by James Whyle
He pointed to the east and his voice rose.
They possess upwards of three thousand stand of arms. They have six million rounds of ball cartridge and half a million assegais. Their prophet has told them to slay and eat. Those who flee them will be overtaken and have their throats slit. Any who escape will be hunted and eaten by wild beasts. And should a deserter survive these adventures and return, I will hang him.
The men stood silent and Waine moaned on the gun carriage and Happy Jack cried out.
Justice? the Captain replied, and the cliffs upstream repeated the question again and then again again again. The men stood in silence. The river ran on towards the sea.
Lieutenant.
Captain.
Yoke the oxen and get the wagons across. We camp on the far bank.
The irregulars did as the God-struck Lieutenant bade them and made their fires and ate and lay to sleep and the kid stared up at the stars which marched in good order across the deep rich blackness of the void. He felt for himself under his blanket and thought of the naked women he had seen in the bay, their breasts like long sacks of chamois hanging black-tipped but in the young ripe and lifting at the nipple like dark sweet fruit.
III
A burial – The suffering of beasts – Bitis arietans – A Dutchman – A long shot – A crone’s daghasack – Fingo levies – Gatestown – Disagreements in a bar – A fountain of blood – Waine recovered – The Minié rifle – Evans’ reaping hook – Happy Jack deserted.
ON THE DAY FOLLOWING flies buzzed loud and intimate as the dead man was buried by the side of the river. The God-struck Lieutenant opened his book and began to read of ashes and dust but the Captain cut him short. He shouted orders at Herrid and Herrid shouted in turn and a shovel-load of dirt and rock landed on the dead irregular’s face and open mouth and the oxen were yoked.
The column creaked up the hill and onto a narrow track arched with overhanging trees and hung with grey festoons of lichen. Bees mumbled in blue plumbago and euphorbias rose thirty feet into the air like hellfire plants shaped by a prevailing wind from below. As the sun reached its meridian the path turned to sand. The earth baked and the oxen stumbled and the Hottentot drivers lifted their whips and cracked them down to release blood from scrawny rumps. The beasts roared and two fell almost simultaneously, their tongues swollen and lolling in the dust, thick strands of mucus gathering up grit and sand.
The irregulars rested for two hours and then they hauled the dead beasts off the path and when they moved on there were vultures hanging in the sky and ready to feed.
In the afternoon they crossed a plain of thin baked grass. They travelled in a cloud of dust borne by a blast from the interior. A Hottentot voorloper ran off the track to relieve himself and a rock uncurled beneath his bare feet and a flat head like a beaten arrow flashed up injecting a virulence into his thigh at the spot where the tendons come down to meet the knee. The bitten child was loaded onto a gun carriage and the God-struck Lieutenant prayed by his side and they moved on. The boy was silent and his calf and thigh swelled as though become a plant that harbours water and then he died.
They left the corpse in a shallow grave and the sun was low behind them and they proceeded like a rough beast that would devour its shadow. They passed a party of traders travelling to The Bay with wagonloads of stinking skins. They were escorted by Fingos whose members knocked like stunned serpents against their thighs. The God-struck Lieutenant asked an anthropological question.
What is the difference between the Fingo and the heathen?
As far as I can make out, said the Captain. There is only one.
And that is?
The Fingo, defectors aside, fight for us.
The traders moved on towards their obscure destiny and the irregulars to theirs specific and they encamped on a dry riverbed. Small apes screamed and swore at them from the forest. It stormed in the night and the men rose drenched and cursing when a dim light in the east signalled the approach of dawn.
At sunrise they were travelling through a low grassy land devoid of tree or bush and covered with anthills strongly built and baked as hard as stone. Waine moaned on the gun carriage and the weals on his back attracted rotund flies which laid their eggs in the viscous matter that oozed there.
They halted in the afternoon on the farm of a Dutchman. The place was all stockaded with boxes and chests and barrels filled with sand and the evening light was gold on the fields and on the crops which were much refreshed by the previous night’s rain. The Captain stood and spoke with the Dutchman. He took out his Adams and demonstrated its revolving action and then he called for the kid to bring the one Minié rifle carried by the corps.
The ball is cone-shaped, said the Captain. It has an expansive base which catches the rifling on the bore. A spin is imparted and the ball travels true and far.
I believe what I see, said the Dutchman.
The Captain smiled and gestured towards the kid.
He has a talent.
He pointed to the Dutchman’s cattle which were returning down a hill some six hundred yards opposite.
He will kill one with a head shot.
If he can do that, said the Dutchman, you can eat it.
Thank you, said the Captain. He turned to the kid.
The kid watched the oxen and then he slung the rifle from his shoulder and placed the butt on the ground before him. He took a Minié cartridge between forefinger and thumb and he bit the end from it and he shook the powder into the barrel. He reversed the cartridge and drew his hand down so that the cone-shaped ball sat snug in the mouth of the bore and he twisted off the paper that remained protruding. He dropped his hand to the head of the ramrod and pulled it half out and released it and reversed his hand and took the middle of the rod and he drew it out backhanded and twisted it round and forced the ball down till his hand touched the muzzle. He slid his hand up to the end of the rod and he pushed the ball home on the powder. He tapped twice lightly on the rod to ensure that the ball was secure and he drew the rod half out and reversed his hand and withdrew it and replaced it in its slot. He placed a percussion cap firm on the nipple and cocked the weapon. He knelt and rested the barrel in his left palm on the Dutchman’s balcony. He steadied his breathing and settled the sights and a silence fell among those watching. The kid squeezed steady on the trigger and the cattle bellowed at the sound of the shot. A large white ox started into the bush at a trot and then it slowed and its knees collapsed beneath it.
The irregulars cheered and ran to haul the beast into camp on the Dutchman’s sled and the Hottentot drivers flensed it with their stabbing spears and that night the men feasted on the fresh meat and the Dutchman’s vegetables.
Waine was sweating and groaning at the fire during the meal and the Dutchman’s wife examined him and called forth an ancient Hottentot woman. The crone shuffled up beneath a worn cloak of antelope skin. She examined Waine’s wounds and then she searched under her coverings and brought out a daghasack formed from a monkey’s skin entire, the only opening being the mouth as its anus had been stitched tight. From this hairy grail she selected a variety of mouldy leaves and roots and placed them in a little water in a small pot on the embers of the fire. She applied the poultice to Waine’s back and she spoke an incantation, a mumbled chant of clicks and hisses and strange shifting vowels and then she laughed.
At noon on the day following the column was met by a convoy of ten wagons sent from Gatestown to lighten their loads. The wagons were escorted by fifty Fingo levies bearing spears and battered flintlocks. They carried daghasacks like the crone’s but formed from the skins of the wild cat or hyrax. Their felt hats were ornamented with feathers and hung behind with jackals’ tails and strips of tiger skin. Some wore tattered shirts and some had short cloaks of grimy blanket and all were naked besides.
Thus accompanied the irregulars moved up a narrow valley shut in by rocky hills. They marched by the side of a fresh clear stream along which grew white arum lilies and orange sa
lvias. Flocks of golden green starlings and orioles and honey birds rose from the forest and whirled above to mark their passage. After toiling up a steep and rocky path they passed through a narrow gorge and out onto the tableland above the town. It lay below them, a straggling place, scorched in the heat and surrounded by low hills from which came into the kid’s nostrils a thin clean scent of island herbs.
As they entered the village the settlers and their servants stared in astonishment at the column. The Captain rode before and the irregulars loped behind him, their faces dark with grime and beard. Some trod as though surprised to find the earth beneath their feet instead of a rolling deck and all stared with greedy convict’s eyes at the women and the grog shops and the deserted market and the small white houses in the dust. The voorlopers pranced like dwarves at a fair and the gaunt beasts plodded after them with lowered heads. Behind the wagons rolled the creaking gun carriages with Waine groaning and Happy Jack bound and muttering and after them the Fingo levies strode savage and tall and silent.
When the tents were pitched and the oxen and horses watered, a guard was organised and those without duty followed the Hottentot drivers to the village.
Evans and the kid entered a dim lean-to where candles guttered. A man in the corner looked up and examined their uniforms and then he rose and spat on the floor and left. Evans called for the cheapest drink available and a toothless settler felt below the bar.
Cape Smoke, he said.
He brought out a bottle of alcohol distilled from the fruit of a thorny succulent and the men drank and they fell to talking about the war.
The heathen don’t come at you in rows blowing bugles, said the settler.
How do they come?
They come out of nothing. Like roots. I was with the Dutchmen the first time they tried to relieve Old Thunder at Fort Vic. The heathen stood up out of the rocks on both sides of us. A thousand of them in the bushes where the scouts had ridden half an hour before.
That wasn’t written in the pamphlet, said Evans.
What was written in pamphlet?
Sunny skies. And good pay.
Evans turned to the kid.
True?
It is, said the kid.
There was a noise at the door and Happy Jack came in, followed by an old man, a Hottentot by his gait and features. Jack approached the counter and the Hottentot stood separate and waited.
There’ll be justice, Jack said. A doctor is going to examine Waine tomorrow.
The settler looked at Jack and then he spat. He pointed at the ragged trousers of the Hottentot.
When I came here they were naked or in sheepskins.
There was among the irregulars one who had been a joiner, a gaunt man and darkly bearded. His eyes were of a brown that might be called black in certain contexts and yet burned in others with a strange heat. This lean figure turned now from his place in the shadows.
When the white man came the Hottentot wore hide cloaks. They ran like greyhounds. They would hold a spear out at the height of your shoulder and any man in the company could leap clear over it from a standing position. They sent their cattle into battle against you. Commanded them by whistling.
The Hottentot was staring at the joiner but the kid had no notion of what he comprehended.
The heathen will whistle three times in the bush, said the settler, and your own cattle lying sleeping will rise up and go to him like well-trained dogs. Hottentot likewise.
Maybe they aren’t your cattle, said Evans.
Happy Jack downed an inch of his brandy.
Waine’s going to be examined tomorrow.
The first white men who saw the Hottentot, said the joiner, compared them to ancient Greeks.
To what?
Greeks.
How do you know?
Books.
The settler spat and Jack looked at the joiner.
Your mother was a Greek, he said. You saw Herrid lash Waine when there was no medical man. Waine’s near to dying. Just tell what the Captain did. We’ll be disbanded. We’ll march back to The Bay and sail for the Cape on full pay.
My mother was a what?
They’ll put you in the levies, said the settler.
A Greek, said Jack. Without the Captain, there’s no corps.
Say it again, said the joiner.
A hairy Greek. With a moustache.
Now now, said the settler.
The joiner took Jack’s face in his hands like a lover and stared into his eyes. He rocked back and brought his high-domed forehead down on the bridge of Jack’s nose where the soft cartilage joins with the bone of the skull. Jack’s body seemed to fold in many places and he collapsed like a sack and a wash of blood came from his nostrils. A man complained loudly that the blood had soiled his uniform and the settler threatened to call a constable if there was any more violence.
Be pleased to meet him, said the kid, but Evans hushed him and congratulated the joiner and ordered another round.
On the day following a doctor came to the encampment to examine Waine as Happy Jack had foretold. Waine was housed in the hospital area of the barracks with a guard attendant and the Captain watched as he removed his shirt. Jack, whose nose had swelled overnight and now encroached upon his face in lurid blues and yellows, sat on the bed opposite.
Miracle he lived, he said.
The doctor looked at Happy Jack and then bent to examine Waine’s back which showed a healthy crust of scab and no sign of seeping or redness or any infection whatsoever.
This man can go back on active duty, said the doctor.
He looked at Jack.
Him too, if you want him.
Happy Jack sat silent and puzzled and the Captain thanked the doctor and they walked outside together towards the posts where the man’s horse was tied.
In the afternoon the irregulars stood in single file by a wagon of the commissariat presided over by a wrinkled yellow Hottentot whose slant eyes watched discreet and focused as each man handed in his firelock and received the Minié rifle which the Captain had paid for. Then they assembled in their ranks and the Captain lectured them on the qualities of the weapon which he said would be their greatest friend and ally and on its care.
You are going to be, said the Captain, a living advertisement for the Minié rifle. Because of this weapon you will become the most feared and respected force in this country.
He walked down the line and halted before the kid.
I gave this man our only example because he among all of you showed a true propensity to kill with it.
He took the kid’s weapon and charged the bore and seated a bullet and drove it home.
There are many varieties of heathen of which our Gaika enemy is but one. There are Gunukwebees and Lambies and the sons of Ham. And we will be marching with Fingo levies who are barely distinguishable from these savages even in the light of day.
He put a cap on the nipple and thumbed back the hammer. A cat alighted from a sill at the back of the kitchens and picked a delicate way through motes of dust and past a broken reaping hook lying on the beaten earth and past a stray dog, a mangy skeletal thing panting next to a clay bowl from which it had recently scavenged. A fowl was feeding on what remained and it lifted its head at the cat’s approach. It stood there with one claw raised in anticipation of flight.
It’s important, said the Captain, that we exterminate our enemy and not our ally.
He lifted the rifle and fired. The sound in that silent arena was prodigious. The fowl’s head ceased to exist and its body ran and pumped blood from its neck. The cat leapt for the cover of the woodpile and the dog fled howling. A surprised cook put his head out of the kitchen door and watched the bird which continued its spurting anarchic sprint like a miraculous fountain created to demonstrate the persistence of the heart.
When Herrid called for them to fall out the men formed groups and examined and discussed their new weapons. Evans went to the spot where the fowl was being plucked. He picked up the broken reapi
ng hook and he examined it and felt for sharpness in the blade.
In the evening they were assembled again and the Captain told them that they would depart at dawn for the mountains, all but Happy Jack who the doctor had ascertained was plagued by infected molars which had been affecting his morale and which were scheduled for removal as soon as the necessary levers and grasping implements could be assembled.
IV
The rocky pass – Signs of conflict – Right fork to Fort Adams – Provenance – Methods for encouraging oxen – Breakfast – A dusty citadel on the Nameless River – Indifference of the Kabyles – A demon horde.
THE IRREGULARS LEFT Gatestown in a ragged column with scouts riding ahead. They ascended a long hill to the tableland and in the late morning they gained the rimlands and saw before them sun-struck valleys and grassy plains dotted with mimosa and thorny succulents. There were rocky outcrops containing forested gorges and behind them the mountains, rank on rank, vast and austere.
On the day following they entered a rocky pass winding up through stony hills that sang with the voltaic hum of insects. At the tail of a valley they proceeded between a wall of rock and a vertiginous ravine. The path owned holes as deep as horse ponds and rocks the size of the arms chests strapped to the wagons. Spoked wheels crunched and squealed over the bones and dried skins of oxen and horses slaughtered in ambush. Gorged vultures lumbered into the air and hauled themselves towards the crags from which the spears and gunfire had come down. Three large apes occupied these outposts now. They sat back on their haunches and conversed among themselves with furrowed brows. A female delved in another’s fur and removed a blood-gorged tick and ate it and looked down at the activity below with an expression as thoughtful as a vintner’s assessing the product of an auspicious year.
The column descended from the pass by a steep rough road and passed through sandy country scattered with thorny bush. They came to a place where the road turned left towards Fort Cox and they took the right fork to Fort Adams and arrived at last at a lonely quadrangular fortification close to a ford of the Little Fat River and they encamped on the opposite bank.