Mansur was amazed by their numbers and by the weight of the ivory they carried on the pack-saddles strapped to their backs.
'Even though Uncle Tom and my father were able to escape from the colony with much of the family wealth, you have multiplied it many times over with what you have captured. Tell me how it happened. Tell me of the battle against this Nguni queen, Manatasee, and her legions.'
'I described it to you last night,' Jim protested.
'It is too good a tale to be told only once,' Mansur insisted. 'Tell it to me again.'
This time Jim embellished Louisa's role in the fighting, despite her protests that he was exaggerating. 'I warn you, coz, you must not anger this lady. She is a veritable Valkyrie once she is aroused. She is not feared far and wide as the Dreaded Hedgehog for no good reason.'
They rode to the crest of the next hill and looked down towards the ocean. It was so close that they could just make out the windswept white horses that danced on the horizon. 'How far are we from Nativity Bay?' Jim demanded.
'It took me less than three days on foot,' Mansur answered. 'Now that I have this good horse under me I could be there before nightfall.'
Jim looked at Louisa with a wistful air, and she smiled. 'I know what you are thinking, James Archibald,' she said.
'And what do you think about what I am thinking, Hedgehog?'
'I think we should leave Zama, the wagons and the cattle to come on at their best speed and that we should eat the wind.'
Jim let out a happy shout. 'Follow me, my love. This way for Nativity
Bay.'
It took less time than Mansur had predicted and the sun was still above the horizon when they reined in on the hills above the wide, glittering bay. The two schooners were anchored off the mouth of the Umbilo river and Jim shaded his eyes with his hat against the sun's reflection off the water.
'Fort Auspice,' Mansur told them, and pointed out the newly erected buildings on the banks of the river. 'Your mother chose the name. She wanted to call it Fort Good Auspice, but Uncle Tom said, 'That's a mouthful, and we all know that it an't a bad auspice, any which way you look at it.' So that was it. Fort Auspice.'
As they rode closer they were able to make out the palisade of sharpened stakes that enclosed the high ground on which the fort was set. The earth was still raw around the gun emplacements that covered all the approaches to the fortifications.
'Our fathers have taken every precaution against attack by Keyser or other enemies. We have brought ashore most of the guns off the ships,' Mansur explained.
The roofs of the buildings it enclosed showed above the top of the palisade. 'There are barracks for the servants and each of our families have their own quarters.' Mansur pointed them out as they trotted down the hill. 'Those are the stables. That is the warehouse, and there are the go down and the counting house
All the roofs were still bright and unweathered with new-cut thatch.
'Father has the delusions of Nero.' Jim chuckled. 'He has built himself a city, not a trading post.'
'Aunt Sarah did little to dissuade him,' Mansur said. 'In fact you could say she was an active accomplice.' He snatched off his hat and waved it over his head. 'And there she is now!' A matronly figure had appeared in the gateway of the fort and was staring across at the little band of approaching riders. As soon as Jim waved she threw all dignity to the winds and came running down the path like a schoolgirl released from the classroom.
'Jim! Oh, Jim boy!' Her joyous cries echoed off the cliffs of the bluff. Jim sent Drumfire into a wild gallop to meet her. He jumped from the saddle while the stallion was still at full charge and gathered his mother into his arms.
when they heard Drumfire's hoofs Dorian and Tom Courtney came running out through the gates of the fort. Mansur and Louisa hung back to let the first frenzy of greeting abate.
it took another five days for the wagons and cattle to reach Fort
Auspice. The entire family stood together on the firing platform of the palisade. The herd of spare horses led the way, and Tom and Dorian cheered as they galloped past. 'It will be good to have a horse under me again,' Tom exulted. 'I have felt that half of me was missing for lack of a good mount. Now we will be able to range through this land and claim it as our own.'
Then they gazed in awed silence as the dark mass of the cattle herds poured down the hills towards them. When Inkunzi and his Nguni herders began to off load the ivory on the open parade in front of the gates, Tom climbed down the ladder from the platform and walked among the tall stacks of tusks, marvelling at the quantity and size of some of them. Then he came back and scowled at Jim. 'For the love of all that's holy, lad! Have you no sense of moderation? Did you not give a thought to where we were going to store all this? We shall have to build another warehouse, and you are solely to blame.' Tom's scowl faded and he laughed at his own wit, then folded his son in a bear-hug. 'After this haul, I think we will have no choice but to declare you a full partner in the company.'
Over the following months, there was employment for all, and much besides to plan and arrange. The main work on the fort was completed, including the extension to the warehouse to accommodate the abundance of captured ivory. Sarah was able at last to bring her furniture ashore. She set up her harpsichord in the hall, which was to serve as the dining and common room to both families. That night she played all their favourite tunes, while they joined in the choruses. Tone-deaf Tom made up in volume for what he lacked in tunefulness, until Sarah tactfully distracted him by asking him to turn the pages of her music book.
For lack of grazing, such a great number of cattle could not be held in the immediate vicinity of the fort. Jim split them into seven smaller herds, and ordered Inkunzi to move them out into the surrounding country, as far as twenty leagues distant from Fort Auspice, wherever good grazing and water could be found. The Nguni herders built their villages close to these new grazing grounds.
'They will form a buffer round the fort,' Jim pointed out to Tom and Dorian, 'and they will give us good warning of the approach of an enemy before they come within twenty leagues.' Then he added, as if in afterthought, 'Of course, I will have to ride out to inspect them at regular intervals.'
'And that will provide you with a fine excuse to run off hunting
elephants.' Tom nodded sagely. 'Your devotion to company duty is moving, lad.'
However, after only a few such expeditions the elephant responded to Jim's attentions by moving out of this country and vanishing into the fastness of the deep interior.
Within a month of their arrival at Fort Auspice, Jim and Louisa waylaid Sarah in her kitchen. After a long and emotional discussion, which left both women in tears of joy, Sarah went off immediately to speak to Tom.
'My oath, Sarah Courtney, I know not what to say,' said Tom, which she knew was his most forceful expression of amazement. 'There can be no mistake?'
'Louisa is certain. Women are seldom mistaken in such matters,' Sarah replied.
'We shall need somebody to splice the knot, and make it all shipshape and legal.' Tom looked worried.
'Well, you are a ship's captain,' Sarah pointed out tartly, 'so you have that power vested in you.'
The longer Tom thought about it, the more the idea of having a grandson appealed to him. 'Well, it seems Louisa has passed her trials fair enough,' he conceded, with a convincing show of nonchalance.
Sarah placed her fists on her hips, a storm warning. 'If that was meant as a jest, Thomas Courtney, it fell far short of the mark. As far as you and I, or anyone else in the world, is concerned, Louisa Leuven will be a virgin bride,' she said.
He gave ground rapidly. 'I am convinced of that, and I will fight any man who says different. As you and I are well aware, premature birth runs strongly on both sides of our family. On top of that, Louisa is a comely and likely lass. I daresay our Jim would have to sail a long way to find another better.'
'Does that mean you will do it?' Sarah demanded.
'I suspect I will not have much peace until I do.'
'For once you suspect correctly,' she said, and he picked her up and bussed her on both cheeks.
Tom married them on the quarter-deck of the Sprite. There was not space aboard for all the company so the overflow watched from the rigging of the Revenge or from the palisade walls of the fort. Jim and Louisa spoke their vows, then signed the ship's log. When Jim brought his bride ashore, Mansur and his men fired a salute of twenty-one guns from the cannons of the fort, which scattered the Nguni warriors in confusion, and reduced little Letee to hysteria until Bakkat could reassure her that the sky was not falling in upon them.
'Well!' said Tom, with satisfaction. 'That should hold them, until they can find a priest to do the job properly.' And he doffed his captain's cocked hat and exchanged the job of clergyman for that of bartender, by knocking the bung out of a cask of Cape brandy.
Smallboy slaughtered an ox, and they roasted it whole on a spit on the beach below the fort. The festivities went on until it was consumed and the brandy cask was at last drunk dry.
