by James Whyle
They proceeded with flank patrols thrown out left and right and after a quarter of a mile they heard the dull boom of a gun and the clouds parted and they saw across an intervening valley how howitzers belched out white smoke and shells burst over a heathen village and small figures scattered into the trees.
They marched on for seven miles and piled arms near the spot where they had been attacked on the 8th of September. They were a quarter of a mile from the forest pass which separated the Kromme plateau from the General’s brigade on the tableland beyond. Several companies were extended to watch the forest and detached parties of Fingos went into the bush on the right and burned a homestead and exchanged fire with a small group of the displaced heathen. The irregulars lay in the shifting clouds and after an hour a party of the Cape Corps issued from the forest and the Lieutenant Colonel received orders to join the General on the other side.
The picquets were called in and while his horse was being saddled the Captain crowded with the other officers to hear that the General’s brigade had driven a large body of the enemy off the heights and into the Great Western Ravine. A lieutenant severely wounded and a colonel’s charger shot from under him and two or three other men lost. Captain Norris of the Mounted Rifles was dead of a ball through the throat.
The column formed up and entered the forest in file by a narrow rocky path. The Captain noted that the timber was very fine. Luxuriant evergreens grew beneath the tall trees and immense creepers hung like ropes in great festoons from branches fifty or sixty feet high. The kid trudged and staggered and his ear ached and his neck below it and he was deaf on that side and he looked only at the rocks before his feet.
There were puffs of smoke in the forest to the right and the world about him roared and the trees on the left-hand side of the path spat wood and bark as lead crashed into them. No man fell among the irregulars and they fired back at their invisible antagonists and they charged their rifles and moved on and fired again when they saw smoke in the trees. They gained the open ground and were greeted by a succession of volleys from an angle of the forest on the left. The Captain watched and saw that the volleys were timed to the arrival of the officers and that these men were lucky to escape with only a grazing of their accoutrements.
The companies re-formed in open column and moved on to join the General’s brigade. As they proceeded an alarm came that the Mounted Rifles were cut off in the rear with the pack animals. The irregulars were ordered to the right about and moved eastwards along the edge of the wood. The bush was fringed with rocky ground and from this cover they skirmished with the heathen and the heathen dodged behind the trees and fired from breastworks of low stone about their village but the irregulars’ rifles told and the heathen retreated.
The irregulars turned back towards the column and the kid saw five riderless horses gallop from the forest at the mouth of the trail and then the Mounted Rifles began to come through. Many were wounded and towards the rear came a pack horse with two men slung across it and their heads bounced on its flanks. Scattered groups of heathen were visible behind the emerging riders and when the last of the pack animals were clear of the trees the artillery opened fire from rising ground five hundred yards to the north. Round shot and spherical case howled above and the kid saw one warrior and the tree next to him simply evaporate and in their place was a void demarcated by splinter and blood.
The kid watched with Evans and the joiner and they saw a man called Ricketts carried past with a hole in his chest and he did not look like a man who would live. The artillery ceased their fire and the forest was still and for a moment all was quiet upon the plain. Then a bugle sounded the recall and the skirmishers closed and retired and the regiments were re-formed and the heavy masses of infantry moved out first across the high green grasslands to join the General.
Within an hour the two brigades were united and they moved on in open column over undulating tableland. The plain rolled out to the west and north and it was bounded by mountains and Mount Misery lay behind them to the east. A beam of yellow light came low across the green expanse and through this shaft the pilgrims moved as if in review before some ultimate censor. The first to be counted were the lean and bloodied Mounted Rifles and after that a group of heathen prisoners who carried pots and mats and gourds upon their heads. A train of groaning wounded passed through the light and then the stained and ragged veterans and then the irregulars. Behind them came new arrivals whose coats were still bright red and tattered Highlanders in their bush dress and the lumbering artillery and in the rear the great train of pack horse and mule.
The heathen emerged onto the plain behind the column and took points of cover and fired from a distance. A group of cavalry split off and galloped back and the heathen retreated into the forest and the cavalry did not follow.
The column moved on and in the evening the irregulars stumbled to a halt at the devastated homestead of a settler called Mundell. The wounded were placed in wagons and lay there leaking blood and waiting. They were about to embark for the fort at Post Retief when the Captain pointed out to the officer commanding that the shifting shadows on the plain to the north were parties of heathen horsemen and so the wounded remained on their wagons and a Highlander died quietly in the midst of their groaning.
The irregulars bivouacked in a little hollow and lit their fires. The hollow was close to a detached clump of bush on a stony outcrop and the kid went there. He stepped behind a great boulder and into a sheltered cranny beneath a tree and loosened his belt and lowered his trousers. He squatted next to a pale rock which was level with his head and he placed his hand thereon to steady himself. The rock shifted at his touch and the kid looked at it and saw that it was not stone but bone.
It was the monstrous skull of some animal. It owned two great eye-sockets on its sides and a strange hole like a smiling mouth in the middle of its forehead. It had no chin but two round heavy tubes that rested in the earth. It stood there beside the kid like the ritual mask of a tribe of Cyclops, like some arcane artefact made by a race of giant imagination and long extinct. They made a strange picture, the squatting boy and the skull. The sun sank into the horizon and the fires glowed across the plain and the kid left his offering and returned to his companions. He did not eat but lay down to sleep on the damp grass and he did not open his eyes again before the dawn came.
The Captain was about with the sunrise and hopeful of action but the General ordered that they could not move before he had received ammunition from Post Retief. And so the army remained on the tableland and the heathen came out once more to demonstrate their cavalry manoeuvres at a distance.
In the afternoon the Captain stood at the side of Captain Norris’ grave and looked about at the men assembled. A host of stained and weather-beaten faces. The sun shone briefly and the red coats of the infantry funeral party began to steam. The coats were patched with canvas and leather and cloth of many colours and the men wore battered straw hats and they stood steaming like damp itinerant clowns and their expressions were grave. The men of Norris’ platoon rested their hairy chins on the butts of their firelocks and their muddy toes protruded from the gaping seams of their boots. There was a rich waft of decay which mingled with the smell of unwashed men and the corpse lay roughly sewn in a blanket and blood seeped from it still.
A clergyman had come with escort from Post Retief and he stood by the side of the grave and spoke.
Captain Norris was a friend. He was an amiable and gallant and brave man and he has given his life for our cause.
The clergyman paused and looked about.
What is that cause?
The Captain knotted his fingers together before him and then he inverted his hands and pushed his palms away from him with his fingers locked. He released his hands and worked his neck and shoulders and then he relaxed them and he stood still.
This is a country roamed by ungoverned clans of Dutchmen and heathen. There are tribes to the north so devastated by the Zulu that they have taken to eating
each other. Only when this land is settled with English citizens and ruled by English law can peace and productivity prevail. And it will. That is what Charles Norris died for.
The Captain nodded and the clergyman began to read the funeral service. Ashes to ashes, said the clergyman. Dust to dust. The Captain stood very straight and took a breath and cleared his throat. Evans was standing with the joiner and he indicated the Captain with an inclination of his head. The Captain raised his arm and brushed a sleeve across his eye. Evans turned to spit but the joiner nudged him with an elbow.
That night the Captain and the God-struck Lieutenant inspected their lines and came upon the kid who stood guard by himself. The kid held up a hand to indicate that they should be silent. The Captain and the God-struck Lieutenant obeyed and after a time they heard a sound that came on a light breeze from the south-west. It was a hymn sung and some trick of the wind and the acoustics of the ravines below amplified it and for a moment they could hear the words and the strange and complex harmonies with which they were sung.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below.
The God-struck Lieutenant stared about but he could see nothing but the darkling plain.
What’s that?
Totties.
Praise him above, angelic host.
Totties?
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Down in the ravines.
Hottentots?
The same ones who will be trying to kill you tomorrow.
But they’re defectors.
Not from Christ, said the Captain.
The men stood there on the chilled plateau and the God-struck Lieutenant looked up and the clouds were low above him and they reflected the dull glow of the fires on their dark and heavy bellies.
At two o’clock in the morning the irregulars were roused and took up their packs and their arms and stood and waited in darkness and bitter cold for an hour. Confused orders were shouted in the night and then the Lieutenant Colonel’s brigade marched south towards the pass onto the Kromme plateau. A large fire blazed up from a heathen observation post on the slopes of Mount Misery to signal their approach. As the horizon began to grey the column wheeled to the right and began to descend into the Great Western Ravine. They moved down by a stony pass and slipped from rock to rock in uncertain light and sometimes the irregulars slid down on their buttocks which were little protected by their dilapidated trousers and aside from their curses they might have been children at play.
They gained the head of the valley and halted near the ruin of a farmhouse. This skeleton of recent domesticity lay in a fine garden filled with vines and bananas and oranges and lemons and citrons and pomegranates and figs and peaches. There were trees in blossom and the kid noted through his daze how their sweet fragrance mingled with the warlike odours of men and animals and guns. The clouds were low and a thin drizzle came down and they marched on up a subsidiary valley. It was elegantly wooded and shut in by mountains and the clouds rested on their forested heights. A broad wagon path cut through a grove of flowering bushes and followed the course of a rocky stream and the water which flowed in it was clear and cold.
There were grey crags that towered above and belts of lichen-covered forest and slopes of green grass. The drizzle stopped and the clouds lifted to reveal basaltic towers rising out of the woods on the higher ridges. The sun broke through these eminences and the trees and the rocks and the grass sparkled with dew and gave off a fragrance in the sudden warmth that might have convinced a man that some kind of peace was possible. And then the irregulars came down into a depression and the kid retched.
Clouds of flies rose from the defector corpses which lay about like the remnants of a picnic which has been struck by a bomb. The flies buzzed and the bodies broiled in the sun. One lay on his front like a sleeper and others on their backs and their faces were grotesquely swollen by the bacterial processes within. One lay curled in a foetal position as though he had died in agony. There were wolf and jackal tracks about and the bodies were partially eaten and one owned a red raw stump where the lower leg had been gnawed off at the knee. Among them was a Bastaard who wore the uniform of an officer of the Cape levies and although the stench was such that the Captain was reluctant to approach with measuring tape in hand the Bastaard was at least six foot tall by his estimation.
The irregulars marched on and they passed the lonely ruins of another farmhouse which lay in the midst of fragrant orange orchards all aflower. The kid’s ear throbbed and he walked as if in a dream through the fecund landscape and he saw among the blossoms how a tendril of green creeper grew into a dead man’s rotting mouth.
They crossed the spoor of horses and sheep and cattle and the irregulars detached and followed the trail to the entrance of a narrow valley. They proceeded up a sandy path and it led them to a rocky gorge all tangled with bush. The chasm was silent and smelt of ambush and Evans said that he wasn’t going in for no one and the kid was glad when they turned and retraced their steps into the Great Western Ravine.
They rejoined the column which spread out across the breadth of the valley and commenced to move east towards the highlands. The Captain lifted his Dollond and saw how the General’s column moved like ants along the edge of the northern plateau. The distant brigade reached an enemy position and opened fire and the boom of the howitzers rolled out over the valley and the reports of the bursting shells answered in syncopation.
The Western Ravine formed an amphitheatre embraced by the Kromme Heights to the south and the cliffs of the plateau to the north and scavengers hung patiently above it. The great birds floated on updrafts and fires rose towards them from the immolation of hidden huts and blue smoke wreathed up through the trees. The Fingos worked side by side with the marauders and they called out their triumph across the valley and their voices mixed with the shrill cries of captured women and the column moved up the valley like a rake which tore out all human habitation before it.
The irregulars proceeded up the left of the gorge and worked through sloping bush and they burned and looted without opposition. High up on the edge of the forest near the base of the cliffs they came upon a group of spacious bee-hive huts. The huts were newly built of fine reeds and they were plastered with mud. They sheltered beneath overhanging trees and looked out on a smooth green slope and on the clear waters of a stream which bubbled down among the rocks.
The Captain ducked down and stepped into a dwelling. A small fire flamed in a circle of rocks in its centre. The fire was formed from three dry hardwood logs and made little smoke. There was a grinding stone next to it and the Captain squatted to examine the dark grains which lay in its hollow. He shifted the rough powder in his fingers and took a pinch and raised it to his nose and then he stood and looked about. There were gourds and sheep-skin rugs lying along the walls. The Captain lifted a gourd and it rattled and he turned it upside down and roasted coffee beans of good quality fell into his hand. On the smooth cow-dung floor were fresh piles of a white fibrous root that were still moist from their chewing. The Captain examined a portion of the root and smelt it and then he threw it down on the fire and wiped his hand on his thigh and stepped outside.
The huts and their contents were put to flame and the Captain did not see his letter to the General which the dust devil had taken. The letter lay concealed in its wooden box beneath a sheep skin. It was dusty and much worn and pored over and it lay in its place alongside strategic communications between Jinqi and Branders which were written in the Dutch language. The words burned, like the box and the domed hut that housed them, and when the irregulars reached the head of the valley the words were gone and the whole expanse of the ravine was filled with a haze of smoke.
The column ascended by a rocky track which rose through cool forest. The irregulars cut their way through underwood chocked with luxuriant shrubs and all intertwined with sweet-scented vine. In places the forest floor was covered with wood anemones and bright flowers and amon
g these in a glade lay a heathen woman and child. The woman lay on her side with the baby strapped to her back and both were much cut by the splinters of a shell and the woman had bled profusely before she died.
The brigade gained the head of the pass with the irregulars as flank skirmishers on the left and the General’s column covering them with artillery from above. The Captain nodded at the thoroughness of the coordinated manoeuvre and then he heard in astonishment that the rear guard were being attacked in the bush from which the irregulars had just emerged.
The Captain cantered towards the Lieutenant Colonel but the Lieutenant Colonel was surrounded by officers and he was red in the face and he was shouting. The Captain turned his horse and rode out to the edge of the cliffs. He took out his Dollond and scoured the forest below and gained a glimpse of the track. He saw the heathen rush in on two men. One man was dragged from sight and the other fell and tried to rise with his arms aloft in surrender and the heathen beat him down with knobbed sticks and with the butts of their firelocks. The Captain saw two riderless horses scramble up and when they had passed the track was empty.
An hour later the battered rearguard came out upon the highlands with their wounded and some of their dead and the irregulars watched.
You don’t want to be at the back, said Evans.
The joiner spat. The kid swayed beside them and said nothing. He lowered himself carefully to the ground and put his head on his knees. He woke when Evans pulled him to his feet and he stared about like a mad person. Evans pushed him to his place in the column and he staggered out across the plain.
The heathen showed in considerable force on some low rocks to the right and opened fire at long range. The Lieutenant Colonel’s brigade formed line to the right and took cover behind a low ridge and the balls fell among them. Two companies went out towards the heathen flank and guns were turned on the heathen and when they found their range the heathen retreated.