A Falcon Flies Part 16

it would be a slow and unwieldy caravan unless properly organized, that was bad enough, but on the march it would also be very vulnerable. Zouga gave much thought to defence of the column, and he and Sergeant Cheroot shared the last quarter bottle of whisky as they pooled their experience and planned the order of march.

Zouga, with a small party of local guides and personal bearers, planned to travel independently of the main caravan, reconnoitering the terrain ahead of the march, and making himself free to prospect and hunt as the opportunity arose. He would return most nights to rejoin the caravan, but would be equipped to spend many days out of contact.

Camacho Pereira with five of the Hottentot musketeers would lead the van of the main column, and even when Robyn chaffed him lightly, Zouga saw nothing ludicrous in Camacho marching under the Union Jack. . It's an English expedition, and we will carry the flag, " Zouga replied stiffly. Rule, Britannia, " Robyn laughed irreverently, and Zouga ignored her and went on describing the order of march.

The divisions of porters would remain separate but closed up, and Sergeant Cheroot with the remainder of his musketeers would form the rear guard of the column.

There was a simple system of signals to control the movements of the column, a prearranged series of blasts on the kudu-horn trumpets would sound the "march" or halt', the "close up" or "form square'.

For four days Zouga. exercised the column in these evolutions and though proficiency would only come much later, at last he felt that they were ready to make a start, and he told Robyn so. But how are we to cross the river? " she asked looking across at the north bank.

The river was half a mile wide, and the heavy rainfalls over millions of square miles had drained into it. The flow was swift and powerful. If they were going northwards to the s.h.i.+re river and Lake Marawi they would need a flotilla of dugout canoes and many days to make the crossing to the north bank.

The steam launch Helen had long ago departed on the flood of the river, making good at least twenty knots with the current pus.h.i.+ng her, so she would already be back in Quelimane. All the arrangements have been made, Zouga told her, and she had to be satisfied with that.

On the last day Robyn allowed Juba to accompany her to the cemetery for the first time, and both of them were laden with gifts. Bolts of trade cloth and a thirty-fivepound bag of ceramic beads, the most sought-after scarlet sam-sam variety.

It was as much as she dare ask for from the expedition's stores without arousing Zouga's ire and interest.

She had thought of telling Zouga of Sarah and the child, but had wisely decided against it.

Zouga's reaction to finding a half-brother of mixed blood was too terrible to contemplate. Zouga had acquired his opinions on caste and colour in the hard school of the Indian army, and to find that his own father had trespa.s.sed against these iron rules would be too much of a shock. Instead, Robyn had mentioned that she had met one of her father's former servants, who tended their mother's grave over the years. The gift would have to be in proportion to these services.

Sarah and her child were waiting by the grave, and she accepted the gifts with a gracious little curtsy and her palms held together at the level of her eyes. We leave tomorrow, Robyn explained, and saw the immediate regret in Sarah's eyes, followed by acceptance. It is G.o.d's will, and Robyn could almost hear her father saying it.

Juba and the child soon became involved in collecting the pods from a kaffir boom tree nearby and stringing together the pretty scarlet lucky beans, each with its little black eye at the end to make necklaces and bracelets. The two of them, girl and boy, made a delightfully uninhibited pair, their laughter and shrill happy voices a pleasant background to the talk under the acacia tree.

Robyn and Sarah had become friends in the short time they had known each other. Her father had written -in his Missionary Travels that he preferred the company of black people to white, and certainly all the evidence seemed to point that way. It seemed that Fuller Ballantyne had done nothing but squabble with his own kind.

Contact with other white men seemed to bring out in him all the pettiness, suspicion and jealousy of his complex nature; while he had spent the greater part of his life with black men, and received from them trust and honour and lasting friends.h.i.+ps. His relations.h.i.+p with Sarah was only a natural extension of those feelings, Robyn realized. She contrasted these feelings with those of her brother, and knew that he could never cross the dividing line. A black man could possibly earn Zouga's liking and even his respect, but the gulf was too wide.

For Zouga they would always be "those people', and she guessed that he could never change in that. If he lived on in Africa for another fifty years, he would never learn to understand them, while she, within weeks, had made real friends.h.i.+ps. She wondered if, like her father, she would come one day to prefer them to her own kind. It didn't seem possible now, but she recognized in herself the capacity for adjustment and change.

Beside her, Sarah was speaking, so softly, so shyly that Robyn had to make an effort to tear herself away from her own thoughts and ask:What was that you said? "Your father, Ma.n.a.li, will you tell him about the boy when you find him? "He did not know? " Robyn was stunned, and Sarah shook her head. Why did you not go with him then? " Robyn demanded. He did not wish it. He said the journey would be too hard, but in reality, he is like an old bull elephant who does not like to stay too long with his cows but always must follow the wind."

Camacho Pereira towered above the wiry little tribesmen, checking off their names against the camp register.

This evening he wore a jerkin of kudu skin that was decorated with fancy st.i.tching and trade beads, and unfastened down the front to expose bulging hairy chest and the flat belly with its ridged muscles like the patterns in the sand of a windswept beach. We feed them too much, he told Zouga. "Fat n.i.g.g.e.r is lazy n.i.g.g.e.r. " He chuckled when he saw Zouga's expression, for that word had already been the cause of dissension. Zouga had forbidden him to use it, particularly in front of the expedition's black servants, for some of them it was the only word of English they understood. Feed small, kick heavy and they work hard, Camacho went on with relish.

Zouga ignored these gems of philosophy. He had heard them before, many times. Instead he turned to the captains of divisions, and watched them finish the rationing.

Two of them, their arms floury to the elbows, dipped into the bags of meal and doled it out to the shrinking line of porters. Each man had his calabash or chipped enamel basin to receive the scoop of stone-ground redbrown grain. Then one of the other captains slapped a split and smoked river fish on top of the pile. The fish looked like Scotch kippers, but their odour punched like a prize-fighter. Weevils, maggots and all, they were a delicacy that the porters would miss once they left the river.

Pereira suddenly hauled a man out of the line and hit him a l.u.s.ty clout across the back of the head with the stock of his kurbash. He come twice, try for double, he explained cheerfully, and took a playful kick at the man as he ran. if it had landed it would have knocked him off his feet, but all the porters had come to antic.i.p.ate Camacho's flying boots.

Zouga waited until the last porter had been rationed, then he called to the captains. Indaba! Tell the men, indaba."

It was the call to council, to discuss affairs of consequence, and the whole camp left the cooking fires and came hurrying, agog with excitement.

Zouga paced up and down before the ranks of intent squatting black men, drawing out the moment, for he had come quickly to realize the African love of the theatrical. Most of them could understand the basic Nguni which Zouga now spoke with some fluency, for many of them were Shangaans or Angoni.

Now he spread his arms to his audience, paused for a second and then announced portentously, Kusasa isufari, tomorrow the march begins! There was a hive murmur of comment and excitement, and then one of the captains rose from the front rank. Phi? Phi? Where? Which way? " Zouga lowered his arms, and let the suspense build up for a few moments, and then he stabbed out towards the far blue southern hills with a bunched fist. Laphaya! That way! " They roared with approval, just as they would have done if Zouga had pointed north or west for that matter.

They were ready to go now. The direction was not important. The captains of divisions, the indunas, were shouting out the translation to those who had not understood and the first roar of the crowd settled to a boisterous rumble of comment and speculation, but it died away suddenly, and Zouga. turned quickly.

Camacho Pereira had stepped beside Zouga, and his face was swollen and dark with rage. This was the first time he had heard Zouga's intention to go southwards so that when he started to speak, it was so forcefully that droplets of spittle flew from his lips. He was using one of the local dialects, and speaking so swiftly that Zouga understood only a word here and there. The sense was unmistakable, however, and he saw the shock on the faces of the men who squatted before them.

Carnacho was warning them of the dangers beyond the southern hills. Zouga. heard the word "Monomatapa" and knew that he was speaking of the terrible armies of the legendary empire, merciless legions whose favourite sport was to cut off a man's genitals and force him to eat them himself. The shock of the listening black faces was changing swiftly to terror and Camacho had been speaking for only a few seconds, a minute more and nothing would induce the caravan to march, two minutes more and most of his porters would have deserted by morning.

There was nothing to be gained by arguing with the Portuguese except an unseemly, shouting match, which would be watched with interest by the entire a.s.sembled camp. one thing that Zouga had learned was that the Africans, like the Asians he had come to know well in India, were immensely respectful of a victor and impressed by success. He could demonstrate neither qualities by becoming embroiled in an undignified wrangle in a language that none of the spectators could understand. Pereira! " he snapped, in a tone that cut through the Portuguese's torrent of words, and for an instant stilled them. Zouga had the Englishman's peculiar sense of fair play which made him warn an enemy before an attack.

As the Portuguese turned to face him, Zouga swung in towards him with two light steps and he flicked his left hand at Camacho's eyes, forcing him to throw up both hands to protect his face. As he did so, Zouga slammed his fist into his belly, just under the ribs, with a force that doubled him in the middle, his breath whoos.h.i.+ng out of his gaping mouth in an agonized explosion of sound and his hand dropping to cover his injured belly, leaving his face open for the next blow.

It was a short chopping left-handed shot that took Camacho cleanly under the right ear, on the hinge of the jaw. The plumed beaver hat spun off his head. His eyes rolled up into his skull, leaving the whites glaring madly, and Camacho's knees gave way under him. He pitched forward, making no effort to cus.h.i.+on his fall and dropped face down on to the grey sandy soil.

The silence lasted only a second, and then a shout went up from the watchers. Most of them had felt Camacho's boots or his kurbash, and they hugged one another happily. The trepidation that Carnacho's little speech had raised was completely lost in wonder at the swiftness and the effect of those two blows. Most of them had never seen a man strike with a bunched hand, and the novelty of this form of combat impressed and delighted them.

Casually, Zouga turned his back on the p.r.o.ne figure.

Not a trace of anger showed on his face, in fact he was smiling slightly as he strolled down the front rank of men and lifted one hand to quieten them. There axe soldiers who travel with us, he told them, in a low voice that yet reached clearly to every one of them, "and you have seen them shoot. " He had made sure they had, and that news of the prowess in weapons of Sergeant Cheroot's men would travel ahead of them.

You see that flag? " He flung one hand dramatically at the red and white and blue jack floating above the main tent on its improvised flag pole. "No man, no chief nor warrior dare. . . . "Zouga! shrieked Robyn. To the terrible urgency of her tone Zouga reacted instantly, spinning aside with two dancing paces, and the crowd exploded with a single word, a deep drawn-out JeeV It is a blood-chilling sound, for it is the cry with which an African warrior encourages himself or another in the fatal moments of a battle to the death.

Camacho's stroke'had been aimed at the small of Zouga's back. He-was a man who had fought with the knife many times before, and he had not taken the more tempting target between the shoulder blades, where the point could turn against the ribs. He had gone for the soft area above the kidneys, and even with Robyn's warning, Zouga was not quite quick enough. The point raked his hip, slitting the cloth of his breeches in a six-inch rent, beneath which skin and flesh opened cleanly and the bright blood spread swiftly to the knee.

Jee! " The deep sonorous chant of the watchers as Camacho reversed the stroke of his extended right hand, cutting sideways at Zouga's belly.

The blade twinkled and hissed like an angry cobra, ten inches of tempered steel, and Zouga threw up his hands and sucked in his belly muscles as he jumped back. There -was a sharp tug as the point caught in his s.h.i.+rt, but it did not touch the skin.

Jee! " again as Camacho lunged. His face was bloated and mottled with purple and white, the eyes squinting with rage and the after-effects of the blow to, his jaw.

Zouga felt the sting of the wound on his hip pulling open as he swayed back out of the path of the blade, and the stronger flood of warm blood down his leg.

He paused out of range of the knife for Zouga had heard the snap of a weapon being c.o.c.ked and from the corner of his eye he saw Sergeant Cheroot levelling the Enfield, waiting for a clear shot at the Portuguese. No! Don't shoot!

Zouga called urgently. He did not relish a bullet in his own belly, for he and Camacho were dancing close together, with the weaving point of the knife seeming to bind them to each other. Don't shoot, Sergeant! " There was another reason why he could afford no interference. There were a hundred men judging him now, men with whom he would march and work in the months and years ahead. He needed their respect.

Jee! sang the watchers, and Camacho was panting with rage. Again the blade in his right hand whispered like the wing of a swallow in flight, and this time Zouga over-reacted, blundering back half a dozen paces, and then losing his balance for a moment he dropped on one knee and put a hand to the ground to steady himself.

But as Camacho charged again, he rebounded to his feet and arched his hips aside, the way a matador swings out of the line of the bull's run. In the hand that had touched the ground, Zouga held a handful of the coa.r.s.e grey sand.

His eyes were locked to those of the Portuguese, it was the eyes not the knife hand that would signal Camacho's intentions. They flickered left, while the hand feigned the other way, and Zouga moved in past the blade, and was ready again when Camacho rounded.

They faced each other, shuffling in a slow cycle that stirred wisps of pale dust around their feet. Camacho kept the knife low, and stirred it gently as though he was conducting a slow pa.s.sage of music, but Zouga studying his eyes saw the first small nervous flickers of uncertainty.

He jumped in, launching himself off the right foot.

fee! "roared the watchers, and for the first time Camacho broke ground, falling back and then turning hurriedly as Zouga checked and feinted to his open side.

Twice more Zouga drove him back with threats, until it needed only a feint with his upper body to make Camacho scramble away. The watchers were laughing now, mocking shouts of glee every time he gave ground, and the rage that had flushed Camacho's face had given way to fear, the angry purple mottling had chilled to white.

Zouga was still watching his eyes, as they darted from side to side seeking an escape, but the knife kept weaving between them, bright and razor sharp, broad as three fingers and grooved along its length to break the suction of clinging wet flesh once it was buried.

Camacho's eyes flickered away once more and Zouga moved, pulling the knife hand around as he crossed the man's front, holding out his empty hand for the eyes to follow, keeping the other low and moving in as close to the knife as he dared, then at the moment that Camacho lunged, using the momentum of his avoiding turn, he hurled the handful of coa.r.s.e sand into Camacho's eyes blinding him, and still in the same movement reversing his direction, and going straight in on the knife, chancing it all on locking the wrist before the man could see again.

Jee! " the crowd roared as Camacho's wrist slapped into Zouga's palm, and he locked it down with all his strength.

Tears were already streaming from Camacho's eyes, and his lids fluttered, grinding the sharp grains across the unseeing eyeb.a.l.l.s. He could not judge nor meet Zougals weight as, still locked grimly to the wrist, he threw him off-balance. As Camacho went over, Zouga reared back, resisting with all his strength, holding the knife arm against the fall. Something went with a loud rubbery popping sound in Camacho's shoulder and he screamed, as he sprawled again, face down, with the arm twisted up behind him.

Once again Zouga jerked viciously, and this time Camacho screeched like a girl and the knife dropped from his fingers. He made a feeble effort to s.n.a.t.c.h it with the other hand, but Zouga. trod down on the blade with a booted foot, then scooped it up, released the damaged arm and stepped back holding the heavy weapon in his right hand. Bulala! "chanted the watchers. "Bulala! Kill him! Kill him! " They wanted to see the blood, for that was the fitting end and they hungered for it.

Zouga stabbed the blade deeply into the trunk of the acacia tree and then wrenched against the steel. It snapped at the hilt with a crack like a pistol shot, and he dropped the hilt contemptuously. Sergeant Cheroot, he said, "get him out of this camp. "I should shoot him, " the little Hottentot told him as he came up, and thrust the muzzle of the Enfield rifle into the fallen man's belly.

If he tries to enter the camp again, you can shoot him.

But now just get him out. "Big mistake, " Sergeant Cheroot's pug face took on a theatrically mournful expression. "Always stamp on the scorpion, before he stings."

You are hurt. " Robyn was running towards him. It's a scratch."

Zouga unwound the bandanna from around his throat and pressed it to the wound in his hip as he strode away towards his tent, forcing himself not to favour it with a limp. He had to get away quickly for the reaction was on him, he felt dizzy and nauseated, the wound stung abominably, and he did not want anybody to see that his hands were trembling. I reset the shoulder, Robyn told Zouga as she bound up his hip wound. "I don't think there is anything broken, and it went in again very neatly, but you, " she shook her head, "you won't be able to march with that. Every step will pull against the st.i.tches."

She was right, it was four days before the march could begin, and Camacho Pereira put that time to good use.

He had left an hour after Robyn reset his dislocated shoulder, four paddlers taking a dugout canoe down the Zambezi with the current. When they would have pulled into the bank to make camp, Camacho snarled at them from the bows where he crouched, hugging the injured arm, that even after being set and strapped into a sling, still ached so fiercely that it lit little white sparks of agony behind his closed eyelids every time he tried to doze.

He also would have liked to rest, but his hatred drove him onwards, and the dugout canoe arrowed down-current under a fat yellow moon that paled slowly at the coming of the new day.

Camacho went ash.o.r.e on the south bank of the Zambezi at noon at the small native village at Chamba, a hundred miles below Tete.

He paid off the crew of the dugout and he hired two bearers to carry his rifle and blanket roll. Then he set off again immediately along the network of narrow foot paths that crisscross the entire African continent like the blood vessels of a living body, laid down by wandering men and migrating animals over the centuries.

Two days later he reached the Hyena Road that runs from the mountains of Dismay, Inyangaza, to the sea.

The Hyena Road was a secret track. Although it paralleled the old road from the coast to Vila Monica, it kept forty miles north of it, following the course of the Pungwe river so that there would be water for the mult.i.tudes who unwillingly used the road on their long, last journey from their homeland to other lands, other continents.

Vila Monica was the last outpost of the Portuguese administration in East Africa. A decree by the Governor in council forbade any man, black or white, Portuguese or foreigner, to journey beyond that clay-walled fort towards the haunting range of mountains with the chilling name. It was for this reason that the Hyena Road had been secretly opened by enterprising men, and pushed up through the dense forests of the lower slopes to the bleak and open gra.s.slands atop the mountains.

The march from Chamba to the Pungwe river was a hundred and fifty miles. To make it in three days with the agony of a healing shoulder was good going, and once they reached it, the temptation to rest was almost irresistible. But Camacho kicked his two bearers to their feet and drove them with stinging words and lash along the deserted road towards the mountains.

The road was twice as wide as any of the other footpaths they had followed to reach it, wide enough for a double column rather than the Indian file that was the usual order of African travel. Although the surface had been beaten hard by the pa.s.sage of thousands of bare feet, it was a source of satisfaction to Camacho that the road had clearly not been used for many months, except by the occasional herd of antelope, and once, perhaps a week before, by an old bull elephant, whose huge piles of dung had long dried out. The caravan has not pa.s.sed yet, Camacho muttered, as he scanned the trees ahead for the shapes of the vultures and searched without success for the sly skulking shapes of hyena in the undergrowth beside the road.

True there were human bones scattered along the route, here and there the thick knuckle of the thigh bone that had defied even the iron jaws of the scavengers, or other splintered fragments that they had overlooked, but even these were dried out and bleached white. They were the debris of the previous caravan that had pa.s.sed this way three months before.

He had reached the road in time, and now he hurried along it, pausing now and then to listen or to send one of the bearers up a tree to search ahead.

However, it was two days later that they heard the first faint sound of many voices, and this time Camacho himself climbed to the highest fork of one of the umsisa trees beside the track, and peering ahead he saw the vultures circling, a wide slow wheel of tiny black specks turning against the silver and blue ranges of cloud, as though caught in a hidden vortex of the high heavens.

He sat in the fork thirty feet above the ground, while the sound of voices grew stronger, became the sound of singing. This was no sound of joy, but a terrible mourning dirge, slow and heartbreaking rising and fading as flukes of the breeze and folds of the ground blanketed the sound, but each time it came back a little stronger, until Camacho could make out far away the head of the column, like the head of a maimed serpent writhing out of the forest into an open glade a mile ahead.

He slid down the trunk of the umsisa, and hurried forward. There was an armed party ahead of the main column, five blacks dressed in the tatters of cast-off European-style clothing and carrying muskets, but at their head was a white man, a little man with a face like a vicious gnome, wrinkled and burned darkly by the sun.

The thick drooping black mustache was laced with grey, but he stepped out with a bouncing elastic stride and he recognized Camacho from two hundred paces and s.n.a.t.c.hed his hat off his head and waved it.

He shouted "Camacho! " and the two men ran to embrace, and then hold each other at arm's length, laughing with pleasure. It was Camacho who sobered first, the laughter changing to a scowl as he said, Alphonse, my beloved brother, I have bad tidings the worst possible. "The Englishman? " Alphonse was still smiling, he had a tooth missing from the front of his upper jaw, which made the cold humourless smile seem less dangerous than it really was. Yes, the Englishman, " Camacho nodded. "You know of him? "My father sent a message. I know. " Alphonse was the Governor of Quelimane's eldest surviving son, fullblooded Portuguese by the lawfully wedded bride who had come out forty years previously from Lisbon, a pale sickly mail-order bride, who had borne three sons in swift succession, the first two of which had succ.u.mbed to malaria and infantile dysentery even before the appearance of the little wizened yellowed mite whom they had named Alphonse Jose Vila y Pereira, and expected to bury with his brothers before the end of the rains. However, it was the mother they had buried in the end, and the child had flourished at the breast of a black wet nurse. He did not go north, then? " Alphonse demanded, and Camacho, dropped his eyes guiltily, for he was speaking to the eldest, full-blooded and legitimate son.

Camacho himself was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d and a half-breed, son of one of the Governor's once beautiful Mulatto concubines, now fat and faded and forgotten in one of the back rooms of the seraglio. He was not even recognized as a son, but had to bear the ignominious t.i.tle of nephew.

This in itself was enough for him to show respect for the other, but added to this Alphonse was as determined as their father had been at the same age, though even crueller and harder. Camacho had seen him sing a plaintive fado as he flogged a man to death, accompanying the traditional love song with the flute and percussion of the lash.

He did not go north, Camacho agreed uneasily. You were told to see that he didI could not stop him. He is English, " Camacho's voice croaked a little, "he is stubborn. "We will speak again of that, " Alphonse promised coldly. "Now, swiftly tell me where he is and what he plans to do."

Camacho recited the explanation he had prepared, skirting delicately around the most offensive parts of the story, and dwelling on. subjects such as the wealth that the Ballantyne expedition carried with it rather than his own brutal beating at the Englishman's hands.

Alphonse had thrown himself down in the shade of a tree beside the track and listened broodingly, chewing at the straggling ends of his mustache, filling in for himself the conspicuous gaps in his half-brother's recital, and speaking again only at the end. When will he leave the valley of the Zambezi? " Soon, Camacho, hedged, for the unpredictable Englishman might already be half-way to the escarpment. Although I cut him deeply, it may be he has had himself carried in a mus.h.i.+la (litter). "He must not be allowed to enter the Monomatapa, Alphonse said flatly, and came to his feet with a single lithe movement. "The best place to do the business would be in the bad ground below the rim of the valley."

He glanced back along the winding road. The head of the column was a mile away still, across a glade of open golden gra.s.s. The shuffling double rank of bowed creatures, yoked at the neck, did not seem human, though the singing was sad and beautiful. I can spare fifteen men."

It will not be enough, " Carnacho cut in swiftly. It will be, said his brother coldly, "if you do the business in the night. "Twenty men, Camacho pleaded. "He has soldiers with him, trained soldiers and he is a soldier himself."

Alphonse was silent, weighing risk and advantage but the worst part of the Hyena Road already lay behind the column, and each mile nearer the coast, the land was tamer, the risk diminished and the need for guards less pressing.

Twenty! "he agreed abruptly, and turned to Carnacho. But not one of the foreigners must escape. " Looking into his brother's cold black eyes, Camacho felt his skin crawl. "Leave no sign, bury them deep, so the jackal and hyena do not dig them out. Use the porters to carry the expedition's equipment to the place in the hills, and when they have done so, kill them also. We will bring it down with the next caravan to the coast. "Si. Si. I understand.

"Do not fail us again, my beloved cousin-brother."

Alphonse made the endearment a threat, and Camacho swallowed with a nervous little gulp. I will leave as soon as I have rested. "No, Alphonse shook his head. "You will leave immediately.

Once that Englishman enters the land beyond the mountains, there will soon be no more slaves. It is bad enough that there has been no gold for twenty years and more, but if the river of slaves were to dry up, both my father and I would be displeased, very displeased."

At Zouga's order the long mournful blast of the kuduhom trumpet shattered the silence of the utterly dark hour before the dawn.

The Indunas took up the cry "Safari! We march! " and they prodded the sleeping porters off their reed sleepingmats. The camp fires had burned down to dim red mounds of coals smothered in the soft grey powder of their own ash. As fresh logs were thrown upon them they flared up in a false dawn that lit the underside of the umbrella-shaped acacia trees with wavering yellow light.

The smell of roasting ropoko cakes rose on tendrils of pale smoke straight into the windless dark sky. The muted voices became louder, more cheerful as the flames drove away the chills and the nightmares. Safari! The cry was taken up, and the divisions a.s.sembled, ghostly figures in the gloom, emerging more clearly as the growing dawn light paled the sky and snuffed out the stars. Safari! And the ma.s.s of men and equipment resolved itself and order grew out of chaos.

Like those long columns of big s.h.i.+ny black serowe ants that endlessly cross and re-cross the African earth, the stream of porters moved steadily away into the still gloomy forest.

As each of them pa.s.sed Zouga and Robyn standing together at the gate of the thorn scherm, they shouted a greeting and executed a few prancing steps to demonstrate their loyalty and enthusiasm, while Robyn laughed with them and Zouga called encouragement. We no longer have a guide, and we don't know where we are going. " She took Zougals arm. "What is to become of us? "If we knew, it would take all the fun out of it. "At least a guide. "While you thought I was hunting I went out as far as the escarpment which is further than that swaggering Portuguese ever went, further than any white man, except of course Pater, has ever been. Follow me, Sissy, I am your guide."

She looked up at him now in the strengthening light of coming dawn.

I knew you were not hunting, she told him. The escarpment is rugged and very broken, but I have examined two pa.s.ses through the telescope that I think will go-'And beyond that? " He laughed, "We will find out. " Then he squeezed her around the waist. "That is the whole fun of the thing."

She studied his face with full attention for a few moments. The new full beard emphasized the strong, almost stubborn, lines of his jaw. There was a piratical devil-may-care lift to the corner of his lips, and Robyn realized that no man of conventional mind would have proposed and engineered this expedition. She knew he possessed courage, his exploits in India had proved that beyond doubt, and yet when she looked at his sketches and water colours and read the rough notes he was making for the book, she discovered a sensitivity and an imagination she had never before suspected. He was a difficult person to know and understand.

Perhaps she could have told him about Sarah and the child or even about Mungo St. John, and that night in the main cabin of Huron, for when he laughed like this, the stern features softened with humour and humanity, . and green lights sparkled in his eyes. That's what we are here for, Sissy, the fun of it all. "And the gold, she teased, "and the ivoryYes, by G.o.d, the gold and ivory as well. Come on, Sissy, this is where it truly begins, and he limped after the column as its tail disappeared into the acacia forest, favouring his injured leg and using a freshly cut staff to move across the sandy earth. For a moment Robyn hesitated and then she shrugged aside her doubts and ran to catch up with her brother.

That first day the porters were rested and eager, the valley floor flat and the going easy, so Zouga ordered tirikeza, the double march, so that even at their slow pace the column left many miles of dusty grey earth behind them that day.