The Sound of Thunder

backwards over the rump of his horse, rolling from the saddle, hitting

the ground with his shoulder, one foot caught in the stirrup so that he

dragged over the rough ground until the stirrup leather snapped and

left him lying. His horse galloped away in pursuit of the careering

gun carriage.

Sean dragged himself after it. "Look after him," he shouted.

"For God's sake, look after Saul. " But nobody heard that shout for

they were gone away amongst the trees, gone away in the dust with the

shellfire escorting them like a troop of brown demons.

Still Sean crawled after them, using one hand to reach ahead and claw

into the earth and inch his whole body belly down through the grass.

His other arm dragged at his side, and he could feel his right leg

slithering after him, until it caught and tethered him. He struggled

against it, but his toe had hooked in a tuft of coarse grass and he

could not free it. He wriggled on to [us side and doubled up with his

broken arm beneath him to look back at his leg.

There was much blood, a wet, slippery drag mark of it across the

flattened grass, and still it welled up out of his body. But there was

no pain, only a dizziness and a weariness in his head.

His leg twisted at a ridiculous angle from his trunk, and the spur on

his boot stood up jauntily. He wanted to laugh at the leg, but somehow

the effort was too great and he closed his eyes against the glare of

the sun.

Near him he heard somebody groaning and for a while he thought it must

be Saul. Then he remembered that Saul was safe, and it was the young

subaltern. With his eyes closed Sean lay and listened to him die. It

was an ugly sound.

Battle-General Jan Paulus Leroux stood upon the heights above the

Tugela and removed his Terai hat. His head was bald with a fringe of

ginger hair above the ears and thick around the back.

The skin of his pate was smooth and creamy white where the hat had

protected it from the sun, but his face had been weathered and

sculptured by the elements until it looked like a cliff of red-stone.

"Bring my pony, Hennie." He spoke to the lad who stood beside him.

"Ja, Oorn Paul." And he hurried away down the reverse slope to the

pony laager.

From the firing trench at Jan Paulus's feet one of his burghers looked

up at him.

"God has heard our prayers, Oom Paul. He has given us a great victory.

" Jan Paulus nodded heavily, and his voice as he replied was low and

humble, without any trace of jubilation.

"Ja, Fredevik. In God's name, a great victory.

But not as great as I had planned it, he thought.

Out of cannon shot, almost out of range of the naked eye, the last

tattered remnants of the British were dwindling into the brown

distance.

If only they could have waited, he thought with bitterness. So clearly

I explained it to them, and they did not heed me.

His whole strategy had revolved upon the bridge. If only his burghers

on the kopJe below the heights had held their fire and let them cross.

Then God would have delivered the enemy to them in thousands instead of

hundreds. Caught in the amphitheatre of the heights with the river at

their backs none of them would have escaped when his artillery

destroyed the bridge behind them. Sadly he looked down upon the trap

he had laid with such infinite care. From above he could see the

trenches, each of them, masked and cunningly overlapped so that an

unbearable fire could sweep the grassy bowl into which he had hoped to

lure the British centre. The trap that would never be sprung, for he

knew they would not come again.

Herime climbed back to him, leading his pony, and Jan Paulus mounted

quickly.

"Come, let us go down.

At forty-two years of age, Jan Paulus Leroux was very young for the

command he held. There had been opposition in Pretoria to his

appointment when old Joubert refired, but President Kruger had ridden

rough-shod over it and formed the Volkraad to accept. Ten minutes

before, Jan Paulus had sent him a telegraphed message, which had

justified this confidence.

With long stirrup leathers, his massive body loose and relaxed in the

saddle, his sjambok willing from his wrist and the wide brimmed hat

shading his face, Jan Paulus went down to gather the harvest of war.

As he reached the kopJes and rode in among them, his burghers rose from

their trenches on the slopes and cheered him.

Their voices blended in a savage roar that echoed from the heights like

the jubilation of lions on a new kill. Impassively Jan Paulus examined

their faces as he passed. They were coated with red dust and burned

powder, and sweat had run in dark lines through the grime. One man

used his rifle as a crutch to balance himself against his wound, and

there were harsh lines of pain around his mouth as he cheered. Jan

Paulus checked his pony. "Lie down, don't be a fool, man!" The man

grinned painfully and shook his head.

"Nee, Oorn Paul. I'm going with you to fetch the guns."

Brusquely Jan Paulus motioned to the men who stood beside the wounded

burgher. "Take him away. Take him to the doctors. And he trotted on

to where Commandant Van Wyk waited for him.

"I told you to hold your men until they crossed," he greeted him, and

Van Wyk's grin faded.

"Ja, Oom Paul. I know. But I could not hold them. The young ones

started it. When they saw the guns right there under their noses-I

could not hold them. " Van Wyk turned and pointed across the river.

"Look how near they were. " Jan Paulus looked across the river. The

guns were standing in the open, so close and so lightly screened by the

intervening thorn scrub that he could count the spokes of the wheels

and see the sparkle of the brass breech fittings.

"It was too much temptation," Van Wyk ended lamely.

"So! It is done, and we cannot undo it with words." Grimly Jan Paulus

determined that this man would never command again. "Come, we will

fetch them.

At the road bridge Jan Paulus halted the long column of horsemen behind

him. Although none of it showed on his face, yet his stomach heaved

with horror at what he saw.

"Move them," he ordered, and as the thirty burghers dismounted and went

forward to clear the bridge he called out after them. "Handle them

gently, lift them-do not drag them away like mealie sacks. These were

men. Brave men." Beside him the boy, Hennie, was crying openly.

The tears falling on to his patched tweed jacket.

"Be still, Jong," Jan Paulus murmured gently. Tears are for women."

And he urged his pony into the narrow passage between the dead. It was

the dust and the sun and the lyddite fumes which had irritated his own

eyes, he told himself angrily.

Quietly, lacking the triumphant bearing of victors, they came to the

guns and spread out among them. Then a single rifle-shot 1 cracked out

and a burgher staggered and clutched the wheel of a gun carriage for

support.

Whiding his pony, and flattening himself along its neck, Jan Paulus

charged the don ga beyond the guns from which the shot had come.

Another shot hissed past his head, but by then Jan Paulus had reached

the don ga Pulling Ins mount down from full gallop on to its haunches,

he jumped from the saddle and kicked the rifle out of the British

private's hands before dragging him to his feet.

"We have killed too much already, you fool. " Stumbling over the

English words, his tongue clumsy with rage, he roared into the

soldier's face. "It is finished. Give up." And then turning on the

surviving gunners who huddled along the don ga "Give up, give up, all

of you! " None of them moved for a long minute, then slowly one at a

time they stood up and shuffled out of the don ga

While a party of Boers led the prisoners away, and the others went

about the business of hitching up the guns and the ammunition wagon,

the British stretcher-bearers began filtering forward through the

mimosa trees. Soon khaki figures were mingled everywhere with the

burghers as they searched like bird-dogs for the wounded.

Two of them, dark-skinned Indians of the Medical Corps, had found a man

lying out on the left flank. They were having difficulty with him, and

Jan Paulus handed the reins of Ins pony to Hennie and walked across to

them.

In semi-delirium the wounded man was cursing horribly and resisting all

attempts by the two Indians to fix splints on his leg.

"Leave me alone, you bastards," and a flying fist knocked one of them

sprawling. Jan Paulus, recognizing the voice and the punch, started to

run.

"You behave yourself, or I'll klop you one," he growled as he reached

them. Groggily Sean rolled his head and tried to focus on him.

"Who's that? Who are you? Get the hell away from me.

Jan Paulus did not answer. He was looking at the wounds and they made

him want to vomit.

"Give to me." He took the splints from the shaken bearers and squatted

down beside Sean.

"Get away!" Sean screamed at him. "I know what you're going to do.

You're going to cut it off!" dean " Jan Paulus caught his wrist and

held it while Sean writhed and swore.

"I'll kill you, you filthy bastard. I'll kill you if you touch it.

"Sean! It's me. Look at me!"

And slowly Sean relaxed, his eyes steadied.

"It's you? It's really you?" he whispered. "Don't let them ... don't

let them take my leg. Not like they did to Garry.

"Be still, or I'll break your stupid head, " growled Jan Paulus.

Like Ins face, his hands were beefy and red, big hands with fingers

like calloused sausages, but now they worked as gently as those of a

mother on her child. At last, holding the ankle, he looked at Sean.

"Hold fast, now. I must straighten it."

Sean tried to grin, but his face was grey beneath the coating of battle

filth, and sweat squeezed from his skin like a rash of tiny blisters.

"Don't talk so much, you bloody Dutchman. Do it!"

Bone grated on broken bone deep in the torn flesh and Sean gasped.

Every muscle in Ins body convulsed and then relaxed again as he

fainted.

"Ja, " granted Jan Paulus. "That's better," and for the first time the

set of his features betrayed his compassion. He finished with the

bandages, and for a few seconds continued to squat beside Sean's

unconscious body. Then he whispered so low that the two bearers could

not catch the words.

"Sleep well, my brother. May God spare you your leg."

And he stood, all trace of pity and sorrow locked away behind the

red-stone of his face.

"Take him away," he ordered, and waited while they lifted the stretcher

and staggered away with it.

He went to his pony, and his feet dragged a little through the grass.

From the saddle he looked once more towards the south but the two

bearers had disappeared with their burden among the mimosa trees.

He touched spurs to his pony's flanks and followed the long procession

of wagons, prisoners and guns back towards the Tugela. The only sound

was the jingle of harness and the melancholy rumble of wheels.

Garrick Courtney watched the champagne spilling into the crystal bowl

of his glass. The bubbles swirled in golden patterns, catching the

lantern light. The mess corporal lifted the bottle, dexterously caught

a drop of wine on his napkin and moved behind Garry to fill the glass

of Brigadier Lyttelton, who sat beside him.

"No." Lyttelton placed a hand over his empty glass to prevent him

doing so.

"Come, come, Lyttelton. " Sir Redvers Buller leaned forward and looked

down the table. "That's an excellent wine."

"Thank you, sir, but champagne is for victory-perhaps we should have a

case sent across the river. " Buller flushed slowly and looked down at

his own glass. Once more an ugly silence descended on the mess. In an

effort to break it Garry spoke up.

"I do think the withdrawal today was made in extremely good order.

" "Oh, I agree most heartily. " From across the table Lord Dundonald's

icy sarcasm added to the gaiety. "But in all fairness, Colonel, we

were travelling very light on our return.

This oblique reference to the guns sent every eye to Buller's

face-Dundonald was showing a reckless disregard of that notorious

temper. But as a peer of the realm he could take the chance. With a

courteous insolence he met Buller's glare, and held it until the pale

bulging eyes faded and dropped.

"Gentlemen." Buller spoke heavily. "We have had a most trying day,

and for all of us there is still work to do. " He glanced at his ADC.

"Clery, will you be kind enough to propose the Queen?

Alone, Garry limped from the huge marquee mess tent. The smaller

tents, lit internally, were a vast field of luminous cones, and above

them the night was black satin sown with silver stars.

The wine that Garry had drunk during dinner hummed in his head so that

he did not notice the dejected silence that smothered the encampment as

he picked his way through it.

As Garry entered his headquarters a man stood up from the camp chair

beside his desk. In the light of the lantern his features were gaunt,

and weariness showed in every line of his body.

"Good evening, sir."

"You've come to make your report?"

"I have, sir. For what it's worth.

"Tell me, Curtis-how many casualties?" There was an eagerness behind

the question which Tim found ghoulish. Speculatively he examined

Garry's face before replying.

"We suffered heavily, out of a strength of twenty we had four dead two

Missing and five wounded. "Have you made out a list?

"Not yet."

"Well, tell me. Who were they?" "Killed were Booth, Amery.

No longer could Garry hold his impatience, he blurted out suddenly:

"What about that sergeant?"

"You mean Courtney?"

"Yes. Yes." And now with his impatience was mingled a dread that made

his stomach feel hollow.

"Wounded, sir.

And Garry felt a lift of relief so intense that he must close his eyes

and suck in his breath to ride it up.

Sean was still alive I Thank God Thank Godfor that

"Where is he now?"

"They've got him down at the railhead hospital. He's being sent out

with the first batch of badly wounded."

"Badly?" Garry's relief changed quickly to concern, and he demanded

harshly,

"How badly? How badly?"

"That's all they told me. I went down to the hospital but they

wouldn't allow me to see him.

Garry sank into his chair and instinctively reached for the drawer

before he checked himself.

"Very well, Curtis. You may go."

"The rest of my report, sir?"

"Tomorrow. Leave it till tomorrow.

With the liquor glowing hotly in his belly, Garry set off through the

night towards the hospital. It did not matter now that he had planned

and hoped that Sean would die. He no longer reasoned, but hurried

through the sprawling camp, driven by his desperate need.

Unrecognized but strong within him was the hope that he might again

draw comfort and strength from that fountain as he had done so long

ago. He started to run, stiffly, so the toe of his boot scuffed in the

dust with each pace.

Desperately he searched through the hospital. He hurried along the

rows of stretchers examining the faces of the wounded; he saw pain and

mutilation and slow creeping death soaking like spilt red ink through

the white bandages. He heard the moan and murmur and delirious

laughter, he smelt the taint of agony induced sweat blended with the

heavy sweetness of corruption and disinfectant-and he hardly noticed

them. One face, one face only, he wanted. And he did not find it.

"Courtney. " The medical orderly examined his list, tilting it to

catch the lamplight. "Ah! Yes. Here it is-let's nnnsee. Yes!

He's gone already-left on the first train an hour ago ... I can't say,

sir, probably to Pietermaritzburg. They've established a big new

hospital there. I can't tell you that either, I'm afraid, but they've

got him listed here as dangerous ... that's better am critical

anyway.

Wearing his loneliness like a cloak, Garry stumbled back to his

quarters.

"Good evening, sir. " His servant was waiting for him. Garry always

made them wait up. A new man this, they changed so fast. Never could

keep a batman more than a month.

Garrick pushed past him, and half fell against the camp bed.

"Steady on, sir. Let's get you on to the bed, sir. " The man's voice

was insidiously servile, the voice men used towards drunks. The touch

of his hands infuriated Garry.

"Leave me." He lashed out with a clenched fist across the man's face,

throwing him back. "Leave me. Get out and leave me!"

The servant rubbed his bruised cheek uncertainly, backing away.

"Get out!" Garry hissed at him.

"But, sir-" "Get out, damn you. Get out!"

The man went out and closed the tent flap softly behind him.

Garry stumbled across to it and laced it closed. Then he stood back.

Alone. They can't see me now. They can't laugh now.

They can't. Oh God, Sean!

He turned from the flap. The dummy leg caught on the rough floor and

he fell. One of the straps parted and the leg twisted under him.

On his hands and knees he crawled towards the commode across the tent,

and the leg jerked and twisted grotesquely behind him.

Kneeling beside the commode he lifted the china basin from its recess

and reached into the space below it and he found the bottle.

His fingers were too clumsy for the cork, he pulled it with his teeth

and spat it on to the floor. Then he held the bottle to his lips and

his throat jerked rhythmically as he swallowed.

A little of the brandy spilled on to his tunic and stained the ribbon

of the Victoria Cross.

He lowered the bottle and rested, panting from the sting of the liquor.

Then he drank again more slowly. The trembling of his hands stilled.

His breathing smoothed out. He reached up and took the tumbler from

the top of the commode, filled it, then placed the bottle beside him on

the floor and wriggled into a more comfortable position against the

commode.

In front of him his artificial leg twisted on its broken straps at an

unnatural angle below the knee. He contemplated it, sipping the brandy

slowly and feeling it numb the taste-buds of his tongue.

The leg was the centre of his existence. Insensate, unmoving, still as

the eye of a great storm upon which the whole turmoil of his life

revolved. The leg-always the leg. Always and only the leg.

Now under the lulling spell of the liquor he had drunk, from the

stillness at the centre where the leg lay, he looked outward at the

gigantic shadows of the ast, and found them preserved and perfect, not

distorted or blurred by time, whole and cornI, plete in each detail.

While they paraded through his mind, the night telescoped "in upon

itself so that time had no significance. The hours endured for a few

minutes and were gone while the level in the bottle fell and he sat

against the commode sipping at the tumbler and watching while the night

wasted away. In the dawn the final act was played out before him.

Himself on a horse in the darkness riding in cold soft rain towards

Theuniskraal. One window showing a yellow oblong of

A

lantern light, the rest dark in the greater dark mass of the

homestead.

The unaccountable premonition of coming horror closing cold and soft as

the rain around him, the silence spoiled only by the crunch of his

horse's hooves in the gravel of the drive. The thunW of his peg leg as

he climbed the front steps and the chill of the brass doorknob in his

hand as he turned it and pushed it in upon the silence.

His own voice slurred with drink and dread. "Hello. Where's

everybody? Anna! Anna! I'm back! " The blue flare of his match and

the smell of burnt sulphur and paraffin as he lit the lamp, then the

urgent echoing thump of his peg leg along the passage.

"Anna, Anna, where are you?

Anna, his bride, lay upon the bed in the darkened room, naked, turning

quickly away from the light, but he had seen the dead-white face with

swollen and bruised lips.

The lamp from the table threw bloated shadows on the wall as he stooped

over and gently drew down the petticoats to cover the whiteness of her

lower body, then turned her face to him.

"My darling, oh Anna, my darling. what's happened?" Through the torn

blouse her breasts were engorged and darkly nippled with pregnancy.

"Are you hurt? Who? Tell me who did it? " But she covered her face

and broken lips with her hands.

"My darling, my poor darling. Who was it-one of the servants ?

"No.

"Please tell me, Anna. What happened?

Suddenly her arms were about his neck and her lips close against his

ear. "You know, Garry! You know who did it.

"No, I swear I don't. Please tell me. " Her voice tight and hoarse

with hatred, uttering that word, that one unbelievable horrible word.

"Sean!"

"Sean!" he said aloud in his desolation. "Sean. Oh God!"

and then savagely,

"I hate him. I hate him! Let him die-please God, let him die.

He closed his eyes, losing his grip upon reality, and felt the first

dizzy swing of vertigo as the liquor took firm hold upon him.

Too late now to open his eyes and focus them upon the bed across the

tent, the giddiness had begun-now he would not be able to hold it down.

The warm, acid-sweet taste of brandy welled up into his throat and

mouth and nose.

When his servant found him it was the middle of the morning.

Garry lay fully dressed but asleep upon the bed with his sparse hair

ruffled, his uniform stained and grubby, and the leg lying derelict in

the centre of the floor.

The servant closed the door softly and studied his master, his nostrils

flaring at the sour smell of stale brandy and vomit.

"Had yourself one hell of a bust-up. Hey-Hop, Skip and Jump? " he

murmured without sympathy. Then he picked up the bottle and examined

the inch of liquor remaining in it. "Your bloody good health, cock,"

he saluted Garry and drained the bottle, patted his lips delicately and

spoke again. "Right! Let's get your sty cleaned up.

"Leave me alone," Garry groaned.

"It's eleven o'clock, sir.

"Leave me. Get out and leave me.

"Drink this coffee, sir.

"I don't want it. Leave me.

"I've got your bath filled, sir, and a clean uniform laid out for

YGU

"What time is it?" Garry sat up unsteadily' Eleven o'clock," the man

repeated patiently.

"My leg?" Garry felt naked without it.

"One of the harness makers is stitching the straps, sir. It'll be

ready by the time you've bathed.

Even in a position of rest Garry's hands, laid upon the desk in front

of him trembled slightly, and the runs of his eyelids prickled.

The skin of his face was stretched like that of a drum over the slow

pain that throbbed within his skull.

At last he sighed and picked Lieutenant Curtis's report from the top of

the thin sheaf of papers that waited for his attention.

Garry skimmed through it dully, few of the names upon it meant anything

to him. He saw Sean's name headed the list of wounded, and below him

was the little Jewish lawyer. At last satisfied that mained nothing to

the discredit of Colonel Garrick Courtney, he initialled it and laid it

aside.

He picked up the next document. A letter addressed to him as Officer

Commanding the Natal Corps of Guides, from a Colonel John Acheson of

the Scots-Fusiliers. TWo pages of neat, pointed handwriting. He was

about to discard it and leave it to his Orderly's attention when the

name in the body of the text caught his eye. He leaned forward

attentively and read quickly from the beginning.

"I have pleasure in bringing to your attention... conduct beyond the

call of ... under intense enemy fire... once more, initiated an advance

... although wounded... disregard of personal danger ... two members of

your Guides.

Sergeant Sean Courtney.

Pte. Saul Friedman.

earnestly recommend ... Distinguished Conduct Medal great gallantry and

powers of leadership. "Garry dropped the letter and leaned back in his

chair, staring at it as though it were his own death warrant. For a

long while he did not move, while the pain kept beating in his head.

Then he picked it up once more. Now his hands trembled so violently

that the paper fluttered like the wing of a wounded bird.

"Everything of mine, everything I've ever owned-he's taken it from me,"

and he looked down at the ribbons on his breast.

"I've never had ... Now this, the one thing. " A drop of moisture fell

on to the letter, blurring the ink.

"I hate him, " he whispered and tore the letter across. hope he dies,"

and he torr again and again, ripping it to shreds and at last screwing

them into a ball in his clenched fist.

"No. You'll not get that from me. It's mine-it's the one thing you'll

never have! " He hurled the crumpled ball against the canvas of the

tent, and lowered his head on to his arms upon the desk. His shoulders

shook as he sobbed: "Don't die. Please, Sean, don't die."

Simply by putting his shoulder against her and shoving her aside, Dirk

Courtney cleared a small girl from the doorway and was first down the

steps and out into the sun. Without looking back at the schoolhouse he

headed for the hole in the back hedge, the others would be following.

They caught up with him while he was selecting a klei-lat from the

hedge.

"Hurry up," Dirk ordered. "We got to get to the river first else

they'll get the best place.

They spread out along the hedge, small boys chattering like a troop of

excited monkeys

"Lend me your knife, Dirkie . "Hey, look at my lat." Nick Peterson

brandished the short rod of Port Jackson Willow he had cut and peeled.

It whipped with a satisfying swish.

"It's not a lat," Dirk informed him. "It's a Lee-Metford-" He looked

round at the rest of his team. "You remember now, I'm Lord Kitchener,

and you got to call me

"My Lord." " "And I'm General French," announced Nick. This was fair

enough, after all, he was Dirk's chief lieutenant. It had taken Dirk a

mere two weeks and five bloody fist-fights to reach his position as

un-challenged leader.

-,I'm General Methuen!" one of the lesser members yelped.

"And I'm General Butler!"

I

"And I'm General Gatacre!

"You can't be all generals." Dirk glared around. "Only Nick and I are

generals. You are all just Privates and things

"Gee, man, Dirkie! why you always got to spoil things?" you shut your

mouth, Brian." Dirk sensed mutiny, and quickly he diverted their

attention.

"Come on, let's go and get ammo.

"Dirk took the long route down the sanitary lane. This way he was

unlikely to meet adults and have any of his force seconded to serve

elsewhere at wood chopping or gardening under parental control.

"Peaches are nearly ripe," Nick commented as they passed the Pye

orchard.

"Another week, " Dirk agreed, and crawled through the hedge into the

Van Essen plantation that spread down to the Baboon Stroom.

"There they are!" someone shouted as they emerged from the trees.

"Boers, General!

Out on the right, busy along the bank of the river was another bunch of

small figures-sons of the Dutch families in the district.

"I'll go and talk to them," Dirk said. "You go for ammo.

They trotted off towards the river and Dirk called after them: "Hey,

Nick, get me a good dollop of clay.

"All right, My Lord."

With all the dignity of a general, officer and a peer of the realm Dirk

approached the enemy and stopped a short distance from them.

"Hey, Piet, are you ready yet? " he asked haughtily. Piet Van Essen

was his second cousin twice removed. A chunky lad but not as tall as

Dirk.

"Ja. " "The same rules?" Dirk asked.

"Ja, the same rules. " No clothes, " Dirk warned him.

"And no throwing with stones," Piet shot back.

"How many you got?" Dirk began counting the enemy suspiciously.

"Fifteen-same as you."

"All right then," Dirk nodded.

"All right then!"

Nick was waiting for him below the bank. Dirk jumped down beside him

and accepted the large ball of blue clay that Nick handed him' It just

right, Dirkie, not too wet.

"Alright let's get ready."

Quickly Dirk stripped off his clothing, pulled the belt from the loops

of his pants and buckled it around Ins waist to hold his spare lats.

"Hide the clothes, Brian," Dirk ordered and surveyed his naked

warriors. Nearly all of them still retained the almost WOManly shape

of youth; undeveloped chests, protruding stomachs and fat white

buttocks.

"They'll come down the river like they do every time," Dirk said.

"This time we're going to ambush them. " As he spoke he kneaded a

handful of clay into a ball and spiked it on to the end of the lat.

"Me and Nick Ill wait here-the rest of you on top of the bank in those

bushes back there He was looking for a target to practise on, and found

it in a water tortoise which was laboriously climbing the far bank

-watch that old skilpad. " He interrupted himself; stepped forward

with his right hand holding the lat thrown back, then whipped it

through in an overhead swing. The ball of clay flew from the end of

the rod with a vicious hum and smacked on to the shiny black carapace

with a force that left a white star shaped crack upon the shell. The

tortoise jerked in its head and limbs and toppled backwards into the

stream.

"Good shot!"

"There he is, let me have a shot.

That's enough! You'll get plenty shots just now. " Dirk stopped them.

Now listen to me! When they come me and Nick will hold them here for a

bit, then we'll run back along the river and they'll chase us. Wait

until they are right underneath you-then give it to them."

Dirk and Nick crouched side by side, close in against the bank with the

water up to their noses. A tuft of reeds hid those Parts of their

heads still above the surface and within easy reach their loaded

clay-lats lay on dry land.

Below water Dirk felt Nick's elbow nudge his ribs, and he nodded

carefully. He also had heard the whisper of voices around the bend of

the river, and the roll and plop of loose earth dislodged by a careless

foot. He turned his head and answered Nick's grin with one just as

bloodthirsty, then he. peered around the reeds.

Twenty paces in front of him a head appeared cautiously around the

angle of the bank and the expression on its face was set and

nervous-and Dirk moved his own head back behind the bunch of reeds.

A long silence broken suddenly. "They're not here." The voice was

squeaky with adolescence and tension. Boetie was a delicate child,

small for his age, who insisted on joining the rest Of them in games

beyond his strength.

Another long silence and then the sound of a wholesale but stealthy

approach. Dirk reached out and gripped Nick's arm the enemy were

committed, out in the open-he lifted his mouth above the surface.

"Now!" he whispered and they reached for their lats. The surprise was

complete and devastating. As Dirk and Nick rose dripping, with

throwing arms cocked, the attackers were bunched in such a way that

they could neither run nor return the fire unhampered.

The clay pellets flew into them, slapping loudly on bare flesh,

producing howls of anguish and milling, colliding confusion.

"Give it to them," shouted Dirk, and threw again without picking his

man, blindly into the mass of legs and arms and pink backsides.

Beside him Nick worked in a silent frenzy of load and throw.

The confusion lasted perhaps fifteen seconds, before the howls of pain

became shouts of anger.

"It's only Dirk and Nick."

"Get them-it's only two of them.

The first pellet flipped Dirk's ear, the second hit him full in the

chest.

"Run!" he gasped through the pain, and floundered to the bank.

Bent forward to climb from the stream he was frighteningly vulnerable,

and a pellet thrown at point-blank range took him in that portion of

his anatomy which he was offering to the enemy. The sting of it

propelled him from the water and clouded his vision with tears.

"Chase them!"

"Mt. them!"

The pack bayed after them, pellets hissed about them and slapped at

them as they pelted back along the stream. Before they reached the

next bend their backs and bottoms were dappled with the angry red spots

which tomorrow would be bruises.

Without discretion, hot with the chase, shouting and laughing, the

attackers poured into the trap and as they rounded the bend it closed

upon them.

Dirk and Nick stood poised to meet them, and suddenly the bank above

their heads was lined with squealing, dancing, naked savages, who

hurled a steady stream of missiles into them.

For a minute they stood it, then completely broken they scrambled out

of the river-bed with pellets flailing them and raced panic-stricken

for the shelter of the plantation.

One of them remained below the bank, kneeling in the mud, sobbing

softly. But according to the unspoken laws that governed them this one

was exempt from further punishment.

"It's only Boetie," Nickie shouted. "Leave him. Come on!

Chase the others! " And he scrambled up the bank and led them after

the flight. Yelling and shrilling with excitement they streamed away

through the brown grass to where Piet Van Essen was desperately trying

to stay the rout on the edge of the plantation, and gather his men to

meet the charge.

But another of them remained below the bank-Dirk Courtney.

There were just two of them now. Screened by the bank, completely

alone. Boetie looked up and through his tears saw Dirk coming slowly

towards him. He saw the latin Dirk's hand and the expression on his

face. He knew he was alone with Dirk.

"Please, Dirk," he whispered. "I give up. Please. I give

UP.

Dirk grinned. Deliberately he moulded the clay pellet on to his lat.

"I'll give YOU all my lunch tomorrow, " pleaded Boetie. "Not just the

sweets, I'll give you all of it."

Dirk hurled the clay. Boetie's shriek thrilled his whole body.

He began to tremble with the pleasure of it.

"I'll give you my new pocket-knife. " Boetie's voice was muffled by

sobs and his arms which he had crossed over his face.

Dirk loaded the lat, slowly so he could savour this feeling of power.

"Please, Dirkie. Please, man, I'll give you anything you-" and Boetie

shrieked again.

"Take your hands off your face, Boetie." Dirk's voice was strangled,

thick with pleasure.

"No, Dirkie. Please no!"

"Take your hands away, and I'll stop."

"You promise, Dirkie. You promise you'll stop.

"I promise,"

whispered Dirk.

Slowly Boetie lowered his arms, they were thin and very white, for he

always wore long sleeves against the sun.

"You promised, didn't you. I did what you-" and the clay hit him

across the bridge of his nose, spreading as it struck, jerking his head

back. Immediately there was blood from both nostrils.

Boetie clawed at his face, smearing blood on to his cheeks.

"YOU promised, " he whimpered. "You promised, But Dirk was already

moulding the next pellet.

Dirkie walked home alone. He walked slowly, singing a little, with

soft hair falling forward on to his forehead and a smear of blue clay

on one cheek.

Mary was waiting for him in the kitchen of the cottage on Protea

Street. She watched from the window while he slipped through the hedge

and crossed the yard. As he came towards the door she noticed the

smile on his face. There was hardly sufficient room in her chest for

what she felt as she looked at the innocent beauty of his face. She

opened the door for him.

"Hello, darling."

"Hello, Mary, " Dirk greeted her, and his little smile became a thing

of such radiance that Mary had to reach for him.

"My goodness, you're covered in mud. Lets get you bathed before your

granma gets home. " Dirk extricated himself from her embrace and moved

in on the biscuit-tin.

"I'm hungry.

"Just one," Mary agreed, and Dirk took a handful. "Then I've got a

surprise for you. " "What is it? " Dirk was more interested in the

biscuits. Mary had a surprise for him every evening and usually it was

something silly like a new pair of socks she had knitted.

"I'll tell you when you're in the bath. " "Oh, all right. " Still

munching Dirk set off for the bathroom.

He began to disrobe along the passage dropping first his shirt and then

his pants for Mary to retrieve as she followed.

"What is the surprise?"

"Oh Dirk, you've been playing that horrible game again."

Mary knelt beside the tub and gently passed the soapy flannel down his

bruised back and buttocks. "Please promise me you'll never play it

again.

"All right." It was a very simple matter to extract a promise from

Dirk, he had made this particular one before. "Now, what's your

surprise?

"Guess." Mary was smiling now, a secret knowing smile which

immediately caught Dirk's attention. He studied her scarred face, her

ugly loving face.

"Sweets?" he hazarded, and she shook her head and caressed his naked

body with the flannel.

"Not socks!"

"No. " She dropped the flannel into the soap-scummed water and clasped

him to her chest. "No, not socks," she whispered.

He knew then.

"Yes, Dirkie, it's about your father."

Instantly he began to struggle' Where is he, Mary? Where is he?"

"Into your nightshirt first.

"Is he here? Has he come home?"

"No, Dirk. He isn't here yet. He's in Pietermaritzburg. But you're

going to see him soon. Very soon. Granma has gone now to make

reservations on the train. You're going to see him tomorrow.

His hot, wet body began to tremble in her arms, quivering with

excitement.

"is it ... ? is it ... "well, you'll see for yourself "In some

respects, Mrs. Courtney, it was possibly all to the good that we were

unable to contact you before. " The Surgeon-Major tamped tobacco into

his pipe, and began methodically searching all his pockets.

"Your matches are on the desk. " Ada came to his assistance.

"Oh! Thank you. " He got the pipe drawing, and continued,

"You see, your son was attached to an irregular unit-there was no

record of next-of-kin, and when he came to us from Colenso six weeks

ago he was, shall we say, in no condition to inform us of your address.

" "Can we see Pa now?" Dirk could no longer contain himself, for the

past five minutes he had wriggled and fidgeted on the couch beside

Ada.

"You'll see your father in a few minutes, young man." And the surgeon

turned back to Ada. "As it so happens, Mrs. Courtney, you have been

spared a great deal of anxiety. At first there were grave doubts that

we would be able to save your son's life, let alone his right leg. Four

weeks it hung in the balance, so to speak. But now"-and he beamed at

Ada with justifiable pride' He well?" Quickly, anxiously she asked.

"What a formidable constitution your son has, all muscle and

determination." He nodded, still stiff ling "Yes, he's well on the

road to recovery. There may be a slight limp in the right leg-but when

you weigh that against what might have been . he spread his hands

eloquently. "Now the sister will take you through to him."

"When can he come home?" Ada asked from the doorway.

Soon-another month, perhaps.

A deep veranda, cool with shade and the breeze that came in across the

hospital lawns. A hundred high metal beds along the wall, a hundred

men in grey flannel nightshirts propped against white pillows.

Some of them slept, a few were reading, others talked quietly or played

chess and cards on boards set between the beds. But one lay withdrawn,

staring at, but not seeing, the pair of fiscal shrikes which squabbled

raucously over a frog on the lawn.

The beard was gone, removed while he was too weak to protest on the

orders of the ward sister who considered it unhygienic, and the result

was a definite improvement that even Sean secretly admitted.

Shielded for so long, the skin on the lower half of his face was smooth

and white like that of a boy; fifteen years had been shaved away with

that coarse black matt. Now emphasis was placed on the heavy brows

which, in turn, directed attention to his eyes, dark blue, like cloud

shadow on mountain lakes. Darker blue at this moment as he considered

the contents of the letter he held in his right hand.

The letter was three weeks old, and already the cheap paper was

splitting along the creases from constant refolding. It was a long

letter, much of it devoted to detailed description of the clumsy

sparring along the Tugela laver in which Butler's army was now

engaged.

There was one reference to the headaches from which the writer

periodically suffered as a result of his wound which was now externally

healed, and many more to the deep gratitude that Saul felt for him.

These embarrassed Sean to such an extent that when re-reading the

letter he scowled and skipped each one as he came to it.

But there was one paragraph to which Sean returned each time, and read

slowly, whispering it to himself so that he could savour each word: I

remember telling you about Ruth, my wife. As you know, she escaped

from Pretoria and is in Pietermaritzburg staying with relatives of

hers. Yesterday I had a letter from her that contained the most

wonderful tidings. We have been married four years this coming June,

and now at last as a result of our brief meeting when she arrived in

Natal-I am to become a father! Ruth tells me she has determined on a

daughter (though I am certain it will be a son!) and she has selected a

name. It is a most unusual name, to be charitable-I can see that it

will require a great deal of diplomacy on my part to make her change

her mind. (Among her many virtues is an obstinacy reminiscent of the

rock of ages.) She wants to name the poor waif -Storm'@-Storm

Friedman-and the prospect appauls me!

Although our faiths differ, I have written to Ruth asking her agree to

your election as

"Sandek"-which is the equivalent of godfather. I can foresee no

objection from Ruth (especially in view of the debt which we both owe

you) and it needs now only your consent.

Will you give it?

At the same time I have explained to Ruth your present situation and

address (co Greys Hospital!) and asked her to visit you there so that

she can thank you personally. I warn you in advance that she knows as

much about you as I do-I am not one to hide my enthusiasms!

Lying with the letter clutched in his hand, Sean stared out across the

lawns into the sunlight. Beneath the bedclothes, swelling up like a

pregnant belly, was the wicker basket that cradled his leg. "Storm!"

he whispered, remembered the lightning, playing blue and blinding white

upon her body.

"Why doesn't she come?" Three weeks he had waited for her. "She knows

that I am here, why doesn't she come to me?"

"Visitors for you. " The sister paused beside him and straightened the

bedclothes.

"Who? " He struggled up on to his good elbow, with the other arm still

in its sling across his chest.

"A lady." And he felt it surge through him. "And a small boy. " The

cold backwash of disappointment, as he realized it was not her.

Then immediately guilt, Ada and Dirk, how could he hope it was someone

else?

Without the beard Dirk did not recognize him until he was ten paces

away. Then he charged, his cap flew from his head and his dark hair,

despite the bonds of brilliantine, sprang up into curls as he ran. He

was squeaking incoherently as he reached the bed, clambered up on to

Sean's chest to lock both arms around his neck.

It was some time before Sean could prise him loose and look at him.

"Well, boy," he said, and then again, "well, my boy." Unable to trust

himself not to lay Ins love for the child bare for all to see-there

were a hundred men watching and grinning, Sean sought diversion by

turning to Ada.

She waited quietly, as she had spent half her life waiting, but when he

looked at her the tenderness showed in her smile.

"Sean." She stooped to kiss him. "What hap penned to your beard?

You look so young."

They stayed for an hour, most of which was taken up by a monologue from

Dirk. In the intervals while he regained his breath Ada and Sean were

able to exchange all their accumulated news. Finally, Ada stood up

from the chair beside Sean's bed' The train leaves in half an hour, and

Dirk has school tomorrow. We'll come up from Ladyburg each week-end

until you are ready to return home. " Getting Dirk out of the hospital

was like evicting an unruly drunk from a bar. Alone Ada could not

manage it and she enlisted a male hospital orderly to the cause.

Kicking and struggling in tantrum, Dirk was carried down the veranda

with his screams ringing back to Sean long after he had disappeared

from view.

"I want my Dad. I want to stay with my Dad.

"Benjamin Goldberg was the executor of his brother's estate.

estate consisted of a forty-per-cent shareholding in Goldberg Bros.

Ltd." a company which listed among its assets a brewery, four small

hotels and a very large one situated on the Marine Parade at Durban,

sixteen butcher shops, and a factory devoted to the manufacture of polo

ny pork sausages, bacon and smoked ham. The lag products caused

Benjamin some embarrassment, but their manufacture was too profitable

to be discontinued. Benjamin was also the Chairman of the Board of

Goldberg Bros." and a sixty-per-cent shareholder. The presence of an

army of twenty-five thousand hungry and thirsty men in Natal had

increased the consumption of beer and bacon in a manner that caused

Benjamin further embarrassment, for he was a peaceable man. The huge

profits forced upon him by the hostilities both troubled and delighted

him.

These same two emotions were evoked by the presence in his household of

his niece. Benjamin had four sons and not a single daughter, his

brother Aaron had left one daughter for whom Benjamin would gladly have

traded all four of his own sons. Not that the boys weren't doing very

well, all of them settled into the business very nicely. One of them

running the Port Natal Hotel, the eldest managing the brewery and the

two others in the meat section. But-and here Benjamin sighed-but

Ruth!

There was a girl for a man's old age. He looked at her across the

polished stinkwood breakfast table with its encrustation of -H silver

and exquisite bone china, and he sighed again.

"Now, Uncle Ben, don't start again. Please. " Ruth buttered her toast

firmly.

"So all I'm saying is that we need him here. Is that so bad?

"Saul is a lawyer."

"Nu? Is that so bad. He's a lawyer, but we need a lawyer with us. The

fees I pay out to those other schmo ks " "He doesn't want to come into

the Company."

"All right. We know he doesn't want charity. We know he doesn't want

your money working for him. We know all about his pride-but now he's

got responsibilities. Already he should be thinking about you-and the

baby-not so much about what he wants.

At the mention of the baby, Ruth frowned slightly. Benjamin noticed

it, there were few things he did not notice. Young people! If only

you could tell them. He sighed again.

"All right. We'll leave it until Saul comes back on leave, " he agreed

heavily.

Ruth, who had never mentioned her uncle's offers of employment to Saul

had a momentary vision of living in Pietermaritzburg-close enough to be

drowned in the tidal waves of affection that emanated from her Uncle

Benjamin, caught like a tiny insect in the suffocating web of family

ties and duties. She flashed at him in horror.

"You even mention it to Saul and I'll never speak to you again.

Her cheeks flushed wondrously and fire burned in her eyes.

Even the heavy braid of dark hair seemed to come alive like the tail of

an angry lioness, clicking as she moved her head.

Oi Yoi Yoi! Benjamin hid his delight behind hooded lids. What a

temper! what a woman! She could keep a man young for ever.

Ruth jumped up from the table. For the first time he noticed that she

wore riding habit.

"Where are you going? Ruth, you're not riding again today.

"Yes I am

"The baby!

"Uncle Ben, why did you never learn to mind your own business?"

And she marched out of the room. Her waist was not yet thickened with

pregnancy and she moved with a grace that played a wild discord on the

old man's heart strings.

"You should not let her treat you that way, Benjamin. " Mildly, the

way she did everything, his wife spoke from across the table.

"There's something troubling that girl." Carefully Benjamin wiped egg

from his moustache, laid the napkin on the table, consulted the gold

fob watch he drew from his waistcoat, and stood up. "Something big.

You mark my words."

It was Friday, strange how Friday had become the pivot on which the

whole week turned. Ruth urged the chestnut stallion, and he lengthened

his stride under her, surging forward with such power that she had to

check him a little and bring him down into an easy canter.

She was early and waited ten impatient minutes in the Oaklined lane

behind Greys Hospital before, like a conspirator, the little nurse

slipped out through the hedge.

"Have you got it? " Ruth demanded. The girl nodded, around quickly

and took an envelope out of her grey nursing cloak. Ruth exchanged it

for a gold sovereign. Clutching the d coin the nurse started back for

the hedge.

"Wait. " Ruth stopped her. This was her only physical contact and she

was reluctant to break it so soon. "How is he?

"It's all there, ma'am. " "I know-but tell me how he looks. What he

does and says," Ruth insisted.

"Oh, he's looking fine now. He's been up and about on his sticks all

week, with that big black savage helping him, The first day he fell and

you should have heard him swear. Lordy! " They both laughed

together.

"He's a real card, that one. He and sister had another tiff yesterday

when she wanted to wash him. He called her a shameless strumpet. She

gave him what for all right. But you could see she was ever so pleased

and she went around telling everybody about it.

She bur bled on and Ruth listened enchanted, until: "Then yesterday,

you know what he did when I was changing his dressing?" She blushed

coyly. "He gave me a pinch behind!"

Ruth felt a hot flood of anger wash over her. Suddenly she realized

that the girl was pretty in an insipid fashion.

"And he said.

"Thank you!" Ruth had to restrain the hand that held her riding crop.

"I have to go now. " Usually the long skirts of her habit hampered her

in mounting, but this time she found herself in the saddle without

effort.

"Next week, ma'am?"

"Yes," and she hit the stallion across the shoulder. He lunged forward

so violently that she had to clutch at the pommel of the saddle. She

rode him as she had never ridden a horse before, driving him with whip

and spur until dark patches of sweat showed on his flanks and froth

spattered back along his shoulders, so that by the time she reached a

secluded spot on the bank of the Umgeni River far out of town her

jealousy had abated and she felt ashamed of herself. She loosened the

stallion's girdle and petted him a little before leaving him tethered

to one of the weeping willows, and picking her way down the bank to her

favourite log on the water's edge.

There she settled herself and opened the envelope. If only Sean could

have known that his temperature chart, progress report, house-doctor's

recommendations, and the sucrose content of his urine were being so

avidly studied, he would probably had added a ruptured spleen to his

other ills.

At last Ruth folded the pages into their envelope and tucked it away in

the jacket of her habit. He must look so different without his beard.

She stared into the pool below her and it seemed as though his face

formed in the green water and looked back at her. She touched the

surface with the toe of her riding boot so that the ripples spread and

shattered the image.

She was left with only the feeling of loneliness.

"I must not go to him," she whispered, steeling the resolve which had

kept her from him these past weeks since she had known he was there. So

close-so terribly near.

Determinedly she looked down again into the pool and tried to conjure

up the face of her husband. all she saw was a yellow fish gliding

quietly across the sandy bottom with the pattern of its scales showing

like the teeth of a file along its sides. She dropped a pebble into

the water and the fish darted away.

Saul. Merry little Saul with his monkey face, who made her laugh the

way a mother laughs at her child. I love him, she thought. And it was

true, she loved him. But love has many shapes, and some are the shapes

of mountains-tall and jagged and big. While others are the shape of

clouds-which have no shape, no sharp outline, soft they blow against

the mountain and change and stream away but the mountain stands

untouched by them. The mountain stands for ever.

"My mountain," she murmured, and she saw him again so vividly, standing

tall above her in the storm.

"Storm," she whispered and clasped her open hands across her belly that

was still flat and hard.

"Storm," she whispered and felt the warmth within her. It spread

outwards from her womb, the heat rising with it until it was a burning

madness she could no longer control. With her skirts flying about her

legs she ran to the stallion, her hand trembled on the straps of the

girth. - "Just once," she promised herself. "Just this once more.

Desperately she clawed up into the saddle.

"Just this once, I swear it! " and then brokenly,

"I can't help myself. I've tried-oh God, how I've tried!

An appreciative stirring and hum of comment from the beds along the

wall followed her as she swept down the hospital veranda. There was

urgent grace in the way she held her skirts gathered in one hand, in

the crisp staccato tap of her pointed boots along the cement floor and

the veiled swing of her hips above. There was unrestrained eagerness

in the sparkle in her eyes and the forward thrust of her breasts

beneath the wine coloured jacket. The wild ride which brought her here

had flushed her cheeks and tumbled her hair glossy black down her

temple and on to her forehead.

Those sick and lonely men reacted as though a goddess had passed them

by, thrilled by her beauty, yet saddened because she was unattainable.

She did not notice them, she did not feel their hungry eyes upon her

nor hear the aching whisper of their voices-for she had seen Sean.

He came slowly across the lawns towards the veranda, using the stick

awkwardly to balance the drag of his leg. His eyes were downcast and

he frowned in thought. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw how

wasted was his body. She had not remembered him so tall with shoulders

gaunt and wide like the crosstree of a gallows. Never before had she

seen the bony thrust of his jawline, nor the pale smoothness of his

skin faintly blue with new-shaved beard. But she remembered the eyes

heavily over scored with black brows, and his great beaky nose above

the wide sensuality of his mouth.

On the edge of the lawn he stopped with feet apart, set the point of

the cane between them with both hands clasped over the head of it, and

he lifted his eyes and looked at her.

For many seconds neither of them moved. He stood balancing on the cane

with his shoulders hunched and his chin raised as he stared at her. She

in the shadow of the veranda, her skirts still in one hand-but the

other at her throat, fingers trying to still the emotions that

fluttered there.

Gradually his shoulders straightened until he stood tall. He hurled

the cane aside and reached both hands open towards her.

Suddenly she was running over the smooth, green lawn. Into his arms,

trembling in silent intensity, while he held her.

With both arms around his waist and her face pressed against his chest

she could smell the man smell of him and feel the hard muscle of his

arms as he enfolded her-and she knew she was now safe. As long as she

stayed like this-nothing, nobody could touch her.

On the slope of the table-topped mountain that crouches over the town

of Pietermaritzburg there is a glade among the wattle trees. It is a

secret place where even the timid little blue buck come out to graze in

daylight. On a still day you can hear very faintly the pop of the

wagon whips on the road below, or farther off the steam whistle of a

train. But that is all that intrudes in this wild place.

A butterfly crossed the glade in uncertain wobbling flight, it came out

of the sunlight into the dappled, moving shade along the edge, and

settled.

That's good luck," Sean murmured lazily and Ruth lifted her head from

the plaid rug on which they lay. As the butterfly moved its wings,

fanning them gently, the iridescent green and yellow markings sparkled

in the speck of sunlight that pierced the roof of leaves above them and

fell upon it like a spotlight.

"It tickles, " she said, and the insect moved like a living jewel

across the smooth white field of her belly. It reached her navel and

paused. Then the tiny tendril of its tongue uncurled and dabbed at the

fine sheen of moisture that their loving had left Upon her skin.

"He's come to bless the baby."

The butterfly skirted the deep, delicately chiselled pit and moved on

downwards.

"Don't you think he's being just a little forward-he doesn't have to

bless that as well?" Ruth asked.

"He certainly seems to know his way around," Sean admitted dubiously.

The butterfly found its road southwards blocked by a forest of dark

curls, so laboriously it turned and retraced its steps towards the

north. once more it detoured round her navel and then headed

unerringly for the pass between her breasts

"Keep right on, friend,"

Sean cautioned, but it turned suddenly and climbed the steep slope

until at last it sat triumphant on the peak.

Sean watched it throbbing its wings, blazing in oriental SPlendour upon

her nipple, and he felt himself stirred once more.

-Ruth." His voice was husky again. She rolled her head to look into

his eyes Go away, little butterfly, " and she brushed it from her

breast.

Ruth woke him a little Later, after they had slept and they sat facing

each other on the rug with the open hamper between them.

While Sean uncorked the wine she worked over the hamper with the

dedication of a priestess preparing a sacrifice. He watched her split

the bread rolls and fill them with salty, yellow butter, then open the

screw-topped jars of soused beans and pickled onions and beetroot. A

heart of young lettuce rustled crisply as she plucked its leaves into a

wooden bowl, and poured dressing over them.

Her hair, released from its braid, broke like a black wave over the

marble of her shoulders, then rippled and swung with the small

movements of her body. With the back of her hand she brushed it from

her forehead, then looked up at him and smiled.

"Don't stare. It's bad manners. " She took the glass he offered her

and sipped the cool yellow wine, set it aside and went on to dismember

the fat-breasted chicken. Pretending to ignore his eyes upon her body,

she began to sing, softly, the love-song she had sung on the night of

the storm and shyly her breasts peeped at him through the black curtain

of her hair.

She wiped her fingers carefully on a linen napkin, took up the

wineglass again and with elbows on her knees leaned forward slightly

and returned his scrutiny with equal frankness.

"Eat," she said.

"And you? "In a little while. I want to watch You. Then he was

hungry.

"You eat the way you make love-as though tomorrow you die.

"I'm taking no chances."

"You're covered with scars, like an Old tOm-Cat who fights too much,"

and she leaned forward and touched his chest with one finger.

-What happened there?"

-Leopard.

"And there?" She touched his arm.

"Knife.

"And there?" his wrist.

"Burst shotgun."

She dropped her hand and caressed the fresh purple cicatrice that

twined around his leg like some grotesque parasitic vine.

"This one I know," she whispered and her eyes were sad as she touched

it.

Quickly, to change her mood, he spoke.

"Now it's my turn to ask the questions." He reached across and laid

his open hand upon her stomach where the first faint bulge pressed

warmly into his palm.

"What happened there?" he demanded, and she giggled before she

replied. "Burst shotgun-or was it a cannon?"

When she had repacked the hamper she knelt beside him. He lay flat on

his back with a long black cheroot between his teeth.

"Have you had sufficient?" she asked.

"My God, yes," and he sighed happily.

"Well, I haven't." She leaned over him, took the cheroot from his

mouth and flicked it into the brambles.

With the first faint flush of evening in the sky a small breeze came

down from the mountain and rustled the leaves above them. The fine

hairs upon her forearms came erect, each on its tiny pimple of

gooseflesh, and her nipples stood out dark and hard.

"You must not be late back to the hospital on the very first day

they've let you out. " She rolled away from him and reached for her

clothing. Matron will have me hung, drawn and quartered.

Sean agreed. they dressed quickly, and she was remote from him.

All the laughter gone from her voice and her face cold and

expressionless.

He stood behind her to lace the whalebone corset. He hated to cage

that lovely body and was about to say so.

"Saul is coming tomorrow. A month's leave. Her voice was harsh.

His hands stilled and they stood without moving. It was the first time

either of them had referred to Saul since that morning a month ago when

she had come to him at the hospital.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" His voice also was harsh.

"I didn't want to spoil today." She had not turned towards him, but

stood staring out across the glade to the far hills beyond the town.

"We must decide what we are going to tell him."

"There is nothing to tell him," she answered flatly.

"But what are we going to do?" Now his voice was ugly with mingled

dread and guilt.

"Do, Sean?" She turned slowly and her face was still cold and

expressionless. "We are going to do nothing! nothing at all! "But

you belong to me!" he cried in protest.

"No," she answered.

"The child, it mine!"

At his words her eyes narrowed and the sweet line of her lips hardened

in anger.

"No, damn you, it isn't! Not yours-although you sired it.

She flamed at him. It was the first time she had unleashed her temper

at him. It startled Sean. "The child belongs to Sauland I belong to

Saul. We owe you nothing.

He stared at her. "You don't mean that," and the flames of her anger

faded. Quickly he tried to press his advantage.

"We'll go away together."

"Run away-you mean. Sneak away like a pair of thieves.

What would we take with us, Sean? The happiness of a man who loves and

trusts us both-that, and our own guilt. You'd never forgive me, nor I

you. Even now when we talk of it you cannot meet my eyes.

Already you are beginning to hate me a little.

"No! No!"

"And I would hate you," she whispered.

please.

"You don't love him. " The agonized accusal was wrung from him, but it

was as though he had not spoken. She went on dressing.

"He'll want to see you. Half of every letter he writes is about

YOU.

I've told him that I've visited you at the hospital."

Call for my horse,

"I'm going to tell him," Sean shouted. "I'll tell him everything.

"No, you won't." She answered him calmly.

"You did not save him at Colenso to destroy him now. You would destroy

him-and us. Please call for my horse. " Sean whistled and they stood

together, not touching, not talking, not even looking at each other.

Until Mbejane emerged from the bush below the glade leading the

horses.

Sean lifted her into the saddle.

"When?" he asked quietly.

"Perhaps never," she answered and swung the horse away.

She did not look back so Sean never saw the tears that streamed down

her face. The muffled drum of hooves drowned her sobs and she held her

back and her shoulders stiff so that he would not know.

The War Council ended long after dark and when his commandants had up

saddled and ridden away to their laagers among the hills, Jan Paulus

sat alone beside the fire.

He was tired, as though his brain was the cold, flabby body of an

octopus and its tentacles spread out to every extremity of his body.

He was lonely. Now at the head of five thousand men he was alone as he

had never been in the vast solitude of the open veld.

Because of the loneliness and because of the companionship she had

given him these past twenty years his thoughts turned to Henrietta, and

he smiled in the dari mess and felt the longing blunt the edge of his

determination.

I would like to go back to the farm, for a week only. Just to see that

they are all well. I would like to read to them from the Book and

watch the faces of the children in the lamplight. I would like to sit

with my sons on the stoep and hear the voices of Henrietta and the

girls as they work in the kitchen. I would like . . .

Abruptly he stood up from beside the fire. Ja, you would like !

to do this and you would like to do that! Go then!

Give yourself leave of absence as you refused it to so many others.

He clenched his jaw, biting into the stem of his pipe. Or else, sit

here and dream like an old woman while twenty-five thousand English

pour across the river.

He Strode out to the laager, and the earth tilted upwards beneath his

feet as he headed for the ridge Tomorrow, he thought.

Tomorrow.

God has been merciful that they did not rush the ridge two days ago

when I had three hundred men to hold it. But now I have five thousand

to their twenty-five-so let them come!

Suddenly, as he reached the crest, the valley of the Tugela lay below

him. Soft with moonlight so that the river was a black gash in the

land. He scowled as he saw the field of bivouac fires that straddled

the drift at Trichardt's farm.

They have crossed. May God forgive me that I had to let them cross,

but I could not meet and hold them with three hundred.

Two days I have waited in agony for my columns to cover the twenty

miles from Colenso. TWo days while the cannon bogged down in the

mud.

Two days while I watched their cavalry, foot soldiers and wagons

crossing the drift and I could not stop them.

Now they are ready. Tomorrow they will come up to us. they will come,

to try at any other place is madness, a stupidity far beyond any they

have shown before They cannot try the right, for to reach it they must

march across our front. With little cover and the river fencing them

in they would expose their flank to us at two thousand yards. No, they

cannot try the right-not even Buller will try the right.

Slowly he turned his head and looked out to the left where the tall

peaks rose sheer out of the heights. The formation of the ground

resembled the bak of a gigantic fish. Jan Paulus stood upon its head,

on the relatively smooth slope of Tabanyana. but on his left rose the

dorsal fin of the fish. This was a series of peaks, Vaalkrans,

Brakfontein, Twin Peaks, Conical Hill and, the highest and the most

imposing of all, Spion KOP.

Once again, he experienced the nagging prickle of doubt.

Surely no man, not even Buller, would throw any army against that line

of natural fortresses. It would be senseless as the sea hurling its

surf at a line of granite cliffs. Yet the doubt remained.

perhaps Buller, that pedestrian and completely predictable man, Buller

who seemed eternally committed to the theory of frontal assault,

perhaps this time he would know that the slopes of Tabanyama were too

logically the only point at which he could break through. Perhaps he

would know that the whole of the Boer Army waited for him there with

all their guns Perhaps he would guess that only twenty burghers guarded

each of the peaks on the left flank-that Jan Paulus had not dared to

spread his line so thin, and had risked everything on Tabanyarna.

Jan Paulus sighed. Now it was past the time for doubt. He had made

the choice and tomorrow they would know. Tomorrow, van more.

Heavily he turned away and started down towards the laager.

The moon was setting behind the black massif of Spion Kop, and its

shadow hid the path. Loose rock rolled under his feet.

Jan Paulus stumbled and almost fell.

"Wies Door? " The challenge from an outcrop of granite beside the

path.

"A friend." Jan Paulus saw the man now, he leaned against the rock

with a Mauser held low across his hips.

"Tell me-what commando are you with?"

"The Wynbergers under Leroux.

"So! Do you know Leroux?" the sentry asked.

"Yes.

"What colour is his beard?"

"Red-red as the flames of hell.

The sentry laughed.

"Tell Oom Paul from me I'll tie a knot in it next time I see him.

"Best you shave before you try-he might do the same for you," Jan

Paulus warned him.

"Are you his friend?"

"And his kinsman too.

"The hell with you then also." The sentry laughed again.

"Will you drink coffee with us?

It was an ideal opportunity for Jan Paulus to mingle with his men and

gauge their temper for tomorrow. "Dankie. " He accepted the

invitation.

"Good." The sentry straightened up and Jan Paulus saw he was a big

man, made taller by the homburg hat he wore. "Karl, is there any

coffee left in the pot?" He yelled into the darkness beyond the rocks

and was answered immediately.

"in the name of God, must you bellow? This is a battlefield, not a

political meeting.

"The English are as loud. I've heard them all night."

"The English are fools. Must you be the same?"

"For you, only for you." The sentry dropped his voice to a sepulchral

whisper, and then roared again suddenly: "But what about that damned

coffee?"

This one is not short of stomach, Jan Paulus grinned to himself, as the

man, still chuckling happily, placed an arm about his shoulder and led

him to the screened fire among the rocks.

Three burghers squatted about it with blankets draped over their

shoulders. They were talking among themselves as the sentry and Jan

Paulus approached.

"The moon will be down in half an hour," one of them said.

"Ja. I will not be happy to see it gone. If the English plan a night

attack, then they will come in the dark of the moon. " "Who is with

you?" Karl asked as they came towards the fire.

"A friend," the sentry replied.

"From what commando?"

"The Wynbergers," Jan Paulus answered for himself, and Karl nodded and

lifted the battered enamel coffee-pot from the fire, you are with Oorn

Paul. And what does he think of our chances for tomorrow?"

"That of a man with one bullet left in thick cat bush with a lung shot

buffalo coming down in full charge."

"And does it worry him?"

"Only a madman knows no fear. Oom Paul is afraid. But he tries not to

show it, for fear spreads among men like the white sore throat

diphtheria," Jan Paulus replied as he accepted the mug of coffee and

settled down against a rock out of the firelight so they would not

recognize his face nor the colour of his beard.

"Show it or not," grunted the sentry as he filled his mug.

"But I reckon he'd give one of his eyeballs to be back on his farm at

Wynberg with his wife beside him in the double bed."

Jan Paulus felt the glow of anger in his belly and his voice as he

replied as harsh.

"You think him a coward!"

"I think I would rather stand on a hill a mile behind the fighting and

send other men in to die," the sentry chuckled again, but there was a

sardonic note in it.

"I've heard him swear that tomorrow he will be in front wherever the

fight is fiercest," growled Jan Paulus.

"Oh, he said so? So that we fight more cheerfully? But when the

Lee-Metfords rip your belly open-how will you know where Oorn Paul

is?"

"I have told you he is my kin. When you insult him you insult me.

" Anger had closed Jan Paulus's throat so that his voice was hoarse.

"Good! " The sentry stood up quickly. "Let us settle it now."

"Be still, you fools." Karl spoke irritably. "Save your anger for the

English," and then more softly, "all of us are restless, knowing what

tomorrow will bring. Let your quarrel stand."

"He is right," Jan Paulus agreed, still choked with anger.

"But when I meet you again. . . ! " "How will you know me?" the

sentry demanded.

"Here!" Jan Paulus jerked the wide-brimmed Terai hat from his head and

flung it at the man's feet. "Wear that and give me yours in

exchange.

"Why?" The sentry stood puzzled.

"Then if ever a man comes up to me and says,

"You're wearing my hat," he will be saying,

"Jan Paulus Leroux is a coward!"

The man grinned so that his teeth glittered in the firelight, then he

dropped his own black homburg into Jan Paulus's lap and stooped to pick

up the Terai. In that instant, faintly on the wind, soft as the

crackle of dried twigs, they heard the rifle-fire.

" Mausers! " shouted Karl and he leapt to his feet sending the

coffee-pot flying.

"On the left, " moaned Jan Paulus in anguish. "Oh, God help us!

They've tried the left. " The chorus of rifle-fire rose, swelling

urgently; and now blending with the crisp crackle of the mausers was

the deep belling of the Lee-Metfords.

"Spion Kop! They're on Spion Kop," and Jan Paulus ran, hurling himself

down the path towards the laager with the black homburg jammed down

over his ears.

The mist lay heavily on the peak of Spion Kop that morning, so that the

dawn was a thing of liquid, pearly light. A soft uncertain thing that

swirled about them and condensed in tiny drops upon the metal of their

rifles.

Colonel John Acheson was breakfasting on ham sandwiches spread thickly

with Gentleman's Relish. He sat on a boulder with his uniform cloak

draped over his shoulders and chewed morosely.

"No sign of the jolly old Boer yet," the captain beside him announced

cheerfully.

"that trench is not deep enough. " Acheson glowered at the shallow

ditch which had been scraped in the stony soil and which was filled to

capacity with men in all the various attitudes of relaxation.

"I know, sir. But there's not much we can do about it. We're down to

bedrock and it would need a wagon-load of dynamite to sink another

foot. " The captain selected a sandwich and upended the Relish bottle

over it. "Anyway, all the enemy fire will be from below and the

parapets will cover that. " Along the front edge of the trench clods

of earth and loose rock had been piled a height of two feet. Pathetic

cover for two thousand men.

"Have you ever been on this mountain before?" Acheson asked

politely.

"No, sir. Of course not.

"Well, what makes you so bloody certain how the land lies.

You can't see a thing in this mist."

"Well, sir, we are on the crest, and it is the highest . But Acheson

interrupted him irritably. "Where are those damned scouts?

Haven't they come in yet?" He jumped up and with his cloak swirling

about him strode along the trench. "You men.

Can't you get that parapet higher there!

"At his feet a few of them stirred and began halfheartedly lifting

stone. They were exhausted by the long night climb and the skirmish

which had driven the Boer garrison from the mountain, and Acheson heard

them muttering sullenly behind him as he walked on.

"Acheson!" Out of the mist ahead of him loomed the figure of General

Woodgate Mowed closely by his staff.

"Sir!" Acheson hurried to meet him.

"Are your men entrenched?"

"As best they can."

"Good. What of the enemy? Have your scouts reported back yet?

"No. They're still out there in the mist." And Acheson pointed into

the smoky billows that limited the range of their vision to fifty

feet.

"Well, we should be able to hold until we are reinforced. Let me know

the moment . . . " A small commotion in the mist behind them, and

Woodgate paused. "What is it?"

"My scouts, sir."

Saul Friedman began delivering his report from a range of twenty feet.

His face was working with excitement as he scurried out of the mist.

"False crest! We're on the false crest. The true summit is two

hundred yards ahead and there's a rise of ground out on our right

flank, like a little knoll all covered with aloes, that enfilades our

whole position. There are Boers everywhere. The whole bloody mountain

is crawling with them."

"Good God man! Are you certain?"

"Colonel Acheson," snapped Woodgate, "turn your right flank to face the

knoll," and as Acheson strode away he added under his breath, "if you

have time!" and he felt the agitated swirl of the mist as it was swept

away before the wind Jan Paulus stood beside his pony. The mist had de

wed in his beard and set it a-sparkle in red-gold. Across both

shoulders heavy bandoliers of ammunition drooped, and the Mauser rifle

seemed like a child's toy in his huge hairy hands. His jaw was thrust

forward in thought as he reviewed his dispositions. All night he had

flogged his pony from laager to laager, all night he had roared and

bullied and driven men up the slopes of Spion Kop. And now ground him

the mountain rustled and murmured with five thousand waiting burghers,

and in an arc of 120 degrees behind it stood his guns. From Green Hill

in the northwest to the reverse slopes of the Twin Peaks in the east,

his gunners crouched beside their creusots and their Nordenfeldts,

ready to range in upon the crest of Spion Kop.

All things are ready and now I must earn the right to wear this hat. He

grinned and settled the homburg more firmly over his ears.

"Hennie, take, my horse back to the laager.

The boy led it away and he started up the last slope towards the

summit. The light strengthened as he climbed and the burghers among

the rocks recognized the flaming beacon of his beard.

" Goeie Jag, Oom Paul," and,

"Kom saam om die Rooi Nekke te ski et " they called. Then two burghers

ran down to meet him.

"Oom Paul. We've just been forward to Aloe Knoll. There are no

English on it!"

"Are you sure?" It seemed too generous a gift of fortune

"Ja, man. They are all on the back of the mountain. We heard them

digging and talking there."

"What commando are you?" Jan Paulus demanded of the men massed around

him in the mist.

"The Carolina commando" voices answered.

"Come," ordered Jan Paulus. "Come, all of you. We are going to Aloe

Knoll."

They followed. Skirting the summit, with the brush, brush, brush of

hundreds of feet through the grass, hurrying so that their breathing

steamed in the moist air. Until abruptly ahead of them humped the dark

mound of Aloe Knoll and they swarmed over it and disappeared among the

rocks and crevices like a column of ants returning to their nest.

Lying on his belly Jan Paulus lit his pipe and tamped down on the

glowing tobacco with a fire-calloused thumb, sucked the smoke into his

mouth and peered into the solid white curtain of mist. In the eerie

silence that had fallen upon the mountain his stomach rumbled loudly

and he remembered that he had not eaten since the previous noon. There

was a stick of biltong in his coat pocket.

A lion hunts best on an empty stomach, he thought and drew again on his

pipe.

"Here comes the wind," a voice whispered near him, and he heard the

rising sibilance of it through the aloes above his head.

The aloes stood tall as a man, multi-headed, green candelabra tipped in

crimson and gold, nodding slightly in the morning wind.

"Ja. " Jan Paulus felt it stirring deep in his chest, that blend of

fear and exhilaration that drowned his fatigue. "Here it comes."

He knocked out his pipe, stuffed it still hot into his pocket and

lifted his rifle from the rock in front of him.

Dramatically, as though unveiling a monument, the wind stripped the

mists away. Beneath a sky of cobalt blue, soft golden brown in the

early sunshine, lay the rounded peak of Spion Kop.

A long uneven scar of red earth five hundred yards long was slashed

across it.

"Alinagtig! " Jan Paulus gasped. "Now we have them."

Above the crude parapet of the trench, like birds on a fence rail, so

close that he could see the chin straps and the button on each crown,

the light khaki helmets contrasted clearly with the darker earth and

grass. While beyond the trench, completely exposed from boots to

helmets, standing in the open or moving leisurely forward with

ammunition and water canteens, were hundreds of English soldiers.

For long seconds the silence persisted, as though the burghers who

stared over their rifles at this unbelievable target could not bring

themselves to press the triggers on which their fingers rested. The

English were too close, too vulnerable. A universal reluctance held

the mausers silent.

"Shoot!" roared Jan Paulus. "Skiet, Kerels, Skiet, " and his voice

carried to the English behind the trenches. He saw all movement among

them suddenly paralysed, white faces turn to stare in his direction-and

he sighted carefully into the chest of one of them. The rifle jumped

against his shoulder, and the man went down into the grass.

That single shot broke the spell. Gunfire crackled in hysterical

unison and the frieze of khaki figures along the trench exploded into

violent movement as the bullets, thudded amongst them. At that range

most of Jan Paulus's burghers could be trusted to knock down four

running springbok with five shots. In the few seconds that it took the

English to dive into the trench, at least fifty of them went down, dead

or wounded, and lay sprawled against the red earth.

Now there were only the helmets and heads above the parapet to shoot at

and these were never still. They ducked and weaved and bobbed as

Woodgate's men fired and reloaded, and seventeen hundred Lee-Metford

rifles added their voices to the pandemonium

Then the first shell, lobbed from a field gun on the reverse slope of

Conical Hill, shrieked over the heads of the burghers and burst in a

leap of smoke and red dust fifty feet in front of the English trench.

A lull while Jan Paulus's heliograph team below the crest signalled the

range correction to the battery, then the next shell burst beyond the

trench; another lull and the third fell full upon the trench. A human

body was thrown high, legs and arms spinning like the spokes of a wagon

wheel. When the dust cleared there was a gap in the parapet and half a

dozen men frantically trying to plug it with loose rock.

Together all the Boer guns opened. The constant shriek of big shells

was punctuated by the @icious whine of the quick-firing pompoms.

And once again a mist covered the peak, this time a thin sluggish mist

of dust and lyddite fume which diluted the sunlight and clogged the

nostrils and eyes and mouths of men for whom a long, long day had

begun.

Lieutenant-Colonel Garrick Courtney was damnably uncomfortable.

It was hot in the sun. Sweat trickled down under his tunic and

moistened his stump so that already it was chafed. His field-glasses

magnified the glare as he looked out across the Tugela River to the

great hump of the mountain four miles away.

The glare aggravated the ache behind his eyes, which was a memorial to

last night's drinking.

"Woodgate seems to be holding very well. His reinforcements should be

up to him soon enough.

Sir Redvers, Buller appeared to be satisfied, and none of his staff had

any comment to add. Stolidly they stood and stared through their

glasses at the peak which was now faintly blurred with the dust and

smoke of battle.

Garrick was puzzling once more the devious lines of authority which

Buller had established for the attack on Spion Kop. Comanding the

actual assault was General Woodgate, who was now "holding very well" on

the peak, yet Woodgate was responsible not to Buller but to General

Charles Warren, who had his headquarters beyond Trichardt's Drift where

the column had crossed. Warren was in turn responsible to Buller, who

was well back behind the river, standing on a pleasant little hill

called Mount Alice.

Everyone on the staff was aware that Buller hated Warren.

Garrick was certain that Warren had been given command of an operation

which Buller considered very risky, so that in the event it failed

Warren would be discredited and goaded into resigning.

Of course, if he succeeded, Sir Redvers Buller was still supreme

Commander and the credit would therefore ac rue to him.

It was a line of reasoning Garrick found easy to follow, in fact, had

he been in Buller's position he would have done exactly the same.

This secret knowledge gave gary a deal of satisfaction, standing beside

Buller on the dope of Mount Alice he felt very much in tune with him.

He found himself hoping that Spion Kop would soon be a bloody

slaughter-house, and that Warren would retreat across the river in

disgrace. He remembered the occasion in the mess when Sir Charles had

referred to him as an "irregular, and a damned colonial irregular-at

that! " Garry's fingers tightened on his field-glasses and he glared

out at the mountain He was so deep in his resentment that he hardly

noticed the signaller who came running from the mule wagon that housed

the field telegraph which connected Buller's headquarters with those of

Warren beyond the river.

"Sir! Sir! A message from General Warren. " The urgency of the man's

tone caught all their attentions. As one man the entire general staff

lowered their glasses and turned to him.

"Let's have it then, my man!" Buller snatched the sheet of notepaper

and read it slowly. Then he looked up at Garry and there was something

in those pale, bulging eyes, a pleasure, a conspiratory gleam that made

Garry almost grin.

"What do you make of that, Courtney? " He handed the sheet across and

waited while Garry read it.

"Message from Colonel Crofton on the Spion Kop. Reinforce at once or

all is lost. General Woodgate dead What do you suggest. Warren. "

"It seems to me, sir," Garry spoke slowly, trying to mask the fierce

jubilation he felt, "that Sir Charles Warren is on the verge of

panic.

" "Yes, that's the way it looks." Buller was openly gloating now.

"I would suggest sending him a message that will stiffen him, sir.

"Yes, I agree." Buller turned to the signaller and began to dictate.

"The mountain must be held at all costs. No withdrawal. I repeat no

withdrawal. Reinforce with Middlesex and Dorset regiments."

Then he hesitated and looked around his staff. "What do you know of

this fellow Crofton? Is he the right man to command on the peak?"

There were non-committal sounds of negation from them until A'Court,

Buller's ADC, spoke up.

"Sir. There is one excellent man up there-Acheson-Colonel John

Acheson. You remember his showing at Colenso? " Buller nodded

thoughtfully and turning back to the signaller he went on with his

dictation. "You must put some really good hard fighting man in command

on the peak. Suggest you promote Acheson to Major-General.

In front of the trench the grass was flattened by the repeated

counter-attacks that had swept across it, stained by the blood of those

who had dragged themselves back from the Boer positions along the

crest, and littered with the twisted corpses of those who had not.

Every few seconds a shell exploded along the British line, so there was

a continual moving forest of bursts and the shrapnel hissed like the

flails of threshing giants.

John Acheson forced himself to his feet and climbed on to the parapet

and shouted,

"Come on, lads. This time they'll not stop us!"

In the trench below him the dead and the wounded lay upon each other

two and three deep, all of them coated with a layer of red dust. The

same red dust coated the faces that looked up at him as he shouted

again.

"Bugler, sound the charge. Come, lads, forward. Take the bayonet to

them. " The bugle started to sing, brassy and urgent. Acheson hopped

like a gaunt, old stork from the parapet and flapped his sword.

Behind him he heard laughter from a dozen throats, not the laughter of

ordinary men, but the chilling discord of insanity.

"Follow me, Follow me!" His voice rose to a shriek and they scrambled

from the trench behind him. Dusty spectres with bloodshot eyes,

smeared with dust and their own sweat. Their laughter and their curses

blended with the babbling of the wounded, outstripped it and climbed

into a chorus of wild cheers. Without form, spreading like spilled

oil, the charge flowed out towards the crest. Four hundred men,

staggering through the dust-storm of shell-fire and the tempest of the

Mausers.

Acheson stumbled over a corpse and fell. His ankle twisted with a

shock of pain that jolted his dulled senses. He recovered his sword,

dragged himself up and limped grimly on towards the rampart of boulders

that marked the crest. But this time they did not reach it to be

thrown back as they had before. This time the charge withered before

it had covered half the distance. In vain Acheson waved them forward,

yelling until his voice was a hoarse croak. They slowed and wavered,

then at last they broke and streamed back down the open bullet-swept

slope to the trench. lbars of frustrated anger streaking his dusty

cheeks, Acheson hobbled after them. He fell over the parapet and lay

face down on the corpses that lined the trench.

A hand shaking his shoulder roused him and he sat up quickly and tried

to control the breathing that shuddered up his throat.

Dimly he recognized the man who crouched beside him.

"What is it, Friedman?" he gasped. But the reply was drowned in the

arrival of another shell, and the delirious shrieks of a man wounded in

the belly in the trench beside them.

"Speak up, maul" "Heliograph message from Sir Charles Warren,"

shouted Saul. "You have been promoted General. You are in command of

the peak. " And then with a dusty sweat-streaked grin he added: "Well

done, sir.

Acheson stared at him aghast. "What about General Woodgate? " "He was

shot through the head two hours ago

"I didn't know. " Since morning Acheson had known nothing that was

happening outside his own small section of the line.

His whole existence had closed down to a hundred yards of shrapnel- and

bullet-swept earth. Now he peered out at the holocaust around him and

whispered,

"In command! No man commands here! The devil is directing this

battle."

"Sir Charles is sending up three more battalions to reinforce us,"

Saul shouted into his ear.

"We can well use them," Acheson grunted, and then,

"Friedman, I've sprained my ankle. I want you to lace up my boot as

tight as you can-I'm going to need this foot again before the day is

done. " Saul knelt without argument and began working over his foot.

One of the riflemen at the parapet beside him was thrown sideways.

He fell across Acheson's lap, and from the wound in his temple the

contents of his skull splattered them both. With an exclamation of

surprise and disgust Saul pulled back and wiped his face, then he

reached forward to drag the body from Acheson's legs.

"Leave him. " Acheson prevented him sharply. "See to that boot.

" While Saul obeyed, Acheson unwound the silk scarf from around his own

neck and covered the mutilated head. It was a wound he had seen

repeated a hundred times that day, all of them shot through the right

side of the head.

"Aloe Knoll," he whispered fiercely. "If only we'd taken Aloe Knoll. "

Then his tone dulled. "My poor lads. And gently he eased the

shattered head from his lap.

"They are ripe now, let us pluck them!" With five hundred of his

burghers Jan Paulus had left the shelter of Aloe Knoll and worked his

way forward, crawling belly down through the jumble of rocks, until now

they were crouched in a line along a fold of dead ground below the

false crest. TWenty yards ahead of them was the right-hand extremity

of the English trench. They could not see it, but clearly they heard

the incoherent cries of the wounded; the shouts of

"Stretcher-bearer!

Stretcher-bearer! " and

"Ammunition boys, here!" and above the splutter of musketry, the

continuous metallic rattle of breech bolts reloading.

"You must signal to the guns, Oom Paul," the burgher next to him

reminded him.

"Ja, " Jan Paulus removed the homburg from his head and waved with it

at the fat mound at Aloe Knoll behind them. He saw his signal briefly

acknowledged and knew that the order to cease fire was being flashed by

heliograph to the batteries.

They waited, tensed to charge, a long line of men. Jan Paulus glanced

along them and saw that each man stared ahead fixedly.

Most of their faces masked by beards of fifty different hues, but here

and there a lad too young for this work, too young to hide his fear.

Thank God my eldest is not yet twelve, or he would be here.

He stopped that train of thought guiltily, and concentrated his whole

attention on the volume of shell-fire that raged just ahead of them.

Abruptly it ceased, and in the comparative silence the rifle-fire

sounded strangely subdued. Jan Paulus let the slow seconds pass,

counting silently to ten, before he filled his lungs and roared:

Vrystaat! Come on the Free Staters!"

Echoing his cry, yelling wildly, his burghers surged forward over the

crest on to the English flank. They came from so close in, seeming to

appear as a solid wall from under the English parapet, that the

momentum of their charge carried them instantly into the depleted line

of shell-shocked, thirst-tormented and dazed Lancashires. Hardly a

shot was fired, and though a few individual scuffles rippled the smooth

onward flow of the charge-most of the English responded immediately to

the shouts of

"Hands Op! Hands Op! " by throwing down their rifles and climbing

wearily to their feet with hands held high. They were surrounded by

jubilant burghers and hustled over the parapet and down the slope

towards Aloe Knoll. A great milling throng of burghers, and soldiers

spread over fifty yards of the trench.

"Quickly!" Jan Paulus shouted above the hubbub. "Catch them and take

them away." He was well aware that this was only a very localized

victory, involving perhaps a tenth of the enemy.

Already cries of

"The Lanes are giving in!" "Where are the officers?"" "Back, you men,"

were spreading along the English line. He had planted the gerni of

defeat among them, now he must spread it through them before he could

carry the entire position. Frantically he signalled for reinforcements

from the Boer positions along the crest, hundreds of his burghers were

already running forward from Aloe Knoll.

Another five minutes and complete victory would emerge from the

confusion.

"Damn you, sir! What do you think you're doing!" The voice behind him

was impregnated with authority, unmistakably that of a high-ranking

officer. Jan Paulus wheeled to face a tall and enraged old gentleman,

whose pointed grey whiskers quivered with fury. The apoplectic crimson

of his countenance clashed horribly with its coating of red dust.

"I am taking your men hands-up away. " Jan Paulus struggled gumnally

with the foreign words.

"I'll be damned if you are, sir." Leaning heavily on the shoulder of a

skinny little dark-haired man who supported him, the officer reached

forward and shook a finger in Jan Paulus's face. "There will be no

surrender on this hill. Kindly remove your rabble from my trench!

"Rabble, is it!" roared Jan Paulus. Around them the Boers and the

British had ceased all activity and were watching with interest.

Jan Paulus turned to the nearest burghers: Vat hulle weg! Take them

away! " His gesture that accompanied the order was unmistakable.

"We'll have none of that, sir! " Acheson glared at him before issuing

his own order. "You men, come back and re-form on the Devonshires.

Hurry it up, now. Come along. Come along."

"Hey!" Jan Paulus held up his hand. "These are my .

He groped for the word. "My captures.

"Sir." Acheson released his grip on Saul's shoulder, drew himself up

to his full height and glared up into Jan Paulus's face.

"I will give you five minutes to vacate this trench-otherwise you will

become my prisoner. Good day to you. " And he hobbled away through

the grass. Jan Paulus stared in disbelief when fifty paces away

Acheson turned, folded his arms across his chest, and waited grimly for

the expiry of the five minutes.

About him he had gathered a handful of battle-stained soldiers and it

was clearly his intention to implement his duty with this pitiful

little band. Jan Paulus wanted to laugh with frustration the skinny

old goat. But he realized with dismay that most of his prisoners were

filtering away and hurrying to join Acheson.

He must do something but what? The whole position was deteriorating

into a farce.

"Stop them! " he shouted at his burghers. "Hold those men they went

hands-up. They cannot change their minds now. " Then abruptly the

whole position altered. Over the skyline behind Acheson and his tiny

party poured a solid phalanx of fresh khaki-clad figures. The dime

battalions of reinforcements sent up from the foot of the mountain by

Sir Charles Wan-en had at last arrived. Acheson glanced over his

shoulder and saw them swarming forward. The brown parchment of his

face tore laterally in a wide and wicked grin.

"Fix bayonets!" he shrieked, and drew his sword. "Buglers sound the

charge. Charge, men! Charge!

Hopping and stumbling like a stork with a broken leg, he led them.

Behind him, the glittering crest of a wave, a line of bayonets raced

down on the trench. Jan Paulus's burghers hated naked steel.

There were five hundred of them against two hundred.

They broke and blew away like smoke on a high wind.

Their prisoners ran with them.

Jan Paulus reached the crest and dropped behind a boulder that already

sheltered three men.

"Stop them! Here they come!" he panted.

While the British wave slowed and expended itself against the reef of

hidden Mousers, while they fell back with the shrapnel scourging them

once more-Jan Paulus knew that he would not stand in the British trench

again that day.

He could sense the despondency among his burghers. He knew that

already the faint-hearted were slipping away to where their ponies

waited at the foot of the mountain. He knew with sickened acceptance

that he had lost Spion Kop. Oh! The English had paid a heavy price

all right, there must be fifteen hundred of their dead and wounded

strewn upon the peak, but they had torn a gap in his line. He had lost

Spion Kop and through this breach would pour twenty-five thousand men

to relieve Ladysmith, and to drive his burghers out of Natal and into

the Transvaal. They had lost. It was finished.

John Acheson tried desperately to ignore the agony of his bloated foot,

he tried to shut out the shrill chorus of the wounded pleading for

water. There was no water on the peak. He turned his gaze away from

the trench where men, drugged with exhaustion, oblivious to the thunder

of bombardment that still raged about them, lay in sleep upon the

bodies of their dead and dying comrades.

He looked instead at the sun, that great, bloody orb lightly screened

with long streamers of cloud. In an hour it would be dark-and he knew

he had lost. The message he held in his hands admitted it, the

grotesque piles of dead men that clogged the trench proved it. He

re-read the message with difficulty for his vision jerked and swam

giddily.

"If you cannot hold until tomorrow, retire at Your discretion.

Buller. " "Tomorrow. What would tomorrow bring, if not a repetition

of today's horror? 'rhey had lost. They were going down from this

mountain. They had lost.

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the rough stone of the

parapet. A nerve in his eyelid began to twitch insistently, he could

not stop it.

How many are there left? Half perhaps. I do not know. Half my men

gone, all night I heard their ponies galloping away, and the crack and

rumble of their wagons, and I could not hold them.

Jan Paulus stared up at the mountain in the dawn.

"Spion Kop." He mouthed the name with loathing, but its outline was

blurred for his eyes could not focus. They were rimmed with angry red

and in each corner was a lump of yellow mucus. His body seemed to have

shrunk, dried out like that of an ancient mummy. He slumped wearily in

the saddle, every muscle and nerve in his body screamed for rest. To

sleep for a while. Oh God, to sleep.

With a dozen of his loyal commandants he had tried all night to staunch

the dribble of deserters that was bleeding his army to death.

He had ridden from laager to laager, blustering, pleading, trying to

shame them. With many he had succeeded, but with many he had not-and

once he had himself been shamed. He remembered the old man with the

long white beard straggling from his yellow, wizened face, his eyes

glistening with tears in the firelight.

"Three sons I have given you today, Jan Paulus Leroux. My brothers

have gone up your accursed mountain to beg for their bodies from the

English. Three sons! Three fine sons! What more do you want from

me?" From where he sat against the wheel of his wagon the old man

struggled to his feet hugging the blanket around his shoulders,

"You call me coward, Leroux. You say I am afraid. " He stopped and

struggled with his breathing, and when he went on his voice was a

croak. "I am seventy eight years old and you are the first man to ever

call me that if God is merciful you'll be the last." He stopped

again.

"Seventy-eight years. Seventy-eight! and you call me that!

Look, Leroux. Look well!" He let the blanket fall away and Jan Paulus

stiffened in the saddle as he saw the bloody mess of bandages that

swathed the old man's chest. "Tomorrow morning I will be with my

sons.

I wait for them now. Write on our grave, L@roux!

Write

"Cowards' on our grave!" And through the old lips burst a froth of

pink bubbles.

Now with red eyes Jan Paulus stared up at the mountain. The lines of

fatigue and shame and defeat were etched deep beside his nostrils and

around his mouth. When the mists cleared they would see the English on

the crest and with half his men he would go back. He touched the pony

with his spurs and started him up the slope.

The sun gilded the mountain mist, it swirled golden and began to

dissipate.

Faintly on the morning wind he heard the cheering and he frowned.

The English cheer too soon, he thought. Do they think we will not come

again? He urged his pony upward, but as it scrambled over loose rock

and scree he reeled drunkenly in the saddle and was forced to cling to

the pommel.

The volume of cheering mounted, and he peered uncomprehendingly at the

crest above him. The skyline was dotted with figures who danced and

waved their hats, and suddenly there were voices all around him.

"They've gone."

"The mountain is ours."

"We've won! Praise God, we've won. The English have gone. " Men

crowded about his pony, and dragged him from the saddle. He felt his

legs buckle under him, but rough hands were there to support him, and

half dragging, half carrying him, they bore him up towards the peak.

Jan Paulus sat upon a boulder and watched them harvest the rich crop of

battle. He could not sleep yet, not until this was done. He had

allowed the English stretcher-bearers to come up his mountain and they

were at work along the trench while his own burghers gleaned their dead

from along the crest.

Four of them approached Jan Paulus, each holding the domer of a gray

woollen blanket as though it were a hammock. They staggered under the

load, until they reached the neat line of corpses already laid out on

the grass.

"Who knows this man?" one of them called, but there was no reply from

the group of silent men who waited with Jan Paulus.

They lifted the body out of the blanket and laid it with the others.

One of the burghers who had carried him removed from his clutching,

dead fingers a wide Terai hat and placed it over his face.

Then he straightened and asked: "Who claims him?" Unless a friend or a

kinsman claimed the corpse it would be buried in a communal grave.

Jan Paulus stood up and walked across to stand over the body.

He lifted the hat and replaced it with the homburg from his own head.

"Ja. I claim him," he said heavily.

"Is he kin or friend, Oom Paul?"

"He is a friend."

"What is his name?"

"I do not know his name. He is just a friend.

Saul Friedman fidgeted impatiently. In his eagerness he had arrived

half an hour before visiting-time began and for this he was doing

penance in the bleak little waiting-room of Greys Hospital. He sat

forward on the straight-backed chair, twisted his helmet between his

fingers and stared at the large sign on the opposite wall.

"Gentlemen are requested Not to smoke."

He had asked Ruth to come with him, but she had pleaded a headache. In

a sneaking fashion Saul was glad. He knew that her presence would

inhibit his reunion with Sean Courtney. He didn't want polite

conversation about the weather and how was he feeling now, and he must

come round to dinner some evening. It would have been difficult not to

be able to swear if they wanted-it would have been even more difficult

in view of Ruths attitude.

Yesterday, the first day of his leave, he had spoken of Sean with

enthusiasm. How many times had she visited him? How was he? Did he

Did he limp badly? Didn't Ruth think he was a wonderful person? Twice

she replied and, well, no not badly, yes he was very nice. Just about

then Saul perceived the truth. Ruth did not like Sean. At first he

could hardly believe it. He tried to continue the conversation. But

each of her monosyllabic replies confirmed his first suspicion. Of

course, she had not said so, but it was so obvious. For some reason

she had taken a dislike to Sean which was close to loathing.

Now Saul sat and pondered the reason. He discounted the possibility

that Sean had offended her. If that were the case Sean would have

received as good as he gave and afterwards Ruth would have related the

whole tale with glee and relish.

No, Saul decided, it was something else. Like a swimmer about to dive

into icy water, Saul drew a metaphorical deep breath and plunged into

the uncharted sea of feminine thought processes. Was Sean's

masculinity so overpowering as to be offensive? Had his attention to

her been below average (Ruth was accustomed to extravagant reactions to

her beauty)? Could it be that. . . ? Or, on the other hand, did

Sean. . . ? Saul was floundering heavily when suddenly, as a

shipwrecked victim surfacing for the last time finds a tall ship close

alongside with lifeboats being lowered from every derrick, the solution

came to him.

Ruth was jealous!

Saul leaned back in the chair, astounded at the depth of his own

perception.

His lovely, hot-tempered wife was jealous of the friendship between

Sean and himself!

Chuckling tenderly, Saul laid plans to appease Ruth. He'd have to be

less fulsome in his praises of Sean. He must get them together and in

Sean's presence pay special attention to Ruth.

He must . . .

Then his thoughts ricocheted off in another direction and he began to

think about Ruth. As always when he thought too intensely about her,

he experienced a feeling of bemusement similar to what a poor man feels

on winning a large lottery.

He had met her at the Johannesburg Turf Club during the big Summer

Meeting, and he had fallen in love at a range of fifty paces, so that

when he was presented to her, his usually nimble tongue lay like a

lutrip of heavy metal in his mouth and he squirmed and was silent. The

friendly smile she bestowed upon him licked across his face like a blow

torch, heating it until he felt the skin would blister.

That night, alone in his lodging, he planned his campaign. To its

conduct he allocated the sum of five hundred guineas, which was exactly

half his savings. The following morning he began his intelligence

work, and a week later he had collected a massive volume of

information.

She was eighteen years old and was on a visit to relations in

Johannesburg, a visit scheduled to last a further six weeks. She came

from a rich Natal family of brewers and hotel-keepers, but she was an

orphan and a ward of her uncle. While in Johannesburg she rode every

day, visited the theatre or danced every night with an assortment of

escorts, except Fridays when she attended the Old Synagogue in Jeppe

Street.

His opening manceuvre was the hire of a horse and he waylaid her as she

rode out with her cousin. She did not remember him and would have

ridden on, but at last his tongue, which was sharpened by three years

of practice at the Johannesburg Bar, came to life. Within two minutes

she was laughing and an hour later she invited him back to tea with her

relatives.

The following evening he called for her in a splendid carriage and they

dined at Candy's Hotel and went on to the Ballet in company with a

party of Saul's friend.

Two nights later she went with him to the Bar Association Ball and

found that he was a superb dancer. Resplendent in brand-new evening

dress, with an ugly yet mobile and expressive face, an inch taller than

her five feet six, with wit and intelligence that had earned him a wide

circle of friends-he was the perfect foil for her own beauty. When he

returned her home Ruth had a thoughtful but dreamy look in her eye.

The following day she attended Court and listened to him successfully

defend a gentleman accused of assault with intent to do grievous bodily

harm. She was impressed by his display and decided that in time he

would reach the heights of his profession.

A week later Saul again proved his command of the spoken word in an

impassioned declaration of love. His suit was judged and found worthy,

and after that it was merely a case of informing the families and

sending out the invitations.

Now, at last, four year later they were to have their first child.

Saul grinned happily as he thought about it. Tomorrow he would begin

his attempt to discourage the adoption of the name Storm. " It would

be a difficult case to win, one worthy of his talents. In the

preceding four years Saul had learned that once Ruth set her small

white teeth into something she had a bulldog grip. A great deal of

finesse was needed to loosen that grip without invoking her wrath.

Saul had an awesome respect for his wife's wrath.

"It's four o'clock." The little blonde nurse poked her head around the

waiting-room door and smiled at him. "You may go in now.

You'll find him out on the veranda. " Saul's eagerness returned in

full flood and he had to restrain himself from bouncing too

boisterously down the veranda.

He recognized Sean's bulk, clad in uniform khaki, reclining elegantly

in a cane-backed chair and chatting to the men in the row of beds in

front of him. He came up behind the chair.

"Don't stand up, Sergeant. Just toss me a salute from where YOU are. "

"Saul! " Lugging himself out of the chair and pivoting easily on his

game leg, Sean gripped both Saul's shoulders in the old show of

affection. The pleasure that fired Sean's expression was genuine and

that was enough for Saul.

"Good to see you, you old bastard." He returned Sean's grip, grinning

happily. He did not notice how swiftly Sean's pleasure faded, and was

replaced by a shifty, nervous smile.

"Have a drink." They were the first words that came into Sean's mind.

He must have time to feel his way. Had Ruth said anything to Saul, had

he guessed?

"Water? " Saul grimaced.

"Gin," whispered Sean, guilt making him garrulous and he went on in a

clumsy attempt at humour. "Water carafe is full Of gin. For God's

sake don't tell Matron. I smuggle it in. Argue with the nurse

whenever she tries to change it-she says

"Water stale, must change!" I say,

"Like stale water, raised on stale water, stale water stroongly

indicated in all cases of leg injury!

"Give me stale water too," laughed Saul.

While he poured Sean introduced Saul to the gentleman in the next bed,

a Scotsman who agreed with them that stale water was a sovereign

therapeutic for shrapnel wound in the chest-a complaint from which he

was currently suffering. The three of them settled down to a course of

intensive treatment.

At Sean's prodding Saul embarked on a long account of the battle of

Spion Kop. He made it seem very funny. Then he went on to describe

the final break through at I-Dangwane, Buller's eventual relief of

Ladysmith, and his cautious pursuit of Leroux Is army which was now in

full retreat into the Transvaal.

They discussed Lord Roberts's offensive that had driven up from the

Cape, relieved Kimberley, swept on to take Bloemfontein and was now

poised for the final thrust up through the belly of the Transvaal to

Pretoria which was the heart.

"It will all be over in three months. " The Scotsman gave his

opinion.

"You think so?" Sean sneered at him a little, and succeeded in

provoking an argument whose flames were fed with gin.

As the level in the carafe fell the time for sober and serious

discussion passed and they became sentimental. Tenderly Saul inquired

after their injuries.

The Scotsman was being shipped home across the sea, and at the thought

of parting they became sad.

Sean was returning the following day to Ladyburg for convalescent

leave. At the end of which, if the doctors were satisfied that the

pieces of shrapnel in his leg were satisfactorily encysted (two words

which Sean had difficulty enunciating) he would be returned to duty.

The word "duty" aroused their patriotism and Sean and Saul with arms

around each other's shoulders swore a mighty oath that together,

comrades in arms, brothers in blood, they would see this war out.

Never counting the cost in hardship and danger, together they would

ride against the foe.

Suitable music was needed for their mood, and the Scotsman gave them

"The Wild Colonial Boy. " His eyes were moist and his voice quavered

with emotion.

Deeply touching, but not entirely appropriate to the occasion, Sean and

Saul did

"Hearts of Oak" as a duet, then all three launched into a lively

rendition of

"Are you awake, Johnny Cope?"

The Matron arrived in the middle of the third chorus, by which time

Johnny Cope and anybody else within a hundred yards could not possibly

have been sleeping.

"Gentlemen, visiting hour ended at five o'clock." She was a fearsome

woman with a voice like a cavalry charge, but Saul who had pleaded

before hanging judges rose undaunted to the defence.

"Madam." He opened his address with a bow. "These men may, let me

speak with truth-these heroes have made great sacrifice in the name of

freedom. Their blood has flowed like gin in defence of that glorious

ideal-Freedom! All I ask is that a little of that precious stuff be

granted unto them. Madam. In the name of honour, of fairness, and of

gratitude I appeal to you." He ended with one fist clenched above his

heart and his head tragically bowed.

"Hoots, mon!

"Oh good! Very good!

The two heroes burst into spontaneous and heartwarming applause, but

over the Matron's features descended a frosty veil of suspicion.

She elevated her nose a little and sniffed.

"You're drunk!" she accused grimly.

"Oh, foul libel! Oh, monstrous untruth." Saul backed hurriedly out of

range.

"All right, Sergeant." She turned grimly on Sean. "Where is it?

"What Sean was all helpless innocence.

"The bottle! " She lifted the bedclothes and began her search.

Saul picked up his helmet, saluted them behind her back and tiptoed

down the veranda.

Sean's leave in Ladyburg passed quickly, much too quickly.

MbeJane had disappeared on a mysterious errand into Zululand.

Sean guessed that it related to the two wives and their offspring that

Mbejane had cheerfully sent to the kraals of their parents when Sean

had left Ladyburg so many years before.

Dirk was incarcerated each morning in the schoolhouse, and so Sean was

free to roam alone upon the hills and over the veld that surrounded the

town. Most of his time he spent coveting the huge derelict ranch

called Lion Kop which spread above the escarpment.

After it month he knew the course of every strcani and each fold and

slope of the land. His leg strengthened with the exercise. It no

longer pained him and the scar lost its purple shine and dulled down to

a closer match with his skin colour.

But as his strength returned and flesh filled out his shoulders and

padded the gaunt bones of his face, so restlessness came back to him.

His daily pilgrimage to Lion Kop Ranch became an obsession. He

wandered through the bare rooms of the old homestead and saw them as

they could be with the thatched roof replaced to keep out the rain and

the flaking plaster renewed and freshly painted. He stood before the

empty, smoke-blackened fireplace and imagined the glow and the warmth

it could give. Stamping across the dusty floors he judged the

yellow-wood planking as sound as the massive beams that supported the

roof. Then he wandered out across the land, stooping now and then to

take up a handful of earth and feel its rich loamy texture.

In the May of 1900 he went to the Deeds Registry at the Magistrate's

office and surreptitiously inspected the title. He found that the

fifteen thousand acres of Lion Kop Ranch had been purchased from the

estate of the late Stephanus Johannes Erasmus by the Ladyburg Banking &

Trust Co Ltd. Transfer had been signed by Ronald Pye, Esq in his

capacity as Chairman of the Bank. Sean grinned. Ronny Pye was his

most cherished childhood enemy. This could be very amusing.

Sean settled himself in the deep, soft nest of polished leather formed

by the armchair and glanced curiously around the panelled office.

"A few changes since you were last here. Hey, Sean? " Ronny Pye

interpreted his thoughts accurately.

"A few. " The Ladyburg Banking & Trust Co was doing very prettily,

judging by the furnishings. Some of its prosperity showed on the

figure of its Chairman. Plenty of flesh under the solid gold

watch-chain, dark but expensive jacket to offset the extravagant

waistcoat, fifteen-guinea handmade boots. Very nice until you looked

at the face; pale so that the freckles showed like irregular gold

coins, greedy eyes, ears like the handles of a shaving-mug-that much

hadn't changed. But although Ronny was Just two years Sean's senior,

there was plenty of grey in his ginger sideburns and little wrinkles of

worry around his eyes.

"Been out to Theuniskraal to visit your sister-in-law yet?"

There was a sly expression in Ronny's face as he asked.

"No.

of course you wouldn't," Ronny nodded understandingly and managed to

convey that the scandal, though old, was by no means dead.

Sean felt a repugnance that made him shift in his chair. The little

ginger moustache heightened Ronny's resemblance to a bush rat.

Now Sean wanted to end the business and get out into the fresh air

again.

"Listen, Ronny. I've searched title on Lion Kop. You own it," he

began abruptly.

"Lion Kop? " The previous morning the clerk from the Registry had

hurried down to Mr. Pye with the news that earned him a sovereign.

There had been many others calling with the news that Sean had visited

the ranch every day for a month. But now Ronny had to search his

memory to place the name. "Lion Kop? Ah, yes! The old Erasmus

place.

Yes, I do believe we picked it up from the estate. Paid too much for

it, I'm afraid. " Here he sighed with resignation. "But we can hold

on to it for another ten years or so and get our money back. No hurry

to sell.

"I want it. " Sean cut short the preliminaries and Ronny laughed

easily.

"You're in good company. Half the farmers in Natal want it but not

enough to meet our price.

"How much?

The established price of grazing land in the Ladyburg area was one

shilling and sixpence an acre. minutes before Ronny had set himself to

ask two shillings. But now he was looking into Sean's eyes and

remembering a fist crushing his nose and the taste of his own blood.

He heard again Sean's arrogant laughter rejecting his overtures of

friendship. No, he thought with hatred. No, you big cocky bastard,

now you pay for those.

"Three shillings," he said.

Sean nodded thoughtfully. He understood. Then suddenly he grinned.

"My God, Ronny, I heard you were a pretty sharp business man.

But I must have heard wrong. If you paid three shillings for Lion Kop

they really caught you with your skirts up. " And Ronny flushed.

Sean had probed deep into his pride.

"I paid nine-pence, " he snapped. "I'm selling for three shillings.

"Make out the deed of sale for 2,250. pounds. I'll take it.

Damn it! Damn it to hell! Ronny swore silently. He would have paid

five.

"That's for the land only. An extra 1,000 pounds for the

improvements.

"Anything else?" Sean enquired.

"No. " Sean calculated quickly, with transfer tax he could meet the

price with a few hundred spare.

"I'll still take it. " Ronny stared at him while his brain wriggled

like a snake. I didn't realize he wanted it that badly-I could have

had his soul.

"Of course, my Board will have to approve the sale. It depends on them

really. " Ronny's Board of Directors consisted of himself, his little

sister Audrey, and her husband Dennis Petersen. Ronny held eighty per

cent of the shares, and Sean knew this. He had examined the Company's

Articles that were lodged with the Registrar.

"Listen to me, dear friend of my youth. " Sean leaned forward across

the stinkwood desk and picked up a heavy silver cigar-box. "You made

an offer. I accepted it. I'll be here at four o'clock this afternoon

with the money. Please have the documents ready. " Sean lifted the

cigar-box in one fist and started to squeeze. The muscles in his

forearm writhed like mating pythons and the box crumpled and burst open

at the seams. Sean placed the distorted lump of metal on the blotter

in front of Ronny.

"Don't misunderstand me, Sean. " Ronny grinned nervously and dragged

his eyes away from the box. "I'm certain I'll be able to convince my

Board.

The following day was a Saturday. No school for Dirk. and Sean took

him along on the daily ride out to the ranch. Almost beside himself

with joy at being alone with his god, Dirkie raced his pony ahead and

then circled at full gallop to fall in beside Sean once more.

Laughing with excitement, chattering ecstatically for a while, then he

could no longer contain his high spirits and he galloped ahead.

Before Sean reached the cross-roads below the escarpment he met a small

caravan of travellers coming in the opposite direction.

Sean greeted the leader solemnly. "I see you, Mbejane."

Mbejane had the jaded and slightly sheepish look of a tomcat returning

from a busy night out. "I see you also, Nkosi.There was a long,

embarrassed silence while Mbejane took a pinch of snuff and stared

fixedly at the sky above Sean's head.

Sean was studying MbeJane's travelling companions. There were two in

their middle age, which is about thirty-five years old for a Zulu

woman. Both of them wore the tall head-dress of clay which denotes

matron hood Though they retained the proud, erect carriage, their

breasts were pendulous and empty and the skin of their bellies above

the brief aprons was wrinkled with the marks of child-bearing. There

were also two girls just beyond puberty, moon-faced skins glowing with

youth, straight and well-muscled, buttocks like ripe melons and firm,

round breasts. They hung their heads and giggled shyly.

"Perhaps it will rain tonight," MbeJane remarked.

"Perhaps. " "It will be good for the grazing," Mbejane ploughed on

doggedly.

"Who the hell are these women?" Sean could contain his curiosity no

longer and Mbejane frowned at his breach of etiquette. Observations on

the weather and the grazing should have continued another five

minutes.

"Nkosi, these two are my wives." He gestured at the matrons.

"The other two your daughters?"

"No." Mbejane paused, then went on gravely: "It is not fitting that a

man of my years should have but two women who are old for work and the

bearing of children. I have purchased two younger wives."

"I see," said Sean, and kept the grin off his face. Mbejane had

invested a large percentage of his capital. "And what do YOU propose

doing with all your wives, you know we must soon return again to

fight?"

"When the time comes they will go to the kraals of their fathers and

wait for me there. " Mbejane hesitated delicately. "I bring them with

me until I am certain that I have trodden on the moon of each of them.

" Treading on a woman's moon was the Zulu expression for interrupting

her menstrual cycle. Mbejane was making sure his investment bore

interest.

"There is a farm upon the hills up there." Sean seemed to be changing

the subject.

"Many times, Nkosi, you and I have spoken of it. " But Mbejane

understood and there was an anticipatory gleam in his eyes.

"It is a good farm? " Sean held him a little longer in suspense.

"It is truly an excellent and beautiful farm. The water is sweeter

than the juice of the sugar-cane, the earth is richer than the flesh of

a young ox, the grass upon it as thick and as full of promise as the

hair on a woman's pudendum. " Now Mbejane's eyes were shining with

happiness. In his book a farm was a place where a man sat in the sun

with a pot of millet beer beside him and listened to his wives singing

in the fields. It meant cattle, the only true wealth, and many small

sons to herd them.

It meant the end of a long weary road.

"Take your wives with you and select the place where you wish to build

your kraal. " "Nkosi. " There is no Zulu equivalent of thank you. He

could say I praise you, but that was not what Mbejane felt.

At last he found the word. "Bayete! Nkosi, Bayete! " The salute to a

King.

Dirk's pony was tethered to the hitching-post in front of the

homestead. Using a charred stick Dirk was writing his name in crude

capitals on the wall of the front veranda.

Although the entire house would be replastered and painted Sean found

himself quivering with anger. He jumped from his horse roaring and

brandishing his sjambok and Dirk disappeared round the corner of the

house. By the time Sean had regained self-control and was sitting on

the veranda wall revelling in the pride of ownership, Mbejane

arrived.

They chatted a while and then Mbejane led his women away. Sean could

trust him to build the beehive huts of his kraal on the richest earth

of Lion Kop.

The last girl in the line was Mbejane's youngest and prettiest wife.

Balancing the large bundle on her head, her back straight, her buttocks

bare except for the strip of cloth that covered the cleft, she walked

away with such unconsciously regal grace that Sean was instantly and

forcibly reminded of Ruth.

His elation subsided. He stood up and walked away from the old

building. Without Ruth in it, this house would not be a home.

He sat alone on the slope of the hills. Again he was reminded of Ruth.

This place was so much like their secret glade. Except, of course,

there were no wattle trees here.

"Wattle!" exclaimed Ronny Pye and glared at his sister and his

brother-in-law. "He's planting wattle."

"What for? " Dennis Petersen asked.

"For the bark, man. The bark! There's a fortune in it. Twenty pounds

a ton!"

"What do they use it for?"

"The extract, is used in tanning leather."

"If it's so good why haven't other people-" Dennis began, but Ronny

brushed him aside impatiently.

"I've gone into it thoroughly. Lion Kop is ideal wattle ground, high

and misty. The only other really good ground in the district is

Mahobo's Kloof Ranch and Theuniskraal. Thank God you own Mahobo's

Kloofl Because that's where we're going to plant our own wattle. He

looked at Dennis but without seeing him as he went on. "I've spoken to

Jackson at Natal Wattle Company. He'll sell us the saplings on the

same terms as he's supplying that bastard Courtney, and he'll buy our

bark-every scrap of it at a guaranteed twenty pounds a ton. I've hired

two men to supervise the planting. Labour will be our big problem,

Sean has grabbed every native within twenty miles. He's got an army of

them up there." Suddenly Ronny stopped. He had seen the expression on

Dennis's face. "What's wrong with you?"

"Mahobo's lGoof!" Dennis moaned. "Oh God! Oh my God.

"What do you mean?"

"He came to see me last week. Sean ... He wanted an option to

purchase. A five years" option. " "You didn't give it to him!" Ronny

screamed.

"He offered three shillings an acre-that's six times as much as I paid

for it. How could I refuse. " "You fool! You blathering bloody

idiot! In five years that land will be worth . Ronny gulped,

"It will be worth at least ten pounds! " "But nobody told me! "

Dennis wailed the age-old cry of the might-have-been, the lament of

those that never quite succeed,

"Nobody told Sean either." Audrey spoke softly for the first time and

there was that in her voice that made Ronny turn &avagely on his

handsome sister.

"All right-we all know about you and Sean. But he didn't stay around

long enough for you to get your hooks into him, did he?" Ronny stopped

himself and glanced guiltily at Dennis. It was years before Audrey had

abandoned all hope of Sean's return to Ladyburg and succumbed to

Dennis's gentle but persistent courtship. Now Dennis coughed awkwardly

and looked at his hands on the desk in front of him.

"Well, anyway," he murmured,

"Sean's got it and there's nothing we can do about it. "To hell! "

Ronny pulled a notebook towards him and opened it. "This is how I see

it. He's borrowed that ten thousand from his mother-you know the money

we tried to get her to invest in the Burley deal. " They all

remembered the Burley deal and looked a little ashamed. Ronny hurried

on. "And he's borrowed another five thousand from Natal Wattle-Jackson

let it slip out. " Ronny went on with his calculations. When he

finished he was smiling again. "Mr. Sean Courtney is stretched about

as thin as he can get without breaking.

Just one slip, one little slip and-Pow! " He made a chopping motion

with his open hand. "We can wait!

He selected a cigar from the leather box which had replaced the silver

one and lit it before he spoke again. "By the way did you know he

hasn't been discharged from the army yet? The way the war is going

they certainly need good fighting men.

That leg of his looks all right to me. Perhaps a word in the right

ear-a little pressure somewhere." Ronny was positively grinning now.

His cigar tasted delicious.

The doctors at Greys Hospital had given Sean his final examination a

week before Christmas. They had judged his disability as roughly one

per cent, a slight limp when he was physically fired. This

disqualified him from war wound pension and had made him available for

immediate return to duty.

A week after New Year's Day of 1901 the first letter from the army

arrived. He was to report immediately to the Officer Commanding the

Natal Mounted Rifles-the regiment which had " now swallowed up the old

Natal Corps of Guides.

The war in South Africa had entered a new phase. Throughout the

Transvaal and Orange Free State the Boers had begun a campaign of

guerilla warfare alarming in its magnitude. The war was far from over

and Sean's presence was urgently required to swell the army of a

quarter of a million British troops already in the field.

He had written begging for an extension of his leave, and had received

in reply a threat to treat him as a deserter if he wasn't in

Johannesburg by February first.

The last two weeks had been filled with frantic activity. He had

managed to finish the planting of ten thousand acres of wattle begun

the previous May. He had arranged a further large loan from Natal

Wattle to pay for the tending of his trees. The repairs and renovation

of the Homestead on Lion Kop were completed and Ada had moved from the

cottage in Protea Street to act as caretaker and manager of the estate

during his absence Now, as he rode alone over his land in a gesture of

farewell, he had an opportimity to think of other things. The main one

of these was his daughter. His first and only daughter. She was two

months old now. Her name was Storm and he had never seen her. Saul

Friedman had written a long, joyous letter from the front where Sean

was soon to join him. Sean had sent hearty congratulations and then

tried once again to contact Ruth. He had written her without result

and, finally, had abandoned his work on Lion Kop and gone up to

Pietermaritzburg. Four days he waited, calling morning and afternoon

at the Goldberg mansion-and each time Ruth was either out or

indisposed. He had left a bitter little note for her and gone home.

Deep in gloom he rode through his plantations. Great blocks of young

trees, row upon endless row, covered the hills of Lion Kop. The older

wattle planted ten months before had started to come away.

Already it was waist high with fluffy green tops. It was an

achievement of almost superhuman proportion, ten months of ceaseless

gruelling labour by two thousand native labourers. Now it was done.

He had retained a gang of fifty Zulus, who would work under Ada's

supervision, clearing the undergrowth between the rows and guarding

against fire. That was all there was to it; four years of waiting

until the trees reached maturity and were ready for stripping.

But now he was so completely absorbed in thought that he passed over

the boundary of Lion Kop without noticing, and rode on along the foot

of the escarpment. He crossed the road and the railway line.

From ahead the murmur of the White Falls blended with the wind whisper

in the grass, and he glimpsed the flash of water cascading down from

the high rock in the sunshine. The acacia trees were in bloom, covered

with the golden mist of their flowers above, gloomy with shadows

beneath.

He crossed the river below the pool of the falls. The escarpment rose

steeply above him, striped with dark dense bush in the gulleys, a

thousand feet high so it blocked out the sunlight.

The pool was a place of fern and green moss, and the rocks were black

and slippery with the spray. A cold place, out of the sun-and the

water roared as it fell in a white, moving veil like smoke.

Sean shivered and rode on, ambling up the slope of the escarpment.

Then he knew that instinct had directed him. In his distress he had

come back to the first home he had ever known.

This was Courtney land beneath his feet, and spreading down and out

towards the Tugela. The nostalgia came upon him more strongly as he

climbed, until at last he reached the rim and stood looking down upon

the whole of Theuniskraal.

He picked out the landmarks below him; the homestead with the stables

and the servants" quarters behind it; the paddocks with the horses

grazing heads down and tails swinging; the dip tanks among the

trees-and each of them had some special memory attached to it.

Sean dismounted and sat down in the grass. He lit a cheroot, while his

mind went back and picked over the scrap-heap of the past.

An hour, and then another, passed before he came back to the present,

pulled his watch from the front pocket of his waistcoat and checked the

time.

"After one!" he exclaimed, and stood to dust the seat of his pants

and. settle his hat on to his head before beginning the descent of the

escarpment. Instead of crossing the river at the pool, he stayed on

Theuniskraal and keeping to higher ground aimed to intersect the mad on

this side of the bridge. Occasionally he found cattle feeding together

in herds of less than a dozen; they were all in condition, fat on the

new grass, for the land was not carrying nearly its full capacity. As

he passed they lifted their heads and watched him with vacant, bovine

expressions of un surprise

forest thickened, then abruptly ended and before him lay one of the

small swampy depressions that bellied out from the river. From his

look-out on the escarpment this area had been screened by trees, so now

for the first time Sean noticed the saddled horse tethered on the far

edge of the swamp. Quickly Sean searched for its rider, and found him

in the swamp-only his head visible above the bright poisonous green

field of papyrus grass. The man's head disappeared again and there was

a commotion in the grass; a wild thrashing and the sudden panic ridden

bellow of a beast.

Sean worked his way quickly round the edge of the swamp until he

reached the horse. The head and shoulders of the man in the swamp

reappeared and Sean could see that he was splattered with mud.

"What's the trouble?" Sean shouted, and the head turned towards him.

"There's a beast bogged down here.

"Hold on, I'll give you a hand." Sean stripped his jacket, waistcoat

and shirt and hung them with his hat on a branch before going in.

Ploughing knee-deep through ooze that bubbled and belched gas as he

disturbed it, using both arms to part the coarse tangle of reeds and

marsh grass, Sean finally reached them.

The beast was an old black cow; her hindquarters completely submerged

in a mudhole and her front legs twisted helplessly under her chest.

"She's just about finished," said the man. Sean looked at him and saw

he was not a man but a youth. Tall for his age, but lightly built.

Dark hair, cropped short and the big nose to show he was a Courtney.

with an unnatural tightness in his gut and a shortening of his Sean

knew that he was looking at his son.

breath,

"Don't just stand there," snapped the boy. He was covered from the

chest down in a glistening evil-smelling coat of mud, sweat pouring

down his face and dissolving the spots of mud on his forehead and

cheeks, breathing heavily through open Mouth, crouching over the animal

to hold its head above the surface.

"Have to roll her," said Sean. "Keep her head, up. " He waded to the

hindquarters and the mud bubbled greasily up around his waist. He

thrust his arms down through it-groping for the trapped legs.

Scans hands could only just encompass the thick bone and sinew of the

hock. He settled his grip and leaned back against it, straining

upwards, gradually bringing the fulll strength of his body into the

pull until he knew that something in his belly was on the point of

tearing. He held like that, his whole face contorted, mouth wide open

so that his breathing rattled hoarsely up his throat, the great muscles

of his chest and arms locked in an iron convulsion.

A minute, two minutes, he held the stance while the boy watched him

with a mingled expression of alarm and wonder.

Then suddenly there was a squelching popping escape of swamp gas around

Sean's chest, and the beast began to move. Slowly at first,

reluctantly up through the ooze showed the swell of its rump-then

faster, as the mud lost its hold, until, with a final belch and sigh,

it yielded and Sean came to his feet holding the legs above the

surface-the cow lying exhausted on her side.

"Hell's teeth!" breathed the boy in open admiration. For a moment the

beast lay quiescent, then realizing that its legs were free, it began

to struggle, thrashing wildly to regain them.

"Hold the head," shouted Sean, and blundered sideways until he could

grab its tail and prevent it from attempting to stand.

When the animal was quiet again he began to drag it, moving backwards,

towards the firm ground. Like a bob sleigh the carcass slid easily

over the carpet of mud and flattened reeds until it grounded.

Then Sean jumped clear while she struggled up, stood a moment and then

lumbered unsteadily away into the trees.

Sean and his son stood together, gasping, covered with filth, still

ankle-deep in mud, watching the cow disappear.

"Thanks. I'd never have done it on my own, sir." The form of address

and the boy's tone touched something deep in Sean.

"It needed two of us," he agreed. "What's your name?"

"Courtney, sir. Michael Courtney." He held out his hand towards

Sean.

"Nice to meet you, Mike." Sean took the hand.

"I know you, don't I, sir? I am sure I've seen you before-it's been

worrying me."

"I don't think so." With an effort Sean kept his feelings from showing

in his voice and face.

"I'd ... I'd count it an honour to know your name." As Michael spoke a

shyness came upon them both.

What can I tell him? thought Sean. For I must not he-and yet I cannot

tell him the truth.

"My God, what a bloody mess," he laughed instead. "We stink like we've

been dead ten days.

Michael seemed to notice their condition for the first time.

"Ma will have a hernia when she sees me," he laughed also, then, "Come

up to the house. It's not far from here. Have lunch with us and you

can clean up-the servants will wash your clothes for YOU.

"No. Sean shook his head. "I must get back to Ladyburg.

"Please. I'd like you to meet my mother. My father's not here-he's at

the war. But, please come home with me.

He really wants me to. As Sean looked into his son's eyes the warm

feeling that he had been struggling to suppress flooded up from his

chest and he felt his face flush with the pleasure of it.

"Mike," he spoke slowly, groping for the right words.

"Things are a bit difficult right now. I can't take you up on the

invitation. But I'd like to see you again and I'll be through this way

one day. Shall we leave it until then? " "Oh! " Michael made no

attempt to hide his disappointment.

"Anyway, I'll ride with you as far as the bridge."

"Good. " Sean picked up his shirt and wiped off the surplus mud, while

Michael unhitched their horses.

They rode slowly, in silence at first with the shyness Still] on them.

Then they started to talk, and quickly the barriers between them

crumbled. With a feeling of pride that was ridiculous in the

circumstances, Sean became aware of the quickness of Michael's brain,

the ease of expression unusual in one so young, and the maturity of his

views.

They spoke of Theuniskraal.

"It's a good farm." There was pride in Michael's voice. "My family

has owned it since 1867. " "You're not running much stock,"

Sean grunted.

"Pa has had a run of bad luck. The rinderpest hit us but we'll build

it up again-you wait and see. " He was silent a moment, then, "Pa's

not really a cattleman, instead of putting money into stock he spends

it on horses-like Beauty here. " He patted the neck of his magnificent

golden mare. "I've tried to argue with him, but-" Then he realized

that he was steering close to the lee shore of disloyalty, and he

checked himself then went on hurriedly: "Don't misunderstand me, my

father is an unusual man. Right now he's on the army staff-a colonel,

and one of General Buller's right-hand men. He is a holder of the

Victoria Cross for bravery, and he has been awarded the D.S.O. for the

job he is doing now.

Yes, thought Sean, I have defended Garry also; many times, as often as

you will by the time you reach my age. In understanding he changed the

direction of the conversation.

They spoke of the future: "So you want to be a farmer, then?"

"I love this place. I was born here. To me it is not just a piece of

land and a house. It is part of a tradition to which I belong built by

men of whom I am proud. After Pa, I will be the only one left to

continue it. I won't fail that trust. But .

They had reached the rise above the road, and Michael stopped and

looked at Sean as though trying to make up his mind how much he should

tell this stranger.

"But?" Sean prompted him gently. For a moment longer Michael stared

at him, trying to account for his certainty in this man-for the

conviction he had that he could trust him beyond all other men on

earth. He felt that he had known him all his life, and between them

was something so strong-so good and strong as to be almost tangible.

"But," he jerked himself back to their conversation, "that is not all.

I want something beyond just land and cattle. It's so difficult to

explain. My grandfather was a big man; he worked with people as well

as animals. He had ... you do understand me, don't you?

"I drink so," Sean nodded. "You feel you'd like to make a place for

yourself in the scheme of things. " "Yes, that's it. I'd like to make

decisions other than when to cull and when to brand, or where to build

a new dip-tank.

"What are you going to do about it then? " "Well, I'm at Cape Town

University. This is my third year, I'll have my degree by Christmas.

"Then what?

"I don't know, but I'll find something. " Then Michael smiled.

"There's a lot to learn first. Sometimes when I realize how much it

frightens me a little. " They walked their horses down towards the

road, so completely absorbed in each other that neither of them noticed

the buggy coming towards them from the direction of Ladyburg; until it

was almost on them, Then Michael glanced up. "Hey! Here comes my

mother.

Now you can meet her.

With a sense of dread numbing him, Sean realized he was trapped.

There was no escape-the buggy was less than fifty yards away, and he

could see Anna sitting up behind the coloured driver staring at them.

Michael shouted,

"Hello, Ma!" "Michael! Whatever have you been doing? Look at you!"

There was a shrewishness in her voice now. The years had treated Anna

in the manner she deserved, had sharpened her features and exaggerated

the catlike set of her eyes. She turned those eyes on Sean and she

frowned. The frown cut deep grooves in her forehead and showed the

heavy lines of flesh beneath her chin.

"Who's that with you?" she asked Michael.

"A friend. He helped me free a bogged animal. You should have seen

him, Ma. He lifted it clean out of the mud."

Sean saw that she was expensively dressed, ostentatiously so for a

farmer's wife on a working day. Velvet and ostrich feathers-those

pearls must have cost Garry a small fortune. The rig was new, polished

black lacquer picked out with scarlet, and brass fittings-another few

hundred pounds" worth. Sean ran his eyes over the horses, matched

bays, blood stock-Jesus! be thollo.

Anna was still frowning at him, recognition and doubt mixed in her

expression. She was starting to flush, her lips trembling.

"Hello, Anna."

"Sean!" She spat the word.

"It's been a long time. How are you?"

Her eyes slanted venomously. She hardly moved her lips as she snapped

at Michael,

"Get away from that man!"

"But . . . " The bewildered look on Michael's face hurt Sean like a

spear thrust.

"Do as your mother says, Michael," Sean told him.

"Are you ... are you my Uncle Sean?

"Yes."

"Get away from him, " shrilled Anna. "Don't you ever speak to him

again. Do you hear me, Michael? He's evil-evil! Don't ever let him

near you. He'll destroy you. " Anna was panting, shaking with rage

and hatred, babbling like a mad-woman. "Get off our land, Sean

Courtney. Get off Theuniskraal and don't come on again."

"Very well, Anna. I'm going."

"Michael. Get on your horse!" she screamed at him. I

"Hurry.

Come away from him."

Michael swung up into the saddle.

"Drive on. Drive quickly," she ordered the coloured coachman. At the

touch of the whip the big bays jumped forward and Anna was thrown back

against the padded seat. "Come on, Michael. Come home immediately."

Michael looked across at Sean. He was bewildered, uncertain. "I don't

... I don't believe that you .

"We'll talk again some other time, Mike.

And suddenly Michael's expression changed, the corners of his mouth

drooped and his eyes were dark with regret at having found, and lost,

so soon.

"No," he said, lifted his hand in a gesture of farewell, and wheeled

his horse. Crouched forward on its neck he drove in savage pursuit of

the buggy.

"Michael," Sean called after him, but he did not seem to hear.

And so Sean went back to war. The farewell was an ordeal. Ada was so

brave about it that Sean wanted to shake her and shout,

"Cry, damn you! Get it over with! " Dirk threw one of his more

spectacular fits. He clung to Sean and yelled until he almost

suffocated himself.

By the time the train pulled out Sean was in a towering rage that

lasted until they reached Pietermaritzburg four hours later.

He took his anger into the saloon on the station and sedated it with

half a dozen brandies. Then, with Mbejane carrying his luggage, he

worked his way through the crowd on the platform, searching for an

empty compartment on the northbound express. As traffic was on

military permit only, his fellow travellers were exclusively clad in

khaki. A vast, drab throng speckled with gay spots of colour, women

who were sending men to war and not very happy about it. The sound of

weeping blended with the roar of loud voices, men's laughter and the

occasional squeal of a child. Suddenly, above it all Sean heard his

name called. He peered about and saw an arm waving frantically above

the heads of the crowd.

"Sean! Hey, Sean!" Saul's head bobbed into view and then disappeared

as he hopped up and down. Sean fought his way through to him and they

shook hands delightedly.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Saul demanded.

"Heading back to duty-and you? "A week's leave just ended.

Came down to see the baby. My God, what luck I spotted you!"

"Is Ruth here?" Sean could not contain the question.

"She's waiting in the carriage outside.

"I'd like to have a look at this infant.

"Of course. Let's find a couple of seats first and dump our luggage,

then we've got twenty minutes before the train leaves.

Sean saw her as they came out on to the front steps of the station

building. She sat in an open carriage while a coloured coach boy held

a parasol over her. She was dressed in dove-grey with big

leg-o'-mutton sleeves slashed with pink and a huge hat Piled with pink

roses. Her face was in profile as she leaned forward over the bundle

of white lace on her lap. Sean felt the leap in his chest as he looked

at the calm lines of her face. He stopped and whispered,

"My God, she's lovely,"

and beside him Saul laughed with pleasure.

"Wait until you meet my daughter!

She did not see them approach the carriage, she was too intent on her

child.

"Ruth, I've a surprise for you, " bubbled Saul. She looked up and Sean

was watching her. She went rigid with shock, staring at him while all

colour drained away from her face.

"Hello, Ruth. She did not reply immediately. Sean saw her mask her

face with a pale impassivity.

"Hello, Sean. You startled me."

Saul had missed the interplay of their emotions. He was climbing up

into the carriage beside her.

"Come, have a look." Now he was opening the lace shawl, leaning over

the infant, his face alight with pride.

Silently Sean climbed up into the carriage and sat opposite them.

"Let Sean hold her, Ruth." Saul laughed. "Let him get a good look at

the loveliest girl in the world." And he did not notice the way in

which Ruth froze again and hugged the child to her protectively.

"Take her, Sean. I promise she'll not wet you too badly, though she

might sick up a little, " Saul went on happily.

Sean held out his hands for the infant, watching Ruth's face.

It was defiant, but afraid.

" The colour of her eyes seemed to change a darker bluer grey. The

hard lines around her mouth dissolved and her lips quivered pink and

moist. She leaned forward and placed her daughter in his arms.

It was a long, slow journey up to Johannesburg-a journey broken by

interminable halts. At every siding there was a delay, sometimes of

half an hour but usually of three times that length.

Occasionally, without apparent reason, they groaned to a stop in the

middle of the veld.

"What the hell is the trouble now?"

"Somebody shoot the driver."

"Not again!

Protest and comment were shouted by the angry heads that protruded from

the windows of every coach. And when the guard trotted up along the

gravel led embanlunent towards the front of the train, he was followed

by a chorus of catcalls and hooting.

"Please be patient, gentlemen. We have to check the culverts and

bridges.

"The -war's over.

"What are you worried about?"

"The jolly old Boer is running so hard he hasn't got time to worry

about bridges.

Men climbed down beside the tracks, and stood in small impatient groups

until the whistle blew and they scrambled aboard as the train jolted

and began crawling forward again.

Sean and Saul sat together in a corner of a crowded compartment and

played Klabrias. Because the majority regarded the cold clean high

veld air with the same horror as if it had been a deadly cyanide gas,

the windows were tightly closed. "he compartment was blue with

pipe-smoke and fetid with the smell of a dozen unwashed bodies. The

conversation was inevitable.

Confine a number of men in a small space and they'll get round to it in

under ten minutes.

This company had a vast experience in matters pornographic.

A sergeant had served three years in Bangkok, but it took him two hours

to convince his companions that what rumour placed horizontally,

nature, in fact, had maintained at the vertical. He carried his point

only after an expedition down the corridor from which he returned with

another old China hand. This expert produced photographic evidence

which was studied minutely and deemed conclusive.

It served also to remind a corporal who had done a tour of duty in

India of his visit to the Temple of Konarak. A subject which was good

for another hour and paved the way for a smooth entry into a discussion

of the famous Elephant House in Shanghai.

They kept it up from noon until nightfall.

In the meantime, Saul had lost interest in the cards and taken a book

from his bag and started reading. Sean was bored. He cleaned his

rifle. Then he picked his teeth with a match and stared out of the

window at the small herds of springbok that grazed along the line of

rail. He listened to a detailed account of the pleasures provided by

the proprietress of the Elephant House, and decided to give it a wide

berth if he ever visited Shanghai.

"What am you reading?" he demanded of Saul at last.

"Huh?" Saul looked up vaguely and Sean repeated the question.

"The Westminster system of Government. " Saul held the book so that

Sean could see the title.

"Jesus!" grunted Sean. "What do you read that stuff for?

"I am interested in politics," Saul explained defensively and returned

to reading.

Sean watched him for a while then,

"Have you got any other books with you?"

Saul opened his bag again. "Try this."

"The Wealth of Nations " Sean handled the book dubiously.

"What's it about?" But Saul was reading again.

Sean opened the heavy volume and glanced idly at the first page.

He sighed with resignation for it was a long time since he had read

anything but a letter or a bank statement-then his eyes started moving

back and forth across the page like the shuttle of a loom.

Without knowing it, they were weaving the first threads into a fabric

that would cover a part of his soul which until now had been naked.

After an hour Saul looked across. "What do you make of it?

he asked.

Sean grunted without looking up. He was completely absorbed.

This was important. The language of Adam Smith had a certain majestic

clarity. With some of his conclusions Sean did not agree but the

reasoning evoked a train of thought in Sean's own brain, stimulating it

to race ahead and anticipate sometimes correctly, but often reaching a

point wide of where the author was aimed.

He read quickly, knowing that he would go back and read it all again

for this was only a scouting party into the unknown territory of

economics. With his eyes still fixed on the pages, he groped in the

pockets of his tunic, found a stub of pencil and underlined a passage

to which he wanted to return. Then he left it and went on. Now he

used the pencil frequently.

"No!" he wrote in the margin at one place.

" Good," at another.

Saul looked up again and frowned as he realized Sean was defacing the

book. Then he noticed Sean's expression, saw its scowling

concentration and his own face relaxed. He watched Sean from under

lowered eyelashes. His feeling for this man of muscle and moods and

unexpectedly soft places had passed affection and now reached the

borders of adulation. He did not know why Sean had placed protecting

wings above him." nor did he care. But it was good to sit quietly, no

longer reading, and watch the face of this big man who was more than

just a friend.

Alone in the midst of a multitude they sat together. The train snaked

northwards across the grassland, spreading a long trail of silver-grey

smoke behind it and the sun sank exhausted to the earth and bled on to

the clouds. After it was gone the darkness came quickly.

They ate canned meat spread on coarse bread with the blade of a

bayonet. There was no lighting in the compartment, so after they had

eaten they sat together wrapped in their blankets and talked in

darkness. Around them all other conversation died and was replaced by

the sounds of sleep. Sean opened one of the windows and the cold sweet

air cleaned their minds and sharpened them so that they talked in

quietly suppressed excitement.

They talked of men and land and the welding of the two into a nation;

and how that nation should be governed. They spoke a little of war and

much of the peace that would follow it; of the rebuilding of that which

had been destroyed into something stronger.

They saw the bitterness ahead that would flourish like an evil weed

nourished on blood and the corpses of the dead, and they discussed the

means by which it should be rooted out before it strangled the tender

growth of a land that could be great.

They had never spoken like this before. Saul hugged his blankets about

his shoulders and listened to Sean's voice in the darkness. Like most

of his race his perception had been sensitized and sharpened so that he

could pick up a new quality, a new sense of direction in this man.

I have had a hand in this, he thought, with stirring of pride.

He is a bull, a wild bull, charging anything that moves; charging

without purpose, then breaking his run and swinging on to something

new; using his strength to destroy because he had never learned to use

it in any other way; confused and angry, roaring at the barbs in his

shoulders; chasing everything and as a consequence catching nothing.

Perhaps I can help him, show him a purpose and a way out of the

arena.

And so they talked on into the night. The darkness added another

dimension to their existence. Unseen, their physical forms no longer

limited them and it seemed that their minds were freed to move out and

meet in the darkness, to combine into a cushion of words that carried

each idea forward. Until abruptly, the whole delicate pattern was

shattered and lost in the concussion of dynamite and the shriek of

escaping steam, the roar of breaking timber and glass, and the

confusion of equipment and sleeping bodies thrown violently together as

the train reared and twisted and plunged from the tracks. Almost

immediately a further sound blended into it all-the crackling of

musketry at close range and the steady hammering beat of a Maxim

machine-gun.

Sean was pinned helplessly in the complete darkness, unable to breathe

under an immense weight. He struggled wildly, tearing at the men and

baggage above him, his legs bound by loose blankets. The weight eased

enough for him to drag air into his lungs, but a knee was driven into

his face with such force that his lip burst open and the blood oozed

saltily into his mouth.

He lashed out and felt the stinging rake of broken glass along his

arm.

In the darkness men screamed in terror and in pain, leading the hideous

chorus of groans and oaths and gunfire.

Sean dragged his body free of the press, felt men thrashing under him

as he stood.

Now he could hear the repeated splintering thud of bullets into

woodwork much louder than the guns that fired them.

Someone reeled against him and Sean caught him.

"Saul?"

"Leave me, let me go." A stranger, Sean released him.

"Saul. Saul. Where are you?"

"Sean. " "Are you hurt?

"No. " I "let's get out of here."

"My rifle."

"Bugger your rifle."

"Where's the window?"

"Blocked."

At last Sean was able to get some idea of their situation. The coach

was on its side with the windows against the earth and the whole welter

of dead and broken men piled upon them. The door was high above them,

probably jammed.

"We'll have to break out through the roof. " He groped blindly, then

swore and jerked his hand back as a splinter of wood knifed up under a

fingernail, but he felt a draught of cold air on his face.

"There's a hole." He reached out again eagerly and felt the torn

timber. "One of the planks is sprung."

Immediately there was a rush of bodies in the darkness, hands clawed at

him as half a dozen men fought to find the opening.

"Get back, you bastards. " Sean struck out with both fists and felt

them connect. He was panting and he could feel the sweat sliding down

his back. The air was heavy with the body warmth and breath of

terrified men.

"Get back. I'll work on it." He forced his hands into the crack and

tore the loose plank out. For an instant he struggled with the

temptation to press his face to the narrow opening and suck in the

clean air. Then he locked his- hands on to the next plank, braced his

legs against the roof and heaved back with all his strength. It

wouldn't budge. He felt the panic mounting in him once more.

"Find me a rifle, somebody, " he shouted above the uproar.

"Here. " Saul's voice, and the rifle was thrust into his hands.

He ran the barrel into the opening and using it as a lever flung his

weight on to it. He felt wood tearing, moved the barrel and pulled

again. It gave and he cleared the plank and started on the next.

"all right. One at a time. Saul, you first." With his panic just

below the surface. Sean shoved each man unceremoniously through the

jagged opening. A fat one stuck and Sean put a boot behind him and

pushed. The man squeaked and went out like a champagne cork.

"Is there anyone else?" he shouted in the darkness.

"Sean," Saul's voice from outside. "Get out of there."

"You get under cover," Sean roared back at him.

The Boer fire still flailed the wrecked train. Then he asked again.

"Is there anyone else?" and a man groaned at Sean's feet.

Quickly Sean found him. Hurt badly, his head twisted. Sean cleared

the tangle of baggage from above his body and straightened him out.

Can't move him, he decided, safer here until the Medicos come.

He left him and stumbled over another.

"Damn them," he sobbed in his dreadful anxiety to get out.

This one was dead. He could feel the reptilian clamminess of death on

his skin, and he left him and scrabbled his way out into the open

night.

After the utter blackness of the compartment, the stars lit the land

with a pearly light and he saw the fog of steam hanging above the

locomotive in a high, hissing bank, and the leading coaches telescoped

into each other, and the others jack-knifed and twisted into a weird

sculpture of destruction. At intervals along the chain a few rifles

winked a feeble reply to the Boer fire that poured down upon them,

"Sean, " Saul called from where he was crouched beside the overturned

coach. Sean ran to him and lifted his voice above the clamour.

"Stay here. I'm going back to look for Mbejane.

"You'll never find him in this lot. He was with the horses listen to

them."

From the horse-boxes at the rear of the train came such a sound that

Sean hoped never to hear again. TWo hundred trapped and frenzied

animals-it was far worse than the sound of those men still in the

wreckage.

"My God! " whispered Sean. Then his anger rose higher than his fear.

"The bastards," he grated and looked up at the high ground above

them.

The Boers had chosen a place where the line curved along the bank of a

river. The watercourse cut off escape on that side, and on the other

the ground rose steeply in a double fold that commanded the full length

of the railway line.

Along the first fold lay their riflemen, two hundred of them at least,

judging by the intensity of their fire, while from above them on the

summit ridge the muzzle flashes of the Maxim gun faded and flared as it

traversed relentlessly back and forth along the train. Sean watched it

hungrily for a moment, then he lifted the rifle that he still carried

and emptied the magazine, firing at the Maxim.

Immediately the flashes grew brighter as it came questing back to find

him, and around Sean's head the air was filled with the swishing crack

of a hundred whips.

Sean ducked down while he reloaded, then stood up again to shoot.

"You bastards," he shouted at them, and his voice must have carried for

now the riflemen up there were helping the Maxim to search him out.

They were getting very close.

Sean crouched down once more, and beside him Saul was firing also.

"Where did you get the rifle?"

"I went back for it." Saul punctuated his reply with gunfire and Sean

gritmed as his fingers fumbled with the reload. "You're going to get

hurt one day, " he said.

"You taught me how to go about it, " Saul retorted.

Once more Sean emptied his magazine to no effect, except that the

recoil of the rifle invoked the old high madness in him.

It needed only Mbejane's voice beside him to trigger it completely.

"Where the hell. have you been?" Sean demanded.

"My spears were lost. I spent much time finding them in the darkness.

" Sean was silent for a moment while he peered up at the ridge.

Out of the left there was a gap in the line of riflemen where a narrow

don ga ran through them and down towards the railway.

A small party might be able to go up that gully and pass through the

rear of the Boer firing-line. From there the solitary Maxim on the

ridge would be very vulnerable.

"Bring your spears, Mbejane.

"Where are you going?" Saul asked.

"I'm going to try for that machine-gun. Stay here and keep these

gentlemen's minds on other things.

Sean started off along the train towards the outlet of the don ga

He covered fifty yards before he realized that not only MbeJane but

Saul was with him.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"With YOU' The hell you are!

"Watch me. " There was that peculiar note of obstinacy in Saul's voice

that Sean had come to recognize, and there was no time to argue.

He ran on until he was opposite the don ga where again he sought

shelter in the lee of an overturned coach while he made his final

assessment of the position.

The don ga looked narrow but deep, and the scrub-bush that filled it

would give them cover to the top where there was a definite gap in the

Boer line.

"It'll do, " he decided aloud, and then to the other two,

"I'll go first, then you follow me, Saul, and watch those big feet of

yours!

He was vaguely aware that some show of resistance was being organized

among the survivors of the wreck. He could hear the officers rallying

them and now a hundred rifles were returning the Boer fire.

"All right. I'm off." Sean stood up. "Follow me as soon as I get

across. " At that moment a new voice hailed them. "What are you men

UP to?"

"What's it to you?" Sean flashed impatiently.

"I'm an officer," and then Sean recognized the voice and the lanky

figure with a bared sabre in one hand. "Acheson!"

A second's hesitation before Acheson recognized him.

"Courtney. What are you doing?"

"I'm going up that don ga to attack the Maxim.

"Think you can reach it?"

"I can try.- " "Good fellow-off you go then. We'll be ready to support

you if you make it. " "See you at the top," said Sean and ran out

towards the mouth of the don ga

They moved quietly in single file upwards and the guns and the shouting

cloaked the soft sounds of their advance. Sean could hear the voices

of the burghers above them growing closer and louder as they

approached-very close now-on the side of the don ga just above their

heads-then behind them, and they were through.

The doun ga was shallower here, starting to flatten out as it neared

the crest. Sean lifted his head above the side and looked out.

Below him he could just make out the lumpy shapes of the Boers in the

grass but their rifles threw long orange spouts of flames when seen

from above-while the British replies were mere pinpricks of light from

around the dark tangle of coaches.

Then Sean's attention focused on the Maxim and he could see why the

rifle-fire from below had made no effect on it. Sited just below the

crest of the ridge on a forward bulge of the slope, it was protected by

a scharnz: of rock and earth that had been thrown up in front of it.

The thick water-jacketed barrel protruded through a narrow opening and

the three men that served it crouched low behind the wall.

-Come on," whispered Sean, and wriggled -up out of the don ga on to his

belly to begin the stalk.

One of the gunners saw him when he was a few yards from the gun.

"Magtig! Pasop, daars "n- " and Sean went in with the rifle clubbed in

both hands and the man never finished his warning. Mbejane and Saul

followed him in, and for a few seconds the emplacement was filled with

a struggling mass Of bodies. Then it was over and the three of them

panted heavily in the stillness.

"Do you know how to work this thing, Saul?"

"No. " "Nor do I" Sean squatted behind the gun and settled his hands

on to the twin grips, his thumbs automatically resting on the

firing-button.

"Wat makeer june daar bo? Skiet, man, skeet!" a Boer shouted from

below, and Sean shouted back,

"Wag maar "n oomblik-dan skeet ek bedonderdWites daar? Who's that?"

The Boer demanded and Sean depressed the gun.

It was too dark to use the sights, so he took a vague aim over the

barrel and thrust his thumbs down on the button. Immediately his

shoulders shook like those of a man using a jack hammer and he was

deafened by the harsh beat of the gun, but he swung the barrel in a

low, sweeping arch across the ridge below him.

A storm of shouts and cries of protest broke out along the Boer line,

and Sean laughed with savage delight. The Boer fire upon the train

withered miraculously as men jumped up and scattered beneath the spray

of bullets. Most of them streame( back to where their horses waited

behind the crest, keeping well out on the flanks of the Maxim, while a

line of cheering British infantry followed them up from the

train-giving the support that Acheson had promised.

Only a tiny but determined group of Boers came up the slope towards

Sean, yelling angrily and shooting as they came. There was dead ground

directly below the emplacement where Sean could not reach them with the

Maxim.

"Get out of here. Run out to the sides," Sean shouted back at Saul and

Mbejane as he hoisted the heavy gun on to the rock wall in front of him

to improve its field of fire. But the movement twisted the belt of

ammunition and after the first burst the gun jammed hopelessly. Sean

lifted it above his head, stood like that for an instant and then

hurled it among the men below him. It knocked two of them down into

the grass. Sean snatched up a pumpkin-sized rock from the top of the

wall and sent it after the gun-and another, and another.

Howling with the laughter of fear and excitement, he rained rocks upon

them. And they broke.

Most of them veered out to the sides and joined the general rush for

the horses.

Only one man kept coming, a big man who climbed quickly and silently.

Sean missed him with three rocks, and suddenly he was too close-not ten

feet away. There he paused and lifted his rifle. Even in the dark, at

that range, the Boer could hardly miss and Sean sprang from the top of

the wall. For an instant he dropped free, and then with a shock that

knocked the wind from both of them, he drove into the burgher's chest.

They rolled down the slope, kicking and grappling, bouncing over the

rocky ground, until a small thorn bush held them.

"Now, you bloody Dutchman!" rasped Sean. He knew there was only one

possible outcome to this encounter. With supreme confidence in his own

strength Sean reached for the man's throat, and with a sense of

disbelief felt his wrist held in a grip that made the bone creak.

"Kom, ons slaat aan, " the burgher's mouth was an inch from Sean's ear,

and the voice was unmistakable.

Jan Paulus!"

"Sean!" The shock of recognition eased his grip for an instant, and

Sean broke his hand loose.

Only once in his life had Sean met a man whose strength matched his

own-and now again they were pitted against each other. He drove the

heel of his right hand up under Jan Paulus's chin, forcing his head

back against the encircling left arm. It should have broken Jan

Paulus's neck. Instead he locked his arms around Sean's chest below

the level of his armpits-and squeezed. Within seconds Sean felt his

face swelling and congesting with blood, his mouth opened and his

tongue came out between his teeth.

Without breath, yet he maintained the pressure on Jan Pauls's neck,

felt it give fractionally-and knew that another inch of movement would

snap the vertebrae.

The earth seemed to tot and turn beneath him, he knew he was going for

his vision was blotched with moving patches of deeper darkness-the

knowledge gave him a little more strength.

He flung it all on to Jan Paulus's neck. It moved. Jan Paulus gave a

wild muffled cry and his grip on Sean's chest eased a fraction.

Again, Sean told himself, again. And he gathered all of what was left

for the final effort.

Before he could make it, Jan Paulus moved quickly under him, changing

his grip, lifting Sean clear of his chest. Then his knees came up

under Sean's pelvis and with a convulsive heave drove Sean's lower body

forward and over-cartwheeling him so that he was forced to release Jan

Paulus's neck and use his hands to break his own fall.

A rock caught him in the small of the back and agony flared in him like

sheet lightning in a summer sky. Dimly through it he heard the shouts

of the British infantry very near, saw Jan Paulus scramble up and

glance down the slope at the starlight on the bayonets, and saw him

take off up the slope.

Sean dragged himself to his feet and tried to follow him but the pain

in his back was an effective hobble and Jan Paulus reached the crest

ten paces ahead of him. But as he ran, another dark shape closed on

his flank the way a good dog will quarter on a running rybuck. It was

Mbejane and Sean could see the long steel in his hand as he lifted it

above Jan Paulus's back.

"No! " shouted Sean. "No, Mbejane! Leave him! Leave him!

Mbejane hesitated, slowed his run, stopped and looked back at Sean.

Sean stood beside him, his hands clasped to his back and his breathing

hissed in his throat. Below them from the dark rear slope of the ridge

came the hoof-beats of a single running pony.

The sounds of Jan Paulus's flight dwindled, and they were engulfed in

the advance of the lines of the bayonet men from the train. Sean

turned and limped back through them.

Two days later, on the relief train, they reached Johannesburg.

"I suppose we should report to somebody," Saul suggested as the three

of them stood together on the station platform beside the small pile of

luggage they had been able to salvage from the train wreck.

"You go and report, if that's what you want," Sean answered him.

"Me, I'm going to look around."

"We've got no billets, " Saul protested.

"Follow your Uncle Sean."

Johannesburg is an evil city, sired by Greed out of a dam named Gold.

But it has about it an air of gaiety, of brittle excitement and bustle.

When you are away from it you can hate it-but when you return you are

immediately re-infected. As Sean was now.

He led them through the portals of the railway building into Eloff

Street and grinned as he looked up that well-remembered thoroughfare.

It was crowded. The carriages jostled for position with the

horse-drawn trams. On the sidewalks beneath the tall three- and

four-storeyed buildings the uniforms of a dozen different regiments set

off the butterfly colours of the women's dress".

Sean paused on the station steps and lit a cigar. At that moment the

sounds of carriage wheels and human voices were drowned by the

plaintive wail of a mine hooter and immediately others joined in

signalling the noon. Automatically Sean reached for his pocket-watch

to check the time, and noticed the same general movement in the crowded

street. He grinned again.

Jo'burg; hasn't changed much-still the old habits, the same feeling

about it. The mine dumps higher than he remembered them, a few new

buildings, a little older and a little smarter but still the same

heartless bitch beneath it all.

And there on the corner of Commissioner Street, ornate as a

wedding-cake with its fancy ironwork and corniced roof, stood Candy's

Hotel.

With rifle and pack slung over each shoulder, Sean pushed his way

through the press on the sidewalk with Saul and Mbejane in his wake.

He reached the hotel and went in through the revolving glass doors.

"Very grand." He looked about the lobby as he dumped his pack on the

thick pile of the carpet. Crystal chandeliers, velvet curtains roped

with silver, palms and bronze urns, marble tables, fat plush chairs.

"What do you think, Saul. Shall we give this flophouse a try?"