Blue Horizon

There was a fresh chorus of screams and heart-stopping cries from the women around her as they felt the vessel touch the bottom. The ship tore herself free and drifted on, only to touch again, the impact shivering the timbers of the hull. This time she stuck fast, pinned down on the sands, and the waves charged at her like rank after rank of a monstrous cavalry. The ship could not yield to their assault, and each wave struck with a malicious boom and a high white fountain of foam. Slowly the

hull rolled over, and her starboard side came uppermost. Louisa scrambled out through the jagged opening. She stood upright on the high side of the heavily canted hull. The wind flung out her long yellow hair in a tangle, and flattened the threadbare canvas shift against her thin body. The wet cloth emphasized the thrust of her breasts, which were full and round.

She gazed towards the beach, saw the heads of the sailors who had abandoned the ship bobbing in the wild waters. One reached the shallows and stood up only to be knocked flat by the next wave. Through the hole in the hull three other convicts followed her out, but as they clung to the planking their leg irons slowed their movements. Another wave swept the hull and Louisa grabbed one of the shrouds from the mainmast, which dangled close by. The waters swirled round her waist but she clung on. When the wave receded all three of the other women were gone, drawn instantly under the green water by their chains.

Using the shroud Louisa pulled herself to her feet again. The spectators were galvanized by the sight of her, seemingly rising like Aphrodite from the waves. She was so young and lovely, and in such mortal danger. This was better than any flogging or execution on the parade-ground of the castle. They danced and waved and shouted. Their voices were faint but in the lull in the wind she could make out their cries.

"Jump, Meisje."

"Swim, let's see you swim!"

"Better than a gaol cell, Poesje?"

She could see the sadistic excitement on their faces, and hear the cruelty in their voices. She knew that there was no promise of help to be had from them. She raised her face to the sky and, at that moment, a movement caught her eye.

A horse and rider had appeared on the crest of the dune overlooking the stricken ship. The horse was a magnificent bay stallion. The rider sat astride the bare back. He had stripped off all his clothing except a breech clout knotted round his waist. His torso was pale as porcelain, but his strong young arms were tanned by the sun to the colour of fine leather and his dense dark curls danced in the wind. He gazed back at her across the beach and the booming surf, and suddenly he raised his arm above his head and waved at her. Then she recognized him.

Wildly she waved back, and screamed his name. "Jim! Jim Courtney!"

With mounting horror Jim had watched the final moment of Het Gelukkige Meeuw's agony. A few of the crew still huddled on the capsized hull, then some of the female convicts were creeping out of the open gun ports and shattered hatches. The crowds on the beach taunted them as they clustered on the wave-swept hull. When a woman was washed overboard, and her chains pulled her under, there was an ironic chorus of laughter and cheers from the spectators. Then the ship's keel struck the sand and the impact hurled most of the convicts over the side.

As the ship was rolled and pummelled on to the beach by the waves, the crew leaped from the heavily listing deck into the sea. The water overpowered most of them. One or two drowned bodies were washed up on the beach and the spectators dragged them up above the high-water mark. As soon as it was evident there was no life in them they threw them into an untidy pile, and ran back to join the sport. The first of the survivors waded out through the surf and fell to his knees in prayerful gratitude for his escape. Three convict women were thrown ashore, clinging to a spar from the shattered rigging; it had supported them despite the weight of their chains. The soldiers from the castle rushed waist deep into the creaming surf to drag them out on to the beach and arrest them. Jim saw that one was an obese creature with flaxen hair. White breasts the size of a pair of Zeelander cheeses bulged out of her torn shift. Struggling with her captors she screamed an obscenity at Colonel Keyset as he rode up. Keyser leaned out of the saddle, lifted his sheathed sword and struck her a blow with the scabbard that knocked her to her knees. But she was still shrieking as she looked up at him. There was a livid purple scar down her fat cheek.

The next blow with the steel scabbard dropped her face down into the sand, and the soldiers dragged her away.

Desperately Jim searched the open deck for a glimpse of Louisa, but he could not find her. The hull dragged itself free of the sand and began once more to drift closer. Then she struck again solidly, and began to roll over. The surviving women slid down the listing deck, and one after another dropped over the side and splashed into the green water. The ship now lay on her side. There were no living souls clinging to the wreck. For the first time Jim saw the gaping hole through which the loose cannon had burst out. This opening was pointed to the sky, and suddenly a slim feminine form crawled out of it, and came to her feet

shakily on the rounded hull. Her long yellow hair was streaming with seawater, and flapped heavily in the gale. Her tattered shift barely covered her coltish limbs. She might have been a boy, were it not for the full bosom under the rags. She gazed imploringly towards the crowds on the beach, who jeered and mocked her.

"Jump, gallows-bait," they hooted.

"Swim. Swim for us, little fish."

Jim focused the telescope on her face, and it did not need the sapphire flash of blue from the eyes in her gaunt and pale face for him to recognize her. He sprang to his feet and ran down the back slope of the dune to where Drumfire stood patiently. He lifted his head and whinnied when he saw Jim coming. As he ran Jim stripped off his clothing and left it strewn behind him. Hopping first on one leg and then the other he pulled off his boots, until he wore only his cotton breech clout. He reached the stallion's side, undid the girth and let the saddle drop into the sand. Then he swung himself on to Drumfire's bare back, urged him up the slope and halted him on the crest.

He looked out with dread that he might find that the girl had been washed off the wallowing hull. His spirits surged when he saw that Louisa was still perched there, as he had last seen her, but the ship was breaking up under the brutal hammer blows of the surf. He lifted his right arm high and waved at her. Her head jerked as she looked towards him, and he saw the moment that she recognized him. She waved back at him wildly, and although the wind smothered the sound she mouthed his name: "Jim! Jim Courtney!"

"Ha! Ha!" he called to Drumfire, and the stallion leaped forward down the slope of loose white sand, going back on his haunches to balance as they slid down the dune. They hit the beach at a gallop, and the crowd of onlookers scattered in front of Drumfire's flying hoofs. Keyser spurred his horse forward as if to intercept them. His plump, clean-shaven face was stern and the ostrich feathers in his hat were blowing like the white surf. Jim touched Drumfire's flank with his toe and the stallion swerved past the other horse and they raced down towards the sea.

A broken wave came tumbling to meet them, but its main force was spent. Without hesitation Drumfire gathered his forefeet under his chest and leapt over the leading edge of white water as though he were jumping a fence. When he splashed in on the other side, it was already too deep for his hoofs to find the bottom. He began to swim, and Jim slid off his back and wove his fingers into the horse's mane. With his free hand on the stallion's neck he guided him towards the wallowing wreck.

Drumfire swam like an otter, his legs pumping in a mighty rhythm beneath the surface. He had gone twenty yards before the next tall wave struck, and burst over them, submerging them.

The girl on the wreck stared in horrified fascination, and even the watchers on the beach were silenced as they searched for a sign of them in the swirling aftermath of the wave's passage. Then a shout went up as their heads appeared through the foam. They had been washed back half the distance gained, but the stallion was swimming strongly and the girl could hear him snorting the seawater from his nostrils with each breath. Jim's long black hair was sleeked down his face and shoulders. She could hear his cries faint in the thunder of waters: "Come, Drumfire. Ha! Ha!"

They swam on through the icy green seas, swiftly making up the distance lost. Another wave came in but they swam up and over the crest, and now they were almost half-way across the gap between shore and ship. The girl stood up and balanced precariously on the heaving hull, gathering herself for the leap over the side.

"No!" Jim yelled up at her. "Not yet! Wait!" He had seen the next wave humping up against the horizon. This one dwarfed all those that had come before it. Its cliff-like face seemed to be carved from solid green malachite, laced with white spume. As it came on in ponderous majesty it blocked out half of the sky.

"Hold hard, Louisa!" Jim shouted, as the mighty wave crashed into the ship, and smothered her. It left her submerged in its wake. Then it gathered itself again like a predator pouncing on its prey. For long seconds horse and rider swam up its curling front. They were a pair of insects trapped on a wall of green glass. Then the face of the wave toppled forward, curling over them and falling in a solid avalanche as it crashed down on itself with such weight and power that the men on the beach felt the earth jump beneath their feet. Horse and rider were gone, driven so deeply under that surely they could never surface again.

The watchers who, only seconds before, had clamoured to see the storm prevail and its victims perish, now stood smitten with dread, waiting for the impossible to happen, for the heads of that gallant horse and his rider to reappear through the wild surf. Then the water subsided around the ship and as it poured away they saw the girl still lying on the hull, the loose ropes of the rigging holding her from being sucked over the side. She lifted her head and, with the water streaming from her long hair, searched desperately for any sign of horse and man. The seconds drew on and became minutes. Another wave crashed in, then another, but they were not as high and powerful as the one that had buried horse and rider.

Liisa felt despair settle on her. It was not for herself that she feared. She knew she was about to die, but her own life did not seem to matter any more. Instead she grieved for the young stranger who had given his own trying to save her. "Jim!" she pleaded. "Please don't die."

As if in response to her call, the two heads burst out through the surface. The undertow of the great wave that had pinned them under had also sucked them back almost to where they had disappeared.

"Jim!" she screamed, and leaped to her feet. He was so close that she could see the agony that contorted his face in the effort to draw breath, but he looked up at her, and tried to say something. Perhaps it was a farewell, but then she knew in her heart that this was not a man who would ever surrender, not even to death. He was trying to shout a command, but his breath only whistled and gurgled in his throat. The horse was swimming again, but when it tried to turn its head back towards the beach she saw Jim's hand in its mane guide it back towards her. Jim was still choking and could not use his voice, but he made a gesture with his free hand, and now he was close enough for her to see the determination in his eyes.

"Jump?" she shouted, against the wind. "Shall I jump?"

He nodded his sodden curls emphatically, and she could just make out the hoarse croak of his voice: "Come!"

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that, even in his distress, he had picked the slack between the waves to call her on. She threw aside the piece of rope that had saved her, took three running strides across the shattered deck and leaped over the side with her shift ballooning round her waist and her arms windmilling. She hit the water and went under, to reappear almost immediately. She struck out the way her father had taught her and swam to meet them.

Jim reached out and seized her wrist. His grip was so powerful that she thought it might crush her bones. And after what she had suffered at Huis Brabant she had thought that she would never allow a man to touch her again. But there was no time to think of that now. The next wave broke over her head, but his grip never slackened. They came up again and she was spluttering and gasping for breath, yet she seemed to feel strength flowing into her through his fingers. He guided her hand to the horse's mane, and now he had recovered some of his voice.

"Don't hamper him." She understood what he meant for she knew horses, and she tried not to put her weight on the stallion's back but to

swim beside him. Now they were heading towards the beach and each wave that came up behind them carried them forward. Louisa heard voices, faint at first but growing louder every second. The spectators on the beach were caught up in the excitement of the rescue and, fickle as any mob, they were cheering them on. They all knew this horse most of them had seen him win on Christmas Day. Jim Courtney was a well known figure in the town: some envied him as the son of a rich man, some thought him too brash, but they all were forced to pay him respect. This was a famous battle he was waging against the sea, and most of them were sailors. Their hearts went out to him.

"Courage, Jim!"

"Power to you, lad."

"Good on you! Swim, Jim boy, swim."

Drumfire had felt the shore shelving under his hoofs, and lunged forward powerfully. By now Jim had recovered his breath and coughed most of the water out of his lungs. He threw one leg over the stallion's back. As soon as he was astride he reached down and pulled Louisa up behind him. She wrapped both arms round his waist and hung on with all her strength. Drumfire burst out of the shallows, water exploding before his charge, and then they were out on the beach.

Jim saw Colonel Keyser galloping to intercept them, and urged Drumfire into full stride, swinging his head away until Keyser was trailing twenty strides behind.

"Wag, jou donderl Wait! She's an escaped prisoner. Hand the cow over to the law."

"I will deliver her to the castle myself," Jim yelled, without looking back.

"No, you don't! She's mine. Bring the bitch back!" Keyser's voice was thick with fury. As Jim urged Drumfire on down the beach he was determined on one thing only. He had already chanced too much ever to turn this girl over to anyone in the garrison, and in particular to Keyser. He had watched too many of the floggings and executions on the parade-ground outside the castle walls over which Keyser had presided. Jim's own great-grandfather had been tortured and executed on that very ground after being falsely convicted of piracy on the high seas.

"They aren't going to get this one," he swore grimly. Her thin arms were clasped round his waist and he could feel the length of her body pressed against his naked back. Although she was half starved, wet and

shivering with the cold of the green waters and the wind of Drumfire's speed, he could sense the courage and determination in her, which matched his own.

She's a fighter, this one. I can never let her down, he thought, and called back to her, "Hold tight, Louisa. We're going to run the fat colonel into the dirt." Though she did not answer and he could hear her teeth chattering, she tightened her grip round him and crouched low. He could feel by her balance and the way she adjusted to Drumfire's motion that she was a horsewoman.

He glanced back under his arm, and saw that they had opened the gap on Keyser. Jim had raced against Trouwhart before and he knew the mare's best points and her weaknesses. She was quick and game as her name, Trueheart, suggested, but Keyser overburdened her light frame. On firm, smooth going she was in her element and she probably had the legs of Drumfire out in the open, but on this soft beach sand or over rock and other heavy going, Drumfire's great strength gave him the advantage. Although the stallion was carrying a double load, Louisa was light as a sparrow and Jim was not as heavily built as the colonel. Yet Jim knew better than to underestimate the mare. He knew she had the heart of a lioness and had almost run Drumfire down over the last half mile of the Christmas racing.

I must pick the course to our advantage, he decided. He had ridden every inch of the ground between here and the foothills, and knew every hill and marsh, salt pan and patch of forest where Trueheart would be at a disadvantage.

"Stop, jon gen or I will shoot." There was another shout behind and when Jim looked back, Keyser had drawn the pistol from the holster on the front of his saddle and was leaning out to avoid hitting his own horse. In that swift glance Jim saw that it was a single-barrelled weapon, and there was not a second in the holster. Jim swerved Drumfire to the left without a break in his stride, cutting sharply across the mare's nose. In an instant he had changed Keyser's target from a steady going-away shot to one with a sharp angle of deflection. Even an experienced soldier like the colonel, shooting from a galloping horse, would have difficulty judging the forward allowance.

Jim reached back, seized Louisa round the waist and swung her round on his off-side, tucking her under his armpit and shielding her with his own body. The pistol shot boomed out, and he felt the strike of the heavy ball. It was high in his back across his shoulders, but after the numbing shock his arms were still strong and his senses alert. He knew he was not badly wounded.

Only pricked me, he thought, and then he spoke: That's his one and

only shot." He said it to encourage Louisa, and swung her back into her place behind him.

"Mercy! You're hit," she exclaimed fearfully. Blood was streaming down his back.

"We'll worry about that later," he sang out. "Now Drumfire and I are going to show you a few of our tricks." He was enjoying himself. He had just been half drowned and shot, but he was still cocky. Louisa had found herself an indomitable champion, and her spirits soared.

But they had lost ground with that evasive turn, and close behind they heard Trueheart's hoofs slapping into the sand, and the scraping of steel in the scabbard as Keyser drew his sabre. Louisa glanced back and saw him rise up over her, standing in the stirrups with his blade held high, but the change of his balance wrong-footed the mare and she stumbled. Keyser swayed and grabbed at the pommel of his saddle to regain balance and Drumfire pulled ahead. Jim put him at the slope of the high dune, and here the stallion's great strength came into play. He went up in a series of violent lunges with the sand spurting out from under his hoofs. Trueheart dropped back sharply as she carried the colonel's weight up the slope.

They went over the top and slid down the far side. From the foot of the dune there was open ground and firm going to the edge of the lagoon. Louisa looked back. "They're gaining again," she warned Jim. Trueheart was striding out gracefully. Even though she was carrying the weight of the colonel, and all his weapons and accoutrements, she seemed to flirt with the earth.

"He's reloading his pistol." There was an edge of alarm in her voice. Keyser was ramming a ball into the muzzle.

"Let's see if we can wet his powder for him," Jim said, and they reached the edge of the lagoon and plunged in without a check.

"Swim again," Jim ordered, and Louisa slipped into the water on Drumfire's other flank. They both looked back as Trueheart reached the edge of the lagoon and Keyser pulled her up. He jumped down and primed the pan of his pistol. Then he cocked the hammer, and aimed at them across the open water. There was a puff of white gunsmoke. A fountain of water jumped from the surface an arm's length behind them and, with a hum, the heavy ball ricocheted over their heads.

"Now throw your boots at us." Jim laughed, and Keyser stamped with rage. Jim hoped that he would give up now. Surely, even in his anger, he must consider the fact that Trueheart was so heavily burdened, while they were almost naked and Drumfire's back was bare. Keyser made the decision, and swung up on to the mare's back. He pushed her into the water, just as Drumfire emerged on to the muddy bank on the far side.

Immediately Jim turned him parallel to the shore and, keeping to the soft ground, led him along the shore at a trot.

"We must give Drumfire a chance to breathe," he told Louisa as she ran behind him. "That swim out to the ship would have drowned any other horse." He was watching their pursuers. Trueheart was only halfway across the lagoon. "Keyser wasted time with his pistol practice. One thing is certain, there will be no more of that. His powder is well and truly soaked by now."

The water washed the blood from your wound," she told him, reaching out to touch his back lightly. "I can see now it's a graze, not deep, thank the good Lord."

"It's you we have to worry about," he said. "You're skin and bones, not a pound of meat on you. How long can you run on those skinny legs?"

"As long as you can," she flared at him, and angry red spots appeared on her pale cheeks.

He grinned at her unrepentantly. "You may have to prove that boast before this day is done. Keyser is across."

Far behind them Trueheart came out on to the bank and, streaming water from his tunic, breeches and boots, Keyser mounted her and set out along the bank after them. He urged the mare into a gallop, but heavy clods of mud flew from her hoofs and it was immediately obvious that she was making heavy work of it. Jim had kept to the mud flats for just that reason, to test Trueheart's strength.

"Up you get." Jim seized Louisa, threw her up on to the stallion's back and broke into a run. He kept a firm grip on Drumfire's mane so he was pulled along, keeping pace with horse's easy canter while saving the animal's strength. He kept glancing back to judge their relative speeds. He could afford to let Keyser gain a little ground now. Carrying only Louisa's weight Drumfire was going easily, while the mare was burning up her strength in this reckless pursuit.

Within half a mile Keyser's weight began to tell, and Trueheart slowed to a walk. She was still trailing by a half pistol-shot. Jim slowed to her speed to keep the gap constant.

"Come down, if you please, your ladyship," he told Louisa. "Give Drumfire another breather."

She jumped down lightly, but flashed at him, "Don't call me that." It was a bitter reminder of the taunts she had endured from her fellow convicts.

"Perhaps we should rather call you Hedgehog?" he asked. The Lord knows, you have prickles enough to warrant it."

Keyser must be almost exhausted by now, Jim thought, for he stayed in the saddle, not taking his weight off his mount. They are almost

done in," he told Louisa. He knew that not far ahead and still on the Courtney estate lay a salt pan that they called Groot Wit Big White. That was where he was leading Keyser.

"He's coming on again," Louisa warned him, and he saw that Keyser was pushing the mare into a canter. She was a game little filly, and she was responding to the whip.

"Mount!" he ordered.

"I can run as far as you can." She shook the salt-crusted tangle of her long hair at him defiantly.

"In Jesus's name, woman, must you always argue?"

"Must you always blaspheme?" she riposted, but she allowed him to hoist her on to the stallion's back. They ran on. Within the mile True heart had slowed to a walk, and they could do the same.

"There is the beginning of the salt." Jim pointed ahead and even under the low storm clouds and in the gathering dusk, it shone like a vast mirror.

"It looks flat and hard." She shaded her eyes against the glare.

"It looks that way, but under the crust it's porridge. With that great fat Dutchman and all his equipment up on her back the mare will break through every few paces. It's almost three miles across the pan. They will be completely finished before they reach the other side and..." he looked at the sky "... by then it will be dark."

Although it was hidden by the lowering blanket of cloud the sun must have been close to the horizon and the darkness was coming on apace as Jim led Drumfire, the girl staggering beside him, off the treacherous white plain. He paused at the edge of the forest, and they both looked back.

Like a long string of black pearls Drumfire's hoofprints were deeply scored into the smooth white surface. Even for him the crossing had been a terrible ordeal. Far behind they could just make out the small dark shape of the mare. Two hours earlier, with Keyser on her back, Trueheart had broken through the salt crust and into the quicksand beneath. Jim had stopped and watched Keyser struggle to free her. He had been tempted to turn back and help them. She was such a game, beautiful animal that he could not bear to watch her bogged down and exhausted. Then he remembered that he was unarmed and almost naked, while Keyser had his sabre and was a swordsman to be reckoned with. Jim had watched him leading his cavalry troop through their evolutions on the parade-ground outside the castle. While he hesitated Keyser had managed, by force, to drag the mare free of the mud and continue plodding in pursuit.

Now he was still following and Jim frowned. "If there were ever a

time to meet Keyser it would be when he comes off the salt. He will be exhausted and in the dark I would have the benefit of surprise. But he has his sabre and I have nothing," he murmured. Louisa looked at him for a moment, then turned her back to him modestly, and reached under the skirt of her shift. She found the horn-handled clasp knife in the pouch she wore strapped round her waist and handed it to him without a word. He stared at it in astonishment, then burst out laughing as he recognized it.

"I withdraw everything I said about you. You look like a Viking maid and, by Jesus, you act like one too."

"Watch your blaspheming tongue, Jim Courtney," she said, but there was no fire in the rebuke. She was too tired to argue further, and the compliment had been a pretty one. As she turned away her head there was a weary half smile on her lips. Jim led Drumfire into the trees, and she followed them. After a few hundred paces, in a spot where the forest was thickest, he tethered the stallion and told Louisa, "Now you can rest a while."

This time she did not protest but sank down on the thick leaf mould on the forest floor, curled up, closed her eyes. In her weakened state she felt that she might never have the strength to stand up again. Hardly had the thought flashed through her mind than she was asleep.

Jim wasted a few moments admiring her suddenly serene features. Until then he had not realized how young she was. Now she looked like a sleeping child. While he watched her he opened the blade of the knife and tested the point on the ball of his thumb. At last he tore himself away, and ran back to the edge of the forest. Keeping well hidden he peered out across the darkening salt pan. Keyser was still coming on doggedly, leading the mare.

Will he never give up? Jim wondered, and felt a twinge of admiration for him. Then he looked around for the best place to hide beside the tracks that Drumfire had left. He picked a patch of dense bush, crept into it and squatted there with the knife in his hand.

Keyser reached the edge of the pan, and staggered out on to the firm footing. By this time it was so dark that, although Jim could hear him panting for breath, he was just a dark shape. He came on slowly, leading the mare, and Jim let him pass his hiding-place. Then he slipped out of the bush and crept up behind him. Any sound he might have made was covered by the hoof-falls of the mare. From behind he locked his left arm around Keyset's throat and, at the same time, pressed the point of the knife into the soft skin under his ear. "I will kill you if you force me to it," he snarled, making his tone ferocious.

Keyser froze with shock. Then he regained his own voice. "You can't

hope to get away with this, Courtney. There is no place for you to run. Give me the woman, and I will settle things with your father and Governor van de Witten."

Jim reached down and drew the sabre from the scabbard on the colonel's belt. Then he released his lock around the man's throat and stepped back, but he held the point of the sabre to Keyser's chest. Take off your clothes," he ordered.

"You are young and stupid, Courtney," Keyser replied coldly. "I will try to make allowances for that."

"Tunic first," Jim ordered. "Then breeches and boots."

Keyser did not move. Jim pricked his chest, and at last, reluctantly, the colonel reached up and began to unbutton his tunic.

"What do you hope to achieve?" he asked, as he shrugged out of it. "Is this some boyish notion of chivalry? The woman is a convicted felon. She is probably a whore and a murderess."

"Say that again, Colonel, and I will spit you like a sucking pig." This time Jim drew blood with the point. Keyser sat down to pull off his boots and his breeches. Jim stuffed them into Trueheart's saddlebags. Then, with the point of the sabre at the man's back, he escorted Keyser, barefoot and wearing only his undershirt, to the edge of the salt pan.

"Follow your own tracks, Colonel," he told him, 'and you should be back at the castle in time for breakfast."

"Listen to me, jon gen Keyser said, in a thin tight voice. "I will come after you. I will see you hanged on the parade, and I promise you it will be slow very slow."

"If you stand here talking, Colonel, you're going to miss your breakfast." Jim smiled at him. "You had far better start walking."

He watched Keyser trudge away across the salt pan. Suddenly the heavy clouds were stripped away by the wind and the full moon burst through to light the pale surface as though it were day. It was bright enough to throw a shadow at Keyser's feet. Jim watched him until he was only a dark blob in the distance, and knew that he was not coming back. Not tonight, at least. But it's not the last we've seen of the gallant colonel, he thought, we can be sure of that. Then he ran back to Trueheart, and led her into the forest. He shook Louisa awake. "Wake up, Hedgehog. We have a long journey ahead of us," he told her. "And by this time tomorrow we are going to have Keyser and a squadron of cavalry in full cry after us."

When she sat up groggily he went to Trueheart. A rolled woollen cavalry cloak was strapped on top of Keyser's saddlebags.

"It will be cold when we get into the mountains," he warned her. She was still half asleep and did not protest as he wrapped the cloak round

her shoulders. Then he found the colonel's food bag. It held a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, a few apples and a flask of wine. The colonel dearly loves his food." He tossed her an apple and she wolfed it down core and all.

"Sweeter than honey," she said, through a mouthful. "I never tasted anything like it before."

"Greedy little Hedgehog," he teased her and this time she gave him an urchin smile. Most people found it hard to be angry with Jim for long. He squatted on his haunches in front of her and, with the clasp knife, cut a hunk of bread and slapped a thick slice of cheese on top of it. She ate with ferocious intensity. He watched her pale face in the moonlight. She looked like a pixie.

"And you?" she asked. "Aren't you eating?" He shook his head. He had decided that there would not be enough for both of them: this girl was starving.

"How did you learn to speak such good English?"

"My mother came from Devon."

"My oath! That's where we're from. My great-great-grandfather was a duke, or something of that ilk."

"So, shall I call you Duke?"

"That will do until I think of something better, Hedgehog." She took another bite of bread and cheese so she could not reply. While she ate he sorted through the rest of Keyser's possessions. He tried on the gold frogged tunic, and held the lapels together.

"Space for two of us in here, but it's warm." The front flaps of the colonel's breeches went half-way again round Jim's middle but he belted them with one of the straps from the saddlebags. Then he tried the boots. "At least these are a good fit."

"In London I saw a play called The Tin Soldier," she said. "That's who you look like now."

"You were in London?" Despite himself he was impressed. London was the centre of the world. "You must tell me about it as soon as we have an opportunity."

Then he led the horses to the well on the edge of the pan where the cattle were watered. He and Mansur had dug it themselves two years ago. The water in it was sweet, and the horses drank thirstily. When he led them back he found Louisa had fallen asleep again under the cloak. He squatted beside her and studied her face in the moonlight, and there was a strange hollow feeling under his ribs. He left her to sleep a little longer and went to feed the horses from the colonel's grain bag.

Then he selected what he needed from Keyser's equipment. The pistol was a lovely weapon, and tucked into the leather holster was a

small canvas roll that contained the ramrod and all the accessories. The sabre was of the finest steel. In the tunic he found a gold watch and a purse filled with silver guilders and a few gold ducats. In the back pocket there was a small brass box that contained a flint and steel, and cotton kindling.

"If I steal his horse I might as well take the money too," he told himself. However, he drew the line at filching Keyset's more personal possessions, so he placed the gold watch and the medals in one of the saddlebags, and left it lying conspicuously in the centre of the clearing. He knew that Keyser would return here tomorrow with his Bushman trackers, and would find his personal treasures. "I wonder how grateful he will be for my generosity?" He smiled bleakly. He was carried along by a sense of reckless inevitability. He knew that there was no turning back. He was committed. He went to resaddle Trueheart, then squatted beside Louisa. She was curled into a ball under the cloak. He stroked her hair to wake her gently.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. "Don't touch me like that," she whispered. "Don't ever touch me like that again."

Her voice was filled with such bitter loathing that he recoiled. Years ago Jim had captured a wild-cat kitten. Despite all his loving patience he had never been able to tame the creature. It snarled and bit and scratched. In the end he had taken it out into the veld and set it free. Perhaps this girl was like that. "I had to wake you," he said. "We must go on." She stood up immediately.

"Take the mare," he said. "She has a soft mouth and a gentle nature, yet she is fast as the wind. Her name is Trueheart." He boosted her into the saddle, and she took the reins and wrapped the cloak tightly around her shoulders. He handed her the last of the bread and cheese. "You can eat as we go." She ate as though she were still famished, and he wondered what terrible privations she had been forced to endure that had turned her into this starved, abused wild creature. He felt a fleeting doubt at his own ability to help or redeem her. He thrust it aside and smiled at her in what he imagined was a placatory way, but which to her seemed merely supercilious. "When we get to Majuba, Zama will have the hunter's pot going. I hope he has filled it to the brim. I would place money on you in an eating contest with the good colonel." He sprang up on Drumfire's back. "First, though, we have something else to do here."

He set off at a trot in the direction of High Weald, but he circled well clear of the homestead. By now it was after midnight, but still he did not want to chance running into his father or Uncle Dorian. The news of his escapade would have reached their ears almost as soon as he had plucked the girl out of the sea. He had seen many of the family freed slaves and servants among the spectators on the beach. He could not face his father now. We will get no sympathy there, he thought. He will try to force me to turn Louisa over to the colonel. He rode instead to a cluster of huts at the east side of the paddock. He dismounted in a stand of trees and handed Drumfire's reins to Louisa. "Stay here. I won't be long."

He approached the largest mud-walled hut in the village carefully and whistled. There was a long pause, then a lantern flared behind the uncured sheepskin that covered the single window in place of a curtain. The reeking fleece was drawn aside, and a dark head poked out suspiciously. "Who's there?"

"Bakkat, it's me."

"Somoya!" He came out into the moonlight with a greasy blanket tucked around his waist. He was as tiny as a child, his skin amber in the moonlight. His features were flattened and his eyes had a curious Asiatic slant. He was a Bushman, and he could track a lost beast for fifty leagues over desert and mountain, through blizzard and storm. He smiled up at Jim, and his eyes were almost hidden in a web of wrinkles. "May the Kulu Kulu smile upon you, Somoya."

"And on you also, old friend. Call out all the other shepherds. Gather up the herds and drive them over every road. Especially all the paths heading towards the east and north. I want them to chop up the ground until it looks like a ploughed field. Nobody must be able to follow my tracks when I leave here, not even you. Do you understand?"

Bakkat cackled with laughter. "Oh, j'a, Somoya! I understand very well. We all saw the fat soldier chasing you when you ran off with that pretty little girl. Don't worry! By morning there won't be a single one of your tracks left for him to follow."

"Good fellow!" Jim clapped him on the back. "I am off."

"I know where you are going. You are taking the Robbers' Road?" The Robbers' Road was the legendary escape route out of the colony, travelled only by fugitives and outlaws. "Nobody knows where it leads, because nobody ever comes back. The spirits of my ancestors whisper to me in the night, and my soul pines for the wild places. Do you have a place for me at your side?"

Jim laughed. "Follow and be welcome, Bakkat. I know that you'll be able to find me wherever I go. You could follow the tracks of a ghost over the burning rocks of hell. But, first, do what you must do here. Tell my father I am well. Tell my mother I love her," he said, and ran back to where Louisa and the horses were still waiting.

They went on. The storm had blown itself out, the wind had dropped,

and the moon was low in the west before they reached the foothills. He stopped beside a stream that ran down from the hills. "We will rest and water the horses," he told her. He did not offer to help her dismount, but she dropped to the ground as lithely as a cat, and took Trueheart to drink at the pool. She and the mare seemed already to have established an accord. Then she went into the bushes on her own. He wanted to call after her and warn her not to go far, but he held back the words.

The colonel's wine flask was half-empty. Jim smiled as he shook it. Keyser must have been nipping at it since breakfast time yesterday, he thought and went to the pool to dilute what remained with the sweet mountain water. He heard the girl come back through the bushes and, still hidden from him by a pile of tall rocks, go down to the water. There was a splash.

"Damn me if the mad woman is not taking a bath." He shook his head, and shivered at the thought. There was still snow on the mountains, and the night air was chill. When Louisa returned she sat on one of the rocks at the edge of the pool, not too close to him nor again too far away. Her hair was wet and she combed it out. He recognized the tortoiseshell comb. He went over to her and passed her the wine flask. She paused long enough to drink from it.

"That's good." She said it like a peace-offering, then went on combing the pale hair that reached almost to her waist. He watched her quietly but she did not look in his direction again.

A fishing owl darted down on the pool on silent wings like a gigantic moth. Hunting only by the last rays of the moon it snatched a small yellow fish from the waters and flew with it to a branch of the dead tree on the far bank. The fish flapped in its talons as the owl tore chunks of meat out of its back.

Louisa looked away. When she spoke again her voice was soft and the faint accent appealing. "Don't think I'm not grateful for what you have done for me. I know you have risked your life and maybe more than that to help me."

"Well, you must understand that I keep a menagerie of pets." He spoke lightly. "I needed only one more to add to it. A small hedgehog."

"Perhaps you have the right to call me that," she said, and sipped from the flask again. "You know nothing about me. Things have happened to me. Things that you could never understand."

"I know a little about you. I have seen your courage and your determination. I saw what it was like and how it smelt on board the Meeuw. Perhaps I might understand," he replied. "At least, I would try."

He turned to her, then felt his heart break as he saw the tears running down her cheeks, silver in the moonlight. He wanted to rush to her and

hold her tightly, but he remembered what she had said: "Never touch me like that again."

Instead he said, "Whether you like it or not, I'm your friend. I want to understand."

She wiped her cheeks with the palm of one small dainty hand, and sat huddled, thin, pale and disconsolate in the cloak.

"There is just one thing I must know," Jim said. "I have a cousin called Mansur. He is closer to me than a brother could be. He said that perhaps you are a murderess. That burns my soul. I must know. Are you? Is that why you were on the MeeuwT

She turned slowly towards him and, with both hands, parted the curtain of her damp hair so that he could see her face. "My father and mother died of the plague. I dug their graves with my own hands. I swear to you, Jim Courtney, on my love for them and on the graves in which they lie, that I am no murderess."

He heaved a great sigh of relief. "I believe you. You don't have to tell me anything else."

She drank again from the flask, then handed it back to him. "Don't let me have more. It softens my heart when I need to be strong," she said. They sat on in silence. He was just about to tell her that they must go on deeper into the mountains when she whispered, so quietly that he was not sure that she had spoken, "There was a man. A rich and powerful man whom I trusted as once I trusted my dead father. He did things to me that he did not want other people to know about."

"No, Louisa." He held up his hand to stop her. "Don't tell me this."

"I owe you my life and my freedom. You have a right to know."

"Please stop." He wanted to jump to his feet and run into the bushes to escape her words. But he could not move. He was held mesmerized by them, as a mouse by the swaying dance of the cobra.

She went on in the same sweet, childlike tones. "I will not tell you what he did to me. I will never tell anyone that. But I cannot let any man touch me again. When I tried to escape from him, he had his servants hide a packet of jewellery in my room. Then they called the watch to find it. They took me before the magistrate in Amsterdam. My accuser was not even in the court room when I was condemned to be transported for life." They were both silent for a long time. Then she spoke again. "Now you know about me, Jim Courtney. Now you know that I am a soiled and discarded plaything. What do you want to do now?"

"I want to kill him," said Jim at last. "If ever I meet this man I will kill him."

"I have spoken honestly to you. Now you must speak honestly to me.

Be sure of what you want. I have told you that I will let no man touch me again. I have told you what I am. Do you want to take me back to Good Hope and hand me over to Colonel Keyser? If you do, I am ready to go back with you."

He did not want her to see his face. Not since he was a child had anyone seen him weep. He jumped to his feet and went to saddle Trueheart. "Come, Hedgehog. It's a long ride to Majuba. We have no more time to waste in idle chatter." She came to him obediently and mounted the horse. He led her into the deep defile in the mountains and up the steep gorge. It grew colder as they climbed, and in the dawn, the sun lit the mountain tops with a weird pink light. Patches of old unmelted snow gleamed among the rocks.

It was late in the morning before they paused on the crest at the limit of the treeline and looked down into a hidden valley. There was a tumbledown building among the rocks of the scree slope. She might not have noticed it, were it not for the thin column of smoke rising from the hole in the tattered thatch roof, and the small herd of mules in the stone-walled kraal.

"Majuba," he told her, as he reined in, 'the Place of the Doves, and that is Zama." A tall young man dressed in a loincloth had come out into the sunlight and was staring up at them. "We have been together all our lives. I think you will like him."

Zama waved and bounded up the slope to meet them. Jim slipped down from Drumfire's back to greet him. "Have you got the coffeepot on?" he asked.

Zama looked up at the girl on the horse. They studied each other for a moment. He was tall and well formed, with a broad, strong face, and very white teeth. "I see you, Miss Louisa," he said at last.

"I see you also, Zama, but how did you know my name?"

"Somoya told me. How did you know mine?"

"He told me also. He is a great chatterbox, is he not?" she said, and they laughed together. "But why do you call him Somoya?" she asked.

"It is the name my father gave him. It means the Wild Wind," Zama replied. "He blows as he pleases, like the wind."

"Which way will he blow now?" she asked, but she was looking at Jim with a small, quizzical smile.

"We shall see." Zama laughed. "But it will be the way we least expect."

Colonel Keyser led ten mounted troopers clattering into the courtyard of High Weald. His Bushman tracker ran at his horse's head. Keyser stood in the stirrups and shouted towards the main doors of the go down "Mijnheer Tom Courtney! Come out at once!"

From every window and doorway white and black heads appeared, children and freed slaves gawked at him in round-eyed amazement.

"I am on dire Company business," Keyser shouted again. "Do not trifle with me, Tom Courtney."

Tom came out through the tall doors of the warehouse. "Stephanus Keyser, my dear friend!" he called, in jovial tones, as he pushed his steel rimmed spectacles on to the top of his head. "You are welcome indeed."

The two had spent many evenings together in the Mermaid tavern. Over the years they had done each other many favours. Only last month Tom had found a string of pearls for Keyser's mistress at a favourable price, and Keyser had seen to it that the charges of public drunkenness and brawling laid against one of Tom's servants were quashed.

"Come in! Come in!" Tom spread his arms in invitation. "My wife will bring us a pot of coffee, or do you prefer the fruit of the vine?" He called across the courtyard to the kitchens, "Sarah Courtney! We have an honoured guest."

She came out on to the terrace. "Why, Colonel! This is a delightful surprise."

"A surprise maybe," he said sternly, 'but delightful, I doubt it, Mevrouw. Your son James is in serious trouble with the law."

Sarah untied her apron and went to stand beside her husband. He put one thick arm around her waist. At that moment Dorian Courtney, slim and elegant, his dark red hair bound up in a green turban, stepped out of the shadows of the go down and stood at Tom's other hand. Together, the three presented a united and formidable front.

"Come inside, Stephanus," Tom repeated. "We cannot talk here."

Keyser shook his head firmly. "You must tell me where your son, James Courtney, is hiding."

"I thought you might be able to tell me that. Yesterday evening all the world and his brothers saw you racing Jim over the dunes. Did he beat you again, Stephanus?"

Keyser flushed and fidgeted on his borrowed saddle. His spare tunic was too tight under the armpits. Only hours ago he had recovered his medals and the star of St. Nicholas from the abandoned saddlebags his Bushman tracker had found on the edge of the salt pan. He had

pinned these decorations on awry. He touched his pockets to reassure himself that his gold watch was still in place. His breeches were fit to burst their seams. His feet were raw and blistered from the long walk home in the darkness; his new boots pinched the sore spots. He usually took pride in his appearance, and his present disarray and discomfort compounded the humiliation he had suffered at the hands of Jim Courtney.

"Your son has absconded with an escaped convict. He has stolen a horse and other valuable items. All these are hanging matters, I warn you. I have reason to believe that the fugitive is hiding here at High Weald. We have followed his tracks here from the salt pan. I am going to search every building."

"Good!" Tom nodded. "And when you are finished my wife will have refreshments ready for you and your men." As Keyser's troopers dismounted and drew their sabres, Tom went on, "But, Stephanus, you warn those ruffians of yours to leave my serving girls alone, otherwise it will really be a hanging matter."

The three Courtneys withdrew into the cool shade of the go down and crossed the wide, cluttered floor to the counting-house on the far side. Tom slumped into the leather-covered armchair beside the cold fireplace. Dorian sat cross-legged on a leather cushion on the far side of the room. With his green turban and embroidered waistcoat he looked like the Oriental potentate he had once been. Sarah closed the door but remained standing beside it to keep watch for any possible eavesdroppers. She studied the pair while she waited for Tom to speak. Brothers could scarcely have been more different: Dorian slim, elegant, marvellously handsome and Tom so big, solid and bluff. The strength of her feelings for him, even after all these years, still surprised her.

"I could happily wring the young puppy's neck." Tom's genial smile had given way to a furious scowl. "We can't be sure what he has got us all into."

"You were young once, Tom Courtney, and you were always in hot water up to your neck." Sarah gave him the smile of a loving wife. "Why do you think I fell in love with you? It could never have been your looks."

Tom tried not to let his smile reappear. "That was different," he declared. "I never asked for trouble."

"You never asked," she agreed. "You simply grabbed it with both hands."

Tom winked at her and turned to Dorian. "It must be wonderful to have a dutiful, respectful wife like Yasmini." Then he was serious again.

"Has Bakkat returned yet?" The herder had sent one of his sons to

Tom to tell him of Jim's nocturnal visit. Tom had felt a sneaking admiration for Jim's ruse in covering his tracks. "It's the sort of thing I would have done. He may be wild as the wind but he's no fool," he had told Sarah.

"No," Dorian answered. "Bakkat and the other herders are still moving all of the cattle and sheep over every path and road this side of the mountains. Even Keyset's Bushman will not be able to work out Jim's tracks. I think we can be sure that Jim has got clean away. But where did he go?" Both of them looked at Sarah for the answer.

"He planned it carefully," she answered. "I saw him with the mules a day or so ago. The shipwreck might have been a stroke of luck as far as he was concerned, but he was planning to get the girl off the ship one way or the other."

"That damned woman! Why is it always a woman?" Tom lamented.

"You, of all people, should not have to ask that," Sarah told him. "You stole me away from my family with musket balls whizzing around our heads. Don't try to play the Pope with me, Tom Courtney!"

"Sweet heavens, yes! I'd almost forgotten about that. It was fun, though, wasn't it, my beauty?" He leaned across and pinched her bottom. She slapped his hand, and he went on unperturbed, "But this woman Jim is with. What is she? A prison drab. A poisoner? A cutpurse? A whore mistress? Who knows what the idiot has picked for himself."

Dorian had been watching this exchange with a fond expression while he got his hookah pipe to draw properly. It was a habit he had brought back from Arabia. Now he took out the ivory mouthpiece and remarked drily, "I have spoken to at least a dozen of our people who were on the beach and saw it all. She may be all the other things you suggest, but she is no drab." He blew a long feather of fragrant smoke. "Reports of her vary. Kateng says she is an angel of beauty, Litila says she is a golden princess. Bakkat says she is as lovely as the spirit of the rain goddess."

Tom snorted with derision. "A rain goddess out of a stinking convict ship? A sunbird hatching from a turkey buzzard's egg is more likely. But where has Jim taken her?"

"Zama has been missing since the day before yesterday. I didn't see him go, but my guess is that Jim sent him off with the mules to wait for him somewhere," Sarah suggested. "Zama will do whatever Jim asks."

"And Jim spoke to Bakkat about the Robbers' Road," Dorian added, 'and told him to sweep his tracks from the road to the east and the north of here."

The Robbers' Road is a myth," said Tom firmly. "There are no roads into the wilderness."

"But Jim believes in it. I heard him and Mansur discussing it," Sarah said.

Tom looked worried. "It's madness. A babe and a prison drab going off empty-handed into the wilderness? They won't last a week."

"They have Zama, and they are hardly empty-handed. Jim took six mule-loads of goods," said Dorian. "I've been checking what is missing from the stores, and he chose well. They are well set-up and provisioned for a long journey."

"He didn't even say goodbye." Tom shook his head. "He's my son, my only son, and he didn't even say goodbye."

"He was in somewhat of a hurry, brother," Dorian pointed out.

Sarah rallied to her son's defence: "He sent us a message through Bakkat. He didn't forget us."

"It's not the same," said Tom heavily. "You know he might never come back. He has closed this door behind him. Keyser will catch him and hang him if he ever sets foot in the colony again. No, damn my eyes, I must see him again. Just once more. He is so headstrong and wild. I have to give him my counsel."

"You have been giving him your counsel for the last nineteen years," Dorian said wryly. "Look where it has got us now."

"Where was his rendezvous with Zama?" Sarah asked. "That is where they will be."

Tom thought about it for a moment, then grinned. "Only one place it could be," he said firmly.

Dorian nodded. "I know what you're thinking," he told Tom. "Majuba is the obvious place for them to hide out. But we dare not follow them there. Keyser will be watching us like a leopard at the water-hole. If one of us leaves High Weald he will put that little yellow bloodhound of his on to us, and we will lead him straight to Majuba, and Jim."

"If we're going to find him it must be soon, otherwise Jim will be gone from Majuba. They are well mounted. They have Drumfire and Keyser's mare. Jim will be half-way to Timbuktu before we can catch up with him."

At that moment the tramp of boots and loud masculine voices echoed through the main storeroom of the go down

"Keyset's men have searched the house." Sarah glanced out of the door. "Now they're starting on the warehouse and the outbuildings."

"We'd better go out to keep an eye on those rogues," Dorian stood up, 'before they start helping themselves."

"We'll decide what to do about Jim once we've seen Keyser off," Tom said, as they went through on to the main floor of the go down

Four of the troopers were poking about aimlessly among the clutter. They were obviously tiring of their fruitless hunt. The long storeroom was piled to the high yellow-wood rafters. If they were to search it thoroughly they would need to clear the tons of goods with which the warehouse was congested. There were bales of silk from China, and cottons from the Indies; sacks of coffee beans and gum arabic from Zanzibar and other ports beyond the Horn of Hormuz; balks of sawn teak, sandalwood and ebony; mounds of pure gleaming copper cast into huge wheels so that armies of slaves could trundle them down the mountain tracks from the far interior of Ethiopia to the coast. There were bundles of the dried skins of exotic animals, tigers and zebras, and the furs of monkeys and seals, and the long curved horns of the rhinoceros, famous through China and the Orient for its aphrodisiac powers.

The Cape of Good Hope sat across the trade routes between Europe and the Orient. In former times the ships from the north had made the long voyage down the Atlantic. Even when they anchored in Table Bay they still faced another seemingly endless passage to the Indies and China, then even further north again to far Japan. A ship might be at sea for three or four years before it could return to Amsterdam, or the Pool of London.

Tom and Dorian had gradually evolved another network of trade. They had convinced a syndicate of ship-owners in Europe to send their ships only as far as the Cape. From the Courtney Brothers' warehouse they could fill their holds with choice goods, turn round in Table Bay and, with favourable winds, be back in their home ports in under a year. The profit the Courtneys exacted more than compensated for the additional years that the ships would be forced to spend at sea if they went further afield. In the same way ships coming from the east could discharge in Table Bay into the go down of the Courtney Brothers and be back in Batavia, Rangoon or Bombay in less than half the time it would have taken to make the journey across two great oceans.

This innovation was the foundation on which they had built their fortune. Added to this, they had their own trading schooners, which plied the African coast and were captained by Dorian's trusted Arab followers. As Muslims they could travel into waters forbidden to Christian captains, and venture as far as Muscat and Medina, the Luminous City of the Prophet of God. Although these vessels lacked the large holds in which to carry bulky cargoes, they dealt in the goods of higher value: copper and gum arabic, pearls and mother-of-pearl shells from the Red Sea, ivory from the markets of Zanzibar, sapphires from the mines

of Kandy, yellow diamonds from the alluvial field along the great rivers of the empire of the Moguls, and cakes of black opium from the mountains of the Pathans.

There was only one commodity in which the Courtney brothers refused to trade: human slaves. They had intimate knowledge of the barbaric practice. Dorian had spent most of his boyhood in slavery, until his owner, Sultan Abd Muhammad al-Malik, the ruler of Muscat, had adopted him as a son. In his younger days Tom had waged a bitter war against the Arab slave-traders of the East African coast, and had been a witness at first hand of the heartless cruelty of the trade. Many of the Courtney servants and sailors were former slaves who had come into their possession and whom they had manumitted at once. The means by which some of these unfortunates had been brought under the wing of the family varied- sometimes by force of arms, for Tom dearly loved a good fight, or by shipwreck, or in payment of debts, or even by outright purchase. Sarah could seldom bring herself to walk past a weeping orphan on the auction block without importuning her husband to buy the child and give it into her care. She had reared half of her house servants from infancy.

Sarah went out to the kitchens and came back almost immediately with her sister-in-law Yasmini, and a chattering, giggling train of housemaids all bearing jugs of freshly squeezed lime juice, trays of Cornish pasties, pork pies and samos as filled with spicy lamb curry. The bored, hungry troopers sheathed their blades and fell upon the fare with a will. Between bites they ogled and flirted with the maids. The soldiers who were supposed to be searching the coach-house and the stables saw the women carrying the provender out of the kitchens and found an excuse to follow them.

Colonel Keyser interrupted the feast and ordered his men back to work, but Tom and Dorian placated him and inveigled him into the counting house.

"I hope that now you will accept my word of honour, Colonel, that my son Jim is not anywhere on High Weald." Tom poured him a glass of jonge jenever from a stone bottle; Sarah cut him a thick wedge of steaming Cornish pasty.

"Ja, very well, I accept that he is not here now, Tom. He has had enough time to get clean away- for the moment, that is. But I think you know where he is hiding." He glared at Tom as he accepted the long-stemmed glass.

Tom assumed the expression of a choirboy about to receive the sacrament. "You can trust me, Stephanus."

"That I doubt." Keyser washed down a mouthful of the pasty with a

swallow of gin. "But I warn you, I am not going to let that bumptious puppy of yours get away with what he has done. Do not try to soften my resolve."

"Of course not! You have your duty to perform," Tom agreed. "I offer you only common hospitality and I am not attempting to influence you. The minute that Jim returns to High Weald I myself will frog march him up to the castle to account to you and His Excellency. You have my word on it as a gentleman."

Only slightly mollified, Keyser allowed them to usher him out to where a groom was holding his horse. Tom slipped two more bottles of the young Hollands gin into his saddlebags and waved to him as he led his squadron out through the gates.

As they watched them go, Tom said quietly to his brother, "I have to get a message to Jim. He must stay at Majuba until I can reach him. Keyser will be watching for me to ride into the mountains and show him the way, but I'll send Bakkat. He leaves no tracks."

Dorian threw the tail of his turban over his shoulder. "Listen to me well, Tom. Don't take Keyser too lightly. He is not the clown he pretends to be. If he gets his hands on Jim it will be a tragic day for this family. Never forget that our own grandfather died on the gallows of the castle parade."

The rutted road from High Weald back to the town led through a forest of tall yellow-wood trees with trunks as thick as cathedral columns. Keyser halted his troop as soon as they were hidden from the homestead. He looked down at the little Bushman at his stirrup, who gazed back at him with the eager expression of a hunting dog.

"Xhia!" He pronounced the name with the explosive sound of a sneeze. "Soon they will send someone with a message to wherever the young rogue is hiding. Watch for the messenger. Follow him. Do not let yourself be seen. When you have found the hiding-place, return to me swiftly. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Gwenyama." He used the term of utmost respect, which meant He Who Devours His Enemies. He knew that Keyser enjoyed the title. "I know who they will send. Bakkat is an old rival and enemy of mine. It will give me pleasure to bring him down."

"Go, then. Keep watch."

Xhia slipped away into the yellow-wood forest, silent as a shadow, and Keyser led the troop of horsemen back towards the castle.

The lodge at Majuba was a single long room. The low roof was thatched with reeds from the banks of the stream that flowed close by the door. The windows were slits in the stonework, curtained by the dried skins of eland and blue buck There was an open fireplace in the centre of the earthen floor, with a hole in the roof above to let the smoke escape. The far corner of the hut was screened off by a hanging curtain of rawhide.

"We put my father behind that curtain when we came hunting up here. We thought it might deaden the sound of his snores," Jim told Louisa. "Of course it didn't work. Nothing could deaden his snores." He laughed. "But now we will put you there."

"I don't snore," she protested.

"Even if you do, it won't be for long. We're going to move on as soon as I have rested the horses, repacked the loads and put some decent clothes on you."

"How long will that be?"

"We will go on before they can send soldiers after us from the castle."

"To where?"

"I don't know." He smiled at her. "But I will tell you when we get there." He gave her an appraising glance. Her tattered shift left her almost naked and she drew the cloak around herself. "You are hardly dressed for dinner with the governor at the castle." He went to one of the mule packs, which Zama had stacked against the wall. He rummaged in it and pulled out a roll of trade cloth, and a canvas housewife roll, which contained scissors, needles and thread. "I hope you can sew?" he asked, as brought them to her.

"My mother taught me to make my own clothes."

"Good," he said. "But we will sup first. I haven't eaten since breakfast two days ago."

Zama ladled out venison stew from the three-legged hunter's pot standing on the coals. On top of it he placed a chunk of stiff maize cake. Jim took a spoonful. With his mouth full he asked Louisa, "Did your mother teach you to cook also?"

Louisa nodded. "She was a famous cook. She cooked for the Stad holder of Amsterdam, and the Prince of the House of Orange."

"Then you have much employment here. You shall take over the cooking," he said. "Zama once poisoned a chief of the Hottentots, without even exerting himself. You may not think this a great accomplishment, but let me tell you that a Hottentot will grow fat on what kills the hyenas."

She glanced at Zama uncertainly, her spoon half-way to her mouth. "Is that true?"

"The Hottentots are the greatest liars in all Africa," Zama answered, 'but none can match Somoya."

"So it is a joke?" she asked.

"Yes, it is a joke," Zama agreed. "A bad English joke. It takes many years to learn to understand English jokes. Some people never succeed."

When they had eaten, Louisa spread out the roll of cloth and began to measure and cut. Jim and Zama unpacked the mule loads that Jim had thrown together in such haste, and they noted and rearranged the contents. With relief Jim donned his own familiar boots and clothing, and gave Keyser's tunic and breeches to Zama. "If we ever get into a battle with the wild tribes of the north, you can impress them with the uniform of a Company colonel," he told him.

They cleaned and oiled the muskets, then replaced the flints in the locks. They placed the lead pot on the fire and melted lead to cast additional balls for the pistol Jim had captured from Colonel Keyser. The shot bags for the muskets were still full.

"You should have brought at least another five kegs of powder," Zama told Jim, as he filled the powder flasks. "If we meet hostile tribes when we start hunting, this will not last long."

"I would have brought another fifty kegs, if I had found another twenty mules to carry them," Jim said acidly. Then he called across the hut to where Louisa was kneeling over the bolt of material she had spread on the floor. She was using a stick of charcoal from the fireplace to mark her pattern before cutting it. "Can you load and fire a musket?"

She looked abashed, and shook her head.

"Then I shall have to teach you." He pointed to the material she was working on. "What is that you are making?"

"A skirt."

"A stout pair of trousers would be more useful, and would take less cloth."

Her cheeks turned an intriguing shade of pink. "Women don't wear trousers."

"If they are going to ride astride, walk and run, as you are, then they should." He nodded at her bare feet. "Zama will make you a fine pair of velskoen boots from eland skin to go with your new trousers."

Louisa cut the legs of her trousers very full, which made her appear even more boyish. She trimmed the tattered hem of her convict shift

into a long shirt that she wore over the top and it hung half-way down her thighs. She gathered this in at the waist with a rawhide belt that Zama made for her. She learned that he was an expert sail maker and leather-worker. The boots he made fitted her well. They reached halfway up her calves, and he turned the fur on the outside, which gave them a dashing appearance and enhanced the length of her legs. Lastly, she made herself a canvas bonnet to cover her hair and keep off the sun.

Early the next morning Jim whistled for Drumfire. He charged up from the bank of the stream where he had been cropping the young spring grass. In his usual display of affection, he pretended he was going to run his master down. Jim bestowed on him a few affectionate insults while he slipped the bridle over his head.

Louisa appeared in the door of the hut. "Where are you going?"

"To sweep the back trail," he told her.

"What does that mean?"

"I must go back the way we came to make certain we are not being followed," he explained.

"I would like to come with you, for the ride." She looked out at True heart. "Both the horses are well rested."

"Saddle up!" Jim invited her.

Louisa had hidden a large chunk of maize bread in the pouch on her belt, but Trueheart smelt it as soon as she stepped out of the door of the hut. The mare came to her at once, and while she ate the bread Louisa settled the saddle on her back. Jim watched her buckle the girth and mount. She moved easily in her new breeches.

"She must be the luckiest horse in Africa," Jim commented, 'to have exchanged the colonel for you. An elephant for a hedgehog."

Jim had saddled Drumfire: he slid a long musket into the sheath, slung a powder horn over his shoulder then sprang on to Drumfire's back. "Lead the way," he told her.

"Back the way we came?" she asked, and without waiting for his reply she started up the slope. Louisa had a light hand on the reins, and a natural seat. The mare seemed not to notice her weight, and flew up the steep mountainside.

From behind Jim appraised her style. If she was accustomed to the side-saddle, she had adapted readily to riding astride. He remembered how she had endured during the long night ride, and was amazed at how

auickly she had recovered. He knew that she would be able to keep up, no matter how gruelling the pace he set.

When they reached the crest, he moved into the lead. Unerringly he found his way back through the labyrinth of valleys and defiles. To Louisa each sheer cliff and hillside seemed the same as the one before it but he twisted and turned through the maze without hesitation.

Whenever a new stretch of ground opened before them he dismounted and climbed to a vantage-point to scan the terrain ahead through the lens of his telescope. These halts gave her respite to enjoy the grand scenery that surrounded them. After the flat country of her native land, these mountain tops seemed to reach to the heavens. The cliff walls were umber, red and purple. The scree slopes were densely clad with shrubs: some of their flowers looked like huge pincushions, and the colours were daffodil yellow and brilliant orange. Flocks of long tailed birds swarmed over them, probing their curved beaks deeply into the flowers.

"Suiker-bekkies -sugar-beaks," Jim told her, when she pointed them out. "They are drinking the nectar from the pro tea bushes."

It was the first time since the shipwreck that she had been able to look around her, and she felt drawn by the beauty of this strange new land. The horrors of the Meeuw's gundeck were already fading, seemed now to belong to an old nightmare. The path they were following climbed another steep slope, and Jim stopped below the skyline and handed her Drumfire's reins to hold, while he climbed to the crest to observe the far side of the mountain.

She watched him idly. Suddenly his manner changed abruptly. He ducked down, doubled over, and scrambled back to where she waited. She was alarmed, and her voice shook: "Are we being followed? Is it the colonel's men?"

"No, it's much better than that. It's meat."

"I don't understand."

"Eland. Herd of twenty or more. Coming straight up the far side towards us."

"Eland?" she asked.

The largest antelope in Africa. As big as an ox," he explained, as he checked the priming in the pan of the musket. The flesh is rich with fat and closer to the taste of beef than any other antelope's. Salted and dried or smoked the flesh of a single eland will last us many weeks."

"Are you going to kill one? What if the colonel is following us? Won't he hear the shot?"

"In these mountains the echoes will break up the sound and confuse

the direction. In any event, I cannot miss this opportunity. We are already short of meat. I must take the chance if we are not to starve."

He took hold of the bridles of both horses and led them off the path, then stopped behind an outcrop of raw red rock.

"Dismount. Hold the horses' heads, but try to stay out of sight. Don't move until I call you," he ordered Louisa, and then, carrying the musket, he ran back up the slope. Just before he reached the crest he dropped into the grass. He glanced back and saw that she had followed his instructions. She was squatting down so that only her head was visible.

"The horses will not alarm the eland," he told himself. The eland would take them for other wild game.

With his hat he wiped the sweat out of his eyes, and wriggled down more comfortably behind a small rock. He was sitting, not lying flat. Fired from the prone position the recoil of the heavy musket might break his collar-bone. He used his hat as a cushion and laid the stock of the musket on it, aiming up the slope.

The profound silence of the mountains settled over the valley; the soft hum of insects in the pro tea blossoms and the lonely, plaintive whistle of a red-winged mountain starling sounded abnormally loud.

The minutes passed as slowly as honey dripping, then Jim lifted his head. He had heard another sound that made his heartbeat trip. It was a faint clicking, like dry sticks being tapped together. Jim recognized it instantly. The eland antelope has a peculiar characteristic, unique in the African wild: the mighty sinews in its legs make a strange click with each step it takes.

Bakkat, the little yellow Bushman, had explained to Jim when he was a child how this had come about. One day in that far-off time when the sun had risen on the first day and the world was new with the dew still fresh upon it, Xtog who was the father of all the Khoisan, the Bushmen, caught in his cunning snare Impisi, the hyena. As all the world knows, Impisi was and still is a powerful magician. As Xtog was sharpening his flint knife to cut his throat, Impisi said to him, "Xtog, if you set me free, I will make a magic for you. Instead of my flesh, which stinks of the carrion I eat, you will have hills of white fat and mountains of the sweet meat of the eland roasting on your fire every night of your life."

"How can this be, O Hyena?" Xtog had wondered, although he was beginning to drown in his own saliva at the thought of the eland meat. But the eland was a cunning animal and difficult to find.

"I will place a spell on the eland so that wherever he roams over desert and mountain he will make a sound that will guide you to him."

Thus Xtog had set Impisi free, and from that day onwards the eland has clicked as he walks to warn the hunter of his approach.

Jim grinned as he remembered Bakkat's story. Gently he drew back the heavy hammer of the musket to full cock, and settled the brassbound butt into his shoulder. The clicking sounds grew louder, stopping as the animals that made them paused, then coming on again. Jim watched the skyline just ahead of where he lay and suddenly a massive pair of horns rose against the blue. They were as long and thick as a strongman's arm, spiralled like the horn of the narwhal, polished black so the sun glinted upon them.

The clicking sound ceased and the horns turned slowly from side to side, as if the animal that carried them was listening. Jim heard his breath whistling in his ears, and his nerves tightened like the string of a crossbow. Then the clicking sound began again and the horns rose higher, until two trumpet-shaped ears and a pair of huge eyes appeared beneath them. The eyes were dark and gentle, seeming to swim with tears. Long curling lashes veiled them. They stared directly into Jim's soul, and his breath stopped. The beast was so close that he could see it blink, and he dared not move.

Then the eland looked away, swinging its great head to stare down the slope up which it had come. Then it started forward towards Jim, and the rest of its body came into view. He could not have circled that thick neck with his arms: a heavy dewlap hung beneath it, swinging ponderously with each pace. Its back and shoulders were blue with age, and it stood as tall as Jim himself.

Only a dozen paces from where he sat it stopped and lowered its head to pull the new spring leaves from a cripple wood bush. Over the ridge behind the bull, the rest of the herd came into view. The cows were a soft creamy brown, and although they carried the long spiral horns, their heads were more graceful and feminine. The calves were a ruddy chestnut, the younger ones hornless. One dropped its head and butted its twin playfully, then they bucked and chased each other in a circle. The mother watched with mild disinterest.

The hunter's instinct drew Jim's eyes back to the great bull. It was still chewing the cripple wood It was an effort for Jim to reject this old animal. Despite the mighty trophy it carried, its flesh would be tough and gamy, its fat sparse.

Bakkat's philosophy came back to him: "Leave the old bull to breed, and the cow to suckle her young." Slowly Jim turned his head to examine the rest of the herd. At that moment the perfect quarry came up over the ridge.

This was a much younger bull, not more than four years old, his hindquarters so plump they seemed to be bursting from his glossy golden brown hide. He turned aside, attracted by the shiny green leaves of

a gwarrie tree. The branches were laden with ripe purple berries, and the young bull moved round until he was facing Jim. Then he stretched up to nibble at the berries, exposing the creamy curve of his throat.

Jim traversed the barrel of the musket towards him. His movements were as slow as the advance of a chameleon on a fly. The frolicking calves kicked up dust and distracted the usually watchful gaze of the cows. Carefully Jim laid the bead of the foresight on the base of the bull's throat, on the crease of skin that encircled it like a necklace. He knew that even at such close range either of the beast's massive shoulder-blades would flatten and stop the musket ball. He had to find the gap in the animal's brisket through which he could drive the ball deep into the vitals to tear through the heart, lungs and pulsing arteries.

He took up the slack in the trigger and felt the resistance of the sear. Steadily he increased the pressure, staring hard at his aiming point on the throat, resisting any impulse to jerk the trigger that final hairbreadth. The hammer fell with a loud snap, and the flint struck a shower of sparks off the friz zen the powder in the pan ignited in a puff of white smoke, and with a bass roar the butt slammed back into his shoulder. Before he could be unsighted by the heavy recoil and the gush of powder smoke, Jim saw the eland hump its back in a mighty spasm. He knew from this that the ball had sliced through its heart. He sprang to his feet to see over the bank of smoke. The young bull was still frozen in agony, its mouth gaping. Jim could see the bullet wound, a dark, bloodless hole in the smooth hide of the throat.

All around him the rest of the herd burst into flight, scattering away down the rocky hillside in a mad gallop, loose stones and dust flying from under their hoofs. The stricken bull backed away, racked in a gigantic contortion. Its legs shook and quivered, and it sank back on its haunches. It lifted its head to the sky and the bright lung blood sprayed from its gaping jaws. Then it twisted over and fell on its back, all four legs kicking spasmodically in the air. Jim stood and watched the beast's last throes.

His jubilation was gradually replaced by the melancholy of the true hunter, caught up in the beauty and tragedy of the kill. As the eland subsided and was still, he laid aside the musket and drew the knife from its sheath on his belt. Using the horns as a lever he pulled back the beast's head and, with two expert incisions, he laid open the arteries on each side of the throat and watched the bright blood flow out. Then he lifted one of the massive back legs and cut away the scrotum.

Louisa rode up as he straightened with the furry white pouch in his hand. He felt bound to explain: "It would taint the flesh if we left it."

She looked away. "What a magnificent animal. So big." She seemed subdued by the enormity of what he had done. Then she sat up straighter in the saddle. "What must I do to help you?"

Tether the horses first," he told her and she swung down from Trueheart's back and led the horses to the gwarrie tree. She hitched them to the trunk, then came back.

"Hold one of the back legs," he said. "If we leave the guts inside, the meat will sour and spoil in a few hours."

It was heavy work, but she did not flinch from it. When he made the paunching stroke from the crotch to the ribs the bowels and entrails came ballooning out of the opening.

"This is when you get your hands messy," he warned her, but before he could go on, another voice spoke near at hand, a piping, childlike voice.

"I taught you well, Somoya."

Jim spun round, the knife held instinctively in the underhand defensive grip, and stared at the little yellow man who sat on a rock watching them.

"Bakkat, you little shaitan," Jim shouted, more in fright than anger. "Don't ever do that again. Where in the name of the Kulu Kulu did you come from?"

"Did I startle you, Somoya?" Bakkat looked uncomfortable, and Jim remembered his manners. He had come close to giving offence to his friend.

"No, of course not. I saw you from afar." You must never tell a Bushman that you had overlooked him: he will take it as an insulting reference to his tiny stature. "You stand taller than the trees."

Bakkat's face lit up at the compliment. "I watched you from the beginning of the hunt. It was a fair stalk and a clean kill, Somoya. But I think you need more than a young girl to help you dress the meat." He hopped down from the rock. He paused in front of Louisa and crouched down, clapping his hands in greeting.

"What is he saying?" she asked Jim.

"He says that he sees you, and that your hair is like sunlight," he told her. "I think you have just been given your African name, Welanga, Girl of Sunlight."

"Please tell him that I see him also, and that he does me great honour." She smiled down at him and Bakkat cackled with delighted laughter.

Bakkat carried a native axe hooked over one shoulder, and his hunting bow over the other. He laid aside the bow and quiver, and hefted the axe as he came to help Jim with the huge carcass.

Louisa was amazed at how quickly the two of them worked. Each knew his job and did it without hesitation or argument. Bloody to the elbows they drew out the entrails and the bulging sac of the stomach. With barely a check in the work Bakkat cut a strip of the raw tripes. He slapped it against a rock to knock off the half-digested vegetation, then stuffed it into his mouth and chewed with unfeigned relish. When they pulled out the steaming liver, even Jim joined in the feast.

Louisa stared in horror. "It's raw!" she protested.

"In Holland you eat raw herring," he said, and offered her a sliver of the purple liver. She was about to refuse, then saw from his expression that this was a challenge. She hesitated still until she realized that Bakkat also was watching her with a sly smile, his eyes slitted between leathery wrinkles.

She took the slice of liver, gathered her courage and placed it in her mouth. She felt her gorge rise but forced herself to chew. After the first shock of the strong taste, it was not unpleasant. She ate slowly, and swallowed it. To her deep satisfaction Jim looked crestfallen. She took another slice from his bloody hand and began to chew at it.

Bakkat let out a squeal of laughter, and dug his elbow into Jim's ribs. He shook his head with delight, mocking Jim, and miming the way she had won the silent contest, staggering around in a circle as he crammed imaginary lumps of liver into his mouth with both hands, weak with mirth.

"If you were half as funny as you think you are," Jim told him sourly, 'you would be the wit of all the fifty tribes of the Khoisan. Now let's get back to work."

They divided up the meat into loads for both the horses, and Bakkat made a sack of the wet skin into which he stuffed all the tit bits of kidneys, tripes and liver. It weighed almost as much as he did, but he shouldered it and set off at a trot. Jim carried a shoulder of the eland, which almost buckled his knees, and Louisa led the horses. They covered the last mile down the gorge to Majuba in darkness.

Xhia trotted with the rapid bow-legged gait that the Bushmen call 'drinking the wind'. He could keep it up from first light in the morning until nightfall. As he went he talked to himself as if to a companion, replying to his own questions, chuckling at his jokes. Still on the run, he drank from his horn bottle and ate from the leather food bag slung over his shoulder.

He was reminding himself of how cunning and brave he was. "I am

Xhia the mighty hunter," he said, and gave a little jump in the air. "I have killed the great bull elephant with the poison that tips my arrow." He remembered how he had followed it along the banks of the great river. Doggedly, he had kept up the hunt during the time that it had taken the new moon to wax to the full, then wane again. "Not once did I lose the spoor. Could any other man do that?" He shook his head. "No! Could Bakkat perform such a feat? Never! Could Bakkat have fired the arrow into the vein behind the ear so that the poison was taken straight to the heart of the bull? He could not have done it!" The frail reed arrow could barely pierce the thick pachyderm hide it would never penetrate to heart or lung: he had had to find one of the great blood vessels close to the surface to carry the poison. It had taken the poison five days to bring the bull down. "But I followed him all that time and I danced and sang the hunter's song when, at last, he fell like a mountain and raised the dust as high as the treetops. Could Bakkat have performed such a feat?" he asked the high peaks around him. "Never!" he replied. "Never!"

Xhia and Bakkat were members of the same tribe, but they were not brothers. "We are not brothers!" Xhia shouted aloud, and he became angry.

Once there had been a girl, with skin as bright as the plumage of a weaver bird and a face shaped like a heart. Her lips were as full as the fruit of the ripe mar ula her buttocks were like ostrich eggs and her breasts as round as two yellow Tsama melons warming in the Kalahari sun. "She was born to be my woman," Xhia cried. "The Kulu Kulu took a piece of my heart while I slept and moulded it into that woman." He could not bring himself to say her name. He had shot her with the tiny love arrow tipped with the feathers of the mourning dove to demonstrate to her how much he wanted her.

"But she went away. She would not come to lie on the sleeping mat of Xhia the hunter. She went instead with the despicable Bakkat and bore him three sons. But I am cunning. The woman died from the bite of the mamba." Xhia had captured the snake himself. He had found its hiding-place under a flat rock. He had tethered a live dove as bait beside it and when the snake slid out from under the rock, he had pinned it behind the head. It was not a large mamba, only as long as one of his arms, but its venom was virulent enough to kill a bull buffalo. He placed it in the girl's harvesting bag while she and Bakkat slept. The next morning when she opened the mouth of the bag to place a tuber inside, the snake had bitten her three times, once on the finger and twice on the wrist. Her death, though swift, was terrible to behold. Bakkat wept as he held her in his arms. Concealed among the rocks, Xhia had

watched it all. Now the memory of her death and Bakkat's grief was so sweet that Xhia jumped with both feet together like a grasshopper.

"There is no animal who can elude me. There is no man who can prevail against my guile. For I am Xhia!" he shouted, and the echo came back from the cliffs above. "Xhia, Xhia, Xhia."

After Colonel Keyset left him, he had waited two days and a night on the hills and in the forests of High Weald, watching for Bakkat. On the first morning he saw him come out of his hut in the dawn, yawn, scratch himself and laugh at the squeal of gas from between his buttocks. For the Bushmen a flourish of flatus was always a propitious sign of good health. He watched him let the herd out of the kraal and drive them down to the water. Lying like a partridge concealed in the grass Xhia saw the big white man with the black beard that they called Klebe, the hawk, ride down from the homestead. He was Bakkat's master and the two squatted in the middle of the open field with their heads close together and they spoke in whispers for a long time so that no one could overhear them. Even Xhia was not able to creep close enough to pick up their words.

Xhia grinned to watch their secret counsel. "I know what you are saying, Klebe. I know you are sending Bakkat to find your son. I know you are telling him to take care that he is not followed but, like the spirit of the wind I, Xhia, will be watching when they meet."

He watched Bakkat close the door of his hut at nightfall, and saw the glow of his cooking fire, but Bakkat did not come out again until the dawn.

"You try to lull me, Bakkat, but will it be tonight or tomorrow?" he asked, as he watched from the hilltop. "Is your patience greater than mine? We shall see." He watched Bakkat circle around his hut in the early light, searching the earth for the sign of an enemy, for someone who had come to spy upon him.

Xhia embraced himself with glee, and rubbed his back with both hands. "Do you think I am such a fool as to come in close, Bakkat?" This was the reason he had sat all night upon the hilltop. "I am Xhia and I leave no sign. Not even the high-flying vulture can discover my hiding place."

All that day he had watched Bakkat go about his business, tending his master's herds. At nightfall Bakkat went into his hut again. Xhia worked a charm in the darkness. He took a pinch of powder from one of the stoppered duiker-horn flasks on his beaded belt and placed it on his tongue. It was the ash of a leopard's whiskers, mixed with the dry, powdered dung of a lion and other secret ingredients. Xhia mumbled an incantation as it dissolved in his own saliva. It was the spell for out110

witting prey. Then he spat three times in the direction of the hut in which Bakkat lived.

This is a charm of great power, Bakkat," he warned his enemy. "No animal or man can resist its spell." This was not always true, but whenever it failed there was always good reason for it. Sometimes it was because the wind had changed direction, or because a black crow flew overhead, or because the sore-eye lily was in bloom. Apart from these and similar circumstances it was an infallible charm.

Having cast the spell he settled down to wait. He had not eaten since the day before, so now he swallowed a few fragments of smoked meat from his food bag. Neither hunger nor the cold wind off the snows of the mountain deterred him. Like all his tribe he was inured to pain and hardship. The night was still, proof that his spell was efficacious. Even a small breeze would have covered the sounds for which he was listening.

It was soon after the moon had set that he heard a night bird utter its alarm call in the forest behind Bakkat's home. He nodded to himself. "Something moves there."

A few minutes later he heard the nightjar's mate whirl up from the forest floor, and by correlating the two clues he guessed the direction in which his quarry was moving. He went down the hill, silent as shadow, testing each footfall with his bare toe for twigs or dry leaves that might crackle and disclose his presence. He stopped to listen at every second step, and heard, down by the stream, the dry rustle of a porcupine erecting its quills as a warning to a predator who had ventured too close. The porcupine might have seen a leopard, but Xhia knew it had not. The leopard would have lingered to harass its natural prey, but a man moved on immediately. Not even an adept of the San, such as Bakkat or even Xhia himself, could have avoided encountering the nightjar or the prowling porcupine in the darkness of the forest. Those little signs had been all that Xhia needed to work out how Bakkat was moving, and the direction he was taking.

Another hunter might have made the mistake of closing in too swiftly, but Xhia hung back. He knew that Bakkat would backtrack and circle to make certain he was not followed.

"He is almost as cunning in the lore of the wild as I am. But I am Xhia and there is no other like me." Telling himself this made him feel strong and brave. He found where Bakkat had crossed the stream and, in the last rays of the waning moon he picked out a single wet footprint gleaming on the top of one of the river boulders. It was the size of a child's, but broader, and there was no arch.

"Bakkat!" He gave a little hop. "I will remember the shape of your foot all the days of my life. Have I not seen it a hundred times running

beside the track of the woman who should have been my wife?" He remembered how he had followed their tracks into the bush so that he could creep up on them and watch them as they coupled, writhing together in the grass. The memory made him hate Bakkat with a fresh, corroding passion. "But you will never savour those melon breasts again. Xhia and the snake have seen to that."

Now that he had clearly established the direction and run of the spoor, he could hang back to avoid, in the dark, the traps that Bakkat would surely set for him. "Because he moves in darkness he will not be able to cover his sign as completely as he would in daylight. I will wait for the coming of the sun to read more clearly the sign he has left for me."

In the first flush of the dawn he picked up the spoor again. The wet footprint had dried leaving no trace, but within a hundred paces he found a dislodged pebble. Another hundred paces and there was a broken blade of grass, dangling and beginning to wither. Xhia did not stop to pore over these clues. A quick darting glance confirmed his instinct and enabled him to make minute adjustments to his direction. He smiled and shook his head when he found where Bakkat had lain in wait beside his spoor. Because he had squatted unmoving for so long, his bare heels had left indentations in the earth. Then, much further on, he found where Bakkat had made a wide circle to wait again beside his own spoor, the same way as a wounded buffalo circles back to wait for the hunter who pursues him.

Xhia was so pleased with himself that he took a little snuff, sneezed softly and said, "Know, Bakkat, that it is Xhia who follows, that Xhia is your master in all things!" He tried not to think of the honey-yellow girl, the one thing in which Bakkat had prevailed.

Once the spoor led into the mountains it became even more elusive. Up one long narrow valley he found where Bakkat had hopped from rock to rock, never touching soft earth or disturbing a blade of grass or other growing thing, except for the grey lichen that grew sparsely on the rocks. This plant was so dry and tough, and Bakkat so light, his sole so small and pliant, that he passed over it almost as softly as the mountain breeze. Xhia squinted to pick out the slightly different shade of lichen grey where his foot had touched. Xhia kept carefully to the side of the tracks furthest from the rising sun, to highlight the faint spoor and not to disturb it in case he was forced to come back to rework it.

Then even Xhia was confounded. The tracks climbed a scree slope, again moving from rock to rock. Then abruptly, half-way up the scree, the tracks ended. It was as though Bakkat had been plucked into the

sky in the talons of an eagle. Xhia went on in the established line of the spoor until he reached the head of the valley, but he found nothing more. He went back to where the sign ended, squatted down and turned his head one way then the other to contemplate the faint smears on the lichen coating of the rocks.

As a last resort he took another pinch of the magical powder from the duiker horn and let it dissolve in his saliva. He closed his eyes to rest them, and swallowed the mixture. He half opened his eyes and, through the veil of his own lashes, he had a fleeting glimpse of movement, faint shadows like the flicker of bat's wings in the gloaming. When he looked directly at them they disappeared as though they had never existed. The saliva dried in his mouth and the skin on his arms prickled. He knew that one of the spirits of the wilderness had touched him, and what he had seen was the memory of Bakkat's feet running across the rocks. They were running not upwards but back down the scree.

In that moment of heightened awareness, he realized, from the colour of the lichen, that Bakkat's feet had touched it twice, going up and coming back. He laughed out loud. "Bakkat, you would have deceived any other man, but not Xhia." He moved back down the scree and saw how he had done it. How he had run up the slope, bouncing from rock to rock and then, in mid-stride, he had reversed direction and run backwards, his tiny feet falling exactly in the same spoor. The only telltale sign was the slight colour difference of the double tracks.

Near the bottom of the slope the spoor passed under the low branch of a Boer bean tree. Lying on the earth beside the tracks was a fragment of dried bark no bigger than a thumbnail. It had recently fallen or been dislodged from the branch above. At this point the double tracks on the lichen-coated rocks suddenly became single tracks again. Xhia laughed out loud.

"Bakkat has taken to the trees like the baboon that was his mother." Xhia went to stand under the outspread branch, jumped, caught a hold and drew himself up until he stood upright, balancing on the narrow branch. He saw the marks Bakkat's feet had made on the bark. He ran along them to the main trunk of the tree, slid down to the earth, picked up the spoor again and ran along it.

Twice more Bakkat had set him puzzles to solve. The first of these was at the base of a red cliff and cost him more time. But after the Boer bean tree he had learned to look upwards and found the place where Bakkat had reached up high and traversed hand over hand along a ledge so that his feet had not touched the earth.

The sun had started down the sky by the time he reached the place

where Bakkat had laid the second puzzle. This one seemed to defy even his powers of solution. After a while he felt a superstitious tingle of his nerves that Bakkat had worked some counter-charm and grown wings like a bird. He swallowed another dose of the hunter's powder, but the spirits did not touch him again. Instead his head began to ache.

"I am Xhia. No man can deceive me," he told himself, but even though he said it loudly he could not dispel the sense of failure that slowly overwhelmed him.

Then he heard a sound, dulled by distance but unmistakable. The echoes from the cliffs confirmed it, but at the same time muddled the direction so that Xhia turned his head from side to side to try to pinpoint it. "Musket shot," he whispered. "My spirits have not deserted me. They lead me on."

He left the spoor and climbed the nearest peak, squatted there and watched the sky. It was not long before he picked out a tiny black speck high against the blue. "Where there is gunfire, there is Death. And Death has his faithful minions."

Another speck appeared, then many more. They coalesced into a slow-turning wheel in the sky. Xhia sprang to his feet and trotted in that direction. As he approached, the specks resolved themselves into carrion birds, soaring on fixed wings, turning their repulsive naked heads to peer down at one spot among the mountains below them.

Xhia knew well all the five varieties of vulture, from the common tawny bird of the Cape to the huge bearded vulture with its patterned throat and triangular fan of tail feathers.

"Thank you, old friends," Xhia called up to them. Since time beyond memory these birds had led him and his tribe to the feast. As he came closer to the centre of the spinning circle, he became more furtive, creeping from rock to rock, peering all around with those sharp bright eyes. Then he heard human voices coming from the far side of the ridge ahead of him and, like a puff of smoke, Xhia seemed simply to dissolve in the air.

From his place of concealment he watched the trio loading the butchered meat on to the horses. Somoya, he knew well. His was a familiar face in the colony. Xhia had watched him win the Christmas Day races from his own master. However, the woman was a stranger. "This must be the one that Owenyama seeks. The woman who escaped from the sinking ship."

He chuckled when he recognized Trueheart tethered beside Drumfire. "Soon you will return to our master," he promised the mare. Then he concentrated all his attention on the dainty figure of Bakkat and his eyes slitted with hatred.

He watched the little band finish loading the horses, and move off out of sight along the game trail that meandered down the valley. As soon as they had gone Xhia ran down to dispute what remained of the eland carcass with the vultures. There was a puddle of blood lying where Jim had cut the eland's throat. It had coagulated to a black jelly, and Xhia scooped it up in his cupped hands, and dribbled it into his open mouth. Over the past two days he had eaten only sparingly from his food bag, and he was famished. He licked every last sticky clot from his fingers. He could not afford to spend much time on the carcass, for if Bakkat looked back he would notice that the vultures had not settled immediately, and know that something or someone was keeping them in the air. The hunters had not left much for him. There was the long rubbery tube of the small intestines, which they had not been able to carry away. He drew it through his fingers to squeeze out the liquid dung. The coating of excrement that remained gave it a pungent relish, which he savoured as he chewed. He was tempted to use a rock to crack open the massive leg bones and suck out the rich yellow marrow, but he knew that Bakkat would return to the kill, and he would not overlook such an obvious clue. Instead he used his knife to scrape off the shreds and strips of flesh that still adhered to the bones and ribcage. He stuffed these fragments into his food bag, then used a switch of dried grass to brush away his footprints. The birds would soon obliterate any small traces of his presence that he had overlooked. When Bakkat returned to sweep his back trail there would be nothing to alert him.

Chewing happily on strips of the reeking intestines, he left the carcass and went on after Bakkat and the white couple. He did not follow directly in their tracks but kept well out on the slope above the valley. At three places he anticipated the twists and turns of the valleys ahead, cut across the high ground where the horses could not go and intercepted them on the far side. From a distance he picked out the smoke from the camp at Majuba and hurried ahead. He was watching from the peak when they arrived with the horses. He knew that he should go back at once to report to his master his success in discovering the hiding-place of the fugitives, but the temptation to linger and gloat over his old enemy, Bakkat, was too great to resist.

The three men, white, black and yellow, cut the raw eland meat into thick strips, and the woman sprinkled coarse sea salt from a leather bag on to them then rubbed it in with her palms and spread out the strips on the rocks to cure. In the meantime the men threw the lumps of white fat they trimmed from the meat into a three-legged pot on the fire to render it down for cooking or making soap.

Whenever Bakkat stood up or moved apart from the others, Xhia's

eyes followed him with the malevolent gaze of a cobra. He fingered one of the arrows in his little bark quiver and dreamed of the day when he would sink the poisoned tip deep into Bakkat's flesh.

When the butcher's work was done, and the men were tending the horses and the mules, the white woman laid out the last strips of meat to dry. Then she left the camp and picked her way along the bank of the stream until she reached a green pool screened by the bend from the camp. She took off her bonnet and shook out her hair in a glowing cloud. Xhia was taken aback. He had never seen hair that colour and length. It was unnatural and repellent. The scalps of the women of his tribe were covered by crisp, furry peppercorns, pleasant to touch and look upon. Only a witch or some other disgusting creature would have hair like this one. He spat to ward away any evil influence she might emit.

The woman looked about her carefully, but no human eye could discover Xhia when he wished to remain concealed. Then she undressed, stepping out of the baggy clothes that covered her lower body, and stood naked at the edge of the pool. Again Xhia was repelled by her appearance. This was no female but some hermaphroditic thing. Her body was misshapen: her legs were elongated, her hips narrow, her belly concave and she had the buttocks of a starving boy. The San women gloried in their steatopygia. There was another puff of hair at the juncture of her thighs. It was the colour of the Kalahari desert sands and so fine that it did not completely screen her genitals. Her slit was like a tightly pursed mouth. There was no sign of the inner lips. The mothers of Xhia's tribe pierced their daughters' labia in infancy and hung stones upon them to stretch them and make them protrude attractively. In Xhia's estimation monumental buttocks and dangling labia were signs of true feminine beauty. Only her breasts proclaimed this woman's sex, yet they, too, were strangely shaped. They thrust out pointedly and the pale nipples pricked upwards like the ears of a startled dik-dik. Xhia covered his mouth and giggled at his own simile. "What man could want a creature like that?" he asked himself.

The woman waded out into the pool until the water reached her chin. Xhia had seen enough and the sun was sinking. He slipped back over the skyline and set off at a trot towards the flat-topped mountain, blue and ethereal in the distance, that showed above the southern horizon. He would travel on through the night to bring the news to his master.

They sat close to the small fire in the centre of the hut, for the nights were still chill. They feasted on thick steaks cut from the long back strips of the eland, and kebabs of kidney, liver and fat grilled over the coals. The rich juices greased Bakkat's chin. When Jim sat back with a sigh of contentment, Louisa poured a mug of coffee for him. He nodded his thanks. "Won't you take some?" he invited, but she shook her head.

"I do not like it." This was untrue. She had developed a taste for it while she lived in Huis Brabant, but she knew how rare and expensive it was. She had seen how he treasured the small bag of beans, which would not last much longer. Her gratitude towards him, as her saviour and protector, was so strong that she did not want to deprive him of something that gave him so much pleasure. "It's harsh and bitter," she explained.

She went back to her place on the opposite side of the fire and watched the men's faces in the firelight as they talked. She did not understand what they were saying for the language was strange, but the sound was melodious and lulling. She was drowsy and well fed, and had not felt as safe and contented since she had left Amsterdam.

"I gave your message to Klebe, your father," Bakkat told Jim. This was the first time they had mentioned the subject uppermost in both their minds. It was callow and ill-mannered to speak of important matters until the right moment for serious discussion.

"What was his reply?" Jim demanded anxiously.

"He told me to greet you in his name and in the name of your mother. He said that although you would leave a hole in their hearts that would never be filled, you must not return to High Weald. He said that the fat soldier from the castle would wait for your return with the patience of a crocodile buried in the mud of the water-hole."

Jim nodded sadly. He had known what the consequences must be from the moment he had decided he must rescue the girl. Yet now that he heard his father confirm it, the enormity of his exile from the colony weighed like a stone. He was truly an outcast.

In the firelight Louisa saw his expression and instinctively she knew she was the cause of his grief. She looked down into the wavering flames, and her guilt was a knife under her ribs.

"What else did he say?" Jim asked softly.

He said that the pain of parting from his only son would be too great to bear, unless he could hold you in his eye once more before you go."

Jim opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Bakkat went on, "He knows that you intend to follow the Robbers' Road northwards into the wilderness. He said that you will not be able to survive with such meagre stores as you were able to take with you. He intends to bring you more. He said that would be your inheritance."

"How is that possible? I cannot go to him and he cannot come to me. The risk is too great."

"He has already sent Bomvu, your uncle Dorian, and Mansur with two wagons laden with sacks of sand and chests filled with stones along the west coast road. This will draw Keyset away so that your father can come to meet you at an arranged place. He will have with him other wagons carrying his parting gifts to you."

"Where is the place of meeting?" Jim asked. He felt a deep sense of relief and excitement that he might see his father. He had thought they were parted for ever. "He cannot come here to Majuba. The road through the mountains is too steep and treacherous for wagons to pass."

"No, he will not come here."

"Where then?" Jim asked.

"Do you remember two years ago when we travelled together to the frontiers of the colony?" Jim nodded. "We went through the mountains by the secret pass of the Gariep river."

"I remember." That journey had been the adventure of Jim's life.

"Klebe will take the wagons out through that pass and meet you on the edge of the unknown lands, by the kopje shaped like the head of a baboon."

"Yes, that was where we hunted and killed the old gems buck bull. It was the last camp before we returned to the colony." The disappointment he had felt when they turned back came to him vividly. "I wanted to go on to the next horizon, and the next, until I reached the last."

Bakkat laughed. "You were always an impatient boy, and you still are. But your father will meet you at the Hill of the Baboon's Head. Can you find it without me to lead you, Somoya?" He mocked Jim lightly, but for once he could not draw him. "Your father will only leave High Weald when he is sure that Keyser is following Bomvu and Mansur, and when I have returned with your reply."

Tell my father I will meet him there."

Bakkat stood up and reached for his quiver and bow.

"You cannot leave yet," Jim told him. "It is still dark, and you have not rested since you left High Weald."

"I have the stars to guide me," Bakkat went to the door of the hut, 'and Klebe told me to return at once. We will meet again at the Hill of the Baboon's Head." He crossed to the door of the hut, and smiled back

at Jim. "Until that day go in peace, Somoya. Keep Welanga beside you always, for it seems to me that, although she is young, she will grow to be a fine woman, like your own mother." Then he was gone into the night.

Bakkat moved as swiftly through the darkness as any of the other night creatures, but it had been late when he left Majuba, and the dawn light was already strengthening when he reached the remains of the eland carcass. He squatted beside it and searched for clues as to who and what had visited it since the previous day. The vultures were roosting, hump-backed, on the surrounding cliffs and kranzes. The ground around the carcass was littered with their feathers where they had squabbled over the scraps, and white streaks of their liquid dung painted the rocks around the kill. Their talons had raked the earth, but he was able to pick out the tracks of a number of jackal and other small wild cats and scavengers in the softened earth. There were no signs of hyena, but that was not surprising: the mountains were too high and cold for them at this season of the year. Although picked bare, the skeleton of the eland was intact. Hyena would have chewed the bones to splinters.

If there had been a human visitor, any sign of him had been obliterated. However, Bakkat was confident that he had not been followed. Few men could have untangled the trail he had laid. Then his eyes fell on the ribcage of the eland. The bones were smooth and white. Suddenly he gave a soft whistle of alarm, and his confidence wavered. He touched the bare ribs, running his finger down them one after another. The marks on them were so light that they might have been natural or the toothmarks of one of the scavengers. But Bakkat felt a sick spasm of doubt tighten his stomach muscles. The marks were too smooth and regular, not those of teeth but of a tool. Someone had scraped the flesh off the bone with a blade.

If it were a man, he would have left the mark of boot or sandal, he thought, and made a quick cast around the carcass, wide enough to avoid the chaos created by the scavengers. Nothing! He returned to the skeleton and studied it again. Perhaps he was barefoot? he wondered. But the Hottentot wear sandals, and what would one of them be doing m the mountains in this season? They will be with their herds down in the plains. Perhaps, after all, I was followed? But only an adept could have read my sign. An adept who goes unshod? A San? One of my own kind? As he pondered it he became more anxious. Should I go on to

High Weald, or should I go back to warn Somoya? He hesitated, then made his decision. I cannot go in both directions at the same time. I must go on. That is my duty. I must take my news to Klebe.

Now in the morning light he could move faster. As he ran, his dark eyes were never still and no sound or smell, however faint, eluded him. As he skirted a stand of cripple wood whose stems were hung with beards of grey moss, his nostrils flared as he caught a whiff of faecal odour. He turned off the path to trace the source, and found it within a few paces. A single glance told him that these were the droppings of a carnivore, who had gorged recently on blood and meat: they were black, loose and foetid.

Jackal? he thought, then immediately knew that it was not. It must be human, for close by were the stained leaves with which he had cleaned himself. Only the San used the leaves of the wash-hand bush for that purpose: they were succulent and soft, and when rubbed between the palms of the hand they burst open and ran with herbal-scented juice. He knew then that the same man who had eaten at the eland carcass had defecated here, close to the path that led from Majuba down the mountains, and that the man was of the San. Apart from himself how many adepts of the San lived within the borders of the colony? His people were of the deserts and the wilderness. Then his instincts told him who it must be.

"Xhia!" he whispered. "Xhia, who is my enemy has followed me and learned my secrets. Now he runs back to his master in the castle. Soon they will ride out to Majuba with many horsemen to run down Somoya and Welanga." He was immediately stricken by the same dreadful uncertainty. "Must I go back to warn Somoya, or go on to High Weald? How far is Xhia ahead of me?" Then he reached the same decision. "Somoya will already have left Majuba. Keyser and his troopers will move slower than Somoya. If I drink the wind, I might be able to warn both Klebe and Somoya before Keyser catches up with them."

He began to run as he had seldom run before, as though he were following a wounded gems buck or being chased by a hungry lion.

It was late at night when Xhia reached the colony. The gates of the castle were closed and would not open again until reveille and the hoisting of the VOC flag at daybreak. But Xhia knew that, these days, Gwenyama, his master, seldom slept in his sumptuous quarters within the high stone walls. There was a fresh and irresistible attraction for him in the town.

It was the decree of the VOC council in Amsterdam that the burghers of the colony, and more especially the servants of the Company, should not have congress with the natives of the country. Like many of the other decrees of the Zeventien they were written only on paper, and Colonel Keyser kept a discreet little cottage on the far side of the Company gardens. It was situated down an unpaved lane and was screened by a tall, flowering lantana hedge. Xhia knew better than to waste time arguing with the sentries at the gates of the castle. He went directly to the colonel's love nest, and slipped through the opening in the lantana hedge. A lamp was burning in the kitchen at the rear of the cottage, and he tapped on the window. A shadow passed between the lamp and the pane, and a female voice he recognized called, "Who is there?" Her tone was sharp and nervous.

"Shala! It is Xhia," he called back, in the Hottentot tongue, and heard her lift the locking bar on the door. She swung it open and peered out. She was only a little taller than Xhia and looked childlike, but she was not.

"Is Gwenyama here?" Xhia asked. She shook her head. He looked at her with pleasure: the Hottentot were cousins of the San and Shala was Xhia's ideal of a beautiful woman. Her skin glowed like amber in the lamplight, her dark eyes slanted up at the corners, her cheekbones were high and wide, and her chin was narrow so that her face was the shape of an inverted arrowhead. The dome of her head was perfectly rounded, and covered with a pelt of peppercorn curls.

"No! He has gone away," she repeated, and held open the door in invitation.

Xhia hesitated. From their previous encounters he had a clear picture of her sex in his mind. It resembled one of the succulent desert cactus flowers, with fleshy petals of a pouting purple texture. Added to that, there was an intense pleasure to be had from stirring his master's porridge pot. Shala had once described the colonel's manly part to Xhia. it is like the beak of a sugar-bird. Thin and curved. It sips my nectar only lightly, then flits away."

The men of the San were famous for their priapism, and for penile dimensions unrelated to their diminutive stature. Shala, who had much first-hand experience in these matters, considered Xhia to be gifted beyond all his tribe.

"Where is he ?" Xhia was torn between duty and temptation.

"He rode away yesterday with ten of his men." She took Xhia's hand and drew him into the kitchen, closed the door behind him and replaced the locking bar.

"Where did they go?" he asked, as she stood before him and unwrapped her robe. Keyser delighted in dressing her in the gaudy silks of the Indies, and in pearls and other finery that he purchased at great expense from the go down of the Courtney brothers.

"He said they were following the wagons of Bomvu, the red-haired one," she said, and let the robe slide down her body to the floor. He drew in his breath sharply. No matter how often he saw those breasts it was always with a shock of delight.

"Why is he following those wagons?" He reached out, took one of her breasts and squeezed it.

She smiled dreamily and swayed closer to him. "He said they would lead him to the runaways, to Somoya, the son of the Courtneys, and the woman he stole from the shipwreck," she answered, her voice husky. She lifted the front of his kilt and reached under it. Her eyes slanted lasciviously and she showed small white teeth as she smiled.

"I do not have much time," he warned her.

"Then let us be quick," she said, and sank to her knees in front of him.

"Which way did he go?"

"I watched them from the top of Signal Hill," she replied. "They went along the coastal road towards the west."

She placed her elbows on the floor to brace herself and leaned forward until her extraordinary golden buttocks were raised towards the thatched ceiling. He went behind her, moved her knees apart, knelt between them and, both hands on her hips, pulled her back towards him. She gave a soft little squeal as he forced apart her fleshy petals and went in deeply.

At the end she squealed again, but this time as though in mortal agony and then she flopped forward on to her face and lay there in the centre of the kitchen floor writhing weakly.

Xhia stood up and adjusted his leather skirt. He picked up his quiver and bow and slung them over his shoulder.

"When will you come back?" She sat up shakily.

"When I can," he promised, and went out into the night.

ABakkat topped the hills above High Weald, he saw that the entire estate was bustling with unusual activity. Every one of the servants seemed frantically employed. The wagon drivers and the voorlopers, the lead boys, were bringing up the trek oxen from the kraals at the far end of the main paddock. They had in spanned four full teams of twelve bullocks each, which were trudging up the road to the homestead. Another group of herders had assembled small herds of fat-tailed sheep, milking cows with their unweaned calves, and spare trek bullocks, and were driving them slowly towards the north. They were already strung out over such a distance that the furthest of the small herds were specks almost obscured by their own dust.

"Already they are heading for the Gariep river pass to meet Somoya." Bakkat nodded with satisfaction, and started down the hill towards the homestead.

As soon as he entered the courtyard he saw that the preparations for departure were well advanced. On the loading ramp of the warehouse Tom Courtney was in his shirt-sleeves giving orders to the men who were packing the last chests of goods into the wagon beds.

"What is in that chest?" he demanded of one. "I don't recognize it."

The mistress told me to load it. I do not know what is in it." The man shrugged. "Woman's things, perhaps."

Tut it into the second wagon." Tom turned, and spotted Bakkat as he entered the yard. "I saw you as soon as you came over the hill. You grow taller every day, Bakkat."

Bakkat grinned with pleasure, squared his shoulders and puffed out his chest a little. "I see your plan has worked, Klebe?" It was more a question than a statement.

"Within a few hours of Bomvu taking the wagons out along the west coast, Keyser and all his men were after them." Tom laughed. "But I don't know how soon he will realize that he is following the wrong game, and come rushing back. We have to get clear as soon as we can."

"Klebe, I bring evil tidings."

Tom saw the little man's expression and his own smile faded. "Come! We will go where we can talk privately." He led Bakkat into the warehouse, and listened seriously as the little man related all that had happened during his foray into the mountains. He exclaimed with relief when he heard that their guess had proved correct and Bakkat had found Tom at Majuba.

"So Somoya, Zama and the girl will already have left Majuba, and will be riding to the meeting place on the frontier at the Hill of the Baboon's Head," Bakkat went on.

"This is good news," Tom declared. "So why do you wear such a gloomy countenance?"

"I was followed," Bakkat admitted. "Somebody followed me to Majuba."

"Who was it?" Tom could not disguise his alarm.

"A San," said Bakkat. "An adept of my tribe, one who could unravel my spoor. One who was watching for me to leave High Weald."

"Keyset's hunting dog!" Tom exclaimed furiously.

"Xhia," Bakkat agreed. "He tricked me and even now he must be hurrying back to his master. Within the next day he will lead Keyser to Majuba."

"Does Somoya know he has been discovered by Xhia?"

"I only discovered Xhia's sign when I was half-way back from Majuba. I came on to warn you first," Bakkat said. "Now I can go back to find Somoya, warn him also, and lead him out of danger."

"You must reach him before Keyser catches up with him." Tom's bluff features were twisted with anxiety.

"Xhia must return to Majuba again before he can pick up Somoya's outgoing tracks. Keyser and his men will travel slowly for they are unaccustomed to the mountain paths," Bakkat explained. "He will be forced to make a wide loop to the south. On the other hand, I can cut through the mountains further north, get ahead of them and find Somoya before they do."

"Go swiftly, old friend," Tom told him. "I place the life of my son in your hands."

Bakkat bobbed his head in farewell. "Somoya and I will be waiting for you at the Hill of the Baboon's Head."

Bakkat turned to leave, but Tom called him back. "The woman--' He broke off, unable to look at the little man's face. "Is she still with him?" he asked gruffly, and Bakkat nodded.

"What is she--' Tom stopped, then tried to rephrase his question. "Is she... ?"

Bakkat took pity on him. "I have named her Welanga, for her hair is like sunlight."

"That is not what I wanted to know."

"I think that Welanga will walk beside him for a long, long time. Perhaps for the rest of his life. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"Yes, Bakkat, that is exactly what I wanted to know."

From the loading ramp he watched Bakkat trot out of the gateway, and take the path back towards the mountains. He wondered when last

the little man had rested or slept, but the question was irrelevant. Bakkat would keep on as long as his duty beckoned him.

"Tom!" He heard Sarah call his name, and turned to see her hurrying towards him from the kitchens. To his surprise he saw that she was wearing breeches, riding boots and a wide brimmed straw hat tied down with a red bandanna under her chin. "What was Bakkat doing here?"

"He has found Jim."

"And the girl?"

"Yes." He nodded reluctantly. "The girl also."

"Then why aren't we ready to leave yet?" she demanded.

"We?" he asked. "We are going nowhere. But I will be ready to leave within the next hour."

Sarah placed her clenched fists on her hips. He knew that that was the equivalent of the first rumbling of an active volcano about to erupt. "Thomas Courtney," she said coolly, but the light of battle shone in her eyes, "James is my son. My only child. Do you think for one moment that I will sit here in my kitchen while you ride off to bid him farewell, possibly for ever?"

"I will give him your maternal love," he offered, 'and when I return, I will describe the girl to you in minute detail."

He argued a little longer, but when he rode out through the gates of High Weald Sarah rode at his side. Her chin was up, and she was trying not to smile triumphantly. She glanced sideways at him and said sweetly, "Tom Courtney, you are still the most handsome man I have ever laid eyes upon, except when you are sulking."

"I am not sulking. I never sulk," he said sulkily.

"I will race you to the ford," she said. "Winner may claim a kiss." She tickled the mare's rump with the switch she carried, and bounded forward. Tom tried to hold the stallion, but he danced in a circle, eager to be after them.

"Damn it! All right then." Tom let him have his head. He had given the mare too much of a start, and Sarah was an expert horsewoman.

She was waiting for him at the ford, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. "Where is my kiss?" she asked. He leaned out of the saddle to take her in a bear-hug. "That is just an instalment," he promised, as he set her back in the saddle. "You will get the main payment tonight."

Jim had a well-developed sense of direction, but Bakkat knew it was not infallible. He remembered the time when Jim had slipped away from camp while everyone else was sleeping in the heat of noon. Jim had seen a small herd of gems buck on the horizon, and as they were short of meat he had ridden after them. Three days later, Bakkat had found him wandering in circles through the trackless hills, leading a lame horse, and half crazed with thirst.

Jim hated to be reminded of that episode, and before they parted at Majuba he had listened with full attention while Bakkat gave him detailed directions on how to find his way through the mountains, following the well-defined game trails used for centuries past by the elephant and eland herds. One of these would lead him to a ford on the Gariep river where it debouched on to the plains at the frontier where the wilderness began. From that point the Hill of the Baboon's Head stood out clearly on the horizon to the east. Bakkat could rely on Jim to follow those directions accurately, so he had a clear picture in his mind of where Jim might be now, and what route he must take to intercept him.

Bakkat cut through the foothills and was well out to the north before he turned back into the main range, and went up between tall umber coloured cliffs into the high valleys. On the fifth day after leaving High Weald he cut their sign. With two steel-shod horses and six heavily laden mules they had left a well-trodden spoor. Before noon he had caught up with Jim's party. He did not announce himself, but instead circled out ahead of them to wait beside the path they must follow.

Bakkat watched Jim coming down the path at the head of the file. As Drumfire came level with his hiding-place, he popped up from behind his boulder like the ajinni from the lamp and shouted shrilly, "I see you, Somoya!" Drumfire was so startled that he shied wildly. Jim, also taken by surprise, was thrown on to his neck, and Bakkat shrieked with laughter at the joke. Jim recovered his balance instantly and rode after him as Bakkat darted away down the game path, still hooting with laughter. Jim snatched off his hat, leaned out of the saddle and slapped him with it round the head and shoulders.

"You horrible little man! You are so small, so tiny, so minute that I did not even see you." These insults sent Bakkat into such paroxysms of mirth that he fell and rolled on the earth.

When Bakkat had recovered sufficiently to stand up again, Jim looked him over carefully while they greeted each other with a little more

formality. Now it was apparent how finely drawn Bakkat was. Even though his tribe were famous for their fortitude and endurance, over the past week Bakkat had run over a hundred leagues through mountainous terrain, without allowing himself time to eat or drink adequately, or to sleep for more than a few hours. Instead of being golden and glossy, his skin was as grey and dusty as the ashes of last night's campfire. His head looked like a skull, and his gaunt cheekbones stood proud. His eyes had sunk deeply into their sockets. A Bushman's buttocks are like the camel's hump: when he is well-fed and rested they are majestic, and sway independently as he walks. Bakkat's backside had collapsed into folds of loose skin that dangled out of the back of his kilt. His legs and arms were as thin as the limbs of a praying mantis.

"Zama," Jim called as he brought up the string of mules. "Unload one of the chagga bags."

When Bakkat started to make his report, Jim silenced him. "Eat and drink first," he ordered, 'and then sleep. We can talk later."

Zama dragged up one of the leather bags filled with chagga made from the eland meat. The salted strips had been half dried in the sun, then packed so tightly into the bag that the air and the flies could not get to them. The first African travellers had probably taken the idea from the pemmican of the North American Indians. Treated like this the meat would not putrefy, but keep indefinitely. It retained much of its moisture, and though the taste was high and gamy, the salt disguised the tang of rot. It was a taste that, in circumstances of need, could be readily acquired.

Bakkat sat in the shade by the mountain stream and, with a heap of the black chagga sticks in front of him, began to eat. After Louisa had bathed in one of the pools further downstream she came to sit beside Jim and they watched Bakkat eat.

After a while she asked, "How much more can he take in?"

"He is only now starting to get the taste for it," Jim said.

Much later she said, "Look at his stomach. It's beginning to swell."

Bakkat stood up and went to kneel at the pool. "He has finished!" Louisa said. "I thought he would go on until he burst."

"No." Jim shook his head. "He just needs to wash it down to make room for the next course."

Bakkat returned from the pool, water dripping from his chin, and fell on the pile of chagga with undiminished appetite. Louisa clapped her hands and laughed with amazement. "He is so tiny, it does not seem possible! He is never going to stop."

But at last he did. With an apparent effort he forced down one last mouthful. Then he sat cross-legged and glassy eyed and hiccuped loudly.

"He looks as though he is eight months along with child." Jim pointed out his bulging stomach. Louisa blushed at such an intimate and improper reference, but she could not hold back her smile. It was an apt description. Bakkat smiled at her, then collapsed sideways, curled himself into a ball and began to snore.

In the morning his cheeks had filled out miraculously and his buttocks, although not yet restored to their former grandeur, showed a distinct bulge under his kilt. He set upon a breakfast of chagga with renewed gusto and, thus fortified, was ready to make his report to Jim.

Jim listened mostly in silence. When Bakkat told him of discovering the evidence that Xhia had followed them into the mountains, that he would certainly bring Keyser to Majuba, that they would follow their spoor from there, Jim looked worried. But then Bakkat gave him his father's message of love and support. The dark clouds around Jim seemed to lift, and his face lit with the familiar smile. When Bakkat had finished, they were both silent for a while. Then Jim stood up and went down to the pool. He sat on a rotten tree stump, and brooded heavily. He broke off a lump of rotten bark, picked out the white wood maggots he had exposed and flicked them into the water. A large yellow fish rose to the surface and, in a swirl of water, gobbled them down. At last he came back to where Bakkat waited patiently, and squatted, facing him. "We cannot go on to the Gariep with Keyser following us. We will lead him straight to my father and the wagons." Bakkat nodded. "We must lead him away, and throw him off the spoor."

"You have wisdom and understanding far beyond your tender years, Somoya."

Jim picked up the sarcasm in his voice. He leaned across and gave Bakkat an affectionate cuff. "Tell me then, Prince of the Polecat Clan of the San, what must we do?"

Bakkat led them in a wide, meandering circle, away from the Gariep, back the way they had come, following game trails and crossing from one valley to the other until they arrived back above the Majuba camp. They did not approach within half a league of the stone and thatch hut, but camped instead behind the eastern watershed of the valley. They made no fire but ate their food cold and slept wrapped in jackal-skin karosses. During the day the men took turns to climb to the high ground with Jim's telescope and watch the camp at Majuba for Xhia, Keyser and his troopers to arrive.

"They cannot match my speed through these mountains," Bakkat boasted. "They will not arrive until the day after tomorrow. But until then we must keep well hidden for Xhia has the eyes of a vulture and the instincts of a hyena."

Jim and Bakkat built a hide of dead cripple wood branches and grass below the crest. Bakkat examined it from all angles to make certain that it was invisible. When he was satisfied, he cautioned Jim and Zama not to use the telescope when the sun was at an angle to reflect from the lens. Jim set himself the first morning shift in the lookout hide.

He had settled down comfortably and sunk softly into a pleasant reverie. He thought about his father's promise of wagons and supplies. With this help, his dreams of a journey to the ends of this vast land might become reality. He thought about the adventures he and Louisa would experience, and the wonders they would find in that unexplored wilderness. He remembered the legends of riverbeds lined with gold nuggets, of the vast ivory herds, the deserts paved with glittering diamonds.

Suddenly he was startled to reality by the sound of a loose pebble rattling down the hillside behind him. He reached instinctively for the pistol on his belt. But he could not risk a shot. Bakkat had chided him none too gently about the musket shot that had brought down the eland and had led Xhia to them.

"Xhia would never have unravelled my spoor if you had not led him on, Somoya. That shot you fired confounded us."

"Forgive me, Bakkat," Jim had apologized ironically. "And I know how you hate the taste of eland chagga. It would have been far better for us to starve."

Now he dropped his hand from the pistol, and reached for the handle of his knife. The blade was long and sharp, and he held it poised for a defensive stroke, but at that moment Louisa whispered softly outside the back wall of the hide, "Jim?"

The alarm he had felt at her approach was replaced with a lift of pleasure at the sound of her voice.

"Come in quickly, Hedgehog. Don't show yourself." She crawled in through the low entrance. There was barely room inside the lookout for both of them. They sat side by side, only inches between them. The silence was heavy and awkward. He broke it at last. "Is everything well with the others?"

They are sleeping." She did not look at him, but it was impossible for her not to be intensely aware of him. He was so close, and he smelt of sweat, leather and horses. He was so powerful and masculine that she

felt confused and flustered. Dark memories mixed with new conflicting emotions, and she drew as far away from him as the space allowed. Immediately he did the same.

"Crowded in here," he said. "Bakkat built it to fit himself."

"I didn't mean--' she started.

"I understand, Hedgehog," he said. "You explained to me once." She shot him a glance from the corner of her eye, but saw with relief that his smile was unfeigned. She had learned over the past days that the name "Hedgehog' was not a rebuke or an insult, but friendly teasing.

"You said you once wanted one as a pet." She followed her thoughts.

"What?" He looked puzzled.

"A hedgehog. Why didn't you find yourself one?"

"Not easy. There aren't any in Africa." He grinned. "I've seen them in books. You are the first in the flesh. You don't mind when I call you that?"

She thought about it, and realized that now he was not even teasing her, but using it as an endearment. "I did at first, but now I am accustomed to it," she said, and added softly, "Let me tell you that hedgehogs are sweet little creatures. No, I don't mind too much."

They were silent again, but it was no longer tense and awkward. After a while she made a peephole for herself in the grass of the front wall. He handed her the telescope and showed her how to focus it.

"You told me you are an orphan. Tell me about your parents," he said. The question shocked her, and her temper flared. He had no right to ask that. She concentrated on her view through the telescope, but saw nothing. Then the anger subsided. She recognized a deep need to speak of her loss. She had never been able to before, not even to Elise while she still trusted the old woman.

"My father was a teacher, gentle and kind. He loved books and learning." Her voice was almost inaudible but became stronger and surer as she remembered all the wonderful things about her mother and father, the love and kindness.

He sat beside her quietly, asking a question as her words faltered, leading her on. It was as though he had lanced an abscess in her soul, and let all the poison and the pain escape. She felt a growing trust in him, as though she could tell him everything and he would somehow understand. She seemed to lose track of time, until she was jerked into the present by a soft scratching sound at the back wall of the hide. Bakkat's voice whispered a question. Jim replied and Bakkat went again as silently as he had come.

"What did he say?" she asked.

"He came to take over the watch, but I sent him away."

"I have been talking too much. What time is it?"

"Out here, time matters little. Go on with what you were saying. I like to listen to you."

When she had told him everything she could remember of her parents, they went on to discuss other things, anything that came into her head, or wherever his questions led her. It was such a joy for her to talk freely to someone again.

Now that she was at her ease, and her defences were lowered, Jim found, to his delight, that she had a dry, quirky sense of humour: she could be funny and self-deprecating, sometimes sharply observant or wickedly ironic. Her English was excellent, far surpassing the quality of his Dutch, but her accent made things sound fresh, and her occasional lapses and solecisms were enchanting.

The education she had received from her father had armed her with wide knowledge and understanding of a surprising range of subjects, and she had travelled to places that fascinated him. England was his ancestral and spiritual home, but he had never been there, and she described scenes and places he had heard of from his parents but seen only in books.

The hours sped away, and it was only when the long mountain shadows fell over the little hut that he saw the day was almost gone. Guiltily he realized that he had neglected his watch, had not so much as glanced out of his peephole for several hours.

He leaned forward and peered down the mountainside. Louisa jumped with surprise as his hand fell on her shoulder. They are here!" His voice was sharp and urgent, but for a moment she did not understand. "Keyser and his men."

Her pulse raced and the fine pale hair on her forearms rose. She peered out with trepidation, and saw movement in the valley far below. A column of horsemen was crossing the stream, but at this range it was not possible to identify the individual riders. Jim snatched the telescope out of her lap. He checked the angle of the sun with a glance, but the hut was already in shadow so there was no danger of a reflection from the lens. He refocused it swiftly.

"Xhia the Bushman is leading them. I know that little swine of old. He is as cunning as a baboon and as dangerous as a wounded leopard. He and Bakkat are mortal enemies. Bakkat swears he killed his wife with wizard craft. He says Xhia charmed a mamba to sting her."

He traversed the telescope, and went on to describe what he was seeing: "Keyset is close behind Xhia. He is riding his grey. That's another good horse. Keyser is a wealthy man, from the bribes he has taken and with what he has stolen from the VOC. He has one of the finest stables

in Africa. He is not as soft as his big belly would suggest. They have arrived a full day sooner than Bakkat expected them."

Louise shrank a little closer to him. She felt the cold reptiles of fear slither down her back. She knew what would happen to her if she fell into Keyser's hands.

Jim moved the glass on. That's Captain Herminius Koots following Keyser. Sweet Mother Mary, there's a naughty fellow for you! There are stories about Koots that would make you blush or faint. That's Sergeant Oudeman, behind him. He is Koots' boon companion, and they share the same tastes. What interests them mostly is gold and blood and what's under a skirt."

"Jim Courtney, I'll thank you not to talk like that. Remember, I am a woman."

"Then I'll not have to explain it to you, will I, Hedgehog?" He grinned, and she tried to look severe, but he ignored her disapproval and reeled off the names of the other troopers following Keyser.

"Corporals Richter and Le Riche are in the rear, bringing up the spare horses." He counted ten in the little herd that followed the troop. "No wonder they've made such good time. With all those spares, they'll be able to push us hard."

Then he snapped the telescope shut. "I'm going to explain what we have to do now. We have to lead Keyser away from the Gariep river where my father will be waiting for us with wagons and supplies. I'm sorry, but it's going to mean running away like this for days and even weeks more. It will mean much more hard living, no tents or time to build a shelter, short rations once the eland meat runs out unless we can kill more, but at this season most of the game herds are down on the plains. With Keyser close behind us we won't be able to hunt. It's not going to be easy."

She hid her fears behind a smile, and a cheerful tone: "After the gundeck of the Meeuw it will seem like Paradise." She rubbed the chain galls on her ankles. These injuries were healing: the scabs were peeling away, leaving fresh pink skin underneath. Bakkat had concocted a balm of eland fat and wild herbs for her that was proving almost miraculously efficacious.

"I thought about sending you off to the Gariep with Zama to protect you and take you to the rendezvous with my father, while Bakkat and I led Keyser away, but when I discussed it with Bakkat we decided we could not take the risk. Keyser's Bushman tracker is a magician. You and Zama could never elude him, even with Bakkat playing all the tricks he knows. Xhia would pick up your spoor at the place where we parted and Keyser wants you almost as much as he wants me." His face

darkened as he thought of her left without protection to the mercy of Keyser and Koots and Oudeman. "No, we will stay together."

She was surprised at how relieved she felt that he would not leave

her.

They watched as Keyser's men searched the deserted hut, then remounted and set off up the valley following the cold trail they had left. They disappeared into the mountains.

"They will return soon enough," Jim predicted.

It took Xhia three days to lead Keyser round the wide circuit of the spoor and return to the hills above Majuba. Jim had used this respite to graze and rest the horses and mules. While they waited Bakkat recovered his strength. His backside grew full and fat again while they watched the trail. At a little after noon on the third day, Keyser's column appeared again, doggedly following the old spoor. As soon as Bakkat had them in sight, Jim and his party began to retreat further and further into the mountain fastness. He adjusted their pace to that of the pursuit: they kept far enough ahead of Keyser to keep him under observation and be alert to any sudden dash he might make, or to any other stratagem he and Xhia might conceive to take them unawares.

Their order of march was to send Zama and Louisa ahead with the mules and the baggage. Zama set the best pace that the animals could sustain. They had to be allowed to graze and rest or they would soon weaken and break down. Fortunately the same restrictions on the rapidity of march applied to Keyser's animals, although he had spare horses. Even so, Zama and Louisa were able to keep well out in front.

Bakkat and Jim stayed under Keyser's nose, shadowing him, keeping loose contact, but trying to make certain of his exact whereabouts at all times. Whenever the trail led over a ridge or crossed a watershed they waited on the high ground until Keyser's troop came in sight. Before they moved on Jim counted horses and men through the telescope and made certain that none had detached.

When night fell Bakkat would creep back to watch Keyser's camp from the shadows in case he was planning mischief. He could not take Jim with him. Xhia was a constant danger and, skilled in bush lore as Jim might be, he was no match for Xhia in the darkness. With Louisa and Zama far ahead, Jim would eat alone at his own campfire, then leave it burning to mislead any watcher and slip away into the night, following the other two, guarding their back trail against a surprise attack.

Before it was light Bakkat would break off his vigil over the enemy camp and hurry back to Jim. Then, all that day, they would resume the same order of retreat.

Next morning Xhia was able to read all their movements when he studied the sign they had left. On the third night Keyser ordered a surprise attack. He set up camp at nightfall. His troopers secured the horses, ate their dinners and posted sentries, then the others rolled into their blankets and let the fires die down. They knew from Xhia's observations that Bakkat must be spying on them. As soon as it was dark, Xhia led Koots and Oudeman silently and secretly out of camp. They circled out to try to slip past Bakkat, and surprise Jim at his campfire. But the two white men, even though they had removed their spurs and wrapped rags around their boots to deaden the sound, were no match for Bakkat. He heard every blundering step they took in the darkness. When Xhia and the two white men reached Jim's campfire it was long deserted and the flames had burned down to embers.

Two nights later Koots and Oudeman lay in wait for Bakkat well outside the perimeter of their camp. Bakkat had an animal instinct for survival. He smelt Koots from twenty paces: a white man's sweat and stale cigar smoke have a distinctive aroma. Bakkat rolled a small boulder down the hillside on top of him. Both Koots and Oudeman blazed away with their muskets at the sound. The camp erupted with shouting and gunfire, and neither Keyser nor any of his men got much sleep for the rest of the night.

The next day Jim and Bakkat were watching when the enemy mounted up and came after them again. "When will Keyser give up, and turn back to the colony?" Jim wondered.

Running beside him, hanging on to a stirrup leather, Bakkat chuckled. "You should not have stolen his horse, Somoya. I think you have angered him, and made it a matter of pride. We will either have to kill him or give him the slip. But he will not give up before that."

"No killing, you bloodthirsty little devil. Abduction of a VOC convict and horse theft are bad enough. But even Governor van de Witten could not overlook the murder of his military commander. He would take it out on my family. My father--' Jim broke off. The consequences were too terrible to think about.

"Keyser is no dumbhead," Bakkat went on. "He knows by now that we are going to a meeting with your father. If he does not know where, all he has to do is follow us. If you are not going to kill him, you will need

help from the Kulu Kulu himself to throw Xhia off our spoor. I could not be certain of doing it even if I were travelling alone. But now we are three men, a girl who has never been in the wilderness before, two horses and six loaded mules. What hope do we have against the eyes, nose and magic of Xhia?"

They reached another ridgeline where they stopped to rest Drumfire and let the pursuit come in sight once again.

"Where are we, Bakkat?" Jim rose in the stirrups and gazed around at the awe-inspiring chaos of mountain and valley that surrounded them.

This place has no name for ordinary men do not come here, unless they are lost or mad."

Then which way are the sea and the colony?" He found it difficult to keep a sense of direction in the maze of the mountains.

Bakkat pointed without hesitation, and Jim squinted at the sun to check his bearings, but he did not question Bakkat's infallibility. "How far?"

"Not far if you ride on an eagle's back." Bakkat shrugged. "Perhaps eight days if you know the road, and travel fast."

"Keyset must be running out of supplies by now. Even we are down to the last bag of chagga, and twenty pounds of maize meal."

"He will eat his spare horses before he gives up and lets you go to the meeting with your father," Bakkat predicted.

Late that afternoon they watched, from a safe distance, as Sergeant Oudeman selected one of the horses from the remount herd and led it into a ravine near where Keyser's troop were camped. While Oudeman held its head, and Richter and Le Riche stropped their knives on a rock, Koots checked the flint and priming in his pistol. Then he walked up to the animal and placed the muzzle against the white blaze on its forehead. The shot was muted but the horse dropped instantly and kicked convulsively.

"Horse steaks for dinner," Jim murmured, 'and Keyser has food for another week at the least." He lowered his telescope. "Bakkat, we cannot go on like this much longer. My father will not wait for ever at the Gariep."

"How many horses do they have left?" Bakkat asked as he picked his nose thoughtfully, and examined what he had excavated.

Jim lifted the glass again and ran it over the distant herd. '... sixteen, seventeen, eighteen," he counted. "Eighteen, including Keyser's grey." He studied Bakkat's face, but it was innocent. The horses? Yes, of course!" he exclaimed. Bakkat's studied expression broke and his face creased into an impish grin. "Yes. Their horses are the only way for us to attack them."

The pursuit drove them on relentlessly into wild country where not even Bakkat had ventured before. Twice they saw game once a herd of four eland crossing the skyline, then fifty beautiful blue buck in a single herd together. But if they had turned aside to pursue the animals they would have lost ground and the gunfire would have brought Keyser and his troopers on at full tilt he would be with them before they could butcher their kill. If they shot one of the mules, the same thing would happen. They rode on with the last of their provisions almost gone. Jim hoarded the last handful of coffee beans.

Gradually the pace Zama could maintain with Louisa and the mules fell off. The gap between the two parties dwindled until Jim and Bakkat caught up with them. Still Keyset's troopers came on apace, so that Jim's little band had more and more difficulty holding them off. Fresh horse steaks grilled over the fire seemed to have restored the strength and determination of Keyser's troopers. Louisa was flagging. She had been emaciated before the chase began, and now, with little food and rest, she was nearing the limit of her endurance.

To add to Jim's worries other hunters had joined the chase. Sleeping fitfully in the darkness, cold and hungry, unable to afford time during daylight even to collect firewood, expecting at any moment that Keyser's men might creep up on them, they were startled awake by a terrible sound. Louisa screamed before she could stop herself.

"What is that?"

Jim leaped out of his fur kaross and went to her. He put an arm round her shoulders. She was so terrified that she did not pull away. The sound came again: a series of deep grunts, each louder than the last, crescendoing into a thunder that echoed and rolled off the dark mountains.

"What is it?" Louisa's voice shook.

"Lions," Jim told her. There was no point in trying to deceive her so, instead, he tried to distract her. "Even the bravest of men is frightened by a lion three times- when first he sees its spoor, when first he hears its roar, when first he meets it face to face."

"Once is enough for me," she said, and although her voice quavered, she gave a small, uncertain laugh. Jim felt a lift of pride at her courage. Then he dropped his arm from her shoulders as he felt her shift uncomfortably in his embrace. She still could not bear a masculine touch. They are after the horses," he told her. "If fortune favours us, they might go after Keyser's animals instead of ours." As if in answer to

his wish, a few minutes later they heard a fusillade of musket fire further back down the valley where they had seen the enemy set up camp at nightfall.

"The lions must be on our side." Louisa laughed again, a little more convincingly- At intervals during the rest of the night there came the clap of a distant musket shot.

"The lions are still harassing Keyser's camp," Jim said. "With luck they will lose some horses."

At dawn as they began their flight again, Jim looked back through the telescope and saw that Keyser had lost none of his horses. "They were able to drive off the lions, more's the pity," he told Louisa.

"Let's hope they try again tonight," she said.

It was the hardest day they had so far been forced to endure. During the afternoon a thunderstorm swept down from the north-west and drenched them with cold, driving rain. It blew over just as the sun was setting, and in the last light of the day they saw the enemy less than a league behind them, coming on steadily. Jim continued the retreat long after dark. It was a nightmare march over wet and treacherous ground, through rills that had swollen dangerously with rain. Jim knew in his heart that they could not carry on like this much longer.

When at last they halted Louisa almost fell from Trueheart's back. Jim wrapped her in a sodden fur kaross and gave her a small stick of chagga, almost the last of their food.

"You have it. I am not hungry," she protested.

"Eat it," he commanded. "No time for heroics now."

She slumped and fell asleep before she had taken more than a few mouthfuls. Jim went to where Zama and Bakkat were sitting together. "This is just about the end," he said grimly. "We have to do it tonight, or not at all. We have to get at their horses." They had been planning all that day, but it would be a forlorn attempt. Although he kept a bold face, Jim knew it was almost certainly doomed.

Bakkat was the only one of them who had any chance at all of thwarting Xhia's vigilance and getting into the enemy camp undiscovered, and he could not un tether all eighteen horses and bring them out on his own.

"One or two, yes," he told Jim, 'but not eighteen."

"We must take all of them." He looked up at the sky. A sickle moon sailed through the streaming remnants of the rain clouds "Just enough light to do the job."

"Bakkat could get into the horse lines and cripple them, hamstring them," Zama suggested.

Jim shifted uneasily: the idea of mutilating a horse was distasteful.

"The first animal would scream so loudly Bakkat would have the whole camp down on him. No, that won't work."

At that moment Bakkat sprang to his feet and sniffed loudly. "Hold the horses!" he cried. "Quickly! The lions are here."

Zama ran to Trueheart and seized her halter rope. Bakkat darted to the mules to control them. They would be more docile than the two thoroughbreds. Jim was only just in time. He grabbed Drumfire's head as the stallion reared on his hind legs and whinnied shrilly with terror. Jim was lifted off his feet but he managed to throw an arm around Drumfire's neck, and hold him down. "Steady, my darling. Whoa now! Easy! Easy!" he soothed him. But still the horse stamped and reared and tried to break away. Jim shouted across at Bakkat, "What is it? What's happening?"

"It's the lion," Bakkat panted. "Foul demon! He has circled upwind, and squirted his stinking piss for the horses to smell. The lioness will be waiting down wind to catch any that break away."

"Sweet Christ!" Jim exclaimed. "Even I can smell it!" It was a rank feline stench in the back of his throat, more repulsive than the spray of a tomcat. Drumfire reared again. The odour was driving him crazy. He was beyond control. This time Jim knew he could not hold him. He still had both arms around the stallion's neck but his feet barely touched die ground. Drumfire broke into a gallop dragging Jim along with him.

"The lioness!" Bakkat yelled. "Beware! The lioness is waiting for you."

Drumfire's hoofs thundered over the rocky ground, and Jim felt as though his arms were being wrenched out of their sockets.

"Let him go, Somoya. You cannot stop him!" Bakkat screamed after him. "The lioness will get you too!"

Jim jackknifed his body forward and as his feet struck the earth he used the power of both legs to boost himself high and swing one leg over Drumfire's back. Balancing easily to the stallion's run, he snatch Keyser's pistol from his belt and cocked the hammer with a single movement.

To your right, Somoya!" Bakkat's voice receded behind him, but he picked up the warning just in time. He saw the movement as the lioness broke from cover and streaked in from his right. She was ghostly pale in the faint moonlight, silent, huge and terrible.

He lifted the pistol and leaned forward. He tried to steer Drumfire with the pressure of his knees, but the horse was far beyond any restraint. He saw the lioness get ahead of them and crouch down, gathering herself to spring. Then she rose from the earth, launching herself straight at Jim. There was no time to aim. Instinctively he pointed the muzzle into her

face. She was so close that he could see both her front paws, reaching for him with great curved claws. Her open jaws were a black pit. Her teeth shone like porcelain in the moonlight, and the graveyard stench of her breath blew hot into his face as she roared.

He fired the pistol at the full reach of his right arm, and the muzzle flash blinded him. The weight of the lioness's body crashed into them. Even Drumfire reeled at the weight, but then he gathered himself and galloped on. Jim felt the lioness's claws rip into his boot, but they did not hold. The huge carcass dropped away, tumbled slackly across the hard ground, then lay in an inert pile.

It took seconds for Jim to realize that he had come through the attack unscathed. Then his next care was for Drumfire. He leaned forward and clasped him around the neck, calling to him soothingly, "It's all over, my sweetheart. Whoa! There's a good boy."

Drumfire's ears twitched back as he listened to Jim's voice. He slowed down to an easy trot, and at last to a walk. Jim steered him back up the slope. But as soon as he smelt the lioness's blood, he started mincing and dancing, throwing his head nervously.

"Lioness is dead," Bakkat called out of the darkness. "Shot through the mouth and out the back of her skull."

"Where is the lion?" Jim shouted back.

As if in reply they heard the lion roar near the top of the mountain, a good mile off. "Now she is of no further use to him, he has deserted his wife," Bakkat sneered. "Cowardly and thieving beast."

It was with difficulty that Jim coaxed Drumfire back to where Bakkat stood beside the dead lioness. He was still skittish and nervous. "I've never seen him so terrified," Jim exclaimed.

"No animal can stay calm and brave with the smell of lion's piss or blood in his nostrils," Bakkat told him. Then they exclaimed in the same voice: That's it! We have it!"

It was long after midnight by the time they reached the ridge overlooking the enemy camp. Keyser's watch fires had burned low, but they could see that the sentries were still awake.

"Just a small breeze from the east." Jim held Drumfire's head to calm him. The stallion was still shivering and sweating with terror. Not even Jim's hand and voice could soothe him. Every time the carcass he was towing behind him slithered forward, he rolled his eyes until the whites glared in the moonlight.

"We must keep below the wind," Bakkat murmured. The other horses must not catch the scent until we are ready."

They had muffled Drumfire's hoofs with leather booties, and wrapped

all the metal pieces of his tack. Bakkat went ahead to make sure that the way was clear as they circled out round the western perimeter of the enemy camp.

"Even Xhia has to sleep sometime," Jim whispered to Bakkat, but he was unconvinced. They closed in slowly and were within half a pistol shot of the perimeter where they could see the enemy sentries outlined against the faint glow of their fire.

"Give me your knife, Somoya," whispered Bakkat. "It is sharper than mine."

"If you lose it, I will have both your ears in exchange," Jim muttered, as he handed it over.

"Wait for my signal." Bakkat left him, in his disconcertingly abrupt fashion, seeming to vanish into the air. Jim stood at Drumfire's head, holding his nostrils closed to prevent him whickering at the smell of the other horses so close to him.

Ee a wraith Bakkat drifted closer to the fires and his heart leaped as he saw Xhia. His enemy sat on the opposite side of the second fire, his kaross wrapped about his shoulders. Bakkat could see that his eyes were closed and his head nodded on the verge of sleep.

Somoya was right. Bakkat smiled to himself. He does sleep sometimes.

Nevertheless he kept well clear of Xhia, but he slipped almost contemptuously within touching distance past Corporal Richter who was guarding the horse lines Keyser's grey was the first animal he came to. As Bakkat crept up to it, he began to hum in his throat, a lulling sound. The grey shifted slightly and pricked its ears, but made no other sound. Bakkat took only a moment to sever three strands of its halter rope. Then he moved on to the next horse in the line, still humming his lullaby, and drew the blade carefully across the rope that held it.

He was half-way down the line when behind him he heard Corporal Richter cough, hawk and spit. Bakkat sank to the earth and lay still. He heard Richter's booted footsteps coming down the line and watched him pause beside the grey's head to check the halter. In the darkness he overlooked the unravelling strands of the fraying rope. Then he came on and almost stepped on Bakkat. When he reached the end of the line he unfastened the fly of his breeches and urinated noisily on the earth. When he came back, Bakkat had crawled under the belly of one of the horses, and Richter passed without glancing in his direction. He went back to his place by the fire, and said something to Xhia who grunted a reply.

Bakkat gave them a few minutes to settle again, then crept on down the line of horses, and dealt with each of their halter ropes.

Jim heard the signal, the soft liquid call of a night bird so convincing that he hoped that it was indeed the little man and not a real bird that had uttered it. "No going back now!" He swung up on to Drumfire's back. The stallion needed no urging, his nerves were raw, and as he felt Jim's heels he started forward. The carcass of the lioness, half disembowelled, her reeking guts hanging out of the cavity, slithered after him and Drumfire could stand it no longer. At full tilt he tore into the sleeping camp, and on his back Jim was howling, gibbering and waving his hat over his head.

Bakkat leaped out of the darkness on the far side grunting and roaring at an incredible volume for such a small frame. It was a perfect imitation of the beast.

Corporal Richter, half asleep, staggered to his feet and fired his musket at Jim as he charged past. The ball missed Drumfire but hit one of the horses tethered in the lines, shattering its front leg. The animal screamed and plunged, snapping its weakened halter rope, then fell and rolled on its back kicking in the air. The other troopers woke and snatched up their muskets. The panic was contagious and they blazed away at imaginary lions and attackers, shouting challenges and orders.

"It's the Courtney bastard!" Keyser bellowed. There he is! Shoot him! Don't let him get away!"

The horses were bombarded with shouts and screams and roars, by blasts of gunfire and, finally, by the terrifying scent of lion blood and guts. On the previous night they had been attacked repeatedly by the lion pride, and that memory was still vivid. They could stand no more. They fought their head ropes, kicking, rearing and whinnying with terror. One after another the ropes snapped and the horses were free. They wheeled away and thundered out of the camp in a solid bunch, heading downwind. Close behind them rode Jim on Drumfire. Bakkat darted out of the shadows and seized one of his stirrup leathers. While Drumfire carried him along, Bakkat was still roaring like a ravening lion. In their dust ran Keyser and his troopers, bellowing with rage and firing as fast as they were able to reload.

"Stop them!" Keyser howled. "They have got the horses! Stop them!" He tripped over a rock and fell to his knees, gasping for breath, his heart pounding as though it were about to burst. He stared after the fast vanishing herd, and the import of his predicament struck him with full force. He and his men were stranded in tract less mountainous terrain, at least ten days' march from civilization. Their supplies were severely depleted even those they would not be able to carry with them.

"Swine!" he shouted. "I will get you, Jim Courtney. I will not rest until I see you swinging on the gibbet, until I see the maggots filling your skull and dribbling out of your eye-sockets. I swear by all that is holy, and may God be my witness."

The runaway horses kept bunched together, and Jim herded them along. He cut the rope on which he was towing the lioness, and left her carcass behind. Glad to be rid of his odorous burden, Drumfire calmed down at once. Within a mile the running herd dropped from a gallop to a canter, but Jim kept them moving steadily. Within an hour he knew that none of the troopers, shod as they were and carrying their weapons and equipment, could overhaul them. He slowed down to a steady trot, a pace they could keep up for hours.

Before the attack on Keyser's camp, Jim had sent Zama and Louisa on ahead with Trueheart and the mules. They had had several hours' start, but Jim caught up with them an hour after sunrise. The meeting was emotional.

"We heard the gunfire in the night," Louisa told Jim, 'and feared the worst, but I prayed for you. I didn't stop until a minute ago when I heard you shout behind us."

"That's what did it, then, Hedgehog. You must be a champion prayer maker." Although he grinned, Jim felt an almost irresistible urge to lift her down from Trueheart's back and hold her close, to protect her and cherish her. She looked so thin, pale and exhausted. Instead he swung down from his own saddle. "Make a fire, Zama," he ordered. "We can warm up and rest. Damn me, if we won't eat the last mouthful of the food, drink the last mug of coffee, then sleep until we wake up." He laughed. "Keyset is on his way back to the colony on Shanks's pony and we won't have any more trouble from him for a while."

This time Jim would not allow Louisa to refuse a mug of coffee, and once she had tasted the bitter liquid she could no longer deny herself, and drank the rest thankfully. It revived her almost immediately. She stopped shivering and a little colour returned to her cheeks. She even raised a wan smile at a few of Jim's worst jokes. He refilled the canteen with boiling water every time it was emptied. Each brew of coffee

became progressively weaker but it restored his spirits and he was cheerful and ebullient again. He described to Louisa how Keyser had reacted to the surprise raid, and imitated him staggering about barefoot, waving his sword over his head, bellowing threats and tripping over his own feet in the dark. Louisa laughed until tears ran down her cheeks.

Jim and Zama examined the horses they had captured. They were in good condition, considering the long, gruelling journey that had been forced on them. Keyser's grey gelding was the pick of the herd. Keyser had named him Zehn, but Jim translated that to the English, Frost.

Now that they had remounts they would be able to push on at speed towards the rendezvous on the Gariep. But first Jim rested and grazed the horses knowing that Keyser could not harass them. Louisa took full advantage of this respite. She curled under her kaross and slept. She lay so still that Jim was worried. Quietly he lifted a corner of the fur to make sure she was still breathing.

That morning, just before they had caught up with Zama and Louisa, Jim had spotted a small herd of four or five mountain rhebuck grazing among the rocks higher up the slope from the valley. Now he saddled Frost and Bakkat rode bareback on another of the captured horses. Jim left Louisa to sleep with Zama to guard her, and they rode back to where they had seen the rhebuck. They found that the herd had moved on and the slope was empty, but Jim knew they were unlikely to have gone far. They knee-haltered the horses and left them to graze on a patch of sweet grass with fluffy pink seed heads ripening in the spring sunshine. They climbed the slope.

Bakkat picked up the rhebuck spoor just below the crest, and worked it swiftly, trotting along over rocky ground with Jim striding after him. On the far side of the ridge they found the herd already bedded down in the lee of a cluster of large boulders that sheltered them from the cold wind. Bakkat led Jim in close, leopard-crawling with the musket cradled in the crook of his elbow. At seventy paces Jim knew they could not get closer without bolting the herd. He picked a fat dun-coloured ewe who was lying facing away from him, chewing the cud contentedly. He knew that the musket threw three inches to the right at a hundred paces, so he propped his elbows on his knees for a steady shot and laid off his aim a thumb's width. The ball struck at the base of the ewe's skull with a sound like a ripe melon dropped on a stone floor. She did not move again, except to drop her head flat against the earth. The rest of the herd bounded away, flashing their bushy white tails and whistling with alarm.

They skinned the ewe and gralloched her, feasting on raw liver as

they worked. She was only a medium-sized antelope, but young and plump. They left the skin and head and entrails and between them carried the rest of the carcass back to the horses.

Once they had loaded it on to Frost's back, Bakkat stuffed his food bag with strips of fresh raw meat, and they parted. Armed with Jim's telescope, he rode back to spy on Keyser and his troopers. Jim wanted him to make certain that they had abandoned the chase, now that they had lost their horses, and that they were starting on the long, bitter march back through the mountains to the distant colony. Jim would not trust Keyser to do what was expected of him: he was learning to respect the colonel's tenacity, and the strength of his hatred.

By the time Jim reached the camp where he had left Louisa it was after noon, and she was still sleeping. The aroma of roasting rhebuck steaks roused her. Jim managed to brew one more watery canteen of coffee with the old beans, and Louisa ate with obvious relish.

In the late afternoon, just as the sun was settling on the peaks, painting them bloody and fiery, Bakkat rode back into camp. "I found them about five miles from where we attacked them last night," he told Jim. "They have given up the chase. They have abandoned all of the supplies and equipment they could not carry on their backs they did not even take the time to burn it. I brought back everything I thought we could use."

While Zama helped him unload the booty, Jim asked, "Which way are they heading?"

"As you hoped, Xhia is leading them back west again, straight towards the colony. But they are travelling slowly. Most of the white men are suffering. Their boots are better suited to riding than walking. The fat colonel is already limping, and using a stick. It does not seem as though he will be able to carry on much longer, not for the ten days' travel it will take them to reach the colony." Bakkat looked at Jim. "You said that you did not want to kill him. The mountains might kill him for you."

Jim shook his head. "Stephanus Keyser is no fool. He will send Xhia ahead to fetch fresh horses from the Cape. He might lose some of his belly, but he won't die," he declared, with assurance he did not feel. He added silently, Or, at least, I hope not. He did not want Keyset's murder laid at the door of his family.

For the first time in weeks they did not have to run to keep ahead of their pursuers. Bakkat had found a small bag of flour and a bottle of wine in one of the saddlebags Keyser had abandoned. Louisa cooked flat unleavened bread cakes over the coals, and kebabs of rhebuck meat and liver, and they washed it down with Keyser's fine old claret. Alcohol is

poison to the San, and Bakkat, giggling tipsily, almost fell into the fire when he tried to stand. The fur karosses had dried out after the soaking in the previous day's thunderstorm, and they collected armfuls of cedar wood to feed a fragrant campfire, so they enjoyed their first unbroken sleep for many a night.

Early the next morning they rode on, well fed, rested and mounted, towards the meeting place at the Hill of the Baboon's Head. Only Bakkat was still suffering the ill-effects of the three mouthfuls of wine he had drunk the night before. "I am poisoned," he muttered. "I am going to die."

"No, you won't," Jim assured him. "The ancestors will not take a rogue like you."

For three days Colonel Stephanus Keyser limped along, leaning heavily on the staff that Captain Koots had cut for him, supported on the other side by Goffel, one of the Hottentot troopers. The trail was endless: steep descents followed by treacherous uphill stretches on which the loose round scree rubble rolled underfoot. An hour before noon on the third day of the march Keyser could go no further. He collapsed with a groan on a small boulder beside the game trail they were following.

"Goffel, you useless bastard, pull off my boots," he shouted, and offered one of his feet. Goffel struggled with the large, scuffed, dusty boot, then staggered backwards as it came free in his hands. The others gathered around and stared in awe at the exposed foot. The stocking was in bloody ribbons. The blisters had burst and tatters of skin hung from the open wounds.

Captain Koots blinked his pale eyes. His eyelashes were colourless which gave him a perpetual bland stare. "Colonel, sir, you cannot go on with your feet in that condition."

That's what I have been telling you for the last twenty miles, you gibbering idiot," Keyser roared at him. "Get your men to build me a carrying chair."

The men exchanged glances. They were already heavily burdened with the equipment Keyser had insisted they carry back to the colony, including his English hunting saddle, his folding camp chair and bed, his canteen and bedroll. Now they were about to be accorded the honour of carrying the colonel himself.

"You heard the colonel." Koots rounded on them. "Richter! You and Le Riche find two cedar wood poles. Use your bayonets to trim them

into shape. We will tie the colonel's saddle over them with strips of bark." The troopers scattered to their tasks.

Keyser hobbled on bare, bleeding feet to the stream and sat on the bank. He soaked his feet in the cold clear water and sighed with relief. "Koots!" he shouted, and the captain hurried to join him.

"Colonel, sir!" He stood to attention on the bank. He was a lean, hard man, with narrow hips and wide bony shoulders under the green baize tunic.

"How would you like to earn ten thousand guilders?" Keyser dropped his voice to a confidential tone. Koots thought about that sum of money. It represented almost five years' pay on his present level, and he had no illusions about climbing higher up the military ladder. "It is a large sum of money, sir," he said cautiously.

"I want that young bastard Courtney. I want him as much as anything I have ever wanted in my life."

"I understand, Colonel." Koots nodded. "I would like to get my hands on him myself." He smiled like a cobra at the thought, and clenched his fists instinctively at his sides.

"He is going to get away, Koots," Keyser said heavily. "Before we ever reach the castle he will be over the frontier of the colony and we will never see him again. He has made a jackass of me, and of the

VOC."

Koots showed no sign of distress at these trespasses. He could not prevent a bleak smile reaching his thin lips as he thought, That's no great feat. It doesn't take a genius to make a jackass of the colonel.

Keyser caught a glimmer of the smile. "You, too, Koots. You will be the butt of every joke of every drunkard and whore in every tavern in the colony. You will be buying your own drinks for years to come." Koots's face darkened into a murderous scowl. Keyser pressed the advantage. "That is, Koots, unless you and I can see to it that he is captured and brought back to give a public performance of the rope dance on the parade outside the castle."

"He is taking the Robbers' Road to the north," Koots protested. "The VOC cannot send troops after him. It's outside their suzerainty. Governor van de Witten would never allow it. He could not flout the orders in council of Het Zeventien."

"I could arrange for you, my fine fellow, to take an indefinite leave of absence from the Company service. Paid leave, of course. I would also arrange a travel pass for you to cross the frontier on a hunting expedition. I would give you Xhia and two or three other good men Richter and Le Riche, perhaps? I would provide all the supplies you needed."

"And if I succeed? If I capture Courtney and bring him back to the

castle?"

"I will see to it that Governor van de Witten and the VOC place a bounty on him of ten thousand guilders in gold. I would even settle for his head pickled in a vat of brandewijn."

Koots's eyes widened as he thought about it. With ten thousand guilders he could leave this God-forsaken land for ever. Of course, he could never return to Holland. He was known by a name other than Koots in the old country, and he had unfinished business there that might end on the gallows. However, Batavia was Paradise compared to this backward colony on the tip of a barbaric continent. Koots allowed himself a fleeting erotic fantasy. The Javanese women were famous for their beauty. He had never developed a taste for the simian-featured Hottentots of the Cape. Moreover, there were opportunities in the east for a man who was good with a sword and gun, who did not flinch at the sight of blood, and even more so if he had a purse of gold guilders on his belt.

"What do you say to that, Koots?" Keyser interrupted his daydreams.

"I say fifteen thousand."

"You are a greedy fellow, Koots. Fifteen thousand is a fortune."

"You are a wealthy man, Colonel," Koots pointed out. "I know that you paid two thousand each for Trueheart and Frost. I would bring back your two horses, along with Courtney's head."

At the mention of his stolen horses Keyser's sense of outrage, which he had managed to hold under tenuous control, returned in full force. They were two of the finest animals outside Europe. He looked down at his ruined feet, the pain in them almost as bitter as the loss of his horses. Yet five thousand guilders out of his own purse was indeed a fortune.

Koots saw him wavering. He needed only a gentle push. "Then there is the stallion," he said.

"What stallion?" Keyser looked up from his feet.

"The one who beat you at Christmas. Drumfire. Jim Courtney's stallion. I would throw him into the bargain."

Keyser was weakening, but he set one last condition. "The girl. The convict girl, I want her also."

"I will have a little fun with her first." Although his lean, hard features were impassive, Koots was enjoying the bargaining. "I will bring her to you damaged but alive."

"She is probably damaged already." Keyser laughed. "And will be more so when that young Courtney ram is finished with her. I want her only

to make a good show on the gallows. The crowds always love to see a young girl on the rope. I don't mind what you do to her before that."

"We have an agreement, then?" Koots asked.

"The man, the girl and the three horses." Keyser nodded. Three thousand each, or fifteen thousand for all of them."

There were ten men to share the labour of carrying the colonel. A team of four was changed every hour, timed with Keyset's gold watch. The saddle was in the English style, but the work of one of Holland's finest saddle-makers. They secured it in the centre of the carrying poles. Keyser sat at ease with his feet in the stirrups, while two men at each end lifted the poles on to their shoulders and walked away with them. It took them nine days to reach the colony, the last two without food. The shoulders of the men were sadly galled by the weight of the poles, but Keyser's feet had almost healed, and the enforced diet had slimmed down his belly and bulk; he looked ten years younger.

Keyser's first duty was to report to Governor Paulus Pieterzoon van de Witten. They were old comrades, and shared many secrets. Van de Witten was a tall dyspeptic-looking man of not yet forty. His father and grandfather before him had been members of Het Zeventien in Amsterdam, and his wealth and power were considerable. Very soon he would return to Holland and take his seat on the board of the VOC, as long as there were no blemishes on his career or reputation. The activities of this English bandit might conceivably leave such a stain on his reputation. Colonel Keyser described in detail the crimes against the property and dignity of the VOC perpetrated by the youngest Courtney. Slowly he stoked the flames of the governor's outrage, repeatedly hinting at van de Witten's own responsibility in the affair. Their discussion lasted several hours, helped along by the consumption of quantities of Hollands gin and French claret. Finally van de Witten capitulated and agreed that the VOC would offer a reward of fifteen thousand guilders for the capture of Louisa Leuven and James Archibald Courtney, or for positive proof of their execution.

The placing of rewards on the heads of criminals who had fled the colony was a long-established practice. Many of the hunters and traders who had licences to leave the colony supplemented their profits with bounty money for the VOC.

Keyser was well pleased with this result. It meant that he was not obliged to risk a single guilder of his own carefully accumulated fortune to contribute to the bounty he had agreed with Captain Koots.

That same night Koots visited him in the little cottage in the lane behind the Company gardens. Keyser advanced him four hundred guilders to cover the costs of provisioning the expeditionary force that was to pursue Jim Courtney. Five days later a small party of travellers assembled on the banks of the Eerste river, the first river after leaving the colony. They had come separately to the meeting place. There were four white men: Captain Koots, with his pale eyes and colourless hair, his skin reddened by the sun; Sergeant Oudeman, bald, but with heavy drooping moustaches, Koots's right-hand man and accomplice; Corporals Richter and Le Riche, who hunted together like a pair of wild dogs. Then there were five Hottentot troopers, including the notorious Goffel, who was the interpreter, and Xhia, the Bushman tracker. None of them wore VOC military uniform: they were dressed in the coarse homespun and leather of the Cape burghers. Xhia's loincloth was made of tanned spring buck skin decorated with beads of ostrich eggshell and Venetian trade beads. Over his shoulders he carried his bow and bark quiver of poisoned arrows, and round his waist a belt hung with an array of charms and buck horns filled with magical and medical potions, powders and unguents.

Koots swung up into the saddle and looked down at Xhia, the Bushman. "Take the spoor, you little yellow devil, and drink the wind." They followed Xhia in single file, each trooper leading a spare horse that carried a packsaddle.

"Courtney's spoor will be many weeks old before we cut it again," Koots watched Xhia's bare back and pepper corned head bobbing along ahead of his horse's nose, 'but this hunting dog is a shaitan. He could follow a snowball through the fires of hell." Then he let himself savour the thought of the warrant in his saddlebag signed by Governor van de Witten, and the prospect of fifteen thousand guilders in gold. He smiled. It was not a pretty smile.

Bakkat knew that this was only a respite, and that Keyser would not allow them to escape so easily: sooner rather than later Xhia would be following their spoor again. He scouted well ahead and on the sixth day after the capture of Keyser's horses he found the place ideally suited to his purpose. Here, a stratum of black igneous rock cut diagonally across the floor of a wide valley, through the bed of a fast flowing river, then climbed the steep far side of the valley. The stratum ran straight and stood out as clearly as a paved Roman road, for no grass or other vegetation grew upon it. Where it crossed the river it was so

resistant to the erosion of the waters that it formed a natural weir. The river dropped over the far side, a thundering waterfall, into a whirlpool twenty feet below. The black rock was so hard that not even the steel shod hoofs of the horses left a scratch upon the surface.

"Keyser will come back," Bakkat told Jim, as they squatted on the shiny black floor. "He is a stubborn man, and you have made it a matter of his pride and honour. He will not give up. Even if he does not come himself he will send others to follow you, and Xhia will guide them."