A Sparrow Falls

How are we going to take you home? Marion asked. Will you fit in the basket? In the river bed, the lioness carried the second cub through the shallows, and was followed by one of the heroes of the litter, struggling along gamely through the thick white sand. However, when he reached the edge of the shallow stream and tested it with one paw, his newfound courage deserted him at the cold wet touch, and he sat down and wept bitterly.

The lioness, by this time almost wild with distraction and frustration, turned back, and dropped her burden which immediately set off in clumsy gallop for the jessie thicket again, then she seized the weeping hero instead and trotted back through the stream and set off determinedly for the far bank.

Her huge round pads made no sound in the soft earth as she came up the bank, carrying the cub.

Marion heard the crackling spluttering explosion of sound behind her, and she whirled to her feet in one movement.

The lioness crouched on the lip of the bank fifty yards away. It warned her again with that terrible sound.

All that Marion saw were the eyes. They were a blazing yellow, a ferocious terrifying yellow, and she screamed, a wild high ringing, rising sound.

The sound launched the lioness into her charge, and it came with an unbelievably fluid flowing speed that turned into a yellow rushing blur. She snaked in low, and the sand spurted beneath her paws, all claws fully extended, the lips drawn back in a fixed silent snarl, the teeth exposed, long and white and pointed.

Marion turned to run, and had gone five paces when the lioness took her. She pulled her down with a swipe of a forepaw across the small of her back and five curved yellow claws cut deeply, four inches through skin and muscle, opening the abdominal cavity like a sabre cut, crushing the vertebrae and bursting both kidneys instantaneously.

It was a blow that would have killed even a full-grown ox, and it hurled Marion twenty feet forward, but as she fell on her back, the lioness was on her again.

The jaws were wide open, the long white fangs framed the deep wet pink cavern of tongue and throat. In an instant of incredibly heightened perception, Marion saw the smooth ridges of firm pink flesh that covered the arched roof of the lioness mouth in regular patterns, and she smelt the meaty stink of her breath.

Marian lay twisted under the great yellow cat, she was still screaming and her lower body lay at an odd angle from the shattered spine, but she lifted both arms to protect her face.

The lioness bit into the forearms, just below the elbows and the bone crunched sharply, shattering into slivers and splinters in the mangled flesh, both arms were severed almost through.

Then the lioness seized Marion's shoulder, and worried it until the long eye teeth meshed through broken bone and fat and tissue, and Marion kept screaming, twisting and writhing under the cat.

The lioness took a long time to kill her, confused by her own anger and the unfamiliar taste and shape of the victim.

She tore and bit and ripped for almost a minute before she found the throat.

When the lioness stood up at last, her head and neck were a gory mask, her fur sticky and sodden with blood.

Her tail still lashed from side to side in residual anger, but she licked her face with a long dextrous tongue and her lip curled at the sweet unfamiliar flavour. She wiped her face carefully with her paws before trotting back to her cub, and licking him also with long pink protective strokes.

Marion's broken torn body lay where she left it, until Pungushe's wives came, a little before sundown.

Mark and Pungushe crossed the river in darkness with the moonlight turning the sand-banks to ghostly grey, and the round white moon itself reflected perfectly in the still mirror-surface of the pool below the main camp. The turbulence of their fording shattered the image into a thousand points of light, like a crystal glass flung on to a stone floor.

As they rode up the bank, they heard the death wall in the night, that terrible keening, the mourning of Zulu women. The men halted involuntarily, the sound striking dread into both of them. Come! shouted Mark and kicked one foot from the stirrup. Pungushe grabbed the leather and swung off his feet as Mark lashed Trojan into a gallop and they tore up the hill.

The fire that the women had lit threw a grotesque yellow wavering glow, and weird dancing shadows.

The four women sat in a group around the long, karosswrapped bundle.

None of them looked up as the men ran forward into the firelight. Who is it? Mark demanded. What has happened? Pungushe seized his eldest wife by the shoulders, and shook her, trying to interrupt the hysteria of mourning, but Mark strode forward impatiently and lifted one end of the kaross.

He stared for a moment, not understanding, not recognizing, then suddenly all colour fled from his face and he turned and ran into the darkness. There he fell to his knees and leaned forward to retch up the bitter bile of horror.

Mark took Marion into Ladyburg, wrapped in a canvas buck-sheet, and strapped into the side-car of the Ariel.

He stayed for the funeral and for the grief and recriminations of her family. if only you hadn't taken her out there into the bush, if only you had stayed with her, If only, On the third day he went back to Chaka's Gate. Pungushe was waiting for him at the fold of the river.

They sat together in the sunlight under the cliffs, and when Mark gave Pungushe a cigarette, he broke off the cork tip carefully and they smoked in silence until Mark asked, Have you read the sign, Pungushe? I have, Jarnela. Tell me what happened. The lioness was moving her little ones, taking them one at a time across the river from the jessie bush. Slowly, accurately, Pungushe reconstructed the tragedy from the marks left in the earth which he had studied in Mark's absence, and when he was finished speaking, they were silent again.

Where is she now? Mark asked quietly. She has taken the little ones north, but slowly, and three days ago, the day after, Pungushe hesitated, the day after the thing was done, she killed an impala ram, and the cubs ate a little with her. She begins now to wean them. Mark stood up and they forded the river, climbing together slowly up through the forest to the cottage.

While Pungushe waited on the front stoep, Mark went into the small deserted home. The wild flowers had died and wilted in their vases, giving the room a sad and dejected feeling. Mark began to gather up all Marion's personal possessions, her clothing, and cheap but treasured jewellery, her combs and brushes, and the few hoarded pots of cosmetics. He packed them carefully into her largest suitcase to take to her sister, and when he was finished he carried the case out and locked it in the tool shed. It was too painful a reminder to keep in the house with him.

Then he went back and changed out of his town clothes.

He took the Marinlicher down from the rack and loaded it with brass cartridges from a fresh package. The casings of the cartridges were glistening yellow under their film of wax, the bullets soft-nosed for maximum shock at impact.

When he went out on to the stoep carrying the rifle, Pungushe was still waiting. Pungushe, he said. We have work to do now. The Zulu stood up slowly, and for a moment they stared at each other. Then Pungushe dropped his eyes and nodded.

Take the spoor, Mark commanded softly.

They found where the lioness had killed the impala, but the scavengers of the bush had cleaned the area effectively.

There were a few splinters of bone that had fallen out of the crushing jaws of the hyena , a little hair, pulled out in tufts, a shred of dried skin, and part of the skull with the twisted black horns still intact. But the spoor was cold.

Wind and the trampling feet of the scavengers, the jackals, and hyena, the vultures and marabou storks, had wiped sign. She will keep going north, said Pungushe, and Mark did not ask how he knew that, for the Zulu could not have answered. He simply knew.

They went slowly on up the valley, Pungushe scouting ahead of the mule, making wide tracks back and forth, casting carefully for the sign, and on the second day he cut the spoor. She has turned now. Pungushe squatted over the pug marks, the big saucer-sized pads and the smaller myriad prints of the cubs. I think she was going back towards the Usutu. He nodded over the spoor, touching it with the thin reed wand he carried as a tracking stick. She was taking the little ones back, but now she has changed her mind. She has turned southwards, she must have passed close to where we camped last night. She is staying in the valley. it is her valley now, and she will not leave it. No, Mark nodded grimly. She will not leave the valley again. Follow, Pungushe. The lioness was moving slowly and the spoor ran hotter every hour. They found where she had hunted without success. Pungushe pointed out where she had stalked, an d then the deep driving back claws had raked the earth as she leapt to the back of a full-grown zebra. Twenty paces further, she had fallen heavily, dislodged by the stallion's wild plunging. She had struck shoulder first, Pungushe said, and the zebra had run free but bleeding from the long slash of her claws. The lioness had limped away, and lain under a Thorn tree for a long time before rising and going back slowly to where she had left her cubs. Probably she had torn muscle and sinew in that fall. When will we come up with her? Mark asked, his face a stony mask of vengeance. Perhaps before sunset. But they lost two hours on a rocky ridge, and Pungushe had to cast widely and work with all his skill to cut the spoor again at the point where it doubled sharply and turned west towards the escarpment.

Pungushe and Mark camped on her spoor with only a tiny fire for comfort and they lay directly on the earth.

Mark did not sleep. He lay and watched the waning moon come up over the tree tops, but it was only when Pungushe spoke quietly that he realized that the Zulu also was sleepless. The cubs are not weaned, he said. But they will take a long time to die. No, Mark replied. I will shoot them also. Pungusbe roused himself and took a little snuff, leaning on one elbow and staring into the coals of the fire. She has tasted human blood, Mark said at last. Even in his grief and anger, he sensed Pungushe's quiet disapproval and wanted to justify what he was about to do. She did not feed, Pungushe stated. Mark felt his gorge rise and the bitter taste of it again as he remembered the terrible mutilation, but Pungushe was right, the lioness had not eaten any of that Poor torn flesh. Pungushe, she was my wife. Yes, Pungushe nodded. That is so. Also it was her cub. Mark considered the words, and felt for the first time a confusion of his own objects. The lioness had acted out of one of the oldest instincts of life, the urge to protect her young, but what were his motives? I have to kill her, Pungushe, he said flatly, and there was some slimy obscene thing in his belly; it moved there for the first time, and he tried to deny its existence.

Marion was dead. Sweet, loyal, dutiful Marion, who had been all that a man could ask for in a wife. She had died an unspeakable death, and now Mark was alone, or did the word free come too readily to his tongue?

Suddenly he had an image of a slim, dark lovely girl and a lusty naked little boy walking in the sunset at the edge of the sea.

Guilt, that slimy thing, uncoiled in his belly and began to ripple and undulate like a serpent, and he could not crush it down. She has to die, Mark repeated, and perhaps his own guilt could die in that same purging. Very well, Pungushe agreed. We will find her before noon tomorrow. He lay back and pulled his kaross over his head and his voice was muffled, the words almost lost. Let us hurry now towards the great emptiness They found the lioness early the next morning. She had moved in close under the hills of the escarpment, and when the first heat of the day made the cubs flag and begin to trail disconsolately along behind her, she had selected an umbrella thorn with a flat-topped mass of foliage spreading from the straight trunk and she had lain in the shade on her side, exposing the soft creamy fur of her belly and the double row of flat black nipples.

Now the cubs were almost satiated, only two of the greediest still suckled valiantly, their bellies bulging and the effort of swallowing almost too much.

The indefatigable hunter of tails was now concentrating all his prowess on his mother's long whip-lash with. its fine black tuft of hair which she jerked out from under his nose at the very instant of each attack.

The other three were fighting off sleep, with violent outbursts of undirected energy, succumbing slowly to drooping eyelids and strained bellies, until at last they lay in an untidy heap of fluff and fur.

Mark was one hundred and twenty yards downwind. He lay belly down behind a small ant-heap, and it had taken almost an hour to work in this close. The umbrella thorn was set in an area of short open grassland, and he had been forced to stalk flat, tortoising forward on his elbows with the rifle held across the crook. Can we get closer? Mark asked, his whisper merely a soft breath. The short stiff yellow grass was just high enough to screen the cat when she lay flat on her side. Jamela, I could get close enough to touch her. He put the emphasis on the word I, and left the rest of it unstated.

So they waited in the sun, another twenty minutes until at last the lioness lifted her head.

Perhaps some deep sense of survival had warned her of the presence of the hunters. Her head came up in a flash of yellow movement, the extraordinary swiftness so characteristic of all the big cats, and she stared fixedly downwind, the sector of maximum danger.

For long seconds she watched, and the wide yellow eyes were steady and unblinking. Sensing her concern, two of the cubs sat up sleepily and waited with her.

Mark felt the lioness was looking directly at him, but he obeyed the law of absolute stillness. The first movement of lifting the Marinlicher would send her away in a blur of speed. So Mark waited while the seconds spun out. Then suddenly the lioness dropped her head and stretched out flat once again. She is restless, warned Pungushe. We can get no closer. I cannot shoot from here. We will wait, said Pungushe.

All the cubs slept now, and the lioness dozed, but always all her senses were working, nostrils tasting carefully each breath of the wind for the taint of danger, the big round ears never still, flicking to the slightest sound of wind or branch, bird or animal.

Mark lay in the direct sunlight, and the sweat rose to stain his shirt. A tsetse fly settled behind his ear and bit into the softness of his neck, but he did not make the movement of brushing it away. It was an hour before his chance came.

The lioness rose suddenly to her full height, and swung her tail from side to side. She was too restless to stay here under the thorn tree any longer. The cubs sat up groggily, and looked to her with puzzled furrowed faces.

The lioness was standing broadside to where Mark lay.

She held her head low, and her jaws were a little open as she panted softly in the heat. Mark was close enough to see the dark specks of the tsetse fly sitting on her flanks.

She was still in shadow but now she was backlit by the pale yellow grass beyond her. It was a perfect shot, the point of the elbow the hunter's aiming mark; the span of a hand back from there, and the bullet would rake both lungs, the span of a hand lower would take the heart cleanly.

The lungs were certain, but the heart was swift. Mark chose the heart and lifted the rifle to his shoulder. The safety-catch had long before been set at the firing position.

Mark took up the slack in the trigger and felt the final resistance before the mechanism tripped.

The bullet was 230 grains in weight, and the bronze jacket of the slug was tipped with a grey blob of lead so that it would mushroom on impact and open massive damage through the lioness's chest cavity.

The lioness called her cubs with a soft moaning grunt, and they scrambled obediently to their feet, still a little unsteady from sleep.

She walked out into the sunlight, with that loose feline gait, her head swinging from side to side at each pace, the long back slightly swayed and the heavy droop of her full dugs thickening the graceful line of her body. No, thought Mark. I will take the lungs. He lifted his aim a fraction, holding steady and true four inches behind the point of the elbow, swinging the rifle to follow her as she went into a short restless trot.

The cubs tumbled along behind her in disorder.

Mark held his aim until she reached the edge of the bush, and then she was gone with the insubstantial blurred movement of a wisp of brown smoke on the wind.

When she was gone, he lowered the rifle and stared after her.

Pungushe saw the thing break in him at last. The cold stillness of hatred and guilt and horror broke, and Mark began to cry, hacking tearing sobs that scoured and purged.

It is a difficult thing for a man to watch another weep, especially if that man is your friend.

Pungashe stood up quietly and walked back to where they had tethered the mule. He sat alone in the sun and took a little snuff and waited for Mark.

GOVERNMENT MINISTER SPeAKS ON DUTY To HUMANITY

The newly appointed Deputy Minister of Lands, Mr. Dirk Courtney, expressed concern today at the mauling of a young woman in the proclaimed area of Northern Zululand.

The woman, Mrs. Marion Anders, was the wife of the Government Ranger in the area. She was mauled to death by a lioness last Friday.

This unfortunate incident underlines the grave danger of allowing wild animals to exist in proximity to settled areas of human habitation.

Residents in these areas will be in constant danger of animal attack, of crop depredation and game-borne diseases of domestic. animals as long as this position is allowed to continue.

Mr. Dirk Courtney said that the rinderpest epidemic if at the turn of the century had accounted for a loss of domestic cattle estimated to exceed two million head.

Rinderpest was a game-borne disease. The minister pointed out, We cannot risk a repetition of such a calamity. The proclaimed area of Northern Zululand encompasses both highly valuable arable land, and a major watershed vital to proper conservation of our natural resources. If the full potential of our national assets is to be exploited, these areas must be turned over to properly controlled development. The minister went on, Your Government has placed priority on this issue, and we will be placing legislation before Parliament at the next sitting. Mark read the article through carefully. It was placed prominently on the leader page of the Natal Witness. There are more, General Sean Courtney thumbed open a slim folder with half a dozen other cuttings, take them with you. You'll see it's all the same general purport. Dirk Courtney is beating the drum with a very big stick, I'm afraid. He's in such a position of power now. I never dreamed he would be a Deputy Minister. Yes, Sean nodded. He has rushed to power, but on the other hand we still have a voice. One of our members in a solid seat has stood down for Jannie Smuts, even I have been offered a seat in a safer constituencyWill you take it, Sir? Sean shook his silver beard slowly. I've had a long time in public life, my boy, and anything you do too long becomes a bore. He nodded as he thought about his words. Of course, that's not strictly true. I am tired, let the younger ones with more energy pick up the reins now.

Jannie Smuts will keep in close touch, he knows he can call on me, but I feel like an old Zulu chief. I just want to sit in the sun, drink beer, grow fat and count my cattle What about Chaka's Gate, Sir? Mark pleaded.

I have spoken to Jannie Smuts and some of the others, on both sides of the house. We have a lot of support in the new Government as well. I don't want to make it a party issue, I'd like to see it as an issue of each man's own conscience.

They went on talking until Ruth intervened reluctantly. It's after midnight, dear. You can finish your talk in the morning. When are you leaving, Mark? I should be back at Chaka's Gate tomorrow night. Mark felt a prick of guilt as he lied. He knew damned well he was not going home just yet a while. But you'll stay for lunch tomorrow? Yes I'd like that. Thank you. As Mark rose he picked up the file of newspaper clippings from Sean's desk. I'll let you have them back tomorrow, Sir. However, the moment Mark was alone in his room, he dropped into an easy chair and turned avidly to the reverse side of the newspaper cutting he had brought with him.

He had not dared to turn over the cutting and read the words that had caught his eye in the General's presence, but now he lingered over them, re-reading and savouring.

Part of the article was missing, scissored away when the Deputy Minister's speech had been trimmed, but there wasenough.

ExcEPTIONAL EXHIBITION BY YOUNG ARTIST Presently showing at the sample rooms of the Marine Hotel on the Marine Parade is an exhibition of thirty paintings by a young lady artist.

For Miss Storm Courtney, it is her first public exhibition and even a much older and more established artist could have been justly gratified with such a reception by the art-lovers of our fair city. After the first five days, twenty-one of her paintings had found enthusiastic purchasers at prices as high as fifty guineas each. Miss Courtney has a classical conception of form, combined with both a sure sense of colour and a mature and confident execution rare in an artist of such tender years.

Worthy of special mention is Number 16, Greek athlete at rest. This painting, property of the artist and not for sale, is a lyrical composition that would perhaps raise the eyebrows of the more old-fashioned. It is an unashamedly sensual ode to Here the scissors had cut through, leaving Mark with a disturbing unfinished feeling. He read it once more, inordinately pleased that Storm had reverted to her maiden name with which to sign her work. Then carefully he folded the cutting into his wallet, and he sat in the chair staring at the wall, until he fell asleep, still fully dressed.

A young Zulu lass, no more than sixteen years of age, opened the door of the cottage. She was dressed in the traditional white cotton dustcoat of the nanny and she carried baby John on her hip.

Both nanny and child regarded Mark with huge solemn eyes, but the nanny's relief was patent when Mark addressed her in fluent Zulu.

At the sound of Mark's voice John let out an excited squawk that could have been recognition, but was probably merely a friendly greeting. He began to leap up and down on the nanny's hip with such force that she had to grab to prevent him taking off like a sky rocket, He reached out both hands towards Mark, burbling and laughing and shouting, and Mark took him, all warm and wriggling and baby-smelling, from the maid. John immediately seized a handful of Mark's hair and tried to remove it by the roots.

Half an hour later when Mark handed him back to the little moon-faced maid, and went down the steep pathway to the beach, John's indignant howls of protest followed him, only fading with distance.

Mark kicked off his shoes and left them and his shirt above the high-tide mark, then he turned northwards and followed the white sweep of sand, his bare feet leaving wet prints on the smooth firm edge of the seashore.

He had walked a mile, and there was no sign of any other person. The beach sand was rippled by static wind-blown wavelets, and dappled with the webbed prints of sea-birds.

On his right hand, the surf rose in long glassy lines, curling green and then dropping over in a crash of white water that shook the sand beneath his feet. on his left hand, the dense, dark green bush rose above the white beach, and again beyond that, the far blue hills and taller bluer sky.

He was alone, until he saw, perhaps a mile ahead, another solitary figure, also following the edge of the sea, a far small and lonely figure, coming towards him, still too distant to tell whether it was man or woman, friend or stranger.

Mark lengthened his stride, and the figure drew nearer, clearer.

Mark began to run, and the figure ahead of him stopped suddenly, and stood with that stillness poised on the edge of flight.

Then suddenly the stillness exploded, and the figure was racing to him.

It was a woman, a woman with dark silky hair streaming in the wind, a woman with outstretched arms and flying bare brown feet, and white teeth and blue, very blue eyes.

They were alone in the bedroom. Baby John's cot had been removed to the small dining-room next door, since he had begun to show an interest in everything that looked like a good romp, hanging on the edge of his cot with shouts of applause and approbation, and then trying his utmost to scale the wooden railings and join the play.

Now they were enjoying those contented minutes between love and sleep, talking softly in the candlelight under a single sheet, lying on their sides facing each other, holding close, with their lips almost touching as they murmured together. But darling Mark, it is still a thatched hut, and it is still wild bush. It's a big thatched hut, he pointed out. I don't know. I just don't know if I have changed that much. There is only one way to find out. Come with me. But what will people say? The same as they'd say if they could see us now She chuckled easily, and snuggled a little closer. That was a silly question. The old Storm speaking. People have said all there is to say about me, and none of it really mattered a damn. There aren't a lot of people out there to sit in judgement.

Only Pungushe, and he's a very broad-minded gentleman. She laughed again sleepily. Only one person I care about - Daddy mustn't know. I've hurt him enough already So Storm came at last to Chaka's Gate. She came in the beaten and neglected Cadillac, with John on the seat beside her, her worldly possessions crammed into the cab or strapped on the roof and Mark riding his motorcycle escort ahead of her over the rude and bumpy track.

Where the track ended above the Bubezi River, she climbed out and looked around her. Well, she decided after a long thoughtful survey of the towering cliffs, and the river in its bed of green water and white banks, framed by the tall nodding strands of fluffyheaded reeds and great spreading sycamore figs, at least it's picturesque. Mark put John on his shoulder. Tungushe and I will come back with the mules for the rest of your gear. And he led her down the footpath to the river.

Pungushe was waiting for them under the trees on the far bank, tall and black and imposing in his beaded loin cloth. Pungusbe, this is my lady and her name is Vungu Vungu the Storm. I see you, Vungu Vungu, I see also that you are misnamed, said Pungushe quietly, for a storm is an ugly thing which kills and destroys. And you are a lady of beauty. Thank you, Pungushe. Storm smiled at him. But you are also misnamed, for a jackal is a small mean creature. But clever, said Mark solemnly, and John let out a shout of greeting and bounced on Mark's shoulder, reaching out with both hands for Pungushe. And this is my son. Pungushe looked at John. There are two things a Zulu loves dearly, cattle and children. Of the two, he prefers children preferably boy-children. Of all boy-children, he likes best those that are robust, and bold and aggressive. Jamela, I should like to hold your son, he said, and Mark gave John to him. I see you Phimbo, Pungushe greeted the child. I see you little man with a great voice. And then Pungushe smiled that great beaming radiant smile, and John shouted again with joy and thrust his hand in Pungushe's mouth to grab those white shining teeth, but Pungushe swung him up on to his shoulder and laughed with a great hipposnort and carried him up the hill.

So they came to Chaka's Gate, and there was never any doubt, right from that first day.

Within an hour, there was a polite tap on the screendoor of the kitchen and when Mark opened it there stood in a row on the covered stoep all of Pungushe's daughters, from the eldest who was fourteen to the youngest of four. We have come, announced the eldest, to greet Phimbo. Mark looked at Storm inquiringly, and she nodded. The eldest daughter swung John up on to her back with a practised action, and strapped him there with a strip of cotton limbo. She had played nurse-maid to all her brothers and sisters, probably knew more about small children than both Storm and Mark combined, and John took to the froglike position on her back as though he had been born Zulu. Then the little girl bobbed a curtsey to Storm and trotted away, with all her sisters in procession, bearing John off to a wonderland peopled entirely with playmates of endless variety and fascination.

On the third day, Storm began sketching, and by the end of the first week she had taken over the household management on a system that Mark referred to as comfortable chaos, alternating with brief periods of pandemonium.

Comfortable chaos was when everybody ate what they wanted, perhaps chocolate biscuits and coffee for dinner one night and a feast of barbecued meat the next. They ate it where they felt like it, perhaps sitting up in bed or lying on a rug on the sand-bank of the river. They ate when they wanted, breakfast at noon or dinner at midnight, if talking and laughing delayed it that long.

Comfortable chaos was when the dusting of furniture or polishing of floors were forgotten in the excitement of living, when clothes that needed mending were tossed into the bottom of the cupboard, when Mark's hair was allowed to grow in points over the back of his collar. Comfortable chaos ended unpredictably and abruptly to be replaced by pandemonium.

Pandemonium began when Storm suddenly got a steely look in her eye and announced, This place is a pig sty! followed by the snipping of scissors, buckets of steaming water, clouds of flying dust, hanging pots, and flashing needles. Mark was shorn and clad in refurbished clothing, the cottage gleamed and sparkled, and Storm's housekeeping instincts were exhausted for another indefinite period.

And the next day she would be up on Spartan's back, John strapped Zulu-fashion behind her, following Mark on patrol up the valley.

The first time John had been taken on patrol, Mark had asked anxiously, Do you think it's wise to take him, he's still very small? And Storm had replied, I am older and more important than Master John. He fits into my life, not me into his. So John rode patrol on muleback, slept in his apple basket under the stars at night, and took his daily bath in the coot green pools of the Bubezi River, quickly developed an immunity to the occasional tsetse bite, and flourished.

They climbed the steep pathway to the summit of Chaka's Gate, sat with their feet dangling over that fearful drop, and they looked across the whole valley, the far blue hills and the plains and swamps and the wide winding rivers. When I first met you, you were poor, Storm said quietly, leaning against Mark's shoulder with her eyes filled with the peace and wonder of it, but now you are the richest man in the world, for you are the owner of paradise. He took her up the river to the lonely grave below the escarpment. Storm helped him to build a pile of rocks, and to set the cross that Mark had made over it. He told her Pungushe's story of how the old man had been killed, and she cried openly and unashamedly, holding John on her lap, sitting on the gravestone, listening and living every word. I have looked, but never truly seen before, she said, as he showed her the nest of a suribird, cunningly woven of lichen and spider web, turning it carefully so she could peer into the funnel entrance and see the tiny speckled eggs. I never knew what true peace was until I came to this place, she said, as they sat on the bank of the Bubezi in the yellow light of fading day, and watched a kudu bull with long spiral corkscrew horns and chalk-striped shoulders lead his big-eared cows down to the water.

I did not know what happiness was before, she whispered, when they had woken together a little after midnight for no reason and reached for each other in the darkness.

Then one morning she sat up in the rumpled bed, over which John was rampaging unchecked and sowing crumbles of lightly chewed biscuit, and she looked at Mark seriously. You once asked me to marry you, I she said. Would you like to repeat that question, sir? And it was later that same day they heard the axeman at work up the valley.

The blade of a two-handed axe, swung against the hole of a standing hardwood tree, rings like a gunshot, and the sound of it bounced against the cliffs of Chaka's Gate and was flung back to break in dying echoes down the valley, each stroke still lingering on the air while the next cracked off the grey cliffs. There was more than one axernan at work, so that the din was continuous, like the sounds of battle.

Storm had never before seen such a passion of anger on Mark's face. His skin was drained of blood so that the tan of the sun was fever-yellow and his lips seemed frost-bitten and pinched by the force of it. Yet his eyes blazed, and she had to run to match his angry stride as they went up the scree slope from the river beneath the cliff s, and the sound of the axes broke over them, each separate stroke as brutal and shocking as the ones that preceded it.

Ahead of them, one of the lofty leadwoods quivered as though in agony and moved against the sky. Mark stopped in mid-stride to watch it, with his head thrown back and the same agony twisting his own lips. It was a tree of extraordinary symmetry, the silvery trunk rising with such gyace as to seem as slim as a young girl's waist. It had taken two hundred years to reach its towering height.

Seventy feet above the ground, it spread into a dark green dome of foliage.

As they watched, the tree shuddered again and the axes fell silent. Slowly, majestically, the leadwood swung into a downward arc, gathering ponderous momentum, and the partially severed trunk groaned and popped as the fibres tore; faster and faster still she fell, crashing through the tops of the lesser vegetation below her, the twisting tearing wood shrieking like a living thing until she struck solid earth with a jarring impact they could feel in their guts.

The silence lasted many seconds, and then there was the sound of men's voices, awed voices, as though intimidated

by the magnitude of the destruction they had wrought.

Then almost immediately after that, the axes started again, fragmenting the great silences of the valley, and Mark began to run. Storm could not keep pace with him.

He came out in an area of devastation, a growing swathe of fallen trees where fifty black men worked like ants, half-naked and burnished with their own sweat, as they stripped the branches and piled them in windrows for burning. The wood chips shone white as bone in the sunlight and the sap that oozed from the axe cuts had the sweetish smell of newly spilled blood.

At the head of the long narrow clearing, a single white man crouched to the eyepiece of a theodolite set on its squat tripod. He was aiming the instrument down the clearing and directing with hand signals the setting of brightly painted markers.

He straightened from the instrument to face Mark, a young man with a mild friendly face, thick spectacles in silver wire frames, lank sandy hair flopping on to his forehead. Oh, helln there, he smiled, and then the smile froze as Mark hissed at him. Are you in charge here? Well, yes, I suppose I am, the young surveyor stuttered. You are under arrest. I don't understand. It's quite simple, Mark blazed at him. You are cutting standing timber in a proclaimed area. I am the Government Ranger, and I am placing you under arrest. Now look here, the surveyor began placatingly, spreading his open hands in a demonstration of his friendly intentions. I'm just doing my job. In his blind wholesale rage, Mark had not noticed the approach of another man, a heavy broad-shouldered man who moved silently out of the uncut brush along the edge of the clearing. However, the thick north-country accent was instantly familiar, and struck sparks along the surface of Mark's skin. He remembered Hobday from that daywhen first he had returned to Andersland to find his world turned upside down. That's all right, chummy. I'll talk to Mister Anders. Hobday touched the young surveyor's shoulder placatingly and smiled at Mark, a smile that exposed the short evenly ground teeth, but was completely lacking in any warmth or humour. There is nothing you can tell me, Mark started, and Hobday lifted one hand to stop him.

J am here in my official capacity as a Provincial Inspector for the Ministry of Lands, Anders. You'd better listen. The angry words died and Mark stared at him, while Hobday calmly unfolded a letter from his wallet and proffered it to Mark. It was typewritten on Government paper and signed by the Deputy Minister of Lands. The signature was bold and black, Dirk Courtney. Mark read through the letter slowly, with a plunging sense of despair, and when he finished, he handed it back to Hobday. It gave him unlimited powers in the valley, powers backed by all the authority and weight of Government. Youaregoingupintheworld, he said, but stillworking for the same master. And the man nodded complacently, and then his eyes switched away from Mark's face as Storm came up. The expression on his face changed, as he looked at her.

Storm had her hair in thick twin braids, dangling forward on to each breast. The sun had turned her skin to a rich reddish brown, against which her eyes were startlingly blue and clear. Except for the eyes, she looked like a Sioux princess from some romantic novel.

Hobday dropped his eyes slowly over her body, with such intimate lingering insolence that she reached instinctively for Mark's arm and drew closer to him, as though to bring herself under his direct protection. What is it, Mark? She was still breathless from her climb up the slope, and high colour lit her cheeks. What are they doing here? They're Government men, said Mark heavily. From the Ministry of Lands. But they can't cut our trees, she protested, her voice rising. You've got to stop them, Mark. They're cutting survey lines, Mark explained. They are surveying the valley. But those trees -'It don't really matter, rna'am, Hobday told her. His voice was lower now with a thick gloating tone, and his eyes were still busy on her body, like insects crawling greedily to the scent of honey, moving over the thin sun bleached cotton that covered her breasts. It don't matter a damn, he repeated. They are all going to be under water anyway, cut or standing, it's all going under. He turned away from her at last, and swept one hand down the rude clearing. From that side to this, he said, indicating the gap between the towering grey cliffs of Chaka's Gate, right across it, we're going to build the biggest bloody dam in the whole world. They sat together in darkness, close together as though for comfort, and Mark had not lit the lantern. The reflected glow of stars was thrown in under the thatched veranda of the cottage, giving them just enough light to make out each other's faces. We knew it was coming, whispered Storm. And yet somehow I did not believe it. just as though wishing could make it stop. I'm going through early tomorrow to see your father Mark told her. He has to know. She nodded. Yes, we must be ready to confront them. What will you do? I can't leave you here with John. IAnd you can't take me with you. Not to my father, she agreed. It's all right, Mark, I'll take John back to the cottage. We'll wait for you. I'll come for you there, and next time we return here, you'll be my wife. She leaned against him. If there is anything to return to, she whispered. Oh Mark, Mark, they can't do it!

They can't drown all this, this -'The words eluded her and she fell silent, clinging to him.

They did not speak again, until minutes later a low polite cough roused them, and Mark straightened to see the dark familiar bulk of Pungushe standing below the veranda in the starlight. Pungushe, he said. I see you. Jamela, the Zulu replied, and there was a tone and tightness in his voice that Mark had never heard before. I have been to the camp of the strangers. The cutters of wood, the men with painted poles, and bright axes. He turned his head to look down the valley, and they followed his gaze. The ruddy glow of many camp fires flickered against the lower slopes of the cliffs and on the still night air, the sounds of laughter and men's voices carried faintly.

Yes? Mark asked. There are two white men there. One of them is young and blind and of no importance, while the other is a square thick man, who stands solid on his feet like a bull buffalo, and yet moves silently, and speaks little and quietly. Yes? Mark asked again. I have seen this man before in the valley, Pungushe paused. He is the silent one of whom we have spoken. He is the one who shot ixhegu, your grandfather, and smoked as he watched him die. Hobday moved quietly, solidly, along the edge of the slashline of the trees. The axes were silent, now, but the end of the noon break would be enforced to the minute.

At the stroke of the hour they would be back at work. He was driving them hard, he always worked his gangs hard, took a pride in his ability to extract from each man effort beyond his wage. It was one of the qualities that Dirk Courtney valued in him, that and his loyalty, a fierce unswerving loyalty that baulked at no demand upon it.

There was no squeamishness, no hesitating. When Dirk Courtney ordered it, there was no question asked. Hobday's reward was every day more apparent, already he was a man of substance, and when the new land was apportioned, that red sweet well-watered soil, rich as newly butchered beef, then his reward would be complete.

He paused at the spot where the slope increased sharply, angling into its plunge to the river bed below, and he looked out across the land. Involuntarily he licked his lips, like a glutton smelling rich food.

They had worked so long for this, each of them in his Own way, led and inspired by Dirk Courtney, and although Hobday's personal share of the spoil would be a minute fraction of a single percent, yet it was riches such as most other men only dream of.

He licked his lips again, standing very still and silent in the shadows and he looked to the sky. The clouds were piled to the very heavens, mountains of silver, blinding in the sunlight, and as he watched they moved ponderously down on the light wind. He could feel the closeness, and he stirred impatiently. Rain would delay them seriously, and rain was coming, the big torrential summer rains.

Then he was distracted again. Something moved on the far side of the slash line, and his eye darted to the movement. it was a flash of bright colour like the flick of a sunbird's wing, and his veiled eyes jumped to it instantly, his body without moving became charged with tension.

The girl came out of the brush line, and paused thirty paces away. She had not seen him, and she stood poised, listening, head cocked like a forest animal.

She stood lightly, gracefully, and her limbs were slim and brown, the flesh so firm and young and sweet that he felt the quick bright rush of lust again as he had when, the previous day, he had seen her for the first time.

She wore a loose, wide peasant skirt of gay colour, and a thin cotton bodice pulled low at the front and drawn loosely with a string that left the bulge of bosom pushing free, the fine skin shading from dark ruddy brown to pale cream. She was dressed like a girl going to meet a lover, and there was a deliciously fearful tenseness in the way she took a step forward and stopped again uncertainly. He felt the lust fuelled in his groin, and he was suddenly aware of his own hoarse breathing.

The girl turned her head and looked directly at him, and as she saw him, she started visibly, dropping back a pace with one hand flying to her mouth. She stared at him for fully five seconds, and then slowly a transformation came over her.

The fingers dropped away from her face and she put both hands behind her back, a movement that thrust the pert breasts against the cotton of her bodice so he could see the rosy dark buttons of her nipples through the material. She thrust out one hip at a saucy angle, and lifted her chin boldly. Deliberately she let her eyes slide down his body, let them linger on his groin, and then rise again to his face. it was an invitation as clear as the spoken word, and Hobday heard the blood roaring in his ears.

She tossed her head, flicking the thick braid of hair over her shoulder, and she turned away, walking deliberately back to the tree-line, exaggerating the roll of tight round buttocks under the skirt.

She looked back over her shoulder, and as he started forward to follow, she let out a tingling flirt of laughter and ran lightly on sandalled feet, turning at an angle down the slope and Hobday began to run.

Within fifty yards Storm had lost sight of him in the heavy underbrush, and she stopped to listen, fearful that he might have given up the pursuit. Then there was movement above her, at the crest of the slope, and she realized with the first pang of real alarm that he had moved more swiftly than she had anticipated, and he had not followed her down, but had stayed above her in a position of command.

She went off again, running, and almost immediately she realized that he was ahead of her, moving fast along the crest. From up there, he could trap her by a swift turn directly down the slope.

She felt panic spur her, and started to run in earnest.

Immediately the loose scree betrayed her and slipped away under her feet. She fell and rolled, flailing her arms for support and coming up on to her knees the moment her fall was broken.

She let out a little sob of fear. The man had seen her fall and had come down the slope. He was so close that she could see the square white teeth in the brown smooth face.

He was grinning, a keen excited grimace, and he was steady and quick, moving down directly into the path along which she must run to safety, cutting her off squarely from where Mark waited.

She jumped to her feet and swirled away, doubling the slope, instinctively turning directly away from her pursuer - and from all help. Suddenly, she was completely alone, fleeing on frantic feet into the lonely spaces of the bush, beyond earshot of succour. Mark had been right, she realized, he had not wanted her to act as the bait. He had known just how dangerous a game she had set out to play, but in her stubborn arrogant way she had insisted, laughing at his protests, belittling his fears, until he had reluctantly agreed. Now she was running, terrified, the terror making her heart pound and squeezing her lungs so that her legs felt weak and rubbery under her.

Once she tried to turn back, but like an old and wily hound coursing a hare, he had anticipated and was there to block her, again she ran and suddenly the river was in front of her. The up-country rains had spated the course of the Bubezi and it rolled past in wide green majesty. She had to turn again along the bank, and was immediately into the area of thick jessie bush. The heavy Thorn crowded her closely, leaving only narrow passages, a labyrinth of dark and secret twists and turns in which almost immediately she lost direction. She stopped and stood, trying to listen over the rush of her own breathing, trying to see through the wavering mist of her tears, tears of fear and of helplessness.

Her hair had come down in little wisps over her forehead, her cheeks blazed with high colour, and the tears made her eyes glitter with a feverish sheen.

She heard nothing, and the brown Thorn encircled her.

She turned slowly, almost like a blind woman, and now she was sobbing softly in her terror; she chose one of the narrow passages for escape and dived into it.

He was waiting for her. She came round the first twist of the pathway and ran almost directly into his chest.

Only at the very last instant she saw the outstretched arms, thick and brown and smooth, with the fingers of both hands hooked to seize her.

She screamed, high and shrill, and spun away, back along the path she had come, but his fingers caught in the thin cotton of her blouse. It tore like paper, and as she ran, the smooth creamy flesh of her back shone through the rent, flashing with a pearly promise that spurred his lust even higher, and when he laughed, it was a hoarse breathless blurt of sound that launched Storm into a fresh paroxysm of terror.

He hunted her through the jessie, and twice when he could have taken her, he deliberately let her slip through his fingers, drawing out the excruciating pleasure of it, cat with mouse, delighting at the way she shrieked at his touch, and at the fresh outburst of frantic terror with which she tried to escape him.

But at last she was finished, and she backed up into a corner of solid impenetrable Thorn wall, and crouched there, clutching the shreds of her torn blouse about her, trembling with the wild uncontrollable shudders of a patient in high fever, her face smeared with tears and her sweat, staring at him with huge dark blue eyes.

He came slowly to her. He stooped and she was unresisting as he placed his big square brown hands on her shoulders.

He was still chuckling, but his own breath was unsteady, and his lips were drawn back from the square white teeth in a grimace of lust and excitement.

He pressed his mouth down over hers, and it was like one of those nightmares in which she could not move nor scream. His teeth crushed painfully against her lips, and she tasted her own blood, a slick metallic salt on her tongue and she felt herself suffocating, his hands were hard and rough as granite on the soft silk of her breasts and she came to life again, tugging unavailingly at his wrists, trying to drag them away.

Yes, he grunted, in the soft thick choked voice. Fight.

Keep fighting me. Yes. Yes. That's right, struggle, don't stop. His voice roused her from the hypnotic spell of terror, and she screamed again. Yes, he said. Do that. Scream again. And he turned her across his body; forcing her down until his knee caught her in the small of the back, and her body bent backwards like a drawn bow, her hair sweeping the ground and the curve of her throat was soft and white and vulnerable, he placed his open mouth on her throat.

She was pinned helplessly as with one hand he swept the wide peasant skirt up above her waist. Scream! he whispered gutturally. Scream again. And with complete and horrified disbelief she felt those thick brown fingers, calloused and deliberately cruel, begin to prise open her body. They seemed to tear her tenderest, most secret flesh, like the talons of an eagle, and she screamed and screamed.

Mark had lost them in the labyrinthine maze of the jessie bush, and there had been silence now for many minutes.

He stood bareheaded and panting, listening with every fibre of his being in the aching silence of the jessie Thorn, his eyes were wild, and he hated himself with bitter venom for letting himself be persuaded by Storm.

He had known how dangerous this man was he was a killer, a coldly competent killer, and he had sent a girl, a young and tender girl, to bait him.

Then Storm screamed, close by in the jessie, and with a violent lift of savage relief, Mark began to run again.

At the last moment Hobday heard him coming, and he dropped Storm's slim abused body and turned with unbelievable speed, dropping into the crouch of a heavyweight prize fighter, solid and low behind lifted arms and hunched shoulders, thick and rubbery with muscle.

Mark swung the weapon he had made the night before, a long sausage of raw-hide, the seams double sewn, and then filled with lead buckshot. It weighed two pounds, and it made a sound through the air like the wings of a wild duck and he swung full-armed, the blow given power and weight by his terrible anger and hatred.

Hobday threw up his right arm to catch the blow. The bones of his forearm broke cleanly, with a sharp crackle, but still the force of the blow was not fully expended and the leaded bag flew on, directly into Hobday's face.

Had he not caught the full weight of it on his arm, the blow would have killed him. As it was, his face seemed to collapse and his head snapped backwards to the full stretch of his neck.

Hobday crashed backwards into the wall of Jessie and the curved, red-tipped thorns caught in his clothing and flesh and held him there, sprawling like a boneless doll, arms outspread, legs dangling, his face hanging forward on his chest and the thick dark droplets of blood beginning to fall on to his shirt and roll softly downwards across his belly, leaving wet crimson lines down the khaki drill.

The rain began as they carried Hobday up the track to where the two vehicles were kept under the lee of the cliffs of Chaka's Gate, on the south bank of the Bubezi. It came with the first splattering of fat warm drops, that stung exposed skin with their weight and momentum. It fell heavily and still more heavily, turning the surface of the track to a glaze like melting chocolate, so they slipped under their burden.

Hobday was chained at his ankles with the manacles that Mark used for holding arrested poachers. His good arm was cuffed to the leather belt at his waist, the other arm was crudely sprinted and strapped down to the same belt.

Mark had tried to force him to walk, but either he was shamming or he was really too weak. His face was grotesquely distorted, the nose was swollen and pushed to one side, both eyes almost closed and leaden blue with bruises, his lips also were swollen and thickly scabbed with black dried blood where they had been mashed against his teeth, and through the mangled flesh were the dark gaps where five of the big square teeth had been torn out or snapped off level with the gum by the murderous force of Mark's blow.

Pungushe and Mark carried him between them, laboriously up the steep path in the teeming, stinging rain, and behind them trailed Storm with baby John on her hip, her hair melting in long black shiny smears down her face in the rain. She was shivering violently, in sudden uncontrollable spasms, either from the cold or from lingering shock.

The child on her hip squalled petulantly, and she covered him with a fold of oilskin and tried to hush him distractedly.

They reached the two vehicles under the crude thatched shelter Pungushe had built to protect them from the elements. They put Hobday into the sidecar of the Ariel, and Mark buttoned the canvas screen over him to protect him from the rain and to hold him secure. He lay like a corpse.

Then Mark crossed to where Storm sat, shivering, and sodden and miserable, behind the wheel of the battered old Cadillac. I'm sending Pungushe with you, he said, as he took her in his arms and held her briefly. She did not have the strength or will to argue, and she leaned heavily against Mark's chest for comfort. Go to the cottage, and stay there, he instructed. Don't move out of it until I come for you. Yes, Mark, she whispered, and shuddered again. Are you strong enough to drive? he asked with sudden gentleness, and she roused herself and nodded gamely. I love you, he said. More than anything or anybody in this world!

Mark led on the motorcycle over the slippery, muddy track, and it was almost dark when they reached the main road, itself hardly better than a track with deeply churned double ruts in the glutinous mud, and all the time the rain fell.

At the crossroads, Mark pulled the motorcycle off the road, and hurried back to talk to Storm through the open window of the Cadillac. It's six hours from here to Umhlanga Rocks in this mud, don't try and push it, he told her, and reached through the window. They embraced awkwardly but fiercely, and then she rolled up the window and the Cadillac pulled away, the rear end sliding and skidding in the mud.

Mark watched it over a rise in the land, and when the rear lights winked out over the ridge, he went back to the motorcycle and kicked the engine to life.

In the sidecar the man stirred, and his voice was mushy and distorted through the mangled lips.

I'm going to kill you for this, he said. Like you killed my grandfather? Mark asked softly, and wheeled the cycle into the road. He took the fork to Ladyburg, thirty miles away through the darkness and the mud and the rain, and his hatred and anger warmed him all the way like a bonfire in his belly, and he marvelled at his own restraint in resisting the temptation to kill Hobday with the bludgeon when he had the chance.

The man who had tortured and murdered the old man, and who had abused and desecrated Storm was in his power and still the temptation to avenge himself was fierce.

Mark pushed it aside and drove on grimly into the night.

The motorcycle slipped and slid from one verge of the road to the other as he took it up the steep ascent of the Ladyburg escarpment, and below him the lights of the town were blanketed by the falling white fog of rain.

Mark was uncertain as to whether or not the General was in residence at Lion Kop, but as he gunned the machine into the walled kitchen yard he saw lights in the windows, and a clamorous pack of the General's hunting dogs rushed out into the night followed by three Zulu servants with lanterns. Mark shouted at them. Is the Nkosi here? Their answers were superfluous, for as Mark dismounted, he looked up and saw the bulky familiar beloved shape step into the lighted window of the study, head held low on broad shoulders, as Sean Courtney peered down at him.

Mark ran into the house, stripping off his streaming oilskins, and he burst into the General's study. My boy. Sean Courtney hurried to meet him across the huge room. What is it? Mark's whole being was charged with a fierce and triumphant purpose. I have the man who killed my grandfather, he exulted, and halfway across the study Sean stopped dead and stared at him. Is it, he stopped, and the dread was plain on his face, is it Dirk Courtney, is it my son? The servants carried Hobday's heavy inert body into the study and laid him on the buttoned leather sofa in front of the fire. Who put those chains on him? growled Sean, studying the man, and then without waiting for a reply, Take them off him. My God, what happened to his face?

Ruth Courtney came then, awakened by the uproar and excitement, dressed in a long dressing-gown with her night cap still knotted under her chin, Good Lord, she stared at Hobday. His arm is broken, and perhaps his jaw also. How did it happen? Sean demanded. I hit him, Mark explained, and Sean was silent for a long moment staring at him, before he spoke again.

I think you had better tell me the whole story, he said. From the beginning. While Ruth Courtney worked quietly over Hobday's broken face, Mark began his explanation to the General. His name is Hobday, he works for Dirk Courtney, has done so for years. One of his right-hand men. Of course, Sean nodded. I should have recognized him.

It was the swollen face. I've seen him before. Quietly, quickly, Mark told everything he knew about the man, starting from his first meeting with Hobday at the deserted homestead on Andersland. He told you he was working for Dirk Courtney then?

Sean demanded. For Ladyburg Sugar, Mark qualified, and Sean nodded his white beard on to his chest. Go on. Mark repeated Pungushe's story of the old man's death, how the three men had come with him to the valley, and how the silent one had shot him and waited for him to die, and how they had buried him in an unmarked grave.

However, Sean shook his head, frowning, and Hobday on the couch stirred and tried to sit up. His swollen, distorted jaw worked and the words were blurred. It's a bloody nigger lie, he said. First time I've ever been to Chaka's Gate was three days ago.

Sean Courtney's worry showed clearly on his gaunt features as he turned back to Mark. You say you hit this man, that you are responsible for his injuries. How did it happen? When he came to the valley, Pungushe recognized him as the man who killed John Anders. I lured him out of his camp, and Pungushe and I captured him and brought him here. After half killing him? Sean asked, heavily, and did not wait for Mark's reply. My boy, I think you've put yourself into a very serious position. I cannot see a shred of evidence to support all this, evidence that would convict a man in a court of law, while on the other hand you have assaulted somebody, grievous bodily harm and abduction at the least. Oh, I do have proof, Mark cut in quickly.

What is it? Sean asked gruffly.

The man on the couch turned his battered face to Sean, and his voice rose confidently. He's a bloody liar. It's all lies. Quiet! Sean waved him to silence, and looked to Mark again. Proof? he asked. My proof will be in the fact that Dirk Courtney kills this man, or has him killed, the moment we turn him free. They all stared at Mark in stunned silence, and Mark went on seriously. We all know how Dirk Courtney works. He destroys anything that stands in his way, or that is a danger to him. Hobday was watching him, and for once the eyes were no longer veiled and cold. His mangled lips quivered and gaped slightly, showing the black gaps where the teeth were missing from his jaw.

It isn't necessary for this man to confess anything to us.

The fact that he has been here, in this house, with the General and myself, in the camp of Dirk Courtney's enemies, the fact that his face bears the marks of heavy persuasion, that will be enough for Dirk Courtney. Then one phone call is all it would take. Something like this Mark paused, then went on. "Hobday was with us, he is ready to make a sworn statement, about the killing of John Anders. " Then we take Hobday down to the village and leave him there. Dirk Courtney kills him, but this time we are ready. For once we can trace the murder directly to him. God damn you, snarled Hobday, struggling into a sitting position. It's a lie. I haven't confessed anything! You can tell that to Dirk Courtney. He might believe you, Mark told him quietly. On the other hand, if you turned king's evidence and did confess, you'd have the protection of the General and the law, all the force of the law, and we would not turn you loose. Hobday looked around him wildly, as though some avenue of escape might open miraculously for him, but Mark went on remorselessly. You know Dirk Courtney better than any of us, don't you, Hobday? You know how his mind works. Do you think he will take the chance that you didn't confess? Just how useful are you going to be to him in the future? Can you trust his loyalty, now that the shadow of doubt is on you? You know what he is going to do, don't you? If you think about it, you'll realize that your only chance of survival will be to have Dirk Courtney locked up safely, or dancing at the end of a rope. Hobday glared at him. You bastard, he hissed through his broken lips, and it was as though a cork had been drawn; a steady stream of obscenity poured from him, vicious filth, the ugly meaningless words repeated over and over again, while his naked eyes glittered with helpless hatred.

Mark stood up and cranked the handset of the telephone on Sean's desk. Exchange, he said into the mouthpiece. Please connect me with the residence of Mister Dirk Courtney. No! choked Hobday. Don't do that! and now terror had replaced hatred, and his face seemed to collapse around the ruined nose and mouth.

Mark made no effort to obey, and clearly everybody in the room heard the click of a connection being made, and then the squawk of a voice distorted by the wires and distance. This is the residence of the Honourable Deputy Minister for Lands, Mr Dirk Courtney -Hobday lumbered off the couch, and staggered to the desk, he snatched the earpiece from Mark's hand and slammed it back on to its bracket of the telephone. No, he panted, with pain and fear. Please don't do that. He hung on to the corner of the desk, hunched up with the pain, clutching his broken arm to his chest, his mashed features working convulsively. They waited quietly, Mark and Ruth and Sean, waiting for him to reach his decision.

Hobday turned and staggered heavily back to the sofa. He collapsed upon it with his head hanging forward, almost touching his knees, and his breathing hissed and sobbed in the silence. All right, he whispered hoarsely. What do you want to know?

General Sean Courtney shook himself as though awaking from a nightmare, but his voice was decisive and brisk. Mark, take the Rolls. Co down into town and get me a lawyer. I want this statement drawn up in proper form I'm still a justice of the Peace and Commissioner of Oaths.

I will witness the document. Mark parked the Rolls in Peter Botes gravel driveway of the big new house on the outskirts of town.

The house was dark and silent, but to Mark's heavy knocking on the carved teak front door, a dog began to bark in the house somewhere, and at last a light bloomed in an upstairs window and the sash slid up with a squeal.

Who is it? What do you want? Peter's voice was querulous and fuddled with sleep. It's Mark, he shouted up at the window. You've got to come with me, now! My God, Mark, it's after eleven o'clock. Can't it wait until morning? General Courtney wants you, now. The name had its effect. There was a mumble of voices within the bedroom, Marion's sister protesting sleepily, and then Peter called down again. All right, give me a minute to dress, Mark. As he waited in the driver's seat of the Rolls with the rain slashing down on the roof, and rippling in wavering lines down across the windshield, Mark pondered briefly why he had chosen Peter Botes. It was not only that he knew exactly where to find him so late at night. He realized that he wanted Peter to be there when they tore down his idol, he wanted to rub his nose in it when they proved Dirk Courtney a thief and a murderer. He wanted that satisfaction, and he smiled bleakly without humour in the darkened Rolls. I deserve at least that, he whispered to himself, and the front door of the house opened. Peter hurried out, ducking his head against the slanting rain. What is it? he demanded, through the window of the Rolls. It had better be important, getting me out at this time of night. It's important enough, Mark told him, and started the engine. Get in! I'll follow you in my Packard, Peter told him and ran to the garage.

Peter Botes sat at General Courtney's big desk. Hurriedly dressed, he was without a necktie and his small prosperous paunch bulged the white shirt, pulling it free of his trousers waistband. His sandy hair was thinning and ruffled, so that pink scalp showed through as he bowed over the foolscap sheet of paper.

He wrote swiftly, a neat regular script, his features betraying each new shock at the words he was transcribing, his cheeks pale and his mouth set and thin.

Every few minutes he would pause incredulously and stare at Hobday across the room, breathing heavily at some new and terrible admission. Have you got that? the General demanded, and Peter nodded jerkily and began to write again.

The others listened intently. The General slumped in his chair by the fire. His eyes were closed, as though he slept, but the questions he rapped out every few minutes were bright and penetrating as a rapier blade.

Mark stood behind his chair, quiet and intent, his face expressionless, although his anger and his hatred cramped in his guts.

Hobday sat forward on the sofa and his voice was a muffled drone in his thick north-country accent, muted in contrast to the terrible words he spoke.

It was not only the killing of John Anders. There was more, much more. Forgery of State documents, bribery of high officials, direct abuse of public office, and Mark started and leaned forward with shock as Hobday recounted how he had tried on two occasions, following Dirk Courtney's orders, to kill him.

Mark had not realized nor recognized him, but now Hobday's stocky shape tied in his memory with the shadowy faceless hunter in the night on the escarpment, and with the other figure seen through the rain and the fever mists. Hobday did not look up as he told it, and Mark had no questions to ask. It was as though once Hobday had started, he must purge himself of all this filth, as though he were now deriving some perverse satisfaction from the horror his words struck into his audience.

They listened, appalled by the magnitude of it all. Every few minutes, Ruth exclaimed involuntarily, and Sean would open his eyes briefly to stare at her, before closing them again and covering them with one hand.

At last Hobday came to the murder of John Anders, and each detail was exactly as Pungushe had described it. Mark felt sickened and wretched as he listened, but he asked only one question. Why did you let him die so slowly, why didn't you finish him? It had to look like an accident. Hobday did not look up. One bullet only. A man does not shoot himself twice by accident. I had to let him die in his own time. There was no breadth nor horizon to Mark's anger, and this time Ruth Courtney caught her breath with a sound like a sob. Again Sean Courtney opened his eyes. Are you all right, my dear?

She nodded silently, and Sean turned back to Hobday.

Go on, he said.

At the end, Peter Botes read the statement back, his voice quivering and fading at the more horrendous passages, so that Sean had to gruff at him fiercely. Speak up, man. He had made two fair copies, and Hobday signed each page with an illiterate scrawl, and then each of them signed below him, and Sean pressed his wax seal of office on to the final page of each copy. All right, he said, as he carried the top document to the iron safe built into the wall behind his desk. I want you to keep and file the other copy, he said to Peter, Thank you for your help, Mr Botes. He locked the safe and turned back into the room. Mark, will you telephone Doctor Acheson now, please? We've got to take care of our witness, I suppose.

Though, for my money, I'd just as soon see him suffer. When Doctor Acheson arrived at Lion Kop, it was almost two in the morning, and Ruth Courtney took him up to the guest room where Hobday lay.

Neither Sean Courtney nor Mark went up; they stayed in the study, sitting quietly together across the fire which a servant had built. Against the windows, the wind bumped and the rain spattered. Sean was drinking whisky, and Mark had filled his glass twice for him in the last hour.

He was slumped down in his favourite chair now, tired and old and bowed with grief, holding the glass with both hands. If I had the courage, I would take the rifle to him myself - like a rabid dog. But he is still my son, no matter how often I deny it, he is still of my blood, of my loins.

Mark was silent, and Ruth came into the room.

Doctor Acheson is setting that man's arm, she said. He will be another hour, but I think you should come up to bed now, my dear. She crossed to Sean's chair and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. We have all had more than enough for one day. The telephone rang on the desk, a tinny irritant sound that startled them all. They stared at it for a full five seconds, until it rang again demandingly and Ruth crossed to it and lifted the earpiece.

Mrs. Ruth Courtney, she said softly, almost fearfully. Mrs. Courtney, are you the mother of Mrs, Storm Hunt? Yes, this is correct. I am afraid we have very bad news. This is the Superintendent of Addington Hospital in Durban. Your daughter has been involved in a motor accident. The rain and the mud, I am afraid. Her son, your grandchild, has been killed outright. Thankfully he suffered no pain, but your daughter is in a critical condition. Can you come to her, as soon as you possibly can? We don't know if she will last the night, I'm afraid. The telephone dropped from Ruth's hand, and she swayed on her feet, the colour flying from her face, leaving it frosted with icy white. Oh God! she whispered, and she started to fall, her legs collapsed and she crumpled forward. Mark caught her before she hit the floor and lowered her on to the sofa.

Sean crossed to the dangling earpiece and lifted it. This is General Courtney, he barked angrily. What is it? Mark took the big Rolls down the long slanting right hand turn towards the bridge very fast. The woman he loved, the mother of his dead child, was dying, and Mark's heart was breaking. The road was deep with chocolate mud, and other vehicles had rutted it deeply, churning the mud to a thick ugly porridge. The Rolls flared and kicked in the ruts, but Mark fought the wheel grimly.

The bridge over the Baboon Stroom was five hundred yards ahead of them, still invisible in the endless driving rain. The headlights faded fifty feet ahead, overwhelmed by the flights of white raindrops, thick as javelins.

In the rear seat, Ruth Courtney sat quietly, staring ahead with eyes that did not see. The collar of her fur coat was pulled up around her ears, so she looked small and frail as a child.

General Sean Courtney sat beside Mark, and he was talking quietly, as though to himself. I've left it too late. I've been a stubborn old fool. I wanted too much from her, I wanted her to be better than human, and I was too harsh on her when she did not meet the standards I set for her. I should have gone to her long ago, and now perhaps it's too late. It's not too late, Mark denied. She will live, she must live. It's too late for my grandson, whispered Sean. I never saw him, and only now I realize how much I wanted to -At the mention of baby John, Mark felt the sickening jolt of despair in his stomach again and he wanted to shout, He was my son. My first born! But beside him, Sean was talking again. I've been a spiteful and unforgiving old man. God have mercy on me, but I even cut my own daughter out of my will. I disowned her, and now I hate myself for that. If only we can reach her, if only I can talk to her once more. Please, God, grant me that. Ahead of them the steel guard railings of the bridge loomed out of the torrential darkness, and lightning bounced off the belly of the clouds. For an instant Mark saw the spidery steel tracery of the railway bridge spanning the chasm two hundred yards downstream. Under it, the rocky sides of the gorge dropped almost sheer a hundred and firty feet to the swollen racing brown flood waters of the Baboon Stroom.

Mark touched the brakes, and then double-declutched the gears, bringing the Rolls under tighter control as he lined up for the entrance to the road bridge.

Suddenly, dazzling light flared from the darkness on the right hand side of the road, and Mark threw up one hand to protect his eyes.

Out of the darkness rushed a great dark shape, with two blazing headlights glaring like malevolent eyes as it came.

With sudden clarity of mind, Mark realized that the Rolls was trapped helplessly on the approach ramp to the bridge, and that on his left hand, only a frail railing of iron pipes screened them from the drop and that the monstrous vehicle racing down from the right would come into a collision which would hurl the Rolls through the railing as though it were a child's toy. Hold on! he screamed, and swung the wheel to meet the roaring towering monster of steel, and the blinding white light cut into his eyes.

Peter Botes pulled off the road into the pine trees and switched off the engine of the Packard. In the silence he could hear the pine branches thrashing restlessly on the wind, and the dislodged rain-drops tapped on the roof.

Peter lit a cigarette and the match danced in his cupped hands. He inhaled deeply, waiting for the calming effect of the tobacco smoke, and he stared ahead up the straight roadway that led to Great Longwood, the homestead of Dirk Courtney.

He sensed that the decision he must make now was the most vital of his entire life. Whichever way he decided, his life was already changed for ever.

When Dirk Courtney fell, he would bring down all those close to him, even the innocent, as he was innocent. The scandal and the guilt would sully him, and he had worked so hard for it. The prestige, the blooming career and all the sweets that he was just now starting to enjoy. All of it would be gone, and he would have to begin again, perhaps in another town, another land, to begin again right at the very bottom. The thought appalled him, he had become used to being a man of substance and importance. He did not know if he could face a new beginning.

On the other hand, if Dirk Courtney did not come down, if he were saved from death and disaster -just how grateful would he be to the man who worked his salvation? He knew the extent of Dirk Courtney's present fortune and power, and it was conceivable that some of that, perhaps a large slice of that might come to him, to Peter Botes, the man who had saved Dirk Courtney and yet still retained the instrument of his destruction.

it was one of those moments of destiny, Peter realized, that come only occasionally to a chosen few. On one hand dishonour and obscurity, on the other, power and riches, tens of thousands, perhaps even millions.

He started the engine of the Packard and the rear wheels spun in the slimy mud, and then he swerved back on to the driveway, and put the big machine to the hill.

Dirk Courtney sat on the corner of his desk, one foot swinging idly. He wore a dressing-gown of patterned silk, and the lustrous material caught the lamplight as he moved. There was a white silk scarf at his throat, and his eyes were clear and alert in the handsome tanned face, as though he had not just risen from deep sleep.

He spun the duelling pistol on his forefinger as he listened intently.

Peter Botes sat nervously on the edge of the chair, and though there was a fire in the grate that Dirk had poked and fed to a fierce blaze, still he shivered every few moments and rubbed his hands together. The cold was in his soul, he realized, and his voice rose a little as he grabbled on.

Dirk Courtney did not speak, made no comment nor exclamation, asked no question until he was done. He spun the pistol, two turns and the butt snapped into the palm of his hand. Two turns, and snap.

When Peter Botes finished, Dirk cocked the hammer Of the pistol and the click of the mechanism was unreasonably loud in the silent room. Hobday, my father, his wife, young Anders, and yourself. The only others that know. And the Zulu. And the Zulu, Dirk agreed, and dry-fired the pistol. The hammer cracked against the pan. How many copies of the statement? One, lied Peter. In the iron safe of the General's study. Dirk nodded and re-cocked the pistol. All right. If there is another copy, you have it, he said. But we don't lie to each other, do we, Peter? It was the first time he had used his given name, there was a familiarity and a threat in it, and Peter could only nod with a dryness in his throat.

Again Dirk dry-fired the pistol, and smiled. It was that warm and charming smile, that frank and friendly smile that Peter knew so well. We love each other too much for that, don't we! He kept smiling. That's why you came to tell me this, isn't it? Because we love each Other? Peter said nothing, and Dirk went on, still smiling, And of course you are going to be a rich man, Peter, if you do as I ask. A very rich man. You will do as I ask, won't you, Peter?

And Peter nodded again. Yes, of course, he blurted. I want you to make a phone call, said Dirk. If you speak through a handkerchief, it will sound as though it's long distance, and it will muffle your voice. Nobody will recognize it.

Will you do that? Of course, Peter nodded. You will phone my father's house, speak either to him or his wife. I want you to pretend that you are the Superintendent of Addington Hospital, and here is what you will tell them Dirk Courtney sat in the darkened cab of the truck, and listened to the rain as he reviewed his plans and preparations carefully.

He did not like having to move in a hurry, without time for careful planning. It was too easy to overlook some vital detail.

He did not like having to do this type of work himself. It was best to send another. He did not take personal risks, not any more, not unless there was no other way.

Regrets and misgivings were vain and wasted the moments which still remained before action. He turned all his attention back to his planning.

They would use the Rolls, and there would be three of them, the General and his Jewish whore, and that arrogant scheming puppy Anders.

Dirk had picked the spot with care, and the farmyard truck was loaded with fifty sacks of horse-feed. Three tons of dead weight. It would give it irresistible momentum.

Afterwards he must do two things, firstly he must make sure of them. He had a length of lead piping wrapped in hessian packing. It would crack a skull without breaking skin. Then he must take the General's keys. The key of the safe was on the bunch, and it was on his watch chain.

The thought of plundering his father's dead body did not cause him even a tremor. His only concern was that the keys were retrievable, that there was no fire and that the Rolls was not submerged in the roaring torrent of the Baboon Stroom.

if that did happen, he must rely then on the General not having changed his habits of twenty years before. The spare key had been kept in the wine cellar then, on the rack above the champagne bottles. Dirk had discovered it there when he had used the cellar in a boyhood game, and he had taken the key twice for his own ends, and returned it secretly. The General was an old dog, a creature of habit.

It would still be there. Dirk was certain.

All right, then, the safe. Two keys. If neither was available, then it was an old safe, but he did not want to use force on it. He must hope for the keys. Anyway, he was content that he could open it one way or another.

The statement was his, to be carefully burned, and that left Hobday. Probably in one of the guest rooms, sedated, helpless. The lead pipe again, and then an overturned paraffin lamp.

it was a big house of old dry wooden beams and thick thatch. It would burn as a pyre, with Hobday lying in it like a Viking chieftain.

That left only Peter Botes, Dirk glanced sideways at him.

The situation was containable, it was no worse than fifty others he had survived. It needed only swift, direct action.

He spoke encouragingly to Peter. Don't worry, he said. After tonight, a new life awaits you. I'm going to take you with me along the paths of wealth and power, Peter. You'll never regret this night, I swear it to you. He squeezed Peter's upper arm, a comradely gesture in the darkness. Of course, he had a copy of the statement, Dirk thought, but afterwards there would be time, plenty of time to find it and to be rid of the pompous little prig. In a year or so, when the excitement had died down, another little accident, and it would all be over. Have you got the pistol? he asked, and Peter gulped nervously, clutching the bulky military model Smith Wesson with both hands between his knees.

u are not to use it, Dirk warned again. Except as the very last resort. We don't want bullet holes to explain. You do understand? Yes, I understand. You are insurance, that's all. Final insurance. And out in the darkness, through the slanting arrows of rain a light glowed and faded and grew again higher up the slope. Here they come, said Dirk, and started the engine of the truck.

Mark spun the wheel hard right, and thrust the accelerator pedal flat against the floor-boards, trying to ride off the collision and beat the great roaring vehicle to the threshold of the bridge.

Behind him Ruth Courtney screamed shrilly, but Mark thought he had made it, he thought for an instant that the sudden acceleration had forged the Rolls ahead, but the truck slewed hard, swinging viciously, and he felt the crack of impact in every bone of his body.

It struck at the level of the rear wheels of the Rolls, and the big heavy car snapped sideways, tearing his hands from the steering-wheel and hurling Mark against the door. He felt bones break in his chest like dry twigs, and then the world turned end over end as the Rolls cartwheeled. A shower of bright white sparks flamed like the tail of a meteor in the darkness as steel brushed murderously against steel. There was another jerk as the Rolls crashed through the guardrail of the bridge and then they were dropping free, plunging silently into black space.

In the rear seat, Ruth Courtney was still screaming, and the Rolls struck, a glancing shuddering blow, bounding off the rock wall of the gorge, and leaping out into space once more.

Mark was pressed against the side door, held there by the accelerating dropping force of the plunging Rolls, but at the next impact the door was burst open, and Mark was hurled like a stone from a slingshot, out into resounding swirling darkness.

He saw the burning headlights of the Rolls, spinning in a great vortex of blinding white, below him, and the gorge rang with the iron echoes of steel on rock, and the crazy bellowing roar of the Rolls-Royce engine jammed at full power.

He seemed to fall for ever, through darkness, and then suddenly he struck with a force that drove the air from his lungs. The hard, unyielding impact convinced him for a moment that his body was crushed to boneless pulp on the rocky floor of the gorge, but then the cold, tumultuous torrent of racing water overwhelmed him. He had been thrown far enough to fall into the river itself.

Clinging to his last shreds of consciousness, he fought for breath, fought to keep his head above the surface, as the torrent swept him away. Glistening black boulders leapt like predators out of the dark, clawing at his legs, pummelling his injured chest, barging into him with numbing bruising power in the flood, and icy water gushed down his straining throat, burning his lungs, and making him choke and retch for each breath.

He slid down a racing spill of white rapids, feeling skin stripped from his hip and shoulder at the contact of harsh rock and then, at the bottom, he struck again, jammed solid between two monumental rocks. In the darkness, they stood over him like gravestones.

He was held in their jaws, and the water tore furiously at him, as though denied of its prey, trying to pluck him away.

There was light, just enough to make out shapes and distances, and Mark marvelled at that with a brain jellied by pounding and starved of oxygen. Then he looked up, and through streaming eyes saw that the truck was parked on the threshold of the bridge high above the gorge, its headlights struck the ironwork and the light was broken up and diffused by the rain. It cast a vague uncertain glow into the gorge.

Added to this was a closer, more powerful light source.

The smashed carapace of the Rolls-Royce lay at the foot of the cliff, half in the water, half upon the rocky ledge. It lay on its back, with all four wheels spiralling idly, but both headlights still burned fiercely, striking the uneven rock walls, providing a dramatic stage lighting.

Mark looked around him, and saw that the current had swept him in under the cliff, and that a ledge of glistening black rock extended out over his head. He reached up with his right hand, and then cried out as his fingers touched the ledge, and bright agony flared in his wrist.

Something was broken there, he realized, as he clung desperately to the slippery boulders, and tried to force the fingers of his right hand to open or close.

The torrent was too strong to resist much longer, and he felt himself starting to slide, dragging over the boulders, on the point of being swept away once more. He knew that less than a hundred yards downstream, the first waterfall plunged, frothing and thundering, down the sheer side of the escarpment.

He released his grip with the left hand, and threw himself upwards with all his strength. His fingers caught on the sharp lip of the ledge above his head, and his body swung like a pendulum, the hungry waters slashing at his knees, testing the strength of his grip, trying to drag him away, trying to break the hooked fingers, tearing the fingernails loose so that droplets of blood squeezed out from under them.

Slowly, achingly, Mark bent the arm at the elbow, lifting his knees, drawing his feet clearof the water and its murderous drag.

He hung another moment, gathering what was left of his strength and resolve, and then, with one last convulsive heave, he threw his right arm upwards and hooked his elbow over the ledge, and followed it immediately with his left elbow.

Another moment of rest, and then he wriggled painfully out on the ledge and lay face down. He thought he was blind now, or that the lights had been doused, but the darkness was in his head only.

Slowly the darkness cleared, and he lifted his head. The thunder of the river drowned out all other sound, he could not hear the scrabble of loose stone and the slide of booted feet as Dirk Courtney came down the almost vertical pathway below the bridge. It did not surprise Mark that it was him, it seemed only natural that Dirk Courtney should be here, at the scene of disaster. He was dressed in hunting breeches and calf-length boots, a thick navy pea jacket and a woollen cap pulled low over his face.

He slid down the last ten feet of the cliff, keeping his balance, light as a dancer on his feet, and he paused on the ledge beside the shattered Rolls. Carefully he looked about him, flashing a lantern into the shadows and crevices.

Mark flattened himself down on the rock, but he was beyond the range of the lantern beam.

Dirk turned the beam on to the Rolls, and Mark groaned with the shock of it.

General Sean Courtney had been thrown halfway through the windscreen, and then the full weight of the machine had rolled on to his upper torso. His head was almost severed, and the thick white beard was sodden with bright blood, that shone like rubies in the lantern light.

Dirk Courtney stooped over him, and felt for the carotid pulse in the throat. Despite the fearful mutilation, he must have detected some flutter of stubborn life there. Dirk rolled the head sideways, and the eyes were open and startled. Dirk lifted the short thick club he carried in his right hand. It was wrapped in coarse brown hessian, but its weight and heft were obvious, by the way he handled it.

Mark tried to cry out, but his hoarse croak was lost in the roar of waters. Dirk struck his father across the temple, above the right ear, where the wet grey curls were plastered against the skull, and Mark seemed to feel the thud of the blow in his own soul.

Then with one exploring forefinger, Dirk pressed the temple and felt the give of mortal damage, the grating of the rough edges of shattered bone shard deep in his father's head.

Dirk's features were expressionless, cold and remote, but then he did something which seemed to Mark more dreadful more shocking than the killing blow. With a tender touch of his fingertips, he closed the eyelids over Sean Courtney's dead staring eyes. Then he went down on one knee and kissed his father's bloodied lips lightly, without a change of expression. It was the act of an unhinged mind. It was only at that moment that Mark realized that Dirk Courtney was insane.

Almost immediately, Dirk's manner changed and his hands lost the gentle touch, becoming once again businesslike andprecise. He rolled the body, unbuttoned the camelhair overcoat and searched swiftly through Sean's clothing.

Then he drew out a gold watch chain with the keys and gold hunter attached.

He examined the keys briefly and then pushed them into his pocket. He stood and went to the rear door of the Rolls and struggled with the handle. The door burst open at last, and Ruth Courtney's body spilled out sideways and lay at his feet. He took a handful of her thick dark hair and drew her head back. Again he swung the short thick club against her temple, and again he felt the skull like a doctor making

his diagnosis, prodding to feel the soft spot of crushed bone.

Satisfied, he lifted Ruth Courtney's limp, childlike body in his arms and carried her to the edge of the water. He dropped her over the side, and she was gone instantly, dashed away on the dark current, down to where the plunging waterfalls would tumble her body into the Ladyburg valley, and the cruel rocks would leave no doubt in a coroner's mind as to how she had died.

Helpless with his injuries and exhaustion, his body battered and strained beyond its natural limits, Mark could not move, could hardly breathe as he watched Dirk Courtney stoop and grasp his father's ankles. He dragged the General's heavy body to the edge of the torrent, strai ing backwards, against the dead weight.

Mark dropped his face into his hands and found that he was weeping, great racking dry sobs that probed the injuries deep in his chest.

When he looked up again, Sean Courtney's body was gone, and Dirk Courtney was coming towards where he lay, cautiously following the narrow ]edge, searching the darkness with the lantern beam, sweeping the dark tumbling waters, examining each foot of the ledge, looking for him, looking for Mark, knowing he had been in the Rolls.

The headlights of the truck had struck full into Mark's face in that fatal instant of collision. Dirk Courtney knew he was here, somewhere.

Mark rolled on to his side and tried to unfasten the buttons of his coat but in his haste he had tried with the right hand, and he whimpered with the pain. With his left hand now, he ripped the buttons away and struggled. out of the garment, its wet folds resisting each movement so that when he at last was free of it, Dirk Courtney was only fifty feet away, coming steadily, carefully along the ledge, the lantern in one hand, the short heavy club dangling in the other.

Lying on the edge of the river, Mark flipped the jacket sideways, trying to make it fall on to the rocks in the torrent below, but he had no time to see if he had succeeded. Dirk Courtney was too close.

Mark rolled in towards the foot of the cliff, stifling the cry of pain as his damaged ribs and broken wrist came in rude contact with the rock.

In the lee of the cliff there was a dark shallow chimney, screened from the light of the headlights and lantern. Mark came to his feet. Dirk Courtney was out of sight beyond the angle of the cliff, but the beam of his lantern jumped and swept and swung, bobbing with each pace as he came on.

Mark turned his face to the cliff, gathered himself, and found that some of his dissipated strength was returning, and his anger was still alive, like a small warm flame in his chest. He did not know if it was enough strength, or anger, to carry him through, but he began to climb, slowly, clumsily, like a maimed insect he clung to the cold wet rock and dragged himself upwards.

He was twenty feet up when Dirk Courtney stopped on the ledge directly below him. Mark froze into stillness, the last defence of the helpless animal, but he knew that the instant Dirk lifted the beam, he was discovered. He waited for it, with the numbed resignation of the beast waiting in the abattoir chute.

Dirk made another careful search, swinging the lantern in a full slow traverse of both sides of the river, and he was on the point of lifting the beam to play it on to the cliff where Mark hung, when something caught his attention.

He took two hurried paces to the edge of the rocky ledge and shone the lantern downwards.

Mark's jacket was caught on one of the boulders, and Dirk went down on one knee to try and reach it with one outstretched arm.

It was the respite that Mark needed. Dirk's full attention was on the stranded jacket and the rush and roar of water covered the noise of Mark's scrabbling feet and hands on the cliff.

He did not look down again until he had dragged himself fifty feet higher, and then he saw that the jacket had succeeded as a decoy. Dirk Courtney was a hundred feet downstream, standing on the lip of the first steep waterfall, on the very edge of the escarpment. He had the sodden jacket in his hands and he was peering over the fearsome drop. In the lantern light, the water was black and smooth as oil, as it streamed into the abyss, turning slowly to thick white spume as it fell.

Dirk Courtney threw the jacket out into black space and stood back from the drop. He settled down comfortably on his haunches, sheltered by the cliff from rain and wind, and quite calmly he selected a cigar, like a workman taking a break after performing satisfactorily a difficult task.

That casual little act, the flare of a sulphur match, and the contented puff of blue tobacco smoke in the lantern light, probably saved Mark's life. It stoked his anger to the point when it could overcome his agony and bodily exhaustion. It provided him with the will to go on, and he began to climb again.

Sometimes during the climb, reality faded away from Mark. Once a sense of warmth and well-being began to suffuse his whole body, a wonderful feeling, floating as though on the very frontiers of sleep, but he caught himself before he fell, and deliberately punched his right hand against the rock face. He screamed with the pain of it, but with the pain came new resolve.

But resolve faded slowly in the cold and the pain, and fantasy grew again. He believed that he was one of King Chaka's chosen, following the old king up that terrible cliff to the summit of Chaka's Gate, and he found himself talking gibberish in broken Zulu, and in his head he heard the deep resonant voice of the old king calling him on, giving him encouragement, and he knew if he climbed faster he might catch a glimpse of the king's face. He lost his grip in his impatience, and slid away, gathering momentum down the incline, until he crashed into one of the stunted dwarf trees that grew from the cliff face. It broke his fall, but he screamed again at the pain of broken ribs.

He climbed on, and then he heard Storm's voice. It was so clear and close that he stopped, and turned his face up into the rain and darkness. She was there, floating above his head, so beautiful and pale and graceful, Come, Mark, she said, and her voice echoed and rang like a silver bell in his head. Come, my darling.

He knew then that she was alive, that she was not dying in a cold hospital bed, that she was here, come to him in his pain and exhaustion. Storm, he cried, and threw himself upwards, falling forward, and lying face down in the short wet grass at the top of the cliff.

He just wanted to lie there, for ever. He was not even sure that he had reached the top, was not sure if this was not yet another fantasy, perhaps he was dead already and this was all there was to it.

Then slowly he was aware of the rain drops on his cheek, and the sound of the little tree frogs clinking in the rain, and the cold breath of the wind, and he realized with regret that he was still alive.

The pain began returning then. It started in his wrist first, and began to spread, and he did not think he had the strength left to ride it.

Then suddenly he had the image, clearly formed in his mind, of Dirk Courtney stooped over his father's body, with the club raised in his hand to strike, and Mark's anger came to save him again.

Mark pushed himself to his knees and looked about him. A hundred yards away, the truck was parked on the threshold of the iron bridge, and in its headlights, he could make out the shape of a man.

With one more huge, draining effort, Mark came to his feet, and stood swaying, gathering himself for his next lumbering step.

Pete Botes stood in the rain, holding the heavy pistol hanging in his right hand. The rain had soaked his fine sandy hair, and it ran down his cheeks and forehead, so he kept wiping it away with his left hand.

The rain had soaked through the shoulders of his overcoat also, and he shivered spasmodically, as much from fear as from cold.

He was caught up in the great swirl of events over which he had no control, an encircling web from which he could see no escape, even though his lawyer's mind twisted and turned. Accessory to murder, before and after the fact. He did not want to know what was going on down there at the foot of the cliff, and yet he felt the sick fascination and dread of it.

This was not what he had imagined when he had made the decision to go to Dirk Courtney. He had thought it would be a few words, and he could walk away, pretending it had not happened, crawling back into his wife's warm bed and pulling the blankets over his head.

He had not been prepared for this horror and violence, for a gun in his hand, and this ugly bloody business in the gorge.

The penalty is death, he thought, and shivered again.

He wanted to run, but there was no place to run now. Oh God, why did I do it? he whispered aloud. I wish, oh God, I wish, the age-old cry of the weakling, but he did not finish the wish. There was a sound behind him and he began to turn, lifting the pistol and beginning to point it with both arms at full stretch in front of him.

A figure came towards him out of the darkness, and Peter opened his mouth to cry out.

The figure was an apparition of blood and mud, with a distorted pale face, and it came so swiftly that the cry never reached his lips.

Peter Botes was a man of words and ideas, a soft little man of desks and rich foods, and the man who came out of the darkness was a soldier.

Mark knelt over him in the mud, panting and holding his ribs, waiting for the pain of movement to recede, and for his starred vision to clear.

He looked down at the man under him. His face was pressed into the mud, and Mark took a handful of his hair and rolled the head on its narrow shoulders to prevent the man drowning; it was only then that Mark recognized him. Peter! he whispered hoarsely, and felt his senses reel again, uncertain if this was another fantasy.

He touched the unconscious man's lips, and they were warm and soft as a girl's. Peter! he repeated stupidly, and suddenly he knew it all. It did not have to be thought out a step at a time. He understood how Dirk Courtney had known where to set his ambush. He knew that Peter was the traitor, and he knew that the decoy had been Storm and baby John, he knew it was all a lie then. He knew that Storm and her child were safe and sleeping in the tiny bedroom above the beach, and the knowledge buoyed him.

He picked the Smith Wesson revolver out of the mud with his left hand and wiped it carefully on his shirt.

Dirk Courtney paused at the head of the pathway. He was only slightly breathless from the climb, but his boots were thick with mud and raindrops dewed his shoulders, glittering in the burning headlights of the truck.

The headlights dazzled him, and there was an area of unfathomable darkness behind them.

Peter? he called, and lifted one arm to shield his eyes.

He saw the shadowy figure of the waiting man leaning against the cab of the truck, and he walked forward. It's done, he said. You have nothing to worry about now. I have the key to the safe, it's just the cleaning up left to do. He stopped abruptly, and peered again at the waiting figure. The man had not moved. Peter, his voice cracked. Come on, man! Pull yourself together. There is still work to do. And he started forward again, stepping out of the beam of the headlights. What time is it? he asked. It must be getting late. Yes. Mark's voice was thick and slurred. For you, it's very late. And Dirk stopped again, staring at him. The silence seemed to last for all of eternity, but it was only the instant that it took Dirk to see the revolver and the pale mud-smeared face. He knew that the bullet would come now, and he sought to delay it, just long enough. Listen to me, said Dirk urgently. Wait just one second. He changed his grip on the lantern in his right hand, and his voice was compelling, the tone quick and persuasive, just enough to hold Mark's finger on the trigger. There is something you must know. Dirk made a disarming gesture, swinging the lantern back, and then hurling it forward in a wide arc of his long powerful arm, and, at the same instant, hurling himself forward.

The lantern struck Mark on the shoulder, a glancing blow, just enough to deflect his gun hand as he fired.

But he heard the bullet strike, that muffled thumping sound of soft lead expanding into living flesh, and he heard the grunt of air driven forcibly from Dirk Courtney's lungs by the strike.

Then the man's big hard body crashed into Mark, and as they reeled sideways, supported by the chassis of the truck, he felt one arm lock around his chest and hard fingers close over his gun hand.

In that first moment of direct encounter, Mark knew instantly that Dirk Courtney's strength and weight were far greater than his own. Even if he had been uninjured, it would have been no contest, he was so out-matched that he felt as though he had been caught up in the cogs of a powerful piece of machinery. Dirk Courtney's body seemed not to be made of flesh and bone, but of brutal iron.

Mark's broken ribs moved in the vast encircling grip, and he cried out as the sharp edges of splintered bone lanced into his flesh. He felt his gun hand being forced back, the muzzle of the pistol training up into his own face, and Dirk Courtney swung him off his feet, both of them spinning into a turn like a pair of waltzing dancers, so that only the wildest effort and a lucky trick of balance allowed Mark to come down on his feet again. But now he no longer had the support of the truck -chassis and the next effort would throw him headlong into the mud.

He felt Dirk Courtney gather himself for the next effort, the hard athlete's muscles moving him into perfect balance. Mark tried desperately to meet it, but it came with a smooth surge of power as irresistible as a huge comber rushing towards the beach. Then miraculously, at the moment when he was going, Mark felt the big body hit with a tremor, heard the sobbing outrush of Dirk Courtney's breath, and almost instantly Mark's stomach was drenched with a copious rush of warm liquid as it poured from his adversary.

The strength melted out of Dirk Courtney's body, Mark could feel his balance go, the grip on his pistol hand relaxed slightly, and Mark realized that his bullet had done damage, and that that last effort had torn something open in Dirk's chest. His life blood was expelled from the wound in thick hissing jets by the powerful pump of his heart, and Mark found he was able, by a supreme effort, to reverse the direction of the pistol barrel, swinging it in a slow arc back, back until pointed into Dirk Courtney's face.

Mark did not believe that he had the strength left to pull the trigger. The weapon seemed to fire of its own accord, and the muzzle flash almost blinded him.

Dirk Courtney's head snapped back as though he had been hit in the mouth with the full swing of a baseball bat.

He was hurled backwards, out of the beam of the headlights into the darkness, and Mark heard his body sliding and tumbling down the steep side of the gorge.

The pistol dropped from Mark's hand, and he fell, first on to his knees, and then slowly toppled forward on to his face in the mud.

This is the last will and Testament of SEAN COURTNEY, married out of community of property to RUTH COURTNEY, (formerly FRIEDMAN, born COHEN), and presently residing at LionKop Ranch in the district of Ladyburg.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I give and bequeath my entire estate and effects, movable or immovable, whether in possession, reversion, expectancy or contingency, wherever situate and of whatever description nothing excepted, to my wife the said RUTH COURTNEY.

At first light the next morning, Mark led the search party down the steep river banks. His right arm was in a sling, his ribs were strapped tightly under his shirt, and he hobbled painfully with his injuries.

They found Sean Courtney half a mile below the last cataract, where the Baboon Stroorn debauched into the valley.

He lay on his back, and there was no blood, the waters had cleansed every drop of it, and even his wounds were clean and washed pale blue. Except for the dent in his temple, his features were almost unmarked, and the white bush of his beard had dried in the early morning sun. it curled proudly on his chest. He looked like a carved stone effigy of a medieval knight laid out with his armour and sword on a sarcophagus in the dim depths of an ancient cathedral.

In the event of my wife predeceasing me, or dying simultaneously, or within six months of each other The river had been kind and carried her down to the same sand-bank. She was lying face down, half buried in the soft white sand. One slim naked arm was outflung, and on the third finger was the simple band of bright gold.

The fingers almost, but not quite, touched her husband's arm.

They buried them together, side by side, in the same deep excavation on the slope of the escarpment, a little way beyond the big house of Lion Kop.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I direct that the following shaLl apply in regard to the rest and residue of my estate.

There followed almost five hundred separate bequests which covered fifty pages, and totalled almost five millions of sterling. Scan Courtney had forgotten nobody. Beginning with the humblest grooms and domestic servants enough for a piece of ground, a small herd, the equivalent of a life pension.

TO those with a lifetime of service and loyalty, the gift was greater, in proportion.

To those who had laboured to build up the various prosperous companies and enterprises, there was a share of those companies, a large share.

He had not forgotten a single friend nor relative, not one of them.

I acknowledge that I have one legitimate man-child, though I hesitate to employ the word son, one DIRK COURTNEY, presently residing at Great Longwood in the district of Ladyburg. However, God or the devil has already provided for him so abundantly, that anything I could add would be superfluous. Therefore I leave him nothing -not even my blessing.

They buried Dirk Courtney in the pine forest, below the dog ring. No priest could be found to recite the office of burial, and the undertaker closed the grave under the curious eyes of a few members of the Press and a throng of sensation-seekers. Though there were many to stare, there was nobody to weep.

To my daughter STORM HUNT (born COURTNEY), who took lightly her filial duties, I, in turn, discharge my paternal duties with the bequest of a single guinea. He did not mean it, Mark whispered to her. He was talking about you that night, as it happened, he was remembering you. I had his love, she said softly. Even though, at the end - he tried to deny it, I will have it always. That is riches enough. I don't need his money as well. To MARK ANDERS, for whom I have conceived the affection a man usually accords only to his natural son, I leave no money, as I am well aware of the contempt he holds for that commodity. I bequeath to him, in lieu of cash, all my books, paintings, guns, pistols and rifles, personal jewellery, and all my domestic animals, including dogs, horses and cattle.

The paintings in themselves made up a considerable fortune, and many of the books were unique in rarity and condition.

Mark sold only the cattle and horses, for they were many and there was no place for them all in the tsetse-infested valley of the Bubezi.

The rest and residue of my Estate I bequeath to the said MARK ANDERS in his capacity as the Trustee of the Wild Life Protection Society. The bequest to be used to further the aims of the Society, particularly to the development and extension of the proclaimed lands presently known as Chaka's Gate, into a Wild Life Reservation. No one in Government will want to touch a Bill that was drawn up and piloted by the former Deputy Minister of Lands, General jannie Smuts prophesied to Mark, as they stood talking quietly together after the funeral. The man's name will leave a pungent stink on anything he ever touched. Political reputations are too fragile to risk like that, I foresee a stampede by the new Government to dissociate themselves from his memory. We can confidently expect a new Bill being introduced, confirming and upgrading the status of the proclaimed lands of Chaka's Gate, and I can assure you, my boy, that the Bill will have the full support of my party. As General Smuts had foreseen, the Bill passed through the House at the following Session, becoming law on 31 st May 1926, as Act No. 56 of 1926 of the Parliament of the Union of South Africa. Five days later, the telegram from the Minister of Lands arrived at Ladyburg confirming Mark's appointment as first Warden of Chaka's Gate National Park.

There was no trial at which Hobday could turn king's evidence and claim immunity from the crime of murder; so at Hobday's own trial, the Public Prosecutor asked for the death sentence. In his summing up, the Chief justice mentioned the evidence given by Sithole Zama, alias Pungushe. He made an excellent impression on this Court.

His answers were clear and precise. At no time did the defence shake his transparent honesty and powers of total recall. On Christmas Eve in the whitewashed room at Pretoria Cential-Gaol, with his arms and legs pinioned by leather straps, and his head covered by a black cotton bag, Hobday dropped to eternity through the crashing wooden trap.

Peter Botes, cleared of any implication in the crimes of murder and attempted murder by the testimony of Mark Anders, was not placed on trial. His crimes were weakness and greed, Mark tried to explain to Storm. If there were punishment for those, then there would be a gallows waiting for each of us. Besides, there has been enough vengeance and death already Peter Botes left Ladyburg immediately after the hearings, and Mark never learned where he went or what became of him.

Now when you cross the Bubezi River by the low concrete bridge, where Dirk Courtney's dam wall and hydroelectric station might have stood, you will come to the barrier on the far bank.

A Zulu ranger in smart suntans and a slouch hat will salute you, and give you a smile that sparkles like the Parks Board badge on his hat brim.

When you leave your vehicle and go into the office building of hewn stone and neat thatch to sign the register, look then to the left wall beyond the reception desk. In a glass case there is a permanent display of photographs and memorabilia from the park's early days. The centre-piece of this collection is a large photograph of a sprightly old gentleman, lean and tanned and tough as a strip of rawhide, with a shock of pure white hair and a marvelous pair of spiky moustaches.

His cotton jacket is a little rumpled and fits him as though it was made for his elder brother, the knot of his tie has slipped down an inch and one tab of his shirt collar is slightly awry. Although his smile is impish, his jaw is firm and determined. However, it is the eyes that arrest attention. They are serene and direct, the eyes of a visionary or a prophet.

Under the photograph is the legend: Colonel Mark Anders, First Warden of Chaka's Gate National Park And below that again in smaller letters, Because of this man's energy and farsightedness, Chaka's Gate National Park has come down to posterity. Colonel Anders served on the Board of the National Parks Trust from its inception in 1926. In 1935, he was elected Chairman. He fought with distinction in two world wars, was severely wounded in one, and commanded his battalion in North Africa and Italy in the second. He is the author of many books on wildlife, including Sanctuary and Vanishing Africa. He has travelled the world to lecture and to gain support for the work of conservation. He has been honoured by monarchs and governments and universities!

in the photograph, a tall slim woman stands beside the Colonel. Her hair is streaked with grey and drawn back severely from her face, and although there are crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes and deep lines around her mouth, yet they are the lines of laughter and the planes and angles of her face still show traces of what must once have been great beauty. She leans half protectively, half possessively against the Colonel's right arm and below the photograph the legend continues:His wife and life-long companion in his work was the internationally celebrated artist, who painted her memorable African landscapes and wildlife studies under her maiden name of Storm Courtney. In 1973, Colonel Anders retired from his position of Chairman of the Parks Board, and went with his lady to live in a cottage overlooking the sea at Urnhlanga Rocks on the Natal Coast!

When you have read the legend you may go back to your motorcar. The Zulu ranger will salute you again and raise the barrier. Then you too can go, for a short time, into Eden.

The End

Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University. He became a full-time writer in 1964 after the successful publication of When the Lion Feeds, and has since written twenty-four novels, meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. His work is now translated into twenty-five languages. He normally travels from November to February, often spending a month skiing in Switzerland, and visiting Australia and New Zealand for sea fishing. During his summer break he visits environments as diverse as Alaska and the dwindling wilderness of the African interior. He has an abiding concern for the peoples and wildlife of his native continent, an interest strongly reflected in his novels.

He is married to Danielle, to whom his last twenty books have been dedicated.

The novels of Wilbur Smith

The Courtney Novels:

When the Lion Feeds

The Sound of Thunder

A Sparrow Falls

The Burning Shore

Power of the Sword

Rage

A Time to Die

The Ballantyne Novels:

A Falcon Flies

Men of Men

The Angels Weep

The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

Also:

The Dark of the Sun

Shout at the Devil

Gold Mine

The Diamond Hunters

The Sunbird

Eagle in the Sky

The Eye of the Tiger

Cry Wolf

Hungry as the Sea

Wild justice

Golden Fox

Elephant Song

River God

Power of the Sword