Текст книги "Men of Men"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

He wondered if he would let Louise go if she finally made the decision. There had been a time not long ago when he would have killed her first; but since they had reached Khami, everything had begun altering even more swiftly. They were rushing towards some climax, and Mungo had sensed that it would be explosive.

For Mungo had forgotten the magnetism that Robyn Ballantyne had once exerted upon him, but now he had been vividly reminded by the mature woman, Robyn Codrington. She was even more attractive to him now than she had been as a girl. He sensed that her strength and assurance would provide a secure port for a man tired to his guts and the marrow of his bones by the storms of life.

He knew that she was the trusted confidante of the Matabele king, and that if his fortune awaited him here in the north, as he had come to suspect, then her intercession with the Matabele would be invaluable.

There was something else, some other darker need within him. Mungo Sint John never forgave or forgot an injury. Clinton Codrington had commanded the Royal Naval cruiser which had seized Huron off the Cape of Good Hope, an action which seemed to Mungo to mark the beginning of his long decline, and herald his dogged misfortune. Codrington was vulnerable. Through this woman Mungo could be avenged, and the prospect was strangely compelling.

He sighed and shook his head, roused himself and used the stick to push himself erect. He found himself confronted by the two small figures. Mungo Sint John liked all women of whatever age, and though he had not seen his own children in many years, the youngest would be about the same age as these two.

They were pretty little things. Though he had seen them only fleetingly or at a distance, he had felt the stirring of his paternal instincts; and now their presence was a welcome relief from his dark thoughts, and from the loneliness of the past weeks.

"Good afternoon, ladies." He smiled, and bowed as low as his leg would allow. His smile was irresistible, and some of the rigidity went out of the two small bodies, but their expressions remained pale and fixed; their eyes, huge with trepidation, were fastened upon the fly of his breeches, so that after a few seconds silence even Mungo Sint John felt disconcerted, and he shifted uncomfortably.

What service can I be to you?" he asked.

"We would like to see your tail, sir."

"Ah!" Mungo knew never to show himself at a loss in front of a female, of no matter what age. "You aren't posed to know about that," he said. "Are you, now?"

SUP They shook their heads in unison, but their eyes remained fixed with fascination below his waist. Vicky was right, there was definitely something there.

"Who told you about it?" Mungo sat down again, bringing his eyes to the level of theirs, and their disappointment was evident.

"Mama said you were the Devil, and we know the Devil has a tail."

"I see." Mungo nodded. With a huge effort, he fought back his laughter, and kept his expression serious, his tone conspiratorial.

"You are the only ones that know,"he told them. "You won't tell anybody, will you?" Quite suddenly Mungo realized the value of having allies at Khami, two pairs of sharp bright eyes that saw everything and long ears that heard all.

"We won't tell anybody," promised Vicky. "If you show us.

"I can't do that." And there was an immediate wail of disappointment.

"Why not?"

"Didn't your mother teach you that it's a sin to show anybody under your clothes?"

They glanced at each other, and then Vicky admitted reluctantly. "Yes, we aren't even really allowed to look at ourselves there. Lizzie got whacked for it."

"There." Mungo nodded. "But I'll tell you what I will do, I'll tell you the story of how I got my tail."

"Story!" Vicky clapped her hands, and they spread their skirts and squatted cross-legged at Mungo's feet. If there was one thing better than a secret, it was a story, and Mungo Sint John had stories, wonderful scary, bloodthirsty stories, the kind that guaranteed nightmares.

Each afternoon when he reached the lookout under the leadwood tree, they were waiting for him, captives of his charisma, addicted to those amazing stories of ghosts and dragons, of evil witches and beautiful princesses who always had Vicky's hair or Lizzie's eyes when Mungo Sint John described them.

Then after each of Mungo's stories, he would tactfully initiate a lively discussion of the affairs of Khami Mission. On a typical day he would learn that Cathy had begun painting a portrait of Cousin Ralph from memory, and that it was the considered and unanimous verdict of the twins that Cathy was not only "soft" but, much worse, "sloppy" about Cousin Ralph.

He learned that King Ben had commanded the entire family to attend the Chawala ceremony at the new moon, and the twins were ghoulishly anticipating the slaughter of the sacrificial black bull. "They do it with their bare hands," Vicky gloated. "And this year we are going to be allowed to watch, now that we are eleven."

He was told in detail how Papa had demanded from Mama at the dinner table how much longer "that infamous pirate" was to remain at Khami, and Mungo had to explain to the twins what "infamous" meant "famous, but only more so".

Then on one such afternoon, Mungo learned from Lizzie that King Ben had once again "khombisile" with his indunas. Gandang, one of the king's brothers, had told Juba, who was his wife, and Juba had told Mama.

"Khombisile?" Mungo asked dutifully. "What does that mean?"

it means that he showed them."

"Showed them what?"

The treasure," Vicky cut in, and Lizzie rounded on her.

"I'm telling him!"

"All right, Lizzie." Mungo was leaning forward, interest tempering the indulgent smile. "You tell me."

"It's a secret. Mama says that if other people, bad people, heard about it, it would be terrible for King Ben.

Robbers might come."

"It's a secret then," Mungo agreed.

"Cross your heart."

And Lizzie was telling it before he had made the sign of good faith. Lizzie was determined that Vicky would not get in ahead of her, this time.

"He shows them the diamonds. His wives rub fat all over him, and then they stick the diamonds onto the fat."

"Where did King Ben get all these diamonds?" Scepticism warred with the need to believe.

"His people bring them from Kimberley. Juba says it isn't really stealing. King Ben says it is only the tribute that a king should have."

"Did Juba say how many diamonds?"

"Pots full, pots and pots of them."

Mungo Sint John turned his single eye from her flushed and shining face and looked across the grassy golden plains to the Hills of the Indunas, and his eye was flecked golden yellow like one of the big predatory cats of Africa.

Jordan looked forward to this early hour of day. it was one of his duties to check each evening in the nautical -almanac the time of sunrise, and to waken mister Rhodes an hour beforehand.

Rhodes liked to see the sun come up, whether it was from the balcony of his magnificent private railway coach or drinking coffee in the dusty yard of the corrugated iron cottage that he still maintained behind Market Square in Kimberley, from the upper deck of an ocean-going liner or from the back of a horse as they rode the quiet pathways of his estate on the slopes of Table Mountain.

It was the time when Jordan was alone with his master, the time when ideas which mister Rhodes called his "thoughts" would come spilling out of him. Incredible ideas, sweeping and grand or wild and fanciful, but all fascinating.

It was the time when Jordan could feel that he was part of the vast genius of the man, as he scribbled down mister Rhodes" draft speeches in his shorthand pad, speeches that would be made in the lofty halls of the Cape Parliament to which mister Rhodes had been elected by the constituents of what had once been Griqualand, or at the board table of the governors of De Beers, of which he was chairman. De Beers was the mammoth diamond company which mister Rhodes had welded together out of all the little diggers" claims and lesser competing companies. Like some mythical boa constrictor, he had swallowed them all, even Barney Barnato, the other giant of the fields. mister Rhodes owned it all now.

On other mornings they would ride in silence, until mister Rhodes would lift his chin from his chest and stare at Jordan with those stark blue eyes. Every time he had something startling to say. Once it was, "You should thank God every day, Jordan, that you were born an Englishman."

Another time it was, "There is only one real purpose behind it all, Jordan. It is not the accumulation of wealth. I was fortunate to recognize it so early. The real purpose is to bring the whole civilized world under British rule, to recover North America to the crown, to make all the Anglo-Saxon race into one great empire."

It was thrilling and intoxicating to be part of all this, especially as so often the big burly figure would rein his horse and turn his head and look to the north, towards a land that neither he nor Jordan had ever seen, but which, during the years that Jordan had been with him, had become a part of both their existences.

"My thought," he called it. "My north, my idea."

"That's where it will really begin, Jordan. And when the time comes, I shall send you. The person I can trust beyond any other."

It had never seemed strange to Jordan that those blue eyes had looked in that direction, that the open land to the north had come to loom so large in mister Rhodes' magination, that it had taken on the aura of a sacred quest.

Jordan could mark the day that it had begun, not only the day but the hour. For weeks after Pickering had been buried in the sprawling cemetery on the Cape Road, Jordan had respected mister Rhodes" mourning. Then, one afternoon, he had left his office early. He had returned to the camp.

He retrieved the bird image from where it had "been abandoned in the yard, and with the help of three black workmen, he moved it into the cottage. The living-room had been too small to hold it; it hindered access to both the dining-table and the front door.

In the small cottage, there was only one free wall, and that was in mister Rhodes" bedroom, at the head of his narrow cot. The statue fitted perfectly into the space beyond the window. The next morning, when Jordan went to call him, mister Rhodes had already left his cot and, wearing a dressing-gown, was standing before the statue.

In the fresh pink light of sunrise, as they rode down to the De Beers offices, mister Rhodes had said, suddenly: ` I have had a thought, Jordan, one which I'd like to share with you. While I was studying that statue, it came to me that the north is the gateway, the north is the hinterland of this continent of ours." That is how it had begun, in the shadow of the bird.

When the architect, Herbert Baker, had consulted mister Rhodes on the decoration and furnishings of the mansion that they were building on his Cape Estate, "Groote Schuur", "The Great Barn", Jordan had sat aside from the two men. As always in the presence of others he was unobtrusive and self-effacing, taking the notes that mister Rhodes dictated, supplying a figure or a fact only when it was demanded, and then with his voice kept low, the natural lilt and music of his rich tenor subdued.

mister Rhodes had jumped up from his seat on the box against the wall of the cottage and begun to pace, with that sudden excitable and voluble mood upon him.

"I have had a thought, Baker. I want there to be a theme for the place, something which is essentially me, which will be my motif long after I am gone, something that when men look at it, even in a thousand years" time, they will immediately recall the name Cecil John Rhodes."

"A diamond, perhaps?" Baker had hazarded, sketching a stylized stone on his pad.

"No, no, Baker. Do be original, man! First I have to scold you for being stingy, for trying to build me a mean little hovel and now that I have prevailed on you for magnificently barbaric size and space, you want to spoil it., "The bird," said Jordan. He had spoken despite himself, and both men looked at him with surprise.

"What did you say, Jordan?"

"The bird, mister Rhodes. The stone bird. I think that should be your motif."

Rhodes stared at him for a moment, and then punched his big fist into the palm of his left hand.

"That's it, Baker. The bird, sketch it for me. Sketch it now."

So the bird had become the spirit of Groote Schuur.

There was barely one of the huge cavernous rooms without its frieze or carved door jambs depicting it, even the bath, eleven tons of chiselled and polished granite was adorned at its four corners with the image of the falcon.

The original statue had been shipped down from Kimberley, and a special niche prepared for it high above the baronial entrance hall, from where it stared down blindly upon everyone who came through the massive teak front doors of the mansion.

On this morning they had ridden out even earlier than usual, for mister Rhodes had slept badly and had summoned Jordan from his small bedroom down the corridor.

It was cold. A vindictive wind came down off the mountains of the Hottentots Holland and as they took the path up towards the private zoo, Jordan looked back.

Across the wide Cape flats he saw the snow on the distant peaks turning pink and gold in the early light.

mister Rhodes was in a morose mood, silent and heavy in the saddle, his collar pulled up over his ears, and the broad hat jammed down to meet it. Jordan surreptitiously pushed his own mount level and studied his face.

Rhodes was still in his thirties, and yet this morning he looked fifteen years older. He took no notice of the first unseasonal flush of blue plumbago blooms beside the path, though on another morning he would have exclaimed with delight, for they were his favourite flowers.

He did not stop at the zoo to watch the lions fed, but turned up into the forest; and on the prow of land that led to the steeper cliffs of the flat-topped massif they dismounted.

At this distance the thatched roof of Groote Schuur with its twirling barley-corn turrets looked like a fairy castle, but Rhodes looked beyond it.

"I feel like a racehorse," he said suddenly. "Like a thoroughbred Arab with the heart and the will and the need to run, but there is a dark horseman upon my back that checks me with a harsh curb of iron or pricks me with a cruel spur." He rubbed his closed eyes with thumb and forefinger, and then massaged his cheeks as though to set the blood coursing in them again. "He was with me again last night, Jordan. Long ago I fled from England to this land and I thought I had eluded him, but he is back in the saddle. His name is Death, Jordan, and he will give me so little time." He pressed his hand to his chest, fingers spread as though to slow the racing of his damaged heart. "There is so little time, Jordan. I must hurry." He turned and took the hand from his heart and placed it on Jordan's shoulder. His expression became tender, a small sad smile touched his white lips. "How I envy you, my boy, for you will see it all and I shall not."

At that moment Jordan thought his own heart might break and, seeing his expression, Rhodes lifted his hand and touched his cheek.

"It's all too short, Jordan, life and glory, even love it's all too short. "He turned back to his horse. "Come, there is work to do."

As they rode out of the forest, the course of that mercurial mind had changed again. Death had been pushed aside and he said suddenly: "We shall have to square him, Jordan. I know he is your father, but we shall have to square him. Think about it and let me have your thoughts, but remember time is running short and we cannot move without him."

The road over the neck between the main massif of Table Mountain and Signal Hill was well travelled and Jordan passed twenty coaches or more before he reached the top, but it was another two miles and the road became steadily less populous, until at last it was a lonely deserted track which led into one of the ravines in the Mountainside.

In this winter season the protea bushes on the slopes beyond the sprawling thatched building were drab and their blooms had withered and browned on the branches.

The waterfall that smoked down off the mountain polished the rocks black and cold, and the spray dripped from the clustering trees about the pool.

However, the cottage had a neat cared-for look. The thatch had recently been renewed. It was still bright gold, and the thick walls had been whitewashed. With relief Jordan saw smoke curling from the chimney stack.

His father was at home.

He knew that the property had once belonged to the old hunter and explorer Tom Harkness, and that his father had purchased it with 150 pounds of his royalties from A Hunter's Odyssey. A sentimental gesture perhaps for old Tom had been the one who had encouraged and counselled Zouga Ballantyne on his first expedition to Zambezia.

Jordan dismounted and hitched the big glossy hunter from the stables of Groote Schuur to the rail below the verandah, and he walked to the front steps.

He glanced at the pillar of blue marbled stone that stood at the head of the steps like a sentinel, and a little shadow flitted over his face as he remembered the fateful day that Ralph had hacked it out of the Devil's Own claims and brought it to the surface.

It was the only thing that remained to any of them from all those years of labour and travail. He wondered not only that his father had transported it so far with so much effort, but that he had placed it so prominently to rebuke him.

For a moment he laid his hand upon the stone, and he felt the faint satiny bloom that other hands had made on the same spot on the surface, like the marks of worshippers" hands on a holy relic. Perhaps Zouga also touched it every time he passed. Jordan dropped his hand and called towards the shuttered cottage.

"Is anybody there?"

There was a commotion in the front room, and the front door burst open.

"Jordan, my Jordie!"howled Jan Cheroot, and came bounding down the steps. His cap of peppercorn hair was pure white at last, but his eyes were bright and the web of wrinkles around them had not deepened.

He embraced Jordan with the wiry strength of brown arms; but even from the advantage of the verandah step he did not reach to Jordan's chin.

"So tall, jordie," he chuckled. "Whoever thought you'd grow so tall, my little jordie."

He hopped back and stared up into Jordan's face. "Look at you, I bet a guinea to a baboon turd that you've broken a few hearts already."

"Not as many as you have." Jordan pulled him close again, and hugged him.

"I had a start," Jan Cheroot admitted, and then grinned wickedly. "And I've still got the wind left for a sprint or two."

"I was afraid that you and Papa might still be away."

"We got home three days ago."

"Where is Papa?"

jordan!"

The familiar, beloved voice made him start and he broke from Jan Cheroot's embrace and looked beyond him to Zouga Ballantyne standing in the doorway of the cottage.

He had never seen his father looking– so well. It was not merely that he was lean and hard and sun-browned.

He seemed to stand taller and straighter with an easy set to his shoulders, so different from the defeated slump with which he had left the diamond fields.

"Jordan!" he said again, and they came together and shook hands, and Jordan studied his father's face at closer range.

The pride and the purpose that had been burnt away in the diamond pit had returned, but with their quality subtly changed. Now he had the look of a man who had worked out the terms on which he was prepared to live.

There were the shadows of a new thoughtfulness in his green eyes, the weight of understanding and compassion in his gaze. Here was a man who had tested himself almost to the point of destruction, had explored the frontiers of his soul and found them secure.

"Jordan," he said again quietly for the third time, and then he did something that demonstrated the profound change he had undergone. He leaned forward and briefly he pressed the soft golden curls of his beard to Jordan's cheek.

"I have thought of you often," he said without embarrassment. Thank you for coming." Then with his Arm about his shoulders he ushered Jordan into the front room.

This room always pleased Jordan, and he moved across to the log fire in the walk-in hearth and held out his hands to the blaze while he looked about him. It was a man's room, shelves filled with men's books, encyclopaedias and almanacs and thick leatherbound volumes of travel and exploration.

Weapons hung upon the walls, bows and quivers of poisoned Bushman arrows, shields and assegais of Matabele and Zulu, and, of course, the tools of the trade to which Zouga had reverted, firearms, heavy calibre sporting rifles by famous gunsmiths, Gibbs, Holland and Holland, Westley Richards. They were racked on the wall facing the fireplace, blued steel and lovingly carved wood.

With them were the souvenirs and trophies of Zouga's work, horns of antelope and buffalo, twisting or curved or straight as a lance, the zig-zag stripes of a zebra hide, the tawny gold bushed mane of the Kalahari lion, and ivory, great yellow arcs reaching higher than a man's head, yellow as fresh butter and translucent as candlewax in the cold winter light from the doorway.

"You had a good trip?" Jordan asked, and Zouga shrugged.

"It gets more difficult each season to find good specimens for my clients."

His clients were rich and aristocratic sportsmen, come out to Africa for the chase.

"But at least the Americans seem to have discovered Africa at last. I have a good party booked for next season young fellow called Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy."

He broke off. "Yes, we are managing to keep body and soul together, old Jan Cheroot and I, but I don't have to ask about you."

He glanced down at the expensive English cloth of Jordan's suit, the soft leather of his riding boots which creased perfectly around his ankles like the bellows of a concertina, the solid silver spurs and the gold watch chain in his fob pocket, and then his eye paused on the white sparkle of the diamond in his cravat.

"You made the right choice when you decided to go with Rhodes. My God, how that man's star rises higher and brighter with. each passing day."

"He is a great man, Papa."

"Or a great rogue." Then Zouga smiled apologetically.

"I am sorry, I know how highly you think of him. Let's have a glass of sherry, Jordie, while Jan Cheroot makes lunch for us." He smiled again. "We miss your cooking.

You will find it poor fare, I'm afraid."

While he poured sweet Cape sherry into long glasses, he asked over his shoulder: "And Ralph, what do you hear of Ralph?"

"We meet often in Kimberley or at the railhead. He always asks after you."

"How is he?"

"He will be a big man, Papa. Already his wagons run to Pilgrims" Rest and those new goldfields on the Witwatersrand. He has just won the fast coach contract from Algoa Bay. He has trading posts at Tati and on the Shashi river."

They ate in front of the fire, sour bread and cheese, a cold joint of mutton and a black bottle of Constantia wine, and Jan Cheroot hovered over Jordan, scolding him fondly for his appetite and recharging his glass when it was barely a quarter empty.

At last they finished and stretched out their legs towards the fire, while Jan Cheroot brought a burning taper to light the cigars which Jordan pro from a gold pocket case.

Jordan spoke through the perfumed wreaths of smoke.

"Papa, the concession, "And for the first time an angry arrowhead creased the skin between Zouga's eyes.

"I had hoped that you came to see us," he said coldly.

"I keep forgetting that you are Rhodes" man, ahead of being my son."

"I am both," Jordan contradicted him evenly. "That's why I can talk to you like this."

"What message has the famous mister Rhodes for me this time?" Zouga demanded.

"Maund and Selous have both accepted his offers. They have sold their concessions to mister Rhodes, and both are ten thousand pounds richer."

Maund was a soldier and an adventurer. Fred Selous, like Zouga, a hunter and explorer. Also, like Zouga, Selous had written a well-received book on the African chase A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa. Both of these men had at different times prevailed on Lobengula to grant them concessions to ivory and minerals in his eastern dominions.

"mister Rhodes wants me to point out to you that both the Maund and Selous concessions are over the same territory as the concession that Mzilikazi granted to you.

He owns both of them now, the validity of all the treaties is hopelessly confused and hazy."

"The Ballantyne concession was granted first, by Mzilikazi; the ones that followed have no force," snapped zouga.

"mister Rhodes" lawyers have advised "Damn mister Rhodes and his lawyers. Damn them all to hell."

Jordan dropped his eyes and was silent, and after a long pause Zouga sighed and stood up. He went to the yellow wood cupboard and took out a stained and dog-eared document, so ragged that it had been pasted onto a backing to prevent it falling to pieces.

The ink had faded to brown, but the script was bold and spiky, the hand of an arrogant and cocksure young man.

The document was headed: EXCLUSIVE CONCESSION TO MINE GOLD AND HUNT IVORY IN THE SOVEREIGN TERRITORY OF MATABELELAND And at its foot was a crude wax seal with the image of a bull elephant, and the words:

KKOSI NKHULU, GREAT KING Below it a shaky cross in the same faded ink:

MZILIKAZI, his mark Zouga laid the document on the table between them, and they both stared at it.

"All right," Zouga capitulated. "What do mister Rhodes' lawyers advise?"

"That this concession could be set aside on separate points of law."

"I would fight him."

"Papa. He is a determined man. His influence is enormous. He will be Prime Minister of the Cape Parliament at the next session, there is little doubt of that." Jordan touched the red wax seal. "His fortune is vast, perhaps ten million pounds, "

"Still I will fight him," Zouga said, and then stopped Jordan speaking with a hand on his arm. "Jordan, don't you understand. A man must have Something, a dream, a light to follow in the darkness. I can never sell this, it has been all of my life for too long. Without it I shall have nothing."

"Papa "I know what you will say, that I can never make this into reality. I do not have the money it would need. You might even say that I no longer even have the strength of purpose. But, Jordan, while I have this piece of paper I can still hope, I still have my dream to follow. I can !" never sell it."

"I told him that, and he understood immediately. He wants you to be a part of it."

Zouga lifted his head and stared at his son.

"A seat on the Board of Governors of the company for which mister Rhodes will petition a Royal Charter from Her Majesty. Then you will have grants of farm land, gold claims, and an active command in the field. Don't you see, Papa, he is not taking your dream away from you, he is making it come true at last."

The silence drew out, a log crumbled and crashed softly in the hearth; sparks shot up and the flare lit Zouga's face.

"When will he see me?" he asked.

"We can be at Groote Schuur in four hours" ride."

"It will be dark by then."

"There are fifteen bedrooms for you to choose from," Jordan smiled, and Zouga laughed like a man who has been given back all the excitement and eagerness of youth.

"Then why are we sitting here?" he asked. "Jan Cheroot, bring my heavy coat."

Zouga strode out onto the verandah of the cottage, and on the top step he checked and reached out with his right hand to the pillar of blue stone. He touched it with a strangely formal caress, and with the same hand touched his own lips and forehead, the gesture with which an Arab greets an old friend.

Then Zouga glanced at Jordan, and smiled.

"Superstition," he explained. "Good luck."

"Good luck?" Jan Cheroot snorted from below the steps where he held Zouga's horse. "Damn stone, all the way from Kimberley, trip over the thundering rubbish." He went on muttering to himself as Zouga mounted.

Jan Cheroot would pine away if he didn't have something to complain about." Zouga winked at Jordan, and they trotted out from under the milkwood trees onto the track.

"I often think back to that day when we hit the blue," Jordan said. "If we had only known!"

"How could we know?"

"It was I, I feel sure of that. It was I who convinced you that the blue ground was barren."

"Jordan, you were only a boy."

"But I was supposed to be the diviner of diamonds. If I had not been so certain that it was dead ground, you would never have sold the Devil's Own."

"I never sold it. I gambled it away."

"Only because you thought it was worthless. You would never have accepted mister Rhodes" bet if you had known that the blue was not the end, but only the beginning."

"Nobody knew that, not then."

"mister Rhodes sensed it. He never lost faith. He knew what the blue was. He knew it with a certain instinct that nobody else had."

"I have never been back to Kimberley, Jordie." Zouga settled down in the saddle, riding with long stirrups like a Boer hunter. "I never wanted to go back, but of course the news filters down the line of rail. I heard that when Rhodes and Barnato made their deal, they valued the Devil's Own claims at half a million pounds."

"They were the keys to the field," Jordie explained. "It just happened that they were the central claims in the main enrichment. But you could never have guessed that, Papa."

Strange how right one man's instincts can be," Zouga brooded. "And how wrong another man's. I always knew, or thought I knew, that my road to the north began in that hole, that terrible hole."

"Perhaps it still does. The money to take us all to the north will still come from it. mister Rhodes" millions."

"Tell me about the blue. You have been with Rhodes through it all. Tell me about it."

"It changes," Jordan said. "It's as simple as that, it alters."

Zouga shook his head. "It's like some sort of miracle."