Though what alternative had there been for him, he wondered.
If he had turned the camp into an armed fortress, it would have meant enduring a long drawn-out siege with Camacho's wolves skulking around the perimeter, sniping and harrying them until their opportunity came.
No, he had been right to set the trap and end it at a single stroke. At least now he could be certain that the Portuguese were still in full flight for the coast, but the price had been too high, and Zouga was still angry.
The expedition, so well conceived and lavishly equipped, had ended in disaster before it had achieved a single one of its objectives. The loss of equipment and life had been heavy, but that was not what burned so acidly in Zouga's stomach as he paused at the perimeter of the devastated camp and lifted his eyes longingly towards the high broken ground of the southern escarpment. It was the idea of having to give up, before he had begun, and when he was so close, so very close. Twenty, fifty, not more than a hundred miles ahead of him lay the frontier of the empire of Monornatapa. Behind him, one hundred miles to the north was the dirty little village of Tete, and the wide river which was the beginning of the long ignoble road back to England, back to obscurity, back to a commission in a third-rate regiment, back to conformity and the wearying discipline of the cantonments of the Indian army. Only now that he was doomed to return to that life did he realize how deeply he had hated and resented it, just how much the desire to escape it had brought him here to this wild untouched land. Like a long- term prisoner who has tasted one day of sweet freedom, so the prospect of return to his cage was that much more painful, now. The pain of it cramped his chest, and he had to breathe deeply to control it.
He turned away from the southern vista of ragged peaks and savage black rock cliffs, and he walked slowly to where his sister worked quietly in the shade of the mukusi. She was pale, with dark smudges of fatigue and strain under her green eyes. Her blouse was speckled with spots of her patients' blood, and her forehead appeared blistered with tiny beads of perspiration.
She had started work in the darkness, by the light of a bull's eye lantern and now it was midmorning.
She looked up wearily as Zouga stood over her. We won't be able to go on, he said quietly. She stared at him a moment without change of expression, and then dropped her eyes and went on smearing salve on the badly burned leg of one of the porters. She had treated the worst cases first, and was now finishing with the burns and abrasions. We've lost too much vital equipment, Zouga explained. 'Stores that we need to survive. ' Robyn did not look up this time, 'And we've not enough porters to carry what is left Robyn began bandaging the leg with her full attention. Papa made the Transversa with four porters, she observed mildly. Papa was a man, Zouga pointed out reasonably, and Robyn's hands stilled ominously and her eyes narrowed, but Zouga had not noticed. 'A woman cannot travel or survive without the necessities of civilization, he went on seriously. 'That is why I am sending you back to Tete.
I'm sending Sergeant Cheroot and five of his Hottentots to escort you. You'll have no difficulty, once you reach Tete. I will send with you what remains in cash, a hundred pounds for the launch down river to Quelimane and a passage to Cape Town on a trader. There you can draw on the money I deposited in Cape Town to pay for a passage on the mailship.'
She looked up at him. 'And you? ' she asked.
Until then he had not made the decision. 'The important thing is what happens to you, he told her gravely, and then he knew what he was going to do. 'You will have to go back and I am going on alone. 'It'll take more than Jan Cheroot and five of his damned Hottentots to carry me, she told him, and the oath was a measure of her determination. Be reasonable, Sissy.'
Why should I start now? ' she asked sweetly.
Zouga opened his mouth to reply angrily, then closed it slowly and stared at her. There was a hard uncompromising line to her lips, and the prominent, almost masculine, jaw was clenched stubbornly.
I don't want to argue, he said. Good, ' she nodded. That way you won't waste any more of your precious time. 'Do you know what you are letting yourself in for? ' he asked quietly.
As well as you do, she replied.
We won't have trade goods to buy our way through the tribes. ' She nodded. 'That means we'll have to fight our way through if anyone tries to stop us.'
He saw the shadow in her eyes at that, but there was no wavering of her determination. No tents for shelter, no canned food, no sugar or tea.'
He knew what that meant to her. 'We will live straight off the land, and what we can't scavenge or kill or carry, we go without. We'll have nothing but powder and shot. 'You'd be a fool to leave the quinine, she told him quietly, and he hesitated. The bare minimum of medicines, he agreed, 'and remember, it won't be for just a week or a month. 'We'll probably go a. great deal faster than we have so far, she answered quietly, as she stood up and brushed off the seat of her breeches.
The choice of what to take and what to leave had been nicely balanced, Zouga thought, as he listed and weighed the new loads.
He had chosen paper and writing equipment in place of sugar and most of the tea. His navigational instruments in place of spare boots, for the boots they wore could be resoled with raw buffalo hide. Quinine and other medicines together with Robyn's instruments in place of the extra clothing and blankets. Powder and shot in place of trade beads and cloth.
The pile of abandoned equipment grew steadily, cases of potted jams, bags of sugar, canned foods, insect nets, folding camp chairs and cots, cooking pots, Robyn's enamel hip bath and her flowered chamber pot, trade goods, merkani cloth and beads, hand mirrors and cheap knives. When the pile was complete, Zouga put fire into it, a token of finality and of determination. Yet they watched it burn with trepidation.
There were two small concessions Zouga had made: a single case of Ceylon tea for, as Robyn pointed out, no Englishman could be expected to explore undiscovered territories without that sovereign brew, and the sealed tin which contained Zouga's dress uniform, for their very lives might depend on impressing a savage African potentate. Otherwise they had divested themselves of all but the very essentials.
Chief of these essentials was the ammunition, the sacks of first-grade Curtis and May black powder and the ingots of soft lead, the bullet moulds, the flask of quicksilver to harden the balls and the boxes of copper caps. Out of the remaining forty-six porters, thirty of them carried this powder and shot.
Jan Cheroot's musketeers were horrified when they were informed that their field packs would in future hold two hundred, and not fifty, rounds of Enfield ammunition. We are warriors, not porters, ' his Corporal told him loftily. Jan Cheroot used the metal scabbard of his long bayonet to reason with him, and Robyn dressed the superficial wounds in the Corporal's scalp. They now understand the need for carrying extra ammunition, Major, ' Jan Cheroot reported to Zouga cheerfully.
