Zouga squatted by the King’s chair in the royal enclosure as he had for almost thirty successive days. The King sent for him each day, and he must listen to Mzilikazi’s wisdom and eat huge quantities of half-raw beef washed down by pot after pot of beer.
‘Without a horse my warriors will overrun them before they can reload, even as we did to the Griquas, and afterwards we picked up over three hundred of their precious guns from the battlefield.’
Zouga nodded his agreement, smiling inwardly as he imagined the amadoda trying those tactics on a square of British infantry.
Mzilikazi broke off to lift the beer pot. and then as he lowered it the sparkle of one of Zouga’s tunic buttons caught his eye, and he leaned across to pluck at it. Resignedly Zouga took the clasp knife from his pocket and carefully cut the threads that held the button. He handed it to the king, and Mzilikazi grinned with pleasure and held it to the sunlight.
‘Only five to go,’ Zouga thought ironically. He felt like the Christmas turkey being plucked a feather at a time. His lapel badges and field officer’s pips had long since been taken by the King, as had his belt buckles and helmet badge.
‘The paper,’ Zouga started and the King waved airily, dismissing the reference to the concession.
He might be on the verge of senility and certainly he was an alcoholic, drinking seven gallons of beer each day, by Zouga’s count, but still Mzilikazi possessed a cunning and devious intellect with a natural grasp of his own bargaining weaknesses and strengths. He had teased Zouga for thirty days, just as he had teased the watching nation on the third day of the Chawala,while they had waited for him to hurl the war-spear.
Now the King turned away from Zouga at the mention of the concession, and transferred his attention to the young couple who knelt before him. They had been accused, and come before the King for judgement.
That day, in between chatting with Zouga, Mzilikazi had received emissaries bearing tribute from two of his vassal chieftains, he had rewarded a young herdboy for saving his herd from a marauding lion, he had sentenced to death another who had been seen drinking milk directly from the udder of one of his charges, he had listened to the reports of a messenger from the impis campaigning in the north against the Makololo, and now his attention was on the accused couple before him.
The girl was a lovely creature, with long delicately formed limbs and a sweetly rounded face with full flaring lips over small very white teeth. She kept her eyes tightly closed, so as not to look upon the King’s wrath, and her body was shaken with tremors of terror as she knelt before him. The man was a finely muscled young warrior, from one of the unmarried regiments, who had still to win the honour of being allowed to ‘go in to the women’.
‘Rise up, woman, that the King may see your shame,’ the voice of the accuser rang out, and hesitantly, timidly, still with her eyes tightly closed, the girl lifted her forehead from the dusty earth, and sat back on her heels.
Her naked stomach, drum tight and round as a ripening fruit, bulged out above the tiny beaded apron.
The King sat hunched in his chair, brooding silently for many minutes, then he asked the warrior,
‘Do you deny this thing?’
‘I do not deny it, Nkosi Nkulu.’
‘Do you love this wench?’
‘As I love life itself, my King.’ The man’s voice was low and husky, but firm and without a quaver to it.
The King brooded again.
Zouga had sat by and watched the King give judgement on a hundred such occasions. Sometimes the decision had been worthy of a black Solomon, at others Zouga had been appalled by the barbaric savagery of the sentence.
Now the King stared at the man before him, and he fiddled with the toy spear in his right hand, frowning and shaking his head softly, then he reached a decision, and leaning forward he proffered the weapon to the man who knelt before him.
‘With this blade, open the womb of the woman you love, take out from it that which offends against law and against custom – and place it in my hands.’
Zouga did not sleep that night, and once he threw off his blankets and hurried to the fringe of the acacia grove to retch and heave, vomiting up his horror at what he had witnessed.
In the morning the memory of the girl’s screams had not faded but the King was jocular and garrulous, pressing pot after pot of sour beer on Zouga’s rebellious stomach, recounting episodes from his long and eventful life, describing vividly the scenes from his childhood and youth in far-off Zululand with a certain old man’s wistful nostalgia.
Then suddenly, without any prior hint that he would do so, he commanded Zouga, ‘Speak the words of your paper.’
He listened silently as Zouga translated the terms of the concession he was seeking, and at the end he mused a moment.
‘To hunt elephant and to dig a hole,’ he mumbled at last. ‘It is not so very much you wish for. Write that you will do these things only in the land below the Zambezi, east of the Inyati River and above the Limpopo.’
Not quite convinced that the King was this time serious, Zouga quickly added the proviso to the foot of his homegrown legal document.
Then he directed the King’s trembling hand to form the big uncertain cross below it.
‘Mzilikazi: his mark.’
The King’s pleasure in affixing the wax seal beside his mark was childlike and unaffected. After it was done he passed it to his Indunas to admire, and leaned forward towards Zouga.
‘Now that you have what you want from me, you will wish to leave.’ There was regret in the rheumy eyes, and Zouga felt a pang of guilt, but he replied directly.
‘I cannot hunt in the rains, and there is much work for me to accomplish in my own land across the sea. I must go, but I shall return, Nkosi Nkulu.’
‘I give you the road to the south, Bakela the Fist. Go in peace and return to me soon, for your presence pleases me, and your words are wise for one still so young.’
‘Stay in peace, Great Elephant.’ Zouga rose and left the King’s courtyard, and his step was as light as his spirits were gay. He had the concession buttoned into the breast-pocket of his tunic, fifty-six pounds of native gold in his chest, the stone bird of Zimbabwe, and three fine tusks of ivory to buy his way. The road to the south, to Good Hope and to England lay open before him.
The wind was offshore, a faint backlash of the monsoon, but the sky was low and grey and the twisting squalls of rain fell from it like pearl dust.
Ensign Ferris, Black Joke’s most junior officer, was taking his sights off the traverse board as the gunboat closed the land, calling them quietly to the signals yeoman who swiftly worked out the distance offshore, and wrote this down on the navigation slate, so that at any moment the Captain could glance down at it to confirm his own observations.
There was a man in the bows with a leadline, chanting the depth as he read it from the markings on the line, then twirling the weight and hurling it out ahead of Black Joke’s creeping bows, letting it sink and then reading the mark again as the ship passed over it.
‘By the deep six.’
Clinton Codrington was conning his ship in by the leadsman’s chant, by the angles that Ferris was shooting off the land features which they had identified, by the colour shadings of the water, by the break and swirl of the tide on shoal and bank, and by a seaman’s instinct. The chart surveyed thirty years previously by Captain Owen, R.N., he trusted not at all.
‘Bring her around a point,’ he told the helmsman quietly, and as the ship swung towards the land, they smelt it on the wind.
‘Slave stink!’ exclaimed Denham fiercely, and as he said it the masthead lookout sang out sharply,
‘Smoke! Smoke from the right bank of the river.’
‘How far up stream?’
‘Two miles or more, sir!’
For the first time since sailing from Zanzibar harbour, Clinton allowed himself to believe that he was in time, that he had reached the Rio Save in time to answer the heartrending appeal of the woman he
loved.
‘We will clear for action, if you please, Mr Denham, but don’t run out the guns.’ He kept his voice level and formal, but his Lieutenant grinned at him.
‘A fair cop, by Jove. Congratulations, sir,’ and the crew laughed and skylarked as they lined up at the arms chest to receive their pistol and cutlass.
As Black Joke breasted the breaking white water of the bar, touched sand bottom for a moment and then broke the grip of it, and surged forward into the dark green and still waters of the estuary, Clinton nodded at Denham.
‘You may run out the guns now.’
He had delayed until this moment to avoid altering the ship’s trim during the critical passage of the bar. With the carriages rumbling ominously, Black Joke bared her fangs and under fighting sail, her bronze propeller thrashing exultingly, her crew armed and eager, she went into the labyrinth of the Rio Save like a ferret into the warren.
Clinton took her around the first bend, following the deep green sweep of the channel between the paler sandbanks. It was two hours past low tide and the flood was pushing strongly, the leadsman calling good bottom and Clinton was trying to conceal his impatience and eagerness by the calm controlled tone in which he called his orders to the helm.
‘Would you just look at that!’ exclaimed Ferris, and pointed over the side. Beside them floated what looked like an ebony log. It was only as they passed and it bobbed and rolled in their wake that Clinton realized that it was a human corpse, stomach distended, round and shiny with gas and limbs twisted like the branches of a tree blasted by lightning. Clinton transferred his attention back to the ship, with a small grimace of distaste.
‘Meet her,’ he told the helmsman and then as they tore around the broad curve of water between the mangrove forests and the full stretch of the estuary opened ahead of them, he said, ‘Midships!’
His voice was flat, unemotional, neither triumphant nor dejected. Smoke rose from the bank of the river, and through his glass he could see the smouldering remains of a series of long low buildings, roofs burned through and collapsed inwards. They seemed to have been deliberately fired.
In the smoke soaring and circling on spread wings rose a host of birds, buzzards and kites and vultures and the carrion-eating marabou storks. They seemed to reach up with the smoke to the belly of the lowering monsoon clouds, dimming the light of day with their wings. The oppressive towering silence was broken only by the faint high cries of the birds, and the river was empty.
Clinton and his officers stared silently at the wide deserted sweep of the Rio Save, green and smooth from bank to mangrove-clad bank. No one spoke as Black Joke bore on, close in to the ruined and blackened barracoons. They stared at the piles of corpses, their faces stiff and expressionless, concealing their horror at the foul plague that lurked there in the palm groves, concealing also their disappointment and chagrin at finding the anchorage deserted and Huron gone.
‘Stop engine,’ Clinton broke the silence. ‘Let go port anchor.’
Denham and Ferris turned to look at their Captain, their carefully controlled expressions cracking with disbelieving dread; he was going to send a party ashore. They would come back aboard carrying the plague with them, they would all be doomed.
The bow anchor hit the mud of the estuary bottom, and Black Joke turned sharply, the flow of the tide swinging her across the narrow channel in her own length, the anchor holding her head until she was pointed directly back down the river towards the sea. Immediately Clinton gave the order, ‘Slow ahead,’ and, as the ship breasted the tide, ‘Up anchor,’ and the steam winch clattered merrily. The officers relaxed visibly, and Denham allowed himself to smile with relief. The Captain had used the anchor merely to turn the ship as swiftly as possible without going through the dangerous business of backing and filling in the narrow channel against the push of the tide.
As the anchor came back aboard with the gluey black mud clinging to its flukes, Clinton gave another series of orders.
‘Half ahead.’ That was as fast as he dared push for the open sea.
‘Secure from action stations.’
There was no enemy to fight and as the heavy long-barrelled thirty-two pounder guns were run in, Black Joke handled more easily.
‘Mr Ferris, we will fumigate the ship.’
The smoke from the pails of burning sulphur would redden all their eyes and for days would taint the food and water, but Clinton’s dread of smallpox outweighed such small considerations as comfort, and, besides, he smiled wryly to himself, any change to the taste of Black Joke’s bullied beef and hard bread could only be an improvement.
The smile was fleeting. He was sickened by his brief glimpses of the barracoons, and his anger was a cold sharp thing like the blade of the cutlass on his belt.
‘Mr Denham,’ he said quietly, ‘please plot a course for Good Hope. We’ll come on to it the moment we clear the land.’
He moved to the rail, half his mind on the job of conning Black Joke out of this stinking green river into the open sea, the other half of his mind running swiftly over the problem of bringing his ship into action against Huron.
How long was the start that the tall clipper had over his gunboat? Robyn Ballantyne’s letter had been dated 16th November, today was the 27th November. Eleven days. That was too much. He could only hope that Robyn had been able to delay the sailing, as she had promised.
Clinton glanced back over his shoulder at the blue smoke column that blurred the horizon. How long had those fires in the barracoons been burning? Not more than three or four days, he guessed, with more hope than conviction. Yet even that was still too long a start. He had seen Huron on a wind and she was swift as a swallow, and light as a witch. Even with eight hundred slaves in her holds, and her water casks filled, she would toy with Black Joke in any wind better than a light breeze. His only advantage would be in the offing that Huron must make to get on the trades and weather the bulge of the continent, while Black Joke could cut across the other arm of the triangle, hugging the land. It was small advantage, a few hundred leagues, and in the end it would all depend on the wind.
Clinton found he was pounding his clenched fist on the ship’s rail, that he was glaring ahead with such ferocity that the idle hands of the lee rail were watching him curiously.
With an effort he forced his features to relax, and linked his hands at the small of his back, beneath the tails of his uniform coat, but his eyes still glittered pale sapphire blue and his lips were chalky with stress. It seemed too long for his patience before he could at last bring Black Joke on to her true course, and bend to the engine room voice-tube.
‘I want all the speed you can squeeze out of her,’ he told his engineer. ‘There is twenty thousand pounds of prize money just below the horizon, but it’s running like a fox and I’ll need every pound of steam you can give me.’
He straightened up and the wind whipped his pale golden hair against his sun-gilded cheeks and forehead. He glanced up at the sky and saw the ponderous roll of the monsoon clouds on the wind.
Huron would have it full and boisterous on her port beam, with that hull and rigging it was probably her best point of sailing.
He knew that there was not the remotest chance of finding the clipper on the open sea, there were millions of square miles of ocean to cover – not even a battle fleet with a full squadron of frigates ideally placed ahead of the fugitive would have much chance of finding a single ship in that infinity of water.
Clinton knew that his only chance was to reach the southern tip of the continent ahead of Huron and to take up station athwart the narrow shipping lane that was threaded around Cape Point. However, once Huron rounded the southern cape, the whole of the wide Atlantic would lie ahead of her and she would be gone again. Clinton’s jawline clenched spasmodically at the thought of the American escaping into that limitless expanse of sea. If she had indeed eleven days’ lead on him with this wind holding fair, she could even at this moment be raising the rocky cliffs of Cape Point. He put
the thought from his mind and concentrated on coaxing every inch of speed from his ship over the long days and nights ahead.
Robyn had searched in vain for a subterfuge to delay Huron departure from the Rio Save, even though she knew that if she succeeded she would be endangering the lives of all aboard her. However, Mungo St John had swiftly regained his energy and determination as his wound healed and the effects of the inoculation passed. Affected by Robyn’s warning about the danger of battlefield plagues, he forced the pace of his crew in loading the slaves. They worked through the night by the light of tar-dipped rope torches, as well as by day, the crew every bit as eager as their Captain to be away from this cursed river. Four days after the loading began, Huron’s slave-decks were in place and her cargo of slaves aboard, and that evening at the full of the tide, using the last of the light and the first gusts of the offshore night breeze, Huron slipped over the bar, shook out her reefs and settled down to make her offing during the night.
At dawn they caught the steady push of the trades and Mungo brought her round on to a more southerly heading, close-hauled to make good their eastings before running for the bulge of Agulhas with the wind on the beam.
The sweet clean air of the open sea that had travelled thousands upon thousands of miles since last having touched land, swept through the ship, cleansing it of the dreadful stench of the plague barracoons, and Mungo’s strict hygienic discipline helped to keep the holds free of the slave stink and impressed even Robyn, though reluctantly, with his forethought and his precautions.
By sacrificing a single slave deck, raising the space between each from the traditional 20 inches to 32 inches, he allowed not only greater comfort but easier access. In these mild conditions of wind and sea, the slaves were exercised during all of the daylight hours, the higher headroom and wider ladderways enabled even those in the lowest decks to be brought up on deck in batches of fifty at a time. On the main deck they were forced to dance to the rhythm of a tribal drum beaten by a tattooed naked tribesman, the rattle and clink of their chains made a mournful background music to the drum and the sweet sound of the singing slaves.