Текст книги "Men of Men"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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A deeper, firmer voice replied in the same language.

"Not yet. Let them come closer so there can be no mistake."

And then the voices were blotted out by a grumbling roll of thunder overhead, and Clinton backed the grey up.

"It is a trap, Major. There are armed Matabele in ambush about the wagons. I heard them talking."

"Do you think the king is there?"

"I would not think so, but what I am sure of is that even now the main impi is circling back between us and the river."

"What makes you think that!"

"It is always the Zulu way, the encirclement and then the closing in."

"What do you advise, Padre?"

Clinton shrugged and smiled. "I gave my advice on the bank of the river-" He was interrupted by a shouted warning from the rear of the column. It was one of the Americans, his accent unmistakable.

"There is a force moving in behind us."

"How many?" Wilson shouted back.

"Plenty, I can see their plumes."

"Troop, about wheel!" Wilson ordered. "At the gallop, forward!"

As the horses plunged back down the rough trail, the rain that had been threatening so long burst upon them in an icy silver cascade. It slashed at their faces" and stung their eyes, and drummed on their oilskins.

"This will cover our retreat," Wilson grunted, and Clinton flogged the grey's neck with the loose end of the reins, for the old horse was falling back again.

Through the thick silver lances of falling rain, he caught a glimpse of waving war-plumes above the scrub; they were racing in to head off the patrol. At that moment the grey stumbled and Clinton was thrown onto his neck.

"Jee!" He heard the war chant go up, and he clung desperately to the grey's neck as it plunged to regain its balance.

"Come on, Padre!" somebody yelled, as the other troopers went pounding past him in the mud and the rain.

Then his horse was running again. Clinton had lost a stirrup, and he bumped painfully on the wet saddle, clinging to the pommel for a grip, but they were through.

There were no shields or plumes in the bush around them, only the twisting streamers of rain and the gloom of gathering night.

"Are you telling me, Napier, that Major Wilson has deliberately chosen to spend the night on the far bank, despite my direct orders to return before nightfall?" Mungo Sint John asked. The only light was that of a storm lantern. The rain had washed out the fires.

The tarpaulin over the heads of the two officers flogged in the wind, spilling gouts of rainwater over them, and the lantern flame fluttered uncertainly in its glass chimney, lighting Captain Napier's face from below so that he looked like a skull.

"We got so close to Lobengula, General, within hail of the wagons.

Major Wilson considered a retreat would not be justified. In any event, sir, the bush is swarming with the enemy. The patrol has a better chance of surviving the night by stopping in thick bush and waiting for daylight., "That is Wilson's estimate, is it?" Mungo demanded, putting on a grim expression. Yet inwardly, he congratulated himself on such an accurate assessment of the Scotsman's impetuous character.

"YOU Must reinforce the patrol, sir. You must send at least one of the Maxims across, now, this very hour."

"Listen carefully, Captain," Mungo ordered him. "What do you hear?"

Even over the rain and the wind there was an echo like the sound in a seashell held to the ear.

"The river, Captain," Mungo told him. "The river is spating!"

"I have just forded it. You can still get across, sir. If you give the order now! If you wait until dawn, it may well be in full flood."

"Thank you for your advice, Napier. I will not risk the Maxims."

"Sir, sir, you can take at least one Maxim off its carriage. We can carry it in a blanket and swim across."

"Thank you, Captain. I will send Borrow across with twenty men to reinforce Wilson until morning, and this force will follow, with both Maxims, only when it is light enough to see the ford and make the crossing in safety."

"General Sint John, you are signing the death warrant of those men."

"Captain Napier, you are overwrought. I shall expect an apology from you when you have recovered yourself."

Clinton sat with his back against the bole of a mopani tree. He had one hand thrust into the front of his sheepskin jacket, to hold his travelling Bible out of the rain.

He wished above any other creature needs that he had light enough to read it.

All around him the rest of the tiny patrol lay stretched out on the muddy earth, bundled up in their rubber groundsheets and oilskins, though Clinton was certain that, like himself, none of them was asleep, nor would any of them sleep that night.

Clutching the Bible above his heart, he had the certain prescience of his own death, and he made the astonishing discovery that it had no terrors for him. once, long ago, before he had discovered how close at hand was God's comfort, he had been afraid, and now the release from fear was a blessed gift.

Sitting in darkness, he thought of love, the love of his God and his woman and his daughters, and that was all that he would regret leaving behind him.

He thought of Robyn as he had first seen her, standing on the deck of the American slaver Huron with her dark hair aflutter on the wind and her green eyes flashing.

He remembered her upon the rumpled sweat-soaked childbed as she struggled to give birth, and he remembered the hot slippery and totally enchanting feeling of his first infant daughter's body as it slithered from Robyn's body into his waiting hands.

He remembered the first petulant birth wail, and how beautiful Robyn had been as she smiled at him, exhausted and racked and proud.

There were other small regrets, one that he would never dandle a grandchild, another that Robyn had never come to love him the same way he loved her. Suddenly Clinton sat up straighter against the mopani, and inclined his head to listen, peering out into the utter blackness from whence the sound had come.

No, it was not really a sound, the only true sound was the rain. It was more like a vibration in the air.

Carefully, he returned the precious book to his inside pocket, then he made a trumpet of his bare hands and pressed them to the wet earth, listening intently with his ear to the funnel.

The vibration coming up from the ground was that of running feet, horny bare feet, thousands of feet, trotting to the rhythm of an impi on the march. It sounded like the very pulse of the earth.

Clinton crawled and groped his way across to where he had last seen Major Wilson lie down under his plaid.

There was no glimmering of light under the midnight clouds, and when his fingers touched coarse woven cloth, Clinton asked softly: "Is that you, Major?"

"What is it, Padre?"

"They are here, all around us, moving back to get between us and the river."

They stood-to while the dawn tried vainly to penetrate the low roof of cloud above them. The saddled horses were merely humped shapes just a little darker than the night around them. They were drawn up in a circle, with the men standing on the inside, rifles resting on the saddles as they peered out into the thick bush that surrounded them, straining for the first glimpse as the grey light settled gently, like a sprinkling of pearl dust upon their dark, wet world.

In the centre of the circle of horses, Clinton knelt in the mud. With one hand he held the reins of the grey horse, and with the other he held the Bible to his chest.

His calm voice carried clearly to every man in the dark waiting circle.

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name The light grew stronger; they could make out the shape of the nearest bushes. One of the horses, perhaps infected by the tension of the waiting men, whickered and scissored its ears.

"Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven Now they all heard what had alarmed the horse. The faint drumming approached from the direction of the river, growing stronger with the dawn light.

for thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the glory There was the metallic clash of a rifle breech from the silent waiting circle of dismounted men, and half a dozen gruff voices echoed Clinton's quiet "Anien!"

Then suddenly someone shouted. "Horses! Those are horses out there!" And a ragged little cheer went up as they recognized the shape of slouch hats bobbing against the sullen grey sky.

"Who is it?" Wilson challenged.

"Borrow, Sir, Captain Borrow!"

"By God, you're welcome." Wilson laughed as the column of horsemen rode out of the forest into their defensive circle. "Where is General Sint John; where are the Maxims?"

The two officers shook hands as Borrow dismounted, but he did not return Wilson's smile.

"The general is still on the south bank."

Wilson stared at him incredulous, the smile sliding off his face.

have twenty men, rifles only, no Maxims," Borrow went on.

"When will the column cross?"

"We had to swim our horses across. By now the river is ten feet deep." Borrow lowered his voice so as not to alarm the men. "They won't be coming."

"Did you make contact with the enemy?" Wilson demanded.

"We heard them all around us. They called to each other and we heard them keeping pace with us in the forest as we passed either hand."

"So they are massed between us and the river, and even if we cut our way through to the river, the ford is impassable. Is that it?"

"I am afraid so, sir."

Wilson took his hat from his head and against his thigh he beat the raindrops from its brim. Then he settled it again carefully on his head at a jaunty angle.

"Then it seems there is only one direction that we can take, one direction in which the Matabele will not expect us to move." He turned back to Borrow. "Our orders were to seize the king, and now our very lives depend on it. We must have Lobengula as a hostage. We have to go forward, and that right smartly." He raised his voice. "Troop, mount! Walk march, Trot!" They rode closed up, tense and silent. Clinton's old grey had benefited from the night's rest, and kept his place in the third file.

A young trooper rode at Clinton's right hand.

"What is your name, son?"he asked quietly.

"Dillon, sir, I mean, Reverend." He was smoothcheeked, and fresh-faced.

"How old are you, Dillon?"

"Eighteen, Reverend., They are all so young, Clinton thought. Even Major Allan Wilson himself is barely thirty years of age. If only, he thought, if only "Padre!"

Clinton looked up sharply, his attention had been wandering. They had long ago emerged from the thick bush, and were now coming up to the same spot from which they had retreated the previous evening.

The wagons were still standing abandoned beside the rude track; the tents made pale geometrical oblongs of solid canvas against the dark wet scrub.

Once again, Wilson halted the patrol, and Clinton walked the grey forward.

"Tell them we do not wish to fight" Wilson ordered.

"There is nobody here."

"Try anyway," Wilson urged. "If the wagons are deserted, then we will ride on until we catch up with the king."

Clinton rode forward, shouting as he went. "Lobengula, do not be afraid. It is me. Hlopi., There was no reply, only the flutter of the wind in the torn wagon canvas.

"Warriors of Matabele, children of Mashobane, we do not wish to fight, Clinton called again; and this time he was answered by a bellowing bull voice, haughty and angry and proud. it came out of the gloom and rain, seeming to emanate from the very air, for there was no one to be seen.

"Hau, white men! You do not wish to fight, but we do, for our eyes are red and our steel is thirsty., The last word was blown away on a great gust of sound, and the shrub about them misted over with blue gunsmoke and the air about their heads was torn by a gale of shot.

It was twenty-five years and more since Clinton had stood to receive volleyed gunfire; yet he could still dearly differentiate between the crack of high-powered rifles and the whistle of ball thrown from ancient muzzle loaders, and in the storm the "whirr-whirr" of beaten potlegs tumbling as they flew; so that, glancing up, Clinton expected to actually see one come over like a rising pheasant.

"Back! Fall back!" Wilson was shouting, and the horses were all rearing and plunging. The fire was, most of it, flying overhead. As always, the Matabele had raised their sights to the maximum; but there must have been a hundred or more of them hidden in the shrub and random bullets were scoring.

One of the troopers was hit in both eyes, the bridge of his nose shot away. He was reeling in the saddle, clutching his face with blood spurting out between his fingers.

His number two spurred in to catch him before he fell, and with an arm around his shoulder led him at a gallop back along the trail.

Young Dillon's horse was hit in the neck, and he was thrown in the mud, but he came up with his rifle in his hands, and Clinton yelled at him as he galloped back.

"Cut off your saddle-bags. You'll need every round in them, lad."

Clinton came in for the pick-up, but Wilson rode him off like a polo player.

"Your moke's half done, Padre. He'll not carry two. Get on with you!"

They tried to make a stand in the thicket where they had spent the night, but the hidden Matabele riflemen crept in so close that four of the horses went down, kicking and struggling, exposing the men who had been standing behind them, firing over their backs, and three of the men were hit. One of them, a young Afrikander from the Cape, had a pot-leg slug shatter the bone above his right elbow. The arm was hanging on a tattered ribbon of flesh, and Clinton used the sleeves of his shirt to make a sling for it.

"Well, Padre, we are for it now, and that's no mistake." The trooper grinned at him, white face speckled with his own blood, like a thrush's egg.

"We can't stand here" Wilson called. "Two wounded to a horse and a man to lead them. They'll go in the centre with those who have lost their own horses. The rest of us will ride in a box around them."

Clinton helped the young Afrikander up onto the grey's back, and one of the lads from Borrow's volunteers up behind him. The sharp slivers of his shin bone were sticking out of the meat of his leg.

They started back slowly, at the pace of the walkers, and from the thickets beside the track the muskets banged and smoked; but the Matabele were all of them well hidden. Clearly, they were taking no chances, even with this tiny band of thirty-odd men.

Clinton walked beside the grey, holding the good leg of the wounded man to prevent him slipping from the saddle. He carried the two rifles belonging to the wounded men slung over his shoulder.

"Padre!" Clinton looked up to find Wilson above him.

"We have three horses that are fresh enough to try a run for the river. I have ordered Burnham and Ingram to try and get back to the main camp and warn Sint John of our predicament. There is one horse for you. They will take you with them., "Thank you, Major," Clinton answered without a moment's hesitation. "I am a sailor and a priest, not a horseman; besides, I rather think I have work to do here.

Let somebody else go., Wilson nodded. "I expected you to say that." He pushed his horse to a trot and went up to the head of the dismal little column. Minutes later, Clinton heard the quick beat of flying hooves and he looked up to see three horsemen wheel out of the straggling line and plunge into the brush that surrounded them.

There was a chorus of angry yells and the low humming "Jee!" as the Matabele tried to head them, but Clinton saw their hats bobbing away above the low bush and he called after them.

"God speed you, boys! Then, as he trudged on in the mud that was balling to the soles of his riding boots, he began silently to pray.

On the outside of the column, another horse fell, throwing its rider over its head, and then lunged up again to stand on three legs, shivering miserably in the rain, its off-fore hanging limply as a sock on a laundry line.

The trooper limped back, drawing his revolver from its webbing holster, and shot the animal between the eyes.

"That's a wasted bullet," Wilson called clearly. "Don't waste any more."

They went on slowly, and after a while Clinton became aware that they were no longer following the wagon tracks. Wilson seemed to be leading them gradually more towards the east, but it was hard to tell, for the sun was still hidden by low, grey cloud.

Then abruptly the column stopped again, and now for the first time the insistent banging of muskets from hidden skirmishers in the mopani scrub was silenced.

Wilson had led them into a lovely parklike forest, with short, green grass below the stately mopani trees. Some of these trees stood sixty feet high and their trunks were fluted and twisted as though moulded from potter's clay.

They could see deep into the forest, between the widely spaced trunks. There, directly ahead of the patrol, stretched across their front, waited the army of Lobengula. How many thousands, it was impossible to tell, for their rearguard was hidden in the forest; and even as the little band of white men stared at their host, the likela began, the "surrounding" which had been the Zulu way ever since great Chaka's time.

The "horns" were being spread, the youngest and swiftest warriors running out on the flanks, their naked skins burning like black fire through the forest. A net around a shoal of sardines, they were thrown out until the tips of the horns met to the rear of the band of white men and again all movement ceased.

Facing the patrol was the "chest of the bull", the hard and seasoned veterans; when the "horns" tightened, it was the "chest" that would close and crush, but now they waited, massed rank upon rank, silent and watchful.

Their shields were of dappled black and white, their plumes were of the ostrich, jet black and frothing white, and their kilts of spotted civet tails. In their silence and stillness, it was not necessary for Wilson to raise his voice above conversational tones.

"Well, gentlemen. We will not be going any farther not for a while anyway. Kindly dismount and form the circle."

Quietly the horses were led into a ring, so that they stood with their noses touching the rump of the one ahead. Behind each horse, his rider crouched with the stock of his rifle resting on the saddle, aiming across at the surrounding wall of silent, waiting black and white dappled shields.

"Padre!" Wilson called softly, and Clinton left the wounded whom he was tending in the centre and crossed quickly to his side.

"I want you here to translate, if they want to parley."

"There will be no more talking," Clinton assured him, and as he said it the massed ranks of the "chest" parted and a tall induna came through. Even at a distance of two hundred paces, he was an imposing figure in his plumes and tassels of valour.

"Gandang," said Clinton quietly. "The king's halfbrother."

For long seconds Gandang stared across at the circle of rain-streaked horses and the grim, white faces that peered over them, and then he lifted his broad assegai above his head. It was almost a gladiatorial salute, and he held it for a dozen beats of Clinton's heart. Then his voice carried clearly to where they waited.

"Let it begin!" he called, and his spear arm dropped.

Instantly, the horns came racing in, tightening like a strangler's grip on the throat.

"Steady!" Wilson called. "Hold your fire! No bullets to waste, lads! Hold your fire, wait to make sure."

The blades came out of the thongs that held them to the grip of the shields with a rasping growl, and the war chant rose, deep and resonant: Jee! Jee!"And now the silver blades drummed on the dappled rawhide, so that the horses stamped and threw their heads.

Wait lads." The front rank was fifty yards away, sweeping in out of the gentle silky grey rain mist.

"Pick your man! Pick your man!" Twenty yards, chanting and drumming to the rhythm of their pounding bare feet.

"Fire!"Gunfire rippled around the tight little circle, not a single blast but with the spacing that told that every shot had been aimed, and the front rank of attackers melted into the soggy earth.

The breech blocks clashed, and the gunfire was continuous, like strings of Chinese crackers, and an echo came back, the slapping sound of lead bullets striking naked black flesh.

At two places the warriors burst into the ring, and for desperate seconds there were knots of milling men, and the banging of revolvers held point blank to chest and belly. Then the black wave lost its impetus, hesitated and finally drew back, the surviving warriors slipping back into the forest, leaving their dead scattered in the wet grass.

"We did it, we sent them off!" someone yelled, and then they were all cheering.

"A little early to celebrate," Clinton murmured drily.

"Let them shout," Wilson was reloading his pistol. "Let them keep their courage up." He looked up from the weapon at Clinton. "You'll not be joining us then?" he asked. "You were a fighting man once."

Clinton shook his head. "I killed my last man over twenty years ago, but I will look to the wounded and do anything else you want of me."

"Go around to each man. Collect all the spare ammunition. Fill the bandoliers and dole "em out as they are needed."

Clinton turned back to the centre of the circle, and there were three new men there, one was dead, shot in the head, another with a broken hip, and the third with the shaft of an assegai protruding from his chest.

"Take it out!"his voice rose as he tugged ineffectually at the handle. "Take it out! I can't stand it."

Clinton knelt in front of him and judged the angle of the blade. The point must lie near the heart. "It's better to leave it," he advised gently.

"No! No!"The man's voice rose, and the men in the outer circle looked back, their faces stricken by that hysterical shriek. "Take it out! Perhaps it was best after all, better than lingering, shrieking death to unnerve the men around him.

"Hold his shoulders," Clinton ordered quietly, and a trooper knelt behind the dying man. Clinton gripped the shaft. It was a beautiful weapon, bound in decorative patterns with hair from an elephant's tail and bright copper wire.

He pulled and the wide blade sucked with the sound of a boot in thick mud, and it came free. The trooper shrieked only once more, as his heart's blood followed the steel out in a bright torrent.

The waves of warriors came again four times before noon. Each time it seemed impossible that they could fail to overwhelm the waiting circle, but each time they swirled and broke upon it like a tide upon a rock, and then were sucked back into the forest.

After each assault the circle had to be drawn a little smaller, to take up the gaps left by fallen horses and dead and wounded men, and then the Matabele musketeers would creep in again, moving like quick and silent shadows from mopani to mopani, offering meagre targets, the bulge of a shoulder around the stem of a mopani trunk, little cotton pods of gunsmoke in the patches of green grass, the black bead of a head bobbing above the summit of one of the scattered termite nests as a warrior rose to fire.

Wilson walked quietly around the circle, talking calmly to each man in turn, stroking the muzzle of a restless horse, and then coming back into the centre.

"Are you coping, Padre?"

"We are doing fine, Major."

The dead were laid out with what little dignity was left to them, and Clinton had covered their faces with saddle blankets. There were twelve of them now, and it was only a little past noon, another seven hours of daylight.

The lad who had lost his eyes in the first volley was talking to somebody from long ago in his delirium, but the words were jumbled and made little sense. Clinton had bound his head in a clean white bandage from the saddle-bag of the grey, but the bandage was now muddied, and the blood had seeped through.

Two others lay still, one breathing noisily through the hole in his throat from which the air bubbled and whistled, the other silent and pale, except for a little dry cough at intervals. He had been hit low in the back, and there was no use nor feeling in his lower body. The others, too gravely wounded to stand in the circle, were breaking open the waxed paper packages of cartridges and refilling the bandoliers.

Wilson squatted on his haunches beside Clinton.

"Ammunition?" he asked softly.

"Four hundred rounds," Clinton replied as softly.

"Less than thirty rounds a man,"Wilson calculated swiftly. "Not counting the wounded, of course."

"Well, look at it this way, Major, at least it is no longer raining."

"Do you know, Padre, I hadn't even noticed." Wilson smiled faintly, and looked up at the sky. The cloud belly had risen and at that moment a pale ghostly silhouette of the sun appeared through it; but it was without warmth and so mild that they stared at it without paining their eyes.

"You are hit, Major," Clinton exclaimed suddenly. He had not realized it until that moment. "Let me look at it., "It's almost stopped bleeding. Let it be." Wilson shook his head "Keep your bandages for those others."

He was interrupted by a shout from one of the troopers in the outer circle.

"There he is again!" And immediately firing rifles whipcracked, and the same voice swore angrily.

"The bastard, the bloody bastard "What is it, soldier?"

"That big induna, he's moving about again out there; but he's got the devil's luck, sir. We just wasted a packet of bullets on him."

As he spoke, Clinton's old grey horse threw up his head and fell on his knees, hit in the neck. He struggled to rise again, then rolled over on his side.

"Poor old fellow!" Clinton murmured, and immediately another horse reared up, thrashed frantically at the air with his fore hooves and then crashed over on his back.

"They're shooting better now," Wilson said quietly.

"I would guess that is Gandang's work," Clinton agreed.

"He's moving from sniper to sniper, setting their sights for them and coaching their fire."

"Well, it's time to close the circle again."

There were only ten horses still standing; the others lay where they had fallen, and their troopers lay belly down behind them, waiting patiently for a certain shot at one of the hundreds of elusive figures amongst the trees.

"Close up." Wilson stood and gestured to the ring of troopers. "Come in on the centre He broke off abruptly, spun in a half circle and clutched his shoulder, but still he kept his feet.

"You're hit again!" Clinton jumped up to help him and immediately both his legs were struck out from under him, and he dropped back onto the muddy earth and stared at his smashed knee caps.

It must have been one of the ancient elephant guns, the four-to-the-pounders that some of the Matabele were using. It was a weapon that threw a ball of soft lead weighing a quarter of a pound. It had hit him in one knee and torn through into the other.

Both his legs were gone; one was twisted up under his buttocks, and he was sitting on his own muddy riding boot. The other leg was reversed, the toe-cap of his boot was dug into the mud and the silver spur stuck up towards the swirling cloud belly of the sky. Gandang knelt behind the trunk of the mopani tree and snatched the Martini-Henry rifle out of the hands of a young brave; "Even a baboon remembers a lesson he is taught," Gandang fumed. "How often have you been told not to do this."

The long leaf sight on top of the blued barrel was at maximum extension, set for one thousand yards.

Under Gandang's quiet instructions, the young Matabele rested the rifle in a crotch of the mopani, and fired.

The rifle kicked back viciously, and he shouted joyously. In the little circle a big sway-backed grey horse dropped to its knees, fought briefly to rise and then flopped over on its side.

"Did you see me, my brothers?" howled the warrior.

"Did you see me kill the grey horse?"

Vamba's hands were shaking with excitement as he reloaded and rested the rifle again.

He fired, and this time a bay gelding reared up and then crashed over on its back.

Jee! sang Vamba, and brandished the smoking rifle over his head, and the war chant was taken up by a hundred other hidden riflemen, and the volley of their fire flared up.

"They are almost ready," Gandang thought, as he glimpsed another of the defenders struck down in the renewed gale of gunfire. "There can be few of them who still can shoot. Soon now it will be time to send the spears for the closing-in, and tonight I will have a victory to take to my brother the king. One little victory in all the terrible defeats, and so hard bought."

He slipped away from the shelter of the mopani trunk, and loped swiftly across towards where another of his riflemen was firing away as fast as he could re-load. Halfway there Gandang felt the jarring impact in his upper arm, but he covered the open ground to shelter without a check in his stride, and then leaned against the bole of the mopani, and examined the wound. The bullet had gone in the side of his biceps and out the back of his arm. The blood was dripping from his elbow, like thick black treacle. Gandang scooped a handful of mud and slapped it over the wounds, plugging and masking them.

Then he said scornfully to the kneeling warrior at his side. "You shoot like an old woman husking maize." And he took the rifle out of his hands.

Clinton dragged himself backwards on his elbows, and his legs slithered loosely after him through the mud. He had used the webbing belt from one of the dead men as a tourniquet, and there was very little bleeding. The numbness of the shock still persisted, so the pain was just bearable, though the sound of the shattered ends of bone grating together as he moved brought up the nausea in a bitter-acid flood in the back of his throat.

He reached the blind boy, and paused for his breathing to settle before he spoke. "The others are writing letters, afterwards somebody may find them. Is there anybody at home? I'll write for you."

The boy was silent, did not seem to have heard. An hour earlier Clinton had given him one of the precious laudanum pills from the kit which Robyn had prepared for him before he left Gubulawayo.