Power of the Sword

Centaine withdrew into the crowd, from where she could watch him secretly.

He is the one thing I will not lose. The thought gave her comfort. I will always have him, after Weltevreden and the H'ani have been taken away. And then suddenly a hideous doubt assailed her. Is that truly so? She tried to close her mind to it, but the doubt slipped through. Does he love me, or does he love what I am? Will he still love me when I am just an ordinary woman, without wealth, without position, with nothing but another man's child? And the doubt filled her head with darkness and sickened her physically, so that when Blaine lifted his fingers to his lips and blew a kiss up

towards the slim, pale, blanket-draped figure in the wheel

chair her jealousy struck again with gale force, and she stared at Blaine's face, torturing herself with his expression of affection and concern for his wife, feeling herself totally excluded and superfluous.

Slowly the gap between the liner and the quay opened.

The ship's band on the promenade deck struck up. God be with you till we meet again'; the bright paper streamers parted one by one and floated down, twisting and turning, falling like her ill-fated dreams and hopes to lie sodden and disintegrating in the murky waters of the harbour. The ship's sirens boomed farewell, and the steam tugs bustled in to take charge and work her out through the narrow entrance of the breakwater. Under her own steam the huge white vessel gathered speed; a bow wave curled at her forefoot and she turned majestically into the north-west to clear Robben Island.

Around Centaine the crowds were drifting away, and within minutes she was alone on the dockside. Above her Blaine still stood on the carriage of the crane, shading his eyes with the Panama hat, staring out across Table Bay for a last glimpse of the tall ship. There was no laughter now, no smile upon that wide mouth that she loved so dearly, He was supporting such a burden of sorrow that perforce she shared it with him, and it blended with her own doubts until the weight of it was unbearable and she wanted to turn and run from it. Then suddenly he lowered the hat and turned and looked down at her.

She felt guilty that she had spied upon him in this unguarded and private moment, and his own expression hardened into something that she could not fathom. Was it resentment or something worse? She never knew for the moment passed. He jumped down from the carriage, landing lightly and gracefully for such a big man, and came slowly to where she waited in the shade of the crane, settling the hat back on his head and shading his eyes with the brim so that she could not be certain what they contained; and she was afraid as she had never been before as he stood before her.

When can we be alone? he asked quietly. For I cannot wait another minute longer to be with you. All her fears, all her doubts, fell away and left her feeling bright and vibrant as a young girl again, almost light-headed with happiness.

He loves me still, her heart sang. He will always love me. General fames Barry Munnik Hertzog came out to Weltevreden in a closed car which bore no mark or insignia of his high office. He was an old comrade in arms of Jan Christian Smuts. Both of them had fought with great distinction against the British during the South African War, and they had both taken a part in the peace negotiations at Vereeniging that ended that conflict. After that they had served together on the national convention that led to the Union of South Africa, and they had both been in the first cabinet of Louis Botha's government.

Since then their ways had diverged, Hertzog taking the narrow view with his South Africa first doctrine while Jan Smuts was the international statesman who had masterminded the formation of the British Commonwealth and had taken a leading part in the birth of the League of Nations.

Hertzog was militantly Afrikaner, and had secured for Afrikaans equal rights with English as an official language.

His Two Streams'policy opposed the absorption of his own Volk into a greater South Africa, and in 1931 he had forced Britain to recognize in the Statute of Westminster the equality of the dominions of the empire, including the right of secession from the Commonwealth.

Tall and austere in appearance, he cut a formidable figure as he strode into the library of Weltevreden which Centaine had placed indefinitely at their disposal, and Jan Smuts rose from his seat at the long green-baize-covered table and came to meet him.

So! Hertzog snorted as he shook hands. We may not have as much time for discussion and manoeuvre as we had hoped. General Smuts glanced down the table at Blaine Malcomess and Deneys Reitz, his confidants and two of his nominees for the new cabinet, but none of them spoke while Hertzog and Nicolaas Havenga, the Nationalist minister of finance, settled themselves on the opposite side of the long table. At seventeen years of age Havenga had ridden with Hertzog on commando against the British, acting as his secretary, and since then they had been inseparable. Havenga had held his present cabinet rank since Hertzog's Nationalists had come to power in 1924.

Are we safe here? he asked now, glancing suspiciously at the double brass-bound mahogany doors at the far end of the library and then sweeping his gaze around the shelves which rose to the ornately plastered ceiling and were filled with Centaine's collection of books, all bound in Morocco leather and embossed with gold leaf.

Quite safe, Smuts assured him. We may speak openly without the least fear of being overheard. I give you my personal assurance. Havenga looked at his master for further assurance and when the prime minister nodded he spoke with apparent reluctance.

Tielman Roos has resigned from the Appellate Division, he announced, and sat back in his seat. It was unnecessary for him to elaborate. Tielman Roos was one of the country's best known and most colourful characters. The Lion of the North was his nickname and he had been one of Hertzog's most loyal supporters. When the Nationalists came to power, he had been minister of justice and deputy premier.

It had seemed that he was destined to be Hertzog's successor, the heir apparent, but then failing health and disagreement over the issue of South Africa's adherence to the gold standard had intervened. He had retired from politics and accepted an appointment to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court.

Health? Jan Smuts asked.

No, the gold standard, Havenga said gravely. He intends

coming out against our remaining upon the standard.

His influence is enormous, Blaine exclaimed.

We cannot let him throw doubt upon our policies, Hertzog agreed. 'A declaration from Roos now could be disastrous. It must be our first priority to agree upon our joint policy on gold. We must be in a position either to oppose or pre-empt his position. It is vitally important that we offer a united front. He looked directly at Smuts.

I agree, Smuts answered. We must not allow our new coalition to be discredited before we have even come into existence. This is a crisis, Havenga interjected. We must handle it as such. May we have your views, Ou Baas? You know my views, Smuts told them. You will recall that I urged you to follow Great Britain's example when she went off the gold standard. I don't wish to throw that in your faces now, but I haven't altered my views since then. Please go over your reasons again, Ou Baas. At the time I predicted that there would be a flight from the South African gold pound into sterling. Bad money always drives out good money, and I was right. That happened, Smuts stated simply, and the men opposite looked uncomfortable. The resulting loss of capital has crippled our industry and sent tens of thousands of our workers to swell the ranks of the unemployed. There are millions of unemployed in Britain herself, Havenga pointed out irritably.

Our refusal to go off gold aggravated unemployment. It has endangered our gold-mining industry. It has sent prices for our diamonds and wool crashing. It has deepened the depression to this tragic level where we now find ourselves. if we go off the gold standard at this late stage, what will be the benefits to the country? 'First and by far the most important, it will rejuvenate our gold-mining industry. If the South African pound falls to parity with sterling, and that is what should happen immediately, it will mean that the mines will receive seven pounds for an ounce of gold instead of the present four. Almost double. The mines that have closed down will re-open. The others will expand. New mines will open providing work for tens of thousands, whites and blacks, and capital will flow back into this country. It will be the turning point. We will be back on the road to prosperity. The arguments for and against were thrown back and forth, Blaine and Reitz supporting the old general, and gradually the two men opposite retreated before their logic until a little after noon Barry Hertzog said suddenly: The timing. There will be pandemonium in the stock exchange. There are only three trading days before Christmas. We must delay any announcement until then, do it only when the exchange is closed. The atmosphere in the library seemed palpable.

With Hertzog's statement, Blaine realized that Smuts had finally carried the argument. South Africa would be off gold before the stock exchange re-opened in the new year. He felt a marvelous sense of elation, of achievement. The first act of this new coalition was to set a term to the country's protracted economic agony, a promise of return to prosperity and hope.

I still have sufficient influence with Tielman to prevail upon him to delay his announcement until after the markets close. Hertzog was still speaking, but it was only the details that remained to be agreed upon and that evening, as Blaine shook hands with the others in front of the white gables of Weltevreden and went to where his Ford was parked beneath the oaks, he was filled with a sense of destiny.

it was this that had attracted him into the political arena, this knowledge that he could help to change the world. For Blaine this was the ultimate use of power, to wield it like a bright sword against the demons that plagued his people and his land.

I have become a part of history, he thought, and the elation stayed with him as he drove out through the magnificent Anreith gates of Weltevreden, the last in the small convoy of vehicles.

Deliberately he let the prime minister's car, followed by the Plymouth that Deneys Reitz was driving, pull even further ahead and then disappear into the bends that snaked up Wynberg Hill. Only then he pulled off onto the verge and sat for a few minutes with the engine idling, watching the rearview mirror to make certain that he was not observed.

Then he put the Ford in gear again and swung a U-turn across the road. He turned off the main road before he reached the Anreith gates, into a lane that skirted the boundary of Weltevreden, and within minutes he was once more on Centaine's land, coming in through one of the back lanes, hidden from the chateau and the main buildings by a plantation of pines.

He parked the Ford amongst the trees and set off along the path, breaking into a run as he saw the whitewashed walls of the cottage ahead of him gleaming in the golden rays of the setting sun. It was exactly as she had described to him.

He paused in the doorway. Centaine had not heard him.

She was kneeling before the open hearth, blowing on the smoky flames that were rising from the pile of pinecones she had set as kindling for the fire. For a while he watched her from the doorway, delighted to be able to observe her while she was still unaware of him.

She had removed her shoes and the soles of her bare feet were pink and smooth, her ankles slim, her calves firm and strong from riding and walking, the backs of her knees dimpled. He had never noticed that before and the dimples touched him. He was moved by the deep tenderness that until now he had felt only for his own daughters, and he made a small sound in his throat.

Centaine turned, springing to her feet the instant she saw him. 'I thought you weren't coming. She rushed to him, holding up her face to him, her eyes shining, and then after a long time she broke off the kiss and still in his arms studied his face.

You are tired, she said.

it has been a long day. Come. Holding his hand she led him to the chair beside the hearth. Before he sat, she slipped the jacket off his shoulders and stood on tiptoe to loosen his necktie.

I've always wanted to do that for you, she murmured, and hung his jacket in the small yellow-wood cupboard before she went to the centre table and poured whisky into a tumbler, squirted soda onto it from the siphon and brought it to him.

Is that right? she asked anxiously, and he sipped and nodded.

Perfect. He looked around the cottage, taking in the bunches of cut flowers in the vases, the gleam of new wax on the floors and simple solid furniture.

Very nice, he said.

I worked all day to have it ready for you. Centaine looked up from the cheroot that she was preparing. Anna used to live here, until she married Sir Garry. Nobody else has used it since then. Nobody comes here. It's our place now, Blaine. She brought the cheroot to him, lit a taper in the fire and held it for him until it was burning evenly. Then she placed one of the leather cushions at his feet and settled upon it, leaning her folded arms on his knee and watching his face in the light of the flames.

How long can you stay? Well, he looked thoughtful. How long do you want me? An hour? Two? Longer? and Centaine squirmed with pleasure and clasped his knees tightly.

The whole night, she gloated. The whole glorious night! She had brought down a basket from the kitchen at Weltevreden. They dined on cold roast beef and turkey and drank the wines from her own vineyards. Afterwards she peeled the big yellow Hanepoort grapes and popped them into his mouth one at a time, kissing his lips lightly between each morsel.

The grapes are sweet, he smiled, but I prefer the kisses. 'Fortunately, sir, there is no shortage of either. Centaine brewed coffee on the open hearth and they drank it sprawled together on the rug in front of the fire, watching the flames, neither of them speaking, but Blaine stroked the fine dark hairs at her temples and at the nape of her neck with his fingertips until slowly the tranquil mood hardened and he ran his fingers down her spine and she trembled and rose to her feet.

Where are you going? he demanded.

Finish your cheroot, she told him. Then come and find out. When he followed her into the small bedroom she was sitting in the centre of the low bed.

He had never seen her in a nightdress before. It was of pale lemon satin and the lace at the neck and cuffs was the colour of old ivory that glowed in the candlelight.

You are beautiful, he said.

You make me feel beautiful, she said gravely, and held out both hands to him.

Tonight their loving, in contrast to the other urgent wildly driven nights, was measured and slow, almost stately. She had not realized that he had learned so much about her body and its special needs. Calmly and skilfully he ministered to them and her trust in him was complete; gently he swept away her last reservations and bore her beyond the sense of self, his body deep in hers and she enfolding him and blendmg with him so that their very blood seemed to mingle and his pulse beat in time to her heart. it was his breath that filled her lungs, his thoughts that gleamed and glimmered through her brain, and she heard her own words echo in his eardrums: I love you, my darling, oh God, how I love you. And his voice replied, crying through the cavern of her own throat, his voice upon her lips, I love you. I love you. And they were one.

He woke before her and the suribirds were twittering in the bright orange-coloured blooms of the tacoma shrubs outside the cottage window.

A beam of sunlight had found a chink in the curtains and it cut through the air above his head like the blade of a golden rapier.

Slowly, very slowly, so as not to disturb her, he turned his head and studied her face. She had thrown aside her pillow and her cheek was pressed to the mattress, her lips almost touching his shoulder, one arm thrown out over his chest.

Her eyes were closed, and there was a delicate pattern of blue veins beneath the soft translucent skin of the lids. Her breathing was so gentle that for a moment he was alarmed, then she frowned softly in her sleep and his alarm gave way to concern as he saw the tiny arrowheads of strain and worry that had been chiselled at the corners of her eyes and mouth during these last months.

My poor darling. His lips formed the words without sound, and slowly the splendid mood of the previous night washed away like sand before the incoming tide of harsh reality.

My poor brave darling. He had not known grief like this since he stood beside his father's open grave. if only there was something I could do to help you, now in this time of your need. And as he sai it the thought occurred to him, and he started so violently that Centaine felt it and rolled away from him in her sleep, frowning again, the corner of her eyelid twitching, and muttered something that he could not understand and then was still.

Blaine lay rigid beside her, every muscle in his body under stress, his fists clenched at his sides, his jaws biting down hard, appalled at himself, angry and frightened that he had even been capable of thinking that thought. His eyes were wide open now. He stared at the bright coin of sunlight on the opposite wall but did not see it, for he was a man on the torturer's rack, the rack of a terrible temptation.

Honour, the words blazed in his mind, honour and duty. He groaned silently as on the other side of his brain another word burned as fiercely: love'.

The woman who lay beside him had set no price upon her love. She had made no terms, no bargains, but had simply given without asking in return. Rather than demanding she had given him quittance; it was she who had insisted that no other person should be hurt by their happiness. Freely she had heaped upon him all the sweets of her love without asking the smallest price, not the gold band and vows of marriage, not even promises or assurances, and he had offered nothing. Until this moment there had been nothing for him to give her in repayment.

on the other hand he had been singled out by a great and good man who had placed unquestioning trust in him.

Honour and duty on one hand, love on the other. This time there was no escape from the lash of his conscience. VVho would he betray, the man he revered or the woman he loved?

He could not lie still another moment and stealthily he lifted the sheet. Centaine's eyelids fluttered; she made a little mewling sound and then settled deeper into sleep.

The previous evening she had laid out a new razor and toothbrush on the washstand in the bathroom for him, and this little thoughtfulness goaded him further. The agony of indecision scourged him as he shaved and dressed.

He tiptoed back into the bedroom and stood beside the bed.

I could walk away, he thought. She will never know of my treachery. And then he wondered at his choice of word.

Was it treachery to keep intact his honour, to cleave to his duty?

He forced the thought aside and made his decision.

He reached down and touched her eyelids. They fluttered open. She looked up at him, her pupils very black and big and unfocused. Then they contracted and she smiled, a comfortable sleepy contented smile.

Darling, she murmured, what time is it? Centaine, are you awake? She sat up quickly, and exclaimed with dismay. Oh Blaine. You are dressed, so soon! Listen to me, Centaine. This is very important. Are you listening? She nodded, blinking the last vestiges of sleep from her eyes, and stared at him solemnly.

Centaine, we are going off gold, he said, and his voice was harsh, rough with self-contempt and guilt. They made the decision yesterday, Ou Baas and Barry Hertzog. We'll be off gold by the time the markets re-open in the New Year. She stared at him blankly for a full five seconds and then suddenly it struck her and her eyes flared wide open, but then slowly the fire in them faded again.

Oh God, my darling, what it must have cost you to tell me that, she said, and her voice shook with compassion, for she understood his sense of honour and knew the depths of his duty. You do love me, Blaine. You do truly love me.

I believe it now. Yet he was glaring at her. She had never seen such an expression on his face before. It was almost as though he hated her for what he had done. She couldn't bear that look, and she scrambled onto her knees in the centre of the rumpled bed and held out her arms in appeal.

Blaine, I won't use it. I won't use what you have told me and he snarled at her, his face contorted with guilt: That way you would let me make this sacrifice for nought. Don't hate me for it, Blaine, she pleaded, and the anger faded from his face.

Hate you? he asked sadly. No, Centaine, that I could never do. He turned and strode from the room.

She wanted to run after him, to try and comfort him, but she knew that it was beyond even the power of her great love. She sensed that, like a wounded lion, he had to be alone, and she listened to his heavy footfalls receding down the path through the plantation outside her window.

Centaine sat at her desk at Weltevreden. She was alone, and in the centre of her desk stood the ivory and brass telephone.

She was afraid. What she was about to do would place her far beyond the laws of society and the courts. She was at the begiming of a journey into uncharted territory, a lonely dangerous journey which could end for her in disgrace and imprisonment.

The telephone rang and she started, and stared at the instrument fearfully. It rang again and she drew a deep breath and lifted the handset.

Your call to Rabkin and Swales, Mrs Courtney, her secretary told her. I have Mr Swales on the line. Thank you, Nigel. She heard the hollow tone of her voice and cleared her throat.

Mrs Courtney, She recognized Swales voice. He was the senior partner in the firm of stockbrokers and she had dealt with him before. 'May I wish you the compliments of the festive season. Thank you, Mr Swales. Her voice was crisp and businesslike. I have a buying order for you, Mr Swales. I'd like it filled before the market closes today. Of course, Swales assured her. We will complete it immediately. Please buy at best five hundred thousand East Rand Proprietary Mines, she said, and there was an echoing silence in the earphones.

Five hundred thousand, Mrs Courtney, Swales repeated at last. 'ERP.M. are standing at twenty-two and six. That is almost six hundred thousand pounds. Exactly, Centaine agreed.

Mrs Courtney, Swales stopped.

Is there some problem, Mr Swales? No, of course not. None at all. You caught me by surprise, that's all. just the size of the order. I will get onto it right away., I will post you my cheque in full settlement just as soon as I receive your contract note for the purchase. She paused, and then went on icily, Unless, of course, you require me to send you a deposit immediately. She held her breath.

Nowbere could she raise even the deposit that Swales was entitled to ask for.

Oh dear, Mrs Courtney! I hope you didn't think, I must sincerely apologize for having led you to think that I might question your ability to pay. There is absolutely no hurry.

We will post you the contract note in the usual way. Your credit with Rabkin and Swales is always good. I hope to confirm the purchase for you by tomorrow morning at the very latest. As you are no doubt aware, tomorrow is the final trading day before the Christmas recess. Her hands were shaking so violently that she had trouble setting the handset of the telephone on its hook.

What have I done? she whispered, and she knew the answer. She had committed a criminal act of fraud, the maximum penalty for which was ten years imprisonment.

She had just contracted a debt which she had no reasonable expectation of honouring. She was bankrupt, she knew she was bankrupt, and she had just taken on another half million pounds obligation. She was taken with a fit of remorse and she reached for the telephone to cancel the order, but it rang before she touched it.

Mrs Courtney, I have Mr Anderson of Hawkes and Giles on the line. Put him on, please Nigel, she ordered, and she was amazed that there was no tremor in her voice as she said, casually, Mr Anderson, I have a purchase order for you, please. By noon she had telephoned seven separate firms of stockbrokers in Johannesburg and placed orders for the purchase of gold-mining shares to the value of five and a half million pounds. Then at last her nerve failed her.

Nigel, cancel the other two calls, please, she said calmly, and ran to her private bathroom at the end of the passage with her hands over her mouth.

just in time she fell to her knees in front of the white porcelain toilet bowl and vomited into it a hard projectile stream, bringing up her terror and shame and guilt, heaving and retching until her stomach was empty and the muscles of her chest ached and her throat burned as though it had been scalded raw with acid.

Christmas Day had always been one of their very special days since Shasa was a child, but she awoke this morning in a sombre mood.

Still in their night clothes and dressing-gowns, she and

Shasa exchanged their presents in her suite. He had hand painted a special card for her, and decorated it with pressed wild flowers. His present to her was Francois Mauriac's new no!el Noeud de Vip&res and he had inscribed on the flyleaf: No matter what, we still have each other Shasa.

Her present to him was a leather flying helmet with goggles and he looked at her with amazement. She had made her opposition to flying very plain.

Yes, cheri, if you want to learn to fly, I'll not stop you. Can we afford it, Mater? I mean, you know- You let me worry about that. 'No, Mater. He shook his head firmly. I'm not a child any more. From now on I am going to help you. I don't want anything that will make it more difficult for you, for us. She ran to him and embraced him quickly, pressing her cheek to his so that he could not see the shine of tears in her eyes.

We are desert creatures. We will survive, my darling. But her moods swung wildly all the rest of that day as Centaine played the grande dame, the chatelaine of Weltevreden, welcoming the many callers at the estate, serving sherry and biscuits and exchanging gifts with them, laughing and charming, and then on the pretext of seeing to the servants hurrying away to lock herself in the mirrored study with the drawn curtains while she fought off the black moods, the doubts and the terrible crippling forebodings.

Shasa seemed to understand, standing in her place when she fell out, suddenly mature and responsible, rallying to her aid as he had never been called upon to do before.

just before noon one of their callers brought tidings which genuinely allowed Centaine to forget for a short time her own forebodings. The Rev. Canon Birt was the headmaster of Bishops and he took Centaine and Shasa aside for a few moments.

Mrs Courtney, you know what a name young Shasa has made for himself at Bishops. Unfortunately next year will be his last with us. We shall miss him. However, I am sure it will come as no surprise to you to hear that I have selected him to be head of school in the new term, or that the board of governors have endorsed my choice. Not in front of the Head, Mater, Shasa whispered, in an agony of embarrassment when Centaine embraced him joyously, but she deliberately kissed both his cheeks in the manner he designated French and pretended to disparage.

That is not all, Mrs Courtney. Canon Birt beamed on this display of maternal pride. I have been asked by the board of governors to invite you to join them. You will be the first woman, ah, the first lady, ever to sit on the board. Centaine was on the point of accepting immediately, but then like the shadow of the executioner's axe the premonition of impending financial catastrophe dulled her vision and she hesitated.

I know you are a very busy person, he was about to urge her.

am honoured, Headmaster, she told him. But there are personal considerations. May I give you my reply in the new year?

Just as long as that is not an outright refusal No, I give you my assurance. If I can, I will. When the last caller had been packed off, Centaine could lead the family, including Sir Garry and Anna and the very closest family friends, down to the polo field for the next act in their traditional Weltevreden Christmas festival.

The entire coloured staff was assembled there, with their children and aged parents and the estate pensioners too old to work, and all the others who Centaine supported. Every one of them was dressed in their Sunday best, a marvelous assortment of styles and cuts and colours, the little girls with ribbons in their hair and the small boys for once with shoes on their feet.

The estate band, fiddles and concertinas and banjoes, welcomed Centaine, and the singing, the very voice of Africa, was melodious and beautiful. She had a gift for each of them, which she handed over with an envelope containing their Christmas bonus. Some of the older women, emboldened by their long service and sense of occasion, embraced her, and so precarious was Centaine's mood that these spontaneous gestures of affection made her weep again, which set the other women off.

It was swiftly becoming an orgy of sentiment and Shasa hastily signalled the band to strike up something lively.

They chose Alabama', the old Cape Malay song that commemorated the cruise of the confederate raider to Cape waters when she captured the Sea Bride in Table Bay on 5

August, 1863.

There comes the Alabama Daar kom die Alabama Then Shasa supervised the drawing of the bung from the first keg of sweet estate wine, and almost immediately the tears dried and the mood became festive and gay.

once the whole sheep on the spits were sizzling and dripping rich fat onto the coals, the second keg of wine had been broached, the dancing was losing all restraint and the younger couples were sneaking away into the vineyards, Centaine gathered the party from the big house and left them to it.

As they passed the Huguenot vineyard, they heard the giggling and scuffling amongst the vines behind the stone wall and Sir Garry remarked complacently: Shouldn't think Weltevreden is going to run short of labour in the foreseeable future. Sounds like a good crop being planted. You are as shameless as they are, Anna buffed, and then giggled herself just as breathlessly as the young girls in the vineyard as he squeezed her thick waist and whispered something in her ear.

That little intimacy lanced Centaine with a blade of loneliness, and she thought of Blaine and wanted to weep again.

But Shasa seemed to sense her pain and took her hand and made her laugh with one of his silly jokes.

The family dinner was part of the tradition. Before they ate Shasa read aloud to them from the New Testament as he had every Christmas Day since his sixth birthday. Then he and Centaine distributed the pile of presents from under the tree, and the salon was filled with the rustle of paper and the ooh's and aah's of delight.

The dinner was roast turkey and a baron of beef followed by a rich black Christmas pudding. Shasa found the lucky gold sovereign in his portion, as he did every year without suspecting that it had been carefully salted there by Centaine during the serving; and when at the end they all tottered away, satiated and heavy-eyed, to their separate bedrooms, Centaine slipped out of the french windows of her study and ran all the way down through the plantation and burst into the cottage.

Blaine was waiting for her and she ran to him. We should be together at Christmas and every other day. He stopped her from going on by kissing her, and she reviled herself for her silliness. When she pulled back in his arms, she was smiling brightly. I couldn't wrap your Christmas present. The shape is all wrong and the ribbon wouldn't stay on. You'll have to take it all natural. Where is it? Follow me, sir, and it shall be delivered unto you. Now that, he said a little later, is by far the nicest present that anybody ever gave me, and so very useful too! There were no newspapers on New Year's Day, but Centaine listened to the news every hour on the radio. There was no mention of the gold standard or any other political issue on these bulletins. Blaine was away, occupied all day with meetings and discussions concerning his candidature for the coming parliamentary by-election at the Gardens. Shasa had gone as house guest to one of the neighbouring estates. She was alone with her fears and doubts.

She read until after midnight and then lay in the darkness, sleeping only fitfully and plagued by nightmares, starting awake and then drifting back into uneasy sleep.

Long before dawn she gave up the attempt to find rest and dressed in jodhpurs and riding-boots and her sheepskin coat.

She saddled her favourite stallion and rode down in the darkness five miles to the railway station at Claremont to meet the early train from Cape Town.

She was waiting on the platform when the bundles of newspapers were thrown out of the goods van onto the concrete quay, and the small coloured newsboys swarmed over them, chattering and laughing as they divided up the bundles for delivery. Centaine tossed one of them a silver shilling and he hooted with glee when she waved away the change and eagerly unfolded the newspaper.

The headlines took up fully half the front page, and they rocked her on her feet.

SOUTH AFRICA ABANDONS GOLD STANDARD HUGE BOOST FOR GOLD MINES She scanned the columns below, barely able to take in any more, and then, still in a daze, rode back up the valley to Weltevreden. Only when she reached the Anreith gates did the full impact of it all dawn upon her. Weltevreden was still hers, it would always be hers, and she rose in the stirrups and shouted with joy, then urged her horse into a flying gallop, lifting him over the stone wall and racing down between the rows of vines.

She left him in his stall and ran all the way back to the chAteau.

She had to talk to someone, if only it could have been Blaine. But Sir Garry was in the dining-room; he was always first down for breakfast.

Have you heard the news, my dear? he cried excitedly the moment she entered. I heard it on the radio at six o'clock. We are off gold. Hertzog did it! By God, there will be a few fortunes made and lost this day! Anybody who is holding gold shares will double and treble their money. Oh, my dear, is something wrong? Centaine had collapsed into her chair at the head of the dining-room table.

No, no. She shook her head frantically. There is nothing wrong, not any more. Everything is all right, wonderfully, magnificently, stupendously all right. At lunchtime Blaine telephoned her at Weltevreden. He had never done so before. His voice sounded hollow and strange on the scratchy line. He did not announce himself but said Simply: Five o'clock at the cottage. Yes, I'll be there. She wanted to say more but the line clicked dead.

She went down to the cottage an hour early with fresh flowers, clean crisply ironed linen for the bed and a bottle of Bollinger champagne, and she was waiting for him when he walked into the living-room.

There are no words that can adequately express my gratitude, she said.

That is the way I want it, Centaine, he told her seriously.

No words! We will never talk about it again. I shall try to convince myself it never happened. Please promise me never to mention it, never again as long as we live and love each other. I give you my solemn word, she said, and then all her relief and joy came bubbling up and she kissed him, laughing. Won't you open the champagne? And she raised the brimming glass when he handed it to her and gave him his own words back as a toast: For as long as we live and love each other, my darling. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange re-opened on January the second and in the first hour very little business could be conducted, for the floor was like a battlefield as the brokers literally tore at each other, screaming for attention. But by call-over the market had shaken itself out and settled at its new levels.

Swales of Rabkin and Swales was the first of her brokers to telephone Centaine. Like the market, his tone was buoyant and effervescent.

My dear Mrs Courtney, in the circumstances, Centaine was prepared to let that familiarity pass, my very dear Mrs Courtney, your timing has been almost miraculous. As you know, we were unfortunately unable to fill your entire purchase order. We were able to obtain only four hundred and forty thousand ERPMs at an average price of twenty-five shillings. The volume of your order pushed the price up two and six. However, she could almost hear him puffing himself up to make his announcement, however, I am delighted to be able to tell you that this morning ERPMs are trading at fifty-five shillings and still rising. I am looking forward to sixty shillings by the end of the week Sell them, Centaine said quietly and heard him choke at the end of the line.

If I may be permitted to offer a word of advice Sell them, she repeated. Sell all of them. And she hung up, staring out of the window as she tried to calculate her profits, but the telephone rang again before she reached a total, and one after another her other brokers triumphantly reported on the contracts she had made. Then there was a call from Windhoek.

Dr Twenty-man-Jones, it's so good to hear your voice. She had recognized him instantly.

Well, Mrs Courtney, this is a pretty pickle, Twenty-man-Jones told her glumly. The H'ani Mine will be back in profit again now, even with the parsimonious quota De Beers is allowing us. We've turned the corner, Centaine enthused. We are out of the woods. Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. Gloomily Twenty-man-Jones capped cliche with cliche.

Best not to count our chickens, Mrs Courtney. Dr Twenty-man-Jones, I love you. Centaine laughed delightedly, and there was a shocked silence that echoed across a thousand miles of wire. I'll be there just as soon as I can get away from here. There is a lot for us to work on now., She hung up and went to look for Shasa. He was down at the stables chatting with his coloured grooms as they sat in the sun dubbining his polo harness and saddlery.

Cheri, I am driving into Cape Town. Will you come with me? 'What are you going all that way for, Mater? It's a surprise. That was the one certain way to gain Shasa's full attention and he tossed the harness he was working on to Abel and sprang to his feet.

Her ebullient mood was infectious and they were laughing together as they walked into Porters Motors showroom on Strand Street. The sales manager came from his cubicle on the run.

Mrs Courtney, we haven't seen you in far too long. May I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year. It's off to a good start on both counts, she smiled. Speaking of happiness, Mr Tims, how soon can you deliver my new Daimler? It will be yellow, naturally? With black piping, naturally! And the usual fittings, the vanity, the cocktail cabinet? All of them, Mr Tims. I will cable our London office immediately. Shall we say four months, Mrs Courtney? Let us rather say three months, Mr Tims. Shasa could barely contain himself until they were on the pavements in front of the showroom.

Mater, have you gone bonkers? We are paupers! Well, cheri, let's be paupers with a little class and style. Where are we going now? The post office. At the telegraph counter Centaine drafted a cable to Sotheby's in Bond Street: Sale no longer contemplated. Stop. Please cancel all preparations.

Then they went to lunch at the Mount Nelson Hotel.

Blaine had promised to meet her as early as he was able to escape from the meeting of the proposed new coalition cabinet. He was as good as his word, waiting for her in the pine forest, and when she saw his face her happiness shrivelled.

What is it, Blaine? Let's walk, Centaine. I've been indoors all day. They climbed the Karbonkelberg slopes behind the estate.

At the summit they sat on a fallen log to watch the sunset and it was magnificent.

This was the fairest Cape which we discovered in all our circumnavigation of the earth, she misquoted from Vasco da Garna's log, but Blaine did not correct her as she had hoped he might.

Tell me, Blaine. She took his arm and insisted, and he turned his face to her.

Isabella, he said sombrely.

You have heard from her? Her spirits sank deeper at the name.

The doctors can do nothing for her. She will be returning on the next mail ship from Southampton. in the silence the sun sank into the silver sea, taking the light from the world, and Centaine's soul was as dark.

How ironic it is, she whispered. Because of you I can have anything in this world except that which I most desire you, my love. The women pounded the fresh millet grain in the wooden mortars into a coarse fluffy white meal and filled one of the leather sacks.

Carrying the sack, Swart Hendrick, followed by Moses his brother, left the kraal after the rise of the new moon and crept silently up the ridge in the night. While Hendrick stood guard, Moses climbed to the old eagle owl nest in the leadwood tree and brought down the cartridge paper packets.

They moved along the ridge until they were beyond all possible chance of observation from the village, and even then they very carefully screened the small fire that they built amongst the ironstone boulders. Hendrick broke open the packets and poured the gleaming stones into a small calabash gourd while Moses prepared the millet meal in another gourd, mixing it with water until it was a soft porridge.

Meticulously Hendrick burned the cartridge paper wrappings in the fire and stirred the ashes to powder with a stick.

When it was done he nodded at his younger brother and Moses poured the dough over the coals. As it began to bubble Hendrick buried the diamonds in the unleavened dough.

Moses muttered ruefully as the millet cakes bubbled and hardened. It was almost an incantation. These are death stones. We will have no joy of them. The white men love them too dearly: they are the stones of death and madness. Hendrick ignored him and shaped the baking loaves, squinting his eyes against the smoke and smiling secretly to himself. When each round loaf was crisped brown on the underside he flipped it over and let it cook through until it was brick hard; then he lifted it off the fire and set it out to cool. Finally he repacked the crude thick loaves into the leather sack and they returned quietly to the sleeping village.

In the morning they left early and the women went with them the first mile of the journey, ululating mournfully and singing the song of farewell. When they fell behind neither of the men looked back. They trudged on towards the low brown horizon, carrying their bundles balanced on their heads. They did not think about it, but this little scene was acted out every single day in a thousand villages across the southern. sub-continent.

Days later the two men, still on foot, reached the recruitment station. It was a single-roomed general-dealer's store, standing alone at a remote crossroad on the edge of the desert. The white trader augmented his precarious business by buying cattle hides from the surrounding nomadic tribes and by recruiting for Wenela'.

Wenela was the acronym for the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, a ubiquitous sprawling enterprise which extended its tentacles into the vastness of the African wilderness. From the peaks of the Dragon Mountains in Basutoland to the swamps of the Zambezi and Chobe, from the thirstlands of the Kalahari to the rain forest of the high plateau of Nyasaland, it gathered up the trickle of black men and channelled them first into a stream and finally into a mighty river that ran endlessly to the fabulous goldfields of the Ridge of White Waters, the Witwatersrand of Transvaal.

The trader looked over these two new recruits in a perfunctory manner as they stood dumbly before him. Their faces were deliberately expressionless, their eyes blank, the only perfect defence of the black African in the presence of the white man.

Name? the trader demanded.

Henry Tabaka. Hendrick had chosen his new name to cover his relationship to Moses and to throw off any chance connection with Lothar De La Rey and the robbery.

Name? The trader looked at Moses.

Moses Gama. He pronounced it with a guttural G'.

Have you worked on the mines before? Do you speak English? 'Yes, Basie. They were obsequious, and the trader grinned.

Good! Very good! You will be rich men when you come home from Goldi. Plenty of wives. Plenty of jig-jig, hey? He grinned lasciviously as he issued them each with a green Wenela card and a bus ticket. The bus will come soon. Wait outside, he ordered, and promptly lost all interest in them.

He had earned his guinea-a-head recruitment fee, good money easily made, and his obligation to the recruits was at an end.

They waited under the scraggy thorn tree at the side of the iron-roofed trading store for forty-eight hours before the railway bus came rattling and banging and blowing blue smoke across the dreary wastes.

it stopped briefly and they slung their meagre luggage up onto the roofrack that was already piled with calabashes and boxes and bundles, with trussed goats and cages of woven bark stuffed with live fowls. Then they climbed into the overloaded coach and squeezed onto one of the hard wooden benches. The bus bellowed and blustered on over the plains and the rows of black passengers, wedged shoulder to shoulder, jolted and swayed in unison as it pitched and rolled over the rutted tracks.

Two days later the bus stopped outside the barbed-wire gates of the Wenela staging post on the outskirts of Windhoek, and most of the passengers, all young men, descended and stood looking about them aimlessly until a huge black overseer with brass plaques of authority on his arm and a long sjambok in his hand chivied them into line and led them through the gates.

The white station manager sat on the stoep of his office building, his boots propped on the half wall of the stoep and a black bottle of German lager at his elbow, fanning himself with his hat. One at a time, the black boss-boy pushed the new recruits in front of him for appraisal. He rejected only one, a skinny little runt of a man who barely had the strength to shuffle up to the verandah.

That bastard is riddled with TB. The manager took a gulp of his lager. Get rid of him. Send him back where he came from. When Hendrick stepped forward he straightened up in his thonged chair and set down the lager glass.

What is your name, boy? he asked.

Tabaka. Ha, you speak English. The manager's eyes narrowed. He could pick out the troublemakers; that was his job. He could tell by their eyes, the gleam of intelligence and aggression in them. He could tell by the way they walked and carried their shoulders; this big strutting, sullen black was big trouble.

,R

You in trouble with the police, boy? he asked again. You steal other man's cattle? You kill your brother perhaps, or jig-jig his wife, hey? Hendrick stared at him flatly.

Answer me, boy. No!

You call me Baas when you speak to me, do you understand? Yes, Baas, Hendrick said carefully, and the manager opened the police file that lay on the table beside him and thumbed through it slowly, suddenly looking up to catch any sign of guilt or apprehension on Hendrick's face. But he was wearing the African mask again, dumb, and resigned and inscrutable.

Christ, they stink. He threw the file back onto the table again.

Take them away, he told the black boss-boy, and he picked up his beer bottle and glass and went back into his office.

You know better than that, my brother, Moses whispered to him as they were marched away towards the line of thatched huts. When you meet a hungry white hyena, you do not put your hand in his mouth, and Hendrick did not reply.

They were fortunate; the draft was almost full, three hundred black men already gathered in and waiting in the line of huts behind the barbed-wire fence. Some of them had been there ten days and it was time for the next stage of their journey, thus Hendrick and Moses were not forced to endure another interminable wait. That night three railway coaches were shunted onto the spur of line that ran beside the camp and the boss-boys roused them before dawn.

Gather your belongings. Shayile! The hour has struck.

The steamer waits to take you to Goldi, to the place of gold. They formed up in their ranks again and answered to the roll-call. Then they were marched to the waiting coaches.

Here there was another white man in charge. He was tall and sunbrowned, his khaki shirtsleeves rolled up high on his sinewy biceps and wisps of blond hair hanging from under the shapeless black hat that was pulled low down on his forehead. His features were flat and Slavic, his teeth crooked and stained with tobacco smoke and his eyes were light misty blue; he smiled perpetually in a bland idiotic fashion and sucked at a cavity in one of his back teeth. He carried a sjambok on a thong from his wrist, and now and then, for no apparent reason, he flicked the tapered end of the hippohide whip against the bare legs of one of the men filing past him; it was a casual act born of disinterest and disdain rather than calculated cruelty, and though each stroke was feathery light, it stung like a hornet and the victim gasped and skipped and shot up the ladder into the coach with alacrity.

Hendrick drew level with him and the foreman's lips drew back from his bad teeth as he smiled even more widely. The camp manager had pointed the big Ovambo out to him.

A bad one, he had warned him. Watch him. Don't let him get out of hand. And now he used his wrist in the stroke that he aimed at the tender skin at the back of Hendrick's knee.

Che-cha! the overseer ordered. Hurry up! And the lash popped as it wrapped around Hendrick's leg. It did not split the skin, the overseer was an expert, but it left a purple black welt on the dark velvety skin.

Hendrick stopped dead, the other leg lifted to the first rung of the boarding ladder, gripping the rail with his free hand, with the other hand balancing his bundle on his shoulder, and he turned his head slowly until he was staring into the overseer's pale blue eyes.

Yes! I The overseer encouraged him softly, and for the first time there was a sparkle of interest in his eyes. He altered his stance subtly, coming onto the balls of his feet.

Yes! he repeated. He wanted to take this big black bastard, here in front of all the others. They were going to be five days in these coaches, five hot thirsty days during which tempers and nerves would be rubbed raw. He always liked to do it right at the beginning of the journey. It only needed one, and it would save a lot of trouble later if he made an example right here on the siding. That way all of them would know what to expect if they started anything, and in his experience they never did start anything after that.

Come on, kaffir. He dropped his voice even lower, making the insult more personal and intense. He enjoyed this part of his work, and he was very good at it. This cocky bastard would not be fit to travel when he had finished with him. He wouldn't be much use to anybody with four or five ribs stoved in, and perhaps a broken jaw.

Hendrick was too quick for him. He went up the ladder into the coach in a single bound, leaving the overseer on the siding, braced and poised for his attack with the sjambok held over-hand, ready to drive the point of the butt into Hendrick's throat as he charged.

Hendrick's move took him completely off balance so that when he aimed a hard cut of the lash at Hendrick's legs as he went up the ladder, he was too late by a full half second and the stroke hissed and died in air.

Following behind his brother, Moses saw the murderous expression on the white overseer's face as he passed. It is not yet ended, he warned Hendrick as they placed their bundles on the overhead racks and settled on the hard wooden bench that ran the length of the coach. He will come after you again. In the middle of the morning the three coaches were pulled off the spur and coupled to the rear of a long train of goods carriages, and after another few hours of shunting and jolting and false starts, they rumbled slowly up the hills and then ran southwards.

Late in the afternoon the train stopped for half an hour at a small siding and a food barrow was loaded into the leading coach. Under the pale eyes of the white overseer the two black boss-boys wheeled the barrow down the crowded coaches and each of the recruits was handed a small tin dish of white maize cake over which a dollop of bean stew had been spooned.

When they reached Swart Hendrick's seat, the white overseer shouldered the boss-boy aside and took the dish from his hands to serve Hendrick's portion himself.

We must look after this kaffir, he said loudly. We want him to be strong for his work at Goldi. And he spooned an extra portion of bean stew into the dish and offered it to Hendrick.

Here, kaffir. But as Hendrick reached for the dish, he deliberately let it drop onto the floor. The hot stew splashed over Hendrick's feet and the overseer stepped into the mess of maize porridge and ground it under his boot. Then he stood back with one hand on the billy club in his belt and grinned.

Hey, you clumsy black bugger, you only get one ration.

if you want to eat it off the floor, that's up to you. He waited expectantly for Hendrick to react, and then grimaced with disappointment when Hendrick dropped his eyes, leaned forward and began to scrape the mashed cake into the dish with his fingers, then scooped a ball of it into his mouth and munched on it stolidly.

You bloody niggers will eat anything, even your own dung, he snarled and went on down the coach.

The windows of the coaches were barred, and the doors at both ends were locked and bolted from the outside. The overseer carried the ring of keys on his belt, carefully securing all doors behind him as he passed. From experience he knew that many of the recruits would begin to have misgivings as soon as the journey began, and driven by homesickness and increasing fear of the unknown, by the disturbing unfamiliarity of all about them, would begin to desert, some of them even leaping from the speeding coach. The overseer made his rounds every few hours, meticulously counting heads, even in the middle of the night, and he stood over Hendrick deliberately shining the beam of his lantern into his face, waking him every time he passed down the coach.

The overseer never tired of his efforts to provoke Hendrick. It had become a challenge, a contest between them. He knew it was there; he had seen it in Hendrick's eyes, just a flash of the violence and menace and power, and he was determined to bring it out, flush it into the open where he could crush it and destroy it.

Patience, my brother, Moses whispered to Hendrick.

Hold your anger. Cherish it with care. Let it grow until it is full term, until you can put it to work for you., Hendrick was coming to rely more on his brother's advice and counsel with each day that passed. Moses was intelligent and persuasive, his tongue quick to choose the right word, and that special presence which he possessed made other men listen when he spoke.

Hendrick saw these special gifts of his demonstrated clearly in the days that followed. At first he spoke only to the men that sat near him in the hot crowded coach. He told them what it would be like at the place where they were going, and how the white men would treat them, what would be expected of them and what the consequences would be if they disappointed their new employers.

The black faces around him were intent as they listened, and soon those further up the benches were craning to catch his words and calling softly. Speak, louder, Gama. Speak, that all of us may hear your words. Moses Gama raised his voice, a clear compelling baritone, and they listened with respect. There will be many black men at Goldi. More than you ever believed possible, Zulus and Xhosas and N'debeles and Swazis and Nyasas, fifty different tribes speaking so many languages that you have never heard before. Tribes as different from you as you are different from the white man. Some of them will be traditional blood enemies of our tribe, waiting and watching like hyenas for a chance to turn upon you and savage you. There will be times when you are deep in the earth, down there where it is always night, that you will be at the mercy of such men.

To protect yourselves you must surround yourselves with men you can trust; you must place yourself under the protection of a strong leader; and in return for this protection you must give this chieftain your obedience and loyalty., And very soon they came to recognize that Moses Gama was this strong leader. Within days he was the undisputed chieftain of all the men in coach three, and while he was talking to them and answering their queries, stilling their fears and misgivings, Moses was in his turn assessing their individual worth, watching and weighing each of them, selecting, evaluating and discarding. He began to rearrange the seating in the coach, ordering those whom he had chosen to move closer to his own seat in the centre, gathering around him the pick of the recruits. And immediately the men he had singled out gained prestige; they formed an elite praetorian guard around their new emperor.

Hendrick watched him doing it, manipulating the men around him, subjecting them to the force of his will and personality, and he was filled with admiration and pride for his younger brother, giving up his own last reservations and willingly according to him his full loyalty and love and obedience.

By association with Moses, Hendrick himself was accorded the respect and veneration of the other men in the coach. He was Moses captain and henchman and they recognized him as such, and quite slowly it dawned upon Hendrick that in a few short days Moses Gama had forged himself an impi, a band of warriors on whom he could rely implicitly, and that he had done it with almost no apparent effort.

Sitting in the crowded coach that was already stinking like an animal cage with the rancid sweat of a hundred hot bodies and with the stench from the latrine cubicle, and mesmerized by the Messianic eyes and words of his own brother, Hendrick thought back to the other great black rulers who had emerged from the mists of African history, to lead first a tiny band, then a tribe and finally a vast horde of warriors across the continent, ravaging and plundering and laying waste.

He thought of Mantatisi and Chaka and Mzilikazi, of Shangaan and Angoni, and with a flash of clairvoyance he saw them at their beginnings, sitting like this at some remote camp-fire in the wilderness, surrounded by a small group of men, weaving the spell over them, capturing their imagination and spirit with a silken noose of words and ideas, inflaming them with dreams.

I stand at the beginning of an enterprise which I do not yet understand, he thought. All I have done up until this time was only my initiation, all the fighting and killing and striving was but a training. Now I am ready for the endeavour, whatever it may be, and Moses Gama will lead me to it. I do not need to know what it is. It is sufficient only that I follow where it leads. And he was listening avidly as Moses spoke names that he had never heard and expounded ideas that were new and strangely exciting.

Tenin, said Moses, not a man, but a god come down to earth. And they thrilled to the tale of a land to the north where the tribes had united under this man-god Lenin, had smitten down a king and in doing so had become part of the godhead themselves.

They were enchanted and aroused as he told them of a war such as the earth had never seen before, and their atavistic battlelust scalded their veins and pumped up their hearts, hard and hot as the head of the fighting axe when it comes red and glowing from the ironsmith's forge. The revolution Moses called this war, and as he explained it to them, they saw that they could be part of this glorious battle, they too could be slayers of kings and become part of the godhead.

The door at the head of the coach crashed back on its slide and the white overseer stepped through and stood with his hands on his hips, grinning mirthlessly at them, and they lowered their heads and stared at the floor, hooding and screening their eyes. But those sitting close to Moses, the chosen ones, the elite, they began to understand then where the battle would be fought and who were the kings that would be slain.

The white overseer sensed the charged atmosphere in the coach. It was thick as the odour of unwashed black bodies and the stink of the latrine in the corner of the coach; it was as electric as the air at noon in the suicide days of November just before the great rains break, and he searched quickly for Hendrick sitting in the centre of the coach.

One rotten potato, he thought bitterly, and the whole sackful is spoiled. He touched the billy club in his belt. He had found out the difficult way that the lash of the sjambok was too long to wield effectively in the confines of the coaches. The billy was a stopper, fourteen inches of hard wood, the end drilled and filled with lead shot. He could break bone with it, crush in a skull to kill a man instantly if he needed to, or with a delicate alteration of the weight of the blow merely stun him. He was an artist with the billy club, as he was with the sjambok, but each had its place and time. It was the billy's time now, and he moved slowly down the coach, pretending to ignore Hendrick, examining the faces of each of the other men as he passed, seeing the new rebelliousness in their sullen faces and becoming more angry with the man who had made his task more difficult.

I should have gone after him at the beginning, he told himself bitterly. I've almost left it too late. Me, who loves the quiet life and the easy way. Well, we'll have to make the best of it now. He glanced casually at Hendrick as he passed, and then from the corner of his eye saw the big Ovambo relax slightly as he went on down the aisle between the seats.

You are expecting it, my boy. You know it has to happen, and I'm not going to disappoint you. At the far door of the coach he paused, as if he had an afterthought, and he came back down the aisle slowly, grinning to himself. Now he stopped in front of Hendrick again, and sucked noisily at the cavity in his tooth.

Look at me, kaffir, he invited pleasantly and Hendrick lifted his chin and stared at him.

Which is your mpahle? he asked. Which is your luggage? and Hendrick was taken off-guard. He was acutely conscious of the treasure of diamonds in the rack above his head and now he glanced up at the leather sack instinctively.

Good. The white overseer lifted the sack off the rack and dropped it onto the floor in front of Hendrick.

Open it, he ordered, still grinning, one hand on his hip the other on the handle of the billy.

Come on. The grin became cold and wolfish as Hendrick sat without moving. Open it, kaffir. Let's see what you are hiding!

It had never failed him yet. Even the most docile of men would react to protect their belongings, no matter how worthless and insignificant.

Slowly Hendrick leaned forward and untied the neck of the leather sack. Then he straightened again and sat passively.

The white overseer stooped, seized the bottom of the sack and straightened up again, never taking his eyes off Hendrick's face. He shook the sack vigorously, spilling the contents onto the floor.

The blanket roll fell out first, and using the toe of his boot the overseer spread it open. There was a sheepskin gilet and other spare clothing in the roll, and a nine-inch knife in a leather sheath.

Dangerous weapon, said the overseer. You know that no dangerous weapons are allowed in the coaches. He picked up the knife, pressed the blade into the niche of the window and snapped it off; then he tossed the two separate pieces out between the bars of the window behind Hendrick's head.

Hendrick did not move, although the overseer waited for almost a minute, staring at him provocatively. The only sound was the clackety-clack of the bogey over the cross ties of the steel lines and the faint buffing of the locomotive at the head of the train. None of the other black passengers was watching the small drama develop; they were all staring straight ahead of them, faces closed, eyes unseeing.

What is this rubbish? the overseer asked and touched one of the hard flat millet cakes with his toe, and though Hendrick did not move a muscle, the white man saw the first spark in those black smoky eyes.

Yes, he thought gleefully. That's it. Now he will move. And he picked up a loaf and sniffed it thoughtfully.

Kaffir bread, he murmured. Not allowed. Company rules no food allowed on the train. And he turned the flat loaf on edge so that it would pass between the bars and he tossed it through the open window. The loaf bounced on the embankment below the rocketing steel wheels and then shattered into fragments, and the overseer chuckled and stooped for the next loaf.

It snapped in Hendrick's head. He had held it in check too long and the loss of the diamonds drove him berserk. He went for the white man, launching himself out of the seat, but the overseer was ready for him. He straightened his right arm and drove the point of the billy club into Hendrick's throat. Then, as Hendrick fell back choking and clutching at his throat, he whipped the club into the front of his skull, judging it finely, not a killing blow, and Hendrick's hand dropped from his damaged throat as he toppled forward.

However, the overseer would not let him fall, and with his left hand shoved him back against the seat, holding him upright while he worked with the club.

It rang like an axe on wood as it bounced off the bone of Hendrick's skull, and it opened the thin skin of his scalp and the blood sprang up in little ruby-bright fountains. The overseer hit him three times, measured calculated blows, and then he thrust the point of the club into Hendrick's slack gaping mouth, snapping off both his incisor teeth level with the gums.

Always mark them! It was one of his maxims. Mark them so they don't forget. Only then did he release the unconscious man and let him topple, head first, into the centre of the aisle.

Instantly he whipped around and poised on his toes like a puffadder cocking itself into the threatening S of the strike.

With the billy club ready in his right hand he stared down the shocked eyes of the black men around him. Quickly they dropped their gaze from his and the only movement was the jerking of their bodies in time to the swaying clatter of the coach beneath them.

Hendrick's blood was puddling under his head, and then running in little dark red snakes across the floor of the aisle.

The overseer smiled again, looking down with an almost paternal expression at the recumbent figure. it had been a beautiful performance, quick and complete, exactly as he had planned it, and he had enjoyed it. The man at his feet was his own creation and he was proud of it.

He picked up the other millet loaves out of the blood puddle and one at a time tossed them out between the bars of the window. Finally he squatted over the man at his feet and on the back of his shirt carefully wiped the last traces of blood from his billy. Then he stood up, replaced the club in his belt and walked slowly down the aisle.

it was all right now. The mood had changed, the atmosphere was defused. There would be no more trouble. He had done his job, and done it well.

He went out onto the balcony of the coach, and smiling thinly, locked the sliding door behind him again.

The moment the door closed the men in the carriage came back to life. Moses gave his orders crisply and two of them lifted Hendrick back into his seat; another went to the water tank beside the latrine door, while Moses opened his own pack and brought out a stoppered buckhorn.

While they steadied Hendrick's lolling head, Moses poured a brown powder from the buckhorn into the wounds in his scalp. It was a mixture of ash and herbs, powdered finely, and he rubbed it into the open flesh with his finger. The bleeding stopped, and with a wet cloth he cleaned his brother's broken mouth. Then he cradled his unconscious head in his arms, and waited.

Moses had watched the conflict between his brother and the white man with almost clinical interest, deliberately restraining and directing Hendrick's reaction until the drama had reached this explosive climax. His attachment to his brother was still tenuous. Their father had been a prosperous and lusty man and had brought all of his fifteen wives regularly to the child-bed. Moses had over thirty brothers and sisters. Towards very few of them he felt any special affection beyond vague tribal and family duty. Hendrick was many years his senior and had left the kraal when Moses was still a child. Since then the tales of his exploits had filtered back to him, and Hendrick's reputation had grown on these accounts of wild and desperate deeds. But tales are only tales until they are proven and reputations can be built on words and not deeds.

The testing time was at hand. Moses would consider the results of the test and upon them would depend their future relationship. He needed a hard man as his lieutenant, one of the steely men. Lenin had chosen Joseph Stalin. He would choose a man of steel also, a man like an axe, and with him as a weapon he would hack and shape his own plans out of the hard wood of the future. If Hendrick failed the test Moses would toss him aside with as little compassion as he would an axe whose blade had shattered at the first stroke against the trunk of a tree.

Hendrick opened his eyes and looked at his brother with dilated pupils; he moaned and touched the open wounds on his scalp. He winced at the pain and his pupils shrank and focused, and the rage flamed in their depths as he struggled upright.

The diamonds? His voice was low and sibilant as the hiss of one of those deadly little horned adders of the desert.

Gone, Moses told him quietly.

We must go back, find them. But Moses shook his head.

They are scattered like the seeds of the grass; there is no way to mark their fall. No, my brother, we are prisoners in this coach. We cannot go back. The diamonds are lost for ever. Hendrick sat quietly, with his tongue exploring his shattered mouth, running it over the jagged stumps of his front teeth, considering his brother's cold logic. Moses waited quietly. This time he would give no orders, point no direction, no matter how subtle. Hendrick must come to it of his own accord.

You are right, my brother, Hendrick said at last. The diamonds are gone. But I am going to kill the man that did this to us. Moses showed no emotion. He offered no encouragement.

He merely waited.

I will do it with cunning. I will find a way to kill him, and no man will ever know, except him and us. Still Moses waited. So far Hendrick was taking the path that he had laid out for him. However, there was still something else he must do. He waited for it, and it came as he had hoped it would.

Do you agree that I should kill this white dog, my brother? He had asked for sanction from Moses Gama. He had acknowledged his liege lord, placed himself in his brother's hands, and Moses smiled and touched his brother's arm as though he were placing a mark, a brand of approval, upon him.

Do it, my brother, he ordered. If he failed, the white men would hang him on a rope; if he succeeded he would have proved himself an axe, a steely man.

Hendrick brooded darkly in his seat, not speaking for another hour. Occasionally massaging his temples when the throbbing pain of the blows threatened to burst his skull open. Then he rose and moved slowly down the coach examining each of the barred windows, shaking his head and muttering at the pain. He returned to his seat and sat there for a while, and then rose once again and shuffled down the aisle to the latrine cubicle.

He locked himself into the cubicle. There was an open hole in the deck and through it he could see the rushing blur of the stone embankment below the coach. Many of the men using the latrine had missed the hole, and the floor slopped with dark yellow urine and splattered faeces.

Hendrick turned his attention to the single unglazed window. The opening was covered with steel mesh in a wire frame which was screwed into a wooden frame at each corner and at the centre of each side.

He returned to his seat in the carriage and whispered to Moses, 'The white baboon took my knife. I need another. Moses asked no questions. It was part of the test. Hendrick must do it alone and, if he failed, accept the full consequences without expecting Moses to share them or attempt to aid him. He spoke quietly to the men around him, and within a few minutes a clasp knife was passed down the bench and slipped into Hendrick's hand.

He returned to the latrine and worked on the retaining screws of the wire frame, careful not to scratch the paintwork around them or leave any sign that they had been tampered with. He removed all eight screws, eased the frame from its seating and set it aside.

He waited until the tracks made a right hand bend, judging by the centrifugal force against his body as the coach turned under him, and then he glanced out of the open window.

The train was turning away from him, the leading coaches and goods vans out of sight around the bend ahead, and he leaned out of the window and looked up.

There was a coaming along the edge of the roof of the coach. He reached up and ran his fingers over the ridge and found a handhold. He raised himself, putting his full weight upon it, hanging on his arms, only his feet still inside the latrine window, and the rest of his body suspended outside.

He lifted his eyes to the level of the roof and memorized the slope and layout of the top of the coach, then he lowered himself again and ducked back into the latrine. He replaced the mesh over the window but turned the screws only finger tight, then went back to his seat in the coach.

in the early evening the white overseer and his two bossboys came through the coach with the food barrow. When he reached Hendrick he smiled at him without rancour.

You are beautiful now, kaffir. The black maids will love to kiss that mouth. He turned and addressed the silent ranks of black men. 'If any of you want to be beautiful also, just let me know. I will do it for free. just before dark the boss-boys came back to collect the empty dishes.

Tomorrow night you will be at Goldi, one of them told Hendrick. 'There is a white doctor there who will treat your wounds. There was a hint of sympathy in his impassive black face. It was not wise of you to anger Tshayela, the striker. You have learned a hard lesson, friend. Remember it well, all of you. He locked the door as he left the coach.

Hendrick gazed out of the window at the sunset. In four days of travel the landscape had changed entirely as they had climbed up onto the plateau of the highveld. The grasslands were pale brown, seared by the black frosts of winter, the red earth gouged open with dongas of erosion and divided into geometrical camps with barbed-wire. The isolated homesteads seemed forlorn upon the open veld with the steel-framed windmills standing like gaunt sentinels over them, and the lean cattle were long horned and parti-coloured, red and black and white.

Hendrick, who had lived his life in the unpeopled wilderness, found the fences cramping and restrictive. In this place you could never be out of sight of other men or their works, and the villages they passed were as sprawling and populous as Windhoek, the biggest town he had ever conceived of.

Wait until you see Goldi,Moses told him, as the darkness fell outside and the men around them settled down for the night, wrapping their blankets over their heads for the chill of the highveld blew in through the open windows.

Hendrick waited until the white overseer made his first round of the coaches, and when he shone the beam of his lantern into Hendrick's face made no attempt to feign sleep but blinked up at him blindly. The overseer passed on, locking the door as he left the coach.

Hendrick rose quietly in the seat. Opposite him Moses stirred in the darkness but did not speak, and Hendrick went down the aisle and locked himself in the latrine. Quickly he loosened the screws and worked the frame off its seating.

He set it against the bulkhead and leaned out of the window.

The cold night air buffeted his head, and he slitted his eyes against the hot smuts that blew back from the coal-burning locomotive and stung his cheeks and forehead as he reached up and found his handholds on the ridge of the coaming.

He drew himself upwards smoothly, and then with a kick and a heave, flung the top half of his body over the edge of the roof and shot out one arm. He found a grip on the ventilator in the middle of the curved roof and pulled himself the rest of the way on his belly.

He lay for a while panting and with his eyes tightly closed until he got control of the pounding ache in his head. Then he raised himself to his knees and began crawling forward towards the leading edge of the roof.

The night sky was clear; the land was silver with starlight and blue with shadow, and the wind roared about his head.

He rose to his feet and balanced against the lurch and sway of the coach. With his feet wide apart and his knees bent he moved forward. A premonition of danger made him look up and he saw the dark shape rush at him out of the darkness and he threw himself flat just as the steel arm of one of the railway water towers flashed over his head. A second later it would have decapitated him, and he shivered with the cold and the shock of near death. After a minute he gathered himself and crawled forward again, not raising his head more than a few inches until he reached the front edge of the roof.

He lay spreadeagled on his belly and cautiously peered over the edge. The balconies of the joining coaches were below him, the gap between the roof about the span of one of his arms. Directly under him the footplates articulated against each other as the train clattered through the curves of the line. Anybody moving from one coach to the next must pass below where Hendrick lay and he grunted with satisfaction and looked behind him.

One of the ventilator pots was just level with his feet as he lay outstretched. He crawled back, drawing the heavy leather belt from the top of his breeches, and buckled it around the ventilator, forming a loop into which he thrust one of his feet as far as the ankle.

Once again he stretched out on the roof, one foot securely anchored by the loop, and he reached down into the space between the coaches. He could just touch the banisters of the guard fence around the balcony. Electric bulbs in wire cages were fixed to the overhang of the balconies so the area below him was well lit.

He drew back and lay flat on the roof, only the top of his head and his eyes showing from below. But he knew that the lights would dazzle anybody who looked upwards into the gap between the roofs and he settled down to wait like a leopard in the tree over the water hole.

An hour passed and then another, but he judged the passage of time only by the slow rotation of the stars across the night sky. He was stiff and freezing cold as the wind thrashed his unprotected body, but he bore it stoically, never allowing himself to doze or lose concentration. Waiting was always a major part of the hunt, of the game of death, and he had played this game a hundred times before.

Suddenly, even over the rush of the train's passage and the rhythm of the cross ties, he heard the click of steel on steel and the rattle of keys in the lock of the door below him, and he gathered himself.

The man would step over the footplates as quickly as he could, not wanting to be in that vulnerable and exposed position for a moment longer than was necessary to make the crossing, and Hendrick would have to be quicker still.

He heard the sliding door slam back against the jamb and the lock turn again, then an instant later the crown of the white overseer's hat appeared below him.

Instantly Hendrick shot his body forward and dropped as far as his waist into the gap between the coaches. Only the leather belt around his ankle anchored him. Lothar had taught him the double lock, and he whipped one arm around the white man's neck, and braced his other hand in the crook of his own elbow, catching the man's head in the vice of his arms, and jerked him off his feet.

The white man made a strangled cawing sound and droplets of spittle flew from his lips, sparkling in the electric light as Hendrick drew him upwards as though he were hoisted on the gallows tree.

The white man's hat fell from his head and flitted away into the night like a black bat, and he was kicking and twisting his body violently, clawing at the thick muscled arms that were locked around his neck, his long blond hair fluttering and tumbling in the night wind. Hendrick lifted him until their eyes were inches apart, and he smiled into his face, exposing the mangled black pit of his own mouth, his shattered front teeth still stained with clotted blood, and in the reflection of the balcony lights the white man recognized him. Hendrick saw the recognition flare in his pale dilated eyes.

Yes, my friend, he whispered. It is me, the kaffir. He drew the man up another inch and wedged the back of his neck against the edge of the roof. Then very deliberately he put pressure on his spine at the base of his skull. The white man writhed and struggled like a fish on the barbs of the harpoon, but Hendrick held him easily, staring deep into his eyes, and bent his neck backwards, lifting with his forearm under the chin.

Hendrick felt the spine loading and locking at the pressure.

it could give no more, and for a second longer he held him at the breaking point. Then with a jerk he pushed the man's chin up another inch and the spine snapped like a dry branch. The white man danced in the air, twitching and shuddering, and Hendrick watched the pale blue eyes glaze over, becoming opaque and lifeless, and over the rush of the wind he heard the soft spluttering release as his sphincter muscle relaxed and his bowels involuntarily voided.

Hendrick swung his dangling corpse like a pendulum and as it cleared the balcony rail he let it drop into the gap between the coaches, directly into the track of the racing wheels. It was sucked away by the spinning steel like a scrap of meat into the blades of a mincing machine.

He lay for a moment recovering his breath. He knew that the overseer's mutilated corpse would be smeared over half a mile of the railway tracks.

He untied his belt from the ventilator and buckled it around his waist, then he crawled back along the roof of the coach until he was directly above the latrine window. He lowered his feet over the sill and with a twist dropped into the cubicle. He replaced the mesh frame over the window and tightened the screws. He went back down the coach to his seat, and Moses Gama was watching him as he wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. He nodded at his brother and pulled the corner of the blanket over his head. Within minutes he was asleep.

He was awakened by the shouts of the boss-boys and the jolting of the coach as it was shunted off the main line. He saw the name of the small village where they had stopped painted on a white board on the platform: Vryburg', but it meant nothing to him.

Soon the platform and the coaches were invaded by blue uniformed railway police, and all the recruits were ordered out onto the platform. They lined up, shivering and sleepy under the floodlights, answered to the roll-call. Everyone was present.

Hendrick nudged his brother and with his chin pointed at the wheels and bogey below their coach. The hubs and axles were splattered with blood and tiny slivers and particles of raw red flesh and tissue.

All the following day the coaches stood in the siding while the police individually subjected each of the recruits to a hectoring interrogation in the station master's office. By mid-afternoon it was obvious that they were coming to accept that the overseer's death was accidental and were losing interest in the investigation. The evidence of the locked doors and barred windows was convincing and the testimony of the boss-boys and every one of the recruits was unanimous and unshakable.

in the late afternoon they were loaded back into the coaches and they rumbled on into the night, towards the fabulous Ridge of White Waters.

Hendrick woke to the excited chatter of the men around him, and when he shouldered his way to the crowded window the first thing he saw was a high mountain, so big that it blocked the sky to the north, a strange and wonderful mountain, glowing with a pearly yellow light in the early sun, a mountain with a perfectly flat top and symmetrical sloping sides.

What kind of mountain is this? Hendrick marvelled.

A mountain taken from the belly of the earth, Moses told him. 'That is a mine dump, my brother, a mountain built by men from the rocks they dig up from below. Wherever Hendrick looked there were these flat-topped shining dumps scattered across the undulating grassland or standing along the skyline and near each of them stood tall giraffes of steel, long-necked and skeletal with giant wheels for heads, that spun endlessly against the pale highveld sky.

Headgears, Moses told him. Below each of those is a hole that reaches down into the guts of the world, into the rock bowels that hold the yellow Gold! for which the white men sweat and lie and cheat, and often kill. As the train ran on they saw wonder followed by wonder, taller buildings than they had ever believed possible, roads that ran like rivers of steel with growling vehicles, tall chimneys that filled the sky with black thunderclouds, and multitudes upon multitudes, human beings more numerous than the springbok migrations of the Kalahari, black men in silver helmets and knee-high rubber boots, regiments of them, marching towards the tall headgears or, as the shifts changed, wearily swarming back from the shafts splashed from head to foot with yellow mud. There were white men on the streets and platforms, white women in gaily coloured dresses with remote disdainful expressions, human beings in the windows of the buildings which crowded wall to red brick wall right to the verge of the railway tracks. It was too much, too huge and diffuse for them to assimilate at one time and they gaped and exclaimed and pressed to the windows of the coach.

Where are the women? Hendrick asked suddenly, and Moses smiled.

Which women, brother? The black women, the women of our tribe? 'There are no women here, not the type of women you know. There are only the Isifebi, and they do it for gold.

Everything here is for gold. Once again they were shunted off the main line into a fenced enclosure in which the long white barrack buildings stood in endless rows and the signboard above the gates read: WITWATERSRAND NATIVE LABOUR ASSOCIATION CENTRAL RAND INDUCTION CENTRE From the coaches they were led to a long shed by a couple of grinning boss-boys and instructed to strip to the buff.

The lines of naked black men shuffled forward under the paternal eyes of the boss-boys, who treated them in a friendly jocular fashion.

Some of you have brought your livestock with you, they joked. 'Goats on your scalp, and cattle in your pubic hairs, and dipping the paint brushes they wielded into buckets of bluebutter ointment, they plastered the heads and crotches of the recruits.

Rub it in, they ordered. We don't want your lice and crabs and itchy crawlies. And the recruits entered into the spirit of the occasion and roared with laughter as they smeared each other with the sticky butter.

At the end of the shed they were each handed a small square of blue mottled carbolic soap.

Your mothers may think you smell like the mimosa in flower, but even the goats shudder when you pass upwind. The boss-boys laughed and shoved them under the hot showers.

The doctors were waiting for them when they emerged, scrubbed and still naked, and this time the medical examinations were exhaustive. Their chests were sounded and all their bodily apertures probed and scrutinized.

"What happened to your mouth, and your head? one doctor demanded of Hendrick. No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. He had seen injuries like these before. Those bloody animals in charge of the trains. All, right, we will send you to the dentist to have those stumps pulled, too late to stitch the head, you'll have a couple of lovely scars!

Apart from that, you are a beauty. He slapped Hendrick's hard shiny black muscles. We'll put you down for underground work, and you'll get the underground bonus., They were issued grey overalls and hobnailed boots, and then given a gargantuan meal, as much as they could eat.

It is not like I thought it would be. Hendrick spooned stew into his mouth. Good food, white men who smile, no beatings, not like the train. Brother, only a fool starves and beats his oxen, and these white men are not fools. One of the other Ovambo men took Moses empty dish to the kitchen and returned with it refilled. It was no longer necessary for him to give orders for such menial services.

His wants were taken care of by the men around him as if by birthright. Already the death of the white overseer, Tshayela, the striker, had been embroidered and built into a legend by many repetitions, reinforcing the stature and authority of Moses Gama and his lieutenant; men walked softly around them and inclined their heads respectfully when either Moses or Hendrick spoke directly to them.

At dawn the next morning they were roused from their bunks in the barrack rooms and after a huge breakfast of maize cake and maas, the thick clotted sour milk, they were led to the long iron-roofed classroom.

Then of forty different tribes come from every corner of the land to Goldi, men speaking forty different languages, from Zulu to Tswana, from Herero to Basuto, and only one in a thousand of them understands a word of English or of Afrikaans, Moses explained softly to his brother as the other men respectfully made room for them on one of the classroom benches. Now they will teach us the special language of Goldi, the tongue by which all men, whether black or white, and of whatever tribe, speak to each other here. A venerable old Zulu boss-boy, his pate covered with a cap of shining silver wool, was their instructor in the lingua franca of the gold mines, Fanakalo. The name was taken from its own vocabulary and meant literally like this, like that', the phrase that the recruits would have urged upon them frequently over the weeks ahead: Do it like this! Work like that! Sebenza fanakalo! The Zulu instructor on the raised dais was surrounded by all the accoutrements of the miner's trade, set out on display so that he could touch each item with his pointer and the recruits would chant the name of it in unison. Helmets and lanterns, hammers and picks, jumper bars and scrapers, safety rails and rigs, they would know them all intimately before they stood their first shift.

But now the old Zulu touched his own chest and said: AUna! Then pointed at his class and said: Wena! And Moses led them in the chant: The! You! Head! said the instructor and Arm! and Leg! He touched his own body and his pupils imitated him enthusiastically.

They worked at the language all that morning and then after lunch they were divided into groups of twenty and the group that included Moses and Hendrick was taken to another iron-roofed building similar to the language classroom. It differed only in its furnishings. Long trestle tables ran from wall to wall, and the person that welcomed them was a white man with peculiar bright ginger-coloured hair and mustache and green eyes. He was dressed in a long white coat like those the doctors had worn, and like them he was smiling and friendly, waving them to their places at the tables and speaking in English that only Moses and Hendrick understood, although they were careful not to make their understanding apparent and maintained a pantomime of perplexity and ignorance.

All right you fellows. My name is Dr Marcus Archer and I am a psychologist. What we are going to do now is give you an aptitude test to see just what kind of work you are best suited to. The white man smiled at them and then nodded to the boss-boy beside him, who translated: You do what Bomvu, the red one, tells you. That way we can find out just how stupid you are. The first test was a blockbuilding exercise which Marcus Archer had developed himself to test basic manual dexterity and awareness of mechanical shape. The multicoloured wooden blocks of various shapes had to be fitted into the frame on the table in front of each subject in the manner of an elementary jigsaw puzzle and the time allotted for completion was six minutes. The boss-boy explained the procedure and gave a demonstration and the recruits took their seats at the tables and Marcus Archer called: Enza!

Do it! and started his stop watch.

Moses completed his puzzle in one minute six seconds.

According to Dr Archer's meticulous records, to date 1 1 6,816

had sat this particular test. Not one of them had completed it in under two and a half minutes. He left the dais and went down to Moses table to check his assembly of the blocks.

It was correct, and he nodded and studied Moses expressionless features thoughtfully.

Of course, he had noticed Moses the moment he entered the room. He had never seen such a beautiful man in his life, either black or white, and Dr Archer's preference was strongly for black skin. That was one of the main reasons he had come out to Africa five years before, for Dr Marcus Archer was a homosexual.

He had been in his third year at Magdalene College before he admitted this fact to himself, and the man who had introduced him to the bitter-sweet delights had at the same time stimulated his intellect with the wondrous new doctrines of Karl Marx and the subsequent refinements to that doctrine by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. His lover had secretly enrolled him in the Britis Communist Party, and after he had left Cambridge introduced him to the comrades of Bloomsbury. However, the young Marcus had never felt entirely at home in intellectual London. He had lacked the spiked tongue, the ready acid wit and the feline cruelty, and after a short and highly unsatisfactory affair with Lytton Strachey, he had been given Lytton's notorious treatment and ostracized from the group.

He had banished himself into the wilderness of Manchester University, to take up the new science of industrial psychology. In Manchester he had begun a long and lyrically happy liaison with a Jamaican trombone player and allowed his connections with the Party to fall into neglect. However, he was to learn that the Party never forgets its chosen ones and at the age of thirty-one, when he had already made some small reputation for himself in his profession, but when his association with his Jamaican lover had ended acrimoniously and he was dejected and almost suicidal, the Party had reached out one of its tentacles and drawn him gently back into the fold.

They told him that there was an opening in his field with the South African Chamber of Mines working with African Mineworkers. His penchant for black skin was by now an addiction. The infant South African Communist Party was in need of bolstering and the job was his if he wanted. It was implied that he had free choice in the matter, but the outcome was never in doubt and within a month he had sailed for Cape Town.

In the following five years he had done important pioneering work with the Chamber of Mines and had received both recognition and deep satisfaction from it. His connections with the Party had been carefully concealed, but the covert work he had done in this area was even more important, and his commitment to the ideals of Marxism had grown stronger as he grew older and saw at first hand the inhumanities of class and racial discrimination, the terrible abyss that separated the Poor and dispossessed black proletariat from the enormous wealth and privilege of the white bourgeoisie. He had found that in this rich and beautiful land all the gross ills of the human condition flourished as though in a hothouse, exaggerated until they were almost a caricature of evil.

Now Marcus Archer looked at this noble young man with the face of an Egyptian god and a skin of burnt honey, and he was filled with longing.

You speak English, don't you? he asked, and Moses nodded.

Yes, I do, he said softly, and Marcus Archer had to turn away and go back to his dais. His passion was impossible to disguise, and his fingers were trembling as he took up a stick of chalk and wrote upon the blackboard, giving himself a respite to get his emotions under control.

The tests continued for the rest of the afternoon, the subjects gradually being sorted and channelled into their various grades and levels on the results. At the end only one remained in the main stream. Moses Gama had completed the progressively more difficult tests with the same aplomb as he had tackled the first, and Dr Archer realized that he had discovered a prodigy.

At five o'clock the session ended and thankfully the subjects trooped from the classroom; the last hour had taxed even the brightest amongst them. Moses alone had remained undaunted and as he filed past the desk Dr Archer said: Gama! He had taken the name from the register. There is one more task I would like you to attempt., He led Moses down the verandah to his office at the end.

You can read and write, Gama? Yes, Doctor. It is a theory of mine that a man's handwriting can be studied to find the key to his personality, Archer explained.

And I would like you to write for me. They sat side by side at the desk, and Dr Archer set writing materials in front of Moses, chatting easily. This is a standard text I use. On the card he handed Moses was printed the nursery rhyme The Cat and the Fiddle'.

Moses dipped the pen and Archer leaned closer to watch.

His writing was large and fluent, the characters formed with sharp peaks, forward sloping and definite. All the indications of mental determination and ruthless energy were present.

Still studying the handwriting Archer casually laid his hand on Moses thigh, intensely aware of the hard rubbery muscle beneath the velvety skin, and the nib spluttered as Moses started. Then his hand steadied and he went on writing. He finished, laid the pen down carefully, and for the first time looked directly into Marcus Archer's green eyes.

Gama. Marcus Archer's voice shook and his fingers tightened. 'You are much too intelligent to waste your time shovelling ore. He paused and moved his hand slowly up Moses leg.

Moses stared steadily into his eyes. His expression did not change, but he let his thighs fall slowly open, and Marcus Archer's heart was thumping wildly against his ribs.

I want you to work as my personal assistant, Gama, he whispered, and Moses considered the magnitude of this offer.

He would have access to the files of every worker in the gold-mining industry; he would be protected and privileged, free to pass and enter where other black men were forbidden.

The advantages were so numerous that he knew he could not grasp them all in so brief a moment. For the man who made the offer he felt almost nothing, neither revulsion nor desire, but he would have no compunction in paying the price he demanded. If the white man wished to be treated as a woman, then Moses would readily render him this service.

Yes, Doctor, I would like to work for you, he said.

On the last night in the barrack room of the induction centre, Moses called all his chosen lieutenants to him. They clustered around his bunk.

Very soon you will go from here to the Goldi. Not all of you will go together for there are many mines along the Rand. Some of you will go down into the earth, others will work on the surface in the mills and the reduction plants.

We will be separated for a while, but you will not forget that we are brothers. I, your elder brother, will not forget you. I have important work for you. I will seek you out, wherever you are, and you will be ready for me when I summon you. Eh heP they granted in agreement and obedience. We are your younger brothers. We will listen for your voice. You must know always that you are under my protection, that all trespasses against you will be revenged. You have seen what happens to those who give offence to our brotherhood. We have seen it, they murmured. We have seen it, and it is death. it is death, Moses confirmed. It is death also for any of the brotherhood who betray us. It is death for all traitors. Death to all traitors. They swayed together, coming once more under the mesmeric spell which Moses Gama wove about them.

I have chosen a totem for our brotherhood, Moses went on. I have chosen the buffalo for our totem for he is black and powerful and all men fear him. We are the Buffaloes. We are the Buffaloes. Already they were proud of the distinction. We are the black Buffaloes and all men will learn to fear us. These are the signs, the secret signs by which we will recognize our own. He made the sign and then individually clasped their right hands in the fashion of the white man, but the grip was different, a double grip and turn of the second finger. Thus you will know your brothers when they come to you. They greeted each other in the darkened barracks, each of them shaking the hand of all the others in the new way, and it was a form of initiation into the brotherhood.

You will hear from me soon. Until I call, you must do as the white man requires of you. You must work hard and learn. You must be ready for the call when it comes. Moses sent them away to their bunks and he and Hendrick sat alone, their heads together, speaking in whispers.

You have lost the little white stones, Moses told him.

By now the birds and the small beasts will have pecked the loaves and devoured the millet bread. The stones will be scattered and lost; the dust will cover them and the grass will grow over them. They are gone, my brother., Yes. They are gone, Hendrick lamented. After so much blood and striving, after all the hardships we endured, they have been scattered like seeds to the wind. They were accursed, Moses consoled him. From the moment I saw them I knew that they would bring only disaster and death. They are white man's toys. What could you have done with the white man's wealth? If you tried to spend it, if you tried to buy white man's things with it, you would instantly have been marked by the white police.

They would have come for you immediately and there would have been a rope or a jail cell for you. Hendrick was silent, considering the truth of this. What could he have purchased with the stones? Black men could not own their own land. More than a hundred head of cattle and the local chieftain's envy would have been aroused. He already had all the wives, and more, that he wished for, and black men did not drive in motor cars. Black men did not draw attention to themselves in any way, not if they were wise.

No, my brother, Moses told him softly. They were not for you. Thank the spirits of your ancestors that they were wrested from you and scattered back on the earth where they belong. Hendrick growled softly, Still it would have been good to have that treasure, to hold it in my hands, even secretly. There are other treasures even more important than diamonds or white man's gold, my brother. What are these treasures? Hendrick asked.

Follow me and I will lead you to them. But tell me what they are, Hendrick insisted.

You will discover them in good time. Moses smiled. But now, my brother, we must talk of first things; the treasures will follow later.

Listen to me. Borrivu, the red one, my little doctor who likes to be used as a woman, Bomvu has allocated you to the Goldi called Central Rand Consolidated. it is one of the richest of the Goldi, with many deep shafts.

You will go underground, and it is best if you make a name for yourself there. I have prevailed on Bomvu to send ten of our best men from the Buffaloes to CRC with you. These will be your impi, your chosen warriors. You must start with them, but you will build upon them, gathering around you the quick and strong and the fearless. 'What must I do with these men? Hold them in readiness. You will hear from me soon. Very soon. What of the other Buffaloes? Borrivu has sent them, at my suggestion, in groups of ten to each of the other Goldi along the Rand. Small groups of our men everywhere. They will grow, and soon we will be a great black herd of buffaloes which even the most savage lion will not dare to challenge. Swart Hendrick's initial descent in the earth was the first time in his life that he had been frightened witless, unable to speak or think, so terrified that he could not even scream or struggle against it.

The terror began when he was in the long line of black miners, each of them wearing black rubber gumboots and grey overalls, the unpainted silver helmets on their heads fitted with head lanterns. Hendrick shuffled forward in the press of bodies down the ramp between the poles of the crush, like cattle entering an abattoir, stopping and starting forward again. Suddenly he found himself at the head of the line, standing before the steel mesh gate that guarded the entrance to the shaft.

Beyond the mesh he could see the steel cables hanging into the shaft like pythons with shining scales, and over him towered the steel skeleton of the headgear. When he looked up he could see the huge wheels silhouetted against the sky a hundred feet above his head, spinning and stopping and reversing.

Suddenly the mesh gates crashed open and he was carried on the surge of black bodies into the cage beyond. They packed shoulder to shoulder, seventy men. The doors closed, the floor dropped under his feet and stopped again immediately. He heard the tramp of feet over his head and looked up, realizing that the skip was a double decker and that another seventy men were being packed into the top compartment.

Again he heard the clash of closing mesh gates and he started as the telegraph shrilled, four long rings, the signal to descend, and the skip fell away under him, but this time accelerating so violently that his body seemed to come free and his feet lay only lightly on the steel floor plates. His belly was sucked up against his ribs and his terror was unleashed.

In darkness the skip rocketed downwards, drumming and rattling and racing like an express train in a tunnel, and the terror went on and on, minute after minute, eternity after eternity. He felt himself suffocating, crushed by the thought of the enormous weight of rock above him, his ears popping and crackling at the pressure, a mile and then another mile straight down into the earth.

The skip stopped so abruptly that his knees buckled and he felt the flesh of his face sucked down from the bones of his skull, stretching like rubber. The gates crashed open and he was carried out into the main haulage, a cavern walled with glistening wet rock, filled with men, hundreds of men like rats in a sewer, streaming away into the endless tunnels that honeycombed the bowels of the world.

Everywhere there was water, glistening and shining in the flat glare of the electric light, running back in channels on each side of the haulage, squelching under his feet, hidden water drumming and rustling in the darkness or dripping from the jagged rock of the roof. The very air was heavy with water, humid and hot and claustrophobic so that it had a gelatinous texture, seeming to fill his eardrums and deafen him, trickling sluggishly into his lungs like treacle, and his terror lasted all that long march along the drive until they reached the stopes. Here the men split into their separate gangs and disappeared into the shadows.

The stopes were the vast open chambers from which the gold-bearing ore had already been excavated, the hanging wall above supported now by packed pillars of shoring timber, the footwall under them inclined upwards at an angle following the run of the reef.

The men of his gang trudging ahead of him led Hendrick to his station, and here under a bare electric bulb waited for the white shift boss, a burly Afrikaner flanked by his two boss-boys.

The station was a three-sided chamber in the rock, its number on the entrance. There was a long bench against the back wall of the station and a latrine, its open buckets screened by sheets of burlap.

The gang sat on the bench while the boss-boys called the roll, and then the white shift boss asked in Fanakalo, Where is the new hammer boy? and Hendrick rose to his feet.

Cronje, the shift boss, came to stand in front of him. Their eyes were on a level, both big men. The shift boss's nose was crooked, broken long ago in a forgotten brawl, and he examined Hendrick carefully. He saw the broken gap in his teeth and the scars upon his head and his respect was tentative and grudging. They were both hard, tough men, recognizing it in each other. Up there in the sunshine and sweet cool airs they were black man and white man. Down here in the earth they were simply men.

You know the hammer? Cronje asked in Fanakalo.

I know it, Hendrick replied in Afrikaans. He had practised working the hammer for two weeks in the surface training pits.

Cronje blinked and then grinned to acknowledge the use of his own language. I run the best gang of rock breakers on the CRC, he said, still grinning. You will learn to break rock, my friend, or I will break your head and your arse instead. Do you understand? I understand. Hendrick grinned back at him, and Cronje raised his voice.

All hammer boys here! They stood up from the bench, five of them, all big men like Hendrick. It took tremendous physical strength to handle the jack hammers. They were the elite of the rockbreaking gangs, earning almost double wages and bonus for footage, earning also immense prestige from lesser men.

Cronje wrote their names up on the blackboard under the electric bulb: Henry Tabaka at the bottom of the list and Zama, the big Zulu, at number one. When Zama stripped off his jacket and tossed it to his line boy, his great black muscles bulged and gleamed in the stark electric light.

Ha" He looked at Hendrick. So we have a little Ovambo jackal come in yipping from the desert. The men around him laughed obsequiously. Zama was top hammer on the section; evervbody laughed when he made a joke.

I thought that the Zulu baboon scratched his fleas only on the peaks of the Drakensberg so his voice can be heard afar, Hendrick said quietly, and there was a shocked silence for a moment and then a guffaw of disbelieving laughter.

All right, You two big talkers, Cronjeintervened, let's break some rock. He led them from the station up the stope to the rock-face where the gold reef was a narrow grey horizontal band in the jagged wall, dull and nondescript, without the faintest precious sparkle. The gold was locked away in it.

The roof was low; a man had to double over to reach the face; but the stope was wide, reaching away hundreds of metres into the darkness (in either band, and they could hear the other gangs out there along the rockface, their voices echoing and reverberating, their hinterns throwing weird shadows.

Tabaka!" Cronje yelled. Here! He had marked the shot holes to be drilled with splashes of white paint, indicating the inclination anti depth of each hole.

The blast was a Precise and calculated firing of gelignite I charges. The outer holes would be charged with shapers to form the hanging wall and foot wall of the stopc they would fire first, while the pattern of inner shots fired a second later. These were the 'cutters that would kick the ore back and clear it from the face.

Shaya! Cronje yelled at Hendrick. Hit it! and lingered a second to watch as Hendrick stooped to the drill.

it squatted on the rock floor in front of the face, an ungainly tool in the shape of a heavy machine-gun, with long pneumatic hoses attached to it and running back down the slope to the compressed airsystem in the main haulage.

Swiftly Hendrick fitted the twenty-foot-long steel jumpers

bit into the lug of the drill and then he and his line boy dragged the tool to the rockface. It took all the strength of both Hendrick and his assistant to lift the tool and position the point of the drill on the white paint mark for the first cut. Hendrick eased himself into position behind the tool, taking the full weight of it on his right shoulder. The line boy stepped back, and Hendrick opened the valve.

The din was stunning, a stuttering implosion of sound that drove in against the eardrums as compressed air at a pressure of 500 pounds a square inch roared into the drill and slammed the long steel bit into the rock.

Hendrick's entire body shuddered and shook to the drive of the tool against his shoulder but still he leaned his full weight against it. His head jumped on the thick corded column of his neck so rapidly that his vision blurred, but he narrowed his eyes and aimed the point of the drill into the rock at the exact angle that the shift boss had called for.

Water squirted down the hollow drill steel, bubbling out of the hole in a yellow mist, splattering into Hendrick's face.

The sweat burst from his black skin, running down his face as though he were standing under a cloudburst, mingling with the slimy mud pouring down his naked back and scattering like rain as his straining muscles fluttered and jumped to the impulse of the pounding steel drill at his shoulder.

Within minutes the entire surface of his body began to itch and burn. It was the hammer boys affliction; his skin was being scrubbed back and forth a thousand times a minute by the violent shaking motion of the drill, and with each minute the agony became more intense. He tried to close his mind to it but still it felt as though a blowtorch was being played over his body.

The long steel drill sank slowly into the rock until it reached the depth marker painted on it and Hendrick closed the valve. There was no silence for even though his hearing was dulled, as though his eardrums were filled with cotton wool, yet he could still hear the echoes of the drill thunder resounding against the roof of his skull.

7.Ne The line boy ran forward, seized the jumper bit and helped him withdraw it from the first shot hole and reposition the tip on the second daubed paint mark. Once again Hendrick opened the valve and the din and the agony began again.

However, gradually the itching burn of his body blurred into numbness and he felt disembodied as though cocaine had been injected under his skin.

So he stood to the rock all that shift, six hours without let or relief. When it ended and they trooped back from the face, splattered and coated with yellow mud from head to foot and weary beyond pain or feeling, even Zama the great black Zulu was reeling on his feet and his eyes were dull.

In the station Cronje wrote the total of work completed against their names on the blackboard. Zama had drilled sixteen patterns, Hendrick twelve and the next best man ten.

Hau! Zama muttered as they rode up to the surface in the crowded skip. On his very first shift the jackal is number two hammer. And Hendrick had just enough strength to reply: And on his second shift the jackal will be top hammer. it never happened. Not once did he break more rock than the Zulu. But at the end of that first month as Hendrick sat in the company beer hall with the other Ovambos of the Buffalo totem gathered around him, the Zulu came to his table carrying two one-gallon jugs of the creamy effervescent millet beer that the company sold its men. It was thick as porridge, and just as nutritious, though only very mildly alcoholic.

Zama set a one-gallon jug down in front of Hendrick and said: We broke some rock together this month, hey, jackal? And we'll break a lot more together next month, hey, baboon? And they both roared with laughter and raised the beer jugs in unison and drank them dry.

Zama was the first Zulu to become initiated into the brotherhood of the Buffaloes, not as natural as it sounded for tribal barriers, like mountain ranges, were difficult to cross.

It was three months before Hendrick saw his brother again, but by that time Hendrick had extended his influence throughout the entire compound of black mine workers at the CRC mine property. With Zama as his lieutenant, the Buffaloes now encompassed men from many different tribes, Zulus and Shangaans and Matabeles. The only criterion was that the new initiates should be hard reliable men, preferably with some influence over at least a section of the eight thousand odd black miners, and preferably also appointed by the mine administration to positions of authority on the property: clerks or boss-boys or company police.

Some of the men who were approached resisted the brotherhood's overtures. One of these, a senior Zulu bossboy with thirty years service and a misplaced sense of duty to his tribe and the company, fell into one of the ore chutes on the sixtieth level of the main haulage the day after he refused. His body was ground to a muddy paste by the tons of jagged rock that rumbled over it. It seemed that nobody had witnessed the accident.

one of the company police indunas, who also resisted the blandishments of the brotherhood, was found stabbed to death in his sentry box at the main gates to the property, while yet another was burned to death in the kitchens. Three Buffaloes witnessed this last unfortunate incident caused by the victim's own clumsiness and inattention and there were no more refusals.

When at last the messenger came from Moses, identifying himself with the secret sign and handclasp, he bore a summons to a meeting, and Hendrick was able to leave the mine property without check.

By government decree the black mine workers were strictly confined within the barbed-wire fences of the compounds. It was the opinion of both the Chamber of Mines and the Johannesburg city fathers that to let tens of thousands of single black males roam the goldfields at will would invite disaster. They had the salutary lesson of the Chinese before them. In 1904, almost fifty thousand Chinese coolies had been brought into South Africa to fill the huge shortage of unskilled labour for the gold mines. However, the Chinese were much too intelligent and restless to be confined to compounds and restricted to unskilled labour and they were highly organized in their secret long societies. The result was a wave of lawlessness and terror that swept over the goldfields, rapine and robbery, gambling and drugs, so that in 1908, at huge cost, all the Chinese were rounded up and shipped home. The government was determined to avoid a repetition of this terror and the compound system was strictly enforced.

However, Hendrick passed through the gates of the CRC compound as though he were invisible. He crossed the open veld in the starlight until he found the overgrown track and followed it to the old abandoned shafthead. There, parked behind the deserted rusting corrugated iron shed, was a black Ford sedan and as Hendrick approached it cautiously the headlights were switched on, spotlighting Hendrick, and he froze.

Then the lights were switched off and Moses voice called out of the darkness, I see you, my brother. They embraced impulsively and then Hendrick laughed.

Ha! So you drive a motor car now, like a white man. The motor car belongs to Bomvu. Moses led him to it, and Hendrick sank back against the leather seat and sighed comfortably. This is better than walking. Now tell me, Hendrick my brother. What has happened at CRC? And Moses listened without comment until Hendrick finished his long report. Then he nodded.

You have understood my wants. It is exactly as I wished it. The brotherhood must take in men from all the tribes, not just the Ovambo. We must reach to each tribe, each property, every corner of the goldfields. You have said all this before, Hendrick growled, but you have never told me why, my brother. I trust you, but the men I have assembled, the impi you bid me build, they look to me, and they ask one question. They ask me why? What is the profit in this thing? What is there for us in the brotherhood? And what do you answer them, my brother? I tell them they must be patient. Hendrick scowled. I do not know the answer, but I look wise as if I do. And if they nag me, like children, well, then I beat them like children. Moses laughed delightedly, but Hendrick shook his head.

Don't laugh, my brother, I can't go on beating them much longer. Moses clapped his shoulder. Nor will you have to much longer. But tell me now, Hendrick, what is it you have missed most in the months you have worked at CRCV Hendrick answered. The feeling of a woman under me. That you shall have before the night is finished. And what else, my brother? The fire of good liquor in my belly, not the weak slop from the company beerhall. My brother, Moses told him seriously, 'you have answered your own question. These are the things that your men will get from the brotherhood. These are the scraps we will throw our hunting dogs: women and liquor and, of course money, but for those of us at the head of the Buffaloes there will be more, much more. He started the engine of the Ford.

The gold-bearing reefs of the Witwatersrand form a sprawling arc one hundred kilometres in length. The older properties such as East Daggafontein are in the eastern sector of the arc where the reef originally outcropped; the newer properties are in the west where the reef dips away sharply to great depth; but like Blyvooruitzicht, these deep mines are enormously rich. All the mines are laid out along this fabulous crescent, surroun e the urban development which the gold wealth has attracted and fostered.

Moses drove the black Ford southwards, away from the mines and the white man's streets and buildings, and the road they followed quickly narrowed and deteriorated, its surface rutted and riven with pot holes and puddles from the last thunderstorm. it lost direction and began to meander, degenerating into a maze of lanes and tracks.

The street lights of the city were left behind them, but out here there was other illumination: the glow of hundreds of wood fires, their orange light muted by their own drifting smoke banks. There was one of these cooking fires in front of each of the shanties of tarpaper and old corrugated iron that crowded so closely that there were only narrow lanes between them, and there was amongst the shacks a feeling of the presence of many unseen people, as though an army were encamped out here in the open veld.

Where are we? Hendrick asked.

We are in a city that no man acknowledges, a city of people who do not exist. Hendrick glimpsed their dark shapes as the Ford bumped and pitched over the rough track between the shanties and shacks and the headlights swung aimlessly back and forth illuminating little cameo scenes: a group of black children stoning a pariah dog; a body lying beside the track drunk or dead; a woman squatting to urinate in the angle of one of the orrugated iron walls; two men locked in silent deadly combat; a family at one of the fires eating from tins of bully beef, their eyes huge and shining as they looked up startled into the headlights; and other dark shapes scurrying furtively away into the shadows, hundreds of them and the presence of thousands more sensed.

This is Drake's Farm, Moses told him. One of the squatter townships that surround the white man's Goldi. The odour of the amorphous sprawling aggregation of humanity was woodsmoke and sewage, old sweat on hot bodies and charred food on the open wood fires. It was the smell of garbage mouldering in the rain puddles and the nauseating sweetness of bloodsucking vermin in unwashed bedding.

How many live here? Five thousand, ten thousand. Nobody knows, nobody

cares. Moses stopped the Ford and switched off the headlights and the engine.

The silence afterwards was not truly silence; it was the murmur of multitudes like the sea heard at a distance, the mewling of infants, the barking of a cur dog, the sounds of a woman singing, of men cursing and talking and eating, of couples arguing shrilly or copulating, of people dying and defecating and snoring and gambling and drinking in the night.

Moses stepped out of the Ford and called imperatively into the darkness and half a dozen dark figures came scurrying from amongst the shacks. They were children, Hendrick realized, though their age and sex were obscure.

Stand guard on my motor car, Moses ordered, and tossed a small coin that twinkled in the firelight until one of the children snatched it from the air.

Eh he! Baba! they squeaked, and Moses led his brother amongst the shacks for a hundred yards and the sound of the women singing was louder, a thrilling evocative sound, and there was the buzz of many other voices and the sour smell of old stale alcohol and meat cooking on an open fire.

They had reached a long low building, a rough shed cobbled together from discarded material. Its walls were crooked and the outline of the roof was buckled and sway backed against the fireglow. Moses knocked upon the door and a lantern was flashed in his face before the door was thrown open.

So my brother! Moses took Hendrick's arm and drew him into the doorway. This is your first shebeen. Here you will have all that I promised you: women and liquor, your fill of both. The shed was packed with human beings, jammed so tightly that the far wall was lost in the fog of blue tobacco smoke and a man must shout to be heard a few feet away; the black faces shone with sweat and excitement. The men were miners, drinking and singing and laughing and groping the women. Some were very drunk and a few had fallen to the earth floor and lay in their own vomit. The women were of every tribe, all of their faces painted in the fashion of white women, dressed in flimsy gaudy dresses, singing and dancing and shaking their hips, picking out the men with money and tugging them away through the doors at the back of the shed.

Moses did not have to force his way through this jam of bodies. It opened almost miraculously before him, and many of the women called to him respectfully. Hendrick followed closely behind his brother and he was struck with admiration that Moses had been able to achieve this degree of recognition in the three short months since they had arrived on the Rand.

There was a guard at the door at the far end of the shebeen, an ugly scar-faced ruffian, but he also recognized Moses and clapped his hands in greeting before he pulled aside the canvas screen to allow them to go through into the back room.

This room was less crowded, and there were tables and benches for the customers. The girls in here were still graced with youth, bTight-eyed and fresh-faced. An enormous black woman was seated at a separate table in the corner. She had the serene round moon face of the high-bred Zulu but its contours were almost obscured by fat. Her dark amber skin was stretched tightly over this abundance; her belly hung down in a series of fleshy balconies onto her lap, and fat hung in great black dewlaps under her arms and formed bracelets around her wrists. On the table in front of her were neat stacks of coins, silver and copper, and wads of multicoloured bank notes, and the girls were bringing her more to add to the piles each minute.

When she saw Moses her perfect white teeth shone like precious porcelain; she lumbered to her feet, her thighs so elephantine that she waddled with her feet wide apart as she came to him and greeted him as though he were a tribal chief, touching her forehead and clapping with respect.

This is Mama Nginga, Moses told Hendrick. She is the biggest shebeen keeper and whore mistress on Drake's Farm.

Soon she will be the only one on Drake's Farm. only then did Hendrick realize that he knew most of the men at the tables. They were Buffaloes who had travelled on the Wenela train and taken the initiation oath with him, and they greeted him with unfeigned delight and introduced him to the strangers in their midst.

This is Henry Tabaka. He is the one of the legend. The man who slew Tshayela, the white overseer, and Hendrick noticed the immediate respect in the eyes of these new Buffaloes. They were men from the other mines along the reef, recruited by the original Buffaloes, and Hendrick saw that on the whole they had chosen well.

My brother has not had a woman or a taste of good liquor in three months, Moses told them as he seated himself at the head of the central table. Mama Nginga, we don't want your skokiaan. She makes it herself, he told Hendrick in a loud aside, and she puts in carbide and methylated spirits and dead snakes and aborted babies to give it kick and flavour. Mama Nginga screeched with laughter. My skokiaan is famous from Fordsburg to Bapsfontein. Even some of the white men, the mabuni, come for it. It's good enough for them, Moses agreed, but not good enough for my brother. Mama Nginga sent one of the girls to them with a bottle of Cape brandy and Moses seized the young girl around the waist and held her easily. He pulled open the European-style blouse she wore, forcing out her big round breasts so that they shone like washed coal in the lamplight.

This is where we start, my Buffaloes, a girl and a bottle, he told them. There are fifty thousand lonely men at Goldi far from their wives, all of them hungry for sweet young flesh. There are fifty thousand men, thirsty from their work in the earth, and the white men forbid them to slake their thirst with this. He shook the bottle of golden spirits. There are fifty thousand randy thirsty black men at Goldi, all with money in their pockets. The Buffaloes will give them what they want. He pushed the girl into Hendrick's lap and she coiled herself about him with professionally simulated lust and thrust her shining black breasts into his face.

When the dawn broke over the sprawling shanty town of Drake's Farm, Moses and Hendrick picked their way down the reeking convoluted alleys to where they had left the Ford and the children were guarding it still, like jackals around the lion's kill. The brothers had sat all night in the back room of Mama Nginga's shebeen and the preliminary planning was at last done. Each of their lieutenants had been allotted areas and responsibilities.

But there is still much work to be done, my brother, Moses told Hendrick as he started the Ford. We have to find the liquor and the women. We will have to bring all the little shebeens and brothels like goats into our kraal, and there is only one way to do that. I know how that has to be done, Hendrick nodded. And we have an impi to do it. And an induna, a general, to command that impi. Moses glanced at Hendrick significantly. The time has come for you to leave CRC, my brother. All your time and your strength will be needed now. You will waste no more of your strength in the earth, breaking rock for a white man's pittance. From now on you will be breaking heads for power and great fortune. He smiled thinly. You will never have to pine again for those little white stones of yours. I will give you more, much more. Marcus Archer arranged for Hendrick's contract at CRC to be cancelled and for him to be issued travel papers for one of the special trains that carried the returning miners who had worked out their ticket back to the reservations and the distant villages. But Hendrick never caught that train. Instead he disappeared from the white man's records and was absorbed into the shadowy halfworld of the townships.

Mama Nginga set aside one of the shanties at the back of her shebeen for his exclusive use, and one of her girls was always on hand to sweep and wash his laundry, to cook his food and warm his bed.

It was six days after his arrival at Drake's Farm that the Buffalo impi opened its campaign. The objective had been discussed and carefully explained by Hendrick and it was simple and clear-cut. They would make Drake's Farm their own citadel.

On the first night twelve of the opposition shebeens were burned to the ground. Their proprietors burned with them, as did those of their customers who were too drunk to crawl out of the flaming hovels. Drake's Farm was far outside the sector served by the white man's fire engines, so no attempt was made to fight the flames. Rather, the inhabitants of Drake's Farm gathered to watch the spectacle as though it was a circus arranged particularly for their entertainment.

The children danced and shrilled in the firelight, and screeched with laughter as the bottles of spirits exploded like fireworks.

Nearly all the girls escaped from the flames. Those who had been at work when the fire began ran out naked, clutching their scanty clothing and weeping wildly at the loss of all their worldly possessions and savings. However, there were kindly concerned men to comfort them and lead them away to Mama Nginga's.

Within forty-eight hours the shebeens had been rebuilt on their ashes and the girls were back at work again. Their lot was much improved; they were well fed and clothed and they had their own Buffaloes to protect them from their customers, to make certain they were neither cheated nor abused. of course, if they in turn shirked or tried to cheat, they were beaten soundly; but they expected that, it made them feel part of the totem and replaced the father and brothers they had left in the reservations.

Hendrick allowed them to keep a fixed proportion of the fee they charged and made sure his men respected their rights to it.

Generosity breeds loyalty and firmness a loving heart, he explained to his Buffaloes, and he extended his happy house policy to embrace his customers and everybody else at Drake's Farm. The black miners coming into the township were as carefully protected as his girls were. In very short order the footpads, pickpockets, muggers and other smalltime entrepreneurs were routed out. The quality of the liquor improved. From now on all of it was brewed under Mama Nginga's personal supervision.

it was strong as a bull elephant, and bit like a rabid hyena, but it no longer turned men blind or destroyed their brains, and because it was manufactured in bulk, it was reasonably priced. A man could get falling-down drunk for two shillings or have a good clean girl for the same price.

Hendrick's men met every bus and train coming in from the country districts, bringing the young black girls who had run away from their villages and their tribe to reach the glitter of Goldi. They led the pretty ones back to Drake's Farm. When this source of supply became inadequate as the demand increased, Hendrick sent his men into the country districts and villages to recruit the girls at the source with sweet words and promises of pretty things.

The city fathers of Johannesburg and the police were fully aware of the unacknowledged halfworld of the townships that had grown up south of the goldfields but, daunted by the prospect of closing them down and finding alternative accommodation for thousands of vagrants and illegals, they turned a blind eye, appeasing their civic consciences by occasional raids, arrests and the wholesale imposition of fines. However, as the incidence of murder and robbery and other serious crime mysteriously abated at Drake's Farm and it became an area of comparative calm and order, so their condescension and forbearance became even more pragmatic. The police raids ceased, and the prosperity of the area increased as its reputation as a safe and convivial place to have fun spread amongst the tens of thousands of black mine workers along the Rand. When they had a pass to leave the compound, they would travel thirty and forty miles, bypassing other centres of entertainment to reach it.

However, there were still many hundreds of thousands of other potential customers who could never reach Drake's Farm, and Moses Gama turned his attention to these.

They cannot come to us, so we must go to them. He explained to Hendrick what must be done, and it was Hendrick who negotiated the piecemeal purchase of a fleet of second-hand delivery vans and employed a coloured mechanic to renovate them and keep them in running order.

Each evening convoys of these vehicles loaded with liquor and girls left Drake's Farm, journeying down the length of the goldfields to park at some secluded location close to the big mining properties, in a copse of trees, a valley between the mine dumps, or an abandoned shaft building. The guards at the gate of the mine workers compound, who were all Buffaloes, made certain that the customers were allowed in and out, and now every member of the Buffalo totem could share in the good fortune of their clan.

So, my brother, do you still miss your little white stones? Moses asked after their first two years of operation from Drake's Farm.

It was as you promised, Hendrick chuckled. We have everything that a man could wish for now., You are too easily satisfied, Moses chided him.

There is more? Hendrick asked with interest.

We have only just begun, Moses told him.

What is next, my brother? Have you heard of a trade union? Moses asked. Do you know what it is? Hendrick looked dubious, frowning as he thought about it. I know that the white men on the mines have trade unions, and the white men on the railways also. I have heard it spoken of, but I know very little about them. They are white men's business, no concern of the likes of us. You are wrong, my brother, Moses said quietly. The African Mine Workers Union is very much our concern. It is the reason why you and I came to Goldi!

I thought that we came for the money. Fifty thousand union members each paying one shilling a week union dues, isn't that money? Moses asked, and smiled as he watched his brother make the calculation.

Avarice contorted his smile so that the broken gap in his teeth looked like a black mine pit.

It is good money indeed! Moses had learned from his unsuccessful attempts to establish a mine workers union at the H'ani Mine. The black miners were simple souls with not the least vestige of political awareness; they were separated by tribal loyalties; they did not consider themselves part of a single nation.

Tribalism is the one great obstacle in our path, Moses explained to Hendrick. If we were one people we would be like a black ocean, infinite in our power. But we are not one people, Hendrick pointed out. Any more than the white men are one people. A Zulu is as different from an Ovambo as a Scotsman is from a Russian Cossack or an Afrikaner from an Englishman. Hay! Moses smiled. I see you have been reading the books I gave you. When first we came to Goldi you had never heard of a Russian Cossack- You have taught me much about men and the world they live in, Hendrick agreed. Now teach me how you will make a Zulu call an Ovambo his brother. Tell me how we are to take the power that is held so firmly in the hands of the white man. 'These things are possible. The Russian people were as diverse as we black people of Africa. They are Asiatics and Europeans, Tartars and Slavs, but under a great leader they have become a single nation and have overthrown a tyranny even more infamous than the one under which we suffer.

The black people need a leader who knows what is good for them and will force them to it, even if ten thousand or a million die in achieving it. A leader such as you, my brother? Hendrick asked, and Moses smiled his remote enigmatic smile.

The Mine Workers Union first, he said. Like a child learning to walk, one step at a time. The people must be forced to do what is good for them in the long run even though at first it is painful. I am not sure, Hendrick shook his great shaven round head on which the ridged scars stood proud like polished gems of black onyx. What is it we seek, my brother? Is it wealth or power? We are fortunate, Moses answered. You want wealth and I want power. The way I have chosen, each of us will get what he desires. Even with ruthless contingents of the Buffaloes on each of the mine properties the process of unionization was slow and frustrating. By necessity much of it had to be undertaken secretly, for the government's Industrial Conciliation Act placed severe limitations on black labour association and specifically prohibited collective bargaining by black workers. There was also opposition from the workers themselves, their natural suspicion and antagonism towards the new union shop stewards, all of them Buffaloes, all of them appointed and not elected; and the ordinary workers were reluctant to hand over part of their hard-earned wages to something they neither understood nor trusted.

However, with Dr Marcus Archer to advise and counsel them and with Hendrick's Buffaloes to push the cause forward, slowly the unionization of the workers on each of the various mine properties was accomplished.

The miners reluctance to part with their silver shillings was quelled.

There were, of course, casualties, and some men died, but at last there were over twenty thousand dues-paying members of the African Mine Workers Union.

The Chamber of Mines, the association of mining interests, found itself presented with a fait accompli. The members were at first alarmed; their natural instinct was to destroy this cancer immediately.

However, the Chamber members were first and above all else businessmen, concerned with getting the yellow metal to the surface with as little fuss as possible and with paying regular dividends to their shareholders. They understood what havoc a labour battle could wreak amongst their interests, so they held their first cautious informal talks with the nonexistent union and were most gratified to find the self-styled secretary general to be an intelligent articulate and reasonable person.

There was no trace of Bolshevik dialectic in his statements, and far from being radical and belligerent, he was cooperative and respectful in his address.

He is a man we can work with, they told each other. He seems to have influence. We've needed a spokesman for the workers and he seems a decent enough sort. We could have done a lot worse. We can manage this chap. And sure enough, their very first meetings had excellent results and they were able to solve a few small vexing long-term problems to the satisfaction of the union and the profit of the mine owners.

After that the informal, unrecognized union had the Chamber's tacit acceptance, and when a problem arose with their labour the Chamber sent for Moses Garna and it was swiftly settled. Each time this happened, Moses position became more securely entrenched. And, of course, there was never even a hint at strikes or any form of militancy on the union's part.

Do you understand, my brothers? Moses explained to the first meeting of his central committee of the African Mine Workers Union held in Mama Nginga's shebeen. If they come down upon us with their full strength while we are still weak, we will be destroyed for all time. This man Smuts is a devil, and he is truly the steel in the government's spear.

He did not hesitate to send his troops with machine-guns against the white union strikers in 1922. What would he do to black strikers, my brothers? He would water the earth with our blood. No, we must lull them. Patience is the great strength of our people. We have a hundred years, while the white man lives only for the day. In time the black ants of the veld build mountains and devour the carcass of the elephant. Time is our weapon, and time is the white man's enemy. Patience, my brothers, and one day the white man will discover that we are not oxen to be yoked into the traces of his wagon. He will discover rather that we are black-maned lions, fierce eaters of white flesh. How swiftly the years have passed us by since we rode on Tshayela's train from the deserts of the west to the flat shining mountains of Goldi. Hendrick watched the mine dumps on the skyline as Moses drove the old Ford through the sparse traffic of a Sunday morning. He drove sedately, not too slow not too fast, obeying the traffic rules, stopping well in advance of the changing traffic lights, those wonders of the technological age which had only been installed on the main routes within the last few months. Moses always drove like this.

Never draw attention to yourself unnecessarily, my brother, he advised Hendrick. Never give a white policeman an excuse to stop you.

He hates you already for driving a motor car that he cannot afford himself. Never put yourself in his power. The road skirted the rolling fairways of the Johannesburg Country Club, oases of green in the brown veld, watered and groomed and mown until they were velvet green carpets on which the white golfers strolled in their foursomes followed by their barefooted caddies. Further back amongst the trees the white walls of the club house gleamed, and Moses slowed the Ford and turned at the bottom of the club property where the road crossed the tiny dry Sand Spruit river and the signpost said Rivonia Farm'.

They followed the unsurfaced road, and the dust raised by the Ford's wheels hung behind them in the still dry highveld air and then settled gently to powder the brittle frost-dried grass along the verges a bright theatrical red.

The road served a cluster of small-holdings, each of them five or ten acres in extent, and Dr Marcus Archer's property was the one at the end of the road. He made no attempt to farm the land, he had no chickens, horses or vegetable gardens such as the other small-holders kept.

The single building was square and unpretentious, with a tattered thatched roof and wide verandah encompassing all four sides. It was screened from the road by a scraggly plantation of Australian blue gums.

There were four other vehicles parked under the gum trees, and Moses turned the Ford off the track and stopped the engine. Yes, my brother. The years have passed swiftlY, he agreed. They always do when men are intent on dire purposes, and the world is changing all around us. There are great events afoot. it is nineteen years since the revolution in Russia, and Trotsky has been exiled. Herr Hitler has occupied the Rhineland, and in Europe there is talk of war, a war that will destroy forever the curse of Capitalism and from which the revolution will emerge victorious. Hendrick laughed, the black gap in his teeth making it a grimace. These things do not concern us. You are wrong again, my brother. They concern us beyond all else. I do not understand them. ,Then I will help you. Moses touched his arm. 'Come, my brother. I am taking you now to the next step in your understanding of the world. He opened the door of the Ford and Hendrick climbed down on his side and followed him towards the old house.

It will be wise, my brother, if you keep your eyes and your ears open and your mouth closed, Moses told him as they reached the steps at the front verandah. You will learn much that way. As they climbed the steps, Marcus Archer hurried out onto the verandah to greet them, his expression lighting with pleasure as he saw Moses, and he hurried to him and embraced him lovingly then, his arm still around Moses waist, he turned to Hendrick.

You will be Henny. We have spoken about you often. I have met you before, Dr Archer, at the induction centre. That was so long ago. Marcus Archer shook his hand.

And you must call me Marcus. You are a member of our family! He glanced at Moses and his adoration was apparent.

He reminded Hendrick of a young wife all agog with her new husband's virility.

Hendrick knew that Moses lived here at Rivonia Farm with Marcus and he felt no revulsion for the relationship.

He understood how vitally important Marcus Archer's counsel and assistance had been in their successes over the years and approved the price that Moses paid for them. Hendrick himself had used men in the same fashion, never as a loving relationship but as a form of torture of a captured enemy. In his view there was no greater humiliation and degradation that one man could inflict upon another, yet he knew that in his brother's position he would not hesitate to use this strange red-haired little white man as he desired to be used.

Moses has been very naughty in not bringing you to visit us sooner. Marcus slapped Moses arm playfully. There are so many interesting and important people here who you should have met ages ago.

Come along now, let me introduce you. He took Hendrick's arm and led him through to the kitchen.

It was a traditional farmhouse kitchen with stone-flagged floor, a black woodburning stove at the far end and bunches of onions, cured hams and polonies hanging from the hooks in the beams of the ceiling.

Eleven men were seated at the long yellow-wood table, Five of them were white, but the rest were black men, and their ages varied from callow youth to grey-haired sage.

Marcus led Hendrick slowly down both sides of the table, introducing him to each in turn. beginning with the man at the head of the table.

This is the Reverend John Dube, but you will have heard him called Mafakuzela, and Hendrick felt an unaccustomed wave of awe.

Hau, Baba! he greeted the handsome old Zulu with vast respect. He knew that he was the political leader of the Zulu nation, that he was also the editor and founder of the Ilanga Lase Natal newspaper, The Sun of Natal, but most importantly that he was president of the African National Congress, the only political organization that attempted to speak for all the black nations of the southern African continent.

I know of you, Dube told Hendrick quietly. You have done valuable work with the new trade union. You are welcome, my son!

After John Dube, the other men in the room were of small

interest to Hendrick, though there was one young black man who could not have been more than twenty years of age but who nevertheless impressed Hendrick with his dignity and powerful presence.

This is our young lawyer-'

Not yet! Not yet! the young man protested.

Our soon-to-be-lawyer, Marcus Archer corrected himself.

He is Nelson Mandela, son of Chief Henry Mandela from the Transkei. And as they shook hands in the white men's fashion that for Hendrick still felt awkward, he looked into the law student's eyes and thought: This is a young lion. The white men at the table made small impression on Hendrick. There were lawyers and a journalist, and a man who wrote books and poetry of which Hendrick had never heard, but the others treated his opinions with respect.

The only thing that Hendrick found remarkable about these white men was the courtesy which they accorded him.

In a society in which a white man seldom acknowledged the existence of a black except to deliver an order, usually in brusque terms, it was unusual to encounter such concern and condescension. They shook Hendrick's hand without embarrassment, which was in itself strange, and made room for him at the table, poured wine for him from the same bottle and passed food to him on the same plate from which they had served themselves; and when they talked to him it was as, an equal and they called him comrade and brother'.

It seemed that Marcus Archer was a chef of repute, and he fussed over the woodburning stove producing dishes of food so minced and mixed and decorated and swimming in sauce that Hendrick could not tell either by inspection or taste whether they were fish or fowl or four-footed beast, but the others exclaimed and applauded and feasted voraciously.

Moses had advised Hendrick to keep his mouth filled with food rather than words, and to speak only when directly addressed and then in monosyllables, yet the others kept glancing at him with awe for he was an impressive figure in their midst: his head huge and heavy as a cannonball, the shining cicatrice lumped on his shaven pate and his gaze brooding and menacing.

The talk interested Hendrick very little but he feigned glowering attention as the others excitedly discussed the situation in Spain. The Popular Front Government, a coalition of Trotskyites, Socialists, left-wing Republicans and Communists, were threatened by an army mutiny under General Francisco Franco, and the company at Marcus Archer's luncheon table were filled with joyous outrage at this Fascist treachery. It seemed likely that it would plunge the Spanish nation into civil war and they all knew that only in the furnace of war could resolution be forged.

Two of the white men at the table, the poet and the journalist, declared their intention of leaving for Spain as soon as possible to join the struggle, and the other white men made no effort to disguise their envious admiration.

You lucky devils. I would have gone like a shot but the Party wants me to remain here. There were many references to the Party during the course of that long Sunday afternoon, and gradually the company turned its concerted attention on Hendrick as though it had been prearranged. Hendrick was relieved that Moses had insisted he read parts of Das Kapital and some of Lenin's works, in particular What is to be Done? and On Dual Authority. It was true that Hendrick had found them difficult to the point of pain and had followed them only imperfectly. However, Moses had gutted these works for him and presented him with the essentials of Marx's and Lenin's thoughts.

Now they were taking it in turns to talk directly at Hendrick, and he realized that he was being subjected to some sort of test. He glanced at Moses, and although his brother's expression did not change, he sensed that he was willing him consciously to a course of action. Was he trying to warn Hendrick to remain silent? He was not certain, but at that moment Marcus Archer said clearly: of course, the formation of a trade union amongst the black mine workers is in itself sufficient to assure the eventual triumph of the revolution, But his inflection posed a question, and he was watching Hendrick slyly, and Hendrick was not certain from where inspiration came.

I do not agree, he growled, and they were all silent, waiting expectantly. The history of the struggle bears witness that the workers unassisted will rise only as far as the idea of trade unionism, to combine their resources to fight the employers and the capitalist government. But it needs professional revolutionaries bound by complete loyalty to their ideals and by military-type discipline to carry the struggle to its ultimate victorious conclusion. It was almost a verbatim quotation from Lenin's What is to be Done and Hendrick had spoken in English. Even Moses looked amazed by his achievement, while the others exchanged delighted smiles as Hendrick glowered around him and relapsed back into impressive monumental silence.

It was sufficient. He did not have to speak again. By night

fall, when the others traipsed out into the darkness calling farewells and thanks, climbed into their motor cars with slamming doors and roars of starting engines and drove away down the dusty track, Moses had achieved what he had aimed for in bringing his brother out to Rivonia Farm.

Hendrick had been sworn in as a full member of both the South African Communist Party and of the African National Congress.

Marcus Archer had set the guest bedroom aside for Hendrick.

He lay in the narrow truckle bed listening to Moses and Marcus rutting in the main bedroom across the passage, and he was abruptly seized with the conviction that today the seeds of his destiny had been sown: that both the outer limits of his fortune and the time and manner of his own death had been determined in these last few hours. As he fell asleep, he was carried into the darkness on a wave of exultation and of dread.

Moses woke him while it was still dark and Marcus walked out to the Ford with them. The veld was white with frost; it crunched under their feet and had crusted on the windshield of the Ford.

Marcus shook hands with Hendrick. Forward, Comrade, he said. 'The future belongs to us. They left him standing in the frosty dark, staring after them.

Moses did not drive directly back into the city. instead he parked the Ford below one of the high flat-topped mine dumps and he and Hendrick climbed the eroded dump side, five hundred feet almost sheer, and reached the top just as the rising sun cleared the horizon and turned the winter veld to pale gold.

Now do you understand? Moses asked as they stood shoulder to shoulder on the brink of the precipitous hillside, and suddenly like the sunrise itself Hendrick saw his brother's whole tremendous design.

You want not a part of it, he said softly, not even the greater part. He spread his arms in a wide gesture that encompassed all below them from horizon to horizon. You want it all. The whole land and everything in it. And his voice was filled with wonder at the enormity of the vision.

Moses smiled. His brother had at last understood.

They climbed down the mine dump and went in silence to where the Ford was parked. In silence they drove towards Drake's Farm, for there were no words to describe what had happened, as there are no words adequately to describe birth or death. Only as they left the city limits and were forced to stop at one of the level crossings where the railway that served the mine properties crossed the main road, did the mundane world intrude once again.

A ragged black urchin, shivering in the frosty winter highveld morning, ran to the side window of the Ford and waved a folded newspaper at Moses through the glass. He rolled down the window, flipped the child a copper coin and placed the newspaper on the seat between them.

Hendrick frowned with interest and unfolded the newssheet, holding it so they could both see the front page. The headlines were full column: SOUTH AFRICAN TEAM CHOSEN FOR BERLIN OLYMPIC GAMES THE NATION WISHES THEM GOOD LUCK I know that white boy, Hendrick exclaimed, grinning gap-toothed as he recognized one of the photographs that accompanied the text.

So do I, Moses agreed, but they were looking at different young white faces in the long rows of individual pictures.

Of course, Manfred knew that Uncle Tromp kept the most extraordinary hours. Whenever Manfred's bladder woke him in the small dark hours and he dragged himself out of the tool-shed and stumbled down the path to the outhouse against the moroto hedge he would look up and through sleep-blurred eyes see the larnplight burning in the window of Uncle Tromp's study.

Once, more wide awake than usual, Manfred left the path and crept through Aunt Trudi's cabbages to peer in over the sill. Uncle Tromp sat like a shaggy bear at his desk, his beard rumpled from constant tugging and combing with his thick fingers, wire-framed spectacles perched upon his great beak of a nose, muttering furiously to himself as he scribbled on the loose sheets of paper that were tumbled over the desktop like debris after a hurricane. Manfred had assumed he was working on one of his sermons, but had not thought it strange that his labours; had continued night after night for almost two years.

Then one morning the coloured postman wheeled his bicycle up the dusty road, burdened by an enormous package wrapped in brown paper and blazoned with stamps and stickers and red sealing-wax. Aunt Trudi placed the mysterious package on the small hall table, and all the children found excuses to creep into the hall and stare at it in awe, until at five o'clock Uncle Tromp drove up in his pony trap and the girls, led by Sarah, ran shrilling to meet him before he could dismount.

There is a parcel for you, Papa. They crowded up behind him while Uncle Tromp made a show of examining the package and reading the label aloud.

Then he took the pearl-handled penknife from the pocket of his waistcoat, deliberately tested the edge of the blade with his thumb, cut the strings binding the packet and carefully unwrapped the brown paper.

Books! sighed Sarah, and the girls all drooped with palpable disappointment and drifted away. Only Manfred fingered.

There were six thick copies of the same book, all identical, bound in red boards, the titles printed in fake gold leaf but still crisp and shining from the presses. And something in Uncle Tromp's manner and in the intent expression with which he watched Manfred as he waited for his reaction, alerted him to the unusual significance of this pile of books.

Manfred read the title of the top copy and found it long and awkward: The Afrikaner: His Place in History and Africa.

It was written in Afrikaans, the infant language still striving for recognition. Manfred found that unusual, all important scholarly works, even when written by Afrikaners, were in Dutch. He was about to remark upon this when his eyes moved down to the name of the author, and he started and gasped.

Uncle Tromp! The old man chuckled with modest gratification.

You wrote it! Manfred's face lit with pride. You wrote a book. Ja, Jong, even an old dog can learn new tricks. Uncle Tromp swept up the pile in his arms and strode into his study. He placed the books in the centre of his desk and then looked around with astonishment to see that Manfred had followed him into the room.

I'm sorry, Uncle Tromp. Manfred realized his trespass.

He had been in this room only once before in his life, and then only by special invitation. I didn't ask. May I come in, Dlease, Oom? Looks like you are in already. Uncle Tromp tried to look stern. You might as well stay then. Manfred sidled up to the desk with his hands behind his back. In this house he had learned immense respect for the written word. He had been taught that books were the most precious of all men's treasures, the receptacles of his God-given genius.

May I touch one of them? he asked, and when Uncle Tromp nodded, he gingerly reached out and traced the author's name with his fingertip: The Reverend Tromp Bierman'.

Then he picked up the top copy, expecting at any moment the old man to bellow angrily at him. When it did not happen, he opened the book and stared at the small murky print on cheap spongy yellow paper.

May I read it, please, Uncle Tromp? he found himself begging, again expecting denial. But Uncle Tromp's expression turned softly bemused.

You want to read it? He blinked with mild surprise, and then chuckled. Well, I suppose that's why I wrote it, for people to read. Suddenly he grinned like a mischievous small boy and snatched the book from Manfred's hand. He sat down at his desk, placed his spectacles on his nose, dipped his pen and scribbled on the fly-leaf of the open book, re-read what he had written and then handed it to Manfred with a flourish: To Manfred De La Rey, A young Afrikaner who will help make our people's place in history and Africa secure for all time.

Your affectionate Uncle Tromp Bierman. Clutching the book to his chest, Manfred backed away to the door as though he feared it would be snatched from him again. Is it mine, is it truly for me? he whispered.

And when Uncle Tromp nodded, Yes, Jong, it's yours, he turned and fled from the room, forgetting in his haste to voice his thanks.

Manfred read the book in three successive nights, sitting UP until long after midnight with a blanket over his shoulders, squinting in the flickering candlelight. It was five hundred pages of close print, larded with quotation from holy scripture, but it was written in strong simple language, not weighed down with adjectives or excessive description and it sang directly to Manfred's heart. He finished it bursting with pride for the courage and fortitude and piety of his people, and burning with anger for the cruel manner in which they had been persecuted and dispossessed by their enemies. He sat with the closed book in his lap, staring into the wavering shadows, living in full detail the wanderings and suffering of his young nation, sharing the agony at the barricades when the black heathen hordes poured down upon them with war plumes tossing and the silver steel of the assegais drumming on rawhide shields like the surf of a gale-driven sea, sharing the wonder of voyaging out over the grassy ocean of the high continent into a beautiful wilderness unspoiled and unpeopled to take it as their own, finally sharing the bitter torment as the free land was wrested from them again by arrogant foreigners in their warlike legions and the final outrage of slavery, political and economic, was thrust upon them in their own land, the land that their fathers had won and in which they had been born.

As though the lad's rage had reached out and summoned him, Uncle Tromp came down the pathway, his footsteps crunching on the gravel, and stooped into the shed. He paused in the doorway, his eyes adjusting to the candle-light, and then he crossed to where Manfred crouched on the bed.

The mattress sagged and squeaked as he lowered his bulk upon it.

They sat in silence for a full five minutes before Uncle Tromp asked, So, you managed to finish it then? Manfred had to shake himself back to the present. I think it is the most important book ever written, he whispered.

Just as important as the Bible. That is blasphemy, Jong. Uncle Tromp tried to look stern, but his gratification softened the line of his mouth and Manfred did not apologize.

Instead he went on eagerly, For the first time ever I know who I am, and why I am here. Then my efforts have not been wasted, Uncle Tromp murmured and they were silent again until the old man sighed. 'Writing a book is a lonely thing, he mused. Like crying with all your heart into the night when there is nobody out there in the darkness, nobody to hear your cry, nobody to answer you. I heard you, Uncle Tromp. Ja, jong, so you did, but only you. However, Uncle Tromp was wrong. There were other listeners out there in the darkness.

The arrival of a stranger in the village was an event; the arrival of three strangers together was without parallel or precedent and raised a storm of gossip and speculation that had the entire population in a fever of curiosity.

The strangers arrived from the south on the weekly mail train. Taciturn and granite-faced, dressed in severe dark broadcloth and carrying their own carpet bags, they crossed the road from the railway siding to the tiny iron-roofed boarding house run by the widow Vorster and were not seen again until Sunday morning when they emerged to stride down the rutted sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder, grim and devout, wearing the white neckties and black suits of deacons of the Dutch Reformed Church and carrying their black leatherbound prayer books under their right arms like sabres, ready to unsheath and wield upon Satan and all his works.

They stalked down the aisle and took the front pew beneath the pulpit as if by right, and the families who had sat on those benches for generations made no demur but quietly found places for themselves at the rear of the nave.

Rumours of the presence of the strangers, they had already been dubbed the three wise men, had permeated to the remotest surrounding districts and even those who had not been inside the church in years, drawn by curiosity, now packed all the pews and even stood against the walls.

It was a better turnout even than last Dingaan's Day, the Day of the Covenant with God in thanksgiving for victory over the Zulu hordes and one of the most sacred occasions in the calendar of the Reformed Church.

The singing was impressive. Manfred stood beside Sarah and was so touched by the crystalline beauty of her sweet contralto that he was inspired to underscore it with his untrained but ringing tenor. Even under the deep hood of her traditional Voortrekker bonnet Sarah looked like an angel, golden blonde and lovely, her features shining with religious ecstasy. At fourteen years her womanhood was just breaking into tender uncertain bloom so that Manfred felt a strange breathlessness when he glanced at her over the hymn book they were sharing and she looked up and smiled at him with so much trust and adoration.

The hymn ended and the congregation settled down through a scraping of feet and muted coughing into a tense expectant silence. Uncle Tromp's sermons were renowned throughout South-West Africa, the best entertainment in the territory after the new moving-picture house in Windhoek which very few of them had dared to enter, and Uncle Tromp was in high fettle this day, provoked by the three sober-faced inscrutable gentlemen in the front row who had not even had the common decency to make a courtesy call at the pastory since arriving. He leaned his great gnarled fists on the rail of the pulpit and hunched over them like a prize fighter taking his guard, then he glanced down on his congregation with outraged contempt and they quailed before him with tremulous delight, knowing exactly what that expression presaged.

Sinners! Uncle Tromp let fly with a bellow that rang against the roof timbers and the three dark-suited strangers jumped in their seats as though a cannon had been fired under them. The House of God is filled with unrepentant sinners, and Uncle Tromp was away; he flailed them with dreadful accusations, raking them with that special tone which Manfred thought of privately as the voice and then lulling them with gentle sonorous passages and promises of salvation before again hurling threats of brimstone and damnation at them like fiery spears, until some of the women were weeping openly and there were hoarse spontaneous cries of Amen and Praise the Lord and Hallelujah and in the end they went down trembling on their knees as he prayed for their very souls.

Afterwards they streamed out of the church with a sort of nervous relief, garrulous and gay as though they had just survived some deadly natural phenomenon such as earthquake or gale at sea. The three strangers were the last to leave, and at the door where Uncle Tromp waited to greet them they shook his hand and each of them spoke quietly and seriously to him in their turn.

Uncle Tromp listened to them gravely, then turned to consult briefly with Aunt Trudi before turning back to them.

I would be honoured if you would enter my home and sit at my board. The four men paced in dignified procession up to the pastory, Aunt Trudi and the children following at a respectful distance. She muttered terse instructions to the girls as they walked and the minute they were out of public view they scampered away to open the drapes in the dining-room, which was only used on very special occasions, and to move the dinner setting from the kitchen to the heavy stinkwood dining-table that was Trudi's inheritance from her mother.

The three strangers did not allow their deep erudite discussion to interfere with their appreciation of Aunt Trudi's cooking, and at the bottom of the table the children ate in dutiful but goggle-eyed silence. Afterwards the men drank their coffee and smoked a pipe on the front stoep, the drone of their voices soporific in the midday heat, and then it was time to return to divine worship.

The text that Uncle Tromp had chosen for his second sermon was 'The Lord has made straight a path for you in the wilderness'. He delivered it with all his formidable rhetoric and power, but this time he included passages from his own book, assuring his congregation that the Lord had chosen them particularly as a people and set aside a place for them. It remained only for them to reclaim that place in this land that was their heritage. More than once Manfred saw the three grim-faced strangers sitting in the front pew glance at one another significantly as Uncle Tromp was speaking.

The strangers left on the southbound mail train on Monday mornin& and for the days and weeks that followed a brittle sense of expectancy pervaded the pastory. Uncle Tromp, breaking his usual custom, took to waiting at the front gate to greet the postman each morning. Quickly he would peruse the packet of mail, and each day his disappointment became more obvious.

Three weeks passed before he gave up waiting for the postman. So he was in the tool-shed with Manfred, drilling the Fitzsimmons shift into him, honing that savage left hand of Manfred's, when the letter finally arrived.

it was lying on the hall table when Uncle Tromp went up to the house to wash for supper, and Manfred, who had walked up with him, saw him blanch when he observed the seal of the high moderator of the church on the flap of the envelope. He snatched up the envelope and hurried into his study, slamming the door in Manfred's face. The lock turned with a heavy chink. Aunt Trudi had to wait supper almost twenty minutes before he emerged again, and his grace, full of praise and thanksgiving was twice its usual length. Sarah rolled her eyes and squinted comically across the table at Manfred, and he cautioned her with a quick frown. At last Uncle Tromp roared Amen'. Yet he still did not take up his soupspoon but beamed down the length of the table at Aunt Trudi.

My dear wife,he said. You have been patient and uncomplaining all these years. Aunt Trudi blushed scarlet. Not in front of the children, Meneer, she whispered, but Uncle Tromp's smile grew broader still.

They have given me Stellenbosch, he told her, and the silence was complete. They stared at him incredulously.

Every one of them understood what he was saying.

Stellenbosch, Uncle Tromp repeated, mouthing the word, rolling it over his tongue, gargling it in his throat as though it were the first taste of a rare and noble wine.

Stellenbosch was a small country town thirty miles from Cape Town.

The buildings were gabled in the Dutch style, thatched and whitewashed, as dazzling as snow. The streets were broad and lined with the fine oaks that Governor Van der Stel had ordered his burghers to plant back in the seventeenth century. Around the town the vineyards of the great chateaux were laid out in a marvelous patchwork and the dark precipices of the mountains rose in a heaven-high backdrop beyond.

A small country town, pretty and picturesque, but it was also the very citadel of Afrikanerdom, enshrined in the university whose faculties were grouped beneath the green oaks and the protecting mountain barricades. It was the centre of Afrikaner intellectualism. Here their language had been forged and was still being crafted. Here their theologians pondered and debated. Tromp Bierman himself had studied beneath Stellenbosch's dreaming oaks. All the great men had trained here: Louis Botha, Hertzog, Jan Christian Smuts. No one who was not Stellenbosch had ever headed the government of the Union of South Africa. Very few who were not Stellenbosch men had even served in the cabinet. It was the Oxford and Cambridge of southern Africa, and they had given the parish to Tromp Bierman. It was an honour unsurpassed, and now the doors would open before him. He would sit at the centre; he would wield power, and the promise of greater power; he would become one of the movers, the innovators. Everything now became possible: the Council of the Synod, the moderatorship itself; none of these were beyond his grasp. There were no limits now, no borders nor boundaries. Everything was possible.

It was the book, Aunt Trudi breathed. I never thought.

I never understood Yes, it was the book, Uncle Tromp chuckled. 'And thirty years of hard work. We will have the big manse on Eikeboom Straat and a thousand a year. Each of the children will have a separate room and a place at the university paid for by the church. I will preach to the mighty men of the land and our brightest young minds. I will be on the University Council.

And you, my dear wife, will have professors and ministers of government at your table; their wives will be your companions, he broke off guiltily and now we will all pray.

We will ask God for humility; we will ask him to save us from the mortal sins of pride and avarice. Down everybody! he roared. Down on your knees. The soup was cold before he allowed them up again.

They left two months later, after Uncle Tromp had handed over his duties to the young dominie fresh from the theology faculty of the university where the old man was now taking them.

It seemed that every man and woman and child from within a hundred miles was at the station to see them off.

Manfred had not realized until that moment just how high was the affection and esteem in which the community held Uncle Tromp. The men all wore their church suits and each of them shook his hand, gruffly thanked him and wished him Godspeed. Some of the women wept and all of them brought gifts, they had baskets of jams and preserves, of milk tarts and koeksisters, bags of kudu biltong, and enough food to feed an army on the journey southwards.

Four days later the family changed trains at the central Cape Town railway station. There was barely time for them to troop out into Adderley Street and gape up at the legendary flat-topped massif of Table Mountain that towered over the city before they had to rush back and clamber aboard the coach for the much shorter leg of the journey across the Cape flats and through the sprawling vineyards towards the mountains.

The deacons of the church and half the congregation were on the platform at Stellenbosch station to welcome them, and the family discovered very swiftly that the pace of all their lives had changed dramatically.

From almost the first day, Manfred was totally immersed in preparations for the entrance examinations of the university. He studied from early morning until late every night for two months and then sat the examinations over a single painful week and lived through an even more painful week waiting for the results to be posted. He passed first in German language, third in mathematics and eighth overall, the habits of study he had learned over the years in the Bierman household now bearing full fruit, and was accepted into the faculty of law for the semester beginning at the end of January.

Aunt Trudi was strongly opposed to his leaving the manse and entering one of the university residences for men. As she pointed out, he had a fine room to himself now; the girls would miss him to the point of distraction, by implication she was included amongst those who would suffer, and even on Uncle Tromp's now princely stipend, the residence fees would be a burden on the family exchequer.

Uncle Tromp called upon the university registrar and made some financial arrangements which were never discussed in the family and then came down strongly on Manfred's side.

Living in a house full of women will drive the boy mad in time. He should go where he can benefit from the company of other young men and from the full life of the university. So, on 25 January, Manfred eagerly presented himself at the imposing Cape Dutch style residence for gentlemen students, Rust en Vrede. The name translated as Rest and Peace', and within the first few minutes of arrival he realized just how ironic was the choice for he was caught up in the barbaric ritual of freshman initiation.

His name was taken from him and he was given instead the sobriquet of Poep; which he shared with the nineteen other freshmen of the house.

This translated freely as flatus'. He was forbidden to use the pronouns Y or me but only this flatus', and he had to request permission not only of the senior men for every action but also of all inanimate objects he encountered in the residence. Thus he was obliged to utter endless inanities: Honourable door, this flatus wishes to pass through, or Honourable toilet, this flatus wishes to sit upon you. Within the residence he and his fellow freshmen were not allowed normal means of perambulation but were made to walk backwards, even down stairs, at all times. They were held incommunicado from friends and family and in particular were most strenuously forbidden to talk to anybody of the opposite sex; if they were caught so much as looking in the general direction of a pretty girl a warning notice was hung around their necks and could not be removed even in the bath. Beware! Sex maniac at large. Their rooms were raided by the seniors every hour, on the hour, from six in the evening until six in the morning. All their bedding was piled in the middle of the floor and soaked with water, their books and possessions were swept from the shelves and turned out of the drawers and piled on the sodden blankets. The senior men performed this duty in shifts until the shivering freshmen took to sleeping on the bare tiles of the passage outside their bedrooms, leaving the chaos within to mould and fester. Whereupon the senior student, a lordly fourth-year honours man named Roelf Stander, held a formal house committee inspection of the rooms.

You are the most disgusting cloud of flatus ever to disgrace this university, he told them at the end of the inspection. You have one hour in which to make your rooms spotless and put them in perfect order, after which you will be taken on a route march as punishment for your slovenly attitude. it was midnight when Roelf Stander finally announced that he was satisfied with the condition of their bedrooms and they were prepared for the route march.

This involved stripping them to their underpants, placing a pillow case over their heads, tying them in Indian file with a rope around their necks and their hands strapped behind their backs and marching them through the streets of the sleeping town and out into the mountains. The chosen route was rough and stony and when one of them fell he brought down the freshmen in front and behind. At four in the morning they were led back into town on bleeding feet and with their throats chafed raw from the coarse hemp rope to find their rooms had been raided once again and that Roelf Stander's next inspection would take place at five o'clock. The first lecture of the university day began at seven. There was no time for breakfast.

All this came under the heading of good clean fun; the university authorities turned a blind eye upon the rites on the grounds that boys will be boys and that the initiation ritual was a university tradition, instilling a community Spirit into the new arrivals. However, in this climate of indulgence the bullies and sadists who lurk in any community took full advantage of

the sanction accorded them. There were a few merciless

beatings, and one freshman was tarred and feathered. Mannfred had heard light talk of this punishment, but had not been able to imagine the dreadful agony that it inflicted when the victim's skin was sealed and his scalp and body hair matted and coated with hot tar. The boy was hospitalized and never returned to the university, but the affair was hushed up completely.

Other freshmen dropped out in those first weeks, for the self-appointed guardians of the university tradition made no allowance for delicate physical or mental constitutions. One of the victims, an asthmatic, was judged guilty of insubordination by the seniors and was sentenced to formal drowning.

This sentence was carried out in the bathroom of the residence. The victim was pinioned by four hefty seniors and lowered headfirst into the toilet bowl of the lavatory.

Two fifth-year medical students were present to monitor the victim's pulse and heartbeat during the punishment, but they had not made allowance for his asthma, and the drowning almost ended as the real thing. only frantic efforts by the budding doctors and an intravenous injection of stimulant started the boy's heart beating again; he left the university next day, like the other dropouts, never to return.

Manfred, despite his size and physique and good looks, which made him a natural target, was able to bridle his anger and check his tongue. He submitted stoically even to extreme provocation until in the second week of torment a note was pinned on the board in the residence common room: all flatus will report to the university gymnasium at 4 pm on Saturday to try out for the boxing squad.

Signed: Roelf Stander Captain of Boxing Each of the university residences specialized in some particular sport: one was the rugby football house, another was field and track; but Rust en Vrede's sport was boxing. This, together with the fact that it was Uncle Tromp's old house, was the reason why Manfred had applied for admission in the first place.

It was also the reason why the interest in the freshmen try-out was far beyond anything that Manfred had expected.

At least three hundred spectators were assembled, and the seats around the ring were all filled by the time that Manfred and his fellow flatus arrived at the gymnasium. Marshalled by one of the senior men into a crocodile column, they were marched to the changing-rooms and given five minutes to change into tennis shoes, shorts and vests, then lined up against the lockers in order of height.

Roelf Stander strolled down the rank, glancing at the fist in his hand and making the matchings. It was obvious that he had been studying them during the preceding weeks and grading their potential. Manfred, the tallest and sturdiest of all the freshmen, was at the end of the line, and Roelf Stander stopped in front of him last.

There is no other fart as loud and smelly as this one, he announced, and then was silent for a moment as he studied Manfred. 'What do you weigh, Flatus? This flatus is light heavyweight, sir, and Roelf's eyes narrowed slightly. He had already singled Manfred out as the best prospect and now the technical jargon heartened him.

Have you boxed before, Flatus? he demanded, and then pulled a wry face at the disappointing reply.

This flatus has never boxed a match, sir, but this flatus has had some practice.

A Oh, all right, then! I am heavyweight. But as there is no

one else to give you a match, I'll go a few rounds with you, if you promise to treat me lightly, Flatus. Roeff Stander was captain of the university squad, amateur provincial champion and one of South Africa's better prospects for the team which would go to Berlin for the Olympic Games in 1936. It was a rich joke cracked by a senior student and everybody laughed slavishly. Even Roelf could not hide a grin at his own preposterous plea for mercy.

All right, we'll begin with the fly-weights, he continued, and led them out into the gymnasium.

The freshmen were seated on a long bench at the back of the hall with an imperfect view of the ring over the heads of the more privileged spectators as Roelf and his assistants, all members of the boxing squad, put the gloves on the first trialists and led them down the aisle to the ring.

While this was going on Manfred became aware of somebody in the front row of seats standing and trying to catch his eye. He glanced around at the senior men who were in charge of them, but their attention was on the ring so for the first time he looked directly at the person in the crowd.

He had forgotten how pretty Sarah was, either that or she had blossomed in the weeks since he had last seen her. Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks were flushed with excitement as she waved a lace handkerchief and mouthed his name happily.

He kept his expression inscrutable, but lowered one eyelid at her in a furtive wink and she blew him a two-handed kiss and dropped back into her seat beside the mountainous bulk of Uncle Tromp.

They have both come! The knowledge cheered him enormously; until that moment he had not realized how lonely these last weeks had been. Uncle Tromp turned his head and grinned at him, his teeth very white in the frosted black bush of his beard; then he turned back to face the ring.

The first bout began: two game little flyweights going at each other in a flurry of blows, but one was outclassed and soon there was blood sprinkling the canvas. Roelf Stander stopped it in the second round and patted the loser on the back.

Well done! No shame in losing. The other bouts followed, all of them spirited, the fighters obviously doing their very best, but apart from a promising middleweight, it was all very rough and unskilled. At last Manfred was the only one on the bench.

All right, FlatusF The senior laced his gloves and told him: 'Let's see what you can do. Manfred slipped the towel off his shoulders and stood up just as Roelf Stander climbed back into the ring from the changing-room end. He now wore the maroon vest and trunks piped with gold that were Varsity colours, and on his feet were expensive boots of glove leather laced high over the ankles. He held up both gloved hands to quieten the whistles and good-natured cheers.

Ladies and Gentlemen. We do not have a match for our last trialist; no other freshman in his weight division. So if you will be kind enough to bear with me, I'm going to take him through his paces. The cheers broke out again, but now there were shouts of Go easy on him, Roelf, and Don't kill the poor beggar! Roelf waved his assurance of mercy at them, concentrating on the section of seats filled with girls from the women's residences, and there were muted squeals and giggles an a tossing of permanently waved coiffures, for Roelf stood six feet, with a square jaw, white teeth and flashing dark eyes.

His hair was thick and wavy and gleaming with Brylcreem, his sideburns dense and curling and his mustache dashing as a cavalier's.

As Manfred reached the front row of seats he could not restrain himself from glancing sideways at Sarah and Uncle Tromp. Sarah was hopping her bottom up and down on her seat, and she pressed her clenched fists to cheeks that were rosy with excitement.

Get him, Manie, she cried. Vat hoM! and beside her Uncle Tromp nodded at him. Fast as a mamba, jong! Brave as a ratel he rumbled so that only Manfred could hear; and Manfred lifted his chin and there was a new lightness in his feet as he ducked through the ropes into the ring.

One of the other seniors had taken over the duty of referee: In this corner at one hundred and eighty-five pounds the captain of Varsity and amateur heavyweight champion of the Cape of Good Hope, Roelf Stander! And in this corner at one hundred and seventy-three pounds a freshman, in deference to the delicate company, he did not use the full honorific, Manfred De La Rey. The timekeeper struck his gong and Roelf came out of his corner dancing lightly, ducking and weaving, smiling thinly over his red leather gloves as they circled each other. just out of striking distance, around they went, and then back the other way, and the smile left Roelf's lips and they tightened into a straight thin line. His light manner evaporated; he had not expected this.

There was no weak place in the guard of the man who faced him; his cropped golden head was lowered on muscled shoulders, and he moved on his feet like a cloud.

He's a fighter! Roelf's anger flared. He lied, he knows what he's doing. He tried once more to command the centre of the ring, but was forced to turn out again as his adversary moved threateningly into his left.

As yet neither of them had thrown a punch, but the cheers of the crowd subsided. They sensed that they were watching something extraordinary; they saw Roelf's casual attitude change, saw deadly intent come into the way he was moving now; and those who knew him well saw the little lines of worry and perturbation at the corners of his mouth and eyes.

Roelf flicked out his left, a testing shot, and the other man did not even deign to duck; he turned it off his glove contemptuously, and Roelf's skin prickled with shock as he sensed the power in that fleeting contact and looked deeply into Manfred's eyes. It was a trick of his, establishing domination by eye contact.

This man's eyes were a strange light colour, like topaz or yellow sapphire, and Roelf remembered the eyes of a calfkilling leopard that his father had caught in a steel spring trap in the hills above the farm homestead. These were the same eyes, and now they altered, they burned with a cold golden light, implacable and inhuman.

It was not fear that clenched Roelf Stander's chest but rather a premonition of terrible danger. This was an animal in the ring with him. He could see the hunger in its eyes, a great killing hunger, and he struck out at it instinctively.

He used his left, his good hand, driving in hard at those pitiless yellow eyes. The blow died in the air and he tried desperately to recover, but his left elbow was raised, his flank was open for perhaps a hundredth part of a second, and something exploded inside of him. He did not see the fist; he did not recognize it as a punch, for he had never been hit like that before. It felt as though it was inside him, bursting through his ribs, tearing out his viscera, imploding his lungs, driving the wind out of his throat in a hissing agony as he was flung backwards.

The ropes caught him in the small of the back and under the shoulderblades and hurled him forward again like a stone from a slingshot. Time seemed to slow down to a trickle; his vision was enhanced, magnified as though there was a drug in his blood, and this time he saw the fist; he had a weird flash of fantasy that it was not flesh and bone but black iron in that glove, and his flesh quailed. But he was powerless to avoid it and this time the shock was even greater, unbelievable, beyond his wildest imaginings. He felt something tear inside him and the bones of his legs melted like hot candlewax.

He wanted to scream at the agony of it, but even in his extremity he choked it off. He wanted to go down, to get down on the canvas before the fist came again, but the ropes held him up and his body seemed to shatter like crystal as the gloved hand crashed into him and the ropes flung him forward.

His hands dropped away from his face and he saw the fist coming yet again. It seemed to balloon before his eyes, filling his vision, but he did not feel it strike.

Roelf was moving into it with all his weight and his skull snapped back in whiplash against the tension of his spinal column and then dropped forward again and he went down on his face like a dead man and lay without a tremor of movement on the white canvas.