by James Whyle
A second hut caught fire and then a third and women and children came out and the marauders scythed them down as they emerged with blade and butt. The slaughter became general. Providence the Fingo bent out of a hut and he held a naked baby by the ankle in each hand. He strode across the clearing and his flickering shadow loomed monstrous across the trees. He squatted by the rocks around the hearth and laid one infant upon the earth. He swung the other up behind him into the air and brought it round again in a full circle so that its head impacted on the rock and its brains burst forth from the fontanel and he dropped it into the fire and picked up the first.
A burning fowl ran past and another hut took fire and women screamed from the flames like berserkers and children with them and the irregulars hacked them down.
Higgs lay on a naked girl with her throat half cut and he raped her in the moment of her dying and he rose with dirk in hand.
Basson was kneeling to cut a necklace of tiger teeth from a woman’s neck and another woman ran naked from a pursuer and fell wailing on the ground and grasped at the Captain’s ankles. The girl’s body was slim and golden in the firelight and the Captain held the Adams to her head and fired.
He turned aside and vomited and he straightened and looked about. A flickering scene of carnage in the forest. A fairytale metamorphosed into something simple and old and real and horrible beyond reckoning. Yellow fires roaring like dragons and choking smoke and a stench of burning hair and bone and flesh and the trees looming over it. Bloodied beasts clotted with gore who sniffed about for any that might still live.
A slathered shape approached.
I think some got away.
The Captain recognised Lieutenant Bruce’s voice.
They’ll spread the word, he said.
He squatted and charged the Adams and then he ducked into the one hut that had not yet burned. There was a small fire in the hearth at the centre of it and the Captain saw something which crouched in the shadows and he lifted the revolver.
Don’t shoot, Skipper. It’s me.
The words stopped the Captain’s finger on the trigger and Waine stood up out of the gloom. He had a bloodied ivory armlet in one hand and the forearm he had sawed off to purloin it in the other. He waved the limb at the Captain and the pink fingers caught the dim glow of the fire and flopped about. The Captain stared at him and Waine lowered the limb and pointed with it towards a dark wet shape on the ground.
I done her.
The Captain nodded.
I’m going to torch this hut.
He turned and ducked out and took a burning brand from the hut next door and laid it against the wall and the flames licked up.
There were no more to kill and the men gathered and the Dutch scouts came striding out of the darkness. One of them carried a head by the hair. He came to the flames and lifted the head to the light and examined it as though he might recognise someone he knew and then he threw it down into the conflagration and the eyeballs shrivelled in that furnace as it landed.
The irregulars moved away from the heat and the stench and regrouped at the edge of the forest. They left the place quickly and quietly and no man looked back and Smith and two others of their company lay where they had fallen.
The Captain led his horse on the rocky path and he heard a sound and came upon one of the children who had guided them to the village. The boy was still gagged and he lay by the side of the path. The Captain squatted next to him and Johnny Fingo joined him with a flaming brand. The child’s face was all squeezed up in pain and fear and he pointed at his foot. The Captain examined the limb and saw that a bullet had entered the sole of the foot and passed up the leg and shattered several inches of bone.
The Captain picked the child up and hoisted him across his pommel and they proceeded down out of the forest and turned south and began to climb the spur of the Kromme. They returned to Blakeway’s farm on a warm foggy morning. The blood had dried on their bodies and faces and their weapons and clothes were black with it. They came treading gently and quietly and they loomed out of the mist and Waine carried the arm over his shoulder and its hand flapped at the kid who walked behind him and the sentries stared at them aghast.
XXVIII
The little heathen – Cathcart declares victory in the Kromme – Ahab – Jinqi’s sister – Excursion to Mount Misery – Jinqi’s message – Teachers – Heads – Christ on the stone – Rejoice burning – The kid’s clemency – Waine’s revenge.
THERE WAS COFFEE AND food waiting and they sat around the fires and ate and the yellow dog licked at the kid’s hand. They finished their food and remained there like men caught in a dream that they could not wake from. They stared at the flames. Hearth, home, warmth. Dim figures in the mist. Rapt. Pyrolatrous.
Herrid came to call the joiner and he rose and the two men walked to the tent set aside for the wounded. They found the Captain standing at a table on which lay the little heathen collaborator.
Can you take his leg off?
His leg?
At the knee. Now. Before the foot mortifies.
I can try.
The joiner went back to the fires and he borrowed Evans’ reaping hook and went back to the tent with the kid and Evans and Providence for surgical assistants. They forced an inch of brandy down the child’s throat and gagged him and held him down and the joiner sliced through the joint like a butcher. They cauterised the wound as best they could under the Captain’s instruction and poured brandy over it and bound it tightly to stop the bleeding. They left the child lying in the tent in the sure expectation that he would die and then all retired to the tents and slept.
On the day following the Captain received intelligence through Johnny Fingo and in the night they went out again and they did so five more times in the weeks that followed. In November General Cathcart declared the Kromme area free of heathen and marched north on campaign against the chieftain of the Basotho mountain kingdom which he hoped would provide the press with a victory that would cement his reputation in an arena where so many others had lost theirs.
The irregulars remained at Blakeway’s farm and as that southern land tilted north towards summer there was little to do but patch their uniforms and establish the true range of the Minié rifle by shooting at each other from distances of up to eight hundred yards or holding similar competitions at closer range with thrown spears.
The heathen child recovered and the joiner made him a wooden leg and the boy proved its utility by stamping out heathen reels while the Fingos sang.
He would give, the Captain remarked to Lieutenant Bruce, new ideas to Scotchmen who indulge in the Highland fling.
Blakeway’s was in walking distance from Fort Cox and often after roll call in the evening the men would go there to visit the taverns and sometimes officers from the town would come to picnic with the Captain and Lieutenant Bruce. There was a small stream that flowed a hundred yards below the tents and the irregulars sank the bed of it to make a pool for bathing and the joiner erected a small platform above it by way of a diving board.
When the Captain had visitors the officers would take bottles of wine and baskets of ham and cheese and bread and go down to the pool. On long summer afternoons they stood the little heathen on the platform and took a line from a fishing rod and tied the end to his wooden leg. On the Captain’s command the child leapt into the pool and sank head down and the wooden leg bobbed about like a float.
And so, on one such afternoon, the officers beat their fists upon their thighs and reeled about in an ecstasy of laughter as a major of the Cape Mounted Rifles, a large bearded man recovering from a leg injury, wound the little heathen in with all the excitement and ceremony of a competitive angler who has unaccountably hooked old Ahab’s whale.
The summer came on and the days were drowsy with the sound of bees and birds and the singing cicadas and the Captain became aware that discipline among his men was becoming lax. He spoke to Herrid and the Sergeant Major organised conspicuous night patrols which the irr
egulars easily avoided when they stumbled back from Fort Cox.
On a balmy December evening Herrid returned from his patrol with a crone and two attendants and a princess who told Johnny Fingo that she was the sister of the heathen general Jinqi. The women were taken to the Captain and they stood by the side of his fire and he examined them. The princess was naked from the waist up and her dark-tipped breasts rose up and they seemed to the Captain like the dark noses of young goats that sought to nuzzle him.
Where did you find them, he asked Herrid.
On the road, said Herrid.
Just standing there on the road?
Yes, Skipper.
The Captain looked once more at the women and the crone nodded her head and smiled and said something to the princess.
Ask her what her name is.
Johnny Fingo asked the question and the princess replied and the crone interjected at great length.
She says her name is Noziah.
Noziah?
The old one says that she is the sister of Jinqi.
Which one is the sister of Jinqi?
The young one.
The Captain pointed.
This one?
Yes.
The old one says Jinqi is the son of Ngqika who is the son of Mlawu who is the son of Rharhabe who is the son of Phalo who is the father of all the heathen.
The Captain nodded and the crone began to speak once more.
She asks if they can go, said Johnny Fingo.
Where are they going?
They are going to Jinqi.
Ask them where he is.
Johnny Fingo asked the question and the women shook their heads.
They will not say.
The Captain nodded.
Put them in the tent closest to me, he said. Give them something to eat and drink. You can use my stores. In the morning those three can go.
He pointed to the older women.
I will look after the chieftain’s sister. And when he agrees to meet with me, we’ll bring her to him.
Johnny Fingo spoke with the women who seemed unsurprised by the Captain’s suggestion. Herrid and Johnny Fingo took the women away. As they were leaving the Captain called Herrid back.
I’ve been meaning to mention, Sergeant Major. I had a letter from my friend Doctor Anderson. He’d like us to get him a nice sample of a head.
A head, said Herrid.
He wants a heathen head. A good sample. He wants to get accurate measurements. He’s a phrenologist.
A what, Skipper?
He can deduce your character from measurements of your skull. Do you think you can get a head for him?
Herrid nodded.
I’ll tell the men, he said.
The Captain and Lieutenant Bruce were left alone.
What are you going to do with this princess, asked the Lieutenant.
I want to meet her brother. We can take him some brandy. I believe he drinks like a fish.
Lieutenant Bruce raised his eyebrows.
That would not exactly be in keeping with—
With what?
With the etiquette that normally prevails between belligerents.
We are hardly belligerents at the moment, said the Captain. And General Cathcart is in Basotholand.
That’s true.
We’ll make an expedition of it, said the Captain. I think the men could do with some exercise.
A week later the crone returned to Blakeway’s farm with a message that the Captain could meet with Jinqi on the eastern heights of Mount Misery. The Captain was glad of some activity, legitimate or no, and he prepared for the expedition with great care. He rode to Fort Cox and spoke to a friend of Lieutenant Bruce’s who had a brother in the commissariat. Through him the Captain sourced a train of pack mules and supplies sufficient for a week’s journey which included six bottles of brandy and some claret and a cask of Cape Smoke and three young oxen for slaughter.
The party went up to the Kromme Heights by Hartung’s path with the princess and the crone riding on pack horses and the Captain’s vat on a mule in case he or Lieutenant Bruce came upon a suitable location for a scenic bath. The irregulars were glad of the cool of the forest because the day was hot and they gained the heights at noon and marched north towards the path onto the Northern Highlands and made camp just outside of musket range of the trees.
The joiner worked with Herrid and they assembled a great turning spit and Providence slaughtered the first of the oxen. The Captain sat with Lieutenant Bruce and the princess and the crone and they drank claret and Johnny Fingo translated the conversation.
Afterwards the Captain noted in his book that the princess was the equal of any untutored woman he had come into contact with.
She understands thoroughly, he wrote, the intricate policy being played out at the Cape, the position of the Dutch and English settlers, and the use the heathen might make of these two antagonistic interests for their own profit. She is also aware of the task the missionaries are performing, the progress of English civilisation, and the good and evil it is bringing to the land.
On the day following the irregulars rose in a bright clear dawn and marched onto the forest path. The heathen and Hottentots hanged there had been pecked and eaten away and most had dropped from their ropes like overripe fruit. The princess and the crone rode in front with the Captain and they turned right on a faint track and went up through the forest and came out on the western slopes of Mount Misery. They proceeded round the mountain and the crone led them by a cunningly concealed path to its eastern side. The track wound up through great blocks of stone and forest that broke up that face where it loomed over the Southern Twin. They moved on a great template of the crude hand axe that marks the beginnings of human history and they came out on a small plateau and halted. The ground dropped away sheer to the east and north and in the west it rose up in rocky forested blocks to the sharpened peak.
The crone went up into the forest and the Fingos and the irregulars arranged themselves in a waiting semicircle with their loaded weapons discreetly at the ready. An hour later Jinqi came down at the head of his party. Seen at close range he was perhaps fifty years old and he wore a cloak of tiger skin draped over one shoulder and pinned at the chest. He carried a Westley Richards double-barrelled rifle in his right hand. A warrior at his right shoulder led his white horse and at his left was the giant with bones about his neck and the wolf skin at his groin that the kid had first seen on the Kromme Heights at the time he saved Jones to no purpose which he could afterwards ascertain. After the chieftain and the giant came some sixty well-armed warriors.
The party came on and the chieftain halted some ten yards in front of the Captain. The warriors behind spread out so that they faced the irregulars in an opposing semicircle. Most carried stabbing and throwing spears but some were armed with firelocks.
The chieftain stood and examined the Captain with an eye that took in the physical detail of the Captain’s parade ground uniform and the weaponry and moved on to note the Captain’s youth but also the attentive energies that moved between that officer and his men.
The chieftain nodded and then he raised his hand.
Siyakubona, he said, and the words mean, in the native tongue, we see you.
He is greeting, said Johnny Fingo.
Tell the chieftain I am honoured to meet him.
Johnny Fingo turned with the gravity of the Queen’s ambassador to St Petersburg and conveyed the compliment and the chieftain looked impassively at the Captain and nodded.
The Captain took a bottle of brandy from his bag and handed it to Johnny Fingo.
Give him this.
Johnny Fingo took the bottle and held it out to the chieftain. The chieftain took the brandy and he took out the cork and he sniffed at the contents. He lowered the bottle and held it away from his feet and turned it over so that the contents gurgled steadily out onto the ground. When the bottle was empty he dropped it and he leant forward and he spat on it.
I don’t like the look of this, said Lieutenant Bruce.
Put a gun on him, said the Captain.
Lieutenant Bruce thumbed back the hammer of his rifle and lifted it and pointed it at the chieftain’s head. The irregulars murmured and reached for weapons and the heathen warriors did likewise.
The chieftain looked at Lieutenant Bruce and then he looked at the Captain and he held up his hand. His men froze at the gesture and they kept their eyes on him. The chieftain ascertained that he had the officers’ attention also and then he turned and pointed carefully and accurately at some six locations on the rocky outcrops behind him. And at each of these the Captain saw two or three Hottentot snipers in commanding positions behind impenetrable cover. All of these men had weapons trained on the Captain and Lieutenant Bruce.
The chieftain turned back and looked at the Captain with his head slightly tilted.
Keep the gun on him, said the Captain.
The chieftain smiled but his eyes did not. He seemed tired suddenly but he stood relaxed and attentive nonetheless and he spoke to Johnny Fingo.
He says he comes to talk, said Johnny Fingo.
The Captain looked at him and then he looked up at the Hottentot snipers and the chieftain smiled.
Put the gun down, said the Captain. It’s not going to do us any good.
Lieutenant Bruce obeyed and the heathen warriors relaxed very slightly from their attentive readiness.
Tell him I also come to talk, said the Captain.
Johnny Fingo obeyed and the chieftain looked at the Captain without expression and nodded.
Let’s try the snuff, said the Captain.
Herrid took from his bag a new tin of that substance and opened it and stepped forward and offered it to the chieftain. The chieftain took the tin and took a pinch and held it to his nostril and inhaled deeply. He passed the tin on to the giant and he did not sneeze. The tin was passed on among the heathen seniors and then it came back to the Captain and to Lieutenant Bruce who both took some and sneezed violently. The chieftain watched without expression.