‘You will deliberately bring on a fight, Colonel Hervey?’
Hervey smiled again, but wryly. ‘I should rather they gave back the boy and the cattle without a fight, but in the circumstances I hardly expect they will. I shall be most careful in it, I assure you!’
The spoor of a hundred or more head of cattle was not difficult to follow. In any case, Fairbrother was certain the Xhosa must drive them due east to begin with, for they could not afford to go near the post at Trompetter’s Drift. At this time of year, he explained, the river would be full but not swollen, and there were several deep fords downstream of the drift. There were two other rivers the Xhosa must cross before getting to relative haven the other side of the Keiskama, he said, pointing them out on his own much-embellished map. The Baka River was the greater obstacle – greater even than the Keiskama, though not as extensive – and he reckoned the Xhosa would want to make its banks by nightfall to be able to ford it at dawn; or perhaps even to attempt a crossing after dark since the moon was so full. It was about twenty miles, easily within a day’s march for the Xhosa, even driving a hundred head of cattle. However, although the first river after the Fish, the Gwalana, was not much of an obstacle, it might slow them down more than they were prepared to accept: tired, thirsty cattle could become unmanageable when suddenly presented with water. In which case, Fairbrother argued, the Xhosa would be more likely to head north-east after crossing the Fish, skirting the muddy source of the Gwalana, and then continuing north-east to the Keiskama. So, if instead of tracking them across the Fish they rode fast for Trompetter’s Drift, changed horses, and then made for the head of the Gwalana, they would intercept the Xhosa rather than merely trying to catch them up.
They rode hard on this prediction, reaching Trompetter’s Drift in the middle of the afternoon. Here they changed horses, and Hervey, concerned lest the Xhosa were taking the different course, ordered the post serjeant to send men to patrol the far bank of the Gwalana. They then rode on without rest, reaching the muddy head of the Gwalana an hour and a half later.
‘I think we must remain mounted at all times,’ said Fairbrother as they approached the darker scrub about the headwater. ‘The Xhosa would fancy themselves superior in any fight, but they know they can’t out-run a horse.’
Hervey saw no reason to dispute it. He was, in fact, surprised by the thickness of the bushveld here, and the thorns and tangled grass. The country had been getting trappier by the mile since they crossed the Fish, but here it was so trappy they were obliged to follow animal trails – and much to Hervey’s unease, for he imagined a charging elephant or rhinoceros would deal horribly with half a dozen men and horses in single file. Moreover, the country was ideal for ambush; he was grateful for the saddle’s extra height.
‘I’m beginning to wonder if the notion of mounted rifles is a sound one,’ he said, as if turning the idea over in his mind as he spoke.
‘As long as they’re trained to fire from the saddle as well as on foot, they should serve,’ replied Fairbrother measuredly. ‘The country’s not universally close, as we saw. And the Xhosa throw their spears, they don’t thrust them home – not unless their situation’s desperate. I should say that the rifle is the very best way to hold them off.’
Hervey searched the cover intently, though since it was too dense to reveal even the crouching leopard, he felt his chances of detecting a black spearman were next to nothing. By what sign did the Xhosa reveal themselves? Was it by the spear itself, the sickening thud of its point in flesh? If they were to confront the reiving party it would be well that they ambushed them, for the Xhosa’s scouting skills would surely be at least the equal of their own.
‘Well, we have half a dozen carbines. It will have to do. Assuming they drive the cattle through that open stretch yonder’ (he nodded to the scattered scrub they had just ridden through) ‘if we show a surprise front I don’t imagine there’ll be much throwing or stabbing. And they can hardly run back since they must think they’re pursued as well. We shall call on them to lay down their spears and then interrogate them about the boy. One of them – the leader, if we can find him – we’ll take to Graham’s-town to be dealt with judicially. I would think he’d be willing to talk to us about what the Xhosa are up to in exchange for his neck, would you not? The rest can leave without their weapons once we get a patrol from Fort Willshire to escort them across the Keiskama.’
Fairbrother nodded. ‘You know, Hervey, what I should really like is to meet Gaika. He is the Xhosa’s paramount chief, after all. He has questions to answer – why he breaks the 1820 treaty, for instance. Oh, I know at Graham’s-town they said Gaika has no more idea of a treaty than a monkey, but Gaika’s no fool, and he must know the consequences of what his people are doing. So why does he permit it? This is what your Somervile ought most usefully to know.’
Hervey pondered the proposition. ‘I think you are in the right. But are there not officials who speak regularly with him?’
Fairbrother smiled. ‘I very much doubt it, Hervey. This is Africa; it is not India – or even America. There has not evolved that notion of subtle dealing with the native tribes. I have read much on this, and I confess – against my better instinct – that I am sorely impressed with the method. In Canada, for instance, you have a most estimable corps of men well versed in native affairs, and there is in consequence little trouble with the Indian tribes. And in India you send fine men from Oxford. Here, those who do the King’s bidding are not in the main men you would share a gentlemanly bottle of claret with, and—’
A shot. So loud as to make every horse start. One of the pandours rolled backwards from the saddle, hitting the ground hard and with a scream like a woman. Corporal Wainwright barged past and fired into a thorn bush (he alone had seen the flash). He fired his second pistol. There was a shriek. He sprang from the saddle and began cutting at the thorn with his sabre as Hervey jumped down to tend the motionless redcoat. Without a word Johnson made to gather up the loose reins, even as the other two pandours were high-tailing back towards Trompetter’s Drift.
‘Stop! Damn you!’ shouted Fairbrother, drawing his pistol.
They neither heard nor cared.
Fairbrother sent a ball after them, but it only hastened the flight. ‘Bastard coward-Kaffirs!’ he spat.
Two spears struck the held horses. They squealed and reared. Two Xhosa, hair reddened, wide-eyed and naked but for civet aprons, rushed at them whooping wildly, clutching broken-shaft spears like short swords. Hervey sprang up and drew his sabre; Wainwright stood square to parry. But Fairbrother spurred forward, just getting in front of the dismounted pair as the Xhosa closed. He swung his mare’s quarters left into them, drawing his sabre as he did so, gaining the crucial moment’s surprise and getting in a nearside cut, almost severing an arm at the elbow before either of them could strike.
The second Xhosa thrust the spear-sword at Fairbrother’s thigh. It hit the cheroot case in his pocket and glanced off into the thick leather of the saddle arch. The Xhosa’s eyes rolled with sudden horror as Fairbrother brought the handguard of his sabre down hard into the man’s face, splitting open his nose like a ripe fruit. As the Xhosa crumpled clutching his bloody flesh, Fairbrother drove the point of his sabre deep behind the clavicle, then drew his second pistol and fired a following shot at the other man. The ball struck between the shoulders, and he fell writhing – then twitching; then still.
Fairbrother sheathed his sabre and took out his little Collier revolver. But he had no target. The Xhosa were gone as fast as they’d come.
Corporal Wainwright, hacking furiously at the thorn, shouted suddenly. ‘Here! And alive, sir!’ He pulled the terrified man from cover, and saw the hole in his shoulder.
Johnson had had to dismount to get the led horses in hand. He was struggling still, though one of them, the spearhead deep in its belly, was weakening.
Hervey saw that the pandour lay lifeless, so he closed to the wounded Xhosa instead. The ball had struck in the same place a
s the Burman ball had struck him, three years before. But there would be no surgeon of Mr Ritchie’s vulnerary skill to save this man’s arm; not unless they could get him to Graham’s Town, which they could not do inside of twenty-four hours – even by way of Trompetter’s Drift and with no Xhosa to trouble them. Not unless they rode through the night; even supposing they could find their way by moonlight.
Fairbrother had already calculated the odds, and the time and the distance. ‘We must back-track for Trompetter’s Drift at once,’ he began, calmly but insistently. ‘We might make a couple of leagues before nightfall, and every mile we get nearer the post is another mile further from the Xhosa, except we can’t be certain they won’t follow. We might run into the patrol, too.’ He looked hard at their captive as Wainwright dressed the wound.
‘We can’t leave him, I think,’ said Hervey.
‘Would you leave the pandour if he weren’t dead?’
‘No, indeed: not in a red coat!’
‘And an enemy of that red coat?’
‘A wounded enemy, Fairbrother. I would not chance him to the wild things here. Are you trying me?’
Fairbrother smiled grimly. ‘I am.’
And Hervey thought he knew why. Did Fairbrother imagine he might somehow think the worth of a man’s life, the effort to be expended in its preservation, was in some measure dependent on the shade of his skin? That the white – the grubby white – of a British soldier entitled him to the greater effort, more than any half-caste, and infinitely more than an ebony-coloured savage, who was so far removed from the decencies of good society as to be little more than an animal, to be killed to prevent its predation? ‘I believe you are more a soldier than you will admit. You are content to shoot a pandour in a red coat – in the back – and yet I surmise that a stricken enemy engages every last sentiment.’
‘It is not possible to shoot a fleeing man anywhere but in the back, Hervey.’ ‘
I know that!’
‘And by what right do we expect quarter, and aid, when we are fallen if we do not treat with an enemy, however base, in the same way?’
‘You push at an open door.’
Fairbrother sighed. ‘I wanted only to be sure. It has not always been the way on the frontier.’
Hervey could believe it. It had not always been the way anywhere. He looked about him: a dead redcoat, two dying horses, two pandours fled: not circumstances to be proud of. An ambush, not much less; an affair of bad scouting (or at least superior scouting on the part of the Xhosa). This was no adornment to his reputation. But much more than that, it was notice that they themselves might yet end as vulture-meat in a tract of country that could no longer boast the King’s peace. He was not afraid, however. That sort of fear did not trouble him (he would stand his ground abler than any man who might challenge him hereabouts). Rather was he suddenly aware of how much he had taken for granted – that the Xhosa, whose reputation was hardly fearsome after all, were not as the Burmans or Maharatas, the Pindarees or the Jhauts. Neither was this country desert or tropical forest, nor like anything he had seen in the Peninsula or in France, or Canada. He knew he had been worsted. Courage and address on Wainwright’s and Fairbrother’s part had saved the day. And he was already drawing his conclusions. He had proceeded to the frontier in pursuit of the reiving party as if he had been commanding a troop of His Majesty’s Cavalry of the Line. It would not serve.
XVIII
THE SUN NEVER SETS WITH OUT FRESH NEWS
Later
An hour of straining every muscle and of bending every sense to the detecting of concealed Xhosa induced a feeling of exhaustion quite unlike any Hervey could remember. Although reason told him that every mile meant greater safety, in his water he could not quite feel it. Only when the scrub began to thin – both in thickness of the thorn and its occurrence – did he begin to feel the advantage shifting back in his direction. He had been in closer country – the Burman jungle, the Canadian forest – but he had never before supposed that the country gave the natural advantage to his opponent. The Burmans had known their jungle, and the Iroquois their forest, but Hervey had been certain it was possible to match them; here, in this strange mix of country, he half believed the Xhosa had some magic by which they transported themselves. How else had they covered the ground so quickly, and taken them unawares at the Gwalana’s head?
The wounded Xhosa had soon lost consciousness, and a fever now burned. Fairbrother had tried at first to question him, and to dull his pain and loosen his tongue with brandy; but he had learned nothing. Neither had they met the patrol from Trompetter’s Drift (it was not surprising: their charge, as Hervey himself had given it, was to scout the east bank of the river), nor even one of the routine patrols from Fort Willshire. Were the patrols diverted north, dealing with an irruption into the old Dutch areas?
The party’s one piece of fortune was that the pan-dours had returned to duty. Fairbrother had found them crouching in the scrub a mile or so from the Gwalana’s head, frightened, confused, only too pleased to see authority again and willing to submit to any punishment. Hervey had berated them in English – which they partially understood (and his manner had left no doubt) – and then Fairbrother had berated them in their own language, calling down every ancestral curse he could recall, shaming them to the point that they looked broken men.
‘Don’t let them fool you,’ he said, when at length Hervey dismissed them with but a day’s stoppage of pay. ‘They’re contrite now, but they’d run again as soon as look at you. We neither pay ‘em enough nor treat them as men, half the time. That and the Hottentot’s natural disinclination to soldiery. You have your martial races in India, do you not? Well, Hervey, these Hottentots ain’t no martial race.’
For the time being, however, the pandours worked willingly cutting thorn bushes, gathering wood, chivvied by Johnson, encouraged by Wainwright. There was perhaps an hour’s daylight left when they halted for the night – another league between them and the Xhosa, another league nearer the post at Trompetter’s Drift. If they had been capable of it. The horses were done, needing water and rest; they had led them for at least half the way. They themselves were footsore and just as weary. Half their kit and provisions they had abandoned (two horses destroyed and the priority to powder and cartridges). But they could not be certain that they were putting any distance between them and the Xhosa. Fairbrother had said he could not imagine why they would follow, but then, he had been first to admit his surprise that a Xhosa should carry a musket. Hervey had been sure they needed time to prepare for the night, to meet the Xhosa on ground of his choosing, properly disposed, ready. It was what he would have done with the Sixth in any rearguard, and he would do the same with a troop of mounted riflemen too. Thus far the prudence of the Peninsula applied as well in Africa.
When he had done all that he could for the security of the party – thorn bushes across the approaches to the bivouac, just out of spear-throwing distance, fires laid at the four points of the compass, with powder trails to each, and every man told off to an alarm post – Hervey spoke quietly to his coverman. ‘Rather a scrape, I’m afraid, Corporal Wainwright.’
‘Ay, sir.’
‘One of us must be awake at all times – you or I.’
‘Ay, sir.’
‘The pandours will stand sentry at the thorn in turn, but one or other of us will have to see they keep post.’
Corporal Wainwright nodded. He understood perfectly well. Johnson was probably as capable, but he did not have the rank, and it would be unfair. And Captain Fairbrother, for all that he had fought with as much nerve as he had ever seen, was not regiment. ‘Sir.’
‘It will be dark in half an hour. Captain Fairbrother says the Xhosa don’t as a rule attack during the night unless they’re sure of their advantage, but I wouldn’t rule out an attack at last light, perhaps to rattle us, and then a full-blown affair at dawn. So we may hear them all night, keeping us from sleep, or else they’ll use the dark to creep into position for th
e dawn. Either way, not a happy prospect.’
‘We’ll be right, sir.’
Hervey smiled to himself. This was not bravado, just the proper confidence of a non-commissioned officer who had learned his trade in a dozen different scrapes. ‘I would have wished those pandours had a faithful taste for scouting, that’s all. We should have a better notion of whether we’d been followed.’
‘Maybe, sir; but not certain. We’re doing only what we’d be doing anyway.’
Hervey nodded. Wainwright spoke the truth. There could never be a time to take the night’s ease for granted.
‘Do we break camp before first light if we hear nothing in the night, sir?’
It was the usual practice, so long as the enemy could not get wind of the move: not an easy thing to manage even with some distance between the lines, so to speak. Here, where the Xhosa might rush in from no further than the spear’s flight, and with the moon set, it would be the very devil of a fight. No, Hervey’s instinct was to let the dawn come, when they would then have the advantage of their firearms. He shook his head. ‘We’ll stand to as if defending our position, Corporal Wainwright.’ And then, fearing he had exposed his own doubts too much, he half smiled. ‘It’s of no matter. I do not count the Xhosa especially brave. Had they pressed a little more determinedly we should have been caught, I think. There cannot have been but the three of them.’
‘I reckoned so too, sir. But I think as I should do the scouting in the morning. If they gets behind us tonight then I don’t think the pandours’ll be right. I mightn’t know the country as well as them, but I’d do a better job if it comes to another fight.’
Hervey put a hand to Wainwright’s shoulder. ‘I don’t doubt it – than both of them combined. Very well. And you’ll take the first watch, until midnight?’
‘Sir.’
‘Good man.’ Hervey turned; but then he had second thoughts. ‘We’ve come a long way since that morning on Warminster Common, have we not, Corporal Wainwright?’
Company Of Spears mh-8 Page 24