by James Whyle
The irregulars moved on into the dusk until they had escaped the odours of the dead and then they halted and drew the wagons into a circle on an open plain. They made their fires within and the Captain posted sentries without and beyond them a picquet of Fingos who faced the darkness with much unease. Inside the wagons the Captain sat with the God-struck Lieutenant who stared silent at the flames and the irregulars formed their own circles around their own fires and the Hottentots likewise. The Fingos were separate also and conversed loudly and with much emphasis and exclamation and the kid listened to the strange explosive clicks of their consonants and the long deep music of their vowels as he went to sleep.
At three o’clock the Captain rose with the moon and called for the wagons to be yoked and the men rose cursing and stumbling in the dim light and within half an hour they were on the march. The sun rose and they passed through a thick chilly mist which lay in a depression like soup in a bowl. They emerged into green humming bush which glowed with bright scarlet clusters of bignonia and Fort Cox baked in the centre of a green plain below.
The town when they gained it was dusty and heat-struck and the kid found a patch of shade to sleep in while wagons were loaded at the commissariat and the Dutch farmer contemplated his ruin. At nine o’clock that evening they marched again and halted at midnight to let the oxen graze and at two o’clock they rolled on through the dark and through the day following. The next night they were stumbling lost and drunk with tiredness when the kid spotted the fires of the encampment which had moved in their absence.
They remained for a week at the new place while patrols went out without result and the heathen attacked a train of wagons near Fort Cox and carried off the powder and lead and ambushed the post riders on the rocky pass near Gatestown killing six and wounding three. The Captain cursed the incompetence of his commanders and Evans sharpened his reaping hook and the joiner pored over a book he had acquired at Fort Cox. The kid lay on his back in the shade and stared at the sky. Monkeys chattered and crested green parrots with purple and crimson tails flew from tree to tree in clamorous groups. There were hundreds of turtle doves whose soft calls graced the long afternoons and every evening men went out with guns and blasted them out of the trees and out of the sky and collected their dead bodies and plucked and cleaned them and baked them into crude blackened pies.
The Captain went out shooting quail along a reedy watercourse and found the corpses of two heathen killed by previous patrols. He examined the bodies and took a tape from his pack and measured their length and carefully assessed the circumference of their skulls before washing the tape with soap in a nearby pool and noting his findings in his book.
On the fourth day at the encampment a dark cloud was seen in the west and the men stared at it and wondered and the Hottentot drivers quickly secured the coverings of their wagons. As the irregulars began to understand the truth the dust storm was upon them. For two days they lived in a burning wind that turned them into ochre wraiths and their eyes and nostrils and ears were fringed and clogged with fine red grit. The Captain wore strange wire goggles with dark blue glass and stared out through them like a startled explorer.
On the sixth day the dust storm blew over and was replaced in the west by a thick cloud of smoke where the heathen were destroying English grazing. As night fell the irregulars stood and watched while the plain was licked up by tongues of orange flame that bled up into the sky in a lurid red.
On the seventh day they struck their tents and marched across the charred earth and within hours they were all impartially black and the grey ash rose around their feet and around the feet of the oxen and the horses and they appeared like strange dark ghosts that trod and rolled in their own vaporous mists across the fields of desolation.
VIII
Reed Fountain – West to Charleville – Baptised in the river – Orchards of natche – A heathen child – The business of war – Return to Reed Fountain – Umlungus – A plague of flies – A letter – Wilful wind – Explosions.
THE FIRE HAD STOPPED at a small stream and the irregulars crossed it and marched on and encamped their blackened forms at a deserted farmhouse called Reed Fountain. They remained there two days and then in spite of the Captain’s objections they were ordered west accompanying commissariat wagons to the military post at Charleville.
They halted on the first night at a fine river and the next day they crossed a sandy plain broken only by anthills. They spent the second night at a deserted farmhouse and established their places in echoing rooms and lit fires in the grates but the kid slept outside beneath the stars. They continued over stretching grasslands and they passed devastated dwellings with broken doors and windows where the wind moaned and the stiff dried carcasses of sheep and oxen lay among rusted ploughs and harrows and broken furniture.
It seemed to the kid that this was a land not fortunate for humans for he had hardly seen a homestead outside of the military forts, heathen or Christian, that was not laid waste. It was only the birds and the antelope and the lizards that found a place of rest at night although the birds and antelope were much harried by the Captain who carried an array of weaponry for that purpose.
They marched on and came down into a depression and found a house that was occupied by a dour Dutchman and that only because he had the protection of a company of mounted levies. Several neighbouring farmers had left their homes and drawn up their wagons in a circle not far from the dwelling. The Dutchman spoke no English and none among the irregulars spoke Dutch and they parted at first light with few words exchanged.
The mercenaries and their wagons climbed out of the hollow by a steep path and the sun rose like a burning phallus out of the jagged mountains behind. They came to the edge of the tableland and looked down over a wooded valley bound by a range of high grassy hills which climbed from the forests towards grey cliffs. Acres of prickly pear grew in the lowlands and the earth appeared between them in strips of red. They went down into the valley and crossed a river with high red banks and they stopped on the far side to boil kettles and while the coffee was brewing the entire corps shed all clothing and bathed together in the clean cool water which tumbled over rocky ledges. They chortled and frolicked in their varicoloured nakedness in that medium of baptism as though no man in that company had ever sinned at all. Then they marched on.
They marched on and they passed the smoking ruins of two settler homesteads and the road before them was strewn with trampled grain and stained with blood and the kid looked off the road at an outcrop of stone and saw that it was a cairn and at its base the gaunt head and shoulders of a settler protruded. A little later they came upon his derelict wagon and the remains of three charred and butchered oxen.
They marched on and having travelled five and twenty miles they came to a small river and forded it and they saw Charleville before them, a cluster of white houses set among groves of orange trees at the foot of a green mountain. They encamped by the river and awaited the cattle which were expected from the region of the Great River to the north.
There was a large and celebrated orchard near the village and the Captain visited it in the company of the Civil Commissioner. The orchard grew at the entrance of a deep ravine and the Captain noted in his book the thousands of ripe oranges and lemons and citrons and shaddocks and a sweet loose-peeled orange which the Commissioner told him was a natche and he noted also the Hottentot boys who stood with firelocks in hand ready to chase away the marauding birds.
The men rode back to the village and the Commissioner took the Captain to the jail. There they watched as a Fingo man preached to a group of thirty heathen prisoners. The prisoners were heavily chained and wore only blankets and they listened with sceptical attention to the word delivered in their own language which by its nature imparted a vivid immediacy to tales of slaughter and sacrifice and of a fierce God.
A heathen was brought to the camp in chains. He was younger than the kid even and he had been captured with spear and flintlock when all around hi
m were killed. He was to be taken to Gatestown for sentence and he sat alone near one of the wagons and he looked at the kid.
What’s your name, said the kid.
The prisoner nodded and smiled again. Providence the Fingo stood watching and the kid called to him.
Ask him what his name is.
Providence asked the question and the prisoner replied.
Ndilahlekile kakubi.
Ask him where his folk are.
Providence did as requested and the prisoner pointed to the east and spoke.
Father and brother dead, said Providence. He ask we not kill him.
The kid stared at the prisoner.
Not for me to say, he said.
They waited in that place and in due course a cloud of dust appeared in the north heralding the arrival of one thousand sheep and seven hundred oxen. They were driven by a party of four wild yellow Gonahs dressed in ancient military trousers and jerkins of jackal skin. The Civil Commissioner called on the contractor who provided himself with a handful of rounds of dried hyrax dung. With the Fingos assisting, the Gonahs drove the stock in single file between two trees and as each hundredth animal passed the contractor deposited one of the pellets into his right hand.
When all were counted the contractor was paid and he in turn paid the Gonahs secretly in implements and black powder and lead and so the exchange was made. The Gonahs returned to the Great River and on the way they came upon wandering Dutchmen and sold them half of the powder and in due course the Dutchmen sold half of their half to a heathen party in exchange for ivory and in time the same black powder that had paid to feed the army came back to kill it.
On the day following they commenced travel by a different route towards Reed Fountain and on the way the cattle suffered greatly for want of grazing. During the day the horses chewed on the leaves of trees and shrubs and at night they munched on sticks and wood and dry dung. There were herds of antelope on the plain but they were wary. When the Captain rode out towards them they started and bounded away clearing ten yards at a leap and sometimes they jumped straight upwards to unexpected heights with their hooves all pointed together.
On the second night of their journey the moon rose full and the Fingos danced and sang to honour it and the prisoner sat not far from the kid and watched as the Fingos leapt and thrust their lances into the cold light and sang in his own language of killing his people.
On the evening of the third day they regained the encampment at Reed Fountain and the Captain agitated for more active duty but the patrols that went out belonged to other regiments. The Captain went into his tent and opened his book and wrote in it but he was plagued by the flies that bred in the latrines and the stores of meat and every day the flies became worse.
A party of post riders left for Fort Cox and they took the prisoner with them. The boy raised his hand to the kid as he left and the kid asked Evans what would happen to him.
They’ll lock him up, said Evans.
And then?
Preach to him. Set him digging.
The kid stared after the departing party.
Why are they called heathens?
Evans spat.
What they are.
What they call us?
Ask the joiner.
The kid did as told.
They call us Umlungus, said the joiner.
What’s it mean?
No one knows. And you ask them, they won’t tell you.
They remained at Reed Fountain and the Captain, imitating the Fingo elders, built around his hearth outside the door of his tent a circular wall of green boughs. He levelled the enclosed space and placed a camp table and stools and he sat there during the mornings and wrote in his book and the flies increased their assaults. When the Captain entered his tent in daylight the walls were black with battalions of flies and when he tried to sleep at night solitary scouts remained to land on his eyelids or his nose at exactly the point when a dream beckoned. When the Captain woke in the morning a cloud of flies settled on his face and when he sat down to breakfast a further horde descended on the bacon that Herrid had specially procured from Fort Cox. If the Captain raised a telescope to his eye a fly walked upon the lens and spoiled the view and if he wished to listen to a bird call in order to identify it a fly flew into his ear and buzzed there like a two-handled saw in the hands of energetic lumberjacks.
So the Captain placed a table in his tent and heaped a pile of ration sugar on it and surrounded the sugar with a trail of black powder. Then he put a charge on a board stuck to the point of a claymore and hoisted this device to the top of his tent. He left the flies to gather in greater numbers and went outside and sat at his table writing a letter to the General.
The Captain stated that he had come to the continent to prove to the British Empire the value of the Minié rifle. He gave it as his opinion that since the defection of half of the Hottentot and Fingo levies the heathen had gained a great deal in the way of armament and also a dangerous insight into the conduct of war. He pointed out that rumours in the Fort Cox region and his own interrogation of a prisoner suggested that the heathen’s recent successes were the result of a dangerous collaboration between Jinqi, renegade chieftain of the Gaika, and Hermanus Branders, the commander of the Hottentot levies lately defected.
The Captain paused and searched for the words to describe the terrible shame and loss of life which would ensue if events should further favour the heathen. He paced about and found himself standing at the entrance to his tent and remembered his parallel battle with the flies. The Captain reached for a flint.
The morning patrols had left some hours before and Herrid had conducted his inspections and the small chores of the day had been attended to and the men were resting. Evans and the kid were sleeping beneath their hats in the shade of a tree and Waine was grumbling with his cronies over a gambling game conducted with greasy playing cards. The God-struck Lieutenant was reading in his book how Moses spoke unto all Israel on this side of Jordan in the wilderness over against the Red Sea between Paran and Tophel.
At this point a small and virulent funnel of dust came spinning through the Fingo lines lifting daghasacks and ashes and the Captain struck a spark from the flint and the God-struck Lieutenant heard two loud and almost simultaneous explosions. The Lieutenant leapt from his stool directly into the whirling ash and dust that came like the devil himself out of nowhere to tear his precious book from his hands. He shouted and waved an arm and with the other he clutched the book to his chest and he ran and travelled in concert with the whirlwind and then it outpaced him and he found himself face to face with the Captain. The Captain was much startled and entirely lacking in eyebrows and lashes. He stood covered in charred flies before his burning tent and he stared down at the place on the camp table where his letter had been.
IX
Escort to Gatestown – Spitted hog – A prophecy – The capacity of hell – Dinner with the General – The heathen and Jinqi – A degree of terror.
ON THE DAY FOLLOWING the irregulars were ordered to Fort Cox and from there to accompany a train of commissariat wagons to Gatestown. The Captain marched them at good pace, hoping to meet with the General in person in his centre of operations. Within four days the column was negotiating the rocky pass once more and passing the dead horses of the last post riders to be attacked there. Further down in the valley the Captain came upon a wild boar which fed on the roots of a strelitzia. The beast was longer than a Hottentot by the Captain’s measure and three feet high at the shoulder and he was cloaked in thick dark bristles. His tail stood straight and he looked at the Captain from small black eyes set in an enormous head with two curving tusks and strange bony protuberances on either cheek. The Captain shot him directly in the centre of his forehead at a distance of seventy-five yards.
When they marched into Gatestown Providence the Fingo carried a ham of boar spitted upon his musket and the Captain’s pack horse had another slung across its side. They remained in the town three day
s and the irregulars washed and patched their uniforms and trimmed their beards and ventured forth to sample the pleasures of the town.
Evans and the kid and the joiner entered the same lean-to as before and found the same toothless settler behind the counter.
Hear you taken to sheep herding, he said.
And cattle, said Evans.
What else you hear, said the joiner.
Heathen were watching you the whole way from Cox. If Jinqi wasn’t busy taking a thousand head off the General up Adams way you wouldn’t have come through the pass.
We took them in the mountains, said Evans.
The settler spat.
Who’s doing better?
No one, said the settler. What you drinking?
Brandy, said Evans. Because they had been paid.
They drank their brandy and they called for more and they stared about into the gloom. There stood at the counter a disordered missionary. He was a thin man with a thin black beard which framed his face and he wore a black leather waistcoat and a black and straight-brimmed hat set square upon his head. He stepped out beneath a hanging lantern and removed the hat. His eyes were cast in darkness and his nose threw a shadow like a blade. He levelled a forefinger at them.