by Wilbur Smith
“Hey, coz!” Mansur shouted. “Keep the stroke. You will have us on Robben Island if you’re not more careful.” Jim started out of his daydream just in time to meet the next swell that lifted the stern high.
“Sea’s getting up,” his father grunted. “Like as not it will be blowing a gale by tomorrow. We’ll have to try to take out the last load before it gets too rough.”
Jim took his eyes off the receding shape of the ship, and looked beyond her. His spirits sank. The stormclouds were piling up high and heavy as mountains upon the horizon.
I have to think up an excuse to stay ashore when they take out the next load to the Meeuw, he decided. There is not going to be another chance to make ready.
As the mules dragged the longboat up the beach, Jim told his father, “I have to take Captain Hugo his cut. He might scotch us if he doesn’t have some coin in his fat fist.”
“Let him wait for it, the old sheep thief. I need you to help with the next shipment.”
“I promised Hugo and, anyway, you have a full crew for the next trip out to the ship.”
Tom Courtney studied his son with a searching gaze. He knew him well. He was up to something. It was not like Jim to shirk. On the contrary, he was a rock on which Tom could depend. It was he who had established good terms with the purser on the convict ship, he had obtained the licence to trade from Hugo, and he had supervised the loading of the first shipment. He could be trusted.
“Well, I don’t know…” Tom stroked his chin dubiously.
Mansur stepped in quickly. “Let Jim go, Uncle Tom. I can take over from him for the time being.”
“Very well, Jim. Go and visit your friend Hugo,” Tom acquiesced, “but be back on the beach to help with the boats when we return.”
Later, from the top of the dunes, Jim watched the longboats rowing back towards the Meeuw with the final load of produce. It seemed to him that the swells were higher than they had been that morning, and the wind was starting to claw off the tops in a parade of leaping white horses.
“God spare us!” he said aloud. “If the storm comes up I will not be able to get the girl off until it passes.” Then he remembered his instructions to her. He had told her to jump overboard at precisely two bells in the middle watch. He could not get another message to her to stop her doing that. Would she have the good sense to stay on board if there was a full gale blowing, realizing that he had not been able to keep the rendezvous, or would she throw herself overboard regardless and perish in the darkness? The thought of her drowning in the dark waters struck him like a fist in his belly, and he felt nauseous. He turned Drumfire’s head towards the castle and pressed his heels into the horse’s sides.
Captain Hugo was surprised but pleased to have his commission paid so promptly. Jim left him without ceremony, refusing even a mug of coffee, and galloped back along the beach. He was thinking furiously as he rode.
There had been so little time to lay his plans. It was only in the last few hours that he had been sure the girl had the spirit to chance such a hazardous escape. The first consideration, if he succeeded in getting her ashore, would be to find a safe hiding-place for her. As soon as her escape was discovered the entire castle garrison would be sent out to find her, a hundred infantry and a squadron of cavalry. The Company troops in the castle had little enough employment, and a manhunt or, better still, a woman-hunt would be one of the most exciting events in years. Colonel Keyser, the garrison commander, would be hot for the honour of capturing an escaped convict.
For the first time he allowed himself to consider the consequences if this hare-brained scheme fell to pieces. He worried that he might be making trouble for his family. The strict law laid down by the directors of the VOC, the almighty Zeventien in Amsterdam, was that no foreigner was permitted to reside or carry on a business in the colony. However, like so many other strict laws of the directors in Amsterdam, there were special circumstances by which they could be circumvented. Those special circumstances always involved a monetary token of esteem to His Excellency Governor van de Witten. It had cost the Courtney brothers twenty thousand guilders to obtain a licence to reside and trade in the Colony of Good Hope. Van de Witten was unlikely to revoke that licence. He and Tom Courtney were on friendly terms, and Tom contributed generously to van de Witten’s unofficial pension fund.
Jim hoped that if he and the girl simply disappeared from the colony, there would be nothing to implicate the rest of his family. There might be suspicions, and at the worst it might cost his father another gift to van de Witten, but in the end it would blow over, just as long as he never returned.
There were only two avenues of escape from the colony. The natural and best was the sea. But that meant a boat. The Courtney brothers owned two armed traders, handy and fleet schooners with which they traded as far as Arabia and Bombay. However, at the present time both these vessels were at sea and were not expected back until the monsoon changed, which would not be for several months yet.
Jim had saved up a little money, perhaps enough to pay for a passage for the girl and himself on one of the ships lying in Table Bay at the moment. But the first thing Colonel Keyser would do as soon as the girl was reported missing was to send search parties aboard every ship. He could try to steal a small boat, a pinnace perhaps, something seaworthy enough in which he and the girl could reach the Portuguese ports on the Mozambique coast, but every captain was alert for piracy. The most likely reward for his efforts would be a musket ball in the belly.
Even in his most optimistic expectations he had to face the fact that the sea route was closed to them. There was only one other still open, and he turned and looked northwards at the far mountains on which the last of the winter snows had not yet thawed. He pulled up Drumfire and thought about what lay out there. Jim had not travelled more than fifty leagues beyond those peaks, but he had heard of others who had gone further into the hinterland and returned with a great store of ivory. There was even a rumour of the old hunter who had picked a shiny pebble out of a sandbank of a nameless river far to the north, and had sold the diamond in Amsterdam for a hundred thousand guilders. He felt his skin prickle with excitement. On countless nights he had dreamed of what lay beyond that blue horizon. He had discussed it with Mansur and Zama, and they had promised each other that one day they would make the journey. Had the gods of adventure overheard his boasts, and were they conspiring now to drive him out there into the wilderness? Would he have a girl with golden hair and blue eyes riding at his side? He laughed at the thought, and urged Drumfire on.
With his father, his uncle Dorian and almost all the servants and freed slaves out of the way for the next few hours, he had to work quickly. He knew where his father kept the keys to both the strongroom and the armoury. He selected six strong mules out of the herd in the kraal, pack-saddled them and took them on a lead rein up to the rear doors of the godown. He had to choose carefully as he selected goods from the warehouse to make up the loads. A dozen best Tower muskets and canvas ball-pouches, kegs of black powder, and lead bars and moulds to cast more ball; axes, knives and blankets; beads and cloth to trade with the wild tribes they might meet; basic medicines, pots and water bottles; needles and thread, and all the other necessities of existence in the wilderness, but no luxuries. Coffee was not a luxury, he consoled himself, as he added a sack of beans.
When they were loaded he led the string of mules away to a quiet place beside a stream in the forest almost two miles from High Weald. He relieved the animals of their packs so they could rest, and left them with knee-halters to allow them to graze on the lush grass on the stream bank.
By the time he returned to High Weald the longboats were on their way back from the Meeuw. He went down to meet his father, Mansur and the returning crews as they came back over the dunes. He rode along with them, and listened to their desultory conversation. They were all drenched with seawater and almost exhausted, for it had been a long haul back from the Dutch ship in the heavy seas.
Mansur
described it to him succinctly: “You were lucky to get out of it. The waves were breaking over us like a waterfall.”
“Did you see the girl?” Jim whispered, so his father would not overhear.
“What girl?” Mansur gave him a knowing glance.
“You know what girl.” Jim punched his arm.
Mansur’s expression turned serious. “They had all the convicts locked up and battened down. One of the officers told Uncle Tom that the captain is anxious to sail as soon as he can finish reprovisioning and filling his water butts. By tomorrow at the very latest. He does not want to be pinned down by the storm on this lee shore.” He saw Jim’s despairing expression, and went on sympathetically, “Sorry, coz, but like as not the ship will be gone by noon tomorrow. She would have been no good for you anyway, a convict woman. You know nothing about her, you don’t know what crimes she has committed. Murder, perhaps. Let her go, Jim. Forget about her. There is more than one bird in the blue sky, more than a single blade of grass on the plains of Camdeboo.”
Jim felt anger flare and bitter words rose to his lips, but he held them back. He left the others and turned Drumfire towards the top of the dunes. From the height he looked out across the bay. The storm was mounting even as he watched, bringing on the darkness prematurely. The wind moaned and ruffled his hair, and whipped Drumfire’s mane into a tangle. He had to shield his eyes against the sting of flying sand and spume. The surface of the sea was a welter of breaking white spray, and tall, heaving swells that rose up and crashed down on the beach. It was a wonder that his father had been able to bring the boats in through that turmoil of wind and water, but Tom Courtney was a master mariner.
Almost two miles out the Meeuw was an indistinct grey shape that rolled and pitched with swinging bare masts, and disappeared as each fresh squall swept across the bay. Jim watched until the darkness hid her completely. Then he galloped down the back of the dune towards High Weald. He found Zama still working in the stables, bedding down the horses. “Come with me,” he ordered, and obediently Zama followed him out into the orchard. When they were out of sight of the house they squatted down side by side. They were silent for a while, then Jim spoke in Lozi, the language of the forests, so that Zama would know there were deadly serious matters to discuss.
“I’m going,” he said.
Zama stared into his face, but his eyes were hidden by the darkness. “Where, Somoya?” he asked. Jim pointed with his chin towards the north. “When will you return?”
“I do not know, perhaps never,” said Jim.
“Then I must take leave of my father.”
“You’re coming with me?” Jim asked.
Zama glanced at him pityingly. No answer was needed to such a fatuous question.
“Aboli was a father to me also.” Jim stood up and placed an arm around his shoulder. “Let us go to his grave.”
They climbed the hill in the intermittent lightning flashes, but they both had the night-vision of youth so they went swiftly. The grave was on the eastern slope, sited deliberately to face each morning’s sunrise. Jim remembered every detail of the funeral. Tom Courtney had slaughtered a black bull and Aboli’s wives had stitched the old man’s corpse into the wet hide. Then, Tom had carried Aboli’s once great body, shrunken now with age, like a sleeping child, down into the deep shaft. He had sat him upright, then laid out all his weapons and his most treasured possessions around him. Lastly the entrance to the shaft was sealed with a round boulder. It had taken two full spans of oxen to drag it into position.
Now, in the darkness, Jim and Zama knelt before it and prayed to the tribal gods of the Lozi, and to Aboli, who in death had joined that dark pantheon. The rolling thunder counterpointed their prayers. Zama asked his father for his blessing on the journey that lay ahead of them, then Jim thanked him for teaching him the way of the musket and the sword, and reminded Aboli of when he had taken him to hunt his first lion. “Protect us your sons as you shielded us that day,” he asked, “for we go upon a journey we know not where.”
Then the two sat with their backs against the gravestone, and Jim explained to Zama what he must do. “I have loaded a string of mules. They are tethered by the stream. Take them up into the mountains, to Majuba, the Place of Doves, and wait for me there.”
Majuba was the rude hut, hidden in the foothills, that was used by the shepherds who took the Courtney flocks up to the high pastures in the summer, and by the men of the Courtney family when they went out to hunt the quagga, the eland and the bluebuck. It was deserted at this season of the year. They said their last farewells to the old warrior who sat eternally in the darkness behind the boulder, and went down to the clearing beside the stream in the forest. Jim took a lantern from one of the packs and, by its light, helped Zama load the mules with the heavy packs. Then he set him on the path that led northwards into the mountains.
“I will come in two days, whatever happens. Wait for me!” Jim shouted as they parted, and Zama rode on alone.
By the time Jim arrived back at High Weald the household was asleep. But Sarah, his mother, had kept his dinner warm for him on the back of the stove. When she heard him clattering the pots, she came down in her nightgown and sat to watch him eat. She said little but her eyes were sad, and there was a droop at the corners of her mouth. “God bless you, my son, my only son,” she whispered, as she kissed him goodnight. Earlier that day she had seen him lead away the mule train into the forest and, with a mother’s instinct, she had known he was leaving. She picked up the candle and climbed the stairs to the bedroom where Tom snored peacefully.
Jim slept little that night, while the wind buffeted the house and rattled the window-frames. He was up long before the rest of the household. In the kitchen he poured a mug of bitter black coffee from the enamel kettle that always stood on the back of the stove. It was still dark as he went down to the stables, and led out Drumfire. He rode down to the seashore, and as he and the horse topped the dunes the full force of the wind came at them out of the darkness like a ravening monster. He took Drumfire back behind the shelter of the dune and tethered him to a low saltbush, then climbed again on foot to the crest. He wrapped his cloak closer round his shoulders and pulled his wide-brimmed hat low over his eyes as he squatted and waited for the first show of dawn. He thought about the girl. She had shown herself to be quick-witted but was she sensible enough to realize that no small boat could come out to the anchorage in the bay until this storm abated? Would she understand that he was not deserting her?
The low, scudding clouds delayed the dawn, and even when it broke it could hardly illuminate the wild scene before him. He stood up, and had to lean into the wind as though he were crossing a fast-flowing river. He held onto his hat with both hands and searched for a glimpse of the Dutch ship. Then, far out, he saw a flash of something not as evanescent as the leaping foam and spray that strove to extinguish it. He watched it avidly, and it persisted, constant in this raging seascape.
“A sail!” he cried, and the wind tore the words from his lips. However, it was not where he had expected to find the Meeuw. This was a ship under sail, not lying at anchor. He must know if this was the Meeuw, trying to fight her way out of the bay, or if it was one of the other ships that had been anchored there. His small hunting telescope was in his saddlebag. He turned and ran back through the soft sand to where he had left Drumfire out of the wind.
When he reached the crest again he searched for the ship. It took him minutes to find her, but then her sails flashed at him again. He sat flat in the sand and, using his knees and elbows like a tripod to steady himself against the buffeting of the wind, he trained the lens on the distant ship. He picked up her sails, but the swells obscured the hull until suddenly a freak combination of wave and wind lifted her high.
“It’s her!” There was no doubt left. “Het Gelukkige Meeuw.” He was swamped by an enervating sense of doom. Before his eyes Louisa was being carried away to some foul prison at the far ends of the earth and there was nothing he could
do to prevent it happening.
“Please, God, don’t take her from me so soon,” he prayed, in despair, but the distant ship battled on through the storm, close-hauled, her captain trying to get clear of the deadly lee shore. Through the lens Jim watched her with a seaman’s eye. Tom had taught him well, and he understood all the forces and counter-forces of wind, keel and sail. He saw how close to disaster she was hovering.
The light strengthened and, even with the naked eye, he could make out the detail of this dreadful contest of ship against storm. After another hour she was still locked in the bay and Jim trained the telescope from the ship on to the black, sharklike shape of Robben Island that guarded the exit. Every minute that passed made it more apparent that the Meeuw could not break out into the open sea on this tack. The captain would have to come about. He had no alternative: the bottom under him was already too deep for him to drop anchor again, and the storm was pushing him down inexorably on to the rocks of the island. If he went aground there, the hull would be smashed to splinters.