A Sparrow Falls

His instant reaction was to wonder if the General himself was in any way involved in the murderous attack he had survived on the escarpment; and the thought disturbed him so that he left the library and went down to the palmlined esplanade and found a bench overlooking the quiet sheltered waters of the bay, with the great whale-backed mountain of the bluff beyond.

He watched the shippin& as he pondered the tangled web that was centred in Ladyburg, where the hidden spider sat. He knew that his investigations were going to take time. The reading was a slow business and it would be days before he could expect to have a reply to his letter to Marion.

Later, in his dingy room, he counted the remaining sovereigns in his money belt, and knew that living in the city they would not last him long.

He needed a job.

The floor manager had the beer belly and flash clothing that seem always to go with salesmen in the motor industry; Mark answered his questions with extreme politeness and a false cheerfulness, but with despair below the surface.

He had trudged the city for five days, from one faint prospect of work to another. Times are hard, almost every prospective employer told him at the beginning of the interview, and we are looking for a man with experience. Mark had no time to pursue his quest at the library. Now he sat on the front edge of his chair waiting to thank the man and say goodbye as soon as he was dismissed, but the man went on talking long after he should have closed the interview. He was talking about the salesmen's commission, and how it was so generous that there was plenty for two.

if you know what I mean. The man winked and fitted a cigarette into his ivory holder.

Yes, of course, Mark nodded vehemently, having absolutely no idea what the man meant, but eager to please. of course, I'd be looking after you personally. If we came to some sort of arrangement, right? Right, Mark agreed, and only then did he realize that the manager was soliciting a kick-back off Mark's commission. He was going to get the job. Of course, sir. He wanted to leap up and dance. I'd like to think we were equal partners. Good. Fifty percent of Mark's commission was more than the manager had expected. Start Monday, nine o'clock sharp, he said quickly, and beamed at Mark.

Mark wrung his hand gratefully, but as he was leaving the little cubicle of the office the manager called after him. You do have a decent suit, Anders, don't you? Of course, Mark lied quickly. Wear it. He found a Hindu tailor at the Indian market who ran up a grey three-piece suit overnight, and charged him thirty-two shillings. You wear clothes beautiful, sir. Like a royal duke, the tailor told him, as he pointed Mark at the fly-blown mirror in his fitting-room, standing behind him and skillfully holding a fold of surplus material at the small of Mark's back to give the front of the suit a fashionable drape. You will be an extremely first class advertisement for my humble skills. You can drive a car, of course? the manager, whose name was Dicky Lancome, asked him casualty as they crossed the showroom floor to the glistening Cadillac.

Of course, Mark agreed. Of course, Dicky agreed. Otherwise you wouldn't have applied for a job as a car salesman, would you? Of course not. Hop in then, Dicky invited. And whip us around the block. Mark reeled mentally, but his tongue was quick enough to rescue him. I'd prefer you to point out the special features first. I've never driven a Cadillac before. Which was for once the literal truth. He had never driven a Cadillac, or any other motor vehicle, before. Righty ho, Dicky agreed, and as they sped down the Marine Parade with Dicky whistling and tipping his hat to the pretty girls on the sidewalk, Mark watched his every action with wheel and pedal avidly.

Back at the showrooms in West Street, Dicky flicked casually through a bunch of forms. If you make a sale, you fill in one of these, and make sure you get the money. Then he pulled out his watch. God, it's late. I've got a desperately important lunch date, it was a little after eleven o'clock, very important client. Then he dropped his voice, Blonde, actually. SmasherVand he winked again. See you later. But what about prices, and that sort of thing? Mark called desperately after him. There is a pamphlet on my desk. Gives you all that stuff. To-to! and Dicky disappeared through the back door.

Mark was circling the Cadillac uncertainly, utterly engrossed with the pamphlet, muttering aloud as he tried to master the operating instructions and identify the various component parts of the vehicle from the line-drawing and numerated list, when there was a tap on his arm. Excuse me, young man, but are you the salesman? Before him stood an elderly couple, the man dressed in beautifully tailored dark cloth, a carnation in his buttonhole and a cane in one hand. We would like a drive in the motor vehicle, before we decide, said the elegant lady beside him, smiling at Mark in a motherly fashion through the light veil that draped down over her eyes from the brimmed hat. The hat was decorated with artificial flowers, and her hair below the brim was washed silver and neatly waved.

Mark felt waves of panic threaten to engulf him. He looked about desperately for an escape, but already the gentleman was handing his wife into the front seat of the Cadillac.

Mark closed the doors on the couple, and ducked behind the machine for one last brief perusal of the operating pamphlet. Depress clutch pedal with left foot, engage gear lever up and left, depress accelerator pedal firmly with right foot, release clutch pedal, he muttered, stuffed the pamphlet into his pocket and hurried to the driver's seat.

The gentleman sat forward in the centre of the back seat, both hands resting on the head of his cane, grave and attentive as a judge.

His wife beamed kindly at Mark. How old are you, young man? Twenty, ma'am, almost twenty-one. Mark pressed the starter and the engine growled, so she had to raise her voice. My, she nodded, the same age as my own son. Mark gave her a pale and sickly grin, as he silently repeated the instructions in his mind.

, _ accelerate firmly. The engine beat rose to a deafening bellow, and Mark clung to the driving-wheel until the knuckles of both hands blanched with the pressure of his grip.

Do you live at home? asked his passenger. No, ma'am, Mark answered and let out the clutch. The back wheels screeched like a wounded stallion, and a blue cloud blew out from behind as the entire machine seemed to rear upwards, and then hurl itself, slewing wildly, towards the street doors, leaving two long black rubber smears across the polished showroom floor.

Mark fought the wheel and the Cadillac swayed and skidded, lined up with the doors at the last possible moment and careered into the street, moving sideways like a crab. A team of horses drawing a passing coach shied out of the path of the roaring machine, and behind Mark the elderly gentleman managed to struggle up into a sitting position again and find his cane. Good acceleration! Mark shouted above the roar of the engine. Excellent, agreed his passenger, his eyes popping in the rear view mirror.

His wife adjusted her flowered hat that had come down over her eyes, and shook her head sadly. You young oys! As soon as you leave home you starve yourselves. I could tell you are living on your own, you are as thin as Mark took the intersection of Smith and Aliwal at the charge, but halfway through it a heavily laden lorry lumbered across their front and Mark spun the wheel nimbly.

The Cadillac changed direction ninety degrees and ducked into Aliwal on two wheels.

as a rake, said the lady, holding firmly to the door handle with one hand, and with the other to her hat. You should come up to the house one Sunday for a decent meal. Thank you, ma'am, that's very kind. When Mark stopped the Cadillac against the pavement in front of the showrooms at last, his hand was shaking so feverishly that he had to make a second effort to earth the magneto. He could feel the damp of nervous sweat soaking through the jacket of his new suit, and he had not the strength to let himself out of the cab.

Incredible, said the elderly gentleman in the back seat. What control, what mastery, I feel quite young again. It was very nice, dear, his wife agreed. We'll take her, her husband decided impulsively, and Mark could not believe he had heard right. He had made his first sale. Wouldn't it be nice if this young man would come to us as a chauffeur. He is such an excellent driver. No, ma'am, Mark nearly panicked again. I couldn't think of leaving my job here, thank you all the same. Jolly good show, old man. Dicky Lancome folded the two five-pound notes that were his half-share of Mark's commission on the sale of the Cadillac. I can see a great future ahead for you. Oh, I don't know, Mark demurred modestly. A great future, Dicky predicted sagely. But just one thing, old man, that suit, he shuddered gently, let me introduce you to my tailor, now that you can afford it. No offence, of course, but that looks like you are on your way to a fancy-dress ball. That evening after close of business Mark hurried back to the library for the first time in a week. The librarian welcomed him with a severe expression like a disapproving school ma'am. I thought we had seen the last of you, that you had given up. Oh no, by no means, Mark assured her, and again she softened and handed him the key to the reading-room.

Mark had mapped out a family tree for the Courtneys in his notebook, for it was confusing. There was a brother to Sean, who was also a colonel at the end of the Boer War, but also a holder of the Victoria Cross for gallantry, a distinguished family indeed. This brother, Colonel Garrick Courtney, had gradually become a noted and then a famous author of military history and of biographies of other successful soldiers, beginning with his With Roberts to Pretoria and Buller, a Fighting Soldier and going on to Battle for the Son2me and Kitchener. A Life. The books were all extensively and glowingly reviewed in the Lantern. The author had a single son, Michael Courtney. Prior to 1914, there were references to this son's business activities as managing director of the Courtney Saw Mills in the Ladyburg district, and his skills as an athelete and horseman in many local meetings. Then 1917, LADYBURG HERO DECORATED.

Captain Michael Courtney, son of Colonel Garrick Courtney V. C was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his exploits with the. 21 st R. F. C. Fighter Squadron in France. Captain Courtney has been credited with five kills of German aircraft, and was described by his commanding officer as a courageous and dedicated officer of high flying skills. Hero, son of a hero.

Then again, within months, a front-page article outlined in a square of heavy black type.

It is with great regret that we report the death in action of CAPTAIN MICHAEL COURTNEY D. F. C. It is believed that Captain Courtney was shot down in flames behind enemy lines and that his executioner was none other than the notorious Baron von Richthofen of bloody reputation. The Ladyburg Lantern extends its deepest and sincerest condolences to his father and family. A Rose plucked in full bloom. The activities of this branch of the family, its triumphs and tragedies were all reported in detail, and it was the same with the Sean Courtney family for the period from the turn of the century to May of 1910.

Sean Courtney's marriage to Mrs Ruth Friedman in I 903 was described in loving detail, from the bride's dress to the icing on the cake. One of the flower girls was Miss Storm Friedman, aged four, who wore an exact replica of her mother's dress. She makes a pretty new sister for Master Dirk Courtney. Again the mention of the name that truly interested Mark, and he noted it, for it was the last until May 1910.

Colonel Sean Courtney's achievements in politics and business and the more serious fields of recreation filled page after page of subsequent editions; his election to the legislative council of Natal, and later to Prime Minister Louis Botha's Cabinet; he became leader of the South Africa Party in Natal, and was a delegate to Whitehall in London, taking his entire family with him, to negotiate the terms of Union.

Sean Courtney's business interests flourished and multiplied, new sawmills, new plantations, elevation to new offices, the chairman of the first Building Society in Southern Africa, director of Union Castle Shipping Lines, head of the Government Commission on Natural Resources.

Chairman of the South African Turf Club, a one hundred and fifty foot luxury yacht built for him by Thesens of Knysna, Commodore of the Royal Natal Yacht Club, but no further mention of Dirk Courtney until May 1910.

The Ladyburg Lantern and Recorder's front page of the edition of 12th May 1910.

The Ladyburg Lantern takes great pleasure inannouncing that its entire paid up share capital has been acquired by Mr Dirk Courtney, who recently returned to Ladyburg after an absence of some years.

Mr Courtney tells us that the intervening years have been spent in travel, gaining both experience and capital.

Clearly they were not wasted, for immediately on his arrival home, Mr Courtney purchased a controlling interest in the Ladyburg Farmers Bank for a reputed one million pounds sterling in cash.

Ladyburg and all its inhabitants are sure to benefit enormously by the vast energy, wealth and drive that Mr Dirk Courtney brings to the district. I intend taking a close day-to-day interest in all aspects of my companies operations in Ladyburg, he said, when asked of his future plans. Progress, Growth, Prosperity for All, are my watchwords. Mr Dirk Courtney, The Ladyburg Lantern salutes you and welcomes you as a notable ornament to our fair community.

After that, hardly an edition of The Lantern did not contain fawning eulogies of Mr Dirk Courtney, while mention of his father and family was reduced to an occasional small article in the inside pages.

To find news of Sean Courtney, Mark had to turn to the other Natal newspapers. He began with the Natal Mercury.

Ladyburg Mounted Rifles Sail for France General Courtney Takes his Men to War once more.

That jolted Mark, he could remember the sea mist on the bay and the ranks of khaki-clad figures climbing the gangways, each of them burdened by kitbag and rifle. The singing, and the cries of the women, paper streamers and flower petals twisting and falling in gay and gaudy clouds about them, and the sound of the fog horns reverberating mournfully from the bluff. It was so dear in his mind still.

How soon he was to follow them, after exaggerating his age to a recruiting sergeant who did not inquire too closely.

Ladyburg Rifles Badly Mauled Attack fails at Delville Wood General Courtney: I am proud of them. Mark felt sudden stinging tears burn his eyelids as he went slowly down the long casualty lists, pausing as he recognized a name, remembering, remembering, lost again in those terrible seas of mud and blood and suffering.

A hand touched his shoulder arousing him, and he straightened up from the reading table, bewildered at his sudden return to the present. We are closing now, it's after nine o'clock, said the young assistant librarian softly. I'm afraid you will have to leave now. Then she peered more closely at him. Are you all right? Have you been crying? No. Quickly Mark groped for his handkerchief. It's just the strain of reading. His landlady shouted down the stairs to him as he let himself into the hall. I've got a letter for you. The letter looked as thick as a complete works of William Shakespeare, but when he opened it there were only twenty-two pages, beginning: My dear Mark, Of course I remember you so clearly, and I have thought about you often, wondering what ever had become of you,-so your welcome letter came as a marvelous surprise Mark felt a guilty twinge at the unrestrained joy that her letter voiced.

I realize that we know so little about each other. You did not even know my name! ! Well, it is Marion Littlejohn silly name, isn't it? I wish I could change it (that's not a hint, silly! ) and I was born in Ladyburg (I'm not going to tell you when! A lady never reveals her age! ) My father was a farmer, but he sold his farm five years ago, and now he works as a forem in at the sugar mill.

The entire family history, Marion's schooling, the names and estates of all her numerous relatives, Marion's hopes, dreams, aspirations, I'd love to travel, wouldn't you? Paris, London', were laid out in daunting detail, much of it in parentheses and liberally punctuated with exclamation and question marks.

Isn't it strange that our names are so similar, Mark and Marion? It does sound rather grand, doesn't it?

Mark had stirrings now of alarm, it seemed he had called the whirlwind when he had merely whistled for a breeze, and yet there was an infectious gaiety and warmth that came through to him strongly, and he regretted that the girl's features were so hazy in his mind. He realized that he might easily pass her in the street without recognizing her.

He replied that night, taking special care with his penmanship. He could not yet blatantly come to the true purpose of his letters, but hinted vaguely that he was considering writing a book, but that it would require much research in the Ladyburg archives, and that as yet he did not have either the time nor the capital to make the journey, and he concluded by wondering if she did not have a photograph of herself that he might have.

Her reply must have been written and posted the same day as his letter was received. My dearest Mark -'He had been promoted from Dear Mark.

There was a photograph accompanying the twenty-five pages of closely written text. It was stiffly posed, a young girl in party clothes with a fixed nervous smile on her face, staring into the camera as though it were the muzzle of a loaded howitzer. The focus was slightly misty, but it was good enough to remind him what she looked like, and Mark felt a huge swell of relief.

She was a little plump, but she had a sweet heart-shaped face with a wide friendly mouth and well-spaced intelligent eyes, an alert and lively look about her; and he knew already that she was educated and reasonably well read and desperately eager to please.

On the back of the photograph he had received further promotion: To darling Mark, With much love, Marion.

Under her name were three neat crosses. The letter was bursting with unbounded admiration for his success as a Cadillac salesman, and with awe for his aspirations to be a writer.

She was anxious to be of help in his researches, he had only to let her know what information he needed. She herself had access to all the Governmental and Municipal archives ('and I won't charge you a search fee this time! ), her elder sister worked in the editorial office of the Ladyburg Lantern, and there was an excellent library in the Town Hall building where Marion was well known and where she loved to browse, please would he let her help?

One other thing, did he have a photograph of himself, she would love to have a reminder of him.

For half a crown Mark had a photograph taken of himself at a beachfront open-air studio, dressed in his new suit, and with a straw boater canted at a rakish angle over one eye and a daredevil grin on his face.

My darling Mark, How handsome you are! ! I have shown all my friends and they are all quite envious.

She had some of the information he requested, and more would follow.

From Adams Booksellers in Smith Street, Mark purchased a bulky leather-bound notebook, three enormous sheets of cardboard, and a large-scale survey map of Natal and Zululand. These he pinned up on the walls of his room, where he could study them while lying in bed.

On one sheet he laid out the family trees of the Courtneys, the Pyes and the Petersens, all three names associated with the purchase of Andersland on the documents he had seen in Ladyburg Deeds Office.

On one other sheet he built up a pyramid of companies and holdings controlled by the Ladyburg Farmers Bank, and on another he pyramided in the same way the companies and properties of General Sean Courtney's holding company, Natal Timber and Estates Ltd.

On the map he carefully shaded in the actual land holdings of the two groups, red for General Courtney and blue for those controlled by his son, Dirk Courtney Esquire.

It gave him new resolution and determination to continue his search when he carefully shaded with blue the long irregular shape of Andersland, with its convoluted boundary that followed the south bank of the river; and when he had done so and wiped the crayon from his fingers, he was left with the bitter lees of anger in his mouth, a reaffirmation of his conviction that the old man would never have let it go, they would have had to kill him first.

The anger was with him again whenever he filled in another section of the map, or when he lay in bed each night, smoking a last cigarette and studying the blue and red patchwork of Courtney holdings. He smiled grimly when he thought what Fergus MacDonald would say about such wealth in the hands of a single father and son, and then he wrote in the leather-bound notebook any new information that he had accumulated during the day.

He would switch out the light then and lie long awake, and often, when at last he slept, he dreamed of Chaka's Gate, of the great cliffs guarding the river and the tumbled wilderness beyond the gates, that concealed a lonely grave.

A grave unmarked, overgrown now with the lush restless vegetation of Africa, or, perhaps, long ago dug open by hyena or the other scavengers.

One day, when Mark spent his customary evening's study in the library reading-room, he turned first to the recent issues of the Ladyburg Lantern, searching through those editions covering the week following his flight from Ladyburg, and he almost missed the few lines on an inside page.

Yesterday, the funeral service was held of Mr Jacob Henry Rossouw at the Methodist Church in Pine Street.

Mr Rossouw fell to his death in the gorge of the Baboon Stroom below the new railway bridge while hunting with a party of his friends.

Mr Rossouw was a bachelor employed by the Zululand Sugar Co. Ltd. The funeral service was attended by the Chairman of the Company, Mr Dirk Courtney, who made a short but moving tribute at the graveside, once again illustrating his deep concern for even the humblest of the employees of his many prosperous enterprises. Greatrless shows itself in small ways. The date coincided neatly with his escape from the valley. The man might have been one of his hunters, perhaps the one who had caught his damaged ankle as he hung from the goods truck. If he was, then the connection with Dirk Courtney was direct. Slowly Mark was twisting a rope together, but he needed a head for the noose.

Yet, in one direction, Mark felt easier. There seemed to exist a deep rift between father and son, between General Sean Courtney and Dirk. None of their companies overlapped, none of their directorships interlocked, and each pyramid of companies stood alone and separated. This separation seemed to extend beyond finance or business, and Mark had found no evidence of any contact between the two men at the social level, in fact active hostility between them was indicated by the sudden change in the Ladyburg Lantern's attitude to the father, once the son took control of its editorial policy.

Yet he was not entirely convinced. Fergus MacDonald had repeatedly warned him of the perfidious cunning of the bosses, of all wealthy men. They will go to any lengths to hide their guilt, Mark, no trick is too low or despicable to cover the stains of honest workers blood on their hands. Perhaps Mark's first concern must be to establish beyond doubt that he was hunting only one man. Then, of course, the next move must be to go back to Ladyburg, to try and provoke another attack, but this time he would be ready for it and have some idea from which direction it would come. His mind went back to the way in which he and Fergus MacDonald had used Cuthbert, the dummy, to draw fire and force the enemy to reveal himself, and he grinned ruefully at the thought that this time he must do Cuthbert's job himself. He felt for the first time a fear he had not known in France before a shoot, for he must go out against something more formidable and ruthless than he had ever believed possible before, and the time was fast approaching.

He was distracted then by another massive epistle from Ladyburg, one that gave him honest cause for delaying direct action.

My dearest darling, What great news I have for you! ! If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then he Jar she! ) must go to the mountain. My sister and her husband are going to Durban for four days holiday, and they have asked me to join them. We will arrive on the fourteenth, and will be staying at the Marine Hotel on the Marine Parade won't we be posh!

Mark surprised himself by the strength of his pleasure and anticipation. He had not realized the affection that he had slowly accumulated at such long remove for this willing and friendly creature. He was surprised again when he met her, both of them dressed with obvious pains and attention to detail, both in an agony of shyness and restraint under the surveillance of Marion's sister.

They sat on the hotel veranda and stiffly sipped tea, making small talk with the sister while surreptitiously examining each other over the rim of their cups.

Marion had lost weight, Mark saw immediately, but would never know that the girl had almost starved herself to do so in anticipation of this moment; and she was pretty, much prettier than he remembered or than her photograph suggested. More important was her transparent wholesomeness and warmth. Mark had been a lonely boy for most of his life, but more particularly so in these last weeks, living in his small dingy room with only the cockroaches and his plans for company.

Now he reacted to her like a traveller coming in out of the snow-storm responds to the tavern fire.

The sister took her duties as chaperone seriously at first, but she was only five or six years older than Mark, and perceptive enough to be aware of the younger people's attraction for each other and to recognize the essential decency of the boy. She was also young enough and herself so recently married as to have sympathy for them. I would like to take Marion for a drive, we wouldn't be gone very long. Marion turned eyes as soulful and pleading as those of a dying gazelle on her sister. Oh please, Lyn. The Cadillac was a demonstration model, and Mark had personally supervised while two of the Zulu employees at Natal Motors had burnished its paintwork to a dazzle. .

He drove down as far as the mouth of the Umgeni River, with Marion sitting close and proud and pretty beside him.

Mark felt as good as he ever had in his life; dressed in fashionable style, with gold in his pocket, a big shining automobile under him and a pretty adoring girl beside him.

Adoring was the only word to describe Marion's attitude towards him. She could hardly drag her eyes from his face for a moment, and she glowed every time he glanced across at her.

She had never imagined herself beside such a handsome, sophisticated beau. Not even hex most romantic daydreams had ever included a shining Cadillac, and a decorated war hero.

When he parked off the road and they picked a path through the densely overgrown dunes down to the river mouth, she clung to his arm like a drowning sailor.

The river was in spate from some upland rainstorm; half a mile wide and muddy brown as coffee, it surged and swirled down to meet the green thrust of the sea in a leaping ridge of white water. Carried down on the brown water were the debris of the flood, and the carcasses of drowned beasts.

A dozen big black sharks were there to scavenge, pushing high up the river, their dark triangular fins knifing and circling.

Mark and Marion sat side by side on a dune overlooking the estuary. Oh, sighed Marion, as though her heart would break, we've only got four days together. Four days is a long time, Mark laughed at her, I don't know what we are going to do with it all They spent nearly every hour of it together. Dicky Lancome was most understandingwith his star salesman. Just show your face here for a few minutes every morning, to keep the boss happy, then you can slip off. I'll hold the fort for you. What about the demonstration model? Mark asked boldly.

I'll tell him you are making a sale to a rich sugar farmer.

Take it, old chap, but for God's sake, don't wrap it round a tree. I don't know how i'll ever repay you, Dicky, really I don't. Don't worry, old boy, we'll think of a way. I won't ask again, it's just that this girl is really special. I understand. Dicky patted his shoulder in a paternal fashion. Most important thing in life, a likely bit of crumpet. My heart goes out to you, old son. I'll be cheering you on in spirit every inch of the way. It's not like that, Dicky, Mark denied, blushing fiercely. Of course not, it never is. But enjoy it anyway, and Dicky winked lasciviously.

Mark and Marion, she was right, it did sound rather grand, spent their days wandering hand in hand through the city. She was delighted by its bustle and energy, enchanted by its sophistication, by its culture, its museums and tropical gardens, by its playground beachfront with myriad fairy lights, the open-air concerts in the gardens of the old fort, by the big departmental stores in West Street, Stuttafords and Ansteys, their windows packed with expensive imported merchandise, by the docks with great merchant ships lining the wharf and the steam cranes huffing and creaking above them, They watched the Indian fishermen running their surfboats out from the glistening white beach, through the marching lines of green surf to lay their long nets in a wide semi-circle out into deep water. Then Marion hitched up her skirts and Mark rolled his trousers to the knee to help the half-naked fishermen draw in the long lines, until at last a shimmering silver mound of fish lay on the boat, still quivering and twitching and leaping in the sunlight.

They ate strawberry-flavoured ice-cream out of crisp yellow cones, and they rode in an open rickshaw down the Marine Parade, drawn by a leaping howling Zulu dressed in an incredible costume of feathers and beads and horns.

One night they joined Dicky Lancome and a languid siren to whom he was paying court, and the four of them ate grilled crayfish and danced to a jazz band at the Oyster Box Hotel at Umhlanga Rocks, and came roaring home in a Cadillac, tiddly and happy and singing, with Dicky driving like Nuvorelli, rocketing the big car over the dusty rutted road, and Mark and Marion cuddling blissfully in the back seat.

In the lobby of the hotel, under the watchful eye of the night clerk who was poised to intercept Mark if he tried for the elevator, they whispered goodnight to each other. I have never been so happy in all my life, she told him simply, and stood on tip-toe to kiss him full on the lips.

Dicky Lancome had disappeared with both Cadillac and lady-friend, probably to some dark and secluded parking place along the sea front, and as Mark walked home alone through the deserted midnight streets, he thought about Marion's words and found himself agreeing. He could not remember being so happy either, but then, he grinned ruefully, it hadn't been a life crowded with wild happiness up to then. To a pauper, a shilling is a fortune.

It was their last day together, and the knowledge weighted their pleasure with poignancy. Mark left the Cadillac at the end of a narrow track in the sugar cane fields and they climbed down to the long white curve of snowy sand beach, guarded at each end by rocky headlands.

The sea was so clear that from the tall dunes they could see deep down to the reefs and sculptured sand banks below the surface. Farther out, the water shaded to a deep indigo blue, that met at last a far horizon piled with a mountainous range of cumulus clouds, purple, blue and silver in the brilliant sunlight.

They walked down barefooted through the crunching sand, carrying the picnic basket that Marion's hotel had prepared for them and a threadbare grey blanket from Mark's bed, and it seemed that they were the only two persons in the world.

They changed into swimming costumes, modestly separating to each side of a dense dark green milk-wood bush, and then they ran laughing into the warm clear water at the edge of the beach.

The thin black cotton of Marion's costume clung wetly to her body, so that it seemed that she were naked, although clothed from mid thigh to neck, and when she pulled the red rubber bathing cap from her head and shook out the thick tresses of her hair, Mark found himself physically roused by her for the first time.

somehow the pleasure he had taken in her up until then had been that of friendship, and companionship. Her patent adoration had filled some void in his soul, and he had felt protective, almost brotherly towards her.

She sensed instantly, with some feminine instinct, the change in him. The laughter died on her lips, and her eyes went grave and there were shades in them of fear or apprehension, but she turned to face him, lifting her face to him, seeming to steel herself with a conscious act of courage.

They lay side by side on the grey blanket, in the heavy shade of the milk bush, and the midday was heavy and languorous with heat and the murmur of insects.

The wet bathing-suits were cool against their hot skins, and when Mark gently peeled hers away, her skin was damp beneath his fingers, and he was surprised to find her body so different from Helena's. Her skin was clear milky white, tipped with palest pink, lightly sugared with white beach sand, and the hair of her body was fine as silk, light golden brown and soft as smoke. Her body was soft also, with the gentle yielding spring of woman's flesh, unlike the lean hard muscle of Helena's, and it had a different feel to it, a plasticity that intrigued and excited him.

only when she gasped, and bit her lip and then turned her face and hid it against his neck did Mark realize suddenly, through the mists of his own arousal, that all the skills Helena had taught him were not moving Marion, as they were him. Her body was rigid, and her face pale and tensed. Marion, are you all right? It's all right, Mark. You don't like this? It's the first time it's ever happened, We can stop. No. We don't have to. No, Mark, go on. It's what you want. But you don't want it. I want what you want, Mark. Go on. It's for you. "NoGo on, Mark, please go on. And now she looked at him and he saw her expression was pitiful, her eyes swimming with bright tears and her lips quivering. Oh, Marion, I'm sorry. He recoiled from her, horrified by the misery he saw reflected in her expression, but immediately she followed him throwing both arms around his neck, lying half on top of him. No, Mark, don't be sorry. I want you to be happy. It won't make me happy, if you don't want to. Oh, Mark, don't say that. Please don't say that, all I want in the world is to make you happy. She was brave and enduring, holding him tightly over her, both arms locked around his neck, her body rigid but spread compliantly, and for Mark the ordeal was almost as painful; he suffered for her as he felt the tremble of locked nerves and the small sounds of pain and tension that she tried to keep deep in her throat.

Mercifully for both of them, it was swiftly ended, but still she clung to him. Was it good for you, Mark my darling? Oh, yes, he assured her vehemently. It was wonderful. I want so much to be good for you in every way, my darling. Always and in every way, I want to be good for you. It was the best thing in my life, he told her, and she stared into his eyes for a moment, searching for assurance, and finding it because she wanted it so terribly. I'm so glad, darling, she whispered, and drew his head down on to her damp warm bosom, so soft and pink and comforting. Holding him like that, she began to rock him gently, the way a mother rocks her child. I'm so glad, Mark, and it will be better and better. I'll learn, you see if I don't and I'll try so hard for you, darling, always. Driving home slowly in the dusk, she sat proudly next to him on the wide leather seat, and there was a new air about her, an air of confidence and achievement, as though she had grown from child to matron in the space of a few short hours.

Mark felt a rush of deep affection for her. He felt that he wanted to protect her, to keep that goodness and sweetness from souring, to protect her from unhappiness and wanton damage. For a fleeting moment he felt regret that she had not been able to feed that raging madness of his body, and regret also that he had not been able to lead her through the storm to the same peace. Perhaps that would come, perhaps they would find the way together, and if they didn't, well it wasn't that important. The important thing was the sense of duty he felt towards this woman, she had given him everything of which she was capable, and it was his duty now to give back in equal measure, to protect and cherish her. Marion, will you marry me? he asked quietly, and she began to cry softly, nodding her head vehemently through the tears, unable to speak.

Marion's sister, Lynette, was married to a young lawyer from Ladyburg and the four of them sat up late that night discussing the betrothal. Pa won't give permission for you to marry before you are twenty-one, you know how Peter and I had to wait. Peter Botes, a serious young man, nodded wisely and placed his finger tips together carefully. He had thin sandy hair, and was as pompous as a judge in scarlet.

It won't do any harm to wait a few years. Years? wailed Marion. You're only nineteen, Peter reminded her. And Mark will need to build up some capital before he takes on the responsibility of a family. I can go on working, Marion came in hotly. They all say that. Peter waggled his head sagely. And then two months later there's a baby on the way. Peter! His wife rebuked him primly, but he went on calmly. And now, Mark, what about your prospects? Marion's father will want to know. Mark hadn't expected to present an account of his affairs, and on the spur of the moment he could not be certain if his total worth was forty-two pounds twelve shillings, or seven and sixpence.

He saw them off on the Ladyburg train the next morning, with a long lingering embrace and a promise to write every day, while Marion swore she would work at filling her bottom drawer, and at altering her father's prejudice against early marriage. Walking back from the railway, Mark remembered, for no apparent reason, a spring morning in France coming back out of the line to go into reserve, and his shoulders went back and his step quickened and became springy and elastic once more. He was out of the line, and he had survived, that was as far as he could think at that moment.

Dicky Lancome's polished elastic-sided boots were propped on the desk in front of him and fastidiously crossed at the ankles. He looked up from his newspaper, a tea cup held in the other hand with little finger extended delicately. Hail the conquering hero comes, his weary weapon slung over his shoulder. Oh come on, Dicky! weak at the knees, bloodshot eye and fevered brow Any calls? Mark asked seriously. Ah, the giant mind now turns to the more mundane aspects of life. Play the game, Dicky. Mark riffled quickly through a small pile of messages that awaited him. A surfeit of love, a plethora of passion, an overdose of crumpet, a genital hangover. What's this? I can't read your scrawl. Mark averted his eyes, concentrating on his reading. Mark my words, Mark, that young lady has got the brood lust. If you turn your back on her for ten minutes, she will be up the nearest tree building a nest, Cut it out, Dicky. That's precisely what you should do, old boy, unless you can face the prospect of her dropping your whelps all over the scenery. Dicky shuddered theatrically. Never ride in a saloon if you can drive a sports model, old chap, which reminds me, he dropped the newspaper, checked the watch from his waistcoat pocket, I have this important client. He inspected his glossy boots a moment, flicked them lightly with the handkerchief from his breast pocket, stood up and adjusted the strawbasher on his head and winked at Mark. Her husband's gone up country for a week. Hold the fort, old boy, it's my turn now He disappeared through the office door into the showroom, and then reappeared instantly, an expression of horror on his face. Oh God, customers! Get after them, Mark my boy, I'm taking the back door, and he was gone, leaving only the faint perfume of brilliantine lingering on the air.

Mark checked his tie in the sliver of broken mirror wedged in the frame of the window, and adjusted his welcoming smile as he hurried to the door, but at the threshold he stopped as though coming up at the end of a chain.

He was listening with the stillness and concentration of a wild gazelle, listening with every fibre and every quivering nerve end to a sound of such aching and penetrating beauty that it seemed to freeze his heart. It lasted only a few seconds, but the sound of it shimmered and thrilled in the air for long seconds afterwards, and only then did Mark's heart beat again, surging heavily against his rib cage.

The sound was the laughter of a girl. it was as though the air around Mark had thickened to honey, for it dragged heavily at his legs as he started forward, and it required a physical effort to draw it down into his lungs.

From the doorway he looked into the showroom. In the centre of the wide floor stood the latest demonstration model Cadillac, and beside it stood a couple.

The man had his back to Mark, and left only the impression of massive size, a towering figure dressed in dark cloth. Beside him, the girl was dainty, almost ethereal, she seemed to float, light and lovely as a hummingbird on invisible wings.

The earth tilted beneath Mark's feet as he gazed at her.

Her head was thrown back to look up at the man. Her throat was long and smooth, balancing the small head with its huge dark eyes and the laughing mouth, small white regular teeth beyond pink lips, a fine bold brow, pale and wide above those haunting eyes, and all of it crowned by a heart-stopping tumble of thick lustrous hair, hair so black that its waves and falls seemed to be sculptured from freshly oiled ebony.

She laughed again, a lovely joyous ripple of sound, and she reached up to touch the man's face. Her hand was narrow, with long tapered fingers, strong capable-looking hands, so that Mark realized that his first impression had been wrong.

The girl was small only in comparison to the man, and her poise heightened the illusion. However, Mark saw now that she was tall, but graceful as a papyrus stem in the wind, supple and slim, with tiny waist and long legs beneath the light floating material of her skirt.

With her fingertips, she traced the jawline of the man; tilting her head on its long swanlike neck, her beauty was almost unbearable, as her huge eyes shone now with love, and the line of the lips was soft with love. Oh Daddy, you are an old-fashioned, grumpy old bear. She spun away from him, lightly as a ballerina, and struck an exaggerated pose beside the huge glistening machine, putting on a comic French accent. Regarde! Mon cher papa, c'est tres chic -The man growled. I don't trust these fancy new machines. Give me a Rolls. Rolls? cried the girl, pouting dramatically, they're so staid! So biblical! Darling Daddy, this is the twentieth century, remember? Then she drooped like a dying rose in a vase. How could I hold my head up among my friends if you force me to ride in one of those great sombre coffins? At that instant she noticed Mark standing in the doorway of the sales office, and her entire mien changed, the carriage of head and body, the expression of mouth and eye flowing instantly from clown to lady.

Pater, she said softly, the voice cultivated and the eye cool as it flicked over Mark, a steady encompassing sweep from his head to his feet. I think the sales person is here. She turned away, and Mark felt his heart convulse again at the way her hip swung and pushed beneath the skirt and he saw for the first time the cheeky, challenging roll of her small rounded backside as she walked slowly around the Cadillac, calm and aloof, not glancing in his direction again.

Mark stared at her, with fascination, all his emotions in upheaval. He had never seen anything so beautiful, so completely captivating in all his life.

The man had turned and was glaring at him angrily. He seemed, as the girl had teased him, to be biblical. A gaunt and towering figure with shoulders wide as the gallows tree and the big fierce head exaggerated in size by the slightly twisted hooked nose and the dark thick bush of beard, shot through with grey. I know you, dammit! he growled. The face had been burned almost black by twenty thousand suns, but there were deep white creases in the corners of his eyes and the skin in a line below the thick curls of his silvering hair was white also, protected by the band of a hunter's hat or a uniform cap.

Mark roused himself, tearing his eyes off the girl, for the fresh shock of recognition. At the time he could only believe it was some monstrous coincidence, but in the years that followed he would know differently. The threads of their lives were plaited, and intertwined. But in this instant the shock, coming so close on the other, unsettled him and his voice croaked. Yes, General Courtney, I am, Don't tell me, goddammit, the General cut in, his voice like the crack of a Mauser shooting from cover, and Mark felt his spirit quail before the expression on his face; it was the most formidable he had ever confronted.

I know, the name is right there! he glowered at Mark. I never forget a face. The tremendous force and presence of the man threatened to swamp him. It's a sign of old age, Pater, said the girl coolly, glancing over her shoulder without smile or expression. Don't you say that, girl, the man rumbled like an active volcano. Don't you, dare say that. He took a threatening step towards Mark, the dark brow corrugated and the blue eyes cutting into his soul like a surgeon's knives. It's the eyes! Those eyes. Mark retreated a hurried step before the limping, mountainous advance, not quite sure what to expect, but ready to believe that Sean Courtney might at any moment lunge at him with the heavy ebony cane he carried, so murderous seemed his anger. General, Yes! Sean Courtney snapped his fingers with a crack like a breaking oak branch, and the scowl smoothed away, the blue eyes crinkling into a smile of such charisma, of such infectious and conspiratorial glee, that Mark had to smile back at him.

Anders, he said. Anders and MacDonald. Martin?

Michael? No, Mark Anders! And he clenched his fist and struck his own thigh. Old, is it? Girl, who said old?

Pater, you are a marvel. She rolled her eyes, but Sean Courtney was advancing on Mark, seizing his hand in a grip that made the bones creak until he recovered himself and squeezed back, matching the big man's grip. It was the eyes, laughed Sean. You've changed so much from that day, that night - and the laughter dried, as he remembered the boy in the stretcher, pale and moribund, smeared with mud and thick drying blood, and heard again his own voice, He's dead! He drove back the image. How are you now, my boy? I'm fine, sir. I didn't think you were going to pull through. Sean peered closely at him. I'll grant you seem to have made it with all colours flying. How many did you collect, and where? Two, sir, high in the back. Honourable scars, my boy, we'll compare notes one day. And then he scowled again, horrendously. You got the gong, didn't you? Yes, sir. Good, you never know in this man's army. I wrote the citation that night, but you never know. What did they give you? Sean smiled his relief. The M. M sir. I got it at the hospital in England. Excellent. That's good! he nodded, and he let go of Mark's hand, turning to the girl again. Darling, this gentleman was with me in France. How nice. She touched the design on the radiator of the car with one finger, as she drifted past it, not glancing back at them. Do you think we might have a drive now, Pater? Mark hurried to the back door to hold it open. I'll drive, she said, and waited for him to jump to the driver's door.

The starter button is here, he explained. Thank you, I know. Sit in the back, please. She drove like a man very fast but skilfully, picking a tight line into the corners and using the gearbox to brake, double declutching with dancing feet on the pedals, and hitting the shift with a quick sure hand, Beside her the General sat with the set to his shoulders of a younger man. You drive too fast, he growled, the ferocious tone given the complete lie by the fond smile he turned on her. And you're an old fusspot, Daddy, she laughed again; the thrill of it sang in Mark's ears as she hurled the big powerful machine into the next bend. I didn't beat you enough when you were young. Well, it's too late now. She touched his cheek with her free hand. Don't bank on that, young lady, don't ever take bets on that. Shaking his head in mock despair, but with the adoration still glowing in his eyes, the General heaved himself around in the seat and subjected Mark to another dark penetrating scrutiny. You don't turn out at the weekly parades. No, sir. It's an hour on Friday evenings, half an hour square-bashing and then a lecture. Yes, sir? Good fun, really. Tremendous spirit, even though we have combined with the other peace-time regiments now. Yes, sir. I'm the Colonel-in-Chief, Sean chuckled. They couldn't get rid of me that easily. No, sir. We have a monthly shoot, good prizes, and a barbecue all terwards. is that so, sir? We are sending a team to shoot for the Africa Cup this year, all expenses paid. Marvellous opportunity for the lucky lads who get chosen. I'm sure, General. Sean waited for more, but Mark was silent. He could not meet the big man's fierce, unrelenting gaze, and he shifted his eyes, catching as he did so the girl's face reflected in the rear-view mirror.

She was watching him intently, with an unfathomable expression, contempt perhaps, dry amusement, maybe, or something else, something much more intriguing or dangerous. For the split part of an instant, their eyes met, and then her head turned away on the tall graceful column of her neck. The dark shining hair was brushed away from the nape, and there at the juncture with pale skin, the hair was fine and silky, a tiny whorl of it like a question mark at the back of her small sculptured ear.

Mark had an almost insane desire to lean forward and press his lips to it. The thought struck like a physical blow in his groin, and he felt the nerves along his spine racked out cruelly. He realized suddenly then, with a shock that made his senses tilt again, that he was in love with her. I want to win that cup, said the General softly, watching him. The regiment has never won it before. I've rather had enough of uniform and war, General. Mark forced his eyes back to meet the General's. But I do wish you good luck. The chauffeur held the rear door of the Rolls Silver Wraith open, and Sean Courtney lowered himself into the seat beside his daughter. He lifted his right hand in a brief, almost military, salute at the young man on the pavement and the car pulled smoothly away.

The instant they were alone, his daughter let out a girlish squeal of delight and threw both arms around his neck, ruffling his beard and his heart with her kisses.

, oh, Daddy, darling, you spoil me! Yes, I do, don't I?

Irene will turn bright green and curl up like an anchovy.

I love you, my kind and beautiful Daddy. Her father has never bought her a Cadillac! I like that lad, he's one of the bright ones. The sales person? I hadn't really noticed. She released her grip and and sat back in the seat. He sgot heart. He was silent for a moment then, remembering the snow falling silently across a shell-ravaged hill in France. He's got the guts and brightness for better things than selling motor cars. Then he grinned mischievously, looking young enough to be her brother. And I'd love to see Hamilton's face when we take the Africa Cup away from him. Beside him Storm Courtney was silent, her hand still in the crook of her father's arm while she wondered what had disturbed her about Mark Anders. She decided it was his eyes, those serene yellow eyes, calm but watchful, floating like golden moons.

involuntarily, Mark braked the big car almost to a standstill before the white gates. They were tall twin columns, plastered and white-washed with the Zulu name in raised letters on each: EMOYENI, it was a lovely haunting name, the place of the wind, and on the crest of the hills above Durban town, it would indeed receive the cool blessing of the sea breezes during the sweltering summer months.

The swinging portion of the gate was two racks of heavy cast-iron spears, but they stood open now, and Mark crossed the iron grid which would prevent hooved animals entering or escaping and started up the gentle curve of the driveway, butter yellow flint pebbles carefully raked and freshly watered, set on each side with deep beds of cannas which were now in full bloom. They had been arranged in banks of solid colour, scarlet and yellow and white, dazzling in the bright sunshine, and beyond them were lush lawns of deep tropical green, mown carpet-smooth but studded with clumps of indigenous trees which had obviously been spared for their size or beauty or unusual shape.

They were festooned with garlands of lianas the ubiquitous monkey rope plants of Natal, and even as Mark watched, a small blue-grey vervet monkey dropped lithely down one of the living ropes, and, with its back arched like a cat and its long tail held high in mock alarm, bounded across an open stretch of lawn until it reached the next clump of trees where it shot to the highest branches and chattered insolently at the slowly passing car.

Mark knew from his investigation that this was merely the Courtney town house, the main family home was at Ladyburg, and he had not expected anything like this splendour. And yet why not, he grinned wryly, the man had everything in the world, this was a mere pied-A-terre.

He twisted his head to look back. The gates were out of sight behind him now, and there was still no sign of the house ahead. He was surrounded by a fantasy landscape, half wild and yet lovingly groomed and tended, and now he saw the reason for the animal grid at the main gates.

Small herds of semi-domesticated game cropped at the short grass of the lawn or stood and watched the passing car with mild curiosity. He saw graceful golden brown impala with snowy bellies and spindly back-curved horns, a dainty blue duiker as big as a fox terrier with pricked-up ears and bright button eyes; an eland bull with hanging dewlap, thick twisted horns arming the short heavy head, and a barrel body heavy as a pedigree Afrikander bull.

He crossed a low bridge over the narrow neck of an artificial lake. The blue water lotus blooms stood high above their huge round green leaves that floated flat on the surface. Their perfume was light and sweet and nostalgic on the bright warm air, and the dark torpedo shapes of bass hung suspended in the clear water below the sheltering lotusleaves.

On the edge of the lake, a black and white spur-winged goose spread its wings, as wide as the reach of a man's arms, and pressed forward with snakelike neck and pink wattled head, threatening flight at the intrusion; then, thinking better of such effort, it furled the great wings again and waggled its tail, satisfied with a single harsh honk of protest as the Cadilac passed.

The roof of the house showed through the trees ahead now, and it was tiled in candy pink, towered and turreted and ridged, like a Spanish palace. The last curve of the driveway brought Mark out into full view of the building.

Before it lay an open expanse of blazing flowerbeds. The colour was so vibrant and so concentrated that it daunted the eye, and was relieved only by the tall soft ostrich feathers of spray that poured high into the air from the fountains set in the centre of four round ponds, parapeted in stone. The breeze blew soft wisps of spray like smoke across the flowerbeds, wetting the blooms and enhancing the already dazzling colour.

The house was two stories high, with random towers breaking the solid silhouette and columns, twisted like candy sticks, ornamenting the entrance and supporting the window lintels; it was painted white, and it shone in the sunlight like a block of ice.

It should have given the impression of solid size and ostentatious display, but the design was so cunning that it seemed light as a French pastry, a gay and happy house, built in a spirit of fun and probably of love. A rich man's gift to a lovely woman, for the feminine touch was everywhere evident, and the great masses of flowers, the fountains and peacocks and marble statues seemed right, the only setting for such a structure.

Slowly, awed and enchanted, Mark let the Cadillac roll down the last curve of the driveway, and the light faint cries of female voices caught his attention.

The tennis courts stood at the end of the lawns, and there were women at play, their white dresses sparkling in the sun, their limbs flashing as they ran and swerved and struck at the ball. Their voices and laughter were sweet and melodious in the warm hush of the tropical midmorning.

Mark left the car, and started across the lawn towards the courts. There were other female figures, also whiteclad, that lolled in deck-chairs in the shade of the banyan trees, watching the play and conversing languidly as they sipped at long frosted glasses, waiting their turn on the courts.

None of them noticed Mark until he was on the edge of their group. Oh, I say, girls. One of them turned quickly in her chair, and appraised Mark with eyes suddenly no longer bored, but clear blue and acquisitive. A man! We are in luck. Instantly the other three changed, each reacting differently: one exaggerating her indifferent and indolent loll in the low chair, another tugging at her skirt with one hand and pushing at her hair with the other, smiling brightly and sucking in her tummy.

They were all young and sleek as cats, glossy with youth and health and that elusive but unmistakable aura of wealth and breeding. And what is your pleasure, sir? asked the one with blue eyes. She was the prettiest of the four, with fine pale golden hair in a halo around the small neat head and good white teeth as she smiled.

Mark felt discomforted under their stares, especially when the speaker turned further in her chair, slowly uncrossed and crossed her legs, managing to give Mark a flash of white silk panties under the short skirt. I am looking for Miss Storm Courtney. God, said the smiler. They all want Storm -why don't any of them ever want me? Storm! The blonde called out to the court.

Storm Courtney was about to serve, but the call distracted her and she glanced across. She saw Mark and her expression did not change, her attention switched back to the game. She threw the ball high and swung overhand at it, the stroke was fluid and controlled. The racket twanged sharply, and the movement threw her white cotton skirt high against the back of her thighs. Her legs were beautifully moulded, slim ankles and gently swelling calves, knees marked only by symmetrical dimples.

She spun lightly and caught the return of the ball, a long lightly tanned arm flashing in a full sweep and the ball leapt from the racket in a white blur; again her skirt kicked up and Mark shifted slightly on his feet, for the earth had tilted again.

She ran back to the baseline, short neat steps on those long narrow feet, head thrown back to follow the high parabola of the lobbing ball against the blue of the sky. Her dark hair seemed to glow with the metallic sheen of a sunbird's wing as she judged her stroke, and then her whole body went into it, power uncoiling along those long beautiful legs, driven up from tensed and rounded buttocks under the light cotton skirt, through the narrow waist, along young hard back muscles and exploding down through the swinging right arm.

The ball hummed like an arrow, flashed low across the net and kicked a white puff of dust from the baseline. Too good! wailed her opponent despairingly, and Storm laughed, gay and triumphant, and came back to the high fence to pick up the spare balls from the gutter. Oh Storm, there's a gentleman here to see you. The blonde called again, and Storm flipped up a ball with the tip of her racket and the side of her foot bouncing it once on the turf of the court and then catching it in her free hand. Yes, Irene, she answered lightly. I know. He's only a sales person. Ask him to wait by the car until I'm ready to deal with him. She had not looked at Mark again, and now she turned away. Forty, love, she called gaily, and ran back to the baseline. Her voice had a music and lilt that did nothing to sweeten the sudden flare of anger which made Mark's jaw set grimly. If you are a sales person, Irene murmured, then you can sell me something some time. But right now, darling, I suggest you do what Storm says, otherwise we will all know about it. When Storm came to where he waited, she was flanked by the other girls, like maids in waiting attending a princess, he thought, and he felt his resentment fade as he watched her. You could forgive somebody like that, somebody so royal and lovely and heart-achingly beautiful you could forgive them anything.

He stood attentive, waiting for her, and he realized then how tall she was. The top of that glossy head reached to his chin, almost. Good morning, Miss Courtney. I have brought your new Cadillac, and all of us at Natal Motors wish you much joy and enjoyment. It was a little speech he always used when making a delivery, and he spoke it with all the warmth and charm and sincerity which had made him in so few months the star salesman of Natal Motors. Where are the keys? Storm Courtney asked, and for the first time looked at him directly. Mark realized that her eyes were that dark, almost black, blue like the General's.

There was no question who her father was, She opened them a little wider, and in the sunlight they were the colour of polished sapphires or the blue of the Mozambique current, out in the deep water at noon. They are in the car, he answered, and his voice sounded strange in his own ears, as though it came from a distance. Get them, she said, and he felt himself start to move, to hurry to her bidding. Then something like that sense of danger he had known and developed in France warned him.

Her expression was neutral, completely unconcerned, as though she found the effort of talking directly to him was wasted, just one of these tiresome moments in an otherwise important march of events. Yet the warning was clear as the chime of a bell in his head, and only then he saw something else move in her eyes, something dangerous and exciting like the shape of a leopard hunting in the shadows.

A challenge, perhaps, a dare, and suddenly he knew clearly that no daughter of Sean Courtney would be reared to such natural arrogance and rudeness. There was a reason, some design in her attitude.

He felt a lightness of mind, that kind of special madness which had driven away fear of consequence so often in moments of peril or desperate enterprise, and he grinned at her. He did not have to force the grin, it was natural and devilish and challenging. Certainly, Miss Courtney. Of course I'll get them, just as soon as you say please. There was an audible communal gasp from the girls around her, and they stilled with awed delight, their eyes darting to Storm's face and then back to Mark's. Say please to the nice man, Stormy. Irene used the patronizing voice for instructing young children, and there was a delighted burst of giggles from the others.

For one unholy instant something burned in the girl's dark blue eyes, something fierce that was not anger. Mark recognized the importance of that flash; although he did not truly know the exact emotion it betrayed, yet he knew it might affect him. Then it was gone and in its place was true unfeigned anger. How dare you! Storm's voice was low and quivering, but her lips were suddenly frosty white as the blood drained away. The anger was too swift, too strong for the occasion, out of all proportion to the mild exchange, and Mark felt a reckless excitement that he had been able to reach her so deeply. He kept the grin mocking and taunting. Hit him, darling, Irene teased, and for a moment Mark thought she really might. You keep your silly mouth shut, Irene Leuchars. Oh la la! Irene gloated. Temper! Mark turned casually away, and opened the driver's door of the Cadillac. Where are you going! Back to town. He started the engine, and looked out of the window at her. There was no doubt now that she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Anger had rouged her cheeks, and the fine dark hair at her temples was still damp from her play on the courts. It was plastered against the smooth skin in tiny curls. That is my car! They'll send somebody else up with it, Miss Courtney, I'm used to dealing with ladies.

Again the wondering gasp and burst of giggles. Oh, he's a darling! Irene clapped her hands in applause, but Storm ignored her. My father will have you fired. Yes, he probably will, he agreed. Mark thought about that solemnly for a moment, then he nodded and he let out the clutch. He looked back in the mirror as he took the first bend in the driveway and they were still standing in a group staring after him in their white dresses, like a group of marble statues. Nymphs Startled by Satyr, was a fitting title, he thought, and laughed with the reckless mood still on him. Jesus, Dicky Lancome whispered, clutching his brow with horror. What made you do it? He shook his head slowly, wonderingly. She was damned rude. Dicky dropped his hands and stared at him aghast. She was rude to you. Oh my God, I don't think I can stand much more. Don't you realize that if she was rude to you, you should be grateful? Don't you know that there are thousands of peasants like us who go through their entire lives without being insulted by Miss Storm Courtney? I was not going to take that, Mark explained reasonably, but Dicky cut in. Look, old bean, I've taught you all I know, and you still know nothing. Not only do you take it, but if Miss Courtney expresses a desire to kick your fat stupid arse, the correct reply is "Certainly, ma'am, but first let me don fresh bags lest I soil your pretty foot! " Mark laughed, the reckless mood still there but fading, and Dicky's expression became more lugubrious. That's right, have yourself a good laugh. Do you know what happened? and before Mark could answer he went on, A summons from on high, the ultimate, the Chairman of the Board himself. So the boss and I dash across town fear, trepidation, cautious optimism, are we to be fired, promoted, congratulated on the month's sale figures? And there is the Board, the full Board mind you, looking like a convention of undertakers who have just been informed of the discovery of Pasteur's vaccine Dicky stopped, the memory was too painful, and he sighed heavily. You didn't really tell her to say "please", did you?

Mark nodded. You didn't really tell her she was not a lady? Not directly, Mark protested. But I did imply it. Dicky Lancome tried to wipe his face off with one hand, starting at the hairline and drawing the palm of his hand down slowly to his chin. I've got to fire you, you know that, don't you?

Mark nodded again. Look, said Dicky. I tried, Mark, I really did. I showed themyour sales figures, I told them you were young, impulsive, I made a speech. Thank you, Dicky. At the end of the speech, they almost fired me also. You shouldn't have stuck your neck out for meAnyone else, you could have picked on anyone else, old chap, you could have punched the mayor, sent abusive letters to the king, but why in the name of all holy things did you have to pick on a Courtney? You know something, Dicky? and it was Dicky's turn silently to shake his head. I loved it, I loved every moment of it. Dicky groaned aloud, as he took out his silver cigarette case and offered it to Mark. They lit their cigarettes, and smoked in silence for a few moments.

So I am fired, then? Mark asked at last. That's what I have been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes, Dicky agreed.

Mark began to clear out the drawers in his desk, then stopped and asked impulsively. Did the General, did General Courtney make the demand for my head? I have no idea, old chap, but sure as hell it was made.

Mark wanted to believe that it had not been the General.

It was too mean a gesture from such a big man. He could imagine the General bursting into the showroom, brandishing; a horse-whip.

The man who could take such revenge for a small flash of spirit, might be capable of other things, like killing an old man for his land.

The thought sickened Mark, and he tried to thrust it aside. Well, then, I suppose I'd better be getting along. I'm sorry, old bean. Dicky stood up and offered his hand, then looked embarrassed. You all right for the filthy lucre? I could let you have a tenner to tide you over. Thanks, Dicky, but I'll be all right. look, Dicky blurted out impulsively. Give it a month or so, time for the dust to settle, and then if you haven't got yourself fixed, come and see me. I'll try and sneak you in again through the back door, even if we have to write you up on the paysheet under an assumed name. Goodbye, Dick, and thanks for everything. I really mean that. I'm going to miss you, old chap. Keep your head down below the parapet in future, won't you? The pawn shop was in Soldiers Way, almost directly opposite the railway station. The front room was small and overcrowded with a vast array of valuables, semi-valuables and rubbish left here by the needy over the years.

There was a melancholy about the racks of yellowing wedding dresses, in the dusty glass cases of old wedding rings, engraved watches, cigarette cases and silver drinking flasks, all given in love or respect, each with its own sad story. Two pounds, said the pawnbroker, after a single glance at the suit. It's only three months old, Mark said softly. And I paid fifteen. The man shrugged and the steel-framed spectacles slid down his nose. Two pounds, he repeated, and pushed the spectacles up with a thumb that looked grey and dusty as his stock. All right, and what about this? He opened the small blue case, and showed the bronze disc nestled in a nest of silk, pinned by its gay little ribbon of white and red and blue. The Military Medal for gallantry displayed by non-commissioned officers and other ranks. We get a lot of those, not much call for them. The man pursed thin lips. Twelve pounds ten, he said. How long do you keep them before you sell them? Mark asked, suddenly reluctant to part with the scrap of metal and silk. We keep em a year. The last ten days of constant search for employment had depleted Mark's resources of cash and courage.

All right, he agreed.

The pawnbroker wrote the ticket, while Mark wandered into the back reaches of the shop. He found a bundle of old military haver-sacks and selected one; then there was a rack of rifles, most of them ancient Martinis and Mousers, veterans of the Boer war, but there was one among them that stood out. The woodwork was hardly marked, and the metal shone smooth and oily, no scratches or pitting of rust, and Mark picked the weapon off the rack and the shape and feel of it brought memories crowding back. He thrust them aside. He would need a rifle where he was going, and it was sensible to have one he knew so well.

Fate had put a P. 14 there for him, and damn the memories, he decided.

He slipped the bolt from the breech and held the barrel to the light from the doorway, peering into the mouth of the breech. The bore of the barrel was unmarked, the rifling described its clean glistening spirals, again without fouling or pitting. Somebody had cared well for the weapon. How much? he asked the pawnbroker, and the man's eyes turned to lifeless pebbles behind his steel-rimmed spectacles. That's a very good rifle, he said, and I paid a lot of money for it. There's a hundred rounds of ammunition goes with it also. Mark found he had gone soft in the city, his feet ached within the first five miles and the straps of rifle and haversack cut painfully into his shoulders.

The first night he lay down beside the fire and slept as though he had been clubbed. In the morning he groaned at the effort of sitting upright, the stiffness was in his legs and back and shoulders.

The first mile he hobbled like an old man, until his muscles began to ease, and he was going well by the time he reached the rim of the escarpment and started down into the coastal lowlands.

He kept well away from Andersland, crossing the river five miles upstream. His clothing and rifle and pack were balanced on his head as he waded through a shallow place between white sandbanks, and he dried naked in the sun, sprawled out like a lizard on a rock, before he dressed again and headed north.

The third day, he settled into the long swinging hunter's stride, and the pack rode lightly on his back. The going was hard, the undulating folds of the ground forced him to climb and then descend, taxing every muscle, while the thick Thorn scrub made him weave constantly to find a way through, wasting time and almost doubling the distance between point and point. Added to this, the grass was dried and seeding. The seeds were sharp as spears and worked easily through his woollen socks into his flesh. He had to stop every half hour or so to dig them out, but still he made thirty miles that day. In the gathering dusk he crossed another of the countless ridges of higher ground.

The distant blue loom of Chaka's Gate almost blended with darkening clouds of evening.

He camped there that night, sweeping a bed an the bare ground below an acacia thorn tree and eating bully beef and maize porridge by the light of the fire of acacia wood that burned with its characteristic bright white flame and smell of incense.

General Sean Courtney stood at the heavy teak sideboard, with its tiers of engraved glass mirrors and displays of silver plate. in one hand he held the ivory-handled carving fork and in the other the long Sheffield knife.

He used the knife to illustrate the point he was making to the guest-of-honour at his table. I read it through in a single day, had to stay up until after midnight. Believe me, Jan, it's his best work yet. The amount of research, quite extraordinary. I look forward to reading it, said the Prime Minister, nodding acknowledgement to the author of the work under discussion. It's still in manuscript. I am not entirely satisfied yet, there is still some tidying up to do. Sean turned back to the roast and, with a single practised stroke of the blade for each, cut five thin slices of pink beef rimmed with a rind of rich yellow fat.

With the fork he lifted the meat on to the Rosenthal porcelain plate and immediately a Zulu servant in a flowing white kanza. robe and red pillbox fez carried the plate to Sean's place at the head of the long table.

Sean laid the carving-knife aside, wiped his hands on a linen cloth, and then followed the servant to the table and took his seat. We were wondering if you might write a short foreword for the book, Sean said, as he raised a cut crystal glass of glowing red wine to the Prime Minister, and Jan Christiaan Smuts inclined his head on narrow shoulders in an almost birdlike gesture. He was a small man, and the hands laid before him on the table were almost fragile; he had the mien of a philosopher, or a scholar, which was not dispelled by the neat pointed beard.

Yet it was hard to believe that he was small. There was a vital force and awesome presence about him that belled the high, rather thin voice in which he replied, Few things would give me as much pleasure. You do me honour. He seemed to bulk huge in his chair, such was the power of character he commanded. I am the one who is honoured, Colonel Garrick Courtney replied gravely from across the table, bowing slightly - and Sean watched his brother fondly. Poor Garry, he thought, and then felt a guilty stab. Yet it seemed so natural to think of him in those terms. He was frail and old now, bowed and grey and dried out, so that he seemed smaller even than the little man opposite him.

Have you a title yet? asked Jan Smuts. I have thought to call it The Young Eagles. I hope you do not find that too melodramatic for a history of the Royal Flying Corps. By no means, Smuts contradicted him. I think it excellent. Poor Garry, Sean thought again. Since Michael had been shot down, the book filled the terrible gap that his son's death had left; but it had not prevented him from growing old. The book was a memorial to Michael, of course, an act of great love, This book is dedicated to Captain Michael Courtney D. F. C one of the Young Eagles who will fly no more. Sean felt the resuscitation of his own grief, and he made a visible effort to suppress it.

His wife saw the effort, and caught his eye down the length of the table. How well she knew him after all these years, how perfectly she could read his emotions, she thought, as she smiled her sympathy for him, and saw him respond, the wide shoulders squaring up and heavy bearded jaws firming as he smiled back at her.

Deftly she changed the mood. General Smuts has promised to walk around the gardens with me this afternoon, Garry, and advise me on planting out the proteas he brought me from Table Mountain. You are also such a knowledgeable botanist. Will you join us? As I warned you, my dear Ruth, said Jan Smuts in that ready, yet compelling voice, I do not give much hope for their survival. Perhaps the Leucadendrons, ventured Garry, if we find a cool, dryish place? Yes, agreed the General, and immediately they fell into an animated discussion. She had done it so skilfully, that she seemed to have done nothing.

Sean paused in the doorway of his study and ran a long lingering gaze over the room. As always, he felt a glow of pleasure at re-entering this sanctuary.

The glass doors opened now on to the massed banks of flowers, and the smoking plumes of the fountain, yet the thick walls ensured that the room remained cool even in the sleepy hush of midday.

He crossed to the desk of stinkwood, dark and massive and polished, so that it shone even in the cool gloom, and he lowered himself into the swivel chair, feeling the fine leather stretch and give under his weight.

The day's mail was neatly arranged on a silver salver at his right hand, and he sighed when he saw that, despite the careful screening by the senior clerk down at the city Head Office, there were still not much less than a hundred envelopes awaiting him.

He delayed the moment by swinging the chair slowly to look once again about the room. It was hard to believe it had been designed and decorated by a woman, unless it was a woman who loved and understood her man so well that she could anticipate his lightest whim and fancy.

Most of the books were bound in dark green leather, and stamped on their spine in gold leaf with Sean's crest. The exceptions were the three ceiling-high shelves of first editions with African themes. A dealer in London, and another in Amsterdam had carte blanche instructions from Sean to search for these treasures. There were autographed first editions by Stanley, Livingstone, Cornwallis Harris, Burchell, Munro and almost every other African explorer or hunter who had ever published.

The dark panelled woodwork between the book shelves was studded with the paintings of the early African artists; the Baines glowed like rich gems in their flamboyant colours and naive, almost childlike, depiction of animal and countryside. One of these was set in an intricately carved frame of Rhodesian redwood and engraved, To my friend David Livingstone, from Thomas Baines. These links with history and the past always warmed Sean with pleasure, and he fell into a mild reverie.

The deep carpeting deadened her footsteps, but there was the light perfume on the air that warned Sean of her presence, and he swung his chair back to the desk. She stood beside his chair, slim and straight as a girl still. I thought you were walking with Garry and Jan. Ruth smiled then, and seemed as young and beautiful as when he had first met her so many years before. The cool gloom of the room disguised the little lines at the corners of her eyes and the light streaking of silver in the dark hair drawn back from her temples and caught with a ribbon at the back of her neck. They are waiting for me, but I slipped away for a moment to make certain that you had all you wanted. She smiled down at him, and then selected a cigar from the silver humidor and began to prepare it. I will need an hour or two, he said, glancing at the pile of mail. What you really need, Sean, is an assistant. She cut the cigar carefully, and he grunted. You can't trust any of these young people - and she laughed lightly as she placed the cigar between his lips. You sound as old as the prophets. She struck a Vesta and waved it to clear the sulphur before she held it to the tip of the cigar. It's a sign of old age to mistrust the young. With you beside me, I'll be young for ever, he told her, still awkward with a compliment after all these years and she felt her heart swell with her love, knowing the effort it had required.

She stooped quickly and kissed his cheek, and with a speed and strength that still astonished her, one of his thickly muscled arms whipped around her waist and she was lifted into his lap. You know what happens to forward young ladies, don't you? He grinned at her, his eyes crinkling wickedly. Sean, she protested, in mock horror. The servants! Our guests! She struggled out of his embrace with the warmth and wetness of his kiss still on her lips, together with the tickle of his whiskers and the taste of his cigar, and rearranged her skirts and her hair. I'm a fool. She shook her head sorrowfully. I always trust you. And then they smiled at each other, lost for a moment in their love. My guests, she remembered suddenly, a hand flying to her mouth. May I set the tea for four o'clock? We'll have it down at the lake. It's a lovely day. When she had gone, Sean wasted another minute staring after her through the empty doorway into the gardens.

Then he sighed again, contentedly, and drew the silver salver of mail towards him.

He worked quickly, but with care, pencilling his instructions at the foot of each page and initialling them with a regal'S. No! but tell them politely. S. C. Let me have the previous year's figures of purchase and delay the next shipment against bank guarantee. S. C. Why did this come to me? Send it to Barnes. S. C. Agreed. S. C. To Atkinson for comment, please. S. C. The subjects were as diverse as the writers, politicians, financiers, supplicants, old friends, chancers, beggars they were all there.

He flicked over a sealed envelope and stared at it for a moment, not recognizing the name or the occasion. Mark Anders Esq Natal Motors, West Street, Durban. It was written in the hand that was so bold and flourishing that nobody could mistake it for any other but his own, and he remembered sending the letter.

Somebody had written across the envelope, Left, no forwarding address, return to sender. Sean clamped the cigar in the corner of his mouth and slit the flap with a Georgian silver paper-knife. The card was embossed with the regimental crest.

The Colonel-in-Chief and the officers of the Natal Mounted Rifles request the pleasure of MARK ANDERS ESQ.

at a regimental reunion dinner to be held at the Old Fort. . .

Sean had written in the boy's name in the blank space, and at the end of the card, Do try to come. S. C. Now it was returned, and Sean scowled. As always, he was impatient and frustrated by even the slightest check in his plans. Angrily he tossed both card and envelope at the wastepaper bin, and they both missed, fluttering to the carpet.

Surprisingly, even to himself, his mood had altered, and though he worked on, he fumed and gruffed now over his correspondence and his instructions became barbed. The man is a fool or a rogue or both, under no circumstances will I recommend him to a post of such importance, despite the family connection! S. C. After another hour, he had finished and the room was hazed with cigar smoke. He lay back in the chair and stretched voluptuously like an old lion, then glanced at the wall clock. It was five minutes short of four o'clock, and he stood up.

The offending card caught his eye again, and he stooped quickly and picked it up, reading it again as he crossed the room, tapping the stiff cardboard thoughtfully on the open palm of his hand as he limped out heavily into the sunlight and across the wide lawns.

The gazebo was set on a constructed island in the centre of the lake with a narrow causeway joining it to the lawns.

Sean's household and guests were gathered there already, sitting about the table in the shade under the crazily contrived roof of the gazebo with its intricate castiron work painted with carnival colours. Already a host of wild duck had gathered about the tiny island, quacking loudly for pieces of biscuit and cake.

Storm Courtney saw her father coming across the lawns, and she let out one small excited squeak, leapt from the tea table and flew down the causeway to meet him before he reached the lake.

He lifted her easily, as though she were still a baby, and when he kissed her, she inhaled the smell of him. It was one of the lovely smells of her existence, like the smell of rain on hot dry earth, or horses, or the sea. He had a special perfume like old polished leather.

When he lowered her, she took his arm and pressed close to him, matching her light quickstep to his limp. How was your lunch appointment? he asked, looking down on her shining lovely head, and she rolled her eyes and then squinted ferociously. He is a very presentable young man Sean told her sternly. An excellent young man. Oh, Daddy, from you that means he is a weak-minded bore. Young lady, I would like to remind you that he is a Rhodes scholar, and that his father is the Chief justice. Oh, I know all that, but, Daddy, he just hasn't. got zing! Even Sean looked for an instant nonplussed. And what, may I ask, is "zing? Zing is indefinable, she told him seriously, but you've got zing! You're the zingiest man I know. And with that statement Sean found all his fatherly advice and disapproving words gone like migrating swallows, and he grinned down at her, shaking his head. You don't really believe that I swallow all your soft soap, do you? You'll never believe it, Daddy, but Payne Bros, have got in twelve actual Patou Couture models, they're absolutely exclusive, and Patou is all the rage now, Women in savage, barbaric colours, driven mad by those Machiavellian scheming monsters of Paris, growled Sean, and Storm giggled delightedly. You are a scream, Daddy, she told him. Irene's father has told her she may have one of them, and Mr Leuchars is a mere tradesman! Sean blinked to hear the head of one of the largest import houses in the country so described. If Charles Leuchars is a tradesman, what, pray, am I he asked curiously. You are landed gentry, a Minister of the Crown, a General, a hero, and the zingiest man in the world. I see, he could not help but laugh, that I have a position to uphold. Ask Mr Payne to send the account to me. She hugged him again, ecstatically, and then for the first time noticed the card he still held in his hand. Oh, she exclaimed. An invitation! Not for you, my girl, he warned her, but she had taken it from his hand, and her face changed as she read the name. Suddenly she was quiet and subdued. You are sending that to that, sales person.

He frowned again, his own mood altering also. I sent it.

It was returned. He has left, without a forwarding address. General Smuts is waiting to talk to you. With an effort she recaptured the smile and skipped beside him. Let's hurry. it's serious, old Sean. They are organized, and there is no question but that they are seeking a direct confrontation. Jan Christiaan Smuts crumbled a biscuit between his fingers, and tossed it to the ducks. They squabbled noisily, splashing in the clear water and chattering their broad flat bills as they dipped for the scraps.

How many white workers will they lay off ? Sean asked. Two thousand, to begin with, Smuts told him. Probably four thousand, all in all. But the idea is to do it gradually, as the blacks are trained to replace them. Two thousand, Sean mused, and he could not help but imagine the wives, and the children, the old mothers, the dependents. Two thousand wage-earners out of work represented much suffering and misery. You like it as little as I do. The shrewd little man had read his thoughts; not for nothing did his opponents call him slim Jannie, or'clever Jannie. Two thousand unemployed is a serious business, he paused significantly. But we will find other employment. We need men desperately on the railways and on other projects like the Vaal-Harts irrigation scheme. They will not earn there the way they do in the mines, Sean pointed out. No, Jan Smuts drew out the negative thoughtfully, but should we protect the income of two thousand miners, at the cost of closing the mines themselves?

Surely it is not that critical? Sean frowned quickly. The Chairman of the Chamber of Mines assures me that it is, and he has shown me figures to support this view. Sean shook his head, half in incredulity and half in anguish. He had been a mine-owneT himself once, and he knew the problem of costs, and also the way that figures can be made to speak the language their manipulators taught. You know also, old Sean, you especially, how many others depend for life on those gold mines. It was a hard probing statement, with a point like a stiletto. The previous year, for the first time, the sales of timber pit-props from Sean's sawmills to the gold mines of the Transvaal had exceeded two million pounds sterling. The little General knew it as welt as he did. How many men are employed by Natal Sawmills, old Sean, twenty thousand? Twenty-four thousand, Sean answered shortly, one blond eyebrow lifted quizzically, and the Prime Minister smiled softly before going on. There are other considerations, old friend, that you and I have discussed before. On those occasions, it was you who told me that to succeed in the long term, our nation must become a partnership of black man and white, that our wealth must be shared according to a man's ability rather than the colour of his skin, not so? Yes, Sean agreed. It was I who said we must make haste slowly in that direction, and now it is you who hesitate and baulk. I also told you that many small steps were surer than a few wild leaps, made under duress, made only with an assegai at your ribs. I said, Jannie, that we should learn to bend so that we might never have to break. Jannie Smuts turned his attention back to the ducks, and they both watched them distractedly. Come, Jannie, Sean said at last. You mentioned other reasons. Those you have given me so far are good but not deadly urgent and I know you are politician enough to save the best until the end. Jannie laughed delightedly, almost a giggle, and leaned across to pat Sean's arm. We know each other too well. We should, Sean smiled back at him. We fought each other hard enough. They both sobered at mention of those terrible days of the civil war. And we had the same tutor, God bless him. God bless him, echoed Jan Smuts, and they remembered for a moment that colossus Louis Botha, warrior and statesman, architect of Union, and first Prime Minister of the new nation. Come, Sean insisted. What is your other reason? It is quite simple. We are about to decide who governs.

The duly elected representatives of the people, or a small ruthless band of adventurers who call themselves trade union leaders, representatives of organized labour, or quite simply international communism. You put it hard. It is hard, Sean. It is very hard. I have intelligence facts that I shall lay before the first meeting of the Cabinet when Parliament reconvenes. However, I wanted to discuss these with you personally before that meeting. I need your support again, old Sean. I need you with me at that meeting. Tell me, invited Sean. Firstly, we know that they are arming, with modern weapons, and that they are training and organizing the Mineworkers into war commandos. Jan Smuts spoke quickly and urgently for nearly twenty minutes, and when he had finished he looked at Sean. Well, old friend, are you behind me? Bleakly Sean looked out into the future, seeing with pain the land he loved once more torn by the hatred and misery of civil war. Then he sighed. Yes, he nodded heavily, I am with you, and my hand on it. You and your regiment? Jan Smuts took the big bony hand. As a Minister of the Government and as a soldier? Both, Sean agreed. All the way. Marion Littlejohn read Mark's letter, sitting on the closed seat of the office toilet, with the door locked, but her love transcended her surroundings, discounted even the hiss and gurgle of water in the cistern suspended on its rusty downpipe above her head.

She read the letter through twice, with eyes misty and a tender smile tugging uncertainly at her lips, then she kissed his name on the final page and carefully folded it back into its envelope, opened her bodice and nestled the paper between her plump little breasts. It made a considerable lump there when she returned to the main office and the supervisor looked out from his glass cubicle and made a show of consulting his watch. It was an acknowledged, if unwritten, rule in the Registrar's office that calls of nature should be answered expeditiously, and in no circumstances should the answer occupy more than four minutes of a person's working day.

The rest of the day dragged painfully for Marion, and every few minutes, she touched the lump in her bodice and smiled secretively. When at last the hour of release came, she hurried down Main Street and arrived breathless just as Miss Lucy was closing the doors of her shop. Oh, am I in time? Come in, Marion dear, and how is your young man? I had a letter from him today, she :announced proudly, and Miss Lucy nodded her silver curls and beamed through the silver steel frames of her spectacles. Yes, the postman told me. Ladyburg was not yet such a large town that it could not take an intimate interest in the affairs of all its sons and daughters. How is he? Marion prattled on, flushing and shiny-eyed, as she inspected once again the four sets of Irish linen sheets that Miss Lucy was holding for her. They are beautiful, dear, you can really be proud of them. You'll have fine sons between them. Marion blushed again. How much do I still owe you, Miss Lucy? Let's see, dear, you've paid off two pounds and sixpence. That leaves thirty shillings balance. Marion opened her purse and counted its contents carefully, then after a mental struggle reached a decision and laid a shiny golden half sovereign on the counter. That leaves only a pound. She hesitated, flushed again, then blurted out, Do you think I might take one pair with me now? I would like to begin the embroidery work. Of course, child, Miss Lucy agreed immediately. You have paid for three already. I'll open the packet Marion and her sister Lynette sat side by side on the sofa. Each of them had begun at one side of the sheet and their heads were bent together over it, the embroidery needles flicking in the lamplight as busily as their tongues. Mark was most interested in the articles I sent him on Mr Dirk Courtney and he says that he feels Mr Courtney will have a prominent place in the book, Across the room, Lyn's husband worked head down over a sheath of legal documents spread on the table before him.

He had lately affected a briar pipe, and it gurgled softly with each puff. His hair was brilliantined and brushed down to a polish with a ruler-straight parting of white scalp dividing it down the middle. Oh, Peter, Marion exclaimed suddenly, her hands stilling and her face lighting. I have just had a wonderful idea Peter Botes looked up from his papers, a small frown of annoyance crinkling the serious white brow, a man interrupted at his labour by the silly chatter of woman. You do so much work for Mr Courtney down at the bank. You've even been up to the big house, haven't you?

He even greets you on the streets, I've seen that. Peter nodded importantly, puffing at the pipe. Yes, Mr Carter has often remarked that Mr Courtney seems tolike me. I think I will be handling the account more and more in the future. Oh, darling, won't you speak to Mr Courtney and tell him that Mark is doing all this work for his book on Ladyburg, and that he is ever so interested in Mr Courtney and his family , oh, come now, Marion. Peter waved the pipe airily. You can't expect a man like Mr Courtney -'You might find he is flattered to be in Mark's book please dear. I know Mr Courtney will listen to you. You might find he likes the idea, and it will reflect credit on you. Peter paused thoughtfully, weighing carefully the value of impressing the womenfolk with his importance and influence against the dread prospect of speaking on familiar terms with Mr Dirk Courtney. The thought appalled him. Dirk Courtney terrified him and in his presence he affected a fawning, self-effacing manner which was, he realized, part of the reason why Dirk Courtney liked to workwithhim; of course, hewas alsoapainstaking meticulous lawyer, but the main reason was his respectful attitude, Mr Courtney liked respect from his underlings. Please, Peter, Mark is going to so much trouble over this book. We must try and help him. I was just telling Lynette that Mark has taken a month's leave from his job to go on an expedition up to Chaka's Gate, just to gather facts for the book. He's gone to Chaka's Gate? Peter looked mystified, and removed the pipe from his mouth. What on earth for?

There is nothing up there but wilderness. I'm not sure, admitted Marion, and then quickly, but it's important for the book. We must try and help him. What exactly do you want me to ask Mr Courtney? Won't you ask him to meet Mark, and sort of tell him his life story in his own words. Imagine how that would be in the book. Peter swallowed once. Marion, Mr Courtney is a busy man, he can't -'Oh please. Marion jumped up and crossed the room to kneel beside his chair. Pretty please, for my sake! Well, he mumbled, I'll mention it to him. Peter Botes stood like a guardsman beside the head seat of the long ormolu table, bending stiffly from the waist only when it was necessary to turn the page.

and here please, Mr Courtney. The big man in the chair dashed a careless signature across the foot of the document hardly glancing at it and without interrupting his conversation with the other fashionably dressed men further down the table.

There was a strong perfume hanging about Dirk Courtney, he wore it with the panache of a cavalry officer's cloak, and Peter tried in vain to identify it. It must be terribly expensive, but it was the smell of success, and he made a resolution to acquire a bottle of whatever it was.

and here again, please, sir. He noticed now at close range how Dirk Courtney's hair was shining and cut longer at the temple, free of brilliantine and allowed to curl into the sideburns. Peter would wash the brilliantine from his own hair tonight, he decided, and let it grow out a little longer. That is all, Mr Courtney. I'll have copies delivered tomorrow. Dirk Courtney nodded without glancing up at him, and, pushing back his chair, he stood up. Well, gentlemen, he addressed the others at the table, we should not keep the ladies waiting and they all laughed with that lustful, anticipatory laugh, their eyes gleaming like those of caged lions at feeding time.

Peter had heard in detail of those parties that Dirk Courtney held out at Great Longwood, his big house. There was gaming for high stakes, sometimes dog-fighting, two matched animals in a pit, ripping each other to ribbons of dangling skin and flesh, sometimes cock-fighting, always worne n, women brought in closed cars from Durban or Johannesburg. Big city women and Peter felt his body stir at the thought. Introductions to the parties were limited to men of importance or influence or wealth, and during the weekend that the revels continued, the grounds were guarded by Dirk Courtney's bully boys.

Peter dreamed sometimes of being invited to one of those parties, of sitting across the green baize table from Dirk Courtney and casually drawing towards him the multi-coloured pile of ivory chips without removing the expensive cigar from his lips, or of sporting among the rustling silks and smooth white limbs, he had heard of the dancers, beautiful women who disrobed as they danced the Seven Veils, and ended mother-naked while the men roared and groped.

Peter roused himself almost too late. Dirk Courtney was across the room, ushering his guests ahead of him, laughing and charming, flashing white teeth from the swarthy handsome face, a servant standing ready with his overcoat, chauffeurs waiting with the limousines in the street below, about to depart into a realm about which Peter could only speculate in disturbing erotic detail.

He hurried after him, stammering nervously. Mr Courtney, I have a personal request. Come, Charles, Dick Courtney did not look at Peter, but smilingly laid a friendly arm across one of his guest sshoulders. I trust you are in better luck than last time, I hate to take a friend's money. My wife's sister has a fiance, sir, Peter stumbled on desperately. He's writing a book about Ladyburg, and he would like to include an account of your personal experience. Alfred, will you ride with Charles in the first car. Dirk Courtney buttoned his coat, and adjusted his hat, beginning to turn towards the door, just a slight crease to is brow showing his annoyance at Peter's importunity. He is a local man, Peter was almost in tears of embarrassment, but he went on doggedly, with a- good war record, you might remember his grandfather John Anders A peculiar expression came over Dick Courtney's face, and he turned slowly to look directly at Peter for the first time. The expression struck instant terror into him, Peter had never before seen such burning malevolence, such merciless cruelty on a man's face before. It was only for an instant, and then the big man smiled. Such a smile of charm and good fellowship that Peter felt dizzy with relief.

. A book about me? He took Peter's arm in a friendly grip above the elbow. Tell me more about this young man.

I presume he is young? Oh yes, sir, quite young. Gentlemen. Dirk Courtney smiled apologetically at his guests. Can I ask you to go ahead of me. I will follow shortly. Your rooms are prepared, and please do not feel you have to await my arrival before sampling the entertainment. Still holding Peter's arm, he led him courteously back into the huge board room to a seat in one of the leather chairs by the fireplace. Now, young Master Botes, how about a glass of brandy? and Peter watched bemused as he Poured it with his own hands, big strong hands, covered with fine black hair across the back and with a diamond the size of a ripe pea on the little finger.

With each step northwards, it seemed to Mark that the great bastions of Chaka's Gate changed their aspect gradually, from silhouettes smoked blue with distance until the details of the living rock came into focus.

The twin bluff s faced each other in almost mirror image, each towering a thousand sheer feet but deeply divided by the gorge through which the Bubezi River spilled out on to the coastal lowlands of Zululand and then meandered down a hundred and twenty miles into a maze of swamp and lagoon and mangrove forest, before finally escaping through the narrow mouth of the tidal estuary. The mouth sucked and breathed with the tide, and the ebb blew a stain of discoloured water far out into the electric blue of the Mozambique Current, a brown smear that contrasted sharply with the vivid white rind of sandy beaches that stretched for a thousand miles north and south.

if a man followed the course of the Bubezi up through the portals of Chaka's Gate, as Mark and the old man had done so often before, he came out into a wide basin of land below the main escarpment. Here, among the heavy forests, the Bubezi divided into its two tributaries, the White Bubezi that dropped in a series of cataracts and falls down the escarpment of the continental shield, and the Red Bubezi, which swung away northwards following the line of the escarpment up through more heavy forest and open grassy glades until at last it became the border with the Portuguese colony of Mozambique.

In the flood seasons of high summer, this tributary carried down with it the eroding laterite from deposits deep in Mozambique; turning to deep bloody red, it pulsed like a living artery, and well earned its name, the Red Bubezi.

Bubezi was the Zulu name for the lion, and indeed Mark had hunted and killed his first lion on its banks, half a mile below the confluence of the two tributaries.

It was almost noon, when at last Mark reached the river at the point where it emerged from the gorge between the gates. He reached for his watch to check the time and then arrested the gesture. Here time was not measured by metal hands, but by the majestic swing of the sun and the eternal round of the seasons.

He dropped his pack and propped the rifle against a tree trunk; the gesture seemed symbolic. With the weight from his shoulders, the dark weight on his heart seemed to slip away also.

He looked up at the rock cliffs that filled half the sky above him, and was lost in awe as he had been when he looked up at the arched stone lattice-work of the Henry V11 chapel in Westminster Abbey.

The columns of rock, sculptured down the ages by wind and sun and water, had that same ethereal grace, yet a freedom of line that was not dictated by the strict rules of man's vision of beauty. The cliffs were painted with lichen growth, brilliant smears of red and yellow and silvery grey.

In cracks and irregularities of rock grew stunted trees; hundreds of feet above their peers, they were deformed and crippled by the contingencies of nature as though by the careful skills of a host of Japanese Banzai gardeners, and they twisted out at impossible angles from the face of the cliff; holding out their branches as if in supplication to the sun.

The rock below some narrow ledges was darkened by the stain of the urine and faeces of the hydrax, the fluffy rock rabbits, which swarmed from every crack and hole in the cliff. Sitting in sleepy ranks, on the very edge of the drop, sunning their fat little bodies and blinking down at the tiny figure of the man in the depth of the gorge, Following the floating wide-pinioned flight of a vulture, Mark watched it swing in steeply, planing and volleying its great brown wings to meet the eddy of the wind across the cliff face, reaching forward with its talons for a purchase as it pulled up and dropped on to its nesting ledge a hundred and fifty feet above the river, folding its wings neatly and then crouching in that grotesque vulturine attitude with the bald scaly head thrust forward, as it waddled sideways along the rim of its huge shaggy nest of sticks and small branches built into the rockface.

From this angle Mark could not see the chicks in the nest, but clearly he recognized the heaving motions of the bird as it began to regurgitate its cropful of rotten carrion for its young. Gradually a sense of peace settled like a mantle over Mark, and he sat down, his back against the rough hole of a fever tree, and slowly, without sense of urgency, he selected and lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke with an unhurried breath and then letting it trickle out through his nostrils, watching the pale blue tendrils rise and swirl on the lazy air.

He thought perhaps that the nearest human being was forty miles distant, the nearest white man almost a hundred, and the thought was strangely comforting.

He wondered at the way in which all man's petty striving seemed insignificant in this place, in this vast primeval world, and suddenly he thought that if all men, even those who had known nothing but the crowded ratlike scrambling of the cities, could be set down in this place, even for a brief space of time, then they might return to their lives cleansed and refreshed, their subsequent strivings might become less vicious, more attuned to the eternal groundswell of nature.

Suddenly he grunted, his reverie shattered by the burning needle sting in the soft of his neck below the ear, and he slapped at it with open palm. The small flying insect was stunned, its carapace too tough to be crushed, even by a blow that heavy. It fell spinning and buzzing into Mark's lap, and he picked it up between thumb and forefinger, examining it curiously, for it was many years since last he had seen one.

The tsetse fly is slightly larger than the house fly, but it has a sleeker more streamlined body, with transparent wings veined in brown. The saviour of Africa, the old man had called it once, and Mark repeated the words aloud as he crushed it between his fingers. It burst in a bright liquid red explosion of the blood it had sucked from his neck. He knew the bite would swell and turn angry red, all the subsequent bites would react in the same way, until swiftly his body rebuilt its immunity. Within a week he would not even notice 4 their stings, and the bite would cause less discomfort than that of a mosquito. The saviour of Africa, the old man had told him. This little bastard was all that saved the whole country being overrun and over-grazed with domestic animals. , Cattle first, and after cattle the plough, and after the plough the towns and the railway tracks. The old man had chewed slowly, like a ruminating bull in the light of the camp fire, his face shaded by the spread of the terai hat. One day they will find some way to kill him, or something to cure the sleeping sickness, the nagana, that he carries. Then the Africa we know will have gone, lad. He spat a long honey-brown spirt of juice into the fire. What will Africa be without its lonely places and its game? A man might as well go back and live in London town. Looking with new eyes and new understanding at the majestic indigenous forest around him, Mark saw in his imagination what it might have been like without its tiny brown-winged guardians; the forests chopped out for firewood, and cleared for ox-drawn cultivation, the open land grazed short and the hooves of the cattle opening the ground cover to begin the running ulcers of erosion, the rivers browned and sullied by the bleeding earth and by man's filth.

The game hunted out, for its meat and because it was in direct competition to the domestic animals for grazing.

For the Zulu, cattle was wealth, had been for a thousand years, and wherever cattle could thrive, they came with their herds.

Yet it was ironic that this wilderness had had another guardian, apart from the winged legions, and that guardian had been a Zulu. Chaka, the great Zulu king, had come here long ago. Nobody knew when, for the Zulu does not measure time as a white man does, nor record his history in the written word.

The old man had told Mark the story, speaking in Zulu which was fitting for such a story, and his old Zulu gunbearer had listened and nodded approvingly, or grunted a correction of fact; occasionally he spoke at length embroidering a point in the legend.

in those days there had lived here in the basin a small tribe of hunters and gatherers of wild honey, so they called themselves Inyosi, the bees. They were a poor people but proud, and they resisted the mighty king and his insatiable appetite for conquest and power.

Before his swarming impis, they had withdrawn into the natural fortress of the northern bluff. Remembering the story, Mark raised his eyes and looked across the river at the sheer cliffs.

Twelve hundred men and women and children, they had climbed the only narrow and dangerous path to the summit, the women carrying food upon their heads, a long dark moving file against the rock wall, they had gone up into their sanctuary. And from the summit the Chief and his warriors had shouted their defiance at the king.

Chaka had gone out alone and stood below the cliff, a tall and lithe figure, terrible in the strength of his youth and majesty of his presence. Come down, oh chief, and receive the king's blessing and be a chief still, under the sunshine of my love. The Chief had smiled and called in jest to his warriors around him, I heard a baboon bark" Their laughter rang against the rock cliffs. The king turned and strode back to where his impis squatted in long patient ranks, ten thousand strong.

in the night Chaka picked fifty men, calling each softly by name. Those of great heart and fearsome reputation.

And he had told them simply, When the moon is down, my children, we will climb the cliff above the river, and he laughed that low deep laugh, the sound of which so many had heard as their last sound on this earth. For did not that wise chief call us baboons -and the baboon climbs where no man dares. The old gunbearer had pointed out to Mark in daylight the exact route that Chaka had taken to the top. It needed binoculars to trace the hairline cracks and the finger-wide ledges.

Mark shuddered now, retracing the route with his eyes, and he remembered that Chaka had led that climb without ropes, in the pitch darkness after the moon, and carrying his shield and his broad-bladed stabbing spear strapped on his back.

Sixteen of his warriors had slipped and fallen during the climb, but such was the mettle of the men that Chaka. had chosen that not one of them had uttered a sound during that terrible dark plunge, not a whisper of sound to alert the Inyosi sentries until the final soft thud of flesh on rock down below in the gorge.

In the dawn, while his impis diverted the Inyosi by skirmishing on the pathway, Chaka had slipped over the rim of the cliff, regrouped his remaining warriors and thirty-five against twelve hundred, carried the summit with a single shattering charge, each stab of the great blades crashing through a body from chest to spine, and the withdrawal sucking the life blood out in a gushing burst of scarlet. Ngidhla! I have eaten, roared the king and his men as they worked, and most of the Inyosi threw themselves from the cliff top into the river below, rather than face Chaka's wrath. Those who hesitated to jump were assisted in their decision.

Chaka lifted the chief of the Inyosi with both hands high above his head, and held him easily as he struggled. If I am a baboon, then you are a sparrow" He roared with savage laughter. Fly, little sparrow, fly!

and he hurled the man far out into the void.

For once they spared not even the women nor the children, for among the sixteen Zulus who had fallen from the cliff during the climb were those whom Chaka loved.

The old gunbearer scratched in the debris of the scree face below the cliff and showed Mark in the palms of his hand chips of old bone that might have been human.

After his victory on the summit, Chaka. had ordered a great hunt in the basin of the two rivers.

Ten thousand warriors to drive the game, and the hunt had lasted four days. They said that the king alone with his own hands had slain two hundred buffalo. The sport had been such that afterwards he had made the decree:This is a royal hunting ground, no man will hunt here again, no mari but the king. From the cliffs over which Chaka threw the Inyosi, east to the mountain crests, south and north for as far as a man may run in a day, and a night, and another day, this land is for the king's hunt alone. Let all men hear these words, tremble and obey. He had left a hundred men under one of his older indunas to police the ground, under the title of keeper of the king's hunt, and Chaka returned again and again, perhaps drawn to this well of peace to refresh and rest his tortured soul with its burning crippling craving for power. He had hunted here, even in that period of dark madness while he mourned his mother Nandi, the Sweet One. He had hunted here nearly every year until at last he had died beneath the assassin's blades wielded by his own brothers.

Probably nearly a century later, the legislative council of Natal, sitting in solemn conclave, hundreds of miles distant from the cliffs of Chaka's Gate, had echoed his decree and proclaimed the area reserved against hunting or despoliation, but they had not policed the Royal Hunt as well as had the old Zulu King. The poachers had been busy over the years, with bow and arrow, with snare and pit, with spear and dog pack, and with high-powered rifled weapons.

Perhaps soon, as the old man had predicted, they would find a cure for the nagana or a means of eradicating tsetse fly. A man-made law would be repealed, and the land given over to the lowing, slow-moving herds of cattle and to the silver-bright blade of the plough. Mark felt a physical sickness of the stomach at the prospect, and he rose and set off along the scree slope to let the sickness pass.

The old man had always been a creature of habit, even to the clothes he wore and his daily rituals of living. He always camped at the same spot when he travelled a familiar road or returned to a place he had visited before.

Mark went directly to the old camp site above the river junction in the elbow of the main river course, where flood waters had cut a steep high bank and the elevated ground above it formed a plateau shaded by a grove of sycamore fig trees, with stems thick as Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square and the cool green shade below them murmurous with the sound of insects and purple doves.

The hearth stones for the camp fire were still there, scattered a little and blackened with soot. Mark built them back into the correct shape.

There was plenty of firewood, dead and fallen trees and branches, driftwood brought down by the floods and cast up on the high watermark on the bank.

Mark drew clear water from the river, put the billy on to boil for tea, and then, from the side pocket of the pack, brought out the sheath of paper, held together by a clasp and already much ngere an a itt e tattered, that Marion had sent him. Transcript of the evidence from the coroners inquiry into the death Of JOHN ANDERS ESQUIRE of the farm ANDERSin the district Of LADYBURG. LAND Mari on Littlejohn had typed it out laboriously during her lunch hours, and her lack of skill with the machine was evident in the many erasures and over-types.

Mark had read it so many times before that he could almost repeat the entire text from memory, even the irrelevant remarks from the bench.

Mr Greyling (Snr): We was camped there by the Bubezi River, judge Magistrate: I am not a judge, Sir. The correct form of ddress to this Court is Your Worship.

But now he began again at the beginning, searching carefully for some small clue to what he was seeking that he might have overlooked in his previous readings.

But always he came back to the same exchange.

Magistrate: Will the witness please refer to the deceased as'the deceased'and not'the old man.

Mr Greyling JSnr): Sorry, your worship. The deceased left camp early on the Monday morning, he says like he's going to look for kudu along the ridge. It would be a little before lunchtime we hears a shot and my boy, Cornelius, he says -'Sounds like the old man got one'- beg your pardon, I mean the deceased.

Magistrate: You were still in camp at that time?

Mr Greyling (Sar): Yes, Your Worship, my boy and me, we was cutting and hanging biltong, we didn't go out that day.

Mark could imagine the butchering of the game carcasses, the raw red meat hacked into long strips, soaked in buckets of brine, and then festooned on the branches of the trees, a scene of carnage he had witnessed so often before. When the meat had dried to black sticks, like chewing tobacco, it was packed into jute sacks for later carriage out on the pack donkeys. The wet meat dried to a quarter of its weight, and the resulting biltong was highly prized through Africa and commanded such a high price as to make the poaching a lucrative trade.

Magistrate: When did you become concerned by the deceased's absence?

Mr Greyling: Well, he didn't come into camp that night.

But we weren't worried like. Thought he might have been spooring up a hit one, and slept up a tree.

Further on in the evidence was the statement: Mr Greyling (SnrJ: Well, in the end we didn't find him until the fourth day. It was the assvogels, beg pardon, the vultures, that showed us where to look.

He had tried to climb the ridge at a bad place, we found where he had slipped and the gun was still under him. it must have been that shot we heard, we buried him right there, you see he wasn't fit to carry, what with the birds and the sun. We put up a nice cross, carved it myself, and I said the Christian words.

Mark refolded the transcript, and slipped it back into the pack. The tea was brewing and he sweetened it with thick condensed milk and brown sugar.

Blowing on the mug to cool it, and sipping at the sweet liquid, he pondered what he had gleaned. A rocky ridge, a bad place, within sound of gunshot of where he now sat, a cairn of stones, probably, and a wooden cross, perhaps long ago consumed by termites.

He had a month, but he wondered if that was time enough. On such slim directions it was a search that could take years, if luck ran against him.

Even if he was successful, he wasn't yet sure what he would do next. The main concern that drove him on was merely to find where the old man lay. After that he would know what to do.

He worked the ridges and the rocky ground on the south bank first. For ten days he climbed and descended the rugged rim of the basin, hard going against the grain of the natural geological formations, and at the end of that time he was lean as a greyhound, arms and face burned to the colour of a new loaf by the sun and with a dark crisp pelt of beard covering his jaw. The legs of his pants were tattered by the coarse, razor-edged grass and by the clumps of aptly named wait-a-bit thorns, that grabbed at him to delay his progress.

There was a rich treasure of bird life in the basin, even in the heated hush of midday, the air rang with their cries the fluting mournful whistle of a wood dove or the high piping chant of a white-headed fish eagle circling high overhead. In the early morning and again in the cool of the evening, the bush came alive with the jewelled flash of feathers, the scarlet breast of the impossibly beautiful Narina Trogon, named long ago for a Hottentot beauty by one of the old travellers, the metallic flash of a suribird as it hovered over the pearly fragrant flowers of a buffalo creeper, the little speckled woodpeckers tapping furiously with heads capped in cardinal red, and, in the reeds by the river, the ebony sheen of the long floating tail feathers of the Sakabula bird. All this helped to lighten the long weary hours of Mark's search, and a hundred times a day he paused, enchanted, to watch for a few precious moments.

However, of the larger animals he saw very little, although their sign was there. The big shiny pellets of kudu dung scattered along their secret pathways through the forest, the dried faeces of a leopard furry with baboon hair from its kill, the huge midden of a white rhinoceros, a mountain of scattered dung accumulated over the years as this strange animal returned to the same place daily to defecate.

Pausing beside the rhinoceros midden, Mark grinned as he remembered one of the old man's stories, the one that explained why the rhinoceros was so fearful of the porcupine and why he always scattered his own dung.

Once, long ago, he had borrowed from the porcupine a quill to sew up the tear in his skin caused by a red-tipped mimosa Thorn. When the job was done the rhinoceros had held the quill between his teeth as he admired his handiwork, but by accident he swallowed the quill.

Now, of course, he runs away to avoid having to face the porcupine's recriminations, and he sifts each load that he drops, to try and recover the missing quill.

The old man had a hundred yarns like that one to delight a small boy, and Mark felt close to him again; his determination to find his grave strengthened, as he shifted the rifle to his other shoulder and turned once more to the rocky ridge of the high ground.

On the tenth day, he was resting in the deep shade at the edge of a clearing of golden grass, when he had his first good sighting of larger game.

A small herd of graceful pale brown impala, led by three impressively homed rams, emerged from the far side of the clearing. They fed cautiously, every few seconds they froze into perfect stillness with only the big scooplike ears moving as they listened for danger, and their wet black noses snuffing silently.

Mark was out of meat, he had eaten the last of the bully the previous day, and he had brought the rifle for just this moment, to relieve a diet of mealie porridge, yet he found himself strangely reluctant to use it now, a reluctance he had never known as a boy. For the first time, he looked with eyes that saw not just meat but rare and unusual beauty.

The three rams moved slowly across the clearing, passing a hundred paces from where Mark sat silently, and then drifted away, pale shadows, into the thorn scrub. The does followed them, trotting to keep up, one with a lamb stumbling on long gawky legs at her flank, and at the rear of the troop was a half-grown doe.

one of her back legs was crippled, it was withered and stunted, swinging free of the ground and the animal was having difficulty keeping up with the herd. it had lost condition badly, bone of rib and spine showed clearly through a hide that lacked the gloss and shine of healthMark swung up the P. I 4 and the flat crack of the shot bounced from the cliffs across the river, and startled a flock of white-faced duck into whistling flight off the river.

Mark stooped over the doe as she lay in the grass and touched the long curled lashes that fringed the dark swimming eye.

There was no reflex blink, and the check for life was routine only. He knew the shot had taken her in the centre of the heart, an instantaneous kill. Always make the check. The old man's teachings again. Percy Young would tell you that himself if he could, but he was sitting there on a dead lion he had just shot, having a quiet pipe, when it came to life again. That's why he isn't around to tell you himself. Mark rolled the carcass and squatted to examine the back limb. The wire noose had cut through the skin, through sinew and flesh, and had come up hard against the bone as the animal struggled to break out of the snare.

Below the wire the leg had gangrened and the smell was nauseous, summoning a black moving wad of flies.

Mark made the shallow gutting stroke, deflecting the blade upwards to avoid puncturing the gut. The belly opened like a purse. He freed the anus and vagina with the deft surgeon strokes, and lifted out bladder and bowel and gut in one scoop. He dissected the purple liver out of the mass of viscera, cut away the gall bladder and tossed it aside. Grilled over the coals, the liver would make a feast for his dinner. He cut away the rotten, stinking hind leg, and then he carefully wiped out the stomach cavity with a handful of dry grass. He cut flaps in the skin of the neck.

Using the flaps of skin as handles, he hefted the whole carcass and lugged it down to the camp by the river. Cut and salted and dried, he now had meat for the rest of his stay. He hung the strips of meat high in the sycamore fig to save them from the scavengers who would surely visit the camp during his daily absences, and only when he had finished the task, and he was crouching over his fire with the steaming mug in his hand, did he think again of the snaring wire that had crippled the impala doe.

He felt an indirect flash of anger at the person who had set that noose, and then almost immediately he wondered why he should feel particular anger at the trapper, when a dozen times he had come across the old abandoned camps of white hunters. Always there were the bones, and the piles of rotting worm-riddled horns.

The trapper was clearly a black man, and his need was greater than that of the others who came in to butcher and dry and sell.

Thinking about it, Mark felt a despondency slowly overwhelm him. Even in the few short years since he had first visited this wilderness, the game had been reduced to but a small fraction of its original numbers. Soon it would all be gone, as the old man had said, The great emptiness is coming. Mark sat at his fireside, and he felt deeply saddened at the inevitable. No creature would ever be allowed to compete with man, and he remembered the old man again. Some say the lion, others the leopard. But believe me, my boy, when a man looks in the mirror, he sees the most dangerous and merciless killer in all of nature. The pit had been built to resemble a sunken water reservoir. It was fifty feet across and ten feet deep, perfectly circular, plastered and floored in smooth cement.

Although there were water pipes installed and its position on the first slope of the escarpment above Ladyburg was perfectly chosen to provide the correct fall to the big gabled house below, yet it had never held water.

The circular walls were white-washed to gleaming purity, and the floor was lightly spread with clean-washed river sand and neatly raked.

Pine trees had been planted to screen the reservoir. A twelve-stranded barbedwire fence enclosed the wholeplantation, and there were two guards at the gate this evening, tough, silent men who checked the guests as the cars brought them up from the big house.

There were forty-eight men and women in the excited, laughing stream that flowed through the gate, and followed the path up among the pines to where the pit was already starkly lit by the brilliant glare of the Petromax lanterns suspended on poles above it.

Dirk Courtney led the revellers. He wore black gaberdine riding breeches and polished knee-length boots to protect his legs from slashing fangs, and his white linen shirt was open almost to the navel, exposing the hard bulging muscle of his chest and the coarse black body hair which curled from the vee of the neck. The sleeves of the shirt were cut full to the wrist, and he rolled a long thin cheroot from one corner of his mouth to the other without touching it, for his arms were around the waists of the women who flanked him, young women with bold eyes and laughing painted mouths.

The dogs heard them coming and bayed at them, leaping against the padded bars of their cages, hysterical with excitement as they tried to reach each other through the gaps, snarling and snapping and slavering while the handlers attempted to shout them into silence.

The spectators lined the circular parapet of the pit, hanging over the edge. In the merciless light of the Petromax, the faces were laid bare, every emotion, every stark detail of the blood lust and sadistic anticipation was revealed the hectic colouring of the women's cheeks, the feverish glitter of the men's eyes, the shrillness of their laughter and the widely exaggerated gesturing.

During the early bouts, the small dark-haired girl beside Dirk screamed and wriggled, holding her clenched fists to her open mouth, moaning and gasping with fascinated, delighted horror. Once she turned and buried her face against Dirk's chest, pressing herbody, tremblingand shuddering, against him. Dirk laughed and held her around the waist. At the kill she screamed with the rest of them and her back arched; then Dirk half lifted her, as she sobbed breathlessly, and supported her to the refreshment table where there was champagne in silver buckets and sandwiches of brown bread and smoked salmon.

Charles came to where Dirk sat with the girl on his lap, feeding her champagne from a crystal glass, surrounded by a dozen of his sycophants, jovial and expansive, enjoying the rising sense of tension for the final bout of the evening when he would match his own dog, Chaka, against Charles'animal. I feel bad, Dirk, Charles told him. They have just told me that your dog is giving almost ten poundsThat mongrel of yours will need every pound, Charles, don't feel bad now, keep it for later, when you'll really need it. Dirk was suddenly bored with the girl, and he pushed her casually from his lap, so that she almost lost her balance and fell. Piqued, she settled her skirts, pouted at Dirk and when she realized he had already forgotten her existence, she flounced away. Here. Dirk indicated the chair beside him. Do have a seat, Charles old boy, and let's discuss your problem. The crowd drew closer around them, listening eagerly to their banter, and braying slavishly at each sally. My problem is that I should like a small wager on the bout, but it does seem most unsporting to bet against a light dog, like yours. Charles grinned as he mopped his streaming red face with a silk handkerchief, sweating heavily with champagne and excitement and the closeness of the humid summer evening. We all know that you make your living betting on certainties. Charles was a stock-broker from the Witwatersrand. However, the expression of such noble sentiment does you great credit. Dirk tapped his shoulder with the hilt of his dog-whip, a familiar condescending gesture that made Charles'grin tighten wolfishly.

dy ou will accommodate me then? he asked, nodding and winking at his own henchmen in the press of listening men. At even money? Of course, as much as you want. My dog Kaiser, against your Chaka, to the death. Even money, a wager of - Charles paused and looked to the ladies, smoothing the crisp little mustache with its lacing of iron grey, drawing out the moment. One thousand pounds in gold. The crowd gasped and exclaimed, and some of the listeners applauded, a smattering of handclaps.

No! No! Dirk Courtney held up both hands in protest. Not a thousand! and the listeners groaned, his own claque shocked and crestfallen at this loss of prestige.

Oh dear, Charles murmured, too strong for your blood?

Name the wager then, old boy. Let's have some real interest, say ten thousand in gold. Dirk tapped Charles shoulder again, and the man's grin froze over. The colour faded from the scarlet face, leaving it blotched purple and puffy white. The small acquisitive eyes darted quickly around the circle of laughing applauding faces, as if seeking an escape, and then slowly, reluctantly returned to Dirk's face. He tried to say something, but his voice squeaked and broke like a pubescent boy. Ah, and what exactly does that mean? Dirk inquired with elaborate politeness. Charles would not trust his voice again, but he nodded jerkily and tried to resurrect his cheeky grin, but it was crooked and tense and hung awkwardly on his face.

Dirk carried the dog under his right arm, enjoying the hard rubbery feel of the animal's compact body, carrying its fifty-pound weight easily, as he dropped lightly down the steps to the floor of the pit.

Every muscle in the dog's body was strained to a fine tension, and Dirk could feel the jump and flutter of nerves and sinew, every limb was stiff and trembling, and the deep crackling snarls kept erupting up the thick throat, shaking the whole body.

He set the dog down on the raked sand, with the leash twisted securely around his left wrist, and as the dog's paws touched ground he lunged forward, coming -up short against the leash so hard that Dirk was almost pulled off his feet. Hey, you bastard, he shouted, and pulled the animal back.

Across the pit, Charles and his handler were bringing down Kaiser, and it needed both their strength for he was a big dog, black as hell, and touched with tan at the eyes and chest, a legacy of the Dobermann Pinscher in his breeding.

Chaka saw him, his lunges and struggles became wilder and fiercer, and the snarls sounded like thick canvas ripping in a hurricane.

The timekeeper called from the parapet, lifting his voice above the excited buzz of the watchers. Very well, gentlemen, hate them! The two owners set them at each other with cries ofSick him up, Kaiser! and Get him boy. Kill! Kill! but held them double-handed on the leash, driving them into a madness of frustration and anger.

on the short leash, the Dobermann weaved and ducked, leggy for a fighting dog, with big shoulders dropping back to lower quarters. He had good teeth, however, and a threatening gape, enough to lock the teeth into the killer grip at the throat. He was fast too, swinging and weaving against the leash, barking and thrusting with the long almost snake-like neck.

Chaka did not bark, but the thick barrel of his chest vibrated to the deep rolling snarls and he stood foursquare on his short legs. He was heavy and low in silhouette, Staffordshire bull terrier blood carefully crossed with mastiff, and his coat was coarse and brindled gold on black.

The head was short and thick, like that of a viper, and when he snarled, his upper lip lifted back in deep creases revealing the long ivory yellow fangs and the dark pink gums. He watched the other dog with yellow leopard eyes.

Bate them! Bate them! yelled the crowd above, and the owners worked the leashes like jockeys pushing for the post, pointing the animals at each other and driving them on.

Dirk slipped a small steel implement from his pocket, and dropped on his knee beside his dog. Instantly the animal swung on him with gaping jaws but the heavy muzzle caged his fangs. His saliva was beginning to froth, and it splattered the spotless linen of Dirk's shirt.

Dirk reached behind the dog and stabbed the short spur of steel into his flesh, a shallow goading wound at the root of his testicles, just enough to break the skin and draw a drop of blood, the animal snarled on a newer higher note, stashing sideways, and Dirk goaded him again, driving him further and further into the black fighting rage. Now at last he barked, a series of almost maniacal surges of sound from his straining throat. Ready to slip, shouted Dirk, struggling to manage his animal.

Ready hereF Charles panted across the pit, his feet sliding in the sand as Kaiser reared chest high. Slip them! yelled the timekeeper, and at the same instant, both men slipped muzzle and leash and studded collars, leaving both animals free, and unprotected.

Charles turned and scrambled hurriedly out of the pit, but Dirk waited extra seconds, not wanting to miss the moment when they came together.

The Doberman showed his speed across the pit, meeting Chaka in his own ground, bounding in on those long legs, leaning forward so the sloping back was flattened in his run.

He went for the head, slashing open the skin below the eye, in a clean sabre-stroke of white teeth, but not holding.

Chaka. did not go for a hold either, but turned at the the instant of impact; using his shoulder and the massive strength of his squat frame, he hit the bigger dog off-balance, breaking his charge, so that he spun away and would have gone over but the white-washed wall caught him, and saved him, for Chaka. had turned neatly to catch him as he fell.

Now, however, Kaiser was up and with a quick shift of weight he was in balance again, and he cut for the face mask, missing as the small brindled dog ducked, catching only the short cropped ear and splitting it, so that blood flew in black droplets to splatter the sand.

Again Chaka bit with the shoulder, blood streaming from cheek to ear, as he put his weight into the charge.

The bigger dog reared out, declining to meet shoulder with shoulder and as he came over he went for a hold, but the crowd screamed as they saw his mistake. Drop it! Drop it! howled Charles, his face purple as an over-ripe plum, for his dog had got into that thick loose skin padded with fat between the shoulder, and he growled as he worried it. Work him, Chaka. Work him! bowled Dirk, balancing easily on the narrow parapet above them. Now's your chance, boy. Locked into his grip the Dobermann was holding too high, his neck and head up and off -balance. As he worried the hold, it gave and pulled like rubber, not affording purchase or leverage to throw his weight across and bring down the brindled terrier.

The smaller dog seemed not even to feel the grip, although a small artery had ruptured, sending a fine spurt of blood dancing into the lantern light like a pink flamingo's feather. Drop it, screamed Charles again in agony, wringing his hands, sweat dripping from his chin. Belly him! Belly him! exhorted Dirk, and his dog twisted under the big dog's chest, forcing him higher so that his front paws were off the ground, and he hit him in the belly, gaping wide and then plunging his yellow eye teeth full into the bare, shiny dark skin below the ribs.

The Dobermann screamed and dropped his shoulder hold, twisting out violently so that Chaka's fangs tore out of his belly hold, ripping out a flap of stomach-lining through which wet purple entrails bulged immediately but he beat the terrier's try for the throat, jaw clashing into open snarling jaw, and teeth cracked together, before they spun off and circled.

Both heads were masks of blood now, eyelids blinking rapidly, the eyeballs smeared with flying blood from wound and bite, the fur of the faces plastered with black blood, blood filling the mouths and turning the exposed teeth pink, trickling from the corners of the jaw, staining the froth of saliva bright rose red.

Twice more they came together, each charge initiated by the smaller squatter Chaka, but each time the Dobermann avoided the solid contact of chest to chest for which Chaka's instincts dictated that he must keep trying.

Instead, Chaka received two more slashes deeply through F the brindled skin, into the flesh, down to white bone, so that when his next charge carried him to the wall he left a broad thick smear of red across the white-wash before turning to attack again.

The Dobermann was humped up from the belly wound, arching his back to the agony of it, but fast and lithe still, not trying for another hold since that fool's hold at the shoulder, but cutting hard and deep and keeping off his opponent like a skilled boxer.

Chaka was losing too much blood now, and as he circled again he lolled his tongue for the first time, frothy saliva discoloured with blood dripping from it, and Dirk swore aloud at this sign of weakness and imminent collapse.

Big Kaiser attacked again now, cutting in sharply as though for the throat and then turning in a low dark streak for another weakening flank cut. As he hit, Chaka turned into him steeply, and snapped at his lean belly again, reaching low and with fortune taking a hold on the bulging entrails that showed in the open flap of the wound.

Instantly the terrier went stiff on his forelegs, and hunched his neck, bringing his chin down on to his chest to hold the grip. The Dobermann's charge carried him on and his entrails were pulled out of him, a long thick glistening ribbon in the lantern light, and the women screamed, high with anguished delight, while the men roared.

Chaka crossed the bigger dog's rump now, still holding his guts and tangled his back legs in the slippery rubbery pink tubes that hung out of the stomach cavity, so that he stumbled off-balance, and the terrier lunged forward, hitting him solidly with the chest, knocking him into the air so he dropped onto his back, screaming and kicking.

Chaka's follow-up was so instinctive, so natural to his breed, that it was swift as the flash of a striking adder and he had his killing hold, locked deep and hard into the throat, bearing down with the solid bone of his jaws, snuffling and working his head on the short hunched neck until his long eye teeth met in the Dobermann's windpipe.

Dirk Courtney jumped down lightly from the parapet, his laugh was pitched unnaturally high and his face was darkened to a congested sullen red as he whipped off his do& and turned the carcass of the Dobermann with the toe of his boot. A fair kill? he laughed up at Charles, and the man glowered down at him a moment before shrugging acknowledgement of defeat and turning away.

Dicky Lancome sat with the voice-piece of the telephone set on the desk in front of him and the ear-piece held loosely to his cheek, trapped there by a hunched shoulder while he trimmed his finger-nails with a gold-plated penknife.

what can I say, old girl, except that I am desolate, but then Aunty Hortense was rich as that fellow that turned everything to gold, that's right Midas, or was it Croesus, I just cannot give her funeral a miss, you do understand?

You don't? and he sighed dramatically, as he returned the penknife to his waistcoat pocket and began to thumb through the address book for the other girl's number. No, old girl, how can you say that? Are you certain? Must have been my sister It was almost noon on Saturday morning and Dicky had the premises of Natal Motors to himself. He was making his domestic arrangements for the weekend on the firm's telephone account before locking up, and finding some wisdom in the admonition against changing mounts in midstream.

At that moment he was distracted by the crack of footsteps on the marbled floor of the showroom, and he swivelled his chair f or a glimpse through the door of his cubicle.

There was no mistaking the tall figure that strode through the street doors, the wide shoulders and thrusting bearded jaw, the dark glint of eyes like those of an old eagle. Oh, Lord preserve us, Dicky breathed, his guilty conscience delivering a heavy jolt into his belly. General Courtney, and he let the ear-piece of the telephone drop and dangle on its cord, while he slid forward stealthily from his chair and crawled into shelter below his desk, knees drawn up to his chin.

He could imagine exactly why General Courtney was calling. He had come to discuss the insult to his daughter in person, and Dicky Lancome had heard enough about the General's temper to want to avoid joining this discussion.

Now he listened like a night animal for the stalk of the leopard, cocking his head for the sound of further footsteps and bating his breath to a shallow cautious trickle, in order not to disclose his hiding-place.

The ear-piece of the telephone still dangled on its cord, and now it emitted the high-pitched distorted voice of an irate female. Without leaving the cover of the desk, he reached out to try and muffle the ear-piece, but it dangled tantalizing inches beyond his finger-tips. Dicky Lancome, I know you are there, squawked the tinny voice, and Dick wriggled forward another inch.

A hand, in size not unlike that of a bull gorilla, entered Dicky's field of vision, closed on the ear-piece, and placed it in Dicky's outstretched fingers.

Please allow me, said a deep gravelly voice from somewhere above the desk. Thank you, sir, whispered Dicky, trying not to draw too much attention to himself even at this stage. For want of anything better to do, he listened respectfully to the earpiece. It is no good pretending not to be listening, said the female voice. I know all about you and that blonde hussy, I expect you need this, said the deep voice from on high, and the hand passed the mouthpiece of the telephone down into his hiding-place. Thank you, sir, Dicky whispered again, uncertain as to which emotion dominated him at that moment, humiliation or trepidation.

He cleared his throat and spoke into the telephone.

'Darling, I have to go now, he croaked. I have an extremely important client in the shop. He hoped that the touch of flattery might sweeten the coming encounter. He broke the connection and crawled out unwillingly on his hands and knees. General Courtney! He dusted himself down and smoothed his hair, assembled his dignity and salesman's smile. We are honoured. I hope I did not interrupt you in anything important? Only the sapphire twinkle in the heavily browed eyes betrayed the General's amusement. By no means, Dicky assured him, I was , he looked around wildly for inspiration, I was merely meditating. Ah! Sean Courtney nodded. That explains it. How can I be of service to you, General? Dicky went on hurriedly. I wanted to find out about a young salesman of yours Mark Anders.

Dicky's heart was struck by black frost again. Don't worry, General, I fired him myself, Dicky blurted out. But I tore a terrible strip off him first. You can be sure of that. He saw the General's dark beetling brows come together and the forehead crease like an eroded desert landscape, and Dicky nearly panicked. He won't get another job in this town, count on it, General. I have put the word out, the black mark, He's properly queered around here, he is. What on earth are you talking about, man? the General rumbled, like an uneasy volcano. One word from you, sir, was enough. Dicky found that the palms of his hands were cold and slippery with sweat. From me? The rumble rose to a roar and Dicky felt like a peasant, looking fearfully up the slopes of Vesuvius.

What did I have to do with it? Your daughter, choked Dicky, after what he did to your daughter. My daughter? The huge voice subsided to something that was close to a whisper, but was too cold and intense.

It was a fiercer sound than the roar that preceded it. He molested my daughter? Oh God no, General, Dicky moaned weakly. No employee of ours would raise a finger to Miss Storm. What happened? Tell me exactly. He was insolent to your daughter, I thought you knew? Insolent? What did he say? He told her she did not conduct herself like a lady. She must have told you? Dicky gulped, and the General's fearsome expression melted. He looked stunned and bemused. Good God. He said that to Storm? What else? He told her to use the word "please" when giving orders. Dicky couldn't meet the man's eyes and he lowered his head. I'm sorry, sir. There was a strangled growling sound from the General, and Dicky stepped back quickly, ready to defend himself.

It took him seconds to realize that the General was struggling with his mirth, gales of laughter that shook his chest and when at last he let it corner he threw back his head and opened his mouth wide.

Weak with relief, Dicky essayed a restrained and cautious chuckle, in sympathy with the General. It's not funny, man, roared Sean Courtney, and instantly Dicky scowled. You are much to blame, how can you condemn a man on the whim of a child? It took Dicky a moment to realize that the child in question was the gorgeous, head-strong, darling of Natal society. I understood that the order came from you, I stammered Dicky. From me! The laughter stopped abruptly, and the General mopped at his eyes. You thought I would smash a man because he was man enough to stand up to my daughter's tantrums? You thought that of me? Yes, said Dicky miserably, and then quickly, No, and then hopelessly, I didn't know, sir. Sean Courtney took an envelope from his inside pocket, and looked at it thoughtfully for a moment. Anders believed, as you did, that I was responsible for his dismissal? he asked soberly now. Yes, sir. He did. Can you contact him? Will you see him again? Dicky hesitated, and then steeled himself and took a breath. I promised him his job back at the end of the month, after we had gone through the motions of dismissal, General.

Like you, I didn't think the crime deserved the punishment. And Sean Courtney looked at him with a new light in his eye, and a grin lifting the corner of his mouth and one

eyebrow. When you see Mark Anders again, tell him of our conversation, and give him this envelope. Dicky took the envelope, and as the General turned away, he heard him mutter darkly, And now for Mademoiselle Storm. Dicky Lancome felt a comradely pang of sympathy for that young lady.

It was almost noon on a Saturday morning and Ronald Pye sat in the back seat of the limousine, stiffly as an undertaker in his hearse, and his expression was as lugubrious. He wore a three-piece suit of dark grey cloth and a high starched collar with stiff wings; gold-rimmed spectacles glittered on his thin beaky nose.

The chauffeur swung off the main Ladyburg road into the long straight avenue that led up to the glistening white buildings of Great Longwood on the lower slopes of the escarpment. The avenue was lined with Cycads that were at least two hundred years old, thick-stemmed palm-like plants each with a golden fruit the size of hogshead, like a monstrous pine cone, nestled in the centre of the graceful fronds. Dirk Courtney's gardeners had scoured the countryside for a hundred miles in each direction to find them, and had lifted them, matched them for size and replanted them here.

The driveway had been smoothed and watered to keep down the dust, and parked in front of the house were twenty or thirty expensive motor cars. Wait for me, said Ronald Pye. I won't be long, and as he alighted, he glanced up at the elegant facade. It was an exact copy of the historic home of Simon van der Stel, the first Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, which still stood at Constantia. Dir Courtney had his architects measure and copy faithfully every room, every arch and gable. The cost must have been forbidding.

In the hall, Ronny Pye paused and looked about him impatiently, for there was nobody to welcome him, although he had been specifically invited, perhaps summoned was a better word, for noon.

The house was alive; there were women's voices and the tinkling bells of their laughter from deep in the interior, while closer at hand the deeper growl of men punctuated by bursts of harsh laughter and voices raised to that reckless, raucous pitch induced by heavy drinking.

The house smelled of perfume and cigar smoke and stale alcohol, and Ronny Pye saw empty crystal glasses standing carelessly on the priceless rosewood hall table, leaving rings of damp on the polished surface, and an abandoned pair of pearly rose women's silk carni-knickers were draped suggestively over the door handle that led to the drawingroom.

While he still hesitated, the door across the hall opened and a young woman entered. She had the dazed, detached air of a sleep-walker, gliding silently into the room on neatly slippered feet. Ronny Pye saw that she was a young girl, not much more than a child, although her cosmetics had run and smeared. Dark rings of mascara gave her a haunted consumptive look, and her lipstick was spread so that her mouth looked like a bruised and overblown rose.

Except for the slippers on her small feet, she was stark naked and her breasts were immature and tender, with pale unformed nipples, and snarled dishevelled tresses of pale blonde hair hung on to her shoulders.

Still with slow, drugged movements, she took the knickers from the door handle, and stepped into them. As she pulled them to her waist she saw Ronny Pye standing by the main door, and she grinned at him, a lo sided depraved whore's smile on the smeared and inflamed lips. Another one? All right, come along then, love. She took a step in his direction, tottered suddenly and turned away to grab at the table for support, the painted doll's face suddenly white and translucent as alabaster, then slowly she doubled over and vomited on the thick silken expanse of woven Quin carpet.

With an exclamation of disgust, Ronny Pye turned away, and crossed to the doors that led into the drawing-room.

Nobody looked up as he entered, although there were twenty people or more in the room. They were gathered intently about a solid round gaming-table of ebony with ivory and mosaic inlay. The tabletop was scattered with poker chips, brightly coloured ivory counters, and four men sat at the table, each holding a fan of cards to his chest, watching the figure at the head of the table. The tension crackled in the room like static electricity.

He was not surprised to see that one of the men at the table was his brother-in-law. He knew that Dennis Petersen regularly attended the soirees at Great Longwood, and he thought briefly of his pliant dutiful sister and wondered if she knew. The man has drawn us all in, Ronny thought bitterly, glancing at Dennis and noticing his bleary, inflamed eyes, the nervous drawn white face. At least I have withstood this, this final filthy degradation. Whatever other evils he has led me into, I have kept this little shred of my self respect. Well, gentlemen, I have bad news to impart, I'm afraid, Dirk Courtney smiled urbanely. The ladies are with me, and he spread his cards face up on the green baize. The four queens in their fanciful costume stared up with wooden expressions, and the other players peered at them for a moment, and then one at a time, with expressions of disgust, discarded their own hands.

Dennis Petersen was the last to concede defeat, and his face was stricken, his hand shook. And then with a sound that was almost a sob, he let his cards flutter from his fingers, pushed back his chair and blundered towards the door.

Halfway there, he stopped suddenly as he recognized the gaunt forbidding figure of his brother-in-law. He stared at him for a moment, the lips still trembling, blinking his bloodshot eyes; then he shook his head as though doubting his senses. You here? Oh yes, Dirk called from the table where he was gathering and stacking the ivory chips. Did I forget to mention that I had invited Ronald? Forgive me, he told the other players, I will be back in a short while. He stood from the table, brushed away the clinging hands of one of the women, and came to take the elbows of Ronald Pye and his brother-in-law in a friendly grip, and to guide them out of the drawing-room, down the long flagged passage to his study.

Even at midday, the room was cool and dark, thick stone walls and heavy velvet drapes, dark wooden panelling and deep Persian and Oriental carpeting, sombre smoky-looking oil paintings on the panelling, one of which Ronald Pye knew was a Reynolds, and another a Turner, heavy chunky furniture, with coverings of chocolate-coloured leather, it was a room which always depressed Ronald Pye. He always thought of it as the centre of the web in which he and his family had slowly entangled themselves.

Dennis Petersen slumped into one of the leather chairs, and after a moment's hesitation, Ronald Pye took the one facing him and sat there stiffly, disapprovingly.

Dirk Courtney splashed single malt whisky into the glasses that were set out on a silver tray on the corner of the big mahogany desk, and made a silent offer to Ronald Pye, who shook his head primly.

instead, he carried a glass of the glowing amber liquor to Dennis who accepted it with trembling hands, gulped a mouthful and then blurted thickly, Why did you do it, Dirk? You promised that nobody would know I was here, and you invited-'he glanced across at the grim countenance of his brother-in-law.

Dirk chuckled. I always keep my promises, just as long as it pays me to do so. He lifted his own glass. But between the three of us there should be no secrets. Let's drink to that. When Dirk lowered his glass, Ronald Pye asked, Why did you invite me here today? We have a number of problems to discuss, the first of which is dear Dennis here. As a poker player, he makes a fine blacksmith. How much? Ronald Pye asked quietly. Tell him, Dennis, Dirk invited him, and they waited while he studied the remaining liquor in his glass.

Well? said Ronald Pye again. Don't be shy, Dennis, the old cocky diamond, Dirk encouraged him. Dennis mumbled a figure without looking up.

Ronald Pye shifted his weight in the leather chair, and his mouth quivered. It's a gambling debt. We repudiate itShall I ask one or two of the young ladies who are my guests here to go down and give your sister a first-hand account of some of the other little tricks Dennis has been up to? Did you know that Dennis likes to have them kneel over-'Dirk, you wouldn't, bleated Dennis. You're not going to do that- and he sank his face into his hands. You will have a cheque tomorrow, said Ronald Pye softly. Thank you, Ronny, it really is a pleasure to do business with you. Is that all? Oh no, Dirk gritmed at him. By no means. He carried the crystal decanter across to Dennis and recharged his glass. We have another little money matter to discuss.

He filled his own glass with whisky and held it to the light.

Bank business, he said, but Ronny Pye cut in swiftly. I think you should know that I am about to retire from the Bank. I have received an offer for my remaining shares, I am negotiating for a vineyard down in the Cape. I will be leaving Ladyburg and taking my family with me. No, Dirk shook his head, smiling lightly. You and I are together for ever. We have a bond that is unbreakable.

I want you with me always, somebody I can trust, perhaps the only person in the world I can trust. We share so many secrets, old friend. Including murder. They both froze at the word, and slowly colour drained from Ronald Pye's face. John Anders and his boy, Dirk reminded them, and they both broke in together. The boy got away-'He's still alive. Not for much longer, Dirk assured them. My man is on the way to him now. This time tomorrow there will be no further trouble from him. You can't do it, Dennis Petersen shook his head vehemently. Why, in God's name? Let it be. Ronald Pye was begging now, suddenly all the stiffness going out of his bearing. Let the boy alone, we have enough-No. He has not left us alone, Dirk explained reasonably. He has been actively gathering information on all of us and all our activities. By a stroke of fortune I have learned where he is and he is alone, in a lonely place They were silent now, and while he waited for them to think it out, Dirk flicked the stub of his cheroot on to the fireplace and lit another. What more do you want from us, now? Ronald asked at last. Ah, so at last we can discuss the matter in a businesslike fashion? Dirk propped himself on the edge of the desk and picked up an antique duelling pistol that he used as a paper weight. He spun in on his finger as he talked. I am short of liquid funds for the expansion programme that I began five years ago. There has been a decline in sugar prices, a reduction in the Bank's investment flow, but you know all this, of course. Ronald Pye nodded cautiously. We have already agreed to adapt the land purchases to our cash flow, for the next few years at least. We will be patient. I am not a patient man, Ronny. We are short two hundred thousand a year over the next three years. We have agreed to cut down, Ronald Pye went on, but Dirk was not listening. He twirled the pistol, aimed at the eye of the portrait above the fireplace and snapped the hammer on the empty cap. Two hundred thousand a year for three years is six hundred thousands of sterling, Dirk mused aloud, and lowered the pistol. Which is by chance exactly the amount paid by me to you for your shares, some ten years ago. No, said Ronald Pye, with an edge of panic in his voice. That's mine, that's my personal capital, it has nothing to do with the Bank. You've done very nicely with it too, Dirk congratulated him. Those Crown Deep shares did you proud, an excellent buy. By my latest calculations, your personal net worth is not much less than eight hundred thousand. In trust for my family, my daughter and my grandchildren, said Ronny, his voice edged with desperation.

I need that money now, Dirk spoke reasonably. What about your own personal resources? Ronald Pye demanded desperately. Stretched to their limit, my dear Ronald, all of it invested in land and sugar. You could borrow on-job, but why should I borrow from strangers, when a dear and trusted friend will make the loan to the Ladyburg Farmers Bank. What finer security than that offered by that venerable institution? A loan, dear Ronald, merely a loan. No. Ronald Pye came to his feet. That money is not mine. it belongs to my family. He turned to his brotherin-law. Come. I will take you home. Smiling that charming, sparkling smile, Dirk aimed the duelling pistol between Dennis Petersen's eyes. Stay where you are, Dennis, he said, and snapped the hammer again. It's all right, said Ronald Pye to Dennis. We can break away now. If you stick with me. Ronald was panting a little, and sweating like a runner. If he accuses us of murder, he accuses himself also. We can prove that we were not the planners, not the ones who gave the orders. I think he is bluffing. It's a chance we will have to take to be rid of him. He turned to face Dirk now, and there was the steel of defiance in his eyes. To be rid of this monster.

Let him do his worst, and he damns himself as much as he does us. How well conceived a notion! Dirk laughed delightedly. And I do really believe that you are foolish enough to mean what you say. Come, Dennis. Let him do his worst. Without another glance at either of them, Ronald Pye stalked to the door. Which of your grandchildren do you cherish most, Ronny, Natalie or Victoria? Dirk asked, still laughing.

Or, I imagine, it's the little boy, what's his name? Damn!

I should know the brat's name, I am his godfather. He chuckled again, then snapped his fingers as he remembered. Damn me, of course, Ronald, like his granddaddy.

Little Ronald. Ronald Pye had turned at the door and was staring across the room at him. Dirk grinned back at him, as though at some delicious joke. Little Ronald, he grinned, and aimed the pistol at an imaginary figure in the centre of the open carpet, a diminutive figure it seemed, no higher than a man's knee. Good bye, little Ronald, he murmured, and clicked the hammer. Goodbye, little Natalie. He swung the pistol to another invisible figure and snapped the action. Goodbye, little Victoria. The pistol clicked again, the metallic sound shockingly loud in the silent room. You wouldn't- Dennis voice was strangled, you ouldn't-I need the money very badly, Dirk told him. But you wouldn't do that-'You keep telling me what I wouldn't do. Since when have you been such a ffne judge of my behaviour? Not the children? pleaded Dennis.

I've done it before, Dirk pointed out. Yes, but not children, not little children. Ronald Pye stood at the door still. He seemed to have aged ten years in the last few seconds, his shoulders had sagged and his face was grey and deeply lined, the flesh seemed to have fallen in around his eyes, sagging into loose folds. Before you leave, Ronny, let me tell you a story you have been desperate to hear for twelve years. I know you have spent much time and money trying to find out already. Return to your chair, please. Listen to my story and then you are free to go, if you still want to do so. Ronald Pye's hand fell away from the door handle, and he shambled back and dropped into the leather chair as though his limbs did not belong to him.

Dirk filled a spare glass with whisky and placed it on the arm of his chair, within easy reach, and Ronny did not protest.

It's the story of how a nineteen-year-old boy made himself a million pounds in cash, and used it to buy a bank.

When you have heard it, I want you to ask yourself if there is anything that boy would not do. Dirk stood up and began to pace up and down the thick carpeting between their chairs like a caged feline animal, lithe and graceful, but sinister also, and cruel; and he began to speak in that soft purring voice that wove a hypnotic web about them, and their heads swung to follow his regular measured pacing. Shall we call the boy Dirk, it's a good name, a tough name for a lad who was thrown out by a tyrannical father and set out to get the things he wanted his own way, a boy who learned quickly and was frightened of nothing, a boy who by his nineteenth birthday was first mate of a beatenup old coal-burning tramp steamer running dubious cargos to the bad spots of the Orient. A boy who could run a ship single-handed and whip work out of a crew of niggers with a rope end, while the skipper wallowed in gin in his cabin. He paused beside the desk, refilled his glass with whisky and asked his audience, Does the story grip you so far? You are drunk, said Ronald Pye. I am never drunk, Dirk contradicted him, and resumed his pacing.

We will call the steamer L'Oiseau de Nuit, "The Bird of Night", though, in all truth, it's an unlikely name for a stinking old cow of a boat. Her skipper was Le Doux, the sweet one, again a mild misnomer, and Dirk chuckled reminiscently, and sipped at his glass. This merry crew discharged a midnight cargo in the Yellow River late in the summer of ag and next day put into the port of Mang Su for a more legitimate return cargo of tea and silks. From the roadstead, they could see that the outskirts of the town was in flames, and they could hear the crackle of small arms fire. The basin was empty of shipping, just a few sampans and one or two small junks, and the fearcrazed population of the city was crowding the wharf, screaming for a berth to safety. Hundreds of them plunged into the basin and swam out to where "The Bird of Night" was hovering. The mate let two of them come aboard and then turned the hoses on the others, driving them off, while he learned what was happening. Dirk paused, remembering how the pressure of the solid jets of water had driven the swimmers under the filthy yellow surface of the basin, and how the others had wailed and tried to swim back. He grinned and roused himself. The Communistwar-lord, HanWang, wasattacking the port and had promised the rich merchants an amusing death in the bamboo cages. Now the mate knew just how rich the merchants of Liang Su really were. After consulting the captain, the mate brought "The Bird of Night" alongside the wharf, clearing it of the peasant scum with steam hoses and a few pistol shots, and he led an armed party of lascars into the city to the guild house where the Chinese tea merchants were gathered, paralysed with terror and already resigned to their fate. Another whisky, Ronny? Ronald Pye shook his head, his eyes had not left Dirk's face since the tale began, and now Dirk smiled at him. The mate set the passage money so high that only the very richest could afford to pay it, two thousand sovereign a head, but still ninety-six of them came aboard "The Bird of Night", each staggering under the load of his possessions.

Even the children carried their own weight, boxes and bales and sacks, and while we are on the subject of children, there were forty-eight of them in the party, all boys of course, for no sane Chinaman would waste two thousand pounds on a girl child. The little boys ranged from babes to striplings, some of them of an age with your little Ronald. Dirk paused to let it register, then, It was a close run, for as the last of them came aboard, the mate cast off from the wharf and Han Wang's bandits burst out of the city and hacked and bayoneted their way on to the wharf. Their rifle-fire spattered the upper works, and swept "The Bird of Night's" decks, sending her newly boarded passengers screaming down into the empty holds, but she made a clear run of it out of the river and by dark was pushing out into a quiet tropical sea. Le Doux, the captain, could not believe his fortune almost two hundred thousand sovereigns in gold, in four tea chests in his cabin, and he promised young Dirk a thousand for himself. But Dirk knew the value of his captain's promises. Nevertheless, he suggested a further avenue of profit. Old Le Doux had been a hard man before the drink got to him. He had run slaves out of Africa, opium out of India, but he was soft now, and he was horrified by what his young mate suggested. He blasphemed by praying to God and he wept. "Les pauvres petits, " he slobbered, and poured gin down his throat until after midnight he collapsed into that stupor that Dirk knew would last for forty eight hours. The mate went up on to the bridge and sounded the ship's siren, shouting to his passengers that there was a government gunboat overtaking them, and driving them from the open deck back into the holds. They went like sheep, clutching their possessions. The mate and his Iascars battened down the hatches, closing them. up tight and solid. Can you guess the rest of it? he asked. A guinea for the correct solution.

Ronald Pye licked his dry grey lips, and shook his head. No? Dirk teased him. The easiest guinea you ever missed, why, it was simple. The mate opened the seacocks and flooded the holds. He watched them curiously, anticipating their reactions. Neither of his listeners could speak, and as Dirk went on, there was a small change in his telling of it. He no longer spoke in the third person.

Now it was we, and Of course, we couldn't flood to the top, even in that low sea she might have foundered, and rolled on her back.

There must have been a small airspace under the hatch, and they held the children up there. I could hear them through the four-inch timbers of the hatch. For almost half an hour they kept up their howling and screaming until the air went bad and the roll and slosh of the watergot them, and when at last it was all over and we opened the hatches, we found that they had torn the woodwork of the underside of the covers with their fingers, ripped and splintered it like a cage full of monkeys.

Dirk turned to the empty chair nearest the fireplace and sank into it. He swilled the whisky in his right hand and then swallowed it. He threw the crystal glass into the empty fireplace and it exploded into diamond fragments.

They were all silent, staring at the glass splinters. Why? whispered Dennis huskily at last. In God's name, why did you kill them? Dirk did not look at him, he was lost in the past, reliving a high tide in his life. Then he roused himself and went on, We pumped out the hold, and I had the lascars carry all the sodden sacks and bales and boxes up into the saloon.

God, Ronny, you should have been there. It was a sight to drive a man like you mad with greed. I piled it all up on the saloon table. It was a treasure that had taken fifty cunning men a lifetime to accumulate. There was gold in coin and bar, diamonds like the end of your thumb, rubies to choke a camel, emeralds, well, the merchants of Liang Su were some of the richest in China. Together with the passage money, the loot came to just over a million in sterling-'And the captain, Le Doux, his share? Ronald Pye asked, even in his horror his accountant's mind was working. The captain? Dirk shook his head and smiled that light, boyish smile. Poor Le Doux, he must have fallen overboard that night.

Drunk as he was, he would not have been able to swim, and the sharks were bad out there in the China Sea. God knows that with the water full of dead Chinese, there was enough to attract them. No, there was only one share, not counting a token to the lascars. Two hundred pounds for each of them was a fortune beyond their wildest dreams of avarice. That left a million pounds for a night's work. A million before the age of twenty. That's the most terrible story I've ever heard. Ronald Pye's voice shook like the hand that raised the glass to his lips. Remember it when next you have naughty thoughts of leaving Ladyburg, Dirk counselled him, and leaned across to pat his shoulder. We are comrades, unto death, he said.

For Mark the allotted days were running out swiftly.

Soon he must leave the valley and return to the world of men, and a quiet desperation came over him. He had searched the south bank and the steep ground above it, now he crossed to the north bank and started there all over again.

Here, for the first time, he had warning that he was not the only human being in the valley. The first day he came across a line of snares laid along the game trials that led down to drinking-places on the river. The wire used was the same as that he had found on the gangrened leg of the crippled impala doe, eighteen-gauge galvanized mild steel wire, probably cut from some unsuspecting farmer's fence.

Mark found sixteen snares that day and tore each out, bundled the wire and hurled it into one of the deeper pools of the river.

TWO days later, he came across a log deadfall, so cunningly devised and so skilfully set that it had crushed a full-grown otter. Mark used a branch to lever the log clear and drew out the carcass. He stroked the soft, lustrous chocolate fur and felt again the stirring of his anger. Quite unreasonably, he was developing a strange proprietary feeling for the animals of this valley, and a growing hatred for anyone who hunted or molested them.

Now his attention was divided almost equally between his search for his grandfather's grave and for further signs of the illegal trapper. Yet it was almost another week before he had direct sign of the mysterious hunter.

He was crossing the river each morning in the dawn to work the north bank. It might have been easier to abandon the camp under the fig trees, but sentiment kept him there.

It was the old man's camp, their old camp together, and in any case he enjoyed the daily crossing and the journey through the swampland formed in the crotch of the two rivers. Although it was only the very edge of this watery world that he moved through, yet he recognized it as the very heart of this wilderness, an endless well of precious water and even more precious life, the last secure refuge of so many creatures of the valley.

He found daily evidence of the big game on the muddy paths through the towering stands of reed and papyrus, which closed overhead to form a cool gloomy tunnel of living green stems. There were Cape buffalo, and twice he heard them crashing away through the papyrus without a glimpse of them. There were hippopotamus and crocodile but they spent the days deep in the dark reed-fringed lakelets and mysterious lily-covered pools. At night he often woke and huddled in his blanket to listen to their harsh grunting bellows resounding through the swampland.

One noonday, sitting on a low promontory of rocky wooded ground that thrust into the swamp, he watched a white rhinoceros bring its calf out of the sheltering reeds to feed on the edge of the bush.

She was a huge old female, her pale grey hide scarred and scratched, folded and wrinkled over the massive prehistoric body that weighed at least four tons, and she fussed over the calf anxiously, guiding it with her long slightly curved nose horn; the calf was hornless and fat as a piglet.

Watching the pair, Mark realized suddenly how deeply this place had touched his life, and the possessive love he was developing for it was reaffirmed.

Here he lived as though he was the first man in all the earth, and it touched some deep atavistic need in his spirit.

It was on that same day that he came upon recent signs of the other human presence beyond Chaka's Gate.

He was following one of the faint game paths that skirted another ridge, one of those that joined the main run of ground into the slopes of the escarpment, when he came upon the spoor.

It was barefooted, the flat-arched and broad soles of feet that had never been constricted by leather footwear. Mark went down on his knees to examine it carefully. Too big for a woman, he knew at once.

The stride told him the man was tall. The gait was slightly toe-in and the weight was carried on the ball of the foot, the way an athlete walks. There was no scuff or drag of toe on the forward swing, a high lift and a controlled transfer of weight, strong& quick, alert man, moving fast and silently.

The spoor was so fresh that at the damp patch where the man had paused to urinate, the butterflies still fluttered in a brilliant cloud for the moisture and salt. Mark was very close behind him, and he felt the hunter's thrill as, without hesitation, he picked up and started to run the spoor.

He was closing quickly. The man he was following was unaware. He had paused to cut a green twig from a wild loquat branch, probably to use as a tooth pick, and the shavings were still wet and bleeding.

Then there was the place where the man had paused, turned back on his own spoor a single pace, paused again, almost certainly to listen, then turned abruptly off the path; within ten more paces the spoor ended, as though the man had launched into flight, or been lifted into the sky by a fiery chariot. His disappearance was almost magical, and though Mark worked for another hour, casting and circling, he found no further sign.

He sat down and lit a cigarette, and found he was sweaty and disgruntled. Although he had used all his bushcraft to come up with his quarry, he had been made to look like an infant. The man had become aware of Mark following, probably from a thousand yards off, and he had jinked and covered his spoor, throwing the pursuit with such casual ease that it was a positive insult.

As he sat, Mark felt his ill-humour harden and become positive hard anger. I'll get you yet, he promised the mysterious stranger aloud, and it did not even occur to him what he might do, if he ever did come up with his quarry. All that he knew was that he had been challenged, and he had taken up the challenge.

The man had the cunning of, Mark sought for a simile, a properly disparaging simile, and then grinned as he found a suitable one. The man had the cunning of a jackal, but he was Zulu so Mark used the Zulu word Pungushe.

I will be watching for you, Pungushe. I'll catch you yet, little jackal. His mood improved with the insult, and as he crushed out his cigarette, he found himself anticipating the contest of bush skills between himself and Pungushe.

Now whenever Mark moved part of his attention was alert for the familiar footprints in the soft earthy places or for the glimpse of movement and the figure of a man among trees. Three times more he cut the spoor, but each time it was cold and wind-eroded, not worth following.

The days passed in majestic circle of sky and mountain, of sun and river and swamp, so that time seemed without end until he counted on his fingers and realized that his month was almost run. Then he felt the dread of leaving, a sinking of the spirits such as a child feels when moment of return to school comes at the end of an idyllic summer holiday.

That night he returned to the camp below the fig tree with the last of the light, and set his rifle against the stem of the tree. He stood a moment, stretching aching muscles and savouring the coming pleasure of hot coffee and a cheerful fire, when suddenly he stooped and then dropped to one knee to examine the earth, soft and fluffy with leaf mould.

Even in the bad light, there was no mistaking the print of broad bare feet. Quickly, Mark looked up and searched the darkening bush about him, feeling an uneasy chill at the knowledge that he might be observed at this very moment. Satisfied at last that he was alone he backtracked the spoor, and found that the mysterious stranger had searched his camp, had found the pack in the -tree and examined its contents, then returned them carefully, each item to its exact place and replaced the pack in the tree.

Had Mark not seen the spoor in the earth he would never have suspected that his pack had been touched.

It left him disquieted and ill at ease to know that the man he had tracked and followed had been tracking and probably watching him just as carefully, and with considerably greater success rewarding his efforts.

Mark slept badly that night, troubled by weird dreams in which he followed a dark figure that tap-tapped with a staff on the rocky dangerous path ahead of him, drawing slowly away from Mark without looking back, while Mark tried desperately to call to him to wait, but no sound came from his straining throat.

In the morning he slept late, and rose dull and heavyheaded to look up into a sky filled with slowly moving cumbersome ranges of dark bruised cumulus cloud that rolled in on the south-east wind from off the ocean. He knew soon it would rain, and that he should be going. His time had run, but in the end he promised himself a few last days, for the old man's sake and his own.

It rained that morning before noon, a mere taste of what was to come, but still a quick cold grey drenching downpour that caught Mark without shelter. Even though the sun poured through a gap in the clouds immediately afterwards, Mark found that the cold of the rain seemed to have penetrated his bones, and he shivered like a man with palsy in his sodden clothing.

only when the shivering persisted long after his clothes had dried, did Mark realize that it was exactly twenty-two days since his first night under the fig tree, and his first exposure to the river mosquitoes.

Another violent shivering fit caught him, and he realized that his life probably depended now on the bottle of quinine tablets in the pack high in the branches of the fig tree, and on whether he could reach it before the malaria struck with all its malignance.

it was four miles back to camp and he took a short route through thick Thorn and over a rocky ridge, to intersect the path again on the far side.

By the time he cut the path, he was feeling dizzy and light-headed, and he had to rest a moment. The cigarette he lit tasted bitter and stale, and as he ground the stub under his heel he saw the other spoor in the path. In this place it had been protected from the short downpour of rain by the dense spreading branches of a mahoba hobo tree. it overlaid his own outward spoor, moving in the same direction as he had, but the thing that shocked him was that the feet that had followed his had been booted, and shod with hob-nails. They were the narrower elongated feet of a white man. There seemed in that moment of sickness on the threshold of malaria to be something monstrously sinister in those booted tracks.

Another quick fit of shivering caught Mark, and then passed, leaving him momentarily clear-headed and with the illusion of strength, but when he stood to go on, his legs were still leaden. He had gone another five hundred yards back towards the river when a day-flighting owl called on the ridge behind him, at the point where he had just crossed.

Mark stopped abruptly, and tilted his head to listen. A tsetse fly bite at the back of his neck began to itch furiously, but he stood completely still as he listened.

The call of the owl was answered by a mate, the fluting hoot-hoot, skilfully imitated, but without the natural resonance. The second call had come from out on Mark's right, and a new chill that was not malaria rippled up his spine as he remembered the hooting owls on the escarpment above Ladyburg on that night so many months ago.

He began to hurry now, dragging his heavy almost disembodied legs along the winding path. He found that he was panting before he had gone another hundred yards, and that waves of physical nausea flowed upwards from the pit of his belly, gagging in his throat as the fever tightened its grip on him.

k His vision began to break up, starring and cracking like shattered mosaic work, irregular patches of darkness edged in bright iridescent colours, with occasional flashes of true vision, as though he looked out through gaps in the mosaic.

He struggled on desperately, expecting at any moment now to feel the spongy swamp grass under his feet and to enter the dark protective tunnels of papyrus which he knew so well, and which would screen him and direct him back to the old camp.

An owl hooted again, much closer this time and from a completely unexpected direction. Confused, and now frightened, Mark sank down at the base of a knob-thorn tree to rest and gather his reserves. His heart was pounding against his ribs, and the nausea was so powerful as almost to force him to retch, but he rode it for a moment longer and miraculously his vision opened as though a dark curtain had been drawn aside, and he realized immediately that in his fever blindness he had lost the path. He had no idea where he was now, or the direction in which he was facing.

Desperately he tried to relate the angle of the sun, or slope of the ground, or find some recognizable landmark, but the branches of the knob-thorn spread overhead and all around him the bush closed in, limiting his vision to about fifty paces.

He dragged himself to his feet and turned up the rocky slope, hoping to reach high ground, and behind him an owl hooted, a mournful, funereal sound.

He was blind and shaking again when he fell, and he knew he had torn his shin for he could feel the slow warm trickle of blood down his ankle, but it seemed unrelated to his present circumstances, and when he lifted his hand to his face, it was shaking so violently that he could not wipe the icy sweat from his eyes.

Out on his left, the owl called again, and his teeth chattered in his head so that the sound was magnified painfully in his ears.

Mark rolled over and peered blindly in the direction of the hooting owl, trying to force back the darkness, blinking the sweat that stung like salt in his eyes.

it was like looking down a long dark tunnel to light at the end, or through the wrong end of a telescope.

Something moved on a field of golden brown grass, and he tried to force his eyes to serve him, but his vision wavered and burned.

There was movement, that was all he was sure of, then silent meteors of light, yellow and red and green, exploded across his mind, and cleared, and suddenly his vision was stark and brilliant, he could see with unnatural almost terrifying clarity.

A man was crossing his flank, a big man, with a head round and heavy as a cannon ball. He had a wrestler's shoulders, and a thick bovine neck. Mark could not see his face. it was turned away from him, yet there was something dreadfully familiar about him.

He wore a bandolier over his shoulder, over the khaki shirt with military-style button-down pockets, and his breeches were tucked into scuffed brown riding-boots. He carried a rifle at high port across his chest, and he moved with a hunter's cautious, exaggerated tread. Mark's vision began to spin and disintegrate again.

He blundered to his feet, dragging himself up the stem of the knob-Thorn and one of the sharp curved thorns stabbed deeply into the ball of his thumb; the pain was irrelevant and he began to run.

Behind him there was a shout, the view-halloo of the hunter, and Mark's instinct of survival was just strong enough to direct his feet. He swung away abruptly, changing direction, and he heard the bullet a split second before the sound of the shot. It cracked in the air beside his head like a gigantic bull-whip, and after it, the secondary brittle snapping bark of the shot. Mauser, he thought, and was transported instantly to another time in another land.

Some time-keeping instinct in his head began counting the split instants of combat, tolling them off even in his blindness and sickness, so that without looking back he knew when his hunter had reloaded and taken his next aim. Mark jinked again in his stumbling, unseeing run and again the shot cracked the air beside him, and Mark unslung the P. 14 from his shoulder and ran on.

Suddenly he was into trees, and beside him a slab of bark exploded from a trunk, torn. loose by the next Mauser bullet in a spray of flying fragments and sap, leaving a white wet wound in the tree. But Mark had reached the ridge, and the instant he dropped over it, he turned at right angles, doubled up from the waist and dogged away, seeking desperately in the gloom for a secure stance from which to defend himself.

Suddenly he was deafened by a sound as though the heavens had cracked open, and the sun had fallen upon him sound and light so immense and close that he thought for an instant that a Mauser bullet had shattered his brain. He dropped instinctively to his knees.

It was only in the silence that followed that he realized lightning had struck the ironstone ridge close beside him, and the electric stench of it filled the air around him, the rumbling echo of thunder still muttered over the blue wall of the escarpment and the huge bruised masses of cloud had tumbled down out of the endless blue vault of the sky to press close against the earth.

The wind came immediately, cold and swiftly rushing, thrashing the branches of the trees above him, and when Mark dragged himself to his feet again, it billowed his shirt and ruffled his hair, inducing another fit of violent shivering. It seemed the sweat on his face had been turned instantly to hoar-frost; in the rush of the wind, an owl hooted somewhere close at hand, and it began to rain again.

In the rain ahead of Mark, there was the gaunt, tortured shape of a dead tree. To his fever-distorted eyes it had the shape of an angry. warlock, with threatening arms and twisted frame, but it offered a stance, the best he could hope for at this exposed moment.

For a few blessed moments, the darkness behind his eyes lightened and his vision opened to a limited grey circle.

He realized that he had doubled back and come up against the river. The dead tree against which he stood was on the very brink of the sheer high bank. The river had undercut its roots, killing it, and in time would suck it into the flood and carry it away downstream.

At Mark's back, the river was already high and swift and brown with rain water, cutting off any retreat. He was cornered against the bank while the hunters closed in on him. He knew there were more than one, the owl calls had been signals, just as they had on the escarpment of Ladyburg.

Mark realized that perhaps his only hope was to separate them, and lead them unsuspecting on to his stance, but it must be quick, before the fever tightened its hold on his sense.

He cupped one hand to his mouth and imitated the sad, mournful call of the Scops owl. he leaned back against the tree and held the rifle low across one hip. Off on the right his call was answered. Mark did not move. He stood frozen against the tree trunk, only his eyes swivelled to the sound and his forehead creased in his effort to see clearly. Long minutes drew out, and then the owl hoot came, even closer at hand.

The rain came now on the wind, driving in at a steep angle, ice-white lances of slanting rain, tearing at the bush and open grassland beneath it, hammering into Mark's face with sharp needles that stung his eyelids, and yet cleared his vision again so that he could see into the swirling white veils of water. Carefully Mark cupped his mouth and hooted the owl call, bringing his man closer. Where are you? a voice called softly. Rene, where are you? Mark swivelled his eyes to the sound. A human figure loomed out of the sodden trees, half obscured by the sheets of falling rain. I heard your shots, did you get him? He was coming towards Mark, a tall lean man with a very dark brown sunscorched face, deeply lined and wrinkled around the eyes, with a short scraggy growth of grizzled hair covering his jowls.

He carried a Lee-Metford rifle at the trail in one hand, and a rubber ex-army gas-cape draped over his shoulders, wet and shiny with rain, a man past the prime of -his life, with the dull, unintelligent eyes and the coarse almost brutal features of a Russian peasant. The face of one who would kill a man with as little compunction as he would slit a hog's throat.