just that, he shagged.
In that far away valley, when he had been a young ensign leading a patrol ahead of the battalion, he had seen something as he had today. Something of no account, a stray movement, a glint of light that might have been off a gunbarrel, or the horn of a wild goat.
Then, as now, it had been too much trouble to check it. That night he had lost three men, killed while they fought their way out of the valley. The fight had earned praise from his Colonel, but the men remained dead.
He glanced up at the slanting sun, there was an hour of light left. He knew he should have climbed that slope.
While Robyn watched him with a puzzled expression, he wavered a few seconds longer and then with an exclamation of exasperation stood up wearily. His feet still ached abominably and he rubbed his hip where the knifewound throbbed.
It was going to be a long walk. back down the valley.
Zouga used a deep and narrow ravine to get out of the camp unobtrusively, and once clear he scrambled out and kept to the thicker bush just above the river-bed until he reached a tangled barrier of driftwood carried down during the recent rains which blocked the dry water-course from bank to bank.
He used this to cover his crossing, and started up the far slope. He went very carefully, dodging from one tree to another and watching and listening before each move.
On the crest there was a faint movement of cooler air, the evening breeze coming down the escarpment that cooled the sweat on his neck and almost made the hard climb worth-while. It seemed that was all the reward he would get. The stony ground was too hard to carry sign, and it was deserted of life, animal or human. However, Zouga was determined to make up for his previous sloth.
He stayed too long. It would be fully dark before he reached the camp again, moon-rise was late, and he risked a broken leg moving over this sort of terrain in the pitch dark.
He turned to go back, and he smelt it before he saw it, and the hair prickled along his forearms and he felt his belly muscles contract, yet it was such a commonplace smell. He stooped and picked up the small squashed brown object. He had smoked the last of his own cheroots two days before, perhaps that was why his nose was so sensitive to the smell of tobacco.
The cigar had been smoked down to a thin rind, and crushed out so it resembled a scrap of dried bark. Without the smell to guide him, he would never have found it. Zouga shredded it between his fingers, and there was still a little residual dampness of saliva in the chewed end. He lifted his fingers and sniffed them. He knew where he had smelled that particular scented type of Portuguese tobacco before.
Camacho left fifteen of his men well back off the crest, in a tumble of rock that looked like a ruined castle, and whose caves and overhangs gave shade and concealment.
They would sleep, he knew, and he grudged it to them.
His own eyelids were drooping as be lay belly down in cover, on the other side of the ridge watching the caravan making camp.
He had only two of his men with him to help him mark the sentries and scherms, the watch fires and the tent sites. They would be able to lead the others in, even in the complete darkness before the moon, if that should become necessary. Carnacho hoped not. In the dark mistakes could be made, and it needed only a shot or a single shout. No, they would wait for the moon, he decided.
The Englishman had come into camp earlier, just before the caravan halted. He had the Hottentot with him, and they both hobbled stiffly like men who had made long, hard marches. Good, he would sleep soundly, was probably doing so already, for Carnacho had not seen him in the last hour. He must be in the tent beside the woman s. He had seen a servant carrying a steaming bucket of water to her.
They had watched the Hottentot Sergeant set only two sentries. The Englishman must be feeling very secure, two sentries merely to watch against lions. They would probably both be fast asleep by midnight. They would never wake again. He, personally, would cut one of them. He smiled in anticipation, and he would send a good knife to cut the other.
The remaining Hottentots had built their usual leanto shelter and thatched it in a rudimentary fashion.
There was no chance of rain, not at this season and not with that unblemished eggshell-blue sky. It was almost two hundred paces from the tents, a groan or a whimper would not carry that far. Good, Camacho nodded again.
It was working out better than he had hoped.
As always, the two tents were set close together, almost touching. The gallant Englishman guarding the woman, Camacho smiled again, and felt his drowsiness lifting miraculously as his groin charged once more. He wished the night away, for he had already waited so long.
Night came with the dramatic suddenness of Africa, within minutes the valley was filled with shadows, the sunset made its last theatrical flare of apricot and old gold light and then it was dark.
For an hour more Carnacho could see the occasional dark figure silhouetted by the flames of the camp fires.
Once the sound of singing carried softly and sweetly to the ridge, and the other camp sounds, the clank of a bucket, the thud of a log thrown on the fire, the drowsy murmur of voices, showed that the routine was unaltered, and the camp completely unaware.
The noises faded and the fires died. The silence and the darkness was disturbed only by the piping lament of a jackal across the valley.
The star patterns turned slowly across the sky marking the passage of the hours, and then gradually paled out before the greater brilliance of the rising moon. Fetch the others, Camacho told the man nearest him, and rose stiffly to his feet, stretching like a cat to relieve numbed muscles. They came silently, and gathered close about Camacho, to listen to his final whispered instructions.
When he finished whispering he looked from one. to the other in turn. Their faces in the bright moonlight had the pale greenish hues of freshly exhumed corpses, but they nodded their agreement to his words, and then followed him down the slope, dark silent shapes like a troop of wolves; they reached the dry water course. in the
