wrote to mother or to us, and I know that my place is there. In Africa, with Papa.'
Zouga lifted his hand from hers and carefully stroked his thick side whiskers. 'You always had a way of making me feel excited-' Then, seemingly going off at a tangent, 'Did you hear that they have found diamonds on the Orange river? ' He lifted his glass and examined the lees in the bottom of it attentively. 'We are so very different, you and I, and yet in some ways so much alike. ' He poured fresh wine into his glass and went on casually. I am in debt, Sissy.'
The word chilled her. Since her childhood she had been taught a dread of it.
How much? ' she asked at last quietly.
Two hundred pounds. ' He shrugged. So much! ' she breathed, and then, 'You haven't been gambling, Zouga? ' That was one of the other dread words in Robyn's vocabulary.
Not gambling? ' she repeated. As a matter of fact, I have, Zouga laughed. 'And thank God for that. Without it I would be a thousand guineas under. 'You mean you gamble, and actually win? ' Her horror faded a little, became tinged with fascination. Not always, but most of the time.'
She studied him carefully, perhaps for the first time.
He was only twenty-six years old, but he had the presence and aplomb of a man ten years older. He was already a hard, professional soldier, tempered in the skirmishes on the border of Afghanistan where his regiment had spent four years. She knew they had been cruel encounters against fierce hill tribes, and that Zouga had distinguished himself. His rapid promotion was proof of that.
Then how are you in debt, Zouga? ' she asked. Most of my brother officers, even my juniors, have private fortunes. I am a major now, I have to keep some style. We hunt, we shoot, mess bills, polo ponies -' He shrugged again. Will you ever be able to repay it? 'I could marry a rich wife, he smiled, 'or find diamonds.'
Zouga sipped his wine, slumped down in his chair, not looking at her, and went on quietly. I was reading Cornwallis Harris's book the other day - do you remember the big game we saw when we lived at Koloberg? ' She shook her head. No, you were only a baby. But I do. I remember the herds of springbok and wildebeest on the trek down to the Cape. One night there was a lion, I saw it clearly in the light of the campfire. Harris's book described his hunting expeditions up as far as the Limpopo, nobody has been further than that, except Papa, of course. A damned sight better than potting pheasant or black buck.
Did you know that Harris made nearly five thousand pounds from his book? ' Zouga pushed his glass away, straightened up in his seat and selected a cigar from his silver case. While he prepared and lit it, he was frowning thoughtfully. You want to go to Africa for spiritual reasons. I probably need to go to Africa, for much better reasons, for blood and for money. I make you a proposal. The Ballantyne Expedition! ' He lifted his glass to her.
She laughed then, uncertainly, thinking he was joking, but lifted her own glass which was still almost full. 'My word on it. But how? Zouga, how do we get there? 'What was the name of that newspaper fellow? ' Zouga demanded. Wicks, she said, 'Oliver Wicks. But why should he help us? 'I'll find a good reason why he should. ' And Robyn remembered how, even as a child, he had been an eloquent and persuasive pleader of causes. You know I rather think you might.'
They drank then, and when she lowered her glass, she had been as happy as she could ever remember being in all her life.
It was another six weeks before she saw Zouga again, striding towards her through the bustle of London Bridge Station as she clambered down from the carriage. He stood tall above the crowd, with the high beaver top hat on his head and the three-quarter length paletot cloak flaring from his shoulders. Sissy! ' he called, laughing at her, as he lifted her from her feet. 'We are going, we really are going.'
He had a cab waiting for them, and the driver whipped up the horses the moment they were aboard. The London Missionary Society were no use at all, he told her, still with his arm around her shoulders as the cab clattered and lurched over the cobbles. 'I had them down on my list for five hundred iron men, and they nearly had apoplexy. I had the feeling they would rather Papa stayed lost in darkest Africa, and they would pay five hundred to keep him there.'
You went to the directors? ' she demanded. Played my losing tricks first, Zouga smiled. 'The next was Whitehall, actually managed to see the First Secretary. He was damned civil, took me to lunch at the Travellers', and was truly very sorry that they were not able to give financial assistance. They remembered Papa's Zambezi fiasco too clearly, but he did give me letters. A dozen letters, to every conceivable person, to the Governor at the Cape, to Kemp the Admiral at Cape Town, and all the others. 'Letters won't get us far. 'Then I went to see your newspaper friend. Extraordinary little man.
Smart as a whip. I told him we were going to Africa to find Papa, and he jumped up and clapped his hands like a child at a Punch and Judy show.'
Zouga hugged Robyn tighter. 'To tell the truth, I used your name shamelessly, and it did the trick. He will have all the story rights to our diaries and journals, and the publishing rights to both books. 'Both books? ' Robyn pulled away from him and looked into his face. Both. ' He grinned at her. 'Yours and mine I am to write a book? 'You certainly are. A woman's account of the expedition. I have already signed the contract on your behalf.'
She laughed then, but breathlessly. 'You're going too far, much too fast. 'Little Wicks was in for five hundred, and the next on the list was the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade, they were easy. His Royal Highness is the Society's patron, and he had read Papa's books. We are to report on the state. of the trade in the interior of the continent north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and they came up with another 500 guineas. 'Oh Zouga, you are a magician.
'Then there was the Worshipful Company of London Merchants Trading into Africa. For the last hundred years they have based all their activities on the west coast, I convinced them that they needed a survey of the east coast. I have been appointed the Worshipful Company's Agent, with instructions to examine the market in palm oil, gum- copal, copper and ivory, and they have come up with the third and last 500 guineas, and a presentation Sharps rifle. 'One thousand five hundred guineas, Robyn breathed, and Zouga nodded.
We are going back home in style.'
When? '
I have booked passage on an American trading clipper.
We sail from Bristol in six weeks, for Good Hope and Quelimane in Mozambique. I have written asking leave from my regiment for two years, you will have to do the same with the L. M. S.'
It had all happened with dreamlike rapidity after that.
