'When will the column cross?'
'We had to swim our horses across. By now the river is ten feet deep.' Borrow lowered his voice so as not to alarm the men. 'They won't be coming.'
'Did you make contact with the enemy?' Wilson demanded.
'We heard them all around us. They called to each other and we heard them keeping pace with us in the forest as we passed either hand.'
'So they are massed between us and the river, and even if we cut our way through to the river, the ford is impassable. Is that it?'
'I am afraid so, sir.'
Wilson took his hat from his head and against his thigh he beat the raindrops from its brim. Then he settled it again carefully on his head at a jaunty angle.
'Then it seems there is only one direction that we can take, one direction in which the Matabele will not expect us to move.' He turned back to Borrow. 'Our orders were to seize the king, and now our very lives depend on it. We must have Lobengula as a hostage. We have to go forward, and that right smartly.' He raised his voice. 'Troop, mount! Walk march, Trot!' They rode closed up, tense and silent. Clinton's old grey had benefited from the night's rest, and kept his place in the third file.
A young trooper rode at Clinton's right hand.
'What is your name, son?'he asked quietly.
'Dillon, sir, I mean, Reverend.' He was smoothcheeked, and fresh-faced.
'How old are you, Dillon?'
'Eighteen, Reverend., They are all so young, Clinton thought. Even Major Allan Wilson himself is barely thirty years of age. If only, he thought, if only 'Padre!'
Clinton looked up sharply, his attention had been wandering. They had long ago emerged from the thick bush, and were now coming up to the same spot from which they had retreated the previous evening.
The wagons were still standing abandoned beside the rude track; the tents made pale geometrical oblongs of solid canvas against the dark wet scrub.
Once again, Wilson halted the patrol, and Clinton walked the grey forward.
'Tell them we do not wish to fight' Wilson ordered.
'There is nobody here.'
'Try anyway,' Wilson urged. 'If the wagons are deserted, then we will ride on until we catch up with the king.'
Clinton rode forward, shouting as he went. 'Lobengula, do not be afraid. It is me. Hlopi., There was no reply, only the flutter of the wind in the torn wagon canvas.
'Warriors of Matabele, children of Mashobane, we do not wish to fight, Clinton called again; and this time he was answered by a bellowing bull voice, haughty and angry and proud. it came out of the gloom and rain, seeming to emanate from the very air, for there was no one to be seen.
'Hau, white men! You do not wish to fight, but we do, for our eyes are red and our steel is thirsty., The last word was blown away on a great gust of sound, and the shrub about them misted over with blue gunsmoke and the air about their heads was torn by a gale of shot.
It was twenty-five years and more since Clinton had stood to receive volleyed gunfire; yet he could still dearly differentiate between the crack of high-powered rifles and the whistle of ball thrown from ancient muzzle loaders, and in the storm the 'whirr-whirr' of beaten potlegs tumbling as they flew; so that, glancing up, Clinton expected to actually see one come over like a rising pheasant.
'Back! Fall back!' Wilson was shouting, and the horses were all rearing and plunging. The fire was, most of it, flying overhead. As always, the Matabele had raised their sights to the maximum; but there must have been a hundred or more of them hidden in the shrub and random bullets were scoring.
One of the troopers was hit in both eyes, the bridge of his nose shot away. He was reeling in the saddle, clutching his face with blood spurting out between his fingers.
His number two spurred in to catch him before he fell, and with an arm around his shoulder led him at a gallop back along the trail.
Young Dillon's horse was hit in the neck, and he was thrown in the mud, but he came up with his rifle in his hands, and Clinton yelled at him as he galloped back.
'Cut off your saddle-bags. You'll need every round in them, lad.'
Clinton came in for the pick-up, but Wilson rode him off like a polo player.
'Your moke's half done, Padre. He'll not carry two. Get on with you!'
They tried to make a stand in the thicket where they had spent the night, but the hidden Matabele riflemen crept in so close that four of the horses went down, kicking and struggling, exposing the men who had been standing behind them, firing over their backs, and three of the men were hit. One of them, a young Afrikander from the Cape, had a pot-leg slug shatter the bone above his right elbow. The arm was hanging on a tattered ribbon of flesh, and Clinton used the sleeves of his shirt to make a sling for it.
'Well, Padre, we are for it now, and that's no mistake.' The trooper grinned at him, white face speckled with his own blood, like a thrush's egg.
'We can't stand here' Wilson called. 'Two wounded to a horse and a man to lead them. They'll go in the centre with those who have lost their own horses. The rest of us will ride in a box around them.'
Clinton helped the young Afrikander up onto the grey's back, and one of the lads from Borrow's volunteers up
