promulgated from the muzzle of a gun.'
On the strength of the letters, the commander of the Cape Town garrison had allowed Zouga to ask for volunteers from his regiment of Hottentot Infantry. 'They are the only natives of Africa who understand the working of a firearm, Harkness had told him. 'They are the devil with drink and women, but they can fight and march, and most of them are hardened to fever and famine. Pick them carefully and watch them every moment, night as well as day.'
Zouga's request for volunteers had been most enthusiastically received.
By reputation the Hottentots could scent plunder or a willing lady from fifty miles, and the pay and rations that Zouga offered were almost thrice that of the British army. They had volunteered to a man and Zouga's difficulty had been in selecting ten of them.
Zouga had taken an instant liking to these wiry little men, with their almost oriental features, slanted eyes and high cheekbones. Despite appearances, they were more African than almost any other breed. They were the original inhabitants that the first navigators had found on the beach at Table Bay, and they had taken readily to the white min's ways, and more than readily to his vices.
Zouga had solved his problem by making one selection only. This was a man with an ageless face, it might have been forty years or -eighty, for the skin was the colour and texture of a papyrus parchment, each wrinkle seemed to have been eroded into it by wind and driven dust, but the little peppercorns of hair that covered his skull were untinged with silver.
I taught Captain Harris to hunt elephant, he boasted. Where was that?
' Zouga demanded, for Cornwallis Harris was one of the most famous of the old African hunters. His book The Wild Sports of Africa was the great classic of the African chase.
I took him to the Cashan mountains. ' Harris's expedition to the Cashan mountains, which the Boers now called Magaliesberg, was in 1829, thirty-one years previously. That would make the little Hottentot somewhere between fifty and sixty years old, if he were telling the truth. Harris did not mention your name, he said. 'I have read his account carefully.'
Jan Bloom, that was my name then. ' Zouga nodded.
Bloom had been one of Harris's most intrepid hunterretainers. Why is your name Jan Cheroot now? ' Zouga asked and the dark eyes had twinkled with pixie merriment. Sometimes a man gets tired of a name, like he does of a woman, and for his health or his life he changes both The long military-issue Enfield rifle was as tall as Jan Cheroot, but it seemed an extension of his wizened little body. Pick nine other men. The best, Zouga told him, and Sergeant Cheroot brought them aboard while the gunboat was working up a head of steam in her boilers.
Each man carried his Enfield over his shoulder, his worldly possessions in the haversack on his back and fifty rounds in the pouches on his belt It needed only the 'Rogue's March' to welcome them, Zouga thought wryly, as he watched them come in through the entry port, each one bestowing upon him a beatific grin and a salute so vigorous that it nearly swung the donor off his feet.
Sergeant Cheroot lined them up at the rail. Their original scarlet uniform jackets had suffered strange mutations to ten different shades, ranging from sunfaded pink to dusty puce, and each peppercorn head wore its brimless infantry cap cocked at a different angle from all the others. Thin shanks were bound up with grubby puttees, and brown bare feet slapped the oak planking of the deck in unison as Cheroot brought them to attention, Enfields at the slope and happy grins on each puckish face.
Very well, Sergeant. ' Zouga acknowledged the salute. Now let's have the packs open, and the bottles over the side.'
The grins wilted, and they exchanged crestfallen glances, the Major had looked so young and gullible. You hear the Major, julie klomp dam skaape. ' Gleefully Jan Cheroot likened them to 'a herd of stupid sheepin the kitchen Dutch of the Cape, and as he turned back to Zoup there was for the first time a gleam of respect in the dark eyes.
There are two passages from which a ship may choose when sailing the southeastern coast of Africa. The master may stay outside the 100-fathom line which marks the edge of the continental shelf, for here the opposing forces of the Mozambique current and the prevailing winds can generate a sea which seamen call with awe the '100 year wave', a wave over 200 foot from crest to through, which will overwhelm even the sturdiest vessel as though it were a drifting autumn leaf. The alternative and only slightly less hazardous passage lies close inshore, in the shallows where the rocky reefs await a careless navigator.
For the sake of speed Clinton Codrington chose the inshore passage, so that always the land was in sight as they bustled northwards. Day after day the shimmering white beaches and dark rocky headlands unreeled ahead of Black joke's bows, sometimes almost lost in the smoky blue sea-fret, and at other times brutally clear under the African sun.
Clinton kept steam in his boilers and the single bronze screw spinning under his counter with every sail set and trained around to glean the smallest puff of the wind, as he drove Black joke on to the rendezvous that Mungo St. John had set. His haste was symptom of a compulsion that Robyn Ballantyne only began fully to understand during those days and nights that they drove east and north, for Clinton Codrington sought her company constantly and she spent many hours of each day with him, or all of it that could be spared from the management of the vessel, beginning with the assembly of the ship's company for morning prayers.
Most naval captains went through the motions of divine service once a week, but Captain Codrington held prayers every morning and it did not take Robyn long to realize that his faith and sense of Christian duty was, if anything, greater than her own. He did not seem to experience the terrible doubts and temptations to which she was always such a prey, and if it had not been unchristian to do so she would have felt envy for his sense and secure faith. I wanted to go into the church, like my father and my elder brother, Ralph, before me, he told her. Why did you noWThe Almighty led me into the path He had chosen for me, Clinton said simply, and it did not seem pretentious when he said it. 'I know now He meant me to be a shepherd for His flock, here in this land, and he pointed at the silver beaches and blue mountains. 'I did not realize it at the time, but His ways are wonderful. This is the work He has chosen for me.'
Suddenly she realized how deep was his commitment to the war he was waging against the trade, it was almost a personal crusade. His whole being directed at its destruction, for he truly believed that he was the instrument of God's will.
Yet, like many deeply religious men, he kept his belief closely guarded, never flaunting it in sanctimonious posturing or biblical quotation. The only time he spoke of his God was during the daily prayers and when he was alone with her on his quarterdeck. Quite naturally, he assumed that her belief matched, if not outstripped, his own. She did nothing to disillusion him, for she enjoyed his patent admiration, his deference to the fact that she had been appointed as a missionary, and when she was truthful to herself, which was more and more often these days, she
