A Falcon Flies Part 14

Black Joke groped her way out through the dark, unbuoyed channel an hour before the first flush of dawn in the eastern sky. Turning southwards she set all canvas and worked up swiftly to her best speed.

She was making eleven knots when she pa.s.sed the sloop Penguin a little before midnight the following night. Penguin bearing her urgent dispatches was hull down on the eastern horizon and her running lights were obscured by a heavy tropical deluge, the first fanfare of the coming monsoon that pa.s.sed between the two vessels hiding them from each other's lookouts.

By dawn the two s.h.i.+ps were fifty nautical miles apart, and rapidly widening the gap, while Clinton Codrington paced his quarterdeck impatiently, stopping at every turn to peer impatiently into the south.

He was hurrying to answer the most poignant appeal, the most pressing duty of a dutiful man, the call for succour from the woman he loved, a woman in terrible and pressing jeopardy.

The flow of the Zambezi had a majesty that Zouga Ballantyne had seen on no other great river, neither the Thames, nor the Rhine, nor the Ganges.

The water was the almost iridescent green of molten s ag pouring down the side o a steel-yard dump, and it formed powerful, slowly turning vortices in the angles of the broad bends, while in the shallows it seemed to roll upon itself as though the leviathan of all the world sported below its dark mysterious surface. Here the main channel was more than a mile across, though there were other lesser channels, and other narrower mouths beyond the waving banks of papyrus and cotton-headed reeds.

The small flotilla of boats hardly seemed to move against the current. In the lead was the steam launch Helen, named after Zouga's mother.

Fuller Ballantyne had designed the vessel and had it manufactured in Scotland for the disastrous Zambezi expedition which had penetrated only as far as the Kaborra-Bossa gorge.

The launch was almost ten years old now, and for most of that time had been the victim of the engineering prowess of the Portuguese trader who had purchased her from Fuller Ballantyne when the expedition was abandoned.

The launch's steam engine creaked and thudded, leaked steam from every pipe and joint, and sprayed sparks and thick black smoke from her wood-burning furnace, exerting herself far beyond the dictates of her age and maker's specifications as she towed the three deeply laden barges against the flow of the mighty river.

They were making good a mere fifteen miles a day, and it was more than two hundred up river from Quelimane to Tete.

Zouga had chartered the launch and her barges to carry the expedition upstream to the jump-off point at Tete.

He and Robyn rode in the first barge, together with the most valuable and delicate equipment: the medical stores, the navigational equipment, s.e.xtants, barometers and chronometers, the ammunition and firearms, and the personal camping gear.

in the third and last barge, under the bright and restless eye of Sergeant Cheroot, were the few porters that had been recruited at Quelirnane. Zouga was a.s.sured that the additional hundred porters that he needed could be procured at Tete, but it had seemed prudent to sign on these healthy and vigorous men, as they became available. So far there had been no desertions, which was something unusual for the beginning of a long safari, when the proximity of home and hearth could be expected to exert sudden irresistible attractions on the weaker souls.

in the middle barge, on the tow-line directly behind Zouga, were the bulkier stores. In the main these were trade goods, cloth and beads, knives and axes, some cheap muskets and lead bars for ball, bags of black powder and flints. These were essential commodities with which to buy fresh provisions, to bribe local headmen for right to pa.s.sage, to purchase concessions to hunt and prospect, and generally sustain the expedition's objects.

In charge of this middle barge was Zouga's newest and most dubious acquisition, who had been hired as. guide, translator and camp manager. His slight admixture of blood showed in his skin, a smooth dark olive and his hair, thick and l.u.s.trous as a woman's. His teeth were very white and he flashed them in a perpetually ready smile. Yet, even when he smiled, his eyes were cold and black as those of an angry mamba.

The Governor in Quelimane had a.s.sured Zouga that this man was the most famous elephant hunter and traveller in all the Portuguese territories. He had ventured further into the interior than any other living Portuguese, and he spoke a dozen of the local dialects and understood the customs of the local tribes. You cannot travel without him, " the Governor a.s.sured Zouga. "It would be madness to do so. Even your own father, the famous Dr. Fuller Ballantyne, made use of his services. It was he who showed your sainted father the way to reach Lake Marawi."

Zouga had raised an eyebrow. "My father was the first man to reach Lake Marawi!

'The first white man, the Governor corrected him delicately, and Zouga smiled as he realized that it was one of the subtle distinctions which Fuller Ballantyne used to protect the value of his discoveries and explorations.

Of course, there had been men living on the sh.o.r.es of the lake for at least two thousand years, and the Arabs and Mulattos had traded there for two hundred years, but they were not white men. That made an enormous difference.

Zouga had at last acceded to the Governor's suggestions when he had realized that this paragon was also the Governor's nephew, and that the further course of the expedition would be much smoothed by employing somebody so well connected.

He had reason to reconsider this opinion within the first few days. The man was a braggart and a bore. He had an endless fund of tales, of which he was always the hero, and the evident disregard for the truth that these demonstrated made all his facts and information suspect.

Zouga was uncertain just how well the man spoke the tribal dialects. He seemed to prefer to communicate with the toe of his boot or the siambok of cured hippopotamus hide which he always carried. As for his hunting prowess, he certainly expended a great deal of powder and shot.

Zouga was sprawled on the barge's afterdeck, in the shade of the canvas awning, and he was sketching on the board he held on his knees. It was a pastime he had taken up in India, and though he knew that he had no great talent, yet it filled the idle hours of camp life and served as a useful record of places and persons, of events and animals. Zouga intended incorporating some of the sketches and water colours in the book describing the expedition. The book which would make his fortune and reputation.

He was trying to capture on paper the river's immensity, and the tallness of that aching blue sky set with the afternoon's building thunderheads, when there was the sharp crack of a rifle shot, and he looked up frowning with annoyance. He is at it again. " Robyn dropped her book into her lap and glanced back at the second barge.

Camacho Nuflo Alvares Pereira sat high on the barge's cargo, reloading the rifle, ramrodding the charge down the long barrel. The high beaver hat sat on his head like a chimney stack and the bunch of white ostrich feathers plumed out above the crown like smoke from the furnace. Zouga could not see what he had fired at, but he guessed what would be his next target, for the steamer was being pushed out by the current to the outside of a broad bend in the river, and it was forced to steer between two low sandbanks.

The sand shone in the sunlight with the peculiar brilliance of an alpine snowfield, contrasting with the dark shapes upon it that looked like rounded granite boulders.

As the steamer slowly closed the gap, the shapes resolved into a troop of sprawling somnolent hippopotami. There were a dozen of them, one a huge scarred bull, lying on his side and exposing the expanse of his belly.

Zouga glanced back from the huge sleeping animals to the figure of Camacho Pereira on the second barge.

Camacho lifted the plumed beaver and waved it in jovial salute. His teeth flas.h.i.+ng like a semaph.o.r.e even at that distance. You chose him, said Robyn sweetly, following the direction of his gaze.

That's a great comfort. " Zouga glanced at his sister. They told me he was the greatest sportsman and guide on the east coast."

They both watched Camacho finish loading the rifle and setting the cap on its nipple.

The sleeping hippopotami suddenly became aware of the approaching vessels. They scrambled upright with amazing alacrity for such clumsy-looking animals, and galloped over the white sand, scattering clouds of it under their huge feet and then entered the water in a high cras.h.i.+ng cascade of thrown spray, disappearing swiftly, and leaving the water churned and flecked with foam. Standing in the bows of the first barge, Zouga could clearly see the dark shapes below the surface of the water, galloping in comical slow motion, their movements inhibited by the water. They were silhouetted against the lighter-coloured sandbanks, and as he watched them, the ungainly creatures evoked his sympathy and amus.e.m.e.nt.

He remembered a nursery rhyme that his Uncle William had recited to him as a child that began "A hippo, what, ainus? " Zouga was still smiling as the bull hippo surfaced fifty paces from the barge's side. The bulky grey head broke clear, the flaps of flesh that sealed the nostrils flared open as he breathed and the small round ears fluttered like the wings of a bird as he cleared them of water.

For a moment he stared at the strange vessels through pinkly inflamed, piggy blue eyes. Then he opened the full gape of his jaws, a cavern the colour and the texture of a pink rose. The tusks were yellow and curved to murderous cutting edges, quite capable of biting a bullock cleanly in half, and he no longer seemed fat and comical. Instead he looked exactly what he was, the most dangerous of all African big game.

Zouga knew that the hippopotamus had killed more human beings than all the elephant and lion and buffalo together. With ease they could crunch in the fragile hull of a dug-out canoe, the ubiquitous makoro of Africa, and then cut in half the terrified swimmers. They would readily leave the water to chase and kill any human who they believed threatened a calf, and in areas where they had been hunted they would attack without provocation.

However, the steel hulls of the barges were invulnerable even to the jaws and tusks of the ma.s.sive creature, and Zouga could afford to watch with complete objectivity.

From the bull's gaping pink jaws came a challenging series of bellows, each mounting in volume and menace as he moved closer to drive off the intruders who threatened his females and their young. Camacho put his hand up behind his head, and tilted the beaver hat at a jaunty angle over one eye. As always, he was smiling as he swung up the rifle and fired.

Zouga saw the strike of the bullet deep in the animal's throat, it severed an artery and instantly bright crimson blood gushed against the roof of the open mouth, discolouring the gleaming tusks, and pouring in a quick flood over the rubbery, bewhiskered lips. The bull's bellow rose into a piercing scream of agony, and he lunged half clear of the surface in a burst of white water. I keel heem! " roared Camacho, and his shout of laughter filled the sudden void of silence as the bull dived below the surface, leaving his blood to swirl away down the current.

Robyn had jumped up and was clinging to the barge's rail, a flush overlaying her sunbronzed cheeks and throat.

That was callous butchery, she said quietly. No point in it, Zouga agreed. "The animal will die below the surface and be washed out to sea.

ut he was wrong, for the bull surfaced again, closer to the barge. His jaws still gaping and streaming gouts of blood, he thrashed and lunged in maddened circles, his bellows distorted by blood and water, as his death frenzy rose to a crescendo. Perhaps the bullet had damaged his brain, making it impossible for him to close his jaws or to control his limbs. I keel heem! " roared Camacho, dancing with excitement on the foredeck of the second barge, pouring shot after shot into the immense grey body, grabbing a rifle from his black gunbearer or from his second loader as soon as it was primed.

His two black servants worked with the expertise of long practice, so that it seemed that Camacho always had a loaded rifle ready to s.n.a.t.c.h and waiting hands ready to take the smoking weapon from him the moment he had fired.

Slowly the string of barges drew away upstream, leaving; the stricken animal wallowing with increasing feebleness in its own expanding circle of blood-tinged waters, until at last it rolled belly upwards, all four stubby legs sticking up towards the sky for a moment before it sank at last and the blood was diluted and swept away downstream.

That was sickening, " whispered Robyn. Yes, but he has trained those gunbearers of his d.a.m.ned well, said Zouga thoughtfully. "If one is going to hunt elephant, that is the way to do it Two hours before sunset the Helen edged in towards the south bank. For the first time since leaving Quelimane there was some feature on the sh.o.r.e, beyond the endless reed swamps and sand-banks.

The bank was steeper here, rising ten feet above the river, and game paths had been cut into the grey earth by thousands of sharp hooves, and polished to s.h.i.+ny clay by the sliding wet bellies of the long lizard-like shapes of the big crocodiles that came tobogganing down the almost vertical slope when they were disturbed by Helen's churning propeller. The heavily armoured reptiles with the staring yellow eyes set on a hard h.o.r.n.y scale atop the long saurian head repulsed Robyn, the first African animal to do so.

There were trees on the bank now, not just waving stands of papyrus. Chief of these were the graceful palms with stern s sculptured like a claret bottle. Ivory palms, Zouga told her. "The fruit has a kernel like a ball of ivory."

Then far beyond the palms, low against the ruddy evening sky, they could make out the first silhouette of hills and kopjes. They were leaving the delta at last, and that night the company would camp on firm ground, instead of soft white sand, and burn heavy logs on the camp fires rather than the pulpy papyrus stern s.

Zouga checked the sentries that Sergeant Cheroot had placed over the irreplaceable cargoes in the barges on which the whole expedition depended, then he supervised the siting of the tents before taking the Sharps rifle and starting out into the open forest and gra.s.sland beyond the camp site. I come weeth you, offered Camacho. "We keel somethingYour job is to make camp, Zouga told him coolly, and the Portuguese flashed his smile and shrugged. I make one d.a.m.n fine camp, you see."

But as Zouga disappeared amongst the trees, the smile slid off his face, and he hawked in his throat and spat in the dust. Then he turned back into the turmoil of men raising canvas on poles, or drawing in branches of freshly cut thorns to build the scherm against marauding lions or scavenging hyena.

Camacho lashed out at a bare black back. "Hurry, you one mother, twenty-seven fathers. " The man cried out at the pain of the cured hippo-hide whip, redoubling his efforts as a purple welt, thick as a man's little finger, rose across his sweat-oiled muscles.

Camacho strode on towards the small grove of trees which Zouga had picked as the site for the tents of his sister and himself, and he saw that the tents had already been erected and that the woman was busy with the evening muster when she treated the ailments of the camp.

She had been seated at the collapsible camp table, but as Camacho approached, she rose and stooped to examine the foot of one of the bearers whose axe had slipped and almost severed a toe.

The Portuguese stopped abruptly. and his throat dried out as he watched her. As soon as they had left Quelimane, the woman had taken to wearing men's breeches.

Camacho found them more provocative than naked flesh itself. It was the first time he had ever seen a white woman dressed like this, and he found it hard to take his eyes off her. Whenever she was in sight, he would watch her surrept.i.tiously, waiting hungrily for the moment when she stooped or leaned forward and the moleskin stretched over her b.u.t.tocks, as it was now. It lasted too short a time, for the woman straightened up and began speaking to the little black girl who seemed more of a companion to her than a servant.

Still Carnacho leaned against the hole of one of the tall urnsivu trees and watched her with those black eyes gone velvet and swimming with desire. He was carefully weighing the consequences of what he had dreamed about every night since they had left Quelimane. He had imagined every detail, every expression, every word, each movement and each sigh or cry.

It was not as improbable as it seemed at first. She was an English woman, of course, daughter of a famous man of G.o.d, both facts should have been prohibitive to his intentions. However, Camacho had a canny instinct when it came to women, there was a sensuality about her eye and in the full soft lips, and she moved with animal awareness of her body. Carnacho stirred restlessly and thrust his hands into his pockets, kneading and tugging gently at himself.

He was fully aware that he was a magnificent specimen of masculinity, those thick tresses of black hair, the gypsy feyness of eyes, the blazing smile, and powerful and well-proportioned body. He was attractive, perhaps irresistibly so, for more than once he had intercepted a quizzical appraising look from the woman.

Often the admixture of his blood was attractive to white women, it was an exoticism, the attraction of the forbidden and dangerous, and he sensed in this woman a rebellious disregard for the rules of society. It was possible, no more than possible, Carnacho decided, and there was unlikely to be a better opportunity than now. The cold stiff English brother was out of camp, would be so f or another hour or more, and the woman had finished attending the little group of sick bearers. A servant had brought a kettle of boiling water to her tent, and she was closing the fly.

Cim-echo had watched this little ritual every evening.

Once the oil lamp had cast her shadow upon the canvas, and he had watched her silhouette lowering those tantalizing breeches, and then using the sponge to, he shuddered deliciously at the memory, and pushed himself away from the tree trunk.

Robyn mixed the hot water from the kettle into the enamel basin. It was still scalding hot, but she liked it so that it reddened the skin and left her feeling glowing with cleanliness. She began to unb.u.t.ton the flannel s.h.i.+rt, sighing with pleasant weariness, when something scratched on the fly of the tent. Who is it? " she called sharply, and felt a faint stir of alarm as she recognized the low voice. "What do you want? " I want talk you, missus. " Camacho's tone was conspiratorial. Not now, I am busy. " The man repelled her, and yet in a contrary manner, fascinated her as well. She had found herself staring at him more than once, as she would at a beautiful but poisonous insect. She was annoyed that he had noticed and was vaguely aware that it was unwise to show even the vaguest interest in a man like that. Come back tomorrow. " It suddenly occurred to her that Zouga was not in the camp, and she had sent little Juba on an errand. I cannot wait. I am sick."

That was one appeal she could not deny. Oh very well. Wait, she called, and b.u.t.toned her s.h.i.+rt, and then as an excuse perhaps to delay the moment turned her attention to her instruments still spread on the table that had been carried into the tent.

It rea.s.sured her to touch them, and rearrange the bottles and pots of medicines. Enter, " she called at last, and faced the entrance of the tent.

Camacho stooped through the entrance, and for the first time she realized bow tall he was. His presence in the small tent was almost overpowering, and his smile seemed to light up the interior. His teeth were startlingly white and perfect, she found herself staring again, like a chicken at the dancing cobra perhaps. He was beautiful in a decadent, overblown way, he was bare-headed, all dark dancing hair and scalding eyes. What is the trouble? " she asked, trying to sound brisk and businesslike. I show you."

Very well, " she nodded, and he unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt.

His skin had the sheen of wet marble, but was deep olive in colour, and his body hair grew in crisply springing whorls. His belly was moulded like that of a greyhound and his waist narrow as a girl's. She ran her eyes down his body, quite certain that her gaze was level and professional, but there was no denying the fact that he was an extraordinary animal. Where is it? " she asked, and with a single movement he had unclinched and lowered the light duck trousers that were all he wore on his lower body. Where? " she asked, and realized that her voice croaked, and she could not go on with the question, for suddenly it dawned upon her that she had been the victim of a carefully planned ruse, and she was in a potentially dangerous position.

Is that where it hurts? " she found her voice was still a husky whisper. Yes, his voice was A whisper also, and he made a slow stroking movement. "You can fix, maybe. " He took a step towards her. I can fix, certainly, she said softly, and her hand dropped on to the array of surgical instruments. She actually experienced a twinge of real regret, for it was a superior example of nature's art, and afterwards she was relieved that she had selected a needle probe, and not one of the razorlike scalpels that she had reached for.

The instant before she stabbed, he realized what was about to happen and an expression of utter terror blanched his swarthy, handsome face. He tried frantically to return it to whence it had come, but fear had slowed his hand.

He screamed like a teenage girl as the probe plunged into him, and kept on screaming as he spun around on the same spot as though one foot had been nailed to the ground. Now he was using both hands to hold himself, and once again, with cool professional interest, Robyn noticed the quite miraculous change that had taken place.

She advanced the probe once more into the ready position, and Camacho could no longer stand his ground.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his trousers, and with a last terrified howl, launched himself head-first into the tent pole. The collision checked him only a moment, and then he was gone, and Robyn found herself trembling violently and yet she was strangely elated. It had been an unusual and instructive experience. However " she would have to use her own personal code when describing it in her journal.

From that evening onwards the Portuguese kept well away from Robyn, and she was relieved not to have those hot dark eyes caressing her wherever she turned. She thought of telling Zouga of the incident, but decided that the embarra.s.sment to both of them and the difficulty of finding the correct words was not worth it. Then there would be the extreme reaction which Zouga would almost certainly have, or that she expected he would have. She had learned never to expect the obvious reaction from her brother, behind the cool and reserved exterior she suspected there existed mysterious pa.s.sions and dark emotions. After all, they were full-blooded brother and sister, and if she was so afflicted, why should he not be also?

On the other hand, she suspected that, like a cornered wild animal, the Portuguese could be a grave danger even to an experienced soldier and man of action like Zouga.

She had a horror of forcing her brother into a position which might lead, if not to his death. then at least to serious injury. Besides which, she had effectively taken care of the man herself. He would be no further trouble, she decided comfortably, and she dismissed Camacho from her mind, and concentrated instead on the pleasure of the last few leisurely days of the voyage up-stream.

The river had narrowed, and the flow was swifter, so that the rate of the convoy's advance slowed even further. The banks provided an ever-changing panorama.

Sitting under the awnin& with Zouga sketching or writing beside her, she was able to call his attention to the new birds and trees and animals and to have the benefit of his knowledge, gathered to be sure mostly from books, but still wide-reaching and interesting.

The hills of the escarpment rose in a series of c.o.c.ks...o...b.., so two-dimensional that they seemed to be cut out from thin sheets of some opaque material that allowed the colours of the sunrise to glow through with a weird luminosity. As the sun rose higher, the colours washed out to ethereal eggsh.e.l.l blues, and finally faded altogether in the heat haze of midday, to reappear in the late afternoon in a new suit of totally different colours ale pinks and ash of roses, ripe plum and delicate p apricot.

The hills formed a backdrop to the forests that now ran in a narrow belt along the river banks. Tall galleries of trees, with spreading upper branches in which the troops of vervet monkeys frolicked. The trunks of these trees were daubed with multi-coloured lichens, sulphurous yellows, burnt oranges and the blues and greens of a summer sea. The tangled ropes of lianas, which as a child Robyn had called "monkey ropes', dangled down from the upper branches to touch the surface of the river or cascade into the dense dark greens of the undergrowth.

Beyond this narrow strip of vegetation, there were occasional glimpses of a different forest on the higher, drier ground, and Robyn saw again with a sharp nostalgic pang the ugly and bloated baobab tree with its scrubby bare little branches topping the huge swollen stern . The African legends that her mother had repeated to her so often, explained how the Nkulu-kulu, the great great one, had planted the baobab upside down, with its roots in the air.

Nearly every baobab had a nest of one of the big birds of prey in its bare branches, each a s.h.a.ggy ma.s.s of dried twigs and small branches looking like a small, air-borne haystack. often the birds were at the nest site, sitting on a look-out branch, with that typical raptorial stillness, or soaring above in wide circles, with only an occasional lazy flap of the spread wings, and the stiff tip-feathers feeling the air currents like the fingers of a concert pianist upon the ivory keys.

There was very little game along this part of the river, and the rare antelope rushed back into cover at the first distant approach, a pale blur of movement, with a mere fleeting glimpse of the tall corkscrew horns of a greater kudu, or the flirt of the white, powder-puff underside of a reedbuck's tail.

The game close to the river had been heavily hunted, if not by the Portuguese themselves then by their armed servants, for nearly two hundred years.

When Zouga asked Camacho, "Do you ever find elephant on this part of the river! the Portuguese had flashed his smile and declared, "If I find heern, I keel heern."

A sentiment that was probably shared by nearly every traveller along this busy waterway, and which accounted for the timidity and scarcity of game in the area.

Camacho was reduced to firing at the roosting fish eagles on their fis.h.i.+ng-perches overhanging the water.

These handsome birds had the same snowy white head, breast and shoulders of the famous American bald eagle, and a body of lovely dark russet and glistening black.

When a shout of Carnacho's laughter signalled a hit, a bird would tumble untidily over its disproportionately large wings as it fell into the green water, reduced from imperial dignity to awkward and ungainly death by the strike of the lead bullet.

Within a few days Camacho had recovered from the peculiar, bow-legged and deliberate gait, with which he favoured the injury that Robyn had inflicted on him, and his laughter regained its ringing timbre. But there were other injuries that did not heal so readily, those to his pride and his masculinity. His l.u.s.t had been changed on the instant to burning hatred, and the more he brooded upon it the more corrosive it became and the deeper his craving for vengeance.

However, his personal considerations would have to wait. There was still much important work for him to do. His uncle, the Governor of Quelimane, had placed great trust in him by a.s.signing him to this task, and his uncle would be unforgiving of any failure. The family fortune was involved, and to a lesser extent the family honour, although this last was a commodity that through constant attrition had lost much of its l.u.s.tre.

However, the family fortunes had suffered considerably since Portugal had been forced to heed the Brussels Treaty. What was left to the family had to be protected.

Gold before honour, and honour only when it does not affect the profits, this might have been the family motto.

His uncle had been perceptive, as always, in recognizing in this English expedition a further threat to their interests. It was, after all, headed by the son of a notorious.

troublemaker who could be expected to aggravate the enormous damage done by the father. Furthermore, n.o.body could be sure of the real objects of the expedition.

Major Ballantyne's a.s.sertion that it was an expedition to find his missing father was, of course, utterly absurd.

That explanation was much too simple and direct, and the English were never simple or direct. This elaborate expedition must have cost many thousands of English pounds, a huge sum of money, far beyond the means of a junior army officer, or the family of a missionary whose futile effort to navigate the Zambezi had ended in disgrace and ridicule, a sick old man who must have perished years ago in the uncharted wilderness.

No, there was another motive for all this activity and the Governor wanted to know what it was.

It was, of course, possible that this was a clandestine reconnaissance by an officer of the British army ordered by his overbearing government. Who knew what outrageous designs they had upon the sovereign territory of the glorious Portuguese empire? The avarice of this impudent race of shopkeepers and tradesmen was scarcely to be believed. The Governor did not trust them, despite their traditional alliance with Portugal.

On the other hand, it might indeed be a private expedition, but the Governor never lost sight of the fact that it was led by the son of that notorious old busybody who had possessed the scavenging eye of a vulture.

Who knew what the old devil had stumbled upon out there in the unknown land, a mountain of gold or silver, the fabled lost city of Monomatapa with all its treasures intact: anything was possible. Of course, the old missionary would have sent news of the discovery to his own son. If there was a mountain of gold out there, then the Governor would be very pleased to know about it.