Men of Men

by Wilbur Smith

  The Union Jack unfurled above their heads and a bugler sounded the advance.

  ‘Heroes every one of them,’ Ralph grinned at Cathy. ‘But it’s up to the likes of me to see our heroes through.’

  His shirtsleeves were rolled high on his muscled arms and a disgracefully stained hat was cocked over one eye.

  ‘When I come back, we’ll be richer by eighty thousand pounds,’ he told her, and lifted her off the ground with his embrace.

  ‘Oh Ralph, how I wish I were coming with you.’

  ‘You know Mr Rhodes has forbidden any women to cross the frontier – and you’ll be a damned sight safer and more comfortable at Lily’s Hotel in Kimberley with Jordan to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Then be careful, my darling,’ she cautioned him, breathless from his hug.

  ‘No need for that, Katie, my sweet. The devil looks after his own.’

  ‘These are not men coming to dig holes.’ Gandang stood forth from the circle of indunas. ‘They are dressed as soldiers; they bring guns that can break down the granite hills with their smoke.’

  ‘What did the king promise Lodzi?’ demanded Babiaan. ‘That he may come in peace to look for gold. Why does he march against us like an army?’

  Bazo spoke for the young men. ‘Oh great King, the spears are bright and our eyes are red. We are fifteen thousand men; can the king’s enemies stand against us?’

  Lobengula looked at his handsome eager young face. ‘Sometimes the most dangerous enemy is a hasty heart,’ he said, softly.

  ‘And at other times, Bull Elephant of Kumalo, it might be a tardy spear arm.’

  A shadow of irritation at importunate youth passed behind the king’s eyes; then he sighed. ‘Who knows?’ he agreed. ‘Who knows where the enemy lies?’

  ‘The enemy lies before you, great King; he has crossed the Shashi river and he has come to take your land from you,’ Somabula told him. And then Gandang stood again:

  ‘Let the spears go, Lobengula, Son of Mzilikazi, let your young men run – or as the sun will rise tomorrow, that surely will you live to regret it.’

  ‘That I cannot do,’ Lobengula said softly. ‘Not yet. I cannot use the assegai when words may still suffice.’ He roused himself and his voice firmed.

  ‘Go, Gandang, my brother, take your hot-hearted son with you. Go to the leader of these soldiers and ask him why he comes into my lands in battle array, and bring his answer to me here.’

  Frederick Selous rode ahead, a trooper with an axe following him, and he pointed out the trees to be cut.

  The trooper blazed them with a slash of the axe, and followed Selous on. The axemen came up behind them, fifty of them, riding in pairs. One man dismounted, handed his reins to his partner, spat on his already callused hands and, hefting the axe, addressed himself to the trunk of the doomed tree.

  While his axe thudded and the wood chips flew white as bone in the sunlight, the second man sat in the saddle, his rifle in his hands, and he watched the forest around him for the first plumed head and long tasselled shield to appear. When the tree crackled and toppled, the axeman mounted and they rode on to the next, where he took his turn on guard while his mate swung the axe. Behind them the bullock spans came plodding to chain the fallen trunks and drag them out of the road, and then the whole ponderous caravan rumbled forward.

  It was slow work, and on the third day Ralph rode to the head of the column to discuss with Selous the possibility of using the steam engine to haul the smaller trees, roots and all, from the sandy earth. They had left their horses with a trooper and walked forward for a better view of the way ahead when Ralph said quietly: ‘Stand your ground, Mr Selous. Do not draw your pistol, and, in God’s name, do not show any agitation.’

  There were dark and moving shadows in the forest all around them, and then suddenly the dreaded long shields were there, forming a wall across their front.

  ‘Has the king killed any white men?’ a deep voice challenged. ‘If he has not, then why has this impi of warriors crossed his border?’

  ‘Lobengula has killed nobody,’ Ralph called back.

  ‘Then have the white men mislaid something of value – that they come to seek it here?’

  Ralph said quietly to Selous. ‘I know this man. He is one of the king’s senior indunas. The one with the red shield behind him is his son; between them they disposed of eight thousand men. It would be as well to tread warily, Mr Selous. We are surrounded by an army.’

  Then he addressed himself to the watching and waiting warriors: ‘The king has given us the road.’

  ‘The king denies that he called an army to enter his domain.’

  ‘We are not an army,’ Ralph denied, and Gandang threw back his head and laughed briefly and bitterly. Then he spoke again:

  ‘Hear me, Henshaw, no white man steps beyond this place without the word of Lobengula. Tell that to your masters.’

  Ralph whispered briefly with Selous, and then faced Gandang again.

  ‘We will wait,’ he agreed, ‘for the king’s word.’

  ‘And we will watch while you wait,’ Gandang promised ominously, and at a gesture the warriors melted away into the forest again and it seemed they had never been.

  ‘Pull in the pickets,’ Colonel Pennefather ordered. ‘Put the wagons into laager. Ballantyne, can you get a message back to Tuli on the heliograph and have someone post up to GuBulawayo to find what are Lobengula’s real intentions.’ And, as Ralph turned to hurry away, ‘Oh, one other thing, Ballantyne, can you start the generator and have the searchlight ready to sweep the area around the camp tonight. We don’t want those fellows creeping up on us in the dark.’

  Gandang and his son stood together on the crest of one of the little rocky kopjes that dotted the wide hot plain between the rivers.

  They were alone, although when Bazo turned his head and looked down the steep back-slope of the hill, he could see the bivouac of their combined impis. There were no cooking fires to disclose their presence to the white men; they would eat cold rations and sleep in darkness this night. The long, black ranks squatted with enforced patience, dense as hiving bees beneath the shading branches of the mopani.

  Bazo knew that he had only to lift his right arm above his shield to bring them to their feet and send them racing away, silent and ferocious as hunting leopards, and the thought gave him a savage joy. Reluctantly he turned back, and stood quietly with his shield not quite touching his father’s.

  The little afternoon breeze coming up from the river stirred their war plumes, and they gazed down upon the laager of the white men.

  The bullocks had been penned within the circle of the wagons, and they could see the field guns and the Maxim machine-guns posted at the points of the barricade, their positions fortified with biscuit boxes and ammunition cases from the wagonloads. The gun crews lounged near their weapons, yet somehow the whole scene appeared tranquil and unwarlike.

  ‘In the dark hour before the dawn, we could take them before they could stand to their guns,’ murmured Bazo. ‘It would be so quick, so easy.’

  ‘We will wait on the king’s word,’ his father replied, and then started and exclaimed.

  ‘What is it, my father?’

  Gandang lifted his assegai and pointed with it southwards, to the pale blue horizon, far beyond the Shashi river, to the faint line of hills, shaped as fantastically as the turreted towers of a fairy castle.

  On those far pale hills, something flickered and sparkled, a tiny speck of brightest white light, like a fire-fly in flight, or like the twinkle of the morning star.

  ‘The stars,’ Gandang whispered with superstitious awe, ‘the stars are shining on the hills.’

  The little group of officers stood behind the tripod of the instrument and focused their telescopes on the distant twinkle of light.

  The heliograph operator called the message aloud, at the same time scribbling it on his signal pad. ‘Jove advises hold your position pending clarification Lobengula’s intention.’ Jove was the c
ode for Mr Rhodes.

  ‘Very well.’ Pennefather closed his telescope with a snap. ‘Acknowledge message received and understood.’

  The operator bent to the prism of the instrument and made a minute adjustment in its focus, turning one mirror to catch the sunlight and the second to reflect it directly towards the line of distant hills; then he seized the handle and the shutter clattered as it blinked the beam of sunlight, speeding the dots and dashes of the Morse code instantaneously across fifty miles of wilderness.

  Pennefather turned away and crossed briskly to the massive steam engine on its tall steel wheels. He looked up at Ralph on the footplate.

  ‘Are you ready to light up, Ballantyne?’

  Ralph removed the long black cheroot from between his teeth, and gave a parody of a military salute.

  ‘We’ve got sixty pounds of pressure on the boiler. Another half hour and she’ll be whistling out of the valve.’

  ‘Very well.’ Pennefather hid his mystification. He neither understood nor admired these demoniacal contraptions. ‘Just as long as we have light by nightfall.’

  Gandang sat on his shield with his fur kaross of monkey skins over his shoulders. The winter evenings were cold, even here in the lowlands. There were no fires in the bivouac – and he could barely make out the faces of his junior commanders who sat opposite him, for the last flush of the sunset was fading from the western sky.

  ‘It was something that all of us saw, and something that we have never seen before.’

  They murmured agreement.

  ‘It was a star, fallen from the heavens, and it lay upon the hills. We all saw it.’

  ‘In the morning I will send two of our swiftest runners to the king. He must know of this terrible witchcraft.’ He stood up and let his kaross fall. ‘Now I am going—’ He did not finish the sentence.

  Instead he dropped into a defensive crouch and flung up his shield to cover his head, and around him his warriors wailed like frightened children, their eyes wide and white, glinting in the flood of light that burst down upon them from the sky.

  The evening stars were washed out by the brilliance of the great white beam that reached from earth to heaven, and threw the hills into crisp black silhouette.

  ‘The sun has returned,’ Gandang croaked in religious terror. ‘It is the prophecy, the whole prophecy. The stone falcons have flown, the stars shine on the hills, and now the sun burns at midnight.’

  Fort Salisbury

  20th Sept. 1890

  My darling Kate,

  Over two months since last I kissed you – and I am missing your cooking, amongst other things!

  You will see by the address that we have reached our destination – although we lost a man drowned, another to drink, a third bitten by a mamba and a fourth eaten by a lion – the Matabele touched not one of us.

  So Lobengula kept his word – to the surprise of all, and the disappointment of not a few. After one exchange of insults with old Gandang at the head of 8,000 of his bully boys, they let us pass – and the rest of it was rather tedious – just sweat and blisters!

  The great Selous almost lost us once – but then I showed him the pass through the hills which Isazi and I found when we made our little foray to Great Zimbabwe. Selous called it Providential Pass (providential that I was with him, I’d say), and he took the kudos (to which he is welcome). He will probably write another book about his feat!

  We reached Mount Hampden on the 6th instant, and it gave me a turn to think that Papa had been the first man here all those years ago.

  However, Pennefather, in his great wisdom, decided there was insufficient water there and moved us all twelve miles across here. Of course the man is a new chum, fresh out from home, so how is he to know that this place will turn into a swamp with the first rains. (I intend to be well away by then!)

  I have visited some God-forsaken places on my travels – but this one gets the coconut! It’s infested with lions – and I’ve lost 15 oxen to them already. The grazing is sour veld – the remaining beasts are losing condition – oh, how I long for the sweet-veld of Matabeleland. Trust the Matabele to pick the best stock country, so I’ll not be too surprised when others start thinking about Lobengula’s herds and pastures. If only the cunning old blighter had thrown his war spear and given us the excuse, we might be hoisting the flag over GuBulawayo now – rather than over this dreary spot.

  Oh well! At least I am the only one here with whisky – two wagonloads of it – and doing a roaring trade at £10 the bottle. You shall have the prettiest bonnet in Kimberley when I return, Katie my heart.

  The day Pennefather hoisted the flag the boys were free to go their own way – and what a stampede there was! Everyone intent to be the first to peg the gold reef we’ve heard so much about. Some of them are crawling back already, tail between their legs. This is no Eldorado – if there is gold, they’ll have to work for it – and then, of course, Mr Rhodes and his British South Africa Company will take half of it. Of course, they all were happy enough about the Company’s cut when they signed on – but they are starting to bellyache about it now.

  We had a message on the ‘Helio’ this morning that the British South Africa Company shares are selling for £3-15s-0d. each in London, and 5,000 new shareholders on the books in the first week. Well, all I can say is that whoever is paying that price has never seen Fort Salisbury!

  ‘Young Ballantyne,’ says Leander Starr Jameson to me, ‘you were damnably lucky to take half your fees payable in B.S.A. shares valued at £1 each.’

  ‘Jameson,’ says I, ‘it’s strange how the harder I work and the harder I think, the luckier I get.’

  So I have 40,000 B.S.A. shares, Katie my love, and you will find here attached a letter addressed to Aaron Fagan, my solicitor in Kimberley, instructing him to sell every last one of them. Take it around to him posthaste, that’s a good girl. We’ll be well rid of them at a profit of £2-15s-0d. each, and that’s God’s truth! Perhaps I’ll buy you two bonnets when I come back!

  Oh, if only we had Matabeleland – no wonder Lobengula left Mashonaland to the Mashonas! Though they don’t call it that any more. The new name that is all the rage is Rhodesia – no less!

  What an ungainly name it is, but no doubt Mr Rhodes will be flattered and my brother Jordan will be delighted. They are welcome to my share of Rhodesia – Don’t forget to take the letter to Fagan, mind!

  Nonetheless, there is still a penny to be made here. I have taken a partner, and we are building a General Store and Bar-room. He will run both businesses, as well as the Salisbury Depot for my wagons. He seems an honest lad, our Tom Meikle, and hard-working, so I have given him a wage of £5 a month and ten per cent of the profits – no point in spoiling him! Just as soon as we get the building up and the stocks on the shelves, I will leave him to it and be on my way back to you.

  Mr Rhodes wants me to contract to erect the telegraph line from Kimberley to Fort Salisbury for him at a price of £25,000. I reckon there will be £10,000 profit in it. You shall have three bonnets, Katie, I swear it to you!

  I must leave here by the 10th of next month if I am to beat the rains. Once they start the mosquitoes are going to take over Fort Salisbury, and every river between here and the Shashi will be a flood that would break even Noah’s heart.

  Thus I expect to reach Kimberley by the end of October, so take a good look at the floor, Katie my sweet, for when I get there you will be looking at nought but the ceiling for a week – and my word on it!

  Your loving husband,

  Ralph Ballantyne

  (Ex Major B.S.A. Police Retired!)

  ‘We must have Matabeleland. It is as simple as that,’ said Zouga Ballantyne, and Jordan looked up sharply from his pad of Pitman’s shorthand.

  His father sat in one of the deep buttoned leather chairs facing Mr Rhodes’ desk. Beyond him the green velvet curtains were open and held with yellow tasselled ropes of silk. The view from this top floor of the De Beers Company buildings took in a wide sw
eep of the dry Griqualand plain dotted with camel-thorn trees, and closer to hand the stacking ground where the blue earth from the Kimberley mine was left to deteriorate in the brilliant sunshine before being made to yield up its precious diamonds.

  Jordan had no eyes for the view now; his father’s words had shocked him. But Mr Rhodes merely hooded his eyes and slumped massively at his desk, gesturing for Zouga to continue.

  ‘The Company shares are six shillings in London, against three pounds fifteen on the day we raised the flag at Fort Salisbury three years ago—’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Rhodes nodded.

  ‘I have spoken with the men that remain; I have spent the last three months travelling from Fort Victoria to Salisbury as you bid me. They won’t stay, Mr Rhodes. They won’t stay unless you let them go in and finish it.’

  ‘Matabeleland.’ Rhodes lifted his great shaggy head, and Jordan thought how terribly he had aged in these last three years. ‘Matabeleland,’ he repeated softly.

  ‘They are sick of the constant menace of Lobengula’s hordes upon their borders; they have convinced themselves that the gold they did not find in Mashonaland lies under Lobengula’s earth; they have seen Lobengula’s fat herds of choice cattle and compared them to their own lean beasts that starve on the thin sour veld to which they are restricted—’

  ‘Go on,’ Rhodes nodded.

  ‘They know that to reach them the telegraph and the railroad must come through Matabeleland. They are sick to the guts with malaria and the constant fear of the Matabele. If you want to keep Rhodesia, you must give them Matabeleland.’

  ‘I have known this all along. I think we all have. Yet we must move carefully. We must be careful of the Imperial Factor, of Gladstone and of Whitehall.’ Rhodes stood up and began to pace back and forth before the shelves laden with leather-bound books titled in gold leaf.