months earlier, had taken six weeks to reach him along the chain of
spies and commandos which carried their mail. Henrietta was sick with
dysentery and both the younger children, Stephanus and baby Paulus,
were dead from the Witseerkeel. The concentration camp was ravaged by
this disease and she feared for the safety of the older children.
The light had failed so he could not read further. He sat with the
letter in his hands. With such a price as we have paid, surely we
could have won something.
Perhaps there is still a chance. Perhaps.
'Upsaddle! Upsaddle! Khaki is coming.' The warning was shouted from
the ridge across the river where he had placed his pickets. It carried
clearly in the still of the evening.
' Upsaddle! Khaki is coming.' The cry was taken up around the camp.
Jan Paulus leaned over and shook the boy beside him, who was too deep
in exhaustion to have heard.
'Wake up, Hennie. We must run again.'
Five minutes later he led his commando over the ridge and southward
into the night.
'Still holding southwards,' Sean observed. 'Three days' riding and
they haven't altered course.
'Looks like Leroux has got his teeth into something,' agreed Saul.
'We'll halt for half an hour to blow the horses. ' Sean lifted his
hand and behind him the column lost its shape as the men dismounted and
led their horses aside. Although the entire unit had been remounted a
week before, the horses were already losing condition from the long
hours of riding to which they had been subjected. However, the men
were in good shape, lean and hard, looking. Sean listened to their
banter and watched the way they moved and laughed. He had built them
into a tough fighting force that had proved itself a dozen times since
that fiasco a year ago when Leroux had caught them in the mountains.
Sean grinned. They had earned the name under which they rode. He
handed his horse to Mbejane and moved stiffly towards the shade of a
small mimosa tree.
'Have you got any ideas about what Leroux is up to?' he asked Saul as
he offered him a cheroot.
'He could be making a try at the Cape railway.'
'He could be,' Sean agreed as he lowered himself gratefully on to a
flat stone and stretched his legs out in front of him. 'My God, I'm
sick of this business. Why the hell can't they admit it's finished,
why Must they go on and on?'
'Granite cannot bend.' Saul smiled dryly. 'But I think that now it is
very near the point where it must break. ' 'We thought that six months
ago,' Sean answered him, then looked beyond time. 'Yes, Mbenjane, what
is it?'
Mbejane was going through the ritual which preceded serious speech, He
had come and squatted half a dozen pieces from where Sean sat, had laid
his spears carefully beside him in the grass, and now he was taking
snuff.
'Nkosi.'
'Yes?' Sean encouraged him and waited while Mbejane tapped a little of
