by Wilbur Smith
There were two fine English hunting-saddles and tack, common saddles for the servants, two pack-saddles for bringing in venison from the veld, a large bell tent for a kitchen and dining room, folding chairs and tables to furnish it.
For hunting and defence against attack by the more warlike tribes Tom had provided twenty naval cutlasses and thirty smooth-bore Brown Bess muskets, which most of the servants could load and fire with some proficiency, two heavy German elephant guns that threw four to the pound and could drive to the heart of an elephant or a rhinoceros, and a pair of iniquitously expensive London-made two-grooved double-barrelled rifles so accurate that Jim knew from experience that with the conical bullet he could bring down an oryx or kudu at four hundred paces. There was one other rifle, a lovely little lady’s gun made in France. Its provenance was noble for the lock was gold inlaid with the coat of arms of the dukes of d’Ademas. Tom had given it to Sarah when Jim was born. It was light and accurate and there was a pink velvet cheek pad on the walnut stock. Although nowadays she seldom hunted, Jim had once seen his mother drop a running springbuck at two hundred paces with this weapon. Now she was giving it to Louisa. “It may be useful.”
Sarah dismissed Louisa’s thanks, but impulsively Louisa threw both arms round her and whispered, “I shall treasure your gifts, and always remember your kindness to me.”
To serve this battery of guns there was an assortment of lead ladles, bullet moulds, loading ramrods, shot-belts and powder flasks. To manufacture ammunition there were five hundredweight of lead in bars, fifty pounds of pewter to harden the balls to be used against heavy game, twenty thousand prepared lead musket balls, twenty kegs of first-class sporting gunpowder for the rifles and a hundred kegs of coarse black powder for the Brown Bess muskets, two thousand gunflints, greased patches to ensure a tight fit of the conical bullets in the rifle bore, fine cotton cloth to be cut into more patches, and a large keg of rendered hippopotamus fat to grease them.
So great was this store of goods that by nightfall on the second day they had not finished reloading the wagons. “That can wait until tomorrow,” Tom said expansively, “but now the ladies are free to make supper for us.”
The last meal together was marred by melancholy silences when they were reminded of their imminent parting. These were followed by bursts of forced jollity. In the end Tom brought it to its conclusion with typical directness. “Early start tomorrow.” He stood up and took Sarah’s hand. As he led her to their quarters in the first wagon he whispered, “Can we leave them alone? Should we not chaperone them?”
Sarah laughed gaily at him. “Tom Courtney, what a time for you to turn prissy on me! They have already spent weeks alone in the wilderness together, and it seems they are about to spend several years more. What good could you do now?”
Tom grinned ruefully, picked her up in his arms and boosted her into the wagon. Later as they settled in the cardell bed Sarah murmured, “Don’t worry about Louisa. I have told you already that she is a good girl, and we have brought up Jim to behave like a gentleman. Nothing has happened between them yet, and nothing will until the time is ripe. Then herds of wild buffalo could not prevent it. If things have changed when next we all meet we can think of a wedding. As I recall, Tom Courtney, you showed less restraint when we first met, and there was some delay before we celebrated our own nuptials.”
“In these matters, at least, you are wiser than me,” Tom admitted and pulled her closer. “Mind you, Mistress Courtney, there are no herds of wild buffalo present to prevent anything happening here tonight, between you and me.”
“Indeed, Mr. Courtney, how perceptive of you,” she said, and giggled like a girl.
They had taken breakfast and completed the rest of the loading before the sun had fully dispersed the last of the night’s chill. With a single stroke of his trek whip Smallboy, the huge head driver, gave the signal to begin inspanning the oxen. This formidable instrument was a bamboo pole twenty-two feet in length, with a whip thong even longer. Without leaving his seat on the wagon or removing his clay pipe from his mouth, Smallboy could kill a fly on the rump of the lead ox in his team with the tapered forelash of kudu hide and not disturb a hair on the beast’s back.
Now as he cracked the long whip with a report like a double-shotted pistol that could be heard a mile away across the plain, the lead boys ran to yoke the oxen in pairs and bring them in from the veld where they had been grazing. They drove them in with shouted insults and well-aimed pebbles.
“Come, Scotland, you snake with twenty-two fathers and only one mother.”
“Hey! Squint Eye, look this way or you will fetch another stone.”
“Wake up, Lizard, you lazy skellum!”
“Move along, Blackheart, don’t try any of your tricks today.”
Pair after pair the beasts were linked into the span. Then the leaders, the strongest and most tractable animals, were led to their places. Smallboy fired his great whip again and, without apparent strain, the oxen walked away and the heavily loaded wagon rolled smoothly after them. At intervals of a few hundred paces the other three wagons fell into caravan behind the leader. They maintained the wide spacing to avoid the dust raised by the hoofs of the leading oxen and the iron-rimmed wheels of the vehicles they pulled. Behind the wagons followed a loose herd of horses, spare oxen, milk cows and sheep and goats for slaughter. Although they spread out to graze, they were kept in a loose formation and brought along at a leisurely pace by four herd-boys. None of these lads was older than thirteen or younger than ten. They were some of the orphans Sarah had gathered over the years, and who had pleaded to be allowed to join in the great adventure with Somoya, whom they revered. At their heels ran a motley pack of mongrel hounds, who would earn their keep by hunting and finding wounded game or stray animals.
Soon only one small dog-cart remained in the encampment below the Baboon’s Head kopje, but it was packed and the horses were grazing nearby, ready to take Tom and Sarah back to High Weald. The family were reluctant to part. They drew out the last hour together, drinking a final mug of coffee around the smouldering fire, remembering all the things they had forgotten to say over the last few days, and repeating all those that had been said many times already.
Tom had kept one of the most serious matters to the last. Now he fetched a mariner’s tarpaulin chart case from the dog-cart and came back to sit beside Jim again. He opened the flat case, and drew out a chart. “This is a copy of a chart I’ve been drawing up over the past fifteen years. I have kept the original, and this is the only copy. It’s a valuable document,” he told Jim.
“I will keep it safe,” his son promised.
Tom spread the sheet of heavy parchment on the ground in front of them, and placed small stones on each corner to hold it down in the light morning breeze. Jim studied the finely drawn and coloured topography of the south continent. “I had no idea, Father, that you were a talented artist.”
His father looked mildly uncomfortable and glanced at Sarah. “Well,” he drawled, “I had a little help.”
“You are too modest, Tom.” Sarah smiled. “You did all the supervision.”
“Of course,” Tom chuckled, “that was the difficult part.” Then he was serious again. “The outline of the coast is accurate, more accurate than any other map I have seen. Your uncle Dorian and I made the observations as we sailed and traded along both the western and eastern coastlines over the last twenty years. You have been on one of these voyages with me, Jim, so you will remember these places.” He named them as he pointed them out. “On the west coast the Bay of Whales and New Devon Harbour—I named it for the old country. On the east coast this is Frank’s Lagoon, where your great-grandfather buried the treasure he captured from the Dutch galleon the Standvastigheid. It’s a fine anchorage guarded from the open sea by an entrance protected by rocky headlands. Here much further north is another great bay, which the Portuguese call Nativity Bay, or Natal.”
“But you don’t have godowns built at these ports, Fat
her,” Jim interjected. “I know that they are desolate, deserted places, all of them.”
“You’re right, of course, Jim. But one of our schooners calls in at these places every six months or so, depending on the season and the winds. The natives know that we come regularly, and they wait for us there with hides, gum arabic, ivory and other goods to trade.”
Jim nodded.
Tom went on, “Because you have already been there, you will recognize any of those places on the coast when you reach it. You know where the mail stones are.” These were large brightly painted flat stones set at prominent places on shore under which visiting sailors could leave letters in waterproof tarpaulin packets to be found by other ships and carried on to the person to whom they were addressed. “If you leave a letter there you know that I or your uncle will find it in time. We also will leave them for you, on the off-chance.”
“Or I could wait there for the next visit of one of our ships.”
“Yes, Jim, you could do that. But make sure it’s not a VOC ship that you meet. By now Governor van de Witten will have a large bounty on your head and Louisa’s too.”
They all looked serious as they considered the predicament in which the young couple now stood. Tom went on quickly to cover the pause: “Before you reach the coast, however, you will have to cross hundreds, even thousands of leagues of virtually unexplored wilderness.” Tom spread his big scarred hand across the map. “Just look what lies ahead of your wagons. It’s an opportunity I’ve been hankering for all my life. This place where we are sitting now is as far into the interior as I have ever been able to travel.”
“You have nobody to blame for that but yourself, Thomas Courtney,” Sarah told him. “I never stopped you, but you were always too busy making money.”
“And now it’s too late. I’m getting old and fat.” Tom put on a lugubrious expression. “But Jim here is going in my place.” He stared longingly at the map, then lifted his gaze across the plain to where the wagon train was rolling away in its own yellow dustcloud, and murmured, “You lucky devil, you are going to see places never before looked upon by civilized eyes.”
Then he returned his attention to the map. “Over the years I have sought out every man, black, white and yellow, who was ever reputed to have travelled beyond the borders of the Cape colony. I questioned them exhaustively. When Dorian and I went ashore on our trading expeditions we interrogated the natives we traded with. I have written everything that I ever learned from these sources on to this map. I have spelled the names as they sounded in my ear. Here, in the margins and on the reverse side, I have made notes of every story and legend I was told, the names of the different tribes, their villages, kings and chiefs. Then I have tried to mark in the rivers, lakes and water-holes, but there was no way of telling the distances between them and their compass bearings from each other. You, Bakkat, Zama and Smallboy between you speak a dozen or so native dialects. You will be able to hire guides and translators as you travel on and come in contact with new and unknown tribes.” Tom folded the map again and placed it back with reverential care in the tarpaulin case. He handed it to Jim. “Guard it well, my boy. It will guide you on your journey.”
Then he went back to the dog-cart and brought out a hard leather case. He opened it and showed Jim what it contained. “I would have liked you to have one of those new-fangled chronometers that Harrison in London has so recently perfected, so that you could more accurately determine your latitude and longitude as you travel, but I have never even laid eyes on one, and they do say that even if you find one they cost five hundred pounds each. The same goes for one of John Hadley’s reflecting quadrants. But here are my trusty old compass and octant. They belonged to your grandfather, but you know well how to use them, and with this copy of the Admiralty tables you will always be pretty sure at least of your latitude any time you can see the sun. You should be able to navigate to any of the places I have marked on the chart.”
Jim took the leather case from his father, opened it and lifted out the beautiful, complex instrument. It was of Italian manufacture. On top was the brass ring from which it could be suspended to establish its own level, then the rotating brass rings lovingly engraved with star charts, circles of latitude and a marginal circle of hours. The alidade, or diametral rule, which served as a sun sight, could pick up the sun’s shadow, and throw it across the coinciding circles of time and latitude.
Jim fondled it, then looked up at his father. “I shall never be able to repay you for all these wonderful gifts and for all you have done for me. I do not deserve such love and generosity.”
“Let your mother and me be the judge of that,” Tom said gruffly. “And now we must start for home.” He called to the two servants who were returning to the colony with them. They ran to inspan the draught horses to the dog-cart, and to saddle Tom’s big bay gelding.
Up on Drumfire and Trueheart, Jim and Louisa rode beside the dogcart for almost a league, taking this last chance to repeat their farewells. When at last they knew they should go no further if they wanted to catch up with their own wagons before sunset, they lingered and watched the dog-cart dwindling across the dusty veld.
“He’s coming back,” Louisa exclaimed, as she spotted Tom returning at a gallop. He reined in beside them again.
“Listen to me, Jim, my lad, don’t you forget to keep a journal. I want you to record all your navigational notes. Don’t forget the names of the native chiefs and their towns. Keep a lookout for any goods we might be able to trade with them in future.”
“Yes, Father. We have spoken about this already,” Jim reminded him.
“And the gold pans,” Tom went on.
“I will pan the sands of every riverbed we cross.” Jim laughed. “I won’t forget.”
“You remind him, Louisa. He is a scatterbrain, this son of mine. I don’t know where he gets it from. Must be his mother.”
“I promise, Mr. Courtney.” Louisa nodded seriously.
Tom turned back to Jim. “James Archibald, you look after this young lady. She is obviously a sensible girl, and much too good for you.”
At last Tom left them and rode off after the dog-cart, turning in the saddle every few minutes to wave back at them. They saw him rejoin the distant cart, and then suddenly Jim exclaimed, “Name of the devil, I forgot to send my respects and farewells to Mansur and Uncle Dorian. Come on!” They galloped in pursuit of the cart. When they caught up with it they all dismounted and embraced again.
“This time we really are leaving,” Jim said at last, but his father rode back with them a mile before he could bring himself to let them go, and he waved them out of sight.
The wagons had long ago disappeared into the distance, but the tracks of their iron-rimmed wheels were scored into the earth, and as easy to follow as a signposted road. As the two of them rode along it the herds of springbuck were driven ahead of them like flocks of sheep, the smaller herds mingling with those ahead, until the land seemed to seethe and the grass was hidden beneath this living sea.
Other larger wild animals became part of this tide of life. Dark troops of gnu pranced and cavorted, shaking their shaggy manes, arching their necks like thoroughbreds and kicking their hind legs to the sky as they chased each other in circles. Squadrons of quagga galloped away in ranks, barking like packs of hounds. These wild horses of the Cape, striped like the zebra except for their plain brown legs, were so numerous that the Cape burghers killed them in thousands for their hides. They sewed them into grain bags and left the carcasses for the vultures and the hyenas.
Louisa looked upon this host with amazement. “I have never seen such a marvellous sight,” she cried.
“In this land we are blessed with such multitudes that no man need stint himself or put up his gun until his arms are too exhausted to lift it,” Jim agreed. “I know of one great hunter who lives in the colony. He destroyed three hundred head of big game in a single day, and rode four horses to a standstill to achieve it. What a feat that was.” Jim shoo
k his head in admiration.
The campfires guided them to the laagered wagons in the last mile of darkness, where Zama had the black iron kettle boiling and coffee beans freshly ground in the mortar.
Relying on his father’s chart and navigational instruments, Jim steered the wagons north by east. The days fell into a natural rhythm, and became weeks, which in their turn became months. Each morning Jim rode out with Bakkat to spy out the land that lay ahead, and to find the next water-hole or river. He took his breakfast with him in the canteen slung with his bedroll on the back of his saddle, and Bakkat led a pack-horse to bring in any game they bagged.
Often Louisa was busy around the wagons, mending and cleaning, directing the servants in running her movable home the way she wanted, but most days she was free to ride out with Jim on Trueheart. From the beginning she was enchanted by the animals and birds that teemed in every direction she cast her eye. Jim taught her the names of all of them and they discussed their habits in detail. Bakkat joined in with an endless fund of facts and magical stories.
When they halted at midday to rest and graze the horses, Louisa brought out of her saddlebag one of the pads Sarah had given her and sketched the interesting things they had seen that day. Jim lounged nearby and advised on how she might improve each portrait, though secretly he was amazed at her artistic skills.
He insisted she always carry the little French rifle in the gun sheath under her right knee. “When you need a gun you need it in a hurry,” he told her, “and you had better be sure you know how to use it.” He rehearsed her in loading, priming and firing the weapon. With the report and recoil of her first shot she cried out with alarm and would have dropped the rifle, had not Jim been ready to snatch it out of her hands. After much reassurance and encouragement he convinced her that it had not been as fearful an experience as her reaction had indicated, and Louisa expressed herself ready for a second attempt. To encourage her, Jim placed his own hat on a low thornbush twenty paces away.