Authors: Wilbur Smith
‘Your brother-in-law has other important work to do—’
‘Stealing the king’s cattle,’ Clinton cut in acidly.
It was already common knowledge that Zouga Ballantyne had been given the task of rounding up the vast Matabele herds and bringing them in to GuBulawayo for distribution.
However, Jameson might not have heard the remark, and he went on smoothly. ‘Besides, Reverend, you and your wife have been close friends of Lobengula for many years, he trusts and likes
you. But, since it was Major Ballantyne who delivered our ultimatum, Lobengula looks upon him as an enemy.’
‘Not without reason,’ Clinton murmured dryly. ‘However, Doctor, I refuse to be your Judas goat.’
‘Your presence with the column may help to avert another bloody conflict, with the inevitable result of hundreds if not thousands more Matabele slaughtered. I would think it your Christian
duty to try to prevent that.’
Clinton hesitated, and Mungo murmured. ‘Do point out, Doctor Jim, that after Lobengula surrenders, Reverend Codrington will be in a position to comfort and protect him, to ensure that the
king is kindly treated and that no harm befalls him. I give him my word on that.’
‘Very well,’ Clinton capitulated sadly. ‘On the understanding that I am to be the king’s protector and advisor, I will go with your column.’
‘T
hey follow,’ Gandang said softly. ‘They still follow.’ And Lobengula lifted his face and looked at the sky. The rain
drops, heavy and hard as newly minted silver shillings, struck his cheeks and forehead.
‘The rain,’ said Lobengula. ‘Who said they could not follow us in the rain?’
‘It was me, my King, but I was wrong,’ Gandang admitted. ‘When he marched from GuBulawayo, One-Bright-Eye had three hundred men and four of the little guns with three legs
which chatter like old women. He also had wagons and one big cannon.’
‘I know this,’ said the king.
‘When the rains came, I thought that they had turned back, but now my scouts have come in with heavy news to tell. One-Bright-Eye has sent back half of his men and the wagons, the cannon
and two of the little three-legged guns. They could not ride over the mud – but—’ Gandang paused.
‘Do not try to spare me, my brother, tell me it all.’
‘He comes on with half his men, and two little machine-guns drawn by horses. They are travelling fast, even in the mud.’
‘How fast?’ the king asked quietly.
‘They are a day’s march behind us, tomorrow evening they will camp here on this very river.’
The king pulled the tattered old coat around his shoulders. It was cold in the rain, but he did not have the energy to crawl under the canvas of his wagon tent. He looked out across the
watercourse. They were camped on the Shangani river, but almost a hundred and fifty miles higher than where the first battle of the war had been fought upon the headwaters of this same river.
They were in thick mopani forest, so thick that a road had to be chopped through it to allow the king’s wagons to pass. The terrain was flat and relieved only by the clay hills of the
termite nests that dotted the forest, some of them as large as houses, others the size of a beer keg, just big enough to smash the axle of a wagon.
The sky, grey and heavy as the belly of a pregnant sow, pressed down upon the tops of the mopani. Soon it would rain heavily again, these fat drops were merely a warning of the next deluge to
come, and that trickle of muddy water, the colour of a drunkard’s bile, down the middle of the watercourse would be a roaring torrent again within minutes of the onslaught.
‘One hundred and fifty men, Gandang,’ the king sighed. ‘How many have we?’
‘Two thousand,’ said Gandang. ‘And perhaps tomorrow or the next day Gambo may come to join us with a thousand more.’
‘Yet we cannot stand against them?’
‘The men we would eat. It is those little guns with three legs, oh King, not even ten thousand warriors, each with the liver of a lion, could prevail when they begin to laugh. But if the
king commands, we will run—’
‘No! it is the gold,’ Lobengula said suddenly. ‘The white men will never let me be until they have the gold. I will send it to them. Perhaps then they will leave me in peace.
Where is Kamuza, my young induna? He speaks the language of the white men. I will send him to them.’
Kamuza came swiftly to the king’s bidding. He stood attentively in the spattering rain beside the front wheel of the wagon.
‘Place the little bags of gold in the hands of the white men, Kamuza, my trusted induna, and say to them thus, “You have eaten up my regiments and killed my young men, you have
burned my kraals and scattered the women and children of Matabeleland into the hills where they burrow for roots like wild animals, you have seized my royal herds, and now you have my gold. White
men, you have it all, will you now leave me in peace to mourn my lost people?”’
There were ten bags of white canvas, stamped with black lettering. They made a heavy burden for one man to carry. Kamuza knelt and tied them together in bunches, and then packed each bunch into
a leather grain bag.
‘To hear is to obey, Great Elephant,’ Kamuza saluted his king.
‘Go swiftly, Kamuza,’ Lobengula ordered softly. ‘For they are close upon us.’
W
ill Daniel sat his own horse, with the brim of his hat pulled down to protect the bowl of his clay pipe from the drizzling rain, and over his
shoulders he wore a rubber groundsheet which glistened with moisture and gave him a pregnant, clumsy look as he slumped barrel-bellied in the saddle.
On lead reins he held two other horses, one was a pack animal whose burden was covered by a white canvas sheet. Daniel no longer bore the lofty rank of sergeant. After his conduct at the secret
valley of the Umlimo, Zouga Ballantyne had seen him reduced to trooper, and as an additional mortification, he was now acting as batman to one of the officers of the flying column. The packhorse
carried Captain Coventry’s traps.
The other horse belonged to Will’s old comrade in arms, Jim Thorn. That worthy was crouched behind a thorny shrub a short way off, with his belt hanging around his neck and cursing
bitterly in a low monotone.
‘Filthy bleeding water, stinking bloody rain – God-forsaken country—’
‘Hey, Jimmo, your backside must be on fire by now. That’s the twelfth time today.’
‘Shut your ugly face, Will Daniel,’ Jim shouted back, and then dropped back into his dismal monotone. ‘Bloody gut-breaking trots—’
‘Come on, Jim my lad.’ Will lifted the brim of his hat to peer about him. ‘We can’t fall too far behind the rest, not with the bush crawling with bloody black
savages.’
Jim Thorn came out from behind the bush re-buckling his belt, but wincing with another bout of stomach cramps. He climbed gingerly up into the saddle, and the three horses plodded along in the
deep yellow muddy ruts of the horse-drawn carts which carried the two Maxim machine-guns.
The rear of the column was out of sight ahead of them amongst the dripping mopani trees. The two of them had soon learned to loiter at the back away from the scrutiny of the officers, so that
they would not be ordered into the thigh-deep mud when the Maxim carts bogged down and had to be man-handled through one of the glutinous ‘mopani holes.’
‘Look out, Will!’ Jim Thorn yelled suddenly, and his oilskins flapped like the wings of a startled rooster as he tried to draw his rifle from its scabbard. ‘Look out, bloody
savages!’
A Matabele had stepped silently out of the thick bush alongside the cart tracks, and now he stood directly in front of the horses and held up his empty hands to show the white men that he was
unarmed.
‘Wait, Jimmo!’ Will Daniel called. ‘Let’s see what the bastard wants.’
‘I don’t like it, man. It’s a trap.’ Jim searched the bush around them nervously. ‘Let’s shoot the black bugger and get out of it.’
‘I come in peace!’ the Matabele called in English. He wore only a fur kilt, without armlets and leg tassels, and the rain shone on his smoothly muscled torso. On his head was the
headring of an induna.
The two mounted men both had their rifles out now, and were aiming from the hip, covering Kamuza at point-blank range.
‘I have a message from the king.’
‘Well, spit it out then,’ Will snapped.
‘Lobengula says take my gold, and go back to GuBulawayo.’
‘Gold? demanded Jim Thorn. ‘What gold?’
Kamuza stepped back into the scrub, picked up the leather grain bag, and carried it to them.
Will Daniel was laughing excitedly as he pulled out the little canvas bags. They jingled softly in his hands.
‘By God, that’s the sweetest music I ever heard!’
‘What will you do, white men?’ Kamuza demanded. ‘Will you take the gold to your chief?
‘Don’t fret yourself, my friend.’ Will Daniel clapped him delightedly on the shoulder. ‘It will go to the right person, you have the word of William Daniel hisself on
it.’
Jim Thorn was unbuckling his saddle-bags and stuffing the canvas sacks into it.
‘Christmas and my birthday all in one,’ he winked at Will.
‘White men, will you turn and go back to GuBulawayo now?’ Kamuza called anxiously.
‘Don’t worry about it another minute,’ Will assured him, and ferreted a loaf of hard bread out of his own saddle-bag. ‘Here’s a present for you,
bonsela
,
present, you understand?’ Then to Jim. ‘Come on, Mr Thorn, it’s Mister I’ll be calling you now that you are rich.’
‘Lead on, Mr Daniel,’ Jim grinned at him, and they spurred past Kamuza, leaving him standing in the muddy pathway with the mouldy loaf of bread in his hands.
C
linton Codrington came slipping and sloshing along the bank of the Shangani river. The lowering clouds were bringing on the night prematurely,
and the forests on the far bank were dank and gloomy.
The thunder rumbled sullenly, as though boulders were being rolled across the roof of the sky, and for a few seconds the rain spurted down thickly and then sank once more to a fine drizzle.
Clinton shivered and pulled up the collar of his sheepskin coat as he hurried on to where the Maxim carts stood at the head of the column.
There was a tarpaulin draped between the two carts and beneath it squatted a small group of officers. Mungo St John looked up as Clinton approached.
‘Ah, Parson!’ he greeted him. Mungo had learned that this address irritated Clinton inordinately. ‘You took your time.’ Clinton did not reply; he stood hunched in the
rain and none of the officers made room for him beneath the canvas.
‘Major Wilson is going to make a reconnaissance across the river with a dozen men. I want you to go with him to translate, if he meets any of the enemy.’
‘It will be dark in less than two hours,’ Clinton pointed out stolidly.
‘Then you had best hurry.’
‘The rains will break at any minute,’ Clinton persisted. ‘Your forces could be split—’
‘Parson, you bother about brimstone and salvation – let us do the soldiering.’ Mungo turned back to his officers. ‘Are you ready to go Wilson?
Allan Wilson was a bluff Scot, with long, dark moustaches and an accent that burred with the tang of heather and highlands.
‘You’ll be giving me detailed orders then, sir?’ he demanded stiffly. There had been ill-feeling between him and St John ever since they had left GuBulawayo.
‘I want you to use your common sense, man,’ St John snapped. ‘If you can catch Lobengula, then grab him, put him on a horse, and get back here. If you are attacked, fall back
immediately. If you let yourself be cut off, I will not be able to cross the river to support you with the Maxims until first light, do you understand that?’
‘I do, General.’ Wilson touched the brim of his slouch hat. ‘Come on, Reverend,’ he said to Clinton. ‘We do not have much time.’
B
urnham and Ingram, the two American scouts, led the patrol down the steep bank of the Shangani; Wilson and Clinton followed immediately
behind.
Clinton’s lanky, stooped frame, in the scuffed sheepskin jacket and with a shapeless stained hat pulled down over his ears, looked oddly out of place in the middle of the uniformed patrol
of armed men. As he came level with Mungo St John, standing on the top of the bank with his hands clasped behind his back, Clinton bent low from the saddle of his borrowed horse and said, so
quietly that only Mungo heard him, ‘Read II Samuel, chapter eleven, verse fifteen.’ Then Clinton straightened, gathered the old grey gelding with which he had been provided by the
Company, and the two of them went sliding untidily down the cutting in the steep bank which the Matabele had dug to take Lobengula’s wagons across.
At this point, the Shangani river was two hundred yards across, and as the little patrol waded the deepest part of the channel, the muddy waters reached to their stirrup irons. They climbed the
far bank and almost immediately were lost from view in the dripping woods and poor light.
Mungo St John stood for many minutes, staring across the river, ignoring the fine, drizzling rain. He was wondering at himself, wondering why he had sent such a puny force across the river, with
only hours of daylight left. The priest was right, of course, it would rain again soon. The heavens were leaden and charged with it. The Matabele were in force. The priest had seen the Inyati impi
under its old and crafty commander, Gandang, escorting the wagons away from GuBulawayo.
If he were going to reconnoitre the lie of the land beyond the river, then he knew that he should have used the last of the daylight to ford his entire force. It was the correct tactical
disposition. That way the patrol could fall back under the protection of the Maxims at any time during the night, or he could go forward to relieve them if they ran into trouble.
Some demon had possessed him when he gave the orders. Perhaps Wilson had finally irritated him beyond all restraint. The man had argued with him at every opportunity, and had done his best to
subvert Mungo’s authority amongst the other officers, who resented the fact that he was an American over British officers. It was mostly Wilson’s fault that this was such an unhappy and
divided little expedition. He was well rid of the overbearing and blunt Scotsman, he decided. Perhaps a night spent in company with the Inyati regiment would take some of the pepper out of him; and
he would be a little more tractable in the future – if there was a future for him. Mungo turned back to the sheltering tarpaulin strung between the gun carriages.