man in the stockade who had not already read the slim volume, or at least heard of its contents, and if Vicky had thrown a live mamba on the table, their consternation could not have been more intense.
The contents of the book were so dangerous that three reputable London publishers had rejected it, and finally Robyn St. John had published it privately and created an immediate sensation. In six months it had sold almost two hundred thousand copies, and had been treated to extensive reviews in almost every influential newspaper both at home in England and abroad in the colonies.
The frontispiece of the book set the tone for the text that followed. It was a murky photograph that depicted a dozen white men in BSA Company uniform standing under the spreading branches of a tall wild teak tree and looking up at the corpses of four semi-naked Matabele hanging by their necks from the topmost branches. There was no caption to the photograph, and the faces of the white men were too indistinct to be recognizable.
Now Mr. Rhodes reached out and opened the book at the gruesome illustration. 'Those are four Matabele indunas who were wounded at the battle of Bembesi, and who committed suicide by hanging, rather than surrender to our forces,' he growled. 'They are not the victims of some atrocity as this scurrilous piece of offal implies.' Mr. Rhodes closed the book with a snap, and Elizabeth exclaimed sweetly, 'Oh, Mr. Rhodes, Mama will be so disappointed that you did not enjoy her little story.' The book described the fictional adventures of Trooper Hackett of the BSA Company expeditionary force, and his whole-hearted participation in the slaughter of the Matabele with machine-gun fire, the pursuit and shooting down of the fleeing survivors, the burning of the kraals, the looting of Lobengula's cattle and the rape of the young Matabele girls. Then Trooper Hackett is separated from his squadron and spends the night alone on a wild kopje, and while huddled over his camp-fire a mysterious white stranger comes out of the night and joins him at the fire. Hackett remarks, 'Ah, you have been in the wars, too, I see,' leaning forward and inspecting the stranger's feet. 'By God!
Both of them! And right through you must have had a bad time of it!'
And the stranger replies, 'It all happened a very long time ago, then the reader is left in no doubt as to whom he is dealing with, especially when the author describes his beautiful gentle countenance and his all-seeing blue eyes. Abruptly the stranger breaks into a florid injunction to young Hackett.
'Take a message to England. Go to that great people and demand of them. 'Where is the sword that was given into your hand, that with it you might enforce justice and deal out mercy? How came you to give it up into the hands of men whose search is gold, whose thirst is wealth, to whom the souls and bodies of their fellow men are counters in a game, men who have transformed the sword of a great people into a tool to burrow for gold, as the snouts of swine for earth nuts?'' It was little wonder, Ralph smiled to himself, that Mr. Rhodes pushed the book away and wiped the hand that had touched it on the lapel of his rumpled Norfolk jacket.
'Oh, Mr. Rhodes,' murmured Vicky, angel-faced and wide-eyed. 'At the least you must read the inscription that Mama dedicated to you.'
She retrieved the , discarded volume, opened the flyleaf and read aloud, 'For Cecil John Rhodes, without whose endeavours this book would never have been written.'' Mr. Rhodes rose from his seat with ponderous dignity. 'Ralph,' he said quietly. 'Thank you for your hospitality. Dr. Jim and I will be getting on to Bulawayo, I think. We have spent too long here as it is.' Then he looked across at Jordan.
'The mules are well rested. Jordan, is there a moon tonight?' 'There will be a good moon tonight,' Jordan replied promptly, 'and there are no clouds so we will have a good light for the road.' 'Can we be ready to leave by this evening, then?' It was a command, and Mr. Rhodes did not wait for a reply, but stalked out of the stockade towards his own tent, and the little doctor followed him stiffly. The moment they were gone, the twins burst into merry tinkling laughter and hugged each other ecstatically.
'Mama would have been proud of you, Victoria Isabel.-' 'Well, I am not.' Jordan's voice cut through their hilarity.
He was white- faced and shaking with anger. 'You are ill mannered and silly little girls.' 'Oh Jordan,' Vicky wailed and seized his hands. 'Don't be cross. We love you so.' 'Oh yes, we do. Both of us.' Elizabeth took his other hand, but he pulled away from them.
'You do not have any idea in those giddy little heads how dangerous a game you are playing, not only for yourselves.' He strode away from them, but paused for a moment in front of Ralph. 'Nor do you, Ralph.' His expression softened, and he placed his hand on Ralph's shoulder. 'Please be more careful for my sake, if not for your own.'
Then he followed his master from the stockade.
Ralph pulled the gold hunter from the inner pocket of his waistcoat and made a show of inspecting it.
'Well,' he announced to the twins, 'sixteen minutes to clear the camp. That must be a new record even for you two.' He returned the watch to his pocket and put one arm around Cathy's shoulders. 'There you are, Katie my love, there is your home again without a single stranger.' 'That is not quite the case,' murmured a soft Kentucky accent, and Harry Mellow rose from the log he had been using as a seat and removed the slouch hat from his curly head. The twins stared at him for a startled instant, then -flashed each other a look of complete accord and a remarkable transformation came over them. Liza smoothed her skirts and Vicky pushed back the dense dangling tresses from her face and their expressions became grave and their comportment ladylike.
'You may, present the young gentleman. cousin Ralph,' said Vicky in accents so refined as to make Ralph glance at her to confirm it was the same girl speaking.
When the mule coach drove through the outer gates of the stockade, there was one member of Mr. Rhodes' party who was not aboard.
'What did- you tell Mr. Rhodes?' Cathy asked, hanging onto Ralph's arm as they watched the coach rolling away, a dark shadow on the moon-silver road.
'I told him that I needed Harry for a day or two more to help me lay out the development for the Harkness.' Ralph lit his last cheroot of the day and they began the leisurely stroll around the camp that was a little ritual of their life together. It was their time of contentment and delicious anticipation, the time when they talked over the events of the day just past and planned for the one ahead, at the same time touching each other as they walked, her hand in the crook of his arm, their hips sliding against each other, a closeness which would soon lead naturally and sweetly to the wide soft cot in the bell tent.
'Was that true?' Cathy asked.
'Semi-true,' he admitted. 'I need him for longer than a day or two, more like ten or twenty years.' 'If you succeed, you will be one of the few men to get the better of Mr. Rhodes, and he will not like it.' Ralph stopped her and commanded. 'Listen!' From the inner stockade there was the orange glow of the fire and the sound of a banjo being played with such rare skill that the limpid notes shimmered and ran into each other, like some exotic birdsong, it rose to an impossible crescendo and then ceased so abruptly that the utter stillness trembled in the air for many seconds before the night chorus of the cicadas in the trees,) which had been shamed to silence by the vaunting instrument, hesitantly recommenced. With it mingled the patter of soft palms and the twins' unfeigned exclamations of delight.
'He is a man of many talents, your Harry Mellow.' 'The chief of them is that he can spot gold in a filled tooth across a polo field.
However, I have no doubt your little sisters will come to cherish others of his accomplishments.' 'I should send them to bed,' Cathy murmured.
'Don't be the wicked elder sister,' Ralph admonished, and the music started again, but this time Harry Mellow's soaring baritone led and the twins picked up the refrain in their true clear voices.
'Leave the poor creatures alone, they have enough of that at home.' Ralph led her away.
'It's my duty,' Cathy protested halfheartedly.
'If it's duty you are after,' Ralph chuckled, 'then, by God, woman, I have another more pressing duty for you to perform!' He lay stretched out on his back on the cot, and watched her prepare for bed in the lamplight. It had taken her a long time to forget her upbringing as the child of Christian missionaries and to allow him to watch her, but now she had- come to enjoy it, and she had flaunted a little before him, until he grinned and leaned out of the cot to crush out the cheroot, then lifted both hands towards her.
'Come here, Katie!' he ordered, but she hung back provocatively.
'Do you know what I want?' 'No, but I know what I want.' 'I want a home-' 'You have a home.' 'With thatch and brick walls, and a real garden.' 'You have a garden, the most beautiful garden in the world, and it stretches from the Limpopo to the Zambezi.' 'A garden with roses and geraniums.' She came to him, and he lifted the sheet. 'Will you build me a home, Ralph?' 'Yes.' 'When?' 'When the railroad is finished.' She sighed softly. He had made the same promise while he was laying the telegraph line, and that was before Jonathan was born, but she knew better than to remind him. Instead, she slipped under the sheet, and strangely his arms, as they closed around her, became home for that moment.
In the southern springtime on the shores of one of the great lakes that lie in the hot depths of the Rift Valley, that mighty geological fault that splits the shield of the African continent like the stroke of an axe, there occurred at that time a bizarre hatching.
The
