A Sparrow Falls

Mark drove fast, concentrating all his attention on the twisting treacherous road through the mountains, driving the big heavily laden Rolls down the path of its own glaring brass-bound headlights, up Baines Kloof where the mountain fell away on his left hand sheer into the valley, past Worcester with its orderly vineyards standing in dark lines in the moonlight, before the final ascent up the Hex River Mountains to the rim of the flat compacted shield of the African interior.

They came out over the top, and the vast land stretched away ahead of them, the dry treeless karroo, where the flat-topped kopjes made strangely symmetrical shapes against the cold starry sky.

Now at last, Mark could relax in the studded leather driver's seat, driving instinctively, the road pouring endlessly towards him, pale and straight out of the darkness, and he could tune his ears to the voice of the two men in the rear seat. What they don't understand, old Sean, is that if we do not employ every black man who offers himself for work no, more than that, if we don't actively recruit all the native labour we can get hold of, it will result not-only in fewer jobs for white men, but, in the long run, it will mean, finally, no jobs at all for the white men of Africa. A jackal, small and furry as a puppy, lolloped into the path of the headlights with its ears erect, and Mark steered carefully to miss it, his own ears cocked for Sean's reply.

They think only of today. His voice was deep and grave. We must plan for ten years from now, for thirty, fifty years ahead, for a nation firm and undivided. We cannot afford once again to have Afrikander against Briton, or worse, we dare not have white against black. It is not enough that we are forced to live together, we must learn to work together. Slowly, slowly, old Sean, the Prime Minister chuckled. Don't let dreams run away with reality. I don't deal in dreams, Jannie. You should know that. If we don't want to be torn to pieces by our own people, we must give all of them, black, white and brown, a place and a share. They ran on hard into the endless land, and the light of a lonely farm house on a dark ridge emphasized how vast and empty it was. Those who clamour so loudly for less work and more pay may find that what benefit they get now will have to be paid for at a thousand percent interest some day in the future. A payment in misery and hunger and suffering, Sean Courtney was speaking again. If we are to steer off the reef of national disaster, then men will have to learn to work again, and to take seriously once more the demands of a disciplined and orderly society. Have you ever wondered, Sean, at how many people these days depend for their livelihood on nothing else but finding areas of dispute between the employers and the employed, between labour and management? Sean nodded, taking it up where Smuts left off. As though the two were not shackled to each other with bonds that nothing can break. They travel the same road, to the same goal, bound together irretrievably by destiny. When one stumbles, he brings the other down on bloody knees, when one falls the other comes down with him Slowly, as the stars made their circuit of grandeur across the heavens, the talk in the back seat, of the Rolls dwindled into silence.

Mark glanced in the mirror and saw that Sean Courtney was asleep, a travelling rug about his shoulders and his black beard on his chest.

His snores were low and regular and deep, and Mark felt a rush of feeling for the big man. It was a fine mixture of respect and awe, of pride and affection. I suppose that is what you would feel, if you had a father, he thought, and then, embarrassed by the strength and presumption of his feeling, he once again concentrated all his attention on the road.

The night wind had sifted the sky with fine dust, and the dawn was a thing of unbelievable splendour. From horizon to horizon, and right across the vaulted domes of the heavens, vibrant colour throbbed and glowed and flamed, until at last the sun thrust clear of the horizon. We won't stop in Bloemfontein or any of the big towns, Mark. We don't want anybody to see the Prime Minister.

Sean leaned across the back of the seat. We'll need petrol, General. Pick one of the roadside pumps, Sean instructed. Try and find one with no telephone lines. It was a tiny iron-roofed general dealer's store set back from the road under two scraggy eucalyptus blue gum trees. There was no other building in sight, and the open empty veld stretched dry and sun-scared to the circle of the horizon. The plaster walls of the store were cracked and in need of whitewash, plastered with advertisement boards for Bovril and Joko tea. The windows were shuttered and the door locked, but there were no telephone lines running from the solitary building to join those that followed the road, and a single red-painted petrol pump stood at rigid attention in the dusty yard below the stoep.

Mark blew a long continuous blast on the Rolls' horn, and while he was doing so, the Prime Minister's black Cadillac that was following turned off the main road and parked behind them. The driver and the three members of the ministerial staff climbed out and stretched their stiff muscles.

When the proprietor of the store emerged at last, unshaven, red-eyed, but cheerfully doing up his breeches, he spoke no English. Mark asked in Afrikaans, Can you fill up both cars? While the storekeeper swung the handle of the pump back and forth, and the fuel rose alternatively into the two one-gallon glass bowls on the top of the pump, his wife came out from the store with a tray of steaming coffee mugs and a platter of crisp golden freshly baked rusks.

They ate and drank gratefully, and were ready to go on again within twenty minutes.

The storekeeper stood in the yard, scratching the stubble of his beard and watched the twin columns of red dust billowing into the northern sky. His wife came out on to the stoep and he turned to squint up at her. Do you know who that was? he asked, and she shook her head.

That was Clever Jannie, and his English gun-men.

Didn't you see the uniform the young one wore? He spat into the red dirt, and his phlegm balled and rolled, Khaki!

Damned khaki! He ripped the word out bitterly, and went around the side of the building to the little lean-to stable.

He was clinching the girth on the old sway-backed grey mare, when she followed him into the stall. It's none of our business, Hendrick. Let it stand. None of our business? he demanded indignantly. Didn't I fight khaki in the English war, didn't I fight it again in 1916 when we rode with old De Wet, isn't my brother a rock-breaker on the Simmer and Jack mine, and isn't that where Clever Jannie is going with his hangmen? He swung up on the mare and put his heels to her. She jumped away, and he pointed her at the ridge. It was eight miles to the railway siding, and there was a telegraph in the ganger's cottage; the ganger was a cousin of his. The Railway Workers Union was out in sympathy with the miners now. The Action Committee would have the news in Johannesburg by lunch time that Clever Jannie was on his way.

While Mark Anders drank coffee at the wayside store, Fergus MacDonald lay under the hedge at the bottom of a garden ablaze with crimson cannas in orderly beds, and peered through a pair of binoculars down the slope at the Newlands Police Station. They had sand-bagged the windows and doors.

The lady of the house had sat onher veranda the previous evening, drinking coffee and counting forty-seven police constables arriving by motor lorry to reinforce the station.

Her son was a shift boss on the Simmer and Jack. Whoever commanded the police at Newlands was no soldier, Fergus decided, and grinned that wolfish wicked grin.

He had seen the dead ground instantly, any soldier would have picked it up at a glance. Pass the word for the Mills bombs, he muttered to the striker beside him, and the man crawled away.

Fergus swung the glasses up along the road where it started to climb the kopies, and grunted with satisfaction.

The telephone wires had been cut, along with the power lines. He could see the loose ends dangling from the poles.

The police station was isolated.

The striker crawled back to Fergus side, dragging a heavy rucksack. He had a tooth missing from his upper jaw, and he grinned gap-toothed at Fergus. Give them hell, comrade. Fergus face was blackened with soot and his eyelashes were singed away. They had burned the Fordsburg Police Station a little before midnight. I want covering fire, on my whistle. You'll get it, never fear. Fergus opened the rucksack and glanced at the steel globes, with their deeply segmented squares for fragmentation, then he slung the strap over his shoulder and adjusted the burden to hang comfortably on his flank. Look after it well. He handed his Lee-Enfield rifle to the gap-toothed striker. We'll need it again today. He crawled away down the shallow drainage ditch that led to a concrete culvert which crossed under the road, The culvert was lined with circular tubes of rusty corrugated iron, and Fergus wriggled through it carefully, emerging on the far side of the road.

Lying on his side, he raised himself slightly to peer over the edge of the drainage ditch. The police station was a hundred and fifty yards away. The blue light over the front door, with the white lettered POLICE, was dead, and the flag hung limply on its pole in the still windless morning.

it was fifty yards to the slope of dead ground under the eastern windows of the brick building, and Fergus could see the rifle barrels of the defenders poked through the gaps in the sand-bags.

He pulled the silver whistle from his back pocket by its lanyard, and came up on his knees like a sprinter on the blocks.

He drew a deep breath and blew a long shrill ringing blast on the whistle. Immediately a storm of rifle fire crashed out from the hedges and ditches that surrounded the station.

The blue lamp shattered into flying fragments, and red brick dust popped off the walls like dyed cotton pods.

Fergus came out of the ditch at a run. A bullet kicked dust and stone chips stung his ankles, and another jerked like an impatient hand at the tail of his coat, then he was into the dead ground and out of their field of fire.

He still ran doubled over, however, until he reached the police station. Then he flattened himself against the wall between two of the sand-bagged windows while he struggled with his breathing.

A rifle barrel protruded from the left-hand window as it blazed away up the slope of the kopje. Fergus opened the rucksack and took out a grenade with his left hand. He pulled the pin with his teeth, while he groped for the Webley . 45 5 revolver stuck into the belt of his trousers.

He locked one arm over the barrel of the police rifle, dragging it harmlessly aside, then he stepped into the window, and, still holding the rifle, looked through the narrow hole in the sand-bags.

A young, beardless face stared back at him, the eyes wide with amazement, the mouth hanging open slightly and the police helmet pulled down low over his eyes.

Fergus shot him in the bridge of the nose, between the startled staring eyes, and the head was smashed backwards out of view.

Fergus hurled the grenade through the gap and ducked down. The explosion in the confined space was vicious and ear-numbing, Fergus bobbed up and tossed in another grenade.

Glass and smoke blew from the windows, and from within there were the screams and cries of the trapped police constables, the groans and gasping walls of the wounded.

Fergus threw in a third grenade, and screamed, Chew on that you bloody strike-breakers. The bomb exploded, shattering out a panel from the front door, and smoke billowed from all windows.

Inside a single voice started screaming. Stop it! Oh God, stop it! We surrender! Come out with your hands in the air, you bastards!

A police sergeant staggered out of the shattered doorway.

He held one hand above his head, the other hung at his side in a torn and blood-soaked sleeve.

The last call that went out from Newlands Police Station before the strikers cut the lines was a call for help. The relieving column coming over the ridge from Johannesburg in a convoy of three trucks got as far as the Hotel in Main Street where it was halted by rifle fire, and the moment it stopped, strikers ran out into the roadway behind it and set all the trucks ablaze with petrol bombs.

The police abandoned their vehicles and raced for cover in a cottage beside the road. It was a strong defensive position and they looked set to hold out against even the most determined attacks, but they left three dead constables lying in the road beside the burning trucks, and another two of their number lying near them, so badly wounded they could only cry out for succour.

A white flag waved from across the road, and the police commander stepped out on to the veranda of the cottage.

What do you want? he called across.

Fergus MacDonald walked out into the road, still waving the flag, a slight unwar-like figure in shabby suit and cloth cap. You can't leave these men out here, he shouted back, pointing at the bodies.

The commander came out with twenty un-armed police into the road to carry away the dead and wounded, and while they worked, strikers under Fergus, orders slipped in through the back of the cottages.

Suddenly Fergus whipped the Webley out from under his coat and pressed it to the commander's head. Tell your men to put their hands up, or I'll blow your bloody brains all over the road. In the cottage, Fergus' men knocked the weapons out of the hands of the police, and in the roadway armed strikers were among them.

You were under a flag of truce, protested the commander bitterly. We aren't playing games, you bloody black-leg! snarled Fergus. We're fighting for a new world. The commander opened his mouth to protest again and Fergus swung the revolver sideways, slashing the barrel into his face, snapping out the front teeth from his upper jaw, and crushing the lip into a red wet smear. The man dropped to his knees, and Fergus strode among his men. We'll siege the Brixton ridge now, and after that Johannesburg. By tonight, we'll have the red flag flying on every public building in town. Onward, comrades, nothing will stop us now. The Transvaal Scottish detrained at Dunswart Station that same morning to march in and seize the mining town of Benoni, which was under full control of the Action Committee's commandos, but the strikers were waiting for them.

The advancing troops were caught in flank and rear by the cross-fire from hundreds of prepared positions, and fought hard all that day to extricate themselves, but it was late afternoon when, still under sniping fire, they were able to retrain at Dunswart.

They carried with them three dead officers and nine dead other rankers. Another thirty were suffering from gunshot wounds, from which many would later die.

From one end to the other of the Witwatersrand, the strikers were on the rampage. The Action Committee controlled that great complex of mining towns and mining properties that follows the sweep of the gold-bearing reef across the bleak African veld, sixty miles from Krugersdorp to Ventersdorp, with the city of Johannesburg at its centre.

it is the richest gold-bearing formation yet discovered by man, a glittering treasure house, the foundation stone of the prosperity of a nation, and now the strikers carried the red flag across it at will, and at every point the force of law and order reeled back.

Every police commander was loath to initiate fire, and every constable loath to act upon the order when it did come. They were firing upon friends, countrymen, brothers.

In the cellars of the Fordsburg Trade Union Hall they were holding a kangaroo court; a traitor was on trial for his life.

Harry Fisher's huge bulk was clad now in a military style bushjacket, with buttoned patch-pockets, over which he wore a bandolier of ammunition. On his right arm was a plain band of red cloth, but his unkempt black hair was uncovered, and his eyes were fierce.

His desk was a packing case, and Helena MacDonald stood behind his stool. She had cropped her hair as short as a man's, and she wore breeches tucked into her boots, and the red irmband on her tunic. Her face was pale and gaunt, her eyes in deep plum-coloured sockets were invisible in the bad light, but her body was tensed with the nervous energy of a leashed greyhound with the smell of the hare in its nostrils.

The accused was a storekeeper of the town, with pale watery eyes behind the steel-rimmed spectacles which he blinked rapidly as he watched his accuser. He asked to be connected with police headquarters in Marshall Square! Just a minute, Helena interrupted. You are on the local telephone exchange, is that right? Yes, that's right. I am Exchange Supervisor! The woman looked like a schoolteacher, iron-haired, neatly dressed, unsmiling. Go on. I thought I'd better listen in, you know, see what he was up to. The storekeeper was wringing white bony hands, and chewing nervously on his lower lip. He looked at least sixty years old with the pale silver fluff of hair standing up comically from his bald pink pate. Well, when he started giving them the details of what was happening here, I broke the connection. What exactly did he say? Fisher demanded. He said that there was a machine gun here. He said that? Fisher's expression was thunderous. He transferred his glare to the storekeeper, and the man quailed.

My boy is in the police, he's my only boy, he whispered, and then blinked back the tears from the pale eyes. That's as good as a confession, said Helena coldly, and Fisher glanced over his shoulder at her and nodded.

Take him out and shoot him, he said.

The light delivery van bumped along the overgrown track and stopped beside the old abandoned No. 1 shaft on the Crown Mine's property. It had not been used for twelve years, and concrete machinery slabs and the collar of the shaft were thick with rank grass that grew out of the cracks in the concrete and covered the rusted machinery.

Two men dragged the storekeeper to the dilapidated barbed-wire fence that protected the dark black hole of the shaft. No. 1 shaft was fifteen hundred feet deep, but had flooded back to the five-hundred-foot level. The warning notices on the barbed-wire fence were embellished with the skull and cross-bones device.

Helena MacDonald stayed at the wheel of the delivery van. She lit a cigarette and stared ahead, waiting without visible emotion for the executioner's shot.

The minutes passed, while the cigarette burned down between her fingers, and she snapped impatiently when one of the armed strikers came to the side window of the van. What's keeping you? Begging your pardon, missus, neither of us can do it. What do you mean? Helena demanded. Well, the man dropped his eyes. Old Cohen's been selling me my groceries for ten years now. He always gives the kids a candy bar when they go in -With an impatient exclamation, Helena opened the van door and stepped out. Give me your revolver, she said, and as she strode to where the second striker guarded the old storekeeper she checked the load and spun the chamber of the pistol.

Cohen started to smile, a mild ingratiating smile as he peered at her face myopically, then he saw her expression and the pistol in her hand.

He dropped to his knees, and he began to urinate in terrified spurts down the front of his baggy grey flannel trousers.

When Helena parked the van in the street behind the market buildings, she was aware immediately of a new charge of excitement in the air. The men at the sandbagged windows called out to her, Your old man's back, missus. He's down in the cellar with the boss! Fergus looked up from the large-scale map of the East Rand over which he and Harry Fisher were poring. She hardly recognized him.

He was sooty and grimed as a chimney sweep, and his eyelashes had been burned away, giving him a bland startled look. His eyes were bloodshot and there were little wet beads of dirty mucus in the corners.

Hello, luv, he grinned wearily at her. What are you doing here, comrade? she demanded. You are supposed to be at Brixton ridge.

Harry Fisher intervened, Fergus has taken the ridge.

He's done fine work, really fine work. But now we have been granted a stroke of really good fortune What is it? Helena demanded. Slim jannie Smuts is on his way from Cape Town. That's bad news, Helena contradicted coolly. He's coming by road, and he's got no escort with him, Harry Fisher explained. Like a lover, right into our arms, grinned Fergus, and spread his own arms wide. There were dark splotches of dried blood on his sleeves.

The Prime Minister's aide-de-camp had spelled Mark at the wheel of the Rolls on the long stretch northwards from Bloemfontein. Mark had been able to sleep, hunched up on the front seat, oblivious of the lurching and shaking over the bad stretches of road, so that he woke refreshed when Sean Courtney stopped the little convoy on a deserted hilltop fifteen miles south of the built-up complex of mines and towns of the Witwatersrand.

it was late afternoon and the lowering sun turned the banks of low false cloud in the north to a sombre purple hue. It was not cloud but the discharge from the hundreds of chimneys of the power stations and refineries, of the coal-burning locomotives and the open fires of tens of thousands of African labourers in their locations, and of burning buildings and vehicles.

Mark wrinkled his nose as he smelled the acrid taint of the city fouling the clean dry air of the highveld.

The entire party took the opportunity to stretch cramped muscles and to relieve other physical needs. Mark noted wryly that nice social distinctions were observed when those members of the party who had general officer's rank and Cabinet Minister's status used the screened side of the Puked cars, while the lesser members stood out in the open road.

While they went about their business, there was an argument in progress. Sean was advocating caution and a round-about approach through the suburbs and outlying areas of Johannesburg. We should cut across to Standerton and come in on the Natal road, the rebels are holding all the southern suburbs. They'll not be expecting us, old Sean. We'll go through fast and be at Marshall Square before they know what's happened, jannie Smuts decided. I can't afford the extra two hours it will take us to circle around. And Sean growled at him, You always were too damned hot-headed, Jannie. Good God, you were the one who rode into the Cape with a hundred and fifty men in your commando to capture Cape Town from the whole British army. Gave them the fright of their lives, the Prime Minister chuckled as he came around the back of the Rolls, buttoning his trousers, and Sean, following him, went on with relish, That's right, but when you tried the same tricks on Lettow von Vorbeck in German East Africa, you were the one who got the fright. He roasted your arse for you. Mark winced at Sean's choice of words, and the Prime Minister's party looked to heaven and earth, anywhere except at their master's suddenly unsmiling countenance. We are going into Johannesburg on the Booysens Road, said Jannie Smuts coldly.

You'll be no damned good to us dead, grumbled Sean. That's enough, old Sean. We'll do it my way. All right, Sean agreed lugubriously. But you'll ride in the second car. The Cadillac will lead with your pennant flying. He turned to the Prime Minister's driver, Flat out, you understand, stop for nothing. Yes, sir. Have you gentlemen got your music with you? he demanded, and all of them showed him the sidearms they carried. Mark, Sean turned to him. Get the Mannlicher off the roof. Mark unstrapped the leather case from the luggage rack and assembled the 9. 3 mm sporting rifle, the only effective weapon they had been able to find at short notice in Somerset House before leaving. He loaded the magazine and handed the weapon to Sean, then slipped two yellow packets of Eley Kynoch ammunition into his own pockets.

Good boy, Sean grunted, and peered at him closely. How are you feeling? Did you get some sleep? I'm fine, sir. Take the wheel. Darkness fell swiftly, smearing the silhouettes of the blue gum trees along the low crests of the rolling open ground, crowding in the circle of their vision.

There were the flickering pinpoints of open cooking fires from a few of the native shacks among the hills, but these were the only signs of life. The road was deserted, and even when they began to speed past the first brick-built buildings, there were no lights, and the stillness was unnatural and disquieting. The main power station has shut down. The coal-miners were limiting supply to fifty tons a day for essential services, but now they've stopped even that, the Prime Minister mused aloud, and neither of them answered him.

Mark followed the twinkling red rear-lights of the Cadillac, and the darkness pressed closer. He switched on the main beams of his headlights, and suddenly they were into the narrow streets of Booysens, the southernmost suburb of Johannesburg.

The miners cottages crowded the road like living and menacing presences. On the left, against the last faint glimmer of the day, Mark could make out the skeletal shape of the steel headgear at Crown Mines'main haulage, and ahead, the low table-like hillocks of the mine dumps gave him a nostalgic twinge.

He thought suddenly of Fergus MacDonald, and Helena, and glanced once again to his left, lifting his eyes from the road for a moment.

just beyond the Crown Deep headgear, not more than a mile away, was the cottage on Lover's Walk where she had taught him he was a man.

The memory was too wrapped around with pain and guilt, and he thrust it aside and turned his full attention back to the road just as the first rifle shots sparkled from the darkened cottage windows on the right side of the road ahead.

Instantly, he was judging the angle and field of the enemy fire, noticing how they had chosen the curve of the road where the vehicles must slow. Good, he thought dispassionately, applauding the choice, and he hit the gear lever of the Rolls, double declutching into a lower gear to build up revolutions for the turn.

Get down! he shouted at his illustrious passengers.

Ahead the Cadillac swerved wildly at the volley and then recovered, and went roaring into the turn. Six or seven rifles, Mark estimated, and then saw the high hedge and the open pavement below the cottage windows. He would give them a changing closing target, he decided, and used the power and rush of the Rolls to broadside up on to the pavement, under the cover of the hedge.

Foliage brushed with a light rushing whisper against the side of the roaring vehicle and behind him a service revolver hanged lustily as Sean Courtney fired through the open window.

Mark hit the brakes and fanned the back of the Rolls through the turn, bounded off the pavement and let her sway out across the road, to further confuse the riflemen in the cottages. Then he tramped down hard on the accelerator, guided her through the turn and went howling down into the dark deserted commercial area of Booysens, leaving the stupefied riflemen staring into the deserted bend, and listening to the receding note of the Rolls-Royce engine.

Only two miles and they would be through the danger area, over the ridge and into Johannesburg proper.

Ahead of him, the Cadillac was running through the area of shops and warehouses and small factories, its headlights blazing harshly on the buildings that lined the road, carving a tunnel of light down their avenue to safety.

in the back seat of the Rolls, the two Generals had not taken Mark's advice to seek cover, and were both sitting bolt upright, discussing the situation objectively in cool measured tones. That was quick thinking, Smuts said. They weren't expecting that turn. He's a good lad, Sean agreed. But you are wasting your time with that pistol. Gives me something to do, Sean explained, as he reloaded the chambers of his revolver. You should have ridden with my commando, old Sean, I would have taught you to save ammunition. Smuts sought revenge for Sean's earlier remarks.

The headlights of the Cadillac tipped slightly upwards as it charged through the dip and reached the first rising ground. They all saw the road-block at the same moment.

It was flung up crudely across the road, oil drums, baulks of timber, iron bedsteads, sand-bags and household furniture obviously dragged from the cottages.

Sean swore loudly and with ferocity. I can turn now, Mark shouted. But they'll get us when we slow down, and we'll have to go back through the ambush. Watch the Cadillac, Sean shouted back.

The heavy black machine had not hesitated, and it roared up the slope at the barricade, picking the spot which seemed weakest. He's going to open a breach! Follow him, Mark. The Cadillac smashed into the road-block, and tables and chairs flew high into the night. Even above the roar of wind and engine, Mark could hear the tlearing crashing impact, and then the Cadillac was through and going on up the ridge, but its speed was bleeding away and a white cloud of steam plumed from the torn radiator.

However, they had forged a breach in the barricade and Mark steered for it, bumping over a mangled mass of timber and then accelerating away up the slope, gaining rapidly on the leading vehicle.

The Cadillac was losing speed, clearly suffering a mortal injury.

Shall I stop for them? Mark demanded. No, said Sean. We have to get the Prime Minister, Yes, said Smuts. We can't leave them. Make up your bloody minds, yelled Mark, and there was a stunned disbelieving silence in the back, and Mark began to brake for the pick up.

The machine gun opened from the scrubby bush at the base of the nearest mine dump. The tracer flailed the night, brilliant white fire sweeping down the road in a blinding storm, the high ripping tearing sound was unmistakable and Mark and Sean exclaimed together in appalled disbelief. Vickers! The Prime Minister's green and golden pennant on the bonnet of the Cadillac drew the deadly sheet of fire, and in the horrified micro-seconds that Mark watched, he saw the car begin to break up. The windshield and side windows blew away in a sparkling cloud of glass fragments, the figures of the three occupants were plucked to pieces like chickens caught in the blades of a threshing-machine.

The Cadillac slewed off the road and crashed headlong into the blank wall of a timber warehouse on the edge of the road, and still the relentless stream of Vickers fire -tore into the carcass, punching neat black holes into the metalwork, holes that were rimmed with bare metal that sparkled in the headlights of the Rolls like newly minted silver dollars.

It would only be seconds before the gunner swivelled his Vickers on to the Rolls, Mark realized, and he searched the road ahead for a bolthole.

Between the timber warehouse and the next building was a narrow alleyway, barely wide enough to admit the Rolls. Mark swung out to make a hay-cart turn for the alley, and the gunner guessed his intention, but was stiff and low on his traverse as he swung the Vickers on to the Rolls.

The sheet of bullets ripped the surface of the road, a boiling teeming play of dust and tarmac that ran down under the side of the car.

Before the gunner could correct his aim, the petrol tank of the ruined Cadillac exploded in a woofing clap of sound and a vivid rolling cloud of scarlet flame and dense black smoke.

Under its cover Mark steered for the alleyway, and slammed the Rolls into it although she was suddenly heavy on the steering, and thumping brutally in her front end.

Fifty feet down, the alley was blocked with a heavy haulage trailer, piled high with newly sawn timber baulks - and Mark skidded to a halt, and jumped out.

He saw that for the moment they were covered by the corner of the warehouse from the Vickers, but the timber trailer cut off their escape down the alley and it would be only minutes before the strikers realized their predicament and moved the Vickers to enfiltrade the alleyway and shoot them to pieces. One glance showed him that machine-gun fire had shredded the off -side leading wheel. Mark jerked open the rear door and snatched the Mannhcher from Sean, and paused only a moment to snap at the two Generals. Get the wheel changed. I'll try and hold them off. Then he was sprinting back down the alleyway. I shall have to insist that in future, when he gives me an order, he calls me sir, Sean said with thin humour, and turned to Smuts. Have you ever changed a wheel, Jannie? Don't be stupid, old Sean. I'm a horse soldier, and your superior officer, Smuts smiled back at him, with his golden beard looking like a refined Viking in the reflected headlights. Bloody hell! grunted Sean. You can work the jack. Mark reached the corner of the warehouse and crouched againstit, checking the load of the Mannlicher before glancing around.

The Cadillac burned like a huge pyre, and the stink of burning rubber and oil and human flesh was choking. The body of the driver still sat at the wheel, but the smoky red flames rushed and drummed about him so that his head was blackening and charring, and his body twisted and writhed in a slow macabre ballet of death.

There was a wind that Mark had not noticed before, a fitful inconstant wind that gusted and puffed down the ridge, rolling thick clouds of the stinking black smoke across the road and then changing strength and direction so that for a few seconds the smoke pall once again poured straight upwards into the night sky.

Over all blazed the flickering orange wash of the flames, uncertain light which magnified shadow and offered false perspective.

Mark realized that he had to get across the road into the scrub and eroded ground below the mine dump before he could get a chance at the Vickers gunner. He had to cross fifty open yards before he reached the ground where he could turn the clumsiness and relative immobility of the Vickers to his own account. He waited for the wind.

He saw it coming, rustling the grass tops in the firelight and rolling a dirty ball of newspaper down the road, then it picked up the smoke and wafted it in a stinking black pall across the open roadway.

Mark launched himself from the corner of the warehouse and had run twenty paces before he realized that the wind had tricked him. It was merely a gust, passing in seconds and leaving the night still and silent when it had gone, silent except for the snapping, crackling flames of the burning Cadillac.

He was halfway across as the smoke opened again, and the cold weight of dread in his belly seemed to spread down into his legs and slow them as he ran like a man in shackles; but the battle clock in his head was running clearly, tolling off the seconds, judging finely the instant that the Vickers gunner up on the dump spotted his shadowy running figure, judging the time it took for him to swing and resight the heavy weapon. Now! he thought, and rolled forward from the waist without checking his speed, going on to his shoulder and somersaulting, ducking under the solid blast of machinegun fire that came at the exact second he had expected it.

The momentum of his fall carried him up on to his feet again, and he knew he had seconds before the unsighted gunner picked him up again. He plunged onwards and lances of pain shot through the old bullet wounds in his back, wounds which he had not felt in over a year; the pain was in anticipation, as well as from the wrench of his fall.

The bank of red earth on the far side of the road seemed to loom far off while instinct warned him that the Vickers was on to him again. He launched himself feet first, like a baseball player sliding for the plate, and at the same instant the stream of Vickers bullets tore a leaping sheet of dust off the lip of the bank, and the ricochets screamed like frustrated banshees and wailed away into the night.

Mark lay under the bank for many seconds with his face cradled in the crook of his arm, sobbing for breath while the pain in his old wounds receded and his heart picked up its normal rhythm. When he lifted his head again, his expression was bleak and his anger was cold and bright and functional.

Fergus MacDonald swore softly with both hands on the firing handles of the Vickers, his forefingers still holding the automatic safety-catch open and his thumbs poised over the firing button. He kept the weapon swinging in short rhythmic traverses back and forth as he peered down the slope, but he was swearing, monotonous profanity in a low tight whisper.

The man beside him was kneeling, ready to feed the belt to the gun, and now he whispered hoarsely, I think you got him. The hell I did, hissed Fergus, and jerked the gun across as something in shadow caught his eye down on the road.

He fired a short holding burst, and then muttered. Right, let's pull out. Damn it, comrade, we've got them - protested the loader.

You bloody fool, didn't you see him? Fergus asked. Didn't you see the way he crossed the road, don't you realize we've got a real ripe one on our hands? Whoever he is, he's a killer. Are we going to let one bastard chase us You're so right, snapped Fergus. When it's that bucko down there, I'm not going to risk this gun. It's worth a hundred trained men, he patted the square steel breech block. We came here to kill Clever Jannie, and he's down there, cooking in his fancy motorcar. Now, let's get the hell out of here, and he started the complicated process of unloading the Vickers, cranking it once to clear the chamber of its live round and then cranking again to clear the round in the feed block. Tell the boys to cover us when we pull back, he grunted, as he extracted the ammunition belt from the breech pawls, and then started uncoupling the Vickers from its tripod. Come on, work quickly, he snapped at his loader. That bastard is on his way, I can feel him breathing down my neck already. There were eight strikers on the slope of the dump, Fergus and two for the Vickers, with five riflemen spread out around the gun to support and cover. Right, let's go. Fergus carried the thick-jacketed barrel over one shoulder and a heavy case of ammunition in his left hand; his number two wrestled with the ungainly fifty-pounds weight of metal tripod and the number three carried the five-gallon can of cooling water and the second case of ammunition. We are pulling out, Fergus called to his riflemen, look lively, that's a dangerous bastard coming after us! They ran in a group, bowed under their burdens, feet slipping in the loose white cyanided sand of the dump.

The shot was from the left, Fergus had not expected that, and it was impossibly high on the dump. The bastard must have grown wings and flown to get there, Fergus thought.

The report was a heavy booming clap, some sort of sporting rifle, and behind him the number three made a strange grunting sound as though his lungs had been forcibly emptied by a heavy blow. Fergus glanced back and saw him down, a dark untidy shape on the white sand. Good Christ, gasped Fergus. It had to be flukey shooting at that range, and in this impossible light, just the early stars and the ruddy glow of the burning Cadillac.

The rifle boom boomed again, and he heard one of his riflemen scream and then thrash about wildly in the undergrowth.

Fergus knew he had judged his adversary fairly, he was a killer. They were all running now, shouting and firing wildly as they scattered tack under the tee of the dump, and Fergus ran with them, only one thought in his mind, he must get his precious Vickers safely away. It The sweat had soaked through his jacket between the shoulders, and had run down from under his cap so that he was blinded, and unable to speak when at last he tumbled into the cover of a deep donga and sat against the earth of the bank, with the machine gun cradled in his arms like an infant.

one after another his riflemen reached the donga and fell thankfully into cover.

How many were there? gasped one of them. I don't know, panted another, must have been a dozen ZARPS, at least. They got Alfie. And they got Henry also, I saw five of them.

Fergus had recovered his breath enough to speak now. There was one, only one, but a good one. Did we get Slim Jannie? Yes, said Fergus grimly. We got him all right. He was in the first car, I saw his flag and I saw him cooking. We can go home now. It was a little before eleven o'clock when the solitary Rolls-Royce was halted at the gates of police headquarters on Marshall Square by the suspicious sentries, but when the occupants were recognized, half a dozen high-ranking police and military officers hurried down the steps to welcome them.

The Prime Minister went directly to the large visitors drawing-room on the first floor which had been transformed into the headquarters of the military administration, empowered and entrusted by the declaration of martial law with the Government of the nation. The relief on the faces of the assembled officers was undisguised.

The situation was a mess, but Smuts was here at last and now they could expect order and direction and sanity to emerge from the chaos.

He listened to their reports quietly, tugging at his little goatee beard, his expression becoming more grim as the full extent of the situation was explained.

He was silent a little longer, brooding over the map, and then he looked up at General van Deventer, an old comrade in arms during two wars, a man who had ridden with him on that historic commando into the Cape in igoi and Who had fought beside him against the wily old German, Lettow von Vorbeck, in German East Africa. Jacobus, he said, you command the East Rand. Van Deventer whispered an acknowledgement, his vocal chords damaged by a British bullet in or, Sean, you have the west. I want the Brixton ridge under our control by noon tomorrow. Then, as an afterthought, Have your lads arrived from Natal yet? I hope so, said Sean Courtney. So do I, Smuts smiled thinly. You will have a merry time taking the ridge single-handed. The smile flickered off his face. I want your battle plans presented by breakfast time, gentlemen. I don't have to remind you that, as always, the watchword is speed. We have to cauterize this ulcer and bind it up swiftly. in early autumn, the highveld sun has a peculiar brilliance, pouring down through an atmosphere thinned by altitude out of a sky of purest gayest blue.

It was weather for picnicking and for lovers in quiet gardens, but on 14th March 1922 it was not calm, but a stillness of a menacing and ominous intensity which hung over the city of Johannesburg and its satellite towns.

In just two days van Deventer had swept through the East Rand, stunning the strikers with his Boer Commando tactics, rolling up all resistance in Benoni and Dunswart, recapturing Brakpan and the mine, while the Brits column under his command drove through the Madder and Geduld mines and linked with van Deventer at Springs. In two days, they had crushed the revolt on the East Rand, and thousands of strikers came in under the white flag to be marched away to captivity and eventual trial.

But Fordsburg was the heart and the Brixton ridge which commanded it was the key to the revolt.

Now at last, Sean Courtney had the ridge, but it had been two days of hard and bitter fighting. With artillery and air support, they had swept the rocky kopjes, the school buildings, brickfields, the cemetery, the public buildings and the cottages, each of which the strikers had turned into a strongpoint; and in the night they had carried in the dead of both sides, and buried them in the Milner Park cemetery, each with his own comrades, soldier with soldier and striker with striker.

Now Sean was ready for the thrust to the heart, and below them the iron roofs of Fordsburg blinked in the fine clear sunlight. Here he comes now, said Mark Anders, and they all lifted their binoculars and searched for the tiny fleck of black in the immense tall sky.

The DH. 9 sailed in sedately, banking slowly in from the south and levelling for the run over the cowering cottages of Fordsburg.

Through the lens of his glasses, Mark could make out the head and shoulders of the navigator in the forward cockpit as he hoisted each stack of pamphlets on to the edge of the cockpit, cut the strings and then pushed them over the side. They flurried out in a white storm behind the slow-moving machine, caught in the slipstream, spreading and spinning and drifting like flocks of white doves.

A push of the breeze spread some of the papers towards the ridge, and Mark caught one out of the air and glanced at the crude printing on cheap thick paper.

MARTIAL LAW NOTICE Women and children and all persons well disposed towards the Government are advised to leave before 11 a. m. today that part of Fordsburg and vicinity where the authority of the Government is defied and where military operations are about to take place. No immunity from punishment or arrest is guaranteed to any person coming in under this notice who has broken the law.

SEAN COURTNEY CONTROL OFFICER It was clumsy syntax. Mark wondered who had composed it as he crumpled the notice and dropped it into the grass at his feet. What if the pickets won't let them come out, sir? he asked quietly.

I don't pay you to be my conscience, young man, Sean growled warningly, and they stood on in silence for a minute. Then Sean sighed and took the cigars from his breast pocket and offered one to Mark as a conciliatory gesture. What can I do, Mark? Must I send my lads into those streets without artillery support? He bit the tip off his cigar and spat it into the grass. Whose lives are more important, the strikers and their families or men who trust me and honour me with their loyalty? It's much easier to fight people you hate, Mark said softly, and Sean glanced at him sharply. Where did you read that? he demanded, and Mark shook his head.

At least there are no blacks caught up in this, he said.

Mark had personally been in charge of sending disguised black policemen through the lines to warn all tribesmen to evacuate the area. Poor blighters, Sean agreed. I wonder what they make of this white men's madness. Mark strode to the edge of the shallow cliff, ignoring the danger of sniping fire from the buildings below, and glassed the town carefully. Suddenly he exclaimed with relief, They're coming outV Far below where they stood, the first tiny figures straggled out of the entrance of the Vrededorp subway. The women carried infants and dragged reluctant children at arm's length. Some were burdened with their personal treasures, others brought their pets, canaries in wire cages, dogs on leashes. The first small groups and individuals became a trickle and then a sorry, toiling stream, pushing laden bicycles and hand carts, or simply carrying all the possessions they could lift. Send a platoon down to guide them, and give them a hand, Sean ordered quietly, and brooded heavily with his beard on his chest. I'm glad to see the women out of it, he growled. But I'm sad for what it means.

The men are going to fight, Mark said. Yes, Sean nodded. They're going to fight. I had hoped we had had enough slaughter, but they are going to make a bitter ending to a tragic tale. He crushed the stub of his cigar under his heel. All right, Mark. Go down and tell Molyneux that it's on. Eleven hundred hours we'll open the barrage. Good luck, son Mark saluted, and Sean Courtney left him and limped back from the crest to join General Smuts and his staff who had come out to watch the final sweep of the battle.

The first shrapnel bursts clanged across the sky, and burst in bright gleaming cotton pods of smoke above the roofs of Fordsburg, cracking the sky and the waiting silence, with startling violence.

The y were fired by the horse artillery batteries on the ridge, and immediately the other batteries on Sauer Street joined in.

For twenty minutes, the din was appalling and the brilliant air was sullied by the rising mist of smoke and dust.

Mark stood in the hastily dug trench and peered over the parapet. There was something so dreadfully familiar in this moment. He had lived it fifty times before, but now he felt his nerves screwing down too tightly and the heavy indigestible lump of fear in his guts nauseated him.

He wanted to duck down below the parapet, cover his head to protect his ears from the great metallic harrimerblows of sound, and stay there.

It required an immense effort of will to stand where he was and to keep his expression calm and disinterested but the men of A Company lined the trench on each side of him and, to distract himself, he began to plan his route through the outskirts of the town.

There would be road-blocks at every corner, and every cottage would be held. The artillery barrage would not have affected the strikers under cover, for it was limited to shrapnel bursts. Sean Courtney was concerned with the safety of over a hundred police and military personnel who had been captured by the strikers and were being held somewhere in the town. No high explosive, was the order, and Mark knew his company would be cut to ribbons on the open streets.

He was going to take them through the kitchen yards and down the sanitary lanes to their final objective, the Trades Hall on Commercial and Central Streets.

He checked his watch again, and there were four minutes to go.

All right, Sergeant, he said quietly.

The order passed quickly down the trench and the men came to their feet, crouching below the parapet. Like old times, sir, the Sergeant said affably, and Mark glanced at him. He seemed actually to be enjoying this moment, and Mark found himself hating the man for it. Let's go, he said abruptly, as the minute hand of his watch touched the black hair-line division, and the Sergeant blew his whistle shrilly.

Mark put one hand on the parapet and leapt nimbly over the top.

He started to run forward, and from the cottages ahead of him came the harsh crackling of musketry. Suddenly, he realized he was no longer afraid.

He was little more than a youth, with smooth. pink cheeks and the lightest golden fluff of a mustache on his upper lip.

They shoved him down the last few steps into the cellars, and he lost his footing and fell. Another yellow belly, called the escort, a strapping bearded fellow with a rifle slung on his shoulder and the red band around his upper arm. Caught him trying to sneak out of the subway. The boy scrambled to his feet. He had skinned his knees in his fall and he was close to tears as Harry Fisher towered above him. He carried a long black sjambok in his right hand, a vicious tapered whip of cured hippo-hide.

A traitor, bellowed Fisher. In the last days of continuous planning and fighting, the strain had started to show.

His eyes had taken on a wild fanatical glare, his movements were jerky and exaggerated, and his voice ragged and overloud. No, comrade, I swear I'm no traitor, the youth bleated pitifully. A coward, then, shouted Fisher, and caught the front of the boy's shirt in one big hairy fist and ripped it open to the waist.

I didn't have a rifle, protested the boy. There'll be rifles for all later, when the first comrades die. The lash of the sjambok split the smooth white skin of the boy's back like a razor stroke, and the blood rose in a vivid bright line as he fell to his knees.

Harry Fisher stood over him and swung the siambok until there were no more screams or groans, and the only sound in the cellar was the hiss and splat of the lash, then he stood back panting and sweating. Take him out so the comrades can see what happens to traitors and cowards. A striker took each of the boy's arms and as they dragged him up the steps, the flesh of his back hung in ribbons and tatters and the blood ran down over his belt and soaked into the gabardine of his breeches.

Mark dropped cat-footed over the back wall into the tiny paved yard. Cases of empty beer bottles were piled high along the side walls, and the smell of stale liquor was fruity and heady in the noon heat.

He had reached the bottle store in Mint Road less than an hour after the starting time of the drive, and the route he had led his men, through the backyards and over the roof-tops, had been more successful than he had dared hope.

They had avoided the road-blocks and twice had outflanked groups of strikers dug in to strong positions, surprising them completely, and scattering them with a single volley.

Mark ran across the yard and kicked in the back door of the bottle store, and in the same movement flattened himself against the wall, clear of the gaping doorway and any striker fire from the interior of the building.

The Sergeant and a dozen men followed him over the wall, and spread out to cover the doorway and barred windows. He nodded at Mark, and Mark dived through the doorway sideways with the rifle on his hip, and his eyes screwed up against the gloom after the bright sunlight outside.

The store was deserted, the shutters bolted down over the front windows and the shelves of bottles untouched by looters, in testimony of the strikers discipline. The tiers of bottles stood neatly in their gaily coloured labels, glinting in the dusky light.

The last time Mark had been in here was to buy a dozen bottles of porter for Helena MacDonald, but he pushed the thought aside and went to the shuttered windows just as the Sergeant and his squad burst in through the back door.

The shutters had been pierced by random shrapnel and rifle fire, and Mark used one aperture as a peephole.

Fifty yards across the road was the Trades Hall, and the complex of trenches and defences that the strikers had thrown up around the square.

Even the public lavatories had been turned into a blockhouse, but all the defenders attention was directed into the streets across the square.

They lined the parapets and were firing frantically at the kilted running figures of the Transvaal Scottish racing towards the Square from the station side.

The strikers were dressed in a strange assortment of garb, from greasy working overalls and quasi-military safari jackets, caps and slouch hats and beavers, to Sunday suits, waistcoats and ties. But all of them wore bandoliers of ammunition draped from their shoulders, and their backs were exposed to Mark's attack.

A volley through the bottle-store windows would have done terrible execution among them, and already the Sergeant was directing his men to each of the windows in a fierce and gleeful croak of anticipation. I could order up a machine gun, Mark thought, and something in him shied away from the mental image of a Vickers firing into that exposed and unsuspecting group. if only I hated them. As he watched, first one and then others of the strikers at the barricades crouched down hopelessly from the withering fire the Highlanders were now pouring on to them. Fix bayonets, Mark called to the men, and the steel scraped from the metal scabbards in the sombre gloom of the store. A stray bullet splintered the shutter above Mark's head and burst a bottle of Scotch whisky on the shelves behind him. The smell of the spirit was sharp and unpleasant, and Mark called again, on my order, break open the windows and doors, and we'll show them steel. The shutters crashed back, the main doors flew open, and Mark led his company in a howling racing line across the road. Before they reached the first line of sand-bags, the strikers began throwing down their rifles and jumping up with their hands lifted above their heads.

Across the square, the Highlanders poured into the Street cheering and shouting and raced for the barricades; Mark felt a surge of relief that he had taken the risk of going with the bayonet, rather than ordering his men to shoot down the exposed strikers.

As his men ran into the square, knocking the weapons out of their hands and pushing the strikers into sullen groups, Mark was racing up the front steps of the Trades Hall.

He paused on the top step, shouted, Stand back inside and fired three rifle bullets into the brass lock.

Harry Fisher leaned against the wall and peered out of the sand-bagged window into the milling yelling chaos of the square.

The madness of unbearable despair shook the huge frame, and he breathed like a wounded bull when it stands to take the matador's final thrust. He watched his men throw down their arms, saw them herded like cattle, with their hands held high, stumbling on weary careless feet, their faces grey with fatigue and sullen in defeat.

He groaned, a low hollow sound of emotional agony stretched to its furthest limits, and the thick shoulders sagged. He seemed to be shrinking in size. The great unkempt head lowered, the blazing vision dimmed in his eyes as he watched the young lieutenant in barathea battledress race up the stairs below him, and heard the rifle shots shatter the lock.

He shambled across to his desk and slumped down into the chair facing the closed door, and his hand was shaking as he drew the service revolver from his belt and cocked the hammer. He laid the weapon carefully on the desk in front of him.

He cocked his head and listened to the shouted orders and the trampling confusion in the square below for a minute, then he heard the rush of booted feet up the wooden staircase beyond the door.

He lifted the revolver from the desk, and leaned both elbows on the desk-top to steady himself.

Mark burst in through the main doors of the hall and stopped in surprise and confusion. The floor was covered with prostrate bodies, it seemed there must be hundreds of them.

As he stared, a Captain of Highlanders and half a dozen men burst in behind him. They stopped also. Good God, panted the Captain, and then suddenly Mark realized that the bodies were all uniformed, police khaki, hunting green kilts, barathea. They have slaughtered their prisoners Mark thought with nightmare horror, staring at the mass of bodies, then suddenly a head lifted cautiously and another. Oh thank God, breathed the Captain beside Mark, as the prisoners began scrambling to their feet, their faces shining with relief, a single voice immediately becoming a hubbub of nervous gaiety.

They surged for the door, some to embrace their liberators and others merely to run out into the sunlight.

Mark avoided a big police Sergeant with rumpled uniform and three days growth of beard, ducked under his arms and ran for the staircase.

He took the stairs three at a time, and paused on the landing. The doors to five offices on this floor were standing open, the sixth was closed. He moved swiftly down the corridor, checking each of the rooms.

Cupboards and desks had been ransacked, and the floors were ankle-deep in paper, chairs overturned, drawers pulled from desks and dumped into the litter of paper.

The sixth door at the end of the passage was the only one closed. It was the office of the local Union chairman, Mark knew, Fergus MacDonald's office. The man for whom he was searching, driven by some lingering loyalty, by the dictates of shared comradeship and friendship to find him now, and to give him what help and protection he could.

Mark slipped the safety-catch on the rifle as he approached the door. He reached for the handle, and once again that sense of danger warned him. For a moment he stood with his fingers almost touching the brass lock, then he stepped quietly out of the line of the doorway, reaching sideways he rattled the handle softly and then turned it.

The door was unlocked, and the latch snicked and he pushed the door open. Nothing happened, and Mark grunted with relief and stepped through the doorway.

Harry Fisher sat at the desk facing him, a huge menacing figure, crouching over the desk with the big tousled head lowered on massive shapeless shoulders and the revolver held in both hands, pointing directly at Mark's chest.

Mark knew that to move was death. He could see the rounded leaden noses of the bullets in the loaded chambers of the cylinder and the hammer fully cocked, and he stood frozen.

It is not defeat, Harry Fisher spoke with a strangled hoarse voice that Mark did not recognize. We are the dragon's teeth. Wherever you bury one of us, a thousand warriors will spring up. It's over, Harry, Mark spoke carefully, trying to distract him, for he knew he could not lift the rifle and fire in the time Harry Fisher could pull the trigger.

No. Fisher shook the coarse tangled locks of his head. It is only just beginning. Mark did not realize what he was doing, until Harry Fisher had reversed the pistol and thrust the muzzle into his own mouth. The explosion was muffled, and Harry Fisher's head was stretched out of shape, as though it were a rubber ball struck by a bat.

The back of his skull erupted, and a loose mass of bright scarlet and custard yellow splattered the wall behind him.

The impact of the bullet hurled his body backwards and his chair toppled and crashed over.

The stench of burned powder hung in the room on filmy wisps of gunsmoke, and Harry Fisher's booted heels kicked and tapped a jerky, uneven little dance on the bare wooden floor. Where is Fergus MacDonald? Mark asked the question a hundred times of the files of captured strikers. They stared back at him, angry, bitter, some of them still truculent and defiant, but not one of them even deigned to answer.

Mark took three of his men, under the pretext of a mopping-up patrol, down to Lover's Walk as far as the cottage.

The front door was unlocked, and the beds in the front room were unmade. Mark felt a strange repugnance of mind, balanced by a plucking of lust at his loins, when he saw Helena's crpe de Chine dressing-gown thrown across the chair, and a crumpled pair of cotton panties dropped carelessly on the floor beside it.

He turned away quickly, and went through the rest of the house. The dirty dishes in the kitchen had already grown a green fuzz of mould, and the air was stale and disused. Nobody had been in these rooms for days.

A scrap of paper lay on the floor beside the coal-black stove. Mark picked it up and saw the familiar hammer and sickle device on the pamphlet. He screwed it up and hurled it against the wall. His men were waiting for him on the stoep.

The strikers had dynamited the railway lines at Braamfontein station, and at the Church Street level-crossing, so the regiment could not entrain at Fordsburg. Most of the roads were blocked with rubble and the detritus of the final struggle, but most dangerous was the possibility of stubborn strikers still hiding out in the buildings that lined the road through the dip to Johannesburg.

Sean Courtney decided to move his men out up the slope to the open ground of the Crown Deep property.

They marched out of Fordsburg in the darkness, before good shooting light. It had been a long uncomfortable night, and nobody had slept much. Weariness made their packs leaden to carry and shackled their legs. There was less than a mile to go, however.

The motor transport was drawn up in the open ground near the headgear of Crown Mine's main haulage, a towering structure, shaped like the Eiffel Tower, steel girders riveted and herring-boned for strength, rising a hundred feet to the huge wheels of the winching equipment. When the shift was in, these wheels spun back and forth, back and forth, lowering the cages filled with men and equipment, hundreds of feet into the living earth, and raising the millions of tons of gold-bearing rock out of the depths.

Now the great wheels stood motionless, they had been dead for three months now, and the buildings clustered about the tower were gloomy and deserted.

The transport was an assortment of trucks and commercial vans, commandeered under martial law, gravel lorries from the quarries, mining vehicles, even a bakery van, but it was clear that there was not enough to take out six hundred men.

As Mark came up, marching on the flank of A Company, there were half a dozen officers in discussion at the head of the convoy. Mark recognized the familiar bearded figure of General Courtney standing head and shoulders above the others, and his voice was raised in an angry growl. I want all these men moved before noon. They've done fine work, they deserve hot food and a place, At that moment he saw Mark, and frowned heavily, waving him over and beginning to speak before he had arrived. Where the hell have you been? With the company I sent you to take a message, and expected you back.

You know damned well I didn't mean you to get into the fighting. You are on my staff, sir! Mark was tired and irritable, still emotionally disturbed by all that he had seen and done that day, and he was in no mood for one of the General's tantrums.

His rebellious expression was unmistakable. Sir, he began, and Sean shouted at him, And don't take that tone to me, young man! An uncaring, completely irresponsible dark rage descended on Mark. He didn't give a damn for the consequences and he leaned forward, pale with fury, and opened his mouth.

The regiment was bunched up now, halted in the open roadway, neat symmetrical blocks of khaki, six hundred men in ranks three deep.

The shouted orders of the N. C. O. s halted each section, one after the other, and stood them at the easy position.

From the top of the steel headgear, they made an unforgettable sight in the rich yellow light of early morning. Ready, luv, whispered Fergus MacDonald, and Helena nodded silently. Reality had long faded and been replaced by this floating dreamlike state. Her shoulders were raw where the carrying straps of the heavy ammunition boxes had bitten into the flesh, but there was no pain, just a blunting numbness of body. Her hands seemed bloated, and clumsy, the nails broken off raggedly and rinded with black half -moons of dirt, and the harsh canvas of the ammunition belts between her fingers felt smooth as silk, the brass cartridge cases cool, so that she felt like pressing them to her dried cracked lips.

Why was Fergus staring at her that way, she wondered with a prickle of irritation that did not last, once again the dreamy floating sensation. You can go down now, Fergus said quietly. You don't have to stay. He looked like a very old man, his face shrivelled and falling in upon itself. The stubble of beard on his lined and haggard cheeks was silvery as diamond chips, but the skin was stained by smoke and dirt and sweat.

Only the eyes below the peak of the cloth cap still burned with the dark fanatic flames.

Helena shook her head. She wanted him to stop talking, the sound intruded, and she turned her head away.

The men below stood shoulder to shoulder in their orderly ranks. The low sun threw long narrow shadows from their feet across the red dust of the roadway.

A second longer Fergus stared at her. She was a pale, wasted stranger, the bones pushing through the smooth drawn flesh of her face, the scarf wound like a gypsy around her head, covering the black cropped hair. All right then, he murmured, and tapped the breech of the Vickers, once, twice, training it slightly left.

There was a group of officers near the head of the column. One of them was a big powerful man with a dark beard. The sunlight sparkled on his shoulder-tabs, Fergus lowered his head and looked through the rear sight of the Vickers.

There was a younger slimmer officer with the other, and Fergus blinked twice rapidly, as something stirred deep in his memory.

He hooked his fingers into the automatic safety-bar and lifted it, priming the gun, and he brought his thumbs on to the firing button.

He blinked again. The face of the young officer moved something in him, he felt a softening and blurring of his determination and he rejected it violently and thrust down on the button with both thumbs.

The weapon juddered on its tripod, and the long belt was sucked greedily into the breech, Helena's small pale hands guiding it carefully, and the empty brass cases spewed out from under the gun, tinkling and ringing and bouncing off the steel girders of the headgear.

The sound was a deafening tearing roar that seemed to fill Helena's head and beat against her eyes, like the frantic wings of a trapped bird.

Even the most skilled marksman must guard against the tendency to ride up on a downhill shot. The angle from the top of the headgear was acute and the soft yellowish early light further confused Fergus aim. His first burst carried high, shoulder-high instead of belly-high, which is the killing line for machine-gun fire.

The first bullets struck before Mark heard the gun. One of them hit Sean Courtney high up in the big bulky body.

It flung him forward, chest to chest with Mark, and both of them went down, sprawling in the roadway.

Fergus tapped the breech block, dropping his aim a fraction on to the belly line, and traversed in a long unhurried sweep along the ranks of standing soldiers, cutting them with the scythe of the Vickers in the eternal seconds that they still stood in stunned paralysis.

The stream of tracer hosed them, and washed them into crazy heaps, piled them on each other, dead and wounded together, their screams high and thin in the rushing hurricane of Vickers fire.

Sean rolled half off Mark, and his face was contorted, angry and outraged, as he tried to struggle on to his knees, but his one arm was dangling. His blood splattered them both and he flopped helplessly.

Mark wriggled out from under him, and looked up at the headgear. He saw the tracer flickering like fire-flies and darting into the crowded roadway on the triumphant fluttering roar of the gun. Even in his own confusion and despair, he saw that the gunner had picked a good stance.

He would be hard to come at.

Then he looked down the road and a cold fist clenched on his guts as he saw the bloody execution. The ranks had broken, men running and stumbling for what little cover the vehicles and ditches offered, but the road was still filled.

They lay in wind-rows and piles, they crawled and cried and twisted in the dust which their blood was turning to chocolate-red mud, and the gun swivelled and came back, flickering tracer into the carnage, chopping up the road surface into a spray of dust and leaping gravel, running viciously over the piles of wounded, coming back to where they lay.

Mark twisted up into a crouch, and slipped an arm under the General's chest. The weight of the man was enormous, but Mark found strength that he had not known before, goaded on by the fluttering rushing roar of the Vickers.

Sean Courtney heaved himself up like a bull caught in quicksand, and Mark got him on to his feet.

Bearing half his weight, Mark steadied him and kept him from falling. He weaved drunkenly, hunched over, bleeding badly, breathing noisily through his mouth, and Mark forced him into an ungainly crouching run.

The gun swept their heels, kicking and smashing into the back of a young lieutenant who was creeping towards the ditch, dragging both useless legs behind him. He dropped face down and lay still.

They reached the drainage ditch and tumbled into it. It was less than eighteen inches deep, not enough to cover the General fully, even when he lay flat on his belly, and the Vickers was still hunting.

After that first long slicing traverse, it was firing short accurate bursts at selected targets, more deadly than random-fire, keeping the gun from overheating and preventing a stoppage, conserving ammunition. Mark, weighing it all, realized that there was an old soldier up there in the tower. Where are you hit? he demanded, but Sean struck his hands away irritably, twisting his head to peer up into the tall steel headgear. Can you get him, Mark? he grunted, and pressed his fingers into his shoulder, where the blood welled up thick and dark as molasses. Not from here, Mark answered quickly. It had taken him seconds to assess the shoot. He's holed up tight. Merciful Jesus! My poor boys. He's built himself a nest. Mark studied the steelwork.

The platform below the winch wheels was covered with heavy timber, fitted loosely into the framework of steel.

The gunner had pulled these up and built himself four walls of wood, perhaps two feet thick. Mark could see the light glimmering through the open gaps in the floor boards, and make out the shape and size of the fortified nest. He can hold us here all day! Sean looked down at the piles of khaki bodies in the roadway, and they both knew many of the wounded would bleed to death in that time.

Nobody dared go out to them.

The gun came back, ripping a flail across the earth near their heads and they ducked their faces to the ground, pressing their bodies into the shallow ditch.

The ground sloped down very gradually towards the steel tower, only when you lay at ground level like this was the gradient apparent. Somebody will have to get under him, or behind him, Mark spoke quickly, thinking it out.

It's open ground all the way, Sean grunted.

On the opposite side of the road fifty yards away, a narrow-gauge railway ran down the short open grassy slope to the foot of the tower. It was used to truck the waste material from the shaft-head to the rock dump, half a mile away.

Almost opposite where they lay, half a dozen of the steel cocoa pans had been abandoned at the beginning of the strike. They were small four-wheeled tip-trucks, coupled to each other in a line, each of them heaped high with big chunks of blue rock.

Mark realized he was still wearing his pack and he shrugged out of the straps as he planned his stalk, judging angles and range as he groped for the field-dressing and handed it to Sean. Use this. Sean tore open the package and wadded the cotton dressing into the front of his tunic. His fingers were sticky with his own blood.

Mark's P-14 rifle lay in the road where he had dropped it, but there were five clips of ammunition in the pouches on his webbing belt. Try and give me some covering fire when I start to go up, he said, and watched the tower for the next burst of tracer. You'll never get there, said Sean. We'll bring up a thirteen-pounder and shoot the bastard out of there. That will take until noon, it will be too late for them. He glanced at the wounded in the road, and at that moment a stream of brilliant white tracer flew from the tower, aimed at the far end of the column, and Mark was up and running hard, stooping to gather the rifle at full run, crossing the road in a dozen flying strides, stumbling in the rough ground beyond, catching his balance and sprinting on.

That stumble had cost him a tenth of a second, the margin of life and death perhaps, while the gunner high up in the tower spotted him, swivelled the gun and lined up.

The steel cocoa pans were just ahead, fifteen paces, but he wasn't going to make it, the warning flared in his brain, and he dropped into the short grass and rolled sideways, just as the storm of Vickers fire filled the air about him with the lash of a hundred bullwhips.

Mark kept rolling, like a log, and the gun gouged a furrow out of the dry stony earth inches from his shoulder.

He came up against the wheels of the cocoa pan with a force that bruised his hip and made him cry out involuntarily. Vickers bullets hammered and clanged against the steel body of the truck and howled off in ricochet, but Mark was under cover now.

Mark, are you all right? the General's bull-bellow carried across the road. Give me covering fire. You heard him, lads, shouted the General, and one or two rifles began firing spasmodically from the ditches, and from behind the stranded motor lorries.

Mark dragged himself on to his knees, and quickly checked the rifle, brushing the sights with his thumb to make certain they were cleaned of dirt and undamaged in the fall.

Then he worked his way to the coupling of the cocoa pan and threw the release toggle. The brake wheel was stiff and required both his hands to unwind it. The brake chocks squeaked softly as they disengaged, but the slope of the ground was so gentle that the truck did not move until Mark put his shoulder to it.

He strained with all his weight before the steel wheels made a single reluctant revolution, then gravity took her and the cocoa pan began to roll. Give the bastard hell! Sean Courtney yelled, as he realized suddenly what Mark was going to do, and Mark grinned without mirth at that characteristic exhortation, and he trotted along, doubled up behind the heavily-laden steel truck.

A terrible tearing, hammering storm of Vickers broke over the slowly rolling truck, and instinctively Mark ducked lower and steadied himself against the metal side.

He realized that as he came closer to the tower, so the gunner's angle would change until he was shooting almost directly down on top of Mark, then the side of the truck would give him no cover, but he was committed. Nothing would stop the slowly accelerating rush of the cocoa pan down the slope, it had the weight of ten tons of rock behind it and its speed was gathering. Soon he would not be able to keep up with it, already he was running, and the Vickers roared again, the bullets screeching and wailing furiously off the steel body.

Twisting as he ran, he slung the rifle on one shoulder and reached up to hook both hands over the side of the truck. He was pulled instantly off his feet, and they dangled without foothold, in danger of being caught up in the spinrung steel wheels. He drew his knees up under his chin, hanging all his weight on his arms and taking the intolerable strain in his belly muscles as the truck flew down into the stretching octopus shadow of the headgear.

Still hanging on his arms, Mark flung his head back and looked up. The tower was fore shortened by perspective, and it crouched over him like some menacing monster, stark against the mellow morning sky, crude black steel and timber baulks pyramiding into the heavens. At its zenith, Mark could see the pale mirrortike face of the gunner, and the thick water-jacketed barrel of the Vickers trained down at its maximum depression.

The gun flamed, and bullets rang the steel near his head like a great bell. They churned into the blue rock, disintegrating into chips of buzzing metal and shattering the rock into vicious splinters and pellets that cut at his hands so that he screwed his eyes shut and clung helplessly.

Such was the speed of the truck now that he was under fire for only seconds, and the gunner's aim could not follow it, as it raced down on to the concrete loading bank, and slammed into the buffers. The force of the impact was brutal and Mark was hurled from his perch, the rifle-strap snapped and the weapon sailed away, and Mark turned in the air and hit the sloping concrete ramp on his side with a crash that jarred his teeth in his head. The rough concrete ripped away the thick barathea cloth from his hip and leg and shoulder, and scared the flesh beneath with gravel burn.

He came up at last against a stack of yellow-painted oildrums, and his first concern was to roll on to his back and stare upwards.

He was under the headgear now, protected from the gunner by the legs and intricate steel girders of the tower itself, and he pulled himself to his feet, dreading the give and crippling drag of broken bone. But though his body felt crushed and bruised, he could still move, and he hobbled to where his rifle lay.

The strap was broken, and the butt was cracked and splintered, and as he lifted it, it snapped into two pieces.

He could not fire from the shoulder.

The foresight had been knocked off, and the broken metal had a sugary grey crystalline look. He could not aim the weapon. He would have to get close, very close.

There was a deep bright scar in the steel of the breech.

He muttered a prayer, Please God! as he tried to work the bolt open. It was jammed solid and he struggled with it fruitlessly for precious seconds. All right, he thought grimly. No butt to hold to the shoulder, no foresight with which to aim, and only the one cartridge in the breech, it's going to be interesting. He looked around him quickly.

Beneath the steel tower, the two square openings to the main shaft were set into the concrete collar, protected by screens of steel mesh. The one cage stood at the surface station, doors open, ready for the next shift. The other was at the bottom station, a thousand feet below ground level.

They had stood that way for months now. On the far side was the small service elevator which would take maintenance teams the hundred feet to the summit of the tower in half a minute. However, there was no power on the shaft head, and the elevator was useless.

The only other way up was the emergency ladder. This was an open steel stairway that spiralled up around the central shaft, protected only by a low handrail of inch piping.

High above Mark's head the Vickers fired again, and Mark heard a scream of agony out there on the roadway. it hastened him, and he limped to the stairway.

The steel-mesh gate was open, the padlock shattered, and Mark knew by what route the sniper had reached his roost.

He stepped on to the stairway and began to climb, following the coils up the casing round and round, and up and up.

Always at his right hand, the open black mouth of the shaft gaped, an obscene dark orifice in the earth's surface, dropping straight and sheer into the very bowels, a thousand dark terrifying feet.

Mark tried to ignore it, dragging his bruised and aching body up by the handrail, carrying the broken weapon in his other hand, and strained his neck backwards for the first glimpse of the gunner above.

The Vickers fired again, and Mark glanced sideways. He was high enough now to see into the road, one of the trucks was burning, a tall dragon's breath of smoke and sullen flame pouring into the sky, and the drab khaki bodies were still strewn in the open, death's discarded toys.

Even as he watched, the Vickers fire thrashed over them, mangling already dead flesh, and Mark's anger became cold and bright as a dagger's blade. Keep firing, luv, Fergus croaked in that husky stranger's voice. Short bursts. Count to twenty slowly, and then a touch on the button. I want him to think that I am still up here. He pulled the Webley from his belt, and crawled on his belly towards the head of the steep staircase. Don't leave me, Fergus. It'll be all right, he tried to grin, but his face was grey and crumpled. Just you keep firing. I'm going down to meet him halfway. He'll not expect that. I don't want to die alone, she breathed. Stay with me. I'll be back, luv. Don't fuss yourself, and he slid on his belly into the opening of the staircase.

She felt like a child again, in one of those terrible dark nightmares, trapped and enmeshed in her own fate, and she wanted to cry out. The sound reached her lips but died there as a low blubbering moan.

A rifle bullet chunked into the barricade of timber beside her. They were shooting from down below. She could not pick them out, for they were hidden in the ditches and the irregularities of the ground, screened by long purple shadows, and her eyes were blurred with tears and with exhaustion; yet she found the last few grains of her strength and crawled to the gun.

She squatted behind it and her hands were almost too small to reach the firing button. She pressed the barrel downwards, and forced her blearing vision to focus, marvelling at the little toy figures in the field of the sight. The gun juddered in her hands like a living creature. A short burst, she whispered to herself, repeating Fergus instructions, and lifted her thumbs from the firing button. One, two, three, she began to count to the next burst.

Mark paused at the next burst of firing and stood for a moment staring up. He was over halfway to the top, and now he could make out the floor of the service platform below the winch wheels, the platform on which the Vickers was sited.

There were narrow cracks in the woodwork through which bright lines of open sky showed clearly, and as he watched he saw one of the lines of light interrupted by a dark movement beyond. It was that flicker of movement that caught his attention, and he realized that he was looking at the body of the person who served the gun. He must be squatting directly over one of the narrow joints in the floor of the platform, and his movements blocked out part of that bright line of light.

A bullet through the gap would cripple and pin him, but he glanced at the broken weapon in his hand and knew that he would have to get closer, much closer.

He began to run upwards and though he tried to keep his weight lightly on the balls of his feet, the hobnails in his boots rang on the steel stairs.

Fergus MacDonald heard them and checked his own run, shrinking into the protective lee of one of the steel girders. One man only, he muttered. But coming up fast He dropped on one knee and peered down through the gaps between the stairs, hoping for sight of the man who he was hunting. The steps overlapped each other like fanned playing-cards, and the lateral supports of the tower formed an impenetrable steel forest below him.

The only way he could hope for a glimpse was to hang out over the handrail and look down the central shaft-well.

The idea of that thousand-foot black hole repelled him, and he had formed an estimate of his opponent high enough to guess that the reward for putting his head over the side would be a bullet between the eyes.

He edged into a better position where he could cover the next spiral of staircase below him. I'll let him come up to me, he decided, and braced his arm against the girder at the level of his chin, and laid the Webley over the crook of his elbow to give the heavy pistol support. He knew that over ten paces it was wildly inaccurate, but the dead rest would give him at least one fair shot.

He cocked his head slightly to listen to the clatter of booted feet on steel, and he judged that the man was very close. One more spiral of the stair would bring him into shot. Carefully, he thumbed back the hammer of the Webley and looked down over the slotted rear-sight.

Above them, the Vickers fired again, and Mark paused to catch his breath and check the situation of the gunner, and to his dismay he realized that he had climbed too high in the tower.

He had changed the angle of sight, and could no longer see through the cracks in the timber platform. He had to retreat carefully down the staircase before once again the bright lines of light opened in the dark underbelly of timber.

A vague blur of movement reassured him that the gunner had not changed his position. He was still squatting over the joint, but the shot was almost impossible.

He was shooting directly upwards, awkward even in the best conditions, but now he had no butt to steady the rifle and no foresight, he was shooting into a single dark mass of timber and had to guess the position of the crack because the gunner's body obscured the light from the far side. The crack itself was only two inches wide, and if he missed by a smallest fraction the bullet would bury itself harmlessly in the thick timber.

He tried not to think that there would be only one shot, the jammed breach made that certain.

He put his hip to the guardrail and leaned out over the open shaft, squinted upwards trying to set the target in his mind as he lifted the broken rifle in an easy natural movement. He knew that he had to make the shot entirely by instinct. He had no chance if he hesitated or tried to hold his aim steadily on the target.

He swept up the shattered weapon and at the moment the long barrel aligned, he pressed the trigger.

In the flash and thunder of the shot a tiny white splinter of wood jumped from the edge of the crack. The bullet had touched wood and Mark felt an instant of utter dismay.

Then the body that had obscured the light was jerked abruptly aside, and the crack was a single uninterrupted line again, and on the platform somebody screamed.

Helena MacDonald had just reached the count of twenty again, and was aiming at a gathering of men she could see grouping beyond one of the lorries. She squatted low over the gun and was on the point of jamming her thumbs down on the firing button, when the bullet came up through the floor timbers.

It had touched one of the hard mahogany baulks, just enough to split the casing of the bullet and alter its shape, mushrooming it slightly, so that it did not enter her body through a neat round puncture.

It tore a ragged entry into the soft flesh at the juncture of her slightly spread thighs and plunged upwards through her lower abdomen, striking and shattering the thick bony girdle of her pelvis, glancing off the bone with still enough impetus to bruise and weaken the lower branch of the descending aorta, the great artery that runs down from the heart, before going on to embed itself in the muscles high in the left side of her back.

it lifted Helena into the air, and hurled her across the platform on to her face. Oh God, oh God, help me! Fergus! Fergus! I don't want to die alone, she screamed, and the sound carried clearly to the two men in the steel tower below her.

Mark recognized the voice instantly. It did not need the name to confirm it.

His mind shied at the enormity of what he had done.

The broken rifle almost slipped from his hands, but he saved it and caught at the handrail for support.

Helena cried again, a sound without words, it was exactly that strange wild cry that she had uttered at the zenith of one of their wildest flights of passion together, and for an instant Mark remembered her face shining and triumphant, the dark eyes burning and the open red mouth and the soft pink petal of her tongue aflutter.

Mark started to run, hurling himself upwards.

The screams caught Fergus like a flight of arrows in the heart. A piercing, physical agony, he dropped the pistol to his side and stood irresolute staring upwards, not knowing what had happened, except that Helena was dying. He had heard the death scream too often to have any doubt about that. What he was listening to was mortal agony, and he could not force his body to begin the climb upwards, to the horror he knew waited him there.

While he hesitated, Mark came around the angle of the staircase and Fergus was not ready for him. The pistol was at his side, and he fell back and tried to bring it up, to fire at point-blank range into the chest of the uniformed figure.

Mark was as off balance as he was. He had not expected to run into another enemy, but he saw the pistol and swung the broken rifle at Fergus'head.

Fergus ducked, and the Webley fired wide, the bullet flew inches past Mark's temple and the report slammed against his eardrum and made him flinch his head. The rifle struck the girder behind Fergus and was jerked from Mark's grip, then they came together chest to chest. Mark seized the wrist of his pistol hand and held with all his strength.

Neither of them had recognized the other. Fergus had aged into a grey caricature of himself and his eyes were shaded by the cloth cap. Mark was in unfamiliar uniform, dusty and bloodied, and he had changed also, youth had become man.

Mark was taller, but they were matched in weight and Fergus was endowed with the terrible fighting rage of the berserker which gave him superhuman strength.

He drove Mark back against the guardrail, and bowed his back out over the open shaft, but Mark still had his pistol wrist, and the weapon was pointed up over his head.

Fergus was sobbing wildly, driving with all the wiry uncanny strength of a body tempered by hard physical work, and fired now by the strength of anger and sorrow and despair.

Mark felt his feet slip, the hob-nails of his boots skidding on the steel steps and he went over further, feeling the mesmeric suck of a thousand feet of open space plucking at his back.

Above them, Helena screamed again, and the sound drove like a needle into the base of Fergus brain, he shuddered, and his body convulsed in one great rigid spasm that Mark could not hope to hold. He Vent backwards over the guardrail, but still he had his grip on Fergus gun hand and his other arm he had wound about his shoulders.

They slid into the void, locked together in a horrible parody of a lovers embrace, but as they started to fall, Mark hooked both legs over the rail, like a trapeze artiste, and jerked to a halt, hanging upside down into the shaft.

Fergus was somersaulted over him by the force of his own thrust; as he turned in the air, the cloth cap flew from his head and he was torn from the arm that Mark had around his shoulder.

He came up with a jerk that almost tore Mark's shoulder from its socket, for some animal instinct had kept Mark's grip locked on the pistol hand, and he dangled from that precarious hold.

The two of them pendulurned out over the black emptiness of the shaft, Mark's legs hooked over the rail, hanging at full stretch, with Fergus'body the next link in the chain.

Fergus head was thrown back, staring up at Mark, and with the cap gone, his lank sandy hair fell back from his face and Mark felt fresh shock loosen his grip.

Fergus! he croaked, but the madman's eyes that stared back at him were devoid of recognition. Try and get a grip, Mark pleaded, swinging Fergus towards the staircase. Grab the rail. He knew he could not hold many seconds longer, the fall had wrenched and weakened his arm, and the blood was rushing to his head in this inverted position, he could feel his face swelling and sufflusing and the pounding ache in his temples, while the black and hungry mouth of the shaft sickened him; with his other hand he groped and got a second hold on Fergus' wrist.

Fergus twisted in his grip, but instead of going for the rail he reached upwards and took the pistol from his own hand, transferring it to his free hand. No, Mark shouted at him. Fergus, it's me! It's me, Mark! But Fergus was far past all reason, as he juggled with the Webley, getting a firing grip on the hilt with his left hand. Kill them, he muttered. Kill all the scabs. He lifted the barrel to aim upwards at Mark, dangling over the drop, twisting slowly in that double retaining grip. No, Fergus! screamed Mark, and the muzzle of the revolver pointed into his face. At that range, it would tear half his head away, and he saw Fergus forefinger tighten on the trigger, the knuckle whitening under pressure.

He opened his hands and Fergus wrist slipped from his fingers.

He spun away, falling swiftly, and the revolver never fired but Fergus began to scream a high thin wall.

Still hanging upside down Mark watched Fergus body, limbs spread and turning like the spokes of a wheel, as it dropped away, shrinking rapidly in size, and the despairing wailing cry receding with it, dwindling away to a small pale speck, like a dust mote which was swallowed abruptly into the dark mouth of the shaft far below and the wailing cry with it.

In the silence afterwards, Mark hung batlike, blinking the sweat out of his eyes and for many seconds unable to find strength to move. Then from the platform above him came a long shuddering moan and it roused him.

Forcing his bruised body to respond, he managed to get a grip on the guardrail and drag himself up, until he tumbled on to the staircase, and started up it on rubbery legs.

Helena had dragged herself to the pile of timber, leaving a dark wet smear across the platform. The khaki breeches she wore were sodden with blood and it oozed from her still to form a spreading puddle in which she sat.

She lay back against the timber next to the tripoded Vickers in an attitude of utter weariness, and her eyes were closed.

Helena, Mark called her, and she opened her eyes.

Mark, she whispered, but she did not seem surprised.

It was almost as though she expected him. Her face was completely drained of all colour, the lips seemed rimmd with frost, and her skin had an icy sheen to it. Why did you leave me? she asked.

Hesitantly, he crossed to her. He knelt beside her, looked down at her lower body and felt the scalding flood of vomit rise into his throat. I truly loved you, her voice was so light, breathing soft as the dawn wind in the desert, and you went away. He put out his hand to touch her legs, to spread them and examine the wound, but he could not bring himself to do it. You won't go away again, Mark? she asked, and he could hardly catch the words. I knew you'd come back to me. I won't go away again, he promised, not recognizing his own voice, and the smile flickered on her icy lips. Hold me, please Mark. I don't want to die alone. Awkwardly, he put an arm around her shoulders and her head lolled sideways against him.

Did you ever love me, Mark, even a little bit?

Yes, I loved you, he told her, and the lie came easily.

Suddenly there was a hissing spurt of brighter redder blood from between her thighs as the damaged artery erupted.

She stiffened, her eyes flew wide open, and then her body seemed to melt against him and her head dropped back.

Her eyes were still wide open and dark as a midnight sky. As he stared at it, slowly her face changed. It seemed to melt like white candle wax held too close to the flame, it ran and wavered and reformed, and now it was the face of a marble angel, smooth and white and strangely beautiful, the face of a dead boy in a land far away, and the fabric of Mark's mind pulled and tore.

He began to scream, but no sound came from his throat the scream was deep down in his soul, and his face was without expression, his eyes dry of tears.

They found him like that an hour later. When the first soldiers climbed cautiously up the iron staircase to the top of the steel tower, he was sitting quietly, holding the woman's dead body in his arms.

Well, said Sean Courtney, they've hanged Taffy Long!

He folded the newspaper with an angry gesture and dropped it on to the paving beside his chair.

In the dark shiny foliage of the loquat tree that spread above them, the little white-eyes pinkled and twittered as they probed the blossoms with sharp busy beaks and their wings fluttered like moths about the candle.

Nobody at the breakfast table spoke. All of them knew how Sean had fought for leniency for those strikers on whom the death sentence had been passed. He had used all his influence and power, but it had not availed against the vindictive and vengeful who wanted full measure of retribution for all the horrors of the revolt. Sean brooded now at the head of the table, hunched in his chair with his beard on his chest, staring out over the Ladyburg valley.

His arm was still supported by the linen sling; it had not healed cleanly and the bullet wound was still open and draining. The doctors were anxious about it, but Sean had told them, Leopard, and bullet and shrapnel and knife, I've had them all before. Don't twist a gut for me. Old meat heals slowly, but it heals hard. Ruth Courtney watching him now was not worried about the wounds of the flesh. It was the wounds of the mind that concerned her.

Both the men of her household had come back deeply marked by the lash of guilt and sorrow. She was not sure what had happened during those dark days, for neither man had spoken about it, but the horror of it still stalked even here at Lion Kop, even in the bright soft days, on these lovely dreaming hills where she had brought them to heal and rest.

This was the special place, the centre and fortress of their lives, where Sean had brought her as his bride. They owned other great houses, but this was home, and she had brought Sean here now after the strife and the turmoil. But the guilt and the horror had come with them. Madness, muttered Sean. Utter raving madness. How they cannot see it, I do not know. He shook his head, and was silent a moment. Then he sighed. We hang them now and make them live for ever. They'll haunt and hound us all our days. You tried, dear, said Ruth softly. Trying isn't enough, he growled. In the long run, all that counts is succeeding. Oh Pater, they killed hundreds of people, Storm burst out, shaking her shining head at him, with angry colour in her cheeks. They even tried to kill you! Mark had not spoken since the meal began, but now he lifted his head and looked at Storm across the table. She checked the other words that sprang to her lips as she saw his expression.

He had changed so much since he had come home. It was as though he had aged a hundred years. Though there was no new line or mark on his face, yet he seemed to have shed all his youth and taken upon himself the full burden of knowledge and earthly experience.

When he looked at her like that she felt like a child. It was not a feeling she relished. She wanted to pierce this new armour of remoteness that invested him. They're just common murderers, she said, addressing the words not to her father. We are all murderers, Mark answered quietly, and though his face was still remote, the knife clattered against his plate as he put it down. Will you excuse me, please, Mrs Courtney -'he turned to Ruth and she frowned quickly. Oh Mark, you've not touched your food. I'm riding into the village this morning. You ate no dinner last night. I want the mail to catch the noon train. He folded his napkin, rose quickly and strode away across the lawn and Ruth watched the tall, graceful figure go with a helpless shrug before turning to Sean. He's wound up so tight, like a watch spring about to snap, she said. rWhat's happening to him, Sean? Sean shook his head. It's something that nobody understands, he explained. We had so much of it in the trenches. It's as though a man can stand just so much pressure, and then something breaks inside him. We called it shellshock, for want of a better name, but it's not just the shelling, he paused. I have never told you about Mark before, about why I picked him, about how and when I first met him, and he told it to them. Sitting in the cool green shade of the loquat tree, he told them of the mud and the fear and the horror of France. It's not just for a single time, or a day or a week, but it goes on for what becomes an eternity. But it is worse for a man who has special talents. We, the Generals, have to use them ruthlessly. Mark was one of those, And he told them how they had used Mark like a hunting dog, and his two women listened intently, all of them bound up in the life of the young man who had gradually come to mean so much to each of them. A man gathers horror and fear like a ship gathers weed. It's below the waterline, you cannot see it, but it is there. Mark carries that burden, and at Fordsburg something happened that brought him close to the breaking-point. He is on the very edge of it now. What can we do for him? asked Ruth softly, watching his face, happy for him that he had a son at last, for she had long known that was what Sean saw in Mark. She loved her husband enough not to resent that it was not her own womb that had given him what he so desperately wanted, glad only that he had it at last, and that she could share it with him.

Sean shook his head. I don't know. And Storm made an angry hissing sound. They both looked at her.

Sean felt that soft warmth spreading through his chest, a feeling of awe that this lovely child could be part of him.

Storm looked so smooth and fragile, yet he knew she had the strength of braided whipcord. He knew also that though she had the innocence of a newly opened bloom, yet she could sting like a serpent; she had the brightness and beauty that dazzled, and yet below that were depths that mystified and awed him; and when her moods changed so swiftly, like this unaccountable spurt of anger, he was enchanted by her, under her fairy spell.

He frowned heavily now to hide his feelings.

Yes, Missy, what is it now? he grumped at her. He's going away, she said, and Sean blinked at her, swaying back in his chair.

What are you talking about? he demanded. Mark. He's going away. How do you know that? Something deep inside of Sean cringed at the prospect of losing another son. I know, I just know, she said, and came to her feet with a flash of long sleek limbs, like a gazelle rising in alarm from its grassy bed. She stood over him. You didn't think he would be your lap dog for ever? she asked, a biting scorn in her tone that at another time would have brought from him a sharp retort. Now he stared at her speechless.

Then suddenly she was gone, crossing the lawn in the sunlight that gilded her loose dark hair with stark white light and struck through the flimsy stuff of her dress, . revealing her long slim body in a stark dark silhouette, surrounding her with a shimmering halo of light, that made her seem like some lovely unearthly vision. Don't you see that it's better you cry a little now, than cry for the rest of your life? Mark asked gently, trying not to let her see how the tears had eroded his resolve. Won't you ever come back? Marion Littlejohn was not one of those women who cried well. Her little round face seemed to smear and lose its shape like unfired clay, and her eyes swelled and puffed pinkly. Marion, I don't even know where I am going. How can I know if I'm coming back? I don't understand, Mark, I truly don't understand. She twisted the damp linen handkerchief in her hands, and she sniffed wetly. We were so happy. I did everything I knew to make you happy, even thatIt's not you, Marion, Mark assured her hurriedly. He did not want to be reminded of that which Marion always referred to as that. it was as though she had loaned him a treasure which had to be returned with interest at usurious rates. Didn't I make you happy, Mark? I tried so hard. Marion, I keep trying to tell you. You are a fine, pretty girl, you're kind and good and the nicest person I know. Then why don't you want to marry me? Her voice rose into a wall, and Mark glanced with alarm down the length of the porch. He knew that sisters and brothers-in-law were probably straining their hearing for snatches of the conversation. It's that I don't want to marry anybody She made a low moaning sound and then blew her nose loudly on the inadequate scrap of sodden linen. Mark took his own handkerchief from his inside pocket, and she accepted it gratefully.

I don't want to marry anybody, not yet, he repeated. Not yet, she seized the words. But some day? Some day, he agreed. When I have discovered what it is I want out of my life and how I am going to get it. I will wait for you. She tried to smile, a brave watery pink smile. I'll wait for you, Mark. No! Mark felt alarm flare through every nerve of his body. It had taken all his courage to tell her, and now it seemed that he had achieved nothing. God knows how long it will be, Marion. There will be dozens of other men - you're a kind sweet loving person, I'll wait for you, she repeated firmly, her features regaining their usual pleasant shape, and her shoulders losing their dejected droop.

Please, Marion. It's not fair on you, Mark tried desperately to dissuade her, realizing that he had failed dismally.

But she gave one last hearty sniff and swallowed what was left of her misery, as though it were a jagged piece of stone.

Then she smiled at him, blinking the last tears from her

eyes. Oh, it doesn't matter. I am a very patient person. You'll see, she told him comfortably. You don't understand, Mark shrugged with helpless frustration. Oh, I do understand, Mark, she smiled again, but now it was the indulgent smile of a mother for a naughty child. When you are ready, you come back here to me. She stood up and smoothed down the sensible skirts. Now come along, they are waiting lunch for us. Storm had taken great care choosing her position. She had wanted to catch the play of afternoon light and the run of the clouds across the escarpment, and yet to be able to see into the gorge, for the white plume of falling spray to be the focus of the painting.

She wanted also to be able to see down along the Ladyburg road, and yet not be overlooked by a casual observer.

She placed her easel on the lip of a small saucer of folded ground near the eastern boundary peg of Lion Kop, positioning both easel and herself with an artist's eye for aesthetic detail. But when she posed on the lip of the saucer, with the palette cradled in the crook of her left arm and the brush in the other, she lifted her chin and looked up at the powerful sweep of land and forest and sky, at the way the light was working and at the golden-tinged turquoise of the sky, and immediately she was intrigued.

The pose was no longer theatrical, and she began to work, tilting her head to appraise a colour mix, moving about the canvas in a slow ritual, like a temple maid making the sacrifice, so completely absorbed that when she heard the faint putter of Mark's motorcycle, it did not penetrate into the silken cocoon of concentration she had woven about herself.

Although her original intention in coming to this place had been to way-lay him, now he was almost past before she was aware of him, and she paused with the brush held high in one hand, caught in the soft golden light of late afternoon, a much more striking picture than she could have composed with studied care.

The dusty strip of road snaked five hundred feet below here she stood, making its first big loop on to the slope of the escarpment, and, as he came into the bend, Mark's eyes were drawn naturally to the small delicate figure on the slope.

There were clouds along the summit of the escarpment, and the late sun burned through the gaps, cutting long shimmering beams across the valley, and one of these fell full on Storm.

She stood completely still, staring down the slope at him, making no gesture of recognition or welcome.

He pulled the big machine into the side of the road, and sat astraddle, pushing the goggles on to his forehead.

Still she did not move, and they stared at each other.

Mark made a move at last as though to restart the machine, and Storm felt a shock of deprivation, although it did not show either on her face nor in the stillness of her body.

She exerted all her will, trying consciously to reach him with mind, and he paused and looked up at her again. Come! she willed him, and with an impatient, almost defiant gesture, he pulled the goggles off his head and stripped the gloves off his hands. - serenely, she turned back to the painting, a small secret smile playing like light across her softly parted lips and she did not watch him climbing up through the yellow knee-high grass.

She heard his breathing behind her, and she smelled him. He had a special smell that she had learned to know, a floury smell a little like a suckling puppy or freshly polished leather. It made her skin feel hot and sensitized, and put a painful little catch in her breathing. That's beautiful, he said, and his voice felt like the touch of fingers along the nape of her neck. She felt the fine soft hair there rise, and the Hush of blood spread warmly down her chest and turn her nipples into hard little pebbles. They ached with something which was not pain, something more obsessive. She wanted him to touch her there, and at the thought she felt her legs tremble under her and the muscles cramped deeply in the wedge of her thighs. It's truly beautiful, he said again, and he was so close she could feel his breath stir the fine hair of her neck, and another thrill ran down her spine, this time it was like a claw cutting through her flesh and she clenched her buttocks to ride the shock of it as though she was astride a mettlesome horse.

She stared at the painting, and she saw that he was right.

It was beautiful, even though it was half-finished. She could see the rest of it in her mind, and it was beautiful and right, but she wanted the touch of his hands now.

it was as though the painting had heightened her emotional response, opened some last forbidden door and now she wanted his touch with a terribly deep physical ache.

She turned to him, and he was so close and tall that she felt her breathing catch again, and she looked up into his face. Touch me, she willed him. Touch me, she commanded silently, but his hands hung at his side and she could not fathom his eyes.

She could not stand still a moment longer, and she stirred her hips in a slow voluptuous gesture, something was melting and burning deep in her lower body.

Touch me, she tried to force him silently to her will. Touch me there where it hurts so fiercely. But he did not heed her, would not respond to all her silent pleas, and suddenly she was angry.

She wanted to lash out at him, to strike him across that solemn handsome face, she had a mental image of ripping his shirt away and sinking her nails deep into the smoothly muscled chest. She stared now at the vee of his open shirt, at the coils of dark hair, and his skin had an oiled gloss gilded by the sun to warm golden brown.

Her anger flared and focused. He had aroused these surging emotions which she could neither understand nor control, these heady terrifying waves of physical arousal, and she wanted to punish him for it, to make him suffer, to have him mauled by his desires as she was; at the same instant in time, she wanted to take that splendid proud head of his and hold it to her bosom like a mother holds her child, she wanted to cherish, and gentle and love him, and claw and ravage and hurt him, and she was confused and giddy and angry and puzzled, but most of all she was racing high on a wave of physical excitement that turned her birdlike and quick and vital. I suppose you've been bouncing about on that fat little trollop of yours, she almost snarled it at him. Immediately the hurt and shock showed in his eyes, and she was pleased and savagely triumphant, but also aching with contrition, wanting to fall at his feet and plead for forgiveness, or to lash out with her nails and raise deep bleeding lines across that smooth brown dearly beloved face. Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the providence that gave you your beauty and your talent had thought to make you a nice person at the same time, he said quietly, almost sadly. Instead of a vicious spoiled little brat She gasped with the delicious profane shock of it, the insult gave her cause to discard the last vestige of control.

Now she could loose the rein and use lash and spur without restraint. Oh you swine! she flew at him, going for his eyes, knowing he was too quick and strong for her, but forcing violent physical contact on him, forcing him to seize her, and when he held her powerless by both arms, she flung her body against his, driving him back a pace, and she saw the surprise on his face. He had not expected such strength.

She turned against him, her body fined and tuned and hardened by physical exercise on the courts and in the saddle, forcing him off balance, and, as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, she hooked one ankle with hers and threw her weight in the opposite direction.

They fell together, tumbling backwards into the grassy saucer of ground, and he released her wrists, using both hands to break their fall and cushion her shock as she landed on her back.

instantly she was at him with both hands, and her nails stung his neck. He grunted and she saw the first flare of real anger in his eyes. It delighted her, and when he seized her wrist, she twisted and bit him in the hard sinewy muscle of his forearm. Hard enough to break the skin, and leave a double crescent of small neat teeth-marks.

He gasped and his anger mounted as he rolled over her, pinning her lower body with one leg as he fought to hold her flying flailing hands She bucked under him, her skirts had pulled up to her waist, one slim smooth thigh thrusting up, natural, untutored, cunning, into his groin, not hard enough to injure him, but enough to make him suddenly conscious of his own arousal.

As he realized what was happening, his grip of her arms slackened and he tried desperately to disengage, but one of her arms slid around his neck and the silken warmth of her cheek was pressed to his.

His hands acted without command, running down the deep groove in the centre of her arched back, following the small hard knuckles of her spine to the rounded divide of her buttocks, felt through the glossy slipperiness of silken underwear.

Her breathing rasped hoarsely as sandpaper, and she shifted her head and her mouth joined his, arching her back and lifting her lower body to let her silk underwear come away freely in his hands.

The waxen fork of her body rose out of the bright disordered petals of her skirts like the stamen of some wondrously exotic orchid; its flowing perfection interrupted only by the deep finely sculptured pit in the centre of the perfect plain of her belly, and below that the shockingly abrupt explosion of dark smoky curls, a fat deep wedge that changed shape as she relaxed in a slow voluptuous movement. Oh Mark, she breathed. Oh Mark, I can't stand it Her anger had all evaporated, she was soft and breathless, slowly entwining, warm and gentle and loving, but the sound of her voice woke him suddenly to reality. He realized the betrayal of the trust placed in him by Sean Courtney, the abuse of a privileged position, and he pulled away from her, appalled at his own treachery. I must be mad, he gasped with horror, and tried to roll away from her. Her response was instantaneous, the instinctive reaction of a deprived lioness, that uncanny ability to go from soft purring repose to dangerous blazing anger in the smallest part of a second.

Her open hand cracked across his face, in an explosion of brilliant Catherine wheels of colour that starred his vision, and she screamed at him. What kind of a man are you? She tried to strike him again, but he was ready for her and they rolled together chest to chest in the grass. You're a nothing, and you'll stay like that because you haven't the guts and the strength to be anything else, she hissed at him, and the words hurt a thousand times worse than the blow. His own anger flared to match hers and he came up over her. Damn you! How dare you say that!

She shouted back at him. At least I dare, you wouldn't dare, But she broke off then as she felt it happen, then she cried out again but in a different voice. Oh Go! Her whole body racked as she locked him to her, enfolding and holding him while she purred and murmured with a voice gone low and husky arid victorious. Oh Mark, oh darling, darling Mark. Sean Courtney sat his horse with the slumping comfortable seat of the African horseman. Long stirrups and legs thrust forward, sitting well back on his mount, sjambok trailing from his left hand and reins held low on the pommel of the saddle.

In the shade of the leadwood tree, his stallion stood with the patience of a trained gun horse, its weight braced on three legs and the fourth cocked at rest, neck stretched against the reins as it reached to crop the fine sweet grass that covered the upper slopes of the escarpment, its teeth making a harsh tearing sound with each mouthful.

Sean looked out across the spreading forests and grassland below him, and realized how much it had all changed since he had ran across it barefooted with his hunting dogs and throwing sticks s asmall boisterous child.

Four or five miles away, nestled against the protective wall of the escarpment, was the homestead of Tbeunis Kraal, where he had been born in the old brass bedstead in the front room, both he and Garrick, his twin brother, in the course of a single sweltering summer morning, a double birthing that had killed the mother he had never known. Garrick lived there still, and at last he had found peace and pride among his books and his papers. Sean smiled with affection and sympathy, tinged with ancient guilt, what might his brother have been if one leg had not been shattered by the careless shotgun that Sean had fired?

He thrust the thought aside, and instead turned in the saddle to survey his own domain.

The thousands upon thousands of acres that he had planted to timber and which had given him the foundation of his fortune. From where he sat he could see the sawmills and timber yards adjoining the railway yards down in the town, and once again he felt the warm contentment of a life not thrown to waste, the glow of achievement and endeavour rewarded. He smiled and lit one of the long dark cheroots, striking the match off his boot, adjusting easily to the shifting balance of the horse under him.

A moment longer he indulged this rare moment of selfgratification, almost as though to avoid thinking of the most pressing of his problems.

Then he let his eyes drift away across the spreading rooftops of Ladyburg to that new ungainly structure of steel and galvanized sheet iron that rose tall enough to dwarf any other structure in the valley, even the massive fourstorey block of the new Ladyburg Farmers Bank.

The sugar refinery was like some heathen idol, ugly and voracious, crouching at the edge of the neat blocks of planted sugar which stretched away beyond the limit of the eye, carpeting the low rolling hills with waving, moving green that rolled in the wind like the waves of the ocean, planted to feed that eternally hungry structure.

The frown puckered the skin between Sean's eyes at the bridge of his big beaky nose. Where he counted his land in thousands of acres, the man who had once been his son counted his in tens of thousands.

The horse sensed his change of mood and gathered itself, nodding its head extravagantly and skittering a little in the shade, ready to run. Easy, boy, Sean growled at him, and gentled him with a hand on his shoulder.

He waited now for that man, having come early to the rendezvous as was always his way. He liked to be there first and let the other man come to him. It was an old trick, to let the other seem the interloper in established territory, while the waiting man had time to consider and arrange his thoughts, and to study the other as he approached.

He had chosen the place and the time with care. He had not been able to sanction the tough of Dirk Courtney riding on to his land again, and enter his home. The aura of evil that hung around the man was contagious, and he did not want that evil to sully the inner sanctum of his life which was the homestead of Lion Kop. He did not even want him on his land, so he had chosen the one small section of boundary where his land actually bordered on that of Dirk Courtney. It was the only half-mile of any land of Sean's along which he had strung barbed wire.

As a cattleman and horseman, he had an aversion to barbed wire, but still he had strung it between his land and that of Dirk Courtney, and when Dirk had written asking him for this meeting, he had chosen this place where there would be a fence between them.

He had chosen the late afternoon with intent also. The low sun would be behind him and shining into the other man's eyes as he came up the slope of the escarpment.

Now Sean drew the watch from his waistcoat and saw it was one minute before four, the appointed time. He looked down into the valley, and scowled. The slope below him was deserted, and he could follow the full length of the road into town beyond that. Since he had seen young Mark puttering past on his motorcycle half an hour before, the road also had been deserted.

He looked beyond the town to the flash of the white walls of the grand mansion that Dirk Courtney had bult when first he returned to the valley. Great Longwood, a pretentious name for a pretentious building.

Sean did not like to look at it. To him it seemed that the same aura of evil shimmered about it, even in the daylight an almost palpable thing, and he had heard the stories they had been repeated to him with glee by the gossipmongers, about what happened up there under the cover of night.

He believed those stories, or he knew with the deep instinct which had once been love, the man who had once been his son.

He looked again at the watch in his hand, and scowled at it. It was four o'clock. He shook the watch and held it to his ear. It ticked stolidly, and he slipped it back into his pocket and gathered the reins. He wasn't coming, and Sean felt a sneaking coward's relief, because he found any meeting with Dirk Courtney draining and exhausting. Good afternoon, Father, The voice startled him, so that he gripped the horse with his knees and jerked the reins.

The stallion pranced and circled, tossing his head.

Dirk sat easily on a golden red bay. He had come down out of the nearest edge of the forest, walking his mount carefully and silently over the thick mattress of fallen leaves. You're late, growled Sean. I was just leaving. Dirk must have circled out, climbing the escarpment below the falls on to Lion Kop, avoiding the fence and riding up through the plantations to come to the rendezvous from the opposite direction. Probably he had been sitting among the trees watching Sean for the last half hour. What did you want to speak to me about? He must never again underestimate this man. Sean had done so many times before, each time at terrible cost. I think you know, Dirk smiled at him, and Sean was reminded of some beautiful glossy and deadly dangerous animal. He sat his horse with a casual grace, at rest but in complete control, and he was dressed in a hunting-jacket of finely woven thorn-proof tweed, with a yellow silk cravat at the throat; his long powerful legs were encased in polished chocolate leather. Remind me, invited Sean, consciously hardening himself against the fatal mesmeric charm that the man could project at will.

oh come now, I know you have been busy thrashing the sweating unwashed hordes back into their places. I read with pride of your efforts, Father. Your butcher's bill at Fordsburg was almost as fearsome as when you put down Bombata's rebellion back in 19o6. Magnificent stuff-'Get on with it. Sean found himself hating again. Dirk Courtney had a high skill at finding weakness or guilt, and exploiting it mercilessly. When he spoke like this of the manner in which Sean had been forced to discharge his duty, it shamed him more painfully than ever. Of course it was necessary to get the mines operating again. You do sell most of your timber to the gold mines, I have the exact sales figures somewhere. Dirk laughed lightly. His teeth were perfect and white, and the sunlight played in the shining curls of his big handsome head, backlighting him and making his looks more theatrically magnificent. Good on you, dear Papa. You always had a keen eye for the main chance. No future in letting a bunch of wild-eyed reds put us all out of business. Even I am utterly dependent on the gold mines in the long run. Sean could not bring himself to answer, his anger was choking him. He felt dirtied and ashamed. It's one of the many things for which I'm indebted to you, Dirk went on, watching him carefully, smiling and urbane and deadly. I am your heir, I have inherited from you the ability to recognize opportunity and to seize it. Do you recall teaching me how to take a snake, how to pin it and hold it with thumb and forefinger at the back of the neck?

Sean remembered the incident suddenly and vividly.

The fearlessness of the child had frightened him even then. I see you do remember. The smile faded from Dirk's face, the lightness of his manner was gone with it. So much, so many little things, do you remember when we were lost after the lions stampeded the horses in the night? Sean had forgotten that also. Hunting in Mopani country, the child's first overnight away from the security and safety of the wagons. A little adventure that had turned into nightmare, one horse killed by the lions and the other gone, and a fifty-mile walk back through dry sandveld and thick trackless bush. You showed me how to find water. The puddle in the hollow tree, I can still taste the stink of it. The bushmen wells in the sand, sucking it up with a hollow straw. It all came back, though Sean tried to shut his mind against it. They had gone wrong on the third day, mistaking one small dry stony river bed f or another and wandering away into the wilderness to a lingering death. I remember you made a sling from your cartridge belt, and carried me on your hip. When the child's strength had gone, Sean had carried him, mile after mile, day after day in the thick dragging sand. When finally his own great strength had been expended also, he had crouched down over the child, shielding him from the sun with his shadow, and had worked his swollen tongue painfully for each drop of saliva to inject into Dirk's cracked and blackening mouth, keeping him alive just long enough. When Mbejane came at last, you wept The stampeded horse had reached the wagons with the lion claw-marks slashed deeply across its rump. The old Zulu gunbearer, himself sick with malaria, had saddled the grey and taken a pack horse on the lead rein. He had back-tracked the loose horse to the lion camp, and then picked up the spoor of man and child, following them for four days along a cold wind-spoiled spoor.

When he reached them, they were huddled together in the sand, under the sun, waiting for death.

, it was the only time in my life I ever saw you cry, Dirk said softly. But did you ever think how often you made me weep? Sean did not want to listen longer. He did not want to be further reminded of that lovely, headstrong, wild and beloved child who he had reared as mother and father together, yet Dirk's quiet insidious voice held him captive in a web of memory from which he could not escape. Will you ever know how I worshipped you? How my whole life was based on you, how I mimicked every action, how I tried to become you?

Sean shook his head, trying to deny it, to reject it. Yes, I tried to become you. Perhaps I succeeded No. Sean's voice was strangled and thick.

Perhaps that's why you rejected me, Dirk told him. You saw in me the mirror-image of yourself, and you could not bring yourself to accept that. So you turned me away, and left me to weep. No. God, no, that's not true. It was not that way at all.

Dirk swung his horse in until his leg touched Sean's. Father, we are the same person, we are one, won't you admit that I am you, just as surely as I fell from your loins, just as surely as you trained and moulded me? Dirk, Sean started, but there were no words now, his whole existence had been touched and shaken to its very core. Don't you realize that every thing I have ever done was for you? Not only as a child, but as a youth and a man. Did you never think why I came back here to Ladyburg, when I could have gone to any other place in the world, London, Paris, New York, it was all open to me. Yet I came back here. Why, Father, why did I do that?

Sean shook his head, unable to answer, staring at this beautiful stranger, with his vital strength and his compelling disturbing presence. I came back because you were here. They were both silent then, holding each other's eyes in a struggle of wills and a turmoil of conflicting emotions.

Sean felt his resolve weakening, felt himself sliding slowly under the spell that Dirk was weaving about him. He heeled his horse, forcing it to wheel and break the physical contact of their legs, but Dirk went on remorselessly. As a sign of my love, of this love that has been strong enough to stand against all your abuse, against the denials you have made, against every blow you have dealt it, as a sign of that, I come to you now, and I hold out my hand to you. Be my father again, and let me be your son. Let us put our fortunes together and build an empire. There is a land here, a whole land, ripe and ready for us to take Dirk reached out across the space between the horses with his right hand, palm upwards, fingers outstretched. Take my hand on it, Father, he urged. Nothing will stop us. Together we will sweep the world from our path, together we will become gods. Dirk, Sean found his voice, as he fought himself out of the coils in which he had been trapped. I have known many men, and not one of them was all good nor completely evil. They were all combinations of those two elements, good and evil, that is, until I came to know you. You are the only man who was totally evil, evil unrelieved by the slightest shading of good. When at last I was forced to face that fact, then I turned my back on you. Father. Don't call me that. You are not mine, and you never will be again. There is a great fortune, one of the great fortunes of the worldNo, Sean shook his head. It is not there for either you or me. It belongs to a people, to many peoples, Zulu, and Englishman and Afrikander, not to me, but especially not to You. When I came to see you last, you gave me cause to believe, Dirk began to protest. I gave you no cause, I made no promise. I told you everything, all my plans. Yes, said Sean. I wanted to hear it, I wanted to know every detail, not so that I could help you, but so that I could stand in your way. Sean paused for emphasis, and then leaned across so his face was close to Dirk's and he could look into his eyes. You will never get the land beyond the Bubezi River. I swear that to you, he said it quietly, but with a force that made every word ring like a cathedral bell.

Dirk recoiled, and the high colour drained away from his face. I rejected you because you are evil. I will fight you with all my strength, with my life itself. Dirk's features changed, the line of the mouth and the set of the jaw altered, the slant and tilt of the eyes became wolfish. You deceive yourself, Father. You and I are one. If I am evil, then you are the source and fountain and father of that evil. Don't spout noble words to me, don't strike postures. I know you, remember. I know you perfectly as I know myself. He laughed again, but not the bright easy laughter of before. It was a cruel thin sound and the shape of the mouth did not lose its hard line. You rejected me for that Jewish whore of yours, and the bastard slut you spawned on her soft white belly. Sean bellowed, a low dull roar of anger, and the stallion reared under him, coming up high on his hindquarters and cutting at the air, and the bay mare swung away in alarm, milling and trampling as Dirk sawed at its mouth with the curb. You say you will fight me with your life, Dirk shouted at his father. It may just come to that! I warn you. He brought the horse under control, barging in on the stallion so he could shout again. No man stands in my way. I will destroy you, as I have destroyed the others who have tried it. I will destroy you and your Jewish whore. Sean swung back-handed with the sjambok, a polo cut, using the wrist so the thin black lash of hippo-hide fluted like the wing of a flighting goose. He aimed at the face, at the snarling vicious wolf's head of the man who once had been his son.

Dirk threw up his arm and caught the stroke, it split the woven tweed of his sleeve like a sword cut and bright blood sprang to stain the luxurious cloth, as he kneed the bay away in a wide prancing circle.

He held the wound, pressing the lips of the cut together while he glared at Sean, his face contorted with utter malevolence. I'll kill you for that, he said softly, and then he swung the bay away and put her into a dead gallop, straight at the five-stranded, barbed fence.

The bay went up and stretched at the jump, flying free of earth and then landing again on the far side, neatly gathered and fully in hand, reached out again into a run, a superb piece of horsemanship.

Sean walked the stallion, fighting the temptation to lash him into a gallop, following the path over the high ground, a path now almost indiscernible, long overgrown. Only a man who knew it well, who had been along it often before, would know it as a path.

There was nothing left of the huts of Mbejane's kraal, except the outline of building stones, white circles in the grass. They had burned the huts, of course, as is the Zulu custom when a chief is dead.

The wall of the cattle kraal was still intact, the stone carefully and lovingly selected, each piece fitted into the shoulder-high structure.

Sean dismounted and tethered the stallion at the gateway. He saw that his hands were still shaking, as though in high fever, and he felt sick to the gut, the aftermath of that wild storm of emotion.

He found his seat on the stone wall, the same flat rock that seemed moulded to his buttocks, and he lit a cheroot.

The fragrant smoke calmed the flutter of his heart, and soothed the tremble in his hands.

He looked down at the floor of the kraal. A Zulu chief is buried in the centre of his cattle kraal, sitting upright facing the rising sun, with his induna's ring still on his head, wrapped in the wet skin of a freshly killed ox, the symbol of his wealth, and with his food pot and his beer pot and his snuff box, his shield and his spears at his side, in readiness for the journey. Hello, old friend, said Sean softly. We reared him, you and I. Yet he killed you. I do not know how, nor can I prove it, but I know he killed you, and now he's vowed to kill me also. And his voice quivered. Well, smiled Sean. If you have to make an appointment to speak with me, it must be some business of dire consequence. Through the merry twinkle of his eye, he was examining Mark with a shrewd assessing gaze. Storm had been right, of course. The lad had been gathering himself to make the break. To go off somewhere on his own, like a wounded animal perhaps, or a cub lion leaving the pride at full growth? Which was it, Sean wondered, and how great a wrench would the parting make on the youngster? Yes, sir, you could say that, Mark agreed, but he could not meet Sean's eyes for once. The usually bright and candid eyes slid past Sean's and went to the books on the shelves, went on to the windows and the sweeping sunlit view across the tops of the plantations and the valley below. He examined it as though he had never seen it before. Come on in then. Sean swivelled his chair away from the desk, and took the steel-rimmed spectacles off his nose and waved with them at the armchair below the window. Thank you, sir. While he crossed to the chair, Sean rose and went -to the stinkwood cabinet. If it's something that important, we'd best take a dram to steel ourselves, like going over the top. He smiled again. It's not yet noon, Mark pointed out. That's a rule you taught me yourself. The man who makes the rules is allowed to change them, said Sean, pouring two huge measures of golden brown spirit, and spurting soda from the siphon. That's a rule I've just this moment made, and he laughed, a fat contented chuckle, before he went on, Well, my boy, as it so happens, you have chosen a good day for it. He carried one glass to Mark, and returned to his desk. I also have dire an d important business to discuss. He took a swallow from his glass, smacked his lips in evident relish, and then wiped his moustaches on the back of his hand. As the elder, will it be in order if we discuss my business first?

Of course, sir. Mark looked relieved and sipped cautiously at his glass, while Sean beamed at him with illconcealed self-satisfaction.

Sean had conceived of a scheme so devious and tailored so fittingly to his need, that he was a little in awe of the divine inspiration which had fostered it. He did not want to lose this young man, and yet he knew that the surest way of doing so was trying to hold him too close. While we were in Cape Town I had two long discussions with the Prime Minister, he began, and since then we have exchanged lengthy correspondence. The upshot of all this is that General Smuts has formed a separate portfolio, and placed it under my ministry. It is simply the portfolio of National Parks. There is still legislation to see through Parliament, of course, we will need money and new powers but I am going ahead right away with a survey and assessment of all proclaimed areas, and we will act on that to develop and protect - He went on talking for almost fifteen minutes, reading from the Prime Minister's letters and memoranda explaining and expanding, going over the discussions, detailing the planning, while Mark sat forward in his chair, the glass at his side forgotten, listening with a rising sense of destiny at work, hardly daring to IJ breathe as he drank in the great concept that was unfolded for him.

Sean was excited by his own vision, and he sprang up from the desk and paced the yellow wood floor, gesturing, using hands and arms to drive home each point, then stopping suddenly in full flight and turning to stand over Mark. General Smuts was impressed with you, that night at Booysens, and before that. He stopped again, and Mark was so engrossed that he did not see the cunning expression on Sean's face. I had no trouble persuading him that you were the man for the job. What job? Mark demanded eagerly. The first area I am concentrating on is Chaka's Gate and the Bubezi valley. Somebody has to go in there and do a survey, so that when we go to Parliament, we know what we are talking about. You know the area well The great silences and peace of the wilderness rushed back to Mark, and he felt himself craving them like a drunkard. Of course, once the Bill is through Parliament, I will need a warden to implement the act. Mark sank slowly back in his chair. Suddenly the search was over. Like a tall ship that has made its offing, he felt himself come about and settle on true course with the wind standing fair for a fine passage. Now what was it you wanted to talk to me about?

Sean asked genially. Nothing, said Mark softly. Nothing at all. And his face was shining like that of a religious convert at the moment of revelation.

Mark Anders had been a stranger to happiness, true happiness, since his childhood. He was like an inriocent discovering strong liquor for the first time, and he was almost entirely unequipped to deal with it, It induced in him a state of euphoria, a giddy elation that transported him to levels of human experience whose existence he had not previously guessed at.

Sean Courtney had engaged a new secretary to take over Mark's duties from him. He was a prematurely bald, unsmiling little man, who affected a shiny black alpaca jacket, an old-fashioned celluloid butterfly collar, a green eye-shade and cuff -protectors. He was silent, intense and totally efficient, and nobody at Lion Kop dreamed of calling him anything but Mr Smothers.

Mark was to stay on for a further month to instruct Mr Smothers in his new duties, and at the same time Mark was to set his own affairs in order and make the preparations for his move to Chaka's Gate.

Mr Smothers inhuman efficiency was such that within a week Mark found himself relieved almost completely of his previous duties, and with time to gloat over his new happiness.

Only now that it had been given to him did he realize how those tall stone portals of Chaka's Gate had thrown their shadows across his life, how they had become for him the central towers of his existence, and he longed to be there already, in the silence and the beauty and the peace, building something that would last for ever.

He realized how the recent whirlpool of emotion and action had driven from his mind the duty he had set himself, to find the grave of old Grandfather Anders, and fathom the mystery of his death. It was all now before him, and his life had purpose and direction.

But, this was only the foundation and base of his happiness, from which he could launch himself into the towering heady heights of his love.

True enchantment had sprung from that incredible moment in the grassy saucer on the slopes of the Ladyburg escarpment.

his love, which he had borne secretly, a burden cold and heavy as a stone, had in a single magical instant burst open, flowering like a seed into a growth of such vigour and colour and beauty and excitement, that he could not yet grasp it all.

He and Storm cherished it so dearly that no other must even guess at its existence. They made elaborate plans and pacts, weaved marvellously involved subterfuges about themselves to protect this wondrous treasure of theirs.

They neither spoke to each other, nor even looked at the other in the presence of a third party and the restraint taxed each of them so that the moment they were alone together they fell ravenously each upon the other.

When they were not alone together, they spent most of their time planning and scheming how to be so.

They wrote each other flaming notes which were passed under the table in the presence of Sean and Ruth and should have scared the fingers that touched them. They developed codes and signs, they found secret places, and they took hideous chances. Danger spiced their already piquant banquet of love and delight, and they were both insatiable.

At first, they rode to hidden places in the forest along separate and convoluted pathways and galloped the last mile, arriving breathless and laughing, embracing, still in the saddle while the horses stamped and snorted. The first time they were still locked together when they tumbled from the saddles to the forest bed of dead leaves and ferns, and they left their horses loose. It had been a long walk home, especially as they clung to each other like drunkards, laughing and giggling all the way. Luckily their horses had found a field of lucerne before they reached the homestead, and their riderless return had not alerted the grooms. Their secret remained intact, and after that they wasted a few seconds of their precious time together while Mark hobbled the horses.

Soon it was not enough to have only a stolen hour in the day and they met in Storm's studio. Mark climbed the banyan tree, crawling out along the branch, while Storm held the window open and squealed softly with horror when his foot slipped, or hissed a warning when a servant passed, then clapped her hands and flung her arms around his neck as he came in over the sill.

The studio was furnished with a single wooden chair, the floor was bare and hard, and the danger of sudden intrusion too great for even them to ignore. However, they were undaunted and inventive, and they found almost immediately that Mark was strong enough and she was light enough and that all things are possible.

Once Mark became unsteady at the scorching noonday of their loving and backed her into one of her own unfinished masterpieces. Afterwards, she knelt on the wooden chair holding her skirts to her waist and elevated her perfect little round stern while Mark removed the smudges of burnt umber and prussian blue with a rag moistened with turpentine. Storm was shaking so violently with suppressed laughter that Mark's task was much complicated.

She was also blushing so furiously that even her bottom glowed a divine ethereal pink, and for ever afterwards, the smell of turpentine acted on Mark as a powerful aphrodisiac.

On another terrifying occasion, there was the heavy tramp, and the unmistakable limping drag in the passageway beyond the studio door, and they were frozen and ashen-faced, unable to breathe as they listened to its approach.

The peremptory knock on the door almost panicked her and she stared into Mark's face with huge terrified eyes.

He took control instantly, realizing just how terrible was the danger. Sean Courtney, faced with the sight of somebody actually tupping his ewe lamb, was fully capable of destroying both them and himself.

The knock came again, impatient, demanding, and Mark whispered quickly as they adjusted their clothing with frantic hands. She responded bravely, though her voice caught and quavered. One moment, Daddy. Mark seized her paint-stained smock and slipped it over her head, grabbed a brush from the pot and put it in her right hand, squeezed her shoulders to brace her, and then pushed her gently towards the door.

There was just enough space between the wall and a canvas for him to crawl in and crouch, trying to still his breathing, while he listened to Storm shoot the door-bolt and greet her father. Locking the door now, Missy? Sean growled at her, throwing a suspicious glance around the bare studio. Intruding, am I? PNever, Pater, not you! And they were into the room, Storm following meekly, while Sean gave critical judgement of her work. There isn't a tree on Wagon Hill. I'm not taking photographs, Daddy. There should be a tree there. It balances the composition. Don't you see? She had recovered like a champion and Mark loved her to the point of pain.

Mark was emboldened enough to take a cautious glance around the edge of the canvas, and the first thing he saw was a five-guinea pair of cami-knickers in sheer oyster silk, the wide legs cuffed with ivory cambrai lace, lying crumpled and abandoned on the studio floor where Storm had dropped them earlier.

He felt a cold sheen of sweat break out afresh across his brow; on the bare floor, the lovely silk was as conspicuous as a battle ensign. He tried to reach that blatantly sinful little pile, but it was beyond his finger-tips.

Storm was hanging on to her father's arm, probably because her legs were too weak to support her, and she saw what Mark's desperate arm and groping hand protruding from behind the canvas was trying to reach. Her panic flooded back again at high spring tide.

She gabbled meaningless replies to her father's questions and tried to lead him towards the door, but it was like trying to divert a bull elephant from his set purpose. Inexorably Sean bore down upon the discarded knickers and the canvas where Mark cowered.

At his next step, the silk wrapped itself around the toe of his boot. The material was so filmy and light that he did not notice it, and he limped on happily, one foot draped in an exotic piece of feminine underwear, while two young people watched in abject terror the knickers, slow circuit of the room.

At the door, Storm flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, managing to anchor the knickers with the toe of her shoe, and then propelling her father into the passage with indecent despatch and slamming the door behind him.

Weak with terror and laughter, they clung together in the middle of the studio, and Mark was so chastened that, when he regained his voice, he told her sternly, We are not going to take any more chances, do you understand? Yes, master, she agreed demurely, but with a wicked sparkle in her eye. Mark was awakened a few minutes after midnight with a wet pointed tongue probing deeply into his ear and he would have let out a great shout but a strong little hand was pressed firmly across his mouth, Are you mad? he whispered, as he saw her bending over him in the moonlight from the open window, and realized that she had made the journey across the full length of the house, down cavernous passageways and creaking staircases, in pitch darkness and clad only in a gossamer pair of pyjamas. Yes, she laughed at him. I'm mad, completely wonderfully insane, a magnificent noble rage of the mind. He was only half awake or he would not have asked the next question. What are you doing here? I have come to ravish you, she said, as she slipped into the bed beside him. My feet are cold, she announced regally. Warm them for me. For God's sake, don't make so much noise, he pleaded, which was a ridiculous request in the circumstances, for only minutes later they were both raising such a chorus of cries that should have woken the entire household.

Long afterwards, she murmured in that special purry feline voice of hers that he had come to know so well.

You really are an amazingly talented man, Mr Anders.

Where ever did you learn to be so utterly depraved? And then she chuckled sleepily, If you tell me, I shall probably claw your eyes out of your head. You mustn't come here again. Why not? It's so much better in bed. What will your father do if he finds out? He'll murder you, she said comfortably. But what on earth has that got to do with it?

one of the ancillary benefits which accrued to Storm from this relationship was that she had at last a fine male figure model for her work, something which she had always needed but had never found the courage even to ask her father to give her. She knew exactly what his reaction would be.

Mark was not gushing with enthusiasm for the idea either, and it took all her wheedling and cooing to have him disrobe in cold blood. She had picked one -of their secret places in the forest for her figure studio, and Mark perched self-consciously on a fallen log.

Relax, she pleaded. Think beautiful thoughts. I feel such an ass, he protested, wearing only a pair of striped cotton underpants, at which he had drawn the line, despite her entreaties. Anyway, there's nothing under there you could paint on canvas, he pointed out. But that's not the point, you're supposed to be an ancient Greek, and who ever saw an Olympic athleteNo, Mark cut her short. They stay on. That's final. She sighed at the intransigence of men, and applied herself to her paints and canvas. Slowly he did relax, and even began to enjoy the freedom and the feel of the sunlight and cue air on his skin.

He enjoyed watching her work also, the little frown of total concentration, the half-closed eyes, the porcelain white teeth nibbling thoughtfully at her lower lip, the almost dancing ritual of movement she performed around the canvas, and while he watched her he fantasized a future in which they walked hand in hand through the garden wilderness beyond Chaka's Gate. A future bright with happiness, and radiant with shared labour and achievement, and he began to tell her about it, letting his thoughts find expression in words, that Storm did not hear. Her ears were closed, her whole existence transferred into eyes and hands, seeing only colour and form, sensitive only to mood.

She saw the awkwardness and rigidity of his body flowLng into a pose of natural grace such as she could never have composed; she saw the rapture dawning on his features, and she nodded and murmured agreement softly, not wanting to spoil it or break the mood; her fingers racing to capture the moment, all her mind and art concentrated on that single task; her own rapture rising to complement and buoy his even higher, seemingly bound close and fast by the silken traces of love and common purpose, but in reality as far from each other as earth is from moon. I'll be studying the ground for the exact place to site the homestead, he told her, and it will take a full year to see it all in every season. Good water in the dry, but safe from flood in the rains. The cool sea breeze in summer and protected from the cold weather in winter. Oh yes, she murmured, that's marvelous. But she was looking at his eyes. If only I can capture that fleck of light that makes them shine so. she thought, and dabbed a touch of blue to the white to mix the shade. Two rooms to start. One to sleep and one to live. Of course a wide veranda looking out across the valley. That's wonderful, she exulted softly, as she touched the eye with the tip of the brush and it came instantly alive, gazing back at her from the canvas with an expression that squeezed her heart. I'll quarry the stone from the cliff, but away from the river so there'll be no scar to spoil it, and we'll cut the thatch from the edge of the swamp, and the roof poles from the forest. The sun had swung to the west and it filtered down through the forest roof with a cool greenish light that touched the smooth hard muscles of his arm and the sculptured marble of his back, and she saw that he was beautiful. We can build on slowly, as we need new rooms. I'll design it that way. When the children come, we can change the living room to a nursery and add a new wing. He could almost smell the aromatic shavings of the watels poles, and the sweet perfume of new cut thatch, and in his mind he saw the bright new roof mellowing and darkening in the weather, feel the cool of the high deep rooms at midday, and hear the crackle of the fiercely burning mien osa thorn in the stone fireplace on the cold and starry nights. We'll be happy, Storm, I promise you that. They were the only words she heard, and she lifted her head and looked at him.

all, Oh! yes. We'll be happy, she echoed, and they smiled at each other in total misunderstanding.

When Sean had told Ruth Courtney that Mark was leaving, her dismay had alarmed him. Sean had not realized that he had taken such a place in her affections also.

Oh, no, Sean, she had protested. It's not as bad as it might have been, he assured her quickly. We'll not lose him altogether, it's just that he'll be on a longer rein, that's all. He'll still be working for me, but now only in my official capacity. And he explained it all to her. She was silent for a long time when he had finished, considering it from every angle before she gave her opinion. He'll be good at that, I think, she nodded at last. But I had rather got used to having him around us. I'll miss him. Sean grunted what could have been agreement, not able to make such a sentimental admission outright. Well, Ruth went on immediately, her whole attitude becoming businesslike, I'll have to get on with it, which meant that Mark Anders was to be fitted out for his move to Chaka's Gate by one of the world's leading experts. She had sent her man on campaign or on safari so often, that she knew exactly what was necessary, the absolute bare necessity for survival and comfort in the African bush. She knew that anything more than that would not be used, bundles of luxuries would come home untouched, or be abandoned along the way. Yet everything she selected was of the finest quality, for she raided Sean's campaign bag blatantly, justifying each theft with the firm utterance, Sean won't be using that again. The sleeping roll needed darning, and she made the repair a little work of art. Then she applied herself to the one luxury the pack would contain, books. This choice she and Mark discussed at length, for weight and space made it essential that each book must be able to withstand numerous rereadings. They had a wide selection from which to make their choice, hundreds of battered old volumes, stained by rain and mud, spilled tea and, in more than one case, by splotches of dried blood, and faded by sunlight and age, all of them having been carried great distances in Sean's old canvas book-bag.

Macaulay and Gibbon, Kipling and Tennyson, Shakescase and even a small leather-bound Bible were given a place, after being carefully screened by the selection committee, and Mark, whose previous camping equipment had been limited to a blanket, a pot and a spoon, felt as though he had been given a permanent suite at the Dorchester.

Sean provided the other essentials for the expedition.

The 9. 3 Marmlicher in its leather case and two mules.

They were big rangy animals, both hard workers and of equitable temper, both salted by having been deliberately exposed to the bite of the tsetse fly and surviving the onslaught of the disease that resulted. They had cost Sean dearly for this immunity, but then the nagana had an almost ninety percent mortality rate. Salted animals were essential. It would have been less trouble and had the same end result to shoot them between the eyes, rather than take unsalted animals into the fly belt beyond Chaka's Gate.

Each day, Sean set aside an hour or so to discuss with Mark the objects and the priorities of the expedition. They drew up a list, which was added to daily and, as it grew, so did Sean Courtney's enthusiasm. More than once he broke off to shake his head and grumble. You lucky brighter, what I wouldn't give to be your age again, and to be going back into the bush. You could come and visit me, Mark smiled.

I might just do that, Sean agreed, and then resettled his spectacles on his nose to bring up the next point for discussion.

The first of Mark's tasks was to compile an estimate of what species of wild animal still existed in the proclaimed area, and how many of each there were. Clearly this was of the utmost importance to any attempt at protection and conservation. All would depend on there being sufficient wild-life surviving to make their efforts worthwhile. It may already be too late in the afternoon, Sean pointed out.

No. Mark would not even listen to the suggestion. There is game there. Just enough to give us a chance. I'm sure of it Next important was for him to contact the people living in the area of Chaka's Gate, the Zulus grazing cattle along the edge of the tsetse fly belt, the native hunters and gatherers living within the belt, each wandering group, each village, each headman, each chief, and hold discussions with them; gauging the attitude of the Zulu peoples to the stricter administration of the proclaimed area, and warning them that what for many years they and their ancestors had looked upon as commonage and tribal hunting-ground was under new control. Men were no longer free to cut timber and thatch, to gather and hunt at will.

Mark's intimate knowledge of the Zulu language would serve him well here.

He was to build temporary accomodation for himself, and conduct a survey to choose the final site for a permanent warden's post. There were fifty other tasks less important, but no less demanding.

It was a programme to excite and intrigue Mark, and make him want to begin, and as the day drew nearer, only one cloud lay dark and heavy on the splendid horizon ahead of him. He would be parting from Storm, but he consoled himself with the sure knowledge that it would not be for long. He was going ahead into Eden to prepare a place for his Eve.

As Storm watched him sleep flat on his back, spread like a crucifix on the forest floor, without even the cotton underpants between him and nature, the possessive smile of a mother watching over the child at her breast warmed and softened Storm's lips.

She was naked also, her clothing scattered around them like the petals of an overblown rose, thrown there by the storm winds of passions which were now spent and quiescent. She sat over him cross-legged on the corner of the plaid rug, and she studied his face, wondering at how young he looked in sleep, feeling a choking of tenderness in her throat, and the soft melting after-glow of loving deep in her body where he had been.

She leaned over him, and her breasts swung forward with a new weightiness, the tips darker and wrinkled like small pinky brown raisins. She dipped her shoulders and let the nipples brush lightly across his face, and smiled again as he screwed up his nose and pursed his lips in his sleep, snorting as if to blow away a bothersome fly.

He came awake suddenly and as he reached for her, she squealed softly and plucked her breasts away from him, slapping at his hands. Unhand me, sir, this instant! she commanded, and he caught her and pulled her down on to his chest, so that she could hear his heart beating under her ear.

She snuggled down, making throaty little sounds of comfort. He sighed deeply, and his chest swelled and expanded under her cheek and she heard the air rush into his lungs.

Mark? she said. I'm here. You're not going. You know that, don't you? The air in his lungs stayed there as he held his breath, and the hand that was stroking lightly up from the small of her back to the nape of her neck stilled. She could feel the tension in his fingers.

They stayed like that for many seconds and then he let the air out of his lungs with an explosive grunt. What do you mean? he asked. Where am I not going? This place up there in the bush, she said. Chaka's Gate? Yes. You're not going. Why not? Because I forbid it.

He sat up abruptly, joggling her roughly off his chest.

They sat facing each other, and he was staring at her with such an expression that she ran her fingers through her hair and then folded her arms across her breasts, covering them protectively. Storm, what on earth are you talking about? he demanded.

I don't want you to waste any more time, she told him. You must start making your way now, if you're ever going to amount to anything. This is my way, our way, he said, bewildered. We agreed on it. I will go up there to Chaka's Gate and build our home. Home! She was truly appalled. Up there in the bush me in a grass hut? Mark, are You out of your mind! I thought -'What you're going to do is start making some money, she told him fiercely, and, picking up her blouse, she pulled it over her head, and as her tousled head emerged she went on, and forget about little boys games. I'll be making money. His expression was stiff, and becoming hostile.

What money? she asked, just as frostily. I'll have a salary. A salary! She flung back her head and gave a high peal of scornful laughter. A salary, forsooth! How much? I don't know, he admitted. It isn't really all that important. You're a child, Mark. Do you know that? A salary, twenty pounds a week? Can you really and truly imagine me living on your salary? She gave the word a world of contempt. Do you know who earns salaries? Mr Smothers earns a salary, she was on her feet now, hopping furiously on one leg as she drew on her knickers. Daddy's foremen at the saw-mills earn salaries. The servants that wait on the table, the stable-grooms earn salaries. She was pulling up her riding breeches, and with them all her dignity. Real men don't earn salaries, Mark. Her voice was high and shrill. You know what real men do, don't you? He was buttoning the fly of his breeches also, forced to follow her example, and he shook his head silently. Real men pay salaries, not take them, she said. Do you know that when my father was your age he was already a millionaire! Mark was never able to fathom what it was that triggered him, perhaps the mention of Sean at that particular moment, but suddenly he lost his temper. He felt it like a hot red fog behind his eyes.

I'm not your bloody father, he shouted. Don't you swear at my father, she shouted back. He's five times the man you'll ever be. They were both panting and flushed, clothing rumpled, half-clad, with wild hair and wilder eyes glaring at each other like animals, speechless with hurt and anger.

Storm made the effort. She swallowed painfully, and held out her hands palms upwards. Listen, Mark. I've got it all planned. If you went into timber, selling to the mines, Daddy would give you the agency and we could live in Johannesburg. But Mark's anger was still on him, and his voice was rough and scaly with it.

Thank you, he said. Then I could spend my life grubbing money for you to buy those ridiculous clothes, and Don't you insult me, Mark Anders, she blazed.

Try me, Mark told her. And that's what I'm going to be the rest of my life. If you loved me, you'd respect that. And if you loved me, you wouldn't want me to live in a grass hut. I love you, he shouted her down. But you'll be my wife and you'll do what I decide. Don't challenge me, Mark Anders. I warn you. Don't ever do that! I'll be your husband, he began, but she snatched up her boots and ran to her horse, stooping to loose the hobble and then flinging herself on to its back bare-footed and looked down at him. She was breathless with anger, but she struggled to make her voice icy and cutting. Don't take any bets on thad! And she dragged the horse's head around and kicked him into a run. Where is Missy? Sean demanded as he unfolded his napkin and tucked the corner into his waistcoat, glancing at Storm's empty place at the table. She's not feeling very well, dear, Ruth told him, as she began serving the soup, ladling it out of the fat-bellied tureen in a cloud of fragrant steam. I allowed her to have her dinner sent up to her room. What's wrong with her? Sean looked up with concern creasing his forehead. It's nothing serious, said Ruth firmly, closing the door on further discussion. Sean stared at her for a moment, and then understanding dawned. Oh! he said. The functions of the female body had always been shrouded for Sean Courtney in deepest mystery, and awakened in him an abiding awe. Oh! he said again, and leaned forward to blow noisily on a spoonful of soup to cover his embarrassment, and the niggling resentment that his beloved child was a child no longer.

Across the table, Mark applied himself to his spoon with equal determination, but with an empty aching feeling below his ribs. Where is Missy tonight? Sean asked, with what was for him a certain diffidence. Still not well, "She telephoned Irene Leuchars this morning. Apparently the Leuchars are having a huge party tonight and she wanted to go. She left after lunch. She's driving herself back to Durban in the Cadillac. Where will she stay? Sean demanded.

Vith the Leuchars, naturally. She should have asked me, Sean frowned. You were down at the saw-mills all day, dear. The decision had to be made immediately, or she would have missed the party. I knew you wouldn't mind. Sean minded everything that took his daughter away from him, but he could not say so now. I thought she hated Irene Leuchars, he complained.

That was last month, said Ruth.

I thought she was sick, Sean persisted. That was last night. When is she coming home? She may stay in town for the race-meeting at Greyville on Saturday. Mark Anders listened with the empty space in his chest turning to a great bottomless void. Storm had gone back to join that close group of rich, indolent and privileged young people, to their endless games and their eternal round of extravagant partying, and on Saturday Mark was leaving with two mules for the wilderness beyond Chaka's Gate.

Mark would never fathom how Dirk Courtney knew.

To him it seemed further evidence of the man's power, the tentacles of his influence that reached into every corner and crevice.

I understand you are to make the survey for the Government, to decide whether it's worth developing the proclaimed area beyond Chaka's Gate? he asked Mark.

Mark could still hardly believe the fact that he stood unarmed and completely unprotected here at Great Longwood. His skin tingled with warning of deadly danger, his nerves were drawn like bow-strings, and he walked with exaggerated care, one hand clenched in the hip-pocket of his breeches.

Beside him, Dirk Courtney was tall and courteous and affable. When he turned to make that statement, he smiled a warm spread of the wide and handsome mouth and he laid a hand on Mark's upper arm. A light but friendly touch, which shocked Mark as though a mamba had kissed him with its little flickering black tongue. How does he know it? Mark stared at him, his feet slowing, so that he pulled gently away from Dirk's touch.

If Dirk noticed the withdrawal, it did not show in his smile, and he let his hand fall naturally to his side and took the flat silver cigarette-case from his jacket pocket. Try one, he murmured. They are made especially for me. Mark tasted the incense of the sweetish Turkish tobacco, using the act of lighting the cigarette to cover his uncertainty and surprise. Only Sean Courtney and his close family knew, and of course the Prime Minister's office, the Prime Minister's office, if that was it, as it seemed it must be, then Dirk Courtney's tentacles stretched far indeed. Your silence I must take as confirmation, Dirk told him, as they came down the paved alleyway between two lines of whitewashed loose boxes. From over the halfdoors, the horses stretched out their necks to Dirk and he paused now and then to caress a velvety muzzle with surprisingly gentle fingers, and to murmur an endearment. You are a very silent young man. Dirk smiled that warm endearing smile again. I like a man who can keep his own counsel, and respect the privacy of others. He turned to confront Mark, forcing him to meet his eyes.

Dirk reminded Mark of some glossy cat, one of the big predators, not the tabby domestic variety. The leopard, golden and beautiful and cruel. He wondered at his own courage, or foolhardiness, in coming here right into the leopard's lair. A year ago it might have been suicidal to put himself in this man's hands. Even now, without Sean Courtney's protection, he would never have dared, Yet although it was logical to believe that nobody, not even Dirk Courtney, would dare touch him, now that he was Sean Courtney's protege with all that that implied, yet prickles of apprehension nettled his spine as he looked into those leopard's eyes.

Dirk took his elbow, not giving him opportunity to avoid the touch, and led him through a gateway to the stud pens.

The two pens were enclosed with ten-foot high pole fences, carefully padded to prevent damage to the expensive animals that would be confined here. The earth within the rectangular enclosures was ankle-deep with fresh sawdust, and though one was empty, there was a group of four grooms busy in the nearest pen.

Two of them had the mare on a double lead rein. She was a young animal, a deep red bay in colour, and she had the beautiful balanced head of the Arab, wide nostrils which promised great heart and stamina, and strong but delicate bones.

Dirk Courtney placed a booted foot on the bottom rail of the pen, and leaned forward to look at her with a gloating pride. She cost me a thousand guineas, he said, and it was a bargain. The two other grooms had the stallion in check. An old, heavily built animal, with grey dappling his muzzle. He wore a girdle, strapped under his belly, and up between the hindlegs, a cage like an old-fashioned chastity belt of woven light chain that was called the teaser. It would prevent him effectively covering the mare.

The grooms gave him rein to approach the mare, but the instant she felt his gentle nuzzling touch under her tail, she put her head down and lashed out with both back legs, a murderous hissing cut of hooves that flew within inches of the stallion's head.

He snorted and backed away. Then, undeterred, he closed with her once more, reaching out to touch her flank, running his nose with a gentle ]over's touch across the glossy hide, but the mare made her skin shudder wildly, as though she were beset by bees, and she let out a screaming whinny of outrage at the importunate touch on her maidenly virtue. One of the grooms was dragged down on his knees as she flashed at the stallion with terrible yellow teeth, catching him in the neck and ripping open his old dappled hide in a shallow bloody cut before they pulled her off. Poor old beggar, murmured Mark, although the injury was superficial; it was the indignity of the whole business that aroused Mark's sympathy. The old stallion must endure the kicks and bites, until at last the temperamental filly was wooed and willing. Then he would be led away, his work done. Never waste sympathy for the losers in this world, Dirk advised him. There are too many of them In the sawdust-covered arena, the filly lifted her tail, the long glossy hairs forming a soft waving Plume, and she urinated a sharp spurt that was evidence of her arousal.

The stallion circled her, -rolling back his upper lip, exposing his teeth, and his shoulder muscles spasmed violently as he nodded his head vigorously and reached out to her again.

She stood quietly now, with her tail still raised, and trembled at the soft loving touch of his muzzle, ready at last to accept him. All right, Dirk shouted. Take him out. But it required the strength of both grooms to drag his head around and lead him out of the tall gate that Dirk swung open. Strangely enough, I don't believe that you are one of this life's losers, Dirk told Mark easily, as they waited by the gate. That is why you are here at this moment. I only trouble myself with a certain type of man. Men with either talent, or strength or vision, or all of those virtues. I believe you may be of that type. Mark knew then that all this had been carefully arranged, the meeting with Peter Botes, Marion Littlejohn's brother-in-law, outside the post office in Ladyburg, the urgent summons to Dirk Courtney's estate he had delivered, so there was no opportunity to report to Sean Courtney and discuss the invitation, and now this erotic show of mating horses, all of it planned to confuse and unsettle Mark, to keep him unbalanced. I think you are more like this, Dirk went on, as the grooms led in the stud stallion, an animal too valued to risk damaging by putting to an unwilling female, a tall horse, black as a rook's wing, high-stepping and proud, kicking the soft sawdust with polished hooves, and then coming up hard and trembling on stiff legs as he smelt the waiting mare, and the great black root grew out of his belly, long as a man's arm and as thick, arrogant, and with a flaring head that pulsed with a life of its own and beat impatiently against the stallion's chest. The losers toil, and the winners take the spoil, said Dirk, as the huge beast reared up over the mare. One of the grooms darted forward to guide him, and the mare hunched her back to receive the long gliding penetration. The winners and the losers, he repeated, watching the stallion work with glistening bulging quarters, and Dirk's handsome face was flushed with high colour, and his hands gripped the poles of the fence until the knuckles blanched like marble.

When at last the stallion dropped back off the mare on to four legs, Dirk sighed, took Mark's elbow again and led him away. You were present when I spoke with my father of my dream.

I was there, Mark agreed. Oh good, Dirk laughed genially. You have a voice, I was beginning to doubt it, But my information is that you have a good brain also Mark glanced at him sharply and Dirk assured him, Naturally, I have made it my business to find out all about you. You know certain details of my plans, I must be in a position to protect myself. They skirted the ornamental pond, below the homestead, the surface covered with flat lily pads and the smell of their blooms light and sugary in the afternoon heat, and they went on through the formal rose garden, neither of them speaking again until they had entered the high-ceilinged and overfurnished study; Dirk had closed the wooden shutters against the heat, making the room cool and gloomy, and somehow forbidding.

He waved Mark to a chair across from the fireplace and went to the table on which stood a silver tray of bottles and crystal. Drink? he asked, and Mark shook his head and watched Dirk pour from a black bottle. You know my dream, Dirk spoke, still concentrating on his task. What did you think of it?

It's a large concept, Mark said cautiously. Large? Dirk laughed. It's not the word I would have chosen. He saluted Mark with the glass and sipped at it, watching him over the rim. Strange how the fates work, Dirk thought, watching the slim graceful figure. Twice I tried to be rid of the nuisance he could have caused me. If I had succeeded, I would not be able to use him now. He hitched one leg over the corner of his desk and set the glass aside carefully to leave both hands free, and he gesticulated as he talked. We are talking of opening a whole new frontier, a huge step forward for our nation, work for tens of thousands of people, new towns, new harbours, railways, progress. He spread his hands, a gesture of growth and limitless opportunity. That one wonderful word that describes it all, progress! And anybody who tries to stop that is worse than a fool, he's a criminal, a traitor to his country, and should be treated as one. He should be brushed mercilessly aside, by any means that comes to hand. He paused now and glowered at Mark. The threat was barely concealed, and Mark stirred restlessly in his chair. On the other hand, Dirk smiled suddenly, like a flooding beam of sunlight bursting through the grey overcast of a storm sky. Every man who works towards the fulfilment of this huge concept will be fully entitled to a share of the rewards. What do you want from me? Mark asked, and the abrupt question caught Dirk with his hands poised and the next flight of oratory on his lips. He let the hands drop to his sides, and watched Mark's face expectantly, as though there was something still to come. And what are the rewards you speak of? Mark went on, and Dirk laughed delightedly, those were the words for which he had been waiting, each man has a coin for which he will work.

You know what I want from you, he said.

Yes, I think I do, Mark agreed.

Tell me what I want, Dirk laughed again. You want a report that recommends that the development of the Chaka's Gate proclaimed area as a National Park is not practical. You said it, not me. Dirk picked up his glass again and lifted it to Mark. But, none the less, I'll drink to it And the rewards? Mark went on. The satisfaction of knowing that you are doing your patriotic duty for the peoples of this nation, Dirk told him solemnly. I had all the satisfaction I need for a lifetime in France, Mark said softly. But I found out you can't eat or drink it, and Dirk laughed delightedly. That really is choice, I must remember it. Are you certain you won't have a drink? Mark smiled for the first time. Yes, I'll change my mind. Whisky? Please. Dirk stood up and went to the silver tray, and he realized that he felt a sneaking relief. If it had proved that this man had no price, as he had started to believe possible, it would have destroyed one of the headstones on which he had based his whole philosophy of life. But it was all right again now. The man had a price, and he felt a sudden contempt and scorn, it would be money, and a paltry sum at that.

There was nothing different about this fellow.

He turned back to Mark. Here is something you can drink. He gave him the crystal glass. Now let's discuss something you can eat.

He went back to the desk, slid open one of the drawers, and took out of it a brown manilla envelope, sealed with red wax.

He laid it on the desk-top, and picked up his own glass.

That contains an earnest of my good will, he said. How earnest? One thousand pounds, Dirk said. Enough to buy a mountain of bread. One of your companies bought a farm from my grandfather, Mark spoke carefully. He had promised that farm to me, and he died without leaving any of the money. Dirk's expression had closed suddenly and his eyes were wary and watchful. For a moment he played with the idea of feigning ignorance, but already he had admitted he had investigated Mark thoroughly. Yes, he nodded. I know about that. The old man wasted it all away. The price of that farm was three thousand pounds, Mark went on. I feel that I am still owed that money. Dirk dropped his hand into the drawer again, and brought out two identical sealed envelopes. He laid them carefully on top of the first envelope. By a strange coincidence, he said. I just happen to have that exact amount with me. A paltry sum indeed, he smiled his contempt. What had made him suspect that there was something unusual about this man, he wondered. In the desk drawer were seven other identical manilla envelopes, each containing one hundred ten pound notes. He had been prepared to go that high for the report -no, he corrected himself, I would have been prepared to go further, much further. Come, he smiled. Here it is. And he watched Mark Anders rise from the chair and cross the room, pick up the envelopes and slip them into his pocket.

Sean Courtney's beard bristled like the quills on the back of an angry porcupine, and his face turned slowly to the colour of a badly fired brick. Good God! he growled, as he stared at the three envelopes on his desk top. The seals had been carefully split and the contents arranged in three purple blue fans of crisp treasury bills. You took his money? Yes, sir, Mark agreed, standing in front of the desk like a wayward pupil before the head pedagogue. Then you have the brass to come to me with it? Sean made a gesture as though to sweep the piles of bills on to the floor. Take the filthy stuff away from me. Your first lesson, General. The money is always important, Mark said quietly. Yes, but what must I do with this? As patron of the Society for the Protection of African Wildlife, your duty would be to send the donor a letter of acceptance and thanks for his generous donation What on earth are you talking about? Sean stared at him. What society is this? I have just formed it, sir, and elected you patron. I am sure we will be able to draw up a suitable memorandum of objects and rules of membership, but what it boils down to is a campaign to make people aware of what we are going to do, to gather public support, Mark spoke rapidly, pouring it all out, and Sean listened with the brick colour of his face slowly returning to normal, and a slow but delighted grin pulling his beard out of shape. We'll use this money for advertisements in the press to make people aware of their heritage, Mark raced on, ideas tumbling out of him, and immediately spawning new ideas, while Sean listened, his grin becoming a spasmodic chuckle that shook his shoulders, and then finally a great peal of laughter, that went on for many minutes. Enough! at last he bellowed delightedly. Sit down, Mark, that's enough for now. And he groped for a handkerchief to mop his eyes and blow the great hooked beak of a nose like a trumpet, while he recovered his self-control. It's indecent, he chortled. Positively sacrilegious! You have no respect for money at all. It's un-natural. Oh, yes, I have, but money is only a means, not an end, sir, Mark laughed also, for the General's mirth was contagious. my God, Mark. You are a prize, you really are. Where ever did I find you? He gave one last chuckle, and then grew serious. He drew a clean sheet of paper from the sidedrawer and began to make notes. As though I haven't enough work already, he growled. Now let's draw up a list of objects for this bloody society of yours. They worked for nearly three hours, and Ruth Courtney had to come and call them to the dinner table. In a minute, dear, Sean told her, and placed a paperweight on the thick pile of notes he had made; he was about to rise when he frowned at Mark.

'You have chosen a dangerous enemy for yourself, young man, he warned him.

Yes, I know, Mark nodded soberly.

You say that with feeling. He stared at Mark questioningly. Mark hesitated a moment and then he began. You know my grandfather, John Anders, you spoke of him once before. Sean nodded, and sank back into the padded leather chair. He had land, eight thousand acres, he called it Andersland Sean nodded again, and Mark went on carefully, telling it all without embellishment, stating the facts, and when he had to guess or make conjecture, stating that it was so.

Again Ruth came to call them to dinner, just when Mark was describing the night on the escarpment when the gunmen had come to his camp. She was about to insist they come before the meal spoiled, but then she saw their faces and came silently to stand behind Sean's chair and listen, her face becoming paler and more set.

He told them about Chaka's Gate how he had searched for his grandfather's grave and the men who had come to hunt him, and when he had finished the story they were all silent, until at last Sean roused himself, sighed, a gusty, sorrowful sound, before he spoke. Why didn't you report this? Report what? Who would have believed me? You could have gone to the police. I have not a shred of evidence that points to Dirk Courtney, except my own absolute certainty. And he dropped his eyes. It's such a wild, unlikely story that I was afraid to tell even you, until this moment. Yes, Sean nodded. I can see that. Even now I don't want to believe it is true. I'm sorry, said Mark simply. I know it's true, but I don't want to believe it. Sean shook his head, and lowered his chin on to his chest. Ruth, standing behind him, placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. Oh God, how much more must I suffer for him?

he whispered, then lifted his head again. You will be in even greater danger now, Mark. I don't think so, General. I am under your protection, and he knows itGod grant that is enough, Sean muttered, but what can we do against him? How can we stop this, Sean paused, seeking the word, and then hissed it savagely, this monster. There is no evidence, Mark said. Nothing to use against him. He has been too clever for that by far There is evidence, said Sean with complete certainty. If all this is true, then there is evidence, somewhere. Trojan the mule's broad back felt like a barrel under Mark, and the sun beat through his shirt so that his sweat rose in dark damp patches between his shoulder blades and at his armpits, as he jogged down the bank of the Bubezi with Spartan, the second heavily burdened mule, following him on a lead rein.

In the river bed on one of the sugary white sandbanks, he let the mules wade in knee-deep and begin to drink, sucking up the clear water noisily so that he could feel the animal's belly swelling between his knees.

He pushed his hat on to the back of his head and wiped away the drops from his brow with one thumb as he looked up at the portals of Chaka's Gate. They seemed to fall out of the sky like cascades of stone, sheer and eternal, so vast and solid that they dwarfed the land and the river at their feet.

The double pannier on the back of the lead mule was the less onerous of the burdens that he had brought with him from the teeming reaches of civilization. He had brought also a load of guilt and remorse, the sorrow of a lost love, and the galling of duty left unperformed. But now, beneath the cliffs of Chaka's Gate, he felt his burden lightening, and his shoulders gathering strength.

Something indefinable seemed to reach out to him from across the Bubezi River, a feeling of destiny running its appointed course, or more a sense of home -coming. Yes, he thought, with sudden joy, I am coming home at last.

Abruptly Mark was in a hurry. He pulled up Trojan's reluctant head, with water still pouring from his loose rubbery lips, and kicked him forward into the swirling green eddy of the river, slipping from the saddle to swim beside him when he lost his footing.

As the big soup-plate hooves touched bottom, he threw his leg back across the saddle and rode up the far bank, his breeches clinging to his thighs and his sodden shirt streaming water.

Suddenly, for the first time in a week, and for no good reason, he laughed, a light unstrained burst of laughter that hung about Men like a shimmering halo long afterwards.

The sound was so low, and the hooves of Trojan the grey mule were plugging into the soft earth along the river with a rhythmic chuffing sound, so that Mark was not sure of what he had heard.

He reined Trojan to a stop and listened. The silence was so complete that it seemed to hiss like static, and when a wood dove gave its melodious and melancholy whistle a mile along the river, it seemed close enough to touch.

Mark shook his head, and flicked the reins. At the first hoof fall, the sound came again, and this time there was no mistaking it. The hair down the nape of Mark's neck prickled, and he straightened quickly out of his comfortable saddle slouch. He had heard that sound only once before, but in circumstances that made certain he would never forget it.

It was close, very close, coming from the patch of thick green riverine bush between him and the river, a tangled thicket of wild loquat and hanging lianas, typical cover for the animal that had called.

It was a weird unearthly sound, a fluid sound, almost like liquor poured from the neck of a stone jug, and only one who had heard it before would recognize the distress and warning call of a fully grown leopard.

Mark swung the mule away, and set him lumbering up the rising ground until he reached the spreading shade of a leadwood, where he tethered him and loosened his girth.

Then he slipped the Marmlicher out of its scabbard, and quickly checked the loaded magazine, the fat brass cartridges with their copper-jacketed noses were still bright and slick with wax, and he snapped the bolt closed.

He carried the rifle casually in his left hand, for he had no intention at all of using it. Instead he was aware of a pleasurable glow of excitement and anticipation. In the two months of hard riding and walking since his return to Chaka's Gate, this was the first chance he had been given of sighting a leopard.

There were many leopard along the Bubezi, he had seen their sign almost daily, and heard them sawing and coughing in the night. Always the leopard and the kudu are the last to give way before man and his civilization. Their superior cunning and natural stealth protect them long after the other species have succumbed, Now he had a chance at a sighting. The patch of riverine bush though dense, was small, and he longed for a sighting, even if just a flash of yellow in deep shade, something concrete, a firm entry in his logbook, another species to add to the growing list of his head count, He circled out cautiously, his eyes flickering from the thick green wall of bush to soft ground at his feet, checking for spoor as well as for actual sight of the yellow cat.

just above the steep river bank he stopped abruptly, and stared down before going on to one knee to touch the earth.

They weren't leopard tracks, but others he had grown to know and recognize. There was no special distinguishing characteristic, no missing toes, no scarring or deformity, but Mark's trained eye recognized the shape and size, the slight spraying toe-in way the man walked, the length of his stride and a toe-heavy impression, that of a quick alert tread. The distress call of the animal in the thicket made sense now. Pungushe, said Mark quietly. The jackal at work again. The tracks were doubled, entering the thicket and returning. The inward tracks seemed deeper, less extended, as though the man carried a burden, but the outward tracks were lighter, the man walked freely.

Slowly, Mark edged in towards the thicket, following the man's prints. Pausing for long minutes to examine the undergrowth carefully every few paces, or squatting down to give himself better vision along the ground under the hanging hanas and branches.

Now that he knew what he was going to find, the pleasurable glow of excitement had given way to the chill of anger

and the cold knowledge of mortal danger.

Something white caught his eye in the gloomy depths of the thicket. He stared at it moments before he saw the white, bleeding pith of a tree trunk, where it had been ripped by the claws of an anguished beast, long raking marks deep through the dark woody bark. His anger slid in his belly like an uncoiling serpent.

He moved sideways and slowly forward, the rifle held ready now, low across his hips, three paces before he stopped again.

On the edge of the thicket there was an area of flattened grass and scrub; the soft black leaf-mould earth had been churned and disturbed, something heavy had been dragged back and forth, and there was a fleck of wet red lit by a single beam of falling sunlight that might have been the petal of a wild flower, or a drop of blood.

He heard another sound then, the clink of metal on metal, link on link, steel chain moved stealthily in the dark depths of the thicket and it sighted him. He knew where the animal was lying now, and he moved out sideways, crabbing step after step, slipping the safety-catch of the rifle, and holding it at high port across his chest.