"You are asking yourselves why?" Ralph said. "You want to know why Ralph Ballantyne wants to sell out." Neither brother denied it, they waited quietly as vultures in the treetops.



"The truth is this, I have over-extended myself in Matabeleland.



The Harkness Mine-" The lines of tension around Roelofs mouth smoothed out. They had heard about the mine, the talk on the Johannesburg stock exchange floor was that it would cost 50,000 pounds to bring it into production.



"I am behind on the railway contract for Mr. Rhodes," Ralph went on quietly and seriously. "I need cash." "You had a figure in mind?"



Roelof asked, and took a puff on the cigar.



Ralph nodded and gave it to him, and Roelof choked on his smoke.



His brother pounded him between his shoulders until he regained his breath, and then Roelof chuckled and shook his head.



"Ja,"he said. "That's good. That's a very good one." "It looks as though you were right," Ralph agreed. "I am wasting your time." He pushed back his chair and stood up.



"Sit down." Roelof stopped laughing. "Sit down and let's talk," he said briskly, and by the following noon Aaron Fagan had drawn up the contract in his own hand.



It was very simple. The purchasers accepted the attached statement of assets as complete and correct. They agreed to take over all existing contracts of carriage and the responsibility of all goods at present in transit. The seller gave no guarantees. The purchase price was in cash, no share transfers were involved, and the effective date was that of the signatures walk out, walk in.



They signed in the presence of their attorneys, and then both parties, accompanied by their legal counsellors, crossed the street to the main branch of the Dominion Colonial and Overseas Bank where the cheque of Zeederberg Bros was presented and duly honoured by the manager. Ralph swept the bundles of five-pound notes into his carpet bag, tipped his hat to the brothers Zeederberg.



"Good luck to you, gentlemen," and then he took Aaron Fagan's arm and led him in the direction of Diamond Lil's Hotel.



Roelof Zeederberg massaged the bald spot on his crown. "I suddenly have this strange feeling," he murmured uneasily as he watched them go.



The next morning, Ralph left Aaron Fagan at the door of his office.



"You'll be hearing from the good brothers Zeederberg again sooner than you expect," he warned him affably. "Try not to bother me with their accusations, there's a good fellow." He sauntered away across the Market Square, leaving Aaron staring after him thoughtfully.



Ralph's progress was slow, half a dozen acquaintances stopped him to enquire solicitously after his health, and then seek confirmation of the sale of his transport company, or to find out if he intended making a public issue of Harkness Mine shares.



"Give me a nod when you decide, Ralph." "Any help I can give, it will be my pleasure, Mr. Ballantyne." Rumours of the "payable" values of the Harkness ore put it as high as sixty ounces to the ton, and everybody he met wanted to be let in, so it took him almost an hour to cover the five hundred yards to the offices of the De Beers Consolidated Mines Company.



It was a magnificent edifice, a temple dedicated to the worship of diamonds. The open balconies on all three floors were laced with white grilles of delicate ironwork, the walls were of redbrick with corners picked out in worked stone blocks, the windows were of stained glass and the doors were oiled teak with polished brass fittings.



Ralph signed his name in the visitors" book and a uniformed janitor with white gloves led him up the spiral staircase to the top floor. There was a brass plate on the teak door, a name only, with no title to accompany it. "Mr. Jordan Ballantyne. But the grandeur of the office beyond the door gave some indication of Jordan's importance in the hierarchy of De Beers Diamond Company.



The double windows looked out over the Kimberley mine, the excavation was almost a mile across, and it was impossible even from this height to see into its depth. It seemed as though a meteor had struck and ploughed this crater through the earth's crust. Each day saw it driven deeper and deeper still, as the miners followed the fabulous cone of blue kimberlite conglomerate downwards. Already that hole had delivered up almost ten million carats of fine diamonds, and Mr. Rhodes Company owned it all. Ralph merely glanced once at this view of the pit in which he had spent most of his youth grovelling and scratching for the elusive stones, and then he surveyed the room appraisingly. The panelling was of seasoned oak, the intricate carving worked by craftsmen, the carpets over the floor were silk Quin, and the books in the shelves were matching sets bound in morocco and stamped in gold leaf.



There was the sound of running water from the open door of the bathroom, and a voice asked, "Who is it?" Ralph spun his hat onto the. stand, and turned to face the door as Jordan came through it. He was in his shirtsleeves with protectors over his cuffs, his shirt was the finest Irish linen and the cravat under his stock was watered silk.



He was drying his hands on a monogrammed towel, but he froze when he saw Ralph, then he threw the towel aside and crossed to him with three long lithe strides and a cry of delight.



At last Ralph broke the brotherly embrace and held Jordan off at arm's length to study him.



"Always the dandy," Ralph teased him, and ruffled his thick fashionably dressed golden curls.



No amount of brotherly familiarity could dim the fact that Jordan was still one of the most handsome men that Ralph had ever met. No, he was more than handsome, he was beautiful, and his evident pleasure at seeing Ralph heightened the glow of his skin and the lively sparkle of green behind his long curved fringe of lashes. As always, his younger brother's charisma and gentle nature recaptivated Ralph.



"And you," Jordan laughed, "you look so hard and brown and lean, what on earth happened to that prosperous paunch?" "I left it on the road from Matabeleland." "Matabeleland!" Jordan's expression changed.



"Then you'll have brought the terrible news with you." Jordan hurried to the leather-topped desk. "The telegraph line has been down for over a week, this is the first message to come through. I finished decoding it not an hour ago." He handed Ralph the flimsy, and he scanned it swiftly. The translation was written in Jordan's fair hand between the lines of tele printing The addressee was "Jove', Mr. Rhodes" private code name, and it was from General Mungo St. John in his capacity as acting Administrator of Matabeleland in the absence of Doctor Jameson.



"Outbreak of cattle disease reported from northern Matabeleland.



Losses sixty per cent repeat sixty per cent. Company veterinarian recognizes symptoms similar to Peste bovine epidemic Italy 1880.



Disease also known as rinderpest. No known treatment. Possible losses 100 per cent failing isolation and control. Urgently request authority to destroy and burn all cattle in central province to prevent southward spread." While he feigned astonishment and shock at the first paragraph, Ralph ran his eye swiftly down the remaining text. It was a rare opportunity to read a decoded BSA Company report, the fact that Jordan had handed it to him was a measure of his agitation.



There were lists of police strengths and dispositions, summaries of monies -held and dispensed, administrative requisitions, recommendations for trading-licences, and the roster of mineral claims filed in Bulawayo. Ralph passed the sheet back to his brother with a suitably solemn expression.



At the head of the roster of new claims, he had seen a block of forty square miles registered in the name of Wankie Coal Mining Company. That was the name that he and Harry Mellow had agreed upon for their company, and Ralph glowed with satisfaction that did not show on his face. Harry must have got the,-women and Jonathan safely back to Bulawayo, and he had wasted no time in filing the claims. Once again- Ralph congratulated himself on his choice of partner and brother-in-law. The only prickle of uncertainty was the rider to the roster that St. John had sent.



Advise soonest Company policy regarding coal and base metals claims register 198 in favour of Wankie Coal Mining Co. held in abeyance pending clarification.



The claims were filed but not yet confirmed, however, Ralph would have to worry about that later. Right now, he had to concentrate on Jordan's apprehensions.



"Papa is right in the path of this thing, this rinderpest. He has worked so hard all his life, and had such rotten luck oh Ralph, it can't happen to him, not again." Jordan stopped as another thought occurred to him. "And you, too. How many bullock teams did you have in Matabeleland, Ralph?" "None." "None? I don't understand." "I sold every last ox and wagon to the Zeederbergs." Jordan stared at him.



"When?" he asked at last. "Yesterday." "When did you leave Bulawayo, Ralph?" "What has that got to do with it?" Ralph demanded.



"The telegraph lines they were cut, you know, deliberately. In four places." "Extraordinary, who would have done a thing like that?"



"I don't even dare to ask." Jordan shook his head. "And on second thoughts, I don't want to know when you left Bulawayo, or whether or not Papa sold his stock as suddenly as you did yours." "Come on, Jordan, I'll take you to lunch at the club. A bottle of bubbly will console you for belonging to a family of rogues and for working for another." The Kimberley Club had a most undistinguished la ode Since its foundation, it had been enlarged twice, and the additions were glaringly apparent, unbaked Kimberley brick abutting upon galvanized iron and finally fired redbrick. The iron roof was unpainted, but there were strange little touches of pretension, the white picket fence, the front door glazed in Venetian glass.



Until a man had become a member, he could not consider himself truly to have arrived in South Africa. Membership was so prized that Barney Barnato, who despite his millions had been steadfastly blackballed, was finally tempted to sell out his diamond holdings to Mr. Rhodes only after he had been promised the coveted membership as part of the deal. Even then, with the pen in his hand, Barnato had hesitated over signing the contract.



"How do I know they still won't chuck me out again, as soon as I've signed?" "My dear fellow, we will make you a life governor," Mr. Rhodes assured him, offering the final plum that was irresistible to the little slum-born Cockney.



On his first night as a member of the club, Barnato strode up to the long bar dressed like a theatrical impresario, and ordered a round of drinks for all, then flashed a magnificent ten-carat blue-white diamond ring on his third finger.



"What do you gents think of that, hey?" One of the members studied it for a" moment, and remarked, "Clashes awfully with the colour of your fingernails, old boy." Then ignoring the proffered drink, he sauntered through to the billiard room, and everybody except Barney Barnato and the barman trooped out after him. It was that kind of club.



Ralph's and Jordan's own membership had been assured as soon as they came of age. For not only was their father a founder member and a life governor, but he was also a holder of the Queen's commission and a gentleman. These things counted at the Kimberley Club ahead of vulgar wealth. The porter greeted the brothers by name, and put their cards up on the "in" board. The barman behind the long bar poured Jordan a pink gin and Indian tonic, without being ordered, though he turned to Ralph apologetically.



"We don't see you often enough, Mr. Ralph. Is it still Glenlivet whisky, sir, water and no ice?" In the dining-room they both ordered from the carving trolley, juicy young lamb, with the subtle taste of the Karroo herbs on which it had barely been weaned, served with parsleyed baby new potatoes. Jordan declined the champagne that Ralph suggested.



"I am a working man," he smiled, "my tastes are simpler than yours, something like Chliteau Margaux "73 would suit me better." The twenty-year-old claret cost four times more than any champagne on the wine list.



"By GodV said Ralph ruefully. "Under that urban veneer, you are a true Ballantyne, after all." "And you must be neck-deep in filthy lucre after that timely sale. It's my brotherly duty to help you get rid of it." "Fire sale price," Ralph demurred, but nodded in appreciation of the claret. They ate in contented silence for a few minutes, then Ralph picked up his glass.



"What does Mr. Rhodes think of the coal deposits that Harry and I pegged?" he asked mildly, pretending to study the ruby lights in the wine, but watching his brother's reaction.



He saw the corners of Jordan's mouth quiver with surprise, saw his eyes flare with some other emotion which he could not read before it was masked, then Jordan lifted a pink morsel of the lamb on the silver fork, chewed it fastidiously and swallowed before he asked. "Coal?"



"Yes, coal. Ralph agreed. "Harry Mellow and I pegged a huge deposit of high-grade coal in northern Matabeleland haven't you seen the filing yet? Hasn't the Board approved the register? You must know about it, Jordan." "What a fine wine this is." Jordan inhaled the bouquet. "A big, spicy perfume." "Oh, of course, the telegraph line has been down.



You haven't received it yet?" "Ralph, I happen to know through my spies," Jordan said carefully, and Ralph leaned closer to him, "that the club secretary has just received a twenty-pound Stilton front Fortnum's. It should be perfect after the voyage." "Jordan." Ralph stared at him, but Jordan would not look up.



"You know I can't say anything," he whispered miserably, so instead they ate the Stilton on water biscuits and accompanied it with a port from the cask that was not listed on the wine card, its existence known only to the privileged members.



At last Jordan took the gold hunter from his fob pocket.



"I should be getting back, Mr. Rhodes and I are leaving for London at noon tomorrow. There is a great deal to do before we go." However, as they stepped out of the front door of the club, Ralph took his brother's elbow firmly and steered him into De Beers Road, lulling him with a flow of family gossip until they were opposite a pretty redbrick cottage almost hidden by dog roses, its diamond-paned windows curtained with frilled lace, and its demure little sign on the gate. "French dressmakers. Haute Couture. Continental Seamstresses. Specialities for individual tastes." Before Jordan had realized what his brother was about, Ralph had lifted the latch of the gate and was leading him down the walk. Ralph felt that on top of good food and wine, the company of one of the young ladies whom Diamond Lil chose with such taste and care to ornament Rose Cottage could not fail to soften and relax the tongue of even such A loyal servant as Jordan into indiscreet comment on his master's affairs.



Jordan took one pace beyond the gate, before he pulled back from Ralph's grasp with unnecessary violence.



"Where are you going?" he demanded. He had gone as pale as though a mamba had crossed the path at his feet. "Do you know what this place is?" "Yes, I do," Ralph nodded. "It's the only whorehouse I know of where a doctor checks the goods on offer at least once a week."



"Ralph, you can't go in there." "Oh, come now, Jordie," Ralph smiled, and took his arm again. "It's me, your brother Ralph. You don't have to put on a show. A salty young bachelor like you, by God, I'll bet there is a plaque on the wall above every bed in there with your name on it-" He stopped, as he recognized Jordan's real consternation. "What is it, Jordie?" For once Ralph was uncertain of himself. "Don't tell me you have never had your cuff turned back for you by one of Lil's seamstresses?" "I have never set foot in that place." Jordan shook his head vehemently. He had gone pale and his lips trembled. "And nor should you, Ralph. You are a married man!" "Oh Lord, Jordie, don't be daft, lad. Even a solid diet of caviar and champagne can pall after a while. A hunk of country ham and a jug of rough cider makes a nice change." "That's your business," Jordan flashed at him. "And I don't propose to stand in the street in front of this this institution, discussing it." He turned on his heel and strode away down the sidewalk a half-dozen paces before looking back over his shoulder. "You would do better to consult your lawyer about your damned coal than-" Jordan broke off with a stricken expression, clearly horrified by his indiscretion, then he hurried away towards Market Square.



Ralph's jaw hardened, his eyes went cold and hard as polished emeralds. He had got his hint from Jordan, and it hadn't cost him the price of one of Diamond Lil's fancy girls either. The lace curtain in the front window of Rose Cottage lifted, and a pretty dark-eyed lass with a creamy oval face and soft red mouth smiled out at him, shaking her ringlets in invitation to enter.



"Sit on it, dearie," Ralph told her grimly. "And keep it warm for me. I'll be back later." He ground out the half-smoked Romeo y Julieta under his heel, and strode away towards Aaron Fagan's office building. aran Fagan called them the "wolf pack."



"Mr. Rhodes keeps them chained in specially Aconstructed kennels, but lets them run every now and then, just to get a little taste of human flesh." They did not look particularly lupine. There were four of them, soberly dressed men whose ages ranged from late thirties to mid-fifties.



Aaron introduced each of them individually, and then collectively.



"These gentlemen are the De Beers Company permanent legal advisers. I think I am correct in saying that they also act on behalf of the British South Africa Company?" "That is correct, Mr. Fagan," said the senior counsellor, and his colleagues arranged themselves down the opposite side of the long table. Each of them placed his pigskin folder of papers neatly in front of him, and then, like a rehearsed vaudeville team, they looked up in unison. It was only then that Ralph recognized the wolflike glitter in their eyes.



"In what way can we be of assistance?" "My client is seeking clarification of the mining laws promulgated by the BSA Company," Aaron replied, and two hours later Ralph was groping desperately through a maze of jargon and convoluted legal-side-roads as he tried to follow the discussion, and his irritation was becoming increasingly obvious.



Aaron made a silent plea for patience, and with an effort Ralph stopped the angry words reaching his lips, instead he hunched further down in his chair, and in a deliberately boorish gesture of defiance, he placed one boot on the polished table top amongst the scattered legal papers and crossed his other ankle on top of it.



For another hour he listened, sinking lower and still lower in his chair and scowling at the lawyers opposite him, until Aaron Fagan asked humbly. "Does that mean in your opinion my client has not fulfilled the requirements of Section 27 B Clause Five read in conjunction with Section 7 Bis?" "Well, Mr. Fagan, we would first have to examine the question of due performance as set out in Section 31," replied the pack leader carefully, smoothing his moustache and glancing at his assistants who nodded brightly again in concert. "In terms of that section--2



Abruptly Ralph reached the far frontier of his patience. He brought his boots down off the table onto the floor with a crash that startled the four grey-suited men across the table. One of them knocked his folder onto the floor, and papers flew like the feathers when a red caracal cat gets into the henhouse.



"I may not know the difference between "due performance" and the aperture between your buttocks," announced Ralph in a voice that made the leader pale and shrink in size. Like all men of words, he had a horror Of violence, and that was what he sensed in the gaze with which Ralph fixed him. "However, I do know a wagonload of horse manure when I see one. And this, gentlemen, is grade-one horse manure you are giving me." "Mr. Ballantyne." One of the younger assistants was bolder than his chief. "I must protest your use of language! Your insinuation-" "It is not an insinuation," Ralph rounded on him. "I am telling you outright that you are a bunch of bandits, is that still not clear enough? How about robbers then, or pirates?" "Sir-" The assitant sprang to his feet, flushed with indignation, and Ralph reached across the table and caught him by the front of his stock. He twisted it sharply, cutting off the man's protest before it emerged.



"Pray be silent, my good fellow, I am speaking," Ralph admonished him, and then went on, "I am sick of dealing with little thieves. I want to speak to the head bandit. Where is Mr. Rhodes?" At that moment a locomotive down in the shunting yards whistled. The sound only just carried even in the silence which followed Ralph's question, and Ralph remembered Jordan's excuse for ending lunch the previous day. He released the struggling lawyer so abruptly that the man collapsed back into his chair, fighting for breath.



"Aaron," Ralph demanded. "What time is it?" "Eight minutes of noon." "He was fobbing me off the cunning bastard was fobbing me off!" Ralph whirled and ran from the boardroom.



There were half a dozen horses at the hitching rack outside the front of the De Beers building. Without checking his speed, Ralph decided on a big strong looking bay and ran to it. He clinched the girth, unhitched the reins, and turned its head out into the road.



"Hey, you," shouted the janitor. "That's Sir Randolph's mound" "Tell Sir Randolph he can have his suite back," Ralph called, and vaulted to the saddle. It had been a good choice, the bay drove strongly between his knees. They galloped past the mine st agings through the gap between the hillocks formed by the high tailing dumps and Ralph saw Mr. Rhodes" private train.



It was already crossing the points at the southern end of the yards and running out into the open country. The locomotive was hauling four coaches, steam spurted from the pistons of the driving wheels with each stroke. The signal arm was down and the lights were green. The locomotive was picking up speed swiftly.



"Come boy," Ralph encouraged the bay, swinging it towards the barbed-wire fence beside the track. The horse steadied himself, pricking his ears forward as he judged the wire. Then he went for it boldly. "Oh good boy." Ralph lifted him with hands and knees.



They flew over it with two feet to spare and landed neatly. There was flat open ground ahead, and the railway tracks curved slightly.



Ralph aimed to cut the curve. He lay against the horse's neck, watching the stony ground for holes. Five hundred yards ahead the train was pulling gradually away from them, but the bay ran on gamely.



Then the locomotive hit the gradient of the Magersfontein Hills and the huffing of the boiler changed its beat and slowed. They caught it a quarter of a mile from the crest, and Ralph pushed the bay in close enough for him to lean from the saddle and grab the handrail of the rear balcony on the last coach. Ralph swung across the gap and scrambled up onto the balcony. He looked back. The bay was already grazing contentedly on the Karroo bush beside the tracks.



"Somehow, I knew you were coming." Ralph turned quickly. Jordan was standing in the door of the coach. "I even had a bed made up for you in one of the guest compartments." "Where is he?" Ralph demanded.



"Waiting for you in the saloon. He watched your daredevil riding with interest. I won a guinea on you." Ostensibly the train was for the use of all the directors of De Beers, though none of them, apart from the Chairman of the Board, had yet shown the temerity to exercise that right.



The exteriors of the coaches and the locomotive were varnished in chocolate brown and gold. The interiors were as luxurious as unlimited expenditure could make them, from the fitted Wilton carpets and cut-glass chandeliers in the saloon to the solid gold and onyx fittings in the bathrooms.



Mr. Rhodes was stumped in a buttoned calf-leather chair beside the wide picture window in his private car. There were sheaves of paper on the Italian gold-embossed leather top of his bureau, and a crystal glass of whisky at his elbow. He looked tired and ill. His face was bloated and blotched with livid purple. There was more silver than ruddy gold in his moustache and wavy hair now, but his eyes were still that pale fanatical blue and his voice high and sharp.



"Sit down, Ballantyne," he said. "Jordan, get your brother a drink." Jordan placed a silver tray with a ship's decanter, a Stuart crystal glass and a matching claret jug of water on the table beside Ralph. While he did so, Mr. Rhodes addressed himself once more to the papers in front of him.



"What is the most important asset of any nation, Ballantyne?" he demanded suddenly, without looking up again. "Diamonds?" suggested Ralph mockingly, and he heard Jordan draw breath sharply behind him.



Then," said Mr. Rhodes, as though he had not heard. "Young, bright men, imbued during the most susceptible period of their lives with the grand design. Young men like you, Ralph, Englishmen with all the manly virtues." Mr. Rhodes paused. "I am endowing a series of scholarships in my will. I want these young men to be chosen carefully and sent to Oxford University." For the first time he looked up at Ralph. "You see, it is utterly unacceptable that a man's noblest thoughts should cease, merely because the man dies. These will be my living thoughts.



Through these young men, I shall live for ever." "How will you select them?" Ralph asked, intrigued despite himself by this design for immortality, devised by a giant with a crippled heart.



"I am working on that now." Rhodes rearranged the papers on his bureau. "Literary and scholastic achievement, of course, success at manly sports, powers of leadership." "Where would you find them?" For the moment, Ralph had set aside his anger and frustration. "From England, all of them?" "No, no," Mr. Rhodes shook his shaggy leonine head. "From every corner of the Empire Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, even from America. Thirteen from America each year, one for every state." Ralph suppressed a smile. The colossus Of Africa, Of whom Mark Twain had written "When he stands on Table Mountain, his shadow falls on the Zambezi', had blind spots in his vast scheming mind. He still believed that America consisted of the original thirteen states. Such small imperfections gave Ralph courage to face him, to oppose him. He did not touch the decanter at his elbow. He would need all his wits to find any other weakness to exploit.



"And after men?" Rhodes asked. "What is the next most precious asset of a new land? Diamonds, as you suggest, or gold perhaps?" He shook his head. "It is the power that drives the railways, that turns the mine head gears that fuels the blast furnaces, the power that makes all the wheels go round. Coal." Then they were both silent, staring at each other. Ralph felt every muscle in his body under stress, the hackles at the back of his neck rising in an atavistic passion. The young bull facing up to the herd bull in their first trial of strength.



"It is very simple, Ralph, the coal deposits in Wankie's country must be retained in responsible hands." "The hands of the British South Africa Company?" Ralph asked grimly.



Mr. Rhodes did not have to reply. He merely went on staring into Ralph's eyes.



"By what means will you take them?" Ralph broke the silence.



"By any means that are necessary." "Legal or otherwise?" "Come on, Ralph, you know it is totally within my power to legalize anything I do in Rhodesia." Not Matabeleland or Mashonaland, Ralph noted, but Rhodesia. The megalomanic dream of grandeur was complete. "Of course, you will be compensated land, gold claims whatever you choose.



What will it be, Ralph?" Ralph shook his head. "I want the coal deposits that I discovered and that I pegged. They are mine. I will fight you for them." Rhodes sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.



"Very well, I withdraw my offer of compensation. Instead, let me point out a few facts to you of which you are probably unaware. There are two Company linesmen who have sworn an affidavit before the Administrator in Bulawayo that they saw you personally cutting telegraph lines south of the town on Monday the fourth at 4 p-m."



"They are lying," said Ralph, and turned to look at his brother. Only he could have made the deduction and pointed it out to Mr. Rhodes.



Jordan sat quietly in an armchair at the end of the saloon. He did not look up from the shorthand pad on his lap, and his beautiful face was serene. Ralph tasted the sourness of treachery on the back of his tongue, and he turned back to face his adversary.



"They may be lying," Mr. Rhodes agreed softly. "But they are prepared to testify under oath." "Malicious damage to Company property," Ralph raised an eyebrow. "Is that a capital offence now?"



"You still do not understand, do you? Any contract made under a deliberate misrepresentation can be set aside by a court of law. If Roelof Zeederberg could prove that when you and he signed your little agreement, you were fully aware of the epidemic of rinderpest which is sweeping Rhodesia," (that name again.) "and that you had committed a criminal act to keep that fact from him.-" Mr. Rhodes did not finish.



Instead he sighed again and rubbed his chin, the silver stubble rasped under his thumb. "On the fourth, your father, Major Zouga Ballantyne, sold five thousand head of breeding stock to Gwaai Cattle Ranches, one of my own companies. Three days later, half of them were dead of rinderpest, and the rest will soon be destroyed by the Company anti-rinderpest measures. Already Zeederberg Brothers have lost sixty per cent of the bullocks you sold them, they have two hundred wagons and their loads stranded on the great north road. Don't you see, Ralph, both your contract of sale and your father's could be declared null and void. Both of you forced to refund the purchase monies you received and to take back thousands of dead and dying animals." Ralph's face was stony, but his skin had yellowed like a man five days in fever. Now with a jerky movement he poured the crystal tumbler half full of whisky, and he swallowed a mouthful as though it were broken glass. Mr. Rhodes let the subject of rinderpest lie between them like a coiled adder, and he seemed to go off in another direction.



"I hope that my legal advisers followed my instructions and apprised you of the mining and prospecting laws that have been adopted for the Charter territories. We have decided to apply the American law, as opposed to the Transvaal law." Mr. Rhodes sipped from his glass, and then twisted it between his fingers. The base had left a wet circle on the expensive Italian leather. "There are some peculiar features of these American laws. I doubt that you have had an opportunity to study all of them, so I will take the liberty of pointing one out to you. In terms of Section 23, any mineral claim pegged between sunset of one day and sunrise of the following day shall be void and the title in those claims liable to be set aside by an order of the mining commissioner. Did you know that?" Ralph nodded his head. "They told me." "There is an affidavit on the Administrator's desk at this moment, made in the presence of a Justice of the Peace by one Jan Cheroot, a Hottentot in the domestic service of Major Zouga Ballantyne, to the effect that certain claims registered by the Rhodesian Land and Mining Company, of which you are the major shareholder, which claims are known as the Harkness Mine, were pegged during the hours Of darkness, and therefore liable to be declared void." Ralph started so that his glass rattled against the silver tray, and whisky slopped over the rim.



"Before you chastise this unfortunate Hottentot, let me hasten to assure you that he believed he was acting in the best interests of you and his master when he swore this affidavit." This time the silence drew out for many minutes, while Mr. Rhodes peered out of the window at the bleak tree, less sun bleached spaces of the Karroo under a milky blue sky.



Then quite suddenly Mr. Rhodes spoke again. "I understand that you have already committed yourself to the purchase of mining machinery for the Harkness Mine, and that you have signed personal sureties for over thirty thousand pounds. The choice before you is simple enough then.



Give up all claim to the Wankie coal deposits, or lose not only them, but the Zeederberg contract and the Harkness claims. Walk away still a rich man by any standards, or-, Ralph let the unfinished statement rest for ten beats of his racing heart, and then he asked. "Or?" "Or else I will destroy you, utterly," said Mr. Rhodes. Calmly he met the ferocious hatred in the eyes of the young man before him. He was inured by now both to adulation and to hatred, such things were meaningless when measured against the grand design of his destiny. Yet he could afford a placating word.



"You must understand that there is nothing personal in this, Ralph" he said. "I have nothing but admiration for your courage and determination. As I said earlier, it is in young men like you that I place my hope for the future. No, Ralph, it is not personal. I simply cannot allow anything or anybody to stand in my way. I know what has to be done, and there is so little time left in which to do it." The instinct to kill came upon Ralph in a black unholy rage. He could clearly imagine his fingers locked into the swollen throat, feel his thumbs crushing the larynx from which that shrill cruel voice rose.



Ralph closed his eyes and fought off his rage. He threw it off the way a man throws off a sodden -cloak when he comes in from the storm, and when he opened his eyes again, he felt as though his whole life had changed. He was icy calm, the tremor gone from his hands, and his voice was level.



"I understand," he nodded. "In your place I would probably do the same thing. Shall we ask Jordan to draw up the contract making over any rights I or my partners might have in the Wankie coal fields to the BSA Company, and in consideration thereof the BSA Company irrevocably confirms my rights in the claims known as the Harkness Mine." Mr. Rhodes nodded approvingly. "You will go far, young man. You are a fighter."



Then he looked up at Jordan. "Do it!" he said.



The locomotive roared on into the night, and despite the tons of lead that had been placed over the axles to soften the ride for Mr. Rhodes, the carriages lurched rhythmically and the ties clattered harshly under the steel wheels.



Ralph sat by the window in his stateroom. The goose down coverlet was drawn back invitingly on the double bed behind the green velvet curtains, but it had no attraction for him. He was still fully dressed, though the ormolu clock on the beside table showed the time as three o'clock in the morning. He was drunk, yet unnaturally clear-headed, as though his rage had burned up the alcohol as soon as he swallowed it.



He stared out of the window. There was a full moon standing over the strangely shaped purple kopjes along the horizon, and every once in a while the beat of the wheels changed to a ringing gong as they crossed another low steel bridge over a dry river course in which the sugary sand glowed like molten silver in the moonlight.



Ralph had sat through dinner at Mr. Rhodes" board, listening to his high, Jarring voice parading a succession of weird and grandiose ideas, interspersed with sudden startling truths or shop-worn old maids" platitudes that spilled endlessly out of the big man with the lumpy, ungainly body.



The only reason why Ralph managed to control his emotions and keep a good face, the reason why he even managed to nod in agreement or smile at one of Mr. Rhodes" sallies, was the realization that he had uncovered another of his adversary's weaknesses. Mr. Rhodes lived in a stratum so high above other men, he was so cushioned by his vast wealth, so blinded by his own visions, that he did not seem even to realize that he had made a mortal enemy. If he did think at all of Ralph's feelings, it was to suppose that he had already discounted the loss of the Wankie coal fields and accepted it as philosophically and impersonally as Mr. Rhodes himself had.



Even so, the choice food and noble wines were tasteless as sawdust, and Ralph swallowed them with difficulty and experienced a surge of relief when Mr. Rhodes finally declared the evening ended in his usual abrupt manner by pushing back his chair without warning and rising to his feet. Only then he paused for a moment to examine Ralph's face.



"I measure a man by the style in which he faces adversity," he said. "You will do, young Ballantyne." In that moment Ralph had come close, once again, to losing control, but then Mr. Rhodes had left the saloon with his bearlike gait, leaving the two brothers together at the table.



"I am sorry, Ralph," Jordan had said simply. "I tried to warn you once. You should not have challenged him. You should not have forced me to choose between you and him. I have put a bottle of whisky in your stateroom. We will reach the village of Matjiesfontein in the morning. There is a first-rate hotel run by a fellow called Logan.



You can wait there for the northbound train to take you back to Kimberley tomorrow evening." Now the whisky bottle was empty, Ralph looked at it with astonishment. He should have been comatose-from the amount that he had drunk. It was only when he tried to stand that his legs cheated him, and he fell against the washstand. He steadied himself, and peered into his own image in the mirror It was not the face of a drunkard. His jaw was hard edged his mouth firm, his eyes dark and angry. He pulled back from the mirror, glanced at the bed, and knew that he could not sleep, not even now when he was almost burned out with rage and hatred. Suddenly he wanted surcease, a short oblivion, and he knew where to find it. At the far end of the saloon, behind the tall double doors of intricate marquetry work, was an array of bottles, the finest and most exotic liquors gathered from every civilized land that was where he could find oblivion.



Ralph crossed his stateroom, fumbled with the door catch and stepped out. The cold Karroo night air flicked his hair and he shivered in his shirtsleeves, and then weaved down the narrow corridor towards the saloon. He bumped first one shoulder and then the other against the polished teak bulkheads, and cursed his own clumsiness. He crossed the open balcony between coaches, clutching at the handrail to steady himself, eager to get out of the wind. As he entered the corridor of the second coach, one of the doors slid open ahead of him, and a shaft of yellow light outlined the slim and graceful figure that stepped through.



Jordan had not seen his brother. He paused in the doorway and looked back into the stateroom beyond. His expression was as soft and as loving as that of a mother leaving her sleeping infant. Gently, with exaggerated care, he closed the sliding door so as not to make the least sound. Then he turned and found himself face to face with Ralph.



Like his brother, Jordan was coat less but his shirt was unbuttoned down to "the silver buckle of his breeches, the cuffs of his sleeves were not linked as though the garment had been thrown on carelessly, and Jordan's feet were bare, very white and elegantly shaped against the dark-toned carpet.



None of this surprised Ralph. He expected that, like himself, Jordan was hungry or visiting the heads. He was too fuddled to ponder on it, and was about to invite Jordan to come with him to find another bottle, when he saw the expression on Jordan's face.



He was instantly transported back fifteen years in time, to the thatched bungalow of his father's camp near the great pit of the Kimberley mine where he and Jordan had passed most of their youth. One night, that long ago, Ralph had surprised his brother in a childish act Of onanism, and had seen that same, expression, that stricken dread and guilt, upon his lovely face.



Now again Jordan was transfixed, rigid and pale, staring at Ralph with huge terrified eyes, his hand raised as though to shield his throat. Suddenly Ralph understood. He recoiled in horror and found the door onto the balcony closed behind him. He flattened his back against it, unable to speak for infinite seconds, while they stared at each other. When at last Ralph regained his voice, it was rough as though he had run a hard race.



"By God, now I know why you have no use for whores, for you are one yourself." Ralph turned and tore open the door, he ran out onto the balcony and looked about him wildly, like a creature in a trap, and saw the clean moon-washed spaces of the open veld. He kicked open the gate of the balcony, swung down the steps, and let himself drop into the night.



The earth hit him with crushing force and he rolled down the ballasting and came to rest face down in the harsh scrub beside the tracks. When he lifted his head, the red running-lights of the caboose were dwindling away into the south, and the sound of the wheels was already muted, by distance.



Ralph pushed himself up, and limped and staggered away into the empty veld. Half a mile from the tracks he fell to his knees again, and gagged and retched as he vomited up the whisky and his own disgust.



The dawn was an unearthly orange wash behind a crisp black cut-out of flat-topped hills. Ralph lifted his face to it, and he spoke aloud.



"I swear I will have him. I swear that I will destroy this monster, or destroy myself in the attempt." At that moment the rim of the sun pushed up above the hills and hurled a brazen dart of light into Ralph's face as though a god had been listening, and had sealed the pact with flame.



"My father killed a great elephant upon this spot. The tusks stand on the stoep at King's Lynn," Ralph said quietly. "And I shot a fine lion here myself. It seems strange that things like that will never happen again at this place." Beside him Harry Mellow straightened up from the theodolite, and for a moment his face was grave.



"We have come to conquer the wilderness, he said. "Soon there will be a high headgear reaching up into the sky, and if the Harkness reef runs true, one day a town with schools and churches, hundreds perhaps thousands of families. Isn't that what we both want?" Ralph shook his head. "I would be getting soft if I did not. It just seems strange, when you look at it now." The low valleys were still blowing with the soft pink grasses, the timber along the ridges was tall, the tree trunks silver in the sunlight, but even as they watched one of them shivered against the sky and then toppled with a rending crackling roar. The Matabele axe men swarmed over the fallen giant to lop off the branches and for a moment longer the shadow of regret lingered in Ralph's eyes, then he turned away. "You have picked a good site," he said, and Harry followed the direction of his gaze.



"Knobs Hill,"he laughed.



The thatch and daub hut was sited so that it would not overlook the compound for the black labourers. Instead it had a breathtaking view over the forest to where the southern escarpment dipped away into infinite blue distances. A tiny feminine figure came out of the hut, her apron a merry spot of tulip yellow against the raw red earth which Vicky hoped would one day be a garden. She saw the two men below her and waved.



"By God, that girl has done wonders." Harry lifted his hat above his head to acknowledge the greeting, his expression fondly besotted.



"She copes so well, nothing upsets her not even the cobra in the lavatory this morning she just up and blasted it with a shotgun. Of course, I'll have to fix the seat." "It's her life," Ralph pointed out.



"Put her in a city and she'd probably be in tears in ten minutes."



"Not my girl, "said Harry proudly.



"All right, you made a good choice," Ralph agreed, "but it's bad form to boost your own wife." "Bad form?" Harry shook his head wonderingly. "You limeys!" he said, and stooped to put his eye back to the lens of the theodolite.



"Leave that damn thing for a minute." Ralph pinched his shoulder lightly. "I didn't ride three hundred miles to look at your backside."



"Fine." Harry straightened. "I'll let the work lie. What do you want to talk about?" "Show me how you decided on the site of your No.1 shaft," Ralph invited, and they went down the valley, while Harry pointed out the factors which had led him to choose the spot.



"The ancient trenches are inclined at just over forty degrees, and we have three layers of schists over-running. Now I extended out the strike of the ancient reef, and we put in the potholes here-" The exploratory potholes were narrow vertical shafts, each under a gantry of raw native timber, spaced out in a straight line along the slope of the hill.



"We went down -a hundred feet on five of them, down through the friable levels, and we picked up the upper schist layer again-" "Schist isn't going to make us rich." "No, but the reefs still under it." "How do you know?" "You hired me for my nose." Harry chuckled. "I can smell it." And led Ralph on. "So you see this "is the only logical spot for the main shaft. I reckon to intersect the reef again at three hundred feet and once we are on it we can stope it out." A small gang of black men were clearing the collar area of the reef and Ralph recognized the tallest of them.



"Bazo," he cried, and the and una straightened up and rested on his pick handle.



"Henshaw," he greeted Ralph gravely. "Have you come to watch the real men at work?" Bazo's flat hard muscle shone like wet anthracite, and running sweat had left snaking trails down it.



"Real men?" Ralph asked. "You promised me two hundred, and you have brought me twenty." "The others are waiting," Bazo promised. "But they will not come if they cannot bring their women with them.



One-Bright-Eye wants the women to stay in the villages." "They can bring their women, as many as they wish. I will speak to One-Bright-Eye. Go to them. Choose the strongest and the best. Bring me your old comrades from the Moles impi, and tell them I will pay them well and feed them better, and they can bring their women and breed strong sons to work my mines." "I will leave in the morning," Bazo decided. "And be back before the moon shows its horns again." When the two white men moved on down the survey line, Bazo watched them for a while, his face expressionless and his eyes inscrutable, then he looked at his gang and nodded.



They spat on their palms, hefted their pick-axes and Bazo sang out the opening chorus of the work chant.



Vbunyonyo bu gin ye entudh1a. The little black ants can eat up the giraffe." Bazo had composed the line beside the corpse of a giraffe struck down by the rinderpest, and untouched by all the gorged scavengers of the veld except a colony of the black safari ants which had cleaned the cadaver down to the bone. The significance of it had stayed with Bazo, how, by persistence, even the greatest are overcome, and the seemingly innocent line of gibberish was now insidiously preparing the minds of the amadoda who laboured under him. At the invocation they swung the picks on high, standing shoulder to shoulder, the crescent-headed tools silhouetted against the flat blue of the sky.



"Guga mzimba!" they replied in soaring chorus. "Sola nhhziyo.



Though our bodies are worn out, our hearts are constant." And then together the humming "Jee!" as the pick-heads hissed downwards in unison, and with a crash buried themselves in the iron earth.



Each man levered his pick-head free, took one step forward and braced himself as Bazo sang. "The little black ants can eat up the giraffe." And again the act was repeated, and again, and a hundred times more, while the sweat was flung from their bodies and the red dust flew.



Bazo loped along at a deceptively easy gait that never varied, though the hills were steep and the valleys abrupt. His spirits were joyous, he had not truly realized how much the labours of the last weeks had galled until he was released from them. Once long ago he had worked with pick and shovel in the yellow diamond pit at Kimberley.



Henshaw had been his companion then, and the two of them had made a game of the brutal endless labour. It had built their muscles and made them strong, but had caged and cramped their spirits, until neither of them could suffer it longer, and they had escaped together.



Since those days Bazo had known the savage joy and the divine madness of that terrible moment that the Matabele call the "closing in." He had stood against. the king's enemies and killed in the sunlight with his regimental plumes flying.



He had won honours and the respect of his peers. He had sat on the king's council with the and una head ring on his brow, and he had come to the brink of the black river and briefly looked beyond it into the forbidden land that men call death, and now he had learned a new truth. It was more painful for a man to go backwards than it is for him to go forward. The drudgery of menial labour rankled the more now for the glories that had preceded it.



The path dropped away towards the river and disappeared into the dense dark green vegetation like a serpent into its hole. Bazo followed it down and stopped into the gloomy tunnel, and then froze. Instinctively his right hand reached for the non-existent -assegai on its leather thong under the grip of the long shield that also was not there so hard do old habits die. The shield had long ago been burned on the bonfires with ten thousand other shields, and the steel snapped in half on the anvils of the BSA Company blacksmiths.



Then he saw this was no enemy that came towards him down the narrow tunnel of riverine bush, and his heart bounded almost painfully against his ribs.



"I see you, Lord,"Tanase greeted him softly.



She was slim and upright as the young girl he had captured at the stronghold of Pemba the wizard, the same long graceful legs and clinched-in waist, the same heron's neck like the stem of a lovely black lily.



"Why are you so far from the village?" he demanded, as she knelt dutifully before him, and clapped her hands softly at the level of her waist.



"I saw you on the road, Bazo, son of Gandang." And he, opened his mouth to question her further, for he had come swiftly, then he changed his mind and felt the little superstitious prickle of insect feet along the nape of his neck. Sometimes still there were things about this woman that disquieted him, for she had not been stripped of all her occult powers in the cave of the Umlimo.



"I see you, Lord," Tanase repeated. "And my body calls to yours the way a hungry infant fresh roused from sleep frets for the breast."



He lifted her up, and held her face between his hands to examine it as though he had picked a rare and beautiful flower in the forest. It had taken much to accustom himself to the way she spoke of their secret bodily desires. He had been taught that it was unseemly for a Matabele wife to show pleasure in the act of generation, and to speak of it the way a man does. Instead she should be merely a pliant and unprotesting vessel for her husband's seed, ready whenever he was, and unobtrusive and self-effacing when he was not.



Tanase was none of these things. At first she had shocked and horrified him with some of the things she had learned in her apprenticeship for the dark mysteries. However, shock had turned to fascination as she had unfolded each skill before him.



She had potions and perfumes that could rouse a man even when he was exhausted and wounded from the battlefield, she had tricks of voice and eyes that bit like an arrowhead. Her fingers could find unerringly the spots beneath his skin at places on his body of which even he was unaware, upon which she played like the keys of the marimba, making him more man than he had even dreamed was possible. Her own body she could use more skilfully than he could wield his shield and long bright steel and deal as telling blows. She could make each separate muscle of her body move and tighten in complete freedom from the muscles around it.



At will she could bring him to precipitous rushing release or keep him hovering high as a black shouldered kite when it hunts on sharply stabbing pinions.



"We have been too long apart," she whispered, with that combination of voice and slant of wide Egyptian eyes that tripped his breath and made his heart race. "I came to meet you alone, so we could be free for a while of your son's clamorous adoration and the eyes of the villagers." And she led him off the track, and unclasped her leather cloak to spread it on the soft bed of fallen leaves.



Long after the storm had passed, and the aching tension had left his body, when his breathing was deep and even again and his eyelids drooped- with the deeply contented lassitude that follows the act Of love, she raised herself on her elbow above him, and with a kind of reverential wonder traced out the planes of his face with the tip of one finger, and then said softly. "Bayete!" It was the greeting that is made only to a king, and he stirred uncomfortably and his eyes opened wide. He looked at her, and knew that expression. Their loving had not softened her, and made her sleepy, as it had done him. That royal greeting had not been a jest.



"Bay'ete!" she said again. "The sound of it troubles you, my fine sharp-bladed axe. But why should it do so?" Suddenly Bazo felt the insects of fear and superstition crawling on his skin again, and he was angry and afraid. "Do not talk like this, woman. Do not offend the spirits with your silly girlish prattlings." She smiled, but it was a cruel catlike smile, and she repeated. "Oh Bazo, the bravest and the strongest, why do you then start so at my girlish words? You in whose veins runs the purest blood of Zanzi? Son of Gandang, the son of Mzilikazi, do you dream perchance of the little redwood spear that Lobengula carried in his hand? Son of Juba, whose great-grandfather was mighty Diniswayo, who was nobler even than his protege Chaka, who became King of Zulu, do you not feel the royal blood coursing in your veins, does it make you itch for things you dare not even speak aloud?"



"You are mad, woman, the mopani bees have entered your head and driven you mad." But Tanase smiled still with her lips close to his ear, and. she touched his eyelids with her soft pink fingertip.



"Do you not hear the widows of Shangani and Bembesi crying aloud, ""Our father Lobengula is gone, we are orphans with no one to protect us." Do you not see the men of Matabeleland with empty hands entreat the spirits? "Give us a king," they cry. "We must have a king."" "Babiaan," whispered Bazo. "Somabula and Gandang. They are Lobengula's brothers." "They are old men, and the stone has fallen out of their bellies, the fire has gone out in their eyes." "Tanase, do not speak so." "Bazo, my husband, my king, do you not see to whom the eyes of all the indunas turn when the nation is in council?" "Madness," Bazo shook his head.



"Do you not know whose word they wait upon now, do you not see how even Babiaan and Somabula. listen when Bazo speaks?". She laid the palm of her hand over his mouth to still his protests, and then in one swift movement she had mounted and straddled him again, and miraculously he was ready and more than ready for her, and she cried out fiercely. "Bayete, son of kings! Bayete, father of kings, whose seed will nile when the white men have been swallowed again by the ocean which spewed them up." And with a shuddering cry he -felt as though she had drawn the very life force from his guts, and left in its place a dreadful haunting longing, a fire in his blood, that would not be assuaged until he held in his hand the little redwood spear that was the symbol of the Nguni monarch. " They went side by side, hand in hand, which was a curious thing, for a Matabele wife always walks behind her husband with the roll of the sleeping mat balanced upon her head. But they were like children caught up in a kind of delirious dream, and when they reached the crest of the pass, Bazo took her in his arms and held her to his breast in an embrace that he had never used before. if I am the axe, then you are the cutting edge, for you are a part of me, but the sharpest part." "Together, Lord, we will hack through anything that stands in our way" she answered fiercely, and then she pulled out from the circle of his arms and lifted the flap of the beaded pouch upon her belt.



"I have a gift to make your brave heart braver and your will as hard as your steel." She took something soft and grey and fluffy from her pouch, and stood before him on tiptoe, reaching high with both arms to bind the strip of fur around his forehead. "Wear this moleskin for the glory that was and that shall be again, and una of the Moles-who-burrowed under-a-hill. One day soon, we will change it for a headband of spotted gold leopard skin, with royal blue heron feathers set upon it." She took his hand and they started down from the hilltop, but they did not reach the grassy plain before Bazo stopped again and inclined his head to listen. There was a faint popping sound on the small dry. breeze, like the bubbles bursting in a pot of boiling porridge.



"Guns,"he said. "Still far away, but many of them." "It is so, Lord," Tanase replied. "Since you left, the guns of One-Bright-Eye's kanka have been busy as the tongues of the old women at a beer-drink."



There is a terrible pestilence sweeping through the land." General Mungo St. John had selected a clay anthill as a rostrum from which to address his audience. "It passes from one animal to the next, as a bushfire jumps from tree to tree. Unless we can contain it, all the cattle will die." Below the anthill, Sergeant Ezra was translating loudly, while the listening tribesmen squatted silently facing them. There were almost two thousand of them, the occupants of all the villages that had been built along both banks of the Inyati river to replace the regimental kraals of Lobengula's impi.



The men were in the foremost ranks, their faces expressionless but their eyes watchful, behind them were the youths and boys not yet admitted to the rank of warrior. These were the mujiba, the herd boys whose daily life was intimately interwoven with the herds of the tribe. The present indaba concerned them as much as it did the elders.



There were no women present, for it was a matter of cattle, of the nation's wealth.



"It is a great sin" to try to hide your cattle, as you have done.



To drive them into the hills or the thick forest. These cattle carry with them the seeds of the pestilence," Mungo St. John explained, and waited for his sergeant to translate, before going on. "Lodzi and I are very angry with these deceptions. There will be heavy fines for those villages which hide their cattle, and as further punishment, I will double the work quotas for the men, so that you will work like amah oh like slaves you will toil, if you attempt to defy the word of Lodzi Mungo St. John paused again, and lifted the black eye-patch to wipe away the sweat that trickled down from under the wide-brimmed slouch hat.



Drawn by the lowing herds in the thombush kraal, the big shiny green flies swarmed, and the place stank of cow dung and unwashed humanity.



Mungo found himself impatient with the necessity of trying to explain his actions to this silent unresponsive throng of half-naked savages, for he had already repeated this same warning at thirty other indabas across Matabeleland. His sergeant finished the translation and glanced up at him expectantly.



Mungo St. John pointed to the mass of cattle penned in the thorn kraal behind him. "As you have seen, it is of no avail to try to hide the herds. The native police track them down." Mungo stopped again, and frowned in annoyance. In the second row, a Matabele buck had risen and was facing him quietly.



He was a tall man, finely muscled, although one arm seemed deformed, for it was twisted from the shoulder at an awkward angle.



Though the body was that of a man in his full prime, the face was eroded and ravaged, as though by grief or pain, and was aged before its time. On the neat cap of dense curls, the man wore the head ring of an and una and around his forehead a headband of grey fur.



"Babo, MY father," said the and una "We hear your words, but like children we do not understand them." "Who is this fellow?" Mungo demanded of Sergeant Ezra, and nodded when he heard the reply. "I know about him. He is a troublemaker." Then to Bazo, raising his voice, "What is so strange about what I say? What is it that puzzles you?"



"You say, Babo, that the sickness will kill the cattle so before it does, you will shoot them dead. You say, Babo, that to save our cattle you must kill them for us." The quiet ranks of, Matabele stirred for the first time. Though their expressions were still impassive, here a man coughed and there another shuffled his bare feet in the dust or yet another flicked his switch at the circling flies. No man laughed, not one mocked with word or smile, but it was mockery nonetheless, and Mungo St. John sensed it. Behind those inscrutable black African faces, they were gleefully following the mock humble questions of the young and una with the old worn face.



"We do not understand such deep wisdom, Babo, please be kind and patient with your children and explain it to us. You say that if we try to hide our cattle, then you will confiscate them from us to pay the heavy fines that Lodzi demands. You say in the same breath, Babo, that if we are obedient children and bring the cattle to you, then you will" shoot them and burn them up." In the packed ranks an elderly white beard who had taken snuff sneezed loudly, and there was immediately an epidemic of sneezing and coughing. Mungo St. John knew they were encouraging the young and una in this sly impudence.



"Babo, gentle Father, you warn us that you will double our work quotas, and we will be as slaves. This is another matter which escapes from us, for is a man who works one day at another's command less a slave than he who works two days? Is not a slave merely a slave and is not a free man truly free? Babo, explain to us the degrees of slavery." There was a faint humming sound now, like the sound of a hive at noon, and though the lips of the Matabele facing Mungo St. John did not move, he saw that their throats trembled slightly. They were beginning to drum, it was the prelude and unchecked it would be followed by the deep ringing'j.eel Jee!"of the chant.



"I know you, Bazo," Mungo St. John shouted. "I hear and mark your words. Be sure that Lodzi also will hear them." "I am honoured, little Father, that my humble words will be carried to the great white father, Lodzi This time there were cunning and wicked grins on the faces of the men around Bazo.



Sergeant, "Mungo St. John shouted. "Bring that man to mei!



The big sergeant leaped forward with the brass badge of his rank glittering on his upper arm, but as he did so the ranks. of silent Matabele rose to their feet and closed up. No man raised a hand, but the sergeant's forward rush was smothered and he struggled in the crowd as though in living black quicksand, and when he reached the place where Bazo had been, the and una was gone.



"Very well," Mungo St. John nodded grimly, when the sergeant reported back to him. "Let him go. It will wait for another day, but now we have work to do. Get your men into position." A dozen armed black police trotted forward and formed a line facing the throng of tribesmen, holding their rifles at high port. At the same time the rest of the contingent climbed up onto the thorny walls of the kraal and at the command they pumped cartridges into the breeches of the repeating Winchester rifles.



"Let it begin," Mungo nodded, and the first volley of rifle fire thundered out.



The black constables were firing down into, the milling mass of cattle in the kraal, and at each shot a beast would fling its horned head high and collapse, to be hidden at once by the others. The smell of fresh blood maddened the herd and it surged wildly against the Thorn barrier, the din of the blood-bellow was deafening, and from the ranks of watching Matabele went up a mourning howl of sympathy.



These animals were their wealth and their very reason for existence. As mujiba they had attended the birthings, in the veld, and helped to beat off the hyena and the other predators. They knew each animal by name and loved them with that special type of love that will make the pastoral man lay down his own life to protect his herds.



In the front rank was a warrior so old that his legs were thin as those of the marabou stork and whose skin was the colour of a tobacco pouch and puckered in a network of fine wrinkles. It seemed there was no moisture left in his dried out ancient frame, and yet fat heavy tears rolled down his withered cheeks as he watched the cattle shot down.



The crash of rifle fire went on until sunset, and when it at last was silent, the kraal was filled with carcasses. They lay upon each other in deep windrows like the wheat after the scythes have passed. Not a single Matabele had left the scene, they watched in silence now, their mourning long ago silenced.



"The carcasses must be burned," Mungo St. John strode down the front rank of warriors. "I want the carcasses covered with wood. No man is spared this labour, neither the sick nor the old. Every man will wield an axe, and when they are covered, I will put the fire to it myself." "What is the mood of the people?" Bazo asked softly, and Babiaan, the senior of all the old king's councillors, answered him.



It was not lost on the others in the packed beehive thatched hut that Babiaan's tone was respectful.



"They are sick with grief," said Babiaan. "Not since the death of the old king has there been such despair in their hearts as now that the cattle are being killed." "It is almost as though the white men wish to plunge the assegai in their own breast." Bazo nodded. "Each cruel deed strengthens us, and confirms the prophecy of the Umlimo.



Can there be one amongst you who still has doubts?" "There are no doubts. We are ready now," replied Gandang, his father, and yet he also looked to Bazo for confirmation, and waited for his reply.



"We are not ready." Bazo shook his head. "We will not be ready until the third prophecy of the Umlimo has come to pass." "When the hornless cattle are eaten up by the cross"," Sornabula. whispered.



"We saw the cattle destroyed today, those that the pestilence has spared." "That is not the prophecy," Bazo told them. "When it comes, there will be no doubt in our minds. Until that time we must continue with the preparations. What is the number of the spears, and where are they held?" One by one the other indunas stood and each made his report. They listed the numbers of warriors that were trained and ready, where each group was situated and how soon they could be armed and in the field.



When the last one had finished, Bazo went through the form of consulting the senior indunas, and then gave the field commanders their objectives.



"Suku, and una of the Imbezu impi. Your men will sweep the road from the Malundi drift southwards to Gwanda mine. Kill anybody you find upon the road, cut the copper wires at each pole. The amadoda working at the mine will be ready to join you when you reach there.



There are twenty-eight whites at Gwanda, including the women and the family at the trading-post. Afterwards, count the bodies to make certain that none has escaped." Suku repeated the orders, war perfectly displaying the phenomenal recall of the illiterate who cannot rely on written notes, and Bazo nodded and turned to the next commander to give him his instructions and to hear them recited back to him.



It was long after midnight before all of them had received and repeated their orders, and then Bazo addressed them again.



"Stealth and speed are our only allies. No warrior will carry a shield, for the temptation to drum upon it in the old way would be too strong. Steel alone, silent steel. There will be no singing the war songs when you run, for the leopard does not growl before he springs.



The leopard hunts in darkness, and when he enters the goat-shed he spares nothing as easily as he rips the throat from the billy, he kills also the nanny and the kids." "Women?" asked Babiaan sombrely.



"Even as they shot down Ruth and Imbali,"Bazo nodded. "Children?" asked another and una



"Little white girls grow up to bear little white boys, and little white boys in their turn grow up to carry guns. When a wise man finds a mamba's lair, he kills the snake and crushes the eggs under foot."



"Will we spare none?" "No, , Bazo confirmed quietly, but there was something in his voice that made Gandang, his father, shiver. He recognized the moment when the real power shifted from the old bull to the younger. Indisputably, Bazo was now their leader.



So it was Bazo who said at last, "Indaba peUle! The meeting is finished!" And one by one the indunas saluted him and left the the hut and slipped away into the night, and when the last was gone, the screen of goatskins at the back was pushed aside and Tanase stepped out and came to Bazo.



"I am so proud," she whispered, "that I want to weep like a silly girl." It was a long column, counting the women and children, almost a thousand human beings. It was strung out over a mile, winding like a maimed adder down out of the hills. Again custom was being flouted, for although the men led, they were burdened with grain bags and cooking-pots. Of ala, they would have carried only their shield and weapons. There were more than the two hundred strong men that Bazo had promised Henshaw.



The women came after them. Many of the men had brought more than one wife and some as many as four. Even the very young girls, those not yet in puberty, carried rolls of sleeping-mats balanced upon their heads, and the mothers had their infants slung upon their hips so that they could suckle from a fat black breast while on the march. Juba's roll of matting was as heavy as any of them. However, despite her great bulk, the younger women had to step out to keep pace with her.



Her high clear soprano led the singing.



Bazo came back along the column at an easy lope, unmarried girls turned their heads, careful not to unbalance their burdens, to watch him as he passed, and then they whispered and giggled amongst themselves, for though he was ravaged and scarred, the aura of power and purpose that surrounded him was intensely attractive to even the youngest and flightiest of them.



Bazo came level with Juba, and fell in at her side. "Mamewethu."



He greeted her respect hilly "The burdens of your young girls will be a little lighter after we cross the river. We will leave three hundred assegais concealed in the millet-bins and buried under the goat shed of Suku's people." "And the rest of them? "Juba asked.



"Those we will take with us to the Harkness Mine. A place of concealment has been prepared. From there your girls will take them out a few at a time to the outlying villages." Bazo started back towards the head of the column, but Juba called him back.



"My son, I am troubled, deeply troubled." "It grieves me, little Mother. What troubles you?" "Tanase tells me that all the white folk are to be kissed with steel." "All of them," Bazo nodded.



"Nomusa, who is more than a mother to me, must she die also, my son? She is so good and kind to our people." Gently Bazo took her by the arm and led her off the path, where they could not be overheard.



"That very kindness which you speak of makes her the most dangerous of all of them," Bazo explained. "The love that you bear for her weakens us all. If I say to you, "We will spare this one," then you will ask, "Can we not also spare her little son, and her daughters and their children?"" Bazo shook his head. "No, I tell you truly, if I were to spare one of them, it would be One-Bright-Eye himself."



"One-Bright-Eye!" Juba started. "I do not understand. He is cruel and fierce, without understanding." "When our warriors look on his face and hear his voice, they are reminded once again of all the wrongs we have suffered, and they become strong and angry. When they look upon Nomusa, they become soft and hesitant. She must be amongst the very first to die, and I will send a good man to do that work." "You say they must all die?" Juba asked. "This one, that comes now. Will he die also?" Juba pointed ahead, where the path wound lazily beneath the spreading flat-topped acacia trees. There was a horseman cantering towards them from the direction of the Harkness Mine and even at this distance there was no mistaking the set of his powerful shoulders and his easy and yet arrogant seat in the saddle. "Look at him!" Juba went on. "It was you who gave him the praise name of "little Hawk". You have often told me how as youths you worked shoulder to shoulder, and ate from the same pot. You were proud when you described the wild falcon that you caught and trained together." Juba's voice sank lower.



"Will you kill this man that you call your brother, my son?" "I will let no other do it," Bazo affirmed. "I will do it with my own hand, to make sure it is swift and clean. And after him I will kill his woman and his son. When that is done, there will be no turning back." "You have become a hard man, my son, "Juba whispered, with terrible shadows of regret in her eyes and an ache in her voice.



Bazo turned away from her, and stepped back onto the path. Ralph Ballantyne saw him and waved his hat above his head.



"Bazo," he laughed, as he rode up. "Will I ever learn never to doubt you? You bring me more than the two hundred you promised." Ralph Ballantyne crossed the southern boundary of King's Lynn, but it was another two hours" riding before he made out the milky grey loom of the homestead kopjes on the horizon.



The veld through which he rode was silent now, and almost empty.



It chilled Ralph so that his expression was gloomy and his thoughts dark. Where several months ago his father's herds of plump multicoloured cattle had grazed, the new grass was springing up again dense and green and untrodden, as though to veil the white bones with which the earth was strewn so thickly.



Only Ralph's warning had saved Zouga Ballantyne from complete financial disaster. He had managed to sell off some small portion of his herds to Gwaai Cattle Ranches, a BSA Company subsidiary, before the rinderpest struck King's Lynn, but he had lost the rest of his cattle, and their bones gleamed like strings of pearls amongst the new green grass.



Ahead of Ralph amongst the mimosa trees was one of his father's cattle-posts, and Ralph stood in the saddle and shaded his eyes, puzzled by the haze of pink dust which hung over the old stockade. The dust had been raised by hooves and there was the sharp crack of a trek whip, a sound that had not been heard in Matabeleland for many months.



Even at a distance, he recognized the figures silhouetted upon the railing of the stockade like a pair of scraggly old crows.



"Jan Cherood" he called as he rode up. "Isazi! What are you two old rogues playing at?" They grinned at him delightedly, and scrambled down to greet him.



"Good Lord!" Ralph's astonishment was unfeigned as he realized what the animals in the stockade were. The curtains of thick dust had hidden them until this minute. "Is this how you spend your time when I am away, Isazi? Whose idea is this?" "Bakela, your father's." Isazi's expression instantly became melancholy. "And it is a stupid idea." The flat sleek animals were striped in vivid black and white, their manes stiff as the bristles in a chimney-sweep's broom.



"Zebras, by GodV Ralph shook his head. "How did you round them up?" "We used, up a dozen good horses chasing them," Jan Cheroot explained, his leathery yellow features wrinkled with disapproval.



"Your father hopes to replace the trek oxen with these dumb donkeys. They are as wild and unreasonable as a Venda virgin. They bite and kick until you get them in the traces and then they lie down and refuse to pull." Isazi spat with disgust. it was manifest folly to try to bridge in a few short months the vast gap between wild animal and domesticated beast of burden. It had taken millennia of selection and breeding to develop the doughty courage, the willing heart and strong back of the draught bullock. It was a measure of the settlers" desperate need for transport that Zouga should even make the attempt.



"Isazi." Ralph shook his head. "When you have finished this boy's game, I have man's work for you at the railhead camp." "I will be ready to go with you when you return," Isazi promised enthusiastically. "I am sick to the stomach with striped donkeys." Ralph turned to Jan Cheroot. "I want to talk to you, old friend. "When they were well beyond the stockade, he asked the little Hottentot, "Did you put your mark on a Company paper saying that we had pegged the Harkness claims in darkness?" "I would never let you down," Jan Cheroot declared proudly. "General St. John explained to me, and I put my mark on the paper to save the claims for you and the major." He saw Ralph's expression, and demanded anxiously, "I did the right thing?" Ralph leaned out of the saddle and clasped the bony old shoulder. "You have been a good and loyal friend to me all my life." "From the day you were born," Jan Cheroot declared.



"When your mama died, I fed you, and held you on my knee." Ralph opened his saddlebag, and the old Hottentot's eyes gleamed when he saw the bottle of Cape brandy.



"Give a dram to Isazi," Ralph told him, but Jan Cheroot clasped the bottle to his bosom as though it were a firstborn son.



"I wouldn't waste good brandy on a black savage," he declared indignantly, and Ralph laughed and rode on towards the homestead of King's Lynn.



Here there was all the bustle and excitement that he had expected.



There were horses that Ralph did not recognize in the paddock below the big thatched house, and amongst them the unmistakable matched white mules of Mr. Rhodes" equipage. The coach itself stood under the trees in the yard, its paintwork asparkle and harness-wear carefully stacked on the racks in the saddle-room beside the stables. Ralph felt his anger flare up when he saw it. His hatred burned like a bellyful of cheap wine, and he could taste the acid of it at the back of his throat. He swallowed hard to control it as he dismounted.



Two black grooms ran to take his horse. One of them unstrapped his blanket-roll, his saddlebags and rifle scabbard, and ran with them up towards the big house. Ralph followed him, and he was halfway across the lawns when Zouga Ballantyne came out onto the wide stoep, and with a linen table-napkin shaded his eyes against the glare. He was still chewing from the luncheon table.



"Ralph, my boy. I didn't expect you until evening." Ralph ran up the steps and they embraced, and then Zouga took his arm and led him down the veranda. The walls were hung with trophies of the chase, the long twisted horns of kudu and eland, the gleaming black scimitars of sable and roan antelope, and guarding each side of the double doors that led into the dining-room were the immense tusks of the great bull elephant that Zouga Ballantyne had shot on the site of the Harkness Mine. These heavy curved shafts of ivory were as tall as a man standing on tiptoe could reach, and thicker than a fat lady's thigh.



Zouga and Ralph passed between them into the dining room. Under the thatch it was cool and dark after the brilliant white glare of noon. The floor was of hand-sawn wild teak, and the roof beams of the same material. Jan Cheroot had made the long refectory table and the chairs with seats of leather thonging from timber cut on the estate, but the glinting silver was from the Ballantyne family home at King's Lynn in England, a tenuous link between two places of the same name and yet of such dissimilar aspect.



Zouga's empty chair was at the far end of the long table, and facing it down the long board was the familiar massive brooding figure that raised his shaggy head as Ralph came in from the stoep.



"Ah, Ralph, it's good to see you." It amazed Ralph that there was no rancour in either Mr. Rhodes" voice or eyes. Could he have truly put the dispute over the Wankie coal fields out of his mind, as though it had never happened? With an effort, Ralph matched his own reaction to the other man's.



"How are you, sir?" Ralph actually smiled as he gripped the broad hand with its hard prominent knuckles. The skin was cool, like that of a reptile, the effect of the poor circulation of the damaged heart.



Ralph was pleased to release it, and pass on down the length of the long table. He was not certain that he could long conceal his true feelings from the close scrutiny of those pale hypnotic eyes.



They were all there. The suave little doctor at Mr. Rhodes right hand, his appropriate station.



"Young Ballantyne," he said coldly, offering his hand without rising.



"Jameson!" Ralph nodded familiarly, knowing that the deliberate omission of the title would rankle with him as much as the condescending young' had annoyed Ralph.



On Mr. Rhodes" other hand was a surprising guest. It was the first time that Ralph had ever seen General Mungo St. John at King's Lynn.



There had once been a relationship between the lean grizzled soldier with the dark and wicked single eye and Louise Ballantyne, Ralph's stepmother. That had been many years ago, long before Ralph had left Kimberley for the north.



Ralph had never entirely fathomed that relationship, nor somehow the breath of scandal clouding it. But it was significant that Louise Ballantyne was not in the room, and that there was no place set at the table for her. If Mr. Rhodes had insisted that St. John was present at this gathering, and Zouga Ballantyne had agreed to invite him, then there was a compelling reason for it. Mungo St. John flashed that wolfish smile at Ralph as they shook hands. Despite the family complications, Ralph had always had a sneaking admiration for this romantically piratical figure, and his answering smile was genuine.



The stature of the other men at the table confirmed the importance and significance of this gathering. Ralph guessed that the meeting was being held here to preserve the absolute secrecy that they could not have assumed in the town of Bulawayo. He guessed also that every guest had been personally selected and invited by Mr. Rhodes, rather than by his father.



Apart from Jameson and St. John, there was Percy Fitzpatrick, a partner of the Corner House mining group, and prominent representative of the Witwatersrand Chamber Of Mines, the organ of the gold barons of Johannesburg. He was a lively and personable young man with a fair complexion and ruddy hair and moustache, whose cheque red career had included bank clerk, transport rider, citrus farmer, guide to Lord Randolph Churchill's Africa expedition, author and mining magnate.



Many years later Ralph would reflect on the irony of this extraordinary man's claim to immortality being founded on a sentimental book about a dog called Jock.



Beyond Fitzpatrick sat the Honourable Bobbie White, who had just visited Johannesburg at Mr. Rhodes" suggestion. He was a handsome and pleasant young aristocrat, the type of Englishman that Mr. Rhodes preferred. He was also a staff officer and a career soldier as his mess tunic revealed.



Next to him sat John Willoughby, second-in-command of the original pioneer column, which had taken occupation of Fort Salisbury and Mashonaland. He had also ridden with Jameson's column that had destroyed Lobengula, and his Willoughby's Consolidated Company owned almost one million acres of prime pastoral land in Rhodesia, a rival to Ralph's Rholands Company, so their greetings were guarded.



Then there was Doctor Rutherford Harris, the first secretary of the British South Africa Company and a member of Mr. Rhodes" political party in which he represented the Kimberley constituency in the Cape Parliament. He was a taciturn grey man with a sinister cast of eye, and Ralph mistrusted him as one of Mr. Rhodes' slavish minions.



At the end of the table, Ralph came face to face with his brother Jordan, and he hesitated for just a fraction of a second, until he saw the desperate appeal in Jordan's gentle eyes. Then he gripped his brother's hand briefly, but he did not smile and his voice was cool and impersonal as he greeted him like a mere acquaintance, and then took the place that a servant in a white Kanza uniform and scarlet sash had hurriedly laid beside Zouga at the head of the table.



The animated conversation that Ralph had interrupted was resumed with Mr. Rhodes orchestrating and directing it. "What about your trained zebras? "he demanded of Zouga, who shook his golden beard.



"It was a desperate measure and doomed from the outset. But when you consider that out of the hundred thousand head of cattle that we had in Matabeleland before the rinderpest, only five hundred or so have survived, any chance seemed worth taking." "They say that the Cape buffalo have been wiped out utterly and completely by the disease," Doctor Jameson suggested. "What do you think, Major?" "Their losses have been catastrophic. Two weeks ago I rode as far north as the Pandamatenga river, where a year ago I counted herds of over five thousand together. This time I saw not a single living beast. Yet I cannot believe they are now extinct. I suspect that somewhere out there are scattered survivors, the ones that had a natural immunity, and I believe that they will breed." Mr. Rhodes was not a sportsman, he had once said of his own brother Frank, "Yes, he's a good fellow, he hunts and he fishes in other words, he is a perfect loafer," and this conversation about wild game bored him almost immediately. He changed it by turning to Ralph.



"Your railway line-what is the latest position, Ralph?" "We are still almost two months ahead of our schedule," Ralph told him with a touch of defiance. "We crossed the Matabeleland border fifteen days ago I expect as we sit here that the railhead has reached the trading-post at Plumtree already." "It's as well" Rhodes nodded. "We shall have urgent need of your line in a very short while." And he and Doctor Jim exchanged a conspiratorial glance.



When they had all relished Louise's bread and butter pudding, thick with nuts and raisins and running with wild honey, Zouga dismissed the servants, and poured the Cognac himself, while Jordan carried around the cigars. As they settled back in their seats, Mr. Rhodes made one of his startlingly abrupt changes of subject and pace, and Ralph was immediately aware that the true purpose for which he had been summoned to King's Lynn was about to be revealed.



"There is not one of you who does not know that my life's task is to see the map of Africa painted red from Cape Town to Cairo. To deliver this continent to our Queen as another jewel in her crown." His voice that had been irritable and carping up until now, took on a strange mesmeric quality. "We men of the English-speaking Anglo Saxon race are the first among nations, and destiny has imposed a sacred duty upon us to bring the world to peace under one flag and one great monarch. We must have Africa, all of it, to add to our Queen's dominions. Already my emissaries have gone north to the land between the Zambezi and the Congo rivers to prepare the way." Rhodes broke off and shook his head angrily. "But all this will be of no avail if the southern tip of the continent eludes us." "The South African Republic," said Jameson. "Paul Kruger and his little banana republic in the Transvaal." His voice was low but bitter.



"Do not be emotive, Doctor Jim," Rhodes remonstrated mildly. "Let us concern ourselves merely with the facts." "And what are the' facts Mr. Rhodes?" Zouga Ballantyne leaned forward eagerly from the head of the table..



"The facts are that an ignorant old bigot, who believes that the rabble of illiterate Dutch nomads that he leads are the new Israelites, specifically chosen by their Old Testament God. this extraordinary personage sits astride a vast stretch of the richest part of the African continent, like an unkempt and savage hound with a bone, and growls at all efforts at progress and enlightenment." They were all silenced by this bitter invective, and Mr. Rhodes looked around at their faces before he went on. "There are thirty-eight thousand Englishmen on the gold fields of Witwatersrand, Englishmen who pay nineteen of every twenty pounds of the revenue that flows into Kruger's coffers, Englishmen who are responsible for every bit of civilization in that benighted little republic, and yet Kruger denies them the franchise, they are taxed mercilessly and denied representation. Their petitions for the vote are greeted in the Volksraad by the contemptuous derision of a motley assembly of untutored oafs." Rhodes glanced at Fitzpatrick.



"Am I being unfair, Percy? You know these people, you live with them on a day-to-day basis. Is my description of the Transvaal Boer accurate?" Percy Fitzpatrick shrugged. "Mr. Rhodes is correct. The Transvaal Boer is a different animal from his Cape cousins. The Cape Dutch have had the opportunity of absorbing some of the qualities of the English way of life. By" comparison they are an urbane and civilized people, while the Transvaaler has unfortunately lost none of the traits of his Dutch ancestry. he is Slow, obstinate, hostile, suspicious, cunning and malevolent. it galls a man to be told to go to hell by that ilk, especially when we ask only for our rights as free men, the right to vote." Mr. Rhodes, not long to be denied the floor, went on. "Not only does Kruger insult our countrymen, but he plays other more dangerous games. He has discriminated against British goods with punitive tariffs. He has given trade monopolies in all essential mining goods, even dynamite, to members of his family and government.



He-is blatantly arming his burghers with German guns and building a corps of German Krupp artillery, and he is openly flirting with the Kaiser." Rhodes paused. "A German sphere of influence in the midst of Her Majesty's domains would forever damn our dreams of a British Africa. The Germans do not have our altruism." "All that good yellow gold going to Berlin," Ralph mused softly, and immediately regretted having spoken, but Mr. Rhodes did not seem to have heard, for he went on.



"How to reason with a man like Kruger? How can one even talk to a man who still believes implicitly that the earth is flat?" Mr. Rhodes was sweating again, although it was cool in the room. His hand shook so that as he reached for his glass, he knocked it over, and the golden cognac spread across the polished table-top. Jordan rose quickly and mopped it up before it could cascade into Mr. Rhodes" lap, and then he took a silver pillbox from his fob pocket, and from it placed, a white tablet close to Mr. Rhodes" right hand. The big man took it, and still breathing heavily, placed it under his tongue. After a few moments his breathing eased and he could speak again. (I went to him, gentlemen. I went to Pretoria to see Kruger at his own home. He sent a message with a servant, that he could not see me that day." They had all of them heard this story, their surprise was only that Mr. Rhodes could recount such a humiliating incident.



President Kruger had sent a black servant to one of the richest and most influential men in the world with this message.. "I am rather busy at the moment. One of my burghers has come to discuss a sick ox with me. Come back on Tuesday." "God knows," Doctor Jim intervened to break the embarrassed silence. "Mr. Rhodes has done everything a reasonable man could. To risk further insult from this old Boer could bring discredit not only on Mr. Rhodes personally, but on our Queen and her Empire." The little doctor paused and looked at each of his listeners in turn. Their faces were rapt, they waited intently for his next words. "What can we do about it? What must we do about it?" Mr. Rhodes shook himself, and looked at the young staff officer in his resplendent mess kit.



"Bobbie?"he said in invitation.



"Gentlemen, you may be aware that I have just returned from the Transvaal." Bobbie White lifted a leather briefcase from the floor beside his chair to the table, and from it produced a sheaf of crisp white paper. He passed a sheet to every man at the table.



Ralph glanced at his copy, and started slightly. It was the order of battle of the army of the South African Republic. His surprise was so intense that he missed the first part of what Bobbie White was saying.



"The fort at Pretoria is under repair and extension. The walls have been breached for this purpose and will be entirely vulnerable to a small determined force." Ralph had to force himself to believe what he was hearing. "Apart from the corps of artillery, there is no regular standing army. As you can see from the paper before you, the Transvaal depends upon its citizen commandos for defence. It requires four to six weeks for them to assemble into an effective force." Bobbie White finished his recital, and Mr. Rhodes turned from him to Percy Fitzpatrick.



"Percy?" he invited.



"You know what Kruger calls those of us whose capital and resources have developed his gold-mining industry for him? He calls us the "Uitlanders", the "Outlanders", the "Foreigners". You know also that we Outlanders have elected our own representatives, which we call the "Johannesburg Reform Committee". I have the honour to be one of the elected members of that Committee, and so I speak for every Englishman in the Transvaal." He paused and carefully dressed his moustache with his forefinger, and then went on. "I bring you two messages. The first is short and simple. It is, "We are determined and united to the cause. You may rely upon us to the utmost."" The men about the table nodded, but Ralph felt his skin tingle. They were taking this seriously it was not some boyish nonsense. They were plotting one of the most audacious acts of piracy in history. He kept his expression serious and calm with an enormous effort as Fitzpatrick went on.



"The second message is in the form of a letter signed by all the members of the Reform Committee. With your permission I shall read it to you. It is addressed to Doctor Jameson in his capacity as Administrator of Rhodesia, and it reads as follows. "Dear Sir, Johannesburg. The position of matters in this state has become so critical that we are assured that at no distant period there will be a conflict between the Transvaal government and the Uitlander population.



As the letter unfolded, Ralph recognized that it was a justification for armed insurrection.



"A foreign corporation of Germans and Hollanders is controlling our destinies, and in conjunction with the Boer leaders endeavouring to cast them in a mould which is wholly alien to the genius of the British peoples..



They were going to try to take by force of arms the richest gold reef in existence, Ralph sat bemused.



When our petition for franchise was debated in the Transvaal Volksraad, one member challenged the Uitlanders to fight for the rights they asked for, and not a single member spoke against him. The Transvaal government has called into existence all the elements necessary for armed conflict.



I It is under these circumstances that "we feel constrained to call upon you, as an Englishman, to come to our aid should a disturbance arise. We guarantee any expense you may incur by helping us, and we ask you to believe that nothing but sternest necessity has prompted this appeal." Percy Fitzpatrick looked up at Doctor Jim, and then finished.



"It is signed by all the members of the committee, Leonard, Phillips, Mr. Rhodes" brother Francis, John Hays Hammond, Farrar and by myself. We have not dated it." At the head of the table, Zouga Ballantyne let out his breath in a low whistle, but nobody else spoke while Jordan rose and passed down the table re-filling each glass from the crystal decanter. Mr. Rhodes was slumped forward over the table, his chin resting on the heel of his hand, staring out of the windows down across the lawns towards the far blue line of hills, the Hills of the Indunas, where once the Matabele king's kraal had stood. Everybody at the table waited for him, until at last he sighed heavily.



"I much prefer to find a man's price, and pay it, rather than to fight him, but we are not dealing with a normal man here. God save us all from saints and fanatics, give me a solid rogue every time." His head turned towards Doctor Jameson, and the dreaming blue eyes focused. "Doctor Jim," he invited, and the little doctor rode his chair back on its hind legs and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.



"We will need to send five thousand rifles and a million rounds of ammunition into Johannesburg." Intrigued and fascinated despite himself, Ralph interrupted to ask, "Where will you where will we get those? They are not common trade goods." Doctor Jim nodded. "That's a good question, Ballantyne. The rifles and ammunition are already in the mine stores of De Beers at Kimberley." Ralph blinked, the plot was far advanced, further than he had believed possible. Then he recalled the little doctor's suspicious behaviour at the base camp from which they had discovered the Harkness reef They must have been busy for months. He must find out all the details.



"How will we get them into Johannesburg? They'll have to be smuggled in, and it's a bulky shipment-" "Ralph," Mr. Rhodes smiled.



"You didn't really believe you were invited here for a social luncheon.



Who would you judge to be the most experienced of us in shipping weapons? Who carried the Martini rifles to Lobengula? Who is the shrewdest transport operator on the sub-continent?" " Ralph was startled.



"You," agreed Mr. Rhodes, and as Ralph stared at him, he felt a sudden unholy excitement welling up within him. He was to be at the centre of this fantastic conspiracy, privy to every detail. His mind began to race, he knew intuitively that this was one of the opportunities that comes a man's way once in a lifetime, and he had to wring from it every last advaniage.



"You will do it, of course?" A small shadow' passed across the penetrating blue eyes.



"Of course," said Ralph, but the shadow persisted. "I am an Englishman. I know my duty, "Ralph went on quietly and sincerely, and he saw the shadow clear from Mr. Rhodes" eyes. That was something he could believe in, something he could trust. He turned back to Doctor Jameson.



I am sorry, Mr. Rhodes said. "We interrupted you." And Jameson went on. "We will raise a mounted force of around six hundred picked men here-" and he looked at John Willoughby and Zouga Ballantyne, both of them proven soldiers. "I will rely heavily on you two." And Willoughby nodded, but Zouga frowned and asked, "Six hundred men will take weeks to ride from Bulawayo to Johannesburg." "We will not start from Bulawayo," Jameson replied evenly. "I have the approval of the British government to maintain a mobile armed force in Bechuanaland, on the railway concession strip which runs down the border of the Transvaal. The force is for the protection of the railway, but it will be based at Pitsani, a mere one hundred and eighty miles from Johannesburg. We can be there in fifty hours" hard riding, long before the Boers could raise any kind of resistance." It was at that moment that Ralph realized that it was feasible. Given Doctor Leander Starr Jameson's legendary luck, they could pull it off. They could take the Transvaal with the same ease as they had seized Matabeleland from Lobengula.



By God, what a prize that would be! A billion pounds sterling in gold, annexed to Rhodes" own land, Rhodesia. After that everything else was possible British Africa, a whole continent. Ralph was stunned at the magnitude of the design.



It was Zouga Ballantyne again who unerringly identified the fatal flaw in the scheme. "What is the position of Her Majesty's government?



Will they support us?" he asked. "Without them it will all be in vain." "I have just returned from London," Mr. Rhodes replied. "While I was there I dined with the colonial secretary, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.



As you know, he has instilled a new spirit of vigour and determination into Downing Street. He is in complete sympathy with the plight of Our subjects in Johannesburg. He is also fully aware of the dangers of German intervention in southern Africa. Let me just assure you all that Mr. Chamberlain and I understand each other. I can say no more at this stage, you must trust me." If that is true, Ralph thought, then the chances of complete success were better than even. The swift thrust to the heart of the unprepared enemy, the uprising of armed citizenry, the appeal to a magnanimous British government, and finally the annexation.



As he listened to the planning, Ralph was swiftly calculating the consequences of the successful outcome of the involved, Corner House mining group, Rand Mines, Consolidated Goldfields, would all crash with it. A simple bear coup on the Johannesburg stock exchange could net millions of pounds.



Ralph Ballantyne felt a sense of awe at the magnitude of the prospect that faced him, a prospect of power and wealth such as he had never dreamed of until this moment. He almost missed the question, and looked up when Mr. Rhodes repeated it.



"I said, how soon can you leave for Kimberley to take charge of the shipments, Ralph?" "Tomorrow," Ralph replied evenly.



"I knew we could rely upon you," Mr. Rhodes nodded.



Ralph had lingered deliberately to be the last to leave King's Lynn.



Now he and his father stood on the veranda and watched the dust column raised by Mr. Rhodes" mule coach dwindling away down the hill.



Ralph leaned against one of the whitewashed pillars that supported the roof, with his sun browned muscular arms folded across his chest and his eyes crinkled against the spiralling smoke of the cheroot between his teeth.



"You aren't naive enough to accept young Percy's estimate of the Boers, are you, Papa?" Zouga chuckled. "Slow, suspicious, malevolent and all that nonsense." He shook his head. "They ride hard and shoot straight, they have fought every black tribe south of the Limpopo-" "Not to mention our own soldiers," Ralph reminded him. "Majuba Hill, 1881, General Calley and ninety of his men are buried on the peak, the Boers didn't lose a single man." "They are good soldiers," Zouga admitted, "but we will have surprise on our side." "However, you do agree that it will be an act of international banditry, Papa?" Ralph removed the cheroot from his mouth and tapped off the ash. "We won't have one shred of moral justification for it." Ralph watched the scar on Zouga's cheek turn white as bone-china. It was an infallible barometer of his mood.



"I do not understand," Zouga said, but they both knew he understood perfectly.



"It's robbery," Ralph persisted. "Not just a little footpaddery, but robbery on the grand scale. We are plotting to steal a country."



"Did we then steal this land from the Matabele?" Zouga demanded.



"That was different," Ralph smiled. "They were pagan savages, but here we are planning to overthrow a government of fellow Christians."



"When we consider the greater good of the Empire," Zouga's scar had turned from icy white to crimson.



"Empire, Papa?" Ralph was still smiling. "If there are two people who should be entirely honest with each other, they are you and me.



Look. at me, and tell me straight that there will be no profit in it for us other than the satisfaction of having done our duty to the Empire." But Zouga did not look at him. "I am a soldier-" "Yes," Ralph cut him short. "But you are also a rancher who has just come through the rinderpest. You managed to sell five thousand head of cattle, but we both know that was not enough. How much do you owe, Papa?" After a moment's hesitation, Zouga told him grudgingly. "Thirty thousand pounds." "Do you have any expectation of paying off those debts?" "No."



"Not unless we take the Transvaal?" Zouga did not reply, but the scar faded and he sighed.



"All right," Ralph told him. "I just wanted to be certain that I was not alone in my motives." "You will go through with it?" Zouga asked.



"Don't worry, Papa. We'll come out of it, I promise you that."



Ralph pushed himself away from the pillar, and called to the grooms to bring his horse.



From the saddle he looked down at his father and for the first time noticed how the weariness of age had faded the green of his eyes.



"My boy, just because some of us will be rewarded for our endeavours, it does not mean that the enterprise is not a noble one.



We are the servants of the Empire, and faithful servants are entitled to a fair wage." Ralph reached down and clasped his shoulder, then he picked up the reins and rode down the hill through the acacia forests.



The railhead was feeling its way up the escarpment, like a cautious adder, often following the ancient elephant roads, for these huge beasts had pioneered the easiest gradients and the gentlest passes. It had left the swollen baobabs and yellow fever trees of the Limpopo basin far below and the forests were lovelier, the air sweeter, and the streams clearer and colder.



Ralph's base camp had moved up with the railhead into one of the secluded valleys, just out of earshot of the hammers of the gangs driving the steel spikes into the teak railway sleepers. The spot had many of the charms of the remote wilderness. In the evenings a herd of sable antelope came down to feed in the grass glade below the camp, and the barking of baboons from the hills roused them each dawn. Yet the telegraph hut at the railhead was ten minutes" stroll away, around the foot of the wooded hill, and the locomotive bringing up the rails and sleepers from Kimberley delivered as well the latest copy of The Diamond Fields Advertiser, and any other small luxuries that the camp required.



In an emergency Cathy would have the railway overseer and any men of his gang to call upon, while the camp itself was protected by twenty loyal Matabele servants and Isazi, the little Zulu driver, who pointed out modestly that he alone was worth twenty more of the bravest Matabele. In the unlikely event of Cathy becoming lonely or bored, the Harkness Mine was only thirty miles away, and Harry and Vicky promised to ride across every weekend.



"Can't we come with you, Daddy?" Jonathan pleaded. "I could help you, really I could." Ralph lifted him into his lap. "One of us has to stay and look after Mama," he explained. "You are the only one I can trust." "We can take her with us," Jonathan suggested eagerly, and Ralph had a vision of his wife and child in the midst of an armed revolution, with barricades in the streets and Boer commandos ravaging the countryside.



"That would be very nice, Jon-Jon," Ralph agreed, "but what about the new baby? What happens if the stork arrives here while we are all away and there is nobody to sign for your little sister?" " Jonathan scowled. He was already developing a healthy dislike for this not yet arrived but eternally present female personage. She seemed to stand squarely in the way of every pleasant prospect or exciting plan, both parents managed to introduce his darling sister into almost every conversation, and his mother spent much of the time formerly devoted to Master Jonathan's interests in knitting and sewing or just sitting smiling to herself. She no longer went out riding with him each morning and evening, nor indulged in those rowdy romps which he enjoyed so heartily. Jonathan had in fact already consulted Isazi on the possibility of getting a message to the stork and telling him not to bother, that they had changed their minds. However, Isazi had not been very encouraging, although he had promised to have a word with the local witch doctor on Jonathan's behalf.



Now confronted once more with that ubiquitous female, Jonathan capitulated with poor grace.



"Well, can I come with you when my baby sister is here to look after Mama?" I tell you what, old fellow, I'll do better than that.



How would you like to go on a big boat across the sea?" This was the kind of talk Jonathan preferred, and his face lit up.



"Can I sail it?" he demanded.



"I'm sure the captain will let you help him," Ralph chuckled.



"And when we get to London, we will stay in a big hotel and we will buy all sorts of presents for your mama." Cathy dropped her knitting into her lap, and stared at him in the lamplight.



"What about me?" Jonathan demanded. "Can we buy all sorts of presents for me too?" "And for your baby sister," Ralph agreed. "Then when we come back we will go to Johannesburg and we will buy a big house, with shining chandeliers and marble floors." "And stables for my pony. "Jonathan clapped his hands. "And a kennel for Chaka." Ralph ruffled his curls. "And you will go to a fine brick school with lots of other little boys." Jonathan's grin wavered slightly, that was perhaps carrying things a little too far, but Ralph stood him on his feet again, slapped his backside lightly and told him, "Now go and kiss your mother goodnight, and ask her to tuck you up in your cot.



Cathy hurried back from the nursery tent, moving with the appealing awkwardness of her pregnancy into the fired light, and she came to where Ralph sat in the canvas folding chair with his boots stretched to the blaze, and the whisky glass in his hand. She stopped behind his chair, put both arms around his neck and, with her lips pressed to his cheek, whispered. "is it true, or are you just teasing me?" "You have been a good brave girl for long enough. I'm going to buy you a home that you didn't dare even dream about." "With chandeliers?" "And a carriage to take you to the opera." "I don't know if I like opera I've never been to one." "We'll find out in London, won't we? "Oh Ralph, I'm so happy I think I could cry. But why now?



What has happened to make it all change?" "Something is going to happen before Christmas that is going to change our lives. We -are going to be rich." "I thought we were already rich?" "I mean really rich, the way Robinson and Rhodes are rich." "Can you tell me what it is?" "No," he said simply. "But you only have a few short weeks to wait, just until Christmas." "Oh, darling," she sighed. "Will you be away that long, I miss you so." "Then let's waste no more precious time talking." He stood up, picked her up in his arms and carried her carefully to the bell tent under the spreading wild fig tree. in the morning Cathy stood with Jonathan beside her, holding his hand to restrain him, and they looked up at Ralph on the foot-plate of the big green locomotive.



"We always seem to be saying goodbye." She had to raise her voice above the hiss of steam from the driving wheels and the roar of the flames in the firebox.



"It's the last time," Ralph promised her.



How handsome and gay he was, it made her heart swell until it threatened to choke her.



"Come back to me as soon as you can."



"I will, just as soon as I can." The engine-driver pulled down the brass throttle-handle and the huff of steam drowned Ralph's next words.



"What? What did you say?" Cathy trotted heavily beside the locomotive as it began to trundle down the steel tracks. "Don't lose the letter," he repeated.



"I won't" she promised, and then the effort of keeping level with the rolling locomotive became too much. She came up short, and waved with the white lace handkerchief until the curve in the southbound tracks carried the train out of sight beyond the heel of a kopje, and the last mournful sob of its steam whistle died on the air. Then she turned back to where Isazi waited with the trap. Jonathan wrested his hand from hers and raced ahead to scramble up onto the seat.



"Can I drive them, Isazi?" he pleaded, and Cathy felt a prick of anger at the fickleness of boyhood one moment tearful and bereft, the next shrieking with the prospect of handling the reins.



As she settled onto the buttoned leather rear seat of the trap, she slipped her hand into the pocket of her apron to check that the sealed envelope that Ralph had left with her was still safe. She drew it out and read the tantalizing instruction he had written upon the face. "Open only when you receive my telegraph." She was about to return it to her pocket, then she bit her lip, fighting the temptation, and at last ran her fingernail under the flap, splitting it open and drew out the folded sheet.



"Upon receiving my telegraph, you must send the following telegraph immediately and urgently. "To Major Zouga Ballantyne.



Headquarters of Rhodesian Horse Regiment at Pitsani Bechuanaland.



YOUR WIFE MRS LOUISE BALLANTYNE GRAVELY ILL RETURN IMMEDIATELY KINGS



LYNN."" Cathy read the instruction twice and suddenly she was deadly afraid.



"Oh my mad darling, what are you going to do?" she whispered, and Jonathan urged the horses into a trot back along the track towards the camp.



The workshops of the Simmer and Jack gold mine stood below the steel headgear on the crest of the ridge. The town of Johannesburg sprawled away in the low Valley, and over the further rounded hills.



The workshop was roofed and walled with corrugated iron, and the concrete floor was stained with black puddles of spilled engine oil.



It was oven-hot under the iron, and beyond the big double sliding doors at the end of the shed the sunlight of early summer was blinding.



"Close the doors," Ralph Ballantyne ordered, and two of the small group went to struggle with the heavy wood and iron structures, grunting and sweating with unaccustomed physical effort. With the doors closed, it was gloomy as a Gothic cathedral, and the white beams of sunlight through chinks in the iron walls were filled with swirling dust motes.



Down the centre of the floor stood a row of fifty yellow drums.



Stencilled on each lid in black paint were the words. "Heavy Duty Engine Oil. 44 gals." Ralph slipped off his beige linen jacket, pulled down the knot of his necktie and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He selected a two-pound hammer and a cold chisel from the nearest workbench and started to hack open the lid of the nearest drum. The four other men crowded closer to watch. The hammer strokes echoed hollowly about the long shed. The yellow paint flew off in tiny flakes beneath the chisel, and the raw metal was bright as newly minted shillings.



At last Ralph prised open the half-severed lid, and bent it back.



The-surface of the oil glimmered glutinous and coal black in the poor light, Ralph thrust his right arm into it as far as the elbow, and drew out a long oilskin-wrapped bundle dripping with the thick oil. He carried it to the workbench, and slit the binding with the chisel, and there were exclamations of satisfaction as he stripped away the covering.



"The very latest Lee Metford bolt-action rifles firing the new smokeless cordite load. There is no other rifle in the world to match it." They passed the weapon from hand to hand, and when it reached Percy Fitzpatrick, he rattled the bolt, opening and closing it rapidly.



"How many?" "Ten to a drum," Ralph answered. "Fifty drums." "And the rest of them?" demanded Frank Rhodes. He was as unlike his younger brother as Ralph was to Jordan. A tall lean man with deepset eyes and high cheekbones, his greying hair receding from a deep bony forehead.



"I can bring through a shipment every week for the next five weeks," Ralph told him, wiping his greasy hands on a ball of cotton waste.



"Can you do it quicker than that?" "Can you clean and distribute them quicker than that?" Ralph countered, and without waiting for a reply, turned to John Hays Hammond, the brilliant American mining engineer whom he trusted more than Mr. Rhodes" ellete brother.



"Have you decided on the final plan of action?" he asked. "Mr. Rhodes will want to know when I return to Kimberley." "We will seize the Pretoria fort and the arsenal as our first objective," Hays Hammond told him, and they fell into a detailed discussion with Ralph scribbling notes on the back of a cigarette packet, When at last Ralph nodded and stuffed the packet into his back pocket, Frank Rhodes demanded. "What is the news from Bulawayo?" "Jameson has his men, over six hundred of them. They are mounted and armed. He will be ready to move southwards to Pitsani on the last day of the month, that's his latest report." Ralph shrugged on his jacket again. "It will be wiser if we are not seen together." He returned to shake hands with each of them, but when he reached Colonel Frank Rhodes, he could not resist the temptation to add, "It would also be wiser, Colonel, if you could limit your telegraph messages to essentials only. The code you are using, the daily references to this fictitious gold-mine flotation of yours is enough to attract the attention- of even the most dimwitted of the Transvaal police agents, and we know for certain that there is one in the Johannesburg telegraph office." "Sir, we have indulged in no unnecessary traffic," Frank Rhodes replied stiffly.



"Then how do you rate your latest effort? "Are the six hundred northern shareholders in a position to take up their debentures?" Ralph mimicked his prim old maidish diction, then nodded farewell and went out to where his horse was tethered and rode down the road to Fordsberg Dip and the city.



Elizabeth rose at a glance from her mother, and began to gather up the soup bowls.



"You haven't finished, Bobby," she told her young brother.



"I'm not hungry, Lizzie," the child protested. "It tastes funny."



"You always have an excuse not to eat, Master Robert," Elizabeth scolded him. "No wonder you are so skinny, you'll never grow up strong and tall like your papa." "That's enough, Elizabeth," Robyn spoke sharply. "Leave the boy, if he's not hungry. You know he isn't well."



Elizabeth glanced at her mother, then dutifully stacked Robert's boWl with the others. None of the girls had ever been allowed to leave food, not even when they were giddy with malaria, but she had learned not to protest the unfairness of Robyn's indulgence of her only son.



With the kerosene lantern in her other hand, Elizabeth went out of the back door and crossed to the thatched kitchen hut.



"It is time she had a husband." Juba shook her head mournfully.



"She needs a man in her bed and a baby to her breast to make her smile." "Don't talk nonsense, Juba," snapped Robyn. "There will be time for that later. She is doing important work here, I could not let her go. She is as good as a trained doctor." "The young men come out from Bulawayo one after the other, and she sends them all away, "Juba went on, ignoring Robyn's injunction.



"She's a sensible, serious girl," Robyn agreed. "She is a sad girl, with a secret." "Oh Juba, not every woman wants to spend her life as some man's chattel," Robyn scoffed.



"Do you remember when she was a girl?" Juba went on unperturbed.



"How bright she was, how she shone with joy, how she sparkled like a drop of morning dew." "She has grown up." "I thought it was the tall young rock-finder, the man from across the sea who took Vicky away."



Juba shook her head. "It was not him. She laughed at Vicky's wedding, and it was not the laughter of a girl who has lost her love. It is something else," Juba decided portentously, "or somebody else." Robyn was about to protest further, but she was interrupted by the sound of excited voices in the darkness outside the door, and she stood up quickly.



"What is it?" she called. "What is happening out there, Elizabeth?" and the flame of the lantern came bobbing back across the yard, lighting Elizabeth's flying feet but leaving her face in darkness.



"Mama! Mama! Come quickly!" Her voice rang with excitement.



Elizabeth burst in through the door.



"Control yourself, girl." Robyn shook her shoulder, and Elizabeth took a deep breath.



"Old Moses has come up from the village he says that there are soldiers, hundreds of soldiers riding past the church." "Juba, get Bobby's coat." Robyn took her woollen shawl and her cane down from behind the door. Tlizabeth give me the lantern!" Robyn led the family down the driveway under the dark spathodea trees, past the go downs of the hospital, towards the church. They went in a small tight group, with Bobby bundled up in a woollen coat riding on Juba's fat hip, but before they reached the church, there were many other dark figures hurrying along in the darkness around them.



"They are coming out of the hospital." Juba was righteously indignant. "And tomorrow they will all be sick again." "You'll never stop them." Elizabeth sighed with resignation. "Curiosity killed the cat." And then she exclaimed, "There they are! Moses was right just look at them!" The starlight was bright enough to reveal the torrent of dark horsemen pouring down the road from the neck of hills. They rode two abreast and a length between each rank. it was too dark to see their faces under the broad brims of their slouch hats, but a rifle barrel stuck up like an ate user finger behind each man's shoulder, silhouetted against the frosty fields of stars that filled the heavens.



The deep dust of the track muffled the hooves to a soft floury puffing sound, but the saddles squeaked with the rub of dubbined leather and a curb chain tinkled as a horse snorted softly and tossed its head.



Yet the quiet was uncanny for such a multitude. No voice raised above a whisper, no orders to close up, not even the usual low warning, "Ware hole!" of massed horsemen moving in formation across unfamiliar terrain in darkness. The head of the column reached the fork in the road below the church, but took the left hand turning, the old wagon road towards the south.



"Who are they?" Juba asked with a thrill of superstitious awe in her voice. "They look like ghosts." "Those aren't ghosts," Robyn said flatly. "Those are Jameson's tin soldiers, that's his new Rhodesian Horse Regiment." "Why are they taking the old road?" Elizabeth, too, spoke in a whisper, infected by Juba and by the unnatural quiet. "And why are they riding in the dark?" "This stinks of Jameson and his master." Robyn stepped forward to the edge of the road and called loudly, lifting the lantern above her head, "Where are you going?" A low voice from the column answered her. "There and back to see how far it is, missus!" and there were a few low chuckles, but the column flowed on past the church without a check.



In the centre of the column were the transports, seven wagons drawn by mules, for the rinderpest had left no draught-oxen. After the wagons came eight two-wheeled carts with canvas covers over the Maxim machine-guns, and then three light field guns, relics of Jameson's expeditionary force that had captured Bulawayo a few short years ago.



The tail of the column was again made up of mounted men, two abreast.



It took almost twenty minutes for them all to pass the church, and then the silence was complete, with just the taint of dust in the air as a reminder of their going. The patients from the hospital began to slip away from the roadside, back into the darker shadows beneath the spathodea trees, but the little family group stayed on silently, waiting for Robyn to move.



"Mummy, I am cold," Bobby whined at last, and Robyn roused herself.



"I wonder what devilry they are up to now," she murmured, and led them back up the hill towards the homestead. " "The beans will be cold by now," Elizabeth complained, as she hurried back into the kitchen hut while Robyn and Juba climbed up the steps onto the stoep.



Juba let Bobby down from her hip, and he scampered back into the warm lamplight of the- dining-room. Juba was about to follow him, but Robyn stopped her with a hand upon her forearm. The two women stood together, close and secure in the love and companionship they bore each other. They looked out across the valley, in the direction in which the dark and silent horsemen had disappeared.



"How beautiful it is!" Robyn murmured. "I always think of the stars as my friends, they are so constant, so well remembered, and tonight they are so close." She lifted her hand as though to pluck them from the firmament. "There is Orion, and there is the bull.". "And there Manatassi's four sons," Juba said, "the poor murdered babes."



"The same, stars," Robyn hugged Juba closer to her, "the same stars shine upon us all, even though we know them by different names. You call those four white stars Manatassi's Sons but we call them the Cross. The Southern Cross." She felt Juba start and then begin to shiver, and Robyn's voice was instantly concerned.



"What is it, my little Dove?"she asked.



"Bobby was right," whispered Juba. "It is cold, we should go in now." She sat silent during the rest of the meal, but when Elizabeth took Bobby through to his bedroom, she said simply, "Nomusa, I must go back to the village." "Oh Juba, you have only just returned, whatever is the matter?" "I have a feeling, Nomusa, a feeling in my heart that my husband needs me." Then," said Robyn bitterly. "If we could only be shot of all of them life would be so much simpler if we women ran the world." "It is the sign," whispered Tanase, holding her son to her bosom, and the light from the small smoky little fire in the centre of the hut left her eyes in shadow like those of a skull. "It is always the way with the prophecy of the Umlimo, the meaning becomes clear only when the events come to pass." "The wings in the dark noon," Bazo nodded, "and the cattle with their heads twisted to touch their flanks, and now-" "And now the cross has eaten up the hornless cattle, the horsemen have gone south in the night. It is the third, the last sign for which we waited," Tanase exulted softly. "The spirits of our ancestors urge us on. The time of waiting is over." "Little Mother, the spirits have chosen you to make their meaning clear. Without you we would never have known what the white men call those four great stars. Now the spirits have other work for you. You are the one who knows where they are, you know how many are at Khami Mission." Juba looked at her husband, and her lips trembled, her great dark eyes were swimming with tears. Gandang nodded to her to speak.



"There is Nomusa," she whispered. "Nomusa, who is more than a mother and a sister to me. Nomusa who cut the chain that held me in the slave ship--" "Put those thoughts from your mind," counselled Tanase gently. "There is no place for them now. Tell us who else is at the Mission." "There is Elizabeth, my gentle sad Lizzie, and Bobby, who I carry upon my hip." "Who else?"Tanase insisted.



"There are no others, "Juba whispered. Bazo looked at his father.



"They are yours, all of them at Khami Mission. You know what must be done." Gandang nodded, and Bazo turned back to his mother. "Tell me, sweet little Mother." His voice sank to a soothing rumble. "Tell me about Bakela, the Fist, and his woman. What news do you have of him?" "Last week he was in the big house at King's Lynn, he and Balela, the One who brings Clear and Sunny Skies." Bazo turned to one of the other indunas who sat in the rank behind Gandang.



"Suku!" The and una rose on one knee. "Babo?" he asked.



"Bakela is yours, and his woman," Bazo told him. "And when you have done that work, go on to Hartley Hills and take the miners there, there are three men, and a woman with four whelps." "Nkosi Nkulu," the and una acknowledged the order, and no one queried or demurred when he called Bazo, "Nkosi Nkulu! King!" "Little Mother, where is Henshaw and his woman, who is the daughter of Nomusa?" "Nomusa had a letter from her, three days ago. She is at the railhead, she and the boy. She carries an infant, which will be born about the time of the Chauula festival. She wrote of her great joy and happiness." "And Henshaw?"



Bazo asked patiently. "What of Henshaw?" "In the letter she said he was with her, the source of her happiness. He may still be with her."



"They are mine," Bazo said.. "They and the five white men who are at the railhead. Afterwards we will sweep up the wagon road and take the two men and the woman and three children at Antelope Mine." He went on quietly allocating a task to each of his commanders, each farm and lonely mine was given to one of them with a recount al of the victims to be expected there, the telegraph lines were to be cut, the native police were to be executed, the drifts were to be guarded, all the wagon roads had to be swept for travellers, firearms collected, and livestock carried off and hidden. When he had finished, he turned to the women.



"Tanase, you will see to it that all our own women and children go into the ancient place of sanctuary, you yourself will lead them into the sacred hills of the Matopos. You will make certain that they stay in small groups, each well separated from the others, and the mujiba, the young boys not yet initiated, will watch from the hilltops against the coming of the white men. The women will have the potions and the muti ready for those of our men who are wounded." "Nkosi Nkulu," said Tanase after each instruction, and she watched his face, trying not to let her pride and her wild exultation show. "King!" she called him, as the other indunas had done.



Then the telling of it was over, and they waited for one thing more. The silence in the hut was strained and intense, the white of eyes gleaming in faces of polished ebony, as they waited, and at last Bazo spoke.



"By tradition, on the night of the Chaw aLa moon, the sons and daughters of Mashobane, of Mzilikazi, and of Lobengula, should celebrate the Festival of the First Fruits. This season there will be no cobs of corn to reap, for the locusts have reaped them for us. This season there will be no black bull for the young warriors to kill with their bare hands, for the rinderpest has done their work for them."



Bazo slowly looked about the circle of their faces.



"So on the night of this Chawala moon, let it begin. Let the storm rage. Let the eyes turn red. Let the young men of Matabele run!" "Jee!" hummed Suku in the second rank of indunas, and "Jee!" old Babiaan took up the war chant, and then they were all swaying together with their throats straining and their eyes bulging redly in the firelight with the divine fighting madness coming down upon them.



The ammunition was the most time-consuming of the stores to handle, and Ralph was limited to twenty trusted men to do the work for him.



There were 10,000 rounds in each iron case, with the W.D. and arrow impressed upon its lid. They were secured with a simple clip that could be knocked open with a rifle butt. The British army always learned its lesson the hard way. They had learned this one at isandhlwana, the Hill of the Little Hand, on the frontier of Zululand when Lord Chelmsford left 1,000 men at his base camp, while he took a flying column to bring the Zulu indunas to battle. Avoiding contact with the column, the indunas doubled back and stormed the base camp.



Only when the swarming imp is broke through the perimeter did the quartermasters realize that Chelmsford had taken the keys for the ammunition chests with him. Isazi, Ralph's little Zulu driver, had given him an eye-witness account of the end.



"They were tearing at the boxes with axes, with bayonets and with their bare hands. They were swearing and screaming with rage and chagrin when we brought the assegais to them, and at the last they tried to defend themselves with their empty rifles." Isazi's eyes had gone misty with the memory, the way an old man recalls a lost love. "I tell you, little Hawk, they were brave men and it was a beautiful stabbing." Nobody could be certain how many Englishmen had died at the Little Hand, for it was almost a year before Chelmsford retook the field, but it was one of the most terrible disasters of British military history, and immediately after it the War Office redesigned their ammunition chests.



Now the fact that the.303 ammunition was packed in these WD chests was some indication of how deep was the understanding between Mr. Rhodes and the colonial secretary in Whitehall. However, the bulk packets had to be broken down and repacked in waxed paper. One hundred rounds to the packet, then these had to be soldered into tin sheets before going into the oil drums. It was an onerous task and Ralph was pleased to escape for a few hours from the workshops of the De Beers Consolidated Mines Company where it was being done.



Aaron Fagan was waiting for him in his office, with his coat on and his Derby hat in his hand.



"You are becoming a secretive fellow, Ralph," he accused.



"Couldn't you have given me some idea of what you expect?" "You will learn that soon enough," Ralph promised, and put a cheroot between his lips. "All I want to know from you is that this fellow is trustworthy, and discreet." "He is the eldest son of my own sister," Aaron bridled, and Ralph struck a Vesta to the end of the cheroot to calm him.



"That is all very well, but can he keep his mouth shut?" "I will stake my life on it." "You may have to," Ralph told him drily. "Well, let us go to visit this paragon." David Silver was a plump young man with a pink scrubbed complexion, gold-rimmed pince-nez and his hair glossy with brilliantine and parted down the centre so that his scalp gleamed in the division like the scar of a sword cut He deferred courteously to his Uncle Aaron, and went to pains to make certain that both his guests were comfortable, that their chairs were arranged with the light from the windows falling from behind and that each of them had an ashtray beside him and a cup of tea in his hand.



"It's orange pekoe, he pointed out modestly, as he settled beside his desk. Then he placed his fingertips together, pursed his lips primly and looked expectantly at Ralph.



While Ralph briefly explained his requirements, he nodded his head brightly and made little sucking sounds of encouragement.



"Mr. Ballantyne - "he kept nodding like a mandarin doll when Ralph had finished' that is what we stockbrokers " he spread his hand deprecatingly, -"in our jargon call a "bear position" or "selling short". It is quite a commonplace transaction." Aaron Fagan squirmed a little in his chair, and glanced apologetically at Ralph. "David, I think Mr. Ballantyne knows-" "No, no," Ralph raised a hand to Aaron."please let Mr. Silver continue. I am sure his discourse will be enlightening." His expression was solemn, but his eyes twinkled with amusement. The irony was lost on David Silver and he accepted Ralph's invitation.



"It is an entirely short-term speculative contract. I always make a point of mentioning this to any of my clients who contemplate entering into one. To be entirely truthful, Mr. Ballantyne, I do not approve of this speculation. I always feel that the stock exchange is a venue for legitimate investment, a market where capital can meet and mate with legitimate enterprise. It should not have been made into a bookmakers" turf where sportsmen bet on dark horses." "That is a very noble thought," Ralph agreed.



"I am glad you see it that way." David Silver puffed out his cheeks pompously. "However, to return to the operation of selling shares short. The client enters the market and offers to sell shares of a specified company which he does not possess, at a price below the current market price, for delivery at some future date, usually one to three months ahead." "Yes," Ralph nodded solemnly. "I think I follow so far." "Naturally, the expectation of the bear operator is that the shares will fall considerably in value before he is obliged to deliver them to the purchaser. From his point of view the larger the fall in value the greater will be his profit." "Ah!"said Ralph. "An easy way to make money." "On the other hand" David Silver's plump features became stern. - "should the shares rise in value the bear operator will incur considerable losses. He will be forced to re-enter the market and buy shares at the inflated prices to make good his delivery to the purchaser, and naturally he will be paid only the previously agreed price." "Naturally!" "Now you can see why I try to discourage my clients from engaging in these dealings." "Your uncle assured me that you were a prudent man." David Silver looked smug. "Mr. Ballantyne, I think you should know that there is a buoyant mood in the market. I have heard it rumoured that some of the Witwatersrand companies will be reporting highly elevated profits this quarter. In my view this is the time to buy gold shares, not to sell them." "Mr. Silver, I am a terrible pessimist." "Very well." David Silver sighed with the air of a superior being inured to the intractability of the common man. "Will you tell me exactly what you have in mind, please, Mr. Ballantyne?" "I want to sell the shares of two companies short," Ralph told him. "Consolidated Goldfields and the British South Africa Company." An air of vast melancholy came over David Silver. "You have chosen the strongest companies on the board, those are Mr. Rhodes" enterprises. Did you have a figure in mind, Mr. Ballantyne? The minimum lot that can be traded is one hundred shares,-" "Two hundred thousand, "said Ralph mildly.



"Two hundred thousand pounds! "gasped David Silver.



"Shares," Ralph corrected him.



"Mr. Ballantyne." Silver had paled. "BSA is standing at twelve pounds and Consolidated at eight. If you sell two hundred thousand shares well, that is a transaction of two million pounds." "No, no! "Ralph shook his head. "You misunderstand me." "Thank the good Lord for that." A little colour flowed back into David Silver's chubby cheeks.



"I meant not two hundred thousand in total, but two hundred thousand in each company. That is four million pounds" worth altogether." David Silver sprang to his feet with such alacrity that his chair flew back against the wall with a crash, and for a moment it seemed that he might try to escape out into the street.



"But," he blubbered, "but-" And then he could think of no further protest. His pince-nez misted and his lower lip stuck out like a sulky child's.



"Sit down," Ralph ordered gently, and he sank back miserably into his chair.



"I will have to ask -you to make a deposit," Silver made one last effort.



"How much will you need?" "Forty thousand pounds." Ralph opened his cheque-book on the edge of the desk, and took one of David Silver's pens from the rack. The squeak of the nib was the only sound in the hot little office, until Ralph sat back and fanned the cheque to dry the ink.



"There is just one thing more," he said. "Nobody outside these four walls nobody is ever to know that I am the principal in this transaction." "You have my word." "or your testicles," Ralph warned him, as he leaned close to hand him the cheque, and though he smiled, his eyes were such a cold green that David Silver shivered, and he felt a sharp pang of anticipation in his threatened parts.



It was a typical high veld Boer homestead set on a rocky ridge above an undulating treeless plain of silver grass. The roof was of galvanized corrugated iron which had begun to rust through in patches. The house was surrounded by wide verandas, and the whitewash was discoloured and flaking from the wall. There was a windmill on a skeletal tower behind the house. The vanes blurred against the pale cloudless sky, spinning in the dry dusty wind, and at each weary crank of the plunger, a cupful of cloudy green water spilled into the circular concrete cistern beside the kitchen door.



There was no attempt at a garden or lawn. A dozen scrawny speckled fowls scratched at the bare baked earth, or perched disconsolately on the derelict Cape wagon and the other ruined equipment that always seemed to ornament the yard of every Boer homestead. On the side of the prevailing wind stood a tall Australian eucalyptus tree with the old bark hanging in tatters from the silver trunk like the skin of a moulting serpent. In its scant shade were tethered eight sturdy brown ponies.



As Ralph dismounted below the veranda, a pack of mongrel hounds came snapping and snarling about his boots, and he scattered them yelping and howling with a few kicks and a hissing cut from his hippo-hide sjambok.



"U is laat , meneer." A man had come out onto the veranda. He was in shirtsleeves with braces holding up the baggy brown trousers that left his bare ankles exposed. On his feet, he wore rawhide velskoen without socks.



"Jammer," Ralph apologized for being late. Using the simplified form of Dutch, which the Boer called the taal, the language.



The man held the door open for Ralph and he stooped through it into the windowless living-room. It smelled of stale smoke and dead ash from the open fireplace. The floor was covered with rush mats and animal-skins. There was a single table down the centre of the room, of heavy crudely fashioned dark wood. There was a single hanging on the wall opposite the fireplace, an embroidered copy of the ten commandments in High Dutch script. The only book in the room lay open on the bare table-top. It was an enormous Dutch Bible with leather cover and bindings of brass.



On leather-thonged chairs, eight men sat down the length of both sides of the table. They all looked up at Ralph as he entered. There was not a man amongst them younger than fifty years old, for the Boers valued experience and acquired wisdom in their leaders. Most of them were bearded and all of them wore rough hard-worn clothing, and were solemn and unsmiling. The man who had greeted Ralph followed him in and silently indicated an empty chair. Ralph sat down and every shaggy bearded head turned away from him towards the figure at the end of the table.



He was the biggest man in the room, monumentally ugly, as a bulldog or one of the great anthropoids is ugly. His beard was a grey scraggly fringe, but his upper lip was shaven. His face hung in folds and bags, the skin was darkly burned by ten thousand fierce African suns, and it was lumped and stained with warts and with the speckles of benign skin cancer, like the foxing on the pages of a very old book.



One eyelid drooped to give him a crafty suspicious expression. His toffee-brown eyes had also been affected by the white sun glare of Africa, and by the scouring dust of the hunting veld and the battlefield, so they were now perpetually bloodshot, sore and inflamed-looking. His people called him Oom Paul, Uncle Paul, and held him in only slightly less veneration than they did their Old Testament God.



Paul Kruger began to read aloud again from the open Bible before him. He read slowly, followed the text with his finger. The thumb was missing from his hand. It had been blown off by a bursting gunbarrel thirty years before. His voice was a rumbling basso profunda.



"Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled and very great. and moreover we saw the children of the Anak there... And Caleb stilled the people, and said. Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it." Ralph watched him intently, studying the huge slumped body, the shoulders so wide that the ugly head seemed to perch upon them like a bedraggled bird on a mountaintop, and he thought of the legend that surrounded this strange man.



Paul Kruger had been nine years old when his father and uncles had packed their wagons and gathered their herds and trekked northwards, away from British rule, driven on by the memory of their folk heroes hanged at Slachters Nek by the Redcoats. The Krugers trekked from the injustice of having their slaves turned free, from the English black circuit courts, from judges who did not speak their language, from taxes levied on land that was theirs and from the foreign troops who seized their beloved herds to pay those taxes.



The year had been 1835 and on that hard trek Paul Kruger became a man at an age when most boys are still playing with kites and marbles.



Each day he was given a single bullet and a charge of powder and sent out to provide meat for the family. If he failed to bring back a buck, his father beat him. He became, by necessity, an expert marksman. it was one of his duties to scout ahead for water and good grazing, and to lead the caravan to it. He became a skilled horseman and developed an almost mystical affinity for the veld, and the herds of fat-tailed sheep and multi-hued cattle that were. his family's wealth. Like a Matabele mujiba, he knew every beast by name, and could pick out an ailing animal from the herd at a mile distant.



When Mzilikazi, the Matabele emperor, sent his imp is with their long shields swarming down upon the little caravan of wagons, little Paul took his place with the other men at the barricades. There were thirty-three Boer fighting men inside the circle of wagons. The wagon trucks were lashed together with trek chains, and the openings between the wheels latticed with woven thorn-branches.



The Matabele amadoda were uncountable. Regiment after regiment they charged, hissing their deep ringing "Jee!" They attacked for six hours without respite, and when the bullets ran low, the Boer women smelted and cast lead in the midst of the battle. When the Matabele fell back at last, their dead lay chest-deep around the wagons and little Paul had become a man, for he had killed a man many men.



Strangely, it was another four years before he killed his first lion, sending a hardened ball through its heart as it sprang upon his horse's back. By now he was able to test a new horse by galloping it over broken ground. If it fell, young Paul would land catlike, on his feet, shake his head with disapproval, and walk away. When hunting buffalo, he would mount facing his horse's tail so as to have a steadier shot when the beasts "chased his horse, as they invariably did. This unusual seat in no way hampered his control of the horse, and he could change to face ahead so swiftly and smoothly as not to upset his mount's stride in full gallop.



About this time he showed a gift of extra-sensory powers. Before a hunt, standing at his horse's head, he would go into a self-induced trance and begin describing the surrounding countryside and the wild animals in it. "One hour's ride to the north there is a small muddy pan. A herd of quagga are drinking there, and five fat eland are coming down the path to the water. On the hill above it, under a camel-Thorn tree, a pride of lion are resting, "n ou swart maanhaar, an old black mane and two lionesses. In the valleys beyond, three giraffe." The hunters would find the animals, or the signs they had left, exactly as young Paul described them.



At sixteen, he was entitled, as a man, to ride off two farms, as much land as a horseman could encircle in a day. Each of them was approximately sixteen thousand acres. They were the first of the vast land-holdings he acquired and held during his lifetime, sometimes bartering sixteen thousand acres of prime pasture for a plough or a bag of sugar.



At twenty he was a field cornet, an elected office which was something between magistrate and sheriff.-, at such tender years to be chosen by men who venerated and marked him as somebody unusual. About this time, he ran a foot race against a horseman on a picked steed over a course of a mile, and won by a length. Then during a battle against the black chief Sekukuni, the Boer General was shot through the head and tumbled over the edge of the kopje. The General was a big bulky man, two hundred and forty pounds weight, but Paul Kruger leaped down the krans, picked up the body and ran-back up the hillside under the musket-fire of Sekukuni's men.



When he set off to claim his bride, he found his way blocked by the wide Vaal river in raging spate, the carcasses of cattle and wild game rolling by in the flood. Despite cries of warning from the ferryman, and without even removing his boots, he urged his horse into the brown waters and swam across. Flooded rivers would not stop a man like Paul Kruger.



After having fought Moshesh and Mzilikazi, and every other warlike tribe south of the Limpopo river, after having burned Dr. David Livingstone's mission on the suspicion that he was supplying arms to the tribes, after having fought even his own people, the rebellious Boers of the Orange Free State, he was made Commandant-in-Chief of the army, and still later the President of the South African Republic.



It was this indomitable, courageous, immensely physically powerful, ugly, obstinate, devout and cantankerous old man, rich in land and herds, who now lifted his head from the Bible and finished his reading with a simple injunction to the men who waited upon him attentively.



"Fear God, and distrust the English," he said, and closed the Bible.



Then still without taking his bloodshot eyes from Ralph's face, he bellowed with shocking force, "Bring coffee!" and a coloured maid bustled in with a tin tray loaded with steaming mugs. The men around the table exchanged pouches of black Magaliesberg shag, and charged their pipes, watching Ralph with closed and guarded expressions. Once the oily blue smoke had veiled the air, Kruger spoke again. "You asked to see me, mynheer?" "Alone,"said Ralph. "These men I trust." "Very well." They used the taal. Ralph knew that Kruger could speak English with some fluency, and that he would not do so as a matter of principle. Ralph had learned to speak the taal on the diamond-diggings. It was the simplest of all European languages, suited to the everyday life of an uncomplicated society of hunters and farmers, though even they, for the purposes of political discussion or worship, fell back upon the sophistication of High Dutch.



"My name is Ballantyne." "I know who you are. Your father was the elephant-hunter. A strong man, they say, and straight but you," and now a world of loathing entered the old man's tone, "you belong to that heathen, Rhodes." And though Ralph shook his head, he went on, "Do not think I have not heard his blasphemies. I know that when he was asked if he believed there was a God, he replied," and here he broke into heavily accented English for the first time, "I give God a fifty-fifty chance of existing."" Kruger shook his head slowly. "He will pay for that one day, for the Lord has commanded, "Thou shalt not take My name in vain."" "Perhaps that day of payment is already at hand, "said Ralph softly. "And perhaps you are God's chosen instrument.



"Do you dare to blaspheme, also?" the old man demanded sharply.



"No," Ralph shook his head. "I come to deliver the blasphemer into your hands." And he laid an envelope on the dark wood, then with a flick slid it down the length of the table until it lay in front of the president. "A list of the arms he has sent "secretly into Johannesburg, and where they are held. The names of the rebels who intend to use them. The size and force of the commando gathered on your borders at Pitsani, the route they Will take to join the rebels in Johannesburg, and the date on which they intend to ride." Every man at the table had stiffened with shock, only the old man still puffed calmly at his pipe. He made no effort" to touch the envelope.



"Why do you come to me with this?" "When I see a thief about to break into a neighbour's home, I take it as my duty to warn him. Kruger removed the pipe from his mouth and flicked a spurt of yellow tobacco juice from the stem onto the dung floor beside his chair. We are neighbours," Ralph explained. "We are white men living in Africa. We have a common destiny. We have many enemies, and one day we may be required to fight them together." Kruger's pipe gurgled softly, but nobody spoke again for fully two minutes, until Ralph broke the silence.



"Very well then," he said. "If Rhodes fails, I will make a great deal of money." Kruger sighed, and nodded. "All right, now I believe you at last, for that is an Englishman's reason for treachery." And he picked up the envelope in his brown gnarled old hand. "Goodbye, mynheer, "he said softly.



Cathy had taken to her paintbox again. She had put it away when Jon-Jon was born, but now there was time for it once more, However, this time she was determined to make a more serious work of it, instead of sugary family portraits and pretty landscapes.



She had begun a study of the trees of Rhodesia, and already had a considerable portfolio of them. First she painted the entire tree, making as many as twenty studies of typical specimens before settling on a representative example, and then to the master painting she added detailed drawings of the leaves, the flowers and the fruits, which she rendered faithfully in watercolours, finally she pressed actual leaves and blooms and gathered the seeds, then wrote a detailed description of the plant.



Very soon she had realized her own ignorance, and had written to Cape Town and London for books on botany, and for Linnaeus" Systetna Naturae for plants. Using these, she was training herself to become a competent botanist. Already she had isolated eight trees that had not been previously described, and she had named one for Ralph "Terminalia Ralphii" and another for Jonathan who had climbed to the upper branches to bring down its pretty pink flowers for her.



When she diffidently sent some of her dried specimens and a folio of drawings to Sir Joseph Hooker at Kew Gardens, she received an encouraging letter, complimenting her on the standard of her artwork and confirming her classifications of the new species. With the letter was an autographed " copy of his Genera Plantmum, "to a fellow student of nature's wonders', and it had become the start of a fascinating correspondence. The new hobby was one that could be practised side by side with Jon-Jon's bird-nesting activities, and it helped fill the dreary days when Ralph was away, although now she had "difficulty keeping up with Jon Jon her swollen belly reducing her to an undignified waddle. She had to leave all the climbing and rock-scrambling to him.



This morning they were working one of the kloofs of the hills above the camp where they had found a beautiful spreading tree with strange candelabra of fruit on the upper branches. Jonathan was twenty feet above ground, edging out to snatch a laden branch when Cathy heard voices calling in the thick bush that clogged the mouth of the kloof.



She swiftly rebuttoned her blouse and dropped her skirts down over her bare legs the heat was oppressive in the confined gulley between the hills and she had been sitting on the bank and dabbling her feet in the trickle of the stream.



"Yoo boo!" she yelled, and the telegraph-operator came sweating and scrambling up the steep side.



He was a dismal shrimp of a man, with a bald head and protruding eyes, but he was also one of Cathy's most fervent admirers. The arrival of a telegraph for her was an excuse for him to leave his hut and seek her out. He waited adoringly with his hat in his hands, as she read the message.



"Passage reserved Union Castle leaving Cape Town for London March 20th stop open envelope and follow instructions carefully stop home soon love Ralph." "Will you send a telegraph for me, Mr. Braithwaite?"



"Of course, Mrs. Ballantyne, it will be *a great pleasure." The little man blushed like a girl and hung his head bashfully.



Cathy wrote out the message recalling, Zouga Ballantyne to King's Lynn on a sheet of her sketch pad and Mr. Braithwaite clutched it to his concave chest like a holy talisman.



"Happy Christmas, Mrs. Ballantyne," he said, and Cathy started.



The days had gone by so swiftly, she had not realized that the year 1895 was so far gone. Suddenly the prospect of Christmas alone in the wilderness, another Christmas with out Ralph, appalled her.



"Happy Christmas, Mr. Braithwaite," she said, hoping he would leave before she began to cry. Her pregnancy made her so weak and weepy if only Ralph would come back. If only... itsani was not a town nor even a village. It was a single trading-store, standing forlornly in the flat P san-dveld on -the edge of the Kalahari Desert that stretched away 1,500 miles into the west.



However, it was only a few miles to the frontier of the Transvaal, but no fence nor border-post marked the division. The country was so flat and featureless and the scrub so low, that the rider could see the trading-store from a distance of seven miles, and around it, shimmering like ghosts in the heat mirage, the little cone-shaped white tents of an army encamped.



The rider had pushed his horse mercilessly along the thirty miles from the railway at Mafeking, for he bore an urgent message. He was an unlikely choice for a peace messenger, for he was'a soldier and a man of action. His name was Captain Maurice Heany, a handsome man with dark hair and moustaches and flashing eyes. He had served with Carrington's horse and the Bechuana police, and in the Matabele war he had commanded a troop of mounted infantry. He was a hawk and he bore the message of a dove. The sentries picked up his dust from two miles out and there was a small bustle as the guard was called out.



When Hearty trotted into the camp all its senior officers were already gathered at the command tent, and Doctor Jameson himself came forward to shake his hand and lead him into the tent where they were screened from curious eyes. Zouga Ballantyne poured Indian tonic onto a dram of gin, and brought it to him.



"Sorry, Maurice, this is not the Kimberley Club, I'm afraid we have no ice." "Ice or not, you have saved my life." They knew each other well. Maurice Heany had been one of Ralph Ballantyne's and Harry Johnston's junior partners when they had contracted to bring the original pioneer column into Mashonaland.



Heany drank and wiped his moustache before looking up at John Willoughby, and the little doctor. He was in a quandary as to whom he should address his message to, for although Willoughby was the regimental commander and Zouga Ballantyne his second-inrcommand, and although Doctor Jameson was officially only a civilian observer, they all knew with whom the ultimate decision-making and authority lay.



Jameson smoothed his embarrassment by ordering directly, "Well then, out with it, man." "It's not good news, Doctor Jim. Mr. Rhodes is utterly determined that you must remain here until after the Reform Committee has captured Johannesburg." "When will that be?" Jameson demanded bitterly. "Just look at these!" He picked up a sheaf of telegraph flimsies from the camp table. "A new telegraph every few hours, in Frank Rhodes" execrable code. Take this one, yesterday."



Jameson read aloud. "It is absolutely necessary to delay floating until company letterhead agreed upon"." Jameson dropped the telegraphs back on the table with disgust. "This ridiculous quibbling over what flag to fly. Damn me, but if -we aren't doing this for the Union Jack, then what are we doing it for?" "It is rather like the timorous bride who, having set the date, views the approach of the wedding day with delicious confusion." Zouga Ballantyne smiled. "You must remember that our friends on the Reform Committee in Johannesburg are more used to stock deals and financial speculation than the use of steel. Like the blushing virgin, they may need a little judicial forcing." "That's it exactly." Doctor Jameson nodded. "And yet Mr. Rhodes is concerned that we should not move ahead of them." "There is one other thing that you should know." Heaney hesitated. "It does seem that the gentlemen in Pretoria are aware that something is afoot. There is even talk that there is- a traitor amongst us." "That is unthinkable," snapped Zouga.



"I agree with you, Zouga," Doctor Jim nodded. "It is much more likely that these damned puerile telegraphs, of Frank Rhodes have come to old Kruger's notice." "Be that as it may, gentlemen. The Boers are making certain preparations it is even possible that they have already called out their commandos in the Rustenburg and Zeerust divisions." "If that is the case," Zouga said softly, "then we have a choice. We can either move immediately, or we can all go home to Bulawayo.". Doctor Jameson could not remain seated any longer, he jumped up from his canvas chair and began pacing up and down the tent with quick jerky little strides. They all watched in silence until he stopped in the opening of the tent and stared out across the sun-scorched plain towards the eastern horizon beneath which lay the great golden prize of the Witwatersrand. When at last he turned to face them, they could see that he had reached his decision.



"I am going, "he said.



"Thought you would," murmured Zouga



"What are you going to do?"Jameson asked as softly. "Going with you," said Zouga



"Thought you would," said Jameson, and then glanced at Willoughby who nodded.



"Good! Johnny will you call the men out? I would like to speak to them before we ride and, Zouga, will you see to it that the telegraph lines are all cut? I don't want ever to see another one of those communications from Frankie. Anything more he has to say, he can tell me face to face when we reach Johannesburg." "They've got Jameson!"



The cry echoed through the elegant hush of the Kimberley Club, like a Hun war-cry at the gates of Rome.



The consternation was immediate and overwhelming. Members boiled out of the long bar into the marbled lobby, and surrounded the news-crier. Others from the reading room lined the banisters, shouting their queries down the stair-well. In the dining-room someone bumped into the carving-wagon in his haste to reach the lobby, and sent it crashing on its side while the joint rolled across the floor with roast potatoes preceding it like a squad of footmen.



The bearer of the news was one of the prosperous Kimberley diamond-buyers, a profession no longer referred to as "kopje-walloping', and such was his agitation that he had forgotten to remove his straw boater when entering the club portals. An offence that at another time would have merited a reprimand from the committee.



Now he stood in the centre of the lobby, hat firmly on his head and reading spectacles sliding to the end of his em purpled nose, a symptom of his excitement and agitation. He was reading from a copy of The Diamond Fields Advertiser, the ink of which was so fresh that it smeared his fingers. "Jameson raises White Flag at Doomkop after sixteen killed in fierce fighting. Doctor Jameson, I have the honour -to meet you. General Cronje accepts surrender." Ralph Ballantyne had not left his seat at the head of the corner table, although his guests had deserted him to join the rush into the lobby. He signalled the distracted wine waiter to refill his glass, and then helped himself to another spoonful of the sole bonne femme, while he waited for his guests to return. They came trooping back, led by Aaron Fagan, like a funeral party returning from the cemetery.



"The Boers must have been waiting for them-" "Doctor Jim walked straight into it-" "What on earth did the man think he was doing?"



Chairs rasped and every one of them reached for his glass the moment he was seated.



"He had six hundred and sixty men and guns. By God, it was a carefully planned thing then." "There will be a few tales to tell."



"And heads to roll, no doubt." "Doctor Jim's luck has run out at last."



"Ralph, your father is amongst the prisoners!" Aaron was reading the newsprint.



For the first time Ralph showed emotion. "That's not possible."



He snatched the paper from Aaron's hand, and stared at it in agony.



"What happened?" he muttered. "Oh God, what has happened?" But somebody else was yelling in the lobby. "Kruger has arrested all the members of the Reform Committee he has promised to have them tried for their lives." "The gold mines!" another said clearly in the ensuing silence, and instinctively every head lifted to the clock on the wall above the dining-room entrance. It was twenty minutes to two.



The stock exchange re-opened on the hour. There was another rush, this time out of the club doors. On the sidewalk, hatldss members shouted impatiently for their carriages, while others set out at a determined trot towards the stock exchange buildings.



The club was almost deserted, not more than ten diners were left at the tables. Aaron and Ralph were alone at the corner table. Ralph still held the list of prisoners in his hand.



"I cannot believe it,"he whispered.



"It's a catastrophe. What can possibly have possessed Jameson?"



Aaron agreed.



It seemed that the worst had happened, nothing could match the dreadful tidings that they had received so far, but then the club secretary came out of his office ashen-faced, and stood in the doorway of the dining-room.



"Gentlemen, he croaked. "I have some more terrible news. It has just come through on the wire. Mr. Rhodes has offered his resignation as prime minister of Cape Colony. He has also offered to resign from the chairmanship of the Charter Company, of De Beers and of Consolidated Goldfields." "Rhodes," Aaron whispered. "Mr. Rhodes was in it. It's a conspiracy the Lord only knows what will be the final consequences of this thing, and who Mr. Rhodes will bring down with him." "I think we should order a decanter of port," said Ralph, as he pushed his plate away from him. "I'm not hungry any more." He thought about his father in a Boer prison, and suddenly an image come into his mind of Zouga Ballantyne in a white shirt, his hands bound behind his back, his gold- and silver-laced beard sparkling in the sunlight, the whitewashed wall at his back, regarding the rank of riflemen in front of him with those calm green eyes of his. Ralph felt nauseated and the rare old port tasted like quinine on his tongue. He set the glass down.



"Ralph." Aaron was staring at him across the table. "The bear transaction, you sold the shares of Charter and Consolidated short, and your position is still open." "I have closed all your transactions," said David Silver. "I averaged out BSA shares at a little over seven pounds, that gives you a profit, after commission and levy, of almost four pounds a share. You did even better on the Consolidated Goldfields transactions, they were the worst hit in the crash, from eight pounds when you began selling them short they dropped to almost two pounds when it looked as though Kruger was going to seize the mining companies of the Witwatersrand in retaliation." David Silver broke off and looked at Ralph with awe. "It is the kind of killing which becomes a legend on the floor, Mr. Ballantyne. The frightful risk you took," he shook his head in admiration. "What courage! What foresightV "What luck!" said Ralph impatiently. "Do you have my difference cheque?" "I have." David Silver opened the black leather valise in his lap and brought from it a snowy white envelope sealed with a rosette of scarlet wax.



"It is counted signed and guaranteed by my bank." David laid it reverently upon his Uncle Aaron's desk-top. "The total is," and he breathed it like a lover, "one million and fifty-eight pounds eight shillings and sixpence. After the one that Mr. Rhodes paid to Barney Barnato for his claims in the Kimberley mine, it is the largest cheque ever drawn in Africa, south of the equator. what do you say to that, Mr. Ballantyne?" Ralph looked at Aaron in the chair behind the desk.



"You know what to do with it. Just be certain it can never be traced back to me." "I understand," Aaron nodded, and Ralph changed the subject.



"Has there been an answer to my telegraph yet? My wife is not usually so slow in replying." And because Aaron was an old friend, who loved the gentle Cathy as much as any of her many admirers, Ralph went on to explain. "She is within two months of her time. Now that the dust of Jameson's little adventure has begun to settle and there is no longer any danger of war, I must get Cathy down here, where she can have expert medical attention." "I'll send my clerk to the telegraph office." Aaron rose and crossed to the door of the outer office, to give his instructions. Then he looked back at his nephew. "Was there anything else, David?" The little stockbroker started. He had been staring at Ralph Ballantyne with the glow of hero-worship in his eyes.



Now he hastily assembled his papers, and stuffed them into his valise, before coming and offering his soft white hand to Ralph.



"I cannot tell you what an honour it has been to be associated with you, Mr. Ballantyne. If there is ever anything at all I can do for you-" Aaron had to shoo him out of the door.



"Poor David," he murmured, as he came back to the desk. "His very first millionaire, it's a watershed in any young stockbroker's life."



"My father-" Ralph did not even smile.



"I'm sorry, Ralph. There is nothing more we can do. He will go back to England in chains with Jameson and the others. They are to be imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs until they are called to answer the charge. "Aaron selected a sheet of paper from the pile on his desk.



"That they, with certain other persons in the month of December 1895, in South Africa, within Her Majesty's dominions, did unlaufully prepare and fit out a military expedition to proceed against the dominions of a certain friendly state, to wit, the South African Republic, contrary to the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870."" Aaron laid down the paper and shook his head. "There is nothing any of us can do now."



"What will happen to them? It's a capital offence-" "Oh no, Ralph, I am sure it won't come to that." Ralph sank down in his chair and stared moodily out of the window, for the hundredth time castigating himself for not having anticipated that Jameson would cut the telegraph lines before marching on Johannesburg. The recall that Cathy had sent to Zouga Ballantyne, the fiction that Louise was gravely ill, had never reached him and Zouga had ridden into the waiting Boer commandos with the rest of them.



If only, Ralph thought, and then his thoughts were interrupted.



He looked up expectantly as the clerk came hesitantly into the office.



"Has there been a reply from my wife?" Ralph demanded, and the man shook his head.



"Begging your pardon, Mr. Ballantyne, Sir, but there has not." He hesitated, and Ralph urged him. "Well, man, what is it? Spit it out, there's a good fellow." "It seems that all the telegraph lines to Rhodesia have been down since noon on Monday." "Oh, so that is it."



"No, Mr. Ballantyne, that's not all. There has been a message from Toti on the Rhodesian border. It seems a rider got through this morning."



The clerk gulped. "This messenger seems to have been the only survivor." "Survivor!" Ralph stared at him. "What does that mean?



What on earth are you talking about?" "The Matabele have risen. They are murdering all the whites in Rhodesia man, woman and child, they are being slaughtered!" "Mummy, Douglas and Suss aren't here. There is nobody to get me breakfast." Jon-Jon came into the tent while Cathy was still brushing out her hair, and twisting it up into thick braids.



"Did you call for them?" "I called and called." "Tell one of the grooms to go down and fetch them, darling." "The grooms aren't here also." "The grooms aren't here either," Cathy corrected him and stood up. "All right, then, let's go and see about your breakfast." Cathy stepped out into the dawn. Overhead the sky was a lovely dark rose colour shaded to ripe orange in the east, and the bird chorus in the trees above the camp was like the tinkle of silver bells. The camp-fire had died to a puddle of grey powdery ash and had not been replenished.



"Put some wood on, jonjon,"Cathy told him and crossed to the kitchen hut. She frowned with annoyance. It was deserted. She took down a tin from the gauzed meat-safe and then looked up as the doorway darkened.



"Oh Isazi, she greeted the little Zulu. "Where are the other servants?" "Who knows where a Matabele dog will hide himself when he is needed?" Isazi asked contemptuously. "They have most likely spent the night dancing and drinking beer and now their heads are too heavy to carry.". "You'll have to help me," said Cathy. "Until the cook gets here." After breakfast in the dining-tent, Cathy called Isazi from the fire again.



"Have any of them come back yet?" "Not yet, Nkosikazi." "I want to go down to the railhead. I hope there is a telegraph from Henshaw.



Will you put the ponies into the trap, Isazi." Then for the first time she noticed the little frown of concern on the old Zulu's wrinkled features.



"What is it?" "The horses they are not in the kraal." "Where are they then?" "Perhaps one of the mujiba took them out early, I will go to find them." oh, it doesn't matter." Cathy shook her head. "It's only a short walk to the telegraph office. The exercise will be good for me." And she called to Jonathan, "Fetch my bonnet for me, Jon-Jon."



"Nkosikazi, it is perhaps not wise, the little one-" "Oh don't fuss," Cathy told him fondly, and took Jonathan's hand. "If you find the ponies in time you can come and fetch us." Then swinging her bonnet by its ribbon and with Jonathan skipping beside her, she started along the track that led around the side of the wooded hill towards the railhead.



There was no clamour of hammers on steel. Jonathan noticed it first.



"It's so quiet, Mama. "And they stopped to listen.



"It's not Friday," Cathy murmured. "Mr. Mac can't be paying the gangs." She shook her head, still not alarmed. "That's strange. "And they went on.



At the corner of the hill they stopped again, and Cathy held her bonnet up to shade her eyes from the low sun. The railway lines ran away southward, glistening like the silken threads of a spider's web, but below them they ended abruptly at the raw gash of the cut line through the bush. There was a pile of teak sleepers at the railhead and a smaller bundle of steel rails, the service locomotive was due up from Kimberley this afternoon to replenish those materials. The sledgehammers and shovels were in neat stacks where the shift had left them at dusk the night before. There was no human movement around the railhead.



"That's even stranger, "said Cathy.



"Where is Mr. Henderson, Mama?" Jonathan asked. His voice was unusually subdued. "Where are Mr. Mac and Mr. Braithwaite?" "I don't know. They must still be in their tents." The tents of the white surveyor and the engineer and his supervisors were grouped just beyond the square galvanized iron shack of the telegraph. There was no sign of life around the hut nor between the neat pyramids of canvas, except for a single black crow which sat on the peak of one of them.



Its hoarse cawing reached them faintly, and as Cathy watched, it spread its black wings and flapped heavily to earth at the entrance of the tent.



"Where are all the hammer-boys?" Jonathan piped, and suddenly Cathy shivered.



"I don't know, darling." Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. "We will go and find out." She realized she had spoken too loudly, and Jonathan shrank against her legs. "Mummy, I'm frightened."



"Don't be a silly boy," Cathy told him firmly, and dragging him by the hand, she started down the hill.



By the time she reached the telegraph hut, she was moving as fast as her big round belly would allow, and her breathing in her own ears was deafening.



"Stay here." She did not know what prompted her to leave Jonathan at the steps of the veranda, but she went up alone to the door of the telegraph hut. , The door was ajar. She pushed it fully open.



Mr. Braithwaite sat beside his table facing the doorway. He was staring at her with those pale popping eyes, and his mouth hung open. "Mr. Braithwaite," Cathy said, and at the sound of her voice there was a hum like a swarm of bees taking flight, and the big cobalt blue flies that had covered his shirt-front rose in a cloud into the air, and Cathy saw that his belly was a gaping mushy red pit, and that his entrails hung in ropes down between his knees into a tangle on the floor under the desk. Cathy shrank back against the door. She felt her legs turn rubbery under her and black shadows wheeled through her vision like the wings of bats at sundown. One of the metallic blue flies settled on her cheek and crawled sluggishly down towards the corner of her mouth.



Cathy leaned forward slowly and retched explosively, and her breakfast spattered on the wooden door between her feet. She backed away slowly out of the door, shaking her head and trying to wipe the sickly sweet taste of vomit from her lips. She almost tripped on the steps, and sat down heavily. Jonathan ran to her, and clung to her arm.



"What happened, Mummy?" "I want you to be a brave little man," she whispered.



"Are you sick, Mummy?" The child shook her arm with agitation, and Cathy found it difficult to think.



She realized what had caused the hideous mutilation of the corpse in the hut. The Matabele always disembowelled their victims. It was a ritual that released the spirit of the dead man, and allowed it to go on to its Valhalla. To leave the belly pouch was to trap the victim's shade upon the earth and have it return to haunt the slayer.



Mr. Braithwaite had been split by the razor-sharp edge of a Matabele assegai and his hot entrails had been plucked from him like those of a chicken. It was the work of a Matabele war party.



"Where is Mr. Henderson, Mummy?" Jon-Jon demanded shrilly. "I am going to his tent." The big burly engineer was one of Jonathan's favourite friends, and Cathy caught his arm.



"No, Jon-Jon don't go!" "Why not?" The crow had screwed up its courage at last and now it hopped into the opening of the engineer's tent and disappeared. Cathy knew what had attracted it.



"Please be quiet, Jon-Jon," Cathy pleaded. "Let Mummy think." The missing servants. They had been warned, of course, as had the Matabele construction gangs. They knew that a war party was out, and they had faded away, and a horrifying thought struck Cathy. Perhaps the servants, her own people, were part of the war party. She shook her head violently. No, not them. These must be some small band of renegades, not her own people.



They would have struck at dawn, of course, for it was the favourite hour. They had caught Henderson and his foreman asleep in the tents. Only the faithful little Braithwaite had been at his machine. The telegraph machine Cathy started up the telegraph was her one link with the outside world.



"Jon-Jon, stay here," she ordered, and crept back towards the door of the hut.



She steeled herself, and then glanced into the interior, trying not to look at the little man in the chair. One quick glance was enough. The telegraph machine had been ripped from the wall and smashed into pieces on the floor of the hut. She reeled back and leaned against the iron wall beside the door, clutching her swollen stomach with both hands, forcing herself to think again.



The war party had struck the railhead and then disappeared back into the forest and then she remembered the missing servants. The camp, they had not disappeared, they would be circling up through the trees towards the camp. She looked around her desperately, expecting at any moment to see the silent black files of plumed warriors come padding out of the thick bush.



The Service train from Kimberley was due late that afternoon, ten hours from now, and she was alone, except for Jonathan. Cathy sank down on her knees, reached for him and clung to him with the strength of despair, and only then realized that the boy was staring through the open doorway.



"Mr. Braithwaite is dead!" Jonathan said matter-of-factly.



Forcibly, she turned his head away. "They are going to kill us too, aren't they, Mummy?" "Oh Jon-Jon!" "We need a gun. I can shoot.



Papa taught me." A gun Cathy looked towards the silent tents. She did not think she had the courage to go into one of them, not even to find a weapon. She knew what carnage to expect there.



A shadow fell over her and she screamed. "Nkosikazi. It is me."



Isazi had come down the hill as silently as a panther.



"The horses are gone," he said, and she motioned him to look into the telegraph hut.



Isazi's expression did not change.



"So,"he said quietly, "the Matabele jackals can still bite." "The tents," Cathy whispered. "See if you can find a weapon." Isazi went with the lithe swinging run of a man half his age, ducking from one tent-opening to another, and when he came back to her, he carried an assegai with a broken shaft.



"The big one fought well. He was still alive, with his guts torn out of him and the crows were eating them. He could no longer speak, but he looked at me. I have given him peace. But there are no guns the Matabele have taken them." "There are guns at the camp," Cathy whispered.



"Come, Nkosikazi," he lifted her tenderly to her feet and Jonathan manfully took her other arm, though he did not reach to her armpit.



The first pain hit Cathy before they reached the thick bush at the edge of the cut line, and it doubled her over. They held her while the paroxysm lasted, Jonathan not understanding what was happening, but the little Zulu was grave and silent.



"All right." Cathy straightened up at last, and tried to wipe the long tendrils of her hair off her face, but they were plastered there by her own sweat.



They went up on the track at Cathy's pace. Isazi was watching the forest on both sides for the dark movement of warriors, and he carried the broken assegai in his free hand with an underhand stabbing grip.



Cathy gasped and staggered as the next pain caught her.



This time they could not hold her and she went down on her knees in the dust. When it passed, she looked up at Isazi.



"They are too close together. It is happening." He did not have to reply.



"Take Jonathan to the Harkness Mine." "Nkosikazi, the train?"



"The train will be too late. You must go." "Nkosikazi you, what will become of you?" "Without a horse, I could never reach the Harkness. It is almost thirty miles. Every moment you waste now wastes the boy's life." He did not move.



"If you can save him, Isazi, then you save part of me. If you stay here, we will all die. Go. Go quickly!" she urged. Isazi reached for Jonathan's hand, but he jerked away.



"I won't leave my mummy." His voice rose hysterically. "My daddy said I must look after my mummy." Cathy gathered herself. It took all her determination to perform the most difficult task of her young life.



She hit Jonathan open-handed across the face, back and forth, with all her strength. The child staggered away from her. The vivid crimson outlines of her fingers rising on the pale skin of his cheeks. She had never struck his face before.



"Do as I tell you," Cathy blazed at him furiously. "Go with Isazi this very instant." The Zulu snatched up the child, and looked down at her for a moment longer.



"You have the heart of a lioness. I salute you, Nkosikazi." And he went bounding away into the forest, carrying Jonathan with him. In seconds he had disappeared and then only did she let the sobs come shaking and. choking up her throat.



She thought then that being entirely alone is the hardest thing in life to bear. She thought of Ralph, and she had never loved nor wanted him the way she did at that moment. It seemed for a time that she had used the last grain of her courage to strike her only child, and to send him away for a faint chance of salvation. She would be content to stay here, kneeling in the dust in the early sunlight until they came for her with the cruet steel.



Then from somewhere deep within, her she found the strength to rise and hobble on up the path. At the heel of the hill, she looked down at the camp. It looked so quiet and orderly. Her home. The smoke from the camp-fire rose like a pale grey feather into the still morning air, so welcoming, so safe, illogically she felt that if she could only reach her tent then it would be all right.



She started and she had not gone a dozen paces, before she felt something burst deep within her, and then the abrupt hot rush down the inside of her legs as her waters broke and poured from her. She struggled on, hampered by her sodden skirts, and then, unbelievably, she had reached her own tent.



It was so cool and dark within, like a church, she thought, and again her legs gave way beneath her. She crawled painfully across the floor, and her hair came tumbling down and blinded her. She groped her way to the wagon chest set at the foot of the big camp cot, and threw the hair out of her eyes as she rested against it.



The lid was so heavy that it took all her strength, but at last it fell open with a crash. The pistol was tucked under the crocheted white bed covers, that she had hoarded for the home that Ralph would one day build for her. It was a big service Webley revolver. She had only fired it once, with Ralph steadying her from behind, holding her wrists against the recoil. Now it needed both her hands to lift it out of the chest. She was too tired to climb onto the cot. She sat with her back against the chest, both her legs straight out in front of her flat against the floor, and she held the pistol with both hands in her lap.



She must have dozed, for when she started awake, it was to hear the whisper of feet against the bare earth. She looked up. There was the shadow of a man silhouetted by the slanting rays of the sun against the white canvas of the tent like a figure in a magic lantern show.



She lifted the pistol and aimed at the entrance. The ugly black weapon wavered uncertainly in her grip, and aman stepped through the flap.



"Oh, thank God." Cathy let the pistol fall into her lap, "Oh thank God, it's you," she whispered and let her head fall forward. The thick curtain of her hair fell open, splitting down the back of her head, exposing the pale skin at the tender nape of her neck. Bazo looked down at it. He saw a soft pulse throbbing beneath the skin.



Bazo wore only a kilt of civet-tails, and about his forehead a band of mole-skin no feathers nor tassels. His feet were bare. In his left hand he held a broad stabbing assegai. In his right he carried a knobkerrie like the mace of a medieval knight. The handle was of polished rhinoceros horn, three feet long, and the head was a ball of heavy lead wood studded with hand-forged nails of native iron.



When he swung the knobkerrie, all the strength of his wide shoulders was behind the blow, and his point of aim was the pulse in the pale nape of Cathy's neck.



Two of his warriors came into the tent and flanked Bazo, their eyes were still glazed with the killing madness. They also wore the mole-skin headbands, and they looked down at the crumpled body on the floor of the tent. One of the warriors changed his grip on the assegai, ready for the cutting stroke.



"The woman's spirit must fly," he said.



"Do it!" Bazo said, and the warrior stooped and worked quickly, expertly.



"There is life within her," he said. "See! It moves yet." "Still it!" Bazo ordered, and left the tent, striding out into the sunlight.



"Find the boy, , he ordered his men who waited there. "Find the white cub." The driver of the locomotive was terrified. They had stopped for a few minutes at the trading-post beside the tracks at Plumtree siding, and he had seen the bodies of the storekeeper and his family lying in the front yard.



Ralph Ballantyne thrust the muzzle of the rifle- between his shoulder-blades, and marched him back to the cab, forcing him to go on northwards, deeper and deeper into Matabeleland.



They had come all the way from the Kimberley shunting yards with the loco throttle wide open, and Ralph had spelled the stoker on the foot plate shovelling the lumpy black coal into the firebox with a monotonous rhythm, bare-chested and sweating in the furnace glare, the coal dust blackening his face and arms like those of a chimney-sweep, his palms wet and raw from the burst blisters.



They had clipped almost two hours off the record run to the railhead. As they came roaring around the bend between the hills and saw the iron roof of the telegraph shack, Ralph hurled the shovel aside and clambered onto the side of the cab to peer ahead.



His heart leaped joyfully against his ribs, there was movement around the hut and between the tents, there was life here! Then his heart dropped as swiftly as it had risen, as he recognized the skulking dog-like shapes. , The hyena were so intent on squabbling over the things they had dragged out of the tents, that they were totally unafraid. It was only when Ralph started shooting that they scattered.



He knocked down half a dozen of the loathsome beasts before the rifle was empty. He ran from the hut to each tent in turn, and then back to the locomotive. Neither the driver nor the fireman had left the cab.



"Mr. Ballantyne, these murdering bloody eat hen will be back at any minute.-" "Wait!"" Ralph shouted at him, and scrambled up the side of the cattle-truck behind the coal buggy. He knocked out the locking-pins and the door came crashing down to form a drawbridge.



Ralph led the horses out of the truck. There were four of them, one already saddled, the best mounts he had been able to find. He paused only long enough to clinch the girth, and then swung up into the saddle with the rifle still in his hand.



"I'm not going to wait here," the driver yelled. "Christ Almighty, those niggers are animals, man, animals "If my wife and son are here, I'll need to get them back. Give me one hour, "Ralph asked.



"I'm not waiting another minute. I'm going back." The driver shook his head.



"You can go to hell then, "Ralph told him coldly.



He kicked his horse into a gallop, and dragging the spare mounts on the lead-rein behind him, took the track up the side of the kopje towards the camp.



As he rode, he thought once more that perhaps he should have listened to Aaron Fagan, perhaps he should have recruited a dozen other horsemen in Kimberley to go with him. But he knew that he would never have been able to abide the few hours that he would have needed to find good men. As it was, he had left Kimberley less than half an hour after he had received the telegraph from Toti just long enough to fetch his Winchester, fill the saddlebags with ammunition, and take the horses from Aaron's stables to the shunting-yard.



Before he turned the angle of the hill, he glanced back over his shoulder. The locomotive was already huffing back along the curve of the rails towards the south. Now, as far as he knew, he might be the only white man left alive in Matabeleland.



Ralph galloped into the camp. They had been there already. The camp had been looted, Jonathan's tent had collapsed, his clothing was scattered and trampled into the dust. "Cathy," Ralph shouted, as he dismounted. "Jon-Jon! Where are you?" Paper rustled under his feet and Ralph looked down. Cathy's portfolio of drawings had been thrown down and had burst open, the paintings of which she was so proud were torn and crumpled. Ralph picked up one of them, it was of the lovely dark scarlet trumpet flowers of Kigeha africana, the African sausage tree. He tried to smooth out the rumpled sheet, and then realized the futility of that gesture.



He ran on to their living-tent, and ripped open the flap. Cathy lay on her back with her unborn child beside her. She had promised Ralph a daughter and she had kept her promise.



He fell on his knee beside her, and tried to lift her head, but her body had set into an awful rigidity, she was stiff as a carven statue in marble. As he lifted her, he saw the great cup-shaped depression in the back of her skull.

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