A Sparrow Falls

He had seen Mark against the dead tree trunk, but the swirling rain and the bad light showed him just the dark uncertain shape, and the call of the owl had lulled him. Rene? he called again, and then stopped, for the first time uncertain, and he squinted into the teeming rain with those flat expressionless eyes. Then he swore angrily, and tried to bring up the Lee-Metford, swinging it across his belly and wipping the safety-catch across with one calloused thumb. It's him! He recognized Mark, and the dismay was clear to see on his face. No, Mark warned him urgently, but the rifle barrel was coming up swiftly, and Mark had heard the metallic snick of the safety-catch and knew that in an instant the man would shoot him down.

He fired with the P. 14 still held low across his hip, the man was that close, and the shot crashed out with shocking loudness.

The man was lifted off his feet, thrown backwards With the Lee-Metford spinning from his hands, hitting the rocky ground with his shoulder blades, his heels kicking and drumming wildly on the earth and his eyelids fluttering like the wings of trapped butterflies.

The blood that streamed from his chest soaked into the sodden material of his shirt and was diluted immediately to a paler rose pink by the hammering raindrops.

With a final spasm, which arched his back, the man subsided and lay completely still. He seemed to have shrunk in size, looking old and frail, and his lower jaw hung open, revealing the pink rubber gums of a set of tobacco-stained false teeth. The rain beat into the open staring eyes, and Mark felt a familiar sense of dismay. The cold familiar guilt of having inflicted death on another human being. He had an irrational desire to go to the man, to give him succour, though he was far past any human help, to try to explain to him, to justify himself. The impulse was fever-born and carried on wings of rising delirium; he was at the point now where there was no clear dividing line between fantasy and reality. You shouldn't have, he blurted, you shouldn't have tried, I warned you, I warned, He stepped out from the shelter of the dead tree trunk, forgetting the other man, the man that his senses should have warned him was the most dangerous of the two hunters.

He stood over the man he had killed, swaying on his feet, holding the rifle at high port across his chest.

Hobday had missed with his first three shots, but the range had been two hundred or more and it was up-hill shooting, with intervening bush and tree and shrub, snap shooting at a running, jinking target, worse than jumpshooting for kudu in thick cat bush, a slim swift human shape. He had fired the second and third shots in despair, hoping for a lucky hit before his quarry reached the crest of the ridge and disappeared.

Now he could follow only cautiously, for he had seen the rifle strapped on the boy's back, and he might be lying up on the ridge, waiting his chance for a clear shot. He used all the cover there was, and at last the sheets of falling rain, to reach the rocky crest, at any moment expecting retaliatory fire, for he had shown his own hand clearly. He knew the boy was a trained soldier. He was dangerous and Hobday moved with care.

His relief when he reached the crest was immense, and he lay there on his belly in the wet grass with the reloaded Mauser in front peering down the reverse slope for a sign of his quarry.

He heard the owl hoot out on his left, and frowned irritably. Stupid old bastard! he grunted. Pissing himself with fright still. His partner needed constant reassurance, his old nerves too frayed for this work, and he used no judgement in timing his contact calls. The damned fool!

He must have heard the shots and known the critical stage of the hunt was on, yet here he was, calling again, like a child whistling in the dark for courage.

He brushed the man from his thoughts and concentrated on searching the rain-swept slope, until he froze with disbelief. The owl call had been answered, from his left, just below the crest.

Hobday came up on his feet. Crouching low, he worked swiftly along the crest.

He saw solid movement in the grey, wind-whipped scrub and dropped into a marksman's squat, drawing swift aim on the indistinct target, blinking the rain out of his eyes, waiting for a clean shot and then grunting with disappointment as he recognized his own partner, bowed under the glistening wet gas-cape, moving heavily as a pregnant woman in the gloom beneath the rain cloud and dense overhead branches.

The man paused to cup his hand over his mouth and call the mournful owl hoot again, and the bearded hunter grinned. Decoy duck, he whispered aloud, the stupid old dog! and he felt no compunction that he was going to let his ally draw fire for him. He watched him carefully, keeping well down on the skyline, the silhouette of his head and shoulders broken by the low bush under which he crouched.

The old man in the gas-cape called again, and then waited listening with his head cocked. The reply called him on, and he hurried forward into the wind and the rain, drawn on to his fate. Hobday grinned as he watched. One share was better than two, he thought, and wiped the clinging raindrops off the rear sight of the Mauser with his thumb.

Suddenly the old man checked and began to swing up the rifle he carried, but the shot crashed out and he went down abruptly in the grass. Hobday swore softly, bitterly, he had missed the moment, had not been able to place the spot from which the shot had been fired. Now he waited with a finger on the trigger, screwing up his eyes against the rain, less certain of himself, feeling a new awe and respect for his quarry, and the first tingle of fear. It had been a good kill, that one, leading the old man right in close, calling him up as though he were a hungry leopard coming to the bleat of a duiker horn.

Then suddenly the bearded hunter's doubts were dispelled, and for an instant he could hardly believe his fortune. just when he had been steeling himself for a dangerous and long-dravTn-out duel, his quarry stepped out into the open from the cover of a twisted dead tree trunk on the bank of the river, a childlike, ridiculously artless act an almost suicidal act, so ingenuous that for a moment he feared some trap.

The young man stood for a moment over the corpse of the man he had killed. Even at this range, it seemed as though he swayed on his feet, his face very pale in the weak grey light but the khaki of his shirt standing out clearly against the back lighting from the surface of the river.

it needed no fancy shooting, the range was less than a hundred and fifty yards and for an instant Hobday held his aim in the centre of the boy's chest, then he squeezed off the shot with exaggerated care, knowing that it was a heart shot. As the rifle pounded back into his shoulder and the brittle crack of the Mauser stung his eardrums, he watched the boy hurled backwards by the shock of the strike and heard the bullet impact with a jarring solid thud.

Mark never even heard the Mauser shot for the bullet came ahead of the sound. There was only the massive shock in the upper part of his body, and then he was hurled backwards with a violence that drove the air from his lungs.

The earth opened behind him, and as he fell, there was the sensation of being engulfed in a swirling vortex of blackness, and he knew for just a fleeting moment of time that he was dead.

Then the icy plunge into the swirling brown current of the river caught him and shocked him back from the edge of blackness. The water engulfed his head and he had the strength to kick away from the muddy bottom. As his head broke the surface, he dragged precious air into his crushed burning lungs and realized that he held the P. 14 in both hands still.

The wooden stock of the rifle was directly in front of his eyes, and he saw where the Mauser bullet had smashed into the wood and then flattened against the solid steel of the breech block.

The bullet was squashed to a misshapen lump, like a pellet of wet clay hurled against a brick wall. The rifle had stopped it dead, but the tremendous energy of impact had driven the P. 14 into his chest, expelling the air from both lungs and hurling him backwards over the bank.

With enormous relief, Mark let the rifle drop into the muddy bottom below him, and was swept away by the current into a swirling nightmare of malaria and rain and raging brown water. Slowly the darkness overwhelmed him, and his last conscious thought was the irony of being saved from death by rifle shot to be immediately drowned like an unwanted kitten.

The water came up over his mouth again, he felt it burn in his lungs and then he was gone into nothingness.

There can be few terrors like those of a mind tortured by malaria f ever, a mind trapped in an endless nightmare from which there is no escape, never experiencing the relief of waking in the sweat of terror and knowing it was only delirium.

The nightmares of malaria are beyond the creation of the healthy brain, they are unremitting and they are compounded by a consuming thirst. The thirst as the body burns its strength and fluid in the heat of the conflict, a cycle of attack no less terrible for its regular familiar stages: icy chills that begin the cycle, followed by burning Saharan fevers that rocket the body heat to temperatures so high that they can damage the brain, and that are followed by the great sweat, when body fluid streams from every pore of the victim's body, desiccating him and leaving him without the strength to lift head or hand while he awaits the next round of the cycle to begin, the next bout of icy shivering chill.

There were semi-lucid moments for Mark between the periods of heat and cold and nameless terror. Once, when the thirst burned so that every cell of his body shrieked for moisture and his mouth was dry and swollen, it seemed that strong cool hands lifted his head and bitter liquid, bitter but cold and wonderful, flooded his mouth and ran like honey down his throat. At other times in the cold, he pulled his own grey woollen blanket close around his shoulders and the smell of it was familiar and well-beloved - the smell of woodsmoke and cigarette and his own body smell. Often he heard the rain and crash-rumble of thunder, but always he was dry, and then all sound faded and he was swept away on the next cycle of the fever.

He knew it was seventy-two hours after the first chilling onslaught that he came once again fully conscious. The malaria is that predictable in its cycle that he knew when it was to within a few hours.

it was late afternoon and Mark lay wrapped in his blanket on a mattress of fresh-cut grass and aromatic leaves. It was still raining, a steady grey relentless downpouring from the low pregnant cloud-banks that seemed to press against the tree-tops, but Mark was dry.

Above him was a low roof of rock, a roof that had been blackened over the millennium by the wood fires of others who had sought shelter in this shallow cave; the opening of the shelter faced north-west, away from the prevailing rain-bearing winds, and just catching the last glimmerings of light from where the sun was sinking behind the thick cloud-cover.

Mark lifted himself with enormous effort on one elbow and looked about him, bemused. Propped against the rock wall near his head was his pack. He stared at it for a long time, puzzled and completely bewildered. His last coherent memory had been of engulfing icy waters. Closer at hand was a round-bellied beer pot of dark fire-baked clay, and he reached for it immediately, his hands shaking not only from weakness but from the driving need of his thirst.

The liquid was bitter and medicinal, tasting of herbs and sulphur, but he drank it with panting grateful gulps until his belly bulged and ached.

He lowered the pot then and discovered beside it a bowl of stiff cold maize porridge, salted and flavoured with some wild herb that tasted like sage. He ate half of it and then fell asleep, but this time into a deep healing sleep.

When he awoke again, the rain had stopped and the sun was near its zenith, burning down through the gaps and soaring valleys of the towering cloud ranges.

It required an effort, but Mark rose and staggered to the opening of the rock shelter. He looked down into the flooded bed of the Bubezi River, a roaring red-brown torrent in which huge trees swirled and tumbled on their way to the sea, their bared roots lifted like the crooked arthritic fingers of dying beggars.

Mark peered to the north and realized that the whole basin of swamp and bush had been flooded, the papyrus beds were submerged completely under a dull silver sheet of water that dazzled like a vast mirror, even the big trees on the lower ground were covered to their upper branches, and the higher ridges of ground and the low kopies were islands in the watery waste.

Mark was still too weak to stay long on his feet, and he staggered back to his bed of cut grass. Before he slept again he pondered the attack, and the disquieting problem of how the assassins had known he was here at Chaka's Gate; somehow it was all bound up with Andersland and the death of the old man in the wilderness here. He was still pondering it all when sleep overtook him.

When he awoke, it was morning again, and during the night somebody had replenished the beer pot with the bitter liquid and the food bowl with stiff porridge and a few fragments of some roast flesh, that tasted like chicken but was probably iguana lizard.

The waters had fallen dramatically, the papyrus beds were visible with their long stems flattened and the fluffy heads wadded down by the flood, and the trees were exposed, the lower ground drying out; the Bubezi River in the deep gorge below Mark's shelter had regained some semblance of sanity.

Mark was suddenly aware of his own nudity, and of the stink of fever and body wastes that clung to him. He went down to the water's edge, a long slow journey during which he had to pause often to regain his strength and for the dizziness to stop singing in his ears.

He bathed away the smell and the filth and examined the dark purple bruise where the Mauser bullet had smashed the P. 14 into his chest. Then he dried in the fierce glare of the noon sun. It warmed the last chills of the fever from his body, and he climbed back up to the shelter with a spring and lightness in his step.

in the morning he found that the beer pot and food bowl had disappeared, and he sensed somehow that the gesture was deliberate and carried the message that, as far as his mysterious benefactor was concerned, he was able to fend for himself again, and that he had begun to outlive his welcome.

Mark gathered his possessions, finding that all his clothing had been dried out and stuffed into the canvas pack.

His bandolier of ammunition was there also and the bonehandled hunting knife was in its sheath, but his food Supply was down to one can of baked beans.

He opened it and ate half, saved the rest for his dinner left the pack in the back of the shelter, and set out for the far side of the basin.

It took him almost two hours to find the killing ground, and he recognized it at last only by the dead tree with its twisted arthritic limbs. The ground here was lower than he had imagined, and had been swept by the flood waters, the grass was flattened against the earth, as though brilliantined and combed down, some of the weaker trees had been uprooted and swept away and, in the lower branches of the larger stronger trees, the flood debris clung to mark the high-water level.

Mark searched for some evidence of the fight, but there was none, no body nor abandoned rifle, it was as though it had never been. . . Mark began to doubt his own memory until he slipped his hand into the front of his shirt and fingered the tender bruising.

He searched down the track of the waters, following the direction of the swept grass for half a mile. When he saw vultures sitting in the trees and squabbling noisily in the scrub, he hurried forward, but it was only a rhino calf, too young to have swum against the flood, drowned and already beginning to putrefy.

Mark walked back to the dead tree and sat down to smoke the last cigarette in his tin, relishing every draw, stubbing it out half-finished and carefully returning the butt to the flat tin with its picture of the black cat, and the trade mark Craven A.

He was about to stand when something sparkled in the sunlight at his feet, and he dug it out of the still damp earth with his finger.

It was a brass cartridge case, and when he sniffed at it, there was still the faint trace of burned cordite. Stamped into the base was the lettering Mauser Fabriken. 9 mm and he turned it thoughtfully between his: fingers.

The correct thing was to report the whole affair to the nearest police station, but twice already he had learned the folly of calling attention to himself while some remorseless enemy hunted him from cover.

Mark stood up and went down the gentle slope to the edge of the swamp pools. A moment longer he examined the brass cartridge case, then he hurled it far out into the black water.

At the rock shelter he hefted his pack on to his shoulders, bouncing from the knees to settle the straps. Then, as he crossed to the entrance, he saw the footprints in the fine cold ash dust of the fire. Broad, bare-footed, he recognized them instantly.

On an impulse he slipped the sheathed hunting knife off his belt, and laid it carefully exposed in an offertory position at the base of the shelter wall; then, with a stub of charcoal from the dead fire, he traced two ancient symbols on the rock above it, the symbols that old David had told him stood for The -bowed-slave-who-bears-gifts. He hoped Pungushe, the poacher, would come again to the rock shelter and that he could interpret the symbols and accept the gift.

On the slope of the south butt of Chaka's Gate, Mark paused again and looked back into the great sweep of wilderness, and he spoke aloud, softly, because he knew that if the old man were listening, he would hear, no matter how low the voice. All he had learned and experienced here had hardened his resolve to come to the truth and to unravel the mystery and answer the questions that still hid the facts of the old man's death. I'll come again, some day. Then he turned away towards the south, lengthening his stride and swinging into the gait just short of a trot that the Zulus call Winza umhlabathi- or eat the earth greedily.

The suit felt unfamiliar and confining on his body, and the starched collar was like a slave's ring about Mark's throat, the pavement hard and unyielding to his tread and the clank of the trams and the honk and growl and clash of train and automobile were almost deafening after the great silences of the bush, and yet there was excitement and stimulation in the hurrying tide of human beings that swirled around him, strident and colourful and alive.

The tropical hot-house of Durban town encouraged all growth of life, and the diversity of human beings that thronged her streets never failed to intrigue Mark; the Hindu women in their shimmering saris of gaudy silk with jewels in their pierced nostrils and golden sandals on their feet; the Zulus, moon-faced and tall, their wives with the conical ochre headdresses of mud and plaited hair that they wore for a lifetime, bare-breasted under their cloaks, big stately breasts fruitful and full as those of the earth mother, to which their infants clung like fat little leeches, and the short leather aprons high on their strong glossy dark thighs swinging as they walked; the men in loincloths muscled and dignified, or wearing the cast-off rags of Western clothing with the same jaunty panache and self-conscious assurance that the mayor wore his robes of office; the white women, remote and cool and unhurried, followed by a servant as they shopped or encapsuled in their speeding vehicles; their men in dark suits and the starched collars better suited to the climes of their native north, many of them yellowed with fever and fat with rich foods as they hurried about their affairs, their faces set in that small perpetual frown, each creating for himself an isolation of the spirit in the press of human bodies.

It was strange to be back in the city. Half of Mark's soul hated it while the other half welcomed it, and he hurried to find the human company for which he had sometimes hungered these long weeks just past. Good God, my dear old sport. Dicky Lancome, with a red carnation in his button-hole, hurried to meet him across the showroom floor. I am delighted to have you back. I was expecting you weeks ago. Business has been deadly slow, the girls have been ugly, tiresome and uncooperative; the weather absolutely frightful, you have missed nothing, old son, absolutely nothing. He held Mark off at arm's length and surveyed him with a fond and brotherly eye. My God, you look as though you've been on the Riviera, brown as a pork sausage but not as fat. God, I do declare you've lost weight again -'and he patted his own waistcoat which was straining its buttons around the growing bulge of his belly. I must go on a diet, which reminds me, lunch-time! You will be my guest, old boy, I insist, I absolutely insist. Dicky began his diet with a plate piled high with steaming rice, coloured to light gold and flavoured with saffron; over this was poured rich, chunky mutton curry, redolent with Hindu herbs and garnished with mango chutney, ground coconuts, grated Bombay Duck and half a dozen other sauces, and as the turbaned Indian waiter offered him the silver tray of salads, he loaded his side plate enthusiastically without interrupting his questioning.

God, I envy you, old boy. Often promised myself that.

One man against the wilderness, pioneer stuff, hunting and fishing for the pot. He waved the waiter away and lifted a quart stein of lager beer to salute Mark. Cheers, old boy, tell me all about it. Dicky was silent at last, although he did the curry full justice, while Mark told him about it, about the beauty and the solitude, about the busliveld dawn and the starry silent nights, and he sighed occasionally and shook his head wistfully. Wish I could do it, old boy. You could, Mark pointed out, and Dicky looked startled. It's out there now. It won't go away. But what about my job, old boy? Can't just drop everything and walk away. Do you enjoy your job that much? Mark asked softly. Does peddling motorcars feed your soul? Hey! Dicky began to look uncomfortable. It's not a case of enjoying it. I mean nobody really enjoys having to work, do they? I mean it's just something one does, you know. One is lucky to find something one can do reasonably well where one can earn an honest coin, and one does I wonder, Mark mused. Tell me, Dicky, what is most important, the coin or the good feeling down there in your guts? Dicky stared at him, his lower jaw sagging slightly, exposing a mouthful of half-masticated rice. Out there, I felt clean and tall, Mark went on, fiddling with his beer stein. There were no bosses, no clients, no hustling for a commission. I don't know, Dicky, out there I felt important. Important? Dicky swallowed the unchewed curry noisily. Important?

Hey now, old boy, they're selling rakes like you and me on the street corners at ninepence a bunch. He washed down the rice with a swallow of beer, and then patted the froth from his upper lip with the crisp white handkerchief from his breast pocket. Take an old dog's advice, when you say your prayers at night give thanks that you are a good motorcar salesman, and that you have found that out. just do it, old son, and don't think about it, or it will break your heart. He spoke with an air of finality that declared the subject closed, and stooped to open his brief case on the floor beside his chair. Here, I've something for you. There were a dozen thick letters in Marion Littlejohn's neat feminine hand, all in blue envelopes, a colour which she had explained in previous letters indicated undying love; there was also an account for a disputed twelve and sixpence which his tailor insisted Mark had underpaid; and there was another envelope of marbled paper, pale beige and watered expensively, with Mark's name blazoned across it in a peremptory, arrogant hand, and no address.

Mark singled it out and turned it over to examine the crest, thickly crusted in heavy embossing that stood out on the flap.

Dicky watched him open it and then leaned forward to read it unashamedly, but Mark saved him the effort and flipped it across to him.

Regimental dinner, he explained. You'll just make it, Dicky pointed out. Friday the 16th. Then his voice changed, imitating a regiment sergeant-major. Two oh hundred hours sharpish. Dress formal and R. S. bloody V. P. Take your dressing from the right, you lucky brighter, your guinea has been paid by your Colonel-in-Chief, Lord Muck-a-Muck General Courtney his exalted self. Off you go, my boy, drink his champagne and steal a handful of cigars. Up the workers! say! I think I'll give it a miss, murmured Mark, and placed Marion's letters in his inside pocket, to prevent Dicky reading those also. You've gone bush-crazy, the sun touched you, old boy, Dicky declared solemnly. Think of those three hundred potential owners of Cadillacs sitting around one table, pissed to the wide, and smoking free cigars. Captive audience. Whip around the table and peddle them a Cadillac each while they are still stunned by the speeches. Were you in France? Mark asked. Not France. Dicky's expression changed. Palestine, Gallipoli and suchlike sunny climes. The memory darkened his eyes. Then you'll know why I don't feel like going up to the old fort to celebrate the experience, Mark told him, and Dicky Lancome studied him across the loaded table. He had made himself a judge of character, of men and their workings. He had to be a good judge to be a good salesman, so he was surprised that he had not recognized the change in Mark sooner. Looking at him now, Dicky knew that he had acquired something, some new reserve of strength and resolution the likes of which few men gathered about them in a lifetime. Suddenly he felt a humility in Mark's presence, and although it was tinged with envy, the envy was without rancour. Here was a man who was going somewhere, to a place where he would never be able to follow, a path that needed a man with a lion's liver to tread. He wanted to reach across the table and shake Mark's hand and wish him well on the journey, but instead he spoke quietly, dropping the usual light and cavalier facade. I wish you'd think about it, Mark. General Courtney came to see me himself, and he went on to tell him of the visit, of Sean Courtney's anger when he had heard that Mark had been discharged at his daughter's behest. He asked for you to be there especially, Mark, and he really meant it. Mark showed his invitation at the gates, and was passed through the massive stone outer fortifications, There were fairy lights strung in the trees along the pathway that led through the gardens of the old fort, giving the evening a frivolous carnival feeling at odds with the usual atmosphere this bastion had known from the earliest British occupation, through siege and war with Dutch and Zulu; many of the Empire's warriors who had paused here on their occasions.

There were other guests ahead of and behind him on the pathway, but Mark avoided them, feeling self-conscious in the dinner-jacket he had hired from the pawnbroker when he retrieved his decorations. The garment had the venerable greenish tinge of age, and was ventilated in places by the ravages of moths. It was too tight across the shoulders and too full in the belly, and it exposed too much cuff and sock, but when he had pointed this out to the pawnbroker, the man had asked him to finger the pure silk lining and had reduced the hire fee to five shillings.

Miserably he joined the file of other dinner-jacketed figures on the steps of the drillhall and when his turn came, he stepped up to the reception! Then, So! said General Sean Courtney. You came. The craggy features were suddenly boyish, as he took Mark's hand in a grip that felt like tortoise-shell, cool and hard and calloused. He stood at the head of the reception line like a tower, broad and powerful, resplendent in immaculately cut black and crisp starched white with a gaudy block of silk ribbons and enamel crosses and orders across his chest. With a twitch of an imperial eyebrow, he summoned one of his staff. This is Mr Mark Anders, he said. You remember the old firm of Anders and MacDonald, 1 st brigade? Indeed, sir. The officer looked at Mark with quick interest, his eye dropping from his face to the silk ribbons on his lapel and back to his face. Look after him, said General Courtney, and then to Mark, Get yourself a drink, son, and I'll talk to you later. He released Mark's hand and turned to the next in line, but such was the magnetism and charm of the big man that after the brief contact and the few gruff words, Mark was no longer the gawky stranger, callow and awkward in cast-off clothes, but an honoured guest, worthy of special attention.

The subaltern took his charge seriously and led Mark into the dense crowd of black-clad mates, all of them still subdued and self-conscious in their unaccustomed finery, standing in stiff knots, although the waiters moved among them bearing silver trays laden with the regiment's hospitality. Whisky, is it? asked the subaltern, and picked a glass from one of the trays. All liquid refreshment tonight is with the General's compliments, and took another glass for himself. Cheers! Now let's see, 1 st brigade -'and he looked around. You must remember Hooper, or Dennison? He remembered them and others, dozens of them, some were vaguely familiar features, just shades at the edge of his memory, but others he knew well, had liked, or disliked, and even hated. With some he had shared food, or passed a cigarette butt back and forth, with others he had shared moments of terror or exquisite boredom; the good ones, the workers, the cowards and the shirkers and the bullies were all there, and the whisky came endlessly on silver trays.

They remembered him also, men he had never seen in his life came up to him. You remember me, I was section leader at D'Arcy Wood when you and MacDonald -'And others, Are you the Anders, I thought you'd be older somehow, your glass is empty, and the whisky kept coming on the silver trays, and Mark felt tall and clever, for men listened when he talked, and witty, for men laughed when he jested.

They sat at a table that stretched the full length of the hall and was covered with a damask cloth of dazzling white; the regimental silver blinked like heliographs in the candlelight, and now it was champagne cascading into crystal glass in showers of golden bubbles. All around, the comradely uproar of laughter and of raised voices, and each time Mark lowered his glass, there was a turbaned figure at his side and a dark hand poising the green bottle over his glass.

He sagged back in his chair with his thumbs hooked in his armpits and a black cigar sticking a foot out of his mouth, Hear! Hearing! and Quite righting! the after dinner speakers, as owlish and wise as the best of them, exchanging knowledgeable nods of agreement with his neighbours, while the ruby port smouldered in his glass.

When the General rose from his centre seat at the cross piece of the table, there was an audible stir in the company which had become heavy and almost somnolent with port and long meandering speeches. They grinned at each other now in anticipation, and though Mark had never heard Sean Courtney speak, he sensed the interest and recharged enthusiasm and he sat up in his chair.

The General did not disappoint them, he started with a story that left them stunned for a moment, gasping for breath, before they could bellow with laughter. Then he went at them in a relaxed easy manner that seemed casual and natural, but using words like a master swordsman using a rapier, a jest, an oath, a solid piece of good sense, something they wanted to hear, followed immediately by something that disturbed them, singling out individuals for praise or gentle censure. Third this year in the national polo championships, gentlemen, an honour which the regiment carried easily last year, but a certain gentleman seated at this board has chosen to ride for the sugar planters now, a decision which it is his God-given right to make, and which I am certain not one of us here would condemn, and Sean Courtney paused, grinning evilly and smoothing his whiskers, while the entire company booed raucously and hammered the table with their dessert spoons. The victim flushed to vivid scarlet and squirmed in the cacophony. However, good news and great expectations for the Africa Cup this year. By dint of adroit sleuthing, it has been discovered that dwelling in our very midst, and the next moment the entire hall was slapping palm to palm, a great thunder of sound, and heads were craning down to Mark's end of the table, while the General nodded and beamed at him, and when Mark slumped down quickly in his seat and tried to make his lanky frame fold like a carpenter's ruler, Sean Courtney called, Stand up, son, let them get a look at you. Mark rose uncertainly and bobbed his head left and right, and not until later did it occur to him that he had been skilfully manoeuvred into accepting their applause, that in doing so, he was committed. It was the first time he witnessed from a front-row seat the General handling the destiny of a man and achieving his object without apparent effort.

He was pondering this, a little muzzily, as he steered for the safe base of the next lamp post. It would, of course, have been wiser and safer to accept the offer made to him by one of the rickshaw drivers at the gates of the fort, when he had reeled out into the street two hours after midnight.

However, his recent unemployment and extravagant expenditure on fancy clothing had left him no choice as to his means of transport. He faced now a walk of some three miles in the dark, and his progress was erratic enough to make it a long journey.

He reached the lamp post and braced himself just as a black Rolls-Royce stopped beside him and the back door swung open.

Get in! said the General, and as Mark tumbled ungracefully into the soft leather seat, an iron grip steadied him. You are not a drinking man. It was a statement, not a question, and Mark had to agree. No, sir. You've got a choice, said the General. Learn, or leave it alone completely. Sean had waited for almost half an hour, the Rolls parked under the banyan trees, for Mark to appear through the gates, and he had been on the point of abandoning the evening and giving his driver the order to return to Emoyeni when Mark had tottered out into the street, brushed away the importunate rickshaw drivers and set off like a crab along the pavement, travelling further sideways than forward.

The Rolls had crept silently along behind him with the headlights dark, and Sean Courtney had watched with a benevolent smile the young man's erratic progress. He felt a gentle indulgence for the lad and for himself, for the odd little quirks and whims with which he still surprised himself occasionally. At sixty-two years of age, a man should know himself, know every strength and be able to exploit it, know every weakness, and have built a secure buttress against it.

Yet here he was, for no good reason that he could fathom, becoming more and more emotionally involved with a young stranger. Spending time and thought for he was not sure what end.

Perhaps the boy reminded him of himself at the same age, and now he thought about it, he did detect beneath the warm glow of champagne in his belly the nostalgia for that troubled time of doubt and shining ambition when a boy stood on the threshold of manhood.

Perhaps it was that he admired, no, cherished was a better word, cherished special quality in any animal. A fine horse, a good do& a young man, that excellence that horsemen might call blood, or a dog-handler class. He had detected it in Mark Anders, and as even a blood horse might be damaged by bad handling or a class dog spoiled, so a young man who had the same quality needed advice and direction and opportunity to develop his full capability. There was too much mediocrity and too much dross in this world, Sean thought, so that when he found class, he was drawn strongly to it.

Or perhaps again, and suddenly he felt that terrible black wave of mourning sweep over him, or perhaps it is simply that I do not have a son.

There had been three sons: one had died before he had lived, still-born in the great wilderness beyond the Limpopo River.

Another had been borne by a woman who was not his wife and the son had called another man father.

Here Sean felt the melancholy deepen, laden with guilt; but this son was dead also, burned to a charred black mass in the flimsy machine of wood and canvas in which he had flown the sky. The words of Garry's dedication to his new book were clear in Sean's mind. This book is dedicated to Captain Michael Courtney, D. F. C one of the Young Eagles who will fly no more. Michael had been Sean's natural son, made in the belly of his brother's wife.

The third son lived still, but he was a son in name only and Sean would have changed that name had it been within his power. Those ugly incidents that preceded Dirk Courtney's departure from Ladyburg so many years before, among them casual arson and careless murder, were nothing compared to the evil deeds he had perpetrated since his return. Those close to him knew better than to speak the name Dirk Courtney in his hearing. Now he felt the melancholy change to the old anger, and to forestall it, he leaned forward in his seat and tapped the chauffeur's shoulder.

Pull up beside him, he said, pointing to Mark Anders.

What you need is fresh air, Sean Courtney told Mark. It will sober you up or make you puke, either of which is desirable. And by the time the Rolls parked at the foot of West Street pier, Mark had, by dint of enormous mental effort, regained control of his eyes. At first, every time he peered at the General beside him, he had the nauseous certainty that there was a third eye growing in the centre of his forehead, and that he had multiple ears on each side of his head, like ripples on the surface of a pond.

Mark's voice had at first been as uncontrolled, and he had listened with mild disbelief to the odd blurred sounds with which his lips had replied to the General's questions and comments. But when he frowned with the effort, and spoke with exaggerated slowness and articulation, it sounded vaguely intelligible.

However, it was only when they walked side by side down through the loose sand to the edge of the sea where the outgoing tide had left the sand hard and wet and smooth, that he began to listen to what the General was saying and it wasn't tea-party talk.

He was talking of power, and powerful men, he was talking of endeavour and reward, and though his voice was rumbling and relaxed, yet it was like the purr of an old lion who has just killed, and would kill again.

Somehow Mark sensed that what he was hearing was of great value, and he hated himself for the alcohol in his veins that slowed his mind and haltered his tongue. He fought it off actively.

They walked down along the glistening strip of wet smooth sand, that was polished yellow by the sinking glow of the late moon; the sea smelt of salt and iodine, a crisp antiseptic smelt, and the little breeze chilled him so that he shivered even in his dinner jacket. But soon his brain was keeping pace with that of the burly figure that limped beside him, and slowly a sense of excitement built up within him as he heard things said that he had only sensed deep in some secret place of his soul, ideas that he recognized but that he had believed were his alone.

His tongue lost its drag and blur and he felt suddenly bright as a blade, and light as the swallow that drinks in flight as it skims the water.

He remembered how he had at one time suspected that this man might have been responsible in some way for the loss of Andersland, and the old man's death. But now those suspicions smacked almost of blasphemy, and he thrust them aside to throw all his mind into the discussion in which he found himself so deeply involved.

He never did suspect until long afterwards how important that single night's talk would be in his life, and if he had known perhaps his tongue would have seized up solid in his mouth and his brain refused to keep pace, for he was undergoing a rigorous examination. Ideas thrown at Mark seemingly at random were for him to pick up and carry forward or toreject and leave lying. Every question raked conscience and bared his principles, and gradually, skilfully he was forced to commit himself on every subject from religion to politics, from patriotism to morals. Once or twice the General chuckled, You're a radical, did you know that? But I suppose I was at your age, we all want to change the world. Now tell me what do you think about, and the next question was not related to the one that preceded it. There are ten million black men in this country, and a million whites. How do you think they are going to be able to live together for the next thousand years? Mark gulped at the enormity of the question, and then began to talk.

The moon paled away in the coming of the dawn, and Mark walked on into an enchanted world of flaming ideas and amazing visions. Though he could not know it, his excitement was shared. Louis Botha, the old warrior and statesman, had said to Sean once, Even the best of us gets old and tired, Sean, and when that happens, a man should have somebody to whom he can pass the torch, and let him carry it on. With a suddenness that took them both by surprise, the night was passed, and the sky flamed with gold and pink.

They stood side by side, and watched the rim of the sun rise from the dark green sea and climb swiftly into the sky. I have needed an assistant for many years now. My wife hounds me, Sean chuckled at the hyperbole, and I have promised her I will find one, but I need somebody quick and bright and trustworthy. They are hard to find. Sean's cigar was long dead and horribly chewed. He took it from his mouth and examined it with mild disapproval before tossing it into the creeping wavelets at his feet. It would be a hell of a job, no regular hours, no set duties, and, God knows, I'd hate to work for me, because I am a cantankerous, unsympathetic old bastard. But on the other hand one thing I'd guarantee, whoever took the job wouldn't die of boredom, and he'd get to learn a thing or two He turned now, thrusting his head forward and staring into Mark's face. The wind had ruffled his beardand he had long ago stripped off his black tie and thrust it into a pocket. The golden rays of the rising sun caught his eyes and they were a peculiarly beautiful shade of blue.

Do you want the job? he demanded.

Yes, sir, Mark answered instantly, dazzled by the prospect of an endless association with this incredible man.

You haven't asked about the money? growled Sean. Oh, the money isn't important. Sean cocked a beetling black eyebrow over the amused blue twinkle of his eye. The money is always important. The next time Mark entered the gates of Emoyeni was to enter a new life, an existence beyond any he had ever imagined; and yet, in all the overpowering new experience, even in the whirl of having to adjust to new ideas, to the daunting procession of visitors and endless new tasks, there was one moment that Mark dreaded constantly. This was his next meeting with Miss Storm Courtney.

However, he would never know if it had not been carefully arranged by General Courtney, but Storm was not at Emoyeni on Mark's first day, nor during the days that followed, although the memory of her presence seemed every-where in the portraits and photographs in every room, especially the full-length oil in the library where Mark spent much of his time. She was dressed in a fulllength ivory-coloured dress, seated at the grand piano in the main drawing-room, and the artist had managed to capture a little of her beauty and spirit. Mark found the tantalizing scrutiny which the portrait directed at him disconcerting.

Quickly a relationship was established between Mark and the General, and during the first few days, the last of Sean's misgivings were set at rest. It was seldom that the close proximity of another human being over an extended period of time did not begin to irritate Sean, and yet with this youngster he found himself seeking his company. His first ideas had been that Mark should be taught to deal with day-to-day correspondence and all the other timeconsuming trivia, leaving Sean a little more leisure and time to devote to the important areas of business and politics.

Now he would drift through into the library at odd times to discuss an idea with Mark, enjoying seeing it through younger and fresher eyes. Or he might dismiss his chauffeur and have Mark drive the Rolls out to one of the sawmills, or to a board meeting in the city, sitting up front beside him on the journey and reminiscing about those days in France, or going further back to the time before Mark was born, enjoying Mark's engrossing interest in talks of gold-prospecting and ivory-hunting in the great wilderness beyond the Limpopo River in the north. There will be an interesting debate in the Assembly today, Mark. I am going to give that bastard Hendricks hell on the Railway budget. Drive me down, and you can listen from the visitors'gallery. Those letters can wait until tomorrow. There's been a breakdown at the Umvoti Sawmill, we'll take the shotguns and on the way back try and pick up a couple of guineafowl. Drillhall at eight o'clock tonight, Mark. If you aren't doing anything important, which was a command, no matter how delicate the phrasing, and Mark found himself sucked gently back into the ranks of the peace-time regiment. He found it different from France, for he now had powerful patronage. You are no use to me as third rank marker. You're getting to know the way I work, son, and I want you at hand even when we are playing at soldiers.

Besides, and here Sean grinned that evil, knowing grin, you need a little time for range practice. At the next turn-out, still not accustomed to the speed with which things happened in the world ruled by Sean Courtneyo Mark found himself in the full fig of Second Lieutenant, including Sam Browne cross-strap and shining single pips an his shoulders. He had expected antagonism, or at least condescension from his brother officers, but found that when he was placed in command of range drill, he was received with universal enthusiasm.

In the household Mark's standing was not at first clear.

He was awed by the mistress of Ernoyeni, by her mature beauty and cool efficiency. She was remote but courteous for the first two weeks or so, referring to him as Mr Anders, and any request was preceded by a meticulous please and followed by an equally punctilious thank you.

When the General and Mark were at Emoyeni for the midday meal, Mark was served by one of the servants from a silver tray in the library, and in the evenings, after he had taken his leave from the General, he climbed on the elderly Abel Square Four motorcycle he had acquired, and clattered off down the hill into the sweltering basin of the city to his verminous lodgings in Point Road.

Ruth Courtney was watching Mark with an even shrewder eye than her husband had used. Had he in any way fallen short of her standards, she would have had no compunction in immediately bringing all her influence to bear on Sean for his dismissal.

One morning while Mark was at work in the library, Ruth came in from the garden with an armful of cut flowers. Don't let me disturb you. She began to arrange the flowers in the silver bowl on the central table. For the first few minutes she worked in silence, and then in a natural and friendly manner, she began to chat to Mark, quietly drawing from him the details of his domestic arrangements where he slept and ate, and who did his laundry, and secretly she was appalled. You must bring your laundry up here, to be done with the household washing. That's very kind of you, Mrs Courtney. I don't want to be a nuisance. Oh nonsense, there are two dhobi wallahs with nothing else to do but wash and iron. Even Ruth Courtney, one of the first ladies of Natal, still a renowned beauty as a matron well past forty years of age, was not immune to Mark's unstudied appeal. To his natural charm was added the beneficial effect his coming had upon her own man.

Sean seemed younger, more lighthearted in these last weeks and watching it, she realized that it was not only the burden of routine work that had been lifted from him.

The boy was giving him back a little of that spirit of youth, that freshness of thought, that energy and enthusiasm for the things of life that had gone slightly stale and seemed no longer quite worth the effort.

It was their custom to spend the hour before bed in Ruth's boudoir, Sean lounging in a quilted dressing-gown, watching her brush out her hair and cream her face, smoking his last cigar, discussing the day's events while he enjoyed her still slim lithe body under the thin silk of her nightdress, feeling the slow awakening of his own body in anticipation of the moment when she would turn from watching him in the mirror and rise, holding out one hand to him, and lead him through into the bedroom, to the huge four-poster bed under the draped and tasselled velvet canopy.

Three or four times in the weeks since Mark's arrival in the household, Sean had made a remark so radical, so unlike his usual old-fashioned conservative self, that Ruth had dropped the silver hairbrush into her lap and turned to stare at him.

Each time he had laughed self-consciously and held up a hand to prevent her teasing. All right, I know what you're going to say, but I was discussing it with young Mark. He would chuckle again. That boy talks a lot of good sense. Then one evening after Mark had been with them just over a month, they had sat in companionable silence for a while when Sean said suddenly, Young Mark, doesn't he remind you of Michael? I hadn't noticed, no, I don't think so. Oh, I don't mean in looks. It's just something about the way he thinks. Ruth felt the old crushing regret welling up within her like a cold dark tide. She had never given Sean a son. It was the only true regret, the only shadow on all their sunlit years together. Her shoulders sagged now, as though under the burden of her regret, and she looked at herself in the mirror, seeing the guilt of her inadequacy in her own eyes.

Sean had not noticed, had gone on blithely, Well, I can hardly wait until February. It's going to break Hamilton's heart to hand over that big silver mug. Mark's changed the whole spirit of the team, They know they can win now, with him shooting number one. She had listened quietly, hating herself for not being able to give him what he had wanted so badly, and she glanced down at the little carved statue of the God Thor on her dressing-table. It had stood there all these years since Sean had given it to her, a talisman of fertility. Storm had been conceived in the height of a raging electrical thunderstorm, and had been named for it. He had joked that it needed thunder and had given her the little godlet. A fat lot of help you were, she thought bitterly, and looked up at her own body under the silk in the mirror. So good to look at, and so damned useless! She did not usually curse, it was a measure of her distress. Lovely as it was, her body would not bear another child. All it was good for now was to give him pleasure. She stood up abruptly, her nightly ritual incomplete, and she crossed to where he sat and removed the cigar from his lips, crushing it out deliberately in the big glass ashtray.

Surprised, he looked up at her, about to ask a question, but the words never reached his lips. Her eyelids were half hooded, they drooped languorously, and her lips pouted slightly to reveal the white small teeth, and there were spots of hectic colour on her high beautifully moulded cheek-bones.

Sean knew this expression and the mood it heralded. He felt his heart lurch and then begin to pound like an animal in the cage of his ribs. Usually their loving was a thing of depth and mutual compassion, a thing grown strong and good over the years, a complete blending of two persons, symbolic of their lives together, but once in a rare while, Ruth would droop her eyelids and pout that way with the colour in her cheeks, and what followed was so wild and wanton and uncontrolled that it reminded him of some devastating natural phenomenon.

She pushed one slim pale hand into his gown, and long nails raked lightly across his stomach so that his skin was instantly tingling and alive, and she leaned forward and with the other hand twined her fingers into his beard and twisted his face up to her and kissed him-in full on the lips, thrusting a sharp pink tongue deep into his mouth, Sean let out a growl, and seized her, trying to draw her down into his lap and at the same time pulling open the bodice of her nightdress so that her small pointed breasts fell free, but she was quick and strong, twisting out of his grip, the ivory and pink sheen of her skin glowing through the transparent silk of her gown and her bared breasts joggling delightfully as she flew on long shapely legs into the bedroom, her laughter mocking and goading and inviting.

The following morning, Ruth cut an armful of crimson and white carnations and carried them into the library where young Mark Anders was at work. He stood up immediately and as she replied to his greetin& she studied his face. She had not truly realized how handsome he was, and she saw now that it was a face that would age well.

There was a good bone structure and a proud strong nose.

He was one of those lucky ones who would improve with the addition of a few wrinkles and lines around the eyes, and a little silver in the hair. That was a long way off, however, now it was the eyes that demanded attention.

Yes, she thought, looking into his eyes. Sean is right.

He has the same strength and goodness that Michael had. She watched him surreptitiously as she worked at her flower arrangement, deliberately picking the words as she began to chat to him, and when she had completed the flower bowl, she stood back to admire her work and spoke without looking at him. Why don't you join us for lunch on the terrace, Mark? and the use of his name was deliberate, both of them very conscious of it as it was spoken. Unless you'd prefer to continue eating here. Sean glanced up from his newspaper as Mark came out on to the terrace, but his expression did not change as Ruth waved Mark to the seat opposite him and he immediately plunged back into the paper and angrily read out the editorial to them, mocking the writer by his tone and emphasis before crumpling the news sheet and dropping it beside his chair. That man's a raving bloody idiot, they should lock him up.

Well sir, Mark began delicately.

Ruth sighed a silent breath of relief for she had not consulted Sean on the new luncheon arrangements, but the two of them were instantly in deep discussion, and when the main course was served, Sean growled, Take care of the chicken, Mark, and I'll handle the duck, so that the two of them were carving and arguing at the same time, like members of the same family, and she covered her smile with her table napkin as Sean ungraciously conceded a debating point to his junior. I'm not saying you are right, of course, but if you are, then how do you account for the fact that And he was attacking again from a different direction, and Ruth turned to listen as Mark adroitly defended himself again; as she listened, she began to appreciate a little more why Sean had chosen him.

It was over the coffee that Mark learned at last what had become of Storm Courtney.

Sean suddenly turned to Ruth. Was there a letter from Storm this morning? When she shook her head he went on, That damned uppity little missy must learn a few manners, there hasn't been a letter in nearly two weeks.

just where are they supposed to be now? Rome, said Ruth. Rome! grunted Sean. With a bunch of Latin lovers pinching her backside. Sean! Ruth reprimanded him primly. Beg your pardon. He looked a little abashed, and then grinned wickedly. But she's probably putting it in the correct position for pinching right at this moment, if I know her. That night when Mark sat down to write to Marion Littlejohn, he realized how the mere mention of Storm Courtney's name had altered his whole attitude to the girl he was supposed to marry. Under the enormous workload which Sean Courtney had dropped casually on his shoulders, Mark's letter to Marion was no longer a daily ritual, and at times there were weeks between them.

On the other hand, her letters to him never faltered in regularity and warmth, but he found that it was not really the pressure of work that made him keep deferring their next meeting. He sat now chewing the end of his pen until the wood splintered, seeking words and inspiration, finding it difficult to write down flowery expressions of undying love on every page; each empty page was as daunting as a Saharan crossin& yet it had to be filled. We will be travelling to Johannesburg next weekend to compete in the annual shooting match for the Africa Cup, he wrote, and then pondered how to get a little more mileage out of that intelligence. It should be good for at least a page.

Marion Littlejohn belonged to a life that he had left behind him when he passed through the gates of Ernoyeni.

He faced this fact at last, but was none the less dismayed by the sense of guilt the knowledge brought him, and he tried to deny it and continue with the letter but images kept intruding themselves, and the main of these was a picture of Storm Courtney, gay and sleek, glitteringly beautiful and as unobtainable as the stars.

The Africa Cup stood almost as high as a man's chest on a base of polished ebony. The Ernoyem houseboys had polished it for three days before they had achieved the lustre that General Courtney found acceptable, and now the cup formed the centre-piece of the buffet table, elevated on a pyramid of yellow roses.

The buffet was set in the antechamber to the main ballroom, and both rooms overflowed with the hundreds of guests that Sean Courtney had invited to celebrate his triumph. He had even invited Colonel Hamilton of the Cape Town Highlanders to bring his senior officers by Union Castle liner, travelling first class, as the General's guests to attend the ball.

Hamilton had refused by means of a polite thank-you note, four lines long; without counting the address and the closing salutation. The cup had been in the Cape Town Castle since it had been presented by Queen Victoria in the first year of the Boer War, and Hamilton's mortification added not a little to Sean Courtney's expansive mood.

For Mark it had been the busiest period he had known since coming to Emoyeni. Ruth Courtney had come to place more and more trust in Mark, and under her supervision he had done much of the work of preparing the invitations and handling the logistics of food and liquor.

Now she had him dancing with all of the ugly girls who would otherwise have sat disconsolately along the wall, and at the end of each dance, the General summoned him with an imperious wave of his cigar above the heads of his guests to the buffet table where he had taken up a permanent stance close to the cup. Councillor, I want you to meet my new assistant Mark this is Councillor Evans. That's right, Pussy, this is the young fellow who clinched it for us. And while Mark stood, colouring with embarrassment, the General repeated for the fifth or sixth time that evening a shot by shot account of the final day's competition when the two leading regiments had tied in the team events, and the judges had asked for an individual re-shoot to break the deadlock. A cross wind gusting up to twenty or thirty miles an hour, and the first shoot at two hundred yards Mark marvelled at the intense pleasure this trinket gave the General. A man whose fortune was almost beyond calculation, whose land could be measured by the hundred square miles, who owned priceless paintings and antique books, jewellery and precious stones, houses and horses and yachts, but none of them at this moment as prized as this glittering trifle. Well, I was marking myself, the General had taken enough of his own good whisky to begin acting out his story, and he made the gesture of crouching down in the bunker and looking up at the targets, and I don't mind telling you that it was the worst hour of my life.

Mark smiled in agreement. The Highlander marksman had matched him shot for shot. Each of them signalled as a bulls-eye by the flags of the markers. They both shot possibles at two hundred yards, and then again at five hundred yards, it was only at the thousand-yard targets that young Mark's uncanny ability to judge the crosswind, By this time, Sean's audience was cow-eyed with boredom, and there were still ten rounds of deliberate and another ten of rapid fire to hear about. Mark sensed panic signals across the ballroom and he looked up.

Ruth Courtney was beside the main doors of the ballroom and with her was the Zulu butler. A man with warrior blood in his veins and the usual bearing of a chief, now he was grey with some emotion close to fear and his expression was pitiable as he spoke rapidly to his mistress.

Ruth touched his arm in a gesture of comfort and dismissal, and then turned to wait for Mark.

As he hurried to her across the empty dance floor he could not help but notice again how much mother resembled daughter. Ruth Courtney still had the figure of an athletic young woman, kept slim and firm and graceful by hard riding and long walking, and only when he was close to her were the small lines and tiny blemishes in her smooth ivory skin apparent. Her hair was dressed high on her head, scorning the fashionable shorter cut, and her gown had a simple elegance that showed off the lines of her body and the small shapely breasts. One of her guests reached her before Mark did, and she was relaxed and smiling while Mark hovered close at hand until she excused herself and Mark hurried to her. Mark. Her worry showed only in her eyes as she looked up at him towering above her, but her smile was light and steady. There is going to be trouble. We have an unwelcome visitor. What do you want me to do? He is in the entrance hall now. Please, take him through to the General's study, and stay with him until I can warn my husband and send him to you. Will you do that? Of course. She smiled her thanks, and then as Mark turned away she stopped him with a touch. Mark, try to stay with them. I don't want them to be alone together. I'm not sure what might happen. Then her reserve cracked. In God's name why did he have to come here, and tonight when, She stopped herself then, and the smile firmed on her lips, steady and composed, but they both knew that she had been going to say, Tonight when Sean has been drinking. Mark now knew the General well enough to share her concern. When Sean Courtney was drinking, he was capable of anything, from genial and expansive bonhomie to dark, violent and undirected rage. I'll do what I can, he agreed, and then, Tell me, who is it?

Ruth bit her lower lip, the strain and worry clear on her face for a moment before she checked herself, and her expression was neutral when she replied. It's his son, Dirk, Dirk Courtney. Mark's own shock showed so clearly that she frowned at him.

What's wrong Mark? Do you know him?

Mark recovered quickly. No. I have heard of him, but I don't know him. There is bad blood, Mark. Very bad. Be careful She left him and drifted quietly away across the floor, nodding to a dowager, stopping to exchange a word and a smile, and then drifting on to where Sean Courtney still held court in the buffet room.

Mark paused in the long gallery, and looked at himself in one of the tall gilt-framed mirrors. his face looked pale and strained, and when he smoothed his hair, his fingers were trembling slightly.

Suddenly he realized that he was afraid; dread was like a heavy weight in his bowels, and his breathing was cramped and painful.

He was afraid of the man he was going to meet, The man that he had stalked so long and painstakingly, and who he had come to know so well in his imagination.

in his mind he had built up an awesome figure, a diabolic figure wielding great and malignant power, and now he was consumed by dread at the prospect of meeting him face to face.

He went on down the gallery, his footsteps deadened by the thick pile of the carpet, his eyes not seeing the art treasures that adorned the panelled walls, for a sense of imminent danger blinded him to all else.

At the head of the marble staircase, he paused and leaned out with one hand on the balustrade to look down into the entrance hall.

A man stood alone in the centre of the black and white checkered marble floor. He wore a black overcoat, with a short cape hanging from the shoulders, a garment which enhanced his size.

His hands were clasped behind his back, and he balanced on the balls of his feet with head and jaw thrust forward aggressively, an attitude so like that of his father that Mark blinked in disbelief. His bare head was a magnificent profusion of dark curls which were shot by the overhead candelabra with sparkling chestnut highlights.

Mark started down the wide staircase and the man lifted his head and looked at him.

Mark was struck instantly by the man's fine looks, and then immediately afterwards by his resemblance to the General. He had the same powerful jaw, and the shape of his head, the set of his eyes and the lines of his mouth were identical, yet the son was infinitely more handsome than the father.

It was the noble head of a Michelangelo statue, the beauty of his David and the magnificent strength of his Moses, yet for all his beauty he was human, not the implacable monster of Mark's imagining, and the unreasonable fear released its grip on Mark's chest, and he could smile a small welcoming smile as he came down the steps.

Dirk watched him without blinking or moving, and it was only when Mark reached the checkered marble floor that he realized how tall the man was. He towered three inches over Mark, and yet his body was so well proportioned that its height did not seem excessive. Mr Courtney? Mark asked, and the man inclined his head slightly without bothering to reply. The diamond that clasped the white silk cravat at his throat flashed sullenly. Who are you, boy? Dirk Courtney asked, and his voice had the depth and timbre to match his frame. I am the General's personal assistant. Mark did not let the disparaging form of address ruffle his polite smile, though he knew that Dirk Courtney was his senior by less than ten years. Dirk Courtney ran an unhurried glance from his head to his shoes, taking in the cut of Mark's evening dress and every other detail in one casual sweep before dismissing him as unimportant. Where is my father? He turned to adjust his cravat in the nearest mirror. Does he know I've been waiting here for almost twenty minutes? The General is entertaining, but he will see you presently. In the meantime, will you care to wait in the General's study? if you will follow me. Dirk Courtney stood in the middle of the study floor and looked about him. The old boy is keeping grand style these days. He smiled with a flash of startlingly white teeth and then crossed to one of the studded leather armchairs by the stone fireplace. Get me a brandy and soda, boy. Mark swung open the dummy-fronted bookcase, selected a Courvoisier Cognac from the orderly ranks of bottles, poured some into a goblet, squirting soda on top of it, and carried it to Dirk Courtney.

He sipped the drink and nodded, sprawling in the big leather chair with the insolent grace of a resting leopard, and then once again he surveyed the room. His gaze, checking at each of the paintings, at each of the items of value which decorated the room, was calculating and thoughtful, and he asked his next question carelessly, not really interested in the answer. What did you say your name was? Mark stepped sideways, so that his view of the man's face was uninterrupted, and he watched carefully as he replied. My name is Anders, Mark Anders. For a second the name had no effect, then it struck Dirk and a remarkable transformation passed over his features.

Watching it happen, Mark's fear was regenerated in full strength.

When he had been a lad, the old man had snared a marauding leopard in a heavy steel spring-tooth trap, and when they had walked up to the site the following morning, the leopard had charged them, coming up short against the heavy retaining chain within three feet of Mark and with its eyes almost on a level with his own. He had never forgotten the terrible blazing malevolence in those eyes.

Now he was seeing the same expression, an emotion so murderous and unspeakably evil that he drew back involuntarily.

It lasted only an instant, but it seemed that the entire face changed, from extravagant beauty to grotesque ugliness and back to beauty in the time it takes to draw breath.

Dirk's voice, when he spoke, was measured and controlled, the eyes veiled and the expression of polite indifference. Anders? I've heard the name before He thought for a moment as though trying to place it, and then dismissed it as unimportant, his attention returning to the Thomas Baines painting above the fireplace, but in that instant Mark had learned with complete certainty that the vague, unformed suspicions he had harboured so long were based on hard cold fact. He knew now beyond any doubt that something evil had happened, that the sale of Andersland and the old man's death and burial in an unmarked grave were the result of deliberate planning, and that the men who had hunted him on the Ladyburg escarpment and again in the wilderness beyond Chaka's Gate were all part of a design engineered by this man.

He knew that at last he had identified his adversary, yet to hunt him down and bring him to retribution was to be a task that might be beyond his capability, for the adversary seemed invincible in his strength and power.

He turned away to tidy the pile of documents on the General's desk, not trusting himself to look again at his enemy, lest he betray himself completely.

Already he had exposed himself dangerously, but it had been necessary, an opportunity too heaven-sent to allow to pass. in exchange for exposing himself he had forced his enemy to do the same, he had forced him into the open, and he counted himself the winner in the exchange.

There was another factor now that had made his exposure less than suicidal. Whereas before he had been friendless and alone, now he was protected by his mere association with Sean Courtney.

If they had succeeded that night on the Ladyburg escarpment or again at Chaka's Gate, it would be the unimportant passing of a rootless vagrant; now his death or disappearance would rouse the immediate attention of General Courtney, and he doubted if even Dirk Courtney could afford that risk.

Mark looked up quickly from the papers, and Dirk Courtney was watching him again, but now his expression was neutral and his eyes were hooded and guarded. He began to speak, but checked himself as they heard the heavy dragging tread in the passage and they both turned expectantly to the door as it was flung open.

Sean Courtney seemed to fill the entire doorway, the top of the great shaggy head almost touching the lintel and the shoulders wide as the cross-trees of a gallows as he leaned both hands on the head of his cane and glared into the room.

His eyes went immediately to the tall elegant figure that rose from the leather armchair, the craggy sun-browaed features darkening with blood as he recognized him.

The two men confronted each other silently, and Mark found himself a fascinated spectator, as he followed intuitively the play of emotions, the reawakening of the memory of ancient wrongs, and of the elemental love and affection of son for father and father for son that had long ago been strangled and buried, but were now exhumed like some loathsome rotting corpse, more horrible for once having lived and been strong. Hello, Father, Dirk Courtney spoke first, and at the sound of his voice, the rigidity went out of Sean's shoulders, and the anger out of his eyes to be replaced by a sense of sadness, of regret for something that once had value but was lost beyond hope, so his question sounded like a sigh.

Why do you come here? Can we speak alone, without strangers? Mark left the desk and crossed to the door, but Sean stopped him with a hand on the shoulder. There are no strangers here. Stay, Mark. it was the kindest thing that anybody had ever said to Mark Anders, and the strength of the affection he felt for Sean Courtney at that moment was greater than he had ever felt for another human being.

Dirk Courtney shrugged, and smiled for the first time, a light faintly mocking smile. You were always too trusting, Father. Sean nodded as he crossed heavily to the chair behind his desk. Yes, and who should remember that better than you. Dirk's smile faded. I came here hoping that we might forget, that we might look for forgiveness from each other. Forgiveness? Sean asked, looking up quickly. You will grant me forgiveness, for what? You bred me, Father. I am what you made me-Sean shook his head, denying it, and would have spoken, but Dirk stopped him. You believe I have wronged you, but I know that you have wronged me.

Sean scowled. You talk in Circles. Come to the point.

What do you want that brings you uninvited to this house? I am your son. It is unnatural that we should be parted. Dirk was eloquent and convincing, holding out his hands in a gesture of supplication, moving closer to the massive figure at the desk. I believe I have the right to your consideration - he broke off and glanced at Mark. God damn it, can't I speak to you without this gawking audience? Sean hesitated a moment, was on the point of asking Mark to leave, and then remembered the promise he had made to Ruth only minutes before. Don't let him be alone with you for a moment, Sean. Promise me you will keep Mark with you. I don't trust him, not at all. He is evil, Sean, and he brings trouble and unhappiness, I can smell it on him. Don't be alone with him. No. He shook his head. If you have something to say, get it over with. If not, go, and leave us in peace here. All right, no more sentiment, Dirk nodded, and the role of the supplicant dropped from him. He turned and began to stride up and down the study floor, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his overcoat. I'll talk business, and get it over with. You hate me now, but when we have worked together, when I have shared with you the boldest and most imaginative venture this land has ever known, then we will talk again of sentiment.

Sean was silent. As a business man now and as a son later. Do you agree? I hear you, said Sean, and Dirk began to talk.

Even Mark could not but stand in admiration of Dirk Courtney's eloquence, and the winning and persuasive manner in which he used his fine deep voice and his magnificent good looks; but these were theatrical tricks, well rehearsed and stagey.

What was spontaneous was the burning, almost fanatical glow of commitment to his own ideas which radiated from him as he talked and gestured. it was easy to believe him, for he so clearly believed himself.

Using his hands and his voice, he conjured up before his father a vast empire, endless expanses of rich land, thousands upon thousands o square miles, a treasure the like of which few men had ever conceived, planted to cotton and sugar and maize, watered by a gigantic dam that would hold back an inland sea of sweet, fresh water it was a dream quite breathtaking in its scope and sweep. I have half of the land already, Dirk paused and cupped his hands with fingers stiff and grasping as the talons of an eagle, here in my hands. It's mine. No longer a dream. And the rest of it? Sean asked reluctantly, swept along on the torrent against his will. It's there, untouched, ripe, ready. Dirk paused dramatically. It is as though nature had designed it all for just this purpose. The foundations of the dam are there, built by God as though as a blessing. So? Sean grunted sceptically. Now you are an instrument of God's will, are you? And where is this empire he has promised you? I own all the land south of the Unikorno River, that is the half I have already. He stopped in front of the mahogany desk and leaned forward with his hands onthepolished wood, thrusting a face that glowed with the aura of a religious fanatic towards Sean Courtney. We will build a dam between the cliffs of Chaka's Gate and dam the whole of the Bubezi Valley, a lake one hundred and sixty miles long and a hundred wide, and we'll open the land between there and the Umkomo River and add it to the land I already own in the south. Two million acres of arable and irrigated land! Think of that! Mark stared at Dirk Courtney, utterly appalled by what he had just heard, and then his gaze switched to Sean Courtney, appealingly, wanting to hear him reject the whole monstrous idea.

That's tsetse belt, said Sean Courtney at last. Father, in Germany three men, Dressel, Kothe and Rochl, have just perfected and tested a drug called Germanin. It's a complete cure for tsetse-borne sleeping-sickness. It's so secret still that only a handful of men know about it, Dirk told him eagerly, and then went on, Then we will wipe out the tsetse fly in the whole valley. How? Sean asked, and his genuine interest was evident. From the air. Flying machines spraying pythagra extract, or other insect-killers. It was a staggering concept, and Sean was silent a moment before he asked reluctantly, Has it been done before? No Dirk smiled at him. But we will do it! You've thought it out, Sean lay back in his chair and groped absently in the humidor for a cigar, except for one little detail. The Bubezi Valley is a proclaimed area, has been since the time of Chaka, and most of the other ground between the Bubezi and Nkomo Rivers is either tribal trust land, Crown land or forestry reserve. Dirk Courtney lifted a finger at Mark. Get me another brandy, boy. Mark glanced at the General. Sean nodded slightly, and there was silence again while Mark poured the brandy and brought the glass to Dirk. You trust him? Dirk asked his father again, indicating Mark with his head as he accepted the glass. Get on with it, man, snapped Sean irritably, not bothering to answer the question. Dirk saluted his father with the cut-glass tumber and smiled knowingly. You make the laws, Father, you and your friends in the Cabinet and in the Provincial Assembly, and you can change them. That's your end of the bargain. Sean had drawn a swelling chestful of cigar smoke as Dirk spoke, and now he let it trickle out so that his head was wreathed in drifting blue smoke as he replied. Let's get this clear. You put up the money and I force through Parliament legislation repealing the proclamation of these lands we need between Nkomo and the Bubezi Rivers? And the Bubezi Valley, Dirk cut in. And the Bubezi Valley. Then I arrange that some front company gets control of that land, even if it's only on a thousand year ground rental? Dirk nodded. Yes, that's it. What about the cost of the dam and the new railroad to the dam, have you got that type of capital? Mark could hardly believe what he was hearing, that Sean Courtney was haggling over the assets of the nation, treasures that had been entrusted to him as a high representative of the people. He wanted to shout out, to lash out at them as they schemed. The deep affection he had felt moments before turned slowly to a deep sense of outrage and betrayal. Nobody has that type of capital, Dirk told him. I've had my people work out a rough estimate, and there will be little change left out of four million pounds. No individual has that sort of money. So? Sean asked, the wreaths of cigar smoke drifted away from his head and it seemed to Mark that he had aged suddenly. His face was grey and haggard, the deep-set eyes turned by a trick of the light into the dark empty eyesockets of a skull. The Government will build them for us, and Dirk chuckled richly, as he resumed his pacing. Or rather, they'll build dam and railway for the nation. To open up valuable natural resources. Dirk chuckled again. And imagine the prestige of the man that shepherds these measures through Parliament, the man who brings progress and civilization into the wilderness. He picked up the brandy glass and tossed off half the contents. It would all be named after him, the Sean Courtney Dam perhaps? It sounds impressive. A fitting monument, Father. Dirk lifted the glass to his father. But what of the tribal lands, Dirk? Sean used his son's name for the first time, Mark noticed, and glanced sharply at him.

We'll move the blacks out, Dirk told him casually. Find a place for them in the hills. And the game reserves? Good God, are we going to let a few wild animals stand in the way of a hundred million pounds? He shook the handsome head of curls in mock dismay. Before we flood the valley, you can take a hunting safari there. You always did enjoy the hunt, didn't you? I remember you telling me about the big elephant hunts in the old days. Yes, Sean nodded heavily. I killed a lot of elephants. o, Father, we are agreed then? Dirk stopped once more before Sean, and there was for the first time an anxious air, a small frown of worry puckering his bold high forehead. Do we work together? Sean was silent for seconds longer, staring at the blotter on his desk-top, then he raised his head slowly and he looked sick and very old. What you have told me, the sheer size of it all has taken me completely by surprise. He spoke carefully, measuring each word. It's big and it's going to take guts, Dirk agreed. But you have never been frightened before, Father. You told me once, if you want something, go out and get it for one thing is sure as all hell, nobody is going to bring it to you. "I am older now, Dirk, and a man grows tired, loses the strength of his youth. You're as strong as a bull. I want time to think about it. How long? Dirk demanded. Until, Sean faltered, and thought a moment, until after the next parliamentary sessions. I will need to speak to people, examine the feasibility of the whole idea. It's too long, Dirk scowled, and suddenly the face was no more beautiful, the eyes changed, coming together into a mean ferrety look. It's the time I needAll right, I Dirk agreed, and thrust the scowl aside, smiling down at the massive seated figure. He began the gesture of putting out his right hand, but Sean did not look up and instead he thrust the hand back into his overcoat pocket. I am neglecting my guests, said Sean softly. You must excuse me now. Mark will see you out. You will let me know? Dirk demanded. Yes, said Sean heavily, still not looking up. I will let you know. Mark led Dirk Courtney down to the front doors, and he felt feverish with anger and hatred for him. They walked in silence, side by side, and Mark fought the wild, dark and violent impulses that kept sweeping over him. He hated him for having tarnished the man he had respected and worshipped, for having smeared him with his own filth.

He hated him for the old man and for Andersland, and for the dreadful but unknown deeds he had ordered, and he hated him for what he was about to do to that beloved land beyond Chaka's Gate.

At the front doors, Dirk Courtney took his hat from the table and adjusted it over his eyes as he studied Mark carefully. I am a good friend to have, he said softly. My father trusts you, and I am sure he confides in you. You would find me grateful and generous, and I am sure that, since you overheard our conversation, you will know what small items of information might interest me. Mark stared at him. His lips felt numb and cold, and his whole body trembled with the effort it took to control himself. He did not trust his own voice to speak.

Dirk Courtney turned away abruptly, not bothering with his reply and he strode lightly down the front steps into the night.

Mark stared after him long after he disappeared. There was the crackling snarl of a powerful engine, the crunch of gravel under spinning wheels, and the twin beams of headlights swept the garden, and were gone.

Mark's feet kept pace with the furious rush of his anger, and he was almost running when he reached the General's study. Without knocking, he pushed open the door.

Words threatened to explode out of him, bitter condemnation, accusation and rejection, and he looked to the General's desk, but it was empty.

He was going to warn the General that he would use any means to expose the foul bargain that had been proposed that evenin& he was going to voice his disillusion, his horror that Sean Courtney had even listened to it, let alone given it serious thought and the half-promise of his support.

The General stood at the window, his back to the room and the wide square shoulders slumped. He seemed to have shrunk in size. General, Mark's voice was harsh, strident with his anger and determination, I am leaving now, and I won't be coming back. But before I go, I want to tell you that I will fight you and your son -Sean Courtney turned into the room, his shoulders still drooped and his head held at a listening angle, like that of a blind man, and Mark's voice trailed away, his fury evaporating. Mark? Sean Courtney asked, as though he had forgotten his existence, and Mark stared at him, not believing what he was seeing, for Sean Courtney was weeping.

Bright tears had swamped and blinded his eyes and streamed down the lined and sun-scared cheeks, clinging in fat bright droplets to the coarse curls of his beard. It was one of the most distressing sights Mark had ever witnessed, so harrowing that he wanted to turn away from in it but could not. Get me a drink, son. Sean Courtney crossed heavily towards his desk and one of his tears fell to the starched snowy front of his dress shirt, leaving a wet mark on the material.

Mark turned away, and made a show of selecting a glass and pouring whisky from the heavy decanter. He drew the simple act out and when he turned back Sean Courtney was at his desk.

He held a crumpled white handkerchief in his hand that had damp patches on it, but although his cheeks were dry now, the rims of his eyelids were pink and inflamed and the marvelous sparkling blue clarity of his eyes was dulled with swimming liquid. Thank you, Mark, he said as he set the glass on the desk in front of him. Sean did not touch the glass but stared at it, and when he spoke his voice was low and husky. I brought him into the world with my own hands, there was no doctor, I caught him in my own hands still wet and warm and slippery, and I was proud. I carried him on my shoulder, and taught him to talk and ride and shoot. There are no words to explain what a man feels for his first-born son, Sean sighed, a broken gusty sound. I mourned for him once before, I mourned him as though he was dead, and that was many years ago. He drank a little of the whisky and then went on softly, so softly that Mark could hardly hear the words. Now he comes back and forces me to mourn him again, all over again. I am sorry, General. I thought, I believed that you were going to, bargain with him. That thought dishonours me. Sean did not raise his voice nor his eyes. Leave me now, please Mark. We'll talk about this again at some other time. At the door Mark looked back, but the General was not aware of his presence. His eyes were still misty, and seemed to stare at a far horizon. Mark closed the door very softly.

Despite Sean Courtney's promise to discuss Dirk Courtney's proposition again, long weeks went by without even the mention of his name. However, though the life at Ernoyeni seemed to continue in its busy round, yet there were times when Mark entered the panelled and booklined study to find the General brooding darkly at his desk, beak-nosed and morbid as some roosting bird of prey, and he withdrew quietly, respecting his melancholy, knowing he was still in mourning. Mark realized it would take time before he was ready to talk.

During this period there were small changes in Mark's own circumstances. One night, long after midnight, Sean Courtney had entered his dressing-room, to find the lights were still on in the bedroom and Ruth propped on her pillows and reading. You shouldn't have waited up for me, he told her severely. I could have slept on the couch, I prefer you here. She closed the book.

What are you reading? She showed him the title. D. H. Lawrence's new novel, Women in Love. Sean grinned as he unbuttoned his shirt. Did he teach you anything? Not yet, but I'm still hoping. She smiled at him, and he thought how young and lovely she looked in her lace nightdress. And you? Did you finish your speech? Yes. He sat to remove his boots. It's a masterpiece I'm going to tear the bastards to pieces. I heard Mark's motorcycle leaving a few minutes ago.

You kept him here until midnightHe was helping me look up some figures and searching Hansard for me. It's awfully late. He's young, grunted Sean. And dan-ined well paid for it. He picked up his boots and stumped through into the dressing-room, the limp more noticeable now that he was in his stockinged feet. And I haven't heard him complain yet. He came back in his night-shirt and slipped into bed beside her. If you are going to keep the poor boy to these hours, it's not fair to send him back to town every nightWhat do you suggest? he asked, as he wound his gold hunter and then placed it on the bedside table.

I could turn the gate-keeper's cottage into a flat for him.

It wouldn't need much, even though it's been deserted for years. Good idea, Sean agreed casually. Keep him onthepremises so I can really get some work out of him. You're a hard man, General Courtney. He rolled over and kissed her lingeringly, then whispered in her ear. I am glad you noticed. She giggled like a bride and whispered back, I didn't mean that. Let's see if we can teach you something that Mr Lawrence could not, he suggested.

The cottage, once it was repainted and furnished with discards from the big house, was by Mark's standards palatial, and marvellously free of vermin and cockroaches.

It was less than half a mile from the main house, and his hours became as irregular as those of his master, his position became more trusted and naturally integrated into the household. His duties came to cover the entire spectrum from speech-wTiting and researching, answering all correspondence that was not important enough for the General's own hand, operating the household accounts, to merely sitting quietly sometimes when Sean Courtney needed somebody to talk to, and acting as a sounding board for arguments and ideas.

Yet there was still time for his old love of reading. There were thousands of volumes that made up the library at Emoyeni and Mark took an armful of them down to the cottage each evening and readuntil the earlyhours, devouring with omnivorous appetite history, biography, satire, political treatise, Zone Grey, Kipling and Rider Haggard.

Then suddenly there was a new spirit of excitement and upheaval in Emoyeni as the next session of Parliament approached. This meant that the household must uproot itself, and move almost a thousand miles to Cape Town.

Lightly Ruth Courtney referred to this annual political migration as the Great Trek, but the description was justified, for it meant moving the family, fifteen of the senior servants, three automobiles, a dozen horses, all the clothing, silver, glassware, papers, books and other incidentals that would be necessary to sustain in the correct style a busy social and political season of many months, while General Courtney and his peers conducted the affairs of the nation. It meant also closing Emoyeni and opening the house in Newlands, below the squat bulk of Table Mountain.

In the middle of all this frantic activity, Storm Courtney arrived home from the grand tour of the British Isles and the Continent on which she and Irene Leuchars had been chaperoned by Irene's mother. In her last letter to Ruth Courtney, Mrs Leuchars had admitted herself to be both physically and mentally exhausted. You will never know, y dear, the terrible weight of responsibility I have been under. We have been followed across half the world by droves of eager young men, Americans, Italians, Frenchmen, Counts, Barons, sons of industrialists, and even the son of the dictator of a South American Republic. The strain was such that at one period I could bear it no longer and locked both girls in their room. It was only later that I discovered they had escaped by means of a fire escape and danced until the following morning at some disreputable bofte de nuit in Montparnasse. With the tact of a loving wife, Ruth refrained from showing the letter to Sean Courtney and so he prepared to welcome his daughter with all the enthusiasm of a doting father, unclouded by awareness of her recent escapades.

mark was for once left out of the family preparations and he watched from the library window when Sean handed his wife into the Rolls. He was dressed like a suitor in crisply starched fly-away collar, a gay silk cravat, dark blue suit with white carnation in the button-hole and a beaver tilted jauntily over one eye; his beard was trimmed and shamed and there was a merry anticipatory sparkle in his eyes, and he twirled his cane lightly as he went round to his own seat.

The Rolls purred away, almost two hours ahead of the time when the mailship was scheduled to berth at No. 1 wharf. It was followed at a respectful distance by the second Rolls which would be needed for the conveyance of Storm Courtney's baggage.

Mark lunched alone in the study and then worked on, but his concentration was broken by the imminent arrival of the returning cavalcade, and when it came, he hurried to the windows.

He caught only a glimpse of Storm as she left the car and danced up the front steps hand in hand with her mother.

They were followed immediately by the General, his cane snapping a staccato beat off the marble as he hurried to match their swiftness; on his face he wore an expression that tried to remain severe and stern but kept breaking into a wide beaming grin.

Mark heard the laughter and the excited murmur of the servants assembled to greet her in the entrance hall, and Storm's voice giving a new sweet tilt to the cadence of the Zulu language as she went to each of them in turn.

Mark returned to his open books, but did not look down at them. Instead he was savouring that one glimpse he had of Storm.

She had grown somehow lovelier, he had not believed it possible, but it had happened. It was as though the divine essence of young womanhood had been distilled in her, all the gaiety and grace, all the warmth and smoothness, the texture of skin and silken hair, the perfect moulding of limb and the delicate sculpturing of feature, the musical lilt of her voice, clear as the ring of crystal, the dancing grace of her movements, the very carriage of the small perfect head on bare brown shoulders.

Mark sat bemused, acutely aware of the way in which the whole huge house had changed its mood since she entered it, had become charged with her spirit, as though it had been waiting for this moment.

Mark had excused himself from dinner that evening, not wanting to intrude on the family's first evening together.

He intended going down to the drill-hall for the weekly muster, and afterwards he would dine with some of the other young bachelor officers. At four o'clock, he left the house through a side entrance and went down to the cottage to bath and change into his uniform.

He was thundering out of the gates of Emoyeni on the Ariel Square Four when he remembered that the General had asked for the Railway report to be left on his desk. In the distraction of Storm's arrival, he had forgotten it, and now he swung the heavy machine into a tight turn and tore back up the driveway.

In the paved kitchen yard he pulled the motorcycle up on its stand, and went in through the back door.

He was standing at the library table with the report in his hands, glancing through it quickly to check his own notations, when suddenly the latch on the door clicked.

He laid aside the report and turned just as the door swung open.

This close, Storm Courtney was lovelier still. She was three quick light paces into the room before she realized she was not alone, and she paused, startled, poised with the grace of a gazelle on the point of flight.

One hand flew to her mouth, and her fingers were delicately tapered with long nails that gleamed like pink mother of pearl. She touched her lips with the tip of one finger; the lip trembled slightly, wet and smooth and glistening, and her eyes were huge and a dark fearful blue. She looked like a little girl, frightened and alone.

. Mark wanted to reassure her, to protect her from her own distress, to say something to comfort her, but he found he could not move or speak.

He need not have worried, her distress lasted only a fleeting beat of time, just long enough for her to realize that the source of her alarm was a tall young man, dashing in the dress uniform he wore, a uniform that set off the slim graceful body, a uniform emblazoned with badges of courage and of responsibility.

Subtly, with barely a shadow of movement, her whole poise changed. The finger on her lip now touched one cheek with an arch gesture, and the trembling lip stilled and parted slightly into a thoughtful pout. The huge eyes, no longer fearful, almost disappeared behind drooping lids, and then examined Mark critically, lifting her chin to look up into his face.

Her stance changed also, one hip thrusting forward an inch, the twin mounds of her breasts lifting and pressing boldly against the gossamer silk of her bodice. The tender taunting line of her lips was enough to make Mark's breath catch in his throat. Hello, she said. Her voice, although low and throaty, bounced the word off Mark's heart, drawing it out into two syllables that seemed to hang in the air seconds later. Good evening, Miss Courtney, he answered her, surprised that his voice came out level and assured. It was the voice that triggered her memory, and the blue eyes flew wide as she stared at him. Slowly her surprise turned to angry outrage. The eyes snapped sparks and two bright scarlet blotches of crimson burned suddenly on the smooth, almost waxy perfection of her cheeks. You? she asked incredulously. Here? I'm afraid so, he agreed, and her consternation was so comical that he grinned at her, his own misgivings evaporating. Suddenly he felt relaxed and at his ease. What are you doing in this house? She drew herself up to her full height, and her manner became frostily dignified. The full effect was spoiled by the fact that she had to look up at him, and that her cheeks still burned with agitation. I am your father's personal assistant now, and he smiled again. However, I am sure you will soon become reconciled to my presence. We will see about that, she snapped. I shall speak to my father. Oh, I was led to understand that you and the General had already discussed my employment, or rather my unemployment. I, said Storm, and then closed her mouth firmly, the colour spreading from her cheeks down her throat as she remembered with sudden acute discomfort the whole episode. The humiliation was still so intense that she felt herself wilting like a rose on a summer's day, and a small choke of self-pity constricted the back of her throat. it was enough that it had happened, that instead of her father's unquestioning support, something she had been accustomed to since her first childhood memories, he had told her angrily that she had acted like a spoiled child, that she had shamed him by misusing his power and influence, and that the shame had been made more intense by the way she had used it without his knowledge, by sneaking behind his back, as he put it.

She had been frightened, as she always was by his anger, but not seriously disturbed. It was almost ten years since he had last lifted a hand to her. A true lady shows consideration to all around her, no matter what their colour or creed or station. She had heard it often before, and now her fear was turning to irritation. Oh, la-di-da, Pater! I'm not a child any more! she flounced. He was insolent, and anyone who is insolent to me will damned well pay for it. You have made two statements there, the General noted with deceptive calm, and both of them need correction. If you are insolent, then you will get back insolence and you are a child still. He rose from his chair behind the desk, and he was huge, like a forest oak, like a mountain. One other little thing, ladies do not swear, and you are going to be a lady when you grow up. Even if I have to beat it into you. As he took her wrist, she suddenly realized with a sense of incredulous dismay what was about to happen. It had not happened since she was fourteen years of age, and she had believed it would never happen again.

She tried to pull away, but his strength was enormous, and as he lifted her easily under one arm and carried her to the leather couch, she let out her first squeal of fear and outrage. It changed swiftly to real anguished howls as he positioned her carefully across his lap and swept her skirts up over her head. Her pantaloons were of blue crdpe de Chine with little pink roses decorating the target area, and his palm, horny and hard, snapped over the tight double bulge of her buttocks with a sharp rubbery crack. He kept it up until the howling and kicking subsided into heartracking sobs, and then he lowered her skirts and told her quietly, If I knew where to find him, I'd send you to apologize to that young man. Storm remembered that threat, and felt a moment of panic. She knew her father was still quite capable of making her apologize even now, and she nearly turned and rushed out of the library. It required a supreme effort once more to draw herself up and lIfft her chin defiantly. You are right, she said coldly. The hiring and firing of my father's servants is not a subject with which I should concern myself. Now, if you would kindly stand aside, Of course, forgive me. Still smiling, Mark bowed extravagantly and made way for her to pass.

She tossed her head and swished her skirts as she passed him and, in her agitation, went to the wrong shelves. it was some little time before she realized that she was studying intently a row of bound copies of ten-year-old parliamentary white papers, but she would not admit her mistake and humiliate herself further.

Furiously she pondered her next sally, picking and discarding half a dozen disparaging remarks before settling on, I would be obliged if in future you would address me only when it is absolutely necessary, and right at this moment I should like to be alone. She spoke without interrupting her perusal of the white papers.

There was no reply, and she turned haughtily. Did you hear what I said? Then she paused.

She was alone, he had gone silently and she had not even heard the click of the latch.

He had not waited to be dismissed, and Storm felt quite dizzy with anger. Now a whole parade of brilliant and biting insults came readily to her lips, and frustration spiced her anger.

She had to do something to vent it, and she looked around for something to break, and then remembered, just in time, that it was Sean Courtney's library, and everything in it was treasured. So instead, she racked her brain for its foulest oath. Bloody Hell! She stamped her foot, and it was entirely inadequate. Suddenly she remembered her father's favourite. The bastard, she added, rolling it thunderously around her tongue as Sean did, and immediately she felt better.

She said it again and her anger subsided, leaving an extraordinary new sensation.

There was a disturbing heat in that mysterious area between navel and knees. Flustered and alarmed, she hurried out into the garden. The short glowing tropical dusk gave the familiar lawns and trees an unreal stagelike appearance, and she found herself almost running over the spungy turf, as though to escape from her own sensations.

She stopped beside the lake, and her breathing was quick and shallow, not entirely from her exertions. She leaned on the railing of the bridge and in the rosy light of sunset her reflection was perfectly mirrored in the still pearly waters.

Now that the disturbing new sensation had passed, she found herself regretting that she had fled from it. Something like that was what she had hoped for when She found herself thinking again of that awkward and embarrassing episode in Monte Carlo; goaded on by Irene Leuchars, teased and tempted, she had been made to feel inadequate because she lacked the experience of men that Irene boasted of. Chiefly to spite Irene, and to defend herself against her jibes, she had slipped away from the Casino with the young Italian Count and made no protest when he parked the Bugatti among the pine trees on the highlevel road above Cap Ferrat.

She had hoped for something wild and beautiful, something to bring the moon crashing out of the sky and to make choirs of angels sing.

It had been quick, painful and messy, and neither she nor the Count had spoken to each other on the winding road down to Nice, except to mutter goodbye on the pavement outside the Negresco Hotel. She had not seen him again.

Why she thought of this now she could not understand, and she thrust the memory aside without effort. It was replaced almost instantly with a picture of a tall young man in a handsome uniform, of a cool mocking smile and calm penetrating gaze. Immediately she was aware of the warmth and glow in her lower belly again, and this time she did not attempt to fly from it, but continued leaning on the bridge, smiling at her darkening image in the water. You look like a smug old pussy cat, she whispered, and chuckled softly.

Sean Courtney rode like a Boer, with long stirrups, sitting well back in the saddle with legs thrust out straight in front of him and the reins held loosely in his left hand, the black quirt of hippo-hide dangling from its thong on his wrist so that the point touched the ground. His favourite mount was a big rawboned stallion of almost eighteen hands with a white blaze and an ugly unpredictable nature that only the General could fathom; but even he had to use an occasional light cut with the quirt to remind the beast of his social obligations.

Mark had an English seat, or, as the General put it, rode like a monkey on a broomstick, and he added darkly, After only a hundred miles or so perched up like that, your backside will be so hot you could cook your dinner on it.

We rode a thousand miles in two weeks when we were chasing General Leroux. They rode almost daily together, when even the huge rooms of Emoyeni became confining, and the General started to fret at the caging of his big body; then he would shout for the horses.

There were thousands of acres of open ground still backing the big urban estates, and then beyond that there were hundreds of miles of red dirt roads crisscrossing the sugarcane fields.

As they rode, the day's work was continued, with only the occasional interruption for a half mile of hard galloping to charge the blood, and then the General would rein in again and they would amble on over the gently undulating hills, knee to knee. Mark carried a small leather-bound notebook in his inside pocket to make notes of what he must write up on their return, but most of it he carried in his head.

The week before the departure to Cape Town had been filled with the implementation of details and of broad policies, the winding up of the domestic business of the provincial legislative council before beginning on the national business of Parliament, and, deep in this discussion, their daily ride had carried them further than they had ridden together before.

When at last the General reined in, they had reached the crest of a hill, and the view before them spread down to the sea, and away to the far silhouette of the great whalebacked mountain above Durban harbour. Directly below them, a fresh scar had been torn in the earth, like a bold knife stroke through the green carpet of vegetation, into the red fleshy earth.

The steel tracks of the permanent way had reached this far, and as they sat the fidgeting horses, the loco came buffing up to the railhead, pushing the track carrier ahead of it under its heavy load of steel.

Neither of them spoke, as the tracks were dumped with a faint clattering roar, and the tiny antlike figures of the tracklaying gang swarmed over them, manhandling them on to the orderly parallel rows of timber sleepers. The tap of the swinging hammers began then, a quick rhythmic beat as the fishplates were spiked into place. A mile a day, said Sean softly, and Mark saw from his expression that he was thinking once again of another railroad far to the north, and all that it betokened. Cecil Rhodes dreamed of a railway from Cairo to Cape Town and I believed once that it was a grand dream. He shook his beard heavily. God knows, perhaps we were both wrong. He turned the stallion's head away and they walked back down the hill in silence except for the jingle of harness and the clip of hooves. They were both thinking of Dirk Courtney, but it was another ten minutes before Sean spoke. Do you know the Bubezi Valley, beyond Chaka's Gate?

Yes, said Mark. Tell me, Sean ordered, and then went on, It is fifty years since I was last there. During the war with the old Zulu king Cetewayo, we chased the remains of his impis up there, and hunted them along the river. I was there only a few months ago. just before I came to you. Sean turned in the saddle, and his black brows came together sharply.

What were you doing there? he demanded harshly.

For an instant Mark was about to blurt out all his suspicions, of Dirk Courtney, of the fate that had overtaken the old man, of his pilgrimage to find the grave and to fathom the mystery beyond Chaka's Gate. Something warned him that to do so would be to alienate Sean Courtney completely.

He knew enough about him now to realize that although he might accuse and even reject his own son, he would not listen to nor tolerate those accusations from someone outside the family, particularly if those accusations were without substance or proof. Mark put the temptation aside and instead he explained quietly, My grandfather and I went there often when I was a child. I needed to go back, for the silence and the beauty, for the peace. Yes, The General understood immediately. What's the game like there now? Thin, Mark answered. It's been, shot out, trapped and hunted. It's thin and very wild. Buffalo? Yes, there are some in the swamps. I think they graze out into the bush in the night but I never saw them. In I goi old Selous wrote that the Cape buffalo was extinct. That was after the rinderpest plague. My God, Mark, when I was your age there were herds of ten and twenty thousand together, the plains along the Limpopo were black with them, and he began to reminisce again. It might have been boring, an old man's musty memories, but he told it so vividly that Mark was carried along, fascinated by the tales of a land where a man could ride With his wagons for six months without meeting another white man.

It was with a sick little slide of regret, of something irretrievably lost that he heard the General say, It's all gone now. The railway line is right through to the copperbelt in Northern Rhodesia. Rhodes Column has taken the land between the Zambesi and the Limpopo.

Where I camped and hunted, there are towns and mines, and they are ploughing up the old elephant grounds. He shook his head again. We thought it would never end, and now it's almost gone. He was silent and sad again for a while. My grandchildren may never see an elephant or hear the roar of a lion. My grandfather said that when Africa lost its game, he would go back and live in old London town. That's how I feel, Sean agreed. It's strange but perhaps Dirk has done something of great value for Africa and for mankind. The name seemed to choke in his throat, as though it was an effort to enunciate it, and Mark was silent, respecting that effort. He has made me think of all this as never before. One of the things that we are going to do during this session of Parliament, Mark, is to make sure that the sanctuary in the Bubezi Valley is ratified, and we are going to get funds to administer it properly, to make sure that nobody, ever, turns it into a sugar cane or cotton field, or floods it beneath the waters of a dam. As he spoke, Mark listened with a soaring sense of destiny and commitment. It was as though he had waited all his life to hear these words.

The General went on, working out what was needed in money and men, deciding where he would lobby for support, which others in the Cabinet could be relied on, the form which the legislation must take, and Mark made a note of each point as it came up, his pencil hurrying to keep pace with the General's random and eclectic thoughts.

Suddenly, in full intellectual flight, the General broke off and laughed aloud. It's true, you know, Mark. There is nobody so virtuous as a reformed whore. We were the great robber barons, Rhodes and Robertson, Bailey and Barnato, Duff Charleywood and Sean Courtney. We seized the land and then ripped the gold out of the earth, we hunted where we pleased, and burned the finest timber for our camp fires, every man with a rifle in his hand and shoes on his feet was a king, prepared to fight anybody, Boer, Briton or Zulu, for the right of plunder. He shook his head and groped in his pockets before he found his cigars. He laughed no longer, but frowned as he lit the cigar. The big stallion seemed to sense his mood, and he crabbed and bucked awkwardly. Sean rode him easily and quirted him lightly across the flank. Behave yourself! he growled, and then when he quieted Sean went on, The day that I met my first wife, only thirty-two years ago, I hunted with her father and her brother. We rode down a herd of elephant and between the three of us we shot and killed forty-three of them. We cut out the tusks and left the carcasses lying.

That's over one hundred and sixty tons of flesh. Again he shook his head, Only now am I coming to realize the enormity of what we did. There were other things, during the Zulu wars, during the war with Kruger, during Bombata's rebellion in 19o6. Things I don't even like to remember. And now perhaps it's too late to make amends. Perhaps also it's just the way of growing old that a man regrets the passing of the old ways He initiates change when he is young and then mourns that change when he grows old. Mark was silent, not daring to say a word that might break the mood. He knew that what he was hearing was so important that he could then only guess at the depths of it. We must try, Mark, we must try. Yes, sir. We will, Mark agreed, and something in his tone made the General glance across at him, mildly surprised. This really means something to you. He nodded, confirming his statement. Yes, I can see that. Strange, a young fellow like you! When I was your age all I ever thought about was a quick sovereign and a likely piece of - He caught himself before he finished, and coughed to clear his throat. Well, sir, you must remember that I had my full share of destruction at an earlier age than you did. The greatest destruction the world has ever known. The General's face darkened as he remembered what they had shared together in France. When you've seen how easy it is to tear down, it makes the preservation seem worth while. Mark chuckled ruefully. Perhaps I was born too late. No, said the General softly. I think you were born just in time, and he might have gone on, but high and clear on the heat-hushed air came the musical cry of a girl's voice, and instantly the General's head went up and his expression lightened.

Storm Courtney came at the gallop. She rode with the same light lithe grace which marked all she did. She rode astride, and she wore knee-high boots with baggy gaucho pants tucked into the tops, a hand-embroidered waistcoat in vivid colours over a shirt of white satin with wide sleeves, and a black wide-brimmed vaquero hat hung on her back from a thong around her throat.

She reined in beside her father, laughing and flushed, tossing the hair out of her face, and leaning out of the saddle to kiss him, not even glancing at Mark, and he touched his reins and dropped back tactfully.

We've been looking for you all over, Pater, she cried. We went as far as the river, what made you come this way? Coming up more sedately behind Storm on a bay mare was the blonde girl whom Markremembered from that fateful day at the tennis courts. She was more conventionally dressed than Storm in dove-grey riding breeches and tailored jacket, and the wind ruffled the pale silken gold of her cropped hair.

While she made her greetings to the General, her eyes kept swivelling in Mark's direction and he searched for her name and remembered she had been called Irene, and realized she must be the girl who had been Storm's companion on the grand continental tour. A pretty, bright little thing with a gay brittle style and calculating eyes. Good afternoon, Miss Leuchars. Oh la! She smiled archly at him now. Have we met? Somehow her mare was kneed away from the leading pair, and dropped back beside Mark's mount. Briefly, yes, we have, Mark admitted, and suddenly the china-blue eyes flew wide and the girl covered her mouth with a gloved hand. You are the one - then she squealed softly with delight, and mimicked him, Just as soon as you say please!

Storm Courtney had not looked round, and she was paying exaggerated attention to her father, but Mark watched her small perfect ears turn pink, and she tossed her head again, but this time with an aggressive, angry motion.

I think we might forget that, Mark murmured. Forget it? chirruped Irene. I'll never forget it. It was absolutely classic. She leaned over and placed a bold hand on Mark's forearm. At that moment Storm could contain herself no longer; she swivelled in the saddle and was about to speak to Irene, when she saw the hand on Mark's arm.

For a moment Storm's expression was ferocious, and the dark blue eyes snapped with electric sparkle. Irene held her gaze undaunted, making her own paler blue eyes wide and artless, and deliberately, challengingly, she let her hand linger, squeezing lightly on Mark's sleeve.

The understanding between the two girls was instantaneous. They had played the game before, but this time intuitively Irene realized that she had never been in a stronger position to inflict punishment. She had never seen such a swift and utterly malevolent reaction from Storm and they knew each other intimately. This time she had Missy Storm in a vice, and she was going to squeeze and squeeze.

She edged her mare in until her knee touched Mark's, and she turned away from Storm, deliberately looking up at the rider beside her. I hadn't realized you were so tall, she murmured. How tall are you? Six foot two. Mark only dimly realized that something mysterious, which promised him many awkward moments, was afoot. Oh, I do think height gives a man presence. Storm was now laughing gaily with her father, and trying to listen to the conversation behind her at the same time.

Anger clawed her cruelly and she clutched the riding-crop until her fingers ached. She was not quite sure what had affected her this way, but she would have delighted in lashing the crop across Irene's silly simpering face.

It was certainly not that she felt anything for Mark Anders. He was, after all, merely a hired servant at Emoyeni. He could make an idiot of himself over Irene Leuchars and she would not even glance aside at any other time or place. It was just that there were some things that were not done, the dignity of her position, of her father, and family, yes, that was it, she realized. It was an insult that Irene Leuchars, as a guest in the Courtney home, should make herself free, should flaunt herself, should make it so blatant that she would like to lead Mark Anders along the well-travelled pathway to her steamy, she could not continue the thought, for the vivid mental image of that pale, deceptively fragile-looking body of Irene's spread out, languid and naked, and Mark about to, another wave of anger made her sway in the saddle, and she dropped the riding crop she carried and turned quickly. Oh Mark, I've dropped my crop. Won't you be a dear and fetch it for me? Mark was taken aback, not only by the endearment, but also by the stunning smile and warmth of Storm's voice.

He almost fell from the saddle in his haste, and when he came alongside Storm to hand the crop back to her, she detained him with a smile of thanks, and a question. Mark, won't you help me label my cases? it's only a few days and we'll all be leaving for Cape Town. I'm so looking forward to it, Irene agreed as she pushed her mare up on Mark's other side, and Storm smiled sweetly at her. It should be fun, she agreed. I love Cape Town. Grand fun, Irene laughed gaily, and Storm regretted bitterly the invitation that would make her a guest for four months in the Courtney's Cape Town home. Before Storm could find a cutting rejoinder, Irene leaned across to Mark.

Come on, then, she said, and turned her mare aside.

Where are you going? Storm demanded. Mark is taking me down to the river to show me the monument where Dick King crossed on his way to fetch the English troops from Grahamstown. oh, Irene darling, Storm dabbed at her eye with the tail of her scarf. I seem to have something in my eye. Won't you see to it? No, don't wait for us, Mark. Go on ahead with the General. I know he needs you still. And she turned her small perfect head to Irene for her ministrations.

With patent relief, Mark spurred ahead to catch up with the General, and Irene told Storm in honeyed tones, There's nothing in your eye, darling, except a touch of green. You bitch, hissed Storm. Darling, I don't know what you mean. The Dunottar Castle trembled under the thrust of her engines and ran southwards over a starlit sea that seemed to be sculpted from wet black obsidian, each crest marched with such weighty dignity as to seem solid and unmoving.

It was only when the ship put her sharp prow into them that they burst into creaming white, and hissed back along the speeding hull.

The General paused and looked at the southern sky, to where the great cross burned among its myriad cohorts, and Orion the hunter brandished his sword. That's the way the sky should be, he nodded his approval. I could never get used to the northern skies. It was as though the universe had disintegrated, and the grand designs of nature had been plunged into anarchy. They went to the rail and paused there to watch the moon rise out of the dark sea, and as it pushed its golden dome clear of the horizon, the General pulled out the gold hunter watch from his waistcoat pocket and grunted.

Twenty-one minutes past midnight, the moon is punctual this morning. Mark smiled at the little joke. Yet he knew that it was part of the General's daily ritual to consult his almanac for sunrise and moonrise, and the moon phases.

The mAn's energy was formidable.

They had worked until just a few minutes previously and had been at it since midmorning. Mark felt muzzy and woolly headed with mental effort and the pungent incense of the General's cigars which had filled the suite. I think we over-did it a little today, my boy, Sean Courtney admitted, as though he had read the thought. But I did want to be up to date before we dock in Table Bay.

Thank you, Mark. Now why don't you go down and join the dancing? From the boat deck, Mark looked down on to the swirling orderly confusion of dancing couples in the break of the promenade deck. The ship's band was belting out a Strauss waltz and the dancers spun wildly, the women's skirts flahng open like the petals of exotic blooms and their laughing cries a sweet and musical counterpoint to the stirring strains of the waltz.

Mark picked Storm Courtney out of the press, her particular grace making it easy to distinguish her, she lay back in the circle of her partner's arms and spun dizzily, the light catching the dark sparkle of her hair and glowing on the waxy golden perfection of her bare shoulders.

Mark lit a cigarette, and leaned on the rail, watching her. It was strange that he had seldom felt lonely in the great silences and space of the wilderness, and here, surrounded by music and gaiety and the laughter of young people, he knew deep loneliness.

The General's suggestion that he go down and join the dancing had been unwittingly cruel. He would have been out of place there among the rich young clique who had known each other since childhood, a close-knit elite that jealousy closed ranks against any intruder, especially one that did not possess the necessary qualifications of wealth and social standing.

He imagined going down and asking Storm Courtney for a waltz, her humiliation at being accosted by her father's secretary, the nudging and the snide exchanges, the patronizing questions. Do you actually type letters, old boy? And he felt himself flushing angrily at the mere thought of it.

Yet he lingered by the rail for another half hour, delighting in each glimpse of Storm, and hating each of her partners with a stony implacable hatred; and when at last he went down to his cabin, he could not sleep. He wrote a letter to Marion Littlejohn, and found himself as warmly disposed towards her as he had been in months. Her gentled sincerity, and the genuineness of her affection for him were suddenly very precious assets. On the pages he recalled the visit she had made to Durban just before his departure. The General had been understanding and they had had many hours together during the two days. She had been awed by his new position, and impressed by his surroundings. However, their one further attempt at physical intimacy, even though it had been made in the urity and privacy of Mark's cottage, had been, if anything, less successful than the first. There had been no opportunity, nor had Mark had the heart to break off their engagement, and in the end Mark had put her on the train to Ladyburg with relief, but now loneliness and distance had enhanced her memory. He wrote with real affection and sincerity, but when he had sealed the envelope, he found that he still had no desire for sleep.

He had found a copy of Jock of the Bushveld in the ship's library and was rereading the adventures of man and dog, and the nostalgic and vivid descriptions of African bush and animals with such pleasure, that his loneliness was forgotten. There was a light tap on the door of his cabin. Oh Mark, do let me hide in here for a moment. Irene Leuchars pushed quickly past him before he could protest, and she ordered, Quickly, lock the door. Her tone made him obey immediately, but when he turned back to her he had immediate misgivings.

She had been drinking. The flush of her cheeks was not all rouge, the glitter in her eyes was feverish, and when she laughed it was unnaturally high.

What's the trouble? he asked.

Oh God, darling, I have had the most dreadful time.

That Charlie Eastman is absolutely hounding me. I swear I'm terrified to go back to my cabin. I'll talk to him, Mark offered, but she stopped him quickly. Oh, don't make a scene. He's not worth it. She flicked the tail of the ostrich feather boa over her shoulder. I'll just sit here for a while, if you don't mind. Her dress was made of layers of filmy material that floated in a cloud about her as she moved, and her shoulders were bare, the bodice cut so low that her breasts bulged out, very round and smooth and white and deeply divided. Do you mind? she demanded, very aware of the direction of his eyes, and he lifted them quickly to her face. She made a move of impatience as she waited for his reply.

Her lipstick was startling crimson and glossy, so her lips had a full ripe look.

He knew he must get her out of his cabin. He knew that he was in danger. He knew how vulnerable he was, how powerful her family, and he guessed how shallow and callous she could be. But he was lonely, achingly grindingly lonely. You can stay, of course, he told her, and she drooped her eyelids and ran a sharp pink tongue across the painted lips.

Have you got a drink, darling? No, I'm sorry. Don't be, don't ever be sorry. She swayed against him and he could smell the liquor on her breath, but it was not offensive and, with her perfume, blended into a spicy fragrance. Look, she told him, holding up the silver evening bag she carried. The "It" girl with every home comfort, and she took a small silver jewelled flask from the bag. Every comfort known to man, she repeated, and parted her lips in a lewd but intensely provocative pout. Come and I'll give you a little sample. Her voice dropped to a husky whisper, and then she laughed and swirled away in a waltzing turn, humming a bar of the Blue Danube and the gossamer of her skirts floated about her thighs.

Clad in silk, her limbs gleamed in the soft light and when she dropped carelessly on to Mark's bunk, her skirts ballooned and then settled so high that he could see that the black elastic suspender-belt that held her stocking tops

was decorated with embroidered butterflies. The butterflies were spangled with brilliant colour and in exotic contrast to the pale soft skin of her inner thighs. Come, Markie, come and have a little itsy bitsy drinkie. She patted the bunk beside her and then wriggled her bottom across to make room for him. The skirts rucked up higher and exposed the wedge of her panties between her thighs. The material was so sheer that he could see the pale red-gold curls trapped and flattened by the silk.

Mark felt something crack inside him. For another moment, he tried to reckon consequence, to force himself back on to the course that was both moral and safe, but he new that in reality the decision was made when he had allowed her to stay. Come, Mark. she held the flask like bait, and the light reflected off it in silver splinters that she played into his eyes. The crack opened, and like a bursting dam, all restraint was swept aside. She recognized the moment and her eyes flared with triumph and she welcomed him to the bed with a little animal squeal, and with slim pale arms that wrapped about his neck with startling strength.

She was small and strong quick and demanding, and as skilled as Helena MacDonald, but she was different, so very different.

Her youth gave her flesh a sweetness and freshness, her skin an unblemished lustre, a luscious plasticity that was made more startling by her pale pigmentation.

When she slipped the strap off one shoulder and popped one of her glossy breasts out of the top of her bodice, offering it to Mark with a sound in her throat which was like the purr of a cat, he gasped aloud. It was white as porcelain and had the same sheen, too large for the slim fragile body but hard and firm and springy to his touch.

The nipple was tiny, set like a small jewel in the perfect coin of its aureole, so pale and delicate pink when he remembered Helena, dark and puckered and sprinkled with sparse black hair. Wait, Mark. Wait, she chuckled breathlessly, and stood quickly to drop the boa and dress to the cabin floor in one quick movement, and then to slip the sheer underwear to her ankles and kick it carelessly aside. She lifted her hands above her head and twirled slowly in front of him.

Yes? she asked. Yes, he agreed. Oh very much yes Her body was hairless and smooth except for that pale red mist that hazed the fat mound at the base of her belly, and her breasts rode high and arrogant.

She came back to him, kneeling over him. There, she whispered. There's a good boy, she crooned, but her hands were busy, unbuckling, unbuttoning, questing, finding, and then it was her turn to gasp.

Oh, Mark, you clever boy, all by yourself too! No, he laughed. I had a little help, And you are going to get a lot more, she promised, and dropped her soft, fluffy golden head over him. He thought that her mouth was as red and voracious as one of those low-tide rock-pool anemones that he had fed with such delight as a child, watching it softly enfold each tidbit, sucking it in deeply. Oh God, he croaked, for her mouth was hot, hotter and deeper than any sea animal could ever be.

Irene Leuchars carried her shoes in one hand and the feather boa hung over her other arm and trailed on the floor behind her. Her hair stood out in a soft pale halo around her head, and her eyes were underlined by dark blue smudges of sleeplessness, while the outline of her mouth was smudged and blurred, her lips puffed and inflamed. God! she whispered, I'm still tiddly, and she giggled, and lurched unsteadily to the roll of the ship. Then she pulled up the strap which had slipped from her shoulder.

Behind her in the long passageway, there was a clatter of china and she glanced back, startled. One of the whitejacketed stewards was pushing a trolley of cups and pots towards her. The morning ritual of tea and biscuits was beginning and she had not realized the hour.

Irene hurried away, turning the corner from the steward's sly and knowing grin, and she reached the door of Storm Courtney's cabin without another encounter.

She hammered on the door with the heel of one shoe, but it was a full five minutes before the door swung open and Storm looked out at her, a gown wrapped around her shoulders and her big dark eyes owlish from sleep. Irene, are you crazy? she asked. It's still night! Then she saw Irene's attire and smelled the rich perfume of her breath. Where on earth have you been? Irene pushed the door open and almost tripped over the threshold. You're drunk! accused Storm resignedly, closing the door behind her. No. Irene shook her head. It isn't liquor, it's ecstasy. Where have you been? Storm asked again. I thought you were in bed hours ago. I have flown to the moon, intoned Irene dramatically. I have run barefooted through the stars, I have soared on eagles'wings above the mountain peaks. Storm laughed, coming fully awake now, as beautiful even in deshabilIg as Irene would never be, so graceful and lovely that Irene hated her again. She savoured the moment, drawing out the pleasure of anticipation. Where have you been, you mad bad woman? Storm started to catch the spirit of the moment. Tell all! Through the gates of paradise, to the land of never-never on the continent of always -'Irene's smile became sharp, spiteful and venomous, in short, darling, Mark Anders has been bouncing me like a rubber ball! And the expression on Storm Courtney's face gave her the most intense satisfaction she had known in her life. On the third day of January, the Chamber of Mines deliberately tore up the Agreement that it had come to with your Union to maintain the status quo. It tore that agreement to a thousand pieces and flung them in the faces of the workers. Fergus MacDonald spoke with a controlled icy fury that carried to every corner of the great hall, and it stilled even the rowdies in the back seats who had brought their bottles in brown paper packets. Now they listened with intensity, Big Harry Fisher, sitting beside him on the dais, turned his head slowly to assess the man, peering at him under beetling eyebrows and with the bulldog folds of his face hanging mournfully. He marvelled again at how Fergus MacDonald changed when he stood to speak.

Usually he cut a nondescript figure with the small bulge of a paunch beginning to distort the spare frame, the cheap and ill-fitting suit shiny at the elbows and seat with wear, the collar of the frayed shirt damed, and grease spots on the drab necktie. His hair was thinning, starting up in wispy spikes around the neck, pushing back from the brow and with a pink bare patch in the crown. His face had that grey tone from the embedded filth of the machine shops, but when he stood under the red flag and the emblem of the Amalgamated Mineworkers Union on the raised dais facing the packed hall, he grew in stature, a physical phenomenon that was quite extraordinary. He seemed younger and there was a fierce and smouldering passion which stripped away his shoddy dress and armoured him with presence. Brothers! He raised his voice now. When the mines reopened after the Christmas recess, two thousand of our members were discharged, thrown out into the street, discarded like worn-out pairs of old boots The hall hummed, the warning sound of a beehive on a hot summer's day, but the stillness of thousands of bodies pressed closely together was more menacing than any movement. Brothers! Fergus moved his hands in a slow hypnotic movement. Brothers! Beginning at the end of this month, and for every month after that, another six hundred men will be, he paused again and then spat the official word at them, retrenched. They seemed to reel with the word, the whole concourse stunned as though by a physical blow, and the silence drew out, until a voice at the back yelled wildly, No, brothers. No! They roared then, a sound like the surf on a stormy day when it breaks upon a rocky shore.

Fergus let them roar, and he hooked his thumbs into his rumpled waistcoat and watched them, gloating in the feeling of exultation, the euphoria of power. He judged the strength of their reaction, and the moment it began to falter he raised both hands, and almost immediately the silence fell upon the hall again. Brothers! Do you know that the wages of a black man are two shillings and two pence a day? Only a black man can live on that wage! He let it sink in a moment, but not too long before he went on, asking a reasonable question, Who will take the place of two thousand of our brothers who are now out of work? Who will replace the six hundred that will join them at the end of this month, and the next and the next? Who will take your job, he was picking out individuals, pointing at them with an accuser's finger, and yours, and yours? Who will take the food from your children's mouths? He waited theatrically for an answer, cocking his head, smiling at them while his eyes smouldered. Brothers! I tell you who it will be. Two and tuppenny black kaffirs, that's who it will be!

They came upon their feet, a bench here and there crashing over backwards and their voices were a blood-roar of anger, clenched fists thrust out in fury. No, brothers. No! Their booted feet stamped in unison and they chanted, their fists punching into empty air.

Fergus MacDonald sat down abruptly and Harry Fisher congratulated him silently, squeezing his shoulder in a bear's paw before lumbering to his feet. Your executive has recommended that all members of our Union come out on general strike. I put it to you now, brothers, all those in favour, he bellowed, and his voice was drowned in a thousand others. Out, brothers! We're out! Out! Out! Fergus leaned forward in his seat and looked down the length of the trestle table.

Helena's dark head was bowed over the minute book, but she sensed his gaze and looked up. Her expression glowed with a fanatic's ecstasy, and there was open adoration in her eyes that he saw only at moments like this.

Harry Fisher had told him once, For all women, poweristhe ultimate aphrodisiac. No matter how puny in body, no matter what he looks like- power makes a man irresistible. In the thunder of thousands of voices, the pounding feet and the heady roar of power, Fergus was on his feet again. The mine-owners, the bosses have challenged us, they have scorned your executive, they have stated-publicly that we are too faint-hearted to rally the workers and come out on general strike! Well, brothers, we are going to show them. The lion's voice of the crowd rose again and he silenced it only after another minute. First, we are going to drive on the scabs, there are going to be no strikebreakers. When the sound subsided he went on, Slim Jannie Smuts has talked of force to beat a strike, he has an army, but we are going to have one also. I think the bosses have forgotten that we fought their bloody war for them in France and East Africa, at Tabora and Delville Wood.

The names sobered them and they were listening again. Last time we fought for them, but this time we are fighting for ourselves. Each one of you will report to his area commander, you will be armed into 2hting commandos, each man will know his job, and each man will know what is at stake. We will beat them, brothers, the bloody bosses and their greedy grasping minions. We will fight them and beat them! They are organized into military-style commandos, said the Prime Minister softly, breaking the crisp brown roll of bread with fingers that were surprisingly small, neat and capable as a woman's. Of course, we know that George Mason wanted to form labour commandos in 194- It was the main reason I had him deported. The other guests at the luncheon table were silent. The deportation of Mason was not an episode that reflected credit on Jannie Smuts.

But this is a different animal we are dealing with now.

Nearly all the younger members of the unions are trained veterans. Five hundred of them paraded outside the Trade Union Hall in Fordsburg last Saturday. He turned and smiled that impish, irresistible smile at his hostess. My dear Ruth, you must forgive my bad manners. This talk detracts from the delicious meal you have provided. The table was set under the oak trees on lawns so vivid green that Ruth always thought of them as English green.

The house itself had the solid imposing bulk of Georgian England, so different from the frivolous fairy castle at Emoyeni; the illusion of old England was spoiled only by the soaring cliffs of grey rock that rose as a backdrop to the scene. The sheer slopes of Table Mountain were softened by the pine trees that clung precariously for footholds on each ledge and in each tiny pocket of soil.

Ruth smiled at him, In this house, General, you may do as you wish. Thank you, my dear. The smile flickered off his face and the merry twinkle of the pale blue eyes changed to the glint of swords, as he turned back to his listeners. They are seeking confrontation, gentlemen, it's a blatant test of our power and resolution. Ruth caught Mark's eye at the foot of the table and he rose to refill the glasses with cold pale wine tinged with a touch of green, dry and crisp and refreshing, but as he moved down the board, pausing beside each guest, three Cabinet ministers, a visiting British Earl, the Secretary of the Chamber of Mines, he was listening avidly. We can only hope you put it too highly, Prime Minister, Sean Courtney intervened gruffly. They have only broomsticks with which to drill, and bicycles on which to ride into battle. .

And while they laughed, Mark paused behind Sean's chair with the bottle forgotten in his hand. He was remembering the cellars below the Trade Union Hall in Fordsburg, the racks of modern rifles, the gleaming P. I 4 reserved for him and the sinister squatting Vickers machine gun.

When he returned to the present, the conversation had moved on.

Sean Courtney was assuring the company that militant action by the unions was unlikely, and that in the worst circumstances, the army was geared to immediate call-up.

Mark had a small office adjoining the General's study. It had previously been a linen room, but was just large enough to accommodate a desk and several shelves of files.

The General had ordered a large window knocked through one wall to give it air and light, and now, with his ankles crossed and propped on the desk-top, Mark was staring thoughtfully out of the window. The view across lawns and through oaks encompassed a sweep of Rhodes Avenue, named after that asthmatic old adventurer who had seized an empire in land and diamonds, and ended up Prime Minister of the first Cape Parliament, before suffocating from his weak lungs and heavy conscience. The Cape home of the Courtneys was named Somerset Lodge after Lord Charles, the nineteenth-century governor, and the great houses on the opposite side of Rhodes Avenue perpetuated the colonial tradition, Newlands House and Hiddingh House, gracious edifices in spacious grounds.

Looking out at them through the new window, Mark was comparing them with the miners cottages in Fordsburg Dip. He had not thought of Fergus and Helena in many months, but the conversation at lunch had brought them back forcibly, and he felt himself torn by sharply contradictory loyalties.

He had lived in both worlds now, and seen how each opposed the other. He was trying to think without emotion, but always a single image intruded, the cruel shape of weapons in orderly racks, deep in a dark cellar, and the slick smell of gun oil in his throat.

He lit another cigarette, delaying the decision. Through the solid teak door, the sound of voices from the General's study was muted, the higher clearer tones of the Prime Minister, bird-like almost, set against the rumbling of Sean's replies.

The Prime Minister had stayed on after the other luncheon guests had left, as he often did, but Mark wished that he would leave now, thus deferring the decision with which he was wrestling.

He had been trusted by a comrade, somebody who had shared mortal danger with him, and then had unstintingly shared the hospitality of his home, had trusted him like a brother, had not hesitated to give him access to the direst knowledge, had not hesitated to leave him alone with his wife. Mark had betrayed half of that trust, and he stirred restlessly in his seat as he remembered those wicked stolen days and nights with Helena. Now must he betray the rest of the trust that Fergus MacDonald had placed in him?

Once more the image of racked weapons passed before his eyes, they faded only slowly to be replaced with a vivid shocking picture of a face.

it was the face of a marble angel, smooth and white and strangely beautiful, with blue eyes in pale blue sockets, a burst of pale golden curls escaping from under the rim of the steel helmet on to the smooth pale forehead Mark dropped his feet from the desk with a crash, fighting away the memory of the young German sniper, forcing it from his mind, and coming to his feet abruptly.

He found that his hands were shaking and he crushed out the cigarette and turned to the door. His knock was over-loud and demanding, and the voice from beyond was gruff with irritation. Come in. He stepped through. What do you want, Mark, you know I don't - Sean Courtney cut himself short and the tone of his voice changed to concern as he saw Mark's face. What is it, my boy? I have to tell you something, sir, he blurted.

They listened with complete attention as he described his involvement with the executive of the Communist Party, and then broke off to steel himself for the final betrayal. These men were my friends, sir, they treated me as a comrade. You must understand why I am telling you this, please. Go on, Mark, Sean Courtney nodded, and the Prime Minister had drawn back in his chair, still and quiet and unobtrusive, sensing the struggle of conscience in which the young man was involved. I came to believe that much of what they were striving for was good and just, opportunity and a share of life for every man, but I could not accept the methods they had chosen to bring these about. What do you mean, Mark? They are planning war, a class war, sir. You have proof of that? Sean's voice did not rise, and he asked the question carefully. Yes. I have. Mark drew a deep breath before he went on. I have seen the rifles and machine guns they have ready for the day. The Prime Minister shifted in his chair and then was still again, but now he was leaning forward to listen. Go on, Sean nodded, and Mark told them in detail, stating the unadorned facts, reporting exactly what he had seen and where, accurately estimating the numbers and types of every weapon, and finally ending, MacDonald led me to believe that this was only one arsenal, and that there were others, many others, on the Witwatersrand. Nobody spoke for many seconds, and then the Prime Minister stood up and went to the telephone on Sean's desk. He wound the crank handle, and the whirr-whirr was loud and obtrusive in the silent room. This is the Prime Minister, General Smuts, speaking. I want a maximum priority connection with Commissioner Truter, the Chief of the South African Police in Johannesburg! he said, and then listened, is expression bleak and his eyes sparkling angrily. Get me the Exchange Supervisor he snapped and then turned to Sean, still holding the earpiece. The line is down, Floods in the Karroo, he explained, indefinite delay. Then he turned his attention back to the telephone and spoke quietly for many minutes with the Supervisor, before cradling the earpiece. They will make the connection as soon as possible. He returned to his seat by the window and spoke across the room. You have done the right thing, young man. I hope so, Mark answered quietly, and the doubts were obvious, shadows in his eyes and the strains of misery in his voice. I'm proud of you, Mark, Sean Courtney agreed. Once again you have done your duty. Will you excuse me now, please gentlemen? Mark asked, and without waiting for a reply, crossed to the door of his own office.

The two men stared at the closed teak door long after it had closed, and it was the Prime Minister who spoke first. A remarkable young man, he mused aloud. Compassion and a sense of duty. He has qualities that could carry him to great heights, qualities for which one day we may be grateful, Sean nodded. I sensed them at our first meeting, so strongly that I sought him out. We will need him, and others like him in the years ahead, old Sean, Jannie Smuts stated and then switched his attention. Truter will have a search warrant issued immediately, and with God's help we will crush the head of the snake before it has a chance to strike. We know about this man MacDonald, and of course we have been watching Fisher for years. Mark had walked for hours, escaping from the tiny box of his office. He had been driven by his conscience and his fears, striding out under the oaks, following narrow lanes, crossing the little stone bridge over the Liesbeeck stream, torturing himself with thoughts of Judas. They hang traitors in Pretoria, he thought suddenly, and he imaged Fergus MacDonald standing on the trap in the barnlike room while the hangman pinioned his arms and ankles. He shuddered miserably and stopped walking, with his hands thrust deeply into his pockets and shoulders hunched, and he looked up to find himself standing outside the Post Office.

Afterwards he realized that it had probably been his destination all along, but now it seemed an omen. He did not hesitate a moment, but hurried into the office and found a pile of telegram forms on the desk. The nib of the pen was faulty and it sphittered the pale watery ink, and stained his fingers.

MACDONALD 5 5 LOVERS WALK FORDSBURG.

THEY KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE GOT IN THE CELLAR GET RID of IT.

He did not sign it.

The Post Office clerk assured him that if he paid the sevenpence for urgent rating, the message would have priority as soon as the northern lines were reinstated.

Mark wandered back into the street, feeling sick and depleted by the crisis of conscience, not certain that he had done the right thing in either circumstance, and he wondered just how futile was his hope that he might have forced Fergus MacDonald to throw that deadly cargo down some disused mine shaft before death and revolution was turned loose upon the land.

It was almost dark as Fergus MacDonald wheeled his bicycle into the shed and paused in the small back yard to slip the clips off the cuffs of his trousers, before going on to the kitchen door.

The smell of cooking cabbage filled the small room with a steamy moist cloud that made him pause and blink.

Helena was sitting at the kitchen table and she hardly glanced up as he entered. A cigarette dangled from her lips with an inch of grey ash clinging hopelessly to the end of it.

She still wore the grubby dressing-gown she had worn at breakfast, and it was clear that she had neither bathed nor changed since then. Her hair had grown longer and now dangled in oily black snakes to her cheeks. She had grown heavier in the last months, the line of her jaw blurring with a padding of fat and the hair on her upper lip darker and denser, breasts bulging and drooping heavily in the open front of the gown. Hello then, love. Fergus shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it across the back of a kitchen chair. She turned the page of the pamphlet she was reading, squinting at the curl of blue smoke that drifted across her eyes.

Fergus opened a black bottle of porter and the gas hissed fiercely. Anything happened today? Something for you, she nodded at the kitchen dresser, and the cigarette ash dropped down the front of her gown, settling in fine grey flakes.

Carrying the bottle, Fergus crossed to the dresser and fingered the buff envelope. One of your popsies, Helena chuckled at the unlikeliness of her sally, and Fergus frowned and tore open the envelope.

He stared at the message for long uncomprehending seconds before he swore bitterly. Jesus Christ! He slammed the bottle down on the kitchen table with a crash.

Even this late in the evening, there were small groups on each street corner. They had that disconsolate andbored air of men with too little to fill their days, even the commando drilling and the nightly meetings were beginning to pall. As Fergus MacDonald pedalled furiously through the darkening streets, his first alarm and fright turned to fierce exultation.

The time was right, they were as ready as they would ever be, if time drifted on without decisive action from either side, the long boring days of strike inactivity would erode their determination. What had seemed like disaster merely minutes before, he now saw was a heaven-sent opportunity. Let them come, we will be ready for them, he thought, and braked alongside a group of four loungers on the pavement outside the public bar of the Grand Fordsburg Hotel. Get a message to all area commanders, they are to assemble at the Trade Hall immediately. It's an emergency. Brothers, hurry. They scattered quickly, and he pedalled on up the rising ground of the dip, calling out his warning as he went.

In the Trade Union offices, there were still a dozen or so members; most of them were eating sandwiches and drinking Thermos tea, while a few worked on the issue of strike relief coupons to Union families, but the relaxed atmosphere changed as Fergus burst in. All right, comrades, it's beginning. The ZARPS are on their way. It was classic police tactics. They came in the first light of dawn. The advance guard rode down into the dip of land between Fordsburg and the railway crossing, where the Johannesburg road ran down between sleazy cottages and overgrown plots of open ground, thick with weeds and mounds of rotting refuse.

There was a heavy ground-mist in the dip, and the nine troopers on police chargers waded through it, as though fording the sluggish waters of a river crossing.

They had muted harness and muffled accoutrements, so that it was in ghostly silence that they breasted the softly swirling mists. The light was not yet strong enough to pickZuid Afrikaanse Republiek Polisie, used as a derogatory term, out their badges and burnished buttons, it was only the dark silhouette of their helmets that identified them.

Fifty yards behind the leading troopers followed the two police carriages. High four-wheelers with barred windows to bold prisoners, and beside each one of them marched ten constables. They carried their rifles at the slope, and were stepping out sharply to keep up with the carriages.

As they entered the dip, the mist engulfed them, chesthigh, so that their disembodied trunks bobbed in the white soft surface. They looked like strange dark sea-animals, and the mist muted the tramp of their boots.

Fergus MacDonald's scouts had picked them up before they reached the railway crossing and for three miles had been pacing them, slipping back unseen ahead of the advance, runners reporting every few minutes to the cottage where Fergus had established his advance headquarters. All right, Fergus snapped, as another of the dark figures ducked through the hedge of the sanitary lane behind the cottage and mumbled his report through the open window. They are all coming in on the main road. Pull the other pickets out and get them here right away.

The man grunted an acknowledgement and was gone.

Fergus had his pickets on every possible approach to the town centre. The police might have split into a number of columns, but it seemed his precautions were unnecessary.

Secure in the certainty of complete surprise and in overwhelming force, they were not bothering with diversion or flanking manoeuvres.

Twenty-nine troopers, Fergus calculated, together with the four drivers, was indeed a formidable force. More than sufficient, if it had not been for the warning from some unknown ally.

Fergus hurried through into the front parlour of the cottage. The family had been moved out before midnight, all the cottages along the road had been cleared. The grumpy squalling children in pyjamas carried on the shoulders of their fathers, the women with white frightened faces in the lamplight, bundling a few precious possessions with them as they hurried away.

Now the cottages seemed deserted, no lights showed, and the only sound was the mournful howling of a mongrel dog down in the dip. Yet in each cottage, at the windows that faced on to the road, silent men waited.

Fergus spoke to one of them in a whisper and he pointed down into the misty hollow, then spat and worked a round into the breech of the Lee-Enfield rifle which was propped on the windowsill.

The rifle bolt made a small metallic clash that lit a sparkle of memory and made the hair rise on Fergus neck.

It was all so familiar, the silence, the mist and the night fraught with the menace of coming violence. Only on my order, Fergus warned him softly. Easy now, lads. Let them come right in the front door before we slam it on their heads. He could see the leading horsemen now, half a mile away but coming on fast in the strengthening light. it wasn't shooting light yet, but the sky beyond the dark hills of the mine dumps was turning to that pale gull's-egg blue that promised shooting light within minutes.

Fergus looked back at the road. The mist was an added bonus. He had not counted on that, but often when you did not call for fortune, she came a-knocking. The mist would persist until the first rays of the morning sun warmed and dispersed it, another half hour at least. You all know, your orders. Fergus raised his voice and they glanced at him, distracted for only a moment from their weapons and the oncoming enemy.

I They were all good men, veterans, blooded, as the sanguine generals of France would have it. It flashed through Fergus'mind once again how ironical it was that men who had been trained to fight by the bosses were now about to tear down the structure which the bosses had trained them to defend. We will tear down and rebuild, he thought, with exultation tingling in his blood. We will destroy them with their own weapons, strangle them with their own dirty loot, he stopped himself, and pulled the dark grey cloth down over his eyes and turned up the collar of his coat. Good luck to all of us, brothers, he called softly, and slipped out through the front door. That old bugger has got guts, acknowledged one of the soldiers at the window. You're right, he ain't afraid of nothing, agreed another, as they watched him dodge under the cover of the hedge and run forward until he reached the ditch beside the road, and jumped down into it.

There were a dozen men lying there below the lip, and as he dropped beside them, one of them handed him a pickhandle.

rYou strung that wire good and tight? Fergus asked, and the man grunted. Tighter than a monkey's arsehole, the man grinned wolfishly at him, his teeth glinting in the first soft light of morning. And I checked the pegs meself, they'll hold against a charging elephant. Right, brothers, Fergus told them. With me when I give the word. And he lifted himself until he could see over the low blanket of mist. The troopers'helmets bobbed in the mist as they came on up the slope, and now he could make out the sparkle of brass cap badges and see the dark sticklike barrels of their carbines rising above each right shoulder.

Fergus had paced out the ranges himself and marked them with pieces of rag tied to the telephone posts on the verge.

As they came up to the one-fifty-yard mark Fergus stood up from the ditch, and stepped into the middle of the road.

He held his pick-handle above his head and shouted, Halt! Stay where you are!

His men rose out of the mist behind him and moved swiftly into position like a well-drilled team; dark, ominous figures standing shoulder to shoulder, blocking the road from verge to verge, holding their pick-handles ready across their hips, faces hidden by caps and collars.

The officer in the centre of the squadron of horsemen raised a hand to halt them and they bunched up and sat stolidly while the officer rose in his stirrups. Who are you? Strikers'Council, Fergus shouted back, and we'll have no scabs, black-legs or strike-breakers on this property! I am under orders from the Commissioner of Police, empowered by a warrant of the Supreme Court. The officer was a heavily built man, with a proud erect seat on his horse, and a dark waxed mustache with points that stuck out on each side of his face. You're strike-breakers! Fergus yelled. And you'll not set a foot on this property. Stand aside! warned the officer. The light was good enough now for Fergus to see that he wore the insignia of a Captain, and that his face was ruddy from sun and beer, his eyebrows thick and dark and beetling under the brim of his helmet. You are obstructing the police. We will charge if we have to. Charge and be damned, puppets of imperialism, running dogs of capitalism, Troop, extend order, called the Captain, and the ranks opened for the second file to come up into a solid line.

They sat on the restless horses, knee to knee. Strike-breakers! yelled Fergus. Your hands will be stained with the blood of innocent workers this day"Batons! called the Captain sternly, and the troopers drew the long oaken clubs from the scabbards at their knees and held them in the right hand, like cavalry sabres. History will remember this atrocity, screamed Fergus, the blood of the lamb, Walk, march! Forward! The line of dark horsemen waded forward through the mist as it swirled about their bootedlegs. Gallop, charge! sang out the Captain, and the riders swung forward in their saddles, the batons extended along the horses necks, and they plunged forward; now the hooves drummed low thunder as they came down upon the line of standing figures.

The Captain was leading by a length in the centre of the line, and he went on to the wires first.

Fergus men had driven the steel jumper bars deep into the verge, pounding them in with nine-pound hammers, until only two feet of their six-foot length protruded, and they had strung the barbed wire across the road, treble strands pulled up rigid with the fencing strainers.

It cut the forelegs out from under the leading charger, the bone broke with a brittle snap, startlingly loud in the dawn, and the horse dropped, going over on to its shoulder still at full gallop.

An instant later the following wave of horsemen went on to the wire, and were cut down as though by a scythe, only three of them managing to wheel away in time. The cries of the men, and the screaming of the horses, mingled with the exultant yells of Fergus' band as they ran forward, swinging their pick-handles, One of the horses was up, riderless, its stirrups flapping, but it was pinned on its haunches, the broken forelegs flapping and spinning as it pawed in anguish at the air, its squeals high and pitiful above the cries of fallen men.

Fergus pulled the revolver out of the waist -band of his trousers, dodged around the crazed screaming animals and pulled the police Captain to his knees.

He had hit the ground with his shoulder and the side of his face. The shoulder was smashed, sagging down at a grotesque angle and the arm hanging twisted and lifeless.

The flesh had been shaved from his face, ripped off by stone and gravel, so that the bone of his jaw was exposed in the mangled flesh. Get up, you bastard, snarled Fergus, thrusting the pistol into the officer's face, grinding the muzzle into the lacerated wound. Get up you bloody black-leg. We'll learn you a lesson. The three troopers who had escaped the wire had their mounts under control, and had circled to pick up their downed comrades, calling to them by name. Grab a stirrup, Heintjie! Come on, Paul. Get up! Horses and men, milling and shouting and screaming in the mist, a savage confused conflict, above which Fergus raised his voice. Stop them, don't let the bastards get away, and his men swung the pick-handles, dodging forward under the police batons to thrust and hack at the horsemen, but they were not quick enough.

With men hanging from each stirrup leather, the horsemen reared and wheeled away, leaving only the badly hurt officer and another inert body lying among the wires and the terribly mutilated animals, while the police escort was doubling forward up the road in two columns.

Fergus saw them and fumed impatiently, trying to force his captive to his feet, but the man was hardly capable of sitting unaided.

The twenty constables stopped at fifty yards and one rank knelt, while the others fell in behind them, rifles at the ready. The command carried clearly. One round. Warning fireV The volley of musketry crashed out. Aimed purposely high, it hissed and cracked over the heads of the strikers, and they scattered into the ditch.

For one moment, Fergus hesitated and then he pointed the pistol into the air and fired three shots in rapid succession. It was the agreed signal, and instantly a storm of rifle fire crashed from the silent cottages along the road, the muzzle flashes of the hidden rifles dull angry red in the dawn. The fire swept the road.

Fergus hesitated a second only and then he lowered the pistol. It was a Webley . 45 5, a British officer's sidearm. The police Captain saw his intention in his eyes, the merciless glare of the stooping eagle, and he mumbled a plea through his mangled lips, trying to lift hands to protect his face.

The pistol shot was lost in the storm of rifle fire from the cottages, and the answering police fire as they fell back in confusion into the dip.

The heavy lead bullet smashed into the Captain's open pleading mouth, knocking the two front teeth out of his upper jaw, and then it plunged on into his throat and exited through the back of his skull in a scarlet burst of blood and bone chips, clubbing him down into the dirt of the roadway while Fergus turned and darted away under the cover of the hedge.

Only at Fordsburg were the police raids repelled, for at the other centres there had been no warning, and the strikers had not taken even the most elementary precautions of placing sentries.

At the Trades Hall in Johannesburg, almost the entire leadership of the strike was assembled, meeting with the other unions who had not yet come out, but were considering sympathetic action. There were representatives of the Boilermakers Society, the Building and Allied Trades, the Typographical Union and half a dozen others, together with the most dynamic and forceful of the strikers. Harry Fisher was there, Andrews and Ben Caddy, and all the others.

The police were into the building while they were deep in dialectic, debating the strategy of the class struggle, and the first warning they had was the thunderous charge of booted feet on the wooden staircase.

Harry Fisher was at the head of the conference table, slumped down in his chair with his tangled wiry hair hanging on to his forehead and his thumbs hooked in his braces, his sleeves rolled up around the thick hairy arms.

He was the only one to move. He leaned across the table and grabbed the rubber stamp of the High Council of Action and thrust it into his pocket.

As the rifle butts smashed in the lock of the Council Chamber, he leapt to his feet and thrust his shoulder into the shuttered casement. It burst open and, with surprising nimbleness for such a big man, he slipped through it.

The facade of the Trades Hall was heavily encrusted with fancy cast-iron grille work, and it gave him handholds. Like a bull gorilla, he swarmed up on to the third floor ledge and worked his way to the corner.

Below him he heard the crash of overturning furniture, the loud challenges of the arresting officers and the outraged cries of the labour leaders.

With his back pressed to the wall and his hands spread out to balance himself, Harry Fisher peered around the corner into the main street. It swarmed with uniformed police, and more squads were marching up briskly. An officer was directing men to the side alleys to surround the building, and Harry Fisher drew back quickly and looked around him for escape.

It was senseless to re-enter another window, for the whole building was noisy with the tramp of feet and shouted orders.

Fifteen feet below him was the roof of a bottle store and general dealer's shop, but the alleyway between was ten feet wide and the roof of galvanized corrugated iron.

If he jumped, the noise he would make on landing would bring police running from all directions, yet he could not stay where he was. Within minutes the building would be surrounded.

He eched sideways to the nearest downpipe and began to climb. He reached the overhang of the roof and had to lean out to get a grip on the rim of the guttering, then he kicked his feet clear and hung from his arms. The drop of fifty feet below him sucked at his heels, and the guttering creaked and sagged perceptively under his weight, but he drew himself up on his arms, wheezing and straining until he could hook one elbow over the gutter and wriggle the rest of his body up and over the edge.

Still panting from the effort, he crawled slowly round the steeply gabled roof and peered down into the main street, just as the police began hustling the strike leaders out of the front doors.

Fifty helmeted constables with sloped rifles had formed a hollow square in the road, and the strikers were pushed into it; some of them bare-headed and in their shirtsleeves.

Already a crowd was forming on the sidewalks, and every minute it swelled, as the news was shouted from door to door and the curious hurried from every alleyway.

Harry Fisher counted the prisoners as they were brought out and the total was twenty before the mood of the crowd began changing. That's it, comrades, Harry Fisher grunted, and wished he could have been down there to lead them. They surged angrily up to the police lines, calling to the prisoners and hissing and booing the officer who ordered them, through a speaking trumpet, to disperse.

Mounted police wheeled into line, pushing the crowd back and as the last prisoner was led out, the escort stepped out, maintaining its rigid box-formation which enclosed the dejected huddle of strikers, Somebody began to sing the Red Flag, but the voices that joined in were thin and tuneless, and the escort moved off towards the fort, carrying away not only most of the strike leadership but all of its moderate faction, those who had so far counselled against violence, against criminal activity and bloody revolution.

Harry Fisher watched them go with a rising sense of triumph. In one stroke he had been given a band of martyrs for the cause and had all serious opposition to his extreme views swept away. He had also in his hip pocket the seal of the Action Committee. He smiled a thin, humourless grin and settled down on the canted roof-top to wait for nightfall.

Mark Anders carried the General's heavy crocodile-skin brief case down the steps to the Rolls and placed it on the seat beside the chauffeur while he gave him his instructions. To Groote Schuur first, and then to the City Club for lunch. He stood back as the General came out of the house and paused on the top step to kiss his wife as though he were about to leave on a crusade to far places. He smothered her in a vast bear-hug and when he released her, he whispered something in her ear that made her bridle and slap his shoulder. Off with you, sir, she told him primly, and Sean Courtney came down the steps looking mightily pleased with himself, and grinned at Mark. The Prime Minister is making a statement to the House today, Mark. I'll want to see you directly afterwards Very well, sir, Mark returned the grin. I'll look for you in the visitors gallery as soon as he's finished, and give you the nod. Then we'll meet inthe lobby and I'll see you up to my office. Mark helped him into the back seat of the Rolls while he was speaking. He was always clumsy and awkward when moving sideways on to the bad le& nevertheless he resented the helping hand fiercely, hating any weakness in himself even more than he disliked it in others, and he shrugged Mark's hand away the moment he was comfortably seated.

Mark ignored the gesture and went on levelly, Your notes for the Cabinet meeting are in the first folder, he indicated the crocodile bag on the front seat beside the chauffeur, and you are lunching at the Club with Sir Herbert. The House sits at 215 and you have three questions from Opposition members, even Hertzog himself has one for you. Sean growled like an old lion hated by the pack. That bastard! I have your replies clipped to your Order Paper. I checked with Erasmus and then I added a few little touches of my own, so please have a look at them before you stand up, you may not approve. I hope you stuck it to them hard! Of course, Mark smiled again. rWith both barrels. Good boy, Sean nodded. Tell him to drive on. Mark watched the Rolls go down the driveway, check at the gates and then swing out into Rhodes Avenue, before he turned back into the house.

Instead of going down the passageway to his own office, Mark paused in the hall and glanced guiltily about him.

Ruth Courtney had gone back into the domestic depths of the kitchen area and there were no servants in sight.

Mark took the stairs three at a time, swung through the gallery and down to the solid teak door at the end.

He did not knock but turned the handle and went in, closing the door behind him quietly.

The stench of turpentine was a solid shock that made his eyes water for a few seconds until they adjusted.

Mark knew that he was quite safe. Storm Courtney never emerged before midmorning from that sacrosanct area beyond the double doors that were painted with gold cherubim and flying doves. Since arriving in Cape Town, Storm Courtney had kept such hours that even her father had grumbled and huffed.

Mark found himself lying awake at night, just as he was sure the General did, listening for the crunch of wheels on the gravel drive, straining his ears for the faint sounds of gay voices and mentally judging the length and passion of each farewell, troubled by feelings to which he could not place a name.

His relations with Storm had retrogressed drastically. In Natal there had been the beginnings of a relaxed acceptance and undertones of warmth. It had begun with a smile and a friendly word from Storm, then he had escorted her on the daily ride, driven with her to South Beach to swim in the warm surf and sat in the sun arguing religion with her instead. Storm was going through a fashionable period of spiritualism and Mark had felt it his duty to dissuade her.

From religion, the next step had been when Storm had announced, I need a partner to practise a new dance with. Mark had wound the gramophone, changed the needles and danced to Storm's instruction. You really are quite good, you know, she had told him magnanimously, smiling up at him, light and graceful in his arms as they spun around the empty ballroom of Emoyeni. You would make a crippled blacksmith look good job la! she laughed. You are the gallant, Mr Anders! This had all changed abruptly. Since they had arrived in Cape Town she had neither smiled nor spoken directly to him, and Irene Leuchars, who was to have been a house guest of Storm's for four months, stayed only one night, and then caught the next mail ship.

Her name had not been mentioned again, and Storm's hostility to Mark had been so intense that she could hardly bear to be in the same room with him.

Now Mark felt like a thief in her studio, but he had not been able to resist the temptation to steal a glimpse of the progress she had made on her latest canvas.

Full-length windows had been put into the north wall for the light, and they looked out on the mountain. Storm's easel stood in the centre of the bare uncarpeted floor, and the only other items of furniture were the artist's stool, a carpenter's table cluttered with paint pots and a chair on the raised model's dais.

Framed canvases in all sizes and shapes were stacked against the walls, most of them still blank. At one stage, during the period of friendliness, she had even asked Mark to help with the timber framework. He felt a pang when he remembered; she was a ruthless supervisor, checking every lo. mt and tack with a perfectionist's meticulous care.

The canvas was almost completed, and he wondered when she had found time to do so much work in the last few days, and realized that he had misjudged her. She had been working in the mornings when he had believed she was lying abed, but now he became absorbed by the picture.

He stood before it with his hands thrust into his pockets and felt a glow of pleasure spread slowly through his body.

It was a picture of trees, a forest glade with sunlight playing on earth and rock and two figures, a woman in a white dress, stooping to gather wild flowers, while a man sat aside, sprawled against a tree trunk and watching her.

Mark was aware that it was a great advance on anything she had painted before, for although it was a simple picture, it evoked in him an emotion so strong that he felt it choke in his throat. He was awed by the peculiar talent which could have produced this work.

He marvelled at how she had taken reality and refined it, captured its essence and made of it an important occasion.

Mark thought how it was possible for an untrained eye to pick out special talent in any field, just as a person who had never watched epee used before would recognize a great swordsman after the first exchange; now Mark, who knew nothing of painting, was moved by the discovery of real beauty.

The latch clicked behind him, and he spun to face it.

She was well into the studio before she saw him. She stopped abruptly and her expression changed, Her whole body stiffened and her breathing sounded stifled. What are you doing here? He had no answer for her, but the mood of the picture was still on him. I think that you will be a great artist one day. She faltered, taken completely off balance by the compliment and its obvious sincerity, and her eyes slipped away to the picture. All the antagonism, all the haughtiness drained from her.

Suddenly she was just a very young girl in a baggy smock, smeared and daubed with oil paint, and with a wash of pleased and modest colour spreading over her cheeks.

He had never seen her like this, so artless, so open and vulnerable. It was as though for a moment she had unveiled the secret compartments of her soul to allow him to see where she kept her real treasures. Thank you, Mark, she said softly, and she was no longer the glittering butterfly, the spoiled flighty little rich girl, but a creature of substance and warmth.

The rush of his own feelings must have been as obvious he had almost suc combed to the desire he felt to take her in his arms and hold her hard, for she stepped back a pace, looking flustered and uncertain of herself, as though she had read his intention. And yet you won't slide out of it that easily. The curtains were drawn hastily across the secret places, and the old familiar ring was in her voice. This is my private place, even my father wouldn't dare come in here, without my permission first obtained. The change was extraordinary. It was like a superb actress slipping into a familiar role, she even stamped her foot, a gesture that he found suddenly insupportable.

it won't happen again, he assured her brusquely, and he stepped to the doorway, passing her closely. He was so angry he felt himself trembling. Mark! She stopped him imperiously, but it was with an effort he forced himself to turn back; his whole body felt rigid, and his lips were numb and stiff with anger. My father asks permission to come in here, she told him, and then she smiled, a slightly tremulous but utterly enchanting thing. Couldn't you just do the same? She had him off balance, his anger not fully aroused before she assuaged it with that smile, he felt the rigidity melting out of his body, but she had turned to the bench and was clattering her pots busily and she spoke without looking up. Close the door as you leave, she instructed, a princess tossing an order to a serf. His anger, not yet fully assuaged, flared again brightly and he strode to the door with his heels clashing on the bare boards and he was about to slam it with all of his strength, and hope that it smashed off its hinges, when she stopped him again.

, mark!

He stopped, but could not bring himself to answer. I will be coming down to Parliament with you this afternoon. We will leave directly after lunch, I want to hear General Smuts speech, my father says it will be important. He thought that if he tried to answer her, his lips might tear, they felt as stiff and brittle as parchment. Oh dear, she murmured. I had completely forgotten when addressing Mark Anders Esquire, one must always say please! She crossed her hands demurely in front of her, hung her head in a caricature of contrition and made those dark blue eyes huge and soulful. Please may I ride to Parliament with you today? I would be ever so grateful, I really would. And now you can slam the door. You should be on the stage, you're wasted as a painter, he told her, but he closed the door with studied deliberation and she waited to hear the latch click before she dropped into the model's chair, and began to shake with laughter, hugging herself delightedly.

Gradually the laughter dried up, but she was still smiling as she selected a blank canvas from the stock and placed it on the easel.

Working with charcoal, she blocked in the shape of his head, and it was right at the first attempt. The eyes, she whispered, his eyes are the key. And she smiled again as they appeared miraculously out of the blank canvas, surprised that she had them fixed perfectly in her mind. She began to hum softly as she worked, completely absorbed.

The Assembly Chamber of Parliament House was a high square hall, tiered with the galleries for Press and visitors.

It was panelled in dark carved indigenous wood, and the canopy above the Speaker's chair was ornately worked in the same wood.

Softly muted green carpeting set off the richer green leather of the members benches, and every seat was filled, the galleries crowded, but the silence that gripped that concourse was of extraordinary intensity, a cathedral hush into which the high piping voice of the Prime Minister carried clearly. He made a slight but graceful figure as he stood in his seat below the Speaker's dais. The entire Witwatersrand complex is passing slowly into the hands of the red commandos, He used his hands expressively, and Mark leaned forward to obtain a better view. The movement brought his outer leg against Storm Courtney's, and he was aware of the warmth of her thigh against his during the rest of the speech. Three members of the police have been killed in a brutal attack at Fordsburg, and two others have been critically injured in clashes with strikers commandos. These groups are armed with modern pattern military firearms, and they are marching freely through the istreets in quasi-military formations, committing acts of outrage on innocent members of the public, on public officers going about their duties, on all who cross their paths. They have interfered with public services, transport, power and communication, and have attacked and occupied police stations. Sean Courtney, who had been slumped in his front bench seat with one hand covering his eyes, lifted his head and said Shame! in a sonorous voice; it was his third-whisky voice, and Mark could not help but grin as he guessed that the club lunch had fortified him for the session. Shame indeed, Smuts agreed. Now the strikers have gathered about them all the feckless and dissolute elements in the community, their mood has become ugly and threatening. Legitimate strike action has given way to a reign of terror and criminal violence. Yet the most disturbing aspect of this terrible business is that the management of this labour dispute, or should I say, the stagemanaging of the strike - has passed into the hands of the most reckless and lawless men, and these men seek nothing less than the overthrow of civilized government, and a rule of Bolshevik anarchy. Never! boomed Sean, and the cry was taken up across the assembly. This house, and the whole nation is faced by the prospect of bloodshed and violence on a scale which none of us expected or believed possible.

The silence was unbroken now as Smuts went on carefully. If any blame attaches to this Government, it is that we have been too patient and shown too much forbearance for the miners grievances, we have allowed them too much latitude, too much expression of their demands. This was because we have always been aware of the temper of the nation, and the rights of individuals and groups to free expression. Quite right too, Sean agreed, and, Hear! Hear!

answered, Haar! HoorVacross the floor. Now however, we have been forced to reckon the cost of further forbearance, and we have found it unacceptable. He paused and bowed his head for a moment, and when he lifted it again, his expression was bleak and cold. Therefore a state of martial law now exists throughout the Union of South Africa. The silence persisted for many seconds, and then a roar of comment and question and interjection filled the house.

Even the galleries buzzed with confusion and speculation, and the Press reporters jostled and fought each other at the exit doors in the race to reach a telephone.

Martial law was the weapon of last resort, and had only been used once before, during the 1916 rebellion, when De Wet had raised his commandos again and ridden against Botha and Smuts. Now there were cries of protest and anger from the Opposition benches, Hertzog shaking his fist and his pince-nez glinting, while the government members were also on their feet voicing their support. The Speaker's vain cries of Order! Order! were almost drowned in the uproar.

Sean Courtney was signalling to Mark in the gallery, and he acknowledged and helped Storm to her feet, shielding her through the excited press of bodies as they left the gallery and went down the passage to the staircase.

The General was waiting for them at the visitors entrance. He was scowling and dark-faced with concern, a measure of his agitation was the perfunctory kiss he dropped on Storm's uplifted face before turning to Mark. A pretty business, my boy. He seized his elbow. Come on, let's go where we can talk, and he led them to the members entrance, and up the stairs under the portraits of stern-faced Chief justices to his own office.

Immediately the door was closed, he waved Storm away to one of the chairs, and told Mark, The regiment was called out at ten o'clock this morning. I managed to get Scott on the telephone at his home, and he's got it in hand. He's a good man. They will be fully mobilized by now, and there is a special train being made up. They will entrain and leave for the Witwatersrand at eleven o'clock tonight, in full battle order. What about us? Mark demanded. Suddenly he was a soldier again and he dropped neatly into the role. His place was with the regiment. We'll join there. We leave tonight. We are going up in convoy with the Prime Minister, and we'll travel all night - you will drive one of the cars. Sean was at his desk now, beginning to pack his briefcase. How long will it take us? It's a thousand miles, sir, Mark pointed out. I know that, damn it, snapped Sean. How long? Sean had never liked nor understood the internal combustion engine, and his dislike showed in his ignorance of their speed and capability whereas he could finely judge a journey by wagon or horseback. We won't be there before tomorrow evening, it's a hell of a road. Bloody motorcars, Sean growled. The regiment will be there before us by rail. They've only three hundred miles to go. Mark felt obliged to come to the defence of the car, and Sean grunted. I want you to get on -)me now. Have my wife pack my campaign bag and get your duffle together. We'll leave immediately I get home. He turned to Storm. Go along with Mark, now, Missy. I'm going to be busy here for a while. Mark strapped up his bag, and reflected how his worldly possessions had multiplied since he had joined the Courtney household.

There had been a time when he could carry everything he owned in his pockets, the thought was broken by a knock on the door. Come in, he called, expecting a servant. Only Ruth Courtney ever came down this end of the house on her weekly inspection, a determined crusade against dust and cockroaches. Please take it down to the car, he said in Zulu, adjusting his uniform cap in the mirror above the wash-basin.

All on my own? Storm asked sweetly in the same language, and he turned startled. You shouldn't be here. Why not, am I in danger of violation and ravishment? She had closed the door and leaned against it, her hands behind her back, but her eyes bold and teasing. It would be safer, I should imagine, to attempt to ravish a swarm of hornets. That was merely boorish, coarse and insulting, she said. You really are improving immensely. And she looked at the strapped case on the bed. I was going to offer to help you pack, most men are hopeless at that. But I see you've managed. Is there anything else I can do for you? I am sure I could think of something, he said with a solemn expression, but something in the tone of his voice made her smile and caution him. Not too much improvement in one day, please. She crossed to the bed and bounced on it experimentally. God!

Who filled it with bricks? No wonder Irene Leuchars went home! The poor darling must have sprained her back! Her expression was innocent, but her gaze raked him and Mark felt himself blushing furiously. Suddenly, much that had puzzled him was clear, and as he turned back to the mirror, he wondered how she had found out about Irene. For something to do, he tipped the brim of his cap. Beautiful, she agreed. Are you going up there to brutalize those poor strikers, or to bounce on their wives also? And before he could give expression to the shock he felt she went on, Funnily enough, I didn't really come down here to fight with you. I once had another old tomcat and I was really very fond of him, but he got run over by a car.

Have you got a cigarette, Mark? You don't smoke. He had found it difficult to keep up with the conversation. I know, but I have decided to learn. it's so suave, don't you think? Suave was the fashionable word at that moment.

She held the cigarette with an exaggerated vampish pose after he had lit it. How do I look? Bloody awful, he said, and she batted her eyes and took a tentative draw, held it for a moment and then started to cough. Here, give it to me. He took it away from her, and it tasted of her mouth. He felt the ache in his body, the terrible wanting, mingled now with a strange tenderness he had never felt before. She seemed, for once, so tender and young.

Will it be dangerous? she asked, suddenly serious. I don't think so, we'll be just like policemen. They are killing policemen. She stood up and walked to the window. The view is dreadful, unless you like dustbins. I'd complain, if I were you. She turned back to face him. I've never seen a man off to war before. What should I say? I don't know. Nobody ever saw me off before. What did your mother say? I never knew my mother. Oh Mark. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -'Her voice trailed off, and he was shocked to see that her eyes were brimming with tears. It doesn't matter he assured her quickly, and she turned back to the window. Actually, you can just see the top of Devil's Peak, if you twist your head. Her voice was thick and nasal, and it was many seconds before she turned back. Well, we're both new to this, so we'll just have to help each other. I suppose you should say, "Come back soon. "'Yes, I suppose I should, and then what do I do? You kiss me. It was out before he had thought about it, and he was stunned by his own audacity.

She stood very still, rooted by the words, and when she began to move, it was with the slow deliberation of a sleepwalker, and her eyes were huge and unblinking. She came across the room.

She stopped in front of him, and, as she lifted her arms, she came up on her toes.

The air about her was filled with her fragrance, and her arms were slim and strong about his neck, but it was the softness and the warmth of her lips that amazed him.

Her body swayed against him, and seemed to melt with his own, and the long artistic fingers slowly caressed the nape of his neck.

He passed an arm around her waist, and was again amazed at how narrow and slim it was; but the muscles of her back were firm and pliant as she arched it, pushing forward with her hips.

He heard her gasp as she felt him, and a slow voluptuous shudder shook her. For long moments she lingered, her hips pressed to his and her breasts flattened against his tunic.

He stooped over her, his hands beginning to move up the hard resilient little back, his mouth forcing hers open so the soft lips parted like the fleshy red petals of an exotic blooming orchid.

She shuddered again, but then the sound in her throat turned into a panicky moan of protest and she twisted out of his arms, though he tried desperately to hold her. But she was strong and supple and determined.

At the door, she stopped to stare at him. She was trembling, her eyes were wide and dark, as though she had truly only seen him for the first time. Oh la! Who was talking about swarms of hornets! she mocked, but her voice was gusty and unsteady.

She twisted the door open, and tried to smile, but it was a poor lopsided thing, and she did not yet have control of her breathing. I'm not so sure of that "Come back soon" any more. She held the door open to give herself courage, and her next smile was more convincing. Don't get run over, you old tomcat, and she slipped out into the passageway. Her receding footsteps were light and dancing in the silence of the big house, and Mark's own legs were suddenly so weak that he sat down heavily on his bed.