Tom was ready to give over the quarter-deck to Kumrah and go down to the small saloon for the supper that he could smell Sarah was cooking: he recognized the rich aroma of one of her famous spiced boboties and saliva flooded into his mouth. He spent a few more minutes checking the set of the sails and the pointing of the helmsman. Satisfied at last, he turned towards the head of the companionway, then stopped abruptly.
He stared at the dark eastern horizon and muttered, mystified, “There is a great fire out there. Is it a ship ablaze? No, it’s something greater than that. The fires of a volcano?”
The crew on deck had seen it too and crowded to the rail, gawking and gabbling. Then, to Tom’s utter astonishment, there burst over the dark horizon a monstrous ball of celestial fire. It lit the dark surface of the sea. Across the water the sails of the Revenge glowed palely in this ghostly emanation.
“A comet, by God!” Tom shouted in wonder, and stamped on the deck above the saloon. “Sarah Courtney, come up here at once. You have never seen aught such as this, nor will you ever again.”
Sarah came flying up the ladder with Dorian close behind her. They stopped and stared in wonder, struck speechless by the splendour of the sight. Then Sarah came to Tom and placed herself within the protective circle of his arms. “It is a sign,” she whispered. “It’s a benediction from on high for the old life we have left behind at Good Hope, and a promise of the new life that lies ahead of us.”
Dorian left them, moved slowly down the deck until he reached the bows and sank to his knees. He turned his face up to the sky. “All the days of mourning have passed,” he said. “Your time here on earth with me is over. Go, Yasmini, my little darling, I commit you to the arms of God, but you must know that my heart and all my love go with you.”
Across the dark water Mansur Courtney saw the comet, and he ran to the main shrouds and leaped into them. He clambered swiftly upwards until he reached the maintop. He threw an arm around the top-gallant mast, balancing lithely against the roll and pitch of the hull, which were magnified by the sixty feet that separated him from the surface of the sea. He lifted his face to the sky and his long, thick hair streamed back in the wind. “The death of kings!” he cried. “The destruction of tyrants! All these portentous events heralded by God’s finger writing in the heavens.” Then he filled his lungs and shouted into the wind, “Hear me, Zayn al-Din! I am Nemesis, and I am coming for you.”
Night after night as the two little ships sailed northwards the comet climbed overhead, seeming to light their way, until at last they picked out a tall bluff of land that rose out of the dark waters ahead of their bows like the back of a monstrous whale. At the northern end of the promontory, the whale’s mouth opened. They sailed through this entrance into a huge landlocked bay, far greater in extent than the Lagoon of the Elephants. On one side the land was steep-to, on the other it stretched in dense mangrove swamps, but between them lay the lovely embouchure of a river of sweet, clear water flanked by gently sloping beaches that offered a natural landing place.
“This is not our first visit to this place. Dorian and I have been here many times before. The natives hereabouts call this river Umbilo,” Tom told Sarah, as he steered for the beach and dropped his anchor in three fathoms. Looking over the side they could watch the steel flukes burying themselves in the pale, sandy bottom and the brilliant shoals of fish swirling as they feasted on the small crabs and shrimps disturbed from their burrows by the anchor.
When all the canvas was furled, the yards sent down and both ships at rest, Tom and Sarah stood by the rail and watched Mansur row ashore from the Revenge, eager to explore these new surroundings.
“The restlessness of youth,” Tom said.
“If restlessness is the sign of tender age, then you are an infant in arms, Master Tom,” she replied.
“That is most unfair to me,” he chuckled, “but I shall let it pass.”
She shaded her eyes and studied the shoreline. “Where is the mail stone?”
“There, at the foot of the bluff, but do not set your hopes too high.”
“Of course not!” she snapped at him, but she thought, he need not try to protect me from disappointment. I know, with a mother’s sure instinct, that Jim is close. Even if he has not yet reached this spot, he soon will. I need only be patient, and my son will come back to me.
Tom offered an olive branch by changing the subject in a placatory tone: “What do you think of this spot upon the globe, Sarah Courtney?”
“I like it well enough. Perhaps I will grow to like it even more if you allow me to rest here more than a day and a night.” She accepted his peace-offering with a smile.
“Then Dorian and I will begin to mark out the site for our new fort and trading post immediately.” Tom lifted his glass to his eye. He and Dorian had done most of this work on their last visit to Nativity Bay. He ran the glass over the site they had chosen then. It was on a promontory in a meander of the river. Because the Umbilo waters enclosed three sides, it was easy to defend. A constant supply of fresh water was also assured, and there was a good field of fire in all directions. In addition, it was under the guns of the anchored ships and would benefit from their support in the event of an attack by savage tribesmen or other enemies.
“Yes!” He nodded with satisfaction. “It will suit our purpose well enough. We will start work tomorrow at the latest, and you shall design our private quarters for me just as you did at Fort Providence twenty years ago.”
“That was our honeymoon,” she said, with awakening enthusiasm.
“Aye, lass.” Tom smiled down at her. “And this shall be our second of that ilk.”
The small band of horsemen moved slowly across the veld, dwarfed by the infinite landscape that surrounded them. They led the pack-horses and let the small herd of remounts follow at their own pace. Animals and men were lean and hardened by the journey. Their clothing was ragged and patched, their boots long ago worn out and discarded, to be replaced by new ones crudely sewn from the skins of the kudu antelope. The tack of the horses was abraded by their passage through the thorn thickets, the seats of the saddles polished by the riders’ sweaty backsides.
The faces and arms of the three Dutchmen were burned as dark as those of the Hottentot troopers. They rode in silence, strung out behind the tiny trotting figure of Xhia, the Bushman. Onwards, ever onwards, following the tracks of the wagon wheels that ran ahead like an endless serpent across the plains and the hills.
The troopers had long ago given up any thought of desertion. It was not only the implacable determination of their leader that prevented them but also the thousands of leagues of wilderness that had already unfurled behind them. They knew that a lone horseman would have little chance of ever reaching the colony. They were herd animals, forced to stay together to survive. They were not only the prisoners of Captain Herminius Koots’s obsession, but also of the great empty distances.
Koots’s worn leather jacket and breeches were patched and stained with sweat, rain and red dust. His lank hair hung down to his shoulders. It was bleached white by the sun, and the ends were raggedly trimmed with a hunting knife. With his gaunt sun-darkened features and his pale, staring eyes he seemed indeed a man possessed.
For Koots the lure of the reward had long ago faded: he was driven onwards by the need to quench his hatred in the blood of his quarry. He would allow nothing, neither man nor beast nor the burning distances, to cheat him of that ultimate fulfilment.
His chin was sunk on his chest, but now he lifted it and stared ahead, eyes narrowed behind the colourless lashes. There was a dark cloud across the horizon. He watched it climb higher into the sky and roll towards them across the plain. He reined in and called to Xhia: “What is this that fills the sky? It is not dust or smoke.”
Xhia cackled with laughter and broke into a gleeful dance, shuffling and stamping. The distances and hardships of the journey had not wearied him: he had been born to this life. Enclosing walls and the company of hordes of his fell
ow men would have jaded him and chafed his spirit. The wilderness was his hearth, the open sky his roof.
He broke into another of his paeans of self-praise and vilification of his mad, cruel master that he alone of all the company could understand. “Slimy white worm, you creature with skin the colour of pus and curdled milk, do you know nothing at all of this land? Must Xhia, the mighty hunter and slayer of elephants, nurse you like a blind, mewling infant?” Xhia jumped high and deliberately broke flatus, with such force that the wind stirred the back flap of his loincloth. He knew that this would drive Koots into a rage. “Must Xhia, who stands so tall that his long shadow terrifies his enemies, Xhia beneath whose mighty prong women squeal with joy, must Xhia always lead you by the hand? You understand nothing that is written plain upon the earth, you understand nothing that is blazoned in the very heavens.”
“Stop that monkey chatter at once,” Koots shouted. He could not understand the words but he recognized the mockery in the tone, and knew that Xhia had farted only to provoke him. “Shut your filthy mouth, and answer me straight.”
“I must shut my mouth but answer your questions, great master?” Xhia switched into the patois of the colony, a mixture of all the languages. “Am I then a magician?” Over the months of their enforced companionship they had learned to understand each other much better than they had at the beginning, both in words and in intent.
Koots touched the hilt of the long hippopotamus-hide sjambok that hung by its thong from the pommel of his saddle. This was another gesture well understood by them both. Xhia changed his tone and expression again, and danced just beyond the reach of the whip. “Lord, this a gift from the Kulu Kulu. Tonight we will sleep with full bellies.”
“Birds?” Koots asked, and watched the shadow of this cloud sweep across the plain towards them. He had been amazed by the flocks of the tiny quelea bird, but this was far greater in height and extent.
“Not birds,” Xhia told him. “These are locusts.”
Koots forgot his anger, and leaned back in the saddle to take in the size of the approaching swarm. It filled half of the bowl of the sky from horizon to horizon. The sound of wings was like that of a gentle breeze in the high branches of the forest, but it mounted swiftly, becoming next a murmur, a rising roar and then a thunder. The great swarm of insects formed a moving curtain whose trailing skirts swept the earth. Koots’s fascination turned to alarm as the first insects, buzzing low to earth, slammed into his chest and face. He ducked and cried out, for the locust’s hind legs are barbed with sharp red spikes. One left a bloody welt across his cheek. His horse reared and plunged under him, and Koots threw himself from the saddle and seized the reins. He turned the horse’s rump towards the approaching swarm, and shouted to his men to do the same. “Hold the pack-horses and knee-halter the spares, lest they are driven away before this pestilence.”
They forced the animals to their knees, then shouted and jerked the reins until reluctantly they rolled flat on their sides and stretched out in the grass. Koots cowered behind the body of his own horse. He pulled his hat well down over his ears, and turned up the collar of his leather coat. Despite the partial protection afforded by the horse, the flying creatures slapped against any exposed parts of his body in a continuous hailstorm, each with the strength to sting painfully through the folds of his coat.
The rest of the band followed his example and lay behind their mounts, taking cover as though from enemy musket balls. Only Xhia seemed oblivious to the rain of hard bodies. He sat out in the open, snatching up the locusts that hit him and were stunned by the impact. He broke off their legs and goggle-eyed heads and stuffed the bodies into his mouth. The carapaces crunched as he chewed and the tobacco-coloured juices ran down his chin. “Eat!” he called to them as he chewed. “After the locust comes famine.”
From noon to sundown the locust swarm roared over them like the waters of a great river in flood. The sky was darkened by them so that the dusk came on them prematurely. Xhia’s appetite seemed insatiable. He gobbled down the living bodies until his belly bulged, and Koots thought he must succumb to his own greed. However, Xhia was possessed of the same digestive tract as a wild animal. When his belly was stretched tight and shiny as a ball he staggered to his feet and tottered away a few paces. Then, still in full sight of Koots and with the breeze blowing directly to where Koots lay, Xhia lifted the tail flap of his loincloth and squatted again.
It seemed this abundance of food served only to lubricate the action of his bowels. He defecated copiously and thunderously, and at the same time picked up more of the fluttering insects and stuffed them into his mouth.
“You disgusting animal,” Koots shouted at him, and drew his pistol, but Xhia knew that even if Koots thrashed him regularly, he could not kill him, not thousands of leagues from the colony and civilization.
“Good!” He grinned at Koots, and made the gesture of inviting him to join the feast.
Koots holstered his weapon and buried his nose in the crook of his arm. “When he has served his purpose I will strangle the little ape with my own hands,” Koots promised himself, and gagged on the odours that wafted over him.
As darkness fell, the mighty locust swarm sank down out of the air and settled to roost wherever it came to earth. The deafening buzzing of their wings faded, and Koots rose to his feet at last and stared about.
For as far as he could see in every direction the earth was covered waist deep with a living carpet of bodies, reddish brown in the light of the sunset. The trees of the forest had changed shape as the swarms settled upon them. They were transformed into amorphous haystacks of living locusts, seething and growing larger as more insects settled upon those already at roost. With a crackle like volleys of musketry the main branches of the nearest trees gave way under the weight and came crashing down to earth, but still the locusts piled on to them and devoured the leaves.
From their burrows and lairs the carnivores emerged to feast upon this bounty. Koots watched in wonder as hyena, jackal and leopard became bold with greed and rushed upon the mounds of insects, gobbling them down.
Even a pride of eleven lions joined the banquet. They passed close to where Koots stood, but took not the slightest notice of the men or the horses, for they were preoccupied with the feast. Like grazing cattle they spread out across the plain, their noses to the earth, devouring the seething heaps of locusts, champing them between their great jaws. The lion cubs, their bellies stuffed full, stood up on their back legs and playfully batted the flying creatures out of the air as they were disturbed into flight again.
Koots’s troopers swept a clear patch of earth, and built a fire on it. They used the blades of their spades as frying pans, and on these they roasted the locusts crisp and brown. Then they crunched them up with a relish almost as keen as Xhia’s. Even Koots joined in and made a meal of these titbits. When night fell the men tried to compose themselves to rest, but the insects swarmed over them. They crawled into their faces, and their spiked feet rasped and scratched any exposed part of their skin and kept them from sleep.
The next morning when the sun rose it revealed a strange antediluvian landscape of dull featureless red-brown. Swiftly the sun warmed the motionless masses of locusts that had been chilled into a stupor during the night. They began to stir, to undulate and hum like a disturbed hive. Suddenly, as if at a signal, the entire horde rose into the air and roared away towards the east, borne on the morning breeze. For many hours the dark torrents streamed overhead, but as the sun reached its zenith the last had passed on. Once more the sky was brilliant blue and unsullied.
Yet the landscape they left behind was altered out of all recognition. It was bare earth and rock. The trees were denuded of their foliage, the bare branches snapped off to lie tangled below the stark boles and twisted trunks. It was as though a conflagration had consumed every leaf and green sprig. The golden grasses that had undulated in the breeze like the scend of the ocean were gone. In their place was this stony desolation.
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nbsp; The horses snuffled the bare earth and pebbles, then stood disconsolately, their empty bellies already rumbling with gases. Koots climbed to the top of the nearest bare hillock and played his telescope over the stony desert. The herds of antelope and quagga that had infested the land the previous day were gone. In the distance Koots made out a pale mist of drifting dust that might have been raised by the exodus of the last herds from this starvation veld. They were moving southwards to search for other grasslands that had not been devastated by the locusts.
He went back down the hill and his men, who had been arguing animatedly, fell silent as he walked into the camp. Koots studied their faces as he filled his mug with coffee from the black kettle. The last grain of sugar had been used up weeks before. He sipped from the mug, then snapped, “Ja, Oudeman? What is it that is worrying you? You have the same pained expression as an old woman with bleeding piles.”
“There is no grazing for the horses,” Oudeman blurted.
Koots made a show of amazement at this revelation. “Sergeant Oudeman, I am grateful to you for pointing this out to me. Without your sharp sense of perception I might have overlooked it.”
Oudeman scowled at the laboured sarcasm. He was not sufficiently glib or well enough educated to match Koots in word-play. “Xhia says that the herds of wild game will know which way to go to find grazing. If we follow them they will lead us to it.”
“Please go on, Sergeant. I never tire of gleaning these jewels of your wisdom.”
“Xhia says that since last night the game herds have started moving southwards.”
“Yes.” Koots nodded, and blew noisily into the mug of hot coffee. “Xhia is right. I saw that from the hilltop up there.” He pointed with the mug.
“We must go southwards to find grazing for the horses,” Oudeman went on stubbornly.
“One question, Sergeant. Which way are the tracks of Jim Courtney’s wagon heading?” Using the mug again, he pointed out the deep ruts, which were even more obvious now that the grass no longer screened them.