"The reprieve?" she asked. "I cannot do it."



"Then neither can I," she said, and lifted herself onto her knees.



She had to fight to keep herself from laughing aloud as she watched his face swell and his eyes bulge further out. He wriggled and heaved under her, thrusting vainly at the air.



"Please!" he whimpered. "Please!"



"The reprieve?" she asked, keeping herself suspended tantalizingly above him.



"Yes," he whinnied. "Anything. I will give you anything you want."



"I love you, my husband," she whispered in his ear, and sank down like a bird settling on its nest.



Last time he lasted to a count of one hundred, she remembered. This time I shall try to bring him to the finishing line in under fifty. With rocking hips she set herself to better her own record.



Manseer opened the door of Althuda's cell and roared, "Come out, you murderous dog. Governor's orders, you go to work on the wall." Althuda stepped out through the iron door and Manseer glared at him. "Seems you'll not be dancing a quadrille on the scaffold with Slow John, more's the pity. But don't crow too loud, you'll give us as much sport on the castle walls. Barnard and his hounds will see to that. You'll not last the winter out, I'll wager a hundred guilders on it."



Hal led the file of convicts up from the lower cells, and paused on the stone step below Althuda. For a long moment they studied each other keenly. Both looked pleased at what they saw.



"If you give me a choice, then I think I prefer the cut of your sister's jib to yours." Hal smiled. Althuda was smaller in stature than his voice had suggested and all the marks of his long captivity were plain to see. his skin was sallow and his hair matted and tangled.



But the body that showed through the holes in his miserable rags was neat and strong and supple. His gaze was frank and his countenance comely and open. Although his eyes were almond-shaped and his hair straight and black, his English blood mingled well with that of his mother's people. There was a proud and stubborn set to his jaw.



"What cradle did you fall out of?" he asked Hal, with a grin. It was obvious that he was overjoyed to come out from the shadow of the gallows. "I called for a man and they sent a boy."



"Come on, you murdering renegade," Barnard bellowed, as the gaoler handed over the convicts to his charge. "You may have escaped the noose for the moment, but I have a few pleasures in store for you. You slit the throats of some of my comrades on the mountainside." It was clear that all the garrison bitterly resented Althuda's reprieve. Then Barnard turned on Hal. "As for you, you stinking pirate, your tongue is too loose by far. One word out of you today and I'll kick you off the wall, and feed the scraps to my dogs."



Barnard separated the two of them. he sent Hal back onto the scaffold and set Althuda to work in the gangs of convicts down in the courtyard, unloading the masonry blocks from the ox-drawn wagons as they came down from the quarries.



However, that evening Althuda was herded into the general cell. Daniel and the rest crowded around him in the darkness to hear his story told in detail, and to ply him with all the questions that they had not been able to shout up the staircase. He was something new in the dreary, monotonous round of captivity and heart-breaking labour. Only when the kettle of stew was brought down from the kitchens and the men hurried to their frugal dinner did Hal have a chance to speak to him alone.



"If you escaped once before, Althuda, then there must be a chance we can do it again."



"I was in a better state then. I had my own fishing boat. My master trusted me and I had the run of the colony. How can we escape from the walls that surround us? I fear it would be impossible."



"You use the words fear and impossible. That is not a language that I understand. I thought perhaps I had met a man, not some faintheart."



"Keep the harsh words for our enemies, my friend." Althuda returned his hard stare. "Instead of telling me what a hero you are, tell me instead now how you receive word from the outside." Hal's stern expression cracked and he grinned at him. He liked the man's spirit, the way he could meet broadside with broadside. He moved closer and lowered his voice as he explained to Althuda how it was done. Then he handed him the latest message he had received. Althuda took it to the grille gate, and studied it in the torchlight that filtered down the staircase.



"Yes" he said. "That is my sister's hand. I know of no other who can pen her letters so prettily."



That evening the two composed a message for Aboli to collect, to let him and Sukeena know that Althuda had been released from Skellum's Den.



However, it seemed that Sukeena already knew this, for the following day she accompanied her mistress on a visit to the castle. She rode beside Aboli on the driver's seat of the carriage. At the staircase she helped her mistress dismount. It was strange but Hal was by now so accustomed to Katinka's visits that he no longer felt angry and bitter when he looked upon her angelic face. She held his attention barely at all, and instead he watched the slave girl. Sukeena stood at the bottom of the staircase and darted quick birdlike glances in every direction as she searched for her brother's face among the gangs of convicts.



Althuda was working in the courtyard, chipping and chiselling the tough stone blocks into shape before they were swung up on the gantry to the top of the unfinished walls. His face and hair were powdered white as a miller's with the stone dust, and his hands were bleeding from the abrasion of tools and rough stone. At last Sukeena picked him out, and brother and sister stared at each other for one long ecstatic moment.



Sukeena's radiant expression was one of the most beautiful Hal had ever looked upon. But it was only for a fleeting instant, then Sukeena fled up the stairs after her mistress.



A short time later they reappeared at the head of the staircase, but Governor van de Velde was with them. He had his wife on his arm and Sukeena followed then demurely. The slave girl seemed to be searching for someone other than her brother. When she mounted the driver's seat of the carriage, she murmured something to Aboli. In response, Aboli moved only his eyes, but she followed his gaze, up to the top of the scaffold where Hal was belaying a rope end.



Hal felt his pulse sprint as he realized that it was him she was seeking. They stared at each other solemnly and it seemed they were very close, for afterwards Hal could remember every angle and plane of her face and the graceful curve of her neck. At last she smiled, it was a brief, honeyed interlude, then dropped her eyes. That night in his cell he lay on the clammy straw and relived the moment.



Perhaps she will come again tomorrow, he thought, as sleep swept over him like a black wave. But she did not come again for many weeks.



They made a place on the straw for Althuda to sleep near Hal and Daniel so that they could talk quietly in the darkness.



"How many of your men are in the mountains?" Hal wanted to know.



"There were nineteen of us to begin with, but three were killed by the Dutch and five others died after we escaped. The mountains are cruel and there are many wild beasts."



"What weapons do they have?" Hal asked.



"They have the muskets and the swords that we captured from the Dutch, but there is little powder, and by now it might all be used up. My companions have to hunt to live."



"Surely they have made other weapons?" Hal enquired. "They have fashioned bows and pikes, but they lack iron points for these weapons."



"How secure are your hiding places in the wilderness?" Hal persisted.



"The mountains are endless. The gorges are a tangled labyrinth. The cliffs are harsh and there are no paths except those made by the baboons."



"Do the Dutch soldiers venture into these mountains?" "Never! They dare not scale even the first ravine."



These discussions filled all their evenings, as the winter gales came ravening down from the mountain like a pride of lions roaring at the castle walls. The men in the dungeons lay shivering on the straw pallets. Sometimes it was only the talking and the hoping that kept them from succumbing to the cold. Even so, some of the older, weaker convicts sickened. their throats and chests filled with thick yellow phlegm, their bodies burned up with fever and they died, choking and coughing.



The flesh was burned off those who survived. Although they became thin, they were hardened by the cold and the labour. Hal reached his full growth and strength in those terrible months, until he could match Daniel at belaying a rope or hefting the heavy hods. His beard grew out dense and black and the thick pigtail of his hair hung down between his shoulder blades. The whip marks latticed his back and flanks, and his gaze was hard and relentless when he looked up at the mountain tops, blue in the distance.



"How far is it to the mountains?" he asked Althuda in the darkness of the cell.



"Ten leagues," Althuda told him.



"So far!" Hal whispered. "How did you ever reach them over such a distance, with the Dutch in pursuit?"



"I told you I was a fisherman," Althuda said. "I went out each day to kill seals to feed the other slaves. My boat was small and we were many. It barely served to carry us across False Bay to the foot of the mountains. My sister Sukeena does not swim. That is why I would not let her chance the crossing."



"Where is that boat now?"



"The Dutch who pursued us found where we had hidden it. They burned it." Each night these councils were shortlived, for they were all being driven to the limit of their strength and endurance. But, gradually, Hal was able to milk from Althuda every detail that might be of use.



"What is the spirit of the men you took with you to the mountains?"



"They are brave men and women too, for there are three girls with the band. Had they been less brave they would never have left the safety of their captivity. But they are not warriors, except one."



"Who is he, this one among them?"



"His name is Sabah. He was a soldier until the Dutch captured him. Now he is a soldier again."



"Could we send word to him?"



Althuda laughed bitterly. "We could shout from the top of the castle walls or rattle our chains. He might hear us on his mountain top."



"If I had wanted a jester, I would have called on Daniel here to amuse me. His jokes would make a dog retch, but they are funnier than yours. Answer me now, Althuda. Is there no way to reach Sabah?"



Though his tone was light, it had an edge of steel to it, and Althuda. thought a while before he replied. "When I escaped I arranged with Sukeena a hiding place beyond the bitter-almond hedge of the colony, where we could leave messages for each other. Sabah knew of this post, for I showed it to him on the night I returned to fetch my sister. It is a long throw of the dice, but Sabah may still visit it to find a message from me."



"I will think on these things you have told me, "Hal said, and Daniel, lying near him in the dark cell, heard the power and authority in his voice and shook his head.



"Tis the voice and the manner of Captain Franky he has now, Daniel marvelled. What the Dutchies are doing to him here might have put a lesser man UP on the reef but, by God, all they have done to him is filled his main sail with a strong wind. Hal had taken over his father's role, and the crew who had survived recognized it. More and more they looked to him for leadership, to give them courage to go on and to counsel them, to settle the petty disputes that rose almost daily between men in such bitter straits, and to keep a spark of hope and courage burning in all their hearts.



The next evening Hal took up the council of war that exhaustion had interrupted the night before. "So Sukeena knows where to leave a message for Sabah?"



"Naturally, she knows it well the hollow tree on the banks of the Eerste River, the first river beyond the boundary hedge," Althuda replied.



"Aboli must try to make contact with Sabah. Is there something that is known only to you and Sabah that will prove to him the message comes from you and is not a Dutch trap?"



Althuda thought about it. "Just say "tis the father of little Bobby," he suggested at last. Hal waited in silence for Althuda to explain, and after a pause he went on, "Robert is my son, born in the wilderness after we had escaped from the colony. This August he will be a year old. His mother is one of the girls I spoke of. In all but name she is my wife. Nobody inside the bitter-almond hedge but I could know the child's name."



"So, you have as good a reason as any of us for wanting to fly over these walls," Hal murmured.



The content of the messages that they were able to pass to Aboli was severely restricted by the size of the paper they could safely employ without alerting the gaolers, or the sharp, hungry scrutiny of Hugo Barnard. Hal and Althuda spent hours straining their eyes in the dim light and flogging their wits to compose the most succinct messages that would still be intelligible. The replies that returned to them were the voice of Sukeena speaking, little jewels of brevity that delighted them with occasional flashes of wit and humour.



Hal found himself thinking more and more of Sukeena, and when she came again to the castle, following behind her mistress, her eyes went first to the scaffold where he worked before going on to seek out her brother. Occasionally, when there was space in the letters that Aboli placed in the crack of the wall, she made little personal comments, a reference to his bushing black beard or the passing of his birthday. This startled Hal, and touched him deeply. He wondered for a while how she had known this intimate detail, until he guessed that Aboli had told her. He encouraged Althuda to talk about her in the darkness. He learned little things about her childhood, her fancies and her dislikes. As he lay and listened to Althuda, he began to fall in love with her.



Now when Hal looked to the mountains in the north they were covered by a mantle of snow that shone in the wintry sunlight. The wind came down from it like a lance and seemed to pierce his soul. "Aboli has still not heard from Sabah." After four months of waiting, Hal at last accepted that failure. "We will have to cut him out of our plans."



"He is my friend, but he must have given me up," Althuda agreed. "I grieve for my wife for she also must be mourning my death."



"Let us move on, then, for it boots us not to wish for what is denied us," Hal said firmly. "It would be easier to escape from the quarry on the mountain than from the castle itself. It seems that Sukeena must have arranged for your reprieve. Perhaps in the same fashion she can have us sent to the quarry."



They dispatched the message, and a week later the reply came back.



Sukeena was unable to influence the choice of their workplace, and she cautioned that any attempt to do so would arouse immediate suspicion. "Be patient, Gundwane, she told him in a longer message than she had ever sent before. "Those who love you are working for your salvation."



Hal read that message a hundred times then repeated it to himself as often. He was touched that she should use his nickname, Gundwane. Of course, Aboli had told her that also.



"Those who love you?" Does she mean Aboli alone, or does she use the plural intentionally? Is there another who loves me too? Does she mean me alone or does she include Althuda, her brother? He alternated between hope and dismay. How can she trouble my mind so, when I have never even heard her voice? How can she feel anything for me, when she sees nothing but a bearded scarecrow in a beggar's rags? But, then, perhaps Aboli has been my champion and told her I was not always thus.



Plan as they would, the days passed and hope grew threadbare. Six more of Hal's seamen died during the months of August and September. two fell from the scaffold, one was struck down by a falling block of masonry and two more succumbed to the cold and the damp. The sixth was Oliver, who had been Sir Francis's manservant. Early in their imprisonment his right foot had been crushed beneath the iron-shod wheel of one of the ox-wagons that brought the stone down from the quarry. Even though Doctor Soar had placed a splint upon the shattered bone, the foot would not mend. It swelled up and burst out in suppurating ulcers that smelt like the flesh of a corpse. Hugo Barnard drove him back to work, even though he limped around the courtyard on a crude crutch.



Hal and Daniel tried to shield Oliver, but if they intervened too obviously Barnard became even more vindictive. All they could do was take as much of the work as they could on themselves and keep Oliver out of range of the overseer's whip. When the day came that Oliver was too weak to climb the ladder to the top of the south wall, Barnard sent him to work as a mason's boy, trimming and shaping the slabs of stone. In the courtyard he was right under Barnard's eye, and twice in the same morning Barnard laid into him with the whip.



The last was a casual blow, not nearly as vicious as many that had preceded it. Oliver was a tailor by trade, and by nature a timid and gentle creature, but, like a cur driven into an alley from which there was no escape, he turned and snapped. He swung the heavy wooden mallet in his right hand, and though Barnard sprang back he was not swift enough and it caught him across one shin. It was a glancing blow that did not break bone but it smeared the skin, and a flush of blood darkened Barnard's hose and seeped down into his shoe. Even from his perch on the scaffold Hal could see by his expression that Oliver was appalled and terrified by what he had done.



"Sir!" he cried, and fell to his knees. "I did not mean it.



Please, sir, forgive me." He dropped the mallet and held up both hands to his face in the attitude of prayer.



Hugo Barnard staggered back, then stooped to examine his injury. He ignored Oliver's frantic pleas, and peeled back his hose to expose the long graze down his shin. Then still without looking at Oliver, he limped to the hitching rail on the far side of the courtyard where his pair of black boar hounds were tethered. He held them on the leashes and pointed them at where Oliver still knelt.



"Get him!" They hurled themselves against the leashes, baying and gaping with wide red mouths and long white fangs.



"Get him!" Barnard urged, and at the same time restrained them. The fury in his voice enraged the animals, and they leapt against the leashes so that Barnard was almost pulled off his feet.



"Please!" screamed Oliver, struggling to rise, toppling back, then crawling towards where his crutch was propped against the stone wall.



Barnard slipped the hounds. They bounded across the yard and Oliver had time only to lift his hands to cover his face before they were on him.



They bowled him over and sent him rolling over the cobbles, then slashed at him with snapping jaws. One went for his face, but he lifted his arm and it buried its fangs in his elbow. Oliver was shirtless and the other hound caught him in the belly. Both held on.



From high on the scaffold Hal was powerless to intervene. Gradually Oliver's screams grew weaker and his struggles ceased. Barnard and his hounds never let up. they went on worrying the body long after the last flutter of life had been extinguished. Then Barnard gave the mutilated body one last kick and stepped back. He was panting wildly and sweat slimed his face and dripped onto his shirtfront, but he lifted his head and grinned up at Hal. He left Oliver's body lying on the cobbles until the end of the work shift when he singled out Hal and Daniel. "Throw that piece of offal on the dung heap behind the castle. He will be more use to the seagulls and crows than he ever was to me." And he chuckled with glee when he saw the murder in Hal's eyes.



When spring came round again only eight were left. Yet the eight were tempered by these hardships. Every muscle and sinew stood proud beneath the tanned and weathered skin of Hal's chest and arms. The palms of his hands were tough as leather, and his fingers powerful as a blacksmith's tongs. When he broke up a fight a single blow from one of his scarred fists could drop a big man to the paving.



The first promise of spring dispersed the gale-driven clouds, and the sun had new fire in its rays. A restlessness took over from the resigned gloom that had possessed them all during winter. Tempers were short, fighting among them more frequent, and their eyes looked often to the far mountains, from which the snows had thawed or turned out across the blue Atlantic.



Then there came a message from Aboli in Sukeena's hand. "Sabah sends greetings to A. Bobby and his mother pine for him." It filled them all with a wild and joyous hope that, in truth, had no firm foundation for Sabah and his band could only help them once they had passed the bitter-almond hedge.



Another month passed, and the wild flame of hope that had lit their hearts sank to an ember. Spring came in its full glory, and turned the mountain into a prodigy of wild flowers whose colours stunned the eye, and whose perfume reached them even on the high scaffold. The wind came singing out of the south-east, and the sun birds returned from they knew not where, setting the air afire with their sparkling plumage.



Then there was a laconic message from Sukeena and Aboli. "It is time to go. How many are you?"



That night they discussed the message in whispers that shook with excitement. "Aboli has a plan. But how can he get all of us away?"



"For me he is the only horse in the race," Big Daniel growled. "I'm laying every penny I have on him."



"If only you had a penny to lay." Ned chuckled. It was the first time Hal had heard him laugh since Oliver had been ripped to pieces by Barnard's dogs.



"How many are going?" Hal asked. "Think on it a while, lads, before you give answer." In the bad light he looked around the circle of heads, whose expressions turned grim. "If you stay here you will go on living for a while at least, and no man will think the worse of you.



If we go and we do not reach the mountains, then you all saw the way my father and Oliver died. "Twas not a fitting death for an animal, let alone a man."



Althuda spoke first. "Even if it were not for Bobby and my woman, I would go."



"Aye!"said Daniel, and'Aye!"said Ned.



"That's three," Hal murmured, "What about you, William Rogers?"



"I'm with you, Sir Henry."



"Don't test me, Billy. I have told you not to call me that." Hal frowned. When they used his title he felt himself a fraud, for he was not worthy of the honour that his grandfather had won at the right hand of Drake. The title that his father had carried with such distinction.



"Your last chance, Master Billy. If your tongue trips again I'll kick some sense into the other end of you. Do you hear?"



"Aye, I hear you sweet and clear, Sir Henry." Billy grinned at him, and the others roared with laughter as Hal caught him by the scruff of his neck and boxed his ears. They were all bubbling over with excitement all, that was, but Dick Moss and Paul Hale.



"I've grown too old for a lark such as this, Sir Hal. My bones are so stiff I could not climb a pretty lad if you tied him over a barrel for me, let alone climb a mountain." Dick Moss the old pederast grinned. "Forgive me, Captain, but Paul and me have talked it over, and we'll stay on here where we'll get a bellyful of stew and a bundle of straw each night."



"Perhaps you are wiser than the rest of us." Hal nodded, and he was not saddened by the decision. Dicky was long past his glory days when he had been the man to beat to the masthead when they reefed sail in a full gale. This last winter had stiffened his limbs and greyed his hair. He would be non-paying cargo to carry on this voyage. Paul was Dicky's ship-wife. They had been together for twenty years, and though Paul was still a fury with a cutlass in his hand he would stay with his ageing lover.



"Good luck to both of you. You're as good a pair as I ever sailed with," Hal said, and looked at Wally Finch and Stan Sparrow. "What about you two birds? Will you fly with us, lads?"



"As high and as far as you're going." Wally spoke for both of them, and Hal clapped his shoulder.



"That makes six of us, eight with Aboli and Althuda, and it'll be high and far enough to suit all our tastes, I warrant you." here was a final exchange of. messages as Aboli and Sukeena explained the plan they had worked out. Hal suggested refinements and drew up a list of items that Aboli and Sukeena must try to steal to make their existence in the wilderness more certain. Chief among these were a chart and compass, and a backstaff if they could find one.



Aboli and Sukeena made their final preparation without letting their trepidation or excitement become apparent to the rest of the household. Dark eyes were always watching everything that happened in the slave quarters, and they trusted nobody now that they were so close to the chosen day. Sukeena gradually assembled those items for which Hal had asked, and added a few of her own that she knew they would need.



The day before the planned escape, Sukeena summoned Aboli into the main living area of the residence where before he had never been allowed to enter. "I need your strength to move the carved armoire in the banquet hall," she told him, in front of the cook and two others of the kitchen staff. Aboli followed her submissively as a trained hound on a leash. Once they were alone, Aboli dropped the demeanour of the meek slave.



"Be quick!" Sukeena warned him. "The mistress will return very soon. She is with Slow John at the bottom of the garden." She moved swiftly to the shutter of the window that overlooked the lawns, and saw that the ill-assorted couple were still in earnest conversation under the oak trees.



"There is no limit to her depravity," she whispered to herself, as she watched Katinka laugh at something the executioner had said. "She would make love to a pig or a poisonous snake if the fancy came upon her." Sukeena shuddered at the memory of that ophidian tongue exploring. the secret recesses of her own body. It will never happen again, she promised herself, only four more days to endure before Althuda will be safe. If she calls me to her nest before then I will plead that my courses are flowing.



She heard something whirl in the air like a great bird in flight and glanced back over her shoulder to see that Aboli had taken one of the swords from the display of weapons in the hallway. He was testing its balance and temper, swinging it in singing circles around his head, so that the reflections of light off the blade danced on the white walls.



He set it aside and chose another, but liked it not at all and placed it back with a frown. "Hurry!" she called softly to him. Within minutes he had picked out three blades, not for the jewels that decorated the hilts but for the litheness and temper of their blades. All three were curved scimitars made by the annourers of Shah Jahan at Agra on the Indian continent. "They were made for a Mogul prince and sit ill in the hand of a rough sailor, but they will do until I can find a cutlass of good Sheffield steel to replace them." Then he picked out a shorter blade, a kukri knife used by the hill people of Further India, and he shaved a patch of hair off his forearm.



"This will do for the close work I have in mind." He grunted with satisfaction.



"I have marked well those you have chosen," Sukeena told him. "Now leave them on the rack or their empty slots will be noticed by the other house slaves. I will pass them to you on the evening before the day."



That afternoon she took her basket and, the conical straw Hat on her head, went up into the mountain. Although any watcher would not have understood her intent, she made certain that she was out of sight, hidden in the forest that filled the great ravine below the summit. There was a dead tree that she had noted on many previous outings. From the rotting pith sprouted a thicket of tiny purple toadstools. She pulled on a pair of gloves before she began to pick them. The gills beneath the parasol-shaped tops were of a pretty yellow colour. These fungi were toxic, but only if eaten in quantity would they be fatal. She had chosen them for this quality she did not want the lives of innocent men and their families on her conscience. She placed them in the bottom of the basket and covered them with other roots and herbs before she descended the steep mountainside and walked sedately back through the vineyards to the residence.



That evening Governor van de Velde held a gala dinner in the great hall, and invited the notables from the settlement and all the Company dignitaries. These festivities continued late, and after the guests had left the household staff and slaves were exhausted. They left Sukeena to make her rounds and lock up the kitchens for the night.



Once she was alone she boiled the purple toadstools and reduced the essence to the consistency of new honey. She poured the liquid into one of the empty wine bottles from the feast. It had no odour and she did not have to sample it to know that it had only the faintest taste of the fungi. One of the women who worked in the kitchens at the castle barracks was in her debt. Sukeena's potions had saved her eldest son when he had been stricken by the smallpox. The next morning she left the bottle in a basket with remedies and potions in the carriage for Aboli to deliver to the woman.



When Aboli drove the Governor down to the castle, van de Velde was ashen-faced and grumpy with the effects of the previous night's debauchery. Aboli left a message in the slot in the wall that- read, "Eat nothing from the garrison kitchen on the last evening."



That night Hal poured the contents of the stew kettle into the latrine bucket before any of the men were tempted to sample it. The steaming aroma filled the cell and to the starving seamen it smelled like the promise of eternal life. They groaned and gritted their teeth, and cursed Hal, their fates and themselves to see it wasted.



The next morning at the accustomed hour the dungeon began to stir with life. Long before dawn outlined the four small, barred windows, men groaned and coughed and then crept, one at a time to ease themselves, grunting and farting as they voided in the latrine bucket. Then, as the significance of the day dawned upon them, a steely, charged silence gripped them.



Slowly the light of day filtered down upon them from the windows and they looked at each other askance. They had never been left this late before. On every other morning they had been at work on the walls an hour earlier than this.



When at last Manseer's keys rattled in the lock, he looked pale and sickly. The two men with him were in no better case.



"What ails you, Manseer?" Hal asked. "We thought you had changed your affections and that we would never see you again." The gaoler was an honest simpleton, with little malice in him, and over the months Hal had cultivated a superficially amicable relationship with him.



"I spent the night sitting in the shithouse," Manseer moaned. "And I had company, for every man in the garrison was trying to get in there with me. Even at this hour half of them are still in their bunks-" He broke off as his belly rumbled like distant thunder, and a desperate expression came over his face. "Here I go again! I swear I'll kill that poxy cook." He started back up the stairs and left them waiting another half-hour before he returned to open the grille gate and lead them out into the courtyard.



Hugo Barnard was waiting to take over from him. He was in a foul mood. "We have lost half a day's work," he snarled at Manseer. "Colonel Schreuder will blame me for this, and when he does I'll come back to you, Manseer!" He turned on the line of convicts. "Don't you bastards stand there smirking! By God, you're going to give me a full day's work even if I have to keep you on the scaffold until midnight. Now leap to it, and quickly too!" Barnard was in fine fettle, his face ruddy and his temper already on the boil. It was clear that the colic and diarrhoea that afflicted the rest of the garrison had not touched him. Hal remembered Manseer remarking that Barnard lived with a Hottentot girl in the settlement down by the shore, and did not eat in the garrison mess.



He looked around quickly as he walked across the courtyard to the foot of the ladder. The sun was already well up and its rays lit the western redoubt of the castle. There were less than half the usual number of gaolers and guards. one sentry instead of four at the gates, none at the entrance to the armoury and only one more at the head of the staircase that led to the Company offices and the Governor's suite on the south side of the courtyard.



When he climbed the ladder and reached the top of the wall he looked across the parade to the avenue, and could just make out the roof of the Governor's residence among the trees.



"God speed, Aboli," he whispered. "We are ready for you Aboli brought the carriage round to the front of the residence a few minutes earlier than the Governor's wife had ordered it, and pulled up the horses below the portico. Almost immediately Sukeena appeared in the doorway and called to him. "Aboli! The mistress has some packages to take with us in the carriage." Her tone was light and easy, with no hint of strain. "Please come and carry them down." This was for the benefit of the others whom she knew would be listening.



Obediently Aboli locked the brake on the carriage wheels and, with a quiet word to the horses, jumped down from the coachman's seat. He moved without haste and his expression was calm as he followed Sukeena into the house. He came out again a minute later carrying a rolled-up silk rug and a set of leather saddle-bags. He went to the back of the carriage and placed this luggage in the panniers, then closed the lid. There was no air of secrecy about his movements and no furtiveness to alert any of the other slaves. The two maids who were busy sweeping the front terrace did not even look up at him. He went back to his seat and picked up the reins, waiting with a slave's infinite patience.



Katinka was late, but that was not unusual. She came at last in a cloud of French perfume and rustling silks, sweeping down the stairs and scolding Sukeena for some fancied misdemeanour. Sukeena glided beside her on small, silent, slippered feet, contrite and smiling.



Katinka climbed up into the carriage like a queen on her way to her coronation, and imperiously ordered Sukeena, "Come and sit here beside me!" Sukeena gave her a curtsy with her hands to her lips. She had hoped that Katinka would give her that command. When she was in the mood for physical intimacy, Katinka wanted her close enough to be able to stretch out her hand and touch her. At other times she was cold and aloof, but at all times unpredictable.



"Tis an omen for good that she does what I intended, Sukeena encouraged herself, as she took the seat opposite her mistress and smiled at her lovingly.



"Drive on, Aboli!" Katinka called and then, as the carriage pulled away, gave her attention to Sukeena "How does this colour suit me in the sunlight? Does it not make me seem pale and insipid?"



"It goes beautifully with your skin, mistress." Sukeena told her what she wanted to hear. "Even better than it does indoors. Also it brings out the violet lights in your eyes."



"Should there not be a touch more lace in the collar, do you think?" Katinka tilted her head prettily.



Sukeena considered her reply. "Your beauty does not rely on even the finest lace from Brussels," she told her. "It stands alone."



"Do you think so, Sukeena? You are such a flatterer, but I must say you yourself are looking particularly fetching this morning." She considered the girl thoughtfully. The carriage was now bowling down the avenue at a trot, the greys arching their necks and stepping out handsomely. "There is colour in your cheeks and a twinkle in your eye.



One might be forgiven for thinking that you were in love."



Sukeena looked at her in a way that made Katinka's skin tingle. "Oh, but I am in love with a special person," she whispered.



"My naughty little darling," Katinka putted.



The carriage came out into the Parade and turned towards the castle. Katinka was so engrossed that for some while she did not realize where they were heading. Then a shadow of annoyance crossed her face and she called sharply, "Aboli! What are you doing, idiot? Not the castle. We are going to Mevrouw de Wool."



Aboli seemed not to have heard her. The greys trotted straight on towards the castle gates.



"Sukeena, tell the fool to turn round."



Sukeena stood up quickly in the swaying carriage then sat down close beside Katinka and slipped her arm through that of her mistress, holding her firmly.



"What on earth are you doing, child? Not here. Have you lost your mind? Not in front of the whole colony." She tried to pull away her arm, but Sukeena held it with a strength that shocked her.



"We are going into the castle," Sukeena said quietly. "And you are to do exactly what I tell you to do."



"Aboli! Stop the carriage this in stand Katinka raised her voice and made to stand up. But Sukeena jerked her down in her seat.



"Don't struggle," Sukeena ordered, "or I will cut you. I will cut your face first, so that you are no longer beautiful. Then if you still do not obey I will send this blade through your slimy, evil heart."



Katinka looked down and, for the first time, saw the blade that Sukeena held to her side. That dagger had been a gift from one of Katinka's lovers and she knew just how sharp was its slender blade. Sukeena had stolen it from Katinka's closet.



"Are you mad?" Katinka blanched with terror, and tried to squirm away from the needle point.



"Yes. Mad enough to kill you and to enjoy doing it." Sukeena pressed the dagger to her side and Katinka screamed. The horses pricked their ears. "If you scream again I will draw your blood," Sukeena warned. "Now hold your tongue and listen while I tell you what you are to do."



"I will give you to Slow John and laugh as he draws out your entrails," Katinka blustered, but her voice shook and terror was in her eyes.



"You will never laugh again, not unless you obey me. This dagger will see to that," and she pricked Katinka again, hard enough to pierce cloth and skin, so that a spot of blood the size of a silver guilder appeared on her bodice.



"Please!" Katinka whimpered. "Please, Sukeena, I will do as you say. Please don't hurt me again. You said you loved me."



"And I lied," Sukeena hissed at her. "I lied for my brother's sake. I hate you. You will never know the strength of my hatred. I loath the touch of your hands. I am revolted by every filthy, evil thing you forced me to do. So do not trade on any love from me. I will crush you with as little pity as I would rid my hair of lice." Katinka saw death in her eyes, and she was afraid as she had seldom been in her life before.



"I will do as you tell me," she whispered, and Sukeena instructed her in a flat, hard tone that was more threatening than any shouting or raging.



Aboli drove the carriage through the castle gates, the usual stir of activity heralded its Arrival. The single sentry came to attention and presented his musket. Aboli wheeled the team of greys and brought the carriage to a halt in front of the Company offices. The captain of the guard hurried from the armoury, hastily strapping on his sword-belt. He was a young subaltern, freshly out from Holland, and he had been taken by surprise by the unexpected arrival of the Governor's wife.



"The devil's horns!" he muttered to himself. "Why does the bitch pick today to arrive when half my men are sick as dogs?" He looked anxiously at the single guard at the door to the Company offices, and saw that the man's face still had a pale greenish tinge. Then he realized that the Governor's wife was beckoning to him from her seat in the carriage. He broke into a run across the courtyard, straightening his cap and tightening the strap under his chin as he went. He reached the carriage and saluted Katinka "Good morning, Mevrouw. May I assist you to dismount?"



The Governor's wife had a strained, nervous look and her voice was high and breathless. The subaltern was instantly alarmed. "Is something amiss, Mevrouw?"



"Yes, something is very much amiss. Call my husband!" "Will you go to his office?"



"No. I will remain here in the carriage. Go to him this instant and tell him that I say he must come immediately. It is a matter of the utmost importance. Life and death! Go! Hurry!"



The subaltern looked startled and saluted quickly, then bounded up the steps two at a time and shot through the double doors into the offices. While he was gone Aboli dismounted, went to the panniers at the back of the carriage and opened the lid. Then he glanced around the courtyard.



There was one guard at the gates and another at the head of the stairs but, as usual, the slow-match in their muskets was unlit. There was no sentry posted at the doors to the armoury, but from where he stood he could see through the window that three men were in the guard room. Each of the five overseers in the courtyard carried swords as well as their whips and canes. Hugo Barnard was at the far end of the yard and had both his hounds on the leash. He was haranguing the gang of common convicts laying the paving stones along the foot of the east wall. These other convicts, not part of the crew of the Resolution, might be a hazard when they made their attempt to escape. Nearly two hundred were working on the walls, the multihued dregs of humanity. They could easily hamper the rescue attempt by blocking the escape route or even by trying to join in with the Resolution's crew and mobbing the carriage when they realized what was happening.



We will deal with that when it happens, he thought grimly, and turned his full attention to the armed guards and overseers who were the primary threat. With Barnard and his gang, there were ten art ned men in sight but any outcry could bring another twenty or thirty soldiers hurrying out of the barracks and across the yard. The whole business could get out of hand quickly.



He looked up to find Hal and Big Daniel watching him from the scaffold. Hal already had the rope of the gantry in his hand, the tail looped around his wrist. Ned Tyler and Billy Rogers were on the lower tier, and the two birds, Finch and Sparrow, were working near Althuda in the courtyard. They were all pretending to carry on with their tasks, but were eyeing Aboli surreptitiously.



Aboli reached into the pannier and loosened the twine that secured the rolled silk carpet. He opened a flap of it and, without lifting them clear, revealed the three Mogul scimitars and the single kukii knife that he had chosen for himself. He knew that, from their vantage point, Hal and Big Daniel could see into the pannier. Then he stood immobile and expressionless at the back wheel of the carriage.



Suddenly the Governor burst hatless and in his shirt sleeves through the double doors at the head of the staircase and came down at an ungainly lurching run.



"What is it, Mevrouw?" he called urgently to his wife, when he was half-way down. "They say you sent for me, and it's a matter of life and death."



"Hurry!" Katinka cried plaintively. "I am in the most terrible predicament."



He arrived at the door of the carriage, panting wildly. "Tell me what ails you, Mevrouw!" he gasped.



Aboli stepped up behind him and hooked one great arm around his neck, pinning him helplessly. Van de Velde began to struggle. For all his obesity he was a powerful man and even Aboli had difficulty in holding him.



"What in the devil's name are you doing?" he roared in outrage. Aboli placed the blade of the knife at his throat. When van de Velde felt the cold touch of steel and the sting of the razor edge, his struggles ceased.



"I will slit your throat like the great hog you are," Aboli whispered in his ear, "and Sukeena has a dagger at your wife's heart. Tell your soldiers to stay where they are and throw down their arms."



The subaltern had started forward at van de Velde's cry, and his sword was half-way out of its scabbard as he rushed down the stairs.



St opP van de Velde shouted at him in terror. "Don't move, you fool. You will have me killed." The subaltern halted and dithered uncertainly.



Aboli tightened his lock around the Governor's throat. "Tell him to throw down his sword."



"Throw down your sword!" van de Velde whinnied. "Do as he says. Can't you see he has a knife at my throat?" The subaltern dropped his sword, which clattered down the steps.



Fifty feet above the courtyard, Hal sprang out from the scaffold, hanging on the rope from the gantry, and Big Daniel belayed the other end, braking the speed of his fall. The sheave squealed as he plummeted down and landed in balance on the cobbles. He leaped to the rear of the carriage and seized one of the jewelled scimitars. With the next leap he was half-way up the steps where he stooped and swept up the subaltern's sword in his left hand. He placed the point under the officer's chin and said, "Order your men to throw down their weapons!"



"Lay down your arms, all of you!" the subaltern yelled. "If any man among you brings harm to the Governor or his lady, he will pay for it with his own life." The sentries obeyed with alacrity, dropping their muskets and sidearms to the paving stones.



"You too!" van de Velde howled at the overseers, and with reluctance they obeyed. However, at that moment Hugo Barnard was screened by a pile of masonry blocks. He stepped quietly into the doorway to the kitchens, dragging his two hounds with him, and crouched there, waiting his opportunity.



Down from the scaffold scrambled the other seamen. Sparrow and Finch from the lower tier were first to reach the courtyard but Ned, Big Daniel and Billy Rogers were seconds behind them.



"Come on, Althuda!" Hal called, and Althuda dropped his mallet and chisel and ran to join him. "Catch!" Hal lobbed the jewelled scimitar in a high, glinting parabola, and Althuda reached up and caught it by the hilt, plucking it neatly out of the air. Hal wondered what class of swordsman he was. As a fisherman it was unlikely that he would have had much practice.



I shall have to shield him if it comes to a fight, he thought, and looked around quickly. He saw Daniel pulling the other weapons out of the pannier at the back of the carriage. The twin scimitars looked like toys in his huge fist. He tossed one to Ned Tyler and kept the other for himself as he ran to join Hal.



Hal picked up a sword that a sentry had dropped and threw it to Big Daniel. "This one is more your style, Master Danny," he yelled, and Daniel grinned, showing his broken black teeth, as he caught the heavy infantry weapon and made it hiss in the air as he cut left and right.



"Sweet Jesus, it's good to have a re all blade in my hand again!" he exulted, and tossed the light scimitar to Wally Finch. "A tool for a man, but a toy for a boy."



"Aboli, keep a firm hold on that great hog. Cut his ears off if he tries to be crafty," Hal shouted. "The rest of you follow me!" He dropped down the staircase and raced towards the doors of the armoury with Big Daniel and the others on his heels. Althuda began to follow him also, but Hal stopped him. "Not you. You look after Sukeena!" As Althuda turned back and they ran on across the courtyard, Hal snapped at Daniel, "Where's Barnard?"



"The murdering bastard was here not a moment past, but I don't see him now."



"Keep a good lookout for his top sails. We'll have trouble with that swine yet."



Hal burst into the armoury. The three men in the guard room were slumped on the bench. two were asleep and the third scrambled to his feet in bewilderment. Before he could recover his wits, Hal's point was pressed to his chest. "Stay where you are, or I'll look at the colour of your liver." The man dropped back into his seat. "Here, Ned!" Hal called to him as Ned rushed in.. "Play wet-nurse to these infants," and left them in his charge as he ran after Daniel and the other seamen.



Daniel charged the heavy teak door at the end of the passage and it burst open before his rush. They had never before had a chance to look into the armoury, but now at a glance Hal saw that it was all laid out in a neat and orderly fashion. The weapons were in racks along the walls, and the powder kegs stacked to the ceiling at the far end.



"Pick your weapons and bring a keg of powder each," he ordered, and they ran to the long racks of infantry swords, polished, gleaming and sharpened to a bright edge. Further back were the racks of muskets and pistols. Hal thrust a pair of pistols into the rope that served him as a belt. "Remember, you'll have to carry everything you take with you up the mountains, so don't be greedy," he warned them, and picked up a fifty-pound keg of gunpowder from the pyramid at the far end of the armoury, which he hoisted to his shoulder. Then he turned for the door. "That's enough, lads. Get out! Daniel, lay a powder trail as you go! Daniel used the butt of a musket to stove in the bungs of two of the powder kegs. At the foot of the pyramid of barrels he poured a mound of black gunpowder. "That lot will go off with an almighty bang!" He grinned, as he backed towards the door, the other keg under his arm spilling a long dark trail behind him.



Under their burdens they staggered out into the sunlight. Hal was the last to leave. "Get out of here, Ned!" he ordered, and handed him the weapons he carried as Ned ran for the door. Then Hal turned on the three Dutch soldiers, who were cowering on the bench. Ned had disarmed them their weapons were thrown in the corner of the guard room.



"I'm going to blow this place to hell," he told them in Dutch. "Run for the gates, and if you're wise you'll keep running without looking back. Go!" They sprang up and, in their haste to get clear, jammed in the doorway. They struggled and fought each other until they burst out into the courtyard and raced across it.



"Look out!" they yelled, as they sprinted for the gates. "They're going to blow up the powder store!" The gaolers and the other common convicts who, until this point, had stood gaping at the carriage and the hostage Governor in Aboli's grip, now turned their heads towards the armoury and stared at it in stupid surprise.



Hal appeared in the armoury doorway with a sword in one hand and a burning torch that he had seized from its bracket in the other.



"I am counting to ten," Hal shouted, "and then I am lighting the powder train!" In his rags, and with his great bushy black beard and wild eyes, he looked like a maniac.



A moan of horror and fear went up from every man in the yard. One of the convicts threw down his spade and followed the fleeing soldiers in a rush for the gate. Immediately pandemonium overwhelmed them all. Two hundred convicts and soldiers stormed the gates in a rush for safety.



Van de Velde struggled in Aboli's grip and screamed, "Let me go! The idiot is going to blow us all to perdition. Let me go! Run! Run!" His shrieks added to the panic, and within the time it takes to draw and hold a long breath the courtyard was deserted except for the group of seamen around the carriage and Hal. Katinka was screaming and sobbing hysterically, but Sukeena slapped her hard across the face. "Keep quiet, you simpering ninny, or I'll give you good reason to blubber," and Katinka gulped back her distress.



"Aboli, get van de Velde into the carriage! He and his wife are coming with us," Hal called, and Aboli lifted the Governor bodily and hurled him over the top of the door. He landed in an ungainly heap on the floorboards and struggled there, like an insect on a pin. "Althuda, put your sword point to his heart and be ready to kill him when I give the word."



"I look forward to it!" Althuda shouted, dragged van de Velde upright and thrust him into the seat facing his wife. "Where should I give it to you?" he asked him. "In your fat gut, perhaps?"



Van de Velde had lost his wig in the scuffle and his expression was abject, every inch of his huge frame seeming to quiver with despair. "Don't kill me. I can protect you," he pleaded, and Katinka started weeping and keening again. This time, Sukeena merely held her a little tighter, lifted the point of the dagger to her throat and whispered, "We don't need you now we have the Governor. It won't matter at all if I kill you." Katinka choked back the next sob.



"Daniel, load the powder and the spare weapons," Hal ordered, and. they piled them into the carriage. The elegant vehicle was no wagon, and the coach work sagged under the load on its delicately sprung suspension.



"That's enough! It will take no more." Aboli stopped them throwing the last few powder kegs on board.



"One man to each horse!" Hal commanded. "Don't try to board them, lads. You're none of you riders. You'll fall off and break your necks, which won't matter much, but your weight will kill the poor beasts before we have gone a mile, and that will matter. Lay hold of their rigging and let them tow you along." They ran to their places around the team of horses, and latched onto their harness. "Leave space for me on the larboard bow, lads," he called, and even in her excitement and agitation Sukeena laughed aloud at his use of the nautical terms. His men understood, though, and left the offside lead horse for him.



Aboli leaped to his place on the coachman's seat, while in the body of the carriage Althuda menaced van de Velde and Sukeena held her dagger to Katinka's white throat.



Aboli wheeled the team and shouted, "Come on, Gundwane. It's time to go. The garrison will wake up at any moment now." As he said it they heard the flat report of a pistol shot, and a garrison officer ran from the doorway of the barracks across the square waving his smoking pistol, shouting to his men to form up on him. "Stand to arms! On me the First Company!"



Hal paused only a moment to light the slow-match of one of his pistols from the burning torch, then tossed the torch onto the powder train and waited to see it flare and catch. The smoking flame started snaking back through the doors of the armoury into the passageway that led to the main powder magazine. Then he sprang down the steps into the courtyard and raced to meet the overloaded carriage as Aboli drove the horses in a circle and lined up for the gates.



He was almost there, raising his hand to seize the bridle of the leading grey gelding, when suddenly Aboli shouted in agitation, "Gundwane, behind you! Have a care!" Hugo Barnard had appeared in the doorway where he and his hounds had taken shelter at the first sign of trouble. Now he slipped both dogs from the leash and with wild yells of encouragement sent them in pursuit of Hal. "Vat horn! Catch him!" he yelled and the animals raced towards him in a silent rush, running side by side, striding out and covering the length of the courtyard like a pair of whippets coursing a hare.



Aboli's warning had given Hal just time enough to turn to face them. The dogs worked as a team, and one leaped for his face while the other rushed for his legs. Hal lunged at the first while it was in the air and sent his point into the base of the black throat where it joined the shoulders. The flying weight of the hound's body drove the blade in full length, transfixing it cleanly through heart and lung and on into its guts. Even though it was dead, the momentum of its flight drove it on to crash into Hal's chest, and he staggered backwards.



The second hound, snaked in low to the ground and, while Hal was still off balance, sank its fangs into his left shin just below the knee, jerking him over backwards. His shoulder crashed into the stone paving, but when he tried to rise the animal still had him in its grip and pulled back on all four braced legs, sending him sprawling again. Hal felt its teeth grate on the bone of his leg.



"My hounds!" Barnard yelled. "You are hurting my darlings." With his drawn sword in his hand he rushed to intervene. Again Hal tried to rise, and again the hound pulled him down. Barnard reached them and raised his sword to his full height above Hal's unprotected head. Hal saw the blow coming and rolled aside. The blade struck the flint cobbles beside his ear in a sheet of sparks.



"You bastard!" Barnard roared, and lifted the sword again. Aboli swerved the team of horses and drove them deliberately to Barnard. The overseer's back was turned to the approaching carriage, and he was so engrossed with Hal that he did not see it coming. As he was about to strike again at Hal's head, the rear wheel caught him a glancing blow on the hip and sent him staggering aside.



With a violent effort Hal hauled himself into a sitting position, and before the hound could drag him flat again, he stabbed it in the base of the neck, driving his blade at an angle back between its shoulder blades like the bullfighter's coup, finding the heart. The beast let out an agonized howl and released its grip on his leg, staggered around in a circle then collapsed on the cobbles, kicking feebly.



Hal heaved himself to his feet just as Barnard rushed at him. "You have killed my beauties!" He was maddened with grief, and hacked again at Hal, a wild uncontrolled blow. Hal turned it effortlessly aside and let it fly an inch past his head.



"You filthy pirate, I'll cut you down!" Barnard gathered himself and rushed in again. With the same apparent ease Hal deflected the next thrust, and said softly, "Do you remember what you -and your dogs did to Oliver?" He feinted high left, forcing Barnard to open his guard in the mid-line, and then, like a bolt of lightning, thrust home.



The blade took Barnard just under the sternum, and sprang half its length out of his back. He dropped his sword and fell to his knees.



The debt to Oliver is paid!" Hal said, placed his bare foot on Barnard's chest and, against its resistance, pulled his blade clear. Barnard toppled and lay beside the carcass of his dying hound.



"Come on, Gundwane!"Aboli was struggling to hold the team of greys, for the shouting and the smell of blood had panicked them. "The magazine!" It was only seconds since Hal had lighted the powder train, but when he glanced in that direction he saw clouds of acrid blue smoke billowing from the doorway of the armoury.



"Hurry, Gundwane!" Sukeena called softly. "Oh, please, hurry!" Her voice was so filled with concern for his safety that it spurred him. Even in these dire straits, Hal realized that it was the first time he had ever heard her speak his nickname. He started forward. The dog had bitten deeply into his leg, but its fangs could not have severed nerves or sinews for Hal found that, if he ignored the pain, he could still run on it. He leaped across the yard and grabbed hold of the leading horse's bridle. It tossed its head and rolled its eyes until the pink lining showed, but Hal hung on and Aboli gave the team its head.



The carriage went rocking and clattering under the archway of the gates, across the bridge, over the moat and out onto the open Parade. Suddenly from behind them came a shattering explosion, and a shock-wave of disrupted air swept over them like a tropical line squall. The horses reared and plunged in terror, and Hal was lifted off his feet. He clung desperately to the traces and looked back. A tower of dun-Coloured -smoke rose swiftly from the interior courtyard of the castle, spinning and revolving upon itself, shot through with dark flames and scraps of debris and wreckage. In the midst of this plume of destruction a single human body cartwheeled a hundred feet into the sky.



"For Sir Hal and King Charley!" Big Daniel roared, and the other seamen took up the cheering, beside themselves with excitement at their escape.



However, when Hal looked back again he could see that the massive outer walls of the castle were untouched by the detonation. The barracks had been built of the same heavy stonework, and almost certainly had withstood the blast. Two hundred men were housed in there, three companies of green-jackets, and even now they were probably recovering their wits after the explosion. Soon they would come pouring out through the castle gates in full pursuit and where, he wondered, was Colonel Cornelius Schreuder?



The carriage was pounding across the Parade at a gallop. Ahead ran a mob of escaped convicts. They were scattering in every direction, some leaping over the stone wall of the Company gardens and heading for the mountain, others running for the beach to find a boat in which to make good their flight. Out on the Parade were the few stunned burghers and house slaves who were abroad at this time of the forenoon. They gawked in amazement at the tide of fugitives, then at the rolling cloud of smoke that enveloped the castle and then at the even more extraordinary sight of the advancing Governor's carriage, festooned with a motley array of desperate tatterdemalion outlaws and pirates, screaming like madmen and brandishing their weapons. As the vehicle bore down on them they scattered frantically.



"The pirates have escaped from the castle. Run! Run!" At last they recovered and spread the alarm. The cry was taken up and shouted ahead of them through the huts and hovels of the settlement. Hal could see the burghers and their slaves hurrying to escape the bloodthirsty pirate crew. One or two of the braver souls had armed themselves, and there was a desultory popping of musket fire from some of the cottage windows, but the range was long, the aim hurried and poor. Hal did not even hear the flight of the balls and none of the men or horses were hit. The carriage swept on past the first buildings, following the only road that skirted the curving beach of Table Bay, and headed out into the unknown.



Hal looked back at Aboli. "Slow down, damn you! You'll blow the horses before we've got past the town." Aboli stood upright and pulled the horses back. "Whoa, Royal! Slow down, Cloud!" But the team were bolting and had almost reached the outskirts of the settlement before Aboli was able to wrestle them to a trot. They were all sweating and snorting from the gallop, but were far from spent.



As soon as they were under control, Hal loosed his grip on the harness and turned back to jog beside the carriage. "Althuda," he called, "instead of sitting up there like a gentleman on a Sunday picnic, make sure all the muskets are primed and loaded. Here!" He passed up the pistol with the burning match. "Use this to light the match on all the weapons. They'll be after us soon enough." Then he looked from Althuda to his sister.



"We have not been introduced. Your servant, Henry Courtney." He grinned at her, and she laughed delightedly at his formal manner.



"Good morrow, Gundwane. I know you well. Aboli has warned me of what a fierce young pirate you are." Then she turned serious. "You are hurt. I should see to your leg."



"Tis nothing that cannot wait until later," he assured her.



"The bite of a dog will mortify swiftly if it is left untreated, she told him.



"Later!" he repeated, and turned to Aboli.



"Aboli, are you acquainted with the road to the boundary of the colony?"



"There is only one road, Gundwane. We have to go straight through the village, skirt the marshland then head out across the sandy flatlands towards the mountains." He pointed. "The bitter-almond fence is five miles beyond the marsh."



Looking beyond the settlement, Hal could already see marshland and the lagoon ahead, stands of reeds and open water, over which hovered flocks of water birds. He had heard that crocodiles and hippopotami lurked in the depths ofthelagoon.



"Althuda, will there be any soldiers in our way?" Hal asked him.



"There are usually guards at the first bridge and there is always a patrol at the bitter-almond hedge to shoot any Hottentots who try to enter," Althuda replied, without looking up from the musket he was loading.



Then Sukeena sang out, "There will be no pickets or patrols today.



From dawn I kept a watch on the crossroad. No soldiers went out to take up their posts. They are all too busy nursing their aching bellies." She laughed gaily, as excited and wrought up as the rest of them. Suddenly she leaped up in the body of the carriage and called out in a ringing voice, "Free! For the first time in my life I am free!" Her plait had tumbled down and come loose. Her hair streamed out behind her head. Her eyes sparkled, and she was so beautiful that she epitomized the dreams of every one of the ragged seamen.



Although they cheered her, "You, and us also, darling!" it was Hal at whom she was looking with those laughing eyes.



As they passed the buildings of the settlement, the warning cries had been shouted ahead of them. "Beware! The pirates have escaped. The pirates are on the rampage!" The good citizens of Good Hope scattered before them. Mothers rushed into the street to seize their offspring and drag them indoors, to throw the door-bolts and slam down the shutters.



"You are safe now. You have escaped clean away. Please will you not let me free, Sir Henry?" Katinka had recovered from her shock sufficiently to plead for her life. "I swear I have never meant you harm. I saved you from the gallows. I saved Althuda also. I'll do anything you say, Sir Henry. just please set me free," she whimpered, clinging to the side of the carriage.



"You may call me sir now and make me those declarations of goodwill but they would have stood my father in better stead while he was on his way to the gallows." Hal's expression was so cold and remorseless that Katinka recoiled and fell back in the seat beside Sukeena, sobbing as though her heart were breaking.



The seamen running with Hal shouted their scorn and hatred at her.



"You wanted to see us hanged, you painted doxy, and we're going to feed you to the lions out there in the wilderness," gloated Billy Rogers.



Katinka sobbed afresh and covered her face with her hands. "I never meant any of you harm. Please let me go." The carriage rolled steadily down the empty street, and the last few huts and hovels of the settlement were all that lay ahead when Althuda rose from his seat and pointed back down the gravel-surfaced road towards the distant parade. "Horseman coming at a gallop!" he cried.



"So soon?" Big Daniel muttered, shading his eyes. "I had not expected the Pursuit yet. Do they have cavalry to send after us?"



"Have no fear of that, lads, Aboli reassured them. "There are no more than twenty horses in the whole colony, and we have six of those."



"Aboli is right. "tis only one horseman!" shouted Wally Finch.



The rider was leaving a pale ribbon of dust in the air behind him, leaning forward over his mount's neck as he drove the animal to its top speed, using the whip in his right hand to flog it onwards mercilessly.



He was still far Off, but Hal recognized him from the sash that flowed out behind him with the speed of his gallop.



"Sweet Mary, it's Schreuder! I knew he would join us before too long." His jaw clenched in anticipation. "The hot-headed idiot comes alone to fight us. Brains he lacks, but he has a full cargo of guts." Even from his seat Aboli could see what Hal intended by the narrowing of his eyes and the way he changed his grip on his sword.



"Don't think of going back to give him satisfaction, Gundwane!"Aboli called sternly. "You will place every soul here at risk for any delay."



"I know you think I'm no match for Schreuder but things have changed, Aboli. I can beat him now. I'm sure of it in my heart." Aboli thought that he might well do so, for Hal was no longer a boy. The months on the walls had toughened him, and Aboli had seen him match strength with Big Daniel. "Leave me here to see to this business, man to man, and I will follow you later," Hal cried.



"No, Sir Hal!" shouted Big Daniel. "Maybe you could best him but not with that leg bitten to the bone. Leave your feud with the Dutchman for another time. We need you with us. There will be a hundred green-jackets following close behind him."



"No!" agreed Wally and Stan. "Stay with us, Captain." "We've put our trust in you," said Ned Tyler. "We can never find our way through the wilderness without a navigator. You can't desert us now."



Hal hesitated, still glaring back at the swiftly approaching rider. Then his eyes flicked to the face of the girl in the carriage. Sukeena stared at him, her huge dark eyes full of entreaty. "You are sorely wounded. Look at your leg." She leaned over the door of the carriage, so that she was very close, and spoke so softly that he could only just make out the words above the din of men and wheels and horses. "Stay with us, Gundwane."



He glanced down at the blood and pale lymph oozing from the deep puncture wounds. While he wavered Big Daniel ran back and jumped up onto the step of the carriage.



"I'll take care of this one," he said, and lifted the loaded musket from Althuda's hands. Holding it, he dropped from the step into the dirt of the road and stood there checking the burning matchlock and the priming in the pan. He took his time as the carriage trotted away from him and Colonel Schreuder galloped down on him.



Despite all their pleas and warnings Hal started back to intervene. "Daniel, don't kill the fool." He wanted to explain that he and Schreuder had a destiny to work out together. It was a matter of chivalric honour in which no other should come between them, but there was no time to give voice to such a romantic notion.



Schreuder galloped to within earshot and stood in his stirrups. "Katinka!" he shouted. "Have no fear, I am come to save you, my darling. I will never let these villains take. you."



He plucked the bell-muzzled pistol from his sash and held the matchlock in the wind so that the smouldering match flared. Then he lay flat along his horse's neck with his pistol arm outstretched. "Out of my way, oaf! "he roared at Daniel, and fired. His right arm was thrown high by the discharge and a wreath of blue smoke swirled around his head, but the ball flew wide, hitting the earth a foot from Daniel's bare right leg, showering him with gravel.



Schreuder threw aside the pistol and drew the Neptune sword from its scabbard at his side. The gold inlay on the blade glinted as he wielded it. "I'll cleave your skull to the teeth!" Schreuder roared, and raised the blade high. Daniel dropped on one knee and let the Colonel's horse come on the last few strides.



Too close, Hal thought. Much too close. If the musket misfires Danny is a dead man. But Daniel held his aim steadily and snapped the lock. For an instant Hal thought his worst fear had been realized but then, with a sharp report, a spurt of flame and silver smoke, the musket discharged.



Perhaps Daniel had heeded Hal's shout, or perhaps the horse was a bigger and surer target than the rider upon its back, but he had aimed into the animal's wide, sweat drenched chest and the heavy lead ball for once flew true. At full charge Schreuder's steed collapsed under him. He was thrown over its head, slamming face and shoulder into the ground.



The horse struggled and kicked, lying on its back, thrashing its head from side to side while its heart-blood pumped from the wound in its chest. Then its head fell back to earth with a thump and, with one last snorting breath, it lay still.



Schreuder lay motionless on the sun-baked road, and Hal felt a moment's fear that his neck was broken. He almost ran back to aid him, but Schreuder made a few disjointed movements, and Hal paused. The carriage was drawing away swiftly, and the others were shouting to him, "Come back, Gundwane!" "Leave the bastard, Sir Henry."



Daniel sprang up, grabbed Hal's arm. "He ain't dead, but we soon will be if we lie becalmed here much longer," and dragged him away.



For the first few steps Hal resisted and tried to shake off Daniel's hand. "It can't end like this. Don't you understand, Danny?"



"I understand well enough," Big Daniel grunted, and at that Schreuder sat up groggily in the middle of the road. The gravel had torn the skin off one side of his face, but he was trying to get to his feet, lurching and falling, then trying again.



"He's all right," said Hal, with a relief that almost surprised him, and allowed Daniel to pull him away.



"Aye!" said Daniel, as they caught up with the carriage. "He's right enough to crop your acorns for you when next you meet. We'll not be rid of that one so easily."



Aboli braked the carriage to allow them to catch up, and Hal grabbed the bridle of the leading horse and allowed it to lift him off his feet. He looked back to see Schreuder on his feet in the middle of the road, dusty, and bleeding. He staggered after the carriage like a man with a bottle of cheap gin in his belly, still brandishing the sword.



They pulled away from him at a brisk trot and Schreuder gave up the attempt to overhaul the departing carriage, instead screamed abuse after it. "By God, Henry Courtney, I'm coming after you, even if I have to follow you to the very gates of hell. I have you in my eye, sir, I have you in my heart."



"When you come, bring with you that sword you stole from me," Hal shouted back. "I'll spit you with it like a sucking pig for the devil to roast." His seamen hooted with laughter and gave the colonel an assortment of obscene farewell gestures.



"Katinka! My darling!" Schreuder changed his tone. "Do not despair. I will rescue you. I swear it on my father's grave. I love you with my very life."



Throughout all the shouting and the musket fire, van de Velde had been crouching on the floor of the carriage but now he heaved himself back onto the seat and glared at the battered figure in the road. "Is he raving mad? How dare he address my wife in such odious terms?" He rounded on Katinka with a red face and wobbling jowls. "Mevrouw, I trust you have given the dolt of a soldier no cause for such licence."



"I assure you, Mijnheer, his language and address come as more of a shock to me than they do to you. I take great offence, and I implore you to take him seriously to task at the first opportunity," replied Katinka, clinging to the door of the carriage with one hand and to her bonnet with the other.



"I will do better than that, Mevrouw. He will be on the next ship back to Amsterdam. I cannot abide with such impertinence. Moreover, he is responsible for the predicament we are now in. As commander of the castle, the prisoners are his responsibility. Their escape is due to his incompetence and the dereliction of his duty. The Bastard has no right to speak to you in such a fashion."



"Oh, yes, he does," said Sukeena sweetly. "Colonel Schreuder has the right of conquest in his favour. Your wife has been lying under him often enough with her legs in the air for him to call her darling, or even to call her whore and slut if he chose to be more honest."



"Quiet, Sukeena!" shrilled Katinka "Are you out of your mind? Remember your place. You are a slave."



"No, Mevrouw. A slave no longer. A free woman now, and your captor," Sukeena told her, "so I can say to you anything I please, especially if it is the truth." She turned to van de Velde. "Your wife and the gallant colonel have been playing the beast with two backs so blatantly as to delight every tattle-tale in the colony. They have set a pair of horns on your head that are too large for even your grossly bloated body."



"I will have you thrashed!" van de Velde gurgled apoplectically. "You slave bitch!"



"No, you won't," said Althuda, and placed the point of the jewelled scimitar against the Governor's pendulous belly. "Rather, you will apologize for that insult to my sister."



"Apologize to a slave? Never!" van de Velde began in a bellow, but this time Althuda pricked him with more intent and the bellow turned into a squeal, like air escaping from a pig's bladder.



"Apologize not to a slave, but to a free-born Balinese princess," Althuda corrected him. "And swiftly."



"I beg your pardon, madam," van de Velde gritted through clenched teeth.



"You are gallant, sir." Sukeena smiled at him. Van de Velde sank back in his seat and said no more, but he fixed his wife with a venomous stare.



Once they had left the settlement behind them, the surface of the road deteriorated. There were deep wheel ruts left by the Company wagons going out to fetch firewood, and the carriage rocked and lurched dangerously through them. Along the edge of the lagoon the water had seeped in to turn the tracks to mud and slush and, in many places, the seamen were forced to put their shoulders to the tall rear wheels to help the horses drag the vehicle through. It was late morning before they saw ahead the framework of the wooden bridge over the first river.



"Soldiers!" Aboli called. From his high seat he had picked out the glint of a bayonet and the shape of the tall helmets.



"Only four," said Hal. His eyes were still the sharpest of all. "They'll not be expecting trouble from this direction." He was right. The corporal of the bridge guard came forward to meet them, puzzled but unalarmed, his sword sheathed and the match on his pistols unlit. Hal and his crew disarmed him and his men, stripped them to their breeches and sent them running back towards the colony with a discharge of muskets over their heads.



While Aboli walked the carriage over the bridge and took it on along the rudimentary track, Hal and Ned Tyler climbed beneath the wooden structure and roped a barrel of gunpowder under the heavy timber king post When it was secure Hal used the butt of his pistol to drive in the bung of the barrel, thrust a short length of slow-match into it and lit it. He and Ned scrambled back onto the roadway and ran after the carriage.



Hal's leg was painful now. It was swelling and stiffening, but he was looking back over his shoulder as he hobbled along through the ankle-deep sand. The centre of the bridge suddenly erupted in a spout of mud, water, shattered planks and piers. The wreckage fell back into the river.



"That will not hold the good colonel long, but at least he will get his breeches wet," Hal muttered, as they caught up with the carriage. Althuda jumped down and called to him, "Take my place. You must favour that leg."



"There is little wrong with my leg," Hal protested.



"Other than that it can barely carry your weight," said Sukeena sternly, leaning over the door. "Come up here at once, Gundwane, or else you will do lasting damage to it."



Meekly Hal climbed up into the coach and took the seat opposite Sukeena Without looking at the pair, Aboli grinned to himself Already she gives the orders and he obeys. It seems they have the tide and a fair wind behind them.



"Let me look at that leg," Sukeena ordered, and Hal placed it on the seat between her and Katinka.



"Take care, clod!" Katinka snapped, and pulled away her skirts. "You will bloody my dress."



"If you do not have a care to your tongue, it will not be the only thing I will bloody," Hal assured her, and scowled. She withdrew into the farthest corner of the seat.



Sukeena worked over the leg with swift, competent hands. "I should lay a hot poultice on these bites, for they are deep and will certainly fester. But I need boiling water." She looked up at Hal.



"You will have to wait for that until we reach the mountains," he told her. Then, for a while, their conversation broke down and they gazed into each other's eyes bemusedly. This was as close as they had ever been and each found something in the other to amaze and delight them.



Then Sukeena roused herself. "I have my medicines in the saddle-bags, she said briskly, and climbed over the seat to reach the panniers on the back of the carriage. She hung there as she rummaged in the leather bags. The carriage jotted on over the rough track, and Hal looked with awe on her small rounded bottom, pointed skywards. Despite the ruffles and petticoats that shrouded it, he thought it almost as enchanting as her face.



She climbed back with cloths and a black bottle in her hand. "I will swab out the wounds with this tincture and then bind them up," she explained, without looking again into the distraction of his green eyes.



"Avast!" Hal gasped at the first touch of the tincture. "That burns like the devil's breath."



Sukeena scolded, "You have endured whip and shot and sword and savaging by an animal. But the first touch of medicine and you cry like a baby. Now be still."



Aboli's face creased into a bouquet of tattoos and merry laughter lines but, though his shoulders shook, he held his peace.



Hal sensed his amusement, and rounded on him. "How far ahead is the bitter-almond hedge?"



"Another league."



"Will Sabah meet us there?"



"That is what I believe, if the green-jackets don't catch up with us first."



"Methinks we will have some respite. Schreuder made an error by rushing alone in pursuit of us. He should have mustered his troops and come after us in an orderly fashion. My guess is that most of the green-jackets will be chasing the other prisoners we turned free, They will concentrate on us only once Schreuder takes command."



"And he has no horse," Sukeena added. "I think we will get clear away, and once we reach the mountains-" She broke off and lifted her eyes from Hal's leg. Both she and Hal looked ahead to the high blue rampart that filled the sky ahead.



Van de Velde had been avidly following this conversation, and now he broke in. "The slave wench is right. You have succeeded in this underhand scheme Of yours, more's the pity. However, I am a reasonable man, Henry Courtney. Set my wife and me free now. Give the carriage over to us and let us return to the colony. In exchange I will give you my solemn undertaking to call off the chase. I will order Colonel Schreuder to send his men back to their barracks." He turned on Hal what he hoped was an open and guileless countenance. "I offer you my word as a gentleman on it."



Hal saw the cunning and malice in the Governor's eyes.



"Your excellency, I am uncertain of the validity of your claim to the title of gentleman, besides which I should hate to be deprived so soon of your charming company."



At that moment one of the front wheels of the carriage crashed into a hole in the tracks. "The aardvarks dig these burrows," Althuda explained, as Hal clambered down from the lopsided vehicle.



"Pray, what manner of man or beast is that?"



"The earth pig, a beast with a long snout and a thick tail that digs up the burrows of ants with its powerful claws and devours them with its long sticky tongue," Althuda told him.



Hal threw back his head and laughed. "Of course, I believe that. I also believe that your earth pig flies, dances the hornpipe and tells fortunes by cards."



"You have a few things yet to learn about the land that lies out there, my friend,"Althuda promised him.



Still chuckling, Hal turned from him. "Come on, lads!" he called to his seamen. "Let's get this ship off the reef and running before the wind again."



He made van de Velde and Katinka get out and the rest of them strained with the horses to pull the carriage free. From here onwards, though, the track became barely passable, and the bush on either hand grew taller and more dense as they went on. Within the next mile they were stuck in holes twice more.



"It is almost time to get rid of the carriage. We can get on faster on our own shanks, Hal told Aboli quietly. "How much further to the hedge?" -"I thought we should have reached it by now," Aboli replied, "but it cannot be far." They came to the boundary around the next kink in the narrow track. The famous bitter-almond hedge was a straggly and blighted excrescence, hardly shoulder high, but the road ended dramatically against it. There was also a rough hut, which served as a guard post to the border picket, and a notice in Dutch.



"WARNING!" the notice began, in vivid scarlet letters, and went on to forbid movement by any person beyond that point, with the penalty for infringement being imprisonment or the payment of a fine of a thousand guilders or both. The board had been erected in the name of the Governor of the Dutch East India Company.



Hal kicked open the door of the single room of the guard hut and found it deserted. The fire on the open hearth was cold and dead. A few articles of Company uniform hung on the wooden pegs in the wall, and a black kettle stood over the dead coals, with odd bowls, bottles and utensils lying on the rough wooden table or on shelves along the walls.



Big Daniel was about to put the slow-match to the thatch, but Hal stopped him. "No point in giving Schreuder a smoke beacon to follow," he said, "and there's naught of value here. Leave it be," and limped back to where the seamen were unloading the carriage.



Aboli was turning the horses out of the traces and Ned Tyler was helping him to improvise pack saddles for them, using the harness, leather work and canvas canopy from the carriage.



Katinka stood forlornly at her husband's side. "What is to become of me, Sir Henry?" she whispered as he came up. "Some of the men want to take you up into the mountains and feed you to the wild animals," he replied. Her hand flew to her lips and she paled. "Others want to cut your throat here and now for what you and your fat toad of a husband did to us."



"You would never allow such a thing to happen," van de Velde blustered. "I only did what was my duty."



"You're right," Hal agreed. "I think throat-cutting too good for you. I favour hanging and drawing, as you did to my father." He glared at him coldly, and van de Velde quailed. "However, I find myself sickened by you both. I want no further truck with either of you, and so I leave you and your lovely wife to the mercy of God, the devil and the amorous Colonel Schreuder." He turned and strode away to where Aboli and Ned were checking and tightening the loads on the horses.



Three of the greys had kegs of gunpowder slung on each side of their backs, two carried bundles of weapons and the sixth horse was loaded with Sukeena's bulky saddle-bags.



"All shipshape, Captain." Ned knuckled his forehead. "We can up anchor and get under way at your command." "There's nothing to keep us here. The Princess Sukeena will ride on the lead horse." He looked around for her. "Where is she?"



"I am here, Gundwane." Sukeena stepped out from behind the guard hut. "And I need no mollycoddling. I will walk like the rest of you."



Hal saw that she had shed her long skirts and that she now wore a pair of baggy Balinese breeches and a loose cotton shift that reached to her knees. She had tied a cotton head cloth over her hair, and on her feet were sturdy leather sandals that would be comfortable for walking. The men ogled the shape of her calves in the breeches, but she ignored their rude stares, took the lead rein of the nearest horse and led it towards the gap in the bitter-almond hedge.



"Sukeena!" Hal would have stopped her, but she recognized his censorious tone and ignored it. He realized the folly of persisting, and wisely tempered his next command. "Ald-tuda, you are the only one who knows the path from here. Go ahead with your sister." Althuda ran to catch up with her, and brother and sister led them into the uncharted wilderness beyond the hedge.



Hal and Aboli brought up the rear of the column as it wound through the dense scrub and bush. No men had trodden this path recently. It had been made by wild animals. the marks of their hoofs and paws were plain to see in the soft sandy soil, and their dung littered the track.



Aboli could recognize each animal by these signs, and as they moved along at a forced pace, he pointed them out to Hal. "That is leopard and there is the spoor of the antelope with the twisted horns we call kudu. At least we shall not starve," he promised. "There is a great plenty of game in this land."



This was the first opportunity since the escape that they had had to talk, and Hal asked quietly, "This Sabah, the friend of Althuda, what do you know of him?"



"Only the messages he sent."



"Should he not have met us at the hedge?"



"He said only that he would lead us into the mountains. I expected him to be waiting at the hedge," Aboli shrugged, "but with Althuda to guide us we do not need him."



They made good progress, the grey mare trotting easily with them hanging onto her traces and running beside her. Whenever they passed a tree that would bear Aboli's weight he shinned up it and looked back for signs of pursuit. Each time he came down and shook his head.



"Schreuder will come," Hal told him. "I have heard men say that those green-jackets of his can run down a mounted man. They will come."



They moved on steadily across the plain, stopping only at the swampy waterholes they passed. Hal hung onto the horse to ease his injured leg and, as he limped along, Aboli recounted all that had happened in the months since they had last been together. Hal was silent as he described, in his own language, how he had retrieved Sir Francis's body from the gibbet and the funeral he had given him. "It was the burial of a great chief. I dressed -him in the hide of a black bull and placed his ship and his weapons within his reach. I left food and water for his journey, and before his eyes I set the cross of his God." Hal's throat was too choked for him to thank Aboli for what he had done.



The day wore on, and their progress slowed as men and horses tired in the soft sandy footing. At the next marshy swamp where they stopped for a few minutes" rest, Hal took Sukeena aside.



"You have been strong and brave but your legs are not as long as ours, and I have watched you stumble with fatigue. From now on you must ride." When she started to protest he stopped her firmly. "I obeyed you in the matters of my wounds, but in all else I am captain and you must do as I say. From here on you will ride."



Her eyes twinkled. She made a pretty little gesture of submission, placing her fingertips together and touching them to her lips, "As you command, master," and allowed him to boost her up on top of the saddle-bags on the leading grey.



They skirted the swamp and went on a little faster now. Twice more Aboli climbed a tree to look back and saw no sign of pursuit. Against his natural instincts Hal began to hope that they might have eluded their pursuers, that they might reach the mountains that loomed ever closer and taller without being further molested.



In the middle of the afternoon they crossed a broad -open vlei, a meadow of short green grass where herds of wild antelope with scimitar-curved horns were grazing. They looked up at the approach of the caravan of horses and men, standing frozen in wide-eyed astonishment! their coats a metallic blue-grey hue in the afternoon sunlight.



"Even I have never seen beasts of that ilk Aboli admitted.



As the herds fled before them, wreathed in their own dust, Althuda. called back, "Those are the animals the Dutch call blaauwbok, the blue buck. I have seen great herds of them on the plains beyond the mountains."



Beyond the vlei the ground began to rise in a series of undulating ridges towards the foothills of the range. They climbed towards the first ridge, with Hal toiling along at the rear of the column. By now he was moving heavily, in obvious pain. Aboli saw that his face was flushed with fever, and that blood and watery fluid had seeped through the bandage that Sukeena had placed on his leg.



At the top of the ridge Aboli forced a halt. They looked back at the great Table Mountain, which dominated the western horizon. To their left, the wide blue curve of False Bay opened. However, they were all too exhausted to spend long admiring their surroundings. The horses stood, heads hanging, and the men threw themselves down in any shade they could find. Sukeena slid off her mount and hurried to where Hal had slumped with his back to a small tree-trunk. She knelt in front of him, unwrapped the bandage from his leg and drew a sharp breath when she saw how swollen and inflamed it was. She leaned closer and sniffed the oozing punctures. When she spoke her voice was stern.



"You cannot walk further on this. You must ride as you force me to do." Then she looked up at Aboli. "Make a fire to boil water," she ordered him. , "We have no time for such tomfoolery," Hal murmured halfheartedly, but they ignored him. Aboli lit a small fire with a slow-match and placed over it a tin mug of water. As soon as it boiled, Sukeena prepared a paste with the herbs she had in her saddle-bag, and spread it on a folded cloth. While it still steamed with heat she clapped the cloth over Hal's wounds. He moaned and said, "I swear I would rather Aboli pissed on my leg, than you burned it off with your devilish concoctions."



Sukeena ignored his immodest language and went on with her task. She bound the poultice in place with a fresh cloth, then from her saddle-bags she fetched a loaf of bread and a dried sausage. She cut these into slices, folded bread and sausage together, and handed one to each of the men.



"Bless you, Princess." Big Daniel knuckled his forehead, before taking his ration from her.



"God love you, Princess," said Ned, and all the others adopted the name. From then on she was their princess, and the rough seamen looked upon her with increasing respect and burgeoning affection.



"You can eat on the march, lads." Hal hauled himself to his feet.



"We have been lucky too long. Soon the devil will want his turn." They groaned and muttered but followed his lead.



As Hal was helping Sukeena to mount, there was a warning shout from Daniel. "There the bastards come at last." He pointed back down at the open vlei at the bottom of the slope. Hal pushed Sukeena up between the saddlebags and limped back to the rear of the column. He looked down the hillside and saw the long file of running men who had emerged from the edge of the scrub and were crossing the open ground. They were led by a single horseman who came on at a trot.



"It's Schreuder again. He has found another mount." Even at that range there was no mistaking the Colonel. He sat tall and arrogant in the saddle, and there was a sense of deadly purpose about the set of his shoulders and the way he lifted his head to look up the slope towards them. It was obvious that he had not yet spotted them, hidden in the thick scrub.



"How many men with him?" Ned Tyler asked, and they all looked at Hal to count them. He slitted his eyes and watched them come out of the thick scrub. With their swinging trot they kept up easily with Schreuder's horse. "Twenty," Hal counted.



"Why so few?" Big Daniel demanded.



"Almost certainly Schreuder has chosen his fastest runners to press us hard. The rest will be following at their best speed." Hal shaded his eyes. "Yes, by God, there they are, a league behind the first platoon, but coming fast. I can see their dust and the shape of their helmets above the scrub. There must be a hundred or more in that second detachment."



"Twenty we can deal with," Big Daniel muttered, "but a hundred of those murdering green-backs is more than I can eat for breakfast without belching. What orders, Captain?" Every man looked at Hal.



He paused before replying, carefully studying the lie and the grain of the land below before he said, "Master Daniel, take the rest of the party on with Althuda to guide you. Aboli and I will stay here with one horse to slow down their advance."



"We cannot outrun them. They've proved that to us, Captain," Daniel protested. "Would it not be better to fight them here?"



"You have your orders." Hal turned a cold, steely eye upon him.



Daniel again knuckled his brow. "Aye, Captain," and he turned to the others. "You heard the orders, lads."



Hal limped back to where Sukeena sat on her horse, with Althuda. holding the lead rein. "You must go on, whatever happens. Do not turn back for any reason," he told Althuda, and then he smiled up at Sukeena "Not even if her royal highness commands it."



She did not return his smile but leaned down closer and whispered, "I will wait for you on the mountain. Do not make me wait too long."



Althuda led the column of horses forward again, and as they crossed the skyline there was a distant shout from the vlei below.



"So they have discovered us," Aboli muttered.



Hal went to the single remaining horse, and loosened one of the fifty-pound kegs of gunpowder. He lowered it to the ground, and told Aboli, "Take the horse on. Follow the others. Let Schreuder see you go. Tether it out of sight beyond the ridge and then come back to me."



He rolled the keg to the nearest outcrop of tock and crouched beside it. With only the top of his head showing, he again studied the slope below him, then turned his full attention to Schreuder and his band of green-jackets. Already they were much closer, and he could see that two of the Hottentots ran ahead of Schreuder's horse. They watched the ground as they came on, following exactly the route that Hal's party had blazed.



They read our sign from the earth, like hounds after the stag, he thought. They will come up the same path we followed.



At that moment Aboli dropped back over the ridge and squatted beside him. "The horse is tethered and the others go on apace. Now what is your plan, Gundwane?"



"Tis so simple, there is no need to explain it to you," said Hal, as he prised the bung from the keg with the point of his sword. Then he unwound the length of the slow match he had tied around his waist. "This match is the devil. It either burns too fast or too slow. But I will take a chance on three fingers" length," he muttered as he measured, then lopped off a length. He rolled it gently between the palms of his hands in an attempt to induce it to burn evenly, then threaded one end into the bunghole of the keg and secured it by driving back the wooden plug.



"You had best hurry, Gundwane. Your old fencing partner, Schreuder, is in great haste to meet you again."



Hal glanced up from his task and saw that the pursuers had crossed the meadow and were already starting up the slope towards them. "Keep out of sight," Hal told him. "I want to let them get very close." The two lay flat on their bellies and peered down the hillside. Sitting high in the saddle, Schreuder was in full view, but the two trackers who led him were obscured by the scrub and flowering bushes from the waist down. As they came on Hal could make out the ugly gravel graze down Schreuder's face, the rents and dirt smears on his uniform. He wore neither Hat nor wig, had probably lost them along the way, perhaps in his fall. Vain though he was, he had wasted no time in trying to regain them, so urgent was his haste.



The sun had already reddened his shaven pate and his horse was lathered. Perhaps he had not bothered to water it during the long chase. Closer still he came. His eyes were fastened on the ridge where he had seen the fugitives cross. His face was a stony mask, and Hal could see that he was a man driven by his volcanic temper, ready to take any risk or brave any danger.



On the steep slope even his indefatigable trackers began to flag. Hal could see the sweat streaming down their flat yellow Asiatic faces and hear their gasping breath.



"Come on, you rogues!" Schreuder goaded them. "You will let them get clear away. Faster! Run faster." They came scrambling and straining up the slope.



"Good!" Hal muttered. "They are sticking in our tracks, as I hoped." He whispered his final instructions to Aboli. "But wait until I give you the word," he cautioned him.



Closer they came until Hal could hear the Hottentots" bare feet slapping the ground, the squeak of Schreuder's tack and the jingle of his spurs. On he came, until Hal saw the individual beads of sweat that decorated the points of his moustache, and the little veins in his bulging blue eyes as he fixed his obsessed and furious stare on the skyline of the ridge, overlooking the enemy who lay hidden much closer at hand.



"Ready!" whispered Hal, and held the burning slow match to the fuse of the powder keg. It flared, spluttered, caught, then burned up fiercely. The flame raced down the short length of fuse towards the bung hole.



"Now, Aboli!" he snapped. Aboli seized the keg and leapt to his feet, almost under the hoofs of Schreuder's horse. The two Hottentots yelled with shock and ducked off the path, while the horse shied and reared, throwing Schreuder forward onto its neck.



For a moment Aboli stood poised, holding the keg high above his head with both hands. The fuse sizzled and hissed like an angry puff-adder, and the powder smoke blew around his great tattooed head like a blue nimbus. Then he hurled the keg out over the hillside. It turned lazily in the air before striking the rocky ground and bounding away, bouncing and leaping as it gathered speed. It jumped up into the face of Schreuder's horse, which reared away just as its rider had recovered his balance. Schreuder was thrown forward again onto its neck, lost one of his stirrups and hung awkwardly out of the saddle.



The horse spun and leaped back down the slope, almost into the platoon of infantry that was following close upon its heels. As both maddened horse and bouncing powder keg came hurtling back among them, the column of green jackets sent up a howl of consternation. Every one recognized that the smoking fuse was the harbinger of a fearsome detonation only seconds away, and they broke ranks and scattered. Most turned instinctively downhill, rather than breaking out to the sides, and the keg overhauled them, bouncing along in their midst.



Schreuder's horse went down on its bunched hindquarters as it slipped and slid down the hillside. The reins snapped in one of its rider's hands while the other lost its precarious hold on the pommel of the saddle. Schreuder fell clear of his mount's driving hoofs, and as he hit the earth the keg exploded. The fall saved his life for he had tumbled into the lee of a low rock outcrop and the main force of the blast swept over him.



However, it ripped through the horde of routed soldiers. Those closest to it were hurled about and thrown upwards like burning leaves from a garden fire. Their clothing was stripped from their mangled bodies, and a disembodied arm was thrown high to fall back at Hal's feet. Both Aboli and Hal were knocked down by the force of the blast. Ears buzzing, Hal scrambled upright again and stared down in awe at the devastation they had created.



Not one of the enemy was still on his feet. "By God, you killed them all!" Hal marvelled, but at once there were confused Cries and shouts among the flattened bushes. First one and then more of the enemy soldiers staggered dazedly upright.



"Come away!" Aboli seized Hal's arm and dragged him to the top of the ridge. Before they dropped over the crest Hal glanced back and saw that Schreuder had hoisted himself upright. Swaying drunkenly he was standing over the mutilated carcass of his mount. He was still so dazed that, even as Hal watched, his legs folded under him and he sat down heavily among the broken branches and torn leaves, covering his face with his hands.



Aboli released Hal's arm, and changed his sword into his right hand. "I can run back and finish him off," he growled, but the suggestion stirred Hal from his own daze.



"Leave him be! It would not be honourable to kill him while he is unable to defend himself."



"Then let us go, and fast." Aboli growled. "We may have put this band of Schreuder's men up on the reef but, look! The rest of his green-jackets are not far behind."



Hal wiped the sweat and dust from his face and blinked to stop his eyes blurring.. He saw that Aboli was right. The dust cloud from the second detachment of the enemy rose from the scrub of the flatlands on the far side of the vleil but it was coming on swiftly.



"If we run hard now, we might be able to hold them off until nightfall and by then we should be into the mountains,"Aboli estimated. " Within a few paces, Hal stumbled and hopped as his injured leg gave way under him. Without a word Aboli gave him his arm to help him over the rough ground to where he had tethered the horse. This time Hal did not protest when Aboli boosted him up onto its back and took the lead rein.



"Which direction?" Hal demanded. As he looked ahead the mountain barrier was riven into a labyrinth of ravines and soaring rock buttresses, of cliffs and deep gorges in which grew. dense strips of forest and tangled scrub. He could pick out no path nor pass through this confusion.



"Althuda knows the way, and he has left signs for us to follow." The spoor of five horses and the band of fugitives was deeply trodden ahead of them, but to enhance it Althuda had blazed the bark from the trees along his route. They followed at the best of their speed, and from the next ridge saw the tiny shapes of the five grey horses crossing a stretch of open ground two or three miles ahead. Hal could even make out Sukeena's small figure perched on the back of the leading horse. The silver colour of the horses made them stand out like mirrors in the dark, surrounding bush, and he murmured, "They are beautiful animals, but they draw the eye of an enemy."



"In the traces of a gentleman's carriage there could be no finer," Aboli agreed, "but in the mountains they would flounder. We must abandon them when we reach the rough ground, or else they will break their lovely legs in the rocks and crevices."



"Leave them for the Dutch?" Hal asked. "Why not a musket ball to end their suffering?"



"Because they are beautiful, and because I love them like my children," said Aboli softly, reaching up and patting the animal's neck. The grey mare rolled an eye at him and whickered softly, returning his affection.



Hal laughed, "She loves you also, Aboli. For your sake we will spare them."



They plunged down the next slope and struggled up the far side. The ground grew steeper at each pace and the mountain crests seemed to hang suspended above their heads. At the top they paused again to let the mare blow, and looked ahead.



"It seems Althuda is aiming for that dark gorge dead ahead." Hal shaded his eyes. "Can you see them?"



"No," Aboli grunted. "They are hidden by the folds of the foothills and the trees." Then he looked back again. "But look behind you, Gundwane!"



Hal turned and stared where he pointed, and exclaimed as though he were in pain. "How can they have come so quickly? They are gaining on us as though we were standing still."



The column of running green-jackets was swarming over the ridge behind them like soldier ants from a disturbed nest. Hal could count their numbers easily and pick out the white officers. The mid-afternoon sunlight flashed from their bayonets and Hal could hear their faint but jubilant cries as they viewed their quarry so close ahead.



"There is Schreuder!" Hal exclaimed bitterly. "By God, that man is a monster. Is there no means of stopping him?" The dismounted colonel was trotting along near the rear of the long, spread-out column but, as Hal watched him, he passed the man ahead of him on the path. "He runs faster than his own Hottentots. If we linger here another minute, he will be up to us before we reach the mouth of the dark gorge."



The ground ahead rose up so steeply that the horse could not take it straight up, and the path began to zigzag across the slope. There was another joyous cry from below, like the halloo of the fox hunter, and they saw their pursuers strung out over a mile or more of the track. The leaders were much closer now.



"Long musket shot," Hal hazarded, and as he said it one of the leading soldiers dropped to his knee behind a rock and took deliberate aim before he fired. They saw the puff of muzzle smoke long before they heard the dull pop of the shot. The ball struck a blue chip off a rock fifty feet below where they stood. "Still too far. Let them waste their powder."



The grey mare leaped upwards over the rocky steps in the path, much surer on her feet than Hal could have hoped. Then they reached the outer bend in the wide dogleg and started back across the slope. Now they were approaching their pursuers at an oblique angle, and the gap between them narrowed even faster.



The men on the path below welcomed them with joyous shouts. They flung themselves down to rest, to steady their pounding hearts and shaking hands. Hal could see them checking the priming in the pans of their muskets and lighting their slow-match, preparing themselves to make the shot as the grey mare and her rider came within fair musket range.



"Satan's breathP Hal muttered. "This is like sailing into an enemy broadsideP But there was nowhere to run or hide, and they laboured. on up the path.



Hal could see Schreuder now. he had worked his way steadily towards the head of the column and was staring up at them. Even at this range Hal could see that he had driven himself far beyond his natural strength. his face was drawn and haggard, his uniform torn, filthy, soaked with sweat, and blood from a dozen scratches and abrasions. He heaved and strained for breath, but his sunken eyes burned with malevolence. He did not have the strength to shout or to shake a weapon but he watched Hal implacably.



One of the green-jackets fired and they heard the ball hum close over their heads. Aboli was urging on the mare at her best pace over the steep, broken path, but they would be within musket range for many more minutes. Now a ripple of fire ran along the line of soldiers along the path below. Musket balls thudded among the rocks around them, some flattening into shiny discs where they struck. Others sprayed chips of stone down upon them, or whined away in ricochet across the valley.



Unscathed, the grey mare reached the outward leg of the path and started back. Now the range was longer and most of the Hottentot infantrymen jumped to their feet and took up the pursuit. One or two started directly up the slope, attempting to cut the corner, but the hillside proved too sheer for even their nimble feet. They gave up, slid back to the angled pathway and hurried after their companions along the gentler but longer route.



A few soldiers remained kneeling in the path, and reloaded, stabbing the ramrods frantically down the muzzles of their muskets, then pouring black powder into the pan. Schreuder had watched the fusillade, leaning heavily against a rock while his pounding heart and laboured breathing slowed. Now he pushed himself upright and seized a reloaded musket from one of his Hottentots, elbowing the other man aside.



"We are beyond musket shot!" Hal protested. "Why does he persist?"



"Because he is mad with hatred for you," Aboli replied. "The devil gives him strength to carry on."



Swiftly Schreuder stripped off his coat and bundled it over the rock, making a cushion on which to rest the forestock of the musket. He looked down the barrel and picked up the pip of the foresight in the notch of the backsight. He settled' it for an instant on Hal's bobbing head, then lifted it until he had a slice of blue sky showing beneath it, compensating for the drop of the heavy lead ball when it reached the limit of its carry. In the same motion he swept the sight ahead of the grey's straining head.



"He can never hope for a hit from there!" Hal breathed, but at that instant he saw the silver smoke bloom like a noxious flower on the stern of the musket barrel. Then he felt a mallet blow as the ball ploughed into the ribs of the grey mare an inch from his knee. Hal heard the air driven from the horse's punctured lungs. The brave animal reeled backwards and went down on its haunches. It tried to recover its footing by rearing wildly, but instead threw itself off the edge of the narrow path. just in time, Aboli grabbed Hal's injured leg and pulled him from its back.



Hal and Aboli sprawled together on the rocks and looked down. The horse rolled until it struck the bend in the pathway, where it came to rest in a slide of small stones, loose earth and dust. It lay with all four legs kicking weakly in the air. A resounding shout of triumph went up from the pursuing soldiers, whose cries rang along the cliffs and echoed through the gloomy depths of the dark gorge.



Hal crawled shakily to his feet, and quickly assessed their circumstances. Both he and Aboli still had their muskets slung over their shoulders and their swords in their scabbards. In addition they each had a pair of pistols, a small powder horn and a bag containing musket balls strapped around their waists. But they had lost all else.



Below them their pursuers had been given new heart by this reverse in their fortunes and were clamouring like a pack of hounds with the smell of the chase hot in their nostrils. They came scrambling upwards.



"Leave your pistols and musket," Aboli ordered. "Leave the powder horn and sword also, or their weight will wear you down."



Hal shook his head. "We will need them soon enough. Lead the way on." Aboli did not argue and went away at full stride. Hal stayed close behind him, forcing his injured leg to serve his purpose through the pain and the quivering weakness that spread slowly up his thigh.



Aboli reached back to hand him up over the more formidable steps in the pathway, but the incline became sharper as they laboured upwards and began to work round the sheer buttress of rock that formed one of the portals of the dark gorge. Now, at every pace forward, they were forced to step up onto the next level, as though they were on a staircase, and were skirting the sheer wall that dropped into the valley far below. The pursuers, though still close, were out of sight around the buttress.



"Are we sure this is the right path?" Hal gasped, as they stopped for a few seconds" rest on a broader step.



"Althuda is leaving sign for us still," Aboli assured him, and kicked over the cairn of three small pebbles balanced upon each other which had been erected prominently in the centre of the path. "And so are my grey horses." He smiled as he pointed out a pile of shining wet balls of dung a little further ahead. Then he cocked his head. "Listen!"



Now Hal could hear the voices of Schreuder's men. They were closer than they had been when last they had stopped. They sounded as though they were just round the corner of the buttress behind them. Hal looked at Aboli with dismay, and tried to balance on his good leg to conceal the weakness of the other. They could hear the clink of sword on rock and the clatter of loose stones underfoot. The soldiers" voices were so clear and loud that Hal could distinguish their words, and Schreuder's voice relentlessly urging his troops onwards.



"Now you will obey me, Gundwane!"said Aboli, and he leaned across and snatched Hal's musket. "You will go on at your best speed while I hold them here for a while." Hal was about to argue but Aboli looked hard into his eyes. "The longer you argue- the more danger you place me in," he said.



Hal nodded. "See you at the top of the gorge." He clasped Aboli's arm in a firm grip, then hobbled on alone. As the path turned into the main gorge, Hal looked back and saw that Aboli had taken shelter crouching in the bend of the path, and that he had laid the two muskets on the rock in front of him, close to his hand.



Hal turned the corner, looked up and saw the gorge open up above him like a great gloomy funnel. The sides were sheer rock walls and it was roofed over by trees with tall thin stems that reached up for the sunlight. They were draped and festooned with lichens. A small stream came leaping down, in a series of pools and waterfalls, and the path took to this stream bed and climbed up over water worn boulders. Hal dropped to his knees, plunged his face into the fir At pool and sucked up water, choking and coughing in his greed. As the water distended his belly he felt strength flow back into his swollen, throbbing leg.



From the other side of the buttress behind him there came the thud of a musket shot, then the thump of a ball striking flesh, followed immediately by the scream of a man thrown into the abyss, a scream that dwindled and faded as he fell away. It was cut off abruptly as he struck the rocks far below. Aboli had made certain of his first shot, and the pursuers would be thrown back in disarray. It would take them time to regroup and come on more cautiously, so he had won precious minutes for Hal.



Hal scrambled to his feet, and launched himself up the stream bed.



Each of the huge, smooth boulders tested his injured leg to its limit.



He grunted, groaned and dragged himself upward, listening at the same time for the sounds of fighting behind him, but he heard nothing more until he reached the next pool where he stopped in surprise.



Althuda had left the five grey horses tethered to a dead tree at the water's edge. When he looked beyond them to the next giant step in the stream bed, Hal knew why they had been abandoned here. They could no longer follow this dizzy path. The gorge was constricted into a narrow throat high above his head and his own courage faltered as he surveyed the perilous route that he had to follow. But there was no other way, for the gorge had turned into a trap from which there was no escape. While he wavered, he heard from far below another musket shot and a clamour of angry shouts.



"Aboli has taken another," he said aloud, and his own voice echoed weirdly from the high walls of the gorge. "Now both his muskets are empty and he will have to run." But Aboli had won this reprieve for him, and he dared not squander it. He drove himself at -the steep path, dragging his wounded leg over glassy, water-polished rock, which was slippery and treacherous with slimy green algae.



His heart pounding with exhaustion, and his fingernails ripped to the quick, he crawled the last few feet upwards and reached the ledge in the throat of the gorge. Here he dropped flat on his belly and looked back over the edge. He saw Aboli coming up, leaping from rock to rock without hesitation, a musket clutched in each hand, not even glancing down to judge his footing on the treacherous boulders.



Hal looked up at the sky through the narrow opening of the gorge high above his head, and saw that day was fading. It would be dark soon, and the tops of the trees were turning to gold in the last rays of sunlight.



"This way! "he shouted down to Aboli.



"Go on, Gundwane!" Aboli shouted back. "Do not wait for me. They are close behind!"



Hal turned and looked up the steep stream bed behind him. For the next two hundred paces it was in full view. if he and Aboli tried to continue the climb, then Schreuder and his men would reach this vantage point while their backs were still exposed. Before they could reach the next shelter they would be- shot down by short-range musket fire.



We will have to make our stand here, he decided. We must hold them until nightfall, then try to slip away in the dark. Quickly he gathered loose rocks from the choked watercourse in which he hid and stacked them along the lip of the ledge. When he looked down he saw that Aboli had reached the foot of the rock wall and was climbing rapidly up towards him.



When Aboli was half-way up, and fully exposed, there was a shout from further down the darkening gorge. Through the gloom Hal made out the shape of the first of their pursuers. There came the flash and bang of a musket shot, and Hal peered down anxiously but Aboli was uninjured and still climbing fast.



Now the bottom of the gorge was swarming with men, and a fusillade of shots set the echoes booming and crashing. Hal picked out Schreuder down there in the gloom. his white face stood out among the darker ones that surrounded him.



Aboli reached the top of the rock-wall, and Hal gave him a hand on to the ledge. "Why have you not gone on, Gundwane?" he panted.



"No time for talking." Hal snatched one of the muskets from him and began to reload it. "We have to hold them here until dark. Reload!"



"Powder almost finished," Aboli replied. "Only enough for a few more shots." As he spoke he was plying the ramrod.



"Then we must make every shot tell. After that we will beat them back with rocks." Hal primed the pan of his musket. "And when we have run out of rocks to throw, we will take the steel to them."



Musket balls began to buzz and crack around their heads as the men below opened up a sustained rolling volley. Hal and Aboli were forced to lie below the lip, every few seconds popping up their heads to take a quick glance down the wall.



Schreuder was using most of his men to keep up the fusillade, controlling them so that weapons were always loaded and ready to fire at his command while others reloaded. It seemed that he had chosen a team of his strongest men to scale the wall, while his marksmen tried to keep Hal and Aboli from defending themselves.



This first wave of a dozen or more climbers carrying only their swords rushed forward and hurled themselves at the rock wall, scrambling upwards. Then, as soon as Hal and Aboli's heads appeared over the lip, there came a thunderous volley of musket fire and the muzzle flashes lit the gloom.



Hal ignored the balls that flew around and splashed against the rock below him. He thrust out the barrel of his musket and aimed down at the nearest climber. This was one of the white Dutch corporals, and the range was pointblank. Hal's ball struck him in the mouth, smashed in his teeth and shattered his jawbone. He lost his grip on the slippery face, and fell backwards. He crashed into the three men below him, knocking them loose, and all four plummeted down to shatter on the rocks below.



Aboli fired and sent another two green-jackets slithering downwards. Then both he and Hal snatched up their pistols and fired again, then again, clearing the wall of climbers, except for two men who clung helplessly to a crevice half-way up the polished rock face.



Hal dropped the empty pistols and seized one of the boulders he had placed at hand. It filled his fist, and he hurled it down at the man below him. The green-jacket saw it coming, but could not avoid it.



He tried to tuck his head into his shoulders but the rock caught him on the temple, his fingers opened and he fell.



"Good throw, Gundwane!" Aboli applauded him. "Your aim is improving." He threw at the last man on the wall and hit him under the chin. He teetered for a moment, then lost his grip and plunged down.



"Reload!" Hal snapped, and as he poured in powder he glanced at the strip of sky above them. "Will the night never come?" he lamented, and saw Schreuder send the next wave of climbers to rush the wall. Darkness would not save them for, before they had reloaded the muskets, the enemy soldiers were already half-way up.



They knelt on the lip and fired again, but this time their two shots brought down only one of the attackers and the rest came on steadily. Schreuder sent another wave of climbers to join them and the entire wall seethed with dark figures.



"We cannot beat them all back," Hal said, with black despair in his. heart. "We must retreat back up the gorge." But when he looked up at the steep, boulder-strewn climb, his spirits quailed.



He flung down his musket and, with Aboli at his side, went at the treacherous slope. The first climbers came over the lip of the wall and rushed, shouting, after them.



In the gathering darkness Hal and Aboli struggled upwards, turning when the pursuers pressed them too closely to take them on with their blades and drive them back just far enough to give them respite to go on upwards. But now more and still more green-jackets had reached the top of the wall, and it was only a matter of minutes before they would be overtaken and overwhelmed. just ahead, Hal noticed a deep crevice in the side wall of the gorge and thought that he and Aboli might take shelter in its darkness.



He abandoned the idea, however, as he came level with it and saw how shallow it was. Schreuder would hunt them out of there like a ferret driving out a couple of rabbits from a warren.



"Hal Courtney!" a voice called from the dark crack in the rock. He peered into it and, in its depths, saw two men. One was Althuda, who had called him, and the other was a stranger, a bearded, older man dressed in animal skins. It was too dark to see his face clearly, but when both he and Althuda beckoned urgently neither Hal nor Aboli hesitated. They threw themselves at the narrow opening and squeezed in, between the two men already there.



"Get down!" the stranger shouted in Hal's ear, and stood up with a short-handled axe in his hand. A soldier appeared in the opening of the crevice and raised his sword to thrust at the four men crowded into it, but Althuda threw up the pistol in his hand and shot him at close range in the centre of his chest.



At the same time the bearded stranger raised the axe high then slashed down with a powerful stroke. Hal did not understand what he was doing, until he saw that the man had severed a rope of plaited bark, thick as a man's wrist and hairy. The axe bit cleanly through the taut rope, and as it parted the severed tail whipped away, as though impelled by some immense force. The end had been looped and knotted around a sturdy wooden peg, driven into a crack in the stone. The length of the rope ran round the corner of the crevice, then stretched upwards to some point lost in the gathering gloom higher up the steep gorge.



For a long minute nothing else happened, and Hal and Aboli stared at, the other two in bewilderment. Then there was a creaking and a rustling from higher up the funnel of the gorge, a rumbling and a crackling as though a sleeping giant had stirred.



"Sabah has triggered the rockfall!" Althuda explained, and instantly Hal understood. He stared out into the gorge through the narrow entrance to the crevice. The rumbling became a gathering roar, and above it he could hear the wild, terrified screams of green-jackets caught full in the path of this avalanche. For them there was neither shelter nor escape. The gorge was a death trap into which Althuda and Sabah had lured them.



The roaring and grinding of rock rose in a deafening crescendo. The mountain seemed to tremble beneath them. The screams of the soldiers in its path were drowned, and suddenly a mighty river of racing boulders came sweeping past the entrance to the crevice. The light was blotted out, and the air was filled with dust and powdered rock so that the four men choked and gasped for breath. Blinded and suffocating, Hal lifted the tail of his ragged shirt and held it over his nose and mouth, trying to filter the air so that he could breathe in the tumultuous choking dust-storm thrown out by the tidal wave of rock and flying stone that poured past.



The avalanche went on for a long time but gradually the stream of moving rock dwindled to become a slow, intermittent slither and tumble of the last few fragments.



At last silence, complete and oppressive, weighed down upon them, and the dust settled to reveal the outline of the opening to their shelter.



Aboli crawled out and balanced gingerly on the loose, unstable footing. Hal crept out beside him and both peered down the gloomy gorge. From wall to wall, it had been scoured clean by the avalanche. There was no sound or trace of their pursuers, not a last despairing cry or dying moan, not a shred of cloth or discarded weapon. It was as though they had never been.



Hal's injured leg could no longer bear his weight. He staggered and collapsed in the opening of the crevice. The fever in his blood from the festering wounds boiled up and filled his head with darkness and heat. He was aware of strong hands supporting him and then he lapsed into unconsciousness.



Colonel Cornelius Schreuder waited for an hour in the antechamber of the castle before Governor van de Velde condescended to see him.



When, eventually, he was summoned by an aide-decamp, he strode into the Governor's audience chamber, but still van de Velde declined to acknowledge his presence. He went on signing the documents and proclamations that Jacobus Hop laid before him, one at a time.



Schreuder was in full uniform, wearing all his decorations and stars. His wig was freshly curled and powdered, and his moustaches were dressed with beeswax into sharp spikes. Down one side of his face there were pink raw scars and scabs.



Van de Velde signed the last document and dismissed Hop with a wave of his hand. When the clerk had left and closed the doors behind him, van de Velde picked up Schreuder's written report from the desk in front of him as though it was a particularly revolting piece of excrement.



"So you lost almost forty men, Schreuder?" he asked heavily. "Not to mention eight of the Company's finest horses."



"Thirty-four men, Schreuder corrected him, still standing stiffly to attention.



"Almost forty!" van de Velde repeated, with an expression of repugnance. "And eight horses. The convicts and slaves you were pursuing got clean away from you. Hardly a famous victory, do you agree, Colonel?" Schreuder scowled furiously at the sculpted cornices on the ceiling above the Governor's head. "The security of the castle is your responsibility, Schreuder. The minding of the prisoners is your responsibility. The safety of my person and that of my wife is also your responsibility. Do you agree, Schreuder?"



"Yes, your excellency." A nerve beneath Schreuder's eye began to twitch.



"You allowed the prisoners to escape. You allowed them to plunder the Company's property. You allowed them to do grievous damage to this building with explosives. Look at my windowsP Van de Velde pointed at the empty casements from which the stained-glass panels had been blown.



"I have estimates from the Company surveyor that place the damage at over one hundred thousand guilders!" He was working himself steadily into a rage. "A hundred thousand guilders! Then, on top of that, you allowed the prisoners to abduct my wife and myself and to place us in mortal danger-" He had to break off to get his temper under control. "Then you allowed almost forty of the Company's servants to be murdered, including five white men! What do you imagine will be the reaction of the Council of Seventeen in Amsterdam when they receive my full report detailing the depths of the dereliction of your duties, hey? What do you think they will say? Answer me, you jumped-up popinjay! What do you think they will say?" "They may be somewhat displeased," Schreuder replied stiffly.



"Displeased? Somewhat displeased?" shrieked van de Velde, and fell back in his chair, gasping for breath like a stranded fish. When he had recovered, he went on, "You will be the first to know whether or not they are somewhat displeased, Schreuder. I am sending you back to Amsterdam in the deepest disgrace. You will sail in three days" time aboard the Weltevreden, which is anchored in the bay at this moment."



He pointed out through the empty windows at the cluster of ships lying at anchor beyond the surf line. "My report on the affair will go to Amsterdam on the same ship, together with my condemnation of you in the strongest possible terms. You will stand before the Seventeen and make your excuses to them in person." He leered at the colonel gloatingly. "Your military career is destroyed, Schreuder. I suggest you consider taking up the calling of whoremaster, a vocation for which you have demonstrated considerable aptitude. Goodbye, Colonel Schreuder. I doubt I shall have the pleasure of your company ever again."



Aching with the Governor's insults as though he had taken twenty lashes of the cat, Schreuder strode out to the head of the staircase. To give himself time in which to regain his composure and his temper, he paused to survey the damage that the explosion had inflicted on the buildings surrounding the courtyard. The armoury had been destroyed, blown into a rubble heap. The roof timbers of the north wing were shattered and blackened by the fire that had followed the blast, but the outer walls were intact and the other buildings only superficially damaged.



The sentries who once would have leapt to attention at his appearance now delayed rendering him his honours, and when finally they tossed him a lackadaisical salute, one accompanied it with an impudent grin. In the tiny community of the colony news spread swiftly, and clearly his dishonourable discharge from the Company's service was already known to the entire garrison. Jacobus Hop must have taken pleasure in spreading the news, Schreuder decided, and he rounded on the grinning sentry. "Wipe that smirk off your ugly face or, by God, I will shave it off with my sword." The man sobered instantly and stared rigidly ahead. However, as Schreuder crossed the courtyard, Manseer and the overseers whispered together and smiled behind their fists. Even some of the recaptured prisoners, now wearing chains, who were repairing the damage to the armoury stopped work to grin slyly at him.



Such humiliation was painfully hard for a man of his pride and temperament to bear, and he tried to imagine how much worse it would become when he returned to Holland and faced the Council of Seventeen. His shame would be shouted in every tavern and port, in every garrison and regiment, in the salons of all the great houses and mansions of Amsterdam. Van de Velde was correct. he would become a pariah.



He strode out through-the gates and across the bridge of the moat.



He did not know where he was going, but he turned down towards the foreshore and stood above the beach staring out to sea. Slowly he brought his turbulent emotions under some control, and began to look for some escape from the scorn and the ridicule that he could not bear.



I shall swallow the ball, he decided. It's the only way open to me. Then, almost instantly, his whole nature revolted against such a craven course of action. He remembered how he had despised one of his brother officers in Batavia who, over the matter of a woman, had placed the muzzle of a loaded pistol in his mouth and blown away the back of his skull. "It is the coward's way!" Schreuder said aloud. "And not for me."



Yet he knew he could never obey van de Velde's orders to return home to Holland. But neither could he remain here at Good Hope, nor travel to any Dutch possession anywhere upon this globe. He was an outcast, and he must find some other land where his shame was unknown.



Now his gaze focused on the cluster of shipping anchored out in Table Bay. There was the Weltevreden, upon which van de Velde wished to send him back to face the Seventeen. His eye moved on over the three other Dutch vessels lying near it. He would not sail on a Dutch ship but there were only two foreign vessels. One was a Portuguese slaver, outward-bound for the markets of Zanzibar. Even the thought of sailing on a slaver was distasteful he could smell her from where he stood above the beach. The other ship was an English frigate and, by the looks of her, newly launched and well found. Her rigging was fresh and her paintwork only lightly marred by the Atlantic gales. She had the look of a warship, but he had heard that she was privately owned and an armed trader. He could read her name on her transom. the Golden Bough. She had fifteen gun ports down the side, which she presented to him as she rode lightly at anchor, but he did not know whence she had come nor whither she was bound. However, he knew exactly where to find this information so he settled his Hat firmly over his wig and struck out along the shore, heading for the nearest of the insalubrious cluster of hovels that served as brothels and gin halls to the seafarers of the oceans.



Even at this hour of the morning the tavern was crowded, and the windowless interior was dark and rank with tobacco smoke and the fumes of cheap spirits and unwashed humanity. The whores were mostly Hottentots but there were one or two white women who had grown too old and pox-ridden to work in even the ports of Rotterdam or St. Pauli. Somehow they had found ships to carry them southwards and had come ashore, like rats, to eke out their last days in these squalid surroundings before the French disease burned them out entirely.



His hand on the hilt of his sword, Schreuder cleared a small table for himself with a sharp word and haughty state. Once he was seated he summoned one of the haggard serving wenches to bring him a tankard of small beer. "Which are the sailors from the Golden Bough?" he asked, and tossed a silver rix-dollar onto the filthy table top. The trull snatched up this largesse and dropped it down the front of her grubby dress between her pendulous dugs before she jerked her head in the direction of three seamen at a table in the far corner of the room.



"Take each of those gentlemen another chamber pot filled with whatever foul piss you're serving them and tell them that I'm paying for it."



When he left the tavern half an hour later Schreuder knew where the Golden Bough was heading, and the name and disposition of her captain. He sauntered down to the beach and hired a skiff to row him out to the frigate.



The anchor watch on board the Golden Bough spotted him as soon as he left the beach, and could tell by his dress and deportment that he was a man of consequence. When Schreuder hailed the deck of the frigate and asked for permission to come aboard, a stout, florid-faced Welsh petty-officer gave him a cautious greeting at the entry port then led him down to the stern cabin where Captain Christopher Llewellyn rose to welcome him. Once he was seated, he offered Schteuder a pewter pot of porter. He was obviously relieved to find that Schreuder spoke good English. Llewellyn soon accepted him as a gentleman and an equal, relaxed and spoke easily and openly.



First they discussed the recent hostilities between their two countries, and expressed themselves pleased that a satisfactory peace had been concluded, then went on to speak about maritime trade in the eastern oceans and the temporal powers and politics that governed the regions of the East Indies and Further India. These were highly involved, and complicated by the rivalry between the European powers whose traders and naval vessels were entering the Oriental seas in ever greater numbers.



"There are also the religious conflicts that embroil the eastern lands," Llewellyn remarked. "My present voyage is in response to an appeal by the Christian King of Ethiopia, the Prester John, for military assistance in his war against the forces of Islam."



At the mention of war in the East Schreuder sat up a little straighter in his chair. He was a warrior, at the moment an unemployed warrior, and war was his trade. "I had not heard of this conflict. Please tell me more about it."



"The great Mogul has sent his fleet and an army under the command of his younger brother, Sadiq Khan Jahan, to seize the countries that make up the seaboard of the Great Horn of Africa from the Christian king." Llewellyn broke off his explanation to ask, "Tell me, Colonel, do you know much about the Islamic religion?"



Schreuder nodded. "Yes, of course. Many of the men I have commanded over the last thirty years have been Muslims. I speak Arabic and I have made a study of Islam."



"You will know, then, that one of the precepts of this militant belief is the hadj, the pilgrimage to the birthplace of the prophet at Mecca, which is situated on the eastern shores of the Red Sea."



"Ah!" Schreuder said. "I can see where you are heading. Any pilgrim from the Great Mogul's realm in India would be forced to enter the Red Sea by passing around the Great Horn of Africa. This would bring the two religions into confrontation in the region, am I correct in my surmise?"



"Indeed, Colonel, I commend you on your grasp of the religious and political implications. That is precisely the excuse being used by the Great Mogul to attack the Prester John. Of course, the Arabs have been trading with Africa since before the birth of either our Saviour, Jesus Christ, or the prophet Muhammad. From a foothold on Zanzibar island they have been gradually extending their domination onto the mainland. Now they are intent on the conquest and subjugation of the heartland of Christian Ethiopia."



"And where, may I be so bold to ask, is your place in this conflict?" Schreuder asked thoughtfully "I belong to a naval chivalric order, the Knights of the Temple of the Order of St. George and the Holy Grail, committed to defend the Christian faith and the holy places of Christendom. We are the successors to the Knights Templar."



"I know of your order," Schreuder said, "and I am acquainted with several of your brother knights. The Earl of Cumbrae, for one."



"Ah!" Llewellyn sniffed. "He is not a prime example of our membership."



"I have also met Sir Francis Courtney," Schreuder went on.



Llewellyn's enthusiasm was unfeigned. "I know him well," he exclaimed. "What a fine seaman and gentleman. Do you know, by any chance, where I might find Franky? This religious war in the Great Horn would draw him like a bee to honey. His ship joined with mine would make a formidable force."



"I am afraid that Sir Francis was a casualty of the recent war between our two countries." Schreuder phrased it diplomatically, and Llewellyn looked distraught.



"I am saddened by that news." He was silent for a while then roused himself. "To give you the answer to your question, Colonel Schreuder, I am on my way to the Great Horn in response to the Prester's call for assistance to repel the onslaught of Islam. I intend sailing with the tide this very evening."



"No doubt the Prester will be in need of military as well as naval assistance?" Schreuder asked abruptly. He was trying to disguise the excitement he felt. This was a direct answer to his prayers, "Would you look kindly upon my request for passage aboard your fine ship to the theatre of war? I, also, am determined to offer my services."



Llewellyn looked startled. "A sudden decision, sir. Do you not have duties and obligations ashore? Would it be possible for you to sail with me at such short notice?" indeed, Captain, your presence here in Table Bay seems like a stroke of destiny. I have this very day freed myself from the obligations of which you speak. It is almost as though I had divine premonition of this call to duty. I stand ready to answer the call. I would be pleased to pay for my passage, and that of the lady who is to be my wife, in gold coin."



Llewellyn looked doubtful, scratched his beard and studied Schreuder shrewdly. "I have only one small cabin unoccupied, hardly fit accommodation for persons of quality."



"I would pay ten English guineas for the privilege of sailing with you," Schreuder said, and the captain's expression cleared.



"I should be honoured by your company, and that of your lady. However, I cannot delay my departure by a single hour. I must sail with the tide. I will have a boat take you ashore and wait for you on the beach."



As Schreuder was rowed away he was seething with excitement. The service of an oriental potentate in a religious war would surely offer opportunities for martial glory and enrichment far beyond what he could ever have expected in the service of the Dutch East India Company. He had been offered an escape from the threat of disgrace and ignominy. After this war, he might still return to Holland laden with gold and glory. This was the tide of fortune he had waited for all his life and, with the woman he loved beyond everything else at his side, he would take that tide at the full.



As soon as the boat beached he sprang out and tossed a small silver coin to the boatswain, "Wait for me!" and strode off towards the castle. His servant was waiting in his quarters, and Schreuder gave him instructions to pack all his possessions, have them carried down to the foreshore and placed upon the Golden Bough's longboat. It seemed that the entire garrison must know already of his dismissal. Even his servant was not surprised by his orders, so none would think it odd that he was moving out.



He shouted for his groom and ordered him to saddle his single remaining horse. While he waited for the horse to be brought round from the stables, he stood before the small mirror in his dressing room and rearranged his uniform, brushed out his wig and reshaped his moustaches. He felt a glow of excitement and a sense of release. By the time that the Governor realized that he and Katinka were gone, the Golden Bough would be well out to sea and on course for the Orient.



He hurried down the stairs, out into the yard where the groom now held his horse, and sprang into the saddle. He was in great haste, anxious to be away, and he pushed his mount to a gallop along the avenues towards the Governor's residence. His haste was not so great, however, as to deprive him of all caution. He did not ride up the front drive through the lawns in front of the mansion, but took the side road through the oak grove which was used by slaves and the suppliers of firewood and provisions from the village. He reined his horse in as soon as he was close enough for its hoofbeats to be heard in the residence, and walked the animal sedately into the stableyard behind the kitchens. As he dismounted a startled groom hurried out to take the horse, and Schreuder skirted the kitchen wall, entering the gardens through the small gate in the corner.



He looked about carefully for the gardeners were often working in this part of the estate, but he saw no sign of them. He walked across the lawns, neither dawdling nor hurrying, and entered the residence through the double doors that led into the library. The long, book-lined room was deserted.



Schreuder was well acquainted with the layout of the residence. He had visited Katinka often enough while her husband was about his duties in the castle. He went first to her reading room, which overlooked the lawns and a distant vista of the bay and the blue Atlantic. It was Katinka's favourite retreat, but this noon she was not there. A female slave was on her knees in front of the bookshelves, taking down each volume one at a time and polishing the leather bindings with a soft cloth. She looked up, startled, as Schreuder burst in upon her.



"Where is your mistress?" he demanded, and when she gawked dumbly at him he repeated, "Where is Mevrouw van de Velde?"



The slave girl scrambled to her feet in confusion. "The mistress is in her bedroom. But she is not to be disturbed. She is unwell. She left strict instructions."



Schreuder spun on his heel and went down the corridor. Gently he tried the handle of the door at the end of the passage, but it was locked from within. He exclaimed with impatience. Time was wasting away, and he knew Llewellyn would not hesitate to make good his threat to sail without him when the tide turned. He hurried back along the corridor and stepped through the glazed doors out onto the long veranda. He went down to the windows that opened into the principal bedroom suite. The windows to Katinka's closet were shuttered, and he raised his fist to knock upon them but restrained himself. He did not want to alert the house slaves. Instead he drew his sword, slipped the blade through the gap in the shutters and lifted the latch on the inside. He eased open the shutter and stepped inside over the sill.



Katinka's perfume assailed his senses and, for an instant, he felt giddy with his love and longing for her. Then with a surge of joy, he remembered that she would soon be his alone, the two of them voyaging out, hand in hand, to make a new life and fortune together. He crossed the wooden floor, stepping lightly so as not to frighten her, and gently drew aside the curtains from the door into the main bedroom. Here, also, the shutters were closed and latched and the room was in semi-darkness. He paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the dim light and saw that the bed was in disarray.



Then, in the gloom, he made out the pearly sheen of her flawless white skin among the tumbled bed linen She was nude, her back turned to him, her silver-gold hair cascading down to the cleft of her perfect buttocks. He felt a surge of lust, his loins engorged, and he was so overcome with wanting her that for a moment he could not move, could not even breathe.



Then she turned her head and looked straight at him. Her eyes flew wide and all the colour drained from her face.



"You despicable swine!" she said softly. "How dare you spy upon me?" Her voice was low but filled with scorn and fury. He recoiled in astonishment. She was his lover, and he could not understand that she would speak to him thus, nor that she should look upon him with such contempt and fury. Then he saw that her naked breasts shone with the soft dew of her own sweat, and that she was seated astride a supine masculine form. The man beneath her lay upon his back, and she was impaled upon him, in the act of passion, riding him like a steed.



The man's body was muscular, white and hard, the body of a gladiator. With one explosive movement Katinka sprang off him and spun to face Schreuder. As she stood beside the bed trembling with outrage her inner thighs glistened with the overflow of her venery.



"What are you doing in my bedroom?" she hissed at Schreuder.



Stupidly he answered, "I came to take you away with me." But his eyes went down to the man's body. His pubic hair was wet and matted and his sex thrust up towards the ceiling, thick and swollen and glistening, with a shiny, viscous coating. The man sat upright and looked straight at Schreuder, with a flat yellow gaze.



A wave of unspeakable horror and revulsion swept over Schreuder. Katinka, his love, had been rutting with Slow John, the executioner.



Katinka was speaking, but her words barely made sense to him. "You came to take me away? What gave you the notion that I would go with you, the Company clown, the laughing stock of the colony? Get out of here, you fool. Go into obscurity and shame where you belong."



Slow John stood up from the bed. "You heard her. Get out or I shall throw you out." It was not the words but the fact that Slow John's penis was still fully tumescent that turned Schreuder into a maniac. His temper which, until now, he had been able to keep under restraint boiled over and took control of him. To the humiliation, insults and rejection that had been heaped upon him all that day was added the black rage of his jealousy.



Slow John stooped to the pile of his discarded clothing, which lay upon the tiles beside the bed, and straightened up again with a pruning knife in his right hand. "I warn you," he said in that deep, melodious voice, "leave now, at once."



With one fluid movement the Neptune sword sprang from its scabbard as though it were a living thing. Slow John was no warrior. His victims were always delivered to him trussed and chained. He had never been matched against a man like Schreuder. He jumped forward, the knife held low in front of him, but Schreuder flicked his own blade across the inner side of Slow John's wrist, severing the sinews so that the man's fingers opened involuntarily and the knife dropped to the tiles.



Then Schreuder thrust for the heart. Slow John had neither time nor chance to evade the stroke. The point took him in the centre of his broad, hairless chest and the blade buried itself right up to the jewelled pommel. The two men stood, locked together by the weapon. Gradually Slow John's sex wilted and hung white and flaccid. His eyes glazed over and turned opaque and sightless as yellow pebbles. As he sank to his knees, Katinka began to scream.



Schreuder plucked the blade from the executioner's chest. Its burnished length was dulled by his blood. Katinka screamed again as a feather of bright heart-blood stood out of the wound in Slow John's chest, and he toppled headlong to the tiles.



"Don't scream," Schreuder snarled, with the black rage still upon him, and advanced upon her with the sword in his hand. "You have played me false with this creature. You knew I loved you. I came to fetch you. I wanted you to come away with me." She backed away before him, both fists clenched upon her cheeks, and screamed in high, ringing hysteria.



"Don't scream," he shouted. "Be quiet. I cannot bear it when you do that." The dreadful sound, echoed in his head and made it ache, but she retreated from him, her cries louder now, a terrible sound, and he had to make her stop.



"Don't do that!" He tried to catch hold of her wrist, but she was too swift for him. She twisted out of his grip. Her screams grew even louder, and his rage broke its bounds as though it were some terrible black animal over which he had no control. The sword in his hand flew without his brain or his hand commanding it, and he stabbed her satiny white belly, just above the golden nest of her mons vener is



Her screaru turned to a higher, agonized shriek and she clutched at the blade as he jerked it from her flesh. It cut her palms to the bone, and he thrust again to quieten her, twice more in the belly.



"Quiet!" he roared at her and she turned away and tried to run for the doors of her closet, but he stabbed her in the back just above her kidneys, pulled out the blade and thrust between her shoulders. She fell and rolled on her back, and he stood over her and stabbed and hacked and thrust at her. Each time the blade passed clean through her body and struck the tiles on which she squirmed.



"Keep quiet!" he yelled, and kept on stabbing until her screams and sobs died away. Even then he continued to thrust at her, standing in the spreading pool of her blood, his uniform drenched with gouts of scarlet, his face and arms splashed and speckled so that he looked like a plague victim covered with the rash of the disease.



Then, slowly, the black rage drained from his brain, and he staggered back against the wall, leaving daubs of her blood across the whitewash.



"Katinka!" he whispered. "I did not mean to hurt you. I love you so."



She lay in the wide deep pool of her own blood. The wounds were like a choir of red mouths on her white skin. The blood still trickled from each of them. He had not dreamed there could be so much blood in that slim white body. Her head lay in a scarlet puddle, and her hair was soaked red. Her face was daubed thickly with it. Her features were twisted into a rictus of terror and agony that was no longer lovely to look upon.



"Katinka, my darling. Please forgive me." He started across the floor towards her, stepping through the river of her blood that spread across the tiles. Then he stopped with the sword in his hand as, in the mirror across the room, he glimpsed a wild blood-smeared apparition staring back at him.



"Oh, sweet Mary, what have I done?" He tore his eyes from the creature in the Mirror, and knelt beside the body of the woman he loved. He tried to lift her, but she was limp and boneless. She slid out of his embrace, and flopped into the puddle of her own blood.



He stood again and backed away from her. "I did not mean you to die. You made me angry. I loved you, but you were unfaithful."



Again he saw his own reflection in the mirror, "Oh sweet God, the blood. There is so much." He wiped, with sticky hands, at the mess of crimson that covered his jacket, then at his face, spreading the blood into a scarlet carnival mask.



For the first time he thought of flight, of the boat waiting for him on the beach and the frigate lying out in the bay. "I cannot ride through the colony like this! I cannot go aboard like this!"



He staggered across the room to the door of the Governor's dressing room. He stripped off his sodden jacket and threw it from him. A pitcher of water was standing in a basin on the cabinet and he plunged his gory hands into it and sloshed it over his face. He seized the washcloth from its hook and soaked it in the pink water, then scrubbed at his arms and the front of his breeches.



"So much blood!" he kept repeating, as he wiped then rinsed the cloth and wiped again. He found a pile of clean white shirts on one of the shelves, and pulled one on over his damp chest. Van de Velde was a big man, and it fitted him well enough. He looked down and saw that the bloodstains were not so obvious on the dark serge of his breeches. His wig was stained so he pulled it off and flung it against the far wall. He chose another from the row set on blocks along the back wall.



He found a woollen cloak that covered him from shoulders to calves. He spent a minute cleaning the blade and the sapphire of the Neptune sword, then thrust it back into its scabbard. When he looked again in the mirror he saw that his appearance would no longer shock or alarm. Then a thought struck him. He picked up his soiled jacket and ripped the stars and decorations from the lapels. He wrapped them in a clean neck cloth he found on one of the shelves and stuffed them into the inner pocket of the woollen cloak.



He paused on the threshold of the Governor's dressing room and looked for the last time at the body of the woman he loved. Her blood was still moving softly across the tiles, like a fat, lazy adder. As he watched, it reached the edge of the smaller puddle in which Slow John lay. Their blood ran together, and Schreuder felt a deep sense of sacrilege that the pure should mingle thus with the base.



"I did not want this to happen, "he said hopelessly. "I am so sorry, my darling. I wanted you to come with me." He trod carefully over the rill of blood, went to the shuttered window and stepped out onto the veranda. He gathered the cloak around his shoulders and strode through the gardens to the small door in the stableyard. where he shouted for the groom, who hurried up with his horse.



Schreuder rode down the avenue and crossed the Parade, looking straight ahead. The longboat was still on the beach and as he rode up the boatswain called to him, "We was just about to give you up, Colonel. The Golden Bough is shortening her anchor cable and manning her yards."



As he climbed to the deck of the frigate, Captain Llewellyn and his crew were so absorbed by the business of weighing anchor and getting the ship under sail that they paid him little heed. A midshipman showed him down to his small cabin, then hurried away leaving him alone. His travel chests had been brought aboard and were stowed under the narrow bunk. Schreuder stripped off all his soiled dress and found a clean uniform in one of his chests. Before donning it, he placed the stars and orders upon its lapels. His blood-smeared clothing he tied in a bundle, then looked around for something to weight it. Obviously the thin wooden bulkheads would be struck when the frigate was cleared for action, and his cabin would form part of the ship's gundeck. A culverin filled most of the available deck space. Beside the weapon was heaped a pyramid of iron cannonballs. He stuffed one into the bundle of bloodsoaked clothing and waited until he felt the ship come on the wind and thrust out into the bay.



Then he opened the gun port a crack, and dropped the bundle through it into fifty fathoms of green water. When he went up on deck they were already a league offshore and running out strongly on the sou'easter to make their offing before coming about to round the cape.



Schreuder stared back at the land and made out the roof of the Governor's mansion among the trees at the base of the great mountain. He wondered if they had yet discovered Katinka's body, or whether she still lay joined in death to her base lover. He stood there at the stern rail until the great massif of Table Mountain was only a distant blue silhouette against the evening sky.



"Farewell, my darling," he whispered.



It was only when he lay sleepless in his hard bunk at midnight that the enormity of his situation began to dawn upon him. His guilt was manifest. Every ship that left Table Bay would carry the tidings across the oceans and to every port in the civilized world. From this day forward he was a fugitive and an outlaw.



Hal woke to a sense of peace such as he had seldom known before. He lay with his eyes AH shut too lazy and weak to open them. He realized that he was warm and dry and lying on a comfortable mattress. He expected the dungeon stench to assail him, the mouldy odour of damp, rotting straw, the latrine bucket and the smell of men who had not bathed for a twelve-month -crowded together in a fetid hole in the earth. Instead he smelled fresh woodsmoke, perfumed and sweet, the scent of burning cedar faggots.



Suddenly the memories came flooding back, and, with a great lift of the spirits, he remembered their escape, that he was no longer a prisoner. He lay and savoured that knowledge. There were other smells and sounds. It amused him to try to recognize them without opening his eyes. There was the smell of the newly cut grass mattress on which he lay and the fur blanket that covered him, the aroma of meat grilling on the coals and another tantalizing fragrance that he could not place. It was a mingling of wild flowers and a warm kittenish musk that roused him strangely and added to his sense of well-being.



He opened his eyes slowly and cautiously, and was dazzled by the strong mountain light through the opening of the shelter in which he lay. He looked around and saw that it must have been built into the side of the mountain, for half the walls were of smooth rock and the sides nearest the opening were built of interwoven saplings daubed with red clay. The roof was thatch. Clay pots and crudely fashioned tools and implements were stacked against the inner wall. A bow and quiver hung from a peg near the door. Beside them hung his sword and pistols.



He lay and listened to the burble of a mountain stream, and then he heard a woman's laughter, merrier and more lovely than the tinkle of water. He raised himself slowly on one elbow, shocked by the effort it required, and tried to look through the doorway. The sound of an infant's laughter mingled with that of the woman. Through all his long captivity he had heard nothing to equal it, and he could not help but chuckle with delight.



The sound of feminine laughter ceased and there was a quick movement outside the hut. A lissom ga mine figure appeared in the opening, backlit by the sunshine so that she was only a lovely silhouette. Though he could not see her face, he knew straight away who it was.



"Good morrow, Gundwane, you have slept long, but did you sleep well?" Sukeena asked shyly. She had the infant on her hip and her hair was loose, hanging in a dark veil to her waist. "This is my nephew, Bobby." She joggled the baby on her hip and he gurgled with delight.



"How long did I sleep?" Hal asked, beginning to rise, but she passed the baby to someone outside, and came quickly to kneel beside the mattress. She restrained him with a small warm hand on his naked chest.



"Gently, Gundwane. You have been in fever sleep for many days." " I'm well again now," he said, and then recognized the mysterious perfume he had noticed earlier. It was her woman smell, the flowers in her hair and the soft warmth of her skin.



"Not yet," she contradicted him, and he let her ease his head back onto the mattress. He was staring at her and she smiled without embarrassment.



"I have never seen anything so beautiful as you, he said, then reached up and touched his own cheek. "My beard?"



"It is gone." She laughed, sitting back with her legs curled under her. "I stole a razor from the fat Governor especially for the task." She cocked her head on one side and studied him. "With the beard gone, you also are beautiful, Gundwane."



She blushed slightly as she realized the import of her words, and Hal watched in delight as the red-gold suffused her cheeks. She turned her full attention to his injured leg, drew back the fur blanket to expose it and unwound the bandage.



"Ah!" she murmured, as she touched it lightly. "It heals marvellously well with a little help from my medicines. You have been fortunate. The bite from the fangs of a hound is always poisonous, and then the abuse to which you put the limb during our flight might have killed you or crippled you for the rest of your life."



Hal smiled at her strictures as he lay back comfortably and surrendered himself to her hands.



"Are you hungry?" she asked, as she retied the dressing over his wound. At that question Hal realized that he was ravenous. She brought him the carcass of a wild partridge, grilled on the coals, and sat opposite him, watching with a proprietary air as he ate and then sucked the bones clean.



"You will soon be strong again." She smiled. "You eat like a lion." She gathered up the scraps of his meal, then stood up. "Aboli and your other seamen have been pleading with me for a chance to come to you. I will call them now."



"Wait!" He stopped her. He wished that this intimate time alone with her would not end so soon. She sank down beside him once more and watched his face expectantly.



"I have not thanked you," he said lamely. "Without your care, I would probably have died of the fever."



She smiled softly and said, "I have not thanked you either. Without you, I would still be a slave." For a time they looked at each other without speaking, openly examining each other's face in detail.



Then Hal asked, "Where are we, Sukeena?" He made a gesture that took in their surroundings. "This hut?"



"It is Sabah's. He has lent it to us. To you and me, and he has gone to live with the others of his band."



"So we are in the mountains at last?"



"Deep in the mountains." She nodded. "At a place that has no name. In a place where the Dutch can never find US."



"I want to see," he said. For a moment she looked dubious, then nodded. She helped him to stand and offered her shoulder to support him as he hopped to the opening in the thatched shelter.



He sank down and leaned against the doorpost of rough cedar wood. Sukeena sat close beside him as he gazed about. For a long time neither spoke. Hal breathed deeply of the crisp, high air that smelled and tasted of the wild flowers that grew in such profusion about them.



"Tis a vision of paradise, he said at last. The peaks that surrounded them were wild and splendid. The cliffs and gorges were painted with lichens that were all the colours of the artist's palette.



The late sunlight fell full upon the mountain tops across the deep valley and crowned them with a golden radiance. The long shadow thrown by the peak behind them was royal purple. The water of the stream below was clear as the air they breathed, and Hal could see the fish lying like long shadows on the yellow sandbanks, fanning their dark tails to keep their heads into the current.



"It is strange, I have never seen this place nor any like it, and yet I feel as though I know it well. I feel a sense of homecoming, as though I was waiting to return here."



"Tis not strange, Henry Courtney. I also was waiting." She turned her head and looked deep into his eyes. "I was waiting for you.



I knew you would come. The stars told me. That day I first saw you on the Parade outside the castle, I recognized you as the one."



There was so much to ponder in that simple declaration that he was silent again for a long while, watching her face. "My father was also an adept. He was able to read the stars, he said.



"Aboli told me."



"So you, too, can divine the future from the stars, Sukeena."



She did not deny it. "My mother taught me many skills. I was able to see you from afar."



He accepted her statement without question. "So you must know what is to become of us, you and me?"



She smiled, and there was a mischievous gleam in her eye. She slipped a slim arm through his. "I would not have to be a great sage to know that, Gundwane. But there is much else that I am able to tell of what lies ahead."



"Tell me, then," he ordered, but she smiled again and shook her head. "There will be time later. We will have much time to talk while your leg heals and you grow strong again." She stood up. "But now I will fetch the others, I cannot deny them any longer."



They came immediately, but Aboli was the first to arrive. He greeted Hal in the language of the forests. "I see you well, Gundwane.



I thought you would sleep for ever."



"Without your help, I might indeed have done so."



Then Big Daniel and Ned and the others came to touch their foreheads and mumble their self-conscious greetings and squat in a semi-circle in front of him. They were not much given to expressing their emotions in words, but what he saw in their eyes when they looked at him warmed and fortified him.



"This is Sabah, whom you already know." Althuda led him forward.



"Well met, Sabah!" Hal seized his hand. "I have never been happier to see another man than I was that night in the Gorge."



"I would have liked to come to your aid much sooner," Sabah replied in Dutch, "but we are few and the enemy were as numerous as ticks on an antelope's belly in spring." Sabah sat down in the ring of men and, with an apologetic air, began to explain. "The fates have not been kind to us here in the mountains. We did not have the services of a physician such as Sukeena We who were once nineteen are now only eight and two of those a woman and an infant. I knew we could not help you fight out in the open, for in hunting for food we have used up all our gunpowder. However, we knew Althuda would bring you up Dark Gorge.



We built the rockfall knowing that the Dutch would follow you."



"You did the brave and wise thing," Hal said.



Althuda brought his woman out of the gathering darkness. She was a pretty girl, small and darker-skinned than he was, but Hal could not doubt that Althuda was the father of the boy on her hip.



"This is Zwaantie, my wife, and this is my son, Bobby." Hal held out his hands and Zwaantie handed him the child. He held Bobby in his lap, and the little boy regarded him with huge solemn black eyes.



"He is a likely lad, and strong, Hal said, and father and mother smiled proudly.



Zwaantie lifted the infant and strapped him on her back. Then she and Sukeena built up the fire and began to cook the evening meal of wild game and the fruits of the mountain forests, while the men talked quietly and seriously.



First Sabah explained their circumstances, addressing himself directly to Hal, enlarging on the brief report he had already given. Hal soon understood that, despite the beauty of their surroundings now in the summertime and the seeming abundance of the meal that the women were preparing, the mountains were not always as hospitable. During winter the snows lay thick even in the valleys and game was scarce. However, they dared not move down to lower altitudes where they would be seen by the Hottentot tribes and their whereabouts reported to the Dutch at Good Hope.



"The winters here are fierce," Sabah summed up. "If we stay here for another, then few of us will be left alive this time next year." During their captivity Hal's seamen had garnered enough knowledge of the Dutch language to enable them to follow what Sabah had to say, and when he had finished speaking they were all silent and stared glumly into the fire, munching disconsolately on the food the women brought to them.



Then, one at a time, their heads turned towards Hal. Big Daniel spoke for them all when he asked, "What are we going to do now, Sir Henry?"



"Are you seamen or mountaineers?" Hal answered his question with a question, and some of the men chuckled. "We were born in Davey Jones's locker and we were all of us given salt water for blood," Ned Tyler answered.



"Then I will have to take you down to the sea and find you a ship, won't I?"" said Hal. They looked confused but some chuckled again, though halfheartedly.



"Master Daniel, I want a manifest of all the weapons, powder and other stores that we were able to bring with us, Hal said briskly.



"There weren't much of anything, Captain. Once we left the horses we had just about enough strength left to get ourselves up the mountains."



"Powder?" Hal demanded.



"Only what we had in our flasks."



"When you went on ahead, you had two full kegs on the horses."



"Those kegs weighed fifty pounds apiece." Daniel looked ashamed. "Too much cargo for us to haul."



"I have seen you carry twice that weight." Hal was angry and disappointed. Without a store of powder they were at the mercy of this wild terrain, and the beasts and tribes that infested it.



"Daniel carried my saddle-bags up Dark Gorge." Sukeena intervened softly. "No one else could do it."



"I'm sorry, Captain," Daniel muttered.



But Sukeena supported him fiercely. "There is not a thing in my bags that we could do without. That includes the medicines that saved your leg and will save every one of us from the hurts and pestilences that we will meet here in the wilderness."



"Thank you, Princess," Daniel murmured, and looked at her like an affectionate hound. If he had possessed a tail Hal knew he would have wagged it.



Hal smiled and clapped Daniel's shoulder. "I find no fault with what you did, Big Danny. There is no man alive who could have done better."



They all relaxed and smiled. Then Ned asked, "Were you serious when you promised us a ship, Captain?" Sukeena stood up from the fire.



"That's enough for tonight. He must regain his strength before you plague him further. You must go now. You may come again tomorrow." One at a time they came to Hal, shook his hand and mumbled something incoherent, then wandered off through the darkness towards the other huts spread out along the valley floor. When the last had gone Sukeena threw another cedar log on the fire then came and sat close beside him.



In a natural, possessive manner, Hal placed his arm around her shoulders. She leaned her slim body against him and fitted her head into the notch of his shoulder. She sighed, a sweet, contented sound, and neither spoke for a while.



"I want to stay here at your side like this for ever, but the stars may not allow it," she whispered. "The season of our love may be short as a winter day."



"Don't say that," Hal commanded. "Never say that."



They both looked up at the stars, and here, in the high thin air, they were so brilliant that they lit the heavens with the luminescence of the mother-of pearl that lines the inside of an abalone shell taken fresh from the sea. Hal looked upon them with awe and considered what she had said. He felt a sense of hopelessness and sadness come upon him. He shivered.



Immediately she sat up straight and said softly, "You grow cold. Come, Gundwane!"



She helped him to his feet and led him into the hut, to the mattress against the far wall. She laid him upon it and then lit the wick of the small clay oil lamp and placed it on a shelf in the rock wall. She went to the fire and lifted off the clay pot of water that stood on the edge of the coals. She poured steaming water into an empty dish and mixed in cold water from the pot beside the door until the temperature suited her.



Her movements were unhurried and calm. Propped on one elbow, Hal watched her. She placed the dish of warm water in the centre of the floor then poured a few drops from a glass vial into it and stirred it again with her hand. He smelt its light, subtle perfume on the waft of steam.



She rose, went to the doorway and closed the animals king curtain over the opening, then came back and stood beside the dish of scented water. She removed the wild flowers from her hair and tossed them onto the fur blanket at Hal's feet. Without looking at him, she let down the coils of her hair and combed them out until they shimmered like a wave of obsidian. She began to sing in her own language as she combed, a lullaby or a love song, Hal could not be certain. Her voice was mellifluous, it soothed and delighted him.



She laid aside her comb, and let the shift slip from her shoulders. Her skin gleamed in the yellow lamplight and her breasts were pert as small golden pears. When she turned her back to him Hal felt deprived that they were hidden from his sight. Her song changed now it had a lilt of joy and excitement in it.



"What is it you sing?" Hal asked.



Sukeena smiled at him over her bare shoulder. "It is the wedding song of my mother's people," she answered. "The bride is saying that she is happy and that she loves her husband with the eternal strength of the ocean, and the patience of the shining stars."



"I have never heard anything so pleasing," Hal whispered.



With slow voluptuous movements, she unwrapped the sarong from around her waist and threw it aside. Her buttocks were small and neat, the deep cleft dividing them into perfect ovals. She squatted down beside the dish to soak a small cloth in the scented water and began to bathe herself. She started at her shoulders and washed each arm down to her long tapered fingertips. There were silky clusters of black curls in her armpits.



Hal realized that it was a ritual bath she was performing, part of some ceremony she was enacting before him. He watched avidly each move she made, and every now and then she looked up and smiled at him shyly.



The soft hairs behind her ears were damp from the cloth, and water droplets gleamed on her cheeks and upper lip.



She stood at last and turned slowly to face him. Once he had thought her body boyish, but now he saw that it was so feminine that his heart swelled hard with desire for her. Her belly was flat but smooth as butter, and at its base was a triangle of dark fur, soft as a sleeping kitten.



She stepped away from the dish and dried herself on the cotton shift she had discarded. Then she went to the oil lamp, cupped one hand around the wick and leaned towards it as if to snuff out the flame.



"No!" said Hal. "Leave the light. I want to look at you." At last she came to him, gliding across the stone floor on small bare feet, crept onto the bed beside him, into his arms, and folded her body against his. She held her lips to his mouth. Hers were soft and wet and warm, and her breath mingled with his, and smelled of the wild flowers she had worn in her hair.



"I have waited all my life for you, " she whispered into his mouth.



He whispered back, "It was too long to wait, but I am here at last."



In the morning she proudly displayed the treasures she had brought for him in her saddle-bags. She had somehow procured everything he had asked for in the notes he had left for Aboli in the wall of the castle.



He snatched up the charts. "Where did you get these from, Sukeena?"he demanded, and she was delighted to see how much value he placed upon them.



"I have many friends in the colony," she explained. "Even some of the whores from the taverns came to me to treat their ailments. Doctor Soar kills more of his patients than he saves. Some of the tavern ladies go aboard the ships in the bay to do their business, and come back with divers things, not all of them gifts from the seamen." She laughed merrily. "If something is not bolted to the deck of the galleon they think it belongs to them. When I asked for charts these are what they brought me. Are they what you wanted, Gundwane?"



"These are more than I ever hoped for, Sukeena This one is valuable and so is this." The charts were obviously some navigator's treasures, highly detailed and covered with notations and observations in a well-formed, educated hand. They showed the coasts of southern Africa in wondrous detail, and from his own knowledge he could see how accurate they were. To his amazement the location of Elephant Lagoon was marked on one, the first time he had ever seen it shown on any chart other than his father's. The position was accurate to within a few minutes of angle, and in the margin there was a sketch of the landfall and seaward elevation of the heads, which he recognized instantly as having been drawn from observation.



Although the coast and the immediate littoral were accurately recorded, the interior, as usual, had been left blank or filled with conjecture, apocryphal lakes and mountains that no eye had ever beheld.



The outline of the mountains in which they were now sequestered was sketched in, as though the cartographer had observed them from the colony of Good Hope or from sailing into False Bay and had guessed their shape and extent. Somewhere, somehow, Sukeena had found him a Dutch mariners" almanac to go with the charts. It had been published in Amsterdam and listed the movements of the heaVenly bodies until the end of the decade.



Hal laid aside these precious documents and took up the backstaff Sukeena had found. It was a collapsible model whose separate parts fitted into a small leather case, the interior of which was lined with blue velvet. The instrument itself was of extraordinarily fine workmanship. the bronze quadrant, decorated with embodiments of the four winds, needles and screws were all engraved and worked in pleasing artistic shapes and classical figures. A tiny bronze plaque inside the lid of the case was engraved "Cellini. Venezia'.



The compass she had brought was contained in a sturdy leather case, the body was brass and the magnetic needle was tipped with gold and ivory, so finely. balanced that it swung unerringly into. the north as he rotated the case slowly in his hand.



"These are worth twenty pounds at least!" Hal marvelled. "You're a magician to have conjured them up." He took her hand and led her outside, not limping as awkwardly as he had on the previous day. Seated side by side on the mountain slope he showed her how to observe the noon passage of the sun and to mark their position on one of the charts. She delighted in the pleasure she had given him, and impressed him with her immediate grasp of the esoteric arts of navigation. Then he remembered that she was an astrologer, and that she understood the heavens.



With these instruments in his hands, he could move with authority through this savage wilderness, and his dream of finding a ship began to seem less forlorn than it had only a day before. He drew her to his chest, kissed her, and she merged herself tenderly to him. "That kiss is better reward than the twenty pounds of which you spoke, my captain."



"If one kiss is worth twenty pounds, then I have aught for you that must be worth five hundred," he said, laid her back in the grass and made love to her. A long time later she smiled up at him and whispered, "That was worth all the gold in this world."



When they returned to the encampment they found that Daniel had assembled all the weapons, and that Aboli was polishing the sword blades and sharpening the edges with a fine-grained stone he had picked from the stream bed.



Hal went carefully over the collection. There were cutlasses enough to arm every man, and pistols too. However, there were only five muskets, all standard Dutch military models, heavy and robust. Their lack was in powder, slow-match and lead ball. They could always use pebbles as missiles, but there was no substitute for black powder They had less than five pounds weight of this precious substance in the flasks, not enough for twenty discharges.



"Without powder, we can no longer kill the larger game," Sabah told Hal. "We eat partridges and dassies." He used the diminutive of the Dutch name for badger, dasc, to describe the fluffy, rabbity creatures that swarmed in the caves and crevices of every cliff. Hal thought he recognized them as the coneys of the Bible.



The urine from the dassie colonies poured down the cliff face so copiously that as it dried it covered the rock with a thick coating that shone in the sunlight like toffee but smelt less sweet. With care and skill, these rock-rabbits could be killed and trapped in such numbers as to provide the little band with a staple of survival. Their flesh was succulent and delicious as suckling pig.



Now that Sukeena was with them their diet was much expanded by her knowledge of edible roots and plants. Each day Hal went out with her to carry her basket as she foraged along the slopes. As his leg grew stronger they ventured further and stayed out in the wilderness a little longer each day.



The mountains seemed to enfold them in their grandeur and to provide the perfect setting for the bright jewel of their love. When Sukeena's foraging basket was filled to overflowing, they found hidden pools in the numerous streams in which to bathe naked together. Afterwards they lay side by side on the smooth, water-polished rocks and dried themselves in the sun. With tantalizing slowness they toyed with each other's bodies and at last made love. Then they talked and explored each other's minds as intimately as they had explored their bodies, and afterwards made love yet again. Their appetites for each other seemed insatiable.



"Oh! Where did you learn to please a girl so?" Sukeena asked breathlessly. "Who taught you all these special things that you do to me?"



It was not a question he cared to answer, and he said, "Tis simply that we fit together so perfectly. My special places were made to touch your special places. I seek pleasure in your pleasure. My pleasure is increased a hundredfold by yours."



In the evenings when all the fugitives gathered around the cooking fire, they pressed Hal with questions about his plans for them, but he avoided these with an easy laugh or a shake of his head. A plan of action was indeed germinating in his mind but it was not yet ready to be disclosed, for there were still many obstacles he had to circumvent.



Instead he questioned Sabah and the five escaped slaves, who with him had survived the mountain winter.



"How far to the east have you travelled across the range, Sabah?"



"In midwinter we travelled six days in that direction.



We were trying to find food and a place where the cold was not so fierce."



"What land lies to the east?"



"It is mountains such as these for many leagues, and then suddenly they fall away into plains of forest and rolling grassland, with glimpses of the sea on the right hand." Sabah took up a twig and began to draw in the dust beside the fire. Hal memorized his descriptions, questioning him assiduously, urging him to recall every detail of what he had seen.



"Did you descend into these plains?"



"We went down a little way. We found strange creatures never before seen by the eyes of man grey and enormous with long horns set upon their noses. One rushed upon us with terrible snorts and whistles. Though we fired our muskets at it, it came on and impaled the wife of Johannes upon its nose horn and killed her."



They all looked at little one-eyed Johannes, one of Sabah's band of escaped slaves, who wept at the memory of his dead woman. It was strange to see tears squeezing out of his empty eye socket. They were all silent for a while, then Zwaantie took up the story. "My little Bobby was only a month old, and I could not place him in such danger. Without powder for the muskets we could not go on. I prevailed on Sabah to turn back, and we returned to this place."



"Why do you ask these questions? What is your plan, Captain?" Big Daniel wanted to know, but Hal shook his head.



"I'm not ready to explain it to you, but don't lose heart, lads. I have promised to find you a ship, have I not?" he said, with more confidence than he felt. In the morning, on the pretence of fishing, he led Aboli and Big Daniel up the stream to the next pool. When they were out of sight of the camp, they sat close together on the rocky bank. "It is clear that unless we can better arm ourselves, we are trapped in these mountains. We will perish as slowly and despondently as most of Sabah's men already have. We must have powder for the muskets."



"Where will we get that?" Daniel asked. "What do you propose?"



"I have been thinking about the colony, "Hal told them. Both men stared at him in disbelief. Aboli broke the silence. "You plan to go back to Good Hope? Even there you will not be able to lay your hands on powder. Oh, perhaps you might steal a pound or two from the green jackets at the bridge, or from a Company hunter, but that is not enough to see us on our journey."



"I planned to break into the castle again," Hal said.



Both men laughed bitterly. "You lack not in enterprise or in heart, Captain," Big Daniel said, "but that is madness." Aboli agreed with him, and said, in his deep, thoughtful voice, "If I thought there were even the poorest chance of success, I would gladly go alone. But think on it, Gundwane, I do not mean merely the impossibility of winning our way into the castle armoury. Say, even, that we succeeded in that, and that the store of powder we destroyed has since been replenished by shipments from Holland. Say that we were able to escape with some of it. How would we carry even a single keg back across the plains with Schreuder and his men pursuing us? This time we would not have the horses."



In his heart Hal had known that it was madness, but he had hoped that even such a desperate and forlorn proposal might fire them to think of another plan.



At last, Aboli broke the silence. "You spoke of a plan to find a ship. If you tell us that plan, Gundwane, then perhaps we can help you to bring it to pass." Both men looked at him expectantly.



"Where do you suppose the Buzzard is at this very moment?" Hal asked..



Aboli and Big Daniel looked startled. "If my prayers have prevailed he is roasting in hell," Daniel replied bitterly.



Hal looked at Aboli. "What do you think, Aboli? Where would you look for the Buzzard?"



"Somewhere out on the seven seas. Wherever he smells gold or the promise of easy pickings, like the carrion bird for which he is named."



"Yes!" Hal clapped him on the shoulder. "But where might the smell of gold be strongest? Why did the Buzzard buy jiri and our other black shipmates at auction?"



Aboli stared blankly at him. Then a slow smile spread over his wide, dark face. "Elephant Lagoon!" he exclaimed. Big Daniel boomed with excited laughter. "He scented the treasure from the Dutch galleons and he thought our Negro lads could lead him to it."



"How far are we from Elephant Lagoon?"Aboli asked.



"By my reckoning, three hundred sea miles. "The immensity of the distance silenced them.



"It's a long tack, said Daniel, "without powder to defend ourselves on the way or with which to fight the Buzzard if we get there."



Aboli did not reply, but looked at Hal. "How long will the journey take us, Gundwane?"

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