by James Whyle
They paused there to rest the beasts and the irregulars stood about and Evans questioned Herrid about food.
There isn’t any.
Why not?
Because it’s ration day.
Evans stared at him.
Don’t make sense, he said.
Herrid pointed at the wagons.
Rations are in there.
So?
We’re delayed. When we get to the camp, they’ll be distributed.
Evans looked at the sun.
Be night by the time we get there.
Yes.
They won’t even start unloading before tomorrow.
That’s right. There’s a delay.
You meant to feed us, said Waine. It’s regulations.
Herrid turned on them and bellowed.
What are you?
The men were silent.
What are you?
Irregulars, said the joiner.
That’s right, said Herrid. Irregulars.
The column arrived at camp at nightfall as Evans had predicted and Higgs and Basson scrounged some leaden loaves from the cooks and the Captain shared his bread with the God-struck Lieutenant. They were chewing around their fire when a figure loomed up out of the darkness. He was the leader of a group of Dutchmen that were come to join the irregulars as mounted scouts. They were big men with big beards on them and they carried ancient flintlocks of enormous length and the bullet moulds and lead to arm them with. They were dressed in rough trousers and jackets and shoes of their own manufacture and their faces were dark with the grime of many journeys. They did not talk unless asked a direct question and sometimes not even then. They reported to no higher authority that the Captain could ascertain but came merely to offer their assistance and the Captain accepted it.
On the day following the supplies were unloaded and distributed and a company of mounted men escorted the empty wagons back down the Shining Water Pass. These tasks consumed the day and by the time they were finished the nightly guard fires were being made about the perimeter. The men were tired and dirty and ill fed and one of them neglected to properly clear a space in the long grass. The day had been hot and clear and the flames crept into the grasses and played there and leapt about like antic sprites and then they became a monster which roared.
Men yelled and ran to move a cache of ammunition and a pile of firelocks which lay in the path of the inferno. One of the guns went off and a ball passed whizzing through the camp and through the General’s tent just as that man was bent over two fine lamb cutlets and a bottle of claret. The General rose bellowing and his camp table collapsed and his cutlets fell to the floor. The claret gurgled into the mud.
The General’s mood upon this disturbance was communicated to the Lieutenant Colonel and from the Lieutenant Colonel down through the various ranks of commissioned officers who passed it on to the sergeants major who added a profane and earthy tone to the communiqué before it reached the ears of the enlisted men and of the irregulars. With this impetus the fire was beaten out with green boughs and the camp rearranged and the next day’s orders were issued and the two brigades retired to their various earthy beds.
In the morning the General drank his coffee and looked at his map. Opposite the Great Western Ravine and joining it in cutting off the Kromme Heights from the Northern Highlands were two deep valleys. The valleys were bowl-shaped at their heads and both were thickly forested. They were separated by a narrow ridge and the General marked them down on his map as The Twins. The General looked at the map and he pondered on the heathen and the Hottentot and on their abilities and on their modes of war.
There was a locket which lay next to the map and the General picked it up and opened it and looked at the portrait that it contained. It showed a dark woman with a strong nose and a passionate mouth and the General passed his thumb over the frame of it. Some hours later the General’s brigade marched out for the top of the Shining Water Pass.
The Lieutenant Colonel’s brigade remained in the camp and the following day they rose before dawn in chilly fog and moved south towards the Kromme and then they wheeled left towards the narrow ridge so that they could cover the General’s forces as they ascended through the twin valleys.
The irregulars marched in the van behind the mounted scouts. They heard cries in the mist before them and the column halted. The kid squatted down and he could see only Evans and Higgs and Basson and the joiner and a few other vaguer shapes beyond them. The kid listened to the shouts from the invisible ridge and he removed the cap from his rifle and blew on it and polished it on his shirt and replaced it on the nipple. There was a closer commotion in the mist and horses loomed above them as a small group of scouts rode past with captured heathen horses.
They moved on and the fog lifted. The Captain sat his horse and surveyed the land through his eyeglass. The narrow ridge led away to the Shining Water Valley and it dropped down on each side in thickly forested slopes. Across the Southern Twin were the heights of the Kromme and swinging the Dollond onwards the Captain saw that behind him in the west a large party of heathen were moving across the highlands below Mount Misery and away towards the forests above the Great Western Ravine.
The Captain rode off to confer with the Lieutenant Colonel and the irregulars waited. After an hour the column turned about and marched back the way they had come. The irregulars were placed on the left and they advanced in extended order and entered the fringe of the forest which guarded the pass onto the Kromme.
It was not long before they were under fire and the kid lay in the cover of a rock in the undergrowth and Evans was on one side and a Dutch scout was on the other. The kid lifted his head above his rock and a ball struck the corner of it and howled off into the undergrowth. The kid lay with his face in the earth for a moment and then he lifted his head. The Dutchman was looking at him and shaking his head. He held out his hand towards the kid and gestured with his palm as though pressing down a lump of dough.
The kid hissed and Evans looked at him and the kid pointed at the Dutchman. The Dutchman nodded at them and smiled. He put a four-ounce ball in the palm of his left hand and lifted a powder horn and opened the lid with his thumb. He poured powder over the ball until it was fully covered. He closed the horn and let it hang and he lifted his barrel. He secured the ball with his thumb and tilted his hand so that the powder fell down the bore. He patched the ball and took up his rod and drove the ball home and he tilted the frizzen forward and charged the pan and closed the frizzen. Then he placed his hat on the barrel and looked at the kid and the kid was watching him.
The Dutchman lifted his right hand with the inner fingers folded by his thumb and the outer pointing to his eyes and shifting slightly. The kid nodded and moved to the side until he could glimpse the heathen position through the foliage. The Dutchman lifted his barrel slowly until the hat showed above his cover. The kid saw three distinct puffs of smoke hanging in the trees where the heathen had fired and the hat spun on its perch and three shots rang out and the kid fired at a puff of smoke and Evans likewise. The Dutchman’s flintlock roared like a cannon and the kid saw heathen figures rise up and run and he jumped up and charged forward. Higgs and Basson rose from their own places of concealment and followed and Clayton came after them. The kid ran and a bush of sharp small-hooked thorns grasped at him but he tore himself free. He glimpsed fleeting figures retreating before him and heard their cries.
The men jumped a wall of low stonework and came into a clearing containing three domed huts. There was a trail of fresh splattered blood which started next to the wall and disappeared into the forest on the far side. The Captain and the joiner came up to them and they tried to burn the huts but they were newly built of supple green wood and reeds and the fire would not take. They went into the forest and found dry wood and kindling and started fires against the walls of the huts and slowly the flames gained a hand.
They stood about waiting for the huts to burn and the kid armed his weapon. Clayton was doin
g likewise when a ball hummed out of the forest and took off his index finger and shattered the nipple of his rifle. Clayton dropped his weapon and stared down at his hand and the stub of gore where his finger had been and then his knees bent and he sat down and clasped his hand and groaned. The Dutchman ran on into the forest and Clayton bound his hand with a piece of cloth and they heard the boom of the Dutchman’s flintlock and they followed him into the forest.
They skirmished their way through the undergrowth and the heathen retreated and beyond them the sun was shining on the highlands. A light wind blew and the grasses bent and shifted under its hand and their colours shifted likewise and clouds scudded in a blue sky. The jackals and the wolves bided their time in their caves and tunnels and the vultures circled above and the General’s brigade moved in a great column up the Northern Twin. They appeared like insects who had mastered the art of fire.
The Lieutenant Colonel wheeled his forces to the right and General’s men fought their way up the valley and at noon the two brigades were joined once more on the plateau and the irregulars sat down to a meal of biscuit and beef. They sat and chewed and they made no comment as a surgeon amputated a Highlander’s arm and two men of the infantry were buried. Fresh ammunition was issued from the reserve on the pack mules and the General stayed at that place to prevent the heathen from reoccupying the valleys below.
The Lieutenant Colonel’s brigade marched for the old bivouac at Mundell’s farm and they were fired at from patches of bush above the cliffs on the Western Ravine but they proceeded with the loss of only two horses. In the dusk they came to their camping grounds and made their fires in the blackened patches they had used before and Clayton groaned and coughed throughout the night.
On the day following they rose in falling sleet and marched back towards the pass onto the Kromme. The peaks to the north were tipped with snow and the dawn light picked them out in tones of pink and gold and the wind which came from them was cold. They followed the edge of the cliffs and they could see heathen fires on the Kromme Heights.
They found the General’s brigade shivering in an inch of snow on the western slope of Mount Misery. The chill wind swept over the exposed grasslands and the trenches that the men had dug to sleep in were filled with icy melt water. The irregulars stood about and a group of Fingos came in with a heathen they had discovered in a patch of wood. The prisoner stood barefoot and naked apart from a worn blanket. The Fingos conferred briefly with Johnny Fingo and then a man stepped forward and hit the prisoner on the head with a knobbed stick. The sound of the impact was both dull and sharp and the kid ducked as he heard it. The prisoner fell bleeding to the ground and the Fingos fell on him with stabbing spears and eviscerated him and then they gathered round the body and sang and danced to re-enact their victory.
Don’t want to get on the wrong side of them, said Evans.
He was a spy, said Higgs. They take it personal.
How you know he was a spy?
Basson told me.
They’d boil their own grandmother, said Evans.
The Fingos leapt and sang and chanted and stamped the earth and soon they were sweating and the irregulars stood shivering and watched.
What’s the difference between them, said the kid.
Between what, said the joiner.
Fingo and heathen.
There isn’t one, said Evans. That I can see.
Heathen call themselves the Koza, said the joiner. That’s Tottie for angry men. Fingos are paid by Queen Vic. Like you and me.
But why they with us?
Heathen wouldn’t give them any land.
And we did?
Yes, said the joiner. He spat. Half this bunch are just heathens who don’t like their chiefs.
Whose place was it?
When?
Before.
Totties were here first. And the bushmen.
I never seen a bushman, said Evans.
Providence calls the skipper Government, said the kid.
Got his wits about him, said Evans.
They waited in the cold. The General conferred with the Lieutenant Colonel and after a time they agreed that the weather was impractical for warfare and the irregulars returned to their bivouac at Mundell’s farm. The Dutch scouts came upon their old ground first and one man held up his hand and the others halted and dismounted. They walked carefully about the camp and noted the impression of bare feet in the mud around the fires and also the shrivelled scraps of intestine and the split gnawed bones which lay about in the ashes.
The scouts waved the irregulars in and the kid and Evans and the joiner examined the evidence of this occupation. The kid picked up a gnawed bone and sniffed it.
We eat better than them.
Here’s hoping, said Evans.
The irregulars made their camp once more and as they did so they churned the sloppy ground into a bog. A driving rain came slanting across the highlands and fitful gusts scattered ash into their faces and they looked for a time like a tribe of strange spotted people and then the rain washed the ash away.
In the night the rain changed to sleet and the men lay curled in shivering foetal balls in their wet blankets. It frosted towards the dawn and blankets and beards and hair were turned to white. At sunrise a ball of ice the size of a large walnut struck Evans in the place where his ear had been. Evans yelled and cursed and thrashed about and kicked the joiner who was sleeping next to him. The joiner felt Evans’ kick simultaneous with a large hailstone which struck him on the cheek and he bellowed in surprise and he stood and stared about.
The world was pale and dim and ice fell like stones from the sky. It bounced off the ground and off the men’s heads and they cowered in their blankets and dodged about and shouted. They appeared like apparitions, like ancient lunatics, snowy of brow and gibbering and cursing as the hail pelted them in the fog. After ten minutes the hail stopped and was trodden in icy slippery chunks into the mud and the frost melted on the men’s faces and so they resolved themselves into a grim and tattered army once more.
XV
Patrolling the ravines – A heathen village – Inefficacy of Pelargonium – Dogs – Clearing the plateau – Women as targets – Return to Shining Water Post – Hartung’s coat – A canvas city on the floodplain.
THE DAY WAS SPENT in a war against cold. The belt of wood rung out with the sound of axes as officers and men cut trees and chopped them up and carried them to the fires. The irregulars had few axes and billhooks and they made fires around the trunks of standing trees and when the trunks began to burn through they toppled the trees and carried off smoking branches to pile on the camp fires which flamed up high and roared in the rain.
The irregulars stood about these blazes and their fronts steamed and their backs froze and from time to time they turned around to reverse the processes. When they faced the flames their visages flickered and glowed from the radiance and they stared scowling into the conflagration. They brewed coffee and dipped biscuit into it and gazed into the fire and chewed.
The kid clasped his coffee in his hands.
Could be worse.
How?
The kid thought and then he shrugged.
We could be them.
Heathens.
Yes.
Evans spat and stared about him at the deluge.
Like a cow pissing on a flat rock, he said.
On the day following the troops mustered without bugle call and took their places in silence and stood stamping and shivering in the ruddy light of the fires. At five o’clock they marched south and descended towards the Great Western Ravine by a path into a narrow gorge. In the dawn they marched out of this enclave onto the lower reaches of the valley and then they turned left towards its head. The sound of big guns and small gave notice that the General’s brigade was engaged on the heights. They moved up the valley and the rain stopped and the clouds lifted. They proceeded for some hours and then the irregulars forked to the right up a subsidiary gorge and came upon a hidden
village.
They fired the huts and stood about. The Captain took out his eyeglass and saw a group of heathen creeping away on hands and knees through long grasses on a rise across the gorge. He cried out to the Dutchmen and rode out with them and cut the heathen party off. They were armed only with spears and the horsemen hunted them down and shot them at close range in the grasses.
They ascended by a rocky path towards the plateau and their clothes had dried and they sweated as they went. They gained the Kromme tableland and worked their way through the belt of bush at its edge and even the Dutchmen could find no recent spoor. They proceeded across the plain towards the pass onto the northern heights and came to the little basin where they had stopped on their first venture onto the Kromme and bivouacked there and it did not rain.
On the day following they marched before dawn to join the General’s brigade on the Northern Highlands and went through the forest pass without obstruction. The bush was silent apart from their footfall and as they gained the further side, the kid looked down and he saw a skeleton which wore fragments of a red coat and the insignia of a sergeant and the mud around it bore the imprints of the paws of jackal and wolf.
As they came out of the forest at the mouth of the path there were heathen bodies on the open grassland and the corpses of four mules which lay bloated and stiff in the breeze. They moved on to escape the stench and the irregulars wheeled to the right and began to work through a horseshoe of forest above the northernmost of the twin valleys and they came upon the site of a large village.
Each clearing was protected by stone breastworks and these were cunningly contrived to blend into the rocks when seen from a distance. Most clearings contained the burnt remains of domed huts but further into the forest the huts were standing. The kid came to one of these clearings and he saw three charred dogs in a pile and a dead horse and the bodies of heathens and of Hottentot defectors. There was an enclosure for cattle and a stable made of young trees felled and twined between standing trunks and the kid noted the intricacy of its making. Carved wooden utensils and artfully constructed ornaments of skin and bone lay all about. There were many flattened lead balls and fragments of shell on the ground and there were the blasted depressions where the shells had landed.