A Falcon Flies Part 11

Together they came out above the surface, coughing and gasping weakly, Robyn holding the girl's mouth just clear of the surface, but when she tried to lift her further the chain anch.o.r.ed them both and she screamed. Zouga, help me! " Another surge of water, smelling like raw sewage, filled her mouth and both of them went under once more.

She thought she would never come up again, but stubbornly she held on, sliding one arm under the girl's armpit, and with the other hand gripping her chin, forcing it up so that when they broke out again the girl's face was lifted to take another precious breath of the stinking air, and Zouga was with them.

He took a double turn of the chain around his wrists and threw all his weight on to it. In the gloom of the hull he towered over them, the light from the hatch highlighting the bulging wet muscles in his arms and shoulders as he strained at the chain, his mouth opened in a silent scream of effort, sinewy cords standing out of his throat.

Another wave hissed over them, and this time Robyn was not ready for it, she felt the burn of it in her lungs and knew she was drowning. She need only release her hold on the girl's head and shoulders and she would be free to breathe, but she held on stubbornly, determined suddenly that she would never let this little soul go. She had seen it in the girl's eyes, the fierce will to live. This one she could save, this one out of three hundred or more was the only one she could be certain of saving.

She had to have her.

The wave receded and Zouga was still there, his hair streaming with water, slicked down over his face and into his eyes, and now he s.h.i.+fted slightly, jamming his legs against one of the heavy timbers and he reared back once more against -the chain, and a low bellow. broke from his throat in the agony of effort.

The ring bolt that held the loop of chain to the deck ripped out cleanly, and Zouga dragged both women clear of the water, the chain slithering after them for ten feet or more before coming up hard against the next ring bolt.

Robyn had never suspected Zouga capable of such strength, she had never seen his naked upper body, not since he was a child, had not realized that he had the lean hard muscle of a prizefighter. But even so, he could not repeat the effort, and the girl was still chained. They had won only a temporary respite. Zouga was bellowing now, and the young naval Ensign scrambled down through the open hatch. To re-enter the doomed hull was an act of courage in itself, Robyn realized, as she saw that the Ensign carried the cutting shears, lugging the heavy tool with him as he floundered towards the struggling group in the bottom of the hold.

The hull rolled through another five degrees, the water swirling higher towards them hungrily, it sucked at their bodies. Had not Zouga given them the extra few feet of chain they would be far below the surface now.

Zouga stooped over her and helped her hold the black girl's head above the water, while the Ensign groped for the chain links and fed them into the jaws of the shears.

But the blades had been blunted and chipped by the heavy work they had already done, and the Ensign was still only a lad. Zouga pushed him aside.

Again muscle bunched in his shoulders and upper arms and the chain parted with a metallic clunk. Zouga cut twice at ankle and at wrist, then he dropped the shears, picked the frail naked body up against his chest and climbed frantically up towards the hatch.

Robyn tried to follow him, but something tore deep, in her belly, she felt it go, tearing like brittle parchment, and the pain was a lance that transfixed her. She doubled over it, clutching herself, unable to move, and the wave hit her, knocking her down, swirling her over the broken timbers into the dark waters, and the darkness began to fill her head. There was temptation to let go now, to let the water and darkness take her, it would be so easy, but she gathered her anger and her obstinacy to her and went on fighting. She was still fighting when Zouga reached her, and dragged her up towards the light.

As they crawled out through the hatch into the sunlight, so the dhow rolled all the way, flinging them as though from a catapult over the side into the shocking cold of the green waters.

As the dhow capsized so the last faint cries from within her were extinguished, and the hull began to break up under the remorseless hammer of the sea.

When Robyn and Zouga surfaced, still clinging together, the whaler was hovering over them, the Ensign risking all to come in over the reef for the pick-up.

Strong hands reached down, and the overladen boat heeled dangerously as they were pulled aboard. Then the Ensign swung the bows to meet the next boiling line of surf and they climbed its steep side and crashed over the top, the seamen pulling frantically to hold her bows on.

Robyn crawled to where the black girl lay on a heap of other bodies in the bottom of the boat, her relief at finding her aboard and still alive outweighing the pain of her sodden lungs and the deep ache in her belly.

Robyn rolled the girl on to her back, and lifted her lolling head to cus.h.i.+on it from the pounding of the whaler's hull over the steep swells that threatened to crack her skull against the floorboards.

She saw immediately that the girl was older than she had imagined, although the body was desiccated, dried out and wasted. Yet her pelvis had the breadth of maturity. She would be sixteen years old at least, Robyn thought, and pulled a corner of the tarpaulin over her body to screen her from the men's gaze.

The girl opened her eyes again, and stared at Robyn solemnly. Those eyes were still the colour of dark honey, but the ferocity had dimmed to some other emotion as she looked up into Robyn's face. Ngi ya bongo, the girl whispered, and with a shock Robyn realized that she understood the words. She was transported in an instant to another land and another woman, her mother, Helen Ballantyne, teaching her those same words, repeating them to her until Robyn had them perfected. Ngi ya bongo, I praise you! " Robyn tried to find a reply, but her mind was as battered as her body, and it had been so long ago that she had learned the language, the circ.u.mstances so different that the words came only haltingly. Velapi wena, who are you and from where do you come?

The black girl's eyes flew wide with shock. You! " she whispered.

"You speak the language of the people."

They had taken on board twenty-eight living black girls.

By the time Black joke got under way again and turned from the land, towards the open sea, the dhow's hull had burst open and the planking and timbers swung and pitched end over end as they sawed across the exposed reef.

A squawking raucous flock of seabirds squabbled over the reef, hovering above the gruesome remnants that were mixed in the floating debris of the wreck, dropping to seize a tidbit and rise again on delicate fans of pearly wings.

in the deeper water along the seaward side of the reef, the shark packs were gathering, las.h.i.+ng themselves into a frenzy, the stubby rounded triangles of their dorsal fins crisscrossing the green sweep of the current, while every few seconds a long torpedo-shaped body would break clear of the surface in an ecstasy of greed, falling back heavily with a boom like distant cannon as it struck the surface.

Twenty-eight from three hundred and more was no great haul, Robyn thought, as she hobbled along the line of barely living bodies, her own bruised limbs protesting every step, and her despair deepened as she realized how far gone they were. It was easy to see which of them had already lost the will to resist. She had read her father's treatise on the sick African, and she knew how important this will to resist was in treating a primitive people.

A perfectly healthy man could will himself to die, and once he did so there was nothing that could save him.

That night, despite Robyn's constant attention, twenty-two of the girls died and were carried aft to be dropped over Black Joke's stern . By morning all the others were sinking into the coma and fever of renal failure, their kidneys, shrivelled and atrophied by lack of fluid, were no longer filtering the urinal wastes from the bodies" system's. There was only one treatment and that was to force the patient to drink.

The little Nguni girl resisted strongly. Robyn knew that she belonged to the Nguni group of peoples, although she was uncertain of which tribe, for many of them spoke variations of the original Zulu, and the girl's accent and p.r.o.nunciation had been strange to Robyn's ear.

Robyn had tried to keep her talking, keep her conscious and keep the will to resist burning in her. She had conceived an almost maternal possessiveness for the child, and though she tried to spread her attention fairly amongst the other survivors, she always returned to where the girl lay under a strip of tarpaulin and held the pannikin of weak sugar solution to her lips.

They shared only a few hundred words in which to converse, as the girl rested between each painful sip of fluid. I am called Juba, the child whispered, in answer to Robyn's question. Even the sound of it brought back to Robyn the memory of the cooing of the plump blue-grey ring-necked doves in the wild fig trees that grew above the mission cottage in which she had been born. Little Dove. It is a pretty name. " And the girl smiled shyly, and went on in that dry tortured whisper. Much of it Robyn could not follow, but she listened and nodded, realizing with a pang that the sense of it was going, Juba was sinking into delirium, that she was talking to phantoms from her past. Now she tried to resist when Robyn forced her to drink, muttering and crying out in fear or anger, gagging on the tiny mouthfuls of liquid.

You must rest yourself, " Zouga told Robyn brusquely. You have been with her for almost two days without sleeping. You're killing yourself. "I am quite well, thank you, Robyn told him, but her face was gaunt and white with fatigue and pain. At least let me take you down to your cabin."

By this time Juba was the only black girl still alive, all the others had gone over the stern to feed the following shark pack. Very well, Robyn agreed, and Zouga carried the child down from the makes.h.i.+ft shelter on the aft deck which Robyn had used as a surgery.

The steward brought a canvas pallet filled with straw and laid it on the deck of Robyn's tiny cabin. There was only just room for it, and Zouga laid the naked body upon it.

Robyn was tempted to stretch out on her own narrow bunk to rest for a while, but she knew that if she let go now, even for a moment, she would fall into a deathlike sleep, and her patient would die of such neglect.

Alone in the cabin, she sat cross-legged on the straw pallet, wedged her back against the sea-chest, and lifted Juba into her lap. Doggedly she went on with the task of forcing liquid between the girl's lips, drop by drop, hour after hour.

Through the single port, the light turned to a ruby glow at the short tropical sunset and then it swiftly faded. It was almost completely dark in the cabin when suddenly Robyn felt a copious warm flood soak through her skirts into her lap. and she smelt the strong ammoniacal taint of the girl's urine. Thank you, G.o.d, " she whispered.

"Oh, thank you, G.o.d! " The girl's kidneys were functioning again, she was safe. Robyn rocked the girl in her lap, feeling no revulsion from her soaked skirts, welcoming them as the promise of life. You did it, " she whispered. "You did, with sheer pluck, my little dove."

She had just enough strength left herself to wipe down the child's body with a cloth soaked in sea water, then she stepped out of her soiled dress and collapsed face down on her hard narrow bunk.

Robyn slept for ten hours, and then the cramps woke her groaning. Her knees were drawn up against her chest by the severity of the pain, and her belly muscles were hard as stone and it felt as though she had been clubbed across the back, a deep bruised sensation that alarmed her seriously.

For many minutes after waking she believed herself seriously stricken, and then with a rush of relief and joy that was far stronger than the pain she realized what was happening to her. She dragged herself across the cabin, doubled over with the pain, and bathed in the bucket of cold sea water. Then she knelt beside Juba on the pallet.

The girl's fever had abated. The skin felt cooler to the touch. Her continued recovery added to Robyn's sense of deep pleasure and relief. Now she would have to find the right moment to tell Clinton Codrington that she would not marry him, and the vision of the little house above the Portsmouth harbour receded. Despite the pain, she felt free, light of body, like a bird poised on the point of flight.

She filled the pannikin with water and lifted Juba's head. We will be all right now, she told the girl, and Juba opened her eyes. We'll both be all right now, she repeated, watching the girl drink thirstily, smiling happily to herself.

Juba's recovery was swift. Soon she ate with a robust appet.i.te. Her body filled almost before Robyn's eyes, her skin took on the l.u.s.tre of health and youth again, her eyes regained the sparkle of high spirits, and Robyn realized with proprietorial approval that she was a pretty girl, no, more than that, she had natural grace and poise, the voluptuous curve of bosom and b.u.t.tock which ladies of high fas.h.i.+on tried to achieve with bustle and padded bodice. She possessed also a sweet moon-face, the big wide-set eyes and full sculptured lips that were exotic and strangely beautiful.

Juba could not understand Robyn's concern with having her cover her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and legs, but Robyn had seen the seamen's eyes when the girl followed her up on to the deck with only a sc.r.a.p of canvas covering the most vital point of her anatomy and showing no concern at all when the wind lifted the canvas and fluttered it like a beckoning flag. Robyn commandeered one of Zouga's oldest s.h.i.+rts. It hung to Juba's knees and she belted it at the waist with a bright ribbon that had the child cooing with the eternal feminine delight in pretty things.

She followed Robyn about like a puppy, and Robyn's ear tuned to the Nguni language. Her vocabulary expanded swiftly, and the two of them chatted late every night, sitting side by side on the straw pallet.

Clinton Codrington began showing acute signs of jealousy. He had become used to having more of her company, and Robyn was using the girl as an excuse to taper off their relations.h.i.+p, preparing him for the news that she must deliver before they reached Quelimane.

Zouga also disapproved of her growing intimacy with the girl. Sissy, you must remember that she is a native. It never pays to let them get too familiar, Zouga told her gravely. "I've seen that happen too often in India. One has to keep one's reserve. After all, you are an English woman. "And she is a Matabele of Zanzi blood, which makes her an aristocrat, for her family came up with Mzilikazi from the south. Her father was a famous general and she can trace her bloodline back to Senzangakhona, the King of the Zulu, and the father of Chaka himself. We, on the other hand, can trace our family as far as great grandfather, who was a cattle heTd."

Zouga's expression stiffened. He did not enjoy discussing the family origins. We are English. The greatest and most civilized people in the world's history. "Grandfather Moffat knows Mzilikazi, Robyn pointed out, "and thinks him a great gentleman. "You are being foolish, Zouga snapped. "How can you compare the English race to these blood-thirsty savages."

But he stooped out of the cabin for he did not wish to continue the discussion. As usual, Robyn had her facts correct and her logic was infuriating.

His own grandfather, Robert Moffat, had first met Mzilikazi back in . 29 and over the years the two men had become firm and trusted friends. The King relied on Moffat, whom he called Tshedi, for counsel in his dealings with the world beyond his borders and for medical treatment for the gout which plagued him as he grew older.

The route northwards to the land of the Matabele always pa.s.sed through Robert Moffat's mission station at Kuruman. A prudent traveller would ask for a safe conduct from the old missionary, and the Matabele impis guarding the Burnt Land along the border would honour that safe conduct.

Indeed, the ease with which Fuller Ballantyne had moved through the wild, untamed tribes along the Zambezi river as far west as Lake Ngami, unmolested and unharmed, was in great part due to his relations.h.i.+p with Robert "Tshedi" Moffat. The mantle of protection which the Matabele King spread over his old friend extended to his immediate family, and was recognized by all the tribes within range of the Matabele long arm, an arm that wielded the a.s.segai, the terrible stabbing spear which King Chaka of the Zulu had first conceived, and with which he had conquered his known world.

In his pique at Robyn's comparison of the ancestry of his family and that of the pretty half-naked black girl, Zouga at first missed the significance of what she had told him. When it struck him, he hurried back to Robyn's cabin. Sissy, he burst out excitedly. "If she comes from Mzilikazi country, why! that's almost a thousand miles due west of Quelimane. She must have pa.s.sed through the land of Monomatapa to reach this coast. Get her to tell us about it."

He regretted his childhood inattention to the language when his mother had taught them. He concentrated say agely now as the two girls chatted animatedly, and began recognizing some of the words, but it needed Robyn to translate the full sense for him.

Juba's father was a famous Induna, a great warrior who had fought the Boers at Mosega, and a hundred other battles since then, his s.h.i.+eld had been thick with the ta.s.sels of cow tails, black and white, each of which signified a heroic deed.

He had been granted the headring of the Induna when he was still a young man of less than thirty summers, and had become one of the highest elders in the council of the nation. He had fifty wives, many of them of pure Zanzi blood like his own, a hundred and twelve sons and uncounted daughters. Although all the cattle of the nation belonged to the King, yet over five thousand were put in the charge of Juba's father, a mark of the King's high favour.

He was a great man, perhaps too great for his own safety. Somebody whispered the word "treason" in the King's ear, and the King's executioners had surrounded the kraal in the dawn, and called out Juba's father.

He had stooped out through the low entrance of his thatched beehive hut, naked from the embrace of his favourite wife. Who calls? " he cried into the dawn, and then he saw the ring of black figures, tall in their feather headdresses, but standing motionless, silent and menacing.

en the King's name, " a voice answered him, and out of the ranks stepped a figure he recognized immediately.

It was one of the King's Indunas also, a min named Bopa a short powerful man, with a deep-muscled bare chest and a head so heavy that the broad features seemed to have been carved out of a chunk of granite from the kopies across the Nyati River.

There was no appeal, no escape, not that either consideration even pa.s.sed briefly through the old Induna's mind. In the King's name. " That was sufficient. Slowly he drew himself to his full height. Despite the grey cap of his hair, he was still a finely built warrior with broad rangy shoulders and the ridged battle scars crawled across his chest and flanks like live serpents. The Black Elephant, he began to recite the praise names of his King. "Bayete! The Thunder of the Heavens.

The Shaker of the Earth. Bayete! " Still calling the King's names he went down on one knee, and the King's executioner stepped up behind him.

The wives and elder children had crawled from their huts now and huddled together in dread, watching from the shadows, their voices blending in a single cry of horror and sorrow as the executioner drove his short thick-bladed a.s.segai between the Induna's shoulder blades, and two hands breadth out of his chest. As he withdrew the blade, there was the crude sucking sound of steel leaving flesh and the old Induna's life blood spurted head high as he fell forward on to his face.

With his smeared red blade the King's executioner commanded his warriors forward, for the sentence of death included the old man's wives, every one of their sons and daughters, the household slaves and their children, every inhabitant of the large village, three hundred or more souls.

The executioners worked swiftly, but there was a change in the ancient ritual of death. The old women, the grey-headed slaves died swiftly, not honoured with the blade but clubbed to death with the heavy k.n.o.bkerries that each warrior carried. The infants, and unweaned toddlers were s.n.a.t.c.hed up by the ankles, and their brains were dashed from their skulls against the trunk of a tree, against the heavy poles of the cattle enclosure or against a convenient rock. It was very swift, for the warriors were highly trained and disciplined troops and this was something they had done many times before.

Yet this time there was a difference, the younger women, the adolescent children, even those on the verge of p.u.b.erty, were hustled forward and the King's executioner glanced at them appraisingly, and with a gesture of the b.l.o.o.d.y spear sent them left or right.

On the left hand was swift death, while those who were sent right were forced into a trot and led away towards the east, towards the sunrise as the girl Juba explained it to Robyn. Many days we travelled, her voice sinking, the horror of it still in the dark brown eyes. "I do not know how long it was. Those who fell were left where they lay, and we went on. , Ask her what she remembers of the country, Zouga demanded. There were rivers, the girl replied. "Many rivers and great mountains. " Her memories were confused, she could make no estimates of distance, they had encountered no other people, no villages nor towns, they had seen no cattle nor standing crops. Juba shook her head to each of Zouga's questions, and when he showed her the Harkness map in a forlorn hope that she might be able to point out features upon it, the child giggled in confusion. Drawn symbols on parchment were beyond her comprehension, she could not begin to relate them to features of landscape.

Tell her to go on, " he ordered Robyn impatiently. At the end we pa.s.sed through deep gorges in high mountains where the slopes were covered with tall trees, and the rivers fell with white spray, until at last we came to where the bunu, the white men, waited."

The white men? " Robyn demanded.

Then of your people, the girl nodded. "With a pale skin and pale eyes. There were many men, some white and others brown or black men, but dressed as the white men were dressed, and armed with the isibarriu, with guns. " The Matabele people knew well the power and effect of firearms, they had encountered enemies armed with them at least thirty years before. Even some Of the Matabele Indunas carried muskets, although they always handed these to a servant to carry when there was serious fighting in the offing. These people had built kraals, such as we build for our cattle, but these were filled with people, a great mult.i.tude of people and with them we were bound with the insimbi, the links of iron. " She rubbed her wrists instinctively at the memory, and the callouses raised by the slave cuffs still blemished the skin of her forearms. Each day that we stayed at this place in the mountains, more people came. Sometimes only as many as the fingers on both your hands, on other days there were great numbers so we could hear their lamentations at a distance. And always there were warriors guarding them. Then before the sun one morning, at the time of the horns, Robyn recalled the expression for the time of dawning when the horns of the cattle first show against the morning sky, "they led us from the kraals, wearing the insimbi, and we formed a great snake of people so long that the head was out of sight ahead of me in the forest while the tail was still up in the clouds of the mountains when we came down the Hyena RoadThe Hyena Road, Ndlele umfisi. " It was the first time that Robyn had heard the name spoken. It conjured up an image of a dark trail through the forests, beaten by tens of thousands of bare feet, with the loathsome eaters of dead flesh slinking along beside it, chuckling and shrieking their inane chorus. Those that died, and those that fell and could not rise again were released from their chains and dragged to one side. The fisi have grown so bold along the road, that they rushed out of the bushes and devoured the bodies while we pa.s.sed in full sight. It was worst when the body still lived."

Juba broke off and stared unseeingly at the bulkhead across the cabin. Slowly her eyes filled with tears, and Robyn took her hand and held it in her lap. I know not how long we followed the Hyena Road, " Juba went on, "for each day became as the one before it, and as the one that followed it, until at last we came to the sea."

Afterwards Zouga and Robyn discussed the girl's story. She must have gone through the kingdom of Monomatapa, and yet she says there were no towns nor signs of occupation. "The slavers might have avoided contact with Monomatapa's people. "I wish she had seen and remembered more. "She was in a slave caravan, Robyn pointed out. "Survival was her only concern. "If only these d.a.m.ned people could even read a map. "It's a different culture, Zouga, and he saw the spark in her eye, and sensed the drift of the conversation and turned it aside swiftly. Perhaps the legend of Monomatapa. is only a myth, perhaps there are no gold mines. "The important thing about Juba's story is that the Matabele are dealing in slaves, they have never done so before. "Nonsense! " grunted Zouga. "They are the greatest predators since Genghis Khan! They and all the Zulu splinter tribes, the Shangaan, the Angoni and the Matabele. War is their way of life, and plunder is their main crop. Their whole nation was built on a system of slave-taking. "But they have never sold them before, said Robyn mildly. "At least as far as we know from all that grandfather and Harris and the others have written. "The Matabele never found a market before, Zouga replied reasonably. "Now they have at last made contact with the slavernasters, and found an opening to the coast. That was all it lacked before. "We must witness this, Zouga, " Robyn spoke with quiet determination. "We have to bear witness to this terrible crime against humanity and carry word back to London. "If only the child had seen evidence of the Monomatapa, or the gold mines, " muttered Zouga. "You must as her if there were elephant. " He pored over the Harkness map, lamenting the blank s.p.a.ces. "I cannot believe that it does not exist. There is too much evidence. " Zouga looked up at his sister. "One other thing, I seem to have forgotten almost every word of the language that mother taught us, except some of the nursery rhymes and lullabies. Munya, mabili zinthatu, Yolala umdade wethu, " he recited, and then chuckled and shook his head. "I shall have to study it again, you and Juba will have to help me."

The Zambezi comes to the sea through a delta of vast swampland, and a hundred confused shallow channels spread out for thirty miles down the low featureless coastline.

Floating islands of papyrus gra.s.s break free from the main pastures which blanket the waters of the delta and are carried out to sea on the dirty brown water. Some of these islands are many acres in extent and the roots of the plants so entangled that they can support the weight of a heavy animal. On occasions small herds of buffalo are trapped and carried twenty miles out to sea before the action of the waves smashes up the islands and plunges the great bovine animals into the water, prey for the big sharks which cruise the tainted estuary waters for just such a prize.

The muddy smell of the swamps carries far from the land when the wind is right, and the same wind carries strange insects with it. There is a tiny spider no bigger than the head of a wax Vesta which lives in the papyrus banks of the delta. it spins a gossamer web on which it launches itself into the breeze in such numbers that the gossamer fills the sky in clouds, like the smoke from a raging bushfire, rising many hundreds of feet and eddying and swirling in misty columns that are touched by the sunset into shades of pink and lovely pale mauve.

The river pours a muddy brown effluent into the sea, One, two, three, Go to sleep my little sister, silt enriched with the bodies of drowned animals and birds, and the huge Zambezi crocodiles join the shark packs at the feast.

Black joke found the first of these hideous creatures ten miles from land, wallowing in the low swells like a log, the rough scales glittering wetly in the sunlight until the gunboat approached too closely and the reptile dived with a lash and swirl of its powerful ridged tail.

Black joke steamed obliquely across the multiple mouths of the river, none of which offered pa.s.sage for a vessel of her size. She was headed further north for the Congone channel which was the only pa.s.sage upriver to the town of Quelimane.

Clinton Codrington planned to enter it the following morning, after having lain hove-to during the night off the mouth. Robyn knew that she must remove the st.i.tches from the wound under his armpit, though she would have liked to leave them a few days longer. They must come out before she left the gunboat at Quelimane.

She decided to use the same opportunity to give him the answer for which he had waited so patiently. She knew it was going to be painful for him to hear that she would not marry him, and she felt guilty that she had so encouraged him. it was alien to her nature to inflict suffering on another, and she would try to tell him as gently as possible.

She ordered him to her cabin for the removal of the horsehair st.i.tches, seating him on the narrow bunk naked to the waist, with his arm raised. She was delighted with the way the wound had healed, and proud of the neatness of her work. She cooed over each knot as she snipped it with the pointed scissors, then seized it with the forceps and gently tugged and worried it free of his flesh. The st.i.tches left twin punctures, one on each side of the raised purple welt of the scar and they were clean and dry. Only one of them leaked a single drop of blood which she swabbed away gently.

Robyn was training Juba as her a.s.sistant, teaching her to hold the tray of instruments, and receive the discarded and soiled dressings or instruments. Now she stood back and appraised the healed wound, without looking at Juba. You may go now, she said quietly. "I will call you when I need you."

Juba smiled like a conspirator, and murmured, "He is truly beautiful, so white and smooth, and Robyn blushed pinkly, for that was exactly what she had been thinking. Clinton's body, unlike that of Mungo St. John, was hairless as a girl's but finely muscled, and the skin had an almost marble sheen to it. His eyes are like two moons when he looks at you, Nomusa, Juba went on with relish, and Robyn tried to frown at her but her lips kept puckering into a smile.

Go swiftly, she snapped, and Juba giggled. There is a time to be alone, and she rolled her eyes lewdly. "I shall guard the door, and hardly listen at all, Nomusa. " Robyn found it impossible to be angry when the child used that name, for it meant "the daughter of mercy', and Robyn found it highly acceptable. She would have had difficulty picking a better name for herself, and she was smiling as she hurried Juba from the cabin with a gentle slap and a push.

Clinton must have had some idea of the exchange, for he was b.u.t.toning his s.h.i.+rt as she turned back to him, and looking embarra.s.sed.

She drew a deep breath, folded her arms and began. Captain Codrington, I have thought unceasingly of the great honour you have done me by inviting me to be your wife. "However, Clinton forestalled her, and she faltered, the prepared speech forgotten, for her next word would indeed have been, "However'. Miss Ballantyne, I mean Doctor Ballantyne, I would rather you did not say the rest of it. " His face was pale and intense, he really was beautiful now, she thought, with a pang. "That way I can still cherish hope."

She shook her head vehemently, but he lifted a hand. I have come to realize that you have a duty, to your father and the poor unhappy people of this land. I understand and deeply admire that."

Robyn felt her heart go out to him, he was so good and so perceptive to have understood that about her.

However, I feel sure that one day, you and I shall. .

She wanted to spare him pain.

Captain, she began, shaking her head again. No, he said. "Nothing you say will ever make me abandon hope. I am a very patient man, and I realize that now is not the time. But I know in the depths of my soul that our destiny binds us together, even if I must wait ten or fifty years."

A time-span of that magnitude no longer frightened Robyn. She relaxed visibly. I love you, my dear Doctor Ballantyne, nothing will ever alter that, and in the meantime I ask only your good opinion, and friends.h.i.+p. "You have both, she said, with truth and relief. It had een a great deal easier than she had expected, yet strange that a shadow of regret lingered.

There was no further opportunity to speak privately, for Clinton was fully occupied with bringing Black joke into the treacherous channel, with its s.h.i.+fting banks and uncharted shoals guarding the mouth. The channel meandered twenty miles through the mangrove forests to the port of Quelimane on the northern bank.

The heat in the delta was rendered scarcely bearable by the humid qeffluxion of mud and rotting vegetation that rose from the mangrove forests. The weird shapes of the mangroves fascinated Robyn and she stood by the rail and watched them slide past. Each tree stood clear of the slick chocolate-coloured mud on its pyramid of roots, like the multiple legs of a grotesque insect reaching up to join the thick pulpy stern which in turn extended upwards to the roof of poisonous green foliage.

Amongst the roots skittered the purple and yellow fiddler crabs, each of them holding aloft a single disproportionably huge claw, and waving it in menace or ponderous greeting at the pa.s.sing vessel.

Black joke's wake spread across the channel, flopping wavelets on the mud banks and startling the small green and purple night herons into laborious flight.

Around a bend in the channel the decaying buildings of Quelimane came into view, dominated by the square towers of the stucco church. The plaster was falling away in unsightly chunks and the whitewash was streaked and splotched with grey and green mould, like a ripening cheese.