When the Lion Feeds

He had spilt brandy down the front of his waistcoat and three of the buttons were undone. Huddled in the big chair, his body seemed to have shrunk and the curly hair hanging onto his forehead softened the gaunt lines of his face. Sean loosened his fingers from the neck of the bottle and Duff moved restlessly, muttering and twisting his head. Bedtime for small boys, said Sean. He lifted him out of the chair and hung him over one shoulder.

Duff sicked up copiously. That's the way, show Hradsky what you think of his bloody carpet, Sean encouraged him. Give him another one for luck, but not on my boots Duff did as he was bid and, chuckling, Sean carried him up the stairs. At the top he stopped and with Duff still bundled over one shoulder tried to analyse his own feelings. Darrin it, he felt happy. It was ridiculous to feel so happy in the midst of disaster. He went on down the passage still wondering at himself and into Duff Is room. He dropped Duff on the bed and stripped his clothes off, then he rolled him under the blankets. He brought the enamel wash basin from the bathroom and placed it next to the bed. You may need this, sleep well. There's a long ride ahead of us tomorrow. He stopped again at the top of the stairs and looked down their marble slope into the splendour of the lobby.

He was leaving all of it and that was nothing to feel happy about. He laughed aloud. Perhaps it was because he had faced complete :annihilation and at the last instant had changed it into something less; by avoiding the worst he had made defeat into a victory. A pathetic little victory to be sure, but at least they were no worse off now than they had been when they had arrived on the Rand. Was that the reason? Sean thought about it and found that it wasn't the whole truth. There was also a feeling of release. That was another part of it. To go on his way:

north to a new land. He felt the tingle of anticipation. Not a whore or a stockbroker within five hundred miles he said aloud and grinned. He gave up trying to find words for his feeling. Emotion was so damned elusive: as soon as you cornered it, it changed its shape and the net of words which you had ready to throw over it was no longer suitable. He let it go free to range through his body, accepting and enjoying it. He ran down the stairs, out through the kitchens and into the stable yard.

Mbejane! he shouted, where the hell are you The clatter of a stool overturning in the servants quarters and the door of one of the rooms burst open. Nkosi, what is it? The urgency of Sean's voice had alarmed Mbejane.

Which are the six best horses we have?

Mbejane named them, making no attempt to hide his curiosity.

Are they all salted against the Nagana? "All of them, Nkosi. Good, have them ready before tomorrow's light. Two with saddles, the others to carry the packs Mbejane turned on his smile. Could it be we are going hunting, Nkosi?

It could easily be, Sean agreed.

Sleeping sickness. Salting involved deliberate exposure to the sting of the tsetse fly. Animals that recovered were then immune. How long will we be gone, Nkosi? How long is for ever? Take leave of all your women, bring your kaross and your spears and we will see where the road leads Sean went back to his bedroom. It took him half an hour to pack. The pile of discarded clothing in the centre of the room grew steadily and what he kept made only half a horseload. He crammed it into two leather valises.

He found his sheepskin coat in the back of one of the closets and threw it over a chair with his leather breeches and slouch hat, ready to wear in the morning. He went down to the study and made his selection from the gun rack, ignoring the fancy doubles and obscure calibres. He took down a pair of shotguns and four Mannlichers.

Then he went to tell Candy goodbye. She was in her suite but she opened quickly to his knock.

Hav you heard? he asked her. Yes, the whole town knows. Oh! Sean, I'm so sorry please come in.

She held the door open for him. How is Duff? He'll be all right, right now he's both drunk and asleep. I'll go to him, she said quickly. He'll need me now.

For answer Sean raised an eyebrow and looked at her until she dropped her eyes.

No, you're right, I suppose. Perhaps later, when he's got over the first shock. She looked up at Sean and smiled. I suppose you need a drink. It must have been hell for you as well. She went across to the cabinet. She had on a blue gown and it clung to the womanish thrust of her hips and did not go high enough to cover the cleft of her breasts.

Sean watched her pour his drink and bring it to him. She was lovely, he thought.

Till we meet again, Candy, Sean lifted his glass.

Her eyes went wide and very blue. I don't understand.

Why do you say that!

We're going, Candy, first thing tomorrow No, Sean, you're joking. But she knew he wasn't.

There wasn't much to say after that. He finished his drink and they talked for a while, then he kissed her.

Be happy, please, he ordered her. I'll try. Come back one day soon. Only if you promise to marry me, he smiled at her and she caught hold of his beard and tugged his head from side to side. Get away with you, before I hold you to that. He left her then because he knew she was going to weep and he didn't want to watch it.

The next Duff packed his gear under Sean's direction. He followed each instruction with a dazed obedience, answering when Sean spoke but otherwise withdrawn in a protective shell of silence. When he had finished Sean made him pick up his bags and marched him down to where the horses waited in the chill gloom of not-yet day. With the horses were men, four shapes in the darkness. Sean hesitated before going out into the yard. Mbejane, he called. Who are these with you?

They came forward into the light that poured through the doorway and Sean chuckled.

Hlubi, of the noble belly! Nonga! And is it you, Kandhla? Men who had worked beside him in the trenches of the Candy Deep, had plied the spades that had uncovered his fortune, had plied the spears that protected it from the first predators. Happy at his recognition of them, for it had been many years, they crowded forward smiling as widely and whitely as only a Zulu can. What brings you three rogues together so early in the day? Sean asked, and Hlubi answered for them. Nkosi, we heard talk of a trek and our feet burned, we heard talk of hunting and we could not sleep There is no money for wages, Sean spoke gruffly to cover the sudden rush of affection he felt for them. We made no talk of wages, Hlubi answered with dignity. Sean nodded, it was the reply he had expected. He cleared his throat and went on. You would come with me when you know that I have the Tagathi on me? He used the Zulu word f or witchcraft. You would follow me knowing that behind me I leave a spoor of dead men and sorrow? Nkosi, Hlubi was grave as he answered. Something always dies when the lion feeds, and yet there is meat for those that follow him. I hear the chatter of old women at a beer drink, Mbejane observed drily. There is no more to say and the horses grow restless. They rode down the driveway of Xanadu between the jacaranda trees and the smooth wide lawns. Behind them the mansion was grey and unlighted in the half darkness.

They took the Pretoria road, climbed to the ridge and checked their horses at the crest. Sean and Duff looked back across the valley. The valley was filled with early morning mist, and the mine headgears probed up out of it. They watched the mists turn to gold as the low sun touched them and a mine hooter howled dismally. Couldn't we stay for just a week longer, perhaps we could work something out? Duff asked softly.

Sean sat silently staring at the golden mist. It was beautiful. It hid the scarred earth and it hid the mills, it was a most appropriate cloak for that evil, greedy city.

Sean turned his horse away towards Pretoria and slapped the loose end of his reins across its neck.

The Wilderness They stayed five days in Pretoria, just long enough to buy the wagons and commission them, and when they left on the morning of the sixth day they went north on the Hunters Road. The wagons moved in column urged on by the Zulus and a dozen new servants that Sean had hired. They were followed by a mixed bag of black and white urchins and stray dogs; men called good luck after them and women waved from the verandas of the houses which lined the road. Then the town was behind them and they were out into the veld with only a dozen of the more adventurous mongrels still following them.

They made fifteen miles the first day and when they camped that night beside the ford of a small stream, Sean's back and legs ached from his first full day in the saddle in over five years. They drank a little brandy and ate steaks grilled over wood embers, then they let the fire die and sat and looked at the night. The sky was a curtain at which a barrel of grape-shot had been fired, riddling it with the holes through which the stars shone. The voices of the servants made a hive murmur as a background to the wailing of a jackal in the darkness beyond the firelight. They went to their living wagon early and for Sean the feel of rough blankets instead of silk sheets and the hardness of a straw mattress were not sufficient to keep him long from sleep.

From an early start the following morning they put another twenty miles behind them before outspan that night and twenty more the next day. The push and urgent drive were habits Sean had acquired on the Rand when every minute was vital and the loss of a day was a disaster.

leisurely turning of wagon-wheels. Sean's eyes which had been pointing straight ahead along the line of travel now turned aside to look about him. Each morning he and Duff would leave the wagons and wander out into the bush.

Sometimes they would spend the day panning for gold in the sands of a stream, another day they would search for the first signs of elephant, but mostly they just rode and talked or lay hidden and watched the herds of game that daily became more numerous. They killed just enough to feed themselves, their servants and the pack of dogs that had followed them when they left Pretoria. They passed the little Boer settlement at Pietersburg and then the Zoutpansberg climbed up over the horizon, its sheer sides dark with rain forest and high rock cliffs. Here under the mountains they spent a week at Louis Trichardt, the most northerly permanent habitation of white men.

In the town they spoke with men who had hunted to the north of the mountains, across the Limpopo. These were taciturn brown-faced Boers with tobacco-stained beards, big men with the peace of the bush in their eyes.

In their courteous, unhurried speech Sean sensed a fierce possessive love of the animals that they hunted and the land through which they moved so freely. They were a different breed from the Natal Afrikanders and those he had met on the Witwatersrand, and he conceived the respect for them that would grow stronger in the years ahead when he would have to fight them.

There was no way through the mountains, they told him, but wagons could pass around them. The western passage skirted the edge of the Kalahari desert and this was bad country where the wagon wheels sank into the sandy soil and the marches between water became successively longer.

To the east there was good rich forest land, well watered and stocked with game: low country, hotter the nearer one went to the coast, but the true bushveld where a man could find elephant.

So Sean and Duff turned east and, holding the mountains always in sight at their left hand, they went down into the wilderness.

Within a week's trek they saw elephant sign: trees broken and stripped of their bark. Although it was months old the trees already dried out, nevertheless Sean felt the thrill of it and that night spent an hour cleaning and oiling his rifles. The forest thickened until the wagons had to weave continually between the trunks of the trees. But there were clearings in the forest, open vleis filled with grass where buffalo grazed like herds of domestic cattle and white tick birds squawked about them. This country was well watered with streams as clear and merry as a Scottish trout stream, but the water was blood-warm and the banks thick with bush. Along the rivers, in the forest and in the open were the herds of game: impala twisting and leaping away at the first approach with their crumpled horns laid back, kudu with big ears and soft eyes, black sable antelope with white bellies and horns curved like a naval cutlass, zebra trotting with the dignity of fat ponies, while about them frolicked their companions, the gnu, waterbuck, nyala, roan antelope and, at last, elephant.

Sean and Mbejane were ranging a mile ahead of the wagons when they found the spoor. It was fresh, so fresh that sap still oozed from the mahoba-hobo tree where the bark had been prised loose with the tip of a tusk and then stripped off. The wood beneath was naked and white. Three bulls, said Mbejane. One very big. Wait here, Sean spun his horse and galloped back to the column. Duff lay on the driver's seat of the first wagon rocking gently to its motion, his hat covering his face and his hands behind his head.

Elephant! Duff, Sean yelled. Not an hour ahead of us.

Get saddled up, man! Duff was ready in five minutes. Mbejane was waiting for them; he had already worked the spoor a short distance and picked up the run of it and now he went away on it, They followed him, riding slowly side by side.

You've hunted elephant before, laddie? asked Duff.

Never, said Sean. Good grief! Duff looked alarmed. I thought you were an expert. I think I'll go back and finish my sleep, you can call me when you've had a little more experience. Don't worry, Sean laughed with excitement. I know all about it; I was raised on elephant stories That sets my heart at ease, Duff murmured sarcastically and Mbejane glanced over his shoulder at them, not trying to conceal his irritation. Nkosi, it is not wise to talk now for we will soon come up with them. So they went on in silence: passing a knee-high pile of yellow dung that looked like the contents of a coir mattress, following the oval pad marks in the dust and the trail of torn branches.

It was a good hunt, this first one. The small breeze held steadily into their faces and the spoor ran straight and hot. They closed in, each minute strengthening the certainty of the kill. Sean sat stiff and eager in the saddle Whith his rifle across his lap, his eyes restlessly moving over the frieze of bush ahead of him. Mbejane stopped suddenly and came back to Sean's stirrup. Here they halted for the first time. The sun is hot and they will rest but this place was not to their liking and they have moved on. We will find them soon now. The bush becomes too thick, Sean grunted; he eyed the untidy tangle of catbush into which the spoor had led them. We will leave the horses here with Hlubi and go in on foot. Laddie, Duff demurred. I can run much faster on horseback. , off! said Sean and nodded to Mbejane to lead. They moved forward again. Sean was sweating and the drops clung heavily to his eyebrows and trickled down his cheeks; he brushed them away. The excitement was an indigestible ball in his stomach and a dryness in his throat.

Duff sauntered casually next to Sean with that small half smile on his face, but there was a quickness in his breathing. Mbejane cautioned them with a gesture of his hand and they stopped. Minutes passed slowly and then Mbejane's hand moved again, pink-palmed eloquence. It was nothing, said the hand. Follow me. They went on again. There were Mopani flies swarming at the corners of Sean's eyes, drinking the moisture, and he blinked them away. Their bu=ing was so loud in his ears that he thought it must carry to their quarry. His every sense was tuned to its limit: hearing magnified, vision sharp and even his sense of smell so clear that he could pick up the taint of dust, the scent of a will, lower and Mbejane's faintly musky body-smell.

Suddenly in front of him Mbejane was still; his hand moved again gently, unmistakably.

They are here, said the hand.

Sean and Duff crouched behind him, searching with eyes that could see only brown bush and grey shadows.

The tension coarsened their breathing and Duff was no longer smiling. Mbejane's hand came up slowly and pointed at the wall of vegetation in front of them. The seconds strung together like beads on the string of time and still they searched.

An ear flapped lazily and instantly the picture jumped into focus. Bull elephant, big and very close, grey among grey shadow. Sean touched Mbejane's arm. I had seen it, said that touch.

Slowly Mbejane's hand swivelled and pointed again.

Another wait, another searching and then a belly nimbled, a great grey belly filled with half-digested leaves. It was a sound so ridiculous in the silence that Sean wanted to laugh, a gurgling sloshy sound, and Sean saw the other bull. It was standing in shadow also, with long yellow ivory and small eyes tight-closed. Sean put his lips to Duff's ear. This one is yours, he whispered. Wait until I get into position for the other, and he began moving out to the side, each step exposing a little more of the second bull's flank until the shoulder was open to him and he could see the point of the elbow beneath the baggy, wrhilded skin. The angle was right; from here he could reach the heart. He nodded at Duff, brought his rifle up, leaning forward against the recoil, aiming close behind the massive shoulder, and he fired.

The gunfire was shockingly loud in the confined thorn bush; dust flew in a spurt from the bull's shoulder and it staggered from the strike of the bullet. Beyond it the third elephant burst from sleep into flight and Sean's hands moved neatly on his weapon, ejecting and reloading, swinging up and firing again. He saw the buffet hit and he knew it was a mortal wound. The two bulls ran together and the bush opened to them and swallowed them: they were gone, crashing away wounded, trumpeting in pain. Sean ran after them, dodging through the catbush, oblivious to the sting of the thorns that snatched at him as he passed.

This way, Nkosi, Mbejane shouted beside him.

Quickly or we will lose them. They sprinted after the sounds of flight, a hundred yards, two hundred, panting now and sweating in the heat. Suddenly the catbush ended and in front of them was a wide river-bed with steep banks. The river sand was blindingly white and in the middle was a sluggish trickle of water. One of the bulls was dead, lying in the stream with the blood washing off him in a pale brown stain. The other bull was trying to climb the far bank; it was too steep for him and he slid back wearily. The blood dripped from the tip of his trunk, and he swung his head to look at Sean and Mbejane. His ears cocked back defiantly and he began his charge, blundering towards them through the soft river sand.

Sean watched him come and there was sadness in him as he brought up his rifle, but it was the proud regret that a man feels when he watches hopeless courage. Sean killed with a brain shot, quickly.

They climbed down the bank into the river-bed and went to the elephant; it knelt with its legs folded under it and its tusks driven deep into the sand with the force of its fall. The flies were already clustering at the little red mouths of the bullet wounds. Mbejane touched one of the tusks and then he looked up at Sean. It is a good elephant. He said no more, for this was not the time to talk. Sean leaned his rifle against the bull's shoulder; he felt in his top pocket for a cheroot and stood with it unlit between his teeth. He would kill more elephant, he knew, but always this would be the one he would remember. He stroked his hand over the rough skin and the bristles were stiff and sharp.

Where is Nkosi Duff? Sean remembered him suddenly. Did he also kill? He did not shoot, answered Mbejane. What! Sean turned quickly to Mbejane. Why notV Mbejane sniffed a pinch of snuff and sneezed, then he shrugged his shoulders. It is a good elephant, he said again, looking down at it. We must go back and find him. Sean snatched up his rifle and Mbejane followed him. They found Duff sitting alone in the catbush with his rifle propped beside him and a water-bottle to his lips. He lowered the bottle as Sean came up and saluted him with it.

Hail! the conquering hero comes. There was something in his eyes that Sean could not read.

Did you miss yours? Sean asked. Yes, said Duff, I missed mine. He lifted the bottle and drank again. Suddenly and sickeningly Sean was ashamed for him. He dropped his eyes, not wanting to acknowledge Duff's cowardice. Let's get back to the wagons, he said. Mbejane can come with packhorses for the tusks.

They did not ride together on the way home.

It was almost dark when they arrived back at the laager.

They gave their horses to one of the servants and washed in the basin that Kandh1a had ready for them, then they went to sit by the fire. Sean poured the drinks, fussing over the glasses to avoid looking at Duff. He felt awkward.

They'd have to talk about it and he searched his brain for a way to bring it into the open. Duff had shown craven and Sean started to find excuses for him, he may have had a misfire or be may have been unsighted by Sean's shot. At all events Sean determined not to let it stay like this, sour and brooding between them. They'd talk it out then forget it. He carried Duff's glass to him and smiled at him. That's right, try and cover it with a grin, Duff lifted his glass. To our big brave hunter. Dammit, laddie, how could you do itV

Sean stared at Duff. What do you mean? You know what I mean, you're so damned guilty you can't even look me in the face. How could you kill those bloody great animals, but even worse how could you enjoy doing it? Sean subsided weakly into his chair. He Couldn't tell which of his emotions was uppermost, relief or surprise.

Duff went on quickly. I know what you're going to say, I've heard the arguments before, from my dear father. He explained it to me one evening after we'd ridden down a fox. When I say we", I mean twenty horsemen and forty hounds Sean had not yet rallied from the shock of finding himself in the dock after preparing himself to play the role of prosecutor. Don't you like hunting? he asked incredulously. The way he might have asked, don't you like eating?. I'd forgotten what it was like. I was carried away by your exitement, but when you started to kill them it all came back to me. Duff sipped his brandy and stared into the fire. They never had a chance. One minute they were sleeping and the next you were ripping them with bullets the way the hounds ripped that fox. They didn't have a chance. But, Duff, it wasn't meant to be a contest. Yes, I know, my father explained that to me. It's a ritual, a sacred rite to Diana. He should have explained it to the fox as well Sean was getting angry now. We came out here to hunt ivory, and that's what I'm doing. Tell me that you killed those elephant only for their teeth, laddie, and I'll call you a liar. You loved it. Christ!

You should have seen your face and the face of your damned heathen. All right! I like hunting and the only other man I ever met who didn't was a coward, Sean shouted at him.

Duff's face paled and he looked up at Sean. What are you trying to say? he whispered. They stared at each other and in the silence Sean had to choose between letting his temper run or keeping Duffs friendship, for the words that would spoil it for ever were crowding into his mouth. He made his hands relax their grip on the arms of his chair.

I didn't mean that, he said. I hoped you didn't, Duff's grin came precariously back onto his face. Tell me why you like hunting, laddie. I'll try and understand but don't expect me to hunt with you again. It was like explaining colour to a blind man, describing the lust of the hunter to someone who was born without it. Duff listened in agonized silence as Sean tried to find the words for the excitement that makes a man's blood sing through his body, that heightens his senses and allows him to lose himself in an emotion as old as the urge to mate. Sean tried to show him how the nobler and more beautiful was the quarry, the stronger was the compulsion to hunt and kill it, that it had no conscious cruelty in it but was rather an expression of love: a fierce possessive love. A devouring love that needed the complete and irrevocable act of death for its consummation.

By destroying something, a man could have it always as his own: selfish perhaps, but then instinct knows no ethics. It was all very clear to Sean, so much a part of him that he had never tried to voice it before and now he stumbled over the words, gesticulating in helpless inarticulateness, repeating himself, coming at last to the end and knowing by the look on Duff's face that he had failed to show it -to him. And you were the gentleman who fought Hradsky for the rights of men, Duff said softly, the one who always talked about not hurting people.

Sean opened his mouth to protest but Duff went on. You get ivory for us and I'll look for gold, each of us to what he is best suited. I'll forgive you your elephants as you forgave me my Candy, still equal partners. Agreed?

Sean nodded and- Duff held up his glass. It's empty, he said. Do me a favour, laddie. There was never any after-taste to their disputes, no rankling of unspoken words or lingering of doubt. What they had in common they enjoyed, where there were differences they accepted them. So when after each hunt the packhorses brought the tusks into the camp there was no trace of censure in Duffs fare or voice; there was only the genuine pleasure of having Sean back from the bush.

Sometimes it was a good day and Sean would cut the spoor, follow, kill and be back in the laager the same night. But more often, when the herd was moving fast or the ground was hard or he could not kill at the first approach, he would be gone for a week or more. Each time he returned they celebrated, drinking and laughing far into the night, lying late in bed the next morning, playing Klabejas on the floor of the wagon between their cots or reading aloud out of the books that Duff had brought with him from Pretoria. Then a day or two later Sean would be gone again, with his dogs and his gunboys trotting behind him.

This was a different Sean from the one who had whored it up at the Opera House and presided over the panelled offices in Eloff Street. His beard, no longer groomed and shaped by a barber, curled onto his chest. The doughy colour of his face and arms had been turned by the sun to the rich brown of a newly-baked loaf. The seat of his pants that had been stretched to danger point across his rump now hung loosely; his arms were thicker and the soft swell of fat had given way to the flatness and bulge of hard muscle. He walked straighter, moved quicker and laughed more easily.

in Duff the change was less noticeable. He was lean and gaunt-faced as ever, but now there was less of the restlessness in his eyes. His speech and movements were slower and the golden beard he was growing had the strange effect of making him appear younger. Each morning he left the wagons, taking one of the servant's with him, and spent the days wandering in the bush, tapping with his prospecting hammer at the occasional outcrops of rock or squatting beside a stream and spinning the gravel in his pan. Every evening he came back to camp and analysed the bag of rock samples he had collected during the day; then he threw them away, bathed and set out a bottle and two glasses on the table beside the fire.

While he ate his supper he listened and waited for the dogs to bark, for the sound of horses in the darkness and Sean's voice. If the night remained silent he put the bottle away and climbed up into his wagon. He was lonely then, not with a deep loneliness but just enough to add relish to Sean's return.

Always they moved east, until gradually the silhouette of the Zoutpansberg softened as the mountains became less steep and began to fade into the tail of the range.

Scouting along their edge Sean found a pass and they took the wagons up and over and down into the Limpopo valley beyond. Here the country changed character again; it became flat, the monotony of thorn scrub relieved only by the baobab trees with their great, swollen trunks crowned in a little halo of branches. Water was scarce and Sean rode ahead from each camp to find the next waterhole before they moved. However, the hunting was good for the game was concentrated on the isolated drinking places, and before they were halfway from the mountains to the Limpopo Sean had filled another wagon with ivory.

We'll be coming back this way, I suppose! Duff asked.

I suppose so, agreed Sean. Well then, I don't see any point in carrying a ton of ivory with us. Let's bury it and we can pick it up on our way back Sean looked at him thoughtfully. About once in every year you come up with a good idea, we'll do exactly that The next camp was a good one. There was water, an acre of muddy liquid not as heavily salted with elephant urine as some of the previous ones had been; there was shade provided by a grove of wild fig trees and the grazing was of a quality that promised to restore the condition that the oxen had lost since crossing the mountains. They decided to make it a rest camp: bury the ivory, do some repairs and maintenance on the wagons and let the servants and animals fatten up a little. The first task was to dig a hole large enough to contain all the hundred-odd tusks they had accumulated and it was evening on the third day before they finished.

Sean and Duff sat together inside the laager and watched the sun go down, bleeding below the land, and after it had gone the clouds were oyster and Iflac-coloured in the brief twilight. Kandhla threw wood on the fire and it burnt up fiercely. They ate grilled kudu liver, and thick steaks with a rind of yellow fat on them, and they drank brandy with their coffee. The conversation lagged into contented silence for they were both tired. They sat staring into the fire, too lazy to make the effort required for bed. Sean watched the fire pictures form in the coals, the faces and the phantoms flickering and fading. He saw a tiny temple have its columns pulled out from under it by a fiery Samson and collapse in a shower of sparks, a burning horse changed magically into a dragon of blue flame. He looked away to rest his eyes and when he turned back there was a small black scorpion scuttling out from under the loose bark on one of the logs. It lifted its tail like the arm of a flamenco dancer and the flames that ringed it shone on its glossy body armour. Duff was also watching it, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Will he sting himself to death before the flames reach him? he asked softly. I have heard that they do. No, said Sean. Why not? Only man has the intelligence to end the inevitable; in all other creatures the instinct of survival is too strong, Sean answered him, and the scorpion crabbed sideways from the nearest flames and stopped again with its raised sting jerking slightly. Besides he's immune to his own poison so he has no choice. He could jump down into the fire and get it over with, murmured Duff, subdued by the little tragedy.

The scorpion started its last desperate circuit of the closing ring. its tail drooped and the grip of its claws was unsteady on the rough bark; it was shrivelling with the beat, its legs curling up and its tail subsiding. The flames caressed it with swift yellow hands and smeared its shiny body with the dullness of death. The log tipped sideways and the speck was gone. Would you? asked Sean. Would you have jumped?

Duff sighed softly, I don't know, he said and stood up. I'm going to pump out my bilges and crawl into bed He walked away and went to stand at the edge of the circle of firelight.

Since they had left Pretoria the small voices of the jackals had yapped discreetly around each outspan, they were so much a part of the African night that they went unnoticed, but now suddenly there was a difference.

Only one jackal spoke, and with a voice that stammered shrilly, a sound of pain, a crazy hysterical shrieking that made Sean's skin prickle. He scrambled to his feet and stood staring undecided into the darkness. The jackal was coming towards the camp, coming fast, and suddenly Sean knew what was happening.

Duff! ! he called. Come back here! Run, man, run!

Duff looked back at Sean helplessly, his hands held low in front of him. and his water arcing down, curving silver in the firelight from Ins body to the ground. Duff ! Sean's voice was a shout. It's a rabid jackal. Run, damn you, run! The jackal was close now, very close, but at last Duff started to move. He was halfway back to the fire before he tripped. He fell and rolled over and brought his feet up under his body to rise. His head turned to face the darkness from which it would come. Then Sean saw it. It flitted out of the shadows like a grey moth in the bad light and went straight for where Duff knelt. Sean saw him try to cover his face with his hands as the jackal sprang at him. One of the dogs twisted out of Mbejane's hand and brushed past Sean's legs. Sean snatched up a piece of firewood and sprinted after it, but already Duff was on his back, his arms flailing frantically as he tried to push away the terrier-sized animal that was slashing at his face and hands. The dog caught it and dragged it off, worrying it, growling through locked jaws. Sean hit the jackal with the club, breaking its back. He swung again and again, beating its body, into shapelessness before he turned to Duff. Duff was on his feet now. He had unwound the scarf from his neck and was mopping with it at his face but the blood dribbled down his chin and blotched the front of his shirt. His hands were trembling. Sean led him close to the fire, pulled Duff's hands down and examined the bites. His nose was torn and the flesh of one cheek hung open in a flap. Sit down! Duff obeyed, holding the scarf to his face again. Sean went quickly to the fire: with a stick he raked embers into a pile, then he drew his hunting-knife and thrust the blade into the coals. Mbejane, he called, without taking his eyes off the knife. Throw that jackal onto the fire. Put on plenty of wood. Do not touch its body with your hands. When you have done that tie up that dog and keep the others away from it. Sean turned the knife in the fire. Duff, drink as much of that brandy as you can What are you going to do? You know what I've got to do! He bit my wrist as well. Duff held up his hand for Sean to see the punctures, black holes from which the blood oozed watery and slow. Drink. Sean pointed at the brandy bottle. For a second they looked at each other and Sean saw the horror moving in Duffs eyes: horror of the hot knife and horror of the germs which had been injected into him. The germs that must be burnt out before they escaped into his blood, to breed and ferment there until they ate into his brain and rode him to a screaming gibbering death. Drink, said Sean again. Duff took up the bottle and lifted it to his mouth. Sean stooped and pulled the knife out of the fire. He held the blade an inch from the back of his hand. It was not hot enough. He thrust it back into the coals.

IMbejane, Hlubi, stand on each side of the Nkosi's chair. Be ready to hold him. Sean loosened his belt, doubled the thick leather and handed it to Duff. Bite on this. He turned back to the fire and this time when he drew the knife its blade was pale pink. Are you ready? The work you are about to do will break the hearts of a million maids. A last hoarse attempt at humour from Duff.

Hold him, said Sean.

Duff gasped at the touch of the knife, a great shuddering gasp, and his back arched but the two Zulus held held him down remorselessly. The edges of the wound blackened ened and hissed as Sean ran the blade in deeper. The stink of burning brought the vomit into his throat. He clenched his teeth. When he stepped back Duff hung slackly in the Zulus, hands, sweat had soaked his shirt and wet his hair.

Sean heated the knife again and cleaned the bites in Duff's wrist while Duff moaned and writhed weakly in the chair.

He smeared axle grease over the burns and bandaged the wrist loosely with strips torn from a clean shirt. They lifted Duff into the wagon and laid him on his cot. Sean went out to where Mbejane had tied the dog. He found scratches beneath the hair on its shoulder. They put a sack over its head to stop it biting and Sean cauterized its wounds also. Tie it to the far wagon, do not let the other dogs near it, see it has food and water,. he told Mbenjane.

Then he went back to Duff. Delirious with pain and brandy Duff did not sleep at all that night and Sean stayed by his cot until the morning.

About fifty yards from the laager under one of the wild fig trees the servants built Duff a hut. The framework was of poles and over it they stretched a tarpaulin. They made a bed for him and brought his mattress and blankets from the wagon. Sean joined four trek-chains together, forging new links and hammering them closed. He passed one end of the chain round the base of the fig tree and riveted it back up on itself. Duff sat in the shade of a wagon and watched them work. His hurt hand was in a sling and his face was swollen, the wound crusty-looking and edged in angry red. When he was finished with the chain, Sean walked across to him. I'm sorry, Duff, we have to do it. They abolished the slave trade some time ago, just in case you didn't know. Duff tried to grin with his distorted face. He stood up and followed Sean to the hut. Sean looped the loose end of the chain round Duff's waist. He locked it with a bolt through two of the links then flattened the end of the bolt with a dozen strokes of the hammer. That should hold you. An excellent fit, Duff commended him. Now let us inspect my new quarters. Sean followed him into the hut. Duff lay down on the bed. He looked very tired and sick. How long will it take before we know? he asked quietly.

Sean shook his head. I'm not sure. I think you should stay here at least a month, after that we'll allow you back into society. A month, it's going to be fun. Lying here expecting any minute to start barking like a dog and lifting my leg against the nearest tree Sean didn't laugh. I did a thorough job with the knife.

It's a thousand to one you'll be all right. This is just a precaution. The odds are attractive, I'll put a fiver on it. Duff crossed his ankles and stared up at the roof. Sean sat down on the edge of the bed. It was a long time before Duff ended the silence.

What will it be like, Sean, have you ever seen someone with rabies? No. But you've heard about it, haven't you? Tell me what you've heard about it, Duff persisted. For Chrissake, Duff, you're not going to get it. Tell me, Sean, tell me what you know about it. Duff sat up and caught hold of Sean's arm.

Sean looked steadily at him for a moment before he answered. You saw that jackal, didn't you?

Duff sank back onto his pillows. Oh, my God! he whispered.

Together they started the long wait. They used another tarpaulin to make an open shelter next to the hut and under it they spent the days that followed.

In the beginning it was very bad. Sean tried to pull Duff out of the black despair into which he had slumped, but Duff sat for hours at a time gazing out into the bush, fingering the scabs on his face and only occasionally smiling at the banquet of choice stories that Sean spread for him. But at last Seans efforts were rewarded, Duff began to talk. He spoke of things he had never mentioned before and listening to him Sean learned more about him than he had in the previous five years. Sometimes Duff paced up and down in front of Sean's chair with the chain hanging down behind him like a tail; at other times he sat quietly, his voice filled with longing for the mother he had never known. , there was a portrait of her in the upper gallery, I used to spend whole afternoons in front of it. it was the kindest face I had ever seen Then it hardened again as he remembered his father, that old bastard.

He talked of his daughter. - she had a fat chuckle that would break your heart. The snow on her grave made it look like a big sugar-iced cake, she would have liked that -At other times his voice was puzzled as he examined some past action of. his, angry as he remembered a mistake or a missed opportunity. Then he would break off and grin self-consciously. I say, I am talking a lot of drivel. The scabs on his face began to dry up and come away, and more often now his old gaiety bubbled to the surface.

on one of the poles that supported the tarpaulin roof he started a calendar, cutting a notch for each day. it became a daily ceremony. He cut each notch with the concentration of a sculptor carving marble and when he had finished he would stand back and count them aloud as if by doing so he could force them to add up to thirty, the number that would allow him to shed his chain.

There were eighteen notches on the pole when the dog went mad. It was in the afternoon. They were playing Klabejas. Sean had just dealt the cards when the dog started screaming from among the wagons. Sean knocked over his chair as he jumped up. He snatched his rifle from where it leaned against the wall and ran down to the laager.

He disappeared behind the wagon to which the dog was tied and almost immediately Duff heard the shot. In the abrupt and complete stillness that followed, Duff slowly lowered his face into his hands.

it was nearly an hour before Sean came back. He picked up his chair, set it to the table and sat down. It's you to call, are you going to take on? he asked as he picked up his cards. They played with grim intensity, fixing their attention on the cards, but both of them knew that there was a third person at the table now. Promise you'll never do that to me, Duff blurted out at last.

Sean looked up at him. That I'll never do what to you? What you did to that dog. The dog! The bloody dog. He should never have taken a chance with it, he should have destroyed it that first night, Just because the dog got it doesn't mean that you Swear to me, Duff interrupted fiercely, swear you won't bring the rifle to me. Duff, you don't know what you're asking. Once you've got it, Sean stopped; anything he said would make it worse.

Promise me, Duff repeated. All right, I swear it then. It was worse now than it had been in the beginning.

Duff abandoned his calendar and with it the hope that had been slowly growing stronger. If the days were bad then the nights were hell, for Duff had a dream. It came to him every night, sometimes two or three times. He tried to keep awake after Sean had left, reading by the light of a lantern; or he lay and listened to the night noises, the splash and snort of buffalo drinking down at the waterhole, the liquid half-warble of night birds or the deep drumming of a lion. But in the end he would have to sleep and then he dreamed.

He was on horseback riding across a flat brown plain: no hills, no trees, nothing but lawnlike grass stretching away on all sides to the horizon. His horse threw no shadow, he always looked for a shadow and it worried him that there never was one. Then he would find the pool, clear water, blue and strangely shiny. The pool frightened him but he could not stop himself going to it.

He would kneel beside it and look into the water; the reflection of his own face looked up at him, animal-snouted , shaggy-brown with wolf teeth, white and long.

He would wake then and the horror of that face would last until morning.

Nearly desperate with his own utter helplessness, Sean tried to help him. Because of the accord they had established over the years and because they were so close to each other, Sean had to suffer with him. He tried to shut himself off from it; sometimes he succeeded for an hour or even half a morning but then it came back with a stomach-swooping shock. Duff was going to die, Duff was going to die an unspeakable death. Was it a mistake to let someone get too deep inside you, so that you must share his agony in every excruciating detail? Didn't a men have enough of his own that he must share the full measure of another's suffering?

By then the October winds had started, the heralds of the rain: hot winds fall of dust, winds that dried the sweat on a man,'s. body before it had time to cool him, thirsty winds that during daylight brought the game to the waterhole in full view of the camp.

Sean had half a case of wine hoarded under his cot. That last evening he cooled four bottles, wrapping them in wet sacking. He took them up to Duff's shelter just before supper and set them on the table. Duff watched him. The scars on his face were almost completely healed now, glassy red marks on his pale skin.

Chateau Olivier, said Sean and Duff nodded. It's a good wine, most probably travel-sick. Well, if you don't want it, I'll take it away again, said Sean. I'm sorry, laddie, Duff spoke quickly. I didn't mean to he ungrateful. This wine suits my mood tonight. Did you know that wine is a sad drink? Nonsense! Sean disagreed as he twisted the corkscrew into the first cork Wine is gay. He poured a little into Duff's glass and Duff picked it up and held it towards the fire so the light shone through it. You see only the surface, Sean. A good wine has the elements of tragedy within it. The better the wine the more sad it is.

Sean snorted. Explain yourself, he invited.

Duff put his glass down on the table again and stared at it. How long do you suppose this wine has taken to reach its present perfection? Ten or fifteen years, I suppose, Sean answered.

Duff nodded. "And now all that remains is to drink it the work of years destroyed in an instant. Don't you think that is sad? Duff asked softly. My God, Duff, don't be so damned morbid But Duff wasn't listening to him. Wine and mankind have this in common. They can find perfection only in age, in a lifetime of seeking. Yet in the finding they find also their own destruction. So you think that if a man lives long enough he will reach perfection? Sean challenged him, and Duff answered him still staring at the glass. Some grapes grew in the wrong soil, some were diseased before they went to the press and some were spoiled by a careless vintner, not all grapes make good wine Duff picked up his glass and tasted from it, then he went on. A man takes longer and he must find it not within the quiet confines of the cask but in the cauldron of life; therefore his is the greater tragedy. Yes, but no one can live for ever, Sean protested.

so you think that makes it less sad? Duff shook his head. You're wrong of course. It does not detract from it, it enhances it. If only there were some escape, some way of ensuring that what is good could endure instead of this complete hopelessness. Duff lay back in his chair, his face pale and gaunt-looking. Even that I could accept, if only they had given me more time. I've had enough of this talk. Let's discuss something else. I don't know what you're worrying about. You're not fit to drink yet, you've got another twenty or thirty years to go, Sean said gruffly and Duff looked up at him for the first time. Have 1, Sean? Sean couldn't meet his eyes. He knew Duff was going to die. Duff grinned his lopsided grin and looked down again at his glass. Slowly the grin disappeared and he spoke again.

if only I had more time, I could have done it. I could have found the weak places and fortified them. I could have seen the answers. His voice rose higher. I could have! I know I could have! Oh God, I'm not ready yet. I need more time. His voice was shrill and his eyes wild and haunted. It's too soon, it's too soon!

Sean couldn't stand it, he jumped up and caught Duff's shoulders and shook him.

Shut up, God damn you, shut up, he shouted at him.

Duff was panting, his lips were parted and quivering. He touched them with the tips of his fingers as though to stop them. I'm sorry, laddie, I didn't mean to let go like that. Sean dropped his hands from Duffs shoulders, Both of us are too damned edgy, he said. It's going to be A right, you wait and see. Yes, it will be all right. Duff ran his fingers through his hair, combing it back from his eyes. Open another bottle, laddie. That night after Sean had gone to bed, Duff had his dream again. The wine he had drunk slowed him down and prevented him from waking. He was trapped in his fancy, struggling to escape into wakefulness but only reaching the surface before he sank back to dream that dream again.

Sean went up to Duffs shelter the next morning early.

Although the night's coolness still lingered under the spreading branches of the wild figs the rising day promised to blow dry and burn hot. The animals could sense it. The trek oxen were clustered among the trees and a small herd of eland was moving from the waterhole, The bull, with his short thick horns and the dark tuft on his forehead, was leading his cows away to find shAde. Sean stood in the doorway of the hut and waited while his eyes adjusted themselves to its gloom. Duff was awake. Get out of bed or you'll have bed sores to add to your happiness.

Duff swung his feet off the litter and groaned.

What did you put in that wine last night? He massaged his temples gently. I've got a hundred hobgoblins doing a Cossack dance around the roof of my skull Sean felt the first twinge of alarm. He put his hand on Duff's shoulder feeling for the heat of fever, but Duff was quite cool. He relaxed. Breakfast's ready, said Sean. Duff played with his porridge and barely tasted the grilled eland liver. He kept screwing his eyes up against the glare of the sun and when they had finished their coffee he pushed back his chair. I'm going to take my tender head to bedAR right.

Sean stood up as well. We're a bit short of meat. I'll go and see if I can get a buck. No, stay and talk to me, Duff said quickly. We can have a few hands of cards. They hadn't played in days and Sean agreed readily. He sat on the end of Duff's bed and within half an hour he had won thirty-two pounds from him. You must let me teach you this game sometime, he gloated.

Petulantly, Duff threw his hand in. I don't feel like playing any more. He pressed his fingers to his closed eyelids. I can't concentrate with this headache. Do you want to sleep? Sean gathered up the cards and put them in their box. No. Why don't you read to me?

Duff picked up a leather-bound copy of Bleak House from the table beside the bed and tossed it into Sean's lap.

Where shall I start! Sean asked. It doesn't matter, I know it almost by heart. Duff lay back and closed his eyes. Start anywhere. Sean read aloud. He stumbled on for half an hour with his tongue never quite catching the rhythm of the words.

Once or twice he glanced up at Duff, but Duff lay still with a faint sheen of sweat on his face and the scars very noticeable. He was breathing easily. Dickens is a powerful sleeping-draught for a hot morning and Sean's eyelids sagged down and his voice slowed and finally stopped.

The book slid off his lap.

The small tinkle of Duff's chain disturbed him; he awoke and looked at the bed. Duff crouched apelike. The madness was a fire in his eyes and his cheeks twitched.

A yellowish froth coated his teeth and formed a thin line of scum along his lips. Duff, Sean said, and Duff lunged at him with fingers hooked and a noise in his throat that was not human nor yet animal. It was a sound that jellied Sean's stomach and took the strength from his legs. Don't! screamed Sean, and the chain caught on one of the posts of the bed, jerking Duff back sprawling onto the bed before he could sink his teeth into Sean's paralysed body.

Sean ran. He ran out of the hut and into the bush. He ran with terror trembling in his legs and choking his breath. He ran with his heart taking its beat from his racing feet and his lungs pumping in disordered panic. A branch ripped across his cheek and the sting of it served to steady him. His feet slowed, he stopped and stood gasping, staring back towards the camp. He waited while his body settled and he forced his terror down until it was only a sickening sensation in his stomach. Then he circled through the Thorn bush and approached the laager from the side farthest away from Duff's shelter. The camp was empty, the servants had fled in the same terror that had driven Sean. He remembered that his rifle was still in the hut beside Duff's bed. He slipped into his wagon and quickly opened the case of unused rifles. His hands were unsteady again as he fumbled with the locks, for the chain might have parted and at every second he expected to hear that inhuman sound behind him. He found his bandolier hanging on the end of his cot and he took cartridges from it.

He loaded the rifle and cocked it. The weight of steel and wood in his hands gave him comfort.

It made him a man again.

He jumped down out of the wagon and with the rifle held ready he went cautiously out of the circle of wagons.

The chain had held. Duff stood in the shade of the wild fig plucking at it. He was making a sound like a new-born puppy. His back was turned to Sean and he was naked, his torn clothing scattered about him. Sean walked slowly

towards him. He stopped outside the reach of the chain.

Duffi Sean called uncertainly. Duff spun and crouched, the froth was thick in his golden beard; he looked at Sean and his teeth bared. Then he charged screaming until the chain caught him and threw him onto his back once more. He scrambled to his feet and fought the chain, his eyes fastened hungrily on Sean. Sean backed away. He brought up the rifle and aimed between Duff's eyes.

Swear to me. Swear to me you won't bring the rifle to me.

Sean's aim wavered. He kept moving backwards. Duff was bleeding now. The steel links had smeared the skin off his hips, but still he pulled against them fighting to get at Sean, and Sean was shackled just as effectively by his promise. He could not end it. He lowered the rifle and watched in impotent pity.

Mbejane came to him at last.

Come away, Nkosi. If you will not end it, come away.

He no longer has need of you. The sight of you inflames him.

Duff still struggled and screamed against his chain.

From his torn waist the blood trickled down and clung in the hair of his legs with the stickiness of molten chocolate. With each jerk of his head the froth sprayed from his mouth and splattered his chest and arms.

Mbejane led Sean back into the laager. The other servants were there and Sean roused himself to give orders. I want everyone away from here. Take blankets and food, go camp on the far side of the water. I will send for you when it is over. He waited until they had gathered their belongings and as they were leaving he called Mbejane back. What must I do? he asked. If a horse breaks a leg? Mbejane answered him with a question. I gave him my word, Sean shook his head desperately, still facing towards the sound of Duff's raving. Only a rogue and a brave man can break an oath, Mbejane answered simply. We will wait for you. He turned and followed the others. When they were gone Sean hid in one of the wagons and through a tear in the canvas he watched Duff. He saw the idiotic shaking of his head, the curious shambling gait as he moved around the circle of the chain. He watched when the pain made him roll on the ground and claw at his head, tearing out tufts of hair and leaving long scratches down his face. He listened to the sounds of insanity: the bewildered bellows of pain, the senseless giggling and that growl, that terrible growl.

A dozen times he sighted along the rifle barrel, holding his aim until the sweat ran into his eyes and blurred them and he had to take the butt from his shoulder and turn away.

Out there on the end of the chain, its exposed flesh reddening in the sun a piece of Sean was dying. Some of his youth, some of his laughter, some of his carefree love of life, so he had to creep back to the hole in the canvas and watch.

The sun reached its peak and started down again and the thing on the chain grew weaker. It fell and was a long time crawling on its hands and knees before it regained its feet again.

An hour before sunset Duff had his first convulsion. He was standing facing Sean's wagon, swinging his head from side to side, his mouth working silently. The convulsion took him and he stiffened; his lips pulled up grinning, showing his teeth, his eyes rolled back and disappeared leaving only the whites, and his body started to bend backwards. That beautiful body, still slim as a boy's with the long moulded legs, bending tighter and tighter until with a brittle crack the spine snapped and he fell. He lay wriggling, moaning softly and his trunk was twisted at an impossible angle from the broken spine.

Sean jumped from the wagon and ran to him: standing over him he shot Duff in the head and turned away. He flung his rifle from him and heard it clatter on the hard earth. He walked back to his wagon and took a blanket off Duff's cot. He came back and wrapped Duff in it, averting his eyes from the mutilated head. He carried him to the shelter and laid him on the bed. The blood soaked through the blanket, spreading on the cloth, like ink spilled on blotting-paper. Sean sank down on the chair beside the bed.

Outside the darkness gathered and became complete.

Once in the night a hyena came and snuffled at the blood outside on the earth, then it moved away. There was a pride of lions hunting in the bush beyond the waterhole; they killed two hours before dawn and Sean sat in the darkness and listened to their jubilant roaring.

in the morning, Sean stood up stiffly from his chair and went down to the wagons. Mbejane was waiting beside the fire in the laager.

Where are the others? Sean asked.

Mbejane stood up. They wait where you sent them. I came alone, knowing you would need me. Yes, said Sean. Get two axes from the wagon. They gathered wood, a mountain of dry wood, and packed it around Duff's bed, then Sean put fire to it.

Mbejane saddled a horse for Sean and he mounted up and looked down at the Zulu. Bring the wagons on to the next waterhole. I will meet you there. Sean rode out of the laager. He looked back only once and saw that the breeze had spread the smoke from the pyre in a mile long smudge across the tops of the thorn trees.

Like a bag of pus at the root of an infected tooth the guilt and grief rotted in Sean's mind. His guilt was doubleedged. He had betrayed Duff's trust, and he had lacked the courage to make the betrayal worthwhile. He had waited too long. He should have done it at the beginning, cleanly and quickly, or he should not have done it at all.

He longed with every fibre of his body to be given the chance to do it again, but this time the right way. He would gladly have lived once more through all that horror to clear his conscience and clean the stain from the memory of their friendship.

His grief was a thing of emptiness, an aching void, so that he was lost in it. Where before there had been Duff's laughter, his twisted grin and his infectious zest there was now only a grey nothingness. No glimmer of sun penetrated it and there were no solid shapes in it.

The next waterhole was shallow soup in the centre of a flat expanse of dry mud the size of a polo field. The mud was cracked in an irregular chequered pattern forming small brickettes, each the size of a hand. A man could have jumped across the water without wetting his feet.

Scattered thickly round its circumference were the droppings of the animals that had drunk there. Back and forth across its surface, changing direction as the wind veered, a few loose feathers sailed. The water was brackish and dirty. It was a bad camp. On the third day Mbejane went to Sean's wagon. Sean lay in his cot. He had not changed his clothes since leaving Duff. His beard was beginning, , to mat, sticky with sweat for it was hot as an oven under the wagon canvas.

Nkosi, will you come and look at the water. I do not think we should stay here What is wrong with it? Sean asked without interest. It is dirty, I think we should go on towards the big river. Do whatever you think is right. Sean rolled away from him, his face towards the side of the wagon.

So Mbejane took the wagon-train down towards the Limpopo. It was two days later that they found the ribbon of dark green trees that lined the banks. Sean stayed in his cot throughout the trek, jolting over the rough ground, sweating in the heat but oblivious to all discomfort.

Mbejane put the wagons into laager on the bank above the river-bed, then he and all the other servants waited for Sean to come to life again. Their talk round the fire at nights was baited with worry and they looked often towards Sean's living wagon, where it stood unlit by lantem, dark as the mood of the man that lay within.

Like a bear coming out of its cave at the end of winter, Sean came out of the wagon at last. His clothes were filthy. The dogs hurried to meet him, crowding round his knees, begging for attention and he did not notice them.

Vaguely he answered the greetings of his servants. He wandered down the bank into the river bed.

The summer had shrunk the Limpopo into a sparse line of pools strung out down the centre of the watercourse.

The pools were dark olive green. The sand around them was white, glaring snowfield white, and the boulders that choked the barely moving river were black and polished smooth. The banks were steep, half a mile apart and walled in with trees. Sean walked through the sand, sinking to his ankles with each step. He reached the water and sat down at the edge, he dabbled his hand in it and found it warm. as blood. In the sand next to him was the long slither mark of a crocodile, and a troop of monkeys were shaking the branches of a tree on the far bank and chattering at him. A pair of Sean's dogs splashed across the narrow neck between two Pools and went off to chase the monkeys. They went halfheartedly with their tongues flapping at the corners of their mouths for it was very hot in the whiteness of the river-bed. Sean stared into the green water. It was lonely without Duff; he had only his guilt and his sorrow for company. One of the dogs that had stayed with him touched his cheek with its cold nose.

Sean put his arm round its neck and the dog leaned against him. He heard footsteps in the sand behind him, he turned and looked up. It was Mbejane. Nkosi, Hlubi has found elephant not an hour's march up stream. He has counted twenty show good ivory.

Sean looked back at the water. Go away, he said.

Mbejane squatted down beside him with his elbows on his knees. For whom do you mourn? he asked. Go away, Mbejane, leave me alone. Nkosi Duff does not need your sorrow, therefore I think that you mourn for yourself Mhejane picked up a pebble and tossed it into the pool. When a traveller gets a Thorn in his foot, Mbejane went on softly, and he is wise he plucks it out, and he is a fool who leaves it and says "I will keep this thorn to prick me so that I will always remember the road upon which I have travelled. " Nkosi, it is better to remember with pleasure than with pain. Mbejane lobbed another pebble into the pool, then he stood up and walked back to the camp. When Sean followed him ten minutes later he found a saddle on his horse, his rifle in the scabbard and Mbejane and Hlubi waiting with their spears. Kandhla handed him his hat, he held it by the brim, turning it in his hands. Then he clapped it onto his head and swung up onto the horse.

Lead, he ordered.

During the next weeks Sean hunted with a single-mindedness that left no time for brooding. His returns to the wagons were short and intermittent; his only reasons for returning at all were to bring in the ivory and change his horse. At the end of one of these brief visits to camp and as Sean was about to mount up for another hunt, even Mbejane complained. Nkosi, there are better ways to die than working too hard. You look well enough, Sean assured him, although Mbejane was now as lean as a greyhound and his skin shone like washed anthracite. Perhaps all men look healthy to a man on horseback, Mbejane suggested Sean stoppe with one foot in the stirrup. He looked at Mbejane thoughtfully, then he lowered his leg again. We hunt on foot now, Mbejane, and the first to ask for mercy earns the right to be called woman" by the other. Mbejane grinned; the challenge was to his liking. They crossed the river and found spoor before midday, a small herd of young bulls. They followed it until nightfall and slept huddled together under one blanket, then they went on again next morning. on the third day they lost the spoor in rocky ground and they cast back towards the river. They picked up another herd within ten miles of the wagons, went after them and killed that evening three fine bulls, not a tusk between them under fifty pounds weight. A night march back to the wagons, four hours sleep and they were away again. Sean was limping a little now and on the second day out, during one of their infrequent halts, he pulled off his boot. The blister on his heel had burst and his sock was stiff with dried blood.

Mbejane looked at him expressionlessly. How far are we from the wagons? asked Sean. We can be back before dark, Nkosi. Mbenjane carried Sean's rifle for him on the return. Not once did his mask of solemnity slip. Back in camp Kandhla brought a basin of hot water and set it in front of Sean's chair. While Sean soaked his feet in it his entire following squatted in a circle about him. Every face wore an expression of studied concern and the silence was broken only by the clucking sounds of Bantu sympathy. They were loving every minute of it and Mbejane with the timing of a natural act or was building up the effect, playing to his audience.

Sean puffed at a cheroot, scowling to stop himself laughing. Mbejane cleared his throat and spat into the fire.

Every eye was on him; they waited breathlessly. Nkosi, said Mbejane, I would set fifty head of oxen as your marriage price, if you were my daughter.

One instant more of silence, then a shout of laughter.

Sean laughed with them at first, but after a while when Hlubi had nearly staggered into the fire and Nonga was sobbing loudly on Mbejaae's shoulder with tears of mirth streaming down his cheeks, Sean's own laughter stopped.

It wasn't that funny.

He looked at them sourly, at their wide open pink mouths and their white teeth, at their shaking shoulders and heaving chests and suddenly it came to him very clearly that they were no longer laughing at him. They were laughing for the joy of it. They were laughing because they were alive. A chuckle rattled up Sean's throat and escaped before he could stop it, another one bounced around inside his chest and he lay back in his chair, opened his mouth and let it come. The hell with it, he was alive, too.

In the morning when he climbed out of his wagon and limped across to see what Kandhla was cooking for breakfast, there was a faint excitement in him again, the excitement of a new day. He felt good. Duff's memory was still with him, it always would be, but now it was not a sickening ache. He had plucked out the thorn.

They moved camp three times in November, keeping to the south bank of the river, following it back towards the west. Slowly the wagons which they had emptied of ivory beside the waterhole began to fill again, for the game was concentrated along the river. The rest of the land was dry but now each day there was promise of relief.

The clouds that had been scattered across the sky began to crowd together, gathering into rounded dark-edged masses or rearing proudly into thunderheads. All of nature seemed impressed by their growing importance. In the evening the sun dressed them in royal purple and during the day the whirlwinds did dervish dances for their entertainment. The rains were coming. Sean had to make a decision, cross the Limpopo and cut himself off from the south when the river flooded, or stay where he was and leave the land beyond undisturbed. It wasn't a difficult decision.

They found a place where the banks flattened out a little on both sides of the river. They unloaded the first wagon and double-teamed it; then with everybody shouting encouragement the oxen galloped down the steep slope into the river-bed. The wagon bounced behind them until it hit the sand where it came to a halt, tilted at an abandoned angle, with its wheels sunk axledeep into the sand.

onto the spokes, shouted Sean. They flung themselves on the wheels and strained to keep them turning, but half the oxen were down on their knees, powerless in the loose footing.

Damn it to hell. Sean glared at the wagon. Outspan the oxen and take them back. Get out the axes. It took them three days to lay a bridge of corduroyed branches across the river and another two to get all the wagons and ivory to the far bank. Sean declared a holiday when the last wagon was manhandled into the laager and the whole camp slept late the next morning. The sun was high by the time Sean descended from his wagon. He was still muzzy and a little liverish from lying abed. He yawned wide and stretched like a crucifix. He ran his tongue round his mouth and gtimaced at the taste, then he scratched his chest and the hair rasped under his fingers. Kandhla, where's the coffee? Don't you care that I am near dead from thirst? Nkosi, the water will boil very soon. Sean grunted and walked across to where Mbejane squatted with the other servants by the fire watching Kandhla. This is a good camp, Mbejane. Sean looked up at the roof of leaves above them. It was a place of green shade, cool in the late morning heat. Christmas beetles were squealing in the wide stretched branches. There is good grazing for the cattle, Mbejane agreed;

he stretched out his hand towards Sean. I found this in the grass, someone else has camped here. Sean took it from him and examined it, a piece of broken china with a blue fig-leaf pattern. It was a shock to Sean, that little fragment of civilization in the wilderness; he turned it in his fingers and Mbejane went on. There are the ashes of an old fire there against the shurna tree and I found the ruts where wagons climbed the bank at the same place as ours. How long ago? Mbejane shrugged. A year perhaps. Grass has grown in the wagon tracks. Sean sat down in his chair, he felt disturbed. He thought about it and grinned as he realized he was jealous; there were strangers here in the land he was coming to regard as his own, those year-old tracks gave him a feeling of being in a crowd. Also there was the opposite feeling, that of longing for the company of his own kind. The sneaking desire to see a white face again. It was strange that he could resent something and yet wish for it simultaneously. Kandhla, am I to have coffee now or at supper tonight? Nkosi, it is done. Kandhla poured a little brown sugar into the mug stirred it with a stick and handed it to him.

Sean held the mug in both hands, blowing to cool it, then sipping and sighing with each mouthful. The talk of his Zulus passed back and forth about the circle and the snuff -boxes followed it, each remark of worth greeted with a solemn chorus of It is true, it is true, and the taking of snuff. Small arguments jumped up and fell back again into the leisurely stream of conversation. Sean listened to them, occasionally joining in or contributing a story until his stomach told him it was time to eat. Kandhla started to cook, under the critical supervision and with the helpful suggestions of those whom idleness had made garrulous. He had almost succeeded in grilling the carcass of a guinea-fowl to the satisfaction of the entire company, although Mbejane felt that he should have added a pinch more salt, when Nonga sitting across the fire from him jumped to his feet and pointed out towards the north. Sean shaded his eyes and looked.

For Chrissake, said Sean.

Ah! ah! ah! said his servants.

A white man rode towards them through the trees; he cantered with long stirrups, slouched comfortably, close enough already for Sean to make out the great ginger beard that masked the bottom half of his face. He was a big man; the sleeves of his shirt rolled high around thick arms.

Hello, shouted Sean and went eagerly to meet him.

The rider reined in at the edge of the laager. He climbed stiffly out of the saddle and grabbed Sean's outstretched hand. Sean felt his finger-bones creak in the grip. Hello, man! How goes it? He spoke in Afrikaans. His voice matched the size of his body and his eyes were on a level with Sean's. They pumped each other's arms mercilessly, laughing, putting sincerity into the usual inanities of greeting. Kandhla, get out the brandy bottle, Sean called over his shoulder, then to the Boer, Come in, you're just in time for lunch. We'll have a dram to celebrate. Hell, it's good to see a white man again! You're on your own, then? Yes, come in, man, sit down.

Sean poured drinks and the Boer took one up.

What's your name? he asked. Courtney, Sean Courtney. I'm Jan Paulus Leroux, glad to meet you, meneer.

Good health, meneer, Sean answered him and they drank. Jan Paulus wiped his whiskers on the palm of his hand and breathed out heavily, blowing the taste of the brandy back into his mouth. That was good, he said and held out his mug. They talked excitedly, tongues loose from loneliness, trying to say everything and ask all the questions at once, meetings in the bush are always like this. Meanwhile the tide was going out in the bottle and the level dropped quickly, Tell me, where are your wagons? Sean asked. An hour or two behind. I came ahead to find the river. How many in your party? Sean watched his face, talking just for the sound of it.

Ma and Pa, my little sister and my wife, which reminds me, you had better move your wagons. What? Sean looked puzzled.

This is my outspan place, the Boer explained to him.

See, there are the marks of my fire, this is my camp.

The smile went out of Sean's voice. Look around you, Boer, there is the whole of Africa. Take your pick, anywhere except where I am sitting. But this is my place. Jan Paulus flushed a little. I always camp at the same place when I return along a spoor.

The whole temper of their meeting had changed in a few seconds. Jan Paulus stood abruptly and went to his horse. He stooped and tightened the girth, hauling so savagely on the strap that the animal staggered off balance.

He flung himself onto its back and looked down at Sean.

move your wagons he said, I camp here tonight. Would you like to bet on that! Sean asked grimly.

We'll see! Jan Paulus flashed back.

We certainly shall, agreed Sean.

The Boer wheeled his horse and rode away. Sean watched his back disappear among the trees and only then did he let his anger slip. He rampaged through the laager working himself into a fury, pacing out frustrated circles, stopping now and then to glare out in the direction from which the Boer's wagons would come, but under all the external signs of indignation was his unholy anticipation of a fight. Kandhla brought him food, hurrying along behind him with the plate. Sean waved him away impatiently and continued his pugnacious patrol. At last a trek whip popped in the distance and an ox lowed faintly, to be answered immediately by Sean's cattle. The dogs started barking and Sean crossed to one of the wagons on the north side of the laager and leaned against it with assumed nonchalance. The long line of wagons wound out of the trees towards him. There were bright blobs of colour on the high box seat of the lead wagon.

Women's dresses! Ordinarily they would have made Sean's nostrils flare like those of a stud stallion, but now his whole attention was concentrated on the larger of the two outriders. Ian Paulus cantered ahead of his father, and Sean, with his fists clenched into bony hammers at his sides, watched him come. Jan Paulus sat straight in the saddle; he stopped his horse a dozen paces from Sean and shoved his hat onto the back of his head with a thumb as thick and as brown as a fried sausage; he tickled his horse a little with his spurs to make it dance and he asked with mock surprise, What, Rooi Nek, still here?

Sean's dogs had rushed forward to meet the other pack and now they milled about in a restrained frenzy of mutual bottom-smelling, stiff-limbed with tension, backs abristle and legs cocking in the formal act of urination. Why don't you go and climb a tree? You'll feel more at home there, Sean suggested mildly. Oh! so? Jan Paulus reared in his stirrups. He kicked loose his right foot, swung it back over his horse's rump to dismount and Sean jumped at him. The horse skittered nervously, throwing the Boer off balance and he clutched at the saddle. Sean reached up, took a double handful of his ginger beard and leaned back on it with all his weight.

Jan Paulus came over backwards with his arms windmilling, his foot caught in the stirrup and he hung suspended like a hammock, held at one end to the plunging horse and at the other by his chin to Sean's hands. Sean dug his heels in, revelling in the Boer's bellows.

Galvanized into action by Sean's example, the dogs cut short the ceremony and went at each other in a snarling snapping shambles; the fur flew like sand in a Kalahari dust-storm.

The stirrup-leather snapped; Sean fell backwards and rolled to his feet just in time to meet Ian Paulus's charge.

He smothered the punch that the Boer bowled overarm at him, but the power behind it shocked him; then they were chest to chest and Sean felt his own strength matched. They strained silently with their beards touching and their eyes inches apart. Sean shifted his weight quickly and tried for a fall, but smoothly as a dancer Jan Paulus met and held him. Then it was his turn; he twisted in Sean's arms and Sean sobbed with the effort required to stop him. Oupa Leroux joined in by driving his horse at them, scattering the dogs, his hippo-hide sjambok hissing as he swung it. Let it stand! you thunders, give over, hey! Enough, let it stand! Sean shouted with pain as the lash cut across his back and at the next stroke Jan Paulus howled as loudly. They let go of each other and massaging their whip-weals retreated before the skinny old white-beard on the horse.

The first of the wagons had come up now and two hundred pounds of woman, all in one package, called out from the box seat, Why did you stop them, Oupa? No sense in letting them kill each other. Shame on you, so you must spoil the boys fun. Don't you remember how you loved to fight? Or are you now so old you forget the pleasures of your youth? Leave them alone!

Oupa. hesitated, swinging the sjamhok and looking from Sean to Jan Paulus. Come away from there, you old busybody, his wife ordered him. She was solid as a granite kopje, her blouse packed full of bosom and her bare arms brown and thick as a man's. The wide brim of her bonnet shaded her face but Sean could see it was pink and pudding-shaped, the kind of face that smiles more easily than it frowns. There were two girls on the seat beside her but there was no time to look at them. Oupa had pulled his horse out of the way and Jan Paulus was moving down on him. Sean went up on his toes, crouching a little, preoccupied with the taste he had just had of the other's strength, watching Jan Paulus close in for the mAin course and not too certain he was going to be able to chew this mouthful.

Jan Paulus tested Sean with a long right-hander but Sean rolled his head with it and the thick pad of his beard cushioned the blow; he hooked Jan Paulus in the ribs under. his raised arm and Jan Paulus grunted and circled awayForgetting his scruples, Oupa Leroux watched them with rising delight. It was going to be a good fight. They were well matched, both big men, under thirty, quick and smooth on their feet. Both had fought before and that often; you could tell it by the way they felt each other out turning just out of reach, moving in to offer an opening that a less experienced man might have attempted and regretted, then dropping back.

The fluid, almost leisurely pattern of movement exploded. Jan Paulus jumped in, moving left, changed direction like the recoil of a whip lash and used his right hand again; Sean ducked under it and laid himself open to Jan Paulus's left. He staggered back from its kick, bleeding where it had split the flesh across his cheek-bone, and Jan Paulus followed him eagerly, Ins hands held ready, searching for the opening. Sean kept clear, instinct moving his feet until the blackness faded inside his head and he felt the strength in his arms again. He saw Jan Paulus following him and he let his legs stay rubbery; he dropped his hands and waited for Jan Paulus to commit himself. Too late Jan Paulus caught the cunning in Sean's eyes and tried to break from the trap, but clenched bone raked his face. He staggered away and now he was bleeding also.

They fought through the wagons with the advantage changing hands a dozen times. They came together and used their heads and their knees, they broke and used their fists again. Then locked chest to chest once more they rolled down the steep bank into the river bed of the Limpopo. They fought in the soft sand and it held their legs, it filled their mouths when they fell and clung like white icing-sugar to their hair and beards. They splashed into one of the pools and they fought in the water, coughing with the agony of it in their lungs, floundering like a pair of bull hippos, their movements slowing down until they knelt facing each other, no longer able to rise, the water running from them and the only sound their gasping for air.

Not sure whether the darkness was actuality or a fantasy of fatigue, for the sun had set by the time they were finished, Sean watched Jan Paulus starting to puke, retching with a tearing noise to bring up a small splash of yellow bile. Sean crawled to the edge of the pool and lay with his face in the sand. There were voices echoing in his ears and the light of a lantern, the light was red filtered through the blood that had trickled into his eyes.

His servants lifted him and he hardly felt them. The light and the voices faded into blackness as he slipped over the edge of consciousness.

The sting of iodine woke him and he struggled to sit up but hands pushed him down. Gently, gently, the fight is over. Sean focused his one eye to find the voice. The pinkness of Ouma Leroux hung over him. Her hands touched his face and the antiseptic stung him again. He exclaimed through puffed lips. So! just like a man OumA chuckled. Your head nearly knocked off without a murmur but one touch of medicine and you cry like a baby. Sean ran his tongue round inside his mouth; one tooth loose but all the others miraculously present. He started to lift his hand to touch his closed eye but Ouma slapped it down impatiently and went on working over him. Glory, what a fight! She shook her head happily. You were good, kerel, - you were very good. Sean looked beyond her and saw the girl. She was standing in shadow, a silhouette against the pale canvas. She was holding a basin. Ouma turned and dipped the cloth in it, washing out the blood before she came back to his face. The wagon rocked under her weight and the lantern that hung from the roof swung, lighting the girl's face from the side. Sean's legs straightened on his cot and he moved his head slightly to see her better. Be still, jong, Ouma commanded. Sean looked past her at the girl at the full serene line of her lips and the curve of her cheek. He saw the pile of her hair fluff up in happy disarray and then, suddenly, penitent, slide down behind her neck, curl over her shoulder and hang to her waist in a plait as thick as his wrist. Katrina, do you expect me to reach right across to the basin each time? Stand closer, girl She stepped into the light and looked at Sean. Green, laughing almost bubbling green was the colour of her eyes. Then she dropped them to the basin. Sean stared at her, not wanting to miss the moment when she would look up again.

My big bear, Ouma spoke with grudging approval.

Steal our camp site, fight my son and ogle my daughter.

If you go on like this I might have to knock the thunder out of you myself. Glory, but you are a dangerous one!

Katrina, you had better go back to our wagons and help Henrietta see to your brother. Leave the basin on the chest there. She looked at Sean once more before she left. There were secret shadows in the green, she didn't have to smile with her mouth.

Sean woke to the realization that something was wrong.

He started to sit up but the pain checked him: the stiffness of bruised muscle and the catch of half-dried scab.

He groaned and the movement hurt his lips. Slowly he swung his legs off the cot and roused himself to take stock of the damage. Dark through the hair of his chest showed a heel imprint of Jan Paulus's boot. Sean prodded round it gently, feeling for the give of a broken rib; then, satisfied with that area, he went on to inspect the raw graze that wrapped round onto his back, holding his left arm high and peering closely at the broken skin. He picked a bit of blanket fluff from the scab. He stood up, only to freeze as a torn muscle in his shoulder knifed him. He started to swear then softly, monotonously, and he kept it up all through the painful business of climbing down out of the wagon.

His entire following watched his descent, even the dogs looked worried. Sean reached the ground and started to shout.

What the hell!

He stopped hurriedly as he felt his lips crack open again and start to bleed.

rWhat the hell', he said again, keeping his lips still ,are you doing standing round like a bunch of women at a beer drink, is there no work here? Hlubi, I thought I sent you out to look for elephant Hlubi went. Kandhla, where's breakfast? Mbejane, get me a basin of water and my shaving-mirror. Sean sat in his chair and morosely inspected his face in the mirror.

If a herd of buffalo had stampeded across it they would have done less damage."Nkosi, it is nothing compared to his face, Mbejane assured him.

Is he bad? Sean looked up.I have spoken to one of his servants. He has not left his bed yet and he lies there, growling like a wounded lion in a thicket; but his eyes are as tightly closed as those of a new cub."Tell me more, Mbejane. Say truly, was it a good fight?

Mbejane squatted down next to Sean's chair. He was silent a moment as he gathered his words.When the sky sends its cloud impis against the peaks of the Drakensberg, with thunder and the spears of lightning, it is a thing to thrill a man. When two bull elephants fight unto death there is no braver show in all the veld.

Is this not so?

Sean nodded, his eyes twinkling.Nkosi, hear me when I tell you these things were as the play of little children beside this fight Sean listened to the praises. Mbejane was well versed lkin the oldest art of Zululand and when he had finished he looked at Sean's face. It was happy. Mbejane smiled and took a fold of paper out of his loin cloth. A servant from the other camp brought this while you slept Sean read the note. It was written in a big round school- girl hand and worded in High Dutch. He liked that writing.

It was an invitation to dinner. Kandhla, get out my suit and my number one boots. He picked up the mirror again. There wasn't very much he could do about his face, trim the beard, perhaps, but that was all. He laid the mirror down and looked up stream to where the Leroux wagons were half hidden among the trees.

Mbejane carried a lantern in front of Sean. They walked slowly to enable Sean to limp with dignity. When they reached the other laager, Jan Paulus climbed stiffly out of his chair and nodded an equally still greeting. Mbejane had lied, except for a missing tooth there was little to choose between their faces. Oupa slapped Sean's back and pressed a tumbler of brandy into his hand. He was a tall roan but twenty thousand suns had burnt away Ins flesh and left only stringy muscle, had faded his eyes to a pale green and toughened his skin to the texture of a turkey's neck. His beard was yellowish-white with still a touch of ginger round the mouth. He asked Sean three questions without giving him time to answer the first, then he led him to a chair.

Oupa talked, Sean listened and Jan Paulus sulked. Oupa talked of cattle and hunting and the land to the north.

After a few minutes Sean realized that he was not expected to take part in the conversation: his few tentative efforts were crushed under Oupa's verbal avalanche.

So Sean listened half to him and half to the whisper of women's voices from the cooking fires behind the laager.

Once he heard her laugh. He knew it was her for it was the rich sound of the thing that he had seen in her eyes.

At last the women's business with food and pots was finished and Ouma led the girls to where the men sat. Sean stood up and saw that Katrina was tall, with shoulders like a boy. As she walked towards him the movement pressed her skirt against her legs, they were long but her feet were small. Her hair was red-black and tied behind her head in an enormous bun. Ah, my battling bear, Ouma took Sean's arm, let me present my daughter-in-law, Henrietta, here is the man that nearly killed your husband. Jan Paulus snorted from his chair and Ouma laughed, her bosom wobbling merrily.

Henrietta was a small dark-eyed girl. She doesn't like me, Sean guessed instantly. He bowed slightly and took her hand. She pulled it away.

This is my youngest daughter, Katrina. You met her last night.

She does like me. Her fingers were long and squaretipped in his.

Sean risked his lips with a smile. Without her ministrations I might have bled to death, he said. She smiled straight back at him but not with her mouth. You wear your wounds well, maneer, the blue eye has an air of distinction. That will be enough from you, girl Oupa spoke sharply. Go and sit by your mother He turned to Sean. I was telling you about this horse, I said to the fellow, "He's not worth five pounds let alone fifteen, look at those hocks, thin as sticks. So he says to me, trying to get me away, you follow, he says, "Come and look at the saddle. " But I can see he's worriede, The thin cotton of the girl's blouse could hardly contain the impatient push of her breasts, Sean thought that he had never seen anything so wonderful.

There was a trestle-table next to the cooking fire; they went to it at last. Oupa said grace. Sean watched him through his lashes. Oupa's beard waggled as he spoke and at one point he thumped the table to emphasize the point he was making to the Almighty. His amen had such an impressive resonance that Sean had to make an effort to stop himself applauding and Oupa fell back spent. Amen, said ouma and ladled stew from a pot the size of a bucket. Henrietta added pumpkin fritters and Katrina stacked slices of fresh meahe bread on each plate. A silence fell on the table, spoiled only by the clank of metal on china and the sound of Oupa breathing through his nose. Mevrouw Leroux, I have waited a long time to taste food like this again. Sean mopped up the last bit of gravy with a piece of mealie bread. Ouma beamed.

There's plenty more, meneer. I love to see a man eat.

Oupa used to be a great trencherman. My father made him take me away for he could not afford to feed him every time he came courting. She took Sean's plate and filled it. You look to me like a man who can eat I think. I'll hold my own in most company Sean agreed. So? Jan Paulus spoke for the first time. He passed his plate to Ourna. Fill it up, please, Mother, tonight I am hungry-Sean's eyes narrowed, he waited until Jan Paulus had his plate back in front of him, then he took up his fork deliberately. Jan Paulus did the same. Glory, said Ourna happily. Here we go again. Oupa, you may have to go out and shoot a couple of buffalo before dinner is finished tonight! will bet one sovereign on Jan Paulus, Oupa challenged his wife. He is like an army of termites. I swear that if there was nothing else he'd eat the canvas off the wagons. All right, agreed Ouma. I've never seen the Bear eat before, but it seems to me he has plenty of room to put it! Your woollen shawl against my green bonnet that Jan Paulus gives up first, Katrina whispered to her sister-inlaw. When Jannie has finished the stew he'll eat the Englishmin, Henrietta giggled. But it's a pretty bonnet, I'll take the wager. Plateful for plateful, Ouma measuring out each ladle with scrupulous fairness, they ate against each other. The talk round the table dwindled and halted. More? asked Ourna each time the plates were clean, and each time they looked at each other and nodded. At last the ladle scraped the bottom of the pot. That's the end of it, my children, we will have to call it another draw. The silence went on after she had spoken. Sean and Jan Paulus sat very still looking at their respective plates. )an Paulus hiccupped, his expression changed. He stood up and went into the darkness. Ah! listen! listen! crowed Ouma. They, waited and then she exploded into laughter. The ungrateful wretch, is that what he thinks of my food? Where's your sovereign, Oupa? Wait, you greedy old woman, the game's not finished yet. He turned and stared at Sean. To me it looks as though your horse is nearly blown Sean closed his eyes. The sounds of Jan Paulus's distress came to him very clearly. -Thank you for a, He didn't have time to finish. He wanted to get far away so the girl couldn't hear him.

The following morning during breakfast Sean thought about his next move. He would write an invitation to dinner and then he would deliver it himself. They would for coffee and then, if he waited, have to ask him to stay there would be a chance. Even Oupa would have to stop talking sometime and Ouma might relax her vigilance.

He was sure there'd be a chance to talk to the girl. He didn't know what he would say to her but he'd worry about that when the time came. He climbed into the wagon and found pencil and paper in his chest. He went f back to the table and spread the paper in front of him. He chewed the end of the pencil and stared out into the bush.

Something moved against the trees. Sean put the pencil down and stood up. The dogs barked then stopped as they recognized Mubi. He was coming at a trot, he was coming with news. Sean waited for him.

, A big herd, Nkosi, with many showing ivory. I sawthem drink at the river and then go back into the bush, feeding quietly. When? asked Sean to gain time. He was searching for a plausible excuse to stay in camp, it would have to be good to satisfy Mbejane who was already saddling one of the horses. Before the sun this morning, answered Hlubi and Sean was trying to remember which was his sore shoulder, he couldn't hunt with a sore shoulder. Mbejane led the horse into the laager. Sean scratched the side of his nose and coughed. The tracker from the other camp follows close behind me, Nkosi, he too has seen the herd and brings the news k I to his master. But 1, being as swift as a springbok when I run, have outdistanced him, Hlubi ended modestly. Is that so? For Sean it changed the whole problem, he couldn't leave the herd to that red-headed Dutchman. He ran across to the wagon and snatched his bandolier from the foot of the cot. His rifle was already in the scabbard. Are you tired, Hlubi? Sean buckled the heavy ammunition belt across his chest. The sweat had run in oily streaks down the Zulu's body; his breathing was deep and quick. No, Nkosi. well, then, lead us to these elephant of yours, my fleetfooted springbok. Sean swung up onto his horse He looked over his shoulder at the other camp. She would still be there when he came back.

Sean was limited to the speed of Hlubi's feet while the two Leroux had only to gallop along the easy spoor left by Sean's party and they caught up with him before he had gone two miles. Good morning to you, Oupa greeted him as he drew level and pulled his horse in to a trot. Out for a morning's ride, I see. Sean made the best of it with a grin. If we are all to hunt then we must hunt together. Do you agree? Of course, meneer. And we must share the bag equally, one third to each man.

That is always the way. Oupa. nodded. Do you agree? Sean turned in his -saddle towards Jan Paulus. Jan Paulus granted. He showed little inclination to open his mouth since he'd lost his tooth.

They found the spoor within an hour. The herd had wrecked a road through the thick bush along the river.

They had stripped the bark from the saplings and left them naked and bleeding. They had knocked down bigger trees to reach the tender top leaves and they had dropped their great piles of dung in the grass.

We need no trackers to follow this. Jan Paulus had the first excitement on him. Sean looked at him and wondered how many elephant had died in front of his rifle. A thousand perhaps, and yet the excitement was on him again now. Tell your servants to follow us. We'll go ahead. We catch them within an hour. He smiled at Sean, gaptoothed, and Sean felt the excitement lift the hair on his own forearms. He smiled back.

They cantered in a rough line abreast, slack-reined to let the horses pick their own way among the fallen trees.

The river bush thinned out as they moved north and soon they were into parkland. The grass brushed their stirrups and the ground beneath it was firm and smooth.

They rode without talking, leaning forward in their saddles, looking ahead. The rhythmic beat of hooves was a war drum. Sean ran his fingers along the row of bullets strapped across his chest, then he drew his rifle, checked the load and thrust it back into its scabbard. There! said Oupa and Sean saw the herd. It was massed among a grove of fever trees a quarter of a mile ahead. Name of a name, Paulus whistled. There must be two hundred at least. Sean heard the first pig-squeal of alarm, saw ears fan out and trunks lift. Then the herd bunched together and ran with their backs humped, a thin screen of dust trailing behind them. Paulus take the right flank. You, meneer, in the middle and I'll ride left, shouted Oupa.

he jammed his hat down over his ears and his horse jumped under him as he hit it with his heels. Like a thrown trident the three horsemen hurled themselves at the herd. Sean rode into the dust. He picked an old cow elephant from the moving mountain range in front Of him and pressed Ins horse so close upon her that he could see the bristles in her tail tuft and the erosion of her skin, wrinkled as an old man's scrotum. He touched his hand to his horse's neck and it plunged, from full gallop to standstill in half a dozen strides. Sean threw his feet free of the stirrups and hit the ground, loose-kneed to ride the shock. The cow's spine was a line of lumps beneath the grey skin, Sean broke it with his first bullet and she dropped, sliding on her hindquarters like a dog with worms. His horse started to run again before he was properly in the saddle and everything became movement and noise, dust and the smell of burnt powder. Chase them, coughing in the dust. Close with them. Off the horse and shoot. Wet blood on grey skin. Slam, slam of the rifle, its barrel hot, recoiling savagely. Sweat in the eyes, stinging.

Ride. Shoot again. Two more down, screaming, anchored by paralysed legs. Blood-red as a flag. Load, cramming cartridges into the rifle. Ride. Chase them, shoot again and again. The bullets striking on flesh with a hollow sound, then up and ride again. Ride, until the horse could no longer keep up with them and he had to let them go. He stood holding his horse's head, the dust and the thirst closed his throat. He could not swallow. His hands trembled in reaction. His shoulder was aching again. He untied his silk scarf, wiped his face with it and blew the mud out of his nose, then he drank from his water-bottle. The water tasted sweet.

The hunt had led from parkland into mopam bush. It was very thick, shiny green leaves hanging to the ground and pressing close around him. The air was still and warm to breathe. He turned back along the line of the chase. He found them by their squealing. When they saw him they tried to charge, dragging themselves towards him, using the front legs only and groping with their dunks. They sagged into stillness after the head shot. This was the bad part. Sean worked quickly. He could hear the other rifles in the mopard forest around him and when he came to one of the long clearings among the trees he saw Jan Paulus walking towards him, leading his horse.

How many? called Sean. Gott, Man, I didn't count. What a killing, hey? Have you got a drink for me? I dropped my water-bottle somewhere. Jan Paulus's rifle was in its saddle scabbard. The reins were slung over his shoulder and his horse followed him with its head drooping from exhaustion. The clearing was walled in with the dense mopani trees and a wounded elephant broke into the open. It was lung shot, the side of its chest painted with froth, and when it squealed the blood sprayed in a pink spout from the end of its trunk.

It went for Jan Paulus, streaming the black battle ensigris of its ears. His horse reared, the reins snapped, it turned free and galloped away, leaving jan full in the path of the charge. Sean went up onto his horse's back without touching stirrups. His horse threw its head, dancing in a tight circle, but he dragged it around and drove it to intercept the charge. Don't run, for God's sake, don't run! he shouted as he cleared his rifle from the scabbard. Jan Paulus heard him.

He stood with his hands at his sides, his feet apart and his body braced. The elephant heard Sean shout also and it swung its head and Sean saw the first hesitation in its run. He fired, not trying to pick his shot, hoping only to hurt it, to bring it away from Jan Paulus. The bullet slapped into it with the sound of a wet towel flicked against a wall. The elephant turned, clumsy with the weakness of its shattered lungs. Sean gathered his horse beneath him and wheeled it away and the elephant followed him.

Sean fumbled as he reloaded, his hands were slippery with sweat. One of the brass shells slipped through his fingers, tapped against his knee and dropped into the grass under his horse's hooves. The elephant gained on him. He loosened his bed-roll from the saddle and let it fall, they would sometimes stop to savage even a fallen hat, but not this one. He turned in the saddle and fired into it. It squeled again so close upon him that the blown blood splattered into his face. His horse was almost finished; he could feel its legs flopping with every stride and they were nearly at the end of the clearing racing towards the solid wall of green mopani. He pushed another round into the breech of his rifle and swung his body across the saddle.

He slid down until his feet touched the ground and he was running next to his horse. He let go and was flung forward, but he fought to keep his balance, his body jarring with the force of his run. Then, still on his feet, he turned for his first steady shot. The elephant was coming in fast, almost on top of him, hanging over him like a Cliff. Its trunk coiled on its chest and the curves of its ivory were lifted high.

it's too close, much too close, I can't hit the brain from here.

He aimed at the hollow in its forehead just above the level of its eyes. He fired and the elephants legs folded up; its brain burst like an overripe tomato within the bone castle of its skull.

Sean tried to jump aside as the massive body came skidding down upon him, but one of its legs hit him and threw him face down into the grass. He lay there. He felt sick, for his stomach was still full of warm oily fear.

After a while he sat up and looked at the elephant. one of its tusks had snapped off flush with the lip. Jan Paulus came, panting from his run. He stopped next to the elePhant and touched the wound in its forehead, then he wiped his fingers on his shirt. Are you all right, man? He took Sean's arm and helped him to his feet; then he picked up Sean's hat and dusted it carefully before handing it to him.

in the three-sided shelter formed by the belly and outthrust legs of one of the dead elephants they made their camp that night. They drank coffee together and Sean sat between the two Leroux with his back against the rough skin of the elephants belly. The silhouettes of the tree against the night sky were deformed by the shapes of the vultures that clustered in them and the darkness was ugly with the giggling of hyena. They had set a feast for the scavengers. They spoke little for they were tired, but Sean could feel the gratitude of the men who sat beside him and before they rolled into their blankets Jan Paulus said gruffly, Thank you, kerel. , You might be able to do the same for me one day. I hope so, ja! I hope so. In the morning oupa said, It's going to take us three or four days to cut out all this ivory. He looked up at the sky. I don't like these clouds. One of us had better ride.

back to camp to fetch more men and wagons to carry the ivory.

i'll go Sean stood up quickly. I was thinking of going myself. But Sean was already calling to Mbejane to saddle his horse and Oupa couldn't really argue with him, not after yesterday.

Tell Ourna to take the wagons across the river, he acquiesced. We don't want to be caught on this side when the river floods. Perhaps you wouldn't mind helping her. No, Sean assured him. I don't mind at all. His horse was still tired from the previous day's hunt and it was three hours before he reached the river.

He tied his horse on the bank and went down to one of the pools. He stripped off his clothes and lowered himself into the water. He scrubbed himself with handfuls of the coarse sand and when he waded out of the pool and dried on his shirt his skin was tingling. He rode along the bank and the temptation to gallop his horse was almost unbearable. He laughed to himself a little. The field's almost clear, though I wouldn't put it past that suspicious old Dutchman to follow me He laughed again and thought about the colour of her eyes, green as creme-de-menthe in a crystal glass, and the shape of her bosom. The muscles in his legs tightened and the horse lengthened its stride in response to the pressure of his knees. All right, run then, Sean encouraged it, I don't insist on it, but I would be grateful. He went to his own wagons first and changed his sweaty shirt for a fresh one, his leather breeches for clean calico and his scuffed boots for soft pohshed leather. He scrubbed his teeth with salt and dragged a comb through his hair and beard. He saw in the mirror that the battle damage to his face was fading and he winked at his image. How can she resist you? He gave his mustache one more twirl, climbed out of the wagon and was immediately aware of a most uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. He walked towards the Leroux laager thinking about it, and he recognized it as the same feeling he used to have when Waite Courtney called him to the study to do penance for his boyhood sins. That's odd, he muttered. Why should I feel like that?

His confidence faded and he stopped. I wonder if my breath smells, I think I'd better go back and get some cloves He turned with relief, knew it as cowardice and stopped again. Get a grip on yourself. She's only a girl, an uneducated little Dutch girl. You've had fifty finer women. Name me two, he shot back at himself.

Well, there was, Oh! for Chrissake, come on. Resolutely he set off for the Leroux laager again.

She was sitting in the sun within the circle of wagons.

She was leaning forward on the stool and her newlywashed hair fell thickly over her face almost to the ground. with each stroke of the brush it leapt like a live thing and the sun sparkled the red lights in it. Sean wanted to touch it, he wanted to twist fistfuls of it round his hands and he wanted to smell it, it would smell warm and slightly milky like a puppy's fur. He stepped softly towards her but before he reached her she took the shiny mass with both hands and threw it back over her shoulders, a startled flash of green eyes, one despairing wall, oh, no! not with my hair like this A swirl of skirts that sent the stool flying and she was gone into her wagon- Sean scratched the side of his nose and stood awkwardly. Why are you back so soon, meneer? she called through the canvas. Where are the others? Is everything all right! Yes, they're both fine. I left them and came to fetch wagons to carry the ivory. oh, that's good. Sean tried to interpret the inflection of her voice: was it good that they were fine, or good that he had left them? So far the indications were favourable;

her confusion at seeing him boded well. What's wrong? Ouma bellowed from one of the other wagons. It's not Oupa, don't tell me something has happened to him?

The wagon rocked wildly and her pink face, puckered with sleep, popped out of the opening.

Sean's reassurances were smothered by her voice. Oh, I knew this would happen. I had a feeling. I shouldn't have let him go! Paulus, oh, Jan Paulus, I must go to him. Where is he?

Henrietta came running" from the cooking fire behind the wagons and then the dogs started barking and the servants added their chatter to the confusion. Sean tried to shout them all down and watch Katrina emerging from her wagon at the same time. She had disciplined her hair now, it had a green ribbon in it and hung down her back.

She was laughing and she helped him to quieten Ouma and Henrietta.

They brought him coffee, then they sat round him and listened to the story of the hunt. Sean went into detail on the rescue of Jan Paulus and was rewarded by a softening of the dislike in Henrietta's eyes. By the time Sean had finished talking it was too late to start moving the wagons across the river. So he talked some more, it was most agreeable to have three women as an attentive audience, and then they ate supper.

With ostentatious tact Ouma and Henrietta retired early to their respective living wagons and left Sean and Katrina sitting by the fire. At carefullY-spaced intervals there was a stage cough from ouma's wagon, a reminder that they were not entirely alone. Sean lit a cheroot and frowned into the fire searching desperately for something intelligent to say, but all his brain could dredge up was, Thank God, Oupa isn't here He sneaked a glance at Katrina: she was staring into the fire as well and she was blushing. Instantly Sean felt his own cheeks starting to heat up. He opened his mouth to talk and made a squawking noise. He shut it again. We can speak in English if you like, meneer. You speak English? Sean's surprise brought his voice back.

I -Practise every night, I read aloud out of my books Sean grinned at her delightedly, it was suddenly very important that she could speak his language. The dam, holding back all the questions that there were to ask and all the things there were to Say, burst and the words came pouring out over each other. Katrina fluttered her hands when she couldn't find the word she wanted and then lapsed back into Afrikaans. They killed the short taut silences with a simultaneous rush of words, then laughed together in confusion. They sat on the edges of their chairs and watched each other's faces as they talked. The moon came up, a red rain moon, and the fire faded into a puddle of ashes. Katrina, it's long past the time decent people were asleep. I'm sure Meneer Courtney is tired. They dropped their voices to a whisper, drawing out the last minutes. In just one minute, girl, I'm coming out to fetch you to bed They walked to her wagon and with each step her skirts brushed against his leg. She stopped with one hand on the wagon step. She wasn't as tall as he'd imagined, the top of her head came to his chin. The seconds slid by as he hesitated, reluctant to touch, strangely frightened to test the delicate thread they had spun together lest he destroy it before it became strong. Slowly he swayed towards her and something surged up inside him as he saw her chin lift slightly and the lashes fall over her eyes. Goodnight, Meneer Courtney. Ouma's voice again, loud and with an edge to it. Sean started guiltily.

, Goodnight, mevrouw. Katrina touched his arm just above the elbow, her fingers were warm.

gGoodn ight, meneer, I shall see you in the morning.

She rustled up the steps and slipped through the opening of the canvas. Sean scowled at ouma's wagon.

'Thanks very much, and if there is ever anything I can do for you, please don't hesitate to ask. They started moving the wagons early next morning.

There was no time to talk to Katrina in the bustle of inspanning and working the wagons across the corduroy bridge. Sean spent most of the morning in the river-bed and the white sand bounced the heat up at him. He threw off his shirt and sweated like a wrestler. He trotted beside Katrina's wagon when they ran it through the river-bed.

She looked once at his naked chest and arms; her cheeks darkened in the shadow of her bonnet and she dropped her eyes and didn't look at him again. With only the two wagons that were going back to fetch the ivory still on the north bank and the rest safely across, Sean could relax.

He washed in one of the pools, put on his shirt and went across to the south bank looking forward to a long afternoon of Katrina's company.

Ouma met him. Thank you, my bear, the girls have made you a parcel of cold meat and a bottle of coffee to eat on your way. Sean's face went slack. He had forgotten all about that stinking ivory; as far as he was concerned Oupa and Paulus could keep the lot of it.

Don't worry about us any more now, maneer. I know how it is with a man who is a man. When there's work to do everything else comes after. Katrina put the food in his hands. Sean looked for a sign from her. one sign and he'd defy even Ouma.

Don't be too long, she whispered. The thought that he might shirk work had obviously not even occurred to her.

Sean was glad he hadn't suggested it.

It was a long ride back to the elephant. You've taken your time, haven't you? Oupa greeted him with sour suspicion. You'd better get to work if you don't want to lose some of your share. Taking out the tusks was a delicate task: a slip of the axe would scar the ivory and halve its value. They worked in the heat with a blue haze of flies around their faces, settling on their lips and crawling into their nostrils and eyes. The carcases had started to rot and the gases ballooned their bellies and escaped in posthumous belches.

They sweated as they worked and the blood caked their arms to the elbows, but each hour the wagons filled higher until on the third day they loaded the last tusk.

Sean reckoned Ins share at twelve hundred pounds, the equivalent of a satisfactory day on the Stock Exchange.

He was in a good mood on the morning that they started back to the camp, but it deteriorated as the day wore on and they struggled with the heavily-loaded wagons. The rain seemed to have made up its mind at Last and now the sky's belly hung down as heavily as that of a pregnant sow. The clouds trapped the heat beneath them and the men panted and the oxen complained mournfully. At midafternoon they heard the first far thunder.

It will be on us before we pass the river, fretted Oupa. See if you can't get some pace out of those oxen.

They reached Sean's camp an hour after dark and threw his share of the ivory out of the wagons almost without stopping, then they went down to the river and across the bridge to the south bank. My mother will have food ready Jan Paulus called back to Sean. When you have washed come across and eat with us. Sean had supper with the Leroux, but his attempts to get Katrina by herself were neatly countered by Oupa whose suspicions were now confirmed. The old man played his trump card immediately after supper and ordered Katrina to bed. Sean could only shrug helplessly in reply to Katrina's appealing little glance. When she had gone Sean went back to his own camp. He was dizzy, with fatigue and he fell onto his cot without bothering to undress.

The rains opened their annual offensive with a midnight broadside of thunder. It startled Sean to his feet before he was awake. He pulled open the front of the wagon and heard the wind coming. Mbejane, get the cattle into the laager. Make sure all the canvas is secure. It is done already, Nkosi, I have lashed the wagons together so the oxen cannot stampede and I have Then the wind whipped his voice away.

It came out of the east and it frightened the trees so they thrashed their branches in panic; it drummed on the wagon canvas and filled the air with dust and dry leaves.

The oxen turned restlessly within the laager. Then came the rain: stinging like hail, drowning the wind and turning the air to water. It swamped the sloping ground that could not drain It fast enough, it blinded and it deafened.

Sean went back to his cot and listened to its fury. it made him feel drowsy. He pulled the blankets up to his chin and slept.

In the morning he found his oilskins in the chest at the foot of his cot. They crackled as he pulled them on. He climbed out of the wagon. The cattle had churned the inside of the laager to calf-deep mud and there was no chance of a fire for breakfast. Although the rain was still falling the noise was out of proportion to its strength.

Sean paused in his inspection of the camp; he thought about it and suddenly he knew that it was the flood voice of the Limpopo that he heard. Sliding in the mud, he ran out of the laager and stood on the bank of the river. He stared at the mad water. It was so thick with mud it looked solid and it raced so fast it appeared to be standing still. It humped up over piles of submerged rock, guRied through the deeps and hissed in static waves through the shallows. The branches and tree trunks in it whisked past so swiftly that they did little to dispel the illusion that the river was frozen in this brown convulsion.

Reluctantly Sean lifted his eyes to the far bank. The Leroux wagons were gone. Katrina, he said with the sadness of the might-have been, then again, Katrina, with the sense of his loss melting in the flame of his anger, and he knew that his wanting: was not just the itch that is easily scratched and forgotten, but that it was the true ache, the one that gets into your hands and your head and your heart as well as your loins. He couldn't let her go. He ran back to his wagon and threw his clothes onto the cot.

I'll marry her, he said and the words startled him. He stood naked, with an awed expression on his face.

I'll marry her! he said again; it was an original thought and it frightened him a little. He took a pair of shorts out of his chest and put his legs into them; he pulled them up and buttoned the fly. I'll marry her! He grinned at his own daring. I'm damned if I won't! He buckled his belt on and tied a pair of veldschoen to it by their laces. He jumped down into the mud. The rain was cold on his bare back and he shivered briefly.

Then he saw Mbejane coming out of one of the other wagons and he ran. Nkosi, Nkosi, what are you doing? Sean put his head down and ran faster with Mbejane chasing him out onto the bank of the river. It's madness... let us talk about it first Mbejane shouted. Please, Nkosi, please. Sean slipped in the mud and slithered down the bank. Mbejane jumped down after and caught him at the edge of the water, but the mud had coated Sean's body like grease and Mbejane couldn't hold him. Sean twisted out of his hands and sprang far out. He hit the water flat and swam on his back trying to avoid the undertow. The river swept him away. A wave slapped into his mouth and he doubled up to Tough, immediately the river caught him by the heels and pulled him under the surface. It let him go again, just long enough to snatch air then it stirred him in a whirlpool and sucked him under once more. He came up beating at the water with his arms, then it tumbled him over a cascade and he knew by the pain in his chest that he was drowning. He swooped down a chute of swift water between rocks and it didn't matter anymore. He was too tired. Something scraped against his chest and he put out his hand to protect himself; his fingers closed round a branch and his head lifted out of the water. He drank air and then he was clinging to the branch, still alive and wanting to live. He started kicking, edging across the current, riding the river with his arms around the log.

One of the eddies beneath the south bank swung the log in, under the branches of a tree. He reached up, caught them and dragged himself out. He knelt in the mud and water came gushing up out of him, half through his mouth and half through his nose. He had lost his veldschoen. He belched painfully looked at the river. How fast was it moving, how long had he been in the water?

he must be fifteen miles below the wagons. He wiped his face with his hand. It was still raining. He stood shakily and faced upstream.

it took him three hours to reach the spot opposite his wagons. Mbejane and the others waved in wild relief when they saw him, but their shouts could not carry across the river. Sean was cold now and his feet were sore.

The tracks of the Leroux wagons were dissolving in the rain. He followed them and at last the pain in his feet healed as he saw the flash of canvas in the rain mist ahead of him. Name of a name Shouted Jan Pall us. How did you cross the river? I flew, how else? said Sean. Where's Katrina? Paulus started to laugh, leaning back in the saddle. So that's it then, you haven't come all this way to say goodbye to me. Sean flushed. All right, laughing boy.

That's enough merriment for today... Where is she? Oupa came galloping back towards them. He asked his first question when he was fifty yards away and his fifth as he arrived. From experience Sean knew there was no point in trying to answer them. He looked beyond the two Leroux and saw her coming. She was running back from the lead wagon, her bonnet hanging from its ribbon around her throat and her hair bouncing loosely with each step. She held her skirts out of the mud, her cheeks flushed darker than the brown of her face and her eyes were very green. Sean ducked under the neck of Oupa's horse and went wet, muddy and eager to meet her.

Then the shyness stopped them and they stood paces apart. Katrina, will you marry me? She went pale. She stared at him then turned away, she was crying and Sean felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

No, shouted Oupa furiously. She won't marry you.

Leave her alone, you big baboon. You've made her cry.

Get out of here. She's only a baby. Get out of here. He forced his horse between them. You hold your mouth, you old busybody. Ouma came panting back to join the discussion. %, What do you know about it anyway? just because she's crying doesn't mean she doesn't want him. I thought he was going'to let me go, sobbed Katrina, I thought he didn't care Sean whooped and tried to dodge around Oupa's horse. You leave her alone, shouted Oupa desperately, manoeuvring his horse to cut Sean off. You made her cry. I tell you she's crying. Katrina was-undoubtedly crying. She was also trying to get around Oupa's horse.

Vat haar, shouted Jan Paulus. Get her, man, go and get her!

Ouma caught the horse by the reins and dragged it away: she was a powerful woman. Sean and Katrina collided and held tight. Hey, that's it, man, Jan Paulus jumped off his horse and pounded Sean's back from behind. Unable to protect himself Sean was driven forward a pace with each blow.

Much later Oupa muttered sulkily. She can have two wagons for her dowry. Three! said Katrina.

Four! said Ouma. Very well, four. Take your hands off him, girl. Haven't you any shame? Hastily Katrina dropped her arm from Sean's waist. Sean had borrowed a suit of clothing from Paulus and they were all standing round the fire. It had stopped raining but the low clouds were prematurely bringing on the night.

And four of the horses, Ouma prompted her husband. Do you want to beggar me, woman? Four horses, repeated Ourna. All right, all right... four horses. Oupa looked at Katrina, his eyes were stricken. She's only a baby, man she's only fifteen years. Sixteen, said Ouma. Nearly seventeen, said Katrina, and anyway you've promised, Pa, you can't go back on your word now.

Oupa sighed, then he looked at Sean and his face hardened. Paulus, get the Bible out of my wagon. This big baboon is going to swear an oath.

Jan Paulus put the Bible on the tailboard of the wagon.

It was thick and the cover was of black leather, dull with use. Come here, Oupa said to Sean. Put your hand on the book... don't look at me. Look up, man, look up. Now say after me, "I do most solemnly swear to look after this woman", don't gobble, speak slower, "until I can find a priest to say the proper words. Should I fail in this then I ask you, God, to blast me with lightning, sting me with serpents, burn me in eternal fire -j" Oupa completed the list of atrocities, then he grunted with satisfaction and tucked the Bible under his arm. He won't have a chance to do all that to you... I'll get you first. Sean shared Jan Paulus's wagon that night; he wasn't in a mood for sleep and anyway Jan Paulus snored. It was raining again in the morning, depressing weather for farewells. Jan Paulus laughed, Henrietta cried and Ouma did both. Oupa kissed his daughter.

Be a woman like your mother, he said, then he scowled at Sean. Remember, just you rememberV Sean and Katrina stood together and watched the trees and the curtain of ram hide the wagon train. Sean held Katrina's hand. He could feel the sadness on her; he put his arm round her and her dress was damp and cold. The last wagon disappeared and they were alone in a land as vast as solitude. Katrina shivered and looked up at the man beside her. He was so big and overpoweringly male; he was a stranger. Suddenly she was frightened. She wanted to hear her mother's laugh and see her brother and father riding ahead of her wagon, the way it had always been.

oh, please, I want.. she pulled out from his arm.

She never finished that sentence, for she looked at his mouth and his lips were full and burnt dark by the sun they were smiling. Then she looked at his eyes and her panic smoothed away. With those eyes watching over her she was never to feel frightened again, not until the very end and that was a long time away. Going into his love was like going into a castle, a thick-walled place. A safe place where no one else could enter. The first feeling of it was so strong that she could only stand quietly and let the warmth wrap her.

That evening they outspanned Katrina's wagons back at the south bank of the river. It was still raining. Sean's servants waved and signalled to them, but the brown water bellowed down between them cutting off all sound and hope Of passage. Katrina oo ed at the water. Did you really swim that, meneer? lSo fast that I hardly got wet. Thank you, she said.

Despite the rain and smoky fire Katrina served up a meal as good as one of Ouma's. They ate it in the shelter of the tarpaulin beside her wagon. The wind guttered the hurricane lamp, flogged the canvas and blew a fine haze of rain in on them. It was so uncomfortable that when Sean suggested that they go into the wagon Katrina barely hesitated before agreeing. She sat on the edge of her cot and Sean sat on the chest opposite her. From an awkward start their conversation was soon running as fast as the river outside the wagon. My hair is still wet, Katrina exclaimed at last. Do you mind if I dry it while we talk? Of course not. Then let me get my towel out of the chest. They stood up at the same time. There was very little space in the wagon. They touched. They were on the cot.

The movement of his mouth on hers, the warm taste of it, the strong pleading of his fingers at the nape of her neck and along her spine, all these things were strangely confusing. She responded slowly at first, then faster with bewildered movements of her own body and little graspings at his arms and shoulders. She did not understand and she did not care. The confusion spread through her whole body and she could not stop it, she did not want to. She reached up and her fingers went into his hair. She pulled his face down on hers. His teeth crushed her lips sweet, exciting pain. His hand came round from her back and enclosed a fat round breast. Through the thin cotton he found the erectness of her nipple and rolled it gently between his fingers. She reacted like a filly feeling the whip for the first time. One instant she lay under the shock of his touch and then her convulsive heave caught him by surprise. He went backwards off the cot and his head cracked against the wooden chest. He sat on the floor and stared up at her, too surprised even to rub the lump on his head. Her face was flushed and she pushed the hair back from her forehead with both hands. She was shaking her head wildly in her effort to speak through her gasping You must go now, meneer, the servants have made a bed for you in one of the other wagons. Sean scrambled to his feet. Tut, I thought... surely we are... well, I mean. Keep away from me, she warned anxiously. If you touch me again tonight, I'll... I'll bite you. But, Katrina, please, I can't sleep in the other wagon.

The thought appalled him.

I'll cook your food, mend your clothes... everything!

But until you find a priest... She didn't go on, but Sean got the idea. He started to argue. It was his introduction to Boer immovability and at last he went to find his own bed. One of Katrina's dogs was there before him, a threequarters-grown brindle hound. Sean's attempts to persuade it to leave were as ill-fated as had been his previous arguments with its mistress. They shared the bed. During the night a difference of opinion arose between them as to what constituted a half-share of the blankets. From it the dog earned its name, Thief.

Sean determined to show Katrina just how strongly he resented her attitude. He would be polite but distant. Five minutes after they had sat down to breakfast the next morning this demonstration of disapproval had deteriorated to the stage where he was unable to take his eyes off her face and he was talking so much that breakfast lasted an hour.

The rain held steady for three more days and then it stopped. The sun came back, as welcome as an old friend, but it was another ten days before the river regained its sanity. Time, rain or river meant very little to the two of them. They wandered out into the bush together to pick mushrooms; they sat in camp and when Katrina was working Sean followed her around. Then, of course, they talked. She listened to him. She laughed at the right places and gasped with wonder when she was meant to.

She was a good listener. As for Sean, if she had repeated the same word over and over the sound of her voice alone would have held him entranced. The evenings were difficult. Sean would start getting restless and make excuses to touch her. She wanted him to, but she was frightened of the confusion that had so nearly trapped her the first night. So she drew up a set of rules and put them to him. Do you promise not to do anything more than kiss me?

Not unless you say I can, Sean agreed readily.

No. She saw the catch in that. You mean, I must never do anything but kiss you even if you say I can!

She started to blush. If I say so in the daytime, that's different... but anything I say at night doesn't count, and if you break your promise I'll never let you touch me again.

Katrina's rules stood unchanged by the time the river had dropped enough for the wagons to be taken across to the north bank. The rains were resting, gathering their strength, but soon they would set in once more. The river was full but no longer murderous. Now was the time to cross. Sean took the oxen across first, swimming them in a herd. Holding on to one of their tails he had a Nantucket sleigh-ride across the river and when he reached the north bank there was a joyous welcome awaiting him.

They took six thick coils of unused rope from the stores wagon and joined them together. With the end of the rope round his waist Sean made one of his horses tow him back across the river, Mbejane paying out the line to him as he went. Then Sean supervised Katrina's servants as they emptied all the water barrels and lashed them to the sides of the first wagon to serve as floats. They ran the wagon into the water, tied on the rope and adjusted the barrels so that the wagon floated level. Sean signalled to Mbejane and waited until he had made the other end of the rope fast to a tree on the north bank. Then they pushed the wagon into the current and watched anxious as it swung across the river like a pendulum, the current driving it but the tree anchoring it. It hit the north bank a distance the exact width of the river downstream of the tree, and Sean's party cheered as Mbejane and the other servants ran down the bank to retrieve it. Mbejane had a team of oxen standing ready and they dragged it out.

Sean's horse towed him across the river again to fetch the rope.

Sean, Katrina and all her servants rode across on the last wagon. Sean stood behind Katrina with his arms round her waist, ostensibly to steady her, and the servants shouted and chattered like children on a picnic.

The water piled up brown against the side of the wagon, tilting it and making it roll, and with an exhilarating swoop they shot across the river and crashed into the far bank. The impact tumbled them overboard, throwing them into the knee-deep water beside the bank. They scrambled ashore. The water streamed out of Katrina's dress, her hair melted wetly over her face; she had mud on one cheek and she was gasping with laughter. Her sodden petticoats clung to her legs, tripping her, and Sean picked her up and carried her to his own laager. His servants shouted loud encouragement after him and Katrina shrieked genteelly to be put down, but held tight round his neck with both arms.

Now that the rains had changed every irregularity in the land into a waterhole and sowed new green grass where before had been dust and dry earth, the game scattered away from the river. Every few days Sean's trackers came into camp to report that there were no elephant. Sean condoled with them and sent them out again. He was well satisfied; there was a new quarry now, more elusive and therefore more satisfying than an old bull elephant with a hundred and fifty pounds of ivory on each side of his face. Yet to call Katrina his quarry was a lie. She was much more than that.

She was a new world, a place of endless mysteries and unexpected delights, an enchanting mixture of woman and child. She supervised the domestic routine with deceptive lack of fuss. With her there, suddenly his clothes were clean and had their full complement of buttons; the stew of boots and books and unwashed socks in his wagon vanished. There were fresh bread and fruit preserves on the table; Kandhia's eternal grilled steaks gave way to a variety of dishes. Each day she showed a new accomplishment. She could ride astride, though Sean had to turn his back when she mounted and dismounted. She cut Sean's hair and made as good a job of it as his barber in Johannesburg. She had a medicine chest in her wagon from which she produced remedies for every ailing man or beast in the company. She handled a rifle like a man and could strip and clean Sean's Mannlicher. She helped him load cartridges, measuring the charges with a practised eye.

She could discuss birth and procreation with a clinical objectivity and a minute later blush all over when he looked at her that way. She was as stubborn as a mule, haughty when it suited her, serene and inscrutable at times and at others a little girl. She would push a handful of grass down the back of his shirt and run for him to chase her, giggle for rates at a secret thought, play long imaginative games in which the dogs were her children and she talked to them and answered for them. Sometimes she was so naive that Sean thought she was joking until he remembered how young she was. She could drive him from happiness to spitting anger and back again within the space of an hour. But, once he had won her confidence and she knew that he would play to the rules, she responded to his caresses with a violence that startled them both. Sean was completely absorbed in her. She was the most wonderful thing he had ever found and, best of all, he could talk to her. He told her about Duff. She saw the extra cot in his wagon and found clothing that was obviously too small for him. She asked about it and he told her all of it and she understood.

The days became weeks. The cattle grew fat, their skins sleek and tight. Katrina planted a small vegetable garden and reaped a crop from it. Christmas came and Katrina baked a cake. Sean gave her a kaross of monkey skins that Mbejane had worked on in secret. Katrina gave Sean handsewn shirts, each with his initials embroidered on the top pocket, and she relaxed the rules a fraction.

Then when the new year had begun and Sean hadn't killed an elephant in six weeks, Mbejane headed a deputation from the gunboys. The question he had to ask, though tactfully disguised, was simply, Did we come here to hunt, or what? They broke camp and moved north again and the strain was showing on Sean at last. He tried to sweat it out by long days of hunting but this didn't help for conditions were so bad that they added to his irritability. The grass in most places was higher than a mounted man's head, its sharp edges cut as he passed through it. But the grass seeds were the worst: half an inch long and barbed like an arrow they worked their way quickly through clothing and into the skin. in the humid heat the small wounds they made festered within hours. Then there were the flies. Hippo-flies, greenheaded flies, sand-flies all with one thing in common they stung. The soft skin behind the ears was their favourite place. They'd creep upon him, settle so lightlyy he wouldn't feel it, then, ping with the red-hot needle. Always wet, sometimes with sweat, other times with rain, Sean would close with a herd of elephant.

He would hear them moving in the long grass around him and see the white canopy of egrets fluttering over them, but it was seldom he could get a shot at them. If he did he had to stand in the centre of a storm of blundering bodies. Often they would be following a herd, almost upon them, when Sean would lose interest and they'd all go back to camp. He couldn't keep away.

He was miserable, his servants were miserable, and Katrina was happy as a bird at daybreak. She had a man, she was mistress of a household which she ran with confidence and, because her senses were not yet as seasoned as Sean's, she was physically content. Even with Sean's strict adherence to the rules, their evenings in her wagon would end for her with a sigh and a shudder and she would go dreamy-eyed to bed and leave Sean with a burning devil inside of him. The only person Sean could complain to was Thief. He would he with his snout buried in Sean's armpit, with at least his share of the blankets over him, and listen quietly.

The Zulus could see what the trouble was but they didn't understand it. They didn't discuss it, of course, but if one of them spread his hands expressively or coughed in a certain way the others knew what he meant. Mbejane came closest to actually putting it into words. Sean had just thrown a tantrum. It was a matter of a lost axe and who was responsible. Sean lined them up and expressed

doubts as to their ancestry, present worth and future prospects , then he stormed off to his wagon. There was a long silence and Mubi offered his snuff-box to Mbejane.

Mbejane took a pinch and said, It's a stupid stallion that doesn't know how to kick down a fence! It is true, it is true, they agreed, and there the matter rested.

A week later they reached the Sabi river. The mountains on the far side were blue-grey with distance and the river was full, brown and full.

The next morning was fresh and cool from the night's rain. The camp smelt of wood-smoke, cattle and wild mimosa. From one of the ostrich eggs that Mbejane had found the day before, Katrina made an omelette the size of a soup-plate. it was flavoured with nutmeg and chunks.

of mushroom, yellow and rich. Afterwards there were scones and wild honey, coffee and a cheroot for Sean.

Are you going out today? Katrina asked. Uh huh. oh! Don't you want me to? You haven't stayed in camp for a week. Don't you want me to go?

she stood up quickly and started clearing the table. Anyway you won't find any elephant you haven't found anything for ages. Do you want me to stay? It's such a lovely day. She signed to Kandhla to take the plates away.

, If you want me to stay, ask me properly. We could look for mushrooms. Say it, said Sean. All right then, please!

IMbejane! Take the saddle off that horse, I won't be using him Katrina laughed. She ran to her wagon, skirts swirling around her legs, calling to the dogs. She came back with her bonnet on and a basket in her hand. The dogs crowded round them, jumping up and barking. Go on... seek up then, Sean told them and they raced ahead, circling back barking, chasing one another. Sean and Katrina walked holding hands. The brim of Katrina's bonnet kept her face in shadow, but even then her eyes when she looked at him were bright green. They picked the new mushrooms, round and hard, brown and slightly sticky on top, fluted underneath delicately as a lady's fan.

In an hour they had filled the basket and they stopped under a manda tree. Sean lay on his back. Katrina broke off a blade of grass and tickled his face with it until he caught her wrist and pulled her down onto his chest. The dogs watched them, sitting around them in a circle, their tongues hangin out pink and wet. There's a place in the Cape, just outside Paarl. The mountains stand over it and there's a river... the water's very clear, you can see the fish lying on the bottom, said Katrina. Her ear was against his chest and she was listening to his heart. Will you buy me a farm there one day?

Yes, said Sean. We'll build a house with a wide veranda and on Sundays we'll drive to church with the girls and the little ones in the back and the bigger boys riding next to the buggy. How many will there be? asked Sean. He lifted the side of her bonnet and looked at her ear. It was a very pretty ear, in the sunlight he could see the fine fur on the lobe. Oh lots... boys mostly, but a few girls Ten? suggested Sean. More than that. Fifteen? Yes, fifteen. They lay and thought about it. To Sean it seemed a fairly well-rounded number. And I'll keep chickens, I want lots of chickens Alright, said Sean. You don't mind? Should It? Some people mind chickens, some people don't like them at all, said Katrina. I'm glad you don't mind them.

I've always wanted them. Stealthily Sean advanced his mouth towards her ear but she felt his move and sat up. What are you doing? This, I said Sean and his arm shot out. No, Sean, they're watching us. She waved her hand at the dogs. They'll understand, said Sean and then they were both quiet for a long time.

The dogs burst out together in full hunting chorus.

Katrina sat up and Sean turned his head and saw the leopard. It stood fifty yards away on the edge of the thick bush along the river bank watching them, poised elegantly in tights of black and gold, long and smallbellied. It moved then, bluffing with speed, touching the ground as lightly as a swallow touches the water when it drinks in flight. The dogs went after it in a pack, Thief leading them, his voice cracking with excitement. Back, come back, shouted Sean. Leave it, damn you, come back. Stop them, Sean, go after them. We'll lose them all. Wait here, Sean told her.

He ran after the sound of the pack. Not shouting saving his wind. He knew what would happen and he listened for it. He heard the tone of the hunt change, sharper now. Sean stopped and stood panting, peering ahead. The dogs were not moving. The sound of their barking was steady in volume. The swine has stopped; he's going to take them He started running again and almost immediately heard the first dog scream. He kept running. He found the dog lying where the leopard had flung it, the old bitch with white ears, her stomach was stripped out. Sean went on.

The tan ridgeback next, disemboweled, still alive and crawling to meet him. He ran on; always the hunt was out of sight ahead of him but he kept after it. He no longer stopped to help the dogs that had been mauled. Most of them were dead before he reached them. The saliva thickened in his mouth, his heart jumped against his ribs and he reeled as he ran.

Suddenly he was in the open and the hunt was spread out before him. There were three dogs left. One of them was Thief. They were circling the leopard, belting him, darting in at his back legs, snapping, then jumping back as the leopard spun snarling. The grass was short and green in the clearing. The sun was directly overhead: it threw no shadow, it lit everything with a flat, even lightt.

Sean tried to shout but his throat wouldn't let the sound out. The leopard dropped onto its back and lay with the sprawled grace of a sleeping cat, its legs open and its belly exposed. The dogs hung back, hesitating. Sean shouted again but his voice still would not carry. That creamy yellow belly, soft and fluffy, was too much temptation.

One of the dogs went for it, dipping its head, its mouth open. The leopard closed on it like a spring trap. it caught and held the dog with its front paws and its back legs worked quickly. The dog yammered at the swift surgeon strokes and then it was thrown aside, its bowels hanging out. The leopard relaxed again to show the yellow bait of its belly. Sean was close now and this time the two dogs heard his shout. The leopard heard it also. It flashed to its feet and tried to break but the instant it turned Thief was at it, slashing at its back legs forcing it to swing and crouch. Here, boy, leave him! Here, Thief, come here!

Thief took Sean's shout as encouragement. He danced just out of reach of the flicking paws, shrilly taunting the leopard. The hunt was finely balanced now. Sean knew if he could get the dogs to slacken their attack the leopard would run. He went forward a pace, stooped to pick up a stone to throw at Thief and his movement tipped the balance. When he straightened up the leopard was watching him and he felt the eel of fear move in his stomach. It was going to come for him. He knew it by the way its ears flattened against its head and its shoulders bunched like loaded springs. Sean dropped the stone and reached for the knife on his belt.

The leopard's lips peeled back. Its teeth were yellow, its head with the ears flattened was like a snake's. It came fast and low against the ground, brushing the dogs aside.

its run was long-reaching, smoothly beautiful. It snaked towards him, fast over the short grass. It came into the air, lifting high, very fast and very smoothly. Sean felt the shock and the pain together. The shock threw him backwards and the pain sucked the breath from his lungs.

Its claws hooked into his chest, he felt them scrape his ribs. He held its mouth from his face, his forearm against its throat and he smelt the overripe grave smell of its breath. They rolled together in the grass, its front claws still holding in the flesh of his chest, and he felt its back legs coming up to rake his stomach. He twisted desperately to keep clear of them, using his knife at the same time, slipping the blade into its back. The leopard screamed, its back legs came up again; he felt the claws go into his hip and tear down his thigh. The pain was deep and strong and he knew he was badly hurt. The legs came up again. This time they would kill him.

Thief locked his teeth in the leopard's leg before the claws could catch in Sean's flesh, he dragged back, digging in with his front feet, holding the leopard stretched out across Sean's body. Sean's vision was dissolving into blackness and bright lights. He pushed the knife into the leopard's back, close to the spine and pulled it down between the ribs the way a butcher cuts a chop. The leopard screamed again with its body shuddering and its claws curling in Sean's flesh. Sean cut again, deep and long, and again, then again. Tearing at it, mad with the pain, its blood gushed out and mixed with his and he rolled away from it. The dogs were worrying it, growling.

It was dead. Sean let the knife slip out of his hand and touched the tears in his leg. The blood was dark red, pouring with the thickness of treacle, much blood. He was looking down a funnel of darkness. The leg was far away, not his, not his leg. Garry, he whispered. Garry, oh God! I'm sorry. I slipped, I didn't mean it, I slipped. The funnel closed and there was no leg, only darkness. Time was a liquid thing, all the world was liquid, moving in darkness. The sun was dark and only the pain was steady, steady as a rock in the dark moving sea. He saw Katrina's face indistinct in the darkness. He tried to tell her how sorry he was. He tried to tell her it was an accident, but the pain stopped him. She was crying. He knew she would understand so he went back into the dark sea. Then the surface of the sea boiled and he choked in the heat, but always the pain was there like a rock to hold onto. The steam from the sea coiled up around him and it hardened into the shape of a woman and he thought it was Katrina, then he saw its head was a leopard's head and its breath stank like the rotting of a gangrenous leg, I don't want you, know who you are! he shouted at it. I don't want you. It's not my child, and the thing broke into steam, twisting grey steam, and came back gibbering at him on a chain that tinkled, frothing yellow from the grey misty mouth, and terror came with it. He twisted and covered his face, holding onto the pain for the pain was real and steady.

Then after a thousand years the sea froze and he walked on it and the white ice stretched away wherever he looked. It was cold and lonely on the ice. There was a small wind, a cold small wind, the wind whispered across the ice and its whispering was a sad sound, and Sean held his pain, hugging it close to him for he was lonely and only the pain was real. Then there were other figures moving around him on the ice, dark figures all hurrying one way, crowding him, pushing him along with them and he lost his pain, lost it in the desperate hurrying press.

And though they had no faces, some of the figures wept and others laughed and they hurried forward until they came to the place where the crevasse split across the ice in front of them. The crevasse was wide and deep and its sides were white, then pale-green shading to blue and at last to infinite blackness, and some of the figures threw themselves joyfully into it it singing as they fell. Others clung to edges, their formless faces full of fear, and still others stepped off into the void, tiredly, like travellers at the end of a long journey. When Sean saw the crevasse he began to fight, throwing himself back against the crowd that bore him forward, carrying him to the edge of the pit, and his feet slid over the edge. He clawed with his fingers at the slippery edge of the ice. He fought and he shouted as he fought for the dark drop sucked at his legs.

Then he lay quietly and the crevasse had closed and he was alone. He was tired, wasted and terribly tired. He closed his eyes and the pain came back to him, throbbing softly in his leg.

He opened his eyes and he saw Katrina's face. She was pale and her eyes were big and heavily underscored in blue. He tried to lift his hand to touch her face but he couldn't move.

Katrina, he said. He saw her eyes go green with surprise and happiness. You've come back. Oh, thank God. You've come back. Sean rolled his head and looked at the canvas of the wagon tent.

How long? he asked. His voice was a whisper. Five days. Don't talk, please, don't talk.

Sean closed his eyes. He was very tired so he slept.

Katrina washed him when he woke. Mbejane helped her lift and turn him, his big pink-palmed hands very gentle as he handled the leg. They washed the smell of fever off him and changed the dressings. Sean watched Katrina as she worked and every time she looked up they smiled at each other. Once he used a little of his strength to ask Mbejane, Where were you when I needed you? I slept in the sun, Nkosi, like -an old woman, Mbejane half-laughed, half-apologized. Katrina brought him food and when he smelt it he was hungry. He ate it all and then he slept Mbejane built a shelter with open sides and a roof of thatch. He sited it in the shade on the bank of the Sabi.

Then he made a bed of poles and laced leather thongs.

They carried Sean from the wagon, Katrina fussing around them until they had laid him in the shelter. Katrina went back to the wagon for pillows and when she returned she found Thief and Sean settling down comfortably. Sean, get that monster out of there, those blankets have just been washed. Thief flattened his body and hid his head in Sean's armpit.

It's all right, he's quite clean, Sean protected him. He smells. He does not. Sean sniffed at Thief. Well, not much anyway! You two! She put the pillows under Sean's head and went round to his leg. How does it feel? It's fine, said Sean. Thief inched himself up the bed until he reached the pillows.

In the slow slide of days Sean's body healed and the well of his strength filled. The moving air under the shelter dried the scabs off his chest and leg, but there would be scars. In the morning, after breakfast, Sean held court from His couch. Katrina sat on the end of the bed and his servants squatted around him. First they talked over domestic matters, the health of the oxen, mentioning them by name, discussing their eyes, hooves and stomachs. There was a tear in the canvas of one wagon.

The single remaining bitch was in season, was Thief fit enough for the job yet? There was meat to kill perhaps the Nkosikaze would take the rifle later today.

Mubi had caught four barbel of medium size in his fish trap, and here the talk turned to the bush around them.

A lion had killed a buffalo below the first bend in the river, there you could see the vultures. During the night a herd of cow elephant had drunk a mile upstream. Each item was considered by the meeting. Everyone felt free to comment or argue against any view which conflicted with his own. When everything had been said Sean gave them their tasks for the day and sent them away. Then he and Katrina could be alone.

From the shelter they could see the full sweep of the river, with the crocodiles lying on the white sandbars and the kingfishers plopping into the shallows. They sat close to each other and they talked of the farm they would have. Sean would grow grapes and breed horses and Katrina would keep chickens. By the next rainy season they would have filled all the wagons; one more trip after that and they would have enough to buy the farm.

Katrina kept him in bed long after he was strong enough to leave it. She mothered him and he loved it. Shamelessly, in the fashion of the male, he accepted her attentions, and even exaggerated his injuries a little. Finally but reluctantly Katrina let him up. He stayed in camp a week more, until his legs stopped wobbling, then one evening he took his rifle and went with Mhejane to shoot fresh meat. They went slowly, Sean favouring his leg and he shot a young eland not far from the laager. Sean sat against a Hisasa tree and smoked a cheroot while Mbejane went back to fetch servants to carry the meat. Sean watched them butcher the carcass; there were slabs of white fat on the meat. They slung it on poles and carried it between them, two men to a pole, and when they got back to camp Sean found Katrina in one of her inscrutable moods. When he talked to her at supper she answered him from far away and afterwards by the fire she sat detached from him. She was very lovely and Sean was puzzled and a little resentful. At last he stood up. It's time for bed, I'll see you to your wagon. You go. I'll sit a little longer. Sean hesitated. Is there something wrong? Have I done something wrong? No! she said quickly. No. I'm all right. You go to bed.

He kissed her cheek. If you need me I'll be close. Goodnight, sleep sweet!

He straightened up. Come on, Thief, he said. Time for bed. Leave Thief with me, please. Katrina caught the skin at the back of the dog's neck and remained him. Why? I just feel like company. Then I'll stay as well, Sean moved to sit down again. No, you go to bed. She sounded desperate and Sean looked hard at her. Are you sure you're all rightV Yes, please go. He went to his wagon and looked back at her. She was sitting very straight, holding the dog. He climbed into the wagon. The lamp was lit and he stopped in surprise when he saw his cot. There were sheets on it, not just the rough blankets. He ran his hand over the smooth fabric; it was crisp from new ironing. He sat on the cot and pulled off his boots. He undid his shirt and threw it onto the chest, then he lay back and looked up at the lamp. There's something bloody funny going on here, he said. Sean! her voice just outside the wagon. Sean jumped up and opened the flap. Can I come in? Yes, of course. He gave her his hand and lifted her into the wagon. He looked at her face. She was frightened.

There is something wrong, he said. No, don't touch me. There's something I've got to tell you. Sit down on the cot Sean watched her face. He was worried. I thought I loved you when I came away with you. I thought -we had for ever to be together. She swallowed painfully. -Then I found you there in the grass, torn and dead. Before our life together had begun you were dead.

Sean saw the pain come back into her eyes; she was living it again. He put out his hand to her but she held his wrist. No, wait... please let me finish. I have to explain to you. It's very important. Sean dropped his hand and she went on speaking quickly.

You were dead and I, too, was dying inside. I felt empty.

There was nothing left. Nothing... just the hollowness inside and the dry dead feeling on the outside. I touched your face and you looked at me. I prayed then, Sean, and I prayed through the days when you fought the rotting of your body!

She knelt in front of him and held him around the waist. Now we are alive and together again, but I know that it cannot be for ever. A day more, a year, if we are lucky, twenty. But not for ever. I see how small I have been to us. I want to be your wife!

He bent to her quickly but she pulled away and stood up. She slipped the buttons and her clothing fell away.

She loosed her hair and let it drop shiny bright down the whiteness of her body. Look at me, Sean, I want you to look at me. This and my love I can give you... is it enough? There was smoothness, hollow and swell, hair like black fire and soft light on soft skin. He saw the flush from her cheeks spread onto her breasts until they glowed, pink and shy but proud in their perfection. He looked no further. He took her to him and covered her nakedness with his big body. She was trembling and he put her between the sheets and gentled her with his voice until the trembling stopped and she lay with her face pressed up under his beard into his neck.

Show me how... I want to give everything to you.

Please show me how, she whispered.

So they married each other and their marriage was a comingling of many things. There was the softness of the wind in it and wanting, the way the baked earth wants the rain. There was pain sharp and swift, movement like running horses, sound low as voices in the night but glad as a greeting, joy climbing on eagles wings, the triumphant surge and burst of wild water on a rock shore and then there was stillness and warmth within and the snuggling of drowsy puppies, and sleep. Yet it did not end in the sleep, it went on to another seeking and finding, another union and a stranger mystery in the secret depths of her body.

all In the morning she brought her Bible to him. Hey, hey, protested Sean, I've already sworn one oath. Katrina laughed at him, the memory of the night still warm and happy inside her. She opened the book at its fly leaf. You've got to write your name in it... here, next to mine!

She watched him, standing next to his chair with her hip touching his shoulder.

And your date of birth, she said.

Sean wrote: Ninth Jan. 1862,. Then he said: What's this "date of death". do you want me to fill that in as well? Don't talk like that, she said quickly and touched the wooden table.

Sean was sorry he'd said it. He tried to cover up.

There's only space for six children! We can write the others in the margin. That's what Ma did.... hers even go over onto the first page of Genesis.

Do you think we'll get that far, Sean?

Sean smiled at her. The way I feel now we should reach the New Testament without much trouble. They had made a good start. By June the rains were over and Katrina walked with her shoulders back to balance her load. There was a good feeling in the camp. Katrina was more woman than child now. She was big and radiant, pleased with the awe her condition inspired in Sean.

She sang to herself often and sometimes in the night she would let him share in it. She would let him pull the nightdress back from the mound of her stomach and lay his ear against the tight-stretched, blue-veined skin. He listened to the suck and gurgle and felt the movement against his cheek. When he sat up his eyes would be full of the wonder of it and she would smile proudly at him and take his head on her shoulder and they would be together quietly. In the daytime things were right as well.

Sean laughed with the servants and hunted without the intensity of before.

They moved north along the Sabi river. Sometimes they camped for a month at one place. The game came back to the rivers as the veld dried out and once more the ivory started piling up in the wagons.

One afternoon in September Sean and Katrina left the camp and walked along the bank. The land was brown again and smelt of dry grass. The river was pools and white sand. Hell, it's hot! Sean took off his hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead. You must be cooking under all those clothes!

No, I'm all right! Katrina was holding his arm. Let's have a swim. You mean with no clothes on?

Katrina looked shocked. Yes, why notV It's rude! Come on! He took her down the bank protesting every step and at a place where boulders screened the water he prised her out of her dress. She was laughing and gasping and blushing all at the same time. He carried her into the pool and she sat down thankfully with the water up to her chin.

How's that feel? Sean asked.

She let her hair down and it floated out round her, she wriggled her toes in the sand and her stomach showed through the water like the back of a white whale. It's nice, she admitted. It feels like silk underwear against my skin. Sean stood over her with only his hat on. She looked at him. Sit down, she said uncomfortably and looked away from him.

Why? he asked. You know why!... you're rude, that's why!

Sean sat down beside her. You should be used to me by now. Well, I'm not.

Sean put his arm round her under the water. You're lovely, he said. You're my fancy.

She let him kiss her ear.

fWhat's it going to be? He touched the ripe swelling. Boy or girl? This was currently the favourite topic of conversation.

She was very definite. What shall we call him? Well, if you don't find a predikant soon we'll have to call him the name you're always giving to the servants. Sean stared at her. What do you mean? You know what you call them when you're cross. Bastard, said Sean, then really concerned, Hell, I hadn't thought of that! We'll have to find a priest. No child of mine will be a bastard. We'll have to go back to Louis Trichardt. You've got about a month, Katrina warned him. My God, we'll never make it. We've left it too late. Sean's face was ghastly. Wait, I've got it. There are Portuguese settlements across the mountains on the coast. Oh, Sean, but they're Roman Catholics. They all work for the same boss. How long will it take to cross the mountains? Katrina asked doubtfully. I don't know. Perhaps two weeks to reach the coast on horseback. On horseback! Katrina looked still more doubtfully. Oh hell you can't ride! Sean scratched the side of his nose. I'll have to go and fetch one. Will you stay on your own? I'll leave Mbejane to look after you! Yes, I'll be all right! won't go if you don't want me to. It's not that important. It is important, you know it is. I'll be all right, truly I Will Before he left the next morning Sean took Mbejane aside. You know why you're not coming with me, don't YOU?

Mbejane nodded, but Sean answered his own question. Because there is more important work for you to do here. At night, said Mbejane, I will sleep beneath the Nkosikazils.

wagon. You'll sleep? asked Sean threateningly.

only once in a while and then very lightly, Mbejane grinned. That's better, said Sean.

Sean said goodbye to Katrina. There were no tears, she understood necessity and helped him to a quiet acceptance of it. They stood a long while beside their wagon, holding each other, their lips almost touching as they whispered together and then Sean called for his horse.

Mubi followed him leading the packhorse when he crossed the Saba and when Sean reached the far bank he turned and looked back. Katrina was still standing by their wagon and behind her hovered Mbejane. In her bonnet and green dress she looked very young. Sean waved his hat over his head and then set off towards the mountains.

The forests dwindled into grassland as they climbed and each night was colder than the last. Then, in its turn the grassland conceded to the sheer bluffs and misty gorges of the mountain back. Sean and Muhi struggled upwards, following the game trails, losing them, turning back from impassable cliffs, scouting for a pass, leading the horses over the steep pitches and at night sitting close to the fire and listening to the baboons barking in the kranses around them. Then suddenly, in the middle of a Morning that was bright as a cut diamond, they were at the top. To the west the land lay spread out like a map and the distance they had travelled in a week was pathetically small. By straining his eyes and his imagination Sean could make out the dark-green belt of the Sabi watercourse. To the east the land merged with a blueness that was not the sky and for a while he failed to recognize it.

Then, the sea, he shouted and Hlubi laughed with him for it was a godlike feeling to stand above the world. They found an easier route down the eastern slopes and followed it onto the coastal plain. At the bottom of the mountains they came to a native village. To see cultivated lands and human dwellings again was a small shock to Sean. He had come to accept the fact that he and his retinue were the only people left on earth.

The entire population of the village fled when they saw him. Mothers snatched up a child in each hand and ran as fast as their menfolk, memories of the slave-traders still persisted in this part of Africa. Within two minutes of his arrival Sean again had the feeling that he was the only person left on earth. With the contempt of the Zulu for every other tribe in Africa, Hlubi shook his head sadly.

Monkeys, he said.

They dismounted and tied their horses under the big tree that was the centre of the village. They sat in the shade and waited. The huts were grass beehives, their roofs blackened with smoke, and a few chickens picked and scratched at the bare earth between them. Half an hour later Sean saw a black face watching him from the edge of the bush and he ignored it. Slowly the face emerged, followed closely by a reluctant body. With a twig, Sean went on drawing patterns in the dust between his feet. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the hesitant approach. It was an old man with stork thin legs and one eye glazed into a white jelly by tropical ophthalmic.

Sean concluded that his fellows had picked him to act as ambassador on the grounds that of all their number he would be the least loss.

Sean looked up and gave him a radiant smile. The old Man froze and then his lips twitched into a sickly grin of relief. Sean stood up, dusted his hands on the sides of his breeches and went to shake the old man's hand. Immediately the bush around them swarmed with people, they poured back into the village jabbering and laughing: they crowded round Sean and felt his clothing, peered into his face and exclaimed delightedly. It was obvious that most of them had never seen a white man before. Sean was trying to shake off One-Eye, who still had a possessive hold on Sean's right hand, and Hlubi leaned disdainfully against the tree, taking no part in the welcome. One-Eye ended the confusion by screeching at them in a voice rusty with age. The courage he had displayed earlier now earned its reward. At his command a dozen of the younger women scampered off and came back with a carved wooden stool and six earthenware pots of native beer. By the hand, on which he had not for an instant relaxed his grip, One-Eye led Sean to the stool and made him sit; the rest of the villagers squatted in a circle round him and one of the girls brought the biggest beer-pot to Sean. The beer was yellow and it bubbled sullenly, Sean's stomach shied at the sight of it. He glanced at One-Eye who was watching him anxiously, he lifted the pot and sipped.

Then he smiled with surprise; it was creamy and pleasantly tart.

Good, he said.

Goat, chorused the villagers.

Your health, said Sean.ealt, said the village as one man, and Sean drank deep. One of the girls took another beer-pot to Hlubi. She knelt in front of him and shyly offered it. She had a plaited-grass suing around her waist from which a small kil hung down in front, but her stern was completely exposed and her bosoms were the size and shape of ripe melons.

Mubi looked at them until the girl hung her head, then he lifted the beer-pot.

Sean wanted a guide to the nearest Portuguese settlement. He looked at One-Eye and said, Town? Portagee? One-Eye was almost overcome by Sean's attention. He grabbed Sean's hand again before he could pull it away and shook it vigorously. Stop that, you bloody fool! said Sean irritably and OneEye grinned and nodded, then without releasing Sean's hand he began an impassioned speech to the other villagers. Sean meanwhile was searching his memory for the name of one of the Portuguese ports on this coast.

Nova Sofala, he shouted as he got it.

One-Eye broke off his speech abruptly and stared at Sean.Nova Sofala, said Sean again pointing vaguely towards the east and One-Eye showed his gums in his biggest grin yet.Nova Sofala, he agreed pointing with authority and then it was only a matter of minutes before it was understood between them that he would act as guide. Mubi saddled the horses, One-Eye fetched a grass sleeping mat and a battle-axe from one of the huts. Sean mounted and looked at Mubi to do the same but lubi was acting strangely. Yes? Sean asked with resignation. What is it?

INkosi Mubi was looking at the branches of the tree above them. The Old One could lead the packhorse. You can take it in turns, said Sean.

Hlubi coughed and transferred his eyes to the fingernails of his left hand.

INkosi, is it possible that you will return to this village on the way back from the sea? Yes, of course, said Sean, we'll have to leave the Old One here. Why do you ask? I have a Thorn in my foot, Nkosi, it gives me pain. If you do not require me I will wait here for you. Perhaps the thorn wound will have healed by then Mubi looked up at the tree again and shuffled his feet with embarrassment. Sean had not noticed him limping and he was puzzled as to why Hlubi should start malingering now. Then Hlubi could not stop himself from glancing at where the girl stood in the circle of villagers. Her kilt was very small and from the sides gave her no cover at all. Understanding came to Sean and he chuckled.The thorn you have is painful, but it's not in your foot Mubi shuffled his feet again. You said they were monkeys... have you changed your mind? Sean asked. Nkosi, they are indeed monkeys, Wubi sighed.

But very friendly monkeys. Stay then... but do not weaken yourself too much.

We have mountains to cross on the way home.

One-Eye led the packhorse, this made him very proud.

Through tall grass, mangrove swamp and thick hot jungle, then through white coral sand and the curving stems of palm trees, they came at last to the sea. Nova Sofala was a fort with brass cannon and thick walls. The sea beyond it was muddy brown from the estuary that flowed into it.

The sentry at the gates said, Madre de Dio'when he saw Sean, and took him to the Commandant. The Commandant was a small man with fever-yellowed face and a tired, sweat-darkened tunic. The Commandant said, Madze de Dio, and shot his chair back from his desk. It took some time for him to realize that contrary to appearance this dirty, bearded giant was not dangerous. The Commandant could speak English and Sean laid his problem before him.

For a certainty he could be of assistance. There were three Jesuit missionaries in the fort, freshly arrived from Portugal and eager for employment. Sean could take his pick but first he must bath, eat dinner with the Commandant and help him sample the wines that had arrived on the same boat as the missionaries. Sean thought that was a good idea.

At dinner he met the missionaries. They were young men, pink-faced still, for Africa had not yet had a chance to mark them. All three of them were willing to go with him and Sean selected the youngest, not for his appearance but rather for his name. Father Alphonso had a heroic ring to it. The Jesuits went early to bed and left the Commandant, the four junior officers and Sean to the port. They drank toasts to Queen Victoria and her family and to the King of Portugal and his family. This made them thirsty so they drank to absent friends, then to each other. The Commandant and Sean swore a mutual oath of friendship and loyalty and this made the Commandant very sad, he cried and Sean patted his shoulder and offered to dance the Dashing White Sergeant for him, The Commandant said that he would esteem it as a very great honour and furthermore he would be delighted. He himself did not know this dance but perhaps Sean would instruct him. They danced on the table. The Commandant was doing very well until in his enthusiasm he misjudged the size of the table.

Sean helped the junior officers put him to bed and in the morning Sean, Father Alphonso and One-Eye started back towards the mountains.

Sean was impatient of any delay now; he wanted to get back to Katrina. Father Alphonso's English was on a par with Sean's Portuguese. This made conversation difficult, so Alphonso solved the problem by doing all the talking.

At first Sean listened but when he decided that the good father was trying to convert him he no longer bothered.

Alphonso did not seem put out, he just went on talking and clinging to the horse with both hands while his cassock flapped about his legs and his face sweated in the shade of his wide-brimmed hat. One-Eye followed them like an ancient stork.

It took them two days back to One-Eye's village and their entry was a triumphal procession. Father Alphonso's face lit up when he saw so many prospective converts.

Sean could see him mentally rubbing Ins hands together, and he decided to keep going before Alphonso forgot the main object of the exrpedition. He gave One-Eye a hunting-knife in payment for his services. One-Eye sat down under the big tree in the centre of the village, his own thin legs no longer able to support his weight and the knife clutched to his chest.

lubi, you've had enough of that... come on now! Sean had not dismounted and was restlessly waiting for Mubi to say his farewells to three of the village girls.

Mubi had displayed traditional Zulu taste, all three of them were big-breasted, big-bottomed and young. They were also crying. Come on, Mubi... what's the trouble? Nkosi, they believe that I have taken them for my wives. What made them think that? Nkosi, I do not know Mubi broke the armhold that the PlumPest and Youngest had around his neck, he snatched up his spears and fled. Sean and Alphonso galloped after him.

The villagers shouted farewells and Sean looked back and saw One-Eye still sitting at the base of the big tree.

The pace which Sean set was at last telling on Alphonso. His verbal spring-tides slackened and he showed a measure of reluctance to let his backside touch the saddle; he rode crouched forward on his horse's neck with his buttocks in the air. They crossed the mountains and went down the other side; the ground levelled out into the Sabi Valley and they rode into the forest. On the ninth day out from Nova Sofala they reached the Sabi river. It was late afternoon. Flocks of guinea-fowl were drinking in the river-bed, they went up in a blue haze of whirling wings, as Sean led his Party down the bank.

While the horses watered Sean spoke with Mubi. Do you recognize this part of the river? Yes, Nkosi, we are two hours march upstream from the wagons... we held too far to the north coming through the forest Sean looked at the sun, it was on the tree-tops. Half an hour's light left... and there's no moon tonight. We could wait until morning Mubi suggested hopefully. Sean ignored him and motioned to Alphonso to mount up. Alphonso was prepared to debate the advisability of moving on. Sean took a handful of his cassock and helped him into the saddle.

In the darkness the lantern burning in Katrina's wagon glowed through the canvas and guided them the last half mile into camp. Thief bayed them welcome and Mbejane ran out at the head of the other servants to take Sean's horse. His voice was loud with worry and relief. Nkosi, there is little time... it has begun Sean jumped off his horse and ran to the wagon. He tore open the canvas flap. Sean. She sat up. Her eyes were very green in the lantern light, but they were dark-ringed. Thank God, you've come.

Sean knelt beside her cot and held her. He said certain things to her and she clung to him and moved her lips across his face. The world receded and left one wagon standing in darkness, lit by a single Lamp and the love of two people.

Suddenly she stiffened in his arms and gasped. Sean held her, his face suddenly helpless and his big hands timid and uncertain on her shoulders.

What can I do, my fancy? How can I help you?

Her body relaxed slowly and she whispered, Did you find a priest? The priest! Sean had forgotten about him. Still holding onto her he turned his head and bellowed, Alphonso...

Alphonso. Hurry, man Father Alphonso'S face in the opening of the wagon Was pale with fatigue and grimy with dust. MarrY us, said Sean- Quickly, man, che-cha, chopchop... you savvy!™ Alphonso climbed into the wagon. The skirts of his cassock were torn and his knees were white and bony through the holes. He stood over them and opened his book. Ring? he asked in Portuguese.

I do, said Sean. No! No! Ring? I Alphonso held up a finger and made an encircling gesture. Ring?

I think he wants a wedding ring, whispered Katrina.

Oh, my God, said Sean. i'd forgotten about that- He looked round desperately. what can we use? Haven't you got one in your chest or something? Katrina shook her head, opened her lips to answer but closed them again as another pain took her. Sean held her while it lasted and when she relaxed he looked UP angrily at Alpbonso. Marry us... damn you. Don't you see there's no time for all the trimmings? Ring? said Alphonso again. He looked very unhappy. all right, I'll get you a ring Sean leapt out of the wagon and shouted at Mbejane. Bring my rifle, quickly-if Sean wanted to shoot the Portuguese that was his business and Mbejane's duty was to help him. He brought Sean the rifle. Sean found a gold sovereign in the pouch on his belt, he threw it on the ground and held the muzzle of the rifle on it. The bullet punched a ragged hole through it. He tossed the rifle back to Mbejane, picked up the small gold circle and scrambled back into the wagon.

Three times during the service the pains made Katrina gasp and each time Sean held her tight and AlPhonso increased the speed of his delivery. Sean put the punctured sovereign on Katrina's finger and kissed her.

Alphonso gabbled out the last line of Latin and Katrina said, Oh, Sean, it's coming. Get out Sean told Alphonso and made an expressive gesture towards the door, thankfully AlPhonso went.

It did not take long then, but to Sean it was an eternity like that time when they had taken Garrick's leg. Then in a slippery rush it was finished. Katrina lay very quiet and pale, while on the cot below her, still linked to her purple-blotched and bloody lay the child that they had made. It's dead, croaked Sean. He was sweating and he had backed away against the far wall of the wagon.

No Katrina struggled up fiercely. No, it's not...

Sean, you must help me.

She told him what to do and at last the child cried. It's a boy, said Katrina softly. Oh, Sean... it's a boy.

She was more beautiful than he had ever seen her before;

pale and tired and beautiful.

Sean's protests were in vain, Katrina left her bed the next morning and squeezed into one of her old dresses.

Sean hovered between her and the child on the cot.

I'm still so fat, she lamented. Fancy, please stay in bed another day or two. She pulled a face at him and went on struggling with the lacing of her bodice. Who's going to look after the baby? I will! said Sean earnestly. You can tell me what to do Arguing with Katrina was like trying to pick up quicksilver with your fingers, not worth the effort. She finished dressing and took up the child.

You can help me down the steps. She smiled at him.

Sean and Alphonso set a chair for her in the shade of one of the big shuma trees and the servants came to see the child. Katrina held him in her lap and Sean stood over them in uncertain possession. For Sean it seemed unreal yet... too much for his mind to digest in so short a time.

He grinned dazedly at the steady stream of comment from his servants and his arm was limp when Alphonso shook his hand for the twentieth time that morning. Hold your child...

Nkosi. Let us see you with him on your arm called mbejane and the other Zulus took up the cry. Sean's expression changed slowly to one of apprehension. Pick him up, Nkosi Katrina proffered the bundle and a hunted look came into Sean's eyes. Have no fear, Nkosi, he has no teeth, he cannot harm you, Hlubi encouraged him. Sean held his first-born awkwardly and assumed the hunchbacked posture of the new father. The Zulus cheered him and slowly Sean's face relaxed and his smile was a glow of pride. Mbejane, is he not beautiful? As beautiful as his father, Mbejane agreed.

Your words are a blade with two edges, laughed Sean.

He looked at the child closely. It wore a cap of dark hair, its nose was flat as a bulldog's, its eyes were milky-grey and its legs were long, skinny and red, How will you name him? asked Hlubi. Sean looked at Katrina.

Tell them, he said.

He shall be called Dirk, she said in Zulu. What is the meaning? asked Hlubi, and Sean answered him. It means a dagger... a sharp knife. There was immediate nodded approval from all the servants.

Hiubi produced his snuff-box and passed it among them and Mbejane took a pinch. That, he said, is a good name. Paternity, the subtle alchemist, transformed Sean's attitude to life within twelve hours. Never before had anything been so utterly dependent upon him, so completely vulnerable. That first evening in their wagon he watched katrina sitting cross-legged on her cot, stooping forward over it to give it her breast. Her hair hung in a soft wing across one cheek, her face was fuller, more matronly and the child in her lap fed with a red face and small wheezings. She looked up at him and smiled and the child tugged her breast with its tiny fists and hunting mouth.

Sean crossed to the cot, sat beside them and put his :arm around them. Katrina rubbed her cheek against his chest and her hair smelt warm and clean. The boy went on feeding noisily. Sean felt vaguely excited as though he were on the threshold of a new adventure.

A week later, when the first rain clouds built up in the sky, Sean took the wagons across the Sabi and onto the slopes of the mountains to escape the heat of the plains.

There was a valley-he had noticed when he and Mubi had made their journey to the coast. The valley bottom was covered with short sweet grass and cedar trees grew along a stream of clean water. Sean took them to this place.

Here they would wait out the rainy season and when it was finished and the baby was strong enough to travel they could take the ivory south and sell it in Pretoria. It was a happy camp. The oxen spread out along the valley, filling it with movement and the contented sound of their lowing; there was laughter among the wagons and at night when the mist slumped down off the mountains the camp fire was bright and friendly. Father Alphonso stayed with them for nearly two weeks. He was a pleasant young man and although he and Sean never understood what the other was saying yet they managed well enough with sign language. He left at last with Hlubi and one of the other servants to escort him back over the mountains, but before he did he managed to embarrass Sean by kissing him goodbye. Sean and Katrina were sorry to see him go. They had grown to like him and Katrina had almost forgiven him his religion.

The rains came with the usual flourish and weeks drifted into months. Happy months, with life centring around Dirk's cot. Mbejane had made the cot for him out of cedarwood and one of Katrina's chests produced the sheets and blankets for it. The child grew quickly: each day he seemed to occupy more of his cot, his legs filled out, his skin lost its blotchy-purple look and his eyes were no longer a vague milky-blue. There was green in them now, they would be the same colour as his mother's.

To fill the long lazy days Sean started to build a cabin beside the stream. The servants joined in and from a modest first plan it grew into a thing of sturdy plastered walls and neatly thatched roof with a stone fireplace at one end. When it was finished Sean and Katrina moved into it. After their wagon with its thin canvas walls, the cabin gave a feeling of permanence to their love. One night, when the rain hissed down in darkness outside and the wind whined at the door like a dog wanting to be let in, they spread a mattress in front of the fireplace and there in the moving firelight they started another baby.

Christmas came, and after it the New Year. The rains stuttered and stopped and still they stayed on in their valley. Then at last they had to go, for their supplies of basic stores, powder, salt, medicines, cloth, were nearly finished. They loaded the wagons, inspanned and left in the early morning. As the line of wagons wound down the valley towards the plains Katrina sat on the box-seat of the lead wagon holding Dirk on her lap and Sean rode beside her. She looked back, the roof of their cabin showed brown through the branches of the cedar trees. It seemed forlorn and lonely. We must come back one day, we've been so happy here, she said softly. Sean leaned out of the saddle towards her and touched her arm. Happiness isn't a place, my fancy, we aren't leaving it here, we're taking it with us. She smiled at him. The second baby was starting to show already.

They reached the Limpopo river at the end of July and found a place to cross. It took three days to unload the wagons, work them through the soft sand and then carry the ivory and stores across. They finished in the late afternoon of the third day and by then everyone was exhausted. They ate an early supper and an hour after sunset the Zulus were rolled in their blankets, and Sean and Katrina were sleeping around head-on-chest in the wagon. In the morning Katrina was quiet and a little pale.

Sean didn't notice it until she told him that she felt tired and was going to lie down, immediately he was all attentive. He helped her into the wagon and settled the pillows under her head.

Are you sure you're all right! he kept asking. Yes... it's nothing, I'm just a bit tired. I'll be all right, she assured him. She appreciated his concern but was relieved when finally he went to see to the business of reloading the wagons for Sean's ministrations were always a little clumsy. She wanted to be left alone, she felt tired and cold.

By midday the wagons were loaded to Sean's satisfaction. He went to Katrina's wagon, lifted the canvas and peeped in. He expected her to be asleep. She was lying on the cot with her eyes open and two of the thick grey blankets wrapped around her. Her face was as pale as a two-day corpse. Sean felt the first leap of alarm, he scrambled into the wagon. My dear, you look ghastly. Are you sick? He put his hand on her shoulder and she was shivering. She didn't answer him, instead her eyes moved from his face to the floor near the foot of the bed and Sean's eyes followed hers. Katrina's luxury was her chamber-pot; it was a massive china thing with red roses hand-painted on it. She loved it dearly and Sean used to tease her when she was perched on top of it. Now the pot stood near the foot of the bed and when Sean saw what was in it his breathing stopped. It was half full of a liquid the colour of milk stout. oh, my God, he whispered. He went on staring at it, standing very still while a gruesome snatch of doggerel he remembered hearing sung in the canteens of the Witwatersrand began trotting through his brain like an undertaker's hack.

Black as the Angel, Black as disgrace When the fever waters flow They're as black as the ace.

Roll him in a blanket Feed him on quinine But all of us we know It's the end of the line.

Black as the Angel Black as disgrace Soon we'll lay him down below And chuck dirt in his face.

He raised his head and looked steadily at her, searching for the signs of fear. But just as steadily she looked back at him. Sean, it's blackwater! Yes... I know, Sean said, for there was nothing to be gained by denial, no room for extravagant hope. It was blackwater fever: malaria in its most malignant form, attacking the kidneys and turning them to fragile sacks of black blood that the slightest movement could rupture.

Sean knelt by her cot. You must be very still. He touched her forehead lightly with the tips of his fingers and felt the heat of her skin. Yes, she answered him, but already the expression in her eyes was blurring and she made the first restless movement of delirium. Sean put his arm across her chest to hold her from struggling.

By nightfall Katrina was deep in the nightmare of malaria. She laughed, she screamed in senseless terror, she shook her head and fought him when he tried to make her drink. But she had to drink, it was her one chance, to flush out her kidneys that she might live. Sean held her head and forced her.

Dirk started crying, hungry and frightened by the sight of his mother. Mbejane! shouted Sean, his voice pitched high with desperation. Mbejane had waited all afternoon at the entrance of the wagon. Nkosi, what can I do? The child... can you care for him?

Mbejane picked up the cot with Dirk still in it.

Do not worry about him again. I will take him to the other wagon. Sean turned his whole attention back to Katrina. The fever built up steadily within her. Her body was a furnace, her skin was dry and with every hour she was wilder and her movements more difficult to control.