And what can I answer him, thought Sean. Can I tell him she killed
herself for some reason that no one will ever know.
'Fever,' he said. 'Blackwater fever.'
'You did not send word to us. ' 'I did not know where to find you.
Your parents?' 'They too are dead,' Jan Paulus interrupted brusquely
and turned away from Sean to stare at the white canvas wall of the
tent. There was silence between them then as they remembered the dead
in sorrow, made more poignant by its utter helplessness. At last Sean
stood up and went to the entrance of the tent.
'Dirk. Come here.'
Mbejane pushed him forward and he crossed to Sean and took his hand.
Sean led him into the tent.
'Katrina's son,' he said and Jan Paulus looked down at him.
'Come here, boy.' Hesitantly Dirk went to him. Suddenly Jan Paulus
dropped into a squat so that his eyes were on a level with those of the
child. He took Dirk's face between the palm of his hands and studied
it carefully.
'Yes,' he said. 'This is the type of son she would breed.
The eyes-' His voice stumbled and stopped. A second longer he looked
into Dirk's eyes. Then he spoke again.
'Be proud,' he said and stood up. Sean motioned at the flap of the
tent, and thankfully Dirk scampered out to where Mbejane waited.
'And now?' Jan Paulus asked.
'I want passage through the lines.'
'You are going over to the English?'
am English, ' said Sean. Frowning a little, Jan Paulus considered this
before he asked: ' You will give me your word not to take up arms with
them?
'No,' answered Sean and Jan Paulus nodded, it was the answer he had
expected.
'There is a debt between us,' he decided. 'I have not forgotten the
time of the elephant. This is full payment of that debt.' He crossed
to the portable desk and dipped a pen. Still standing he wrote
rapidly, fanned the paper dry and proffered it to Sean.
'Go,' he said. 'And I hope we do not meet again, for the next time I
will kill you.'
'Or I you,' Sean answered him.
That afternoon Sean led his parry across the steel railway bridge over
the Tugela, on through the deserted village of Colenso and out again
across the plain. Far ahead, sown on the grass plain like a field of
white daisies, were the tents of the great British encampment at
Chievely Siding. But long before he reached it Sean came to a guard
post manned by a sergeant and four men of an illustrious Yorkshire
regiment.
'And where the hell do you think you're off to?'
'I am a British subject,' Sean informed them. The sergeant ran an eye
over Sean's beard and patched coat. He glanced at the shaggy pony he
rode, and then considered the direction from which Sean had
approached.
'Say that again,' he invited.
'I am a British subject,' Sean repeated obligingly in an accent that
