through her adulterous heart.' Even in his extreme condition Rashood mouthed the words with relish. 'And al Salil was wounded to the brink of death.'
Jim's anger and sorrow were overwhelming, so much so that he lost all stomach for further punishment that day. Rashood was cut down from the wheel but chained and guarded for the rest of the night. 'I will question him again in the morning,' Jim said and went to tell Louisa the terrible news.
'My aunt Yasmini was the essence of kindness and goodness. I only wish you could have met her,' he said that night, as they lay in each other's arms. His tears soaked her nightdress. Thank God my uncle Dorian seems to have survived the assassination attempt by this fanatic, Kadem ibn Abubaker.'
In the morning Jim ordered the wagon to be towed well away from the laager so that Louisa could not hear Rashood on the wheel. They lashed him to the spokes, but Rashood broke down before Jim had ordered a single spin. 'Pity, effendi. Enough, Somoya! I will tell you all you wish to know, only take me down from this accursed wheel.'
'You will stay on the wheel until you have answered all my questions straight and true. If you hesitate or lie, the wheel will turn. When did this creature Kadem murder the princess? Where did this happen? What of my uncle? Has he recovered? Where is my family now?'
Rashood answered each question as though his life depended on it. Which indeed it does, Jim thought grimly.
When he heard the whole story of how his family had fled from Good Hope in the two schooners, and that they had sailed north after leaving the Lagoon of the Elephants, Jim's sorrow for Yasmini was tempered with relief and his anticipation of an imminent reunion.
'Now I know that we shall find my parents at Nativity Bay, and my uncle Dorian and Mansur with them. I count the days in my heart before I shall see them again. We must resume the journey again tomorrow at first light.'
Consumed with eagerness to reach Nativity Bay, Jim's hopes and longings ran ahead of the slow procession of wagons and grazing herds. He wanted to leave the caravan to ride for the coast at once. He urged Louisa to accompany him, but Zama's recovery from the bullet wound was slow. Louisa insisted that he still needed her care and she could not leave him.
'You go on ahead,' she told him. Even though he was sure she did not truly mean him to leave her, and that she expected him to refuse, he was sorely tempted to take her at her word. But then he recalled that Koots, Oudeman and the Arab assassin, Kadem, were still at large and might be in the offing. He could not leave Louisa alone. Each morning he and Bakkat rode out far ahead of the caravan to scout the road path, and he made certain that he returned before sunset each evening to be with Louisa.
They emerged from the bottom end of the narrow gorge into a country lush with grasslands and fair hills interspersed with green forests, tach day Bakkat found sign of the elephant herds but none fresh enough
to follow up until the morning of the fifth day after leaving the gorge. As usual he was riding just ahead of Jim, breaking trail and scanning ahead for sign, when suddenly he turned Crow aside and reined him to a standstill. Jim came up beside him. 'What is it?' Bakkat pointed wordlessly at the damp earth and the tracks deeply trodden into it. Jim felt his pulse jump with excitement. 'Elephant!'
'Three big bulls,' Bakkat agreed, 'and very fresh. They passed this way in the dawn of this very morning, not long since.' Jim felt his anxiety to reach Nativity Bay abate as he stared at the spoor. 'They are very big,' he said.
'One is a king of all elephants,' Bakkat said. 'It may be as large as the first great beast you slew.'
They cannot be too far ahead of us,' Jim suggested hopefully. There had been many successful hunts since the battle with Manatasee's imp is on the river bank. Each time they caught up with the great ivory bearing bulls Jim added to his fund of experience and knowledge of their habits. By now he had honed his skills as a hunter, and in so doing had become addicted to the dangers and the fascination of the chase after this most noble quarry.
'How long will it take to catch up with them?' he asked Bakkat.
They are feeding as they go, moving slowly,' Bakkat pointed out the torn branches of the trees from which the bulls had fed, 'and they are heading down towards the coast, along our own line of march. We need not detour to follow them.' Bakkat spat thoughtfully and looked up at the sky. He held up his right hand and measured his spread fingers against the angle of the sun. 'If the gods of the hunt are kind, we might catch them before noon, and still be back at the wagons before nightfall.' These days Bakkat showed a reluctance equal to Jim's to spend a night away from the wagons, and the golden charms of Letee.
Jim was torn. Despite his passion for the chase, his love and concern for Louisa were stronger. He knew that the vagaries of the hunt were unpredictable. To follow the bulls might add a day or more to the journey to the coast. They might not be able to return to the wagons before the onset of night. On the other hand there had been no sign of Koots and his Arab ally since that disastrous night attack. Bakkat had swept the back trail for many leagues and it was clear. There seemed no longer to be a threat from that direction. Even so, dare he leave Louisa for so long?
He wanted desperately to follow the tracks. In the months of hunting he had learned to read the spoor so vividly that he could picture them in his mind's eye, and he knew that these were magnificent bulls. He
vacillated for a while longer while Bakkat squatted patiently beside the huge oval pad marks, and waited for him to make up his mind.
Then Jim thought of the small army of men who were with the wagons, to guard and protect Louisa. Koots's force had been routed and decimated. Surely he would not return so soon. At last he convinced himself that Koots was heading either for Portuguese or Omani territory, that he would not double back to attack them again.
'Every minute I dither here the bulls are walking away from me.' He made up his mind. 'Bakkat, take the spoor, and eat the wind.'
They rode hard and closed the gap swiftly. The spoor headed steadily through the low hills and forest towards the coast. In places the raw trunks of the trees from which the elephant had stripped the bark shone like mirrors a cable's length ahead of them and they could push Drumfire and Crow into a canter. A little before noon they came upon a huge mound of spongy yellow dung, composed mostly of half-digested bark. It was lying in a puddle of urine that had not yet soaked away into the earth. The dung was covered by a swarm of butterflies with gorgeous white, yellow and orange wings.
Bakkat dismounted and thrust his bare toe into the moist pile to test the temperature. The butterflies rose around him in a cloud. The dung is still hot from his belly.' He grinned up at Jim. 'If you called his name the bull is so close he would hear your voice.'
The words were no sooner out of Bakkat's mouth than they both froze and their heads turned together. 'Ha!' Jim grunted. 'He heard you speak.'
In the forest not far ahead the elephant trumpeted again, high and clear as a bugle blast. Agile as a cricket Bakkat sprang into the saddle.
'What has alarmed them?' Jim asked, as he drew his big German four to-the-pound gun from its sheath under his knee. 'Why did he trumpet? Did he catch our wind?'
The wind is in our faces,' Bakkat replied. 'They have not smelt us, but something else has done it.'
'Sweet Mary!' Jim shouted with astonishment. 'That is musket fire!'
The heavy reports of the guns boomed out and the echoes were flung back by the surrounding hills.
Is it Koots?' Jim demanded, then answered himself, 'It cannot be. K.oots would never give himself away while he knows we're close. These are strangers, and they are attacking our herd.' Jim felt a flare of anger: these were his elephant the interlopers had no right to intervene in his hunt. He felt a strong urge to rush forward, but he quelled that dangerous inclination. He did not know who these other hunters might
be. Judging by the fusillade of gunfire he knew that there was more than one. Any stranger in the wilderness might be a deadly threat. Suddenly there was another sound, the crackle of breaking branches and the rush of an enormous body bearing down on them through the thick underbrush ahead.
'Be ready, Somoya!' Bakkat called urgently. 'They have driven one of the bulls back towards us. He may be wounded and dangerous.'
Jim had only time enough to swing Drumfire to face the sound, when the green forest wall ahead burst open and a bull elephant was upon him at full charge. In that moment of sudden danger, time seemed to slow as though he were caught in the coils of a nightmare. He saw curved tusks that seemed as massive as the main beams of a cathedral roof high above him, and the ears spread wide as the mainsail of a man o'-war, tattered by shot after a close-fought battle. There was fresh blood smeared down the elephant's flank and fury in his tiny, gleaming eyes as they fastened on Jim.
Bakkat had guessed correctly: the gigantic animal was wounded and enraged. Jim realized that flight would be fatal for Drumfire would not be able to use his speed in the confines of the thorn underbrush while the bull would crash through it without check. Jim could not fire from the saddle. Drumfire was dancing in a circle under him and tossing his head. His antics would upset Jim's aim. Holding the heavy gun high above his head so that it would not hit him in the face as he landed, Jim threw one leg back over the cantle of the saddle and dropped to the
