They marched until the heat came up in the middle of the morning and the merciless sun dried the sweat the moment it burst through their pores and left tiny salt crystals on the skin, that sparkled like diamond chips. Then they found shade and lay like dead men through the heat of noon, stirring again only when the lowering sun gave the illusion of cooling the air and the blast of the kudii-horn trumpet forced them to their feet again.
The second stage of the tirikeza lasted until sunset when it became too dark to see the ground under their feet.
The fires were dying and the voices of the porters in their thorn bush scherms had slowly descended through the occasional mutter and soft murmur to ultimate silence before Zouga left his tent and limped silently as a night creature out of the camp.
He carried the Sharps rifle slung over his shoulder, the staff in one hand and a bull"s eye lantern in the other, while the Colt revolver hung in its holster upon his belt.
Once clear of the camp, he stepped out as briskly as his leg would allow two miles along the freshly beaten footpath that the column had made that afternoon until he reached the fallen tree trunk that was the agreed rendezvous.
He stopped and whistled softly, and a smaller figure stepped out from the undergrowth into the moonlight, carrying a rifle at high-port. The jaunty step and alert set of head on narrow shoulders was unmistakable. All is well, Sergeant.
"We are ready, Major."
Zouga inspected the ambush positions that Sergeant Cheroot had chosen for his men astride the path. The little Hottentot had a good eye for ground and Zouga found his trust and liking for him increasing with every such display of competence. A puff? " Jan Cheroot asked now, with the clay pipe already in his mouth. No smoking, " Zouga shook his head. "They will smell it. " And Jan Cheroot reluctantly b.u.t.toned the pipe into his hip pocket.
Zouga had chosen a position in the centre of the line, where he could make himself comfortable against the trunk of the fallen tree. He settled down with a sigh, his leg thrust out stiffly ahead of him, after the tirikeza it was going to be a long wearying night.
The moon was a few days short of full, and it was almost light enough to read the headlines of a newspaper. The bush was alive with the scurry and rustle of small animals, and it kept their nerves tightened and their ears strained to catch the other sounds for which they waited.
Zouga was the first to hear the click of a pebble striking against another. He whistled softly and Jan Cheroot snapped his fingers, imitating the sound of a black scarab beetle to show that he was alert. The moon had dropped low upon the hills, and its light through the forest trees laid silver and black tiger stripes upon the earth and played tricks with the eye.
Something moved in the forest, and then was gone, but Zouga picked up the whisper of bare feet scuffling the sandy disturbed earth of the path, and then suddenly they were there, and very close, man shapes in file, hurrying, silent, furtive. Zouga counted them, eight, no nine.
Each of them straight-backed under the bulky burden he carried balanced upon his head. Zouga"s anger simmered to the surface and yet at the same time he felt a grim sense of satisfaction that he had not wasted the night.
As the leading figure in the file came level with the fallen tree trunk, Zouga pointed the muzzle of the Sharps rifle straight into the air and pressed the trigger. The crash of the shot broke the night into a hundred echoes that bounced and rebounded through the forest, and the silence magnified it until it seemed like the thunder of all the heaven.
The echoes had not dispersed, and the nine dark figures were still frozen with shock when Jan CherOUE-S Hottentots fell upon them from every direction in a shrieking pack.
The sound of their cries was so shrill, so inhuman, that it even startled Zouga, while the effect on the victims was miraculous. They let fall the burdens they carried, and dropped to earth in a paralysis of superst.i.tious awe, adding their walls and screams to the pandemonium. Then the thud and clatter of cudgels against skull and cringing flesh mingled with it all, and the screams and howls rose to a new pitch.
Jan Cheroot"s men had spent much time and care on selecting and cutting their clubs and now they wielded them with a l.u.s.ty glee, making up for a night of discomfort and boredom. Sergeant Cheroot himself was in the thick of it, and in his excitement he had almost lost his voice. He was yipping squeakily like a demented fox terrier with a cat up a tree.
Zouga knew he would have to stop it soon, before they killed or seriously maimed somebody, but the punishment was richly earned, and he gave it a minute more.
He even joined in himself when one of the prostrate figures scrambled to its feet and tried to dart away into the undergrowth. Zouga swung his staff and brought him down again with a blow to the back of his knees, and when he sprang up again as though he were on springs, Zouga dropped him in the dust with a short right-handed punch to the side of the head.
Then, stepping back out of the fray, Zouga took one of his few remaining cheroots from his top pocket, and lit it from the chimney of the lantern, inhaling with deep satisfaction, while around him the enthusiasm of his Hottentots flagged a little as they tired and Jan Cheroot regained his voice and became coherent for -the first time. Slat hulle, kerels! Hit them, boys! " It was time to stop it, Zouga decided and opened the shutter of the lantern. That"s enough, Sergeant, he ordered, and the thuds of blows became intermittent and then ceased while the Hottentots rested on the cudgels, panting and streaming with the honest sweat of their exertions.
The deserting porters lay moaning and whimpering in pitiful heaps, with their loot scattered about them. Some of the packs had burst open, and trade cloth and beads, flasks of gunpowder, knives, mirrors and gla.s.s jewellery were strewn about and trodden into the dirt. Zouga"s fury returned at full strength when he recognized the tin box which contained his dress uniform and hat. He delivered a last kick at the nearest figure and then growled at Sergeant Cheroot, Get them on their feet and clean it up."
The nine deserters were marched into camp, roped together and bearing not only the heavy burdens which they had stolen, but also an impressive set of contusions, cuts and bruises. Lips were swollen and split, some teeth were missing, a good many eyes were puffed closed and most of their heads were as lumpy as newlypicked Jerusalem artichokes.
More painful than their injuries, however, was the ridicule of the entire camp which turned out to a man to jeer and mock them with laughter.
Zouga lined up the captives, with their booty piled in front of them, and in the presence of their peers made a speech in limping but expressive Swahili in which he likened them to sneaking jackals and lurking hyena and fined them each a month"s wages.
The audience was delighted with the show, and hooted at every insult while the culprits tried physically to shrink themselves into insignificance. There was not one of the watching porters who would not have done the same thing. in fact, had the escape succeeded, most of them would have followed the next night, but now that it had been foiled, they could enjoy the vicarious pleasure of having escaped punishment, and the discomfort of their companions who had committed the sin of being caught.
During the noon rest that divided the two stages of the next day"s tirikeza, the cl.u.s.ters of porters chatting in the shade of the mopani groves agreed that they had found a strong master to follow, one whom it would not be easy to cheat, and it gave them all confidence for the future of the safari. Coming directly after his defeat of the Portuguese, the recapture of the deserting porters added immeasurably to Zouga"s standing.
The four indunas of the divisions agreed that it was fitting that such a man have a praise-name. They conferred at length, and after considering many suggestions, finally decided on "Bakela". Bakela" means "the one-who-strikes-with-the-fist", for this was still. the one of Zouga"s many accomplishments which impressed them most.
Where Bakela led, they were now prepared to follow, and though Zouga spread a dragnet of his faithful Hottentots behind the column each of the following nights, no more fish swam into it. How many? " Zouga whispered, and Jan Cheroot rocked on his heels, sucking softly on the empty clay pipe and squinting his oriental eyes thoughtfully, before he shrugged, "Too many to count. Two hundred, three hundred, perhaps even four."
The ground had been ploughed up into soft fluffy dust by the mult.i.tude of huge cloven hooves, and the dark pats of dung were round and shaped in little concentric circles, completely indistinguishable from those of domestic cattle, and the rank smell of cattle was heavy on the heated air of the Zambezi valley.
For an hour they had followed a small herd through the open mopani forest, stooping under the low branches with the thick shiny double leaves, each of them shaped like the cloven spoor that they followed, and now where the spoor emerged from the forest it had been joined by another much larger herd. How close? " Zouga asked again, and Jan Cheroot slapped his own neck where one of the buffalo flies had settled. It was the size of a honey bee, but dull black and the long needle of its proboscis stung as though it was white hot. We are so close that the flies that follow the herd still linger, and he pushed his forefinger into the nearest pat of wet dung, "and the body heat is still in the dung, but, Jan Cheroot went on as he wiped his finger on a handful of dry gra.s.s, "but they have gone into bad ground-" and he pointed ahead with his chin.
A week before they had reached the escarpment of the valley, but each of the possible pa.s.ses that Zouga had examined through the telescope had proved on closer inspection to be dead-ends, the gorges pinching out into abrupt rock faces, or falling off into some terrifying abyss.
They had turned westwards, following the edge of the escarpment, Zouga ranging ahead with his small scouting party. Yet day after day those impa.s.sable heights loomed at their left hand, rising sheer into the unknown.
Even below the main escarpment, the ground was tortured and riven by deep gorges and ravines, by cliffs of dark rock and hills of enormous tumbled boulders. The ravines were choked with the drab grey stands of thorn, so densely interwoven that a man would have to crawl in on hands and knees, and his vision would be limited to a few feet ahead, yet the herd of many hundreds of buffalo that they were following had disappeared into one of these narrow gorges, their thick hides impervious to the cruel red-tipped thorn.
Zouga took the telescope from his haversack carried by his bearer, and carefully scanned the ground ahead. It had a wild and menacing beauty and for the hundredth time in the last few days he wondered if there was a way through this maze to the empire of Monornatapa. Did you hear that? " Zouga demanded, lowering the gla.s.s suddenly. It had sounded like the distant ]owing of the milk herd as it returned to the farmyard. Ja! " Sergeant Cheroot nodded, as again the mournful sound echoed against the black ironstone cliffs, and was answered by the bleat of a calf. "They are lying up in the jessie bush. They won"t move again until sunset."
Zouga glanced up at the sun. It was four hours or so from its zenith. He had over a hundred mouths to feed, and they had rationed out the last of the dried fish two days before. We will have to go in after them" he said, and Jan Cheroot removed the stern of the pipe from between yellow teeth and spat reflectively in the dust. I am a very happy man, he said. "Why would I want to die now? " Zouga lifted the gla.s.s again, and while he scanned the ridges of higher ground about the choked valley, he imagined what it would be like in there. When the first shot was fired, the jessie bush would be filled with huge, furiously charging black animals.
The fluky breeze coming down the steep narrow valley brought with it another powerful whiff of the herd smell before it faded.
The wind is down the valley, " he said. They have not smelled us, Cheroot agreed, but that was not what Zouga had meant. Again he examined the nearest ridge of high ground. A man could work his way along the edge of it, up towards the head of the narrow valley. Sergeant, we are going to flush them out, he smiled, like spring pheasant."
Zouga had found the native names of his personal bearers hard to p.r.o.nounce, and tiresome to remember. There were four of them, he had selected them with care, rejecting half a dozen others in the process, and he had rechristened them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They had earned enormous prestige by being so honoured, and had proved keen and willing to learn their duties. In a few days they were already proficient at reloading, though not yet of the same standard as Camacho Pereira"s gunbearers, but that would come.
Zouga carried the Sharps rifle, but each of the four bearers had one of the heavy four-to-the-pound elephant guns that Harkness had recommended to Zouga. At any time he had only to reach back over his shoulder and a loaded and primed weapon would be thrust into his hand.
Apart from the elephant guns, his bearers carried his blanket roll, water bottle, canvas food bag, spare ball and powder, and the little clay fire pot from which a smouldering ball of moss and wood pulp could be blown into flame in a few seconds. It was wise to conserve the amenities of civilization, such as Swan Vestas, for the months and years ahead.
Zouga relieved Luke, the quickest and most wiry of the four, of all his equipment except the fire pot, pointed out the path along the cliff, and explained carefully to him what he was to do.
All of them listened with approval, even Sergeant Cheroot nodded sagely at the end. "My old mother tells me, before she throws me out, "Jan", she says, "remember it"s brains what counts."
" In the mouth of the valley, where it debauched out into the mopani forest, was a low outcrop of rock, the black ironstone boulders had been split into strange shapes by sun and erosion, and they formed a natural redoubt, with chest-high walls behind which a man could crouch. A hundred paces directly ahead, the dense palisade of iron-grey thorn blocked the valley, but the ground between was fairly open, with a few stunted second-growth mopani bushes and clumps of coa.r.s.e dried razor gra.s.s as high as a man"s shoulder.
Zouga moved his party into the lee of the rocks, and himself scrambled onto the highest point to follow through his gla.s.s the progress of the almost naked bearer as he picked his way cautiously along the rim of the cliff. Within half an hour he had worked so far up the escarpment that he had disappeared from Zouga"s view.
it was another hour before, from the head of the valley, a thin tendril of pure white smoke rose gently into the heated air, and then bent into the elegant shape of an ostrich plume before the gentle breath of the breeze.
With miraculous suddenness the rising column of white smoke was surrounded by another living cloud, hundreds of tiny black specks that weaved and darted about and around it. The faint but excited bird cries carried down to where Zouga waited, and through the gla.s.s he could make out the rainbow, turquoise and sapphire plumage of the blue jay as they rolled and dived for the insects put to flight by the flames. Competing with them for the feast, were the iridescent black drongas with their long, forked tails catching the sunlight with metallic glitter as they swirled above the spreading smoke clouds.
Luke was doing his job well. Zouga grunted with satisfaction, as new columns of smoke rose at intervals, sealing off the valley from side to side as they spread to meet each other. Now there was a solid wall of smoke from one cliff to the other, and as the smoke turned dirty black, billowing upwards, spinning upon itself, carrying flaming fragments of leaves and twigs within it, it began to roll ponderously down the valley.
It reminded Zouga of a snow avalanche he had watched in the high Himalayas, the slow majestic progress gathering weight and momentum, building up its own wind storm as it sucked the valley of air.
He could see the tops of the flames now, leaping above the thorn, and hear the sound of them, like the whispering waters of a distant river. The alarm bellow of a bull buffalo rang like the blast of a war trumpet from the ironstone cliffs, and the whisper of flames rose swiftly to a dull crackling roar.
The smoke clouds rose across the sun, plunging them into an unnatural gloom, and Zouga felt a sharp. drop in his spirits at the extinction of the bright morning sun, that internal swirling pall of dun smoke seemed to hold a world of menace.
From the edge of the jessie bush broke a herd of kudu, led by a magnificent bull with his corkscrew horns laid flat along his back. He saw Zouga standing on the pinnacle of rock, and snorted with alarm, swinging away out of easy shot with his cows flying big-eared and scary behind him, their fluffy white tails flickered away amongst the mopani groves.
Zouga scrambled down from his too obvious position, and propped himself comfortably against the rock, checked the nipple on the cap of the Sharps and then c.o.c.ked the big hammer.
Ahead of the flames, a pale white dust cloud was rising over the tops of the jessie bush, and another sound was added to the roar of flames. It was a low thunder that made the earth tremble under their feet. They are coming, Jan Cheroot muttered to himself, and his little eyes sparkled.
A single buffalo burst from the palisade of thorn. He was an old bull, almost bald across the shoulders and rump, the dusty grey skin crisscrossed by a thousand ancient scars and scabby with the bites of bush ticks.
The big bell-shaped ears were torn and tattered, and one thickly curved horn was broken off at the tip. He came out at a crabbing gallop, dust exploding at each hoof beat like miniature mortar bursts.
He was on a line to pa.s.s the rocky redoubt at twenty paces, and Zouga let him come on to twice that distance before he threw up the Sharps rifle.
He aimed for the fold of thick skin under the throat that marked the frontal aiming point for the heart and its complex of arteries and blood vessels. He hardly noticed the recoil nor the blurt of the shot as he watched for the strike of the lead bullet. There was a little spurt of dust off the grey hide precisely on his aiming point, and the sound of the hit was exactly like his headmaster swinging the malacca cane against his own schoolboy backside, sharp and meaty.
The bull took the bullet without a stumble or lurch, instead it swung towards them, and seemed immediately to double in size as it lifted its nose into the high att.i.tude of the charge.
Zouga reached for his second gun, but he groped in vain. Mark, his number two, showed the whites of his eyes in a flash of terror, let out a squawk, hurled the elephant gun aside, and went hounding away towards the mopani grove.
The bull saw him and swerved again, thundering ten feet past Zouga as it went after the fleeing bearer.
Waving the empty Sharps, Zouga shouted desperately for another rifle, but the bull was past him in a grey blur and it caught Mark as he reached the tree line.
The great bossed head dropped until the snout almost touched the earth, and then flew up again in a powerful tossing motion that bunched the muscle in the thick black neck. Mark was looking back over his shoulder, his eyes wide and glaring white in the black face, rivulets of sweat pouring down his naked back, his mouth a pink gape as he screamed.
Then he was in the air. Legs and arms tumbling wildly, he went up like a rag doll thrown by a petulant child and disappeared into the thick green canopy of mopani foliage overhead. Without missing a stride, the bull drove on into the forest, but that was all that Zouga saw, for a cry from Sergeant Cheroot made him turn again. Hier kom hullel Here they come! " Across their whole front, the earth seemed to move as though racked by the convulsions of an earthquake.
Shoulder to shoulder, nose to rump, the main herd broke from cover, flattening the Thorn bush under the great wave of bodies, filling the valley from side to side.
They lifted behind them a dense curtain of pale dust, from which the front ranks seemed endlessly to emerge, their great bossed heads nodding in unison as they pounded on, long silver strings of saliva dangling from open jaws as they bellowed in alarm and anger, and the roar of their hooves drowned the sound of the flames.
Matthew and John, Zouga"s two remaining bearers, had stood their ground, and one of them s.n.a.t.c.hed away the empty Sharps and thrust the thick stock of an elephant gun into Zouga"s hand.
The weapon seemed heavy and unbalanced after the Sharps, and the sights were crudely fashioned, a blunt cone for the foresight, and a deep vee for the backsight.
The solid wall of bodies was bearing down upon them with frightening speed. The cows were a dark chocolate colour, and their horns were more delicately curved. The calves that raced at their flanks were sleek russet with crowns of reddish curls between the rudimentary little horn spikes. The herd was so tightly packed that it seemed impossible that they could split open to pa.s.s the rock. There was a tall rangy cow in the leading rank, coming straight on to Zouga.
He held half a beat aiming into the centre of her chest, and squeezed off the shot. The firing cap popped with a tiny puff of white smoke, and a heartbeat later the elephant gun vomited a deafening gust of powder smoke and bright flame, the burning patches went spinning away over the heads of the charging buffalo, and Zouga felt as though one of them had kicked in his shoulder.
He staggered backwards, the barrel thrown high by the recoil, but the big red cow seemed to run into an invisible barrier. A quarter of a pound of mercury-hardened lead drove into her chest, and brought her down in a rolling sliding tangle of hooves and horns. Tom Harkness! That one was yours! " Zouga shouted, offeringthe kill to the memory of the old white bearded hunter, and he grabbed the next loaded rifle.
There was a prime bull, big and black, a ton of enraged bovine flesh. It had seen Zouga, and was coming in over the rocks in a long scrambling leap, hunting him out, so close that Zouga seemed to touch it with the gaping muzzle of the four-to-the-pound. Again the great clanging burst of sound and flame and smoke, and half the bull"s head flew away in a gust of bone chips and b.l.o.o.d.y fragments. It reared up on its hind legs, striking out with fore hooves, and then crashed over in a cloud of dust.
Impossibly, the herd split, galloping down each side of their rocky bide, a heaving, grunting, forked river of striving muscle and bone. Ian Cheroot was yipping shrilly with the fever of the chase, ducking down behind the rock to reload, biting open the paper cartridge with powder dribbling down his chin, spitting the ball into the muzzle and then plying the ramrod in a frenzy, before bobbing up again to fire into the solid heaving press of gigantic bodies.
It lasted for two minutes, which seemed to take a round of eternity, and then they were left choking and gasping in the swirling clouds of dust, surrounded by half a dozen huge black carca.s.ses, with the drum-beats of the herd fading away into the mopani forest, and a louder more urgent din roaring down on them from in front.
The first tongue of heat licked across them, and Zouga heard the lock of suribleached hair that hung on his forehead frizzle sharply and smelt the stink of it. At the same instant, the dust cloud fell abruptly aside, and for seconds they stared at a spectacle which deprived them of power of movement.
The jessie bush was not burning, it was exploding into sheets of flame. Run! " shouted Zouga. "Get out of here!
The sleeve of his shirt charred, and the air he breathed scorched his lungs painfully. As they reached the edge of the mopani forest, the shiny green leaves about their heads shrivelled and yellowed, curling their edges in the heat, and Zouga felt his eyeb.a.l.l.s drying out as the dark smoke clouds rolled over them. He knew that they were experiencing only the heat and smoke carried on the wind, but if the flames were able to jump the gap, then they were all doomed. Ahead of him, the Hottentots and the other bearers were shadowy wraiths, staggering forward but weakening and losing direction.
Then, as suddenly as they had been engulfed by them, the billowing smoke clouds lifted. The flames had not been able to jump the open ground, and the heat came only in gusts. A ray of sunshine pierced the thick gloom overhead, and a puff of sweet fresh air came through.
They sucked at it gratefully, and huddled in awed silence, beating at their clothing which still smouldered in patches. Zouga"s face was blackened and blistered, and his lungs still convulsed in spasms of coughing. As he caught his breath, he grunted hoa.r.s.ely, Well the meat is cooked already, " and he pointed back at the buffalo carca.s.ses.
At that moment something fell limply out of the dense top branches of a mopani tree, and then picked itself up and limped painfully towards them. Zouga let out a husky growl of laughter. Oh, thou swift of foot, he greeted Mark, the bearer, and the others took up the mockery. When you fly, the eagles are put to shame, Jan Cheroot hooted. Your true home is in the treetops, Matthew added with relish, "with your hairy brethren."
By evening they had hacked the buffalo carca.s.ses into wet red chunks, and spread these on the smoking racks.
The racks were waist high, cross-poles set in forked branches, with a slow smoking fire of wet mopani wood smouldering under it.
Here was meat for the caravan that would las them many weeks.
Carnacho Pereira had no doubts that by simply following the line of the escarpment, keeping just below the bad broken ground, he must at last cut the spoor of the caravan. A hundred men, in column, would blaze a track that even a blind man would trip over.
His certainty dwindled with each day"s march through the quiverin& breathless heat that seemed to rebound from black kopjes and the ironstone cliffs which glittered in the aching sunlight like the scales of some monstrous reptile.
Of the men that his half-brother, Alphonse, had given him, he had already lost two. One had stepped on something that looked like a pile of dried leaves, but which had transformed itself instantly into six feet of infuriated gaboon adder, thick as a man"s calf, with a repulsively beautiful diamond-patterned back, and a head the size of a man"s fist. The gaping mouth was a lovely shade of salmon pink, and the curved fangs three inches long. It had plunged them into the man"s thigh and squirted half a cupful of the most toxic venom in Africa into his bloodstream.
After blowing the serpent to shreds with volleys of rifle fire, Camacho and his companions had wagered all their expectations of loot on exactly how long it would take the victim to die. Camacho, the only one who owned a watch, was elected timekeeper, and they gathered around where the dying man lay, either urging him to give up the useless struggle or pleading with him raucously to hang on a little longer.
When he went into back-arching convulsions, with his eyes rolled up into his skull, his jaws locked into a grinning rictus and he lost control of his sphincter muscle, Camacho knelt beside him, holding a bunch of smouldering tambooti leaves under his nostrils to shock him out of it, and crooning, "Ten minutes more, hang on for just ten minutes more for your old friend MachitoV The last convulsion ended with a dreadful gargling expulsion of breath, and when the heart beat faded completely, Carnacho stood and kicked the corpse with disgust. He always was a dung-eating jackal."
When they began to strip the corpse of all items of any possible value, five coins, heavy golden mohurs of the East India Company, fell out of the folds of his turban, There was not one man in all that company who would not have willingly sold his mother into slavery for a single gold mohur, let alone five.
At the first gleam of gold, all their knives came out with a sardonic metallic snickering, and the first man to s.n.a.t.c.h for the treasure reeled away, trying to push his intestines back into the long clean slice through his stomach wall. Leave them lie, " Camacho shouted. "Don"t touch them until the lots are drawn! " Not one of them trusted another, and the knives stayed out while the lots were cast, and grudgingly the winners were allowed one at a time to claim their prize.
The man with the belly wound could not march without his stomach falling out, and because he could not march, he was as good as dead. The dead, as everybody knows, have no need of personal possessions. The logic was apparent to all. They left him his shirt and breeches, both torn and badly stained anyway, but stripped him of all else as they had stripped the first corpse. Then, with a few ribald pleasantries, they propped him against the base of a morula tree, with the naked corpse of the snake-bite victim beside him for company, and they marched away along the line of the escarpment.
They had gone a hundred yards when Camacho was overcome by a rush of compa.s.sion. He and the dying man had fought and marched and wh.o.r.ed together for many years. He turned back.
The man gave him a haggard grin, his dry crusted lips cracking with the effort. Camacho answered him with that marvelous flashing smile as he dropped the man"s loaded pistol in his lap. It would be better to use it before the hyena find you tonight, he told him. The thirst is terrible, the man croaked, a tiny bead of blood appeared on his deeply cracked lower lip, bright as an emperor"s ruby in -the sunlight. He eyed the twogallon water bottle on Carnacho"s hip.
Carnacho resettled the water bottle on its strap so it was out of sight behind his back. The contents sloshed seductively.
Try not to think about it, he counselled.
There was a point where compa.s.sion ended and stupidity began. Who knew where and when they would find the next water? In this G.o.d-blasted desolation, water was an item not to be wasted on a man who was "already as good as dead.
He patted the man"s shoulder comfortingly, gave him a last lovely smile and then swaggered away amongst the grey ironthorn scrub, whistling softly under his breath with the plumed beaver c.o.c.ked over one eye. Camachito went back to make sure we had forgotten nothing. " The one-eyed Abyssinian greeted him as he caught up with the column, and they shouted with laughter. Their spirits were still high, the water-bottles more than half filled and the prospects of immense loot danced like a will-o-the-wisp down the valley ahead of them.
That had been ten days ago, the last three of which without water, for you could not count the cupful of mud and elephant p.i.s.s they had from the last puddled water-hole. Apart from the lack of water, the going had become appalling. Camacho had never marched through such broken and harsh terrain, toiling up one rocky slope and then battling down through tearing Thorn to the next dry river course, and then up again.
Also, it now seemed highly probable that either the Englishman had changed his mind and gone north of the Zambezi river after all, in which case they had lost him, or else, and Camacho"s skin crawled at the thought, or else they had crossed the spoor of the caravan in the early dawn or late evening when the light was too bad to make it out clearly. It was an easy mistake to make, they had crossed hundreds of game tracks each day, and the spoor could have been wiped by a herd of game, or one of the fierce short-lived little whirlwinds, the dust devils which ravaged the valley at this season of the year.
To cap all Camacho"s tribulations, his band of n.o.ble warriors was on the point of mutiny. They were talking quite openly about turning back. There never had been an Englishman and a caravan of riches, even if there had, he was now far from here and getting further every day.
They were exhausted by these switchback ridges and valleys and the water bottles were nearly all of them dry, which made it hard to maintain enthusiasm for the venture. The ringleaders were reminding the others that in their absence, their share of the profits of the slave caravan were blowing in the wind. Fifty slaves, for certain, were worth a hundred mythical Englishmen. They had many excellent reasons for turning back.