contributions. Once the pot was filled, the gunpowder was moistened into paste with the urine, then formed into briquettes, which dried hard in the sun. These were packed into reed baskets for ease of transporting.
'We will grind the cakes as we need them,' Hal explained to Sukeena 'Now we do not have to carry such a weight of dried fish and meat for we will hunt as we travel. If there is such an abundance of game, as Sabah tells us there is, we will not go short of fresh meat.'
Ten days later than they had first intended, the band was ready to set out into the east. Hal, as the navigator, and Sabah, who had travelled that route before, led the column, Althuda and the three musketeers were in the centre to guard the women and little Bobby, while Aboli and Big Daniel brought up the rear under their ponderous burdens.
They travelled with the grain and run of the range, not attempting to scale the high ground but following the valleys and crossing only through the passes between the high peaks. Hal estimated the distances travelled by eye and time, and the direction with the leather-cased compass. These he marked on his charts every evening before the light faded.
At night they camped in the open, for the weather was mild and they were too tired to build a shelter. When they woke each dawn, their skin blankets, that Sabah called karosses, were soaked with dew.
As Sabah had warned, it was six days of hard travel through the labyrinth of valleys before they reached the steep eastern escarpment and looked down from its crest on the lower ground..
Far out to their right they could make out the blue stain of the ocean merging with the paler heron's-egg blue of the sky, but below the land was not the true plains that Hal had expected but was broken up with hillocks, undulating grassy glades and streaks of dark green forest that seemed to follow the courses of the many small rivers that crisscrossed the littoral as they meandered down to the sea.
To their left, another range of jagged blue mountains marched parallel to the sea, forming a rampart that guarded the mysterious hinterland of the continent. Hal's sharp eyesight picked out the dark stains on the golden grassy plains, moving like cloud shadows when there were no clouds in the sky. He saw the haze of dust that followed the moving herds of wild game, and now and then he spotted the reflection of sunlight from tusks of ivory or from a polished horn.
'This land swarms with life he murmured to Sukeena, who stood at his shoulder. 'There may be strange beasts down there that man has never before laid eyes upon. Perhaps even fire-breathing dragons and unicorns and griffons.' Sukeena shivered and hugged her shoulders, even though the sun was high and warm.
'I saw such creatures drawn on the charts I brought for you,' she agreed.
There was a path before them, beaten by the great round pads of elephant and signposted by piles of their fibrous yellow dung, that wound down the slope, picking the most favourable gradient, skirting the deep ravines and dangerous gorges, and Hal followed it.
As they descended, the features of the landscape below became more apparent. Hal could even recognize some of the creatures that -moved upon it. The black mass of bovine animals surmounted by a golden haze of dust and a cloud of hovering tick birds, sparkling white in the sunlight, must be the wild buffalo that Aboli had spoken of. Nyati, he had called them, when he had warned Hal of their ferocity. There must be several hundred of these beasts in each of the three separate herds that he had under his eye.
Beyond the nearest herd of buffalo was a small gathering of elephants. Hal remembered them well from his previous sightings long ago on the shores of the lagoon. But he had never before seen them in such numbers. At the very least there were twenty great grey cows each with a small calf, like a piglet, at her heels. Dotted upon the plain like hillocks of grey granite were three or four solitary bulls. he could barely credit the size of these patriarchs or the length and girth of their gleaming yellow ivory tusks.
There were other creatures, not as large as the elephant bulls, but massive and grey none the less, which at first he took for elephant also, but as they descended towards the low ground he was able to make out the black horns, some as long as a man is tall, that decorated their great creased grey snouts. He remembered then what Sabah had told him of these savage beasts, one of which had speared and killed Johannes' woman with its deadly horn. These 'rhenosters' which was Sabah's name for them, seemed solitary in nature for they stood apart from others of the same kind, each in the shade of its own tree.
As Hal strode along at the head of the tiny column, he heard the light tread of feet coming up behind him, footsteps that he had come to know and love so well. Sukeena had left her place in the centre of the line, as she often did when she found some excuse to walk with him for a while.
She slipped her hand into his and kept pace with him. 'I did not want to go alone into this new land. I wanted to walk beside you, she said softly, then looked up at the sky. 'See the way the wind veers into the south and the clouds crouch on the mountain tops like a pack of wild beasts in ambush? There is a storm coming.'
Her warning proved timely. Hal was able to lead them to a cave in the mountainside to shelter before the storm struck. They lay up there for three long days and nights while the storm raged without, but when they emerged at last, the land was washed clean and the sky was bright and burning blue.
Before the Golden Bough had made her offing from Good Hope and come onto her true course to round the Cape, Captain Christopher Llewellyn was already regretting having taken on board his paying passenger.
He had found out soon enough that Colonel Cornelius Schreuder was a difficult man to like, arrogant, outspoken and highly opinionated. He held firm and unwavering views on every subject that was raised, and was never diffident in giving expression to these. 'He picks up enemies as a dog picks up fleas,' Llewellyn told his mate.
The second day out from Table Bay, Llewellyn had invited Schreuder to dine with him and some of his officers in the stern cabin. He was a cultured man, and maintained a grand style even at sea. With the prize money that he had won in the recent Dutch war, he could afford to indulge his taste for fine things.
The GoLden Bough had cost almost two thousand pounds to build and launch, but she was probably the finest vessel of her class and burden afloat. Her culver ins were newly cast and her sails were of the finest canvas. The captain's quarters were fitted out with a taste and discrimination unparalleled in any navy, but her qualities as a fighting ship had not been sacrificed for luxury.
During the voyage down the Atlantic, Llewellyn had found, to his delight, that her sea-keeping qualities were all he had hoped. On a broad reach, with her sails full and the wind free, her hull sliced through the water like a blade, and she could point so high into the wind that it made his heart sing to feel her deck heel under his feet.
Most of his officers and petty- officers had served with him during the war and had proved their quality and courage, but he had on board one younger officer, the fourth son of George, Viscount Winterton.
Lord Winterton was the Master Navigator of the Order, one of the richest and most powerful men in England. He owned a fleet of privateers and trading ships. The Honourable Vincent Winterton was on his first privateering voyage, placed by his father under Llewellyn's tutelage. He was a comely youth, not yet twenty years of age but well educated, with a frank and winning manner that made him popular with both the seamen and his brother officers alike.
He was one of the other guests at Llewellyn's dinner table that second night out from Good Hope.
The dinner started out gay and lively, for all the Englishmen were merry, with a fine ship under them and the promise of glory and gold ahead. Schreuder, however, was aloof and gloomy. With the second glass of wine warming them all, Llewellyn called across the cabin, 'Vincent, my lad, will you not give us a tune?'
'Could you bear to listen, yet again, to my caterwauling, sir?' The young man laughed modestly, but the rest of the company urged him on. 'Come on, Vinny! Sing for us, man!
Vincent Winterton stood up and went to the small clavichord that was fastened with heavy brass screws to one of the main frames of the ship. He sat down, tossed back his long thick curling locks and struck a soft, silvery chord from the keyboard. 'What would you have me sing?'
'Greensleeves!' suggested someone, but Vincent pulled a face. 'You've heard that a hundred times and more since we sailed from home.'
'Mother Mine'T.' cried another. This time Vincent nodded, threw back his head and sang in a strong, true voice that transformed the mawkish lyrics and brought tears to the eyes of many of the company as they tapped their feet in time to the song.
Schreuder had taken an immediate and unreasoned dislike to the attractive youth, so comely and popular with his peers, so sure of himself and serene in his high rank and privileged birth. Schreuder, in comparison, felt himself ageing and overlooked. He had never attracted the natural admiration and affection of those about him, as this young man so obviously did.
He sat stiffly in a corner, ignored by these men who, not so long ago, had been his deadly enemies, and who, he knew, despised him as a dull foreigner and a foot soldier, not one of their brotherhood of the ocean. He found his dislike turning to active hatred of the young man, whose fine features were clear and unlined and whose voice had the timbre and tonal colour of a temple bell.
