A Falcon Flies

I must see to my men, Captain, Zouga excused himself and hurried forward.

Clinton turned to Robyn and looked steadily into her green eyes.

I beg a small token of remembrance, " he said quietly.

In response to his request she reached up and took one of the cheap paste earrings from her lobe. As they shook hands, she slipped the little ornament into his palm, and he touched it briefly to his lips before slipping it into his pocket. I will wait, " he repeated, "ten or even fifty years."

Black Joke had come up-channel on the flood, unloaded the mountainous stores of the Ballantyne Africa Expedition on to the stone quay during slack water, and two hours later thrown off her mooring ropes and swung sharply across the ebb, pointing her high bows down the channel.

From his position on the quarterdeck, Clinton Codrington stared across the widening gap at the slim, tall figure in long skirts standing on the very edge of the quay.

Beyond her, her brother did not look up from his lists as he checked the stores and equipment. Sergeant Cheroot stood armed guard with his little pug-featured Hottentots, and the idlers and watchers kept well clear.

The Portuguese officials had treated the red wax seals and ribbons which decorated Zouga's letters of authority from the Portuguese ambassador in London with great respect. However, even more important was the fact that Zouga was an officer of Queen Victoria's army, that he had arrived in a Royal Navy gunboat, and lastly that there was every reason to believe that the same gunboat would remain in the area for the foreseeable future.

The Governor of Portuguese East Africa himself would not have commanded greater respect. Already minor officials were scampering about the squalid little town arranging the best accommodation, securing warehousing for the stores, commandeering river transport for the next leg of the journey up-river to Tete, the last outpost of Portuguese empire on the Zambezi, drafting orders to have bearers and guides meet the expedition at Tete, and doing everything else that the young British officer casually demanded as though it was his God-given right In this turmoil of activity Robyn Ballantyne stood alone, staring after the blue-clad figure on Black Joke's quarterdeck. How tall he was, and his hair caught the sunlight in a flash of white gold as he lifted his hand in farewell. She waved until Black Joke disappeared behind a palisade of mangrove, though her masts and turning smokestack stayed in view for a long time after. She watched until they, too, dwindled to nothingness, and only the smear of black smoke lay low over the tops of the green mangrove.

Clinton Codrington stood on his deck, hands clasped loosely at the small of his back, and an expression of near rapture in the pale blue eyes. In this temper the knight-errant of old must have ridden out at chance, Clinton thought.

He did not find the notion at all melodramatic. He felt truly ennobled by his love, sensing somehow that be must earn something so precious, and that the opportunity to do so lay ahead of him. The earring that Robyn had given him was suspended by a thread around his neck, lying under his shirt against his skin. He touched it now, peering impatiently ahead down the channel. It seemed to him that for the first time he had a steady direction in his life, constant as the pole star to the navigator.

This gallant mood was still strong five days later when Black joke rounded the headland of Ras Elat and steamed into the anchorage. There were eight large dhows keeled over on the exposed sand bar at low tide. The tidal fall on this coast at full springs was twenty-two feet. These craft were designed to take the ground readily, and it facilitated loading. The long ranks of chained slaves were being goaded out to the stranded vessels, slipping and splashing through the shallow tidal pools, to await patiently their turn to climb the ladder up the side of the dhow.

Black joke's unannounced arrival caused pandemonium, and the beach was alive with running stumbling figures, the screams and shrieks of the slaves, the pop of the kurbash whips and the frantic cries of the slave-masters carried clearly to Black joke's deck as she dropped her anchor just beyond the reef and rounded up to the wind.

Clinton Codrington stared longingly at the heeled vessels and the concourse of panicky humanity, the way a slum-child stares at the display in the window of a food shop.

His orders were clear, had been spelled out by Admiral Kemp with painful attention to detail. The Admiral remembered with lingering horror his young Captain's capture of the slaving fleet at Calabash after forcing the masters to load their cargoes and sail north of the equator. He wanted no repetition of this type of risky action on this patrol.

Black Joke's commAnder was strictly adjured to respect the territorial integrity of the Sultan of the Omani Arabs, and the exact letter of the treaty that the British Consul had negotiated at Zanzibar.

Clinton Codrington was strictly forbidden to interfere with any subject of the Sultan who was engaged in trade between any of the Sultan's dominions. He was denied even the right of search of any vessel flying the red-andgold flag of Omani on any of the Sultan's recognized trade routes, and these were carefully defined for Captain Codrington's benefit.

He was to confine his patrol to intercepting only vessels that did not belong to the Sultan, particularly vessels of the European powers. Naturally no American vessel might be searched on the high seas. Within these limits Captain Codrington had powers of independent action.

Far from being allowed to seize or search the Sultan's vessels, Clinton was ordered to use the first opportunity to make a courtesy call on the port of Zanzibar. There he would take counsel from the British Consul as how best to use his influence to reinforce the existing treaties, and especially to remind the Sultan of his own obligations under those treaties.

So now Clinton paced his deck like a caged lion at feeding time, and glowered helplessly, through the pass in the coral reef, at the slaving fleet of Omani engaged in legitimate trade, for the Gulf of Elat was very much part of the Sultan's possessions, and had so been recognized by Her Majesty's Government.

After the first wild panic ashore, the beach and dhows were now deserted, but Clinton was aware of the thousands of watchful eyes upon him from the mud-walled town and the shadows of the coconut groves.

The thought of hauling his anchor and sailing away filled him with bitter chagrin, and he stood bare-headed and stared with cold hungry blue eyes at the prize spread before him.

The palace of the Sheikh of Elat, Mohamed Bin Salim, was an unpainted mud-walled building in the centre of the town. The only opening in the parapeted wall was the gate closed by thick, brass-studded double doors in carved teak, which led through to the dusty central courtyard.

In this courtyard, under the spreading branches of an ancient takamaka. tree the Sheikh was in earnest conclave with his senior advisors and the emissaries of his supreme sovereign, the Sultan of Zanzibar. They were discussing a matter, literally, of life or death.

Sheikh Mohamed Bin Salim had the plump smooth body of the bon vivant, the bright red lips of the sensualist, and the hooded eyes of a falcon.

He was a very worried man, for his ambition had led him into dire danger. His ambition had been quite simply to accumulate the sum of one million gold -rupees in his treasury, and he had very nearly satisfied that reasonable goal, when his overlord, the omnipotent Sultan of Zanzibar, had sent his emissaries to call the Sheikh to account.

Sheikh Mohamed had begun to satisfy his ambition ten I years previously by very gently mulching the Sultan s tithe, and each year since then he had increased his depredations. Like all greedy men, one successful coup was the signal for the next. The Sultan had known this, for though he was old, he was also exceedingly cunning.

He knew that the missing tithes were safely stored for him in the Sheikh's treasure house, to be collected whenever he felt inclined. He need only benignly feign ignorance of the Sheikh's manipulations, until he was so deeply in the trap that no squirming or squealing would get him out again. After ten years that moment had arrived. The Sultan would collect not only his due but the Sheikh's own accumulations.

Further retribution would be a lengthy business. It would begin with a beating on the soles of the Sheikh's bare feet, until all those delicate little bones were cracked or fractured making it extremely painful for the Sheikh to be marched into the Sultan's presence. There, the final judgement would be read, and it would end with the knotted strip of buffalo hide wound up tighter and tighter around the forehead, until first the Sheikh's falcon eyes popped from their sockets and then his skull collapsed like a bursting melon. The Sultan truly enjoyed these spectacles, and had been looking forward to this particular one for ten years.

Both men knew the ritual, and it had begun with the polite visit of the Sultan's emissaries who even now were sitting opposite the Sheikh under the takamaka, sipping thick black coffee from the brass thimbles, munching the yellow and pink coconut sweetmeats, and smiling at the Sheikh with cold passionless eyes.

It was into this chilling atmosphere that the messengers from the harbour came running to fling themselves prostrate and gabble out the news of the British warship, whose great guns threatened the harbour and the town.

The Sheikh listened quietly and then dismissed the messengers, before turning back to his distinguished guests. This is a serious business, " he began, relieved to be able to change the subject under discussion. "It would be wise to view this strange vessel. "The Ferengi have a treaty with our master, pronounced one greybeard, and they set great store by these pieces of paper."

They all nodded, none of them showing the agitation which filled all of their breasts. Although this coast had only received passing attention from these brash northern people, still it had been enough to engender fear and apprehension.

The Sheikh deliberated for a few minutes, stroking his thick curly beard, hooding his eyes as the ideas began to flow. His mind had been almost paralysed with the extent of the disaster which had overtaken him, but now it began to work again. I must go out to this warship, " he announced.

There was an immediate hubbub of protest, but he held up his hand to silence them. He was still the Sheikh of Elat, and they had, perforce, to hear him out. It is my duty to ascertain the intentions of the commander and to send word immediately to our master."

Clinton Codrington had almost resigned himself to give the order to weigh anchor. There had been no sign of life on the beach for many hours, and there was nothing he could accomplish here. His hope that he might catch a European slaver, actually taking on slaves in the anchorage, had proved forlorn. He should have sailed hours ago, the sun was half way down the. sky already and he did not want to run the dangers of the inshore channel in darkness, but some instinct had kept him here.

He kept returning to the. starboard rail, and glassing the flat-roofed mud buildings that just showed amongst the palm trees. Each time his junior officers stiffened expectantly, then relaxed as he turned away without a word or change of expression.

This time Clinton saw movement, the flash of white robes in the deserted, single street of the town, and as he watched through the telescope he felt a prickle of excitement and a lift of self-congratulation. A small deputation was emerging from the grove and coming down the beach. Pass the word to my steward to lay out my number ones and sword, he ordered without lowering his glass.

The party on the beach was led by a portly figure in blindingly white robes and a full headdress that gleamed with gold. Behind him a bearer carried the long floating banner, scarlet and gold, of the Sultan. We'll treat him as a Governor, " Clinton decided. And give him four guns. " With that he turned on his heel and went to his cabin to change his uniform.

The Arab climbed out of the little felucca and came in through the entry port puffing for breath, assisted by two house-slaves. As his foot touched the deck, the first gun of the salute crashed out unexpectedly, and the Sheikh let out a whinny like a wild stallion and leapt two feet straight up in the air, the high colour flying from his cheeks leaving them ashen and trembling.

Clinton stepped forward, resplendent in cocked hat, blue and gold jacket, white breeches and sword and took the Sheikh's arm to steady him through the rest of the salute, and to prevent him stampeding back into the crazily rocking felucca where the oarsmen were in equal terror.

Will you step this way, Your Excellency, Clinton murmured, and without releasing his iron grip on the Sheikh's pudgy arm, marched him briskly down to his cabin.

Translation was a problem, but one of the Sheikh's entourage had a smattering of French and some English.

it was almost dark before Clinton was able to see through the flowery verbiage and the atrocious rendering of his mother tongue. When it came it was like a great light filling the cabin, and Clinton found himself buoyed up with a savage, warlike glee.

The fat Sheikh, Governor of Elat, with his soft, red lips, was asking for the protection of her Britannic Majesty against the injustices and tyrannies of the Sultan of Zanzibar. Dites lui je the peux pas, oh, damn it, tell him I can only protect him if he declares Elat free of the Sultan's dominions, comprenez vous? "le m'excuse, je the comprends pas."

It was tedious, especially in view of Clinton's eagerness to remove the province of Elat from under the sway of Zanzibar.

The Foreign Office had provided all commanders of the Atlantic anti-slavery squadrons with blank treaty forms, drawn up with deference to protocol and in correct legal terminology. These were for signature of any indigenous chiefs, warlords, petty princes and native kings who could be induced to place their mark upon them.

These documents started with a declaration of mutual recognition between Her Majesty's government and the signatory, went on in vague terms to promise protection and free trade, and ended in very specific terms with a round condemnation of the slave trade and the granting of rights to Her Majesty's government to search, seize and destroy all ships engaged in such trade within the signatory's territorial waters. Further it granted rights to Her Majesty's Navy to land troops, destroy barracoons, free slaves, arrest slave-masters and do any such other act as should be deemed necessary to the extinction of the trade in all the signatory's lands and possessions.

Admiral Kemp in Cape Town had overlooked the fact that Captain Codrington had a good supply of these documents in his possession. They had been intended for use entirely on the west African coast north of the equator.

The good Admiral would have been a very worried man indeed if he had realized that he had detached his most brilliant but mercurial junior on independent patrol armed with anything so explosive. He must sign here, " Clinton explained briskly, and I will give him an order on the British treasury for a hundred guineas. " The treaty made provision for annual tribute to be paid to the signatory. Clinton considered a hundred guineas sufficient. He was not sure of what authority he had to write treasury orders, but Sheikh Mohamed was delighted. He had negotiated for life alone, and received not only the protection of this fine warship but the promise of good gold as well. He was smiling happily, pursing his red lips as he signed his long signature under his new title "Prince and Supreme Ruler of the sovereign possessions of Elat and Ras Telfa. "Good, said Clinton briskly, rolling his copy of the treaty and slipping the retaining ribbon over it as he hurried to the door of his cabin. Mr. Denham, he bellowed up the companionway. "I want a landing-party, muskets, pistols, cutlasses and carrying combustibles, forty men ready to go ashore at first light tomorrow! " He was grinning as he turned back and told the Sheikh's translator, "It would be best if His Excellency remained on board tonight. We will see him safely installed at noon tomorrow. " And for the first time the Sheikh felt a thrill of apprehension. This Ferengi had the cold blue merciless eyes of a devil. "El Sheetan, he thought, the very devil. " And made the sign against the evil eye. Sir, may I speak? " Mr. Denha Black Joke's first Lieutenant looked puzzled in the light of the binnacle.

It was an hour short of sunrise and he glanced down at the ranks of armed seamen squatting on the foredeck. Speak your heart, Clinton invited him magnanimously. Lieutenant Denham was not accustomed to this jovial mood from his captain, and he expressed himself cautiously. In essence Lieutenant Denham's views came very close to those of the Admiral in Cape Town. If you would like to make a protest against my orders, Lieutenant" Clinton interrupted him cheerfully, "I will be pleased to enter it in the ship's log."

Thus absolved of responsibility for having been party to an act of war on the territory of a foreign ruler, Lieutenant Denham was so relieved that when Clinton told him, "I am taking command of the landing party.

You will command the ship in my absence, he shook Clinton's hand impulsively.

Good luck, sir, he blurted.

They went ashore in two boats, the whaler leading through the pass in the reef and the gig following two lengths astern. The moment the keel touched, Clinton sprang knee-deep into the blood-warm water and the rush of armed men followed him ashore. He drew his cutlass and his shoes squelched as he led his team of five men to the nearest dhow at a dead run.

As he jumped down from the ladder on to the dhow's heavily canted deck, an Arab watchman ducked out of the stern cabin and aimed a long jezail at Clinton's head.

The range was point blank and Clinton struck out instinctively in an underhand parry, just as the gun's lock clicked and smoke and spark shot from the pan under the steel and flint.

His blade clashed against the steel barrel, deflecting it upwards as the jezail roared an instant after the snap of the lock and a blinding billow of smoke and burning powder struck his face and singed his eyebrows, but the chunk of beaten potleg howled inches over his head.

When his vision cleared the watchman had thrown his empty weapon aside, leaped over the side of the dhow and was hopping and hobbling across the sand towards the grove of palms. Search her, and then put fire into her, Clinton ordered brusquely.

It was the first chance he had had to look across at the other dhows of the fleet. One of them was already on fire, the flames bright in the early light, rising straight up with little smoke. The furled mainsail was blackening like a dried leaf, and he could hear the crackle of the tinder dry timbers of the hull and stern cabin. His seamen were spilling out of her and straggling across to the next vessel. She's aflame, sir, his boatswain panted, and a hot gust of air struck Clinton's cheek at that moment and a quiver of heat hung over the main hatch.

We'd best be getting on, he said mildly, and scrambled down the ladder on to the packed damp sand.

Behind him the flames roared like a cageful of wild animals.

The biggest dhow, a two-hundred tanner, lay ahead of them and Clinton reached it fifty paces ahead of his men. Make sure there is nobody below, he ordered, and one of the seamen came back on deck carrying a rolled silk prayer rug under his arm. Belay that! snapped Clinton. "There'll be no looting Reluctantly the seaman dropped the precious burden back into the hatchway, and the flames sucked up in a hot breath to accept it as though it was an offering to Baal.

By the time they reached the tree-line, all eight of the stranded vessels were burning fiercely, the stubby masts collapsing as they burned through at the base, the furled sails disappearing in bright explosions of flame. In one of the burning hulls a keg of powder went up with a thunderous crash of sound, and a tall column of dark smoke hovered over the beach for a few seconds, shaped like a gigantic grey octopus before it drifted slowly out across the reef, leaving the dhow shattered, its timbers scattered across the sand, the flames extinguished by the shock wave of the explosion. Was there anybody aboard her? " Clinton demanded quietly. No, sir. " His boatswain was panting beside him, redfaced with excitement, and with a bared cutlass in his hand. "All accounted for."

Clinton hid his relief behind a coot nod, and spent a few precious minutes drawing his men into an orderly formation, giving them time to regain their breath, and getting them well in hand again. Check your muskets, " he ordered, and there was the click of the locks. "Fix bayonets. " Metal rattled on metal as the long blades were fitted to the barrels of the Enfield rifles. "If there is resistance we'll find it in the town, I fancy, " and he ran an eye down the uneven ranks. They were neither marines nor lobster-backs, he thought with quick affection. They might not be perfect in drill, but they were men with spirit and initiative, not paradeground automatons. Come along then. " He waved them forward into the dusty street between the mud-brown flat-roofed buildings. The town smelled of wood smoke and raw sewage, of rice cooked with saffron and of ghee, clarified butter. Shall we burn "em? " His boatswain jerked a thumb at the buildings that flanked the deserted street. No, we are here to protect them, " Clinton told him stiffly. "They belong to our new ally, the Sheikh."

I see, sir, " the boatswain grunted, looking mildly perplexed, and Clinton took pity on him. We are after the barracoons, he explained.

as they trotted up the street in compact formation. They halted where the road branched left and right.

The heat was oppressive and the silence menacing.

There was no wind and the coconut groves had stilled the eternal clatter of their fronds. From the beach far behind them, came the faint popping of burning timbers, and overhead the ubiquitous pied crows of Africa circled and cawed raucously, but the buildings and dense coconut groves were deserted. I don't like this, " one of the men croaked behind Clinton.

He could understand the man's point of view. A seaman always felt awkward when parted from his ship, and there were a mere forty of them, out of sight of the beach and surrounded by thousands of unseen but none the less savage warriors. Clinton knew he must keep the momentum of surprise rolling through the town, yet he hesitated a moment longer until he realized that the amorphous sacklike shape lying on the edge of the right hand street was a human body, naked and black and very dead. One of the slaves trampled in the previous day's panic and left where he had fallen.

That way must lie the barracoons, he decided. "Quiet! " he cautioned his men, and cocking his head, listened with all his attention to the faint sussuration on the still air. It might have been the wind except there was no wind, or the flames, except that the flames were behind them. It was the distant sound of human voices, he decided, many voices, thousands of voices. This way. Follow me."

They went forward at a full run, taking the right fork and running immediately into the ambush which had been so carefully prepared for them.

The volley of musket fire crashed out from both sides of the narrowing track, and powder smoke rolled out towards them and hung like a thick, pearly curtain amongst the palm holes and the cashew nut trees.

Through the smoke danced the ethereal robed figures of the attackers, brandishing the long-barrelled jezails or swinging the half-moon-bladed scimitars, with wild shrieks of "Allah Akbar, Allah is greatV They rushed down on the little band of seamen, caught in enfilade on the narrow track. There were at least a hundred of them, Clinton judged instantly, and they were pressing in determinedly. Those scimitars were glittering, bright bare steel has a particularly chilling effect. Close up, Clinton shouted. "We'll give them a volley then take the bayonet to them, through the smoke."

The first rank of racing Arabs were almost on top of the levelled Enfields. Incongruously, Clinton noticed that many of them had tucked up the skirts of their robes, leaving their legs bared to the thighs. Their skins varied from the colour of ivory to tobacco, and there were wrinkled grey beards in the front rank, screaming and howling with rage and battle-lust. They had just seen their livelihood burned to heaps of ash upon the beach. All that remained to them of their wealth was the contents of the barracoons set back amongst the groves of cashew nut and coconut trees. Fire! " roared Clinton, and the solid blast of sound deafened him for a moment. The gun-smoke wiped out all vision ahead of him and then hung on the windless morning in an impenetrable fog bank. Forward! " howled Clinton and led the charge into the smoke. He stumbled over the body of an Arab. The man's turban had unwound and come down over his eyes, soaked with blood like the sultan's scarlet banner which Clinton could see waving ahead of him above the smoke.

A figure loomed ahead of him. and he heard the fluting whistle of a scimitar blade, like wild goose wings overhead. He ducked. The sharp breeze puffed a loose strand of hair into his eyes, as the blade passed an inch from his forehead, and Clinton straightened from the knees and put his whole body into the counter-lunge.

The point of his blade went in with a dead, soggy feel, sliding grudgingly through flesh until the point grated on bone. The Arab dropped his scimitar and clutched the cutlass blade with bare hands. Clinton leaned back and jerked the cutlass free of flesh. As the blade slid through the Arab's nerveless fingers the tendons parted with a faint popping sound, and the man went down on his knees, holding his mutilated hands up in front of his eyes with a look of amazement on his face.

Clinton ran on to catch up with his seamen, and found them scattered in little groups amongst the grove, laughing and shouting with excitement. They've run like steeplechasers, sir, the boatswain called. "Grand National, ten to one the field! " He snatched up the fallen banner of the Sultan and waved it furiously over his head, completely overtaken by excitement. Did we lose anybody? " Clinton demanded. He also felt the dizzy euphoria of battle. The killing of the Arab, far from sickening him, had elated him. In that moment he was quite capable of turning back and taking the man's scalp. However, the question sobered them.

Jedrow caught one in the belly, but he can walk.

Wilson got a sword cut in the arm. "Send them back to the beach. They can escort each other. The rest of you, come on! " They found the barracoons a quarter of a mile further on. The guards had fled.

The slave-pens stretched out for a half mile along both banks of a small stream that provided both drinking water and sewage disposal for the inmates.

They were unlike the barracoons that Clinton had captured and sacked on the west coast, for those had been built by European traders with the white man's orderly eye. There was no resemblance in these sprawling comPounds built of rough, unbarked forest poles, bound together with rope made from plaited palm fronds.

Behind the outer barricades were open godowns with thatched roofs in which the chained slaves could find some shelter from sun and rain. The only thing the same was the smell. An epidemic of tropical dysentery had swept through the barracoons and most of the sheds contained the decomposing bodies of the victims. The crows and buzzards and vultures were waiting patiently in the palms and cashew trees, misshapen, dark silhouettes against the hard bright blue of the morning sky.

Clinton met the new ruler of the state of Elat, Sheikh Mohamed, at the water's edge and escorted him up the beach. The incoming tide was dousing the piles of smouldering ash that marked the last resting-places of eight fine dhows, and the Sheikh tottered uncertainly, like a man in deep shock, relying for support on the sturdy shoulder of one of his house-slaves, looking about him with lugubrious disbelief at the carnage that had overtaken him. The Sheikh owned one third shares in every one of those smoking piles of ash.

He had to rest when they reached the tree-hne above the beach. A slave placed a carved wooden stool in the shade, and another waved a fan of plaited palm fronds over his head to keep off the flies and to cool his heated brow that was dewed with the heavy sweat of despair.

His misery was completed by the lecture in broken French and pidgin English which "El Sheetan', the mad British sea captain with the devil's eyes, was relaying to him through the shocked and incredulous interpreter.

Such things could only be repeated in a hoarse whisper, and the Sheikh greeted each new revelation with a soft cry of "WaaW and the upturning of his eyes to heaven.

He learned that the village blacksmiths had been dragged out of the bushes and were already knocking the fetters off long rows of perplexed slaves. WaaW wailed the Sheikh.

"Does the devil not realize that those slaves have already been purchased and that the tax has been collected."

Comfortably Clinton explained that once the slaves were freed, they would be marched back into the interior, and the Sheikh would send guards with them to see them safely home, and to warn any slave caravans that they encountered on the down-route that all the ports of Elat were now closed to the trade. Waai! " This time the Sheikh's eyes actually brimmed with tears. "He will beggar me. My wives and children will starve. "El Sbeetan counsels you to enlarge the trade in gumcopal and copra, " explained the interpreter in a sepulchral voice. "And as your closest ally, he promises to call upon you regularly with his great ship of many guns, to make certain that you heed this advice. "Waai! " The Sheikh plucked at his beard, so that long curly hairs came out between his fingers. This ally makes one long for ordinary enemies."

Twenty-four hours later Black Joke sailed into Telfa bay, forty miles further up the coast. Nobody had thought to warn the slaving fleet that was anchored there of the new policies of the state of Elat to which the territory now belonged.

The five dhows in the outer anchorage managed to cut their anchor cables and slip away into the maze of shallow coral channels and shoals to the north of the bay.

where Black joke could not follow.

However, there were another six smaller vessels on the beach and four magnificent double-decked ocean-going dhows lying in the inner anchorage. Clinton Codrington burned two of them and seized the four newest and biggest vessels, put prize crews into them and sent them south to the nearest British base at Port Natal.

Two days later, off the beach at Kilwa, Clinton Codrington exercised his ship at gunnery practice. Running out his thirty-two pounders, and firing them in broadsides which set the surface of the lagoon seething and dancing with foam and white fountains of spray. The thunder of gunfire burst against the far hills and rumbled back across the sky like cannon balls rolled across a wooden deck.

The Sultan's local Governor was reduced to a quivering jelly of terror by this display of might, and had to be carried bodily into Black joke's whaler to be rowed out to a conclave with the gunboat's Captain. Clinton had the treaty forms already filled out and ready for signature when they carried the Governor aboard to team that he was heir to a kingdom to which he had never aspired, and a title which he knew was too grandiose not to bring with it certain retribution from somebody whose name he did not dare to breathe aloud.

Admiral Kemp, sitting in his study in the magnificent mansion of Admiralty House, overlooking the wide smoky-blue haze of the Cape flats to the far mountains of the Hottentots Holland, hopefully dismissed the first reports as the wild imaginings of some crazed subordinate who had served too long in the godforsaken outpost of Port Natal, and who was suffering from the bush madness of "El Cafard" that sometimes affects a person so isolated.

Then the details began to arrive with every despatch from the north, and they were too graphic to be lightly dismissed. An armada of captured prizes was arriving in the bay of Port Natal, twenty-six sizable dhows to date, some of them loaded with slaves.

The Lieutenant-Governor of Port Natal was desperate for the Admiral's advice as to what should be done with the dhows. The slaves had been taken ashore, released and immediately been contracted as indentured labourers to the hardy and hopeful gentlemen who were attempting to raise cotton and sugarcane in the wilderness of the Umgeni valley. The shortage of tabour was critical, the local Zulu tribesmen much preferred cattle raiding and beer drinking to agricultural labour, so the Governor would be delighted to receive as many freed slaves as the Royal Navy wished to send him. (The Admiral was not entirely certain of the difference between indentured labourers and slaves. ) However, what was the Lieutenant-Governor to do with twentysix, no, the latest figure was thirty-two captured dhows.

A further flotilla of six vessels had arrived as the Governor was dictating his report.

Two weeks later, one of the captured dhows, which had been purchased into the Colonial Service by the Lieutenant-Governor, arrived in Table Bay bearing a further batch of despatches.

One of these was from Sir John Bannerman, H. M.

Consul on the island of Zanzibar. Another was from the Sultan of Omani in person, with copies to the Foreign Secretary in London and, quite remarkably, to the Governor-General in Calcutta. The Sultan evidently believed that as the representative of the Queen of England the Governor-General would have some jurisdiction in the Indian Ocean, which was virtually his front garden.

Admiral Kemp split the seals on both packets with a queasy feeling of impending doom. Good God! " he groaned, as he began reading, and then, Oh sweet merciful Jesus, no! " And later, "It's too much, it's like some sort of nightmare! " Captain Codrington, one of the most junior post-captains on the Admiralty list, seemed to have taken powers unto himself which would have made a Wellington or a Bonaparte pause.

He had annexed to the British Crown vast African territories, which hitherto had formed part of the Sultan's dominions. With a high hand he had negotiated with various local chiefs and dignitaries of dubious title and authority, pledging recognition and good British gold. Good God! the Admiral cried again in real anguish, What will that brighter Palmerston have to say. " As a staunch Tory, Kemp had no great opinion of the new Whig prime minister.

Since the troubles in India, the sepoy risings of a few years previously, the British government was very wary of accepting further responsibility for overseas territory and backward peoples. Their orders were specific, and Captain Codrington's recent activity went far from the essence of those orders.

The scramble for Africa was still in the future, and the spirit of the Little Englanders motivated British foreign policy, of this Admiral Kemp was very painfully aware.

Daunting as this was, yet it was far from the entire story, Kemp realized, as he read on into the Consul's despatch, his breath rasping hoarsely, his colour rising steadily, and his eyes behind the gold-wire framed reading-glasses swimming with tears of rage and frustration.

When I get my hands on that puppy-" he promised himself.

Captain Codrington seemed to have declared singlehanded war upon the Sultan. Yet even in his outrage the Admiral felt a prickle of professional appreciation for the scope of his subordinate's operations.

There was a formidable list of over thirty separate incidents recited by H. M. Consul. The puppy had stormed fortified castles, raided ashore to burn and destroy barracoons, released tens of thousands of slaves, seized slaving vessels on the high seas, burned others at their moorings, and wreaked the kind of chaos worthy of a marauding Nelson himself.

The Admiral's reluctant admiration for Codrington's technical conduct of the campaign in no way lessened his determination to exact vengeance for the disruption of his life and career that those actions presented. Nothing can save him this time. Nothing! " the Admiral rumbled, as he turned to study the Sultan's protest. This was obviously the work of a professional letter-writer, and every paragraph began and ended with incongruous and flowery enquiries after Kemp's health, between which were sandwiched cries of anguish, screams of outrage, and bitter protest against the broken promises and treaties of Her Majesty's government.

At the very end the letter-writer had not been able to resist adding a prayer for the Admiral and the Queen's prosperity and health in this life, and happiness in the one to follow. This detracted a little from the tone of injury in which the protests and demands had been couched.

The Sultan assessed his losses at over fourteen lakhs of rupees, almost a million of sterling, in plundered shipping and released slaves, and that did not take into account the irreplaceable damage to his prestige, nor the break-down of the entire trade along the coast. The confusion was such that some ports might never again be opened to the trade. The system of gathering slaves in the interior of the continent and the network of routes to the coastal ports had been so sadly disrupted that they might take years to re-open, to say nothing of the gross shortage of shipping resulting from the depredations ofEl Sheetan'.

Those ports still open to the trade were swamped with patient slaves, waiting for the dhows which were already scattered wrecks upon the reefs and beaches of the Mozambique channel, or sailing southwards under prize crews. Nothing can save him, repeated Admiral Kemp, and then paused. His own career was finished also. He realized that, and he felt the deep injustice of it. For forty years he had put not a single foot wrong, and his retirement was so close, so very close. He shook off the lethargy of despair, and began to draft his orders.

The first was to all ships of his squadron, to detach immediately and to steam in search of Black joke. In despair he realized that it might take as much as six weeks for his orders to reach his commanders, for they were scattered across two oceans. It might also take as long again for them to search out the errant gunboat in the maze of islands and bays along the Mo ambique channel.

However, when they did so, Captain Codrington was to be relieved of his command with immediate effect.

Lieutenant Denham was to take over as temporary commander, with orders to bring Black joke into Table Bay as soon as possible.

Admiral Kemp was confident that he could assemble sufficient senior officers on the Cape Station to convene an immediate court-martial. It might help his own position a little if he could report to the First Lord that a savage sentence had already been handed down to Codrington.

Then there was a despatch to H. M. Consul in Zanzibar, suggesting he keep the Sultan reassured and quiescent until the situation could once more be brought under control, and until instructions could be forwarded from the Foreign Office in London regarding possible redress and compensation, although naturally at this stage, no promises or commitments were to be given the Sultan, beyond expressions of good faith and commiseration.

Then there was the onerous task of making his report to the Admiralty. There were no words to soften the actions of his subordinate, and his own responsibility.

Besides he had been a serving officer too long to make any such attempt. Yet when the bare facts were stated, even in the beloved unemotional jargon of the navy, they seemed so magnified that Admiral Kemp was himself utterly appalled, all over again. The packet-boat was delayed five hours while the Admiral completed, sealed and addressed this missive. It would be in London in less than a month.

His last despatch was addressed to the officer commanding Her Majesty's ship Black joke in person. And in it Admiral Kemp allowed himself to give expression to some of his own bitterness, taking a sour sadistic pleasure in weighing the relative effectiveness of such words as "corsair" and "pirate', or "malicious" and "irresponsible'.

He had his little masterpiece of venom written Out in five copies to be disseminated in every direction and by every available means that might most speedily bring the puppy to heel. Yet when they were sent, all he could do was wait, and that was the worst part of the affair. Uncertainty and inaction seemed to corrode his very soul.

He dreaded each new arrival in Table Bay, and whenever the signal gun on the hill above the town boomed its brief feather of gunsmoke, his spirit quailed and that sour ache of dread stabbed him in his guts.

Each new despatch lengthened the toll of destruction and depredation, until at last there was a report from the culprit himself, sewn up in a package of canvas and addressed to Admiral Kemp, delivered by the prize crew of a particularly valuable dbow over eighty feet long and of a hundred-ton burden.

The tone in which Captain Codrington listed his achievements infuriated the Admiral as much as the deeds themselves. In an almost casual opening paragraph, Captain Codrington recorded the addition of some million square miles of Africa to the Empire.

He had the grace to admit that his action may have exceeded his orders, and he explained away the discrepancy winningly.

It had been my firm intention to avoid scrupulously, whilst on this service, every act of a political nature.

However, I was forced to accept the cession of the kingdoms of Elat and Telfa by the entreaties of the Sheikh and the Imam, together with that of their people, who seek refuge from the inimical and savage acts of the Sultan of Zanzibar This was hard fare to serve their Lordships, especially the First Lord, Lord Somerset, who had always grudged the use of his men and ships to fight against slavery.

However, much worse was to follow. Captain Codrington went on to lecture the Admiral and to deliver a few homilies for their Lordships" instruction. By God's providence, an Englishman with no other force than the character of his noble nation has brought to these poor people salvation. Their Lordships must pardon me for using an unfashionable argument, a sneer at the Little Englanders, "however, it is as clear to me as the African sun that God has prepared this continent for the only nation on earth that has the public virtue sufficient to govern it for its own benefit, and for the only people who take the revealed word for their moral law."

Admiral Kemp gulped as he read it, swallowed the wrong way, and was prostrated with a coughing fit from which he recovered some minutes later to read on. in all the foregoing I have been influenced by no personal Motive Or interest, by no desire of vainglory, but my endeavours have solely been to use the powers granted me to the honour of my God, my Queen and to the benefit of my country and all mankind!

The Admiral removed his reading glasses and stared at the glass case of stuffed songbirds on the wall opposite him.

To write that, he is either the world's greatest fool or a brave man or both, he decided at last.

Admiral Kemp was wrong in his estimate. In fact, Clinton Codrington was having an attack of cockiness and self-importance occasioned by the sense of limitless power which this command had given him. He had been wielding this power for many months, and his judgement and good sense had warped. Yet he still truly believed that he was fulfilling, in this order, the will of God, his patriotic duty and the spirit of his orders from the Lords of the Admiralty.

He was also fully aware that he had demonstrated superior professional ability in carrying out a series of land and sea actions, nearly always against superior numbers, without a single reverse and with the loss of only three men killed in action and less than a dozen wounded. There was only one area in which Clinton had any reservations regarding the success of the patrol up to this time.

Huron was still on the coast, he had intelligence of her from a dozen sources. Mungo St. John was trading, paying top prices for only the best merchandise, handpicked by either himself or his mate, the bald yellow giant, Tippoo. They were taking only healthy, mature men and women fit to withstand the long voyage back around Good Hope and across the middle passage, and there was a shortage of this type of merchandise.

For Clinton every dawn brought the hope that Black Joke would once again raise that towering pyramid of beautiful white sails, but each day the hope faded slowly with the passage of the fierce tropical sun across the heavens, to be extinguished each night as the huge red orb plunged into the sea, and to be resurrected again with the next dawn.

Once they missed the big American clipper by a single day. She had slipped out of the bay at Lindi twenty-four hours before Black Joke's arrival, after taking on fifty prime slaves. The watchers from the beach could not be certain if she had turned north or south, for she had made her offing below the horizon, and had been lost to sight from the shore before coming around on to her intended course.

Clinton guessed Huron would go south, and had steamed in pursuit for three days, over an empty sea, down a seemingly deserted coast with barren anchorages before admitting that St. John had sailed away from him again, and he was forced to abandon the hunt.

At the very least he knew that if Huron had turned north, St. John was still trading, and there was always a chance of another encounter. He prayed for it every evening. It was all that he needed to make this patrol a clean sweep, so that he could fly a broom from his masthead when he sailed into Table Bay again.

This time he had the sworn and witnessed depositions of the men who had sold St. John his slaves as proof positive that Huron was trading. He did not have to rely on the equipment clause, or the dubious rights of search.

He had his proof and somehow he knew his chance would come.

The tide was running at full flow for Clinton. He was imbued with a new sense of worthiness, a new, ironclad confidence in himself and his own good fortune. He carried himself differently, chin higher, shoulders squarer, and if his gait was not yet a swagger, it was at least an assured stride. He smiled more often and when he did there was a wicked curl to his upper lip and a devilish twinkle in the pale blue eyes. He had even grown a full mustache, golden and curling that gave him a piratical air, and his crew, who had always respected his cold precise management of the ship, but felt little affection for him, now cheered him when he came back on board from one of his forays ashore. Good old Tongs! " It was his new nickname fromHammer and Tongs'. They had never had a pet name for him before, but now they were a proud ship, proud of themselves, and proud of their twenty-seven-year-old Old Man'. Give "em hell, Tongs! " they cheered behind him, as he led them, naked cutlass in hand, over the outer stockade of a barracoon with musket smoke swirling around his lanky figure. At "em, the Jokers! " they cheered themselves, as they leaped the gap between Black fake's rail and the deck of a slaving dhow, swinging their cutlasses, pistols popping as they drove the slavers down into their own holds and battened the hatches down on them, or chased them over the side where the sharks were cruising.

They knew they were creating a legend. Tongs and his jokers sweeping the slavers from the Mozambique channel, a hell of a story to tell the nippers back home, and a good slice of prize money to prove the tale.

It was in this mood that Black Joke sailed into Zanzibar harbour, the stronghold of the Omani Sultan, little Daniel into the lion's den. The gunners on the parapets of the fort, though they stood with the slow match burning in their hands, could not bring themselves to touch them to the huge bronze cannon as the ugly little gunboat came fussing up the Zanzibar roads.

Black Joke had her yards manned with neatly uniformed seamen. A spectacular display, geometrical white ranks of men against the backdrop of tropical anvilheaded thunder-clouds.

Her officers were in cocked hats and full ceremonial dress, uniform, swords, white gloves and white breeches, and as she made her turn into the inner harbour, Black Joke began firing her courtesy salute, which was a signal for most of the population to head for the hills, jamming the narrow alleyways of the old city with a lamenting torrent of refugees.

The Sultan himself fled his palace, and with most of his court took refuge in the British consulate, overlooking the harbour. I am not a coward, the Sultan explained bitterly to Sir John Bannerman, "but the Captain of that ship is a madman. Allah himself does not know what he will do next."

Sir John was a large man, of large appetite. He possessed a noble belly like the glacis of a mediaeval castle and full mutton-chop whiskers around a florid face, but the clear intelligent eyes, and the wide friendly mouth of a man of humanity and humour. He was a noted oriental scholar, and had written books of travel and of religious and political appraisal of the East, as well as a dozen translations of minor Arabic poets.

He was also a confirmed opponent of the slave trade, for the Zanzibar markets were held in the square below the windows of his residence and from his bedroom terrace he could watch on any morning the slaving dhows unloading their pitiful cargoes on the stone wharf they called, with cruel humour, the "Pearl Gate'.

For seven years he had patiently negotiated a series of treaties with the Sultan, each one nipping a few more twigs off the flourishing growth which he detested, but found almost impossible to prune effectively, let alone root out entirely.

In all the Sultan's territories Sir John had absolute jurisdiction only over the community of Hindu traders on the island, for they were British subjects, and Sir John published a bulletin requiring them to free all their slaves forthwith, against a penalty of Si oo for non-compliance.

His bulletin made no mention of compensation, so the most influential of the merchants sent Sir John a defiance which was the Pushtu equivalent of "The hell with you and your bulletins'.

Sir John, with his one good foot, personally kicked in the merchant's door, dragged him out from under his charpoy bed, dropped him to his knees with a fullblooded round-house punch, chained him around the neck and marched him through the city streets to the consulate and locked him in the wine cellar until the fine was paid and the slaves" manumission papers signed.

There had been no further defiance and no takers for the Hindu merchant's subsequent, privately circulated offer to pay another Sioo to anybody who would stick a knife between Sir John's ribs during one of his evening promenades through the old city. Thus it was that Sir John was still bluff and hale as he stood on his terrace puffing a cigar, his only indisposition was the gouty foot thrust into a carpet slipper. He watched the little black-hulled gunboat coming up the channel. She behaves like a flagship, he smiled indulgently, and beside him, Said the Sultan of Zanzibar, hissed like a faulty steam valve. El Sheetan! " His wrinkled turkey neck turned bright red with impotent anger, his bony nose beaked like that of an unhappy parrot. "He sails here, into my harbour, and my gunners stand by their cannons like dead men.

He who has beggared me, who has plunged my empire into ruins, what does he dare here? " The answer that Clinton "Tongs" Codrington would have given him was quite simple. He was carrying out to the letter the orders given him in Cape Town many months previously by Admiral Kemp, the Commander of the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean Squadron. You are further requested and required to take advantage of the first opportunity to call into the harbour of Zanzibar, where you will accord to his Royal Highness the Sultan of Omani full honours, while taking the advice of Her Majesty's Consul, Sir John Bannerman, as to reinforcing existing treaties between His Royal Highness and Her Britannic Majesty's Government."

Which, being translated, was an instruction to show the Union Jack against a background of thirty-two pounder cannons, and by doing so remind the Sultan of his commitments under the various treaties. To teach the naughty old beggar to mind his P's and Q's, " as Clinton explained cheerfully to Lieutenant Denham with a twirl of his new golden mustache. I would have thought, sir, that the lesson had already been given', Denham answered darkly. Not at all, Clinton demurred.

"The treaties with the new sultans on the mainland no longer affect the Zanzibar fellow. We still have to ginger this old boy up a little."

Sir John Bannerman limped up on to Black Joke's deck, favouring his gouty foot and cocked a lively eye at the young naval officer who stepped forward to greet him.

Well, sir, you have been busy indeed, he murmured.

My God, the fellow was little more than a boy, a freshfaced youngster, despite the cocked hat and mustache.

It was difficult to believe that he had created such havoc with this tiny ship.

They shook hands, and Bannerman found himself liking the boy, despite the turmoil that he brought into the Consul's normally tranquil existence.

A glass of madeira, sir? " Clinton suggested. Damned decent of you, I must say."

In the small cabin, Bannerman mopped his streaming face, and came directly to business. By God, you've put the cat amongst the pigeons, he wagged his big head. I don't see. . . "Now, listen to me, Bannerman snapped, "and I'll explain to you the facts of life as they apply to eastern Africa in general, and Zanzibar in particular."

Half an hour later, Clinton had lost much of his newfound bumptiousness.

What should we do? " he asked. Do? innerman asked. "What we do is take full advantage of the situation which you have precipitated, before these idiots in Whitehall come stumbling in. Thanks to you the Sultan is at last in a mood to sign the treaty I have been after for five years. I'll trade a handful of these utterly illegal, untenable treaties that you have made with non-existent states and mythical princes for one that will truss the old goat up the way I've wanted him for years. "Excuse me, Sir John, Clinton looked slightly perplexed, "from what, you said earlier, I understood that you heartily disapproved of my recent actions. "On the contrary, " Sir John grinned at him expansively, you have stirred my blood, and made me proud to be an Englishman again. I say, do you have a little more of the madeira? " He raised the glass to Clinton. "My hearty congratulations, Captain Codrington. I only wish that I could do something to save you from the fate that so certainly awaits you, once the Admiralty and Lord Palmerston catch up with you. " Sir John drank half the glass, smacked his lips, "Jolly good stuff, he nodded, set the glass aside and went on briskly, "Now, we have to work fast and get the Sultan to sign an iron-clad treaty, before Whitehall rushes in with apologies and protestations of good faith which will put to naught all the fine work you have done to date. Something tells me that won't be very long, he added lugubriously, and then more brightly, "You could have your ship's guns run out whilst we are ashore. Do wear your sword. Oh, and one other thing, don't take your eyes off the old goat while I do the talking. There is already talk about your eyes, that extraordinary colour of blue, don't you know, and the Sultan has heard about them already. As you probably know, they now call you "El Sheetan" on this coast, and the Sultan is a man who sets great store by djinns and the occult."

Sir John's predictions as to the imminent arrival of tiding's from higher sources was almost clairvoyant, for as he spoke H. M. sloop Penguin, with urgent despatches on board for Sir John Bannerman, for the Sultan, and for Captain Codrington, was on a fair wind, which, if it held, would bring her into Zanzibar harbour within the next two days. Time was shorter than even Sir John believed.

With some trepidation, the Sultan had moved back into his palace. He had only half believed Sir John's assurances, but, on the other hand, the palace was half a mile from the harbour where that evil black ship was displaying its formidable broadside of carronades, while the consulate was on the harbour front, or the front line of fire, depending on how one looked at it.

On Sir John's advice Clinton had come ashore with a bodyguard of a dozen picked seamen, who could be trusted to resist the temptations of the old city's redlight area, the grog and the women that seamen dream of. It was dusk when the party plunged into the labyrinth of narrow alleys, where the balconies almost met overhead, led by Sir John who despite his game leg set a good pace, picking his way around heaps of noisome garbage and avoiding the puddles in the uneven paving that looked like a cold minestrone soup and smelled a great deal higher.

He chatted affably with Clinton, pointing out the various sites and buildings of interest, relating the island's history and giving a quick perceptive character-sketch of the Sultan and the more important men in his empire, including those unfortunate new princes who had signed Clinton's blank treaty forms. That's one thing, Sir John. I wouldn't want anything to happen to them, Clinton cut in for the first time. "I hope they won't be victimized for having, well, how can one say, for having seceded from the Sultan's empire-Torlom hope."

Sir John waggled his head. "Not one of them will be alive by Ramadan. The old goat has a nasty streak. "Couldn't we put a clause in the new treaty to protect them? "We could, but it would be a waste of paper and ink."

Sir John clapped his shoulder. "Your concern is misplaced. The finest collection of ruffians, rogues and assassins south of the equator, or north of it, for that matter. One of the side benefits of the whole business, getting rid of that lot. Old goat will have a lovely time, compensate him for the loss of face when he straps their heads or hands them the cup of datura tea. Ghastly death, datura. poisoning. Oh, by the way, you must look at these gates. " They had reached the front of the palace. One of the most magnificent examples of craftsmanship on the island."

The massive teak doors were fifteen feet high, intricately carved, but in accordance with Moslem law the carvings depicted neither human nor animal figures.

They were the only impressive feature of the drab square building with its blank walls relieved by the wooden balconies high above street level, shuttered against the night air and the gaze of the curious.

The gates swung open at their approach, and the palace guards armed with ancient jezails were the first living beings they had seen since leaving the harbour. The city was still deserted, and cowering under the menace of Black Joke's guns.

Clinton noticed, since Sir John had mentioned it, that the guards averted their gaze as he passed, one of them actually covering his face with the loose tail of his turban. So the business of the eyes was true. He was not sure whether to feel insulted or amused. You must see these. " Sir John stopped him in the cavernous ante-chamber lit with guttering oil lamps suspended in heavy brass chandeliers from a ceiling lost in the gloom. "The heaviest recorded specimens in the world, one of them over three-hundred-pounds weighc They were a pair of African elephant tusks, suspended on the stone wall with retaining bands of copper, two incredible curves of ancient ivory, as thick as a girl's waist, taller than a man could reach, with hardly any taper from hilt to b unt tip, , earning with the lustre of precious porcelain.

, You have not hunted these beasts? " Clinton shook his head, he had never even seen one of them but the huge teeth impressed him none the less. Before my foot, I shot them in India and in Africa. No other sport to beat that, incredible animals. " He patted one of the tusks. "The Sultan killed this one when he was a young man, with a jezail! But there aren't any monsters like that around any more, more's the pity.

Come along, mustn't keep the old goat waiting."

They went on through half a dozen chambers, each of them Aladdin's caves of rare treasures, carved jade, beautifully worked ivory carvings, a palm tree and suspended moon, the symbol of Mohamed, in solid gold, carpets of silk and thread of gold and silver, a collection of fifty priceless Korans in silver and golden containers set with precious and semiprecious stones. Look at that shiner! Sir John stopped again, and pointed out a native cut diamond in the hilt of an Arabian scimitar.

The diamond was cushion-shaped and a little out of true, but burning with a weird blue and icy fire even in the semi-dark. "Legend says the sword was Saladin's I doubt it, but the stone is one hundred and fifty-five carats. I weighed it myself. " And then as he took Clinton's arm and stumped off again, "Old goat is rich as Croesus. He has been milking rupees out of the mainland for forty years, and his father for fifty years before that. Ten rupees for every slave, ten for every kilo of ivory, God knows how much for copra and gum-copal concessions."

Clinton saw instantly why Sir John called him the old goat. The resemblance was startlin& from the white, pointed beard and square yellow teeth to the mournful Roman nose and elongated ears.

He took one look at Clinton, catching his eye for a split part of a second, before he looked away hurriedly, blanching visibly, as he waved his two visitors to the piles of velvet and silk cushions. Keep the old beady eye on him, " Sir John counselled aside, "and don't eat anything! He indicated the display of sweetmeats and -sugared cakes on the bronze trays. "If they aren't poisoned, they'll probably turn your stomach anyway. It's going to be a long night."

The prediction was accurate, the talk went on hour after tedious hour, in flowing Arabic hyperbole and flowery diplomacy, that concealed the hard bargaining.

Clinton understood not a word. He forced himself not to fidget, though his buttocks and legs soon lost all feeling from the unusual position on the cushions, yet he maintained a stern expression and kept his gaze fixed on the Sultan's wrinkled and whiskered visage. Sir John assured him later that it had helped greatly to shorten the negotiations, yet it seemed a hill round of eternity before Sir John and the Sultan were exchanging polite fixed smiles and deep bows of agreement.

There was a triumphant gleam in Sir John's eye, as he strode out of the palace, and he took Clinton's arm affectionately. Whatever happens to you, my dear fellow, generations unborn will have reason to bless your name. We have done it, you and I. The old goat has agreed. The trade will wither and die out within the next few years now."

On the walk back through the narrow streets, Sir John was as lively and cheerful as a man returning from a convivial party rather than the bargaining table. His servants were still waiting his coming, and all the lamps in the consulate were burning.

Clinton would have liked immediately to go back aboard his ship, but Sir John restrained him with an arm about his shoulder, as he called for his Hindu butler to bring champagne. On the silver tray with the green bottle and crystal glasses was a small package in stitched and sealed canvas. While the uniformed butler poured the champagne, Sir John handed Clinton the package. This came in earlier on a trading dhow. I did not have the opportunity to deliver it to you before we left for the palace."

Clinton accepted it warily, and read the addressCaptain Clinton Codrington, Officer Commanding Her Majesty's Ship Black Joke. Please forward to H. M.

Consul at Zanzibar to await collection."

The address was repeated in French, and Clinton felt a quick thrill kindle his blood as he recognized the bold round script in which the package was addressed. It took an effort to restrain himself from ripping the package open immediately.

However, Sir John was handing him a glass of wine, and Clinton suffered through the toasts, the loyal toast to the Queen, and that ironical one to the Sultan and the new treaty, before he blurted out, "Excuse me, Sir John, I believe this to be a communication of importance, and the Consul waved him into his study and closed the door after him to give Clinton privacy.

On the leather top of the marquetry desk, Clinton slit the seals and stitching of the package with a silver knife from the Consul's desk set. From it fell a thick sheaf of closely written notepaper, and a woman's earring of paste and silver, the twin to the one that Clinton wore under his shirt against his chest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Camacho lifted the plumed beaver and waved it in jovial salute. His teeth flashing like a semaphore even at that distance. You chose him, said Robyn sweetly, following the direction of his gaze.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cim-echo had watched this little ritual every evening.

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

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

That was one appeal she could not deny. Oh very well. Wait, she called, and buttoned her shirt, and then as an excuse perhaps to delay the moment turned her attention to her instruments still spread on the table that had been carried into the tent.

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

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

Very well, " she nodded, and he unbuttoned his shirt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Camacho was reduced to firing at the roosting fish eagles on their fishing-perches overhanging the water.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

troublemaker who could be expected to aggravate the enormous damage done by the father. Furthermore, nobody could be sure of the real objects of the expedition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even if there were no new treasures to discover, there were certainly old ones to protect. It would be Camacho Pereira's duty to steer the expedition away from certain areas, to prevent it stumbling on secrets known not even to the Governor's masters in Lisbon.

Camacho's orders were clear: distract the Englishman by accounts of the insurmountable difficulty of travel in certain directions, the swamps, the mountain ranges, the disease, the savage animals and even more savage men, and contrast that with the friendly people in pleasant lands, rich with ivory, that lay in other directions.

If this was unsuccessful, and Major Ballantyne had all the earmarks of arrogance and intractability peculiar to his nation, then Camacho was to use what other means of persuasion came to hand. This was a euphemism perfectly understood by both the Governor and his nephew.

Camacho had almost convinced himself that this was really the only sensible course of action. Beyond Tete there was no law, except that of the knife, and Camacho had always lived by that law. Now he savoured the thought. He had found the Englishman's unconcealed contempt as galling as the woman's rejection had been painful.

He had convinced himself that the reason for the attitude towards him of both brother and sister was his Mulatto blood. This was a sensitive area of Camacho's self-esteem, for even in Portuguese territories where miscegenation was almost universal practice, mixed blood still carried a stigma. He would enjoy the work ahead, for not only would it wipe out the insults he had suffered, but it would bring rich pickings, and even after they had been shared out with his uncle, and others, there would still be much profit in it for himself.

The equipment that the expedition carried represented, in Camacho's view, a vast fortune. There were barge-loads of excellent trade goods. Camacho had taken the first opportunity to check secretly the contents of the packs. There were firearms, and valuable instruments, chronometers and sextants, and there was a forged-steel field-safe that the Englishman kept locked and guarded. The merciful God alone knew how many golden English sovereigns it contained, and if He did not know, then his good uncle the Governor knew less. It would make the division of spoils more in Camacho's favour. The more he brooded upon it, the more he looked forward to the arrival at Tete, and the jump-off into the unexplored territory beyond.

To Robyn the tiny town of Tete marked her real arrival in Africa, and her return to the world for which she had trained so assiduously and yearned so deeply.

She was secretly glad that Zouga had used the unloading of the barges as an excuse not to accompany her. You find the place, Sissy, and we'll go there together tomorrow."

She had changed back into skirts, for small and isolated as it was, Tete was still a backwater of civilized behaviour and there was no point in giving offence to the local inhabitants. Though she found the heavy folds about her legs annoying, she soon forgot them as she walked the single, dusty street of the village where her father and mother must have walked together for the last time, and peered at the mud-walled trading stores built haphazardly along a rough line with the bank of the river.

She stopped at one of these little duka's and found that the storekeeper could understand a mixture of her basic Swahili, English and Nguni language, enough anyway to direct her on to where the village street petered out in a mere footpath that meandered off into the acacia forest.

The forest was hushed in the heat of the noon, even the birds were silent and the mood weighed on Robyn, depressing her and awakening the memories of long-ago mourning.

She saw a flash of white amongst the trees ahead, and stopped, reluctant to go on to what she knew she would find. For a moment she was transported to girlhood again, to a grey November day standing beside her Uncle William waving upwards at the passenger decks of the departing ship, her eyes so dimmed with tears that she could not make out at the crowded rail the beloved face for which she searched, while the distance between ship and quay opened like the gulf between life and death.

Robyn shook the memory away and went on. There were six graves amongst the trees, she had not expected , that, but then she recalled that there had been heavy mortality amongst the members of her father's KaborraBassa.

expedition, four of disease, one drowned and a suicide.

The grave for which she searched stood a little apart from the others. It was demarcated by a square of whitewashed river stones and at the head was a cross built of mortar. It also had been whitewashed. Unlike the other graves, it had been kept cleaned of grass and weed, and the cross and stones freshly painted. There was even a small bunch of wilted wild flowers standing in a cheap blue china vase. They were not more than a few days old. That surprised Robyn.

Standing at the foot of the grave she read the still fully legible lettering on the plaster cross: In loving memory of Helen beloved wife of Fuller Morris Ballantyne.

Born August 4th i8I4. Died of fever December i6th i852.

God's will be done.

Robyn closed her eyes and waited for the tears to come up from deep inside, but there were no tears, they had been shed long ago. instead there were only the memories.

Little fragments of memory played over and over in her mind, the smell of strawberries as they gathered them together in Uncle William's garden, standing on tiptoe to place one of the lush red fruit between her mother's white teeth and then eating the half that was left especially for her; lying cuddled under her bedclothes as she listened drowsily to her mother's voice reading aloud to her in the candlelight; the lessons at the kitchen table in winter, under the elm trees in summer and her own eagerness to learn and to please; her first pony ride, her mother's hands holding her in the saddle, her legs too short for the stirrups; the feel of the soapy sponge down her back as her mother stooped over the iron hipbath; the sound of her mother's laughter, and then at night the sound of her weeping beyond the thin partition beside her cot; then the final memory of the smell of violets and lavender as she pressed her face to her mother's bodice. Why must you go, Mama? "Because your father needs me. Because your father has sent for me, at last."

And Robyn's own terrible consuming jealousy at the words, mingled with the sense of impending loss.

Robyn knelt in the soft cushion of dust beside the grave, and began to pray, and as she whispered, the memories came crowding back, happy ones and sad ones together, and she had not felt so close to her mother in all the intervening years.

She did not know how long she had knelt there, it seemed an eternity, when a shadow fell across the earth in front of her and she looked up, jerked back to the present with a little gasp of surprise and alarm.

A woman and child stood near her, a black woman, with a pleasant, even pretty, face. Not young, in her middle thirties possibly, though it was always difficult to guess an African's age. She wore European-style clothing, cast-offs probably, for they were so faded that the original pattern was hardly visible, but starched and fastidiously clean. Robyn sensed that they had been donned for the occasion.

Although the child wore the brief leather kilt of the local Shangaan tribe, he was clearly not a full-blooded African. He could not have been more than seven or eight years of age, a sturdy boy, with a head of dustycoloured curls and oddly pale-coloured eyes. There was something vaguely familiar about him that made Robyn stare.

He carried a small bunch of the yellow acacia flowers in his hands, and smiled shyly at Robyn before hanging his head and shuffling his feet in the dust. The woman said something to him and tugged at his hand and he came hesitantly to Robyn and handed her the flowers. Thank you, she said automatically, and raised the bouquet to her nose. They were faintly, but sweetly perfumed.

The woman hiked her skirts and squatted beside the moved the wilted flowers and then handed the grave, re little blue china vase to the boy. He scampered away towards the river-bank.

While he was gone the woman plucked out the first green sprouts of weeds from the mound of the grave and then rearranged the whitewashed stones carefully. The familiar manner in which she performed the chore left no doubt in Robyn's mind that she was responsible for the upkeep of her mother's grave.

Both women maintained a friendly, comfortable silence, but when their eyes met they smiled and Robyn nodded her thanks. The child came trotting back, muddy to the knees and slopping water from the vase, but puffed up with self-importance. He had clearly performed this task before.

The woman took the vase from him and set it carefully on the grave, then both of them looked expectantly towards Robyn and watched her while she arranged the acacia flowers in the vase. Your mother? " said the woman softly, and Robyn was startled to hear her speak English. Yes, " she tried to hide her surprise. "My mother. "Good lady. "You knew her? "Please? " After the valiant opening, the woman had very little English, and their communication was halting, until Robyn, out of the habit of talking to little Juba said something in Matabele. The woman's face lit'with pleasure and she answered swiftly in a language which was obviously one of the Nguni group, and whose inflection and vocabulary differed very little from that to which Robyn was accustomed.

You are Matabele? " Robyn demanded. I am Angoni, the woman put in hastily, for there was rivalry and hostility between even the closely related tribes of the Nguni.

Her tribe, the Angoni, had swept northwards from their origins in the grassy hills of Zululand, and crossed the Zambezi river thirty years before, she explained in her lilting musical dialect. They had conquered the land along the northern shores of Lake Marawi. It was from there that the woman had been sold to one of the Omani slave-masters, and had come down the Shire river in chains.

Unable to keep up with the slave caravan, reduced by starvation, and the fevers and hardships of the long journey, she had been freed of her chains and left for the hyenas beside the slave road. It was there that Fuller Ballantyne had found her and taken her into his own small camp.

She had responded to his rough nursing and when she was recovered, Fuller had baptized her with the Christian name of Sarah. So my father's detractors are mistaken, Robyn laughed, and spoke in English. "He made more than one convert."

Sarah did not understand but laughed in sympathy. By now it was almost dusk and the two women, followed by the half-naked child, , left the little cemetery and started back along the footpath, with Sarah still telling how when Robyn's mother, summoned at last by Fuller Ballantyne, arrived in Tete with other members of the Kaborra-Bossa expedition, Sarah had been presented to her by Fuller as a personal servant.

By now they had stopped at a fork in the path, and after a moment of hesitation Sarah invited Robyn to her village which was only a short way off the path. Robyn glanced up at the sun and shook her head, it would be dark in an hour and Zouga would be certain to turn out the camp to search for her if she had not returned by then.

f She had enjoyed the hours spent with the young woman and the bright sweet child, and when she saw Sarah's obvious disappointment, she said quickly, Although I must go, I will return tomorrow at the same time. I wish to hear all you can tell me of my mother and my father."

Sarah sent the little boy with her as far as the buildings of the village. and after the first few yards Robyn quite naturally took the boy's hand, and he skipped along beside her, chattering gay childish nonsense, which helped to lift her sombre mood until Robyn laughed and chattered with him.

Before they reached the outskirts of Tete, Robyn's fears were confirmed. They met Zouga and Sergeant Cheroot. Zouga was armed with the Sharps rifle and angry with relief the moment he saw her. Damn me, Sissy, but you have had us all beside ourselves. You've been missing for five hours."

The child stared at Zouga with wide eyes. He had never seen anything like this tall lordly man with the imperious manner and sharp commanding voice. He must be a great chief, and he slipped his hand out of Robyn's, retreated two paces, then turned and darted away like a sparrow from the circling hawk.

Some of Zouga's anger left him as he watched the child go, and a small smile touched his lips. For a moment I thought you'd picked up another stray. "Zouga, I found Mama's grave. " Robyn hurried to him and took his arm. "It's only a mile or so."

Zouga's expression changed again and he glanced up at the sun that was already on the tops of the acacia trees and turning deep smouldering red. We'll come back tomorrow, " he said. "I don't like to leave the camp after dark, there are too many jackals lurking about, two legged jackals. " Firmly. he led her back towards the village, continuing his explanation as they walked. We are still having a great deal of difficulty obtaining porters, despite the fact that the Governor in Quelimane assured me they would be readily available, and the good Lord knows there are any amount of able-bodied men hereabouts. Yet that strutting poppinjay Pereira finds obstacles at every turn. " The frown made him look much older than his years as did the full beard which he had allowed to grow since disembarking from Black fake. "He says that the porters refuse to contract until they know the direction and duration of the safari. "That seems logical, Robyn agreed. "I know I wouldn't carry one of those huge packs, unless I knew where I was going. "I don't think at all that it's the porters, there is no reason why the destination should worry them. I am offering top wages, and not a single man has come forward. "What is it, then? "Pereira has been trying to wheedle our intentions out of me, ever since we left the coast. I think this is a form of blackmail, no porters until I tell him. "Then why don't you tell him? " Robyn asked, and Zouga shrugged. Because he is too damned insistent. It's not a casual interest, and instinct warns me not to trust him with any information which it is not essential for him to know."

They walked on in silence until they reached the perimeter of the camp.

Zouga had laid it out on the lines of a military base, with an outer stockade of acacia thorn branches, a Hottentot guard at the gate and the boma for the porters separated from the stores depot by the tent lines. It looks like home already, Robyn congratulated him, and would have left him for her own tent when Camacho Pereira hurried forward. Ah! Major, I wait for you with good news."

That's a pleasant change, Zouga murmured drily. I find man who has seen your father, not eight months ago."

Robyn turned back instantly, her excitement matching that of the flamboyant Portuguese and she spoke directly to him for the first time since the incident in her tent. Where is he?

Oh, this is wonderful news. "If it's true, " qualified Zouga, with considerably less enthusiasm. I bring the man, damned quick, you see! " Carnacho promised, and hurried away towards the porters" boma, shouting as he went.

Within ten minutes he returned dragging with him a skinny old man dressed in greasy tatters of animal skins, and with his eyes rolling up into his head with terror.

As soon as Camacho released him, the old man prostrated himself before Zouga who sat in one of the canvas camp chairs under the awning of the dining tent, and gabbled replies to the queries that Carnacho shouted at him in hectoring tones. What dialect is that he speaks? " Zouga interrupted within the first few seconds. Chichewa, Camacho replied. "He no speak other."

Zouga glanced at Robyn, but she shook her head. They had to rely entirely on Camacho's rendition of the old man's replies.

It seemed that the old man had seen "Manali', the man with the red shirt, at Zimi on the Lualaba river. Manali had been camped there with a dozen porters, and the old man had seen him with his own eyes.

How does he know it was my father? " Zouga asked.

Everybody knew "Manah', the old man explained, he was a living legend from the coast to "Chona longa', the land where the sun sets. When did he see Manali?

One moon before the coming of the last rains, which made it in October of the previous year, as Camacho had said, about eight months previously.

Zouga sat lost in thought, but his gaze fixed with such ferocity on the unfortunate who grovelled before him that the old man suddenly burst out on a plaintive note that made Carnacho's handsome face darken with anger and he touched the skeletal ribs with the toe of his boot, a threatening gesture that quieted the old man instantly.

What did he say? " Robyn demanded. He swears he speak the truth only, Camacho assured her, resurrecting his smile with an effort.

What else does he know of Manali! Zouga asked. He speak with the porters of Manah, they say they go follow the Lualaba river."

It made some sense, Zouga thought. If Fuller Ballantyne was indeed seeking the source of the Nile river to recover his lost reputation, then that is where he would have gone. The Lualaba, which was reputed to run directly northward, was one of obvious choices for the source river.

Camacho questioned the old man for another ten minutes, and would have taken the hippo-hide whip to jog his memory, but Zouga stopped him with a gesture of annoyance. It was obvious that there was nothing further to learn from him. Give him a bolt of merkani cloth and a khete of beads and let him go, Zouga ordered and the old man's gratitude was pathetic to watch.

Zouga and Robyn sat later than usual beside the camp fire, while it collapsed slowly upon itself in spasmodic torrents of rising sparks and the murmur of sleepy voices from the porters" boma died into silence. If we go north, Robyn mused, watching her brother's face, "we will be going into the stronghold of the slave trade, from Lake Marawi northwards. From that area into which no white man, not even Pater, has ever ventured must come all the slaves for the markets of Zanzibar and the Omani Arabs-'What about the evidence of the trade to the south, Zouga glanced across the clearing at the silent figure of Juba, waiting patiently by the entrance to Robyn's tent.

"That girl is the living proof that a new trade is flourishing south of the Zambezi. "Yes, but it seems to be nothing compared to the activity north of here. "The northern trade has been fully documented.

Father reached Marawi and followed the slave caravans down to the coast fifteen years ago, and Bannerman at Zanzibar has written a dozen reports on the Zanzibar market, " Zouga pointed out, nursing a precious tumbler of his fast-dwindling supply of whisky, and staring into the ashes of the fire. "Whereas nobody knows anything about the trade with the Monomatapa and the Matabele south of here."

Yes, I acknowledge that, Robyn admitted reluctantly. However, in his Missionary Travels father wrote that the Lualaba was the source of the Nile and he would one day prove it by following it from its headwaters. Besides which, he has been seen in the north."

Has he, though? " Zouga asked mildly.

That old man. . Was lying. Somebody put him up to it, and I don't need more than one guess, Zouga finished.

How do you know he was lying? " Robyn demanded. If you live long enough in India you develop an instinct for the lie, Zouga smiled at her. "Besides why would father wait eight years after he disappeared to explore the Lualaba river. He would have gone there directly, if he had gone north. "My dear brother, Robyn's voice was stinging, "it would not be the legend of Monomatapa that makes you so stubbornly determined to go south of the river, would it? Is that gleam in your eye the gleam of gold? "That is a mean thought, Zouga smiled again. "But what does intrigue me is the determination of that great guide and explorer, Camacho Pereira, to discourage any journey to the south, and instead to lead us northwards."

Long after Robyn had disappeared into her tent and the lantern within was extinguished Zouga sat on beside the fire, nursing the whisky in the tumbler and staring into the fading coals. When he reached his decision he drained the last drop of precious golden brown spirit in the glass and stood up abruptly. He strode down the lines to where Camacho Pereira's tent stood at the furthest end of the camp.

There was a lantern burning within even at this late hour, and when Zouga called out, a squeak of alarm in feminine tones was quickly hushed with a man's low growl and a few minutes later Camacho Pereira pulled the fly aside and peered out at Zouga warily.

He had thrown a blanket over his shoulders to cover his nudity, but in one hand he carried a pistol and relaxed only slightly as he recognized Zouga. I have decided, Zouga told him brusquely, "that we'll go north, up the Shire river to Lake Marawi, and then on to the Lualaba river."

Camacho's face shone like the full moon as he smiled. That is very good. Very good, much ivory, we find your father, you see, we find him damn soon."

Before noon the following day Camacho, with a great deal of shouting and swishing of the kurbash, marched a hundred strong healthy men into the camp. "I find you porters, " he announced. "Plenty porters, damn good, hey? " The Christian girl Sarah was waiting beside the grave again when Robyn came down through the acacia forest the following afternoon.

The child saw her first and ran to greet her, he was laughing with pleasure, and Robyn was struck once again by the familiarity of his face. It was something about his mouth and his eyes. The resemblance to somebody she had known was so forcible that she stopped dead and stared at him, but could not recapture the memory before the boy took her hand and led her to where his mother waited.

They went through the little ritual of changing the flowers on the grave and then settled side by side on a fallen acacia branch. It was cooler in the shade and in the branches above their heads a pair of shrikes hunted little green caterpillars. The birds were black and white across the back and wings, but their breasts were a striking shade of crimson that glowed like the blood of a dying gladiator, and Robyn watched them with rare pleasure while she and Sarah talked quietly.

Sarah was telling her about her mother, how brave and uncomplaining she had been in the terrible heat of the Kaborra-Bossa where the black ironstone cliffs turned the gorge into a furnace. It was the bad season, Sarah explained. "The hot season before the rains break. " Robyn recalled her father's written account of the expedition in which he had laid the blame for the delays upon his subordinates, old Harkness and Commander Stone, so that they had missed the cool season, and entered the gorge in the suicide month of November. Then when the rains came, the fever came with it, Sarah went on. "It was very bad. The white men and your mother became sick very quickly. " Perhaps her mother had lost much of her immunity to malaria during the years in England while she waited for her husband's summons. "Even Manali himself became sick. it was the first time I had seen him sick of the fever. He was filled with the devils for many days, the expression described vividly the delirium of malaria] fever, Robyn thought. "So he did not know when your mother died."

They were silent again. The child, bored by the interminable talk of the two women, threw a stone at the birds in the acacia branches above their heads, and with a flash of their marvelous crimson breasts the two shrikes winged away towards the river, and again the child engaged Robyn's attention. It was as if she had known that face all her life.

My mother? " Robyn asked, still watching the child. Her water turned black, " said Sarah simply. The blackwater fever, Robyn felt her skin prickle. When malaria changed its course, attacking the kidneys and transforming them into thin-walled sacks of clotted black blood, that could rupture at the patient's smallest movement.

The blackwater fever, when the urine changed to dark mulberry-coloured blood, and few, very few victims, ever recovered. She was strong, Sarah went on quietly. "She was the last of them to go. " She turned her head towards the other neglected graves. The curly pods of the acacia were scattered thickly over the unadorned mounds. "We buried her here, while Manali was still with his devils.

But later, when he could walk he came with the book and said the words for her. He built the cross with his own hands."

Then he went away again? " Robyn asked.

No, he was very sick, and new devils came to him.

He wept for your mother. " The thought of her father weeping was something so completely alien that Robyn could not imagine it. "He spoke often of the river that had destroyed him."

Through the acacia trees there were glimpses of the wide green river, and both their heads turned towards it naturally. He came to hate that river as though it was a living enemy that had denied him a road to his dreams. He was like a man demented, for the fever came and went. At times he would battle with his devils, shouting his defiance the way a warrior giyas at the enemy host. " The giya was a challenge dance with which the Nguni warrior baits his adversary. "At other times he would speak wildly of machines that would tame his enemy, of walls that he would build across the waters to carry men and ships up above the gorge. " Sarah broke off, her lovely dark moon face stricken with the memory, and the child sensed her distress and came to her, kneeling on the earth and laying his dusty little head in her lap. She stroked the tight cap of curls with an absentminded caress.

With a sudden little chill of shock Robyn recognized the child. Her expression changed so drastically that Sarah followed the direction of her gaze, looking down with all her attention at the head in her lap, then up again to meet Robyn's eyes. It did not really need words to pass, the question was posed and answered with silent exchange of feminine understanding, and Sarah drew the child towards her with a protective gesture. It was only after your mother. . . " Sarah began to explain and then fell silent, and Robyn went on staring at the little boy. It was Zouga at the same age, a dusky miniature Zouga. It was only the colour of his skin which had prevented her from seeing it immediately.

Robyn felt as though the earth had lurched beneath her feet, then it steadied again and she felt a strange sense of release. Fuller Ballantyne was no longer the godlike figure hewn from unforgiving, unbending granite that had overshadowed her entire life.

She held out both her hands to the child and he went to her unhesitatingly, trustingly. Robyn embraced him, and his skin was smooth and warm as she kissed him.

He wriggled against her like a puppy, and she felt a deep glow of affection and of gratitude to the child. He was very sick, said Sarah softly, "and alone. They had all gone or died, and he was sad, so that I feared for his life."

Robyn nodded understanding. "And you loved him? "There was no sin in it, for he was a God, said Sarah simply. No, thought Robyn with intense relief. "He was a man, and I, his daughter, am a woman."

In that moment she knew that she never need again feel shame and guilt for her body and the demands and desires which sprang from it. She hugged the child who was proof of her father's humanity, and Sarah smiled with relief.

For the first time in her life Robyn was able to fate the fact that she loved her father, and she understood part of the compulsion that over the years had grown stronger rather than dwindling.

The longing she had felt for the father had been submerged completely by the awe and majesty of the legend.

Now she knew why she was here, on the banks of this majestic river, on the very frontier of the known world.

She had come not to find Fuller Ballantyne, but to discover rather the father and the self that she had never known before. Where is he, Sarah, where is my father? Which way did he go? " she demanded eagerly, but the woman dropped her eyes. I do not know, she whispered. "I woke one morning and he was gone. I do not know where he is, but I will wait for him, until he returns to me and his son. " She looked -up quickly. "He will come back? " she asked pathetically. "If not to me then for the child? "Yes, Robyn answered with certainty that she did not feel. "Of course he will come back."

The selection of porters was a lengthy business, and after Zouga had signalled his choice with a slap on the shoulder, the men were sent to Robyn's tent to be examined for signs of disease or infirmity that might prevent them performing their duties.

Then came the allocation of packs.

Although Zouga had already made up and weighed each pack, making sure that not one of them exceeded the stipulated eighty pounds weight, the newly engaged porters had to watch the loads reweighed publicly, and then there was interminable haggling over the size and balance of the burden that each of them would carry for months, perhaps even years ahead.

Although Zouga brusquely forbade Pereira to hasten the selection process with his kurbash, and entered goodnaturedly into the spirit of banter and bargain, he was, in fact, using the occasion to assess the spirit of his men, to pick out the malcontents who would sour that spirit in the hardships ahead, and also to select the natural leaders to whom the others turned instinctively for decision.

The following day when planning the order of march, Zouga used the knowledge he had gained in this way.

To begin with, seven of the more obvious trouble-makers were given a khete of beads each and ordered out of the camp without explanation or apology. Then Zouga called out five of the brightest and best and made them captains of divisions of twenty porters each.

They would be responsible for maintaining the pace of the march, for preventing pilfering of the loads, making and breaking camp, distributing rations, and acting as the spokesmen of each division, presenting complaints to and transmitting orders from Zouga.

When the roll was complete there were one hundred and twenty-six names upon it, including Sergeant Cheroot's Hottentots the porters who had come up from Quelimane, Camacho Pereira and the two principals Robyn and Zouga himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Casually, Zouga turned his back on the prone figure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He jumped in, launching himself off the right foot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They marched until the heat came up in the middle of the morning and the merciless sun dried the sweat the moment it burst through their pores and left tiny salt crystals on the skin, that sparkled like diamond chips. Then they found shade and lay like dead men through the heat of noon, stirring again only when the lowering sun gave the illusion of cooling the air and the blast of the kudii-horn trumpet forced them to their feet again.

The second stage of the tirikeza lasted until sunset when it became too dark to see the ground under their feet.

The fires were dying and the voices of the porters in their thorn bush scherms had slowly descended through the occasional mutter and soft murmur to ultimate silence before Zouga left his tent and limped silently as a night creature out of the camp.

He carried the Sharps rifle slung over his shoulder, the staff in one hand and a bull's eye lantern in the other, while the Colt revolver hung in its holster upon his belt.

Once clear of the camp, he stepped out as briskly as his leg would allow two miles along the freshly beaten footpath that the column had made that afternoon until he reached the fallen tree trunk that was the agreed rendezvous.

He stopped and whistled softly, and a smaller figure stepped out from the undergrowth into the moonlight, carrying a rifle at high-port. The jaunty step and alert set of head on narrow shoulders was unmistakable. All is well, Sergeant.

"We are ready, Major."

Zouga inspected the ambush positions that Sergeant Cheroot had chosen for his men astride the path. The little Hottentot had a good eye for ground and Zouga found his trust and liking for him increasing with every such display of competence. A puff? " Jan Cheroot asked now, with the clay pipe already in his mouth. No smoking, " Zouga shook his head. "They will smell it. " And Jan Cheroot reluctantly buttoned the pipe into his hip pocket.

Zouga had chosen a position in the centre of the line, where he could make himself comfortable against the trunk of the fallen tree. He settled down with a sigh, his leg thrust out stiffly ahead of him, after the tirikeza it was going to be a long wearying night.

The moon was a few days short of full, and it was almost light enough to read the headlines of a newspaper. The bush was alive with the scurry and rustle of small animals, and it kept their nerves tightened and their ears strained to catch the other sounds for which they waited.

Zouga was the first to hear the click of a pebble striking against another. He whistled softly and Jan Cheroot snapped his fingers, imitating the sound of a black scarab beetle to show that he was alert. The moon had dropped low upon the hills, and its light through the forest trees laid silver and black tiger stripes upon the earth and played tricks with the eye.

Something moved in the forest, and then was gone, but Zouga picked up the whisper of bare feet scuffling the sandy disturbed earth of the path, and then suddenly they were there, and very close, man shapes in file, hurrying, silent, furtive. Zouga counted them, eight, no nine.

Each of them straight-backed under the bulky burden he carried balanced upon his head. Zouga's anger simmered to the surface and yet at the same time he felt a grim sense of satisfaction that he had not wasted the night.

As the leading figure in the file came level with the fallen tree trunk, Zouga pointed the muzzle of the Sharps rifle straight into the air and pressed the trigger. The crash of the shot broke the night into a hundred echoes that bounced and rebounded through the forest, and the silence magnified it until it seemed like the thunder of all the heaven.

The echoes had not dispersed, and the nine dark figures were still frozen with shock when Jan CherOUE-S Hottentots fell upon them from every direction in a shrieking pack.

The sound of their cries was so shrill, so inhuman, that it even startled Zouga, while the effect on the victims was miraculous. They let fall the burdens they carried, and dropped to earth in a paralysis of superstitious awe, adding their walls and screams to the pandemonium. Then the thud and clatter of cudgels against skull and cringing flesh mingled with it all, and the screams and howls rose to a new pitch.

Jan Cheroot's men had spent much time and care on selecting and cutting their clubs and now they wielded them with a lusty glee, making up for a night of discomfort and boredom. Sergeant Cheroot himself was in the thick of it, and in his excitement he had almost lost his voice. He was yipping squeakily like a demented fox terrier with a cat up a tree.

Zouga knew he would have to stop it soon, before they killed or seriously maimed somebody, but the punishment was richly earned, and he gave it a minute more.

He even joined in himself when one of the prostrate figures scrambled to its feet and tried to dart away into the undergrowth. Zouga swung his staff and brought him down again with a blow to the back of his knees, and when he sprang up again as though he were on springs, Zouga dropped him in the dust with a short right-handed punch to the side of the head.

Then, stepping back out of the fray, Zouga took one of his few remaining cheroots from his top pocket, and lit it from the chimney of the lantern, inhaling with deep satisfaction, while around him the enthusiasm of his Hottentots flagged a little as they tired and Jan Cheroot regained his voice and became coherent for -the first time. Slat hulle, kerels! Hit them, boys! " It was time to stop it, Zouga decided and opened the shutter of the lantern. That's enough, Sergeant, he ordered, and the thuds of blows became intermittent and then ceased while the Hottentots rested on the cudgels, panting and streaming with the honest sweat of their exertions.

The deserting porters lay moaning and whimpering in pitiful heaps, with their loot scattered about them. Some of the packs had burst open, and trade cloth and beads, flasks of gunpowder, knives, mirrors and glass jewellery were strewn about and trodden into the dirt. Zouga's fury returned at full strength when he recognized the tin box which contained his dress uniform and hat. He delivered a last kick at the nearest figure and then growled at Sergeant Cheroot, Get them on their feet and clean it up."

The nine deserters were marched into camp, roped together and bearing not only the heavy burdens which they had stolen, but also an impressive set of contusions, cuts and bruises. Lips were swollen and split, some teeth were missing, a good many eyes were puffed closed and most of their heads were as lumpy as newlypicked Jerusalem artichokes.

More painful than their injuries, however, was the ridicule of the entire camp which turned out to a man to jeer and mock them with laughter.

Zouga lined up the captives, with their booty piled in front of them, and in the presence of their peers made a speech in limping but expressive Swahili in which he likened them to sneaking jackals and lurking hyena and fined them each a month's wages.

The audience was delighted with the show, and hooted at every insult while the culprits tried physically to shrink themselves into insignificance. There was not one of the watching porters who would not have done the same thing. in fact, had the escape succeeded, most of them would have followed the next night, but now that it had been foiled, they could enjoy the vicarious pleasure of having escaped punishment, and the discomfort of their companions who had committed the sin of being caught.

During the noon rest that divided the two stages of the next day's tirikeza, the clusters of porters chatting in the shade of the mopani groves agreed that they had found a strong master to follow, one whom it would not be easy to cheat, and it gave them all confidence for the future of the safari. Coming directly after his defeat of the Portuguese, the recapture of the deserting porters added immeasurably to Zouga's standing.

The four indunas of the divisions agreed that it was fitting that such a man have a praise-name. They conferred at length, and after considering many suggestions, finally decided on "Bakela'. Bakela" means "the one-who-strikes-with-the-fist', for this was still. the one of Zouga's many accomplishments which impressed them most.

Where Bakela led, they were now prepared to follow, and though Zouga spread a dragnet of his faithful Hottentots behind the column each of the following nights, no more fish swam into it. How many? " Zouga whispered, and Jan Cheroot rocked on his heels, sucking softly on the empty clay pipe and squinting his oriental eyes thoughtfully, before he shrugged, "Too many to count. Two hundred, three hundred, perhaps even four."

The ground had been ploughed up into soft fluffy dust by the multitude of huge cloven hooves, and the dark pats of dung were round and shaped in little concentric circles, completely indistinguishable from those of domestic cattle, and the rank smell of cattle was heavy on the heated air of the Zambezi valley.

For an hour they had followed a small herd through the open mopani forest, stooping under the low branches with the thick shiny double leaves, each of them shaped like the cloven spoor that they followed, and now where the spoor emerged from the forest it had been joined by another much larger herd. How close? " Zouga asked again, and Jan Cheroot slapped his own neck where one of the buffalo flies had settled. It was the size of a honey bee, but dull black and the long needle of its proboscis stung as though it was white hot. We are so close that the flies that follow the herd still linger, and he pushed his forefinger into the nearest pat of wet dung, "and the body heat is still in the dung, but, Jan Cheroot went on as he wiped his finger on a handful of dry grass, "but they have gone into bad ground-" and he pointed ahead with his chin.

A week before they had reached the escarpment of the valley, but each of the possible passes that Zouga had examined through the telescope had proved on closer inspection to be dead-ends, the gorges pinching out into abrupt rock faces, or falling off into some terrifying abyss.

They had turned westwards, following the edge of the escarpment, Zouga ranging ahead with his small scouting party. Yet day after day those impassable heights loomed at their left hand, rising sheer into the unknown.

Even below the main escarpment, the ground was tortured and riven by deep gorges and ravines, by cliffs of dark rock and hills of enormous tumbled boulders. The ravines were choked with the drab grey stands of thorn, so densely interwoven that a man would have to crawl in on hands and knees, and his vision would be limited to a few feet ahead, yet the herd of many hundreds of buffalo that they were following had disappeared into one of these narrow gorges, their thick hides impervious to the cruel red-tipped thorn.

Zouga took the telescope from his haversack carried by his bearer, and carefully scanned the ground ahead. It had a wild and menacing beauty and for the hundredth time in the last few days he wondered if there was a way through this maze to the empire of Monornatapa. Did you hear that? " Zouga demanded, lowering the glass suddenly. It had sounded like the distant ]owing of the milk herd as it returned to the farmyard. Ja! " Sergeant Cheroot nodded, as again the mournful sound echoed against the black ironstone cliffs, and was answered by the bleat of a calf. "They are lying up in the jessie bush. They won't move again until sunset."

Zouga glanced up at the sun. It was four hours or so from its zenith. He had over a hundred mouths to feed, and they had rationed out the last of the dried fish two days before. We will have to go in after them" he said, and Jan Cheroot removed the stern of the pipe from between yellow teeth and spat reflectively in the dust. I am a very happy man, he said. "Why would I want to die now? " Zouga lifted the glass again, and while he scanned the ridges of higher ground about the choked valley, he imagined what it would be like in there. When the first shot was fired, the jessie bush would be filled with huge, furiously charging black animals.

The fluky breeze coming down the steep narrow valley brought with it another powerful whiff of the herd smell before it faded.

The wind is down the valley, " he said. They have not smelled us, Cheroot agreed, but that was not what Zouga had meant. Again he examined the nearest ridge of high ground. A man could work his way along the edge of it, up towards the head of the narrow valley. Sergeant, we are going to flush them out, he smiled, like spring pheasant."

Zouga had found the native names of his personal bearers hard to pronounce, and tiresome to remember. There were four of them, he had selected them with care, rejecting half a dozen others in the process, and he had rechristened them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They had earned enormous prestige by being so honoured, and had proved keen and willing to learn their duties. In a few days they were already proficient at reloading, though not yet of the same standard as Camacho Pereira's gunbearers, but that would come.

Zouga carried the Sharps rifle, but each of the four bearers had one of the heavy four-to-the-pound elephant guns that Harkness had recommended to Zouga. At any time he had only to reach back over his shoulder and a loaded and primed weapon would be thrust into his hand.

Apart from the elephant guns, his bearers carried his blanket roll, water bottle, canvas food bag, spare ball and powder, and the little clay fire pot from which a smouldering ball of moss and wood pulp could be blown into flame in a few seconds. It was wise to conserve the amenities of civilization, such as Swan Vestas, for the months and years ahead.

Zouga relieved Luke, the quickest and most wiry of the four, of all his equipment except the fire pot, pointed out the path along the cliff, and explained carefully to him what he was to do.

All of them listened with approval, even Sergeant Cheroot nodded sagely at the end. "My old mother tells me, before she throws me out, "Jan", she says, "remember it's brains what counts."

" In the mouth of the valley, where it debauched out into the mopani forest, was a low outcrop of rock, the black ironstone boulders had been split into strange shapes by sun and erosion, and they formed a natural redoubt, with chest-high walls behind which a man could crouch. A hundred paces directly ahead, the dense palisade of iron-grey thorn blocked the valley, but the ground between was fairly open, with a few stunted second-growth mopani bushes and clumps of coarse dried razor grass as high as a man's shoulder.

Zouga moved his party into the lee of the rocks, and himself scrambled onto the highest point to follow through his glass the progress of the almost naked bearer as he picked his way cautiously along the rim of the cliff. Within half an hour he had worked so far up the escarpment that he had disappeared from Zouga's view.

it was another hour before, from the head of the valley, a thin tendril of pure white smoke rose gently into the heated air, and then bent into the elegant shape of an ostrich plume before the gentle breath of the breeze.

With miraculous suddenness the rising column of white smoke was surrounded by another living cloud, hundreds of tiny black specks that weaved and darted about and around it. The faint but excited bird cries carried down to where Zouga waited, and through the glass he could make out the rainbow, turquoise and sapphire plumage of the blue jay as they rolled and dived for the insects put to flight by the flames. Competing with them for the feast, were the iridescent black drongas with their long, forked tails catching the sunlight with metallic glitter as they swirled above the spreading smoke clouds.

Luke was doing his job well. Zouga grunted with satisfaction, as new columns of smoke rose at intervals, sealing off the valley from side to side as they spread to meet each other. Now there was a solid wall of smoke from one cliff to the other, and as the smoke turned dirty black, billowing upwards, spinning upon itself, carrying flaming fragments of leaves and twigs within it, it began to roll ponderously down the valley.

It reminded Zouga of a snow avalanche he had watched in the high Himalayas, the slow majestic progress gathering weight and momentum, building up its own wind storm as it sucked the valley of air.

He could see the tops of the flames now, leaping above the thorn, and hear the sound of them, like the whispering waters of a distant river. The alarm bellow of a bull buffalo rang like the blast of a war trumpet from the ironstone cliffs, and the whisper of flames rose swiftly to a dull crackling roar.

The smoke clouds rose across the sun, plunging them into an unnatural gloom, and Zouga felt a sharp. drop in his spirits at the extinction of the bright morning sun, that internal swirling pall of dun smoke seemed to hold a world of menace.

From the edge of the jessie bush broke a herd of kudu, led by a magnificent bull with his corkscrew horns laid flat along his back. He saw Zouga standing on the pinnacle of rock, and snorted with alarm, swinging away out of easy shot with his cows flying big-eared and scary behind him, their fluffy white tails flickered away amongst the mopani groves.

Zouga scrambled down from his too obvious position, and propped himself comfortably against the rock, checked the nipple on the cap of the Sharps and then cocked the big hammer.

Ahead of the flames, a pale white dust cloud was rising over the tops of the jessie bush, and another sound was added to the roar of flames. It was a low thunder that made the earth tremble under their feet. They are coming, Jan Cheroot muttered to himself, and his little eyes sparkled.

A single buffalo burst from the palisade of thorn. He was an old bull, almost bald across the shoulders and rump, the dusty grey skin crisscrossed by a thousand ancient scars and scabby with the bites of bush ticks.

The big bell-shaped ears were torn and tattered, and one thickly curved horn was broken off at the tip. He came out at a crabbing gallop, dust exploding at each hoof beat like miniature mortar bursts.

He was on a line to pass the rocky redoubt at twenty paces, and Zouga let him come on to twice that distance before he threw up the Sharps rifle.

He aimed for the fold of thick skin under the throat that marked the frontal aiming point for the heart and its complex of arteries and blood vessels. He hardly noticed the recoil nor the blurt of the shot as he watched for the strike of the lead bullet. There was a little spurt of dust off the grey hide precisely on his aiming point, and the sound of the hit was exactly like his headmaster swinging the malacca cane against his own schoolboy backside, sharp and meaty.

The bull took the bullet without a stumble or lurch, instead it swung towards them, and seemed immediately to double in size as it lifted its nose into the high attitude of the charge.

Zouga reached for his second gun, but he groped in vain. Mark, his number two, showed the whites of his eyes in a flash of terror, let out a squawk, hurled the elephant gun aside, and went hounding away towards the mopani grove.

The bull saw him and swerved again, thundering ten feet past Zouga as it went after the fleeing bearer.

Waving the empty Sharps, Zouga shouted desperately for another rifle, but the bull was past him in a grey blur and it caught Mark as he reached the tree line.

The great bossed head dropped until the snout almost touched the earth, and then flew up again in a powerful tossing motion that bunched the muscle in the thick black neck. Mark was looking back over his shoulder, his eyes wide and glaring white in the black face, rivulets of sweat pouring down his naked back, his mouth a pink gape as he screamed.

Then he was in the air. Legs and arms tumbling wildly, he went up like a rag doll thrown by a petulant child and disappeared into the thick green canopy of mopani foliage overhead. Without missing a stride, the bull drove on into the forest, but that was all that Zouga saw, for a cry from Sergeant Cheroot made him turn again. Hier kom hullel Here they come! " Across their whole front, the earth seemed to move as though racked by the convulsions of an earthquake.

Shoulder to shoulder, nose to rump, the main herd broke from cover, flattening the Thorn bush under the great wave of bodies, filling the valley from side to side.

They lifted behind them a dense curtain of pale dust, from which the front ranks seemed endlessly to emerge, their great bossed heads nodding in unison as they pounded on, long silver strings of saliva dangling from open jaws as they bellowed in alarm and anger, and the roar of their hooves drowned the sound of the flames.

Matthew and John, Zouga's two remaining bearers, had stood their ground, and one of them snatched away the empty Sharps and thrust the thick stock of an elephant gun into Zouga's hand.

The weapon seemed heavy and unbalanced after the Sharps, and the sights were crudely fashioned, a blunt cone for the foresight, and a deep vee for the backsight.

The solid wall of bodies was bearing down upon them with frightening speed. The cows were a dark chocolate colour, and their horns were more delicately curved. The calves that raced at their flanks were sleek russet with crowns of reddish curls between the rudimentary little horn spikes. The herd was so tightly packed that it seemed impossible that they could split open to pass the rock. There was a tall rangy cow in the leading rank, coming straight on to Zouga.

He held half a beat aiming into the centre of her chest, and squeezed off the shot. The firing cap popped with a tiny puff of white smoke, and a heartbeat later the elephant gun vomited a deafening gust of powder smoke and bright flame, the burning patches went spinning away over the heads of the charging buffalo, and Zouga felt as though one of them had kicked in his shoulder.

He staggered backwards, the barrel thrown high by the recoil, but the big red cow seemed to run into an invisible barrier. A quarter of a pound of mercury-hardened lead drove into her chest, and brought her down in a rolling sliding tangle of hooves and horns. Tom Harkness! That one was yours! " Zouga shouted, offeringthe kill to the memory of the old white bearded hunter, and he grabbed the next loaded rifle.

There was a prime bull, big and black, a ton of enraged bovine flesh. It had seen Zouga, and was coming in over the rocks in a long scrambling leap, hunting him out, so close that Zouga seemed to touch it with the gaping muzzle of the four-to-the-pound. Again the great clanging burst of sound and flame and smoke, and half the bull's head flew away in a gust of bone chips and bloody fragments. It reared up on its hind legs, striking out with fore hooves, and then crashed over in a cloud of dust.

Impossibly, the herd split, galloping down each side of their rocky bide, a heaving, grunting, forked river of striving muscle and bone. Ian Cheroot was yipping shrilly with the fever of the chase, ducking down behind the rock to reload, biting open the paper cartridge with powder dribbling down his chin, spitting the ball into the muzzle and then plying the ramrod in a frenzy, before bobbing up again to fire into the solid heaving press of gigantic bodies.

It lasted for two minutes, which seemed to take a round of eternity, and then they were left choking and gasping in the swirling clouds of dust, surrounded by half a dozen huge black carcasses, with the drum-beats of the herd fading away into the mopani forest, and a louder more urgent din roaring down on them from in front.

The first tongue of heat licked across them, and Zouga heard the lock of suribleached hair that hung on his forehead frizzle sharply and smelt the stink of it. At the same instant, the dust cloud fell abruptly aside, and for seconds they stared at a spectacle which deprived them of power of movement.

The jessie bush was not burning, it was exploding into sheets of flame. Run! " shouted Zouga. "Get out of here!

The sleeve of his shirt charred, and the air he breathed scorched his lungs painfully. As they reached the edge of the mopani forest, the shiny green leaves about their heads shrivelled and yellowed, curling their edges in the heat, and Zouga felt his eyeballs drying out as the dark smoke clouds rolled over them. He knew that they were experiencing only the heat and smoke carried on the wind, but if the flames were able to jump the gap, then they were all doomed. Ahead of him, the Hottentots and the other bearers were shadowy wraiths, staggering forward but weakening and losing direction.

Then, as suddenly as they had been engulfed by them, the billowing smoke clouds lifted. The flames had not been able to jump the open ground, and the heat came only in gusts. A ray of sunshine pierced the thick gloom overhead, and a puff of sweet fresh air came through.

They sucked at it gratefully, and huddled in awed silence, beating at their clothing which still smouldered in patches. Zouga's face was blackened and blistered, and his lungs still convulsed in spasms of coughing. As he caught his breath, he grunted hoarsely, Well the meat is cooked already, " and he pointed back at the buffalo carcasses.

At that moment something fell limply out of the dense top branches of a mopani tree, and then picked itself up and limped painfully towards them. Zouga let out a husky growl of laughter. Oh, thou swift of foot, he greeted Mark, the bearer, and the others took up the mockery. When you fly, the eagles are put to shame, Jan Cheroot hooted. Your true home is in the treetops, Matthew added with relish, "with your hairy brethren."

By evening they had hacked the buffalo carcasses into wet red chunks, and spread these on the smoking racks.

The racks were waist high, cross-poles set in forked branches, with a slow smoking fire of wet mopani wood smouldering under it.

Here was meat for the caravan that would las them many weeks.

Carnacho Pereira had no doubts that by simply following the line of the escarpment, keeping just below the bad broken ground, he must at last cut the spoor of the caravan. A hundred men, in column, would blaze a track that even a blind man would trip over.

His certainty dwindled with each day's march through the quiverin& breathless heat that seemed to rebound from black kopjes and the ironstone cliffs which glittered in the aching sunlight like the scales of some monstrous reptile.

Of the men that his half-brother, Alphonse, had given him, he had already lost two. One had stepped on something that looked like a pile of dried leaves, but which had transformed itself instantly into six feet of infuriated gaboon adder, thick as a man's calf, with a repulsively beautiful diamond-patterned back, and a head the size of a man's fist. The gaping mouth was a lovely shade of salmon pink, and the curved fangs three inches long. It had plunged them into the man's thigh and squirted half a cupful of the most toxic venom in Africa into his bloodstream.

After blowing the serpent to shreds with volleys of rifle fire, Camacho and his companions had wagered all their expectations of loot on exactly how long it would take the victim to die. Camacho, the only one who owned a watch, was elected timekeeper, and they gathered around where the dying man lay, either urging him to give up the useless struggle or pleading with him raucously to hang on a little longer.

When he went into back-arching convulsions, with his eyes rolled up into his skull, his jaws locked into a grinning rictus and he lost control of his sphincter muscle, Camacho knelt beside him, holding a bunch of smouldering tambooti leaves under his nostrils to shock him out of it, and crooning, "Ten minutes more, hang on for just ten minutes more for your old friend MachitoV The last convulsion ended with a dreadful gargling expulsion of breath, and when the heart beat faded completely, Carnacho stood and kicked the corpse with disgust. He always was a dung-eating jackal."

When they began to strip the corpse of all items of any possible value, five coins, heavy golden mohurs of the East India Company, fell out of the folds of his turban, There was not one man in all that company who would not have willingly sold his mother into slavery for a single gold mohur, let alone five.

At the first gleam of gold, all their knives came out with a sardonic metallic snickering, and the first man to snatch for the treasure reeled away, trying to push his intestines back into the long clean slice through his stomach wall. Leave them lie, " Camacho shouted. "Don't touch them until the lots are drawn! " Not one of them trusted another, and the knives stayed out while the lots were cast, and grudgingly the winners were allowed one at a time to claim their prize.

The man with the belly wound could not march without his stomach falling out, and because he could not march, he was as good as dead. The dead, as everybody knows, have no need of personal possessions. The logic was apparent to all. They left him his shirt and breeches, both torn and badly stained anyway, but stripped him of all else as they had stripped the first corpse. Then, with a few ribald pleasantries, they propped him against the base of a morula tree, with the naked corpse of the snake-bite victim beside him for company, and they marched away along the line of the escarpment.

They had gone a hundred yards when Camacho was overcome by a rush of compassion. He and the dying man had fought and marched and whored together for many years. He turned back.

The man gave him a haggard grin, his dry crusted lips cracking with the effort. Camacho answered him with that marvelous flashing smile as he dropped the man's loaded pistol in his lap. It would be better to use it before the hyena find you tonight, he told him. The thirst is terrible, the man croaked, a tiny bead of blood appeared on his deeply cracked lower lip, bright as an emperor's ruby in -the sunlight. He eyed the twogallon water bottle on Carnacho's hip.

Carnacho resettled the water bottle on its strap so it was out of sight behind his back. The contents sloshed seductively.

Try not to think about it, he counselled.

There was a point where compassion ended and stupidity began. Who knew where and when they would find the next water? In this God-blasted desolation, water was an item not to be wasted on a man who was "already as good as dead.

He patted the man's shoulder comfortingly, gave him a last lovely smile and then swaggered away amongst the grey ironthorn scrub, whistling softly under his breath with the plumed beaver cocked over one eye. Camachito went back to make sure we had forgotten nothing. " The one-eyed Abyssinian greeted him as he caught up with the column, and they shouted with laughter. Their spirits were still high, the water-bottles more than half filled and the prospects of immense loot danced like a will-o-the-wisp down the valley ahead of them.

That had been ten days ago, the last three of which without water, for you could not count the cupful of mud and elephant piss they had from the last puddled water-hole. Apart from the lack of water, the going had become appalling. Camacho had never marched through such broken and harsh terrain, toiling up one rocky slope and then battling down through tearing Thorn to the next dry river course, and then up again.

Also, it now seemed highly probable that either the Englishman had changed his mind and gone north of the Zambezi river after all, in which case they had lost him, or else, and Camacho's skin crawled at the thought, or else they had crossed the spoor of the caravan in the early dawn or late evening when the light was too bad to make it out clearly. It was an easy mistake to make, they had crossed hundreds of game tracks each day, and the spoor could have been wiped by a herd of game, or one of the fierce short-lived little whirlwinds, the dust devils which ravaged the valley at this season of the year.

To cap all Camacho's tribulations, his band of noble warriors was on the point of mutiny. They were talking quite openly about turning back. There never had been an Englishman and a caravan of riches, even if there had, he was now far from here and getting further every day.

They were exhausted by these switchback ridges and valleys and the water bottles were nearly all of them dry, which made it hard to maintain enthusiasm for the venture. The ringleaders were reminding the others that in their absence, their share of the profits of the slave caravan were blowing in the wind. Fifty slaves, for certain, were worth a hundred mythical Englishmen. They had many excellent reasons for turning back.

Carnacho, on the other hand, had nothing to return for, apart from his half-brother's ire. He also had a score to settle, two scores. He still hoped that they might manage to take the Englishman and his sister alive, especially the woman. Even in the thirst and the heat, his groin swelled at the memory of her in men's breeches. He jerked himself back to reality, and he glanced over his shoulder at the straggling line of ruffians who followed him.

Soon it would be necessary to kill one of his men, he had decided hours ago. Dung-eaters all of them, it was the only language they truly understood. He must make an example to stiffen their backbones, and keep them slogging onwards.

He had already decided which one it would be. The one-eyed Abyssinian was the biggest talker, the most eloquent apostle of the return to the coast, and what made his choice even more attractive was that his left side was blind. The problem was that the job must be done properly. The others would be impressed by the knife but not the gun. However, the Abyssinian allowed no man into that blind spot. Without making it too obvious, Camacho had twice sidled up on his left, but each time the Abyssinian had swung his head with its frizzed-up halo of dense curly hair towards him, and given him a grin with a slow trickle of a tear running down his cheek from that obscenely empty eye-socket.

However, Camacho was a persistent man, and an inventive one, for he noticed that whenever he moved out of the Abyssinian's blind spot, the man relaxed, and immediately became more verbose and arrogant. Twice more Camacho tried an approach from the left, and twice more was met with a single cold beady stare. He was establishing a pattern, teaching the victim that threat came only from the left, and when they halted in the middle of the morning, he ostentatiously squatted on the right. The Abyssinian grinned at him as he wiped the spout of his almost empty water bottle on his sleeve. This is the place. I go no further. " The one-eyed man announced in fluent Portuguese. "I make the oath on Christ's sacred wounds. " And he touched the Coptic gold cross that hung around his neck. "Not another step forward. I am going back."