Текст книги "Men of Men"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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"Intercede for me with your God, Henshaw," he said, and struck.

Ralph cried out at the stinging burn of razor steel, and his blood burst from the wound and spilled into the dry earth.

Bazo dropped to his knee beside him and scooped up [ the blood in his cupped hands. He splashed it on his arms and chest. He smeared it on the haft and blade of his spear, until the bright steel was dulled.

Then Bazo leapt up and ripped a strip of bark from the mopani tree. He plucked a bunch of green leaves and came back to Ralph's side. He held together the lips of the deep wound in Ralph's forearm, then he placed the bunch of leaves over it and bound it up with the strip of bark.

The bleeding slowed and stopped, and Bazo hacked the rawhide bonds from Ralph's ankles and wrists and stood back.

He gestured at his own blood-sullied arms and weapon.

"Who, seeing me thus, would believe that I am a traitor to my king?" he asked softly. "Yet the love of a brother is stronger than the duty to a king."

Ralph dragged himself upright against the mopani trunk, holding his wounded arm against his chest and staring at the young induna.

"Go in peace, Henshaw," whispered Bazo. "But pray to your God for me, for I have betrayed my king and forfeited my honour."

Then Bazo whirled and ran back across the glade of yellow grass. When he reached the trees on the far side he neither paused nor looked back, but plunged into them with a kind of reckless despair.

Ten days later, with his boots scuffed through the uppers and the legs of his breeches ripped to tatters by arrow grass and thorn, with his inflamed and infected left arm strapped to his chest by a sling of bark, his face gaunt with starvation and his body bony and wasted, Ralph staggered into the circle of wagons that were outspanned beside the Bushman wells, and Isazi shouted for Umfaan and ran to catch Ralph before he fell.

"Isazi," Ralph croaked, "the birds, the stone birds?"

"I have them safe, Nkosi."

Ralph grinned wickedly, so that his dried lips cracked and his bloodshot eyes slitted.

"By your own boast, Isazi, you are a wise man. Now I tell you also, that you are beautiful to behold, as beautiful as a falcon in flight," Ralph told him, and then reeled so that he had to catch his balance with an arm around the little Zulu's shoulders.

Lobengula sat cross-legged on his sleeping-mat, alone in his great hut. Before him was a gourd of clear spring water. He stared into it fixedly.

Long ago, when he had lived in the cave of the Matopos with Saala, the white girl, the mad old witchdoctor had instructed him in the art of the gourd. Very occasionally, after many hours" staring into the limpid water, and after the utmost exercise of his concentration and will, he had been able to see snatches of the future, faces and events, but even then they had been murky and unclear, and soon after he left the Matopos this small gift had gone from him. Sometimes still, in desperation, he resorted to the gourd, although, as it was this night, nothing moved or roiled darkly beneath the still surface of the spring water, and his concentration slipping away. Tonight he kept toying with the words of the Umlimo.

Always the oracle spoke obliquely, always her counsel was shrouded in imagery and riddles. Often it was repetitive, on at least five previous visits to the cavern the witch had spoken of "the stars shining on the hills" and the sun that burns at midnight". No matter how doggedly Lobengula and his senior indunas had picked at the words, and tried to unravel the meaning that was tied up in them, they had found no answer.

Now Lobengula set aside the fruitless gourd, and lay back upon his kaross to consider the third prophecy, made in the croaking raven's voice from the cliff above the cavern.

"Heed the wisdom of the vixen before that of the dogfox."

He took each word and weighed it separately, then he considered the whole, and twisted it and studied it from every angle.

In the dawn there remained only one possible solution that had survived the night. For once the oracle seemed to have given advice that was unequivocal. It was only for him to decide which female was the "vixen" of the oracle.

He considered each of his senior wives, and there was not one of them that had any interest in anything beyond the begetting and suckling of infants, or the baubles and ribbons that the traders brought to Gubulawayo.

Ningi, his full-blooded sister, he loved still as his one link with the mother he barely remembered. Yet now when Ningi was sober she was elephantine and slowwitted, bad-tempered and cruel. When she was filled with the traders" champagne and cognac, she was giggling and silly to begin with, and then incontinent and comatose at the end. He had spoken with her for an hour and more the previous day. Little that she had said was sensible and nothing she had said could possibly bear on the terrible pressures of Lodzi and his emissaries.

So at last Lobengula returned to what he had known all along must be the key to the riddle of the Umlimo.

"Guards!" he shouted suddenly, and there were quick and urgent footfalls, and one of his cloaked executioners stooped through the doorway and prostrated himself on the threshold.

"Go to Nomusa, the Girlchild of Mercy, bid her come to me with all speed," said Lobengula.

Whereas I have been much molested of late by divers persons seeking and desiring to obtain grants and concessions of land and mining rights in my territories Now, therefore, for the following considerations: Item One, payment by the grantee to the grantor of 100 pounds per month in perpetuity.

Item Two, the provision by the grantee to the grantor of One Thousand Martini-Henry rifles, together with One Hundred Thousand rounds of Ammunition for the same.

Item Three, the provision by the grantee to the grantor of an armed steamboat to patrol the navigable reaches of the Zambezi river.

Now, therefore, I, Lobengula, King of the Matabele people, and Paramount Chief of Mashonaland, Monarch of all territories South of the Zambezi River and Northwards of the Shashi and Limpopo Rivers, do hereby grant Complete and exclusive charge over all metals and minerals in my Kingdom, Principalities and Dominions, together with full power to do all things that they may deem necessary to win and procure the same and to enjoy the profits and revenues, if any, derivable from the said metals and minerals.

in his fair hand, Jordan Ballantyne wrote out the document from mister Rudd's dictation.

Robyn Codrington read the text to Lobengula, and explained it to him, then she helped him attach the Great Elephant seal. Finally, she witnessed the mark that Lobengula made beside it.

"Damn me, Jordan, there's none of us here that can ride the way you can." Rudd made no effort to conceal his jubilation when they were alone. "It's speed now that counts. If you leave immediately, you can reach Khami Mission by nightfall. Pick the three best horses from those that we left there, and go like the winds my boy.

Take the concession to mister Rhodes, and tell him I will follow directly."

The twins ran down the front steps of Khami Mission and surrounded Jordan as he stepped down from the stirrup.

At the head of the steps, Cathy held a lantern high, and Salina stood beside her with her hands clasped demurely in front of her, and her eyes shining with joy in the lantern light.

"Welcome, Jordan," she called. "We have all missed you so."

Jordan came up the steps. "I can rest one night only," he told her, and a little of her delight died and her smile with it. "I ride south tomorrow at first light."

He was so beautiful, tall and straight, and fair, and though his shoulders were wide and his limbs finely muscled, yet he was lithe and light as a dancer and his expression gentle as a poet's as he looked down into Salina's face.

"Only one night," she murmured. "Then we must make the most of it They ate a dinner of smoked ham and roasted sweet yams, and afterwards they sat on the verandah and Salina sang for them while Jordan smoked a cigar and listened with obvious pleasure, tapping the time on his knee and joining with the others in the chorus.

The moment Salina had finished, Vicky leapt to her feet.

My turn," she announced. Uzzie and I have written a poem."

"Not tonight," said Cathy.

"Why?" demanded Vicky.

"Cathy," wailed the twins in unison. "It's Jordan's last night "That is precisely why." Cathy stood up. "Come on, both of you."

Still they cajoled and procrastinated, until suddenly Cathy's eyes slitted viciously, and she hissed at them with a vehemence that startled them to their feet, to bestow hasty pecks on Jordan's face and then hurry off down the verandah, with Cathy close behind.

Jordan chuckled fondly and flicked the cigar over the verandah rail. "Cathy is right, of course," he said. "I'll be in the saddle for twelve hours tomorrow, it's time we were all abed."

Salina did not reply but moved to the end of the verandah farthest from the bedrooms and leaned on the rail, staring down across the starlit valley.

After a moment, Jordan followed her, and asked softly: "Have I offended you?"

"No," she answered quickly. it's just that I am a little sad.

We all have such fun when you are here." Jordan did not reply, and after a minute she asked: "What will you do now, Jordan?"

"i shall not know until I reach Kimberley. If mister Rhodes is att Groote Schuur already, then I shall go there, but if he is still in London, then he will want me to join him., "How long will it take?"

"From Kimberley to London and back? Four months, if the sailings coincide."

"Tell me about London, Jordan. I read about it and dreamed about it."

He talked quietly, but lucidly and fluently, so that she laughed and exclaimed at his descriptions and anecdotes, and the minutes turned to hours, until suddenly Jordan interrupted himself.

"What am I thinking of; it's almost midnight."

She grasped at anything to keep him from going.

"You promised to tell me about mister Rhodes" house at Groote Schuur."

"It will have to wait for another time, Salina."

"Will there be another time?" she asked.

"Oh, I am sure there will," he answered lightly.

"You will go to England, and Cape Town, it could be years before you come back to Khami."

"Even years will not dim our friendship, Salina." And she stared at him as though he had struck her.

"Is that it, Jordan, are we friends, just friends?"

He took both her hands in his. "The dearest, most precious friends," he confirmed.

She was pale as ivory in the dim light, and her grip on his hands was like that of a drowning woman as she steeled herself to speak, but her voice, when at last she summoned it, was so strained that she was not sure he had understood her.

"Take me with you, Jordan."

"Salina, I don't know what you mean."

"I cannot bear to lose you, take me. Please take me."

"But he was confused and shaken, "but what would you do?"

"Whatever you tell me. I should be your slave, your loving slave, Jordan, for ever."

He tried to free his hands from hers, but he did it gently.

"You cannot just go away and leave me, Jordan. When you came to Khami, it was like the sun rising into my life; and if you go you will take the light with you. I love you, Jordan, oh sweet Jesus, forgive me, but I love you more than life itself."

"Salina, stop! Please stop now." He pleaded with her, but she clung to his hands.

"I cannot let you go without telling you, I love you, Jordan, I shall always love you."

"Salina." His voice was stricken. "Oh Salina, I love somebody else," he said.

"It's not true," she whispered. "Oh, please say it's not true.

"I am sorry, Salina. Terribly sorry."

"Nobody else can love you as much as I do, nobody would sacrifice what I would."

"Please stop, Salina. I don't want you to humiliate yourself."

"Humiliate myself?" she asked. "Oh, Jordan, that would be so small a price, you don't understand."

"Salina, please."

"Let me prove to you, Jordan, let me prove how joyfully I will make any sacrifice." And when he tried to speak, she put her hand lightly over his mouth. "We need not even have to wait for marriage. I will give myself to you this very night."

When he shook his head, she tightened her grip to gag his words of denial.

"So fret not, like an idle girl, That life is dash'd with flecks of sin."

She whispered the quotation, with quivering voice. "Give me the chance, dear Jordan, please give me the chance to prove that I can love and cherish you more than any other woman in all the world. You will see how this other woman's love pales to nothing beside the flame of mine."

He took her wrist and lifted her hand from his mouth, and his head bowed over hers with a terrible regret.

"Salina," he said, "it is not another woman."

She stared up at him, both of them rooted and stricken, while the enormity of his words slowly spread across her soul like hoar frost.

"Not another woman?" she asked at last, and when he shook his head, "Then I can never even hope, never?"

He did not reply, and at last she shook herself like a sleeper wakening from a dream to deathly reality.

"Will you kiss me goodbye, Jordan, just one last time?"

"It need not be the last-" But she reached up and crushed the words on his lips so fiercely that her teeth left a taste of blood on his tongue.

"Goodbye, Jordan," she said, and turning from him she walked down the length of the verandah as infirmly as an invalid arising from a long sick-bed. At the door of her bedroom, she staggered and put out a hand to save herself, and then looked back at him.

Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. "Goodbye, Jordan. Goodbye, my love."

Ralph Ballantyne carried up the rifles, one thousand of them, brand new and still in their yellow grease, five in a wooden case, and twenty cases to a wagonload. There were another ten wagonloads of ammunition, all for the account of De Beers diamond mines, another three wagonloads of liquor for his own account, and a single wagon of furniture and household effects for the bungalow that Zouga was building for himself at Gubulawayo.

Ralph crossed the Shashi river with a certain thousand-pound profit from the convoy already safely deposited in the Standard Bank at Kimberley, but with a nagging hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He had no way of knowing whether Bazo had reported him to Lobengula as the abductor of the stone falcons, or whether one of Bazo's warriors had recognized him and, despite the king's warning, had told a wife, who had told her mother, who had told her husband. "Nothing moves in Matabeleland but the whole nation knows of it," Clinton Codrington had warned him once. However, the profits on this run, and the prospect of visiting Khami Mission again, were worth the risk.

On the first day's march beyond the Shashi, that risk was vindicated, for it was Bazo himself at the head of his red shields who intercepted the convoy, and greeted Ralph inscrutably.

"Who dares the road? Who risks the wrath of Lobengula?" And after he had inspected the loaded wagons, as he and Ralph sat alone by the camp fire, Ralph asked him quietly: "I heard that a white man died in the bush between great Zimbabwe and the Limpopo. What was that man's name?"

"Nobody knows of this matter, except Lobengula and one of his indunas," Bazo replied, without lifting his gaze from the flames. "And even the king does not know who the stranger was or where he came from, nor does he know the site of the grave of the nameless stranger." Bazo took a little snuff and went on. "Nor will we ever speak of this matter again, you and me."

And now he lifted his eyes at last, and there was something in their dark depths that had never been there before, and Ralph thought that it was the look of a man destroyed, a man who would never trust a brother again.

in the morning, Bazo was gone, and Ralph faced northwards, with the doubts dispelled and his spirits soaring like the silver and mauve thunderheads that piled the horizon ahead of him. Zouga was waiting for him at the drift of the Khami river.

"You've made good time, my boy."

"Nobody ever made better," Ralph agreed, and twirled his thick dark moustache, "and nobody is likely to, not until mister Rhodes builds his railroad."

"Did mister Rhodes send the money?"

"In good gold sovereigns," Ralph told him. "I have carried them in my own saddle-bags."

"All we have to do is get Lobengula to accept them."

"That, Papa, is your job. You are mister Rhodes" agent."

Yet three weeks later the wagons still stood outside Lobengula's kraal, their loads roped down under the tarpaulins while Zouga waited each day from early morning until dusk in front of the king's great hut.

"The king is sick," they said.

"The king is with his wives."

"Perhaps the king will come tomorrow."

"Who knows when the king will tire of his wives," they said, and at last even Zouga, who knew and understood the ways of Africa, became angry.

"Tell the king that Bakela, the Fist, rides now to Lodzi to tell him that the king spurns his gifts," he ordered Gandang, who had come to make the day's excuses, and Zouga called to Jan Cheroot to saddle the horses.

"The king has not given you the road." Gandang was shocked and perturbed.

"Then tell Lobengula that his impis can kill the emissary of Lodzi on the road, but it will not take long for the word to be carried to Lodzi. Lodzi sits even now at the great kraal of the queen across the water, basking in her favour."

The king's messengers caught up with Zouga before he reached Khami Mission, for his pace was deliberately leisurely.

"The king bids Bakela return at once, he will speak with him at the moment of his return."

"Tell Lobengula that Bakela sleeps tonight at Khami Mission and perhaps the night after, for who knows when he will see fit to talk with the king again."

Somebody at Khami must have put a spy-glass on the dust raised by Zouga's horses, for when they were still a mile from the hills, a rider came out to meet them at full gallop, a slim figure with long dark plaits streaming behind her lovely head.

When they met, Zouga jumped down from his saddle and lifted her from hers.

"Louise," he whispered into her smiling mouth. "You will never know how slowly the days pass when I am away from you."

"It's a cross you make us both carry," she told him. "I am fully recovered now, thanks to Robyn, and still you make me loiter and pine at Khami. Oh, Zouga, will you not let me join you at Gubulawayo?"

"That I will, my dear, just as soon as we have a roof on the cottage, and a ring on your finger."

,"You are always so proper." She pulled a face at him.

"Who would ever know?"

"i would," he said, and kissed her again, before he lifted her back into the saddle of the bay Arab mare which had been his betrothal gift to her.

They rode with their knees touching and their fingers linked, while Jan Cheroot trailed them discreetly out of earshot.

"We shall have only days longer to wait," Zouga assured her. "I have forced Lobengula's hand. This matter of the rifles will be settled soon and then you can choose where you will make me the happiest man on earth, the cathedral at Cape Town perhaps?"

"Darling Zouga, your family at Khami has been so kind to me The girls have become like my own sisters, and Robyn lavished care upon me when I was so ill, so burned and desiccated by the sun."

"Why not?" Zouga agreed. "I'm sure that Clinton will agree to say the words."

"He has already, but there is more to it. The wedding is all planned, and it is to be a double wedding."

"A double wedding, who are the others?"

"You would never guess, not in a thousand years."

They looked more like brothers than father and son, as they stood before the carved altar in the little whitewashed church at Khami.

Zouga wore his full dress uniform, and the scarlet cket, tailored twenty years before, still fitted him to perfection The gold lace had been renewed to impress Lobengula and his indunas, and now it sparkled bright and untarnished, even in the cool gloom of the church.

Ralph was dressed in expensive broadcloth with a high stock and cravat of watered grey silk that on this hot June day brought beads of sweat to his forehead. His thick dark hair was dressed with pomade to a glossy shine, and his magnificent moustache, twirled with beeswax, pricked out in two stiff points.

Both of them were rigid with expectation, staring fixedly at the altar candles which Clinton had hoarded for such an occasion, and lit only minutes before.

Behind them one of the twins fidgeted with excited anticipation, and Salina pumped up the little organ and launched into "Here comes the Bride", while Ralph grinned with bravado and, out of the side of his mouth, muttered to his father, "Well, here we go then, Papa. Fix bayonets and prepare to receive cavalry!"

They turned with parade ground precision to face the church door, just as the brides stepped through it.

Cathy wore the mail-order dress which Ralph had brought up from Kimberley, while Robyn had lifted her own wedding dress from its resting place in the leatherbound trunk and they had taken in the waist and let down the hem to fit Louise. The delicate lace had turned to the colour of old ivory, and she carried a bouquet of Clinton's yellow roses.

Afterwards they all straggled across the yard. The brides tottered on their high heels and tripped on their trains, clinging to the arms of their new husbands; and the twins pelted them with handfuls of rice, before running ahead to the verandah where the wedding board was piled with mountains of food and lined with regiments of bottles, the finest champagne from Ralph's wagons.

At one end of the table Ralph loosened his stock and held Cathy in the circle of his arm and a glass in his other hand as he made his speech: "My wife, "he referred to her, and the company hooted with laughter and clapped with delight, while Cathy clung to him and looked up at his face in transparent adoration.

Then when the speeches were ended, Clinton looked across the table at his eldest daughter. His bald head shone with the heat and excitement and the good champagne.

Will you not sing to us, my darling Salina," he asked.

"Something happy and joyous?"

Salina nodded and smiled, and lifted her chin to sing in her gentle voice: "However far you go, my love, I will follow too.

The highest mountain top, my love, Across deepest ocean blue."

Louise turned her face towards Zouga, and when she smiled the corners of her dark blue eyes slanted upwards and her lips parted and glistened. Below the tabletop Clinton reached for Robyn's hand, but his gaze stayed upon his daughter's face.

Even Ralph sobered, and sat attentively while Cathy laid her cheek upon his shoulder.

"No arctic night too cold, my love, No tropic noon too fierce.

For I will cleave to you, my love, "Til death my heart do pierce."

Salina sat very straight on the wooden bench with her hands in her lap. She was smiling as she sang, a sweet serene smile, but a single tear broke from her lower lid and descended, with tortuous slowness, the velvet curve of her cheek, until it reached the corner of her mouth.

The song ended, and they were silent for a long moment, and then Ralph pounded on the table with the flat of his hand.

"Oh bravo, Salina, that was superb."

Then they were all applauding, and Salina smiled at them and the single tear broke and fell to her breast, to leave a dark star upon the satin of her bodice.

"Excuse me," she said. "Please excuse me."

And she stood up and, still smiling, glided down the verandah. Cathy sprang to her feet, her face twisted with concern, but Robyn caught her wrist before she could follow.

"Leave her be," she whispered. "The child needs to be alone a while. You will only upset her further." And Cathy sank back beside Ralph.

"Shame on you, Louise," with forced jocularity, Clinton called down the table. "Your husband's glass is empty, are you neglecting him so soon?"

An hour later Salina had not returned, and Ralph's voice had become louder and even more assertive. "Now that mister Rhodes has got his charter, we can begin to assemble the column. Cathy and I will start back tomorrow with the empty wagons. Heaven knows we will need every pair of wheels, and I thought old King Ben would never take those rifles off my hands."

But Cathy was for once not drinking in every one of his words; she kept looking down the verandah, and again she whispered to Robyn, who frowned and shook her head.

"You talk as though the whole affair was arranged for your personal profit, Ralph." Robyn turned from Cathy to challenge her new son-in-law.

"Perish the thought, Aunty., Ralph laughed, and winked at his father down the length of the table. "It's all for the good of Empire and the glory of God."

Cathy waited until they were once more embroiled in amiable argument, and then she slipped away so quietly that Robyn did not notice until Cathy reached the end of the verandah. For a moment she looked set to call her back, but instead she made a move of annoyance and addressed herself to Zouga.

"How long will you and Louise remain at Gubulawayo?"

"Until the column reaches Mount Hampden. mister Rhodes doesn't want any misunderstanding between the volunteers and Lobengula's young bucks."

"I will be able to send up fresh vegetables and even a few flowers while you are at the king's kraal, Louise," Clinton offered.

"You've been too kind already," Louise thanked him, and then broke off, and an expression of deep concern crossed her face.

They all turned hurriedly in the direction she was staring.

Cathy had returned and climbed the verandah steps.

She leaned against one of the whitewashed columns. Her face was the muddy yellow of a malaria sufferer, and her brow and chin were blistered with droplets of sweat. Her eyes were tortured, and her mouth twisted with horror.

"In the church," she said. "She's in the church." And then she doubled over, and retched with a terrible tearing sound, and it came up her throat in a solid yellow eruption that soaked the virginal white skirts of her wedding gown.

Robyn was the first to reach the church door. She stared for only a moment and then she whirled and hid her face against Clinton's chest.

"Take her away," Zouga ordered Clinton brusquely, and then to Ralph. "Help me!"

The garland of pink roses had fallen from Salina's head, and lay below her on the floor of the nave. She had thrown a halter rope over one of the roof beams, and she must have climbed up on the table that Robyn used for her surgery.

Her hands hung open at her sides. The toes of her slippers were turned in towards each other in a touchingly innocent stance, like those of a little girl standing on tiptoe; but they were suspended at the height of a man's waist above the flagged floor.

Zouga had to look up at her face. The rope had caught her under one ear and her head was twisted at an impossible angle to one side. To Zouga her face seemed swollen to twice its normal size, and it was mottled a dark mulberry hue.

At that moment a merciful little breeze came in through the doorway and turned her slowly on the rope to face the altar, so that Zouga could see only her lustrous golden hair which had come down and now hung to her waist. That was still beautiful.

Cathy Ballantyne had never known such happiness as the months spent in the British South Africa Company camp on the Macloutsi river.

She was the only woman among nearly seven hundred men, and a favourite of all of them. They called her "Missus", and her presence was eagerly sought at every social activity with which officers and men diverted themselves during the long term of waiting.

The harsh conditions of camp life might have daunted another newly married girl of her age, but Cathy had known no others, and she turned the hut of daub and thatch that Ralph built for her into a cosy retreat with calico curtains in the glassless windows and woven grass native mats on the earth floor. She planted petunias on each side of the doorway, and the troopers of the column vied for the honour of watering them. She cooked over an open fire in the lean-to kitchen, and her invitations to dine were eagerly sought after by men who subsisted on canned bully beef and stamped maize meal.

She glowed with all the attention and excitement, so that from being merely pretty, she seemed to become beautiful, which made the men cherish her the more.

Then, of course, she had Ralph, and she wondered some nights as she lay awake and listened to his breathing, how she had ever lived without him.

Ralph had the rank of major now, and he told her with a wink and an irreverent chuckle, "We are all colonels and majors, my girl. I'm even thinking of making old Isazi a captain." But he looked so handsome in his uniform with frogged coat and slouch hat and Sam Browne belt, that she wished he would wear it more often.

With each day Ralph seemed to her to become taller, his body more powerful and his energy more abundant.

Even when he was away down the line hustling up the wagons, setting up the heliograph stations, or meeting with the other directors of the British South Africa Company in Kimberley, she was not lonely. Somehow his presence seemed always with her, and his absence made anticipation of his return a sort of secret joy.

Then suddenly he would be back, galloping into camp to sweep her up and toss her as high as if she were a child, before kissing her on the mouth.

"Not in public," she would gasp and blush. "People are watching, Ralph."

"And turning green with envy," he agreed, and carried her into the hut.

When he was there, everything was a breathless whirl.

He was everywhere with his long assured stride and merry infectious laugh, driving his men along with a word of encouragement or of banter, and occasionally with sudden murderous black rages.

His rages terrified her, although they were never directed at her; and yet at the same time they excited her strangely. She would watch him with fearful fascination as his face swelled and darkened with passion, and his voice rose into a roar like a wounded bull. Then his fists and boots would fly and somebody would roll in the dust. A Afterwards she felt weak and trembly, and she would hurry away to the hut and draw the curtains and wait.