Blue Horizon

  The rutted road from High Weald back to the town led through a forest of tall yellow-wood trees with trunks as thick as cathedral columns. Keyser halted his troop as soon as they were hidden from the homestead. He looked down at the little Bushman at his stirrup, who gazed back at him with the eager expression of a hunting dog.

  “Xhia!” He pronounced the name with the explosive sound of a sneeze. “Soon they will send someone with a message to wherever the young rogue is hiding. Watch for the messenger. Follow him. Do not let yourself be seen. When you have found the hiding-place, return to me swiftly. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Gwenyama.” He used the term of utmost respect, which meant He Who Devours His Enemies. He knew that Keyser enjoyed the title. “I know who they will send. Bakkat is an old rival and enemy of mine. It will give me pleasure to bring him down.”

  “Go, then. Keep watch.”

  Xhia slipped away into the yellow-wood forest, silent as a shadow, and Keyser led the troop of horsemen back towards the castle.

  The lodge at Majuba was a single long room. The low roof was thatched with reeds from the banks of the stream that flowed close by the door. The windows were slits in the stonework, curtained by the dried skins of eland and bluebuck. There was an open fireplace in the centre of the earthen floor, with a hole in the roof above to let the smoke escape. The far corner of the hut was screened off by a hanging curtain of rawhide.

  “We put my father behind that curtain when we came hunting up here. We thought it might deaden the sound of his snores,” Jim told Louisa. “Of course it didn’t work. Nothing could deaden his snores.” He laughed. “But now we will put you there.”

  “I don’t snore,” she protested.

  “Even if you do, it won’t be for long. We’re going to move on as soon as I have rested the horses, repacked the loads and put some decent clothes on you.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “We will go on before they can send soldiers after us from the castle.”

  “To where?”

  “I don’t know.” He smiled at her. “But I will tell you when we get there.” He gave her an appraising glance. Her tattered shift left her almost naked and she drew the cloak around herself. “You are hardly dressed for dinner with the governor at the castle.” He went to one of the mule packs, which Zama had stacked against the wall. He rummaged in it and pulled out a roll of trade cloth, and a canvas housewife roll, which contained scissors, needles and thread. “I hope you can sew?” he asked, as brought them to her.

  “My mother taught me to make my own clothes.”

  “Good,” he said. “But we will sup first. I haven’t eaten since breakfast two days ago.”

  Zama ladled out venison stew from the three-legged hunter’s pot standing on the coals. On top of it he placed a chunk of stiff maize cake. Jim took a spoonful. With his mouth full he asked Louisa, “Did your mother teach you to cook also?”

  Louisa nodded. “She was a famous cook. She cooked for the Stadholder of Amsterdam, and the Prince of the House of Orange.”

  “Then you have much employment here. You shall take over the cooking,” he said. “Zama once poisoned a chief of the Hottentots, without even exerting himself. You may not think this a great accomplishment, but let me tell you that a Hottentot will grow fat on what kills the hyenas.”

  She glanced at Zama uncertainly, her spoon half-way to her mouth. “Is that true?”

  “The Hottentots are the greatest liars in all Africa,” Zama answered, “but none can match Somoya.”

  “So it is a joke?” she asked.

  “Yes, it is a joke,” Zama agreed. “A bad English joke. It takes many years to learn to understand English jokes. Some people never succeed.”

  When they had eaten, Louisa spread out the roll of cloth and began to measure and cut. Jim and Zama unpacked the mule loads that Jim had thrown together in such haste, and they noted and rearranged the contents. With relief Jim donned his own familiar boots and clothing, and gave Keyser’s tunic and breeches to Zama. “If we ever get into a battle with the wild tribes of the north, you can impress them with the uniform of a Company colonel,” he told him.

  They cleaned and oiled the muskets, then replaced the flints in the locks. They placed the lead pot on the fire and melted lead to cast additional balls for the pistol Jim had captured from Colonel Keyser. The shot bags for the muskets were still full.

  “You should have brought at least another five kegs of powder,” Zama told Jim, as he filled the powder flasks. “If we meet hostile tribes when we start hunting, this will not last long.”

  “I would have brought another fifty kegs, if I had found another twenty mules to carry them,” Jim said acidly. Then he called across the hut to where Louisa was kneeling over the bolt of material she had spread on the floor. She was using a stick of charcoal from the fireplace to mark her pattern before cutting it. “Can you load and fire a musket?”

  She looked abashed, and shook her head.

  “Then I shall have to teach you.” He pointed to the material she was working on. “What is that you are making?”

  “A skirt.”

  “A stout pair of trousers would be more useful, and would take less cloth.”

  Her cheeks turned an intriguing shade of pink. “Women don’t wear trousers.”

  “If they are going to ride astride, walk and run, as you are, then they should.” He nodded at her bare feet. “Zama will make you a fine pair of velskoen boots from eland skin to go with your new trousers.”

  Louisa cut the legs of her trousers very full, which made her appear even more boyish. She trimmed the tattered hem of her convict shift into a long shirt that she wore over the top and it hung half-way down her thighs. She gathered this in at the waist with a rawhide belt that Zama made for her. She learned that he was an expert sailmaker and leather-worker. The boots he made fitted her well. They reached half-way up her calves, and he turned the fur on the outside, which gave them a dashing appearance and enhanced the length of her legs. Lastly, she made herself a canvas bonnet to cover her hair and keep off the sun.

  Early the next morning Jim whistled for Drumfire. He charged up from the bank of the stream where he had been cropping the young spring grass. In his usual display of affection, he pretended he was going to run his master down. Jim bestowed on him a few affectionate insults while he slipped the bridle over his head.

  Louisa appeared in the door of the hut. “Where are you going?”

  “To sweep the back trail,” he told her.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I must go back the way we came to make certain we are not being followed,” he explained.

  “I would like to come with you, for the ride.” She looked out at Trueheart. “Both the horses are well rested.”

  “Saddle up!” Jim invited her.

  Louisa had hidden a large chunk of maize bread in the pouch on her belt, but Trueheart smelt it as soon as she stepped out of the door of the hut. The mare came to her at once, and while she ate the bread Louisa settled the saddle on her back. Jim watched her buckle the girth and mount. She moved easily in her new breeches.

  “She must be the luckiest horse in Africa,” Jim commented, “to have exchanged the colonel for you. An elephant for a hedgehog.”

  Jim had saddled Drumfire: he slid a long musket into the sheath, slung a powder horn over his shoulder then sprang on to Drumfire’s back. “Lead the way,” he told her.

  “Back the way we came?” she asked, and without waiting for his reply she started up the slope. Louisa had a light hand on the reins, and a natural seat. The mare seemed not to notice her weight, and flew up the steep mountainside.

  From behind Jim appraised her style. If she was accustomed to the side-saddle, she had adapted readily to riding astride. He remembered how she had endured during the long night ride, and was amazed at how quickly she had recovered. He knew that she would be able to keep up, no matter how gruelling the pace he set.

&nb
sp; When they reached the crest, he moved into the lead. Unerringly he found his way back through the labyrinth of valleys and defiles. To Louisa each sheer cliff and hillside seemed the same as the one before it, but he twisted and turned through the maze without hesitation.

  Whenever a new stretch of ground opened before them he dismounted and climbed to a vantage-point to scan the terrain ahead through the lens of his telescope. These halts gave her respite to enjoy the grand scenery that surrounded them. After the flat country of her native land, these mountain tops seemed to reach to the heavens. The cliff walls were umber, red and purple. The scree slopes were densely clad with shrubs: some of their flowers looked like huge pincushions, and the colours were daffodil yellow and brilliant orange. Flocks of long-tailed birds swarmed over them, probing their curved beaks deeply into the flowers.

  “Suiker-bekkies—sugar-beaks,” Jim told her, when she pointed them out. “They are drinking the nectar from the protea bushes.”

  It was the first time since the shipwreck that she had been able to look around her, and she felt drawn by the beauty of this strange new land. The horrors of the Meeuw’s gundeck were already fading, seemed now to belong to an old nightmare. The path they were following climbed another steep slope, and Jim stopped below the skyline and handed her Drumfire’s reins to hold, while he climbed to the crest to observe the far side of the mountain.

  She watched him idly. Suddenly his manner changed abruptly. He ducked down, doubled over, and scrambled back to where she waited. She was alarmed, and her voice shook: “Are we being followed? Is it the colonel’s men?”

  “No, it’s much better than that. It’s meat.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Eland. Herd of twenty or more. Coming straight up the far side towards us.”

  “Eland?” she asked.

  “The largest antelope in Africa. As big as an ox,” he explained, as he checked the priming in the pan of the musket. “The flesh is rich with fat and closer to the taste of beef than any other antelope’s. Salted and dried or smoked the flesh of a single eland will last us many weeks.”

  “Are you going to kill one? What if the colonel is following us? Won’t he hear the shot?”

  “In these mountains the echoes will break up the sound and confuse the direction. In any event, I cannot miss this opportunity. We are already short of meat. I must take the chance if we are not to starve.”

  He took hold of the bridles of both horses and led them off the path, then stopped behind an outcrop of raw red rock.

  “Dismount. Hold the horses’ heads, but try to stay out of sight. Don’t move until I call you,” he ordered Louisa, and then, carrying the musket, he ran back up the slope. Just before he reached the crest he dropped into the grass. He glanced back and saw that she had followed his instructions. She was squatting down so that only her head was visible.

  “The horses will not alarm the eland,” he told himself. The eland would take them for other wild game.

  With his hat he wiped the sweat out of his eyes, and wriggled down more comfortably behind a small rock. He was sitting, not lying flat. Fired from the prone position the recoil of the heavy musket might break his collar-bone. He used his hat as a cushion and laid the stock of the musket on it, aiming up the slope.

  The profound silence of the mountains settled over the valley; the soft hum of insects in the protea blossoms and the lonely, plaintive whistle of a red-winged mountain starling sounded abnormally loud.

  The minutes passed as slowly as honey dripping, then Jim lifted his head. He had heard another sound that made his heartbeat trip. It was a faint clicking, like dry sticks being tapped together. Jim recognized it instantly. The eland antelope has a peculiar characteristic, unique in the African wild: the mighty sinews in its legs make a strange click with each step it takes.

  Bakkat, the little yellow Bushman, had explained to Jim when he was a child how this had come about. One day in that far-off time when the sun had risen on the first day and the world was new with the dew still fresh upon it, Xtog who was the father of all the Khoisan, the Bushmen, caught in his cunning snare Impisi, the hyena. As all the world knows, Impisi was and still is a powerful magician. As Xtog was sharpening his flint knife to cut his throat, Impisi said to him, “Xtog, if you set me free, I will make a magic for you. Instead of my flesh, which stinks of the carrion I eat, you will have hills of white fat and mountains of the sweet meat of the eland roasting on your fire every night of your life.”

  “How can this be, O Hyena?” Xtog had wondered, although he was beginning to drown in his own saliva at the thought of the eland meat. But the eland was a cunning animal and difficult to find.

  “I will place a spell on the eland so that wherever he roams over desert and mountain he will make a sound that will guide you to him.”

  Thus Xtog had set Impisi free, and from that day onwards the eland has clicked as he walks to warn the hunter of his approach.

  Jim grinned as he remembered Bakkat’s story. Gently he drew back the heavy hammer of the musket to full cock, and settled the brassbound butt into his shoulder. The clicking sounds grew louder, stopping as the animals that made them paused, then coming on again. Jim watched the skyline just ahead of where he lay and suddenly a massive pair of horns rose against the blue. They were as long and thick as a strongman’s arm, spiralled like the horn of the narwhal, polished black so the sun glinted upon them.

  The clicking sound ceased and the horns turned slowly from side to side, as if the animal that carried them was listening. Jim heard his breath whistling in his ears, and his nerves tightened like the string of a crossbow. Then the clicking sound began again and the horns rose higher, until two trumpet-shaped ears and a pair of huge eyes appeared beneath them. The eyes were dark and gentle, seeming to swim with tears. Long curling lashes veiled them. They stared directly into Jim’s soul, and his breath stopped. The beast was so close that he could see it blink, and he dared not move.

  Then the eland looked away, swinging its great head to stare down the slope up which it had come. Then it started forward towards Jim, and the rest of its body came into view. He could not have circled that thick neck with his arms: a heavy dewlap hung beneath it, swinging ponderously with each pace. Its back and shoulders were blue with age, and it stood as tall as Jim himself.

  Only a dozen paces from where he sat it stopped and lowered its head to pull the new spring leaves from a cripplewood bush. Over the ridge behind the bull, the rest of the herd came into view. The cows were a soft creamy brown, and although they carried the long spiral horns, their heads were more graceful and feminine. The calves were a ruddy chestnut, the younger ones hornless. One dropped its head and butted its twin playfully, then they bucked and chased each other in a circle. The mother watched with mild disinterest.

  The hunter’s instinct drew Jim’s eyes back to the great bull. It was still chewing the cripplewood. It was an effort for Jim to reject this old animal. Despite the mighty trophy it carried, its flesh would be tough and gamy, its fat sparse.

  Bakkat’s philosophy came back to him: “Leave the old bull to breed, and the cow to suckle her young.” Slowly Jim turned his head to examine the rest of the herd. At that moment the perfect quarry came up over the ridge.

  This was a much younger bull, not more than four years old, his hindquarters so plump they seemed to be bursting from his glossy golden-brown hide. He turned aside, attracted by the shiny green leaves of a gwarrie tree. The branches were laden with ripe purple berries, and the young bull moved round until he was facing Jim. Then he stretched up to nibble at the berries, exposing the creamy curve of his throat.

  Jim traversed the barrel of the musket towards him. His movements were as slow as the advance of a chameleon on a fly. The frolicking calves kicked up dust and distracted the usually watchful gaze of the cows. Carefully Jim laid the bead of the foresight on the base of the bull’s throat, on the crease of skin that encircled it like a necklace. He knew that even at suc
h close range either of the beast’s massive shoulder-blades would flatten and stop the musket ball. He had to find the gap in the animal’s brisket through which he could drive the ball deep into the vitals to tear through the heart, lungs and pulsing arteries.

  He took up the slack in the trigger and felt the resistance of the sear. Steadily he increased the pressure, staring hard at his aiming point on the throat, resisting any impulse to jerk the trigger that final hair-breadth. The hammer fell with a loud snap, and the flint struck a shower of sparks off the frizzen, the powder in the pan ignited in a puff of white smoke, and with a bass roar the butt slammed back into his shoulder. Before he could be unsighted by the heavy recoil and the gush of powder smoke, Jim saw the eland hump its back in a mighty spasm. He knew from this that the ball had sliced through its heart. He sprang to his feet to see over the bank of smoke. The young bull was still frozen in agony, its mouth gaping. Jim could see the bullet wound, a dark, bloodless hole in the smooth hide of the throat.

  All around him the rest of the herd burst into flight, scattering away down the rocky hillside in a mad gallop, loose stones and dust flying from under their hoofs. The stricken bull backed away, racked in a gigantic contortion. Its legs shook and quivered, and it sank back on its haunches. It lifted its head to the sky and the bright lung blood sprayed from its gaping jaws. Then it twisted over and fell on its back, all four legs kicking spasmodically in the air. Jim stood and watched the beast’s last throes.

  His jubilation was gradually replaced by the melancholy of the true hunter, caught up in the beauty and tragedy of the kill. As the eland subsided and was still, he laid aside the musket and drew the knife from its sheath on his belt. Using the horns as a lever he pulled back the beast’s head and, with two expert incisions, he laid open the arteries on each side of the throat and watched the bright blood flow out. Then he lifted one of the massive back legs and cut away the scrotum.