from his cooking fire, frowned and

 called to Ralph.

 "This boy's great-grandfather, Mashobane, was a thief, his grandfather,

 Mzilikazi was a traitor, you have every reason to trust him with our

 ivory, Henshaw."

 Bazo did not look at him, but glanced up into the trees.

 "The monkeys hereabout make a frightful chatter," he murmured, and then

 came back to Ralph.

 "Fine tusks!" he admitted. "Like the ones the hunters took when I was

 still a child."

 Ralph did not tell him that most of those in the wagon were taken even

 before that time. He had discovered all but two of the caches that his

 father had bequeathed to him.

 The ivory had dried out, lost almost a quarter of its green weight; but

 most of it was still in good condition, and would fetch the market price

 once he got it to the railhead.

 Though Ralph had hunted diligently for his own elephant whilst he sought

 out Zouga's ancient dumps, he had had little success. He had killed

 five, only one of which was a bull and whose green tusks had weighed

 just over sixty pounds. The others had been small female barely worth

 taking.

 ivory The great herds that Zouga had described in A Hunter's Odyssey no

 longer existed. Since those days there had been many hunters, some of

 them inspired by Zouga's own writing. Boer and Briton, Hottentot and

 German, they had hunted and harried the huge grey beasts and left their

 white bones piled on the veld and in the forest.

 "Yes, they are good tusks," Ralph nodded. "And my wagon is heavy laden

 now. I am on the road back to the king's kraal to ask him for permission

 to leave Matabeleland and go back to Kimberley."

 "Then when you have gone, we will see you no more," Bazo said quietly.

 "You will be like the other white men who come to Matabeleland. You will

 take what you want, and never come back."

 Ralph laughed. "No, old friend, I will be back. I do not have everything

 I wish, not yet. I will come back with more wagons, perhaps six wagons,

 all loaded with trade goods. I will set up trading posts from the Shashi

 river to the Zambezi., "You will be a rich man, Henshaw. I am sure of

 it," Bazo agreed. "But rich men are not always happy men.

 This I have remarked often. Is there nothing else in Matabeleland for

 you but ivory and gold and diamonds?"

 Ralph's expression changed. "How did you know that?"

 he demanded.

 "I asked, I did not know," Bazo denied, still smiling.

 Though I do not have to throw the bones or look in the magic calabash to

 know it is a woman, you have suddenly the look of a dog that smells the

 bitch. Tell me, Henshaw, who is she and when will you take her to wife?"

 Then he laughed aloud. "You have not yet asked her father? Or you have

 asked and he has refused?"

 "It is not a matter for laughter," Ralph said stiffly, and with an

 effort Bazo wiped the mirth from his face, though it twinkled still in

 his eyes.

 "Forgive one who loves you as a brother, I did not know it was such a

 heavy matter." And at last he managed to match Ralph's portentous

 expression, while he waited for him to speak again.

 "Once, long ago, while we rode up in the skip, you spoke of a woman with

 hair as white and fine as the winter grass," Ralph said at last, and

 Bazo nodded.

 "It is she, Bazo. I have found her."

 "She wants you as much as you want her?" Bazo said firmly. "If she does

 not, then she is so stupid that she does not deserve you."

 "i haven't asked her yet," Ralph admitted.

 "Do not ask her, tell her, and then ask her father. Show the father your

 tusks of ivory; that will settle the matter."

 "You are right, Bazo," Ralph looked dubious. "It will be that simple."

 And then softly in English, so that Bazo could not understand. "God

 knows what I shall do if it is not. I don't think I can live without

 her."

 If he did not follow the words, Bazo understood the sense and the mood.

 He sighed, and his eyes strayed to Tanase at the cooking fire.

 "They are so soft and weak, but they wound more deeply than the sharpest

 steel."

 Ralph followed his eyes, and then suddenly his own expression cleared

 and it was his turn to guffaw and reach across to slap Bazo's shoulder.

 "Now I recognize the look you spoke of earlier, the dog with the smell

 of the bitch in his nostrils."

 "It is not a matter for laughter," said Bazo, haughtily, Long after the

 last gnawed buffalo bone was thrown upon the fire and the last beer pot

 emptied; long after the Matabele warriors had tired of singing the song

 of Pemba, the ode to their own prowess and courage on the hill of the

 wizard, and rolled into their sleeping karosses; long after the last

 captive girl had ceased wailing, Bazo and Ralph sat on beside their own

 fire, and the drone of their voices and the munch of the oxen chewing

 the cud were the only sounds in the camp.

 It was as though every last moment was precious to them for both sensed

 that when they met again they would be changed, and perhaps the world

 with them.

 They relived their youth, remembering Scipio, the falcon, and

 Inkosikazi, the great spider; they smiled at the stinging mewary of the

 fighting sticks, and Bakela's wrath when Bazo gave him the shattered

 diamond; they talked of Jordan and Jan Cheroot and Kamuza and all the

 others, until at last reluctantly Bazo rose.

 "I will be gone before the sun, Henshaw," he said.

 "Go in peace, Bazo, and enjoy the honours that await you and the woman

 you have won."

 When Bazo reached his sleeping-mat, the girl was already wrapped in his

 kaross.

 As soon as Bazo lay down beside her, she reached for him. She was as hot

 as though she was in high fever her body burning and her skin dry.

 Silent sobs racked her and her grip was fierce.

 "What is it, Tanase?" He was shocked and alarmed.

 "A vision. A terrible vision."

 "A dream." He was relieved. "It was only a dream., "It was a vision,"

 she denied. "Oh, Bazo, will you not take this terrible gift from me,

 before it destroys us both."

 He held her and could not answer her; her distress moved him deeply, but

 he was helpless to alleviate it.

 After a while she was quiet, and he thought that she slept, but then she

 suddenly whispered.

 "It was a terrible vision, Bazo Lord, and it will haunt me unto my

 grave., He did not answer, but he felt the superstitious chill in his

 guts.

 "I saw you high upon a tree-" She broke off, and another single sob hit

 her like a blow. "The white man, the one you call Henshaw, the Hawk, do

 not trust him."

 "He is as my brother, and like a brother I love him., "Then why did he

 not weep, Bazo, why did he not weep when he looked up at you upon the

 tree?"

 Salina Codrington rolled out her pastry with long and expert strokes of

 the pin. The sleeves of her blouse were rolled high and she was floury

 to the elbows. Little blobs of pastry stuck to her hands and fingers.

 The thatched ceiling of the kitchen at Khami Mission Station was sooty

 from the open iron stove, and the smell of the dough was yeasty and

 warm.

 A single skein of white-gold hair had escaped the ribbon and now tickled

 her nose and chin. Salina pursed her lips and blew it away; it floated

 like gossamer and then gently settled across her face again, but she did

 not change the rhythm of the rolling-pin.

 Ralph thought that little gesture the most poignant he had ever

 witnessed, but then everything she did fascinated him, even the way she

 cocked her head and smiled at him as he slouched against the jamb of the

 kitchen door.

 Her smile was so gentle, so unaffected, that his chest squeezed again,

 and his voice sounded choked in his own ears.

 "I am leaving tomorrow."

 "Yes," Salina nodded. "We shall all miss you dreadfully."

 "This is the first chance I have had to speak to you alone, without the

 monsters "Oh Ralph, that's an unkind, if totally accurate, description

 of my darling sisters." Her laughter had a surprising timbre and depth

 to it. "If you wanted to speak to me, you should have asked."

 "I'm asking now, Salina."

 "And we are alone."

 "Will you not stop still for a moment."

 "The baking will spoil, but I can listen well enough while I work."

 Ralph shifted his feet, and hunched his shoulders uncertainly. It was

 not as he had planned it. It was going to be a feat of timing and

 dexterity to sweep her up in arms all covered with flour and dough and

 with a heavy rolling-pin clutched in her hands.

 "Salina, you are the most beautiful girl, woman, I mean, lady, that I

 have ever seen."

 "That's kind, but untrue, Ralph. I do have a mirror, you know."

 "It's true, I swear-' "Please don't swear, Ralph. In any event, there

 are much more important things in life than physical beauty kindness,

 and goodness and understanding for instance.

 "Oh yes, and you have all those."

 Suddenly Salina stopped in mid stroke, and she stared at him with an

 expression of dawning consternation.

 "Ralph," she whispered. "Cousin Ralph "COUSIN I may be," he was

 stammering slightly in his rush to have it all said, "but I love you,

 Salina, I loved you from the first moment I saw you at the river.

 "Oh Ralph, my poor dear Ralph." Consternation was mingled now with

 compassion.

 "I would never have spoken, not before, but now, after this expedition I

 have some substance. I will be able to pay off my debts, and when I come

 back I will have my own wagons. I am not yet rich, but I will be., "If

 only I had known. Oh Ralph, if only I had suspected, I would have been

 able to But he was gabbling it out now.

 "I love you, Salina, oh how dearly I love you, and I want you to marry

 me."

 She came to him then, and her eyes filled with blue tears that trembled

 on her lower lids.

 "Oh dear Ralph. I am so sorry. I would have given anything to save you

 from hurt. If only I had known."

 He stopped then, bewildered. "You will not, does that mean you will not

 marry me?" The bewilderment faded, and his jaw thrust out and his mouth

 hardened. "But why not, I will give you everything, I will cherish and

 "Ralph." She touched his lips, and left a little dab of flour upon them.

 "Hush, Ralph, hush."

 "But, Salina, I love you! Don't you understand?"

 "Yes, I do. But, dear Ralph, I don't love you!"

 Cathy and the twins went as far as the river with Ralph. Vicky and

 Lizzie rode, two up, on Tom's back.

 They rode astride, with their skirts up around their thighs, and

 squealed with delight every few seconds, until Ralph thought his

 eardrums would split, and he scowled moodily ahead, not replying to

 Cathy's questions and comments as she skipped along beside him, until

 the spring went out of her step and she, too, fell silent.

 The bank of the Khami river was where they would part. All of them knew

 that, without speaking about it.

 And when they reached it Isazi had already taken the wagon through the

 drift. The ironshod wheels had left deep scars in the far bank. He would

 be an hour or so ahead. They stopped on the near bank and now even the

 twins were silent. Ralph looked back along the track, lifting his hat

 and shading his eyes with the brim against the early sunlight.

 "Salina isn't coming then?" he said flatly.

 "She's got a belly ache," said Vicky. "She told me so." If you ask me,

 it's more like the curse of Eve," said Lizzie airily.

 "That's rude," Cathy said. "And only silly little girls talk about

 things they don't understand."

 Lizzie looked chastened, and Vicky assumed a virtuous air of innocence.

 "Now both of you say goodbye to Cousin Ralph."

 "I love you, Cousin Ralph," said Vicky, and had to be prised off him

 like a leach.

 "i love you, Cousin Ralph."

 Lizzie had counted the kisses that Vicky had bestowed on him, and she

 went for a new world record, a noble attempt, but frustrated by Cathy.

 "Now, scat," Cathy told them. "Go, both of you., "Cathy is crying," said

 Lizzie, and both twins were immediately entranced.

 "I am not," said Cathy furiously.

 "Oh yes, you are" said Vicky.

 "I have something in my eye."

 "Both eyes?" asked Lizzie sceptically.

 "I warn you," Cathy told them. They knew that expression of old, and

 reluctantly they retired just out of range. Cathy turned her back to

 them so they missed half of what followed.

 "They are right." Her whisper was blurred as her eyes. "I am crying,

 Ralph. I hate so to see you go."

 Ralph had not truly looked at her, not ever, his eyes had been for

 Salina alone, but now her frank admission touched him and he saw her for

 the first time.

 He had thought her a child, but he had been wrong, he realized suddenly.

 It was the thick dark eyebrows and the firm chin that gave strength to

 her face, so that he sensed that anything that made her cry was deeply

 felt.

 Surely she had not been so tall when first he met her almost a year

 before. Now the top of her head reached his chin.

 The freckles on her cheeks kept her young, but her nose was set in the

 shape of maturity and the gaze of her green eyes below the arched brows,

 though flooded now with tears, was too wise and steady for childhood.

 She still wore the muddy green dress of sewn flour sacks, but its fit

 had altered. Now it was baggy at the waist, while at the same time it

 was too tight across her chest. Yet it could not suppress the thrust of

 young firm breasts, and the seams strained across hips that he

 remembered being as narrow and bony as a boy's.

 "You will come back, Ralph? Unless you promise, I cannot let you go."

 "i promise," he said, and suddenly the pain of rejection by Salina,

 which he had thought might destroy him, was just supportable.

 "i will pray for you each day until you do," Cathy said, and came to

 kiss him. She no longer felt skinny and awkward in his arms, and Ralph

 was suddenly very aware of the softness of her against his chest, and

 lower.

 Her mouth had a taste like chewing a stalk of green spring grass. Her

 lips formed a pillow for his. He had no burning desire to break the

 embrace, and Cathy also seemed content to let it persist. The pain of

 unrequited love ebbed a little more to be replaced by a warm and

 comforting sensation, a most pleasant glow, until with a shock Ralph

 realized two things.

 Firstly, the twins were an avid audience, their eyes enormous and their

 grins impudent. Secondly, that the pleasant glow which had suffused him

 had its source considerably lower than his broken heart, and was

 accompanied by more tangible changes that must soon become apparent to

 the fresh young innocent in his arms.

 He almost shoved her away, and vaulted up onto Tom's back with

 unnecessary violence. However, when he looked down at Cathy again, the

 tide of green tears in her eyes had receded and been replaced by a look

 of satisfaction, a knowingness that proved beyond doubt what he had just

 come to realize, that she was no longer a child.

 "How long?" she asked.

 "Not before the end of the rains," he told her. "Six or seven months

 from now." And suddenly that seemed to Ralph to be a very long time

 indeed.

 "Anyway," she said. "I have your promise."

 On the far bank of the river he looked back. The twins had lost interest

 and started home. They were racing each other down the track, skirts and

 plaits flying, but Cathy still stood staring after him. Now she lifted

 her hand and waved. She kept waving until horse and rider disappeared

 amongst the trees.

 Then she sat down on a log beside the track. The sun made its noon and

 then sank into the misty smoke of the bush fires that blued the horizon

 and turned to a soft red orb that she could look at directly without

 paining her eyes.

 In the gloaming a leopard sawed and hacked harshly from the dense dark

 riverine forest nearby. Cathy shivered and stood up. She cast one last

 lingering glance across the wide river bed and then at last she turned

 for home.

 Bazo could not sleep; hours ago he had left his sleeping-mat and come to

 squat by the fire in the centre of the hut. The others had not even

 stirred when he moved, Zama and Kamuza and Mondane, those who would

 accompany him tomorrow.

 Their finery was piled beside their recumbent figures.

 The cloaks of feathers and furs and beads, the headdresses and kilts,

 the regalia reserved for only the most grave and momentous occasions,

 like the Festival of the First Fruits, or a personal report to the king,

 or, again, the ceremony for which they had gathered and which would

 start at the dawn of the morrow.

 Bazo looked at them now, and his chest felt congested with his joy, joy

 so intense that it sang in his ears and fizzed in his blood. joy even

 more intense in that these his companions of the years, with whom he had

 shared boyhood and youth and now manhood, would be there again at one of

 the most important days of his life.

 Now Bazo sat alone at the fire while his companions snored and muttered

 in sleep, and he took each coin of his good fortune and, like a miser

 counting his treasure, fondled it with his mind, turning each memory

 over and gloating upon it.

 He lived again every moment of his triumph when the lines of captive

 women had filed before Lobengula and piled the spoils in front of his

 wagon, the bars and coils of red copper, the axe heads, the leather bags

 of salt, the clay pots full of beads, for Pemba had been a famous wizard

 and had gathered his tribute from a host of fearful clients.

 Lobengula had smiled when he saw his treasure, for that was what had

 been at the root of his feud with Pemba. The king was not above the

 jealousies of common men. When Lobengula smiled, all his indunas smiled

 in sympathy and made those little clucking sounds of approval.

 Bazo remembered how the king had called him forward, and smiled again

 when Bazo emptied the bag he carried over his shoulder, and the wizard's

 head, which by then was in an advanced state of decomposition, had

 rolled to the forewheel of the wagon and grinned up at Lobengula with

 ruined lips drawn back from uneven teeth stained by the hemp pipe.

 A troop of the gaunt, mange-ridden pariah dogs that skulked about the

 king's kraal had come to snarl and abble over the morsel, and when one

 of the blacksqu cloaked executioners would have scattered them with

 blows of his knobkerrie, the king restrained him.

 "The poor beasts are hungry, let them be." And he turned back to Bazo.

 "Tell me how it was done."

 Bazo relived in his mind every word with which he had described the

 expedition, and while he told it he had begun to giya, to dance and sing

 the ode to Pemba which he had composed: "Like a mole in the earth's gut

 Bazo found the secret way He sang, and in the front row of the senior

 indunas, Gandang, his father, sat grave and proud.

 "Like the blind catfish that live in the caves of Sinoia Bazo swam

 through darkness.

 Then as the verses of the song mentioned them, Zama and his warriors

 sprang forward to whirl and dance at his side.

 "Like the black mamba from under a stone Zama milked death from his

 silver fang When the triumph dance was over, they threw themselves face

 down on the earth in front of the wagon.

 "Bazo, son of Gandang, go out and choose two hundred head from the royal

 herds," said Lobengula.

 "Bayete!" shouted Bazo, still panting from the dance.

 "Bazo, son of Gandang, you who commanded fifty so skilfully, now I give

 you one thousand to command."

 "Nkosi! Lord!"

 "You will command the levy of young men waiting now at the royal kraal

 on the Shangani river. I give you the insignia for your new regiment.

 Your shields will be red, your kilts the tails of the genet cat, your

 plumes the wing feathers of the marabou stork, and your headband the fur

 of the burrowing roole," Lobengula intoned, and then paused. "The name

 of your regiment will be Izimv-ukuzane Ezembintaba, the moles that

 burrow under a mountain."

 "Nkosi kakhula! Great King!" Bazo roared.

 "Now Bazo, rise up and go into the women to choose yourself a wife. Be

 sure that she is virtuous and fruitful, and let her first duty be to set

 the headring of the induna on your brow., "Indh1ovu!

 Ngi ya bonga! Great Elephant, I praise you!"

 Sitting his solitary watch by the fire, Bazo remembered every word,

 every change of tone, every pause and emphasis that the king had used to

 heap his honours upon him. He sighed with contentment and placed another

 log upon the fire, carefully so as not to wake his companions, and the

 sparks floated up through the opening in the highest point of the domed

 roof.

 Then a distant sound interrupted his reverie; it was the single whoop of

 a hyena, not an unusual sound except that it was the first time that he

 had heard it since nightfall. On every other night the hideous cries of

 these loathsome animals began when they crept from their burrows at dusk

 and continued until sunrise.

 They haunted the small woody copse beyond the cattle enclosure that all

 the inhabitants of Gandang's kraal used as a communal open-air latrine.

 The hyena cleansed the area of excrement during the hours of darkness.

 For this reason, Gandang's people tolerated the presence of an animal

 that they usually abhorred with a superstitious dread.

 So tonight the single whooping cry at midnight drew attention to the

 silence that had preceded it. Bazo listened a few seconds longer and

 then let his thoughts stray to the morrow.

 After the king, Gandang was one of the three most important personages

 in Matabeleland, only Somabula and Babiaan were his peers, so that a

 marriage at his kraal would have been a momentous event even if it were

 not his eldest son, himself a newly appointed induna of one thousand,

 who was to be the bridegroom.

 Juba, senior wife of Gandang, and mother of Bazo the bridegroom, had

 supervised the brew of beer, watching with an expert eye for the bloom

 of yeast on the germinating sorghum, testing with her own plump finger

 the temperature of the ground meal gruel as it was malted, udging the

 addition of the final booster of yeast and then standing over the

 matrons as they strained the brewing through woven bamboo sieves into

 the huge black clay beer-pots. Now there were a thousand pots each

 holding half a gallon of her famous brew, ready to greet the guests as

 they arrived at Gandang's kraal. There would be a thousand invited

 guests.

 Lobengula and his retinue were already on the road; they were sleeping

 tonight at the regimental kraal of the Intemba regiment, only five miles

 distant, and they would arrive before noon.

 Somabula was with the king, while Babiaan was coming in from his kraal

 in the east with a hundred warriors in his bodyguard. Nomusa and Hlopi

 were coming from the mission station at Khami as Juba's special guests,

 and they were bringing all their daughters with them.

 and Gandang had picked fifty fat bullocks from his herds, the bridegroom

 and his young companions would begin to slaughter and butcher them in

 the dawn, while the unmarried girls took the bride down to the river

 pool, bathed her and then anointed her with fat and clay until she

 glistened in the early sunlight. Then they would deck her with wild

 flowers.

 The hyena called again much closer this time, sounding as if it were

 right outside the stockade, and then a strange thing happened. The

 single cry was answered by a chorus, as though a great multitude of the

 huge shaggy spotted dog-like beasts had surrounded Gandang's kraal.

 Bazo started up from the fire in astonishment. He had never heard

 anything to equal this, there must be a hundred or more of the ungainly

 animals out there. He could imagine them, their high shoulders sloping

 down to meagre hindquarters, the flat snakelike heads held low as though

 the weight of massive underslung jaw and yellow carnassial teeth was too

 heavy for the neck.

 One hundred at least, he could almost smell their breath as they opened

 those iron jaws, capable of crunching the thigh bone of a bull buffalo

 to splinters. they would reek of long-dead carrion and excrement and

 other filth, but it was the sound of their voices that chilled Bazo's

 guts and started the march of ghost feet along his spine.

 it was as though all the souls of the dead had risen from their graves

 to clamour outside Gandang's stockade. They whooped and howled,

 beginning in a low moan and rising sharply in key.

 "Oooh, wee!" They shrieked like the ghost of a Mashona feeling again the

 steel cleave his breast, and the terrible cries woke the echoes amongst

 the kopjes along the river.

 Almost humanly, they giggled, and they laughed, that maniacal and

 mirthless laughter. The peals of fiendish laughter mingled with the

 tormented shrieks, and then with them were the cries of the kraal's

 watchmen, the screeches of the waking women in their huts, the shouts of

 the men, still haff-asleep, as they scrambled for their weapons.

 "Do not go out," Kamuza shouted across the hut as Bazo sprang to the

 door with his shield on his shoulder and his assegai in his right hand.

 "Do not go into the dark, this is a witchcraft. Those are not animals

 out there."

 His words stopped Bazo at the threshold. There was nothing of flesh and

 blood he would not face, but this The fiendish chorus reached a climax,

 and then abruptly ceased. The silence that followed was even more

 chilling, and Bazo shrank away from the door. His companions crouched on

 their sleeping-mats, weapons in their hands, their eyes wide and white

 in the firelight , but not one of them moved towards the door.

 All of Gandang's kraal was awake now, but silent, waiting, the women

 creeping away into the farthest recesses of their huts and covering

 their heads with their fur karosses, the men frozen with superstitious

 terror.

 The silence lasted the time it would take for a man to run the full

 circle of the stockade, and then was broken by the call of a single

 hyena, the same whooping cry, starting low and rising to a shriek. The

 head of every one of the warriors in Bazo's hut lifted, and they all

 stared upwards to the roof and the star-pticked sky above it, for that

 was from where the ghostly cry emanated from the very air high above

 Gandang's kraal.

 "Sorcery." Kamuza's voice shook, and Bazo choked down on the wail of

 terror that rose in his own throat.

 As the animal cry died in the night, there was only one other sound. The

 voice of a young girl, raised in terrible distress.

 "Bazo! Help me, Bazo!" It was the only thing that could have roused him.

 Bazo shook himself like a dog that leaps from water to land, throwing

 off the terror that paralysed him.

 "Do not go!" Kamuza yelled, after him.

 "It is not the girl, it is a witch voice."

 But Bazo tore the locking bar from the door.

 He saw her immediately. Tanase raced towards him from the women's

 quarters, from Juba's own great hut where she had been passing the last

 night before her nuptials.

 Her dark naked body was without substance, like a moon shadow as she

 sped to him. Bazo leaped towards her, and they met in front of the main

 gate of the stockade, and Tanase clung to him.

 No other person had left the huts; the kraal was deserted, the fearful

 silence oppressive. Bazo lifted his shield to cover both himself and the

 girl, and instinctively he turned to face the gateway.

 It was only then that he realized that the gate was open.

 He tried to retreat towards the hut, taking the girl with him, but she

 was rigid in his arms, rooted to the earth like the stump of a wild

 ebony tree, and his own strength was sapped by terror.

 "Bazo," Tanase whispered. "It is them, they have come., As she spoke the

 watch-fire beside the gate, which had long ago burned down to ash and

 charred logs, suddenly burst into flame once again. The flames sprang

 higher than a man's head, roaring like a waterfall, and the stockade and

 gateway were lit brightly by the yellow dancing light. Beyond the open

 gateway, at the very edge of the firelight stood a human figure. It was

 the figure of a very old man, with stick-like limbs and bowed back; his

 cap of hair was white as the salt from the Makarikari pan; his skin was

 grey and dusty with age. The whites of his eyes flashed as they squinted

 and rolled upwards into his skull, and glassy strings of spittle

 dribbled from his toothless mouth onto his chest, wetting the dry

 parchment skin through which each skeletal rib stood out clearly.

 His voice was a quavering ancient squeal.

 "Tanase!" he called. "Tanase, daughter of the spirits."

 In the firelight all life went out of Tanase's eyes; they became blank.

 "Do not heed-" Bazo croaked, but a bluish sheen appeared over Tanase's

 eyeballs like the nictitating membrane that covers the eye of a shark or

 the cataract of tropical ophthalmia, and blindly her head turned towards

 the spectral figure beyond the gates.

 "Tanase, your destiny calls you!"

 She broke out of Bazo's arms. It seemed to require no effort. He could

 not hold her. Her strength was superhuman.

 She began to walk towards the gateway, and when Bazo tried to follow

 her, he found he could not lift a foot. He dropped his shield, and it

 clattered on the hard earth, but Tanase did not look back. She walked

 with a floating grace, light as river mist towards the ancient stooped

 figure.

 "Tanase!" Bazo's voice was a despairing cry, and he fell upon his knees,

 yearning after her.

 The old man held out one hand, and Tanase took it, and as she did so,

 the watch-fire died down as abruptly as it had flared, and the darkness

 beyond the gateway was instantly impenetrable.

 "Tanase!" whispered Bazo, his arms outstretched, and far away, down by

 the river the hyena called one last time.

 The twins came pelting into the church, tumbling over each other with

 eagerness to be the first to tell.

 "Mama! Mama!

 "Vicky, I saw first, let me!"

 Robyn Codrington looked up from the black body stretched on the table

 and quelled them with a frown.

 "Ladies don't push."

 They came up in a parody of demureness, but hopping with impatience.

 "Very well, Vicky. What is it?"

 They began together, and Robyn stopped them again.

 "I said Vicky."

 And Victoria puffed up importantly.

 "There is someone coming."

 "From Thabas Indunas?" Robyn asked.

 "No, Mama, from the south., "It's probably one of the king's

 messengers."

 "No, Mama, it's a white man on a horse."

 Robyn's interest quickened; she would never have admitted even to

 herself how often the isolation palled.

 A white traveller would mean news, perhaps letters, stores and supplies,

 or even the most precious of all, books. Failing those treasures there

 would be the mere mental stimulation of a strange face and of

 conversation and ideas.

 She was tempted to leave the patient on the table, it was not a serious

 burn, but she checked herself.

 "Tell Papa I shall come directly," she said, and the twins fled, jammed

 in the doorway for a moment, and then popped through like a cork from a

 champagne bottle.

 By the time Robyn had finished dressing the burn, dismissed the patient,

 washed her hands and hurried out onto the porch of the church, the

 stranger was coming up the hill.

 Clinton was leading the mule on which he was mounted. It was a big

 strong-looking grey animal, so the rider looked small and slim upon the

 broad back. He was a lad, dressed in an old tweed jacket and a boy's

 cloth cap.

 The twins danced on each side of the mule, and Clinton at its head was

 looking back over his shoulder, listening to something that the stranger

 was saying.

 "Who is it, Mama?" Salina came out of the kitchen and called across the

 yard.

 "We shall find out in a moment."

 Clinton led the mule to the porch, and the rider's head was on a level

 with Robyn's.

 "Doctor Ballantyne, your grandfather, Doctor Moffat, sent me to you, I

 have letters and gifts from him for you."

 With a start Robyn realized that under the patched tweed coat and cap

 was a woman, and even in that moment of surprise she was aware that it

 was an extraordinarily handsome woman, younger than Robyn herself, not

 much over thirty years of age, with steady, dark eyes and almost

 Mongolian cheekbones.

 She jumped down from the mule with the agility of an expert horsewoman,

 and came up the steps of the porch to seize Robyn's hands. Her grip was

 firm as a man's, and her expression was intense.

 "My husband is ill and suffering. Doctor Moffat says you are the only

 one who can help him. Will you do it? Oh please, will you?"

 "I am a doctor." Robyn gently twisted her fingers out of the other

 woman's painful grip, but it was not that which troubled her, there was

 something too intense, too passionate about her. "I am a doctor, and I

 could never refuse to help anyone who is suffering. Of course, I shall

 do whatever I can."

 "Do you promise that?" the woman insisted, and Robyn nodded slightly.

 "I have said I will help, there is no need to promise."

 "Oh, thank you." The woman smiled with relief.

 "Where is your husband?"

 "Not far behind. I rode ahead to warn you, and to make sure that you

 would help us."

 "What is it that ails your husband?"

 "Doctor Moffat has explained it all in a letter. He sent gifts for you

 also." The woman was evasive, turning away from Robyn's scrutiny and

 running back to the mule.

 From the saddle-bags she lifted down two packages, wrapped in oilskin to

 protect them against the elements and bound up with rawhide thongs. They

 were so heavy and bulky that Clinton took them from her and carried them

 into the church.

 "You are tired," Robyn said. "I am sorry I cannot offer you coffee, we

 used the last a month ago, but a glass of lemonade?"

 "No." The woman shook her head decidedly. "I shall go back immediately,

 to be with my husband, but we shall arrive before nightfall."

 She ran back, and vaulted lightly to the mule's back.

 None of them had ever seen a woman do that.

 "Thank you," she repeated, and then trotted out of the yard, back down

 the hill.

 Clinton came out of the church and put one arm around Robyn's shoulders.

 "What a very beautiful and unusual woman," he said, and Robyn nodded.

 That was one of the things that had troubled her. Robyn mistrusted

 beautiful women.

 "What is her name. she asked.

 "I didn't have a chance to ask."

 "You-were too busy looking, perhaps," Robyn suggested tartly, and

 wriggled out from under his arm and went back into the church, while

 Clinton stared after her with a rueful expression.

 After a moment he made a move as if to follow her but then sighed and

 shook his head. It was always as well to let Robyn come round on her

 own, coaxing only angered her even more unreasonably.

 In the quiet of the church Robyn untied the first package, and unpacked

 the contents onto the table.

 There were five heavy bottles with glass stoppers, and she read the

 labels as she lifted out each one.

 "Carbolic Acid."

 Alum."

 $Quicksilver."

 "Iodine."

 And then the fifth bottle was labelled: "Trichloromethane."

 "Bless you, Grandfather." She smiled delightedly, but still she

 unstoppered the last bottle and sniffed cautiously at the mouth to

 confirm her good fortune.

 The pungent sweet odour was unmistakable. Chloroform was to her more

 precious than her own life's blood; she would gladly have exchanged drop

 for drop.

 Her own last supply had been exhausted months before and the London

 Missionary Society was as parsimonious as ever with its stores. She

 wished she had retained just a few hundred guineas of her enormous book

 royalties to enable her to purchase her own medicines rather than having

 to plead for them with the secretary in London by a correspondence which

 often took twelve months each way.

 sometimes, in a flagrantly unchristian manner, she wished she could have

 that bloodless myopic little man at her side when she removed an eye

 damaged by a blow with a knobkerrie and hanging out of its socket onto a

 black cheek, or when she went for a Caesarian section all without

 anaesthetic.

 She hugged the bottle to her chest for a moment.

 "Darling Grandfather," she repeated, then as reverently as if it were

 the fabulous Kohinoor diamond, she set the bottle of colourless but

 precious fluid aside, and turned to the second package.

 A roll of newspapers, The Cape Times and The Diamond Fields Advertiser.

 In the weeks ahead every column would be read and re-read, down to the

 announcements of auction sales and the legal notices; then the newsprint

 itself would be used for a dozen domestic chores. Under the newspaper,

 books, wonderful fat leather-bound books.

 "Bless you, Robert Moffat."

 She lifted out a translation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. She

 admired the Norwegian for his insight into the human mind, and the muted

 poetry of his prose.

 Robert Louis Stevenson's Virginibus Puerisque'; the title made her

 pause. She had four virgins in her household, and she intended

 maintaining that happy condition without allowing any inflammatory

 literature to thwart her.

 She flipped through the book. Despite the dubious title, it was merely a

 collection of essays, and the man was a good Calvinistic Scot.

 It might just do to let the girls read it, but she would read it first.

 Then there was Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. Here she was less sanguine. She

 had heard of this American's frivolous and irreverent attitude towards

 adolescence, industry and filial duty. She would read it carefully

 before letting it anywhere near Salina or Catherine. Reluctantly she

 left the other books for future study and turned to her grandfather's

 letter.

 There were many pages, written with sooty homemade ink, and the script

 was shaky and wavering. She skimmed swiftly through the salutations and

 the personal news until she reached the middle of the second page:

 Robyn, they say a doctor buries his mistakes: blatantly untrue. I send

 mine to you. The patient who delivers this letter should long ago have

 sought the sanctuary of a modern hospital, such as that at Kimberley.

 This he has steadfastly refused to do. His reasons are his own, and I

 have not pried. However, the fact that for over a year now he has had a

 pistol ball lodged in his body may point to his motives.

 Twice I have cut for this foreign body, but at 87

 years of age my eyes are not as bright nor my hand as steady as yours.

 Each time I have failed and I fear that I have done more harm than good.

 I know that you have interest and skill in treatment of this type of

 injury, as so you should, for you have been provided by young

 Lobengula's warriors with endless opportunity to practise your

 technique. I recall with admiration your inspired reintroduction of the

 spoon of Diokles, after nearly 2,000 years, which you designed from the

 contemporary description by Ceisus , and your successful removal of

 barbed arrowheads with it.

 Thus I send you one more subject on which to demonstrate your art, and

 with him my last bottle of Chloroform; for the poor fellow, whatever his

 sins has suffered enough under my knife.

 The letter left her with a sense of foreboding, as did the woman who had

 delivered it. She folded the letter and thrust it into the pocket of her

 skirt as she left the church and hurried across the yard.

 "Cathy," she called. "Where is that girl! She must set the guesthouse to

 rights."

 "She's gone to it already, Mama." Salina looked up as she stormed into

 the kitchen.

 Then where is your father?"

 Within an hour the mission station was prepared to receive guests, and

 buzzing with anticipation; but they had to wait until midafternoon

 before a two-wheeled cart of unusually high and heavy construction

 appeared over the rise before the river. It was drawn by a pair of

 mules.

 The entire family assembled on the front porch of the main building, and

 all of them had changed their clothing, while the girls had also brushed

 and dressed their hair with ribbons. A dozen times the twins had to be

 cautioned for improper comments and unrestrained behaviour, but finally

 the cart wheeled into the yard.

 The woman had put her mule into the traces and now she walked beside the

 wheel of the cart, which reached almost as high as her head.

 There was a coloured servant in ragged cast-off clothes leading the

 mules, and over the body of the cart was rigged a makeshift sunshade of

 saplings and stained canvas.

 Below the porch the cart stopped, and all of them craned forward as a

 man's head and upper body appeared above its side. He was laid on a

 straw mattress on the floor of the cart, and now he lifted himself on

 one elbow.

 He was a gaunt wasted figure; the flesh seemed to have melted from the

 big bones of his shoulders. His cheeks had fallen in and turned a muddy

 yellow, the hand on the side of the cart was bony, and the veins were

 roped under the skin like blue serpents. His hair bushed wildly about

 his head, coarse dark hair that was shot through with strands of dead

 white. He had not shaved in days; thick stubble covered his jaws and was

 salted with the same white as his hair. One eye was sunk into a bruised

 cavity, and it had that feverish glitter that Robyn recognized

 instantly. It was the look of mortal illness.

 The other eye was covered by a black piratical patch.

 There was something dreadfully familiar about the big aquiline nose and

 the wide mouth, yet it was only when he smiled that old mocking yet

 somehow tender smile that she had never forgotten that Robyn reeled

 backwards, one hand flying to her mouth too late to stop her cry.

 She caught for support at one of the mopani poles that held the roof.

 "Mama, are you all right?" But Robyn pushed Salina's hands away and went

 on staring at the man in the cart.

 Only one memory out of so many rose up like a freak wave out of a

 storm-swept sea to overwhelm her. She saw again that dark bush of curls,

 devoid only of its silver lacing, bowing to her naked bosom. She saw

 above her the beamed roof of the great cabin in the sternquarters of the

 slave ship Huron, and she remembered as she had a thousand times in the

 twenty years since then that pain. The deep splitting incursion that

 rocked her.

 Four childbirths since then had not eradicated the memory of it, the

 agony of passing from maiden to woman.

 Her senses wavered, there was a rushing in her ears, she was going to

 fall, but then Clinton's voice steadied her. The hard fierce tone of it

 which she had not heard in years.

 "You!" he said.

 As Clinton drew himself erect, the years seemed to fall away from him.

 He was once again tall and lithe, stiff with anger as the young Royal

 Naval officer who had come up onto the slaver's quarter-deck with

 pistols and a naval cutlass on his hip to confront this same man.

 Still clinging to the verandah pole, Robyn remembered the words he had

 spoken then in that same fierce tone: "Captain Mungo Sint John, your

 reputation precedes you, sir. The first trader ever to transport more

 than three thousand souls across the middle passage in a single

 twelve-month period, I'd give five years" pay to have the hatches off

 your holds, sir."

 Robyn remembered then how it had taken another year for Clinton to get

 his wish, when off Good Hope he had come back onto Huron's decks,

 boarding her over the stern in the cannon smoke with his fighting seamen

 at his back, and how this action had cost him more than a mere five

 years" pay. He had been court-martialled and cashiered from the Royal

 Navy and imprisoned for it.

 "You dare to come here, to us." Clinton was pale with rage; his blue

 eyes, so gentle for so long, were bleak and hating. "You, you cruel and

 bloody slaver, you dare to come here."

 Mungo Sint John was still smiling taunting him with that smile and the

 glitter in his single eye, but his voice was low and rough with his

 suffering.

 "And you, you kind and sainted Christian gentleman, do you dare to turn

 me away?"

 Clinton flinched as though he had been struck across the face, and he

 took a step backwards. Slowly the litheness and youth went out of his

 stance, his shoulders slumped into their habitual stoop. He shook his

 bald head uncertainly, and then instinctively he turned towards Robyn.

 With a huge effort Robyn gathered herself, pushed away from the

 supporting pole. Despite the turmoil of her emotions she managed to keep

 her expression neutral.

 "Doctor Ballantyne," Louise Sint John came to the steps of the verandah.

 She took the cap from her head, and the thick black plait tumbled out

 from under it.

 "I find it difficult to beg," she said. "But I am begging now."

 "That is not necessary, madam. I gave you my word."

 Robyn turned away. "Clinton, please help missis Sint John to put this

 patient into the bed in the guest-house."

 "Yes, dear."

 "I shall be there directly to make an examination."

 "Thank you, Doctor, oh thank you." Robyn ignored Louise, but when she

 had followed the mule cart across the yard to the guest-hut, she turned

 to face her daughters.

 "None of you, not even you, Salina, will go near the guest-house while

 that man is here. You will not speak to him or the woman, you will not

 answer if they speak to you. You will do your best to avoid seeing

 either of them, and if you do by error find yourself in their presence,

 you will leave immediately."

 The twins were quivering with excitement, their eyes shone, and even

 their ears seemed to be pink and pricked like those of a pair of young

 bunny rabbits. They could not remember a day so wildly exciting.

 "Why?" gasped Vicky, forgetting herself sufficiently in this incredible

 series of events to question her mother's order. For a moment it seemed

 that she would have to pay for the impertinence with a box on one pink

 ear, but Robyn's hand dropped back to her side.

 "Because-" Robyn said softly, "-because he is the devil the very devil."

 He was propped on the iron cot, with a bolster under his shoulders, and

 Louise rose from the other cot as Robyn entered the guest-hut carrying

 her bag.

 "Madam, will you kindly wait outside," Robyn ordered brusquely and, not

 deigning to see if she would obey, Robyn placed her bag on the chair

 beside his cot. Behind her the latch on the door clicked.

 Mungo Sint John wore only a pair of baggy white trousers from which one

 leg had been hacked off high in the thigh. Like his face, his body was

 wasted by sickness, but there was still the width of shoulder and the

 solidness of bone that she remembered so well. His belly had sunk in

 like that of a greyhound, and his ribs stood out in a rack above it, but

 his skin retained the texture and silkiness of a far younger man, while

 the body hair that was crimped into curls upon his chest was not marred

 with silver as was his beard and the hair upon his head.

 "Hello, Robyn,"he said.

 "I will speak to you only when it is absolutely necessary for your

 treatment, and you will do the same," she said, without looking at his

 face.

 She started with the wounds in his flank and back bullet wounds, she

 realized, but through and through and completely healed. Then with a

 little start she noticed the other old, long-healed scar just, below the

 bullet wound.

 She recognized the little white pricks of the suture which had closed

 the knife-cut. Her own work was distinctive, there was nobody who could

 throw down those even and precise knotted sutures as she could, and

 before she realized what she was doing she touched the old hardened

 cicatrices "Yes," Mungo nodded. "Camacho made that."

 She jerked her hand away. Mungo had taken that knife-cut when he had

 intervened to protect her from the Portuguese slaver. He had saved her

 life that night.

 "Do you remember this also?" Mungo asked, and showed her the pock mark

 on his forearm. That was where she had inoculated him when smallpox had

 swept through Huron.

 "Do you remember?" Mungo insisted softly, but she kept her face averted

 and her lips compressed in a thin hard line as she lifted the dressing

 from his upper leg.

 Then the horror showed on her face. Her grandfather's uneven knife

 strokes had lacerated the leg from knee to groin, where he had probed

 and searched for the ball, and his crude stitches had cobbled it all

 back together like a man repacking a valise in haste.

 "Bad?" Mungo asked.

 "It's a mess," she said, and then hated herself for unbending that far,

 and by inference criticizing her grandfather's work.

 The flesh of the leg had that unhealthy putty colour, and there was

 ulceration in the wounds, that awful sloughing of tissue that hinted at

 the corruption beneath.

 Her grandfather had left drains in the wounds, thick black horse hairs

 that stuck stiffly out between the stitches. She drew one now, and Mungo

 gasped but did not flinch. A weak little trickle of watery pus followed

 the hair Out. She stooped and sniffed it and grimaced. This was not the

 rich creamy pus that the ancients had called "pus bonum et laudabile".

 From the stink of it, gangrene was not far off. She felt a little icy

 splinter of dread, and immediately wondered at it, surely there were no

 feelings left in her for this man.

 "Tell me how it happened?"

 "That, doctor, is my business."

 "Dirty business, I have no doubt," she snapped. "And I want no lurid

 account of it, but if I am to locate the ball I must know where you were

 in relationship to the weapon that was fired at you, the type of weapon,

 the weight and charge "Of course," he said quickly. "Your grandfather

 did not bother to enquire."

 "Leave my grandfather out of it."

 "The man used a pistol; it looked like a single-action Remington army

 model, in which case the ball would be .44, Of lead, cone-shaped, weight

 one fifty grains, and driven by black powder."

 "Low penetration, break up of the ball if it hit bone," she muttered.

 "The man was lying on the ground, about twenty-five paces distant, and I

 was in the act of dismounting from my horse, this leg raised "He was

 ahead of you."

 "Slightly ahead and on my right hand."

 Robyn nodded. "This will hurt." And ten minutes later she stood back and

 called, "missis Sint John." As soon as Louise entered, she said, "I

 shall operate as soon as the light is good enough tomorrow morning. I

 shall need your assistance. I warn you now that even if I am successful,

 your husband will not recover full use of the leg. He will always have a

 pronounced limp."

 "And if you are unsuccessful?"

 "The degeneration will accelerate, mortification and gangrene "You are

 frank, doctor," Louise whispered.

 "Yes," Robyn agreed. "I always am., Robyn could not sleep, but she

 reminded herself that she seldom could on the eve of an operation under

 anaesthetic. Chloroform was such an unpredictable substance, the margins

 of safety were frighteningly narrow, overdosage, too high a

 concentration or inadequate oxygenation, would lead to primary collapse

 with fatal depression of the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys.

 She lay beside Clinton in the darkness and ran through a mental list of

 her preparations for the morrow, and set her mind on the procedures she

 must adopt. Firstly she must re-open and find the source of the

 mortification.

 She moved and Clinton stirred beside her and muttered in his sleep. She

 froze and waited for him to settle.

 The distraction altered the direction of her thoughts, and she found she

 was thinking about the man and not the patient. For a while she tried to

 prevent it, and then gave in.

 She remembered him on his quarter-deck, the white linen shirt open to

 the throat and his chest hair curling out of the V, his head thrown back

 to hail the masthead, the thick dark mane of his hair rippling in the

 wind.

 Then suddenly she remembered that morning when she slipped out of her

 cabin and stepped out onto Huron's main-deck. He had been under the deck

 pump, while two seamen worked the handles, and clear sea water hissed

 over him as he stood naked under the jet.

 She remembered his body and the way he smiled at her without attempting

 to cover it from her gaze. Then abruptly she remembered his eyes, those

 flecked yellow eyes above her in the gloom of the cabin, eyes like those

 of a leopard.

 She moved again, and this time Clinton came half awake. He said her name

 and threw one arm across her at the level of her waist. For a while she

 lay quiescent under his arm and then slowly she reached down and drew up

 the hem of her nightdress. She took Clinton's wrist lightly and guided

 his hand downwards. She felt him come fully awake, heard his breathing

 change and his hand went on without her insistence.

 Long ago she had learned, painfully, that there were limits to the

 restraint that she could exercise over her unruly sensuality. So now she

 closed her eyes, relaxed her limbs and let her imagination run

 unchecked.

 She drank only a cup of the hot coffee substitute that she had concocted

 of roasted sorghum and wild honey and while she did so she composed her

 mind by glancing through her notes.

 She always found comfort in Celsus'injunctions, somehow the fact that

 they were written around the time of Christ made them more poignant.

 Now a surgeon, the chirugus, should be youthful or at any rate closer to

 youth than age, with a strong and steady hand that never trembles, ready

 to use left hand as well as right, with vision sharp and clear and

 spirit undaunted ... Then there was Galen, the surgeon of the

 gladiators, the Roman who had stored all his experience in twenty-two

 volumes. Robyn had read them in the original Greek, and extracted the

 pearls of his genius, which she had used with great success in treating

 the gladiatorialtype wounds of Lobengula's young men. Though she had

 substituted alum for corn, iodine for pigeon dung, and carbolic acid for

 lamp black and oil in the fight against inflammation and mortification.

 The kind of trauma that faced her now as she bowed over the long table

 in the church was much like those described by Galen, though caused by a

 different projectile. Mungo Sint John's hoarse, muffled breathing was

 the only sound in the quiet church. Robyn tested the depth of his coma

 by pricking his finger with a probe, and then immediately lifted the

 mask of plaited bamboo and lint from his nose and mouth.

 Then she listened to his breathing as it eased, and found herself

 examining his face as she had not been able to while he was conscious.

 He was still a handsome man, despite the missing eye and marks of pain

 and of advancing age etched into his face. Louise Sint John had borrowed

 Clinton's straight razor the previous day.

 Mungo Sint John was clean-shaven now, and suddenly she realized that the

 new lines in his face and the silver wings above his temples accentuated

 the power of the man, while at the same time the relaxation of his mouth

 gave him a childlike innocence which made the breath catch in her

 throat.

 Clinton looked across at her, and she turned her face away quickly

 before he could see her expression.

 "Are you ready, madam?" Robyn made her voice cold and businesslike, and

 Louise nodded. She was very pale, the fine freckles standing out in

 sharp contrast on her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.

 Still Robyn hesitated. She knew that she was squandering the moments

 during which the chloroform was having its blessed effect, but she was

 seized by a terrible dread. For the first time in her life she was

 afraid to wield the knife, and a thought transfixed her.

 Iff you once love a man, can you ever cease entirely to do so?"

 She dared not look again at Mungo Sint John's sleeping face; she felt

 she must turn and run from the church.

 "Are you unwell, doctor?" Louise Sint John's concern steeled her. She

 would not let this woman suspect weakness in her.

 The leg was painted dark yellow brown with tincture of iodine. It looked

 like a rotten banana. She snipped her grandfather's stitches and the

 wound fell open. She saw the depth of the ulceration, and knew from

 dreadful experience that a wound like this would never heal, even by

 second intention. Her main task was not to find the pistol ball but to

 repair this damage.

 She went in deeper, down past the thick pulsing snake of the femoral

 artery, down to the bone, the bared femur, and again she felt her

 spirits quail. The bone was malformed, yellow and cheesy.

 She guessed at the cause, this was where the pistol ball had struck and

 been deflected away. It had struck a long splinter of bone off the

 femur, and she picked something out of the dead stinking tissue with the

 forceps and held it up to the light from the window.

 It was a flake of black lead. She dropped it into the bucket under the

 table and bent once more over the open chasm in mungo's flesh. There was

 hardly any blood, a few drops only from the stitches, and the rest of it

 was slimy yellow matter smelling like a corpse.

 She knew the risks of attempting to remove this decomposing tissue

 surgically; she had tried it before and killed in the process. It was

 drastic treatment which only a very strong man could survive, yet if she

 closed up, the macabre spectre of gangrene lurked close at hand She took

 up the scraper and it rasped over the exposed bone of the femur.

 stinking pus welled up from out of the bone itself. Osteomyehtis, the

 mortification of the bony tissue. She worked at it grimly, the scraper

 was the only sound in the room until Louise Sint John choked.

 "Madam, if you are going to throw up, please leave," Robyn told her,

 without looking up.

 "I shall be all right," Louise whispered.

 "Then use the swab as I instructed you," Robyn snapped.

 The rotten bone came away, curling off the blade in little yellow whorls

 like wood shavings from the carpenter's plane, until Robyn reached the

 porous core and at last clean bright blood came up through it like wine

 from a sea sponge that had been squeezed, and the bone around the hole

 was hard and white as china.

 Robyn sighed with relief, and at the same moment Mungo groaned and would

 have twitched the leg if Clinton had not been holding it at the ankle.

 Swiftly Robyn replaced the little bamboo basket over his nose and mouth

 then let a few drops of chloroform fall on the lint covering.

 She cut away the rotten ulcerations, working perilously close to the

 artery and the white cord of the femoral nerve. She found more pockets

 of sepsis around the sutures with which her grandfather had closed the

 blood vessels. She cleaned these out and carefully cut away dead tissue.

 There was blood now, plenty of it, but clean bright blood. Robyn had

 reached the most critical stage of the reparative surgery. She knew that

 there was still infection amongst the healthy tissue and as soon as she

 closed the wound it would blossom again.

 She had mixed the antiseptic the night before, one part of carbolic acid

 to one hundred parts of rainwater. With this she washed out the open pit

 in Mungo's leg, and the astringent action of the mixture dried up the

 weeping blood from the vessels too small to tie off.

 She could come out now, and sew up. She had left foreign bodies in

 before, and often they stabilized and became encysted, causing the

 patient little further discomfort, but instinct warned her not to do so

 this time.

 She glanced at Clinton's big silver hunter watch, which he had placed

 beside her instrument case where she could see it readily. She had been

 in for twenty-five minutes, and experience had taught her that the

 longer she stayed in the greater the danger of primary or secondary

 collapse.

 She looked up at Louise Sint John. She was still very pale, but the

 sweat of nausea had dried on her forehead.

 She had grit, Robyn conceded grudgingly, and that was one thing she

 could admire, much more than her exotic beauty.

 "Madam, I am about to go after the ball now," she said.

 "I shall only have time for one attempt."

 She knew from Lister's writing and her own observation how risky it was

 to use her bare hands in a wound , but that risk was preferable to

 leading with a sharp instrument into the nest of veins, arteries and

 nerves in the groin.

 She had guessed the location of the ball by the restricted movement of

 the femur within its pelvic socket, and by the focus of intense pain

 when she had palpated the area while Mungo was conscious. She probed

 with her forefinger, boldly up into the tissue above the raw scraped

 area of the bone. The direction of the shot, from ahead and upwards,

 must be on this line.

 She met resistance and tried again, and then again.

 Suddenly her finger slid into a narrow canal in the hot meat of his

 thigh, right in to its full length, and then at the very limit of her

 reach she touched something hard.

 It could have been the head of the femur or the lower ridge of pelvic

 bone, but she took up the scalpel.

 A fine needle jet of blood from a severed blood vessel sprayed her cheek

 and forehead before she could twist it closed, and she could hear Louise

 gagging again, but her hands with the swab barely shook as she wiped

 away the blood so that Robyn could cut again, and there was a rush of

 thick creamy yellow matter out of the cut like a dam burst by muddy

 flood waters. In the flood were little chips and fragments of shattered

 metal, rotting threads of woollen cloth and other detritus.

 "Praise God!" whispered Robyn, and brought her hand out, dripping with

 the reeking yellow discharge, but with the distorted, misshapen lump of

 bluish lead held firmly between thumb and forefinger.

 The twins had long ago discovered the literary treasure trove that Robyn

 kept in the locked cupboard against the far wall of her bedroom. Of

 course, they could only visit it when their parents and elder sisters

 were fully occupied elsewhere, for instance when King Ben had summoned

 them to Gubulawayo and Salina was cooking and Cathy was painting or

 reading.

 Then they could sneak into the bedroom and push the chair against the

 wall so that Vicky standing on Lizzie's shoulders could reach the key.

 There were more than fifty books in the cupboard. The great majority

 unfortunately contained no illustrations.

 These had proved unrewarding, as the twins" efforts at deciphering the

 text had been shipwrecked on too many rock-hard words; at other times,

 just when it was becoming intensely interesting, they would encounter a

 solid slab of foreign language which they suspected was either Latin or

 Greek.

 The twins avoided these ones, but the ones with pictures were a

 forbidden delight, greatly enhanced by danger and guilt. There was even

 one that had drawings of the inside of women, with and without a baby

 inside, and another of the baby in the process of emerging.

 However, their perennial favourite was the one they called "The Devil

 Book", for there was an illustration on each facing page vivid, lifelike

 and explicit, of souls in torment and the devils who attended them. The

 artist who had interpreted this edition of Dante's Inferno had dwelt

 ghoulishly on decapitation and disembowelment, on red-hot irons and

 hooks, lolling tongues and bulging eyes. Even the briefest stolen

 perusal of this masterpiece was enough to ensure that the twins would

 spend most of the following night clinging together in their bed,

 shivering with delicious terror.

 However, this particular visit to the forbidden cupboard was in the

 interest of scientific research, otherwise they would never have taken

 the risk while Robyn Ballantyne was actually at Khami mission.

 They chose the time of morning xwhen Mama would certainly be in the

 church clinic attending her patients, when Daddy would be mucking out

 the sties, and Salina and Cathy at their chores.

 The raid went with the precision of repeated rehearsal.

 They left their open readers on the dining-room table, and were down the

 verandah and had the key within the time it takes to draw a long breath.

 Lizzie took guard at the window from where she could cover kitchen, the

 church and the pigsties, while Vicky got the cupboard open and the

 "Devil Book" out and open at the correct page.

 "See!" she whispered. "I told you so."

 There he was, Satan, Lucifer, King of the Underworld and Vicky had been

 right. He did not have horns. All the lesser demons had horns, but not

 the Devil, not the very Devil himself. What he did have was a tail, a

 magnificent tail with a point like the blade of a Matabele assegai upon

 the end of it.

 "He's got a beard in this picture," Lizzie pointed out, reluctant to

 abandon her position.

 "He probably shaved it off, to fool us," Vicky told her.

 "Now look!" She took a pin out of her hair and used the black round tip

 to cover one of Lucifer's eyes. Immediately the resemblance was

 undeniable, the thick dark curls, the broad forehead, the beaked nose

 and the piercing eye under arched brow, and the smile, the same

 satanically mocking smile.

 Lizzie shuddered luxuriously. Vicky was right, it was him all right.

 "Kitty Cat!" Vicky hissed a warning. Salina was coming out of the

 kitchen, and they had the book back on its shelf, the cupboard locked,

 the key back in its hidingplace, and were once more seated at the table

 poring over their readers by the time that Salina had crossed the yard

 and looked in upon them.

 "Good." She smiled at them tenderly, they were such an angelic pair,

 sometimes. "Good girls," she said, and went back towards the kitchen.

 "Where does he put it?" Lizzie asked softly, without looking up from her

 reader.

 "What?"

 "His tail., "Watch!" Vicky ordered. "And I'll show you."

 Napoleon, the aged yellow mongrel, was sleeping in the patch of sunlight

 on the verandah. He had a ridge down his back, and grey hair around his

 muzzle. Every few minutes a dream of rabbits and guineafowl made his

 back legs gallop spasmodically and he would puff off an evil-smelling

 fart of excitement.

 "Bad dog!" Vicky said loudly. "Napoleon, you are a bad, bad dog!"

 Napoleon sprang to his feet, appalled by this unjust accusation, and

 wriggled his entire body ingratiatingly, while his upper lip lifted in a

 simpering sycophantic grin.

 At the same time his long whippy tail disappeared between his legs and

 curled up under his belly.

 "That's how he tucks it away. just like Napoleon," Vicky announced.

 "How do you know?

 "If you look carefully, you can see the bulge where it comes out in

 front of him."

 They worked on distractedly for a few seconds, then Lizzie could not

 restrain herself further.

 "Do you think we could see his tail?"

 "How?"

 "What if we -" Halfway through propounding her scheme, Lizzie faltered.

 Even she realized that it would be impossible to modify the latrine,

 drilling a peephole through the back wall, without being apprehended;

 and their motives could never be convincingly explained, especially not

 to Mama.

 "Anyway," Vicky quashed the plan effectively, "Devils are probably like

 fairies, they just don't go."

 Silence fell again. Obviously relieved that nobody had followed up the

 original accusation, Napoleon re-composed himself to his dreams, and it

 seemed the project was abandoned, until Vicky looked up with a

 determined gleam in her eyes.

 "We are going to ask him."

 "But," stammered Lizzie, "but Mama forbade us to talk to him -" She knew

 her protest to be unavailing, that gleam in Vicky's eye was familiar.

 Ten days after she had removed the pistol ball, Robyn came down to the

 guest-house with a crutch carved from mopani wood.

 "My husband made it for you," she told Mungo Sint John.

 "And you are going to use it every day from now on."

 The first day Mungo managed one halting circuit of the yard, and at the

 end of it he was pale and sweating.

 Robyn checked the leg and the stitches had all held, but the muscles of

 the thigh had withered and contracted, pulling the leg an inch shorter

 than the other. The next morning she was there to watch him at exercise.

 He moved more easily.

 After fifteen days she removed the last catgut stitches, and though the

 scar was raised and thickened, a livid purplish red, yet there was no

 indication of mortification. It looked as though it had healed by first

 intention, the drastic use of strong antiseptic on living tissue seemed

 to have been justified.

 After five weeks, Mungo abandoned the crutch in favour of a stout stick,

 and took the footpath that girded the kopje behind the Khami Mission.

 Each day he walked farther and stayed out longer. It was a relief to be

 away from the bitter arguments with Louise which punctuated the long

 periods of her icy withdrawal.

 He had found a viewpoint beyond the sharp northern ridge of the kopje, a

 natural platform and bench of dark serpentine rock under the spreading

 branches of a lovely old leadwood tree, where he could sit and brood out

 over the gently undulating grassland to the far blue silhouette of hills

 that marked the site of Lobengula's kraal.

 His instinct warned him that there was an opportunity there. It was the

 instinct and the awareness of the cruising shark which could detect the

 presence of prey at distances and depths beyond the range of other

 senses. His instinct had seldom failed him, and there had been a time

 when he had seized every opportunity with boldness, with the ruthless

 application of all his skills and all his strength.

 Sitting under the leadwood, his hands upon the head of the cane and his

 chin upon his hands, he cast his mind back to his triumphs: to the great

 ships that he had won and sailed to the ends of the oceans and brought

 back laden with treasures, with tea and coffee and spices or holds

 filled with black slaves. He remembered the rich fertile lands to which

 he had held title, and the sweet smell of sugar-cane fields when the

 harvest was being cut. He remembered piles of gold coins, carriages and

 beautiful horses, and women.

 So many women, too many women perhaps; for they were the cause of his

 present low condition.

 He let himself think of Louise at. last. She had been a fire in his

 blood, which grew fiercer the more often he tried to slake it, and she

 had weakened him, distracted him, diverted him from his ruthless purpose

 of old.

 She had been the daughter of one of his overseers on Fairfields, his

 vast Louisiana estate. When she was sixteen years of age he had allowed

 her to exercise his wife's Palarnino horses; when she was seventeen he

 arranged for her to move into the big house as companion and maid to his

 wife and when she was eighteen he had raped her.

 His wife was in the next-door bedroom, suffering from one of her black

 headaches, and he had torn Louise's clothes off her body, possessed by a

 madness that he had never known before. She had fought him with the

 savagery of one of her Blackfoot Indian ancestors, but in some perverse

 fashion her resistance maddened him as much as the glimpses of her hard

 young flesh, as it was revealed a gleaming flash at a time.

 She had clawed red lines down his chest, and bitten him until he bled,

 but through it all she had not uttered a word or a sound, although a

 single scream would have brought her mistress or the house servants

 running.

 in the end, he had borne her down onto the thick white pelt of a polar

 bear in the middle of the floor, naked except for the tatters of her

 petticoats hanging from her long fine legs, and with his full weight he

 had spread her and entered her.

 Only then had she made any sound, she had gripped him with the same

 atavistic savagery, legs and arms encircling him, and she had whispered

 hoarsely, brokenly. "I love you, I have always loved you, I shall always

 love you."

 When the Armies of the North had marched against them, and his wife had

 fled with the children to her native France, Louise had stayed with him.

 When she could she had been in the field with him, and when she could

 not she had waited for him, filling in the days and most of the nights

 nursing the wounded at the Confederate Hospital in Galveston, and there

 she had nursed him when he was brought in half blinded and terribly hurt

 from the battlefield.

 She had been with him when he went back to Fairfields for the last time,

 and shared his desolation at the burnt fields and ruined buildings, and

 she had been at his side ever since. Perhaps if she had not, things

 would have been different now, for she had weakened him; she had dulled

 the edge of his resolve.

 So many times he had smelled out the opportunities the chances for the

 coup which would restore it all, and each time she had caused him to

 waver.

 "I could never respect you again," she had said once.

 "Not if you did that., "I never suspected you were capable of that,

 Mungo.

 It's wrong morally wrong."

 Gradually it had changed, until sometimes, after another abortive

 attempt to restore his fortunes, she would look at him with a coldness,

 a kind of icy contempt.

 "Why do you not leave me?" he had challenged her then.

 "Because I love you," she had replied. "And, oh, sometimes how I wish I

 did not."

 In Perth, when he had forced her to bait the trap for him, luring in the

 intended victim, she had for the first time rebelled. She herself had

 ridden to warn the man, and they had been forced to run again, shipping

 out on a little trading schooner only an hour or so ahead of the

 constables with the warrant for Mungo's arrest.

 He had never trusted her again, although he had never been able to make

 the decision to desert her. He found that he needed her still. At Cape

 Town a letter had finally caught up with Mungo. It was one of five

 copies sent out by his brother-in-law, the Duc de Montijo, a copy to

 each of the addresses that Mungo had occupied in the years since his

 wife had left him. Solange, his wife, had taken a chill while out riding

 and had died five days later of pneumonia. Her children were in the care

 of the Duc, being educated with his own, and the Duc hinted that he

 would resist any attempt by Mungo Sint John to assume custody.

 At last Mungo was free to make good his promise to Louise, the solemn

 promise he had made to her as they knelt hand in hand before the altar

 in London's church of Sint Martin-in-the-Fields. He had sworn in the

 sight of God that just as soon as he was able to do so, he would marry

 Louise.

 Mungo had read through his brother-in-law's letter three times, and then

 held it in the flame of the candle.

 He had crushed the ashes to powder, and never mentioned the letter or

 its news to Louise. She had gone on believing that he was married, and

 their relationship had limped on, sickening and staling.

 Yet still she could influence him, even when she was not physically

 present. At the dark crossroads south of Kimberley, even when he had

 seen the diamonds gleam in Hendrick Naaiman's hands, he had not been

 able to banish Louise's image from his mind: Louise with contempt in her

 eyes and cold accusation on her lovely lips.

 Expert marksman that he was, the shade of Louise had spoiled his aim. He

 had fired a wink too late, and a touch wide. He had not killed the

 Bastaard, but if he had too done so, Louise's reaction could have been

 no more severe.

 When he rode back to where she waited, reeling in the saddle, the

 wounded stallion dragging under him, he had seen her face in the

 moonlight. Even though she caught him when he might have fallen, and

 though she had tended his wounds and gone for succour, he had realized

 that they had crossed a dividing line over which there was no return.

 As if to confirm it, he had seen Zouga Ballantyne staring at her in the

 lantern light with that unmistakable look in his eyes. Many men had

 looked at her like that over the years, but this time she had returned

 Zouga's scrutiny openly, making no attempt to hide it from either man.

 On the long road northwards, as she walked beside the cart in which he

 lay wounded, he had challenged her again and she had not denied it.

 At least Zouga Ballantyne is a man of honour."

 "Then why do you not leave me?"

 "You know I cannot leave you now, not as you are She left it unfinished,

 and they had not spoken of it again, though in her icy silences he had

 sensed the presence in her mind of the other man, and he knew that no

 matter how desperately unhappy a woman might be she will seldom leave a

 relationship until she has the prospect of something better to replace

 it. Louise had that prospect now, and they were both aware of it.

 He wondered if he would let Louise go if she finally made the decision.

 There had been a time not long ago when he would have killed her first;

 but since they had reached Khami, everything had begun altering even

 more swiftly. They were rushing towards some climax, and Mungo had

 sensed that it would be explosive.

 For Mungo had forgotten the magnetism that Robyn Ballantyne had once

 exerted upon him, but now he had been vividly reminded by the mature

 woman, Robyn Codrington. She was even more attractive to him now than

 she had been as a girl. He sensed that her strength and assurance would

 provide a secure port for a man tired to his guts and the marrow of his

 bones by the storms of life.

 He knew that she was the trusted confidante of the Matabele king, and

 that if his fortune awaited him here in the north, as he had come to

 suspect, then her intercession with the Matabele would be invaluable.

 There was something else, some other darker need within him. Mungo Sint

 John never forgave or forgot an injury. Clinton Codrington had commanded

 the Royal Naval cruiser which had seized Huron off the Cape of Good

 Hope, an action which seemed to Mungo to mark the beginning of his long

 decline, and herald his dogged misfortune. Codrington was vulnerable.

 Through this woman Mungo could be avenged, and the prospect was

 strangely compelling.

 He sighed and shook his head, roused himself and used the stick to push

 himself erect. He found himself confronted by the two small figures.

 Mungo Sint John liked all women of whatever age, and though he had not

 seen his own children in many years, the youngest would be about the

 same age as these two.

 They were pretty little things. Though he had seen them only fleetingly

 or at a distance, he had felt the stirring of his paternal instincts;

 and now their presence was a welcome relief from his dark thoughts, and

 from the loneliness of the past weeks.

 "Good afternoon, ladies." He smiled, and bowed as low as his leg would

 allow. His smile was irresistible, and some of the rigidity went out of

 the two small bodies, but their expressions remained pale and fixed;

 their eyes, huge with trepidation, were fastened upon the fly of his

 breeches, so that after a few seconds silence even Mungo Sint John felt

 disconcerted, and he shifted uncomfortably.

 What service can I be to you?" he asked.

 "We would like to see your tail, sir."

 "Ah!" Mungo knew never to show himself at a loss in front of a female,

 of no matter what age. "You aren't posed to know about that," he said.

 "Are you, now?"

 SUP They shook their heads in unison, but their eyes remained fixed with

 fascination below his waist. Vicky was right, there was definitely

 something there.

 "Who told you about it?" Mungo sat down again, bringing his eyes to the

 level of theirs, and their disappointment was evident.

 "Mama said you were the Devil, and we know the Devil has a tail."

 "I see." Mungo nodded. With a huge effort, he fought back his laughter,

 and kept his expression serious, his tone conspiratorial.

 "You are the only ones that know,"he told them. "You won't tell anybody,

 will you?" Quite suddenly Mungo realized the value of having allies at

 Khami, two pairs of sharp bright eyes that saw everything and long ears

 that heard all.

 "We won't tell anybody," promised Vicky. "If you show us.

 "I can't do that." And there was an immediate wail of disappointment.

 "Why not?"

 "Didn't your mother teach you that it's a sin to show anybody under your

 clothes?"

 They glanced at each other, and then Vicky admitted reluctantly. "Yes,

 we aren't even really allowed to look at ourselves there. Lizzie got

 whacked for it."

 "There." Mungo nodded. "But I'll tell you what I will do, I'll tell you

 the story of how I got my tail."

 "Story!" Vicky clapped her hands, and they spread their skirts and

 squatted cross-legged at Mungo's feet. If there was one thing better

 than a secret, it was a story, and Mungo Sint John had stories,

 wonderful scary, bloodthirsty stories, the kind that guaranteed

 nightmares.

 Each afternoon when he reached the lookout under the leadwood tree, they

 were waiting for him, captives of his charisma, addicted to those

 amazing stories of ghosts and dragons, of evil witches and beautiful

 princesses who always had Vicky's hair or Lizzie's eyes when Mungo Sint

 John described them.

 Then after each of Mungo's stories, he would tactfully initiate a lively

 discussion of the affairs of Khami Mission. On a typical day he would

 learn that Cathy had begun painting a portrait of Cousin Ralph from

 memory, and that it was the considered and unanimous verdict of the

 twins that Cathy was not only "soft" but, much worse, "sloppy" about

 Cousin Ralph.

 He learned that King Ben had commanded the entire family to attend the

 Chawala ceremony at the new moon, and the twins were ghoulishly

 anticipating the slaughter of the sacrificial black bull. "They do it

 with their bare hands," Vicky gloated. "And this year we are going to be

 allowed to watch, now that we are eleven."

 He was told in detail how Papa had demanded from Mama at the dinner

 table how much longer "that infamous pirate" was to remain at Khami, and

 Mungo had to explain to the twins what "infamous" meant "famous, but

 only more so".

 Then on one such afternoon, Mungo learned from Lizzie that King Ben had

 once again "khombisile" with his indunas. Gandang, one of the king's

 brothers, had told Juba, who was his wife, and Juba had told Mama.

 "Khombisile?" Mungo asked dutifully. "What does that mean?"

 it means that he showed them."

 "Showed them what?"

 The treasure," Vicky cut in, and Lizzie rounded on her.

 "I'm telling him!"

 "All right, Lizzie." Mungo was leaning forward, interest tempering the

 indulgent smile. "You tell me."

 "It's a secret. Mama says that if other people, bad people, heard about

 it, it would be terrible for King Ben.

 Robbers might come."

 "It's a secret then," Mungo agreed.

 "Cross your heart."

 And Lizzie was telling it before he had made the sign of good faith.

 Lizzie was determined that Vicky would not get in ahead of her, this

 time.

 "He shows them the diamonds. His wives rub fat all over him, and then

 they stick the diamonds onto the fat."

 "Where did King Ben get all these diamonds?" Scepticism warred with the

 need to believe.

 "His people bring them from Kimberley. Juba says it isn't really

 stealing. King Ben says it is only the tribute that a king should have."

 "Did Juba say how many diamonds?"

 "Pots full, pots and pots of them."

 Mungo Sint John turned his single eye from her flushed and shining face

 and looked across the grassy golden plains to the Hills of the Indunas,

 and his eye was flecked golden yellow like one of the big predatory cats

 of Africa.

 Jordan looked forward to this early hour of day. it was one of his

 duties to check each evening in the nautical -almanac the time of

 sunrise, and to waken mister Rhodes an hour beforehand.

 Rhodes liked to see the sun come up, whether it was from the balcony of

 his magnificent private railway coach or drinking coffee in the dusty

 yard of the corrugated iron cottage that he still maintained behind

 Market Square in Kimberley, from the upper deck of an ocean-going liner

 or from the back of a horse as they rode the quiet pathways of his

 estate on the slopes of Table Mountain.

 It was the time when Jordan was alone with his master, the time when

 ideas which mister Rhodes called his "thoughts" would come spilling out

 of him. Incredible ideas, sweeping and grand or wild and fanciful, but

 all fascinating.

 It was the time when Jordan could feel that he was part of the vast

 genius of the man, as he scribbled down mister Rhodes" draft speeches in

 his shorthand pad, speeches that would be made in the lofty halls of the

 Cape Parliament to which mister Rhodes had been elected by the

 constituents of what had once been Griqualand, or at the board table of

 the governors of De Beers, of which he was chairman. De Beers was the

 mammoth diamond company which mister Rhodes had welded together out of

 all the little diggers" claims and lesser competing companies. Like some

 mythical boa constrictor, he had swallowed them all, even Barney

 Barnato, the other giant of the fields. mister Rhodes owned it all now.

 On other mornings they would ride in silence, until mister Rhodes would

 lift his chin from his chest and stare at Jordan with those stark blue

 eyes. Every time he had something startling to say. Once it was, "You

 should thank God every day, Jordan, that you were born an Englishman."

 Another time it was, "There is only one real purpose behind it all,

 Jordan. It is not the accumulation of wealth. I was fortunate to

 recognize it so early. The real purpose is to bring the whole civilized

 world under British rule, to recover North America to the crown, to make

 all the Anglo-Saxon race into one great empire."

 It was thrilling and intoxicating to be part of all this, especially as

 so often the big burly figure would rein his horse and turn his head and

 look to the north, towards a land that neither he nor Jordan had ever

 seen, but which, during the years that Jordan had been with him, had

 become a part of both their existences.

 "My thought," he called it. "My north, my idea."

 "That's where it will really begin, Jordan. And when the time comes, I

 shall send you. The person I can trust beyond any other."

 It had never seemed strange to Jordan that those blue eyes had looked in

 that direction, that the open land to the north had come to loom so

 large in mister Rhodes' magination, that it had taken on the aura of a

 sacred quest.

 Jordan could mark the day that it had begun, not only the day but the

 hour. For weeks after Pickering had been buried in the sprawling

 cemetery on the Cape Road, Jordan had respected mister Rhodes" mourning.

 Then, one afternoon, he had left his office early. He had returned to

 the camp.

 He retrieved the bird image from where it had "been abandoned in the

 yard, and with the help of three black workmen, he moved it into the

 cottage. The living-room had been too small to hold it; it hindered

 access to both the dining-table and the front door.

 In the small cottage, there was only one free wall, and that was in

 mister Rhodes" bedroom, at the head of his narrow cot. The statue fitted

 perfectly into the space beyond the window. The next morning, when

 Jordan went to call him, mister Rhodes had already left his cot and,

 wearing a dressing-gown, was standing before the statue.

 In the fresh pink light of sunrise, as they rode down to the De Beers

 offices, mister Rhodes had said, suddenly: ` I have had a thought,

 Jordan, one which I'd like to share with you. While I was studying that

 statue, it came to me that the north is the gateway, the north is the

 hinterland of this continent of ours." That is how it had begun, in the

 shadow of the bird.

 When the architect, Herbert Baker, had consulted mister Rhodes on the

 decoration and furnishings of the mansion that they were building on his

 Cape Estate, "Groote Schuur", "The Great Barn", Jordan had sat aside

 from the two men. As always in the presence of others he was unobtrusive

 and self-effacing, taking the notes that mister Rhodes dictated,

 supplying a figure or a fact only when it was demanded, and then with

 his voice kept low, the natural lilt and music of his rich tenor

 subdued.

 mister Rhodes had jumped up from his seat on the box against the wall of

 the cottage and begun to pace, with that sudden excitable and voluble

 mood upon him.

 "I have had a thought, Baker. I want there to be a theme for the place,

 something which is essentially me, which will be my motif long after I

 am gone, something that when men look at it, even in a thousand years"

 time, they will immediately recall the name Cecil John Rhodes."

 "A diamond, perhaps?" Baker had hazarded, sketching a stylized stone on

 his pad.

 "No, no, Baker. Do be original, man! First I have to scold you for being

 stingy, for trying to build me a mean little hovel and now that I have

 prevailed on you for magnificently barbaric size and space, you want to

 spoil it., "The bird," said Jordan. He had spoken despite himself, and

 both men looked at him with surprise.

 "What did you say, Jordan?"

 "The bird, mister Rhodes. The stone bird. I think that should be your

 motif."

 Rhodes stared at him for a moment, and then punched his big fist into

 the palm of his left hand.

 "That's it, Baker. The bird, sketch it for me. Sketch it now."

 So the bird had become the spirit of Groote Schuur.

 There was barely one of the huge cavernous rooms without its frieze or

 carved door jambs depicting it, even the bath, eleven tons of chiselled

 and polished granite was adorned at its four corners with the image of

 the falcon.

 The original statue had been shipped down from Kimberley, and a special

 niche prepared for it high above the baronial entrance hall, from where

 it stared down blindly upon everyone who came through the massive teak

 front doors of the mansion.

 On this morning they had ridden out even earlier than usual, for mister

 Rhodes had slept badly and had summoned Jordan from his small bedroom

 down the corridor.

 It was cold. A vindictive wind came down off the mountains of the

 Hottentots Holland and as they took the path up towards the private zoo,

 Jordan looked back.

 Across the wide Cape flats he saw the snow on the distant peaks turning

 pink and gold in the early light.

 mister Rhodes was in a morose mood, silent and heavy in the saddle, his

 collar pulled up over his ears, and the broad hat jammed down to meet

 it. Jordan surreptitiously pushed his own mount level and studied his

 face.

 Rhodes was still in his thirties, and yet this morning he looked fifteen

 years older. He took no notice of the first unseasonal flush of blue

 plumbago blooms beside the path, though on another morning he would have

 exclaimed with delight, for they were his favourite flowers.

 He did not stop at the zoo to watch the lions fed, but turned up into

 the forest; and on the prow of land that led to the steeper cliffs of

 the flat-topped massif they dismounted.

 At this distance the thatched roof of Groote Schuur with its twirling

 barley-corn turrets looked like a fairy castle, but Rhodes looked beyond

 it.

 "I feel like a racehorse," he said suddenly. "Like a thoroughbred Arab

 with the heart and the will and the need to run, but there is a dark

 horseman upon my back that checks me with a harsh curb of iron or pricks

 me with a cruel spur." He rubbed his closed eyes with thumb and

 forefinger, and then massaged his cheeks as though to set the blood

 coursing in them again. "He was with me again last night, Jordan. Long

 ago I fled from England to this land and I thought I had eluded him, but

 he is back in the saddle. His name is Death, Jordan, and he will give me

 so little time." He pressed his hand to his chest, fingers spread as

 though to slow the racing of his damaged heart. "There is so little

 time, Jordan. I must hurry." He turned and took the hand from his heart

 and placed it on Jordan's shoulder. His expression became tender, a

 small sad smile touched his white lips. "How I envy you, my boy, for you

 will see it all and I shall not."

 At that moment Jordan thought his own heart might break and, seeing his

 expression, Rhodes lifted his hand and touched his cheek.

 "It's all too short, Jordan, life and glory, even love it's all too

 short. "He turned back to his horse. "Come, there is work to do."

 As they rode out of the forest, the course of that mercurial mind had

 changed again. Death had been pushed aside and he said suddenly: "We

 shall have to square him, Jordan. I know he is your father, but we shall

 have to square him. Think about it and let me have your thoughts, but

 remember time is running short and we cannot move without him."

 The road over the neck between the main massif of Table Mountain and

 Signal Hill was well travelled and Jordan passed twenty coaches or more

 before he reached the top, but it was another two miles and the road

 became steadily less populous, until at last it was a lonely deserted

 track which led into one of the ravines in the Mountainside.

 In this winter season the protea bushes on the slopes beyond the

 sprawling thatched building were drab and their blooms had withered and

 browned on the branches.

 The waterfall that smoked down off the mountain polished the rocks black

 and cold, and the spray dripped from the clustering trees about the

 pool.

 However, the cottage had a neat cared-for look. The thatch had recently

 been renewed. It was still bright gold, and the thick walls had been

 whitewashed. With relief Jordan saw smoke curling from the chimney

 stack.

 His father was at home.

 He knew that the property had once belonged to the old hunter and

 explorer Tom Harkness, and that his father had purchased it with 150

 pounds of his royalties from A Hunter's Odyssey. A sentimental gesture

 perhaps for old Tom had been the one who had encouraged and counselled

 Zouga Ballantyne on his first expedition to Zambezia.

 Jordan dismounted and hitched the big glossy hunter from the stables of

 Groote Schuur to the rail below the verandah, and he walked to the front

 steps.

 He glanced at the pillar of blue marbled stone that stood at the head of

 the steps like a sentinel, and a little shadow flitted over his face as

 he remembered the fateful day that Ralph had hacked it out of the

 Devil's Own claims and brought it to the surface.

 It was the only thing that remained to any of them from all those years

 of labour and travail. He wondered not only that his father had

 transported it so far with so much effort, but that he had placed it so

 prominently to rebuke him.

 For a moment he laid his hand upon the stone, and he felt the faint

 satiny bloom that other hands had made on the same spot on the surface,

 like the marks of worshippers" hands on a holy relic. Perhaps Zouga also

 touched it every time he passed. Jordan dropped his hand and called

 towards the shuttered cottage.

 "Is anybody there?"

 There was a commotion in the front room, and the front door burst open.

 "Jordan, my Jordie!"howled Jan Cheroot, and came bounding down the

 steps. His cap of peppercorn hair was pure white at last, but his eyes

 were bright and the web of wrinkles around them had not deepened.

 He embraced Jordan with the wiry strength of brown arms; but even from

 the advantage of the verandah step he did not reach to Jordan's chin.

 "So tall, jordie," he chuckled. "Whoever thought you'd grow so tall, my

 little jordie."

 He hopped back and stared up into Jordan's face. "Look at you, I bet a

 guinea to a baboon turd that you've broken a few hearts already."

 "Not as many as you have." Jordan pulled him close again, and hugged

 him.

 "I had a start," Jan Cheroot admitted, and then grinned wickedly. "And

 I've still got the wind left for a sprint or two."

 "I was afraid that you and Papa might still be away."

 "We got home three days ago."

 "Where is Papa?"

 jordan!"

 The familiar, beloved voice made him start and he broke from Jan

 Cheroot's embrace and looked beyond him to Zouga Ballantyne standing in

 the doorway of the cottage.

 He had never seen his father looking_ so well. It was not merely that he

 was lean and hard and sun-browned.

 He seemed to stand taller and straighter with an easy set to his

 shoulders, so different from the defeated slump with which he had left

 the diamond fields.

 "Jordan!" he said again, and they came together and shook hands, and

 Jordan studied his father's face at closer range.

 The pride and the purpose that had been burnt away in the diamond pit

 had returned, but with their quality subtly changed. Now he had the look

 of a man who had worked out the terms on which he was prepared to live.

 There were the shadows of a new thoughtfulness in his green eyes, the

 weight of understanding and compassion in his gaze. Here was a man who

 had tested himself almost to the point of destruction, had explored the

 frontiers of his soul and found them secure.

 "Jordan," he said again quietly for the third time, and then he did

 something that demonstrated the profound change he had undergone. He

 leaned forward and briefly he pressed the soft golden curls of his beard

 to Jordan's cheek.

 "I have thought of you often," he said without embarrassment. Thank you

 for coming." Then with his Arm about his shoulders he ushered Jordan

 into the front room.

 This room always pleased Jordan, and he moved across to the log fire in

 the walk-in hearth and held out his hands to the blaze while he looked

 about him. It was a man's room, shelves filled with men's books,

 encyclopaedias and almanacs and thick leatherbound volumes of travel and

 exploration.

 Weapons hung upon the walls, bows and quivers of poisoned Bushman

 arrows, shields and assegais of Matabele and Zulu, and, of course, the

 tools of the trade to which Zouga had reverted, firearms, heavy calibre

 sporting rifles by famous gunsmiths, Gibbs, Holland and Holland, Westley

 Richards. They were racked on the wall facing the fireplace, blued steel

 and lovingly carved wood.

 With them were the souvenirs and trophies of Zouga's work, horns of

 antelope and buffalo, twisting or curved or straight as a lance, the

 zig-zag stripes of a zebra hide, the tawny gold bushed mane of the

 Kalahari lion, and ivory, great yellow arcs reaching higher than a man's

 head, yellow as fresh butter and translucent as candlewax in the cold

 winter light from the doorway.

 "You had a good trip?" Jordan asked, and Zouga shrugged.

 "It gets more difficult each season to find good specimens for my

 clients."

 His clients were rich and aristocratic sportsmen, come out to Africa for

 the chase.

 "But at least the Americans seem to have discovered Africa at last. I

 have a good party booked for next season young fellow called Roosevelt,

 Secretary of the Navy."

 He broke off . "Yes, we are managing to keep body and soul together, old

 Jan Cheroot and I, but I don't have to ask about you."

 He glanced down at the expensive English cloth of Jordan's suit, the

 soft leather of his riding boots which creased perfectly around his

 ankles like the bellows of a concertina, the solid silver spurs and the

 gold watch chain in his fob pocket, and then his eye paused on the white

 sparkle of the diamond in his cravat.

 "You made the right choice when you decided to go with Rhodes. My God,

 how that man's star rises higher and brighter with. each passing day."

 "He is a great man, Papa."

 "Or a great rogue." Then Zouga smiled apologetically.

 "I am sorry, I know how highly you think of him. Let's have a glass of

 sherry, Jordie, while Jan Cheroot makes lunch for us." He smiled again.

 "We miss your cooking.

 You will find it poor fare, I'm afraid."

 While he poured sweet Cape sherry into long glasses, he asked over his

 shoulder: "And Ralph, what do you hear of Ralph?"

 "We meet often in Kimberley or at the railhead. He always asks after

 you."

 "How is he?"

 "He will be a big man, Papa. Already his wagons run to Pilgrims" Rest

 and those new goldfields on the Witwatersrand. He has just won the fast

 coach contract from Algoa Bay. He has trading posts at Tati and on the

 Shashi river."

 They ate in front of the fire, sour bread and cheese, a cold joint of

 mutton and a black bottle of Constantia wine, and Jan Cheroot hovered

 over Jordan, scolding him fondly for his appetite and recharging his

 glass when it was barely a quarter empty.

 At last they finished and stretched out their legs towards the fire,

 while Jan Cheroot brought a burning taper to light the cigars which

 Jordan pro from a gold pocket case.

 Jordan spoke through the perfumed wreaths of smoke.

 "Papa, the concession, "And for the first time an angry arrowhead

 creased the skin between Zouga's eyes.

 "I had hoped that you came to see us," he said coldly.

 "I keep forgetting that you are Rhodes" man, ahead of being my son."

 "I am both," Jordan contradicted him evenly. "That's why I can talk to

 you like this."

 "What message has the famous mister Rhodes for me this time?" Zouga

 demanded.

 "Maund and Selous have both accepted his offers. They have sold their

 concessions to mister Rhodes, and both are ten thousand pounds richer."

 Maund was a soldier and an adventurer. Fred Selous, like Zouga, a hunter

 and explorer. Also, like Zouga, Selous had written a well-received book

 on the African chase A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa. Both of these men

 had at different times prevailed on Lobengula to grant them concessions

 to ivory and minerals in his eastern dominions.

 "mister Rhodes wants me to point out to you that both the Maund and

 Selous concessions are over the same territory as the concession that

 Mzilikazi granted to you.

 He owns both of them now, the validity of all the treaties is hopelessly

 confused and hazy."

 "The Ballantyne concession was granted first, by Mzilikazi; the ones

 that followed have no force," snapped zouga.

 "mister Rhodes" lawyers have advised "Damn mister Rhodes and his

 lawyers. Damn them all to hell."

 Jordan dropped his eyes and was silent, and after a long pause Zouga

 sighed and stood up. He went to the yellow wood cupboard and took out a

 stained and dog-eared document, so ragged that it had been pasted onto a

 backing to prevent it falling to pieces.

 The ink had faded to brown, but the script was bold and spiky, the hand

 of an arrogant and cocksure young man.

 The document was headed: EXCLUSIVE CONCESSION TO MINE GOLD AND HUNT

 IVORY IN THE SOVEREIGN TERRITORY OF MATABELELAND And at its foot was a

 crude wax seal with the image of a bull elephant, and the words:

 KKOSI NKHULU, GREAT KING Below it a shaky cross in the same faded ink:

 MZILIKAZI, his mark Zouga laid the document on the table between them,

 and they both stared at it.

 "All right," Zouga capitulated. "What do mister Rhodes' lawyers advise?"

 "That this concession could be set aside on separate points of law."

 "I would fight him."

 "Papa. He is a determined man. His influence is enormous. He will be

 Prime Minister of the Cape Parliament at the next session, there is

 little doubt of that." Jordan touched the red wax seal. "His fortune is

 vast, perhaps ten million pounds, "

 "Still I will fight him," Zouga said, and then stopped Jordan speaking

 with a hand on his arm. "Jordan, don't you understand. A man must have

 Something, a dream, a light to follow in the darkness. I can never sell

 this, it has been all of my life for too long. Without it I shall have

 nothing."

 "Papa "I know what you will say, that I can never make this into

 reality. I do not have the money it would need. You might even say that

 I no longer even have the strength of purpose. But, Jordan, while I have

 this piece of paper I can still hope, I still have my dream to follow. I

 can !" never sell it."

 "I told him that, and he understood immediately. He wants you to be a

 part of it."

 Zouga lifted his head and stared at his son.

 "A seat on the Board of Governors of the company for which mister Rhodes

 will petition a Royal Charter from Her Majesty. Then you will have

 grants of farm land, gold claims, and an active command in the field.

 Don't you see, Papa, he is not taking your dream away from you, he is

 making it come true at last."

 The silence drew out, a log crumbled and crashed softly in the hearth;

 sparks shot up and the flare lit Zouga's face.

 "When will he see me?" he asked.

 "We can be at Groote Schuur in four hours" ride."

 "It will be dark by then."

 "There are fifteen bedrooms for you to choose from," Jordan smiled, and

 Zouga laughed like a man who has been given back all the excitement and

 eagerness of youth.

 "Then why are we sitting here?" he asked. "Jan Cheroot, bring my heavy

 coat."

 Zouga strode out onto the verandah of the cottage, and on the top step

 he checked and reached out with his right hand to the pillar of blue

 stone. He touched it with a strangely formal caress, and with the same

 hand touched his own lips and forehead, the gesture with which an Arab

 greets an old friend.

 Then Zouga glanced at Jordan, and smiled.

 "Superstition," he explained. "Good luck."

 "Good luck?" Jan Cheroot snorted from below the steps where he held

 Zouga's horse. "Damn stone, all the way from Kimberley, trip over the

 thundering rubbish." He went on muttering to himself as Zouga mounted.

 Jan Cheroot would pine away if he didn't have something to complain

 about." Zouga winked at Jordan, and they trotted out from under the

 milkwood trees onto the track.

 "I often think back to that day when we hit the blue," Jordan said. "If

 we had only known!"

 "How could we know?"

 "It was I, I feel sure of that. It was I who convinced you that the blue

 ground was barren."

 "Jordan, you were only a boy."

 "But I was supposed to be the diviner of diamonds. If I had not been so

 certain that it was dead ground, you would never have sold the Devil's

 Own."

 "I never sold it. I gambled it away."

 "Only because you thought it was worthless. You would never have

 accepted mister Rhodes" bet if you had known that the blue was not the

 end, but only the beginning."

 "Nobody knew that, not then."

 "mister Rhodes sensed it. He never lost faith. He knew what the blue

 was. He knew it with a certain instinct that nobody else had."

 "I have never been back to Kimberley, Jordie." Zouga settled down in the

 saddle, riding with long stirrups like a Boer hunter. "I never wanted to

 go back, but of course the news filters down the line of rail. I heard

 that when Rhodes and Barnato made their deal, they valued the Devil's

 Own claims at half a million pounds."

 "They were the keys to the field," Jordie explained. "It just happened

 that they were the central claims in the main enrichment. But you could

 never have guessed that, Papa."

 Strange how right one man's instincts can be," Zouga brooded. "And how

 wrong another man's. I always knew, or thought I knew, that my road to

 the north began in that hole, that terrible hole."

 "Perhaps it still does. The money to take us all to the north will still

 come from it. mister Rhodes" millions."

 "Tell me about the blue. You have been with Rhodes through it all. Tell

 me about it."

 "It changes," Jordan said. "It's as simple as that, it alters."

 Zouga shook his head. "It's like some sort of miracle."

 "Yes," Jordan nodded. "Diamonds are nature's beautiful miracles. I'll

 never forget my own astonishment when mister Rhodes showed it to me.

 That hard blue rock is unyielding as any granite when it comes out of

 the earth, and yet after it has been laid out in the stacking fields for

 a year or two it starts to crumble. It's the sunlight, we think, that

 does it. It crumbles up like a loaf of stale bread, and the diamonds, oh

 Papa, the diamonds. Incredible stones, eleven thousand carats of

 diamonds each day. The blue is the mother lode, the blue is the heart."

 He broke off in embarrassment. "Sometimes I run away with myself," he

 confessed, and Zouga smiled with him.

 Who could resist this beautiful young man, that was the word to describe

 him, not handsome, not good-looking, but beautiful, with a quality of

 gentleness and goodness that seemed to form an aura about him.

 "Papa." Jordan sobered. "Oh Papa, you will never know how happy I am

 that you are to be part of it, after all.

 You and mister Rhodes."

 "mister Rhodes," Zouga thought indulgently. "Always mister Rhodes. And

 yet it's a good thing for a young man to have a hero. Pity this poor

 world of ours when the last hero passes."

 Can you judge a man by his books? Zouga wondered.

 The library was choked with them. One complete wall packed to the

 ceiling with the sources and references which Gibbon had consulted for

 his Decline and Fall.

 So impressed had Rhodes been with this work that he had ordered

 Hatchards of London to collect and, if necessary, translate and bind the

 complete authorities. Jordan said it had cost him 8000 pounds thus far,

 and was not yet complete.

 Ranked beside this formidable array were all the published lives of

 Alexander, of Julius Caesar and of Napoleon. What dreams of empire they

 must sustain. Zouga smiled inwardly as he listened to the high hypnotic

 voice of the burly figure with the flushed swollen face as he sat behind

 the vast desk into whose panels were chiselled the stylized figures of

 the bird, the falcon of Zimbabwe.

 "You are an Englishman, Ballantyne, a man of honour and dedication;

 these things have always attracted me to you." He was irresistible, able

 to conjure up a gamut of emotions with a few words, and Zouga smiled at

 himself again. He was in danger of the same hero worship as his own son.

 "I want you even more than this concession of yours.

 You understand, you know what it is we seek, not merely wealth and

 personal aggrandizement. No, no, it is something beyond that, something

 sacred."

 Then he came to it abruptly, without flourish.

 "There," Rhodes said. "You know what I need, you and your concession.

 What do you want from me in return?"

 "What task will I perform?" Zouga asked.

 "Good." Rhodes nodded the untidy leonine head. "Glory before gold. You

 please me, Ballantyne, but to business.

 I had thought to ask you to lead the occupying expedition, to guide it

 over the ground you know so well but other men can do something as

 simple as that. I shall let Selous do it. I have something more

 important for you. You will be my alter-ego at the kraal of the Matabele

 king. The savages know and respect you, you speak their language, know

 their customs, you are a soldier, I have read your military paper on the

 tribe, and we must not deceive ourselves, Ballantyne, it may come to a

 military option. Few other men can do all these things, have all these

 qualities."

 They stared at each other across the desk, both men leaning forward, and

 then Rhodes spoke again.

 "I am not a mean man, Ballantyne. Do the job for me and you can name

 your rewards. Money, ten thousand pounds, land, each land grant will be

 four thousand acres, gold claims, each will be five hundred yards

 square. How many shall we say, five of each, ten thousand pounds in

 cash, twenty thousand acres of prime land of your choice, five claims on

 the rich gold reef over which you shot the great elephant that you

 described in Hunter's Odyssey. What do you say, Ballantyne?"

 "Ten of each," said Zouga. "Ten thousand pounds, ten land grants, ten

 gold claims."

 "Done!" Rhodes slapped the desk. Write it down, Jordan, write it down.

 But what of your salary while you are agent at Lobengula's kraal? Two

 thousand, four thousand per annum? I am not a mean man, Ballantyne."

 "And I am not a greedy one."

 "Four thousand, then, and we are all agreed, so we can go to lunch."

 Zouga stayed five days at Groote Schuur, days of talking and planning

 and listening.

 It amused him to see the legend dispelled. The idea of Rhodes as a

 solitary and brooding man, withdrawn to some high Olympus where other

 men could not follow, was proved to be a myth.

 For Rhodes surrounded himself with men; there was not a meal at which

 less than fifteen sat to his generous board. What men they were, clever

 or rich or both, belted earls or farm-born Boers, politicians and

 financiers, judges and soldiers. And if they were not wealthy, they were

 powerful or useful or merely amusing. At one dinner there was even a

 poet, a bespectacled little shrimp of a man on passage from Indian

 Service back to England.

 Jordan had read his Plain Tales from the Hills and secured an invitation

 for him, and despite his appearance, the company was quite taken with

 him. Rhodes invited him to return and write about Africa: "The future is

 here, young Kipling, and we shall need a poet to sing it for us."

 Men by the dozen, and never a woman. Rhodes refused to have a woman

 servant in the house. There was not even a painting of a woman on the

 walls.

 And the taciturn, brooding figure of legend never stopped talking.

 From the back of a horse as they rode through the estate, striding over

 the lawns with his clumsy uncoordinated gait, seated behind the teak

 desk or at the head of the long, laden dining-table, he talked.

 Figures and facts and estimates poured from him without reference to

 notes, other than an occasional glance at Jordan for confirmation. Then

 came the ideas, fateful, ludicrous, prophetic, fascinating or fantastic,

 but neverending.

 To a visiting member of the British Parliament: "We have to make a

 practical tie with the old country, for future generations will be born

 beyond its shores; it must be useful, physical and rewarding for both,

 or we shall drift apart."

 To an American senator: "We could hold Parliament for five years in

 Westminster and for the next five in Washington."

 To a rival financier who enviously sniped at his monopoly of the diamond

 industry: "Without me, the price of diamonds would not make it

 worthwhile turning over a stone to pick one up. Kimberley would revert

 to desert and thirty thousand would starve."

 When they began to plan the grand expedition to the north, Zouga had

 imagined that Rhodes would concern himself with each detail. He was

 wrong.

 He defined the objective: "We need a document from Lobengula, ratifying

 and consolidating all these grants into a single concession, that I can

 take to London." Then he picked the man. "Rudd, you have the legal

 mind." And gave him carte blanche. "Go and do it. Take Jordan with you.

 He speaks the language. Take anyone else you need."

 Then to Zouga: "We need an occupying force, small enough to move fast,

 large enough to protect itself against Matabele treachery. Ballantyne,

 that will be your first concern. Let me know what you decide, but

 remember there is little time."

 What might have taken another man six months, was accomplished in five

 days, and when Zouga left Groote Schuur, Jordan rode with him as far as

 the neck of the mountain. The wind had gone up into the north-west, and

 then came down like a ravenous beast, roaring dully against the crags of

 the mountain and bringing in cold, steely-grey rain squalls off the

 Atlantic.

 It could not blunt their spirits, and although their wind-driven

 oilskins flogged their bodies and the horses shivered and drooped their

 ears, they shouted above the wind.

 "Isn't he a great man? Every minute spent in his company is like a

 draught of fine wine, intoxicating with excitement. He is so generous."

 "Though he is the one who profits most from his generosity," Zouga

 laughed.

 "That's mean, Papa."

 "A saint does not make such a fortune in so short a time. But if anybody

 can do this thing, then it is Rhodes, and for that I will follow him

 into hell itself."

 "Let's pray that won't be necessary."

 At the top of the pass the wind was stronger still, and Jordan had to

 turn his horse in until their knees touched.

 "Papa, the column, the occupying column. There is one person who has the

 wagons, who knows the route, can requisition the supplies and recruit

 the men."

 "Who is that, Jordie?"

 "Ralph."

 Zouga watched Jordan ride back down the pass, towards the wind-darkened

 waters of Table Bay and the sprawling white buildings that clung to the

 lower slopes of the mountain under the dingy scudding sky. Then he

 turned his own mount into the wind and went down the other side.

 The excitement stayed with him. He realized that it was Rhodes"

 particular genius to awaken this feeling in men around him. Even though

 there were quicksands ahead in which he knew he might soon be engulfed,

 the enthusiasm and quickness of spirit persisted.

 Ten land grants meant forty thousand acres of land, but it would take

 more than 10000 pounds to hold it. Homestead and wells and fences to

 build, cattle to stock it, men to work it, all that would cost money, a

 great deal of money.

 The gold claims, he could not even begin to imagine how much it might

 cost to transport stamp mills and sluice boxes from the railhead.

 Of course, for lack of money to exploit them, he would have to pass by a

 hundred opportunities that the new land would offer. in the beginning

 the land grants of other men would be for sale at bargain prices,

 hundreds of thousands of acres of the land that he had always thought of

 as his own, and because he did not have the money, it would go to

 others.

 None of this could break the mood, not the cold rain in his face that

 numbed his cheeks, not the realization that his dream was still merely a

 dream. For now at last they were on the move at the breakneck pace set

 by an impatient man, towards the realization of that dream.

 So Zouga could lift his chin and sit up straight in the saddle, ignoring

 the icy snakes of rainwater that wriggled down inside his collar, buoyed

 high above mundane doubts by the gambler's certainty that at last his

 luck had changed, the dice were hot for him and every time he rolled the

 aces would flash like spearheads.

 The sheets of rain hid the cottage from Zouga until he turned in under

 the milkwood grove; then a fluke of the wind opened the slanting silver

 sheets of water, and his mood popped like a bubble.

 He had been mistaken, his luck had not changed, it had all been words

 and illusion, the caravan of his misfortunes rolled on unchecked, for

 before him his home was partially destroyed.

 one of the ancient milkwoods, weary of resisting the gales of a hundred

 winters, had succumbed at last; it had come crashing down across the

 front of the cottage. The roof had given under the blow, and sagged in.

 The supports of the verandah had shattered and a tangle of fallen roof

 beams and milkwood branches blocked the front entrance. The living-room

 would be swamped with rain his books, his papers.

 Appalled at the havoc, he dismounted and stood before it, and his

 spirits slid further. He felt his ribs constricting his breathing and

 dread uncoiled in his guts like an awakening serpent. It was the

 superstitious terror of one who has offended the gods.

 The pillar of blue marbled rock that he had set to guard his threshold

 had been thrown down. It lay half under the tumbled thatch with the

 shattered verandah support beside it. Once it had been hard and smooth

 as granite, but the sunlight and the air had rotted it and the fall had

 shattered it like chalk.

 Zouga went down on one knee and touched a rough, irregular lump of the

 smashed blue ground. The destruction of his home was as nothing. This

 was the only one of his possessions that was irreplaceable, and the omen

 of its destruction struck frost into the secret places of his soul.

 Almost as a chorus to his dread, a fresh rain squall came booming down

 the valley, thrashing the trees and ripping at the scattered thatch.

 Rain beat down onto the broken surface of the rock he was touching, and

 at Zouga's fingertips there was a tiny burst of white lightning so

 dazzling, so searing, that it seemed it could flay the skin from his

 finger as he touched it. But it was cold, cold as a crystal of Arctic

 ice.

 It had never been exposed to the light of day, not once in the two

 hundred million years since it had assumed its present form, and yet it

 seemed in itself to be a drop of distilled sunlight.

 Zouga had never seen anything so beautiful, nor touched anything so

 sensual, for it was the beacon and the lodestone of his life. It made

 all the striving and the heartbreak seem worthwhile, it was

 justification for the years he had believed squandered, it exonerated

 his once firmly held belief that his road to the north began in the

 gaping chasm of De Beers New Rush.

 With hands that shook like those of a very old man, he fumbled open the

 blade of his clasp knife and gently prised that rainbow of light from

 its niche in the shattered blue rock, and held it up before his own

 eyes.

 "The Ballantyne diamond," he whispered, and staring into its limpid

 liquid depths like a sorcerer into his divining ball of crystal, he saw

 light and shadow ripple and change and in his imagination become vistas

 of enchanted pastures rich with sweet grass; he saw slow herds of cattle

 and the headgear of winding wheels of fabulous gold mines spinning

 against a high blue sky.

 They didn't expect him. He came so swiftly that no runner brought word

 ahead of him. He had left Rudd and the zest of the party to follow from

 the Shashi and ridden on ahead, leading two spare horses and changing as

 soon as the mount beneath him tired. The horses were the pick of De

 Beers" stables, and it took him five days from the frontier of

 Matabeleland to Khami Mission.

 "I'm Jordan Ballantyne," he said, and looked down on the family that had

 hastily assembled on the front verandah of the Mission. The siege was

 over without a shot fired; he walked in with his curls shining and that

 warm, almost shy, smile on his lips, and took their hearts, every one of

 them, by storm.

 The gifts he brought had been chosen with obvious care, and spoke of a

 knowledge of each of them and their individual needs.

 There were two dozen packets of seeds for Clinton unusual vegetables and

 rare herbs, cornfrey and okra, horseradish and turmeric, shallot and

 sou-sou. For Robyn a box of medicines, which included a bottle of

 chloroform, and a folding wallet of shiny, sharp surgical instruments.

 The latest volume of Tennyson's poetry for Salina, a pair of marvellous

 lifelike china dogs with moving eyes for the twins, and for Cathy the

 best of all, a box of oil paints, a bundle of brushes, and a letter from

 Ralph.

 in the first week, while he waited for Rudd and the rest of the party to

 come up from the Shashi, Jordan used a green twig to divine water, an

 art that Clinton had never acquired, and helped him dig the new well.

 They hit clear, sweet water ten feet down. He recited to Cathy a

 biography of Ralph from the day and hour of his birth, which was so

 minutely detailed that it took instalments over the entire week to

 complete, while she listened with a fixed avidity.

 He rolled up his sleeves and from the black woodburning stove produced a

 flow of culinary phenomena !" i quenelles and souffles,

 croques-en-bouche and meringues, sauces both Holliandaise and Bearnaise,

 and while Salina hovered near him, eager to learn and help, he quoted to

 her the entire "In Memoriam" of Alfred Lord Tennyson, from memory: "So

 fret not, like an idle girl, That life is dash'd with flecks of sin.

 Abide: thy wealth is gathered in, When Time hath sunder'd shell from

 pearl., And she was utterly enchanted by his golden spell.

 He showed the twins how to cut and fold from a piece of newspaper all

 manner of fantastic bird and animal shapes, and he told stories that

 were the best they had heard since Mungo Sint John had left Khami.

 For Robyn he had the latest news from the Cape. He was able to describe

 for her the rising stars on the political horizon, and categorize their

 strengths and weaknesses. He had the latest assessments of the political

 scene at home. Members of both Houses of Parliament, Cape and home, were

 constant guests at Groote Schuur, so he could repeat the gossip of that

 "wild and incomprehensible old man", as the Queen had called Gladstone.

 He could explain the Home Rule issue and tell her what the odds were for

 a Liberal victory at the next election, even after Gladstone's failure

 to rescue Gordon from Khartoum and his consequential loss of popularity.

 "At the Queen's jubilee the common people on the pavements cheered him,

 but the aristocracy hissed him from the balconies," he told her.

 For Robyn, this was nectar to a woman lost over twenty years in the

 wilderness.

 Dinners at Khami usually finished by the fall of dark, and the family

 was abed an hour later, but after Jordan's arrival, the talk and

 laughter sometimes lasted until midnight.

 "Jordan, there is no doubt that if we want Mashonaland, we shall have to

 square your aunt. I hear that Lobengula will not make a major decision

 without Doctor Codrington. I want you to go on ahead of Rudd and the

 others. Go to Khami and talk to your aunt." That had been mister Rhodes"

 parting injunction to him, and Jordan's conscience found no conflict

 between this duty and his family loyalties.

 Again and again in that week Jordan returned to extol mister Rhodes to

 Robyn, his integrity and sincerity, his vision of a world at peace and

 united under one sovereign power.

 Instinctively he knew which areas of Rhodes" character to emphasize to

 Robyn, patriotism, charity, his sympathetic treatment of his black

 workers, his opposition to the Stropping Act in the Cape Parliament

 which, if passed, would have given employers the right to lash their

 black servants, and only when he judged that she was swayed to his

 views, did Jordan mention the concession to her. Yet, despite his

 preparations, her opposition was immediate and ferocious.

 "Not another tribe robbed of its lands," she cried.

 "We do not want Matabeleland, Aunty. mister Rhodes would guarantee

 Lobengula's sovereignty and protect him "I read the letter you wrote to

 the Cape Times, Aunty, expressing your concern over the Matabele raids

 into Mashonaland. With the British flag flying over the Shona tribes,

 they would be protected by British justice."

 "The Germans and Portuguese and Belgians are gathering like vultures,

 you know, Aunty, that there is only one nation fit to take on the sacred

 trust."

 Jordan's arguments were calculated and persuasive, his manner without

 guile and his trust in Cecil John Rhodes touching and infectious, and he

 kept returning to his most poignant argument.

 "Aunty, you have seen the Matabele bucks returning from Mashonaland with

 the blood caked on their blades and the captured Shona girls roped

 together. Think of the havoc that they have left behind them, the burned

 villages, the murdered infants and grey heads, the slaughtered Shona

 warriors. You cannot deny the Shona people the protection that we will

 offer."

 That night she spoke to Clinton, lying beside him in the darkness in the

 narrow cot on the hard straw-filled mattress; and his reply was

 immediate and simple: "My dear, it has always been clear to me as the

 African sun that God has prepared this continent for the protection of

 the only nation on earth that has the public virtue sufficient to govern

 it for the benefit of its native peoples."

 "Clinton, mister Rhodes is not the British nation."

 "He is an Englishman."

 "So was Edward Teach, alias Blackbeard the pirate."

 They were silent for many minutes and then Robyn said suddenly:

 "Clinton, have you noticed anything wrong with Salina?"

 His concern was immediate. "Is she sickening?"

 "I'm afraid so, incurably. I think she is in love."

 "Good gracious." He sat abruptly upright in the bed.

 "Who on earth is she in love with?"

 "How many young men are there at Khami at the present time?"

 In the morning, on the way to her clinic in the church, she stopped at

 the kitchen. The previous evening Clinton had slaughtered a pig, and now

 Salina and Jordan were making sausages. He was turning the handle of the

 mincing machine while she forced lumps of pork into the funnel. They

 were so absorbed, chatting so gaily together, that while Robyn stood in

 the doorway watching them they were unaware of her presence.

 They made a beautiful couple, so beautiful indeed, that Robyn felt a

 sense of unreality as she watched them, and it was followed immediately

 by uneasiness, nothing in life was that perfect.

 Salina saw her, and started, and then unaccountably blushed so that her

 pixie pointed ears glowed.

 "Oh Mama, you startled me."

 Robyn felt a rush of empathy, and, strangely, of envy for her eldest

 daughter. She wished that she were still capable of that pure and

 innocent emotion, and suddenly she had the contrasting image of Mungo

 Sint John, lean and scarred and unscrupulous, and what she felt shocked

 her so her voice was brusque.

 "Jordan, I have made up my mind. When mister Rudd arrives, I will go

 with you to Lobengula's kraal, and I will speak for your case."

 After a prolonged and unprofitable trading expedition as far as the

 Zambezi, Mungo had returned with Louise to the kraal at Gubulawayo,

 where they were kept almost seven months. But Lobengula's

 procrastinations worked in Mungo Sint John's favour.

 Robyn Codrington had refused to speak to the king on Mungo's behalf, and

 consequently he was only one among dozens of white concession-seekers

 camped around Lobengula's royal kraal.

 The king would not have let Mungo leave, even if he had wanted to.

 He seemed to enjoy talking to him, and listened eagerly to Mungo's

 accounts of the American War and of Mungo's sea voyages. Every week or

 so he would summon Mungo to an audience and question him through his

 interpreter, for hours at a time.

 The destructive power of cannon fascinated him, and he demanded detailed

 descriptions of sundered walls and human bodies blown to nothingness.

 The sea was another source of intense interest, and he tried to grasp

 the immensity of waters and the blast of storm and gale across it.

 However, when Mungo delicately hinted at a land grant and trading

 concession, Lobengula smiled and sent him away.

 "I will call for you again, One Bright Eye, when I have thought on it

 more heavily. Now is there aught you lack in food or drink? I will send

 my women to your camp with it."

 Once he gave Mungo permission to go out into the hunting veld so long as

 he stayed south of the Shangani river and killed neither elephant nor

 hippopotamus. On this expedition Mungo shot a huge cock ostrich and

 salted and dried the skin with its magnificent plumage intact.

 On three other occasions the king allowed him to return to Khami Mission

 Station when Mungo complained that his leg was paining him. Mungo's

 predatory instinct was that Robyn Codrington was disturbed and excited

 by these returns, and each time he was able to draw out the visit for

 days, gradually consolidating his position with her so that when he

 again asked her to intercede with Lobengula on his behalf, she actually

 thought about it for a full day before refusing once more.

 "I cannot set a cat upon a mouse, General Sint John."

 "Madam, I freed my own slaves many years ago."

 "When you were forced to," she agreed. "But who will control you here in

 Matabeleland?"

 "You, Robyn, and gladly would I submit to that."

 She had flushed and turned her face away from him to hide the colour.

 "Your familiarity is presumptuous, sir." And she had left him so that he

 could keep his revived assignations under the leadwood tree with the

 twins. His absence since those first encounters in his convalescence had

 not dimmed their fascination for him. They had become invaluable allies.

 Nobody else could have extracted from Juba the vital information he

 needed for his planning.

 Mungo had expressed doubts as to the existence of the diamonds, and

 declared that he would only be convinced if the twins could tell him

 where Lobengula kept the treasure.

 Juba never suspected danger from such an innocent pair, and in the late

 afternoon, when she had drunk a gallon pot of her own famous brew, she

 was always genial and garrulous.

 "Ningi keeps the diamonds under her sleeping place, Vicky informed

 Mungo.

 "Who is Ningi?"

 "The king's sister, and she is almost as fat as King Ben is."

 Ningi would be the most trusted of all Lobengula's people, and her hut

 in the sanctuary of the forbidden women's quarters was the most secure

 in all Matabeleland.

 "I believe you now. You are clever girls, both of you," Mungo told them,

 and they glowed with pleasure. There was nothing he could not ask of

 them.

 "Vicky, I need some paint. It's for a secret thing, I will tell you

 about it later, if you can get the paint for me."

 "What colour?" Lizzie cut in. "I'll get it for you."

 "Red, white and yellow."

 In the end Lizzie stood guard while Vicky raided Cathy's paintbox, and

 they delivered their offering to Mungo and basked in his extravagant

 praise.

 In his planning, it was not enough merely to get the diamonds into his

 hands; even more vital was to escape the consequences. No man or woman

 could hope to reach the frontier without the king's permission; it was

 hundreds of miles of wild country patrolled by the border impis.

 He could not grab and run. He had to use guile and perhaps turn the

 Matabele dread of darkness and witchcraft to his own advantage.

 So he planned with meticulous concentration" and waited for the right

 moment with the patience of the stalking leopard, for he knew that this

 was his last attempt. If he failed this time, then not even his white

 skin nor his status as a guest of the king could save him.

 If he failed, the Black Ones would wield their knobkerries, crushing in

 his skull, and his corpse would be flung from the cliffs to the waiting

 vultures or into the flooded river pools where the crocodiles would rip

 it into chunks with their spiky yellow saurian teeth. Louise would

 suffer the same fate, he knew, but it was a chance he was prepared to

 take.

 He was careful to conceal his preparations from her and this was made

 easier by the distance that she had for long now been maintaining

 between them. Though they shared the thatched hut that Lobengula's men

 had built for them in the grove beyond the royal kraal, and though they

 ate the same meals of beef and sour milk and stone-ground maize cakes

 that the king sent down to them each evening, Louise spent her days

 alone, riding out on one of the mules in the early morning and not

 returning until dusk. Her mattress of straw in the farthest recesses of

 the hut she had screened with the tattered canvas sunshade from the

 cart, and he only once tried to pass the screen.

 "Not again," she hissed at him. "Never again!" And she showed him the

 knife that she kept under her skirts.

 So he was able to work uninterrupted, during the day, and to hide his

 equipment under his own mattress each evening. He carved the mask from

 the naturally curved portion of a hollow tree trunk, a hideous grimacing

 apelike visage with staring eyes and a gaping mouth full of white fangs,

 and he painted it with the colours from Cathy's paintbox.

 From the plumed ostrich skin he tailored a cloak that reached from neck

 to ankles, and for his feet and hands he made grotesque mittens of black

 goatskin. In full costume he was enough to paralyse even the bravest

 warrior with supernatural terror. He was the very embodiment of the

 Tokoloshe of Matabele mythology.

 Robyn Codrington had given him repeated doses of laudanum for the

 persisting pain in his leg, but he had saved these for the occasion. He

 had decided on one of the Matabele festivals, and he waited until the

 third night when every man and woman of the entire nation, surfeited

 with beer and thtee days and nights of wild dancing, had fallen asleep

 where they fell.

 At nightfall he gave the laudanurn to Louise in a cup of soured milk,

 and the tart flavour concealed the musky taste of the drug. An hour

 after dark he crept across the hut, drew aside the screen and listened

 to her even breathing for a minute before leaning over her and slapping

 her cheeks lightly. She did not move nor murmur, and the rhythm of her

 breathing did not alter.

 He dressed swiftly in the feather cloak, not yet donning the mask and

 mittens, but blackening his face and limbs with a mixture of crushed

 charcoal and fat. Then with the mask and a length of rope under one arm

 and a heavy assegai in the other hand, he crept out of the hut.

 The grove was deserted, no Matabele would venture here when the spirits

 were abroad, so he hurried through it, and from the treeline surveyed

 the stockade of the royal kraal.

 There was a sliver of the old moon rising, and it gave just enough light

 for him to pick his way, but not enough to betray him to watchful eyes.

 There would be few eyes open on this night. Even so he crouched low as

 he crossed the open ground; the cloak made a shaggy hyena shape that

 would excite no real interest.

 At the outer stockade he paused to look and listen, then flicked the

 length of manila rope over the barrier of sharpened poles.

 He climbed up carefully, favouring his bad leg, and peered into the

 kraal.

 It was deserted, but a low watch-fire burned infront of the barred

 gateway.

 Mungo slid down the rope and he crossed quickly to the shadows of the

 nearest hut, and there paused to pull on his mittens and settle the

 cumbersome mask over his head before creeping on again towards the inner

 stockade that guarded the women's quarters.

 In the preceding weeks, using his brass telescope from the vantage point

 of the nearest hilltop, he had been able to see over the walls and to

 study the layout of the wives" quarters.

 There was a double circle of huts, like the concentric rings of a

 target, but at the centre, the bull's-eye, was a larger hut with

 intricate patterns of thatch and lacing proclaiming its greater

 importance. His guess that this was the king's sister's residence had

 been confirmed when he had seen, through the telescope, Ningi's

 elephantine gleaming naked body, escorted by a dozen hand-maidens,

 emerging into the early sunlight from the low doorway.

 Now he reached the gateway in the inner stockade, and studied it from

 around the sheltering wall of the nearest hut. Again his luck held. He

 had been prepared to use the assegai here, but both the guards were

 stretched out, wrapped in their furs, and neither of them moved as Mungo

 stepped over their prostrate bodies.

 From inside one hut he heard the low regular snores of one fat wife, and

 in another a woman coughed and muttered in her sleep, but though his

 nerves jumped, he went on swiftly.

 The door to Ningi's hut was closed. Mungo, had honed the edge of the

 assegai to a razor edge, and with it he sawed through the fastenings of

 bark rope that secured the opening. The rasp and rustle of the blade

 sounded thunderous in his ears, and his skin prickled as he waited for a

 shouted challenge from within. It did not come, but he found that he was

 sweating as he stepped back and brought out the bladders of goats" blood

 from under the cloak.

 He slit the bladders and splashed the stinking, congealing blood over

 the portals of the doorway. He had learned from the twins, who were

 authorities on the supernatural, that a Tokoloshe always spurted blood

 on any doorway through which it passed. It was one of the creature's

 more endearing characteristics.

 Now with the assegai gripped in his right hand, Mungo stooped into the

 hut and, crouched in the doorway, he waited for his eyes to adjust to

 the gloom.

 The fire in the centre of the large hut had burned low.

 There was just enough light to make out two figures curled like dogs on

 the sleeping-mats on each side of it and beyond it the ponderous bulk of

 the princess under her furs.

 Her snores started as a low grumbling like a volcano, and rose to a

 whistling crescendo that covered any sound Mungo might make as he

 slipped across to the first of the sleeping hand-maids.

 Before she could stir he had slipped a gag of goat's skin into her mouth

 and trussed her at the ankles and wrists with a leather thong. She did

 not struggle, but stared up at his horrific mask with huge white eyes in

 the firelight.

 He tied and gagged the second woman before crossing to Ningi's sleeping

 platform.

 That afternoon, as one of the king's guests, Mungo had watched Ningi

 sitting beside her brother and swilling pot after pot of French

 champagne. She went on snoring and grunting as he bound her arms and

 legs. Only when he thrust the gag into her gaping mouth did she snuffle

 and moan and come out of her alcoholic slumbers.

 He rolled her off the platform and she fell with a thump to the clay

 floor. He dragged her across to where her bound servants lay. It was

 heavy work, for she weighed 300 pounds or more.

 He threw a log on the fire, and when it flared he pranced and capered

 around his captives, thrustin his hideous mask into their faces and

 gibbering at them in fiendish menace. In the firelight their sweat of

 fear burst out and ran in little rivulets down their bodies as they

 writhed and wriggled against their bonds.

 Suddenly there was a spluttering explosive rush as Ningi voided her

 bowels with sheer terror, and the hot stink of faeces filled the hut.

 Mungo threw a fur kaross over them and immediately they were still,

 their grunts and muffled groans ceased.

 He moved quickly then. Returning to the sleeping platform he threw the

 furs aside, and found a pallet of woven bamboo. It lifted like a trap

 door, and in the low recess below it were a dozen small clay pots.

 His hands began to shake as he reached for one and lifted it out of the

 recess. His own sweat half blinded but through his blurred vision he saw

 the soapy him gleam of reflected firelight in the mouth of the pot.

 He could not take it all, there was too much for him to carry and too

 much for him later to conceal. Moreover, his survivor's instinct warned

 him that the more he took the more remorseless would be the search and

 pursuit.

 He spilled the contents of all twelve pots into a glittering heap beside

 the fire, and in its uncertain light made his choice of the biggest and

 brightest stones from the hundreds that teased him with their twinkling

 smiles.

 Thirty of them filled the leather drawstring bag he had brought with

 him. He tied it back at his waist, snatched up the assegai and slipped

 out of the hut.

 The guards at the inner stockade still slept, and he passed them

 silently. Below the wall of the outer stockade he stripped off his

 cloak, mittens and mask and dropped them on the untended watch-fire.

 Then he heaped branches over them, there would be only ash by morning.

 He went up the rope swiftly, hand over hand, and pulled it up after him.

 The royal kraal behind him was silent in heavy midnight stupor, and he

 climbed lightly down the outer wall of the stockade.

 He bathed in the pool below the camp, washing off the charcoal and fat,

 and then found his shirt and breeches where he had left them in the

 hollow of a tree trunk beside the pool.

 in the hut he knelt beside Louise and placed one hand, still icy cold

 from the pool, upon her cheek. She sighed and rolled over onto her side.

 He felt like laughing and shouting his triumph out loud. Instead, he hid

 the bag of precious stones under his mattress and rolled into his

 blanket. He did not sleep for the rest of the night, and in the dawn he

 heard the hubbub of superstitious fear from the king's kraal, the

 screams of women and the shouts of men, loudly bolstering their courage

 against the spirits and the demons.

 "This is a cruel thing for a good king to do," Robyn told Lobengula

 bitterly.

 "Nomusa, you are a wise woman, the wisest that I have ever known, but

 you do not understand the spirits and demons of Matabeleland."

 "I understand that the world is full of evil men, but that there are

 very few evil spirits."

 "The thing that entered my sister's hut came from the air. All the gates

 to the kraal were guarded by men unsleeping; they have sworn to me that

 they stood at their posts from dusk to dawn, with eyes wide and spears

 in their hands. Nothing passed them."

 "Even your best men can doze, and then lie to protect themselves."

 "Nobody dare lie to the king. It came from air, and it sprayed rotten

 stinking blood upon the portals of Ningi's hut., Lobengula shuddered

 despite himself. "On Chaka's scrawny buttocks, that is a Tokoloshe

 trick. No man can do that."

 "Except if he carry blood in a pot to hurl on the doorway."

 "Nomusa -" Lobengula shook his head sorrowfully.

 "My sister and her servants saw this great hairy thing black as midnight

 and stinking of the grave, with blood and not sweat oozing from its

 skin. Its eyes were like the full moon, and its voice that of lion and

 eagle, it had no hands and no feet, just hairy pads."

 Lobengula shuddered again.

 "And it stole diamonds," Robyn told him. "What does a demon want with

 diamonds?"

 "Who knows what a demon needs for his spells or his magic, or to please

 his dark master?"

 "Men lust after diamonds."

 "Nomusa, to black men diamonds have no value, so it could not have been

 a black man. On the other hand, if a white man had entered my sister's

 hut he would not have been satisfied with a few stones. A white man

 would have taken them all, for that is their way. So it could not have

 been either a white man or a black man, what is left but a demon?"

 "Lobengula, Great King, you cannot allow this thing to happen."

 "Nomusa, there has been a terrible witchcraft perpetrated within the

 royal kraal. An evil person or many evil persons have conjured up a

 black demon, and I would be no king at all if I allowed them to live.

 The evil ones must be smelled out, and my birds must feast before we are

 cleansed of this filthy thing."

 "Lobengula "Say no more, Girlchild of Mercy, words cannot divert my

 purpose, for you and your family and all the guests at my kraal are

 summoned to see justice done."

 It took ten days for the Matabele people to come in to Gubulawayo; they

 came in their regiments, warriors and maidens, ringed indunas and

 fruitful matrons, the toddlers and the greyheaded toothless old

 droolers, in their thousands and tens of thousands; and on the morning

 that Lobengula had appointed, the nation assembled, rank upon rank,

 regiment upon regiment, a black ocean of humanity that overflowed the

 great cattle stockade.

 There was a peculiar stillness over such an immense gathering, only the

 plumed headdresses moved softly in the small restless breeze, and a pall

 of fear hung over them, so palpable that it seemed to take the heat from

 the sun and dim its very rays.

 The silence was oppressive; it seemed to crush the breath from their

 lungs. Only once when a black crow flew low over the serried ranks and

 screeched its raucous cry into the silence, all their heads lifted and a

 soft sigh shook them, like the wind through the top branches of the

 forest. Before the gates of the royal kraal, facing this huge concourse,

 were drawn up the senior indunas of the Matabele, Somabula and Babiaan

 and Gandang and the lesser princes of Kumalo, while behind them again,

 their backs to the poles of the stockade, were Lobengula's white guests,

 almost one hundred of them, Germans and Frenchmen, Dutchmen and

 Englishmen, hunters and scholars and businessmen and adventurers,

 petitioners and missionaries and traders. Soberly clad in broadcloth,

 wearing hunting leathers and bandoliers or dressed in spangled and gaudy

 uniform, they waited in the sweltering silence.

 There were only two white women present, for Robyn had flatly refused to

 bring her daughters from Khami for the smelling-out ceremony, and

 Lobengula. had relented and made an exception for them.

 The king had given permission for the two women to be seated. Robyn sat

 beside the entrance to the stockade, and Clinton stood over her

 protectively while the members of mister Rhodes" deputation flanked her.

 mister Rudd, redfaced and whiskered, with his Derby hat set four square

 on his head, and Jordan Ballantyne, bare-headed and golden-haired at

 Robyn's other hand.

 Further down the line of guests, Louise Sint John sat on a Stool of

 leather thongs. Her thick sable plaits hung to the waist of her simple

 white dress, and the eyes of the men around her kept returning

 surreptitiously to her exotic high-cheeked beauty. Behind her stood

 Mungo Sint John, one eye hidden by the black patch, leaning easily on

 his cane and smiling to himself as he saw the direction of the eyes of

 the men about him.

 The nation surged like a slumbering black sea struck by a sudden gale of

 wind, and the plumes tossed like spume. There was a single clap of sound

 like the volley of massed cannon as every right leg was lifted shoulder

 high and brought down to stamp the hard earth, and every throat corded

 and strained to the royal salute.

 "Bayete!"

 The Great Black Elephant of Matabele came through the gateway, and

 behind him his wives led by Ningi swayed and shuffled and sang his

 praises.

 With the toy spear of kingship in his hand, Lobengula paced towards the

 mound of packed clay on which the bath chair, which had been his

 father's throne, was set, and Gandang and Babiaan, his brothers, came

 forward to help him ascend the steps.

 From his platform, Lobengula looked upon his people, and those closest

 to him saw the terrible sorrow in his eyes.

 "Let it begin," he said, and slumped into his chair.

 There was a ragged chorus of shrieks and whines and maniacal laughter

 from beyond the stockade walls, and through the gateway came a horrid

 procession of beldams and crones, of prancing hell-hags and gibbering

 necromancers.

 At their throats and waists were hung the trappings of their wizardry,

 skull of baboon and infant, skin of reptile, of python and iguana,

 carapace of tortoise, and stoppered horns, rattles of lucky bean pods

 and bones, and other grisly relics of man and animal and bird.

 Wailing and hooting they assembled before Lobengula's throne.

 "Dark sisters, can you smell the evil ones?"

 rwe smell their breaths, they are here! They are here!" One of the

 witches collapsed in the dust, with froth bubbling over her toothless

 gums; her eyes rolled back into her skull and her limbs twitched

 spasmodically.

 One of her sisters dashed the red powder from a snuffhorn in her face,

 and she shrieked and leaped into the air.

 "Dark sisters, will you bring forth the evil-doers?" Lobengula asked.

 "We will bring them to you, Great Bull of Kumalo. We will deliver them

 up, son of Mzilikazi."

 "Go!"ordered Lobengula. "Do what must be done!"

 Some of them went whirling and cavorting, brandishing their divining

 rods, one the tail of a giraffe, another the inflated bladder of a

 jackal on a staff of red tarnbooti wood, still another the stretched and

 sun-dried penis of a black-maned lion, the rods with which they would

 point out the evil ones.

 Others crept away, slinking and sly as the night-prow- in ling hyena.

 Others again crawled on all fours, snuffling the earth like hunting

 hounds quartering for the scent as they spread out amongst the rows of

 waiting people.

 One of the witches came down the line of white guests, hopping like an

 ancient baboon, her empty teats flapping against her withered belly, her

 skin crusty grey with filth and her charms clattering and jangling; and

 she stopped in front of Mungo Sint John and lifted her nose to sniff the

 air, then she howled like a bitch in season.

 Mungo Sint John took the long black hand-rolled cheroot of native

 tobacco from between his lips and inspected the ash on its tip. The

 crone hopped closer and looked up into his face, and he returned the

 cheroot to his lips and returned her stare without interest.

 She leapt up to thrust her face inches from his and noisily sniff the

 breath of his nostrils, and then she danced away, until she faced him

 again, lifted the long giraffe tail above her head, shrieked like a

 stooping owl and rushed at Mungo, the tail raised to strike into his

 face.

 In front of him she froze in the act of striking, and Mungo Sint John

 took the cheroot from his mouth and he blew a perfect smoke ring, that

 spun upon itself until it broke in the witch's face and blew away in

 soft wisps.

 She cackled, wildly, madly, and passed on down the line to pause in

 front of Robyn Codrington.

 "You stink like the hyena that spawned you," Robyn told her evenly in

 perfect Matabele, and the witch whirled and raced away to where Juba

 stood in the front line of noble matrons; she raised the switch to

 strike and looked back at Robyn, gloating loathsomely.

 Robyn had gone white as bone, and came to her feet clutching her own

 bosom.

 "No," she whispered. "Please, fair sister, let her be."

 The witch dropped her arm and came back to strut and preen in front of

 Robyn; then again she shrieked, whirled and rushed at Juba, this time

 she struck, and the tail hissed and snapped on black flesh, but at the

 very last second the witch had diverted her aim, and the blow flew into

 the startled face of the young woman who stood beside Juba.

 "I smell evil," shrieked the witch, and the woman fell to her knees. "I

 smell blood."

 The witch struck again and again, the tail cutting stingingly into the

 woman's unprotected face until the tears started and ran down her

 cheeks.

 The executioners came forward and pulled her to her feet. The woman's

 legs were paralysed, so they dragged her unprotesting before Lobengula,

 and he looked down on her, saddened and helplessly compassionate, before

 he lifted the forefinger of his right hand.

 One of the executioners swung his war club, a full blow that stove in

 the back of the woman's skull. The bone crunched like a footstep in

 loose gravel, and the woman's eyes were driven from their sockets like

 overripe grapes by the force of it. When she fell face forward in the

 dust there was a bloodless depression in the back of her head into which

 a man could have placed his fist.

 The witch scurried away to continue the hunt, and Juba looked across at

 Robyn. Robyn had fallen back on her chair, trembling and pale, while

 Clinton put an arm around her shoulders to steady her.

 In the packed ranks there was another triumphant shriek, and the

 executioners dragged a fine-looking young warrior from his place. He

 threw off their hands and strode to drop on one knee before Lobengula's

 throne.

 "Father of the nation, hear my praises. Great Thunderer, Black Bull, let

 me die with your name on my lips.

 Oh Lobengula who drives like the wind The king lifted his finger and the

 club fell with the flute of a goose's wing.

 The chorus of howls and shrieks was unending now as the sisters warmed

 to their work, and the victims were dragged out and slaughtered, until

 their corpses were a high mound before the king's throne, a tangle of

 black limbs and shattered heads, that grew and grew.

 A hundred, two hundred, were added to the pile, while the sun reached

 its zenith and the dust and heat and terror formed a suffocating miasma,

 and the blue metallic flies swarmed in the staring eyes and open mouths

 of the dead, and the witches cavorted and giggled and struck with their

 rods.

 Here and there a maiden, overcome with the fear and the blazing heat,

 fell swooning from her place and the witches pounced upon this

 irrefutable evidence of guilt and rained blows upon her bare back or

 glossy breasts, and the executioners hurried to keep pace with their

 dreadful task.

 The sun began its slow descent towards the western horizon, and at last

 one at a time the witches crept back to the mountain of death they had

 created. They staggered with exhaustion, the dust had caked on their

 running sweat, but they bayed and whined like dogs as they pored over

 the corpses, selecting those they would take with them, back to their

 caves and secret places, a sliver of the womb of a virgin was a powerful

 fertility charm, a slice of the heart of a blooded warrior was a

 wonderful talisman in battle.

 "Is the work done?" Lobengula asked.

 "It is done, oh king."

 "Are all the evil ones dead?"

 "They are all dead, son of Mzilikazi."

 "Go then, and go in peace," Lobengula said wearily.

 "Stay in peace, Great King." They chuckled and hooted and, bearing their

 gruesome plunder with them, they shuffled away through the gateway of

 the stockade.

 Three times in as many weeks Mungo Sint John petitioned the king, asking

 him to "give the road" to the south, but each time the king chatted

 affably for an hour and then waved him away. "I will sleep on it, One

 Bright Eye, but are you unhappy here? Does the beef and beer I send you

 not fill your belly? Perhaps you would like to go once again on the

 hunt?"

 "I want to go south, oh King."

 "Perhaps in the next full moon, One Bright Eye, and then again perhaps

 after the rain has passed, or after the Chawala Ceremony, who knows? We

 will see in good season."

 Then one morning Louise rode out early, as had become her custom, but

 after she had been gone some hours Mungo realized that this time she had

 the rifle and bandolier of ammunition, her blanket roll and the gallon

 water bottle with her.

 He puzzled over her behaviour for the rest of that day, but he was not

 alarmed until night fell and she had not returned. He sat up beside the

 fire all that night, and at first light he took the second mule and

 crossed the river to where Rudd's party was camped in grand style in a

 pleasant glade of the forest. They had six wagons and as many tents made

 of best quality waterproof canvas, each with sun flysheets.

 The horses on the picket line were all blood Arabs, one of which would

 carry Mungo and his small bag of precious stones to the Shashi river in

 six days or less.

 He was eyeing them hungrily, when Robyn Codrington stooped out of one of

 the tents. She saw him and would have gone in again, but he called to

 her and jumped down from the mule.

 "Doctor Codrington, please, it is a matter of extreme urgency.

 Reluctantly she turned back.

 "My wife is missing, she did not come in last night."

 Immediately her distant expression changed to one of concern.

 "Did she say where she was going?"

 He shook his head. "I can only think that she might have ridden back to

 Khami, you know she was becoming friendly with your elder daughter, "

 "I shall send a servant to the mission."

 "Can you not ask the king to let me go?"

 "The king has gone in to his wives, nobody, not even I dare disturb him

 until he comes out from the women's quarters."

 "How long will that be?"

 "A day, a week, there is no way of telling. I shall send word to you as

 soon as I have news."

 That night Mungo waited again, and then in the dawn as he crouched,

 haggard and bleary-eyed, over the smoky fire, listening for the hoof

 beats of the mule or the sound of Louise's voice out of the darkness, he

 was struck instead by a thought that chilled his blood and made his guts

 slide with dread.

 He leapt up from the fire, ran into the hut and scrabbled frantically

 under the mattress. With a blessed soaring relief his fingers closed on

 the bag, and he pulled it out and fumbled the drawstring open. He poured

 the bright stones into the palm of his hand. They were all there, but

 with them was something that had not been there before. It was a folded

 sheet of paper, and he took it to the fire and held it to catch the

 light.

 "When you find this you will know why I have gone.

 Even as I write this the memory of those poor wretches who died in their

 hundreds to pay for your greed rises before me to torment me. With them

 died the last of my love for you.

 "I leave you those blood-spattered stones in the certain knowledge that

 they are accursed.

 "Do not follow me. Do not send after me. Do not think of me again."

 She had not signed it.

 Rudd's party was at breakfast under the open-sided dining-tent.

 It was a fresh and cool morning. The conversation around the table was

 intelligent, informed and yet quick and witty, Robyn revelled in it.

 She sat at the head of the trestle table and the gentlemen deferred to

 her. mister Rudd had been very obviously taken with her from their first

 meeting, and addressed all his remarks to her directly.

 Jordan had supervised the preparation of a gargantuan q English

 breakfast, fresh eggs and grilled gammon, salted kippers and tinned pork

 sausage, potted shrimps and bloater paste, with freshly-chumed yellow

 butter and hot scones.

 Mister Rudd, quite carried away with the spontaneous festive mood,

 called for a bottle of champagne that had been hung overnight in a wet

 sack to cool.

 "Well," he lifted his glass to Robyn, "I am sure we shall be able to

 survive this rough life and rude fare until the good king makes up his

 mind."

 Despite Robyn's intercession, Lobengula had not yet ratified the

 concession that they sought. His senior indunas had been in secret

 conclave for weeks, but could not reach a consensus of agreement, while

 Lobengula vacillated and reacted to mister Rudd's insistence by retiring

 to his women's quarters where nobody could reach him.

 "It may take months yet." Robyn lifted her own glass and returned Rudd's

 salute. "I would not expect Lobengula to make a decision on such an

 important matter without going into the Matopos Hills to consult the

 oracle, the Umlimo."

 Suddenly Clinton looked down towards the river, frowned and whispered to

 Robyn. "It's that scoundrel Sint John, what does he want coming here?"

 Mungo Sint John had dismounted at the periphery of the camp, but he did

 not approach the company under the open-sided marquee.

 Robyn stood up quickly. "Please excuse me, gentlemen. General Sint

 John's wife is missing, and he is naturally worried."

 "Thank you for coming," Mungo said, as she hurried to him. "I have

 nobody else to turn to, Robyn."

 She tried to ignore the intimacy of his appeal, and the little jolt that

 his use of her given name always gave her.

 "Do you have news?" she asked.

 "I have discovered a note that Louise left for me."

 "Let me see it." Robyn held out her hand.

 "I am sorry. It contains most personal and, I fear, embarrassing,

 references," Mungo told her. "But what is important is that Louise is

 trying to leave Matabeleland by the southern road."

 "That is madness," Robyn whispered. "Without the king's permission,

 without an escort. The road is obscure, the country wild and infested

 with lions, she cann of hope to pass the border impis, and they have

 orders to kill all who do not have the road from Lobengula."

 She knows all this," Mungo said.

 "Then what possessed her to make the attempt?"

 "We argued. She resented the feeling which she knows that I still have,

 for you."

 Robyn fell back a pace, her cheeks paling and her breath catching in her

 throat.

 "General Sint John, I forbid you to talk in that fashion."

 "you asked me, Robyn, and once, long ago, I told you that I would never

 forget that night aboard Huron "Stop it! Stop it, this instant!

 How can you speak like this when your wife is in dire danger?"

 "Louise was never my wife," he said quietly, staring into her green eyes

 with that single penetrating gaze.

 "She was my travelling companion, never my wife."

 Robyn faltered, colour rushed back into her cheeks, and with it came a

 strange unaccountable pagan joy.

 "You told me, once, that you were married."

 "I was, Robyn. Not to Louise. That other lady died many years ago in

 Navarre in France."

 Robyn confounded herself. She was married to a brave, kind man, in his

 own way a saintly man, while before her stood the embodiment of evil,

 the veritable serpent of Eden; and yet she could not suppress this

 wicked unconscionable elation at the knowledge that he was free, free

 for she knew not what, or could not bring herself to think on it.

 "I shall go to the king," she said, painfully aware of the quaver in her

 voice. "I shall ask him to send men after your, after the lady.

 I shall ask him also to give you the road, General, and I would consider

 it full repayment if you would take it immediately, and never return to

 Matabeleland."

 "what is between us can never be denied, Robyn, as long as we both

 live."

 "I do not wish to see you again." With an effort of all her will she

 steadied her voice and met his eye.

 "Robyn!"

 "I shall send a messenger to you with the king's reply."

 "Robyn!"

 "Please." Her voice cracked again. "In God's holy name, please leave me

 alone."

 However, it was two more days before Robyn sent Jordan Ballantyne to

 Mungo's camp.

 "Doctor Codrington bids me tell you, sir, that the king has already sent

 one of his trusted indunas with a picked body of warriors after your

 wife. They have orders to protect her from the border guards and to

 escort her to the Shashi river."

 "Thank you, young man."

 "Furthermore, she asked me to tell you that the king has given you the

 road. You may follow your wife immediately."

 "Again my thanks to Doctor Codrington."

 "General Sint John, you do not remember me "I am afraid -" Mungo frowned

 up at Jordan on the back of the dancing Arab mare.

 "Jordan, Zouga Ballantyne's son. We met in Kimberley some years ago."

 "Ali! Of course, forgive me. You have changed."

 "General, I know that it is none of my business, but as you are a

 trusted friend of my father's, it is my duty to warn you that there were

 unpleasant rumours after your departure from Kimberley."

 "I did not know," Mungo told him indifferently. "Still, it is one of

 life's unpleasant truths that the more prominent a man becomes, the more

 determined are the mean little men to tear him down."

 "I know that, General. I am associated with a great man, "Jordan checked

 himself. "However, a police agent, a Griqua named Hendrick Naaiman

 claimed that you attended an I.D.B. rendezvous and that when you

 realized it was a trap you attempted to kill him."

 Mungo made an impatient gesture. "Why should somebody of my standing, my

 estate, take such a ridiculous risk as to indulge in I.D.B?"

 "That was what mister Rhodes said, sir. He has repeatedly expressed

 certainty of your innocence."

 "After I have found my wife I shall return immediately to Kimberley to

 confront this Naaiman person."

 "General Sint John, that will be neither necessary nor possible. Naaiman

 was killed some months ago in a knife fight in one of the drinking

 canteens. He cannot give evidence for or against you. Without either

 witness or accuser, your innocence is presumed."

 "Damn it -" Mungo frowned to cover his immense relief. "I should have

 welcomed the chance to force his words down his lying throat, now there

 will always be doubts in some men's minds."

 to nly in the minds of the mean little men." Jordan touched the brim of

 his cap. "I shall not detain you further; you must be anxious to follow

 and find your wife. Good luck and God speed. I am sure we shall meet

 again, General."

 Mungo Sint John stared after Jordan as he rode away. It was hard to

 grasp the extent of his good fortune, the spectre of unrelenting justice

 that had pursued him from the south had vanished; he had the road to

 leave Matabeleland, and an immense fortune in diamonds to carry with

 him.

 An hour later he had visited one of the traders and exchanged the cart

 and the other meagre possessions he no longer needed for a good rifle

 and one hundred rounds of ammunition, and he sat the broad comfortable

 back of the mule, its head pointed southwards, as it skirted the granite

 hills of the indunas.

 Mungo looked neither left nor right: his eye was fixed ahead, towards

 the south, so that he did not see the slim almost boyish figure on the

 slopes high above him.

 Robyn shaded her eyes with the brim of her bonnet and peered after him

 until the little feather of dust raised by the mule's big heavy hooves

 subsided into the mimosa forests.

 Louise Sint John was driven on by her need to keep ahead of any pursuit,

 obsessed with the knowledge that she must avoid the kraals along the

 road, ridden by the guilt she knew she must share with Mungo, her senses

 and emotions in terrible turmoil, so that she did not have a chance to

 regret her hasty action, taken in the shock of discovering the diamonds,

 nor did she realize the depths of her loneliness, until she had

 successfully skirted the last of the great kraals and left the pleasant

 grasslands of the plateau.

 Now ahead of her the escarpment fell into the wild land, hot and heavily

 forested, which she knew was teeming with wild animals and guarded by

 the merciless border impis.

 It was a measure of her desperate need to be free of Mungo Sint John and

 all he stood for that she never once considered turning back, though she

 knew there was sanctuary for her at Khami Mission, though she knew that

 Robyn Codrington would go to the king on her behalf and he would give

 her an escort of warriors to the border.

 She could not go back, she could not bear the prospect of being close to

 Mungo Sint John ever again. The love she had once borne him had sickened

 into a total revulsion.

 No risk was too high to escape him and she had to do it now. There was

 no going back.

 She lay the last night beside the wagon ruts that were her tenuous link

 with civilization and life itself, her own thread through the maze of

 the Matabele Minotaur, and she listened to the mule cropping grass close

 at hand and, far away down the escarpment, the faint roar of a hunting

 lion, while she tried to reconstruct in her mind the map that had formed

 the frontispiece to Zouga Ballantyne's book A Hunter's Odyssey. The

 account of Zouga's Tourneys had fascinated her, even before she had met

 him, and she had studied the map with minute attention.

 She judged that from where she now lay the Tati river was not more than

 one hundred miles due west. No pursuer would expect her to take that

 direction. No impi would guard that desolate untravelled quarter, and

 the Tati river was the border between Matabeleland and Khama's country.

 By all accounts King Kharna was a gentle and honourable man; his country

 was under suzerainty of the British crown, and British justice was

 ensured by the presence of Sir Sidney Shippard at Khama's kraal.

 If she could reach the Tati river and follow it south until she met some

 of Khania's people who could take her to Sir Sidney, then he would see

 to it that she was sent on southwards to Kimberley.

 The thought of that town made her realize the true reason for her

 desperate haste. For the first time she became aware of the terrible

 hunger within her to be with a man whom she could trust, whose strength

 would shield her and make her strong again. The man to whom she could at

 last acknowledge she had transferred the love which Mungo Sint John had

 long ago forfeited. She must reach Zouga, and reach him soon, that was

 the only thing certain in her confusion, and her despair, but first

 there were a hundred miles of wilderness to cross.

 She rose in the first pale light of day, kicked sand over the fire,

 saddled the mule, and slid the rifle into its scabbard, she buckled the

 water-bottle and blanket to the pommel and swung up onto his back. With

 the unearthy red glow of the sunrise at her back, she urged the mule

 forward, and after fifty paces, when she glanced back, the faint double

 track of wagon wheels was no longer discernible.

 The land through which she rode had a harsh and forbidding grandeur; the

 horizons were infinite and the sky was tall and milky blue. It was empty

 of all life, she saw no bird nor animal, and the sunlight was white and

 fierce. In the nights the stars filled the heavens with whorls and

 eddies of cold bright light and she felt herself shrinking under the

 immensity and loneliness of it all.

 On the third evening, she knew that she was lost, hopelessly and

 irretrievably lost. She was barely certain of the direction of the

 sunset, but she had no idea of distances and her memories of the sketch

 map which she had thought vivid and clear, had become fuddled and

 confused.

 The gallon water-bottle was empty. She had drunk the last bloodwarm

 mouthful a little before noon. She had seen no game to provide meat, and

 she had eaten the last stale maize cake the previous evening. The mule

 was too exhausted and thirsty to graze. He stood miserably under the

 wild sycamore tree that she had chosen for her night's camp; but though

 she put the knee halter on him, she knew that he would not wander. His

 head hung to his knees. An arrowhead of flint had lacerated the frog of

 his left fore. He was dead lame, and she had no idea how much farther it

 was to the Tati, nor in which direction the river lay.

 She put a little round white pebble under her tongue to draw her saliva

 and lay down next to the fire. Exhausted sleep came like sudden black

 death, and she woke as though she were struggling up from the depths of

 hell itself.

 The moon was up, full and yellow, but it was the mule's fearful snorts

 and the stamp of his hooves on the stony earth that had roused her. She

 dragged herself up with the help of the sycamore trunk and peered about

 her. Something moved at the edge of her vision, something big and

 ghostly pale, and as she stared at it she could smell the acrid

 ammoniaical whiff of cat. The mule whinnied with terror and broke into a

 maimed lunging gallop, the halters holding his forelegs so that he was

 awkward and slow, and the big pale thing came flashing lightly upon him,

 rising like a huge white bat against the moonlit sky, and settled upon

 the mule's back.

 The mule screamed once and clearly Louise heard his spinal column break

 as the lioness on his back bit into his neck and in the same movement

 reached forward to sink her claws into his cheek and twist his head

 backwards against the hold of her jaws.

 The mule went down with a thumping impact on the hard earth, and the

 lioness immediately flattened herself behind the shuddering and

 spasmodically kicking carcass and began ripping into the soft skin

 around the anus making an opening into the belly cavity through which to

 reach the titbits of kidney and spleen and liver and guts.

 Behind her Louise saw other pale cat shapes coming out of the shadows,

 and she had just presence of mind enough to snatch up the rifle before

 she scrambled up into the fork of the sycamore and climbed upwards,

 driven by a suffocating terror.

 She clung to an upper branch and listened to the grisly feast below her,

 the growling and squabbling of a dozen lions over the carcass, the

 lapping sounds as they licked the meat off the bones with tongues like

 wood rasps, and the awful guttural purring and slurping.

 As the light of day slowly strengthened, so the noises subsided. The big

 cats had eaten their fill and slunk away into the bush. Then Louise

 looked down the trunk of the sycamore into two implacable yellow orbs

 that seemed to search out new depths in her terror.

 A full-maned lion stood at the base of the tree. He seemed as broad

 across the back as a carthorse, and his colour was a dark bluish-grey in

 the bad light. He was looking up at her, and as she stared in horror,

 the great black ruff of his mane came erect in excitation, so that he

 seemed to swell in size to fill the whole field of vision.

 Suddenly he reared up on his hindlegs and reached up towards her, the

 long, curved, yellow claws unsheathing from their massive pads, and he

 ripped long parallel wounds down the bark of the sycamore from which the

 sap swelled in white milky beads.

 Then the lion opened his jaws, and she stared into the deep pink cave of

 his throat. The long velvety tongue curled like the fleshy petal of some

 weird orchid, and each gleaming ivory fang was long as a man's

 forefinger and sharp as the point of a guardsman's pike.

 The lion roared up at her. It was a gale of sound that struck her like a

 blow from a mailed fist. It drove in her eardrums and it jellied every

 muscle in her body. Then the huge beast came up the tree. It climbed in

 a series of lunges, the yellow claws raking slabs of wet bark off the

 trunk as it bunched its quarters and drove upwards, those painful gusts

 of sound still bursting from its throat, So the enormous yellow eyes

 fastened upon her coldly and remorselessly.

 Louise began to scream and the tree rocked, the branches tossed and

 crackled as the great tawny body forced its way through them with a

 speed and power she would never have believed possible. Still screaming,

 she pushed the long barrel of the rifle downwards, without aiming she

 jerked at the trigger and nothing happened except that the lion was

 closer still.

 In her panic she had forgotten the safety catch of the rifle. It was

 almost too late; the lion reached up and struck the barrel with one

 enormous paw. The blow jarred her wrists and numbed her -arms, but she

 kept her grip and slid the catch forward with her thumb And thrust the

 muzzle into the animal's jaws as she pulled the trigger again. The shot

 was almost drowned in the lion's roars.

 The recoil broke her grip on the weapon and it went spinning away,

 clattered against the branches, leaving her utterly defenseless. Just

 below her perch the lion still clung to the tree trunk, but the huge

 shaggy head was thrown back on the arch of the thick neck, and a bright

 fountain of blood spurted up out of the open jaws, and the gleaming

 fangs turned rosy red as it washed over them.

 Slowly the hooked claws released their deep grip on the bark of the tree

 trunk, and the cat fell, twisting and convulsing in mid-air until it

 struck the ground at the foot of the tree. Lying on its side, it

 stretched out its limbs and arched its back, one last breath choked with

 blood rattled up its throat, and then it slumped and softened into the

 total relaxation of death.

 Timidly Louise clambered down from the sycamore and, keeping well clear

 of the carcass, she retrieved the rifle. The butt was cracked through

 and the breech block jammed solid. She struggled with it futilely for a

 few minutes, and then dropped it.

 Terror still stifled her breathing, and congested her bladder, but she

 did not pause to relieve it. Frantically she snatched up the small

 canvas bag that contained her tinder-box and steel, a clasp knife and a

 few items of jewellery and other personal oddments. She left the

 bandolier and blanket and the empty water-bottle, for she was

 desperately driven by the need to leave this place, and she stumbled

 away from the sycamore.

 Once only she looked back. A pair of jackals were already at the lion's

 carcass, and out of the lemon-pate morning sky the first vulture came

 planing down on wide elegant wings to roost, hump-backed, in the top

 branches of the sycamore. It bobbed its foul boiled-looking naked head

 in gluttonous anticipation.

 Louise began to run. She ran with a panicky desperation, looking over

 her shoulder, so that the thorn bushes ripped at her and her high-heeled

 riding boots tottered over the broken ground. She almost exhausted

 herself in that wild run, and when she fell at last she lay face down,

 racked by the sob of each breath, and with the tears of fear and despair

 mingling with the sweat of her cheeks.

 It took her until almost noon to recover her strength, and gather her

 determination and get her racing terror under control.

 Then she went on.

 In the mid-afternoon one heel broke off her boot, and she twisted her

 ankle painfully. She hobbled on until darkness gathered around her and

 with it all her fears returned.

 She climbed to the high fork of a mopani tree. The cramped position on

 the hard trunk, the cold and her own fears prevented her from sleeping.

 In the dawn she climbed down. Her ankle had swollen and turned a deep

 purple-rose colour. She knew that if she removed her boot once more she

 would never get it on again. She pulled up the straps as hard as she

 could and cut a branch of mopani to use as a crutch.

 The noon was windless and fiercely hot. The mucous membrane of her

 nostrils had dried out and swollen so that she was forced to breath

 through her mouth. Her lips cracked and began to bleed. The metallic

 salt of her own blood seemed to scald her tongue. The crutch of raw

 rough mopani rubbed the skin from her armpit and flank, and by

 midafternoon her tongue had swollen into a choking gag like a ball of

 oakum jammed into her mouth.

 That night she did not have the strength to climb to a tree fork. She

 crouched at its base, and when at last exhausted sleep assailed her, she

 was tormented by dreams of running mountain streams, from which she woke

 mumbling and coughing to the worse torment of reality.

 Somehow she dragged herself up again when the light woke her. Each step

 now was an effort to which she had to steel herself. She leaned on the

 staff, staring through bloodshot eyes and swollen lids at the spot where

 she would place her foot, then she lunged forward and swayed to catch

 her balance before she drew her injured foot up beside the other.

 "Five hundred and four -" She counted each step, and then steeled

 herself for the next pace. At every count of one thousand" she rested

 and peered around her at the wavering heat mirage.

 In mid-afternoon she lifted her head during one of the rest pauses and

 saw ahead of her a file of human figures.

 Her joy was so intense that for a moment her vision darkened, then she

 roused herself and tried to shout. No sound came out of her dry,

 cracked, swollen mouth.

 She lifted the crutch and waved it at the oncoming figures, and realized

 at that moment that the mirage and her own hallucinations had tricked

 her. In her wavering, uncertain vision the line of human figures

 resolved into a troop of wild ostrich, and they scattered away across

 the plain.

 There were no tears to tell the depths of her disappointment. Her tears

 had dried long ago. At dusk she fell face down, and her last conscious

 thought was, "It's over. I cannot go on."

 But the dawn chill roused her and she lifted her head painfully and in

 front of her face she saw a stalk of grass curved under the weight of

 the drops of dew that hung from it, trembling precariously and sparkling

 like precious jewels. She reached out her hand and touched it, and

 instantly the lovely drops fell into the dry baked earth and left no

 trace of their going.

 She crawled to the next stalk and this time let the liquid diamonds fall

 into her black swollen mouth. The pleasure was so intense as to change

 its shape to pain.

 The sun came up swiftly to dry the dew, but she had taken enough

 strength at least to push herself upright and go on.

 The following night there was a small warm breeze that nagged at her

 while she slept, and because of it there was no dew, and she knew that

 this was the day she would die. It would be easier to do it here where

 she lay, and she closed her eyes, then opened them again and struggled

 into a sitting position.

 Each thousand paces seemed to take an infinity, and she was

 hallucinating again. Once her grandfather walked beside her for a while.

 He wore his war bonnet of eagle feathers, and his beaded and tasselled

 buckskins.

 When she tried to talk to him he smiled sadly at her and his face folded

 into ancient leathery brown seams, and he disappeared.

 At another time Mungo Sint John galloped past on Shooting Star. He did

 not look in her direction and the great golden stallion's hooves made no

 sound. They whirled way into the dusty distances. Then suddenly the

 earth opened under her and she fell, lightly as a feather from the

 breast of a goose, lightly as a snowflake, twisting and turning, down

 and down, then a jarring impact shocked her back to reality.

 She lay face down in a bed of sugary white sand. For a moment she

 thought it was water, and she scooped a double handful and lifted it to

 her lips, but the dry sharp grains were like salt on her tongue. She

 looked about her and realized with a sort of bitter triumph that she had

 at last reached the Tati river and that she lay now in the parched river

 bed. The fine sand, white as salt, reached from bank to bank, she was

 about to die of thirst in a river.

 "A pool, " she thought. "There must be a pool! She began to crawl

 through the sand, down towards the first bend in the course.

 it opened to another long vista of tall banks, and overhanging trees,

 but the white glittering unbroken sand taunted her. She knew she did not

 have the strength to crawl as far as the next bend. Her vision was

 starring and breaking up again; but she frowned with concentration at

 the piles of brown ball-shaped lumps in the centre of the river bed, and

 vaguely realized that they were heaps of elephant dung, and that near

 them were mounds of sand, like children's sandcastles on the beach.

 She remembered suddenly a description of the elephant digs from Zouga

 Ballantyne's book, and it gave her the final burst of strength to pull

 herself onto her feet and stagger to the nearest sandcastle. The

 elephants had kicked aside the sand, and made an excavation in the

 bottom of the river bed as deep as a man's waist. She slid down into it

 and began frantically to dig with her bare hands. Within minutes her

 nails were broken and her fingertips bleeding, and the sand kept

 collapsing back into her hole, but she dug on doggedly.

 Then the white sand changed colour, became damp and firm, and at last

 there was a glint in the very bottom.

 She tore a strip of cloth from the hem of her ragged skirt and pressed

 it down into the hole, then after a moment lifted it to her mouth, and

 with bleeding fingers squeezed out a drop of water onto her cracked and

 blackened tongue.

 It was as Zouga had always imagined that it would be. He crossed the

 Shashi river an hour before high noon on a hot windless day, with the

 silver and blue thunderheads piled on the far horizons and the teeming

 forests and hunting veld of Matabeleland ahead.

 He sat astride a fine salted horse, and at his right hand rode his

 eldest son, a man full grown, straight and strong, a man to delight his

 father's heart.

 "There she is, Papa." Ralph swept his hat from his head and gestured

 with it to include the horizon of smokyblue hills and green forests.

 "There is your north at last.

 We are coming to take her now."

 Zouga laughed with him, his golden beard glowing in the sunlight and his

 teeth as white and even as his son's.

 "Not quite yet, my boy. This time we have come to woo her, and the next

 time to take her as a bride."

 Zouga had broken his journey three months at Kimberley, and with the

 full resources of De Beers Diamond Mines at his disposal had done the

 planning that Rhodes had ordered.

 He had decided on a band of two hundred men to take and hold

 Mashonaland, to ride the boundaries of the farms and peg the gold reefs.

 They were to be supported by a detachment of Sir Sidney Shippard's

 Bechuanaland Police from Khama's kraal, and another detachment of

 Rhodes" own police which he would raise. Zouga detailed the arms and

 equipment that they would need one hundred and sixteen pages of

 schedules and lists and Rhodes approved it with that bold sweeping

 signature and a curt injunction. "Do it!" Four days later Ralph had come

 into Kimberley with two dozen wagons from the Witwatersrand goldfields,

 and Zouga. sat with him all night in his suite in Lil's new hotel.

 In the morning Ralph had whistled with excitement.

 It's so big so many men, so much equipment" Can you do it, Ralph?"

 "You want me to tender for a price to recruit the men, buy the equipment

 and assemble it here at Kimberley, provide the wagons and oxen to carry

 it all, horses for the men, rifles and ammunition, machine-guns, a steam

 engine to power a searchlight; then you want me to tender to build a

 road to get it all to a map reference, a place which you call Mount

 Hampden, somewhere in the wilderness, and you want it all to be ready to

 leave in nine months?"

 "You have grasped it fairly," Zouga smiled. "Can you do it?

 "Give me a week," Ralph said, and five days later he was back.

 "It's too big for me, I'm afraid, Papa," he said, and then grinned

 mischievously at Zouga's expression of disappointment. "I had to take in

 a partner, Frank Johnson."

 Johnson was another young man in a hurry, and, like Ralph, had already

 acquired a reputation for being able to get things done.

 "Have you and young Johnson worked out a price?"

 "We'll do it for eighty-eight thousand two hundred and fifty-five pounds

 and ten shillings." Ralph handed him ei the signed tender and Zouga

 studied it in silence. When at last he looked up he asked: "Tell me,

 Ralph, what is that ten shillings on the end for?"

 Why, Papa? Ralph widened his eyes disarmingly.

 "That is our profit on the deal."

 Zouga had cabled the tender price to Rhodes at Claridge's Hotel in

 London, and the following day Rhodes had cabled back his acceptance in

 principle.

 All that was still needed was Lobengula's ratification of the

 consolidated concessions, and Zouga was under Rhodes" orders to go

 immediately to Gubulawayo and find out from Rudd the reasons for the

 delay.

 Ralph had immediately elected to ride with Zouga.

 "Once mister Rhodes gives us the word to go, there will be no time for

 anything else. I have some unfinished business in Matabeleland, at Khami

 Mission and beyond -" And an uncharacteristic dreamy look had come into

 Ralph's eyes. "This is the time to do it. While I still have the

 chance."

 So now, side by side, Zouga and Ralph spurred their mounts up the bank

 of the Shashi river and rode into Matabeleland.

 "We will outspan here for a few days, Papa," Ralph said; it was still

 strange for Zouga to have his son make decisions without deferring to

 him. "The grazing is good and sweet, and we will rest the oxen and do a

 little hunting; there is still plenty of game up near the confluence of

 the Tati river."

 At the beginning of this long journey together, Zouga had been

 disconcerted by his son's competitive spirit that turned even the most

 mundane task into a contest.

 He had forgotten this trait of Ralph's in the time they had been

 separated but found now that it had grown stronger and fiercer during

 that period.

 His energy daunted Zouga, who found that on this journey, for lack of

 other opposition, he was a foil for his son's need to compete.

 They shot bird, on foot in heavy cover, guinea-fowl and francolin, Ralph

 counted the bag and scowled when Zouga outgunned him. They sat late at

 each outspan over the ivory dice, or the greasy dog-eared pack of cards,

 and Ralph glowed when he won a shilling, and growled when he lost one.

 So now, when he said, "We'll hunt together tomorrow, Papa," Zouga knew

 he was in for an early start, and a long hard day.

 They rode out from the wagons an hour from first limmer of dawn.

 "Old Tom is getting madala, he's getting old, but I have a sovereign

 that says he'll run rings around that fancy beast of yours," Ralph

 offered.

 "I cannot afford that sort of money," Zouga told him.

 He was hard and fit, his long professional hunting expeditions had kept

 him that way but the pace that Ralph set once he was aroused would be

 punishing.

 There was something else that troubled Zouga. When Ralph hunted

 competitively, he could be murderous. if he were challenged, there was

 only one consideration for him, the size of the bag.

 Zouga had been a hunter for the greater part of his life.

 He had hunted for ivory, and for the peculiar fascination of the

 beautiful and noble animals he pursued. It was almost a form of love,

 that made a man want to study and understand and finally take the quarry

 irrevocably for his own.

 These last seasons he had hunted, of necessity, with many men, but he

 had never yet met a man who hunted like his own son when his blood was

 up. It seemed as if the game were merely counters in another of Ralph's

 contests, the score all that counted. "I don't want to be a sportsman,

 Papa. I leave that to you. I just want to be a winner."

 "I cannot afford that sort of money," Zouga repeated, trying lightly to

 defuse Ralph's escalating tension.

 "You can't afford a sovereign?" Ralph threw back his darkly handsome

 head, and his green eyes flashed as he laughed delighted. "Papa, you

 have just sold that fat diamond of yours for thirty thousand pounds."

 "Ralph, let's make an easy day of it. If we get one giraffe, or a

 buffalo, that's all we need."

 "Papa, you are getting old. A sovereign. If you can't pay immediately,

 why then, your credit is always good! In midmorning they cut the spoor

 of a troop of giraffe, feeding slowly eastward along the river bank.

 "I make out sixteen of them." Ralph leaned from the saddle to examine

 the huge double bean-shaped spoor in the sandy earth. "They'll not be an

 hour ahead of us."

 And he put his heels into old Tom's flanks.

 The forest alternated with open glades through which meandered little

 streams, draining the escarpment down to the Shashi river. They were dry

 at this season of the year, but that did not account for the paucity of

 game.

 When Zouga had first travelled this road, going south from old King

 Mzilikazi's kraal, the herds had darkened every one of these open

 glades. In one day's ride he had counted over a hundred monstrous grey

 rhinoceros, but there had been no counting the silvery herds of fat

 zebra and clowning purple wildebeest.

 In those days, after a man had fired a shot, the dust rising from the

 galloping herds had looked like the smoke from a bush fire, and yet this

 day they had ridden since dawn without seeing a single wild animal.

 Zouga brooded on it as he rode stirrup for stirrup with his son. Of

 course, this area was on the direct road to Lobengula's kraal, over

 which steadily more and more wagons and travellers passed. There were

 still vast areas beyond where the herds were thick as the grass on which

 they grazed. But after the road they would cut into Mashonaland, and the

 railway line that would follow he wondered what would remain.

 Perhaps one day his grandchildren would live in a land of which every

 corner was as barren as this. He did not envy them the prospect; and

 even as he thought that, his trained hunter's eye picked up the tiny

 speck just above the forest line, far ahead.

 For a moment he was reluctant to call Ralph's attention to it. It was

 the head of a giraffe, raised inquisitively high above the mimosa tree

 on which it was feeding.

 For the first time in the hunting veld Zouga felt sick to the gut at the

 slaughter he knew was about to follow and he thought to distract Ralph's

 attention from the herd of huge spotted animals in the mimosa forest

 ahead.

 But at that moment Ralph shouted gaily: "There they are, I'll be damned!

 They are shy as blushing virgins, they are off already."

 There had been a time when Zouga had been able to ride up to within two

 hundred yards of a herd before they took alarm. These were still a mile

 away and already galloping from the two horsemen.

 "Come on, Papa. We'll catch them when they try to cross the Shashi," and

 they tore into the stand of flowering mimosa.

 "Tally-ho!"yelled Ralph. His hat came off and, hanging on its thong, it

 slapped against his back; while his long dark hair fluttered in the wind

 of their gallop. "By God, Papa, you'll have to work to win your

 sovereign today," he warned laughingly.

 They crashed out of the forest onto another level open lain. The entire

 herd of huge vulnerable animals were Spread before them: bulls and cows

 and calves, but that was not what caught Zouga's attention.

 He pulled his horse down out of its gallop and swung his head away to

 the west.

 "Ralph," he shouted, "let them go!"

 Ralph looked back at him through the flying dust. His face was flushed

 with the hunter's fever.

 "Warriors," Zouga shouted. "War party, Ralph. Close up!"

 For a moment it seemed that Ralph would not obey but then his good sense

 prevailed. It would be reckless to separate when there was a war party

 out, and he broke back to Zouga's side and let the panic-driven giraffe

 tear away towards the river.

 He reined Tom to a halt. "What do you make of them?" he asked, shading

 his eyes and peering through the heatdistorted air at the squiggly black

 line, like a shoal of tadpoles in the bottom of a rippling'pool, which

 moved across the far side of the open plain. "Kharna's men? Bamangweto

 raiders? We are only a few miles from the frontier."

 "We won't take any chances until we know," Zouga told him grimly. "Let

 the horses blow. We may have to make a run But Ralph interrupted him.

 "Long shields! And they are red, those are the Moles, Bazo's fellows,"

 Ralph urged Tom towards the approaching impi. "And I'll be damned if

 that isn't Bazo himself out front."

 By the time Zouga came up, Ralph had dismounted and, leaving Tom to

 stand, had run to embrace his old comrade, and he was already joshing

 Bazo cruelly.

 "Hau! the Moles-that-burrow-under-a-mountain are returning from a raid

 without women or cattle. Did Khama's people give you the steel

 farewell?"

 Bazo's delighted smile slid off his face at such levity, and he shook

 his plumes sternly.

 "Not even in jest, Henshaw, do not talk like a giggling girl. If the

 king had sent us to Khama," and he stabbed the air with his assegai,

 "there would have been a beautiful killing." He broke off as he

 recognized Zouga.

 "Baba!" he said. "Bakela, I see you, and my eyes are white with joy."

 "It has been too long, Bazo but now you have the headring on your brow

 and an impi at your back, we shall shoot a beast and feast together this

 night."

 "Ah Bakela, it grieves me, but I am on the king's business. I return to

 Gubulawayo in haste to report the woman's death to the king."

 "Woman?" Zouga asked without real interest.

 "A white woman. She ran from Gubulawayo without the king's word, and the

 king sent me after her-" Bazo broke off with an exclamation. "Hau! But

 you know this woman, Bakela."

 "It is not Nomusa, my sister?" Zouga asked with quick concern. "Not one

 of her daughters?"

 "No, not them."

 "There are no other white women in Matabeleland."

 "She is the woman of One-Bright-Eye. The same woman who raced her horse

 against yours at Kimberley and won. But now she is dead."

 "Dead?" All the blood had drained from Zouga's face, leaving his tan

 muddy and yellow. "Dead?" he whispered, and swayed in the saddle so

 that, had he not grabbed at the pommel, he would have fallen.

 "Louise, dead."

 Zouga found the sycamore that Bazo described to him, merely by

 back-tracking the impi.

 They had left a good wide spoor, and Zouga reached the tree in the

 middle of the afternoon.

 He did not know why he tortured himself so. There could be no reasonable

 doubt that she was dead. Bazo had showed him the pathetic relics he had

 retrieved. The damaged rifle and bandolier, the empty water bottle, and

 the tatters of cloth and saddlery ripped and chewed by the omnivorous

 jaws of the hyena.

 The ground under the sycamore was beaten and swept of all traces of

 Louise by the pads of jackal and hyena, by the fluttering wings and the

 talons of hundreds of feeding, squabbling vultures. It smelled like a

 chicken coop, smeared with vulture dung, and loose feathers blew

 aimlessly hither and thither on the soft dry breeze.

 Except for a few splinters of bone and tufts of hair, every trace of

 animal carcasses and the human body had been devoured. The hyena would

 have gobbled up even the leather of Louise's boots and belt, and the few

 remaining shreds of blanket and cloth were bloodstained.

 It was quite easy to reconstruct what had happened.

 Louise had been set upon by a pride of lion. She had managed a single

 shot, there was an empty shell in the breech of the damaged rifle, and

 had killed one of the cats before being pulled off the mule.

 Zouga could imagine every moment of her agony, almost hear her screams

 as the great jaws crunched through her bone and the yellow claws hooked

 into her flesh. It left him physically nauseated and weakened. He wanted

 to pray on the spot where she had died, but he did not seem to have the

 energy for even such small effort. It was as though the very force of

 life had gone out of him. Until that moment he had not realized what

 Louise's memory had meant to him, how the certainty that their lives

 were intertwined had sustained him while they were apart, how his belief

 in their eventual reunion had given his life purpose and direction. She

 had become part of his dream, and now it had been snuffed out on this

 wild and bloody patch of earth.

 Twice he turned back to his horse to mount and leave, but each time he

 hesitated and then wandered back to sift through the reeking dust with

 his fingers for some last trace of her.

 At last he looked at the sun. He could not reach the wagons before

 nightfall. He had told Ralph to leave Jan Cheroot and the spare horses

 at the drift of the Shashi when he went on with the wagons, so there was

 no urgency. There was no hurry. Without Louise there was no flavour in

 his life. Nothing really mattered any more, but he crossed to his horse,

 clinched the girth and mounted. He took one more lingering look at the

 trampled earth and then turned his horse's head back towards the Shashi

 and the wagons. He had not gone fifty yards when he found himself

 circling. It was not a conscious decision to begin casting for outgoing

 spoor. He knew it was futile, but his reluctance to leave the place

 dictated his actions.

 once he circled the sycamore, leaning out of the saddle and examining

 the broken and stony earth, then he moved farther out and circled again,

 then again, each time opening the radius of the circle. Suddenly his

 heart leaped against his ribs, and new hope flooded his devastated soul,

 but he had to steel himself to lean from the saddle and examine the

 thorn twig, in case he was to be disappointed once again.

 The white tear had caught his eye, the twig had been broken half-through

 and now hung from the main branch at the level of a man's waist. The

 soft green leaves had wilted, the break was two or three days" old, but

 that was not what made Zouga's fingers shake.

 From one of the curved red-tipped thorns hung a fine red thread of spun

 cotton. Zouga lifted it reverently and then touched it to his lips as

 though it were a sacred relic.

 He was to the west of the sycamore; he could just make out the top

 branches above the surrounding bush, which meant that Louise had left

 that thread on the grasping thorn after she had run from the tree. The

 height above ground showed she had been on foot, and the broken twig and

 shredded cloth were evidence of her haste.

 She had run from the sycamore and kept going in the direction which she

 had been stubbornly following, westwards, towards the Tati and Khama's

 country.

 Zouga thumped his heels into the horse's flanks and galloped in the same

 direction. It was useless to look for spoor three days" old on this

 rocky ground. The wind had blown steadily for most of that time, and it

 would have scoured the last traces.

 He must rely on luck and speed. He had seen the empty water-bottle and

 he knew what were the chances of survival on foot, without water, in

 this country between the rivers. He galloped on the line of her flight,

 quartering from side to side, searching grimly, not allowing himself to

 doubt again, concentrating all his mind on the search for another tiny

 sign. In the last minutes of dusk he found it.

 It was the heel of a brown riding boot torn from the sole. The gleam of

 the steel nails had caught his eye. He drew the rifle from its holder

 and fired three spaced shots into the darkening sky.

 He knew she had no rifle to reply, but if somewhere out ahead she heard

 his signal, it might give her hope and strength. He waited beside a

 small fire until the moon came up, and then by its light he went on, and

 every hour he stopped and fired signal shots into the great starry

 silence, and afterwards he listened intently, but there was only the

 shriek of a hunting owl overhead and the yipping of a jackal far out

 across the silvery plain.

 In the dawn he reached the wide white course of the Tati river. It was

 dry as the dunes of the Kalahari Desert, and the hopes which he had kept

 alive all night began to wane.

 He searched the morning sky for the high spiral of turning vultures

 which would show a kill, but all he saw was a brace of sand grouse

 slanting down on quick stabbing wings. Their presence proved that there

 was surface water, somewhere. She might have found it, that was the only

 chance. Unless she had found water she would be dead by now. He took a

 cautious mouthful from his own bottle, and his horse whickered when he

 smelt the precious liquid. Soon the thirst would begin wearing him down

 as well.

 He had to believe that if Louise had reached the river, she would follow

 it downstream. She was part Indian, and she would surely be able to get

 her direction from the sun and to know that her only chance was

 southwards towards the confluence with the Shashi. He turned in that

 direction, staying up on the bank, watching the river bed and the far

 bank and the sky.

 Elephant had been digging in the bed, but their holes were dry now. He

 trotted on along the edge of the high bank. Ahead of him there was a

 rush of big purple-beige bodies as a herd of gemsbuck burst through the

 rank undergrowth on the far bank. Their long straight horns were like

 lances against the pale horizon sky, and the diamond-patterned face

 masks that gave their name seemed theatrical and frivolous. They

 galloped away into the deserts of Khania's country.

 They could live without water for months at a time, and their presence

 gave Zouga no hope, but as he watched them go, his attention shifted to

 another distant movement much farther out on the flat open ground beyond

 the river.

 There was a chacma baboon foraging there, the humanoid shape was quite

 distinctive. He looked for the rest of the troop, perhaps they were in

 the treeline beyond the plain. Chacina baboon would drink daily, and he

 shaded his eyes against the glare to watch the distant moving dark blob.

 It seemed to be feeding on the green fruit of the vine of the wild

 desert melons, but at this range it was difficult to be certain.

 Then abruptly he realized that he had never before encountered baboon

 this far to the west, and at the same moment he was convinced that there

 was no troop. It was a solitary animal, unheard of with such a

 gregarious species, and immediately after that he saw that this animal

 was too big to be a baboon, and that its movements were uncharacteristic

 of an ape.

 With a singing, soaring joy he launched into a full gallop, and the

 hooves beat an urgent staccato rhythm on the iron-hard earth, but as he

 dragged his horse down to a plunging halt and swung down out of the

 saddle, his JOY shrivelled.

 She was on her knees, and they were scratched bloody by the stony

 ground. Her clothing was mostly gone, and her tender flesh was exposed

 in the rents. The sun had burned her arms and legs into red raw

 blisters. Her feet were bound up in the remains of her skirt, but blood

 had soaked through the rags.

 Her hair was a dry tangled bush about her head, powdered with dust and

 with the ends split and bleached.

 Her lips were black scabs, burned and cracked down into the living meat.

 Her eyelids were swollen as though stung by bees and she peered up at

 him like a blind old crone through slits that were caked with dried

 yellow mucus. The flesh had fallen off her body and her face.

 Her arms were skeletal and her cheekbones seemed to push through the

 skin. Her hands were blackened claws the nails torn down into the quick.

 She crouched like an animal over the flat leaves of the vine, and she

 had broken open one of the wild green melons with her fingers and

 stuffed pulp into her ruined mouth. The juice ran down her chin, cutting

 a ninnel through the dirt that plastered her skin.

 "Louise." He went down on one knee, facing her.

 "Louise! -" His voice choked.

 She made a little mewling sound in her throat and then touched her hair

 in a heartbreakingly feminine gesture, trying to smooth the stiff

 dust-caked tresses.

 "Is it?" she croaked " peering at him with bloodshot eyes from slits of

 sun-swollen red lids. "It isn't Fumbling, she tried to cover one soft

 white breast with the rags of her blouse. She started to shake, wildly

 and uncontrollably, and then she closed her eyes tightly.

 He reached out gently and at his touch she collapsed against his chest,

 still shaking, and he held her. She felt light and frail as a child.

 "I knew -" she mumbled. "It didn't make sense, but I knew somehow that

 you would come."

 "Will you not dowse the lantern, Ralph" Cathy whispered, and her eyes

 were huge and dark and piteous as she crept in under the canvas of his

 wagon.

 "Why?" he asked, smiling, propping himself on one elbow on the wagon

 cot.

 "Somebody may come."

 "Your father and mother are still at Lobengula's kraal.

 There is nobody "My sister, Salina "Salina is long ago asleep, dreaming

 of brother Jordan, no doubt. We are alone, Cathy, all alone. So why

 should we put out the lantern?"

 "Because I am shy, then," she said, and blushed a new shade of scarlet.

 "All you ever do is tease me. I wish I had never come."

 "Oh Cathy." His chuckle was fond and indulgent, and he sat up on his

 cot, and the blanket slid to his waist.

 Quickly she averted her eyes from his naked chest and muscled upper

 arms. The skin was so white and marble-smooth in comparison to his brown

 forearms and face.

 it set strange unfamiliar emotions loose within her.

 "come!" He caught her wrist and drew her towards the cot, but she hung

 back until he jerked her for-ward and, taken off balance, she fell

 across his legs.

 Before she could break free, he had taken a handful of the thick dark

 hair at the back of her head and turned her pale face up to his mouth.

 For a while she continued to struggle unconvincingly, and then her whole

 body softened, like wax in the candle flame, and seemed to melt over

 him.

 "Do you still wish you had not come, Cathy?" he asked, but she could not

 reply; instead she tightened her arms around his neck convulsively. Once

 more she searched for his mouth with hers, and made a little moaning

 sound.

 He goaded her with his mouth and tongue, the way Lil had first taught

 him so long ago, and she was defenceless as a beautiful soft-bodied

 insect in the spider's gossamer toils. It excited him as none of the

 practised and calculating women on whom he had spent his gold sovereigns

 ever had.

 His own breathing started to bunt roughly, and his fingers shook at the

 lacings of her bodice. The skin of her shoulder was without blemish,

 silky and warm. He touched it with the tip of his tongue, and she

 shuddered and gasped, but when he pulled down the light cotton, she

 shrugged her shoulders to let the cloth come free. It caught for a

 moment and then slid to the level of her lowest rib.

 He was unprepared for those tender and terribly vulnerable young

 breasts, so pale and rosy-tipped and yet at the same time hard and

 jubilant in their marvellous symmetry.

 He stared at her body, and she watched him through half-closed lids, but

 made no effort to cover herself, though her cheeks were wildly flushed

 and her lips trembled as she whispered.

 "No, Ralph, I don't want to go, not now, or ever."

 "The lantern -" He reached for it, but now she caught his hand.

 "No, Ralph, I'm not ashamed of you and me. I don't want darkness, I want

 to see your dear face."

 She jerked the ribbon loose from her waist and then lifted her dress

 over her head and let it flutter to the wagon floor. Her limbs were long

 and coltish, her hips still bony as a boy's, and her belly concave as a

 greyhound's above the dark triangular bush of her womanhood. Her skin

 shone in the lanternlight with that peculiar lustre of healthy, vibrant

 youth. He stared at it for only an instant and then she had lifted the

 corner of the rough woollen blanket and slid in under it. The long slim

 arms and legs wrapped around him.

 "There is nothing I would not do for you. I would steal and lie and

 cheat, and even kill for you, my wonderful, beautiful Ralph," she

 whispered. "I'm not sure what a man and woman do, but if you show me I

 will be the happiest girl on this earth to do it with you."

 "Cathy, I didn't mean this to happen -" He tried with a last sudden lash

 of his conscience to push her away.

 "I did," she said, clinging stubbornly to him. "Why else do you think I

 came here?"

 "Cathy, "

 "I love you, Ralph, I loved you from the very first moment I ever saw

 you."

 "i love you, Cathy." And he was amazed to find that what he said was the

 truth. "I really and truly love you," he said again, and then later,

 much later: "I didn't realize how much until now."

 "I didn't know that it would be like this," she whispered. "I have

 thought about it often, every day since you first came to Khami. I even

 read about it in the Bible it says that David knew her. Do we know each

 other now, Ralph?"

 "i want to know you better, and more often," he grinned at her, his

 tousled hair still damp with sweat.

 "I felt as though I had fallen through a dark hole in my soul into

 another beautiful world, and I didn't want to come back again."

 Cathy's voice was awed and marvelling, as though she were the first in

 all the infinite lists of creation to experience it. "Didn't you feel

 that, Ralph?"

 They held each other close under the blanket, and they talked softly,

 examining each other's faces in the yellow lantern light, breaking off

 every few minutes to kiss the other's throat and eyelids and lips.

 It was Cathy who pulled away at last. "I don't want to know the time,

 but listen to the birds, it will be light too soon." Then, with a rush

 of words, "Oh Ralph, I don't want you to go."

 it will not be for long, I promise you. Then I will be back."

 "Take me with you."

 "You know I can't."

 "Why not, because it's dangerous, isn't it?"

 But he avoided the question by trying to kiss her again.

 She put her hand over his mouth.

 "I'll die a little every moment of the time you are gone, but I'll pray

 for you. I'll pray that Lobengula's warriors do not find you."

 "Don't worry about me," he chuckled fondly. "We'll fall through that

 dark hole in your soul again soon."

 "Promise," she whispered, and brushed the damp curls off his forehead

 with her lips. "Promise me you will come back, my beautiful, darling

 Ralph."

 Ralph started his wagon train south again on the road to the Shashi, and

 for the first morning he rode at the head of the unusually lightly

 loaded vehicles. At noon he gave the order to outspan. He and Isazi

 slept away the hot afternoon, while the bullocks and horses grazed and

 rested.

 Then at dusk they cut the five chosen bullocks out of the herd and tied

 them to the wagon wheels by leather reins around the boss of their horns

 while they fitted the back packs. Ralph and Isazi had selected these

 beasts for their strength and willingness, and during the long trek up

 from Kimberley he had trained them to accept these unusual burdens with

 resigned docility.

 Jordan had provided Ralph with the precise measurements and weight of

 the bird statue that now graced the entrance to mister Rhodes" new

 mansion, Groote Schuur, and Ralph had used these figures to design the

 back packs and constructed them with his own hands, not trusting anyone

 else with his secret intentions.

 Each pack could carry two statues like the one at Groote Schuur. They

 would be slung in woven nets of good mania rope on each side of the

 bullock, and Ralph had worked meticulously to ensure a perfect fit of

 the saddle to protect the beasts" back from galling, and prevent the

 load from shifting even over the roughest ground or on the steepest

 inclines.

 Now, when Isazi, the little Zulu driver, led the file of three bullocks

 quietly out of the camp and disappeared into the darkening forest, they

 followed meekly. Ralph stayed behind just long enough to repeat his

 orders to the other drivers.

 "You will double-march to the Shashi river. If the border impis question

 where I am, you will tell them I am hunting to the east with the king's

 permission, and that you expect me to rejoin the wagons at any time. Do

 you understand?"

 "I understand, Nkosi," said Umfaan, who, although now promoted from

 voorlooper to driver, still answered to the name of "Boy".

 "Once you cross the Shashi, you will trek on as far as the Bushman wells

 five days" march beyond the frontier.

 Lobengula's impis'will not follow you that far. Wait there until I come,

 do you understand, Umfaan?"

 "I understand, Nkosi."

 "Then repeat it to me."

 Satisfied at last, Ralph stepped up into Tom's stirrup and looked down

 at them from his back.

 "Go swiftly," he said.

 "Go in peace, Nkosi."

 He trotted out of camp, following Isazi's bullock train and dragging

 behind him a bulky branch of thorn mimosa to sweep their spoor clean. By

 mid-morning the following day they were well clear of the wagon road and

 had entered the mystical Matopos Hills. While the oxen grazed and

 rested, Ralph rode ahead to mark a trail between the soaring granite

 kopjes, and through the deep an d sullen gorges. At dark they resaddled

 the bullocks with their packs and went on.

 The next day Ralph made a noon observation of the sun with the old brass

 sextant. From experience he made allowance for the cumulative error in

 his boxed chronometer, and worked out a position which he knew was

 accurate to within ten miles. Also from experience, he knew that his

 father's observations, made before he was born, were usually as

 accurate. Without them he would never have found the caches of ivory

 which had been the start of his growing fortune.

 His calculations compared to his father's showed that he was one hundred

 and sixty miles west of the ancient ruined city that the Matabele called

 Zimbabwe, the burial place of the old kings.

 Then, while he waited for darkness to resume the march, he took from his

 saddle-bags the sheaf of notes which Zouga had given him as a parting

 gift when he first left Kimberley. He read the description of the route

 to Zimbabwe, and of the city itself, for possibly the hundredth time.

 "How much longer must we march through these hills?" Isazi broke his

 concentration. He was cooking maize cakes on a small smokeless fire of

 dry wood. "My beasts suffer on these rocks and steep places," he

 grumbled. "We should have gone farther south and passed below the hills

 on the open ground."

 "Where Lobengula's bucks wait and pray every day for the chance to stick

 an assegai through a skinny little Zulu," Ralph smiled.

 "There is the same danger here."

 "No," Ralph shook his head. "No Matabele comes into these sacred hills

 without good reason. We will find no impi here, and once we come out on

 the far side, we will be beyond the farthest regimental kraals., "And

 this place of stone to which we go? There will be no impi waiting for us

 there?"

 "Lobengula forbids any man even to look into the valley in which the

 stones stand. It is a death-marked place, cursed by Lobengula and his

 priests., azi shifted uncomfortably. "Who sets store by the Is curse of

 a fat Matabele dog?" he demanded, and touched the charm on his belt

 which warded off devils and hobgoblins and other dark secret things.

 Despite his assurances to Isazi, Ralph moved with utmost caution in

 threading the maze of the Matopos.

 During daylight he hid the bullocks in some thick patch of bush in a

 rock gorge, and he went ahead to reconnoitre every yard of the way and

 to mark it for Isazi to follow with a discreetly blazed tree trunk or a

 broken twig of green leaves at every turning or difficult place.

 These precautions saved him from disaster. On the third day he had tied

 Tom in good cover and gone forward on foot to the ridge from where he

 could look into the next valley.

 Just below the brow he was alerted by the raucous alarm call of a grey

 lourie, the "Go-Away" bird of the African bush. The cry came from just

 beyond the ridge, and as he froze to listen he heard a gentle

 susurration like the wind in tall grass; he ducked and jumped off the

 path, sprawling on his belly with his rifle tucked into the crook of his

 elbows, and rolled under the spreading branches of a low red berry bush,

 just as the first rank of Matabele warriors came sweeping over the rise

 ahead of him, with their cloaks and kilts and headdresses rusthng, the

 sound which had warned him.

 From where he lay under the bush beside the path, Ralph could see only

 as high as their knees as they passed, but their gait was that

 determined businesslike trot which the Matabele call "minza h1abathi",

 to eat the earth greedily.

 He counted them. Two hundred warriors in all went d the soft rustle of

 their feet dwindled, but past, an Ralph lay frozen beneath his bush, not

 daring even to creep deeper into the undergrowth. Minutes later, he

 heard the soft chant of bearers coming up from the next valley, and then

 they were trotting past his hiding-place, singing the praise song to the

 king in their deep melodious voices.

 Ralph could tell by the spacing and weight of their gait that they were

 carrying a heavy litter.

 He had guessed that the leading band was merely a vanguard. This was the

 main party, while the person on the litter was without any doubt

 Lobengula himself, and following him were his attendants, his high

 indunas and other important personages. After them again, more bearers

 carrying sleeping-mats and karosses of fur, beer pots and leather sacks

 of maize meal and other burdens. They filed past and disappeared, but

 still Ralph did not rise from hiding.

 Another long silence, and then, with only a soft warriing rustle, came

 the rear guard, two hundred more picked warriors trotting past. After

 five minutes Ralph felt it was safe to crawl out onto the path and dust

 the damp leaf mould from his knees and elbows.

 From the top of the ridge he stared back in the direction which

 Lobengula's party had taken, puzzled as to where they were all headed

 and why. He knew from Cathy that Rudd and his party were still at

 Gubulawayo and that Clinton Codrington and Robyn were with them,

 negotiating the concession that mister Rhodes so desperately needed.

 Why would Lobengula leave such important guests at his kraal and come up

 here into these sacred and deserted hills?

 There was no answer, and Ralph had to be content with having so narrowly

 escaped discovery, and to be now alerted to the presence of large

 parties of warriors in the area.

 He moved forward with even more caution than before so that it took

 three more nights of travel at the pace of A the bullocks before they

 came out of another pass between bald granite cliffs and saw the open

 forests of tall and lovely trees rolling away below them, silver and

 charcoal in the moonlight.

 n the dawn Ralph climbed the cliff to the peak of the last of the

 Matopos Hills, and on the eastern horizon almost exactly where he had

 hoped to find it, he picked out the far blue silhouette of a solitary

 kopje standing above the forested plain. It was still thirty miles

 distant, but the shape of a crouching lion was unmistakable, and it

 fitted exactly the description in Zouga Ballantyrie's notes: "The bill

 which I have named "Lion's Head" stands high above the surrounding

 terrain, and points the traveller unerringly towards great Zimbabwe A

 man might have walked in the shadow of the massstone walls and never

 known they were there, so ive dense was the growth that covered them. It

 was a jungle of hana and flowering creepers, while from the very walls

 themselves grew the twisting serpentine roots of the strangler figs,

 wedging open the mortarless joints of the stonework and bringing it down

 in screes of fallen blocks.

 Above the level of the high walls soared the heads of other tall trees,

 grown to giants in the time since the last inhabitant had fled this

 place or died within its labyrinth of passages and courtyards. When

 Zouga Ballantyne had discovered this massive keep before Ralph's birth,

 it had taken him almost two days to find the narrow gateway under this

 mass of tangled vegetation, but now his directions and descriptions led

 Ralph immediately to it.

 Ralph stood before the ancient portals and looked up at the pattern of

 chevron stone blocks which decorated the top of the wall thirty feet

 above his head, and was seized with a primeval superstitious awe.

 Though he could see the marks of his father's axe, and the old stumps

 cut away on each side of the opening, a veil of trailing plants had

 regrown to screen the gateway , proof that no human being had entered it

 since Zouga's visit more than twenty-five years before.

 The steps that led up to the gateway had been dished by the passage of

 the feet of the ancient inhabitants over the centuries. Ralph drew a

 deep breath, and silently reminded himself that he was a civilized

 Christian; but his superstitious fears lingered as he climbed the

 stairs, ducked under the trailing creepers and stepped through the

 gateway.

 He found himself in a narrow twisted stone gut between high walls open

 to the sky. He followed the passage, clambering over fallen stonework

 blocks and forcing his way through brush and undergrowth that choked it,

 until abruptly he came out into a wide courtyard, dominated by an

 immense cylindrical tower of lichen-coated grey granite.

 It was exactly as his father had described it, even to the damaged

 parapet of the tower where Zouga had broken in to discover whether the

 interior of the towering structure contained a secret treasure chamber.

 He knew that his father had ransacked the ruins for treasure, he had

 even torn up and sieved the earth of this temple enclosure for gold. He

 had retrieved almost a thousand ounces of the yellow metal, small beads

 and flakes of foil, finely woven gold wire and tiny ingots the size of

 an infant's finger, and Ralph knew that the only treasure left for him

 were the idols of green soapstone.

 A With a stoop of his spirits, Ralph thought for a moment that someone

 else had forestalled him. According to Zouga, the stone falcons should

 have been here in this courtyard, and he started forward, his

 superstitious chills forgotten in the bleaker fear of having -been

 deprived of his booty.

 He plunged into the waist-high undergrowth and waded through it towards

 the tower, and he tripped over the first of the statues, and almost

 fell. He crouched over it and with his hands tore away the tangle that

 covered it, and then he looked into the blank cruel eyes above the

 curved beak that he remembered so well from his childhood. It was the

 identical twin of the statue that had stood on the verandah of Zouga's

 cottage at Kimberley, but this falcon had been cast down and lay half

 buried by roots and brush.

 He ran his hands over the satiny green soapstone, then with one finger

 traced the well-remembered shark'stooth pattern around the plinth.

 "We've come for you at last," he whispered aloud, and then looked around

 him quickly. His voice had echoed eerily against the surrounding walls,

 and he shivered though the sun was still high. Then he stood up and went

 on searching.

 There were six statues, as Zouga had counted them.

 One was shattered as though by the blows from a sledgehammer, the

 battered head lay beside it. Three others were damaged to a lesser

 extent, but the remaining two statues were perfect.

 "This is an evil place," a sepulchral voice intoned unexpectedly, and

 Ralph started and spun to face it.

 Isazi had followed and stood close behind him, preferring the terrors of

 the narrow passages and ominous walls to the greater terror of remaining

 alone at the gateway to the city.

 "When can we leave here, Nkosi?" Isazi shot restless little glances into

 the dismal corners of tumbled passageways. "It is not a place where a

 man should stay overlong."

 "How soon can we load these onto the oxen?" Ralph squatted and patted

 one of the fallen images. "Can we do it before nightfall?"

 "Yebho, Nkosi." Isazi promised fervently. "By nightfall we will be a

 good march away from here. You have my word upon it."

 The king had once again chosen Bazo for a special task and Bazo's heart

 was big with pride as he led the vanguard of his impi along the secret

 road that took them deeper and deeper into the dreaming Hills of the

 Matopos.

 The road was well beaten, wide enough for two warriors to run abreast

 with their shields just touching, for it had been used since the time

 when Mzilikazi, the old king, had first brought the nation up from the

 south.

 Mzilikazi himself had blazed the trail to the secret cavern of the

 Umlimo. At every crisis in the nation's history, the old king had

 followed this road, in drought or pestilence or plague, he had come to

 hear the words of the chosen one. Every season he had come for advice on

 the herds and the crops, or to help him decide in which direction to

 send his raiding impis.

 Lobengula, himself an initiate of the lesser mysteries, had first

 entered the cavern of the Umlimo as a youth led by the crazed old

 magician who had been his mentor and his tutor. It had been the Umlimo's

 word which had placed the toy spear of kingship in Lobengula's hand when

 Mzilikazi had let it fall from his grasp. It was the Umlimo who had

 chosen Lobengula in preference to Nkulumane or the other older brothers

 of nobler birth and it was the Umlimo who had made him the favourite of

 the ancestral spirits and had sustained him in the darkest hours of his

 reign.

 Thus it was that Lobengula, plagued by the importunate demands of the

 emissaries of a white man whom he had never seen, confused by scraps of

 paper whose signs he could not read, troubled by doubts and tormented by

 fears, badgered and pulled by the conflicting advice of his senior

 indunas, was at last returning to the secret cavern.

 He lay on his litter, on a mattress of the soft yellow and black spotted

 furs of the leopard, rocked by the motion of the trotting bearers, so

 that the naked folds and bulges of his gross black body shook and

 rippled, and he looked ahead with dark and haunted eyes.

 Lodzi, that was the name on every white man's lips.

 Everywhere he turned, Lobengula heard the name Lodzi.

 "Is this Lodzi a king, as I am a king?" he had asked the white man with

 the red face; for Lobengula, as a Matabele, could not pronounce the "R"

 of the name.

 "mister Rhodes is not a king, yet he is greater than a king," Rudd had

 said.

 "Why does not Lodzi come to me himself?"

 Rhodes has gone across the sea, he sends us lesser men to do this

 business."

 "If I could look upon the face of Lodzi, then I would know if his heart

 was great."

 But Rhodes would not come, and day after day Lobengula had listened to

 the insistence of Lodzi's minions, and in the nights his indunas

 cautioned and questioned him, and argued amongst themselves.

 "If you give the white men a finger, they want the hand," Gandang told

 him, "and having the hand, they desire the arm and then the chest and

 the heart and the head."

 "Oh King, Lodzi is a man of pride and honour. His word is like

 Lobengula's own. He is a good man," said Nomusa, whom he trusted as he

 trusted few others.

 "Give each of the white men a little, and give the same thing to each of

 them," counselled Kamuza, one of his youngest but most cunning indunas,

 a man who had lived with the white men and knew their ways. "Thus white

 man becomes the enemy of the other. Set every one dog on the other, lest

 the pack set upon you."

 "Choose the strongest of the white men and make him our ally" said

 Somabula. "This Lodzi is the herd bull.

 Choose him."

 And Lobengula had cocked his ear to each of them in turn, and become

 more desperate and more confused with every conflicting view, until now

 there was only one path open to him, the path into the Matopos.

 Behind his litter came the bearers with the gifts for the oracle, rolls

 of copper wire, leather bags of coarse salt, pots of trade beads, six

 great tusks of yellow ivory, bolts of bright cloth, knives made by his

 master smith with handles of rhinoceros horn, a considerable treasure to

 pay for the words which he hoped would give him solace.

 The path twisted down like a maimed serpent into the gut of the hills,

 so that the sun was lost and there was only a narrow strip of blue sky

 showing between the tops of the granite cliffs.

 The rank and thorny vegetation crowded the pathway and at last met

 overhead, forming a dreary tunnel, and the silence was a heavy

 oppressive presence, for no bird sang and no animal squeaked or scurried

 in the undergrowth.

 But Bazo led on at the same pace, his head swinging from side to side,

 scanning for danger or menace, and his grip on the shaft of his stabbing

 spear was firm, his sweat-oiled muscles tense as the springs of a

 mantrap, ready to hurl his body forward to meet an enemy at any twist in

 the path.

 There was a stream of slow green water and algae-slick boulders across

 the track, and Bazo leapt it easily with barely a break in his stride;

 and fifty paces farther on the bush thinned and the cliffs pinched in to

 form a natural gateway of stone that led into the looming precipice.

 Here a determined spearman could hold a thousand and Bazo surveyed it

 with the swift appraisal of a soldier; and then he raised his gaze to

 the ledge high above on which was perched a small thatched watch-hut.

 Bazo grounded the butt of his long red shield, and called up the cliff.

 "I, Bazo, induna of one thousand, demand passage." His voice boomed and

 broke into a myriad echoes against the stone walls.

 in whose name do you come to trouble the spirits of the air and earth?"

 a querulous old man's voice replied, and a sticklike figure,

 foreshortened by the height of the cliff, appeared upon the lip.

 "I come in the king's name, Lobengula the Black Bull of Matabele."

 Bazo scorned to wait on permission or favour and, sweeping his shield up

 onto his shoulder, he sprang forward through the ominous portals.

 The passageway beyond was so narrow that his warriors follow only in

 single file, and the grey sand nors co that covered the floor sparkled

 with starry chips of mica and crunched under their bare feet. The

 passageway curved upon itself and then opened again without warning over

 a hidden valley.

 The valley was completely enclosed by sheer cliffs, and this narrow

 passage was its only entrance. The bowl of the floor was lush with green

 grass, and watered by a clear fountain that sprang from the cliff face

 beside the gateway and meandered down into the valley bottom.

 In the centre of the valley, a thousand paces ahead, was a tiny village,

 twenty or so thatched huts laid out in a neat circle. Bazo led his

 warriors down and, with a gesture of his assegai, formed them into a

 double rank on each side of the pathway that led to the huts.

 They waited in stillness and silence until the distant chant of the

 litter-bearers grew louder, and at last the king's party emerged into

 the hidden valley, and Bazo led his men in a deep chorus of praise and

 salutation.

 The royal party camped two days beside the tiny stream, waiting on the

 Umlimo's pleasure.

 Each day her attendants came to Lobengula to receive gifts and tribute

 on the oracle's behalf. They were a strange and macabre motley of lesser

 wizards and witches; some of them, touched by the spirits they served,

 were crazed and wild-eyed, others were young nubile girls, their bodies

 painted and their eyes blank and empty like the smokers of the hemp

 pipe. There were children with wise old eyes who did not laugh or play

 like other children, and ancients with withered bodies and sly eyes who

 spoke with the king in low, wheedling tones and took his gifts and

 promised: "Perhaps tomorrow; who knows when the power of divination will

 descend upon the Umlimo."

 Then on the dawn of the third day Lobengula sent for Bazo, and when he

 came to the king's camp fire, his father Gandang was already with the

 king, dressed in full regimentals, plume and fur and tassels of valour

 at elbow and knee, and with him were six of the other senior indunas.

 "Bazo, my fine axe with a sharp edge, I have chosen you to stand by my

 shoulder when I face the Umlimo to guard my back against treachery,"

 ordered Lobengula, and Bazo felt his chest swell with pride at such a

 mark of the king's trust.

 A witch led them, prancing and mumbling and mouothing, through the

 village and up the far side of the valley. Burdened by his great bulk,

 Lobengula paused often on the climb, his breathing sobbing in his

 throat, and he rested on Gandang's arm before going on again, until at

 last they reached the foot of the sheer high Cliff.

 Here there was a cave in the rock. Its entrance was a hundred paces

 wide, but its roof low enough for a man to reach up and touch. Some time

 long ago the entrance had been walled up with square blocks of dressed

 stone, but the wall had tumbled down, leaving dark gaps like the missing

 teeth in an old man's mouth.

 At a nod from his father, Bazo placed the king's carved stool facing the

 cave and Lobengula lowered his great black haunches upon it gratefully.

 Bazo stood at the king's back, his assegai gripped underhand and pointed

 forward towards the dark entrance in the rock.

 Suddenly there came the terrible spitting, tearing snarl of an angry

 leopard from the cave mouth, so loud and close and real that the band of

 hardened old warriors started and swayed, and stood their ground only

 with an obvious effort of will. The old witch giggled and spittle ran

 down her chin.

 The silence fell again, but charged with promise and the threat of an

 unseen presence watching them from the utter darkness of the cave's

 recesses.

 Then there was a voice, the voice of a child, sweet and piping clear. It

 issued not from the cave but from the air head, so that all of them

 raised their above the king's eyes. There was nothing there except the

 voice.

 "The stars will shine upon the hills, and the Black Bull will not quench

 them."

 The little group of indunas drew closer together as though to take

 comfort from one another, and the silence fell again. Bazo felt himself

 shivering, although his sweat tickled like an insect as it ran down

 between his shoulder blades. Then he jerked his head as another voice

 spoke. It came from the ground at the king's feet, and it used the

 liquid purring tones of a beautiful and seductive woman.

 "The sun will shine at midnight, and the Great Elephant will not dim

 it."

 Again that fraught and frightening silence, before something croaked

 from the cliff high above them, a hoarse inhuman sound, like the croak

 of a carrion crow.

 "Heed the wisdom of the vixen before that of the dogfox, Lobengula, King

 of The voice broke off abruptly, and there was a scuffling sound deep in

 the black maw of the cave, and the old crone who had been nodding and

 grinning at Lobengula's feet scrambled up and shouted an order in an

 unknown tongue.

 Now there was a flash of movement within the cave, and it caused

 consternation to Lobengula and his indunas, for they had visited the

 cave a hundred times and more but they had never seen the Umlimo nor had

 any glimpse of her presence in the depths of the cave.

 This was something beyond ritual and custom, and the crone hopped

 forward, shouting angrily; and now they could make out what was

 happening in the gloom. It seemed that two of the macabre attendants of

 the Umlimo were trying to restrain a smaller and more agile figure. They

 were unsuccessful, for the person threw off their clutching, claw-like

 hands and ran forward to the threshold of the cave, where the early

 sunlight revealed the Umlimo at last.

 She was so beautiful that all of them, even the king, gasped and stared.

 Her skin was oiled and polished to the colour of dark amber.

 Her limbs were long and supple as a heron's neck, her feet and hands

 finely shaped. She was in the prime of her womanhood, her body not yet

 distorted by childbearing; although her belly was luscious as a ripening

 fruit her waist was narrow as a lad's. All she wore was a single string

 of crimson beads about her waist, knotted at the level of the deeply

 sculptured pit of her navel. Her hips flared with a delicate line,

 forming a broad basin to contain the spade-shaped wedge of her sex. It

 nestled there like a dark furry little animal possessed of separate life

 and existence.

 Her head was perfectly balanced on the long stem of her neck; the neat

 cap of her hair set off the marvellous domed contours of her skull and

 exposed the small neat shape of her ears. Her features were oriental,

 the huge eyes slanted, her cheekbones high and her nose delicate and

 straight, but her mouth was twisted with anguish and her eyes blinded

 with tears as she stared at the young induna who stood at the king's

 back.

 Slowly she lifted one hand and reached out towards him; the long,

 delicate palm was pink and soft, the gesture infinitely sad.

 "Tanase!" whispered Bazo, staring at her, and his hands shook so that

 the blade of his assegai clattered against the rim of his shield.

 This was the woman he had chosen and who had been so cruelly taken from

 him. Since her going Bazo had sought no other to wife, though the king

 had chided him, and others whispered that it was unnatural, yet Bazo had

 held to the memory of this bright, sweet maid. He wanted to rush to her

 and seize her, to swing her high upon his shoulder and bear her away,

 but he stood rooted, her anguish reflected in his own eyes.

 For though she stood before him, she was as remote as the full moon. She

 was a child of the spirits and protected by their horrid servants, far

 beyond the reach of his loving hands and constant heart.

 Her attendants came now from the cave behind her, to scold and whine.

 Slowly Tanase lowered her arm, though for a moment longer her whole body

 yearned towards Bazo, and then her lovely head wilted like a flower upon

 the long, graceful stalk of her neck and she allowed them to take her

 arms.

 "Tanase!" Bazo said her name for the last time, and her shoulders jerked

 at the sound of his voice.

 Then a terrible thing happened. A shuddering convulsion ran up Tanase's

 back, from the perfect globes of her tight, hard buttocks to the nape of

 her neck, so that the nerves and muscles twitched and contracted on each

 Side of her spine. Then her spine began to bend backwards like a

 hunter's bow.

 "The spirit is upon her," shrieked the old witch. "Let the spirit take

 her!"

 They let her be, drawing back from her wracked body.

 Every muscle in her body was under such strain that it stood out in

 clear and separate definition under her glossy skin, and her spine

 arched to an impossible angle, the base of her skull almost touching the

 soft flesh at the back of her knees.

 Her face was contorted with the unbearable agony of divination; her eyes

 rolled back into her head so that only the whites showed. Her lips were

 drawn back so that the small perfect white teeth were exposed in a

 frozen rictus and creamy froth bubbled from the corners of her mouth.

 Though her lips did not move, a voice boomed from her tortured throat.

 It was the deep bass of a man, the stentorian voice of a warrior, and it

 bore no trace of the terrible travail of the young woman from whom it

 issued.

 "The falcons! The white hawk has torn open the nest of stone. The

 falcons are flying. Save the falcons! The falcons!"

 The voice rose abruptly into a wild shriek, and Tanase collapsed and

 writhed like a squashed insect upon the earth.

 "No black man, neither Matabele nor Rozwi nor Karanga, none of them

 would dare desecrate the nest of the falcons," said Lobengula, and the

 circle of indunas nodded. "Only a white man would have the effrontery to

 defy the word of the king and chance the wrath of the spirits."

 He paused and took snuff, drawing out the little ritual to put off the

 moment of decision.

 "If I send an impi to Zimbabwe and we take a white man in the red act of

 plundering the ancient place, dare I send steel through his heart?"

 Loberigula turned to Somabula, and the old man lifted his grey head and

 looked sadly at his king.

 "Kill one of them, and the others will come swarming like ants," he

 said. "Set not a feast for the birds, when it will bring a pride of

 lions instead."

 Lobengula sighed and looked to Gandang: "Speak, my father's son."

 "Oh King, Somabula is wise and his words have the same weight as

 boulders of black ironstone. Yet the king's words are heavier still, and

 the king's words have been given, the despoilers of the ancient places

 must die. Those are the words of Lobengula."

 The king nodded slowly.

 "Bazo!" he said softly, and the young induna dropped on one knee before

 the king's stool.

 "Take one of the wizards to guide your impi to the nest of the falcons.

 If the stone birds are gone, follow them. Find the despoiler. If it is a

 white man, take him where no other eyes can see you, not even those of

 your most trusted warriors. Kill the man and bury him in a secret place,

 and speak of it to no man but your king.

 Do you hear the words of Lobengula?"

 "i hear, oh Great King and to hear is to obey."

 Dutchman, the bullock with the narrowest spread of horns, was the only

 one which Isazi could coax down the narrow passageways and over the

 tumbled stonework into the temple enclosure of the ruins. In the baskets

 on his sturdy, dappled back, they ferried out the bird images, even the

 damaged ones, and repacked them onto the backs of the other oxen which

 waited outside the massive walls.

 With Isazi's skilful handling of the bullocks and their burdens, the

 work was finished by midafternoon, and they roped the oxen in single

 file. With patent relief, Isazi led them away through the forest towards

 the south.

 Ralph's relief was every bit as intense. He had been uneasy ever since

 that chance encounter with the Matabele impi in the hills. Now he let

 Isazi go on with the oxen, while he circled back across their incoming

 tracks to the north-west of the ruined city, examining the ground with

 the hunter's eye for any sign that they had been followed, or that there

 were any other human beings in the area. It need not be a war party,

 even a band of honey-gatherers or a hunter could carry word back to

 Lobengula's kraal or alert the border impis.

 He knew what he would have to do if he found a wanderer or solitary

 hunter, and he eased the rifle in the leather boot at his knee. These

 forests were populous.

 He saw troops of big-eared striped kudu, sable antelope with snowy

 bellies and sweeping scimitar horns, big black bovine buffalo and

 spreading herds of plump zebra with alert pricked ears and stiff, black

 manes, but there was no sign of human presence.

 He was only slightly mollified when he turned back and picked up the

 spoor of the bullock file five miles on the other side of the ruins. He

 trotted along the widely beaten sign, and his misgivings returned at

 full strength.

 This was too easy to follow.

 He caught up with Isazi and his bullock train as the dusk was falling,

 and he helped him lift the heavy packs down from the backs of the oxen

 and examine them for galling or saddle sores, before hobbling them and

 letting them graze. More than once during the night he started awake,

 and listened for the sound of men's voices, but heard only the yipping

 of jackal.

 In the early light they entered a wide grassy plain; the trees on the

 far side were a dark line on the horizon, and there were huge troops of

 zebra grazing out in the open.

 They lifted their heads to watch the strange little caravan." an go

 past, and sounded their curiosity and concern with their sharp, almost

 dog-like, barks.

 Halfway across the plain Ralph turned the bullock train at a right angle

 to their track, and they marched due east until noon, when they

 re-entered the forest. Still Ralph headed on cast until darkness fell

 and they camped.

 Isazi muttered and complained about the wasted day, and the detour of so

 many miles out of their direct route towards the Limpopo river and the

 Bushman wells beyond, where Umfaan waited for them with the wagons.

 "Why do we do this?"

 "For the benefit of anyone who follows us."

 "They will still be able to follow the spoor we have laid," Isazi

 protested.

 "i will change that, in the morning," Ralph assured him, and in the dawn

 he allowed Isazi to resume the southerly direction again.

 "if I do not rejoin you, do not wait for me. Keep on until you reach the

 wagons, we'll beyond the frontier of the Matabele. Wait for me there,"

 he ordered, and he left Isazi and rode back on their spoor of the

 previous day.

 He reached the open grassland where they had made such a dramatic change

 of direction the preceding morning, and the zebra barked at him. Their

 stripes were indistinguishable at this distance, and the herds were

 moving silver-grey masses on the yellow grassland.

 "You are going to enjoy this, old Tom." Ralph patted the horse's neck

 and then trotted out onto the plain towards the nearest herd of zebra.

 There were more than a hundred animals in the group, and they let horse

 and rider approach to within a few hundred paces before bunching up and

 galloping away.

 "After them, Tom!"Ralph whooped, and they tore into the bellowing dust

 cloud, gaining swiftly on the chubby, striped ranks of bobbing

 hindquarters. Ralph quartered and turned them, and they gathered up

 another herd, and then another, until there were two or three thousand

 zebra in stampede ahead of them.

 He rode out onto one flank and pushed the herd over the ground which his

 bullock train had crossed the previous day. Thousands of broad hooves

 churned the earth into soft explosions of dust. When they reached the

 far side of the plain, Ralph forced Tom ahead of the leading zebras and

 rode across their front, yelling and waving his hat about his head. The

 dense mass of animals turned like a living whirlpool, and the dust

 boiled up into the sky.

 Back they went across the open ground with Tom delighting in the chase,

 and Ralph worked them northward until the zebra herds reached the forest

 line and swung parallel with the trees, and they scoured the earth with

 driving hooves in a swathe five hundred yards wide.

 Back and forth again Ralph drove them, sheep-dogging them deliberately

 over the bullock tracks on each pass, until at last even Tom's pace was

 short and knocked up, and he was sweating in black streaks down his

 shoulders and flanks and blowing like a south-easterly gale over False

 Bay.

 Ralph off-saddled in the shade of the treeline, while out on the plain

 the zebra herds, skittish and nervous at the harassment, still galloped

 in aimless circles, or snorted and pawed the torn earth.

 "Nobody, not even a Bushman, will be able to pick the spoor through

 that," Ralph told Tom, and stooped to lift each of his hooves in turn.

 With his clasp knife Ralph prised off Tom's iron horseshoes and bundled

 them into the saddle-bag.

 Without shoes, Tom's tracks were almost identical to those of a zebra

 stallion. He might go lame before they reached the wagons at Bushman

 wells, but they could limp in at their own speed, sure at last that

 there would be no pursuit. Once they reached the wagon, there was forge

 and anvil to re-shoe him, and Tom would suffer no lasting injury.

 Ralph wiped Tom down with the saddle blanket and let him rest for

 another hour before re-saddling. Then he rode back amongst the scattered

 zebra herds to mingle and lose Tom's hoof prints amongst theirs before

 deliberately turning westwards, the opposite direction to Isazi's

 bullocks. He settled down in the saddle to lay a false trail into the

 forest before circling back southwards to find Isazi.

 Ralph slept until sunrise the following morning, secure at last, and the

 temptation to drink coffee was to much for him. He chanced a small fire

 and delighted in the strong hot brew.

 When they rode on, the sun was well up, and clear of the forest tops.

 Ralph let old Tom amble along at his own pace to save his unshod hooves,

 and he pushed his hat onto the back of his head and repeated the opening

 bars of Yankee Doodle over and over in a flat tuneless whistle.

 The morning was cool and fresh. He felt elated at the success of his

 coup; already he was planning the sale of the statues. He would send

 letters to the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution in

 Washington, D.C.

 Out on his right a red-breasted cuckoo uttered its staccato call that

 sounded like a greeting "Pete-my-friend!".

 Tom flicked his ears but Ralph went on whistling happily, slouched down

 in the saddle.

 Old J. B. Robinson, one of the Kimberley millionaires who had made

 millions more on the new Witwatersrand goldfield, would buy at least one

 of the birds simply because Rhodes had one. He could not bear In the

 grassy glade ahead of Ralph a francolin called harshly, "Kwali!

 Kwali!" only twice, and it rang falsely to Ralph's ear. These brown

 partridges usually called five or six times, not twice.

 Ralph checked Tom and stood up in the stirrups. Carefully he surveyed

 the narrow open strip of head-high elephant grass. Suddenly a covey of

 brown partridge burst out of the grass and whirled away on noisy wings.

 Ralph grinned and slouched down again in the saddle, and Tom trotted

 into the waving stand of coarse grass and instantly it was full of dark

 figures of dancing plumes and red shields. They swarmed around Tom and

 the sunlight sparkled on the long silver blades.

 "Go, Tom!" Ralph urged, and kicked his heels into his flank, while he

 jerked the rifle from its bucket and held it against his hip.

 As Tom lunged forward, one of the plumed warriors leapt to catch his

 bridle, and Ralph fired. The heavy lead bullet hit the Matabele in the

 jaw and blew half of it away; for a moment teeth and white bone flashed

 in the shattered face, and then were smothered in an eruption of bright

 blood.

 Tom bounded into the gap in their line that the man had left, but as he

 went through, one of them darted in from the side and grunted with the

 strength of his stroke.

 With a thrill of horror Ralph saw the long steel blade go into Tom's

 ribs, an inch in front of his toe cap. He swung the empty rifle at the

 warrior's head, but the man ducked under it, and while Ralph twisted in

 the saddle, a second Matabele darted in, and Tom's whole body shuddered

 and convulsed between Ralph's knees as the man stabbed deep and hard

 into Tom's neck, an inch in front of his plunging shoulder.

 Then they were through the line of Matabele, but the assegai had been

 plucked from the warrior's hand and the shaft stuck out of Tom's neck at

 a brutal angle that showed the point must be buried in his lungs. Still

 the gallant old pony carried his master on across the glade and into the

 first trees of the forest.

 Then abruptly a double stream of frothy bright lungblood burst from

 Tom's nostrils, and splattered back against Ralph's boots. Tom died in

 full run. His nose dropped to the earth and he went over in a somersault

 that pitched Ralph high over his head.

 Ralph smashed into the earth, and he felt as though his ribs were stoved

 in and his teeth cracked from his jaws, but he crawled desperately to

 his fallen rifle and jammed a fresh cartridge into the breech.

 When he looked up, they were almost upon him, a line of racing red

 shields and pounding bare feet below; the war rattles on their ankles

 clashed and the hunting choru. s was like the deep baying of hounds.

 One tall indoda lifted his shield high to clear his spear arm for the

 killing stroke, and the blade flashed as it started down, and then the

 movement froze.

 "Henshaw!" The name exploded out of the warrior's straining throat, and

 then Bazo continued the stroke, but at the last instant rolled his wrist

 and the flat of the heavy blade smashed against Ralph's skull above his

 temple; and he pitched forwards, face down against the sandy earth, and

 lay still as death.

 "You took the irons from the horse's hooves." Bazo nodded approval.

 "That was a good trick. If you had not slept so long this morning, we

 might never have caught up with you."

 "Tom is dead now," replied Ralph.

 He was propped against the trunk of a mopani tree.

 There was a bright scarlet smear of gravel rash on one cheek where he

 had hit the ground when he was thrown from the saddle. The hair above

 his temple was caked with black dried blood where the flat of Bazo's

 blade had knocked him senseless, and he was bound at ankles and wrists

 with thongs of rawhide. Already his hands were vuff!" and blue from the

 constriction of his bonds.

 "Yes!" Bazo nodded again gravely, and looked at the carcass of the horse

 where it lay fifty paces away. "He was a good horse, and now he is

 dead." He looked back at Ralph. "The indoda whom we will bury today was

 a good man, and now he is dead also."

 All about them squatted ranks of Matabele warriors, all Bazo's men drawn

 up in a dense black circle, sitting on their shields and listening

 intently to every word spoken.

 "Your men fell upon me without warning, as though I were a thief or a

 murderer. I defended myself as any man would do."

 U "And are you not a thief then, Henshaw?" Bazo interrupted.

 "What question is that?" Ralph demanded.

 "The birds, Henshaw. The stone birds."

 "I do not know what you speak of," Ralph challenged angrily, pushing

 himself away from the tree trunk and staring arrogantly at Bazo.

 "You know, Henshaw. You know about the birds, for we have spoken about

 them many times. You know also the king's warning that to despoil the

 ancient places is death to any man, for I myself have told you of it.,

 Still Ralph glared his defiance.

 "Your spoor led straight to the burial place of the kings and straight

 away from it, and the birds are gone. Where are they, Henshaw?"

 A moment longer Ralph continued his show, and then he shrugged and

 smiled and sank back against the tree.

 "They are gone, Bazo, flown afar where you cannot follow them. it was

 the prophecy of the Umlimo, beyond the powers of mortal men to prevent."

 At the mention of the prophetess, a shadow of sorrow passed over Bazo's

 face.

 "Yes, it was part of the prophecy," he agreed. "And now it is time to

 carry out the orders of the king." He stood up and addressed the

 squatting ranks of Matabele.

 "All of you heard the king's word," he said. "What must be done, must be

 done in secret; it must be done by me alone, and no other may witness

 it, nor speak of it after, even in a whisper, on pain of slow and

 lingering death.

 You have all heard the king's word. "We have heard the king's word,"

 they agreed in deep sonorous chorus.

 "Go!" Bazo commanded. "Wait for me at great Zimbabwe, and wipe from your

 eyes the things you have seen this day."

 His warriors sprang up and saluted him. They shouldered the body of the

 man that Ralph had slain, using their shields as a litter, and they bore

 him away.

 The double column of running warriors snaked away across the glade and

 into the forest.

 Bazo watched them go, leaning on his own shield, and then he turned back

 to Ralph, heavily and unwillingly.

 "i am the king's man," he said softly. "Strictly charged with your

 death. What I have to do today will leave a deep scar in my heart for

 all my life, though I live to be an old greyhead. The memory of this

 thing will keep me from sleep, and turn the food sour and heavy in my

 belly." Slowly he paced to where Ralph lay and stood over him. "I will

 never forget this deed, Henshaw, though I will never be able to speak of

 it, not to my father or my favourite wife. I must Jock it in the

 darkness of my soul."

 "If you must do it, then do it swiftly," Ralph challenged him, trying to

 show no fear, trying to keep his gaze steady.

 "Yes," Bazo nodded, and shifted his grip on the shaft of the spear.

 "Intercede for me with your God, Henshaw," he said, and struck.

 Ralph cried out at the stinging burn of razor steel, and his blood burst

 from the wound and spilled into the dry earth.

 Bazo dropped to his knee beside him and scooped up

 [ the blood in his cupped hands. He splashed it on his arms and chest.

 He smeared it on the haft and blade of his spear, until the bright steel

 was dulled.

 Then Bazo leapt up and ripped a strip of bark from the mopani tree. He

 plucked a bunch of green leaves and came back to Ralph's side. He held

 together the lips of the deep wound in Ralph's forearm, then he placed

 the bunch of leaves over it and bound it up with the strip of bark.

 The bleeding slowed and stopped, and Bazo hacked the rawhide bonds from

 Ralph's ankles and wrists and stood back.

 He gestured at his own blood-sullied arms and weapon.

 "Who, seeing me thus, would believe that I am a traitor to my king?" he

 asked softly. "Yet the love of a brother is stronger than the duty to a

 king."

 Ralph dragged himself upright against the mopani trunk, holding his

 wounded arm against his chest and staring at the young induna.

 "Go in peace, Henshaw," whispered Bazo. "But pray to your God for me,

 for I have betrayed my king and forfeited my honour."

 Then Bazo whirled and ran back across the glade of yellow grass. When he

 reached the trees on the far side he neither paused nor looked back, but

 plunged into them with a kind of reckless despair.

 Ten days later, with his boots scuffed through the uppers and the legs

 of his breeches ripped to tatters by arrow grass and thorn, with his

 inflamed and infected left arm strapped to his chest by a sling of bark,

 his face gaunt with starvation and his body bony and wasted, Ralph

 staggered into the circle of wagons that were outspanned beside the

 Bushman wells, and Isazi shouted for Umfaan and ran to catch Ralph

 before he fell.

 "Isazi," Ralph croaked, "the birds, the stone birds?"

 "I have them safe, Nkosi."

 Ralph grinned wickedly, so that his dried lips cracked and his bloodshot

 eyes slitted.

 "By your own boast, Isazi, you are a wise man. Now I tell you also, that

 you are beautiful to behold, as beautiful as a falcon in flight," Ralph

 told him, and then reeled so that he had to catch his balance with an

 arm around the little Zulu's shoulders.

 Lobengula sat cross-legged on his sleeping-mat, alone in his great hut.

 Before him was a gourd of clear spring water. He stared into it fixedly.

 Long ago, when he had lived in the cave of the Matopos with Saala, the

 white girl, the mad old witchdoctor had instructed him in the art of the

 gourd. Very occasionally, after many hours" staring into the limpid

 water, and after the utmost exercise of his concentration and will, he

 had been able to see snatches of the future, faces and events, but even

 then they had been murky and unclear, and soon after he left the Matopos

 this small gift had gone from him. Sometimes still, in desperation, he

 resorted to the gourd, although, as it was this night, nothing moved or

 roiled darkly beneath the still surface of the spring water, and his

 concentration slipping away. Tonight he kept toying with the words of

 the Umlimo.

 Always the oracle spoke obliquely, always her counsel was shrouded in

 imagery and riddles. Often it was repetitive, on at least five previous

 visits to the cavern the witch had spoken of "the stars shining on the

 hills" and the sun that burns at midnight". No matter how doggedly

 Lobengula and his senior indunas had picked at the words, and tried to

 unravel the meaning that was tied up in them, they had found no answer.

 Now Lobengula set aside the fruitless gourd, and lay back upon his

 kaross to consider the third prophecy, made in the croaking raven's

 voice from the cliff above the cavern.

 "Heed the wisdom of the vixen before that of the dogfox."

 He took each word and weighed it separately, then he considered the

 whole, and twisted it and studied it from every angle.

 In the dawn there remained only one possible solution that had survived

 the night. For once the oracle seemed to have given advice that was

 unequivocal. It was only for him to decide which female was the "vixen"

 of the oracle.

 He considered each of his senior wives, and there was not one of them

 that had any interest in anything beyond the begetting and suckling of

 infants, or the baubles and ribbons that the traders brought to

 Gubulawayo.

 Ningi, his full-blooded sister, he loved still as his one link with the

 mother he barely remembered. Yet now when Ningi was sober she was

 elephantine and slowwitted, bad-tempered and cruel. When she was filled

 with the traders" champagne and cognac, she was giggling and silly to

 begin with, and then incontinent and comatose at the end. He had spoken

 with her for an hour and more the previous day. Little that she had said

 was sensible and nothing she had said could possibly bear on the

 terrible pressures of Lodzi and his emissaries.

 So at last Lobengula returned to what he had known all along must be the

 key to the riddle of the Umlimo.

 "Guards!" he shouted suddenly, and there were quick and urgent

 footfalls, and one of his cloaked executioners stooped through the

 doorway and prostrated himself on the threshold.

 "Go to Nomusa, the Girlchild of Mercy, bid her come to me with all

 speed," said Lobengula.

 Whereas I have been much molested of late by divers persons seeking and

 desiring to obtain grants and concessions of land and mining rights in

 my territories Now, therefore, for the following considerations: Item

 One, payment by the grantee to the grantor of 100 pounds per month in

 perpetuity.

 Item Two, the provision by the grantee to the grantor of One Thousand

 Martini-Henry rifles, together with One Hundred Thousand rounds of

 Ammunition for the same.

 Item Three, the provision by the grantee to the grantor of an armed

 steamboat to patrol the navigable reaches of the Zambezi river.

 Now, therefore, I, Lobengula, King of the Matabele people, and Paramount

 Chief of Mashonaland, Monarch of all territories South of the Zambezi

 River and Northwards of the Shashi and Limpopo Rivers, do hereby grant

 Complete and exclusive charge over all metals and minerals in my

 Kingdom, Principalities and Dominions, together with full power to do

 all things that they may deem necessary to win and procure the same and

 to enjoy the profits and revenues, if any, derivable from the said

 metals and minerals.

 in his fair hand, Jordan Ballantyne wrote out the document from mister

 Rudd's dictation.

 Robyn Codrington read the text to Lobengula, and explained it to him,

 then she helped him attach the Great Elephant seal. Finally, she

 witnessed the mark that Lobengula made beside it.

 "Damn me, Jordan, there's none of us here that can ride the way you

 can." Rudd made no effort to conceal his jubilation when they were

 alone. "It's speed now that counts. If you leave immediately, you can

 reach Khami Mission by nightfall. Pick the three best horses from those

 that we left there, and go like the winds my boy.

 Take the concession to mister Rhodes, and tell him I will follow

 directly."

 The twins ran down the front steps of Khami Mission and surrounded

 Jordan as he stepped down from the stirrup.

 At the head of the steps, Cathy held a lantern high, and Salina stood

 beside her with her hands clasped demurely in front of her, and her eyes

 shining with joy in the lantern light.

 "Welcome, Jordan," she called. "We have all missed you so."

 Jordan came up the steps. "I can rest one night only," he told her, and

 a little of her delight died and her smile with it. "I ride south

 tomorrow at first light."

 He was so beautiful, tall and straight, and fair, and though his

 shoulders were wide and his limbs finely muscled, yet he was lithe and

 light as a dancer and his expression gentle as a poet's as he looked

 down into Salina's face.

 "Only one night," she murmured. "Then we must make the most of it They

 ate a dinner of smoked ham and roasted sweet yams, and afterwards they

 sat on the verandah and Salina sang for them while Jordan smoked a cigar

 and listened with obvious pleasure, tapping the time on his knee and

 joining with the others in the chorus.

 The moment Salina had finished, Vicky leapt to her feet.

 My turn," she announced. Uzzie and I have written a poem."

 "Not tonight," said Cathy.

 "Why?" demanded Vicky.

 "Cathy," wailed the twins in unison. "It's Jordan's last night "That is

 precisely why." Cathy stood up. "Come on, both of you."

 Still they cajoled and procrastinated, until suddenly Cathy's eyes

 slitted viciously, and she hissed at them with a vehemence that startled

 them to their feet, to bestow hasty pecks on Jordan's face and then

 hurry off down the verandah, with Cathy close behind.

 Jordan chuckled fondly and flicked the cigar over the verandah rail.

 "Cathy is right, of course," he said. "I'll be in the saddle for twelve

 hours tomorrow, it's time we were all abed."

 Salina did not reply but moved to the end of the verandah farthest from

 the bedrooms and leaned on the rail, staring down across the starlit

 valley.

 After a moment, Jordan followed her, and asked softly: "Have I offended

 you?"

 "No," she answered quickly. it's just that I am a little sad.

 We all have such fun when you are here." Jordan did not reply, and after

 a minute she asked: "What will you do now, Jordan?"

 "i shall not know until I reach Kimberley. If mister Rhodes is att

 Groote Schuur already, then I shall go there, but if he is still in

 London, then he will want me to join him., "How long will it take?"

 "From Kimberley to London and back? Four months, if the sailings

 coincide."

 "Tell me about London, Jordan. I read about it and dreamed about it."

 He talked quietly, but lucidly and fluently, so that she laughed and

 exclaimed at his descriptions and anecdotes, and the minutes turned to

 hours, until suddenly Jordan interrupted himself.

 "What am I thinking of; it's almost midnight."

 She grasped at anything to keep him from going.

 "You promised to tell me about mister Rhodes" house at Groote Schuur."

 "It will have to wait for another time, Salina."

 "Will there be another time?" she asked.

 "Oh, I am sure there will," he answered lightly.

 "You will go to England, and Cape Town, it could be years before you

 come back to Khami."

 "Even years will not dim our friendship, Salina." And she stared at him

 as though he had struck her.

 "Is that it, Jordan, are we friends, just friends?"

 He took both her hands in his. "The dearest, most precious friends," he

 confirmed.

 She was pale as ivory in the dim light, and her grip on his hands was

 like that of a drowning woman as she steeled herself to speak, but her

 voice, when at last she summoned it, was so strained that she was not

 sure he had understood her.

 "Take me with you, Jordan."

 "Salina, I don't know what you mean."

 "I cannot bear to lose you, take me. Please take me."

 "But he was confused and shaken, "but what would you do?"

 "Whatever you tell me. I should be your slave, your loving slave,

 Jordan, for ever."

 He tried to free his hands from hers, but he did it gently.

 "You cannot just go away and leave me, Jordan. When you came to Khami,

 it was like the sun rising into my life; and if you go you will take the

 light with you. I love you, Jordan, oh sweet Jesus, forgive me, but I

 love you more than life itself."

 "Salina, stop! Please stop now." He pleaded with her, but she clung to

 his hands.

 "I cannot let you go without telling you, I love you, Jordan, I shall

 always love you."

 "Salina." His voice was stricken. "Oh Salina, I love somebody else," he

 said.

 "It's not true," she whispered. "Oh, please say it's not true.

 "I am sorry, Salina. Terribly sorry."

 "Nobody else can love you as much as I do, nobody would sacrifice what I

 would."

 "Please stop, Salina. I don't want you to humiliate yourself."

 "Humiliate myself?" she asked. "Oh, Jordan, that would be so small a

 price, you don't understand."

 "Salina, please."

 "Let me prove to you, Jordan, let me prove how joyfully I will make any

 sacrifice." And when he tried to speak, she put her hand lightly over

 his mouth. "We need not even have to wait for marriage. I will give

 myself to you this very night."

 When he shook his head, she tightened her grip to gag his words of

 denial.

 "So fret not, like an idle girl, That life is dash'd with flecks of

 sin."

 She whispered the quotation, with quivering voice. "Give me the chance,

 dear Jordan, please give me the chance to prove that I can love and

 cherish you more than any other woman in all the world. You will see how

 this other woman's love pales to nothing beside the flame of mine."

 He took her wrist and lifted her hand from his mouth, and his head bowed

 over hers with a terrible regret.

 "Salina," he said, "it is not another woman."

 She stared up at him, both of them rooted and stricken, while the

 enormity of his words slowly spread across her soul like hoar frost.

 "Not another woman?" she asked at last, and when he shook his head,

 "Then I can never even hope, never?"

 He did not reply, and at last she shook herself like a sleeper wakening

 from a dream to deathly reality.

 "Will you kiss me goodbye, Jordan, just one last time?"

 "It need not be the last-" But she reached up and crushed the words on

 his lips so fiercely that her teeth left a taste of blood on his tongue.

 "Goodbye, Jordan," she said, and turning from him she walked down the

 length of the verandah as infirmly as an invalid arising from a long

 sick-bed. At the door of her bedroom, she staggered and put out a hand

 to save herself, and then looked back at him.

 Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. "Goodbye, Jordan. Goodbye,

 my love."

 Ralph Ballantyne carried up the rifles, one thousand of them, brand new

 and still in their yellow grease, five in a wooden case, and twenty

 cases to a wagonload. There were another ten wagonloads of ammunition,

 all for the account of De Beers diamond mines, another three wagonloads

 of liquor for his own account, and a single wagon of furniture and

 household effects for the bungalow that Zouga was building for himself

 at Gubulawayo.

 Ralph crossed the Shashi river with a certain thousand-pound profit from

 the convoy already safely deposited in the Standard Bank at Kimberley,

 but with a nagging hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

 He had no way of knowing whether Bazo had reported him to Lobengula as

 the abductor of the stone falcons, or whether one of Bazo's warriors had

 recognized him and, despite the king's warning, had told a wife, who had

 told her mother, who had told her husband. "Nothing moves in

 Matabeleland but the whole nation knows of it," Clinton Codrington had

 warned him once. However, the profits on this run, and the prospect of

 visiting Khami Mission again, were worth the risk.

 On the first day's march beyond the Shashi, that risk was vindicated,

 for it was Bazo himself at the head of his red shields who intercepted

 the convoy, and greeted Ralph inscrutably.

 "Who dares the road? Who risks the wrath of Lobengula?" And after he had

 inspected the loaded wagons, as he and Ralph sat alone by the camp fire,

 Ralph asked him quietly: "I heard that a white man died in the bush

 between great Zimbabwe and the Limpopo. What was that man's name?"

 "Nobody knows of this matter, except Lobengula and one of his indunas,"

 Bazo replied, without lifting his gaze from the flames. "And even the

 king does not know who the stranger was or where he came from, nor does

 he know the site of the grave of the nameless stranger." Bazo took a

 little snuff and went on. "Nor will we ever speak of this matter again,

 you and me."

 And now he lifted his eyes at last, and there was something in their

 dark depths that had never been there before, and Ralph thought that it

 was the look of a man destroyed, a man who would never trust a brother

 again.

 in the morning, Bazo was gone, and Ralph faced northwards, with the

 doubts dispelled and his spirits soaring like the silver and mauve

 thunderheads that piled the horizon ahead of him. Zouga was waiting for

 him at the drift of the Khami river.

 "You've made good time, my boy."

 "Nobody ever made better," Ralph agreed, and twirled his thick dark

 moustache, "and nobody is likely to, not until mister Rhodes builds his

 railroad."

 "Did mister Rhodes send the money?"

 "In good gold sovereigns," Ralph told him. "I have carried them in my

 own saddle-bags."

 "All we have to do is get Lobengula to accept them."

 "That, Papa, is your job. You are mister Rhodes" agent."

 Yet three weeks later the wagons still stood outside Lobengula's kraal,

 their loads roped down under the tarpaulins while Zouga waited each day

 from early morning until dusk in front of the king's great hut.

 "The king is sick," they said.

 "The king is with his wives."

 "Perhaps the king will come tomorrow."

 "Who knows when the king will tire of his wives," they said, and at last

 even Zouga, who knew and understood the ways of Africa, became angry.

 "Tell the king that Bakela, the Fist, rides now to Lodzi to tell him

 that the king spurns his gifts," he ordered Gandang, who had come to

 make the day's excuses, and Zouga called to Jan Cheroot to saddle the

 horses.

 "The king has not given you the road." Gandang was shocked and

 perturbed.

 "Then tell Lobengula that his impis can kill the emissary of Lodzi on

 the road, but it will not take long for the word to be carried to Lodzi.

 Lodzi sits even now at the great kraal of the queen across the water,

 basking in her favour."

 The king's messengers caught up with Zouga before he reached Khami

 Mission, for his pace was deliberately leisurely.

 "The king bids Bakela return at once, he will speak with him at the

 moment of his return."

 "Tell Lobengula that Bakela sleeps tonight at Khami Mission and perhaps

 the night after, for who knows when he will see fit to talk with the

 king again."

 Somebody at Khami must have put a spy-glass on the dust raised by

 Zouga's horses, for when they were still a mile from the hills, a rider

 came out to meet them at full gallop, a slim figure with long dark

 plaits streaming behind her lovely head.

 When they met, Zouga jumped down from his saddle and lifted her from

 hers.

 "Louise," he whispered into her smiling mouth. "You will never know how

 slowly the days pass when I am away from you."

 "It's a cross you make us both carry," she told him. "I am fully

 recovered now, thanks to Robyn, and still you make me loiter and pine at

 Khami. Oh, Zouga, will you not let me join you at Gubulawayo?"

 "That I will, my dear, just as soon as we have a roof on the cottage,

 and a ring on your finger."

 ,"You are always so proper." She pulled a face at him.

 "Who would ever know?"

 "i would," he said, and kissed her again, before he lifted her back into

 the saddle of the bay Arab mare which had been his betrothal gift to

 her.

 They rode with their knees touching and their fingers linked, while Jan

 Cheroot trailed them discreetly out of earshot.

 "We shall have only days longer to wait," Zouga assured her. "I have

 forced Lobengula's hand. This matter of the rifles will be settled soon

 and then you can choose where you will make me the happiest man on

 earth, the cathedral at Cape Town perhaps?"

 "Darling Zouga, your family at Khami has been so kind to me The girls

 have become like my own sisters, and Robyn lavished care upon me when I

 was so ill, so burned and desiccated by the sun."

 "Why not?" Zouga agreed. "I'm sure that Clinton will agree to say the

 words."

 "He has already, but there is more to it. The wedding is all planned,

 and it is to be a double wedding."

 "A double wedding, who are the others?"

 "You would never guess, not in a thousand years."

 They looked more like brothers than father and son, as they stood before

 the carved altar in the little whitewashed church at Khami.

 Zouga wore his full dress uniform, and the scarlet cket, tailored twenty

 years before, still fitted him to perfection The gold lace had been

 renewed to impress Lobengula and his indunas, and now it sparkled bright

 and untarnished, even in the cool gloom of the church.

 Ralph was dressed in expensive broadcloth with a high stock and cravat

 of watered grey silk that on this hot June day brought beads of sweat to

 his forehead. His thick dark hair was dressed with pomade to a glossy

 shine, and his magnificent moustache, twirled with beeswax, pricked out

 in two stiff points.

 Both of them were rigid with expectation, staring fixedly at the altar

 candles which Clinton had hoarded for such an occasion, and lit only

 minutes before.

 Behind them one of the twins fidgeted with excited anticipation, and

 Salina pumped up the little organ and launched into "Here comes the

 Bride", while Ralph grinned with bravado and, out of the side of his

 mouth, muttered to his father, "Well, here we go then, Papa. Fix

 bayonets and prepare to receive cavalry!"

 They turned with parade ground precision to face the church door, just

 as the brides stepped through it.

 Cathy wore the mail-order dress which Ralph had brought up from

 Kimberley, while Robyn had lifted her own wedding dress from its resting

 place in the leatherbound trunk and they had taken in the waist and let

 down the hem to fit Louise. The delicate lace had turned to the colour

 of old ivory, and she carried a bouquet of Clinton's yellow roses.

 Afterwards they all straggled across the yard. The brides tottered on

 their high heels and tripped on their trains, clinging to the arms of

 their new husbands; and the twins pelted them with handfuls of rice,

 before running ahead to the verandah where the wedding board was piled

 with mountains of food and lined with regiments of bottles, the finest

 champagne from Ralph's wagons.

 At one end of the table Ralph loosened his stock and held Cathy in the

 circle of his arm and a glass in his other hand as he made his speech:

 "My wife, "he referred to her, and the company hooted with laughter and

 clapped with delight, while Cathy clung to him and looked up at his face

 in transparent adoration.

 Then when the speeches were ended, Clinton looked across the table at

 his eldest daughter. His bald head shone with the heat and excitement

 and the good champagne.

 Will you not sing to us, my darling Salina," he asked.

 "Something happy and joyous?"

 Salina nodded and smiled, and lifted her chin to sing in her gentle

 voice: "However far you go, my love, I will follow too.

 The highest mountain top, my love, Across deepest ocean blue."

 Louise turned her face towards Zouga, and when she smiled the corners of

 her dark blue eyes slanted upwards and her lips parted and glistened.

 Below the tabletop Clinton reached for Robyn's hand, but his gaze stayed

 upon his daughter's face.

 Even Ralph sobered, and sat attentively while Cathy laid her cheek upon

 his shoulder.

 "No arctic night too cold, my love, No tropic noon too fierce.

 For I will cleave to you, my love, "Til death my heart do pierce."

 Salina sat very straight on the wooden bench with her hands in her lap.

 She was smiling as she sang, a sweet serene smile, but a single tear

 broke from her lower lid and descended, with tortuous slowness, the

 velvet curve of her cheek, until it reached the corner of her mouth.

 The song ended, and they were silent for a long moment, and then Ralph

 pounded on the table with the flat of his hand.

 "Oh bravo, Salina, that was superb."

 Then they were all applauding, and Salina smiled at them and the single

 tear broke and fell to her breast, to leave a dark star upon the satin

 of her bodice.

 "Excuse me," she said. "Please excuse me."

 And she stood up and, still smiling, glided down the verandah. Cathy

 sprang to her feet, her face twisted with concern, but Robyn caught her

 wrist before she could follow.

 "Leave her be," she whispered. "The child needs to be alone a while. You

 will only upset her further." And Cathy sank back beside Ralph.

 "Shame on you, Louise," with forced jocularity, Clinton called down the

 table. "Your husband's glass is empty, are you neglecting him so soon?"

 An hour later Salina had not returned, and Ralph's voice had become

 louder and even more assertive. "Now that mister Rhodes has got his

 charter, we can begin to assemble the column. Cathy and I will start

 back tomorrow with the empty wagons. Heaven knows we will need every

 pair of wheels, and I thought old King Ben would never take those rifles

 off my hands."

 But Cathy was for once not drinking in every one of his words; she kept

 looking down the verandah, and again she whispered to Robyn, who frowned

 and shook her head.

 "You talk as though the whole affair was arranged for your personal

 profit, Ralph." Robyn turned from Cathy to challenge her new son-in-law.

 "Perish the thought, Aunty., Ralph laughed, and winked at his father

 down the length of the table. "It's all for the good of Empire and the

 glory of God."

 Cathy waited until they were once more embroiled in amiable argument,

 and then she slipped away so quietly that Robyn did not notice until

 Cathy reached the end of the verandah. For a moment she looked set to

 call her back, but instead she made a move of annoyance and addressed

 herself to Zouga.

 "How long will you and Louise remain at Gubulawayo?"

 "Until the column reaches Mount Hampden. mister Rhodes doesn't want any

 misunderstanding between the volunteers and Lobengula's young bucks."

 "I will be able to send up fresh vegetables and even a few flowers while

 you are at the king's kraal, Louise," Clinton offered.

 "You've been too kind already," Louise thanked him, and then broke off,

 and an expression of deep concern crossed her face.

 They all turned hurriedly in the direction she was staring.

 Cathy had returned and climbed the verandah steps.

 She leaned against one of the whitewashed columns. Her face was the

 muddy yellow of a malaria sufferer, and her brow and chin were blistered

 with droplets of sweat. Her eyes were tortured, and her mouth twisted

 with horror.

 "In the church," she said. "She's in the church." And then she doubled

 over, and retched with a terrible tearing sound, and it came up her

 throat in a solid yellow eruption that soaked the virginal white skirts

 of her wedding gown.

 Robyn was the first to reach the church door. She stared for only a

 moment and then she whirled and hid her face against Clinton's chest.

 "Take her away," Zouga ordered Clinton brusquely, and then to Ralph.

 "Help me!"

 The garland of pink roses had fallen from Salina's head, and lay below

 her on the floor of the nave. She had thrown a halter rope over one of

 the roof beams, and she must have climbed up on the table that Robyn

 used for her surgery.

 Her hands hung open at her sides. The toes of her slippers were turned

 in towards each other in a touchingly innocent stance, like those of a

 little girl standing on tiptoe; but they were suspended at the height of

 a man's waist above the flagged floor.

 Zouga had to look up at her face. The rope had caught her under one ear

 and her head was twisted at an impossible angle to one side. To Zouga

 her face seemed swollen to twice its normal size, and it was mottled a

 dark mulberry hue.

 At that moment a merciful little breeze came in through the doorway and

 turned her slowly on the rope to face the altar, so that Zouga could see

 only her lustrous golden hair which had come down and now hung to her

 waist. That was still beautiful.

 Cathy Ballantyne had never known such happiness as the months spent in

 the British South Africa Company camp on the Macloutsi river.

 She was the only woman among nearly seven hundred men, and a favourite

 of all of them. They called her "Missus", and her presence was eagerly

 sought at every social activity with which officers and men diverted

 themselves during the long term of waiting.

 The harsh conditions of camp life might have daunted another newly

 married girl of her age, but Cathy had known no others, and she turned

 the hut of daub and thatch that Ralph built for her into a cosy retreat

 with calico curtains in the glassless windows and woven grass native

 mats on the earth floor. She planted petunias on each side of the

 doorway, and the troopers of the column vied for the honour of watering

 them. She cooked over an open fire in the lean-to kitchen, and her

 invitations to dine were eagerly sought after by men who subsisted on

 canned bully beef and stamped maize meal.

 She glowed with all the attention and excitement, so that from being

 merely pretty, she seemed to become beautiful, which made the men

 cherish her the more.

 Then, of course, she had Ralph, and she wondered some nights as she lay

 awake and listened to his breathing, how she had ever lived without him.

 Ralph had the rank of major now, and he told her with a wink and an

 irreverent chuckle, "We are all colonels and majors, my girl. I'm even

 thinking of making old Isazi a captain." But he looked so handsome in

 his uniform with frogged coat and slouch hat and Sam Browne belt, that

 she wished he would wear it more often.

 With each day Ralph seemed to her to become taller, his body more

 powerful and his energy more abundant.

 Even when he was away down the line hustling up the wagons, setting up

 the heliograph stations, or meeting with the other directors of the

 British South Africa Company in Kimberley, she was not lonely. Somehow

 his presence seemed always with her, and his absence made anticipation

 of his return a sort of secret joy.

 Then suddenly he would be back, galloping into camp to sweep her up and

 toss her as high as if she were a child, before kissing her on the

 mouth.

 "Not in public," she would gasp and blush. "People are watching, Ralph."

 "And turning green with envy," he agreed, and carried her into the hut.

 When he was there, everything was a breathless whirl.

 He was everywhere with his long assured stride and merry infectious

 laugh, driving his men along with a word of encouragement or of banter,

 and occasionally with sudden murderous black rages.

 His rages terrified her, although they were never directed at her; and

 yet at the same time they excited her strangely. She would watch him

 with fearful fascination as his face swelled and darkened with passion,

 and his voice rose into a roar like a wounded bull. Then his fists and

 boots would fly and somebody would roll in the dust. A Afterwards she

 felt weak and trembly, and she would hurry away to the hut and draw the

 curtains and wait.

 When he came in, he would have that savage look on his face that made

 something flutter in the pit of her stomach, and it took all her will

 not to run to him, but to wait for him to come to her.

 "By God, Katie my girl," he said to her once as he leaned on his elbow

 over her, the sweat still glistening on his naked chest, and his

 breathing as rough as though he had run a race, "you may look like an

 angel, but you could teach the devil himself a trick or two."

 Though she prayed afterwards for strength to control the wanton

 sensations and cravings of her body, the prayers were perfunctory and

 lacked real conviction, and that lovely smug and contented feeling just

 would not go away.

 With Ralph it was excitement all the time, day and night, when they were

 alone and when they were in company. She loved to watch the deference

 with which other men treated him, rich and famous men older than he was

 like Colonel Pennefather and Doctor Leander Starr Jameson, who were the

 leaders of the column. But then, she told herself, so they should. Ralph

 was already a director of the Chartered Company, mister Rhodes" British

 South Africa Company, and when he sat down at the boardroom table in the

 De Beers building, it was in the company of lords and generals and of

 mister Rhodes himself, though Ralph grinned and told her wickedly,

 "Great men, Katie, but not one of them whose feet don't stink in hot

 weather, same as mine."

 A "You are awful, Ralph Ballantyne," she scolded, but she felt all

 puffed up with pride when she overheard two troopers talking of him and

 one said: "Ralph Ballantyne, there's a man for you, and no mistake."

 Then at night, after they had made boisterous unashamed love, they would

 talk in the darkness, sometimes through most of the night, and his

 dreams and plans were the more enchanting for she knew that he would

 make them come true.

 Her personal rapture was heightened by the mood of the seven hundred men

 around her, and each day's restraint as they waited for the word to move

 off increased the tension which gripped them all. Ralph's oxen brought

 up the guns, two seven-pounders, and the artillery fired shrapnel over

 the deserted veld beyond the camp, while the watchers cheered them as

 the fleecy cotton pods of smoking death opened prettily in the clear dry

 air.

 The four Maxim machine-guns were unpacked from their cases and

 de-greased, and then, on a memorable day, the monstrous steam engine

 came chugging into the encampment, dragging behind it the electric

 generator and the naval searchlight which would be just another

 precaution against night attack by the Matabele hordes.

 That night as she lay in his arms, Cathy asked Ralph the question they

 were all asking one another.

 "What will Lobengula do?"

 "What can he do?" Ralph stroked her hair, the way he might caress a

 favourite puppy. "He has signed the concession, taken his gold and guns,

 and promised Papa the roa d to Mashonaland."

 "They say he has eighteen thousand men waiting across the Shashi."

 "Then let them come, Katie, my lass. There are not a few amongst us who

 would welcome the chance to teach King Ben's buckaroos a sharp lesson."

 "That's a terrible thing to say," she said without conviction.

 "But it's the truth, by God."

 She no longer chided him when he blasphemed so lightly, for the days and

 ways of Khami Mission seemed to be part of a fading dream.

 Then one day, early in July of 1890, the mirror of a heliograph winked

 its eye across the dusty, sun-washed distances. It was the word for

 which they had waited all these months. The British Foreign Secretary

 had at last approved the occupation of Mashonaland by the

 representatives of the British South Africa Company.

 The long ponderous column uncoiled like a serpent.

 At its head rode Colonel Pennefather in company uniform, and at his

 right hand the guide Frederick Selous, whose duty it would be to take

 the column wide of any Matabele settlements, to cross the low malarial

 lands before the rains broke and to lead them up the escarpment to the

 sweet and healthy airs of the high plateau.

 The Union Jack unfurled above their heads and a bugler sounded the

 advance.

 "Heroes every one of them," Ralph grinned at Cathy.

 "But it's up to the likes of me to see our heroes through."

 His shirtsleeves were rolled high on his muscled arms and a

 disgracefully stained hat was cocked over one eye.

 "When I come back, we'll be richer by eighty thousand pounds," he told

 her, and lifted her off the ground with his embrace.

 "Oh Ralph, how I wish I were coming with you."

 "You know mister Rhodes has forbidden any women to cross the frontier,

 and you'll be a damned sight safer and more comfortable at Lily's Hotel

 in Kimberley with Jordan to keep an eye on you."

 "Then be careful, my darling," she cautioned him, breathless from his

 hug.

 "No need for that, Katie, my sweet. The devil looks after his own."

 "These are not men coming to dig holes." Gandang stood forth from the

 circle of indunas. "They are dressed as soldiers; they bring guns that

 can break down the granite hills with their smoke."

 "What did the king promise Lodzi?" demanded Bazo. at he may come in

 peace to look for gold. Why does he march against us like an army?"

 Bazo spoke for the young men. "Oh great King, the spears are bright and

 our eyes are red. We are fifteen thousand men; can the king's enemies

 stand against us?"

 Lobengula looked at his handsome eager young face.

 sometimes the most dangerous enemy is a hasty heart," he said, softly.

 "And at other times, Bull Elephant of Kurnalo, it might be a tardy spear

 arm."

 A shadow of irritation at importunate youth passed behind the king's

 eyes; then he sighed. "Who knows?" he agreed. "Who knows where the enemy

 lies?"

 "The enemy lies before you, great King; he has crossed the Shashi river

 and he has come to take your land from you," Somabula told him. And then

 Gandang stood again: "Let the spears go, Lobengula, Son of Mzilikazi,

 let your young men run, or as the sun will rise tomorrow, that surely

 will you live to regret it."

 "That I cannot do," Lobengula said softly. "Not yet. I cannot use the

 assegai when words may still suffice." He roused himself and his voice

 firmed.

 "Go, Gandang, my brother, take your hot-hearted son with you. Go to the

 leader of these soldiers and ask him why he comes into my lands in

 battle array, and bring his answer to me here."

 Frederick Selous rode ahead, a trooper with an axe following him, and he

 pointed out the trees to be cut.

 The trooper blazed them with a slash of the axe, and followed Selous on.

 The axemen came up behind them, fifty of them, riding in pairs. One man

 dismounted, handed his reins to his partner, spat on his already

 callused hands and, hefting the axe, addressed himself to the trunk of

 the doomed tree.

 While his axe thudded and the wood chips flew white as bone in the

 sunlight, the second man sat in the saddle, his rifle in his hands, and

 he watched the forest around him for the first plumed head and long

 tasselled shield to appear. When the tree crackled and toppled, the

 axeman mounted and they rode on to the next, where he took his turn on

 guard while his mate swung the axe. Behind them the bullock spans came

 plodding to chain the fallen trunks and drag them out of the road, and

 then the whole ponderous caravan rumbled forward.

 It was slow work, and on the third day Ralph rode to the head of the

 column to discuss with Selous the possibility of using the steam engine

 to haul the smaller trees, roots and all, from the sandy earth. They had

 left their horses with a trooper and walked forward for a better view of

 the way ahead when Ralph said quietly: "Stand your ground, mister

 Selous. Do not draw your pistol, and, in God's name, do not show any

 agitation."

 There were dark and moving shadows in the forest all around them, and

 then suddenly the dreaded long shields were there, forming a wall across

 their front.

 "Has the king killed any white ment" a deep voice challenged. "If he has

 not, then why has this impi of warriors crossed his border?"

 Tobengula has killed nobody," Ralph called back.

 "Then have the white men mislaid something of value that they come to

 seek it here?" Ralph said quietly to Selous. "I know this man. He is one

 of the king's senior indunas. The one with the red shield behind him is

 his son; between them they disposed of eight thousand men. It would be

 as well to tread warily, mister Selous. We are surrounded by an army."

 Then he addressed himself to the watching and waiting warriors: "The

 king has given us the road."

 "The king denies that he called an army to enter his domain."

 "We are not an army," Ralph denied, and Gandang threw back his head and

 laughed briefly and bitterly.

 Then he spoke again: "Hear me, Henshaw, no white man steps beyond this

 place without the word of Lobengula. Tell that to your masters."

 Ralph whispered briefly with Selous, and then faced Gandang again.

 "We will wait," he agreed, "for the king's word."

 "And we will watch while you wait," Gandang promise ominously, and at a

 gesture the warriors melted away into the forest again and it seemed

 they had never been.

 "Pull in the pickets," Colonel Pennefather ordered. "Put the wagons into

 laager. Ballantyne, can you get a message back to Tuhon the heliograph

 and have someone post up to Gubulawayo to find what are Lobengula's real

 intentions." And, as Ralph turned to hurry away, "Oh, one other thing,

 Ballantyne, can you start the generator and have the searchlight ready

 to sweep the area around the camp tonight. We don't want those fellows

 creeping up on us in the dark."

 Gandang and his son stood together on the crest of one of the little

 rocky kopjes that dotted the wide hot plain between the rivers.

 They were alone, although when Bazo turned his head and looked down the

 steep back-slope of the hill, he could see the bivouac of their combined

 impis. There were no cooking fires to disclose their presence to the

 white men; they would eat cold rations and sleep in darkness this night.

 The long, black ranks squatted with enforced patience, dense as hiving

 bees beneath the shading branches of the mopani.

 Bazo knew that he had only to lift his right arm above his shield to

 bring them to their feet and send them racing away, silent and ferocious

 as hunting leopards, and the thought gave him a savage joy. Reluctantly

 he turned back, and stood quietly with his shield not quite touching his

 father's.

 The little afternoon breeze coming up from the river stirred their war

 plumes, and they gazed down upon the laager of the white men.

 The bullocks had been penned within the circle of the wagons, and they

 could see the field guns and the Maxim machine-guns posted at the points

 of the barricade, their positions fortified with biscuit boxes and

 Ammunition cases from the wagonloads. The gun crews lounged near their

 weapons, yet somehow the whole scene appeared tranquil and unwarlike.

 "In the dark hour before the dawn, we could take them before they could

 stand to their guns," murmured Bazo.

 "It would be so quick, so easy."

 "We will wait on the king's word," his father replied, and then started

 and exclaimed.

 "What is it, my father?"

 Gandang lifted his assegai and pointed with it southwards, to the pale

 blue horizon, far beyond the Shashi river, to the faint line of hills,

 shaped as fantastically as the turreted towers of a fairy castle.

 On those far pale hills, something flickered and sparkled, a tiny speck

 of brightest white light, like a fire-fly in flight, or like the twinkle

 of the morning star.

 "The stars," Gandang whispered with superstitious awe, "the stars are

 shining on the hills."

 The little group of officers stood behind the tripod of the instrument

 and focused their telescopes on the distant twinkle of light.

 The heliograph operator called the message aloud, at the same time

 scribbling it on his signal pad. "Jove advises hold your position

 pending clarification Lobengula's intention." Jove was the code for

 mister Rhodes.

 "Very well." Pennefather closed his telescope with a snap. "Acknowledge

 message received and understood."

 The operator bent to the prism of the instrument and made a minute

 adjustment in its focus, turning one mirror to catch the sunlight and

 the second to reflect it directly towards the line of distant hills;

 then he seized the handle and the shutter clattered as it blinked the

 beam of sunlight, speeding the dots and dashes of the Morse code

 instantaneously across fifty miles of wilderness.

 Pennefather turned away and crossed briskly to the massive steam engine

 on its tall steel wheels. He looked up at Ralph on the footplate.

 "Are you ready to light up, Ballantyne?"

 Ralph removed the long black cheroot from between his teeth, and gave a

 parody of a military salute.

 "Weve got sixty pounds of pressure on the boiler.

 Another half hour and she'll be whistling out of the valve."

 "Very well." Pennefather hid his mystification. He neither understood

 nor admired these demoniacal contraptions "Just as long as we have light

 by nightfall."

 Gandang sat on his shield with his fur kaross of monkey skins over his

 shoulders. The winter evenings were cold, even here in the lowlands.

 There were no fires in the bivouac, and he could barely make out the

 faces of his junior commanders who sat opposite him, for the last flush

 of the sunset was fading from the western sky. "It was something that

 all of us saw, and something that we have never seen before."

 They murmured agreement.

 "It was a star, fallen from the heavens, and it lay upon the hills. We

 all saw it."

 "In the morning I will send two of our swiftest runners to the king. He

 must know of this terrible witchcraft."

 He stood up and let his kaross fall. "Now I am going He did not finish

 the sentence.

 Instead he dropped into a defensive crouch and flung up his shield to

 cover his head, and around him his warriors wailed like frightened

 children, their eyes wide and white, glinting in the flood of light that

 burst down upon them from the sky.

 The evening stars were washed out by the brilliance of the great white

 beam that reached from earth to heaven, and threw the hills into crisp

 black silhouette.

 "The sun has returned," Gandang croaked in religious terror. "It is the

 prophecy, the whole prophecy. The stone falcons have flown, the stars

 shine on the hills, and now the sun burns at midnight."

 Fort Salisbury 20th Sept. 1890 My darling Kate, Over two months since

 last I kissed you, and I am missing your cooking, amongst other things!

 You will see by the address that we have reached our destination,

 although we lost a man drowned, another to drink, a third bitten by a

 mamba and a fourth eaten by a lion, the Matabele touched not one of us.

 So Lobengula kept his word, to the surprise of all, and the

 disappointment of not a few. After one exchange of insults with old

 Gandang at the head of 8,000 of his bully boys, they let us pass, and

 the rest of it was rather tedious, just sweat and blisters!

 The great Selous almost lost us once, but then I showed him the pass

 through the hills which Isazi and I found when we made our little foray

 to Great Zimbabwe. Selous called it Providential Pass (providential that

 I was with him, I'd say), and he took the kudos (to which he is

 welcome). He will probably write another book about his feat!

 We reached Mount Hampden on the 6th instant, and it gave me a turn to

 think that Papa had been the first man here all those years ago.

 However, Pennefather, in his great wisdom, decided there was

 insufficient water there and moved us all twelve miles across here. Of

 course the man is a new chum, fresh out from home, so how is he to know

 that this place will turn into a swamp with the first rains.

 "I intend to be well away by then!) I have visited some God-forsaken

 places on my travels, but this one gets the coconut! It's infested with

 lions, and I've lost 15 oxen to them already. The grazing is sour-!"

 and, the remaining beasts are losing condition, oh, how I long for the

 sweet-veld of Matabeleland. Trust the Matabele to pick the best stock

 country, so I'll not be too surprised when others start thinking about

 Lobengula's herds and pastures. If only the cunning old brighter had

 thrown his war spear and given us the excuse, we might be hoisting the

 flag over Gubulawayo now, rather than over this dreary spot.

 Oh well! At least I am the only one here with whisky, two wagonloads of

 it, and doing a roaring trade at 10 shillings the bottle. You shall have

 the prettiest bonnet in Kimberley when I return, Katie my heart.

 The day Pennefather hoisted the flag the boys were free to go their own

 way, and what a stampede there was! Everyone intent to be the first to

 peg the gold reef we've heard so much about. Some of them are crawling

 back already, tail between their legs. This is no Eldorado, if there is

 gold, they'll have to work for it, and then, of course, mister Rhodes

 and his British South Africa Company will take half of it. Of course,

 they all were happy enough about the Company's cut when they signed on,

 but they are starting to bellyache about it now.

 We had a message on the "Helio" this morning that the British South

 Africa Company shares are selling for 3 pounds 5 shillings. each in

 London, and 5,000 new shareholders on the books in the first week. Well,

 all I can say is that whoever is paying that price has never seen Fort

 Salisbury!

 "Young Ballantyne," says Leander Starr Jameson to me, "you were damnably

 lucky to take half your fees payable in B.S.A. shares valued at 1 pound

 each."

 "Jarneson," says I, "it's strange how the harder I work and the harder I

 think, the luckier I get."

 So I have 40,000 B.S.A. shares, Katie my love, and you will find here

 attached a letter addressed to Aaron Fagan, my solicitor in Kimberley,

 instructing him to sell every last one of them. Take it around to him

 posthaste, that's a good girl. We'll be well rid of them at a profit of

 2 pounds 5 shillings each, and that's God's truth! Perhaps I'll buy you

 two bonnets when I come back!

 Oh, if only we had Matabeleland, no wonder Lobengula left Mashonaland to

 the Mashonas! Though they don't call it that any more. The new name that

 is all the rage is Rhodesia, no less!

 What an ungainly name it is, but no doubt mister Rhodes will be

 flattered and my brother Jordan will be delighted. They are welcome to

 my share of Rhodesia , Don't forget to take the letter to Fagan, mind!

 Nonetheless, there is still a penny to be made here.

 I have taken a partner, and we are building a General Store and

 Bar-room. He will run both businesses, as well as the Salisbury Depot

 for my wagons. He seems an honest lad, our Tom Meikle, and hard-working,

 so I have given him a wage of 5 pounds a month and ten percent of the

 profits, no point in spoiling him! just as cen soon as we get the

 building up and the stocks on the shelves, I will leave him to it and be

 on my way back to you.

 mister Rhodes wants me to contract to erect the telegraph line from

 Kimberley to Fort Salisbury for him at a price Of 25,000 pounds I reckon

 there will be 10,000 pounds profit in it. You shall have three bonnets,

 Katie, I swear it to you!

 I must leave here by the 10th of next month if I am to beat the rains.

 Once they start the mosquitoes are going to take over Fort Salisbury,

 and every river between here and the Shashi will be a flood that would

 break even Noah's heart.

 Thus I expect to reach Kimberley by the end of October, so take a good

 look at the floor, Katie my sweet, for when I get there you will be

 looking at nought but the ceiling for a week, and my word on it!

 Your loving husband, Ralph Ballantyne (Ex Major B.S.A. Police Retired!)

 We must have Matabeleland. It is as simple as that," said Zouga

 Ballantyne, and Jordan looked up sharply from his pad of Pitman's

 shorthand.

 His father sat in one of the deep buttoned leather chairs facing mister

 Rhodes" desk. Beyond him the green velvet curtains were open and held

 with yellow tasselled ropes of silk. The view from this top floor of the

 De Beers Company buildings took in a wide sweep of the dry Griqualand

 plain dotted with camel-thorn trees, and closer to hand the stacking

 ground where the blue earth from the Kimberley mine was left to

 deteriorate in the brilliant sunshine before being made to yield up its

 precious diamonds.

 Jordan had no eyes for the view now; his father's words had shocked him.

 But mister Rhodes merely hooded his eyes and slumped massively at his

 desk, gesturing for Zouga to continue.

 "The Company shares are six shillings in London, against three pounds

 fifteen on the day we raised the flag at Fort Salisbury three years ago,

 " ,I know, I know," Rhodes nodded.

 "I have spoken with the men that remain; I have spent the last three

 months travelling from Fort Victoria to Salisbury as you bid me. They

 won't stay, mister Rhodes.

 They won't stay unless you let them go in and finish it."

 "Matabeleland." Rhodes lifted his great shaggy head, and Jordan thought

 how terribly he had aged in these last three years. "Matabeleland," he

 repeated softly.

 "They are sick of the constant menace of Lobengula's hordes upon their

 borders; they have convinced themselves that the gold they did not find

 in Mashonaland lies under Lobengula's earth; they have seen Lobengula's

 fat herds of choice cattle and compared them to their own lean beasts

 that starve on the thin sour veld to which they are restricted"

 "Go on," Rhodes nodded.

 "They know that to reach them the telegraph and the railroad must come

 through Matabeleland. They are sick to the guts with malaria and the

 constant fear of the Matabele. If you want to keep Rhodesia, you must

 give them Matabeleland."

 "I have known this all along. I think we all have. Yet we must move

 carefully. We must be careful of the Imperial Factor, of Gladstone and

 of Whitehall." Rhodes stood up and began to pace back and forth before

 the shelves laden with leather-bound books titled in gold leaf.

 "We need to prepare ourselves. You must remember, Ballantyne, that we

 have technically only the right to dig for gold. As long as Lobengula

 does not molest us, we cannot declare war upon him."

 "But if Lobengula. were to interfere in any way with our people and

 their rights?"

 "That would be another matter." Rhodes stopped in front of Zouga's

 chair. "Then I should certainly end his game for him."

 "In the meantime the company's shares are six shillings each," Zouga

 reminded him.

 "We need an incident," said Rhodes. "But in the meantime we have to

 prepare and I dare not put it on the wires. I want you to leave

 immediately for Fort Victoria to speak to Jameson. "Rhodes swung his big

 head towards Jordan. "Do not make notes of this, Jordan," he ordered,

 and Jordan dutifully lifted his pencil from the pad.

 "Instruct Jameson to send me a series of telegrams on the new wires.

 Telegrams advising against war, that we can show the British Government

 and people when it is all over, but in the meantime tell him to prepare

 for war."

 Rodes turned back to Jordan. "Take an instruction, Jordan. Sell fifty

 thousand B.S.A. Company shares for what they will fetch. Jameson must

 have what he needs to do the business. Tell him that, Ballantyne. I

 shall be behind him all the way, but we need an incident."

 Ralph Ballantyne sat his horse on the heights of the escarpment which

 fell away before him, in a tumbled splendour of rocky hills and forests.

 The spring foliage turned the groves of msasa trees into clouds of pink

 and swelling scarlets, and the air was so clear and bright that he could

 pick out the telegraph line all the way to the horizon.

 The wires were a gossamer thread that glistened red gold in the

 sunlight, so fragile, so insubstantial, that it seemed impossible that

 they ran, arrow straight, six hundred miles and more to meet the

 raithead at Kimberley.

 Ralph's men had laid this line. The surveyors riding ahead to set up the

 beacons, the axemen following to clear the line, then the wagons

 bringing up the poles and finally the enormous spools of gleaming copper

 wire uncoiling endlessly.

 Ralph had hired good men, paid them well, and visited them less than

 once a month. Yet he was proud as he saw the wires sparkle and thought

 of the importance and significance of this achievement.

 Beside him his foreman cursed suddenly. "There it is!

 The thieving bastards!" And he pointed to where the line of telegraph

 poles marched up the side of one forested hill. Ralph had thought that

 cloud shadow had dimmed the sparkle of the copper wire up this slope,

 but now when he focused his binoculars upon them he saw that the poles

 had been stripped bare.

 "Come on," he said grimly, and rode forward. When they reached the

 bottom of the slope they found that one of the telegraph poles had been

 chopped through at the base, and felled like timber. The wires had been

 hacked IF through, and the scuff marks in the earth where it had been

 rolled into bundles had not yet been erased by the wind.

 Slowly they rode on up the slope, and Ralph did not have to dismount to

 read the sign of bare feet.

 "There were at least twenty of them," he said. "Women and children with

 them, a family outing, damn them to hell."

 "It's the women that put them up to it" the foreman agreed. "That wire

 makes beautiful bracelets and bangles.

 The black girls just love it."

 At the top of the slope another telegraph pole had been felled and the

 wire snipped through, "They have got away with five hundred yards of

 wire," Ralph scowled. "But next time it could be five thousand.

 Do you know who they are?"

 The foreman shrugged. "The local Mashona chief is Matanka. His village

 is just the other side of the valley.

 You can see the smoke from here., Ralph slipped his rifle out of its

 boot under his knee.

 It was a magnificent new Winchester Repeater Model 1890 with his name

 engraved and chased with gold into the metal of the block. He levered a

 round into the breech.

 "Let's go to see brother Matanka."

 He was an old man, with legs like a stork and a cap of pure white wool

 covering his head. He trembled with fear and fell on his knees before

 this furious young white man with a rifle in his hand.

 "Fifty head," Ralph told him. "And next time your people touch the wires

 it will be a hundred."

 Ralph and his foreman cut the fattest cattle out of Matanka's herds and

 drove them ahead of them, up the escarpment and into the little white

 settlement of Fort Victoria which had grown up mid-way between the

 Shashi river and Fort Salisbury.

 "All right," Ralph told his foreman. "You can take them from here. Turn

 them over to the auctioneer, we should get ten pounds a head for them."

 "That will cover the cost of replacing the wires fifty times over," the

 foreman grinned.

 "I don't believe in taking a loss when I don't have to," Ralph laughed.

 "Get on with you, I'll have to go down and square it with the gool

 doctor."

 Doctor Jameson's office, as administrator of the Charterlands of the

 British South Africa Company, was a wood and iron building with an

 untidily thatched roof directly opposite the only canteen in Fort

 Victoria.

 "Ah, young Ballantyne," Jameson greeted Ralph, and secretly enjoyed

 Ralph's frown of annoyance. He did not share the general high opinion of

 this youngster. He was too bumptious and too successful by a half, while

 physically he was all that Jameson was not; tall and broadshouldered,

 with a striking appearance and forceful Presence.

 The wags were saying that one day Ralph Ballantyne would own the half of

 the Charterland that Rhodes did not already have his brand on. However,

 even Jameson had to grant that if you wanted something done, no matter

 how difficult, and if you wanted it done swiftly and thoroughly, and if

 you were prepared to pay top dollar, then Ralph Ballantyne was your man.

 "Ah, Jameson." Ralph retaliated by dropping the mousy little doctor's

 title from the greeting, and by turning immediately to the other man in

 the room.

 "General Sint John." Ralph flashed that compelling smile.

 "How good to see you, sir! When did you get into Fort Victoria?"

 Mungo Sint John limped across the room to take Ralph's hand, and his

 single eye gleamed.

 "Got in this very morning."

 "Congratulations on your appointment, sir. We need a good soldier up

 here, the way things are going." Ralph's compliment was an oblique jibe

 at Doctor Jameson's own military aspirations. Rhodes had very recently

 appointed Mungo Sint John as the Company's Chief of Staff. He would be

 under Jameson's administration, naturally, but would be directly

 responsible for police and military affairs in the Charterlands of

 Rhodesia.

 "Did your men find the break in the wires?" Jameson interrupted them.

 "Bangles, and bracelets," Ralph nodded. "That's what happened to the

 wires. I have given the local chief a lesson that I hope-will teach him

 to behave himself. I fined him fifty head of cattle."

 Jameson frowned quickly.

 "Lobengula considers Matanka to be his vassal. He owns those cattle, the

 Mashona merely tend the herds on the king's behalf."

 Ralph shrugged. "Then Matanka will have some explaining to do, and

 rather him than me, and that's the truth., "Lobengula won't let this

 pass -" Jameson broke off, and the frown cleared. He began to pace up

 and down behind his desk with excited, hopping, bird-like steps.

 "Perhaps," he twitched at his scraggly little moustache, perhaps this

 is what we have been waiting for. Lobengula will not let it pass, nor,

 by God, will we." He paused and looked at Ralph. "How soon will you have

 the wires restored?"

 "By noon tomorrow," Ralph told him promptly.

 "Good! Good! We must get a message through to your father at Gubulawayo.

 If he protests to Lobengula that his vassals are stealing Company

 property, and informs him that we have fined him in cattle, what will

 Lobengula do?"

 "He will send an impi to punish Matanka."

 "Punish him"

 "Cut his head off, kill his men, rape his women and burn his village."

 "Exactly." Jameson punched his fist into his palm. "And Matanka is on

 Company ground and under protection of the British flag. It will be our

 duty, our bounden duty, to drive off Lobengula's men."

 "War!" said Ralph.

 "War," agreed Sint John softly. "Well done, young fellow.

 This is what we have been waiting for."

 "Ballantyne, can you give me a tender to provide wagons and supplies for

 an expeditionary force, say five hundred men; we'll need twenty-five

 wagons, six hundred horses, when we drive for Gubulawayo."

 "When do you expect to march?"

 "Before the rains." Jameson was decisive. "If we go, then we'll have to

 finish it before the rains break.,"

 "I will have a tender for you by the time the telegraph is reopened

 tomorrow., Ralph jumped down from the saddle and tossed his reins to the

 groom who came running.

 Although it was only a temporary lodging which Ralph used on his

 infrequent visits to check the progress of his construction gangs, his

 transport stages and his trading posts, yet it was the grandest house in

 Fort Victoria, with glass in the windows and insect mesh screening the

 doors.

 His spurs clattered on the steps as he stormed up onto the verandah, and

 Cathy heard him and came running with the baby on her hip.

 "You are home so soon," she cried delightedly, rebuttoning her bodice

 from the feeding.

 "Couldn't stay away from you two." He laughed and smacked a kiss on her

 mouth, then snatched the baby from her and tossed him high.

 "Do be careful." Cathy hopped anxiously to try and take him back, but

 Jonathan gurgled joyously and kicked with excitement, and a trickle of

 milk reappeared and ran down his chin.

 "Mucky little devil." Ralph held him high and sniffed at his son.

 "Both ends at once, by God. Here, Katie." He handed the infant to her

 and held her around the waist.

 "We are going to Gubulawayo," he said.

 "Who?" She looked up at him in confusion.

 "Sint John and the good doctor and I, and when we get there B.S.A.

 shares will go to five pounds. Last price I heard before the wires were

 cut was five shillings. The first message that goes out tomorrow is my

 buying order to Aaron Fagan, for fifty thousand British South Africans!"

 Bazo's impi came sweeping down out of the western forests, silent as

 shadows and murderous as wild hunting dogs.

 "Kill that dog Matanka," the king had ordered. "Kill him and all his

 men." And Bazo caught them in the dawn, as the first of them came out of

 their huts yawning and rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and then they

 chased the young girls cackling and shrieking like hens amongst the

 huts, and roped them in bunches.

 "And all his men," had been the king's order, and some of Matanka's men

 were working for the white men, at the Prince Mine, one of the very few

 paying gold reefs in Mashonaland. They were breaking and carrying the

 rock.

 "Do not interfere," Bazo told the mine overseer. "This is the king's

 business. No white man will be hurt, that is the king's order."

 And they chased the Mashona labourers into the crushing plant and

 stabbed them as they hid under the sorting-tables.

 They came racing down the telegraph line, five hundred red shields. The

 Mashona wiremen were unwinding the huge drums and stringing the shining

 strands.

 "No white men will be hurt," Bazo shouted as he let his young men run.

 "Stand aside, white men." But now Bazo was mad with blood and boastful

 with the killing fever. "This is not for you, white men. Not yet, white

 men, but your day will come."

 They dragged the Mashona down from the telegraph poles, and bayed about

 them like hounds tearing a fox to pieces, while the Mashona screamed to

 their white masters for protection.

 "Bring in the cattle, all Matanka's cattle," the king had ordered, and

 Bazo's men swept the Mashona pastures, and drove the sprawling

 multi-coloured herds back into the west in the clouds of their own dust;

 and with the herds were mingled some of the white men's cattle, for one

 beast looks like another, and the marks burned by hot iron into the hide

 meant nothing to the Matabele warriors.

 It was all done so swiftly that Jameson had to ride hard with his band

 of hastily assembled volunteers to catch them before they reached the

 frontier of the Charterland.

 He had thirty-eight men with him, and when he saw the horsemen, Bazo

 turned back and with the massed warriors at his back he greeted Jameson.

 "Sakubona, Daketela! I see you, Doctor! Fear not, by the king's orders

 no white man will be molested."

 But the volunteers bunched their horses, and there was the snick of

 breech blocks and the rattle of bolts as they loaded. Thirty-eight

 against five hundred, and they were jumpy and white-faced.

 The little doctor spurred forward, and Ralph murmured to Sint John: "By

 God, the man is a bantam cock, and he'll get us all into it yet."

 But Jameson showed no agitation as he stood in the stirrups and called:

 "Men of Matabele, why have you crossed the border?"

 "Hau, Daketela!"Bazo answered him with mock astonishment. "What border

 is this you speak of? Surely this land, all of it, belongs to Lobengula.

 There are no borders."

 "The men you have slaughtered are under my protection."

 "The men we killed were Mashona,"Bazo replied scornfully. "And the

 Mashona. are Lobengula's dogs, to kill or keep as he wishes." i'm "The

 cattle you have stolen belong to my people."

 "All the Mashona cattle belong to the king."

 Then Sint John shouted over him, "Careful, Jameson, there is treachery

 here, watch those men on your left."

 Some of Bazo's men had pressed forward, the better to see and to hear. A

 few of them were armed with ancient Martini-Henry rifles, probably those

 with which Rhodes had paid the king for his concession.

 Jameson swung his horse to face them.

 "Back!" he shouted. "Back, I say." He lifted his rifle to enforce his

 order, and one of the Matabele instinctively copied the gesture, ha

 threatening the little group of mounted white men with his rifle.

 Mungo Sint John flung up his rifle, and as it touched his shoulder he

 fired. The shot was a thunderous burst of sound in the dusty air, and

 the heavy bullet smashed into the Matabele's naked chest. His rifle

 clattered on the ground, and a little feather of bright crimson sprayed

 from his chest. The warrior pirouetted slowly, almost gracefully, until

 they looked into the shocking gape of the exit wound between his

 shoulder blades.

 Then the warrior collapsed, and his legs kicked convulsively.

 "Do not touch a white man!" Bazo bellowed into the terrible silence, but

 not more than half a dozen of the horsemen understood the language. To

 the others it sounded like a killing order. The crash of volleyed rifle

 fire mingled with the trample of hooves and whinny of panicky horses.

 The banks of blue gunsmoke blended with the billowing pale dust and the

 rippling plumes of running warriors.

 Bazo's impi was streaming away into the forest, carrying their wounded

 with them, and slowly the rifle fire stuttered and faded, and the horses

 quietened. The little group sat, silent and appalled, and stared at the

 Matabele dead strewn across the open ground ahead of them. They looked

 like the abandoned toys of a petulant child.

 Ralph Ballantyne had not drawn the gold-engraved Winchester from its

 boot, and there was a long unlit cheroot between his white teeth. He

 spoke around it, smiling ironically, but his eyes were cold and green

 and hard.

 "I count thirty-three of "em down, Doctor Jim," he said loudly. "Not a

 bad bag really, even though they were sitting birds." And he struck a

 Vesta against the thigh of his riding breeches and lit the cheroot; then

 he gathered the reins and turned his horses's head back towards the

 fort.

 Lobengula turned the small canvas bag of sovereigns in his narrow

 graceful hands. He stood in the centre of the goat kraal, and there were

 only three Matabele with him, Gandang and Somabula and Babiaan. The

 others he had sent away.

 Before him stood a little white group. Zouga had brought Louise with him

 to the meeting. He had not dared leave her alone in the cottage beyond

 the stockade of the royal kraal, not with the mood of the Matabele as it

 had been ever since Jameson's massacre at Fort Victoria.

 Facing the king also, but a little separated from the other couple,

 stood Robyn and Clinton Codrington.

 Still fingering the bag of gold, Lobengula turned his face to Robyn.

 "See, Nomusa, these are the gold queens that you advised me to accept

 from Lodzi."

 "I am deeply ashamed, oh King," Robvn whispered.

 "Tell me faithfully, did I give away my land when I signed the paper?"

 "No, King, you gave away only the gold beneath it."

 "But how can men dig for gold without the land over it" Lobengula asked,

 and Robyn was silent and miserable.

 "Nomusa, you said that Lodzi was a man of honour.

 So why does he do these things to me? His young men swagger across my

 land and call it their own. They shoot down my warriors, and now they

 gather a great army against me, with wagons and guns and thousands of

 soldiers. How can Lodzi do this to me, Nomusa?"

 "I cannot answer you, oh King. I deceived you as I was myself deceived."

 Lobengula sighed. "I believe you, Nomusa. There is still no quarrel

 between us. Bring your family, all your people here to my kraal that I

 may protect you through the dark times that lie ahead."

 "I do not deserve the king's consideration." She choked on the words.

 "No harm will come to you, Nomusa. You have Lobengula's word upon it."

 He turned slowly back to Zouga.

 "This gold, Bakela. Does it pay me for the blood of my young men?" And

 he threw the bag at Zouga's feet. "Pick UP your gold, Bakela, and take

 it back to Lodzi."

 "Lobengula, I am your friend, and I tell you this as a friend. If you

 refuse the monthly payment, then Lodzi will look upon it as a breaking

 of faith."

 "Was not the killing of my young men a breaking of faith, Bakela?"

 Lobengula asked sadly. "If it was not, then my people believe it to be

 so. The regiments are gathered, so that they darken the Hills of the

 Indunas; they wear their plumes and carry their assegais and their guns,

 and their eyes are red. The blood of Matabele has been spilled, Bakela,

 and the enemies of the king gather against him."

 "Hear me, oh King, think a while before you let your young men run. What

 do they know of fighting Englishmen?" Zouga was angry now, and the scar

 on his cheek burned red as a welt raised by the lash of a whip.

 "My young men will eat them up," said Lobengula simply. "As did the Zulu

 at the Hill of the Little Hand."

 "After the Little Hand came Ulundi," Zouga reminded him. "The earth was

 black with the Zulu dead, and they put chains on the legs of the Zulu

 King and sent him to an island far across the sea."

 "Bakela, it is too late. I cannot hold my young men, I have held them

 too long. They must run now."

 "Your young men are brave when there are old Mashona women to stab, and

 young babies to disembowel, but they have never met real men."

 Gandang hissed with anger behind the Icing's shoulder, but Zouga went on

 firmly.

 "Send them home to dally with their women and preen their feathers, for

 if you let them run, then you will be lucky if you live to see your

 kraal burning and your herds being driven off."

 This time all three of the senior indunas hissed, and Gandang started

 forward impulsively, but Lobengula spread his hand to restrain him.

 "Bakela is a guest of the king," Lobengula said. "While he stands in my

 kraal, every hair of his head is sacred."

 But the king's eyes had never left Zouga's face. "Go, Bakela, leave this

 day and take your woman with you.

 Go to Daketela and tell him that my impis are ready. If he crosses the

 Gwelo river, I will let my young men go."

 "Lobengula, if I leave then the last link between black men and white

 men is broken. There will be no more talking. It will be war."

 "Then let it be so, Bakela."

 It was hard riding. They took the road that Ralph Ballantyne's wagons

 had recently pioneered from Fort Salisbury to Gubulawayo. They left all

 their furniture and possessions in the cottage outside the stockade of

 the king's kraal, and they rode light, with a blanket roll on the pommel

 of the saddle and a food bag on one of the spare horses that Jan Cheroot

 brought up behind on a lead rein.

 Louise rode like a man, astride and uncomplaining, and on the fifth day,

 unexpectedly, they came up with Jameson's column in camp around the

 skeletal headgear of Iron Mine Hill, where the volunteers from Salisbury

 and Fort Victoria had joined up.

 "Zouga, is that how Jameson is going to challenge Lobengula's impi?"

 The little encampment looked pathetically inadequate.

 There were two dozen wagons, and on the canvas tents of most of them

 Zouga could make out the insignia of Ralph's transport company. But he

 pointed to the corners of the laager.

 ,"Machine-guns," he said. "Six of them, and they are worth five hundred

 men each. They have field guns also, look at their emplacements."

 "Oh Zouga, do you have to go with them?"

 "You know that I do."

 They rode down into the camp, and as they passed the pickets there was a

 hail that startled the sentries and made Louise's horse shy and skitter.

 "Papa!" Ralph came hurrying from the nearest wagon.

 "My boy." Zouga jumped down from the saddle, and they embraced happily.

 "I should have known you would be wherever there was something doing."

 Louise bent from the saddle and Ralph brushed her cheek with his fine

 moustache.

 "I still find it difficult to believe that I have a stepmother so young

 and beautiful."

 "You are my favourite son," she laughed. "But I'd love you more if you

 could arrange a hot bath." From behind the canvas screen Louise kept

 calling for more buckets of hot water, and Zouga had to carry them from

 the fire and top-up the galvanized hip-bath in which she sat with her

 thick, dark braids piled on top of her head, glowing pinkly from the

 almost boiling water and taking full part in the conversation beyond the

 screen.

 Ralph and Zouga sat at a camp table with a blue enamel pot of coffee and

 a bottle of whisky between them.

 "We have six hundred and eighty-five men all in."

 "I warned Rhodes that he would need fifteen hundred," Zouga frowned.

 "Well, there are another five hundred volunteers under Major Goold-Adams

 ready to move off from Macloutsi."

 "They would never get here in time to take a part in the fighting."

 Zouga shook his head. "What about lines of supply and reinforcements?

 What happens if we get into trouble with the Matabele?

 What chance of a relieving force?"

 Ralph grinned devilishly. "I am the whole commissariat, you don't think

 I would split the profits with anyone else, do you?"

 "Re-supply? Relieving force?"

 Ralph spread his hands in negation. "The doctor informs me that we don't

 need them. God and mister Rhodes are on our side."

 "If it goes against us, it will be death and mutilation for every man,

 woman and child this side of the Shashi river. Lobengula's impis are mad

 for war now. Neither the king nor his indunas will be able to control

 them once they begin."

 "That thought had occurred to me," Ralph admitted. "i have Cathy and

 Jonathan at Fort Victoria, packed and ready, old Isazi is with them and

 one of my best young men. I have fresh relays of mules posted all the

 way from Fort Vicky to the Shashi. The hour Jameson gives the word for

 the column to march, my family will be on their way south."

 "Ralph, I am taking Louise to Fort Victoria. Can she stay with Cathy and

 leave with her?"

 "Nobody asked me," Louise called from behind the screen, and there was

 an angry splash of water. "I took a vow, until death us do part, Zouga

 Ballantyne."

 "You also vowed to love, honour and obey," Zouga reminded her, and

 winked at Ralph. "I hope you don't suffer the same insubordination from

 your wife."

 "Beat them regularly and give them plenty of babies," Ralph advised. "Of

 course, Louise must go with Katie, but you had better leave for Fort

 Vicky right away, the Doctor is champing at the bit to settle

 Lobengula's hash."

 He broke off, and gestured at a trooper who was hurrying towards their

 wagon across the laager. "And it looks as though he has heard of your

 arrival at last."

 The trooper saluted Zouga breathlessly. "Are you Major Zouga Ballantyne,

 sir? Doctor Jameson asks you please to come to his tent at your earliest

 convenience."

 Doctor Jameson jumped up from the travelling-desk and bustled across the

 tent to meet Zouga.

 "Ballantyne, I was worried about you. Have you come directly from

 Lobengula? What are the chances? What force do you reckon he disposes?"

 He broke off and scolded himself with a deprecatory chuckle. "What am I

 thinking of. Let me get you a drink, man!"

 He led Zouga into the tent. "You know General Sint John, of course -"

 And Zouga stiffened, his face expressionless.

 "Zouga." Mungo Sint John lounged in a canvas camp chair, but he made no

 effort to rise or offer his hand.

 "How long it is. But you are looking well. Marriage agrees with you, I

 have not had the opportunity to congratulate you."

 "Thank you." Zouga nodded. Naturally he had known that Mungo was the

 Doctor's Chief of Staff, but still he was not ready for his anger and

 bitterness at the confrontation. This was the man who had kept Louise as

 a mistress, had held her tender precious body. He found that he was

 trembling, and he thrust the picture from his mind, but it was replaced

 instantly by the image of Louise as he had found her in the desert, her

 skin burned off her in slabs by the sun, and it was Mungo Sint John who

 had let her go and made no effort to follow her.

 "I have heard that your wife is in camp with you -" Sint John's single

 eye glowed maliciously. "You must dine with me tonight; it will be

 gratifying to discuss old times."

 "My wife has had a long, hard journey." Zouga kept his voice level; he

 did not want to give Mungo the satisfaction of knowing how angry he was.

 "And in the morning I am taking her into Fort Victoria."

 "Good!" Jameson cut in briskly. "That suits my own plans, I need a

 trustworthy man to put a message on the telegraph line for mister

 Rhodes.

 But now, Ballantyne, what is the news from Gubulawayo, and how do you

 rate our chances?"

 "Well, Doctor Jim, Lobengula's ready for you, his young men are spoiling

 for a fight, and you have a scanty enough force here. in the ordinary

 way I would say that to take it into Matabeleland without reinforcements

 or a relieving force in the offing would be suicide.

 However "However?" Jameson demanded eagerly.

 "Four of Lobengula's regiments, those he sent against Lewanika, the king

 of the Barotse, are still on the Zambezi, and Lobengula will not be able

 to use them."

 "Why not?"

 "Smallpox," Zouga said. "It's broken out in those regiments, and he dare

 not recall them to the south. They can take no part in the fighting."

 "Half the Matabele army out of it," Jameson exulted.

 "That's a nudge from on high, Sint John, what do you think?

 "I would say it's still a risk, a damnable risk. But think of the stake.

 A whole country to be won with all its lands and herds and gold. I'd say

 if we are ever to march, we must march now."

 "Ballantyne, your sister, the missionary woman, what's her name,

 Codrington, is she still at Khami? Is her family there with her?"

 Zouga nodded, mystified, and Jameson snatched up a pencil and scribbled

 a message on his pad. Then he tore off the sheet and handed it to Mungo

 Sint John. Mungo read it and smiled. He looked like a bird of prey,

 beaknosed and fierce.

 "Yes," he said. "Perfect." He passed the sheet to Zouga.

 Jameson had written in block capitals.

 URGENT FOR JOVE MATABELE REGIMENTS MASSED TO ATTACK STOP ENGLISH WOMEN

 AND CHILDREN IN THE POWER OF THE MATABELE TYRANT STOP IMPERATIVE WE

 MARCH AT ONCE TO SAVE THEM REPLY SOONEST "Even Labouchere couldn't

 quibble with that," Zouga emarked wryly. Labouchere was the London

 editor of Truth magazine, a champion of the oppressed and one of Rhodes"

 most eloquent and persistent adversaries. Zouga proffered the sheet, but

 Jameson waved it back.

 "Keep it. Send it. I don't suppose you could leave this evening?"

 Jameson asked wistfully.

 "It will be dark in an hour, and my wife is exhausted."

 "Very well," Jameson agreed. "But you will return here as soon as you

 can with mister Rhodes" reply?"

 "Of course."

 "And there will be something else I want you to do on your return, a

 most important assignment."

 "What is it?"

 "General Sint John will explain." And Zouga turned suspiciously to

 Mungo.

 Mungo's manner was suddenly placatory. "Zouga, there's not one of us who

 hasn't read your book Hunter's Odyssey. I would say that it's the bible

 of anybody wanting to know about this country and its people."

 "Thank you." Zouga was unbending still.

 "And one of the most interesting sections is the description of your

 visit to the oracle of the Umlimo in the hills south of Gubulawayo."

 "The Matopos," Zouga told him.

 "Yes, of course, the Matopos. Could you find your way back to the

 witch's cavern? After all, it has been over twenty-five years?"

 "Yes, I could find it again." Zouga did not hesitate.

 "Excellent," Jameson interrupted. "Come along, Sint John, do tell him

 why." But Mungo seemed to digress.

 "You know the old Zulu who works for your son "Isazi, Ralph's head

 driver?" Zouga asked.

 "That's the one. Well, we captured four Matabele scouts and we put Isazi

 in the stockade with them. He can pass for a Matabele, so the prisoners

 spoke freely in front of him. One of the things we learnt is that the

 Umlimo has called all the witch doctors of the nation to a ritual in the

 hills."

 "Yes," Zouga agreed. "I heard of it before I left Gubulawayo. The Umlimo

 is preaching war, and promises a charm to the impis that will turn our

 bullets to water."

 Ah, so it's true then." Mungo nodded, and then, thoughtfully: "Just what

 influence does this prophetess have?"

 "The Umlimo is a hereditary figure, a sort of virgin demi-deity that has

 her origins long before the arrival of the Matabele in this land,

 perhaps a thousand years or more ago. First Mzilikazi and then Lobengula

 have fallen under her spell. I have even heard it whispered that

 Lobengula served an apprenticeship in sorcery under the Umlimo's

 guidance, in the Matopos."

 "Then she does wield power over the Matabele?"

 "Immense power. Lobengula makes no important decision without her

 oracle. No impi would march without her charms to protect them."

 "If she were to die on the day we march into Matabeleland?"

 "It would throw the king and his warriors into consternation. They would

 probably act recklessly. The Umlimo's charms would perish with her; her

 advice might turn like a serpent and strike the receiver.

 They would be demoralized, and it would take at least three months to

 choose a prophetess to replace her. During that time the nation would be

 vulnerable."

 "Zouga, I want you to take a party of mounted men the toughest and the

 best we have. I want you to ride to the witch's cave and destroy her and

 all her witch doctors."

 Will Daniel was Zouga's sergeant. He was a Canadian who had been twenty

 years in Africa without losing his accent. He had fought the tribes on

 the Fish river and in Zululand. He boasted that he had killed three of

 Cetewayo's men with a single shot at Ulundi and made his tobacco pouch

 from the scalp of one of them. He had been in the Gazaland rebellion and

 fought at the Hill of the Doves against the free burghers of the

 Transvaal Republic. Wherever there had been trouble and shooting, Will

 Daniel had forged his bloody reputation. He was a big man, heavy in the

 gut, prematurely bald with large round ears that stood out from his

 polished scalp like those of a wild dog. His fists were gnarled, his

 legs bowed from the saddle " and he wore a perpetual wide white grin

 which never touched his cold little eyes.

 "You don't have to like or trust him," Mungo Sint John had advised

 Zouga. "But he is the man for the job."

 With Will Daniel went his henchman, Jim Thorn, half Will's size but

 every bit as vicious. A skinny little Cockney with the grey tones of the

 slum-dweller so deeply etched into his gaunt melancholy face that five

 thousand African suns had been unable to erase them. Doctor Jameson had

 released him from the Fort Victoria gaol, where he was waiting trial for

 beating a Mashona servant to death with a rhinoceros-hide siambok. His

 pardon depended on his conduct during the campaign. "So you can rely on

 him to do whatever needs doing," Mungo had pointed out to Zouga.

 The other thirteen troopers were men of a similar type.

 They had all volunteered under Doctor Jim's Victoria Agreement and

 signed the enlistment document, a document which Jameson made sure

 remained secret. No copy of it went to the High Commissioner in Cape

 Town nor to Gladstone's Government in Whitehall, for it promised the

 volunteers a share of Lobengula's land and cattle and treasures; the

 word "loot" was specifically mentioned in the text.

 On the first night out Will Daniel had come silently to where Zouga

 slept a little apart and, as he stooped over Zouga's recumbent form, a

 wiry arm had whipped suddenly around his neck and the muzzle of a Webley

 revolver was thrust under his ribs with sufficient force to drive the

 air from his lungs.

 "Next time you creep up on me, I'll kill you," Zouga hissed into his

 face; and Will's teeth flashed in the moonlight as he grinned

 appreciatively.

 "They told me you were a sharp one."

 "What do you want?"

 "Me and the boys want to sell our land rights, three thousand morgen

 each, that's ninety thousand acres. You can have them for a hundred

 each."

 "You haven't earned them yet."

 "That's a chance you gotta take, skipper."

 "I thought you were on guard duty, sergeant."

 "Well, it was just for a moment, sir."

 "Next time you leave your post, I'll shoot you myself, without bothering

 about a court martial."

 Daniel stared into his face for a moment.

 "Yep, I reckon you would too," Will grinned mirthlessly.

 Zouga led the patrol south and westwards through the forests where once

 long ago he had hunted the wandering herds of elephant. Now the tuskers

 were all gone, and even the herds of lesser game were wild from the

 unrestrained hunting of the new settlers and they scattered at the first

 approach of the small party of horsemen.

 Zouga avoided the established roads between the Matabele regimental

 towns, and when they had to pass close to a settlement or the cultivated

 lands surrounding it, they did so at night. Though he knew that the

 impis had all answered Loberigula's call and were already assembled at

 Thabas Indunas, still he felt a vast relief when the granite domes of

 the Matopos rose above the treetops ahead of them and in single file his

 horsemen followed him into one of the steep-sided valleys.

 That night there was a deputation of four troopers led by Will Daniel

 and Jim Thorn.

 "The boys have all voted, skipper. We will take a hundred for the lot."

 Will grinned ingratiatingly. "There's not one of us have the price of a

 drink to celebrate when we get home, and you have that money belt around

 your belly. it must be damned heavy by now, and no good it will do you

 if a Matabele sniper puts a bullet in your back."

 The smile was still on Will's face, but the threat was naked in his

 eyes. If Zouga did not buy their land grants, it might be a bullet in

 the back. They would divide up the contents of his money belt anyway.

 Zouga considered defying the big ugly sergeant, but there were fifteen

 of them. The gold in his belt could be his death warrant. He was in

 enough danger from the Matabele.

 "I have seventy-five sovereigns in my belt," he said grimly.

 "Fine," Will agreed. "You've got yourself a bargain, Major."

 Zouga wrote out a contract of land grant sale on the back page of his

 message pad, and twelve of them signed it. Will Daniel and two other

 illiterates made their marks, and then they squabbled over the division

 of the gold sovereigns from Zouga's belt. Zouga was relieved to be rid

 of them, and as he returned the pad to his saddlebag, he realized

 abruptly that, if those grants were valid, then Will Daniel was right.

 He had got a bargain. He decided that when he rejoined Jameson's column,

 he would buy up all the other grants that were on offer from any of the

 rootless drifters who wanted to sell for the price of a bottle of

 whisky.

 Zouga had forgotten just how intense were the peculiar brooding silences

 of the magical Matopos hills. The silence was a thing of weight and

 substance that made their spirits quail. No bird twittered or danced

 upon a twig in the dense undergrowth that pressed in upon the narrow

 path, and no breeze reached into the depths of the granite-sided

 valleys.

 The silence and the heat wcighed even upon the hard and unsusceptible

 men who followed Zouga in single file. They rode with their rifles held

 across their laps, their eyes narrowed against the glare from the

 sparkling chips of mica in the granite walls, watchful and anxious, the

 dense dark green bush about them charged with a nameless menace.

 At times the narrow game trails they were following pinched out or ended

 abruptly in the gut of a valley, and they were forced to retrace their

 route and try another; but always Zouga kept working south and west.

 Then, on the third day, he was rewarded.

 He cut the broad beaten road that led from Gubulawayo to the hidden

 valley of the Umlimo. It was wide and smooth enough for Zouga to spur

 his horse into a canter. At Zouga's orders, his troopers had muffled

 their equipment, and put leathers over the hooves of their mounts, so

 the only sound was the creak of saddlery and the occasional brush and

 whip of an overhanging branch.

 The earlier uneasiness was gone now, and they leaned forward in their

 saddles, eager as hunting dogs on the leash with a hot scent in their

 nostrils. Jameson had promised them a bonus of twenty guineas each and

 all the loot that they could carry away from the valley of the Umlimo.

 Zouga began to recognize landmarks that he passed.

 There was a pile of rocks, the largest of them the size of Sint Paul's

 dome, and three others, graded down in size, all of them weathered to

 almost perfect spheres and balanced one upon the other, and he knew they

 would reach the entrance to the valley before noon. He halted the

 patrol and let them snatch a quick meal standing at their horses" heads

 as he went down the line checking their equipment and assigning each of

 them a separate task.

 "Sergeant, you and trooper Thorn are to stay close behind me. We will be

 the first through the pass and into the valley. There is a small village

 in the centre of it, and there may be Matabele amongst the huts. Don't

 stop for them, even if there are warriors with them, leave them for the

 others. Ride straight on to the cave at the end of the valley; we must

 find the witch before she can escape."

 "This witch, what does she look like, skipper?"

 "I am not sure, she may be quite young, probably naked."

 "You leave "er to me, mate." Jim Thorn grinned lasciviously and nudged

 Will, but Zouga ignored him.

 "Any woman you find in the cave will be the witch.

 Now don't be put off by the sound of wild animals, or strange voices,

 she is a skilled ventriloquist." He went on, giving precise details, and

 ended grimly: "Our orders are harsh, but they may eventually save the

 lives of many of our comrades by breaking the morale of the Matabele

 fighting impis., They mounted again, and almost immediately the road

 began to narrow so that the branches brushed their stirrups as they

 passed, and Zouga's horse stumbled in a narrow stream, clumsy with the

 leathers over its hooves.

 Then he was through and he looked up the sheer granite cliff that

 blocked their way. The entrance to the passage through the rock was a

 dark vertical cleft and high above it a thatched watch-hut was perched

 in a niche of the granite. [ As he stared up at it, Zouga saw an

 indistinct movement on the ledge.

 "Look out above!" Even as he yelled, a dozen black men appeared on the

 lip of the cliff, and each of them hurled a bundle of what looked like

 staves out over the edge.

 They scattered as they fell, and the steel sparkled as the weighted

 heads dropped, points first, towards them.

 There was a fluting sound in the air all around them, soft as swallows"

 wings, then the rattle of steel against rock and the thud of the points

 into the earth beneath the hooves of the horses.

 One of the steel-headed javelins caught a trooper in the side of his

 neck, driving down behind the collar bone, deep into one lung so that

 when he tried to scream the blood gagged him and bubbled out over his

 chin. His horse reared and whinnied wildly, and he fell backwards out of

 the saddle; and then all was milling, shouting confusion on the narrow

 track.

 Through it Zouga craned to watch the ledge, and saw the defenders lining

 the lip again, each with another bundle of javelins on his shoulder.

 Zouga dropped his reins and used both hands to aim his rifle vertically

 upwards.

 He emptied the magazine, firing as rapidly as he could pump cartridges

 into the breech, and though his aim was spoiled by the dancing horse

 under him, one of the men on the ledge arched over backwards with his

 arms windmilling wildly and then fell free, writhing and twisting and

 shrieking in the air until he hit the rock in front of zouga's horse,

 and his screams and struggles ceased abruptly.

 The rest of the men on the ledge scattered away, and Zouga waved the

 empty rifle over his head.

 "Forward! he yelled. "Follow me!" And he plunged into the forbidding

 crevice that split the cliff vertically from base to crest.

 The passage was so narrow that his stirrup irons struck sparks from the

 rock walls on each side of him, but he looked back and saw Will Daniel

 pounding along behind.

 He had lost his slouch hat. His bald head was washed with sweat, and he

 was grinning like a hungry hyena as he reloaded his rifle from the

 bandolier across his chest.

 The passage turned sharply, and the white sand that floored it splashed

 up under the hooves, and the mica chips sparkled even in the gloom.

 Ahead of Zouga a tiny freshet of clear water fountained from the rock,

 and his horse gathered its front feet under its chest and jumped the

 stream easily; then suddenly they burst out from the narrow passage,

 back into the sunlight again.

 The hidden valley of the Umlimo lay in a green basin below them, the

 little village of huts at its centre; and in the base of the cliff

 beyond it, a mile or so away, Zouga could make out the low entrance of

 the cavern, dark as the eye cavity in a bleached skull. It was all

 exactly as he remembered it.

 "Troop, into line wheel!" he shouted as his horsemen galloped out into

 the open behind him; and they swung into extended formation, facing the

 valley, the rifles unsheathed and cocked, impatient and fierce as they

 saw before them the prize they had come so far to find.

 "Amadoda!" shouted Will Daniel, pointing at the band of warriors that

 were trotting out of the village to face the line of horsemen.

 "Twenty of them," Zouga counted swiftly. "They'll give us no trouble."

 And then he stood in his stirrups. "Walk march, forward!"

 The horsemen moved down the slope, keeping their line, while the

 warriors lifted their shields high and raced to meet them.

 "Troop, halt." Zouga ordered when the nearest Matabele was a hundred

 paces ahead. "Pick your targets."

 The first volley, carefully aimed by hard and experienced soldiers,

 scythed the line of charging warriors like the reaper's steel; and they

 went down, falling over their shields, plumes tumbling from their heads,

 assegais pinning harmlessly into the earth, and yet a handful of them

 came on without checking.

 "Fire at will!" Zouga called, and looked over the sights of his rifle at

 a bounding Matabele, watching him grow in size with every pace, seized

 by a strange reluctance to kill a brave man such as this one.

 Jee! the Matabele yelled defiantly, and raised his shield to clear his

 spear arm. Zouga shot him in the notch of bone at the base of his throat

 and the Matabele spun sharrly round, hit the ground with one shoulder

 and rolled against the legs of Zouga's horse.

 Half a dozen of the Matabele had broken in the face of those deadly

 volleys, and were running back towards the village. The others were

 strewn about in front of the line of horsemen.

 "After them." Zouga hardly raised his voice above a conversational tone.

 "Forward! Charge!"

 "Sergeant Daniel. Trooper Thorn, to the cave." He swung his horse's head

 to gallop clear of the cluster of huts, and there was the body of one of

 the fallen Matabele directly in his path. He altered course again to

 miss it, and both Thorn and Daniel pulled a length ahead of him.

 Then the Matabele rolled lithely to his feet, and dodged in front of

 Zouga. Playing dead was an old Zulu trick, and Zouga should have been

 ready for it. But his rifle was in his left hand, and he tried to get it

 across, at the same time trying to turn his horse and shouting an

 impotent challenge at the warrior.

 The Matabele extended his spear arm stiffly and let the running horse

 impale itself upon the broad silver blade. It went deeply into the

 heaving chest between the front legs, and the horse reeled from the blow

 and then went over on its side.

 Zouga barely had time to kick his feet out of the irons and jump clear

 before the carcass hit the earth with all four legs kicking briefly at

 the sky.

 Zouga landed badly, but gathered himself and whirled to face the

 warrior. He was only just in time to deflect the blood-smeared assegai

 as the Matabele struck at his belly. The steel rang against the barrel

 of his rifle and then they were straining chest to chest.

 The man smelled of woodsmoke and ochre and fat, and his body was hard as

 carved ebony and slippery as a freshly caught catfish. Zouga knew he

 could not hold him for more than a few seconds, and with one hand on the

 muzzle and the other on the breech Zouga rammed the barrel of the rifle

 up under the man's chin into his bulging corded throat, and hooked

 desperately with the wel of his spur for the ankle.

 They went over backwards, Zouga on top, and he threw all his weight onto

 the rifle at the moment they hit the hard earth, savagely driving it

 into the Matabele's throat, and the neck broke with a crunch like a

 walnut in a silver nutcracker. The warrior's lids fluttered down over

 the smoky bloodshot eyes and the body went limp under Zouga's chest.

 Zouga pushed himself to his feet and looked around him quickly. His

 troopers were amongst the huts, and there was the thudding of scattered

 rifle fire as they ffnished off the survivors of that gallant but futile

 charge.

 He saw one of his men chase a scampering old naked crone, her empty dugs

 swinging and her thin legs almost giving under her with terror. He rode

 her down, and then backed his horse up to trample her, shouting and

 swearing with excitement and firing down into the frail, withered body

 that lay crushed against the earth.

 Beyond the village, Zouga saw two horses going up the slope towards the

 base of the cliff at full gallop, and even as he started forward, they

 reached it and Daniel and Thorn jumped from the saddles and disappeared

 into the mouth of the cavern.

 It was half a mile from where Zouga had fallen to the base of the cliff.

 He reloaded his rifle as he ran. The fight with the Matabele had shaken

 him, and his riding boots hampered each step. It took him many long

 minutes to toil up the slope to where Daniel and Thorn had left their

 horses, and by then he was badly winded.

 He leaned against the stone portal of the cavern, peering into the black

 and threatening depths, while each breath he drew jarred his whole body.

 Tumultuous echoes boomed out of the blackness of the cavern, the shouts

 of men and the bellowing and snarling of wild animals, the screams of a

 woman in terrible anguish and the crash of rifle fire.

 Zouga pushed himself away from the cliff and stooped through the

 entrance. Almost immediately he stumbled over a body. It was that of an

 old man, his hair pure white and his skin wrinkled like a dried prune.

 Zouga stepped over him, into a puddle of his dark, sticky blood.

 As he moved forward, Zouga's eyes accustomed to the gloom, and he peered

 about him at the mummified bodies of ancient dead piled haphazard

 against the walls of the cavern. Here and there white bone gleamed

 through the parchment of leathery dried flesh, and an arm was raised in

 a macabre salutation or a gesture of supplication.

 Zouga moved on through this grisly catacomb, and ahead of him there was

 a diffused source of light. He quickened his pace as another gale of

 wild screams was this time mingled with booming inhuman laughter that

 bounced from the rocky walls and roof.

 He turned a corner of jagged rock and looked down into a natural

 amphitheatre in the floor of the cavern. It was lit by the flames of a

 flickering orange fire, and from above by a single beam of sunlight that

 came in through a narrow crack in the high arched roof. The sunbeam was

 dimmed to an unearthly blue by the tendrils of curling smoke from the

 fire, and like the limelights of a theatre stage it dramatized the group

 of struggling figures on the floor of the amphitheatre beyond the fire.

 Zouga ran down the natural steps, and had almost reached them before he

 realized what they were doing.

 Between them Daniel and Thorn had the body of a young black girl

 stretched out on the rocky floor, the girl was naked, on her back with

 her limbs spreadeagled. Her "led body was as glossy as the pelt of a

 panther, her limbs were long and shapely. She was struggling with the

 desperation of a wild animal in a trap. But her screams were muted by

 the fur kaross wrapped about her head, and Jim Thorn knelt upon her

 shoulders, pinning her helplessly while he twisted her arms back against

 the joint of the elbows and roared with cruel laughter that was too loud

 for his skinny body.

 Will Daniel was over the girl, his face swollen and dark with congested

 blood. His belt and breeches were down across the back of his knees. He

 was grunting and snuffling like a boar at the trough. His pale buttocks

 were covered with a fuzz of sparse curly black hair. He drove against

 the girl with a wet slapping sound like a washerwoman pounding laundry

 on a slab.

 Before Zouga. could reach him, Will Daniel's whole body stiffened and

 jerked spasmodically and then he rolled off the tender young body, and

 he was bloodied from the knees to the navel of his sagging, hairy

 paunch.

 "By God, Jim my lad," he panted at the little trooper, "that was better

 than a belly ache. Get up on the bitch for your turn-" Then he saw Zouga

 coming out of the shadows, and he grinned at him. "First come, first

 served, Major-' Zouga took two strides to reach him, and then he kicked

 him in his smiling mouth with the heel of his riding boot. Will Daniel's

 bottom lip split open like the petals of a rose, and he scrambled to his

 feet, spitting out white chips of tooth, and hauling up his breeches

 over his monstrous nakedness.

 "I'll kill you for that." He tugged at the knife on his dangling

 unclinched belt, but Zouga thrust the muzzle of his rifle into his

 belly, doubling him over at the waist, and then whirled to slam the butt

 against Jim Thorn's temple, as Thorn was reaching for his abandoned

 rifle.

 "Get on your feet," Zouga told him coldly, and, swaying and clutching

 the swelling above his ear, Jim Thorn backed off against the wall of the

 cave.

 "I'll get you for this," Will Daniel wheezed painfully, still holding

 his belly, and Zouga turned the rifle back onto him.

 "Get out," he said softly. "Get out of here you filthy bloody animals."

 They shuffled up the steps of the amphitheatre; and from the shadows of

 the cavern entrance, Will Daniel yelled again, his voice blustering and

 angry.

 "I'll not forget this, Major bloody Ballantyne. I'll get you yet!"

 Zouga turned back to the girl. She had pulled the kaross off her head,

 and she crouched on the stone floor with her legs curled up under her.

 She was trying to staunch the flow of her virgin blood with her hands,

 but she stared at Zouga with the tortured ferocity of a leopard held by

 the serrated jaws of a spring trap.

 Zouga felt an overwhelming compassion sweep over him, yet he knew there

 was no succour he could give her.

 "You, who were Umlimo, are Umlimo no longer," he said at last, and she

 drew back her head and spat at him.

 The frothy spittle splattered against his boots, but the effort made her

 whimper with pain and press her hands against her lower belly.

 A fresh trickle of bright arterial blood snaked down her thigh.

 "I came to destroy the Umlimo," he said. "But she is destroyed not by a

 bullet from a gun. Go, child. The gift of the spirits has been taken

 from you. Go swiftly, but go in peace."

 Like a wounded animal she crept on her hands and knees into the dark

 maze of tunnels beyond the amphitheatre, leaving a speckle of bloody

 drops upon the stone floor.

 she looked back at him once. "Peace, you say, white man. There will be

 no peace, ever!"

 And then she was gone into the shadows.

 The rains had not yet come, but their heralds soared up to the heavens,

 great ranges of cumulus cloud, their heads shaped like mushrooms. Silver

 and blue and imperial purple, they stood above the Hills of the Indunas.

 The heat seemed trapped beneath them. It clanged down upon the iron

 hills like a blacksmith's hammer on the anvil. The impis were thick as

 safari ants upon the slopes; they squatted in dense ranks their shields

 under them, their assegais and guns laid on the rocky earth@ before

 them, thousands upon thousands they waited, every plumed head craning

 down towards the royal kraal at the foot of the hills.

 There was the beat of a single drum. Tap, tap! Tap tap! And the great

 black mass of warriors stirred like an amorphous sea monster rising from

 the depths.

 "The Elephant comes! He comes! He comes!" It was a soft growl in all

 their throats.

 Through the gates of the stockade filed a small procession, twenty men

 wearing the tassels of valour, twenty men walking proud, the blood royal

 of Kumalo, and at their head the huge heavy figure of the king.

 Lobengula had thrown off all the European gee-gaws, the brass buttons

 and mirrors, the gold brocaded coat and he was dressed in the regalia of

 a Matabele king.

 The headring was on his brow, and heron feathers in his hair. His cloak

 was royal leopardskin, spotted gold, and his kilt was of leopard tails.

 His swollen ankles, crippled with gout, were covered by the war rattles,

 but he mastered the agony of the disease, striding out with ponderous

 dignity, so the waiting impis gasped with the splendour of his presence.

 "See the Great Bull whose tread shakes the earth., In his right hand he

 carried the toy spear of polished redwood, the spear of kingship. Now he

 raised the puny weapon high, and the nation came bounding upright; and

 the shields, the long shields that gave them their name, bloomed upon

 the slope of the hill, covering it like a garden of exotic deadly

 flowers.

 "Bayete!" The royal salute roared like the surf of a winter sea breaking

 on a rocky headland.

 "Bayete! Lobengula, son of Mzilikazi."

 After that great burst of sound, the silence was daunting but Lobengula

 paced slowly along the ranks, and in his eyes was the terrible sorrow of

 a father for the sons who must die. This was the hour which he had

 dreaded from the first day he took the little redwood spear in his right

 hand. This was the destiny which he had tried to avoid, and now it had

 overtaken him.

 His voice boomed, and he lifted the spear and pointed to the east.

 "The enemy that comes upon us now is like -" the spear shook in his

 hand, "like the leopard in the goat kraal, like the white termites in

 the kingpost of a hut. They will not stop until all is destroyed."

 The massed regiments of Matabele growled, straining like hunting dogs

 against the leash, and Lobengula stopped in the centre of their lines

 and threw the leopardskin cloak back from his right arm.

 He turned slowly until he faced into the east, where Jameson's columns

 were massing far over the horizon, and his spear arm went back to its

 full stretch. He stood poised in the classic stance of the

 javelin-thrower, and there was a soft susurration in the air as ten

 thousand lungs filled with breath and held it.

 Then, with a heart-stopping shout, the cry of a man crushed under the

 iron wheel of his own destiny, Lobengula hurled the war spear into the

 east, and his shout was echoed by ten thousand throats.

 "Jee! Jee!" They roared, and stabbed at the air with the broad silver

 blades, stabbing at the still invisible enemy.

 Then the impis formed, one behind the other. Led by their indunas, their

 matched shields overlapping, they swept past the king, fierce in their

 pride, leaping high and flashing their assegais, and Lobengula saluted

 them: the Imbezu. and the Inyati, the Ingubu and the Izimvukuzane, the

 "Moles-that-burrow-under-a-mountain", with their matt red shields held

 high and Bazo, the Axe, prancing at their head. They wound away into the

 eastern grasslands, and Lobengula could still hear their singing,

 faintly on the heated air, long after the last of them had disappeared

 from view.

 A little group of indunas and guards still attended the king, but they

 waited below at the gate of the stockade.

 Lobengula was alone upon the deserted hillside; all the dignity and

 regal pride had gone out of his bearing. His grossly swollen body

 slumped like that of a very old and sick man. His eyes were rheumy with

 unshed tears, and he stared out into the east without moving, listening

 to the fading war chants.

 At last he sighed, shook himself, and hobbled forward on his crippled

 distorted feet.

 Painfully he stooped to retrieve the little redwood spear, but he paused

 before his fingers touched it.

 The blade of the spear of kingship had snapped through. He picked up the

 broken pieces and held them in his hands, and then he turned and

 shuffled slowly down from the Hills of the Indunas.

 The Company flag stood high above the laager on a slightly crooked pole

 of mopani.

 It had hung limply in the stupefying heat all that morning, but now as

 the patrol rode in across the open ground above the river bank, it

 unfurled briefly on a random current of air, snapped as though to draw

 attention to itself, and then extended its full glory for a moment,

 before sagging wearily once again.

 At the head of the patrol, Ralph Ballantyne turned to his father who

 rode at his side. "That flag makes no bones about it, Papa."

 The pretty crosses of Sint George, Sint Andrew and Sint Patrick that

 made up the Union Jack, had the Company insignia superimposed upon them,

 the lion gardant with a tusk of ivory held in its claw and the letters

 under it T.S.A.C.I, British South Africa Company.

 "Servants of the Company first, and of the queen a good deal later."

 "You're a cynical rascal, Ralph." Zouga could hardly suppress his smile.

 "Are you suggesting that there is a man in all our Company here for

 personal gain rather than glory of Empire?"

 "Perish the thought." This time Ralph chuckled. "By the way, Papa, how

 many land grants have you bought up so far? I am losing count, is it

 thirty or thirty-five?"

 "This is a dream I worked for all my life, Ralph. It's coming true

 before our eyes, and when it does, I'll have c my fair reward, and

 nothing more."

 The laager was drawn up in its rigid square three hundred yards from the

 steep banks of the Shangani river, in the centre of a dried-out clay

 pan. The surface was as flat and bare as a tennis court. The clay had

 cracked into irregular briquettes that curled up at the edges. They

 crunched under the horses" hooves as Zouga led the patrol in.

 They had been out for two days, scouting the road beyond the river, and

 Zouga was pleased to see that during his absence Sint John had taken

 Zouga's advice and had his axemen hack down the brush around the edges

 of the pan to open the field of fire. Now any attacker have to cross

 three hundred yards of bare clay to reach the square of wagons, all of

 it under the evil little Cyclopean scrutiny of the Maxims.

 As they cantered up, a party unchained the wheels of one of the wagons

 and dragged it aside to allow them to enter, and a sergeant in Company

 uniform saluted Zouga as he passed and called after him.

 "General Sint John's compliments, sir, and will you report to him

 directly."

 "My bet is that you need a drink." Mungo Sint John took one look at the

 dust that clung like flour in Zouga's beard and the dark patches of

 sweat that had soaked through his shirt. Coldly Zouga nodded his thanks

 and poured from the bottle that held down one corner of the map.

 "The impis are out in full array," he said, and let the whisky soak the

 cloying dust from the back of his throat before going on. "I have

 identified most of them. There's Gandang's Inyati, and Manonda's

 Insukamini -" He reeled off the names of the indunas and their impis,

 glancing at the notes he had made on his pad. "We had a brush with the

 "Moles" and had to shoot our way out and ride for it, but still we

 reached the Bembesi river before turning back."

 "Where are the impis, Ballantyne? Damn it, man, we have advanced seventy

 miles from Iron Mine Hill and seen neither hide nor hair of them,"

 Jameson demanded almost petulantly.

 "They are all around us, Doctor. A thousand or more in the trees just

 across the river, and I cut tracks that showed that two more impis have

 circled out behind us.

 They are probably lying across the Longiwe Hills watching every move we

 make., "We must bring them to battle," Jameson fretted. "Every day the

 campaign lasts is costing the shareholders money."

 "They won't attack us here, not while we are in laager, not across open

 ground."

 "Where then?"

 "They will attack in the Zulu way, in broken ground, or thick bush. I

 have marked four likely deffles ahead of us, places where they will be

 able to creep up close on either side or lay to ambush the wagons as we

 pass."

 "You want us to walk into their trap, rather than draw them out?"

 Mungo asked.

 "You'll not draw them out. I think their commander here is Gandang, the

 king's half-brother. He is far too cunning to come at us in the open. If

 you want to fight them, it must be in the bad ground."

 "When the serpent is coiled, with his head drawn back and his mouth

 agape to show the venom hanging like drops of dew upon his fangs, then

 the wise man does not stretch out his hands towards him." Gandang spoke

 softly, and the other indunas cocked their heads to listen to his words.

 "The wise man waits until the serpent uncoils and begins to creep away,

 then he steps upon the head and crushes it. We must wait. We must wait

 to take them in the forests, when the wagons are strung out, and the

 outriders cannot see one another. Then we cut the column into pieces and

 swallow each one, a mouthful at a time."

 "Yet my young men are tired of waiting," said Manonda, facing Gandang

 across the fire. Manonda was the commander of the elite Insukamini impi,

 and though there was silver on his head, there was still fire in his

 heart. They all knew him to be brave to the edge of folly, quick to take

 an insult, and quicker still to revenge it.

 "These white barbarians have marched unopposed across our lands, while

 we trail around them like timid girls guarding our maidenheads and

 giggling behind our hands. My young men grow weary of waiting, Gandang,

 and I with them."

 "There is a time for timidity, Manonda, my cousin, and there is a time

 to be brave."

 "The time to be brave is when your enemy stands brazenly before you.

 They are six hundred, you have counted them yourself, Gandang, and we

 are six thousand."

 Manonda grinned mockingly around the circle of listening men. On the

 brow of each was the headring of high office, and on their arms and legs

 the tassels of courage.

 "Shame on those that hesitate," said Manonda, the Bold.

 "Shame on you, Bazo. Shame on you, Ntabene. Shame on you, Gainbo." His

 voice was filled with scorn, and as he said each of their names they

 hissed with angry denial.

 Then suddenly here was a sound from beyond the circle of squatting

 indunas, a sound in the night that chilled and silenced them all. It was

 the eerie wail of mourning for the dead, and as they listened it came

 closer, and with it were many other voices.

 Gandang sprang to his feet and challenged loudly.

 "Who comes?"

 And out of the darkness a dozen guards, half dragged and half carried an

 old woman. She wore only a skirt of untanned hyena skin, and around her

 neck the grisly accoutrements and trappings of the witch's trade. Her

 eyes were rolled up into her head so that the whites flashed in the

 firelight, and her spittle foamed on her slack lips. From her throat

 issued the wails of mourning for the dead.

 "What is it, witch?" Gandang demanded, his superstitious fears twisting

 his mouth and darkening his eyes.

 "What tidings do you bring?"

 "The white men have desecrated the holy places. They have destroyed the

 chosen one of the spirits. They have slaughtered the priests of the

 nation. They have entered the cave of the Umlimo in the sacred hills,

 and her blood is splashed upon the ancient rocks. Woe unto all of us.

 Woe unto those who do not seek revenge. Kill the white men. Kill them

 all!" The witch threw off the restraining hands of the guard and, with a

 wild shriek, hurled herself into the midst of the leaping flames of the

 watch-fire.

 Her skirt burst into flames. Her wild bush of hair burned like a torch.

 They drew back in horror.

 "Kill the white men," screamed the witch from out of the flames, and

 they stared as her skin blackened and her flesh peeled from off her

 bones. She collapsed and a torrent of sparks flew up into the

 overhanging branches of the forest, and then there was only the crackle

 and drum of the fire.

 Bazo stood in the stunned silence, and he felt the rage rising from deep

 within his soul. Staring into the flames at the black and twisted

 remains of the witch, he felt the same need of sacrifice, an atonement

 and a surcease from the rage and the grief.

 He saw in the yellow flames an image of Tanase's beloved face, and

 something seemed to tear in his chest.

 Jee!" he said, drawing out the war cry, giving expression to his rage.

 Jee!" He lifted the assegai and pointed the blade in the direction of

 the river and the white men's laager which lay not more than a mile

 beyond the dark silhouette of the hills. Jee!" and the night breeze

 turned the tears cold as the snow-melt from the Drakensberg mountains

 upon his cheeks.

 Jee!" Manonda took up the chant, and stabbed towards the enemy, and the

 divine madness descended upon them. Gandang was the only one who had

 reason and fear of consequence left to him.

 "Wait!"he cried. "Wait, my children and my brothers."

 But they were gone already, racing away into the darkness to rouse their

 sleeping impis.

 Zouga Ballantyne could not sleep, though his back and thighs still ached

 for rest from hard riding, and the earth under his blanket was no harder

 than that on which he had passed a thousand other nights. He lay and

 listened to the snores and occasional dreamers" gabble from the men

 around him, while vague forebodings and dark thoughts kept him from

 joining them in slumber.

 Once again vivid memories of the little tragedy in the cave of the

 Umlimo returned to plague him, and he wondered how long it would be

 before the news of the atrocity reached the king and his indunas. It

 might take weeks for a witness to come down from the cave of the

 Matopos, but when that happened, he would know it by the actions of the

 Matabele indunas.

 From the opposite side of the laager a sky-rocket went hissing up into

 the night sky, and popped into little red stars high in the heavens. The

 pickets had been firing a rocket every hour, to guide a missing patrol

 into the laager.

 Now Zouga reached under the saddle that was his pillow and brought out

 the gold hunter watch. In the light of the sky rocket he checked the

 time. It was three o'clock in the morning. He threw off his blanket, and

 groped for his boots. While he pulled them on, his premonition of

 lurking evil grew stronger.

 He strapped on his bandolier and checked the Webley service revolver

 hanging on the webbing. Then he stepped over the sleeping

 blanket-wrapped forms around him and went down to the horse lines. The

 bay gelding whickered as it recognized him, and Jan Cheroot woke.

 "It is all right," Zouga told him quietly, but the little Hottentot

 yawned and, with the blanket over his shoulders like a shawl, hobbled

 across to stir the ashes of his cooking-fire. He set the blue enamel

 coffee pot on the coals and, while it was heating, they sat side by side

 and talked quietly like the old friends that they were.

 "Less than sixty miles to Gubulawayo," Jan Cheroot murmured. "It's taken

 us more than thirty years, but now at last I feel we are coming home."

 "I have bought up almost forty land grants," Zouga agreed. "That is

 nearly a quarter of a million acres. Yes, Jan Cheroot, we are coming

 home at last. By God, it's been a long, hard road, though, from the pit

 of Kimberley mine to the Zambezi -" Zouga broke off and listened.

 There had been a faint cry, almost like a night bird, from beyond the

 laager.

 "The Mashona," Jan Cheroot grunted. "The general should have let them

 stay in the laager."

 During the slow trek up from Iron Mine Hill, many small groups of

 Mashona had come to the wagons, begging protection from the assembling

 Matabele. They knew from bitter experience what to expect when the impis

 swept across the land in battle array.

 "The general could not take that chance." Zouga shook his head. "There

 may be Matabele spies amongst them, he has to guard against treachery."

 Mungo Sint John had ordered the refugees to keep clear of the laager,

 and now there were three or four hundred, mostly black women and

 children, camped amongst the thorn trees on the river bank, five hundred

 yards from the nearest wagon.

 Zouga lifted the coffee pot from the coals and poured the steaming black

 brew into his mug, then he cocked his head again to listen. There was a

 faint hubbub, a distant chorus of shrieks and shouts from the direction

 of the river. With the mug in his hand Zouga strolled across to the

 nearest wagon in the square, and climbed UP onto the disselboom. He

 peered out of the laager, towards the river.

 The open expanse of flat clay was ghostly pale in the tarlight, and the

 treeline beyond it was solid blackness.

 There was nothing to be seen, except, he blinked his eyes rapidly, for

 they were playing him false. Nothing except the blackness of the

 treeline seemed to be closer, the blackness was spreading towards the

 laager across the pale clay, like spilled oil or a pool of blood.

 Now there was a sound, a rustle like locust wings when the swarms pass

 overhead, and the engulfing blackness was coming closer, with eerie

 swiftness.

 At that moment another sky-rocket went swooshing up into the night sky,

 and when it burst, it flooded the pan with a soft, pink light and Zouga

 dropped the mug of steaming coffee.

 The earth was black with the Matabele horde. It swept like a black tide

 towards the wagons, rank upon rank of great oval shields, and the

 assegais twinkled in the reflection of the rocket flare.

 Zouga pulled the pistol from its holster, -and fired towards the racing

 black wall of shields.

 "Stand to your guns," he bellowed, the heavy revolver bouncing and

 crashing in his fist. "The Matabele are coming!

 Stand to your guns." And from the black tide swelled a sound like a

 swarm of bees when the hive is overturned.

 The hammer of Zouga's revolver clicked on a spent cartridge, and he

 jumped down from the disselboom and raced down the line of wagons to

 where the nearest Maxim was placed.

 Throughout the laager there was a rush of bodies and the shouts of

 frightened men running to their posts, and as Zouga reached the corner

 of the square, the machinegunner came stumbling out from his bed under a

 wagon body. His face was a pale blob, and his hair was hanging into his

 eyes. He was in stockinged feet and his braces dangled down his legs as

 he hitched his breeches and plumped himself down on the little seat that

 was built onto the rear leg of the Maxim tripod.

 His number two loader was nowhere to be seen, perhaps lost in the

 milling confusion of newly-awakened bodies, so Zouga stuffed the

 revolver into his belt and dropped upon his knees beside the ungainly

 weapon. He yanked the top off the ammunition box and lifted out the

 first length of the canvas belt.

 "Good-oh, mate!"muttered the gunner, as Zouga lifted the shutter in the

 side of the breech and passed the brass tag loader of the belt through

 the block.

 "Ready! Load one!"he snapped, and the gunner jerked back the crank

 handle on the opposite side of the block and let it fly home, and the

 gib at the top of the extractor gripped the first round, The spears were

 drumming on the rawhide shields now, and the deep humming chorus of the

 running warriors was almost deafening. They could only be yards from the

 barricade of wagons, but Zouga did not look up. He concentrated all his

 attention on the intricate task of loading the Maxim.

 "Load two!" The gunner cranked again, and the feed block clattered.

 Zouga jerked the brass tag leader and the gunner let the handle fly back

 the second time. The first round shot smoothly into the breech.

 "Loaded and cocked!" Zouga said, and tapped the gunner on the shoulder.

 Now they both looked up. The front rank of shields and war plumes seemed

 to curl over where they squatted beside the weapon, like a wave breaking

 on a beach.

 it was the moment of the "closing in" that the amadoda loved and lived

 for, already the shields were going up on high to free the spear arms

 and the steel rasped as the blades were cleared for the stabbing.

 The joyous roar of the killing chant sundered the night; they were at

 the wagons, breaking into the laager, and the gunner sat stiffly upright

 with the gun between his knees and both hands on the traversing handles.

 He hooked his fingers through the rings of the safety guard, and as it

 lifted, he pressed his thumbs down on the chequered firing button.

 The muzzle was almost touching the belly of a tall plumed warrior coming

 in between the wagons when the thick barrel shuddered, and a bright bar

 of flickering light sprang from the muzzle and the hammering clatter

 dinned upon Zouga's eardrums. It sounded as though a giant was drawing a

 steel bar horizontally across a sheet of corrugated iron, and

 miraculously the warrior was blown away.

 The gunner traversed the Maxim back and forth, like a meticulous

 housewife sweeping a dusty floor, and the continuous muzzle flashes lit

 the open clay pan with a dancing unearthly light.

 The black tide of Matabele was no longer advancing; it stood static in

 front of the wagons; and though its crest foamed with dancing plumes and

 the shields that formed the body of the wave heaved and clattered and

 tumbled, they came no closer. They were dammed by the stroking,

 flickering bar of light that sprang from the Maxim gun. The solid stream

 of bullets played like a jet of water from a firehose upon them, and as

 each of the chanting warriors came racing up, he died on the same spot

 as the man in front of him had died, and he fell upon his corpse, while

 another warrior appeared in the space he had left, and the gun swung

 back, hammering and jerking, and that man went down, his shield

 clattering on the baked clay of the pan and the flash of the gun

 reflected from the burnished steel of his assegai as it went spinning

 from his nerveless hand.

 All around the square the Maxims ripped and roared, and six hundred

 repeating rifles underscored that hellish chorus. The air was blue with

 gunsmoke, and the reek of cordite burned the throats of the troopers and

 made their eyes run, so that they seemed to he weeping for the terrible

 butchery in which they were engaged.

 Still the Matabele came on, though now they had to clamber over a

 shapeless barricade of their own dead, and the gunner beside Zouga

 lifted his thumbs from the button trigger and twirled the elevation

 wheel of the Maxim, lifting the muzzle an inch so as to keep the fire on

 the belly line of the warriors as they climbed over the mounds of

 corpses.

 Then once again the gun fluttered and roared, the glossy black bodies

 jerked and twitched and bucked as the stream of bullets tore into them.

 Still the Matabele came on.

 "By God, will they never stop!" yelled the gunner. The muzzle of the gun

 glowed cherry red, like a horseshoe fresh from the forge, and the steam

 from the water jacket whistled shrilly as the coolant boiled.

 The bright brass cases spewed from the extractor. they pinged and

 pattered against the iron-shod wheel of the wagon and formed a

 glittering mound beneath it.

 "Empty gun!" Zouga yelled, as the end of the belt whipped into the

 clattering breech. They had been firing for less than sixty seconds, and

 the case of five hundred belted cartridges was empty.

 Zouga kicked it aside and dragged up a fresh case, and the Matabele

 surged towards the silent gun.

 "Ready, load one!" Zouga yelled.

 "Load two!" They were swarming into the gap between the wagons.

 "Loaded and cocked!" And once again that fluttering beat like the wings

 of a dark angel dulled their senses, and the barrel swung back and

 forth, back and forth, washing them away into the darkness.

 "They're running," shouted the gunner. "Look at them run!"

 In front of the wagons lay nothing but the piles of bodies. Here and

 there a dying man made feeble little movements, groping for a lost

 assegai or trying to staunch one of the awful holes in his flesh with

 fumbling fingers.

 Beyond the massed corpses, the wounded and maimed were dragging

 themselves back towards the treeline, leaving dark wet smears on the

 clay. One of them was on his feet, staggering in aimless circles, using

 both hands to hold his bulging entrails from falling out of the open

 pouch of his belly. The Maxim had gutted him like a fish.

 Beyond the trees the sky was a marvellous shade of ashes of roses, and

 the clouds were picked out in smoking scarlets and pipings of pale gold

 as the dawn came up in silent fury over the reeking field.

 "Them black bastards have had enough." The Maxim gunner giggled with

 mirthless, nervous reaction to that glimpse that he had just had into

 hell itself.

 "They'll be back," said Zouga quietly, as he dragged up another case of

 belted ammunition and knocked off the lid.

 "You did all right, mate," the gunner giggled again, staring with wide

 horrified eyes at the piles of dead.

 "Refill the water in your condenser, soldier," Zouga ordered him. "The

 gun's over-heating, you'll have a jam when the next wave hits., "Sir!"

 The gunner realized suddenly who Zouga was.

 "Sorry, sir."

 "Here is your loader." The number two came up breathlessly. He was a

 fresh-faced lad, curly-headed and pinkcheeked. He looked more like a

 choirboy than a machine-gunner.

 "Where were you, trooper?" Zouga demanded.

 Checking the horses, sir. It was all over so quickly., "Listen!"

 Zouga ordered, as the boy took his place at the gun.

 From the treeline, across the bloodied clay pan, came the sound of

 singing, deep and sonorous in the dawn.

 It was the praise song of the "Moles-who-burrow-under-a-mountain".

 "Stand to your gun, trooper," Zouga ordered. "It's not over yet."

 And he turned on his heel and went striding down the line of wagons,

 reloading the revolver from his belt as he went.

 Singing, Bazo strode down the squatting lines of his impi, and they sang

 with him.

 He had held their shattered ranks just beyond the edge of the treeline

 as they came streaming back from the square of wagons. They were

 re-grouped now, singing as they screwed their courage for the next

 assault. What remained of Marionda's impi was mingled with his. They had

 been in the first wave of the attack, and very few of them were left.

 Suddenly there was a great rushing sound in the air above the tree tops,

 like the onrush of the first wild storm of summer. Then in the midst of

 the squatting ranks a tall column of smoke and dust and flame sprang

 into the air, and the bodies of men were flung high with it.

 "Kill the smoke devil," somebody screamed, and another shell burst

 amongst them, and another, leaping fountains of smoke and flame; and the

 maddened warriors fired their ancient Martini-Henry rifles at these

 smoke devils, killing and wounding their comrades on the far side.

 "They are not devils," shouted Bazo, but his voice was lost in the

 barrage of artillery fire, and the pandemonium of warriors trying to

 defend themselves against something they did not understand.

 "Come!" Bazo bellowed. There was only one way to bring them under

 control again.

 "To the wagons. Forward to the wagons. "And those close enough to hear

 him followed, and the others, seeing them go, went bounding after them.

 They came out of the treeline in a swarm, and the other shattered impis

 heard the war chant go up, and turned again back onto the open pan of

 pale grey clay, and immediately that terrible clattering din, like the

 laughter of maniacs, began again and the air was filled with the flute

 and crack of a thousand whiplashes.

 "They are coming again," Zouga said quietly, almost to himself. "This is

 the fifth time."

 "It's madness." Mungo Sint John murmured, as the racing ranks came out

 of the trees and over the lip of the river bank, their plumes seething

 like the surface of boiling milk as they came onto the guns.

 The field guns were depressed to the limit of their travel, the fuses

 screwed down to their shortest range, and the shrapnel bursts were

 strangely beautiful in the morning sky, popping open like pods of new

 cotton, shot through with pretty red fire.

 The storm of small-arms fire was like the monsoon rains beating on an

 iron roof, and as the impis came into the drifting banks of gunsmoke,

 the dense ranks thinned out, and lost momentum, like a wave sliding up a

 steep beach.

 Once again the wave faltered, and just short of the wagons it stopped,

 hesitated and then was going back, and the storm of gunfire continued

 long after the last of them had disappeared amongst the trees. In a kind

 of insensate fury the Maxim bullets tore wet white slabs of bark off the

 tree trunks, and then one after the other fell silent.

 Standing beside Zouga, Doctor Jameson scrubbed his hands together

 gleefully. "It's all over. Their impis are destroyed, shattered, blown

 away. it's better than we could ever have hoped for. Tell me, Sint John,

 as a military man, what do you estimate their losses to be so far?"

 Mungo Sint John considered the question seriously, climbing up onto one

 of the wagons the better to survey the field, ignoring the spattering of

 Martini-Henry rifle fire from the edge of the treeline where a few

 Matabele snipers were making very poor practice; convinced that raising

 their sights to the maximum made the bullets more powerful, most of

 their fire crackled high over the heads of the men manning the wagons.

 Standing on the wagon Mungo Sint John lit a cheroot without transferring

 his attention from the carnage which surrounded them. At last he said

 gravely, "Not less than two thousand casualties, perhaps as many as

 three."

 "Why don't you send a party out to count the bag, Doctor?" Zouga

 suggested, and Jameson did not recognize the sarcasm.

 "We cannot spare the delay, more is the pity. We can still get in a full

 day's trek. That will look good in the Company report." He pulled the

 gold chain from his fob pocket and sprang the lid of his watch with his

 thumbnail. "Eight o'clock," he marvelled. "It's only eight o'clock in

 the morning. Do you realize that we have won a decisive battle before

 breakfast, gentlemen, and that by ten o'clock we can be on our way to

 Lobengula's royal kraal?

 I think we have done our shareholders rather proud."

 "I think," Zouga cut in gently. "That we still have a little more work

 to do. They are coming again."

 "I don't believe this," Mungo Sint John marvelled.

 Bazo paced slowly down the sparse ranks. This was no longer an impi. It

 was a pathetic little band of desperate survivors. Most of them had

 bound up their wounds with bloody bunches of green leaves, and their

 eyes had that strange fixed stare of men who had just looked into

 eternity. They were no longer singing, they squatted in silence, but

 they were still facing towards the white men's laager.

 Bazo passed beyond the shortened line and paused under the spreading

 branches of a wild teak tree. He looked up.

 Mationda, the commander of what had once been the glorious Insukamini

 impi, hung by his neck from one of the main branches. There was a thong

 of rawhide around his throat, and his eyes were still open, bulging in a

 defiant glare towards his enemies. His right leg, shattered above the

 knee by machine-gun fire, was twisted at an ugly angle and hung lower

 than his other leg.

 Bazo lifted his assegai in a salute to the dead induna.

 "I greet you, Manonda, who chose death rather than to drink the bitter

 draught of defeat," he shouted.

 The Insukamini impi was no more. Its warriors lay in deep windrows in

 front of the wagons.

 "I praise you, Manonda, who chose death rather than to live a cripple

 and a slave. Go in peace, Manonda and speak sweetly to the spirits on

 our behalf."

 """Now"

 Bazo turned back and stood before the waiting, silent ranks. The early

 morning sun, just clearing the tree tops, threw long black shadows in

 front of them.

 "Are the eyes still red, my children?" Bazo sang out in a high clear

 voice.

 "They are still red, Baba!" they answered him in bass chorus.

 "Then let us go to do the work which still waits to be done."

 Where ten amadoda had raced in that first wave, now two made the last

 charge across the blood-soaked clay.

 Only one of that pitiful band went more than halfway between the

 treelines and the wagons. The rest of them turned back and left Bazo to

 run on alone. He was sobbing with each stride, his mouth open, the sweat

 running in oily snakes down his naked chest. He did not feel the first

 bullet that struck him. It was just a sudden numbness as though part of

 his body was missing, and he ran on, jumping over a pile of twisted

 corpses, and now the sound of the guns seemed muted and far-off, and

 there was another greater dinning in his ears that boomed and echoed

 strangely like the thunder of a mighty waterfall.

 He felt another sharp tug, like the curved red-tipped thorn of the

 "wait-a-bit" tree hooking into his flesh, but there was no pain. The

 roaring in his head was louder, and his vision narrowed so that he

 seemed to be looking down a long tunnel in the darkness.

 Again he felt that irritating but painless jerk and tug in his flesh,

 and he was suddenly weary. He just wanted to lie down and rest, but he

 kept on towards the flashing white canvas of the wagon tents. Yet again

 that sharp insistent pull as though he was held on a leash, and his legs

 buckled under him. Quite gently he toppled forward and lay with his face

 against the hard sun-baked clay.

 The sound of the guns had ceased, but in its place was another sound, it

 was the sound of cheering; behind the wall of wagons the white men were

 cheering themselves.

 Bazo was tired, so utterly deathly tired. He closed his eyes and let the

 darkness come.

 The wind had swung suddenly and unseasonably into the east, and there

 was a cold dank mist lying on the hills. the fine guti which made the

 trees drip dismally and chilled every bone in Tanase's body as she

 trudged up a narrow path that led to a saddle between two pearly grey

 granite peaks. Over her shoulders was a leather cloak and on her head

 she balanced a bundle of possessions which she had salvaged from the

 cave of the Umlimo.

 She reached the saddle and looked down into yet another valley choked

 with dense, dark green undergrowth. She searched it eagerly, but then

 her spirits slowly fell again. Like all the others, it was devoid of any

 human presence.

 Since she had left the secret valley, the moon had reached its full, and

 waned to nothingness, and was once again a curved yellow sliver in the

 night sky. All that time she had searched for the women and children of

 the Matabele nation. She knew they were here, hiding somewhere in the

 Matopos, for it was always the way.

 When a powerful enemy threatened the nation, the women and children were

 sent into the hills, but it was such a vast area, so many valleys and

 deep labyrinthine caves that she might search a lifetime without finding

 them.

 Tanase started slowly down into the deserted valley.

 Her legs felt leaden, and another spasm of nausea brought saliva

 flooding from under her tongue. She swallowed it down, but when she

 reached the floor of the valley, she sank down onto a moss-covered rock

 beside the little stream.

 She knew what was the cause of her malady; though she had missed her

 courses by only a few days, she knew that the loathsome seed that her

 pale, hairy, balloonbellied ravisher had pumped into her had struck and

 taken hold, and she knew what she must do.

 She laid aside her load and searched for dry kindling under the trees

 where the gub had not yet dampened it.

 She piled it in the protected lee of a sheltering rock, and crouched

 over it.

 For many long minutes she concentrated all her will upon it. Then at

 last she sighed, and her shoulders slumped. Even this minor power, this

 small magic of firemaking, had gone from her. As the white man with the

 golden beard had warned her, she was Umlimo no longer.

 She was just a young woman, without strange gifts or terrible duties,

 and she was free. The spirits could make no demands upon her, she was

 free at last to seek out the man she loved.

 As she prepared to make fire in the conventional manner, with the tiny

 bow for twirling the dry twig, two passions gave her strength to face

 the ordeal ahead of her her love and her equally fierce hatred.

 When the contents of the little clay pot boiled, she added the shreds of

 dried bark of the tambooti to it, and immediately the sweet odour of the

 poisonous steam cloyed upon the back of her throat.

 The straight sharp black horn of the gemsbuck had been clipped off at

 the tip so that it could be used for cupping blood, or as a funnel for

 introducing fluids into the body.

 Tanase spread the leather cloak below the rock shelter and lay on it,

 flat upon her back, with her feet braced high against rough granite. She

 had lubricated the, horn with fat, and she took a deep breath, clenched

 her jaw upon it, and then slid the horn into herself. When it met

 resistance, she manipulated it carefully, but firmly, and then her

 breath burst from her in a gasp of agony as the point found the opening

 and forced its way still farther into her secret depths.

 The pain gave her a strange unholy joy, as though she were inflicting it

 upon the hated thing that had taken root within her. She lifted herself

 on one elbow, and tested the contents of the little clay pot. It was

 just cool enough for her to be able to bear the heat when she plunged

 her forefinger into it.

 She took up the pot and poured it into the mouth of the long black

 funnel, and this time she moaned, and her back arched involuntarily, but

 she poured until the pot was empty. there was the coppery salt taste of

 blood in her mouth, and she realized that she had bitten through her own

 lip. She seized the horn and plucked it out of herself, and then she

 curled up on the leather cloak and hugged her knees to her bosom,

 shuddering and moaning at the fire in her womb.

 In the night the first terrible cramps seized her, and she felt her

 belly muscles spasm up hard as a cannon ball under her clutching hands.

 She wished there had been something formed, a tiny replica of that white

 animal that had rutted upon her, so that she could have wreaked a form

 of vengeance upon it. She would have delighted in mutilating and burning

 it, but there was nothing substantial on which to expend her hatred. So

 despite the purging of her body, she carried her hatred with her still,

 fierce and unabated, as she toiled on deeper and deeper into the

 Matopos.

 The joyful cries and sweet laughter of children at play guided her, and

 Tanase crept along the river verge, using the tall cotton-tipped reeds

 as a screen until she overlooked the green pool between its sugary

 sandbanks.

 They were girls sent to fetch water. The big, black clay pots stood in a

 row on the white sand with green leaves stuffed in the mouths to stop

 them slopping over when carried balanced on the girls" heads.

 However, once the pots were filled, they had not been able to resist the

 temptation of the cool, green waters, and they had thrown off their

 skirts and were shrieking and sporting in the pool. The eldest girls

 were pubescent with swelling breast buds, and one of them spotted Tanase

 in the reeds and screamed a warning.

 Tanase was just able to catch the youngest and slowest child as she was

 disappearing over the far bank, and she held the wriggling little body,

 glossy black and wet from the river, against her bosom while the child

 wailed and struggled with terror.

 Tanase cooed reassurances and stroked the little girl with gentling

 hands until she quietened.

 "I am of the people," she whispered. "Don't be afraid, little one."

 Half an hour later the child was chattering gaily and leading Tanase by

 the hand.

 The mothers came swarming out of the caves at the head of the valley to

 greet Tanase, and they crowded about her.

 "Is it true that there have been two great battles?" they begged her.

 "We have heard that the impis were broken at Shangani and again those

 that remained were butchered like cattle on the banks of the Zambesi?

 "Our husbands and our sons are dead, please tell us it is not so," they

 pleaded.

 "They say the king has fled from his royal kraal, and that we are

 children without a father. Is it true, can you tell us if it is true?"

 "I know nothing," Tanase told them. "I come to hear news, not to bear

 it. Is there not one amongst you who can tell me where I may find Juba,

 senior wife of Gandang, brother of the king?"

 They pointed over the hills, and Tanase went on, and found another group

 of women hiding in the thick bush.

 These children did not laugh and play, their limbs were thin as sticks,

 but their bellies were swollen little pots.

 "There is no food," the women told Tanase. "Soon we will starve."

 And they sent her stumbling back northwards, seeking and questioning,

 trying to blind herself to the agonies of a defeated nation, until one

 day she stooped in through the entrance of a dim and smoky cave, and a

 vaguely familiar figure rose to greet her.

 "Tanase, my child, my daughter."

 Only then did Tanase recognize her, for the abundant flesh had melted

 off the woman's frame and her once bounteous breasts hung slack as empty

 pouches against her belly.

 "Juba, my mother," Tanase cried, and ran into her embrace. It was a long

 time after that before she could speak through her sobs.

 "oh my mother, do you know what has become of Bazo?"

 Juba pushed her gently to arm's length and looked into her face. When

 Tanase saw the devastating sorrow in Juba's eyes, she cried out with

 dread.

 "He is not dead!"

 "Come, my daughter," Juba whispered, and led her deeper into the cave,

 along a natural passageway through the living rock, and there was a

 graveyard smell on the cool dark air, the odour of corruption and

 rotting flesh.

 The second cavern was lit only by a burning wick floating in a bowl of

 oil. There was a litter against the far wall, On it lay a wasted

 skeletal body, and the smell of death was overpowering.

 Fearfully Tanase knelt beside the litter and lifted a bunch of leaves

 off one of the stinking wounds.

 "He is not dead," Tanase repeated. "Bazo is not dead."

 "Not yet," agreed Juba. "His father and those of his men who survived

 the white men's bullets, carried my son to me on his shield. They bid me

 save him, but nobody can save him."

 "He will not die," said Tanase fiercely. "I will not let him die." And

 she leaned over his wasted body and pressed her lips to the fever-hot

 flesh. "I will not let you die," she whispered.

 The Hills of the Indunas were deserted; no beast grazed upon them for

 the herds had long ago been driven afar to try to save them from the

 invaders. There were no vultures or crows sailing high above the hills,

 for the Maxim guns had laid a richer feast for them barely twenty-five

 miles eastwards at the Zembesi crossing.

 The royal kraal of Gubulawayo was almost, deserted.

 The women's quarters were silent. No child cried, no young girl sang, no

 crone scolded. They were all hiding in the magical Matopos hills.

 The barracks of the fighting regiments were deserted.

 Two thousand dead on the Shangani, three thousand more at Zembesi, and

 nobody would ever count those who had crawled away to die like animals

 in the caves and thickets.

 The survivors had scattered, some to join the women in the hills, the

 others to cower, bewildered and demoralized, wherever they could find

 shelter.

 Of all the fighting impis of Matabele, only one remained intact, the

 Inyati regiment of Induna Gandang, the king's half-brother. Gandang

 alone had been able to resist the madness of hurling his men over open

 ground at the waiting Maxim guns, and now he waited for his king's

 orders in the hills just north of the royal kraal with his impi gathered

 about him.

 In all of Gubulawayo, there was one small group remaining. Twenty-six of

 these were white men and women. They were the traders and

 concession-hunters who had been at the kraal when Jameson had marched

 from Iron Mine Hill. With them, were the Codrington family, Clinton and

 Robyn and the twins. Lobengula had ordered them all to remain under his

 protection, while the impis were out in battle array, and now he had

 called them to the goat kraal for his last audience.

 Drawn up before the two new brick-built houses which had replaced the

 great thatched hut, were Lobengula's four Cape wagons with the teams

 already in the traces.

 About the wagons were a small party of the royal retainers: two of the

 king's senior wives, four elderly indunas, and a dozen or so slaves and

 servants.

 The king himself sat on the box of the leading wagon.

 in that wagon were all Lobengula's treasures, a hundred big tusks of

 ivory, the little sealed pots of uncut diamonds, and the canvas bags

 stencilled with the name "The Standard Bank Ltd" containing the

 sovereigns paid to him during the four years since he had granted the

 concession to the British South Africa Company, four thousand

 sovereigns, less than a sovereign for every one of his dead warriors.

 Around the wagon were gathered the white men, and Lobengula looked down

 upon them. The king had become an old man in the few short weeks since

 he had thrown the war spear on the Hills of the Indunas. There were deep

 lines of sorrow and espair carved around his mouth and eyes. His eyes

 were rheumy and shortsighted, his hair bleached silver-grey, his body

 bloated and misshapen, and his breathing was racked and irregular like

 that of a dying animal.

 "Tell your queen, white men, that Lobengula kept his word. Not one of

 you has been harmed," he wheezed.

 "Daketela and his soldiers will be here tomorrow. If you go out upon the

 eastern road, you will even meet them before nightfall." Lobengula

 paused and sed to catch his breath, then went on. "Go now. There is

 nothing more I have to say to you."

 They were silent, subdued, and strangely chastened, as they trooped out

 of the goat kraal. Only Robyn and her family remained.

 The twins stood on each side of Robyn. At twenty-one years of age, they

 were as tall as she. it seemed that the three of them were sisters, for

 they all had the clear eyes and glossy hair of healthy young women.

 Clinton Codrington, standing behind them, stooped and bald, dressed in

 sober broadcloth that was mossy green with age and shiny at the cuffs

 and elbows, seemed father to Robyn as well as to the twins.

 The king looked down upon them with a terrible regret.

 It is the last time that you will make my eyes glad, Nomusa," he said.

 oh King, my heart is on fire for you. I think of what has happened and

 how I advised you."

 Lobengula held up his hand to silence her. "Do not torture yourself,

 Nomusa. You have been a true friend of many years, and what you did was

 done in friendship.

 Nothing you or I could have done would have changed the manner of it. It

 was the prophecy; it was as certain as the fall of the leaves from the

 msasa trees when the frosts are on the hills."

 Robyn ran forward to the wagon, and Lobengula stooped to take her hand.

 "Pray to your three gods that are one god for me, Nomusa."

 "He will hear you, Lobengula, you are a good man."

 "No man is all goodness or all evil," the king sighed.

 "Now, Nomusa, soon Daketela and his soldiers will be here. Tell him that

 Lobengula says thus. "I am beaten, white men, my impis are eaten up. Let

 me go now, do not hunt me further, for I am an old sick man. I wish only

 to find a place where I may mourn my people, and at last die in peace."

 "I will tell them, Lobengula."

 "And will they listen, Nomusa?"

 She could not face him, and she dropped her eyes. "You know they will

 not listen."

 "My poor people," whispered Lobengula. "Will you look after my poor

 people when I am gone, Nomusa?"

 "I swear it to you, oh King," Robyn said fiercely. "I will stay at Khami

 Mission until the day that I die, and I will devote my life to your

 people."

 Then Lobengula smiled, and once again there was a flash of the old

 mischievous twinkle in his eye.

 "I give you the royal permission which I denied you all these years,

 Nomusa. From this day forward any of my people, man or woman or child of

 Matabele who wish to pray with you, you may pour water on their heads

 and make the cross of your three gods over them."

 Robyn could not reply.

 "Stay in peace, Nomusa," said Lobengula, and his wagon rumbled slowly

 out through the gates of the stockade.

 Clinton Codrington reined in the mule on the crest of the rise above the

 royal kraal, and he groped for Robyn's hand. They sat silently on the

 seat of the little Scotch cart, watching the last pale shreds of dust

 thrown up by the king's wagons disappearing away in the north across the

 grassy plain.

 "They will never leave him in peace," Robyn said softly, "Lobengula is

 the prize," Clinton agreed. "Without him, Jameson and Rhodes will have

 no victory."

 "What will they do with him!"she asked sadly. "If they catch him."

 "Exile, certainly," Clinton said. "Sint Helena Island, probably. It's

 where they sent Cetewayo."

 "Poor tragic man," Robyn whispered. "Caught between two ages, half

 savage and half civilized man, half cruel despot and half a shy and

 sensitive dreamer. Poor Lobengula."

 "Do look, Papa!" Vicky called suddenly, pointing down the rude track

 towards the east. There was a thick column of dust rising above the tops

 of the thorn trees, and even as they watched, a distant troop of mounted

 men rode out onto the grassy plain with badges and weapons twinkling in

 the sunlight.

 "Soldiers," whispered Lizzie.

 "Soldiers," repeated Vicky gleefully. "Hundreds of them." And the twins

 exchanged a bright ecstatic glance of complete understanding and accord.

 Clinton picked up the reins, but Robyn tightened her grip on his hand to

 restrain him.

 "Wait," she said. "I want to watch it happen. Somehow it will be the end

 of an age, the end of a cruel but innocent age."

 Lobengula had left one of his trusted indunas in the royal kraal, with

 instructions to lay fire to the train as soon as the last wagons were

 clear. In the mud-brick building behind the king's new residence were

 the remains of the hundred thousand rounds of Martini-Henry ammunition

 for which he had sold his land and his people. There were also twenty

 barrels of black powder.

 "There!" said Robyn, as the pillar of black smoke and flame shot

 hundreds of feet straight up into the still air.

 Only many seconds later did the shock wave and the great clap of sound

 pass over where they watched from the ridge, and the smoke, still

 spinning upon itself, blossomed into an anvil head high above the

 shattered kraal.

 Lobengula's house that had given him such pleasure and pride was only a

 shell, the roof blown away and the walls fallen in.

 The beehive huts of the women's quarters were ablaze, even as they

 watched, the flames jumped the stockade and caught in the roofs beyond.

 Within minutes the whole of Gubulawayo was in leaping, swirling flames.

 "Now we can go on," Robyn said quietly, and Clinton shook up the mule.

 There were thirty horsemen in the advance scouting party, and as they

 galloped up, the tall straight figure leading them was unmistakable.

 "Thank God that you are safe!" Zouga called to them.

 He was handsome and heroic in the frogged uniform with his brass badges

 of rank ablaze in the sunlight, and the slouch hat cocked forward over

 his handsome, gravely concerned features.

 "We were never in any danger," Robyn told him. "And well you knew that."

 "Where is Lobengula?" Zouga sought to divert her scorn, but she shook

 her head.

 guilty of one act of treachery against "Lobengula "You are an

 Englishwoman," Zouga reminded her. "You should know where your loyalties

 lie."

 "Yes, I am an Englishwoman," she agreed icily, "but I am ashamed of that

 today. I will not tell you where the king is."

 "As you wish." Zouga looked at Clinton. "You know that it is for the

 good of every one in this land. Until we have Lobengula, there will be

 no peace."

 Clinton bowed his bald head. "The king has gone to the north with his

 wagons and wives and the Inyati regime."

 "Thank you," Zouga nodded. "I will send an escort with you to the main

 column. They are not far behind us.

 Sergeant!"

 A young trooper with triple chevrons on his sleeve spurred forward. He

 was a fine-looking lad, with high English colour in his cheeks and broad

 shoulders.

 "Sergeant Acutt. Take the six men from the rear three files and see this

 party to safety."

 Zouga saluted his sister and brother-in-law curtly and then ordered.

 "Troop, at the gallop. Forward!"

 The first two dozen troopers went clattering away towards Gubulawayo,

 while the sergeant and his six men wheeled in alongside the cart.

 Vicky turned her head and looked directly into the young sergeant's

 eyes. She took a long slow breath that pushed her bosom out under the

 faded cotton of her blouse. The sergeant stared, and the flush of dark

 blood rose from the high stock of his tunic and suffused his cheeks.

 Vicky wetted her pouting lips with the tip of a pink tongue, and slanted

 her eyes at him, and Sergeant Acutt seemed about to fall out of the

 saddle, for Vicky's gaze had struck him from a range of less than six

 feet.

 "Victoria!" Robyn snapped sharply, without looking back over her

 shoulder.

 Yes, Mama." Hurriedly, Vicky slumped her shoulders forward to alter the

 cheeky thrust of her bosom to a more demure angle, and composed her

 expression into dutiful gravity.

 TELEGRAM MESSAGE RECEIVED FORT VICTORIA 10TH NOVEMBER 1893 RELAYED BY

 HELIOGRAPH TO GUBULAWAYO:

 FOR JAMESON STOP. HER MAJASTY'S GOVERNMENT DECLINES TO DECLARE MATABELE

 A CROWN COLONY OR PLACE IT UNDER THE JURISDICTION OF THE HIGH

 COMMISSIONER STOP. HER MAJESTY'S FOREIGN SECRETARY AGREES THAT THE

 CHARTER COMPANY IS TO PROVIDE THE MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT FOR THE NEW

 TERRITORY STOP. BOTH MASHONALAND AND MATABELELAND NOW FALL WITHIN THE

 ADMINISTRATIVE AREA OF THE COMPANY STOP. COMPANY SHARES QUOTED AT 8

 pounds LONDON CLOSE STOP. HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU YOUR OFFICERS

 AND MEN FROM JOVE FOR JAMESON URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL DESTROY ALL COPIES

 STOP. WE MUST HAVE LOBENGULA STOP. NO RISK TOO GREAT NO PRICE TOO HIGH

 FROM JOVE "Reverend. Codrington, I am sending out a considerable force

 to escort Lobengula in." Jameson stood at the fly of his tent, looking

 out beyond the laager to the blackened ruins of the royal kraal. "I have

 already sent this message after the king." Jameson came back to his desk

 and read from his pad: "Now, to stop this useless killing, you must at

 once come back to me at Gubulawayo. I guarantee that your life will be

 safe and that you will be kindly treated."

 "Has the king sent you a reply?" Clinton asked. He had declined a seat

 and stood stiffly in front of the camp table that served Jameson as a

 desk.

 "Here." The doctor handed Clinton a grubby, folded scrap of paper.

 Clinton scanned it swiftly: I have the honour to inform you that I have

 received your letter and have heard all what you have said, so I will

 come ... This is written by a half-caste rogue, named Jacobs, who has

 joined up with Lobengula," Clinton muttered, as he glanced through the

 rest of the wandering, misspelt and barely literate note. "I know his

 handwriting."

 "Do you think the king means it?" Mungo Sint John asked. "Do you think

 he means to come in?"

 Clinton did not turn his head towards where Mungo toiled in a canvas

 camp chair across the tent.

 "Doctor Jameson, I do not condone your actions or those of your infamous

 Chartered Company, but I came here at your bidding in order to do what

 little I can to redress the terrible wrongs that have been perpetrated

 on the Matabele people. However, I draw the line at having to speak or

 in any way communicate with this henchman of yours."

 Jameson frowned irritably. "Reverend, I would like you to bear in mind

 that I have appointed General Sint John as Administrator and Chief

 Magistrate of Matabeleland Clinton cut in brusquely. "You are, of

 course, aware that your Chief Magistrate was once a notorious

 slave-trader, buying and selling the black people over whom you now give

 him supreme powers?"

 "Yes, thank you, Reverend, I am aware that General Sint John was once a

 legitimate trader, and I am also fully aware that while a serving

 officer of Her Majesty's navy, you led an attack on his ship, an action

 which led to your being courtmartialled, imprisoned and cashiered from

 the service. Now let us continue, Reverend. If you do not wish to talk

 directly to General Sint John, you may address me instead."

 In the camp chair Mungo Sint John crossed his beautifully polished

 riding boots and smiled lazily, but his eye was bright and sharp as a

 bared blade. "Doctor Jameson, would you ask the good priest if he is of

 the opinion that Lobengula will give himself up?"

 "Would you?" Clinton asked, still without a glance in Sint John's

 direction.

 "No," Mungo replied, and nodded his head significantly at Jameson.

 "Reverend, General Sint John is taking out a flying column to bring

 Lobengula in. I want you to go with him, please," Jameson said.

 "Why me, Doctor?"

 "You speak the language fluently."

 "So do many others, Zouga Ballantyne is one of them.

 He is also a soldier."

 "Your brother-in-law has other important work to do "Stealing the king's

 cattle," Clinton cut in acidly.

 It was already common knowledge that Zouga Ballantyne had been given the

 task of rounding up the vast Matabele herds and bringing them in to

 Gubulawayo for distribution.

 However, Jameson might not have heard the remark, and he went on

 smoothly. "Besides, Reverend, you and your wife have been close friends

 of Lobengula for many years, he trusts and likes you. But, since it was

 Major Ballantyne who delivered our ultimatum, Lobengula looks upon him

 as an enemy."

 "Not without reason," Clinton murmured dryly. "However, Doctor, I refuse

 to be your Judas goat."

 "Your presence with the column may help to avert another bloody

 conflict, with the inevitable result of hundreds if not thousands more

 Matabele slaughtered. I would think it your Christian duty to try to

 prevent that."

 Clinton hesitated, and Mungo murmured. "Do point out, Doctor Jim, that

 after Lobengula surrenders, Reverend Codrington will be in a position to

 comfort and protect him, to ensure that the king is kindly treated and

 that no harm befalls him. I give him my word on that."

 "Very well," Clinton capitulated sadly. "On the understanding that I am

 to be the king's protector and advisor, I will go with your column."

 "They follow," Gandang said softly. "They still follow."

 And Lobengula lifted his face and looked at the sky. The rain drops,

 heavy and hard as newly minted silver shillings, struck his cheeks and

 forehead.

 "The rain," said Lobengula. "Who said they could not follow us in the

 rain?"

 "It was me, my King but I was wrong," Gandang; admitted. "When he

 marched from Gubulawayo, One-Brighteye had three hundred men and four of

 the little guns with three legs which chatter like old women. He also

 had wagons and one big cannon."

 "I know this," said the king.

 "When the rains came, I thought that they had turned back, but now my

 scouts have come in with heavy news to tell. One-Bright-Eye has sent

 back half of his men and the wagons the cannon and two of the little

 three-legged guns. They could not ride over the mud, but-" Gandang

 paused.

 "Do not try to spare me, my brother, tell me it all."

 "He comes on with half his men, and two little machine-guns drawn by

 horses. They are travelling fast, even in the mud."

 "How fast?" the king asked quietly.

 "They are a day's march behind us, tomorrow evening they will camp here

 on this very river."

 The king pulled the tattered old coat around his shoulders. It was cold

 in the rain, but he did not have the energy to crawl under the canvas of

 his wagon tent.

 He looked out across the watercourse. They were camped on the Shangani

 river, but almost a hundred and fifty miles higher than where the first

 battle of the war had been fought upon the headwaters of this same

 river.

 They were in thick mopani forest, so thick that a road had to be chopped

 through it to allow the king's wagons to pass. The terrain was flat and

 relieved only by the clay hills of the termite nests that dotted the

 forest, some of them as large as houses, others the size of a beer keg

 just big enough to smash the axle of a wagon.

 The sky, grey and heavy as the belly of a pregnant sow, pressed down

 upon the tops of the mopani. Soon it would rain heavily again, these fat

 drops were merely a warning of the next deluge to come, and that trickle

 of muddy water, the colour of a drunkard's bile, down the middle of the

 watercourse would be a roaring torrent again within minutes of the

 onslaught.

 one hundred and fifty men, Gandang," the king sighed. "How many have

 we?"

 "Two thousand," said Gandang. "And perhaps tomorrow or the next day

 Gambo may come to join us with a thousand more."

 "Yet we cannot stand against them?"

 "The men we would eat. It is those little guns with three legs, oh King

 not even ten thousand warriors, each with the liver of a lion, could

 prevail when they begin to laugh. But if the king commands, we will run

 "No" It is the gold," Lobengula said suddenly. "The white men will never

 let me be until they have the gold.

 I will send it to them. Perhaps then they will leave me in peace.

 Where is Kamuza, my young induna? He speaks the language of the white

 men. I will send him to them."

 Kamuza came swiftly to the king's bidding. He stood attentively in the

 spattering rain beside the front wheel of the wagon.

 "Place the little bags of gold in the hands of the white men, Kamuza, my

 trusted induna, and say to them thus, "You have eaten up my regiments

 and killed my young men, you have burned my kraals and scattered the

 women and children of Matabeleland into the hills where they burrow for

 roots like wild animals, you have seized my royal herds, and now you

 have my gold. White men, you have it all, will you now leave me in peace

 to mourn my lost people?" There were ten bags of white canvas, stamped

 with black lettering. They made a heavy burden for one man to carry.

 Kamuza knelt and tied them together in bunches, and then packed each

 bunch into a leather grain bag.

 "To hear is to obey, Great Elephant," Kamuza saluted his king.

 "Go swiftly, Kamuza, Lobengula. ordered softly. "For they are close upon

 us."

 Will Daniel sat his own horse, with the brim of his hat pulled down to

 protect the bowl of his clay pipe from the drizzling rain, and over his

 shoulders he wore a rubber groundsheet which glistened with moisture and

 gave him a pregnant, clumsy look as he slumped barrelbellied in the

 saddle.

 On lead reins he held two other horses, one was a pack animal whose

 burden was covered by a white canvas sheet. Daniel no longer bore the

 lofty rank of sergeant.

 After his conduct at the secret valley of the Umlimo, Zouga Ballantyne

 had seen him reduced to trooper, and as an additional mortification, he

 was now acting as batman to one of the officers of the flying column.

 The packhorse carried Captain Coventry's traps.

 The other horse belonged to Will's old comrade in arms, Jim Thorn. That

 worthy was crouched behind a thorny shrub a short way off, with his belt

 hanging around his neck and cursing bitterly in a low monotone.

 "Filthy bleeding water, stinking bloody rain, God-forsaken country, "

 "Hey, jimmo, your backside must be on fire by now.

 That's the twelfth time today."

 "Shut your ugly face, Will Daniel," Jim shouted back, and then dropped

 back into his dismal monotone.

 "Bloody gut-breaking trots "Come on, Jim my lad." Will lifted the brim

 of his hat to peer about him. "We can't fall too far behind the rest,

 not with the bush crawling with bloody black savages."

 Jim Thorn came out from behind the bush re-buckling his belt, but

 wincing with another bout of stomach cramps. He climbed gingerly up into

 the saddle, and the three horses plodded along in the deep yellow muddy

 ruts of the horse-drawn carts which carried the two Maxim machine-guns.

 The rear of the column was out of sight ahead of them amongst the

 dripping mopani trees. The two of them had soon learned to loiter at the

 back away from the scrutiny of the officers, so that they would not be

 ordered into the thigh-deep mud when the Maxim carts bogged down and had

 to be man-handled through one of the glutinous Imopani holes".

 "Look out, Will!" Jim Thorn yelled suddenly, and his oilskins flapped

 like the wings of a startled rooster as he tried to draw his rifle from

 its scabbard. "Look out, bloody savages!"

 A Matabele had stepped silently out of the thick bush alongside the cart

 tracks, and now he stood directly in front of the horses and held up his

 empty hands to show the white men that he was unarmed.

 "Wait, jimmo@" Will Daniel called. "Let's see what the bastard wants."

 "I don't like it, man. It's a trap." Jim searched the bush around them

 nervously. "Let's shoot the black bugger and get out of it."

 "I come in peace!" the Matabele called in English. He wore only a fur

 kilt, without armlets and leg tassels, and the rain shone on his

 smoothly muscled torso. On his head was the headring of an induna.

 The two mounted men both had their rifles out now, and were aiming from

 the hip, covering Kamuza at pointblank range.

 "I have a message from the king."

 "Well, spit it out then," Will snapped.

 "Lobengula says take my gold, and go back to Gubulawayo."

 "Gold?" demanded Jim Thorn. "What gold?"

 Kamuza stepped back into the scrub, picked up the leather grain bag, and

 carried it to them.

 Will Daniel was laughing excitedly as he pulled out the little canvas

 bags. They jingled softly in his hands.

 "By God, that's the sweetest music I ever heard!"

 "What will you do, white men?" Kamuza demanded.

 "Will you take the gold to your chief?"

 "Don't fret yourself, my friend." Will Daniel clapped him delightedly on

 the shoulder. "It will go to the right person, you have the word of

 William Daniel hisself on it."

 Jim Thorn was unbuckling his saddle-bags and stuffing the canvas sacks

 into it.

 "Christmas and my birthday all in one," he winked at Will.

 "White men, will you turn and go back to Gubulawayo, now?" Kamuza called

 anxiously.

 "Don't worry about it another minute," Will assured him, and ferreted a

 loaf of hard bread out of his own saddle-bag. "Here's a present for you,

 bonsela, present, you understand?" Then to Jim. "Come on, mister Thorn,

 it's Mister I'll be calling you now that you are rich."

 "Lead on, mister Daniel," Jim grinned at him, and they spurred past

 Kamuza, leaving him standing in the muddy pathway with the mouldy loaf

 of bread in his hands.

 Clinton Codrington came slipping and sloshing along the bank of the

 Shangani river. The lowering clouds were bringing on the night

 prematurely, and the forests on the far bank were dank and gloomy.

 The thunder rumbled sullenly, as though boulders were being rolled

 across the roof of the sky, and for a few seconds the rain spurted down

 thickly and then sank once more to a fine drizzle. Clinton shivered and

 pulled up the collar of his sheepskin coat as he hurried on to where the

 Maxim carts stood at the head of the column.

 There was a tarpaulin draped between the two carts and beneath it

 squatted a small group of officers. Mungo, Sint John looked up as

 Clinton approached.

 "Ah, parson!" he greeted him. Mungo had learned that this address

 irritated Clinton inordinately. "You took your time." Clinton did not

 reply; he stood hunched in the rain and none of the officers made room

 for him beneath the canvas.

 "Major Wilson is going to make a reconnaissance across the river with a

 dozen men. I want you to go with him to translate, if he meets any of

 the enemy."

 "It will be dark in less than two hours," Clinton pointed out stolidly.

 "Then you had best hurry."

 "The rains will break at any minute," Clinton persisted.

 "Your forces could be split "Parson, you bother about brimstone and

 salvation let us do the soldiering." Mungo turned back to his officers.

 "Are you ready to go, Wilson?"

 Allan Wilson was a bluff Scot, with long, dark moustaches and an accent

 that burred with the tang of heather and highlands.

 "You'll be giving me detailed orders then, sir?" he demanded stiffly.

 There had been ill-feeling between him and Sint John ever since they had

 left Gubulawayo.

 "I want you to use your common sense, man," Sint John snapped. "If you

 can catch Lobengula, then grab him, put him on a horse, and get back

 here. If you are attacked, fall back immediately. If you let yourself be

 cut off, I will not be able to cross the river to support you with the

 Maxims until first light, do you understand that?"

 "I do, General." Wilson touched the brim of his slouch hat. "Come on,

 Reverend," he said to Clinton. "We do not have much time."

 Burnham and Ingram, the two American scouts, led the patrol down the

 steep bank of the Shangani. Wilson and Clinton followed immediately

 behind.

 Clinton's lanky, stooped frame, in the scuffed sheepskin jacket and with

 a shapeless stained hat pulled down over his ears, looked oddly out of

 place in the middle of the uniformed patrol of armed men. As he came

 level with Mungo Sint John, standing on the top of the bank with his

 hands clasped behind his back, Clinton bent low from the saddle of his

 borrowed horse and said, so quietly that only Mungo heard him, "Read "1

 Samuel, chapter eleven, verse fifteen." Then Clinton straightened,

 gathered the old grey gelding with which he had been provided by the

 Company, and the two of them went sliding untidily down the cutting in

 the steep bank which the Matabele had dug to take Lobengula's wagons

 across.

 At this point, the Shangam river was two hundred yards across, and as

 the little patrol waded the deepest part of the channel, the muddy

 waters reached to their stirrup irons. They climbed the far bank and

 almost immediately were lost from view in the dripping woods and poor

 light.

 Mungo Sint John stood for many minutes, staring across the river,

 ignoring the fine, drizzling rain. He was wondering at himself,

 wondering why he had sent such a puny force across the river, with only

 hours of daylight left. The priest was right, of course, it would rain

 again soon. The heavens were leaden and charged with it. The Matabele

 were in force. The priest had seen the Inyati impi under its old and

 crafty commander, Gandang, escorting the wagons away from Gubulawayo.

 If he were going to reconnoitre the lie of the land beyond the river,

 then he knew that he should have used the last of the daylight to ford

 his entire force. It was the correct tactical disposition. That way the

 patrol could fall back under the protection of the Maxims at any time

 during the night, or he could go forward to relieve them if they ran

 into trouble.

 Some demon had possessed him when he gave the orders. Perhaps Wilson had

 finally irritated him beyond all restraint. The man had argued with him

 at every opportunity, and had done his best to subvert Mungo's authority

 amongst the other officers, who resented the fact that he was an

 American over British officers. It was mostly Wilson's fault that this

 was such an unhappy and divided little expedition. He was well rid of

 the overbearing and blunt Scotsman, he decided. Perhaps a night spent in

 company with the Inyati regiment would take some of the pepper out of

 him; and he would be a little more tractable in the future, if there was

 a future for him. Mungo turned back to the sheltering tarpaulin strung

 between the gun carriages.

 Suddenly a thought struck him, and he called down the line. "Captain

 Borrow."

 "Sir?

 "You have a Bible, don't you? Let me have it, will you?"

 Mungo's batman had a fire going, and coffee brewing in the shelter, and

 he took Mungo's coat to dry and.

 spread a grey woollen blanket over his shoulders as Mungo squatted

 beside the fire and paged slowly through the little leather-bound,

 travel-battered Bible.

 He found the reference and stared at it thoughtfully: And he wrote in

 the letter, saying, Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle,

 and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die.

 Mungo wondered that he was still capable of surprising himself. There

 were still strange places in his soul that he had never explored.

 He took a burning stick from the fire and lit his cigar, then plunged

 the glowing red of the brand into the black coffee to enhance the taste

 of the brew.

 "Well, well, Parson!" he murmured aloud. "You have a sharper instinct

 than I ever gave you credit for."

 Then he thought Of Robyn Codrington, trying to consider his feelings

 objectively, and without passion.

 "Do I love her?" he asked, and the answer was immediate.

 "I have never loved a woman, and by God's grace, I never will."

 "Do I want her, then?" And again there was no hesitation. "Yes, I want

 her. I want her badly enough to send anybody who stands in my way to his

 death."

 "Why do I want her?" he pondered. "When I have never loved a woman, why

 do I want this one? She is no longer young, and God knows, I have had my

 pick of a hundred more beautiful. Why do I want her!"and he grinned at

 his own perception. "I want her because she is the only one whom I have

 never had, and whom I will never have completely."

 He closed the Bible with a snap, and grinned wickedly across the wide

 river at the dark and silent mopani forest.

 "Well done, Parson. You saw it long before I did."

 The tracks of Lobengula's wagons were clear to follow, even in the

 worsening light, and Wilson pushed the pace to a canter.

 Clinton's aged grey was exhausted by two weeks of hard trekking. He fell

 back little by little, until after five miles they were loping along

 with Captain Napier's rear file. The mud thrown up by the hooves ahead

 speckled Clinton's face as though he was suffering from some strange

 disease.

 The mopani thinned out dramatically ahead of the tiny patrol, and there

 were low bare hills on either hand.

 "Look at them, Padre," Wilson called to Clinton, and gestured at the

 hills. "There must be hundreds of them."

 "Women and old men," Clinton grunted. The slopes were scattered with

 silent watching figures. "The fighting men will be with the king."

 The twelve riders cantered on without a check, and the thunder muttered

 and shook the sky above the low, swirling clouds.

 Suddenly Wilson raised his right hand high.

 "Troop, halfl' Clinton's grey stood, head hanging and chest heaving

 between his knees, and Clinton was as grateful. At his best he was no

 horseman, and he was unaccustomed to such hard riding.

 "Reverend Codrington to the front!"The order was passed back, and

 Clinton kicked the grey into a plodding walk.

 At that moment a squall of rain stung his face like a handful of thrown

 rock-salt, and he wiped it off with the palm of his right hand.

 "There they are!"said Wilson tersely, and through the drizzle Clinton

 could make out the stained and ragged canvas tent of a wagon rising

 above the scrub, not more than two hundred paces ahead.

 "You know what to say, Padre." Wilson's Scots accent seemed even

 stronger and was incongruous at this place and in these circumstances.

 Clinton walked the grey forward another few paces, and then drew a deep

 breath.

 "Lobengula, King of the Matabele, it is me, Hlopi.

 These men wish you to come to Gubulawayo to parley with Dakatela and

 Lodzi. Do you hear me, oh King?"

 The silence was broken only by the scraping of a windblown branch and

 the rustle of the rain on the brim of Clinton's old hat.

 Then quite clearly, he heard the snick of a Martinihenry rifle being

 loaded; and a young voice asked in whispered Matabele from the scrub

 near the wagon: "Must we shoot, Baba?"

 A deeper, firmer voice replied in the same language.

 "Not yet. Let them come closer so there can be no mistake."

 And then the voices were blotted out by a grumbling roll of thunder

 overhead, and Clinton backed the grey up.

 "It is a trap, Major. There are armed Matabele in ambush about the

 wagons. I heard them talking."

 "Do you think the king is there?"

 "I would not think so, but what I am sure of is that even now the main

 impi is circling back between us and the river."

 "What makes you think that!"

 "It is always the Zulu way, the encirclement and then the closing in."

 "What do you advise, Padre?"

 Clinton shrugged and smiled. "I gave my advice on the bank of the

 river-" He was interrupted by a shouted warning from the rear of the

 column. It was one of the Americans, his accent unmistakable.

 "There is a force moving in behind us."

 "How many?" Wilson shouted back.

 "Plenty, I can see their plumes."

 "Troop, about wheel!" Wilson ordered. "At the gallop, forward!"

 As the horses plunged back down the rough trail, the rain that had been

 threatening so long burst upon them in an icy silver cascade. It slashed

 at their faces" and stung their eyes, and drummed on their oilskins.

 "This will cover our retreat," Wilson grunted, and Clinton flogged the

 grey's neck with the loose end of the reins, for the old horse was

 falling back again.

 Through the thick silver lances of falling rain, he caught a glimpse of

 waving war-plumes above the scrub; they were racing in to head off the

 patrol. At that moment the grey stumbled and Clinton was thrown onto his

 neck.

 "Jee!" He heard the war chant go up, and he clung desperately to the

 grey's neck as it plunged to regain its balance.

 "Come on, Padre!" somebody yelled, as the other troopers went pounding

 past him in the mud and the rain.

 Then his horse was running again. Clinton had lost a stirrup, and he

 bumped painfully on the wet saddle, clinging to the pommel for a grip,

 but they were through.

 There were no shields or plumes in the bush around them, only the

 twisting streamers of rain and the gloom of gathering night.

 "Are you telling me, Napier, that Major Wilson has deliberately chosen

 to spend the night on the far bank, despite my direct orders to return

 before nightfall?" Mungo Sint John asked. The only light was that of a

 storm lantern. The rain had washed out the fires.

 The tarpaulin over the heads of the two officers flogged in the wind,

 spilling gouts of rainwater over them, and the lantern flame fluttered

 uncertainly in its glass chimney, lighting Captain Napier's face from

 below so that he looked like a skull.

 "We got so close to Lobengula, General, within hail of the wagons.

 Major Wilson considered a retreat would not be justified. In any event,

 sir, the bush is swarming with the enemy. The patrol has a better chance

 of surviving the night by stopping in thick bush and waiting for

 daylight., "That is Wilson's estimate, is it?" Mungo demanded, putting

 on a grim expression. Yet inwardly, he congratulated himself on such an

 accurate assessment of the Scotsman's impetuous character.

 "YOU Must reinforce the patrol, sir. You must send at least one of the

 Maxims across, now, this very hour."

 "Listen carefully, Captain," Mungo ordered him. "What do you hear?"

 Even over the rain and the wind there was an echo like the sound in a

 seashell held to the ear.

 "The river, Captain," Mungo told him. "The river is spating!"

 "I have just forded it. You can still get across, sir. If you give the

 order now! If you wait until dawn, it may well be in full flood."

 "Thank you for your advice, Napier. I will not risk the Maxims."

 "Sir, sir, you can take at least one Maxim off its carriage. We can

 carry it in a blanket and swim across."

 "Thank you, Captain. I will send Borrow across with twenty men to

 reinforce Wilson until morning, and this force will follow, with both

 Maxims, only when it is light enough to see the ford and make the

 crossing in safety."

 "General Sint John, you are signing the death warrant of those men."

 "Captain Napier, you are overwrought. I shall expect an apology from you

 when you have recovered yourself."

 Clinton sat with his back against the bole of a mopani tree. He had one

 hand thrust into the front of his sheepskin jacket, to hold his

 travelling Bible out of the rain.

 He wished above any other creature needs that he had light enough to

 read it.

 All around him the rest of the tiny patrol lay stretched out on the

 muddy earth, bundled up in their rubber groundsheets and oilskins,

 though Clinton was certain that, like himself, none of them was asleep,

 nor would any of them sleep that night.

 Clutching the Bible above his heart, he had the certain prescience of

 his own death, and he made the astonishing discovery that it had no

 terrors for him. once, long ago, before he had discovered how close at

 hand was God's comfort, he had been afraid, and now the release from

 fear was a blessed gift.

 Sitting in darkness, he thought of love, the love of his God and his

 woman and his daughters, and that was all that he would regret leaving

 behind him.

 He thought of Robyn as he had first seen her, standing on the deck of

 the American slaver Huron with her dark hair aflutter on the wind and

 her green eyes flashing.

 He remembered her upon the rumpled sweat-soaked childbed as she

 struggled to give birth, and he remembered the hot slippery and totally

 enchanting feeling of his first infant daughter's body as it slithered

 from Robyn's body into his waiting hands.

 He remembered the first petulant birth wail, and how beautiful Robyn had

 been as she smiled at him, exhausted and racked and proud.

 There were other small regrets, one that he would never dandle a

 grandchild, another that Robyn had never come to love him the same way

 he loved her. Suddenly Clinton sat up straighter against the mopani, and

 inclined his head to listen, peering out into the utter blackness from

 whence the sound had come.

 No, it was not really a sound, the only true sound was the rain. It was

 more like a vibration in the air.

 Carefully, he returned the precious book to his inside pocket, then he

 made a trumpet of his bare hands and pressed them to the wet earth,

 listening intently with his ear to the funnel.

 The vibration coming up from the ground was that of running feet, horny

 bare feet, thousands of feet, trotting to the rhythm of an impi on the

 march. It sounded like the very pulse of the earth.

 Clinton crawled and groped his way across to where he had last seen

 Major Wilson lie down under his plaid.

 There was no glimmering of light under the midnight clouds, and when his

 fingers touched coarse woven cloth, Clinton asked softly: "Is that you,

 Major?"

 "What is it, Padre?"

 "They are here, all around us, moving back to get between us and the

 river."

 They stood-to while the dawn tried vainly to penetrate the low roof of

 cloud above them. The saddled horses were merely humped shapes just a

 little darker than the night around them. They were drawn up in a

 circle, with the men standing on the inside, rifles resting on the

 saddles as they peered out into the thick bush that surrounded them,

 straining for the first glimpse as the grey light settled gently, like a

 sprinkling of pearl dust upon their dark, wet world.

 In the centre of the circle of horses, Clinton knelt in the mud. With

 one hand he held the reins of the grey horse, and with the other he held

 the Bible to his chest.

 His calm voice carried clearly to every man in the dark waiting circle.

 "Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name The light grew

 stronger; they could make out the shape of the nearest bushes. One of

 the horses, perhaps infected by the tension of the waiting men,

 whickered and scissored its ears.

 "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven Now they all heard what

 had alarmed the horse. The faint drumming approached from the direction

 of the river, growing stronger with the dawn light.

 for thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the glory There was the metallic

 clash of a rifle breech from the silent waiting circle of dismounted

 men, and half a dozen gruff voices echoed Clinton's quiet "Anien!"

 Then suddenly someone shouted. "Horses! Those are horses out there!" And

 a ragged little cheer went up as they recognized the shape of slouch

 hats bobbing against the sullen grey sky.

 "Who is it?" Wilson challenged.

 "Borrow, Sir, Captain Borrow!"

 "By God, you're welcome." Wilson laughed as the column of horsemen rode

 out of the forest into their defensive circle. "Where is General Sint

 John; where are the Maxims?"

 The two officers shook hands as Borrow dismounted, but he did not return

 Wilson's smile.

 "The general is still on the south bank."

 Wilson stared at him incredulous, the smile sliding off his face.

 have twenty men, rifles only, no Maxims," Borrow went on.

 "When will the column cross?"

 "We had to swim our horses across. By now the river is ten feet deep."

 Borrow lowered his voice so as not to alarm the men. "They won't be

 coming."

 "Did you make contact with the enemy?" Wilson demanded.

 "We heard them all around us. They called to each other and we heard

 them keeping pace with us in the forest as we passed either hand."

 "So they are massed between us and the river, and even if we cut our way

 through to the river, the ford is impassable. Is that it?"

 "I am afraid so, sir."

 Wilson took his hat from his head and against his thigh he beat the

 raindrops from its brim. Then he settled it again carefully on his head

 at a jaunty angle.

 "Then it seems there is only one direction that we can take, one

 direction in which the Matabele will not expect us to move." He turned

 back to Borrow. "Our orders were to seize the king, and now our very

 lives depend on it. We must have Lobengula as a hostage. We have to go

 forward, and that right smartly." He raised his voice. "Troop, mount!

 Walk march, Trot!" They rode closed up, tense and silent. Clinton's old

 grey had benefited from the night's rest, and kept his place in the

 third file.

 A young trooper rode at Clinton's right hand.

 "What is your name, son?"he asked quietly.

 "Dillon, sir, I mean, Reverend." He was smoothcheeked, and fresh-faced.

 "How old are you, Dillon?"

 "Eighteen, Reverend., They are all so young, Clinton thought. Even Major

 Allan Wilson himself is barely thirty years of age. If only, he thought,

 if only "Padre!"

 Clinton looked up sharply, his attention had been wandering. They had

 long ago emerged from the thick bush, and were now coming up to the same

 spot from which they had retreated the previous evening.

 The wagons were still standing abandoned beside the rude track; the

 tents made pale geometrical oblongs of solid canvas against the dark wet

 scrub.

 Once again, Wilson halted the patrol, and Clinton walked the grey

 forward.

 "Tell them we do not wish to fight" Wilson ordered.

 "There is nobody here."

 "Try anyway," Wilson urged. "If the wagons are deserted, then we will

 ride on until we catch up with the king."

 Clinton rode forward, shouting as he went. "Lobengula, do not be afraid.

 It is me. Hlopi., There was no reply, only the flutter of the wind in

 the torn wagon canvas.

 "Warriors of Matabele, children of Mashobane, we do not wish to fight,

 Clinton called again; and this time he was answered by a bellowing bull

 voice, haughty and angry and proud. it came out of the gloom and rain,

 seeming to emanate from the very air, for there was no one to be seen.

 "Hau, white men! You do not wish to fight, but we do, for our eyes are

 red and our steel is thirsty., The last word was blown away on a great

 gust of sound, and the shrub about them misted over with blue gunsmoke

 and the air about their heads was torn by a gale of shot.

 It was twenty-five years and more since Clinton had stood to receive

 volleyed gunfire; yet he could still dearly differentiate between the

 crack of high-powered rifles and the whistle of ball thrown from ancient

 muzzle loaders, and in the storm the "whirr-whirr" of beaten potlegs

 tumbling as they flew; so that, glancing up, Clinton expected to

 actually see one come over like a rising pheasant.

 "Back! Fall back!" Wilson was shouting, and the horses were all rearing

 and plunging. The fire was, most of it, flying overhead. As always, the

 Matabele had raised their sights to the maximum; but there must have

 been a hundred or more of them hidden in the shrub and random bullets

 were scoring.

 One of the troopers was hit in both eyes, the bridge of his nose shot

 away. He was reeling in the saddle, clutching his face with blood

 spurting out between his fingers.

 His number two spurred in to catch him before he fell, and with an arm

 around his shoulder led him at a gallop back along the trail.

 Young Dillon's horse was hit in the neck, and he was thrown in the mud,

 but he came up with his rifle in his hands, and Clinton yelled at him as

 he galloped back.

 "Cut off your saddle-bags. You'll need every round in them, lad."

 Clinton came in for the pick-up, but Wilson rode him off like a polo

 player.

 "Your moke's half done, Padre. He'll not carry two. Get on with you!"

 They tried to make a stand in the thicket where they had spent the

 night, but the hidden Matabele riflemen crept in so close that four of

 the horses went down, kicking and struggling, exposing the men who had

 been standing behind them, firing over their backs, and three of the men

 were hit. One of them, a young Afrikander from the Cape, had a pot-leg

 slug shatter the bone above his right elbow. The arm was hanging on a

 tattered ribbon of flesh, and Clinton used the sleeves of his shirt to

 make a sling for it.

 "Well, Padre, we are for it now, and that's no mistake." The trooper

 grinned at him, white face speckled with his own blood, like a thrush's

 egg.

 "We can't stand here" Wilson called. "Two wounded to a horse and a man

 to lead them. They'll go in the centre with those who have lost their

 own horses. The rest of us will ride in a box around them."

 Clinton helped the young Afrikander up onto the grey's back, and one of

 the lads from Borrow's volunteers up behind him. The sharp slivers of

 his shin bone were sticking out of the meat of his leg.

 They started back slowly, at the pace of the walkers, and from the

 thickets beside the track the muskets banged and smoked; but the

 Matabele were all of them well hidden. Clearly, they were taking no

 chances, even with this tiny band of thirty-odd men.

 Clinton walked beside the grey, holding the good leg of the wounded man

 to prevent him slipping from the saddle. He carried the two rifles

 belonging to the wounded men slung over his shoulder.

 "Padre!" Clinton looked up to find Wilson above him.

 "We have three horses that are fresh enough to try a run for the river.

 I have ordered Burnham and Ingram to try and get back to the main camp

 and warn Sint John of our predicament. There is one horse for you. They

 will take you with them., "Thank you, Major," Clinton answered without a

 moment's hesitation. "I am a sailor and a priest, not a horseman;

 besides, I rather think I have work to do here.

 Let somebody else go., Wilson nodded. "I expected you to say that." He

 pushed his horse to a trot and went up to the head of the dismal little

 column. Minutes later, Clinton heard the quick beat of flying hooves and

 he looked up to see three horsemen wheel out of the straggling line and

 plunge into the brush that surrounded them.

 There was a chorus of angry yells and the low humming "Jee!" as the

 Matabele tried to head them, but Clinton saw their hats bobbing away

 above the low bush and he called after them.

 "God speed you, boys! Then, as he trudged on in the mud that was balling

 to the soles of his riding boots, he began silently to pray.

 On the outside of the column, another horse fell, throwing its rider

 over its head, and then lunged up again to stand on three legs,

 shivering miserably in the rain, its off-fore hanging limply as a sock

 on a laundry line.

 The trooper limped back, drawing his revolver from its webbing holster,

 and shot the animal between the eyes.

 "That's a wasted bullet," Wilson called clearly. "Don't waste any more."

 They went on slowly, and after a while Clinton became aware that they

 were no longer following the wagon tracks. Wilson seemed to be leading

 them gradually more towards the east, but it was hard to tell, for the

 sun was still hidden by low, grey cloud.

 Then abruptly the column stopped again, and now for the first time the

 insistent banging of muskets from hidden skirmishers in the mopani scrub

 was silenced.

 Wilson had led them into a lovely parklike forest, with short, green

 grass below the stately mopani trees. Some of these trees stood sixty

 feet high and their trunks were fluted and twisted as though moulded

 from potter's clay.

 They could see deep into the forest, between the widely spaced trunks.

 There, directly ahead of the patrol, stretched across their front,

 waited the army of Lobengula. How many thousands, it was impossible to

 tell, for their rearguard was hidden in the forest; and even as the

 little band of white men stared at their host, the likela began, the

 "surrounding" which had been the Zulu way ever since great Chaka's time.

 The "horns" were being spread, the youngest and swiftest warriors

 running out on the flanks, their naked skins burning like black fire

 through the forest. A net around a shoal of sardines, they were thrown

 out until the tips of the horns met to the rear of the band of white men

 and again all movement ceased.

 Facing the patrol was the "chest of the bull", the hard and seasoned

 veterans; when the "horns" tightened, it was the "chest" that would

 close and crush, but now they waited, massed rank upon rank, silent and

 watchful.

 Their shields were of dappled black and white, their plumes were of the

 ostrich, jet black and frothing white, and their kilts of spotted civet

 tails. In their silence and stillness, it was not necessary for Wilson

 to raise his voice above conversational tones.

 "Well, gentlemen. We will not be going any farther not for a while

 anyway. Kindly dismount and form the circle."

 Quietly the horses were led into a ring, so that they stood with their

 noses touching the rump of the one ahead. Behind each horse, his rider

 crouched with the stock of his rifle resting on the saddle, aiming

 across at the surrounding wall of silent, waiting black and white

 dappled shields.

 "Padre!" Wilson called softly, and Clinton left the wounded whom he was

 tending in the centre and crossed quickly to his side.

 "I want you here to translate, if they want to parley."

 "There will be no more talking," Clinton assured him, and as he said it

 the massed ranks of the "chest" parted and a tall induna came through.

 Even at a distance of two hundred paces, he was an imposing figure in

 his plumes and tassels of valour.

 "Gandang," said Clinton quietly. "The king's halfbrother."

 For long seconds Gandang stared across at the circle of rain-streaked

 horses and the grim, white faces that peered over them, and then he

 lifted his broad assegai above his head. It was almost a gladiatorial

 salute, and he held it for a dozen beats of Clinton's heart. Then his

 voice carried clearly to where they waited.

 "Let it begin!" he called, and his spear arm dropped.

 Instantly, the horns came racing in, tightening like a strangler's grip

 on the throat.

 "Steady!" Wilson called. "Hold your fire! No bullets to waste, lads!

 Hold your fire, wait to make sure."

 The blades came out of the thongs that held them to the grip of the

 shields with a rasping growl, and the war chant rose, deep and resonant:

 Jee! Jee!"And now the silver blades drummed on the dappled rawhide, so

 that the horses stamped and threw their heads.

 Wait lads." The front rank was fifty yards away, sweeping in out of the

 gentle silky grey rain mist.

 "Pick your man! Pick your man!" Twenty yards, chanting and drumming to

 the rhythm of their pounding bare feet.

 "Fire!"Gunfire rippled around the tight little circle, not a single

 blast but with the spacing that told that every shot had been aimed, and

 the front rank of attackers melted into the soggy earth.

 The breech blocks clashed, and the gunfire was continuous, like strings

 of Chinese crackers, and an echo came back, the slapping sound of lead

 bullets striking naked black flesh.

 At two places the warriors burst into the ring, and for desperate

 seconds there were knots of milling men, and the banging of revolvers

 held point blank to chest and belly. Then the black wave lost its

 impetus, hesitated and finally drew back, the surviving warriors

 slipping back into the forest, leaving their dead scattered in the wet

 grass.

 "We did it, we sent them off!" someone yelled, and then they were all

 cheering.

 "A little early to celebrate," Clinton murmured drily.

 "Let them shout," Wilson was reloading his pistol. "Let them keep their

 courage up." He looked up from the weapon at Clinton. "You'll not be

 joining us then?" he asked. "You were a fighting man once."

 Clinton shook his head. "I killed my last man over twenty years ago, but

 I will look to the wounded and do anything else you want of me."

 "Go around to each man. Collect all the spare ammunition. Fill the

 bandoliers and dole "em out as they are needed."

 Clinton turned back to the centre of the circle, and there were three

 new men there, one was dead, shot in the head, another with a broken

 hip, and the third with the shaft of an assegai protruding from his

 chest.

 "Take it out!"his voice rose as he tugged ineffectually at the handle.

 "Take it out! I can't stand it."

 Clinton knelt in front of him and judged the angle of the blade. The

 point must lie near the heart. "It's better to leave it," he advised

 gently.

 "No! No!"The man's voice rose, and the men in the outer circle looked

 back, their faces stricken by that hysterical shriek. "Take it out!

 Perhaps it was best after all, better than lingering, shrieking death to

 unnerve the men around him.

 "Hold his shoulders," Clinton ordered quietly, and a trooper knelt

 behind the dying man. Clinton gripped the shaft. It was a beautiful

 weapon, bound in decorative patterns with hair from an elephant's tail

 and bright copper wire.

 He pulled and the wide blade sucked with the sound of a boot in thick

 mud, and it came free. The trooper shrieked only once more, as his

 heart's blood followed the steel out in a bright torrent.

 The waves of warriors came again four times before noon. Each time it

 seemed impossible that they could fail to overwhelm the waiting circle,

 but each time they swirled and broke upon it like a tide upon a rock,

 and then were sucked back into the forest.

 After each assault the circle had to be drawn a little smaller, to take

 up the gaps left by fallen horses and dead and wounded men, and then the

 Matabele musketeers would creep in again, moving like quick and silent

 shadows from mopani to mopani, offering meagre targets, the bulge of a

 shoulder around the stem of a mopani trunk, little cotton pods of

 gunsmoke in the patches of green grass, the black bead of a head bobbing

 above the summit of one of the scattered termite nests as a warrior rose

 to fire.

 Wilson walked quietly around the circle, talking calmly to each man in

 turn, stroking the muzzle of a restless horse, and then coming back into

 the centre.

 "Are you coping, Padre?"

 "We are doing fine, Major."

 The dead were laid out with what little dignity was left to them, and

 Clinton had covered their faces with saddle blankets. There were twelve

 of them now, and it was only a little past noon, another seven hours of

 daylight.

 The lad who had lost his eyes in the first volley was talking to

 somebody from long ago in his delirium, but the words were jumbled and

 made little sense. Clinton had bound his head in a clean white bandage

 from the saddle-bag of the grey, but the bandage was now muddied, and

 the blood had seeped through.

 Two others lay still, one breathing noisily through the hole in his

 throat from which the air bubbled and whistled, the other silent and

 pale, except for a little dry cough at intervals. He had been hit low in

 the back, and there was no use nor feeling in his lower body. The

 others, too gravely wounded to stand in the circle, were breaking open

 the waxed paper packages of cartridges and refilling the bandoliers.

 Wilson squatted on his haunches beside Clinton.

 "Ammunition?" he asked softly.

 "Four hundred rounds," Clinton replied as softly.

 "Less than thirty rounds a man,"Wilson calculated swiftly. "Not counting

 the wounded, of course."

 "Well, look at it this way, Major, at least it is no longer raining."

 "Do you know, Padre, I hadn't even noticed." Wilson smiled faintly, and

 looked up at the sky. The cloud belly had risen and at that moment a

 pale ghostly silhouette of the sun appeared through it; but it was

 without warmth and so mild that they stared at it without paining their

 eyes.

 "You are hit, Major," Clinton exclaimed suddenly. He had not realized it

 until that moment. "Let me look at it., "It's almost stopped bleeding.

 Let it be." Wilson shook his head "Keep your bandages for those others."

 He was interrupted by a shout from one of the troopers in the outer

 circle.

 "There he is again!" And immediately firing rifles whipcracked, and the

 same voice swore angrily.

 "The bastard, the bloody bastard "What is it, soldier?"

 "That big induna, he's moving about again out there; but he's got the

 devil's luck, sir. We just wasted a packet of bullets on him."

 As he spoke, Clinton's old grey horse threw up his head and fell on his

 knees, hit in the neck. He struggled to rise again, then rolled over on

 his side.

 "Poor old fellow!" Clinton murmured, and immediately another horse

 reared up, thrashed frantically at the air with his fore hooves and then

 crashed over on his back.

 "They're shooting better now," Wilson said quietly.

 "I would guess that is Gandang's work," Clinton agreed.

 "He's moving from sniper to sniper, setting their sights for them and

 coaching their fire."

 "Well, it's time to close the circle again."

 There were only ten horses still standing; the others lay where they had

 fallen, and their troopers lay belly down behind them, waiting patiently

 for a certain shot at one of the hundreds of elusive figures amongst the

 trees.

 "Close up." Wilson stood and gestured to the ring of troopers. "Come in

 on the centre He broke off abruptly, spun in a half circle and clutched

 his shoulder, but still he kept his feet.

 "You're hit again!" Clinton jumped up to help him and immediately both

 his legs were struck out from under him, and he dropped back onto the

 muddy earth and stared at his smashed knee caps.

 It must have been one of the ancient elephant guns, the

 four-to-the-pounders that some of the Matabele were using. It was a

 weapon that threw a ball of soft lead weighing a quarter of a pound. It

 had hit him in one knee and torn through into the other.

 Both his legs were gone; one was twisted up under his buttocks, and he

 was sitting on his own muddy riding boot. The other leg was reversed,

 the toe-cap of his boot was dug into the mud and the silver spur stuck

 up towards the swirling cloud belly of the sky. Gandang knelt behind the

 trunk of the mopani tree and snatched the Martini-Henry rifle out of the

 hands of a young brave; "Even a baboon remembers a lesson he is taught,"

 Gandang fumed. "How often have you been told not to do this."

 The long leaf sight on top of the blued barrel was at maximum extension,

 set for one thousand yards.

 Under Gandang's quiet instructions, the young Matabele rested the rifle

 in a crotch of the mopani, and fired.

 The rifle kicked back viciously, and he shouted joyously. In the little

 circle a big sway-backed grey horse dropped to its knees, fought briefly

 to rise and then flopped over on its side.

 "Did you see me, my brothers?" howled the warrior.

 "Did you see me kill the grey horse?"

 Vamba's hands were shaking with excitement as he reloaded and rested the

 rifle again.

 He fired, and this time a bay gelding reared up and then crashed over on

 its back.

 Jee! sang Vamba, and brandished the smoking rifle over his head, and the

 war chant was taken up by a hundred other hidden riflemen, and the

 volley of their fire flared up.

 "They are almost ready," Gandang thought, as he glimpsed another of the

 defenders struck down in the renewed gale of gunfire. "There can be few

 of them who still can shoot. Soon now it will be time to send the spears

 for the closing-in, and tonight I will have a victory to take to my

 brother the king. One little victory in all the terrible defeats, and so

 hard bought."

 He slipped away from the shelter of the mopani trunk, and loped swiftly

 across towards where another of his riflemen was firing away as fast as

 he could re-load. Halfway there Gandang felt the jarring impact in his

 upper arm, but he covered the open ground to shelter without a check in

 his stride, and then leaned against the bole of the mopani, and examined

 the wound. The bullet had gone in the side of his biceps and out the

 back of his arm. The blood was dripping from his elbow, like thick black

 treacle. Gandang scooped a handful of mud and slapped it over the

 wounds, plugging and masking them.

 Then he said scornfully to the kneeling warrior at his side. "You shoot

 like an old woman husking maize." And he took the rifle out of his

 hands.

 Clinton dragged himself backwards on his elbows, and his legs slithered

 loosely after him through the mud. He had used the webbing belt from one

 of the dead men as a tourniquet, and there was very little bleeding. The

 numbness of the shock still persisted, so the pain was just bearable,

 though the sound of the shattered ends of bone grating together as he

 moved brought up the nausea in a bitter-acid flood in the back of his

 throat.

 He reached the blind boy, and paused for his breathing to settle before

 he spoke. "The others are writing letters, afterwards somebody may find

 them. Is there anybody at home? I'll write for you."

 The boy was silent, did not seem to have heard. An hour earlier Clinton

 had given him one of the precious laudanum pills from the kit which

 Robyn had prepared for him before he left Gubulawayo.

 "Did you hear, lad?"

 "I heard, Padre. I was thinking. Yes, there is a girl."

 Clinton turned a fresh page of his notebook and licked the point of his

 pencil, and the boy thought again and mumbled shyly: "Well then, Mary.

 You'll have read in the papers, we had quite a scrap here today.

 It's nearly over now, and I was thinking about that day on the river

 Clinton wrote quickly, to keep up.

 "I'll be saying cheerio, then Mary. Isn't one of us afraid.

 I reckon as how we just want to do it right, when the time comes Quite

 suddenly, Clinton found his vision blurring as he wrote the final

 salutation, and he glanced up at the pale beardless face. The eyes were

 swathed in bloody bandages, but his lips were quivering and the boy

 gulped hard as he finished.

 "What is her name, lad? I have to address it."

 "Mary Swayne. The Red Boar at Falmouth."

 She was a barmaid then, Clinton thought, as he buttoned the folded page

 into the boy's breast pocket. She would probably laugh at the note if

 she ever got it, and pass it around the regulars in the saloon bar.

 "Padre, I was lying," the boy whispered. "I am afraid."

 "We all are." Clinton squeezed his hand. "I tell you what, lad. If you

 like, you can load for Dillon here. He's got eyes to shoot, but only one

 arm, you're got two good arms."

 "Bully on you, Padre," Dillon grinned. "Why didn't we think of that."

 Clinton draped a bandolier across the blind boy's legs.

 There were only fifteen cartridges in the loops, and at that moment, out

 in the mopani, the singing started.

 It was slow and deep and very beautiful, echoing and ringing through the

 forest. The praise song of the Inyati.

 And Clinton turned his head and looked slowly around the circle.

 All the horses were dead; they lay in a litter of saddlery and broken

 equipment, of crumpled yellow scraps of waxed paper from the ammunition

 packets, of empty brass cartridge cases and discarded rifles. In the

 confusion, only the row of dead men was orderly. How long was that row,

 Clinton thought, oh God, what a waste this is, what a cruel waste.

 He raised his eyes, and the clouds were at last breaking up. There were

 valleys of sweet blue sky between the soaring ranges of cumulus. Already

 the sunset was licking the cloud mountains with soft, fleshy tones of

 pink and rose, while the depths of the billowing masses were the colour

 of burnt antimony and tarnished silver.

 They had fought all day on this bloody patch of mud.

 In another hour it would be dark, but even now there were dark specks

 moving like dust motes against the high singing blue of the evening sky.

 The tiny specks turned in slow eddies, like a lazy whirlpool, for the

 vultures were still very high, waiting and watching with the infinite

 patience of Africa.

 Clinton lowered his eyes, and across the circle Wilson was watching him.

 He sat with his back against the belly of one of the dead horses. His

 right arm hung uselessly at his side, and the wadding over the wound in

 his stomach was crimson with seeping blood, but he held his revolver in

 his lap.

 The two men held each other's gaze while the singing soared and fell and

 soared again.

 "They'll be coming now, for the last time," Wilson said.

 Clinton nodded, and then he lifted his chin, and he, too, began to sing:

 "Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee, " His voice was surprisingly

 clear and true, and Wilson was singing with him, holding the wadding to

 his stomach wound.

 Darkness comes over me, My rest a stone The blind boy's voice cracked

 and quavered. Dillon was beside him; though his ankle and elbow were

 shot through, he lay upon his back with a rifle propped on his crossed

 knees, ready to fire one-handed when they came. His voice was flat and

 tuneless, but he winked cheekily at Clinton and grinned:

 Angels to beckon me Eight of them, all that were left, every one of them

 wounded more than once, but all of them singing in the wilderness of the

 mopani forests, their voices tinny and thin, almost lost in the great

 crashing chords of the praise song of the Inyati regiment.

 Then there was thunder in the air, the drumming of two thousand assegais

 on black and white dappled shields, and the thunder came rolling down

 upon their little circle.

 Allan Wilson dragged himself to his feet to face them.

 Because of his stomach wound, he could not stand erect, and the one arm

 dangled at his side. His service revolver made a strangely unwarlike

 popping sound in the roar of the war chant and the drumming blades.

 Dillon was still singing, snatching the loaded rifles and firing, and

 singing, and grabbing the next rifle. The blind boy felt the last

 cartridge into a rifle breech, and passed the hot rifle back to Dillon,

 and then he groped for another round, his fingers becoming frantic as he

 realized the bandolier was empty.

 "They're finished," he cried. "They are all finished!"

 Dillon pushed himself erect on his one good leg, and hopped forward,

 holding the empty rifle by the muzzle, and he swung the butt at the wave

 of shields and plumes that reared over him, but the blow lacked power

 and was deflected harmlessly aside by one of the tall oval shields; and

 then quite miraculously a long, broad blade sprang from between his

 shoulder blades, driven through from breast bone to spine, and the

 silver steel was misted pink.

 "I don't want to die," screamed the blind boy. "Please hold me, Padre."

 And Clinton put his arm around his shoulders and squeezed with all his

 strength.

 "It's all right, lad," he said. "It's going to be all right."

 The bodies were stripped naked. Their skin, never touched by the sun,

 was snowy white and strangely delicate-looking, like the smooth petals

 of the arum lily.

 Upon this whiteness, the wounds were the shocking colour of crushed

 mulberries.

 Around the killing ground was gathered a vast concourse of warriors,

 some of them already wearing items of the looted uniforms, all of them

 still panting with the exhilaration of that last wild charge and the

 stabbing with which it had ended.

 From the dense ranks, an old grizzle-headed warrior stepped forward with

 his assegai held under-handed, like a butcher's knife. He stooped over

 the naked corpse of Clinton Codrington. It was the time to let the

 spirits of the white men free, to let them escape from their bodies and

 fly, lest they remain on earth to trouble the living. it was time for

 the ritual disembowelment. The old warrior placed the point of his blade

 on the skin of Clinton's stomach, just above the pathetic shrivelled

 cluster of his genitals, and gathered himself to make the deep upward

 stroke.

 "Hold!" A clear voice stopped him, and the warrior stood back and

 saluted respectfully as Gandang came striding through the parting ranks

 of his warriors.

 In the centre of that awful field, Gandang stopped, and looked down at

 the naked bodies of his enemies. His face was impassive, but his eyes

 were terrible, as though he mourned for all the earth.

 "Let them lie," he said quietly. "These were men of men, for their

 fathers were men before them."

 Then he turned and strode back the way he had come, and his men formed

 up behind him and trotted away into the north.

 Lobengula had come to the end of his domains. Below him the earth opened

 into the steep escarpment of the Zambezi valley, wild infernal place of

 broken rocky gorges and impenetrable thickets, of savage animals and a

 smouldering crushing heat.

 At the limit of the eye the dark serpentine growth of riverine bush

 outlined the course of the father of all waters, and in the west a tall

 silver cloud of spray stood against the sky: it marked the place where

 the Zambezi river went crashing over a sheer ledge of rock in an

 awesome, creaming torrent, falling over three hundred feet into the

 narrow gorge below.

 Lobengula sat upon the box of the leading wagon and looked upon all this

 savage grandeur with listless eyes.

 The wagon was drawn by two hundred of his warriors.

 The oxen were all dead, the ground had been too rugged and rocky for

 most of them and they had broken down and died in the traces.

 Then the migration had run into the first belt of the tsetse fly, and

 the dreaded little insects had come to swarm on the dappled hides of the

 remaining bullocks and plague the men and women in Lobengula's sprawling

 caravan. Within weeks, the last of the fly-struck beasts was dead, and

 men, more resistant to the sting of the tsetse, had taken their places

 in the span and drawn their king onwards in his hopeless, aimless

 flight.

 Now even they were daunted by what lay ahead, and they rested on the

 yokes and looked back at Lobengula.

 "We will sleep here this night," said the king, and immediately the

 weary, starving host that followed the wagons spread out to begin the

 chores of making camp, the young girls to carry water in the clay pots,

 the men to build the temporary lean-to shelters and cut the wood for the

 fires, and the women to eke out the contents of the almost empty grain

 bags and the few shreds of dried meat that remained. The fly had killed

 the last of the slaughter beasts with the draught bullocks, and game was

 scarce and shy.

 Gandang went forward to the lead wagon and saluted his half -brother.

 "Your bed will be ready soon, Nkosi Nkulu."

 But Lobengula was staring dreamily up at the steep rocky kopje that

 towered above their bivouac. The great bloated trunks of the

 cream-of-tartar trees had forced the black boulders apart. The little

 twisted branches, loaded with smooth furry pods, reached towards the

 uncaring sky like the maimed arms o a cripple.

 "Is that a cave up there, my brother?" Lobengula asked softly. A dark

 cleft was riven into the rock face that girdled the crest of the hill.

 "I wish to go up to that cave."

 Twenty men carried Lobengula on a litter of poles and furs, and he

 winced at each jolt, his great swollen body riddled with gout and

 arthritis, but his eyes were fastened on the crest high above him.

 just below the rock face Gandang made a sign to the bearers and they lay

 the litter gently upon the rocky slope while Gandang shifted his shield

 onto his shoulder and freed his broad blade from its thong as he went

 ahead.

 The cave was narrow but deep and dark. The small ledge at its mouth was

 littered with the furry remains and chewed bones of small animals, the

 hydrax and baboon, gazelle and klipspringer. The cave itself gave out

 the fetid odour of the cage of a carnivorous animal, and when Gandang

 squatted at the entrance and peered into the sombre depths, there was

 the sudden vicious spitting snarl of a leopard, and dimly he saw the

 beast move in the shadows and caught the glint of its fierce golden

 eyes.

 Gandang moved slowly out of the sunlight, and paused to let his eyes

 adjust to the gloom. The leopard warned him again with a terrifying

 crackle of anger in the confined spaces of the cavern. It had crept

 closer and was lying flat upon a narrow ledge above the level of

 Gandang's head. He could just make out the shape of its broad adder-like

 brow; the ears were laid back flat and the eyes slitted with rage.

 Carefully, Gandang moved into position below the ledge, for he did not

 want to trigger the charge until he was ready to receive it. Balanced

 lightly in a half crouch, with the assegai's point lifted and lined up

 on the enraged animal's throat, Gandang flirted his shield and called to

 it.

 "Come, evil one! Come, devil spawn." And with another stunning burst of

 rage, the leopard launched itself, a blurr of gold, upon the tall

 dappled shield. But as it dropped, so Gandang lifted the point and took

 the leopard upon it, letting its own weight drive the steel through its

 heart; and then he rolled backwards under the shield and the cruel

 hooked talons raked the cured iron-hard hide unavailingly.

 The blade was still buried in the leopard's chest. It coughed once,

 choking on its own blood, and then it wrenched itself free of the steel

 and bounded out through the mouth of the cavern. When Gandang followed

 it cautiously into the sunlight, the beautiful beast was stretched out

 on the rocky ledge in a spreading puddle of its own blood. It was a

 magnificent old male, the pelt unscarred. The sable rosettes upon its

 back were not much darker than the dark amber ground, that shaded down

 to a pure buttery cream on the underbelly. A noble animal, and only a

 king might wear its fur.

 "The way is safe, oh King," Gandang called down the slope, and the

 litter-bearers carried Lobengula up and set him gently upon the ledge.

 The king dismissed the bearers, and he and his halfbrother were alone on

 the hillside, high above this harsh and barbaric land. Lobengula looked

 at the dead leopard and then at the dark mouth of the cavern.

 "This would be a fitting tomb for a king," said Lobengula reflectively,

 and Gandang could not answer him.

 They were silent for a long while.

 "I am a dead man," said Lobengula at last, and raised a graceful hand to

 still Gandang's protest. "I walk, I speak still, but my heart is dead

 within me."

 Gandang was silent, and he could not look upon the king's face.

 "Gandang, my brother. I want only peace. Will you grant me that?

 When I order it, will you bring your spear to me and by piercing my dead

 heart let my spirit free to find that peace?"

 "My King, my brother, never once have I disobeyed your order. Ever your

 word was the centre of my existence. Ask anything of me, my brother,

 anything but this.

 Never can I lift my hand towards you, son of Mzilikazi, my father,

 grandson of Mashobane, my grandfather."

 Lobengula sighed. "Oh Gandang, I am so weary and sick with grief.

 If you will not give me surcease, then will you send for my senior

 witchdoctor?"

 The witchdoctor came and listened gravely to the king's command; then he

 rose and went to the carcass of the leopard.

 He clipped off the long, stiff, white whiskers and burned them to powder

 in a tiny clay pot over a small fire. To make the potion stronger still,

 he pounded a dozen seeds of the poison rope shrub to a paste and mixed

 it with the lethal ashes. Then from a stoppered buck-horn on his belt,

 he poured and stirred an acrid green liquid.

 On his knees, with face to the ground, he wriggled towards the king like

 an obsequious cur-dog and placed the pot on the rocky ledge before him.

 As his withered claw-like fingers released the deadly vessel, Gandang

 rose silently behind him and drove his assegai between the witchdoctor's

 bony shoulder blades and out of his pigeon chest.

 Then he picked up the wizened skeletal body and carried it into the

 recesses of the cavern. When he came back he knelt again before

 Lobengula.

 "You are right," Lobengula nodded. "No man but you should know the

 manner of the king's going."

 He picked up the pot and held it between his cupped pink palms.

 "Now you will be the father of my poor people. Stay in peace, my

 brother," said Lobengula, and lifted the pot to his lips and drained it

 at a single draught.

 Then he lay back on the litter and pulled a fur kaross over his head.

 "Go sweetly, my beloved brother," said Gandang. His noble features were

 set like weathered granite, but as he sat beside the king's bier the

 tears coursed down his cheeks and wet the great battle-scarred muscles

 of his chest. They buried Lobengula in the cavern, sitting upright on

 the stone floor and wrapped in the wet green skin of the leopard. They

 dismantled his wagons and carried them up the hill and stacked the parts

 at the back of the cave.

 They piled Lobengula's tusks of yellow ivory at each hand, and at his

 feet Gandang placed his toy spear of kingship and his beer pots and

 eating plates, his knives and mirrors and snuff-horn, his beads and

 ornaments, a bag of salt and another of grain for the journey, and

 finally the little sealed clay pots of uncut diamonds to pay his way

 into the spirit world of his forefathers.

 Under Gandang's supervision, they sealed the mouth of the cavern with

 heavy slabs of black ironstone, then, dolefully singing the king's

 praises, they went back down the hill.

 There were no cattle to slaughter for the funeral feast, nor grain for

 the beer pots. Gandang called the leaders of the mourning people to him.

 "A mountain has fallen," he said simply. "And an age is past. I have

 left behind me my wife and my son and the land that I loved. Without

 those things a man is nothing. I am going back. No man need follow me.

 Each must choose his own path, but mine is south again to Gubulawayo and

 the magical hills of the Matopos, to meet and talk with this man Lodzi."

 In the morning, when Gandang started southwards again, he looked back

 and saw what was left of the Matabele nation straggling along behind

 him, no longer a great and warlike people, but a bewildered and broken

 rabble.

 Robyn Codrington stood on the cool shaded verandah of Khami Mission. It

 had rained that morning, and the air was washed sparkling clean and the

 wet earth smelled like newly baked bread as the bright sunshine warmed

 it.

 Robyn wore the black ribbons of mourning sewn on her sleeves.

 "Why do you come here?" she demanded quietly, but unsmilingly, of the

 man who mounted the front steps of the verandah.

 "I had no choice," Mungo Sint John answered her. He stopped on the top

 step, and studied her for a moment without any trace of mockery on his

 face.

 Her skin was scrubbed and fresh, devoid of either rouge or powder.

 It was smooth and fine-textured. There was no pouching below her clear

 green eyes, no blurring of her jawline, and her hair drawn back from her

 temples and forehead was innocent of silver lacing. Her body was

 small-breasted and narrow-hipped, tall and supple, but when she saw the

 direction of his gaze, the line of Robyn's lips hardened and set.

 "I should be grateful, sir, if you would state your business and leave."

 "Robyn, I am sorry, but perhaps it is best that the uncertainty is

 over."

 In the four months since the return of @ the flying column from the

 Shangani, a dozen rumours. had come out of the bush.

 That fateful morning, Mungo Sint John's column, cut off by the flooded

 river, had heard heavy firing on the opposite bank. Then almost

 immediately they had themselves come under fierce attack by elements of

 the Matabele army. They had been forced to retire, a long weary fighting

 retreat in the rain that had taken weeks of starvation and privation,

 until at last the harrying impis had let them go, but not before the gun

 carriages had been abandoned and half the horses lost.

 Nobody had known what had happened to Allan Wilson's patrol on the north

 bank of the Shangani, but then the word had reached Gubulawayo that the

 little band had cut their way through the impis, gained the Zambezi, and

 rafted down it to the Portuguese settlement of Tete, three hundred miles

 downstream. Later that was denied by the Portuguese and hopes plunged,

 to be revived again when a Matabele induna coming in to surrender

 suggested that the white men had been taken prisoner by the Inyati

 regiment, rumour, denial and counter-rumour for four harrowing months,

 and now Mungo Sint John was standing before Robyn.

 "It's certain," he said. "I did not want a stranger to bring the news to

 you."

 "They are dead," she said flatly.

 "All of them. Dawson reached the battlefield and found them."

 "He would not have been able to recognize them or be certain of how many

 bodies. Not after all these months, not after the hyena and vultures, "

 "Robyn, please." Mungo held out a hand to her, but she recoiled from

 him.

 "I won't believe it, Clinton could have escaped."

 "In the bush Dawson met the senior induna of the Matabele. He is coming

 in with all his people to surrender. He described to Dawson the patrol's

 last stand, and how in the end they all died."

 "Clinton could have, " She was very pale, shaking her head firmly.

 "Robyn, it was Gandang. He knew your husband-well.

 "Hlopi" he called him, the man with white hair. He saw him lying with

 the other dead. It is certain. There can be no more hope."

 "You can go now," she said, and then quite suddenly she was weeping.

 Standing very erect and chewing her lower lip to try and stop herself,

 but her face had crumpled and the rims of her eyelids turned rosy-pink

 with grief.

 "I cannot leave you like this," he said and limped down the stoep

 towards her.

 "Don't come near me," she husked through her tears, and she retreated

 before him. "Please don't touch me."

 He came on, lean and rangy as an old torn-leopard; but the cruel and

 swarthy planes of his face had softened with an expression she had never

 seen upon them before, and his one good eye held her swimming green ones

 with a deep and tender concern.

 "Don't, oh please don't, "Now she held up both hands as if to ward him

 off, and she turned her face away. She had reached the end of the

 verandah; her back was pressed to the door of the bedroom which Cathy

 and Salina had once shared, and she began to pray, her voice muffled by

 her own tears.

 "Oh Gentle Jesus, help me to be strong-" His hands fell upon her

 shoulders; they were hard as bone and cool through the thin cotton of

 her blouse. She shuddered, and gasped.

 Have pity. I beg you. Let me be."

 He took her chin in the cup of his hand and forced her face up to his.

 "Will you give me no peace, ever?" she mumbled brokenly, and then his

 mouth covered hers and she could not speak again. Slowly the rigidity

 went out of her body, and she swayed against him. She sobbed once, and

 began to slump into the embrace of his hard muscled arms. He caught her

 behind the knees, and around the shoulders, and lifted her like a

 sleeping child against his chest.

 He kicked open the door to the bedroom, stepped through and pushed it

 closed with his heel.

 There was a dustsheet on the bed, but no pillow or eiderdown. He laid

 her upon it, and knelt beside her, still holding her to his chest.

 "He was a saint," she choked. "And you sent him to his death. You are

 the very devil."

 Then with the shaking, frantic fingers of a drowning woman, she

 unfastened the mother-of-pearl buttons down the front of his linen

 shirt.

 "His chest was hard and smooth, the olive skin covered with crisp, dark

 curls. She pressed her open lips to it, breathing deeply the man-smell

 of him.

 "Forgive me," she sobbed. "Oh God, forgive me."

 From his cubbyhole beside the pantries, Jordan Ballantyne could overlook

 the cavernous kitchens of Groote Schuur.

 There were three chefs at work over the gleaming, anthracite-burning Aga

 ranges, and one of them hurried across to Jordan with the enamelled

 double-boiler and a silver spoon. With it Jordan tasted the Beamaise

 sauce that would go with the galjoen. The galjoen was a fish of the

 stormy Cape waters; fancifully its shape could be likened to that of a

 Spanish galleon, and its delicate greenish flesh was one of the great

 African delicacies.

 "Perfect," Jordan nodded. "Parfait, Monsieur Galliard, comme toujours."

 The little Frenchman scurried away beaming, and Jordan turned to the

 heavy teak door leading to the wine cellars below the kitchens.

 Jordan had personally decanted the port that afternoon, ten bottles of

 the forty-year-old Vilanova de Gaia of the 1853 vintage; it had faded to

 the beautiful tawny colour of wild honey. Now a Malay waiter in long

 white Kanzu robes, with crimson sash and pillbox fez, came up the stone

 steps, reverently carrying the first Waterford glass decanter on a

 Georgian silver tray.

 Jordan poured a thimbleful into the chased silver tastevin which he wore

 on the chain about his neck. He sipped, rolled it on his tongue and then

 drew breath sharply through pursed lips to let the wine declare itself.

 "I was right," he murmured. "What a fortunate purchase."

 Jordan opened the heavy leatherbound wine register, and noted with

 pleasure that they still had twelve dozen bottles of the Vilanova, after

 he had deducted today's decanting. In the "remarks" column he wrote.

 "Extraordinary. Keep for best," and then turned back to the Malay

 steward.

 "So then, Ramallah, we will offer a choice of Sherry Finos Palma or

 Madeira with the soup, with the fish the Chablis or the 1889 Krug -"

 Quickly Jordan ran down the menu, and then dismissed him. "The company

 will be coming through presently, kindly see that everyone takes their

 places now."

 The twelve waiters stood with their backs to the oak panelling of the

 dining-hall, their white-gloved hands clasped in front of them,

 expressionless as guardsmen, and Jordan gave each one a quick appraisal

 as he passed, looking for a stain on the brilliant white robes or a

 sloppily knotted sash.

 At the head of the long table, he paused. The service was the silver

 gilt queen's pattern presented to mister Rhodes by the directors of the

 Chartered Company, the glass was long, finely stemmed Venetian, lipped

 with twenty-two carat gold to complement the gilt. There were twenty-two

 settings this evening, and Jordan had agonized over the seating

 arrangements. Finally he had decided to place Doctor Jameson at the

 bottom of the table and put Sir Henry Loch, the High Commissioner, on

 mister Rhodes" right. He nodded his satisfaction at that arrangement,

 and took one of the Alphonso Havanas from the silver humidor and sniffed

 it before crackling it against his ear, that too was perfect; he

 replaced it and took one last lingering look around the hall.

 The flowers had been arranged by Jordan's own hands, great banks of

 protea blooms from the slopes of Table Mountain. In the centrepiece,

 yellow English roses from the gardens of Groote Schuur, and of course

 mister Rhodes' favourite flowers, the lovely blue plumbago blossom.

 From beyond the double doors came the clatter of many feet on the marble

 floor of the hall and, the high, almost querulous, voice which Jordan

 knew and loved so well carried to him.

 "And we shall just have to square the old man." Jordan smiled fondly at

 the words, the old man was certainly Kruger, the President of the Boer

 Republic, and "square" was still one of the central words in mister

 Rhodes" vocabulary. just before the doors swung open to admit the

 company of brilliant and famous men clad in sombre dinner jackets,

 Jordan slipped out of the hall, back to his little cubbyhole, but he

 raised the hatch beside his desk an inch, so that he could hear the

 conversation at the long, glittering table in the hall beyond.

 It gave him a glorious feeling of power, to be sitting so close to the

 centre of all this and to listen to the pulse of history beating, to

 know that it was within him subtly to alter and direct, and to do so in

 secrecy. A word here, a hint there, even something so trivial as the

 placing of two powerful men side by side at the long dinner table.

 On occasions, in privacy, mister Rhodes would actually ask, "What do you

 think, Jordan?" and would listen attentively to his reply.

 The tumultuous excitement of this life had become a drug to Jordan, and

 barely a day passed that he did not drink the heady draught to the fill.

 There were special moments that he treasured and whose memory he stored.

 When the meal ended, and the company settled down to the port and

 cigars, Jordan could sit alone and gloat over these special memories of

 his.

 He remembered that it had been he who had written out that legendary

 cheque in his own fair hand for mister Rhodes to sign the day that they

 had bought out the Kimberley Central Company. The amount had been

 5,338,650 pounds, the largest cheque ever drawn anywhere in the world.

 He remembered sitting in the visitor's gallery of Parliament as mister

 Rhodes rose to make his acceptance speech as Prime Minister of Cape

 Colony, how mister Rhodes had looked up and caught his eye and smiled

 before he began speaking.

 He remembered after that wild ride down from Matabeleland when he had

 handed the Rudd Concession with Lobengula's seal upon it to mister

 Rhodes, how he had clasped Jordan's shoulder and with those pale blue

 eyes conveyed in an instant more than a thousand carefully chosen words

 ever could.

 He remembered riding beside mister Rhodes" carriage down the Mall to

 Buckingham Palace and dinner with the queen, while the Union Castle

 mailship delayed its sacred sailing by twenty-four hours to wait for

 them.

 This very morning had added another memory to Jordan's store, for he had

 read aloud the cable from Queen Victoria to "Our well-beloved Cecil John

 Rhodes", appointing him one of Her Majesty's Privy Councillors.

 Jordan started back to the present.

 It was after midnight, and in the dining-hall mister Rhodes was abruptly

 breaking up the dinner in his characteristic fashion.

 "Well, gentlemen, I'll bid you all a good night's rest."

 Quickly Jordan rose from his desk and slipped down the servants"

 passageway.

 At the end he opened the door a crack and anxiously watched the burly,

 appealingly awkward figure mount the stairs. The company had done

 justice to Jordan's choice of wine, but still mister Rhodes" tread was

 steady enough. Though he stumbled once at the top of the sweeping marble

 staircase, he caught his balance, and Jordan shook his head with relief.

 When the last servant left, Jordan locked the wine, cellar and the

 pantry. There was a silver tray left upon his desk, and on it a glass of

 the Vilanova and two water biscuits spread thickly with salted Beluga

 caviar. Jordan carried the tray through the silent mansion. A single

 candle burned in the lofty entrance hall. It stood upon the massive

 carved teak table in the centre of the floor.

 Jordan paced slowly across the chequer board of black and white marble

 paving, like a priest approaching the altar, and reverently he laid the

 silver tray upon the table. Then he looked up at the carved image high

 in its shadowy niche, and his lips moved as he silently began the

 invocation to the bird goddess, Panes.

 When he had finished, he stood silent and expectant in the fluttering

 light of the candle, and the great house slept around him. The

 falcon-headed goddess stared with cruel blind eyes into the north, a

 thousand miles and more towards an ancient land, now blessed, or cursed,

 with a new name, Rhodesia.

 Jordan waited quietly, staring up at the bird like a worshipper before a

 statue of the Virgin, and then suddenly in the silence, from the bottom

 of the gardens, where grew the tall dark oak trees that Governor van der

 Stel had planted almost two hundred years before, came the sad and eerie

 cry of an eagle owl. Jordan relaxed and backed away from the offering

 that he left upon the table. Then he turned and went up the marble

 staircase.

 In his own small room he quickly stripped off his clothing that was

 impregnated with the odours of the kitchen.

 Naked, he sponged down his body with cold water, admiring his own lithe

 form in the full-length mirror on the far wall. He scrubbed himself dry

 with a rough towel, and then rinsed his hands in eau-de-Cologne.

 With a pair of silver-backed brushes he burnished his hair until his

 curls shone like whorls of pure gold wire in the lamplight; then he

 slipped his arms into the brocaded gown of midnight blue satin, belted

 it around his waist, picked up the lamp to light his way and stepped out

 into the passage.

 He closed the door to his bedroom quietly and listened for a few

 seconds. The house was still silent, their guests slept. On silent, bare

 feet, Jordan glided down the thick carpet to the double doors at the end

 of the passage to tap lightly on one of the panels, twice then twice

 again, and a voice called to him softly, "Enter!"

 "These are a pastoral people. You cannot take their herds away from

 them." Robyn Ballantyne spoke with a low controlled intensity, but her

 face was pale and her eyes sparkled with furious green lights.

 "Please, won't you be seated, Robyn."

 Mungo Sint John indicated the chair of rough raw lumber, one of the few

 furnishings in this adobe mud hut that was the office of the

 Administrator of Matabeleland. "You will be more comfortable, and I will

 feel more at ease."

 Nothing could make him appear more at ease, she thought wryly. He lolled

 back in his swivel chair, and his booted ankles were crossed on the desk

 in front of him. He was in shirtsleeves, without a tie or cravat, and

 his waistcoat was unbuttoned.

 "Thank you, General. I shall continue to stand until I receive your

 answer."

 "The costs of the relief of Matabeleland and the conduct of the war were

 born entirely by the Chartered Company. Even you must see that there

 must be reparation."

 "You have taken everything. My brother, Zouga Ballantyne, has rounded up

 over a hundred and twenty-five thousand head of Matabele cattle, "

 "The war cost us a hundred thousand pounds."

 "All right." Robyn nodded. "If you will not listen to the voice of

 humanity, then perhaps hard cash will convince you. The Matabele people

 are scattered and bewildered; their tribal organizations have broken

 down; the smallpox is rife amongst them "A conquered nation always

 suffers privation, Robyn.

 Oh, do sit down, you are giving me a crick in the neck."

 "Unless you return part of their herds to them, at least enough for milk

 and slaughter, you are going to be faced with a famine that will cost

 you more than your neat little war ever did."

 The smile slipped from Mungo Sint John's face, and he inclined his head

 slightly and studied the ash of his cigar.

 "Think about this, General. When the Imperial Government realizes the

 extent of the famine, it will force your famous Chartered Company to

 feed the Matabele. What is the cost of transporting grain from the Cape?

 A hundred pounds a load. Or is it more now? If the famine approaches the

 proportions of genocide, then I will see to it that Her Majesty's

 Government is faced with such a public outcry, led by humanitarians like

 Labouchere and Blunt, that they may be obliged to revoke the charter and

 make Matabeleland a crown colony after all."

 Mungo Sint John took his bottle off the desk and sat upright in his

 chair.

 "Who appointed you champion of these savages, anyway?" he asked. But she

 ignored his question.

 "I suggest, General, that you relay these thoughts to mister Rhodes

 before the famine takes a hold."

 She gloried in the visible effort it took him to regain his equanimity.

 "You may well be right, Robyn." His smile was light and mocking again.

 "I will point this out to the directors of the Company."

 "Immediately," she insisted.

 "Immediately," he capitulated, and spread his hands in a parody of

 helplessness. "Now is there anything else you want of me?"

 "Yes," she said. "I want you to marry me."

 He stood up slowly and stared at her.

 "You may not believe this, my dear, but nothing would give me greater

 pleasure. Yet, I am confused. I asked you that day at Khami Mission. Why

 now have you changed your mind?"

 "I need a father for the bastard you have got on me. It was conceived

 four months after Clinton's death."

 "A son," he said. "It will be a son." He came around the desk towards

 her.

 "You must know that I hate you," she said.

 His single eye crinkled as he smiled at her.

 "Yes, and that is probably the reason that I love you."

 "Never say that again," she hissed at him.

 "Oh, but I must. You see I did not even realize it myself. I always

 believed that I was proof from such a mundane emotion as love. I was

 deceiving myself. You and I must now bravely face up to that fact. I

 love you."

 "I want nothing from you but your name, and you shall have nothing from

 me but hatred and contempt."

 "Marry me first, my love, and later we will decide who gets what from

 whom., "Do not touch me," she said, and Mungo Sint John kissed her full

 on the mouth.

 It had taken almost ten full days of leisurely riding to make a circuit

 of the boundaries of the ranch lands that Zouga had claimed with his

 land grants.

 It stretched eastwards from the Khami river, almost as far as the

 Zembesi crossing and southwards to the outskirts of Gubulawayo, an area

 the size of the county of Surrey, rich grasslands with stretches of

 parklike forests and low golden hills. Through it meandered a dozen

 lesser rivers and streams, which watered the herds that Zouga was

 already grazing.

 mister Rhodes had appointed Zouga the custodian of enemy property, with

 powers to take possession of the royal herds of Lobengula. The hundred

 troopers who volunteered for the duty rounded up almost 130,000 head of

 prime cattle.

 Half of these belonged to the Chartered Company, but that left 65,000 to

 be distributed as loot to the men who had ridden in to Gubulawayo with

 Jameson and Sint John. However, at the very last minute, mister Rhodes

 changed his mind, and telegraphed Sint John with instructions to

 redistribute 40,000 head to the Matabele tribe.

 The volunteers were incensed at having lost more than a third of their

 rightful loot, and word was soon spreading through the improvised bars

 and canteens of Gubulawayo that the cattle had been given back to the

 tribe after threats and representations by the woman doctor of Khami

 Mission. Credence was given to the rumour by the fact that the same

 telegraph message authorized the grant of six thousand acres of land to

 Khami Mission.

 mister Rhodes was squaring the God-botherers, and the volunteers were

 not going to stand for it.

 Fifty troopers, all full of whisky, rode out to burn down the mission

 and string up the hag responsible for their loss. Zouga Ballantyne and

 Mungo Sint John met them at the foot of the hills, With a few salty

 sallies, they had them laughing; then they took it in turn to curse them

 fluently and roundly, and finally they drove them back to town, where

 they stood them a dozen rounds of drinks.

 Despite the redistribution to the tribe, still the flood of cattle upon

 the market brought the price down to two pounds a head, and Zouga used

 half the proceeds of the Ballantyne diamond to buy up ten thousand of

 them to stock his new estates.

 Now as Zouga and Louise rode together, with Jan Cheroot following them

 in the Scotch cart with the tent and camping equipment, they passed

 small herds of the cattle tended by Matabele herders that Zouga had

 hired.

 Zouga had been able to select only the best animals, and he had graded

 them by colour, so that one herd might consist of all red beasts while

 the next of only black ones.

 Ralph had contracted to bring up all the materials for the new homestead

 from the railhead at Kimberley, and with the same convoy would be twenty

 thoroughbred bulls of Hereford stock that Zouga intended running with

 his cows.

 "This is the place," Louise exclaimed with delight.

 "How can you be so certain, so soon?" Zouga laughed.

 "Oh, darling it's perfect. I can spend the rest of my life looking at

 that view."

 Below them the land fell away steeply to deep green pools of the river.

 "At least there will be good water, and that bottom land will grow

 excellent vegetables, "

 "Don't be so unromantic," she chided him. "Look at the trees.

 They soared above their heads like the arched and vaulted spans of a

 great cathedral, and the autumn foliage was a thousand shades of reds

 and golds, murmurous with bees and merry with bird song.

 "They will give good shade in the hot season" Zouga agreed.

 "Shame on you," she laughed. "If you cannot see their beauty, then look

 at the Thabas Indunas."

 The Hills of the Indunas were whalebacked and dreaming blue beneath the

 tall silver clouds. The grassy plains between were scattered with small

 groups of Zouga's cattle, and of wild game, zebra and blue wildebeest.

 "They are close enough, Zouga nodded. "When Ralph's construction company

 finally reaches Gubulawayo with the railway line, then we shall be a few

 hours" ride from the railhead and all the amenities of civilization."

 "So you will build me a home here, on this very spot?"

 "Not until you give it a name., "What would you like to call it, my

 darling husband?"

 "I'd like to have a touch of the old country, King's Lynn was where I

 spent my childhood."

 "That's it then."

 "King's Lynn." Zouga tested the name. "Yes, that will do very nicely.

 Now you shall have the home you want."

 Louise took his hand, and they walked down under the trees towards the

 river.

 A man and a woman came down the narrow winding pathway through the thick

 riverine bush.

 The man carried his shield on his left shoulder, with the broad-bladed

 assegai secured to it by the rawhide thongs; but his right arm was

 shortened and deformed, twisted out from his shoulder as though the bone

 had been broken and badly set.

 There was no superfluous flesh upon his powerfully boned frame; the rack

 of his ribs showed through, and his skin lacked the lustre of health. It

 was the dull lifeless colour of lamp-black, as though he had just risen

 from a long sick bed. On his trunk and back gleamed the satiny rosettes

 of freshly healed gunshot wounds, like newly-minted coins of pure blue

 cobalt.

 The woman who followed him was young and straight.

 Her eyes were slanted and her features those of an Egyptian princess.

 Her breasts were fat and full with milk, and her infant son was strapped

 tightly to her back so that his head would not jerk or wobble to her

 long, swinging gait.

 Bazo reached the bank of the river and turned to his wife.

 "We will rest here, Tanase."

 She loosened the knot and swung the child onto her hip. She took one of

 her swollen nipples between thumb and forefinger until milk spurted from

 it, and then she touched it to the boy's lips. Immediately he began to

 feed with little pig-like snuffles and grunts.

 "When will we reach the next village?" she asked.

 "When the sun is there." Bazo pointed halfway down the sky. "Are you not

 weary of the road, we have travelled so far, so long."

 "I will never weary, not until we have delivered the word to every man

 and woman and child in Matabeleland," she replied, and she began to

 joggle the baby and croon to it: "Tungata is your name, for you will be

 a seeker.

 "Zebiwe is your name, for what you will seek is that which has been

 stolen from you and your people.

 "Drink my words Tungata Zebiwe, even as you drink my milk. Remember them

 all your days, Tungata, and teach them to your own children. Remember

 the wounds on your father's breast, and the wounds in your mother's

 heart, and teach your children to hate."

 She changed the infant to her other hip, and her other breast, and she

 went on crooning until he had drunk his fill and his little head drooped

 sleepily. Then she slung him upon her back once more, and they crossed

 the river and went on.

 They reached the village an hour before the setting of the sun. There

 were less than a hundred people living in the scattered huts. They saw

 the young couple from afar and a dozen of the men came out to greet them

 with respect and lead them in.

 The women brought them grilled maize cakes and thick soured milk in

 calabash gourds, and the children came to stare at the strangers and to

 whisper to one another. "These are the wanderers, these are the people

 from the Hills of the Matopos."

 When they had eaten, and the sun had set, the villagers built up the

 fire. Tanase stood in the firelight, and they squatted in a circle about

 her, silent and intent.

 "I am called Tanase," she said. "And once I was the Umlimo., There was a

 low gasp of shock at her mention of that name.

 "I was the Umlimo," Tanase repeated. "But then the powers of the spirits

 were taken from me."

 They sighed softly and stirred like dead leaves when a random breeze

 passes.

 "There is another who is now the Umlimo, and lives in the secret place

 in the hills, for the Umlimo never dies."

 There was a little hum of assent.

 "Now I am the voice of the Umlimo only. I am the messenger who brings

 you the word of the Umlimo.

 Listen well, my children, for the Umlimo prophesies thus." She paused

 and now the silence was charged with religious terror.

 "When the noon sun goes dark with wings, and the trees are bare of

 leaves in the springtime, then warriors of Matabele put an edge to your

 steel."

 Tanase paused and the firelight gleamed on the hundreds of eyes that

 watched her.

 "When the cattle lie with their heads twisted to touch their flank and

 cannot rise, then will be the time to rise up and to strike with the

 steel."

 She spread her arms like a crucifix and cried out: "That is the

 prophecy. Harken to it, children of Mashobane; Harken to the voice of

 the Umlimo. For the Matabele will be great once again."

 In the dawn the two wanderers, carrying the infant who was named the

 "Seeker after what has been stolen", went on towards the next village,

 where the elders came out to greet them.

 In the southern springtime of 1896 on the shores of a lake near the

 southern extremity of the Rift Valley, that mighty geological fault

 which splits the African Continental Shield like an axe stroke, a

 bizarre hatching occurred.

 The huge egg masses of schistocerca gregaria, the desert locust, that

 were buried in the loose earth along the border of the lake, released

 countless multitudes of flightless nymphs. The eggs had been laid by

 females in the solitary phase of the locust's life cycle; but so vast

 was the hatching of their progeny that the earth could not contain them,

 and though they spread out over an area of almost fifty square miles,

 they were forced to crawl upon one another's backs.

 The constant agitation and stimulation of contact with other nymphs

 wrought a miraculous change in this teeming tide of insects. Their

 colour turned to a vivid orange and midnight black, unlike their

 parents" drab brown.

 Their metabolic rate surged and they became hyperactive and nervous.

 Their legs grew longer and stronger, their gregarious instincts more

 powerful, so that they flowed in a compact body that seemed to be a

 single monstrous organism. They had entered the gregarious phase of the

 life cycle, and when at last they moulted fox the last time and their

 newly-fledged wings had dried, the entire swarm took spontaneously to

 the air.

 In that first baptism of flight, they were spurred by their high body

 temperature, which was raised further by their muscular activity. They

 could not stop until the cool of evening, and then they settled in such

 dense swarms that the branches of the forest snapped under their weight.

 They fed voraciously all night, and in the morning the rising heat

 spurred them into flight once more.

 They rose in a cloud so dense that the sound of their wings was the

 drumming roar of hurricane winds. "the trees they left behind were

 stripped completely of their tender springtime foliage. As they passed

 overhead, their wings eclipsed the noonday sun, and a deep shadow fell

 over the land.

 They were headed south towards the Zambezi river.

 From the Great Sud where the infant Nile river weaves its way through

 fathomless swamps of floating papyrus, southwards over the wide

 savannahs of eastern and central Africa, down to the Zambezi and beyond,

 roamed vast herds of buffalo.

 They had never been hunted by the primitive tribes who preferred easier

 game; only a few Europeans with sophisticated weapons had ventured into

 these remote lands, and even the lions which followed the herds could

 not check their natural multiplication.

 The grasslands were black with the huge bovine black beasts. Twenty or

 thirty thousand strong, the herds were so dense that the animals in the

 rear literally starved, for the pasture was destroyed before they could

 reach it.

 Weakened by their own vast multitudes, they were ripe for the pestilence

 that came out of the north.

 It was the same plague that Moses" God had inflicted on the Pharaoh of

 Egypt, the rinderpest, the peste bovine, a virus disease which attacks

 cattle and all other ruminants. The stricken animals were blinded by the

 discharge of thick mucus from their eyes. It poured in ropes from their

 gaping jaws and nostrils to contaminate the pastures and infect any

 other animal that passed over them.

 Their emaciated bodies were wracked by spasms of profuse diarrhoea and

 dysentery. When at last they dropped, the convulsions twisted their

 heads back upon their tortured necks, so that their noses touched one of

 their flanks, and they could never rise again.

 So swift was the passage of the disease that a herd of ten thousand

 great homed black beasts was wiped out between dawn and sunset. Their

 carcasses lay so thickly that they touched each other, and the

 characteristic fetid odour of the disease mingled with the stench of

 rotting flesh; for although the vultures gorged, they could not devour

 one thousandth part of this dreadful harvest of death.

 Swiftly, carried by the vultures and the blundering, bellowing herds,

 the plague swept southwards towards the Zambezi river.

 On the banks of that mighty river Tanase stood beside another watch-fire

 and repeated the prophecy of the Umlimo: "When the noon sun goes dark

 with wings, and the trees are bare of leaves in the springtime "When the

 cattle lie with their heads twisted to touch their flank, and cannot

 rise Thus she cried, and the people of the Matabele listened and took

 new heart and looked to their steel.