Men of Men

"We had killed two hundred great elephant since leaving the Zambezi river, and we had fought bad men and savages. Our porters had mostly deserted or died of disease and wild animals, our provisions were long finished, no salt, no tea, no medicine and little gunpowder. Our clothes were rags, our boots worn through and repaired with the wet hide of buffalo.

"It had been a killing journey, over mountains with no passes and rivers with no names " and ordinary men would long ago have fallen and the birds would have picked their bones white. Even we were tired and sick and we were lost. Around us, as far as our eyes could see, there was nothing but wild hills and bad bush through which only the buffalo could pass."

"And you needed honey for your strength," Jordie burst out, unable to contain himself, and knowing the story word perfect. "Otherwise you would have died in the bush."

"And we needed honey for our strength or we would have died in the bush," Jan Cheroot agreed solemnly.

"Out of the bush came a little brown honey guide, and he sang thus -" Jan Cheroot imitated the high-pitched burring call and fluttered his fingers in an unca

"Come!" he called to us. "Come, follow me, and I will lead you to the hive."

"But he wasn't a real honey-bird, was he, Jan Cheroot?"

Jordie cried excitedly.

"No, Jordie, he wasn't a real honey-bird."

"And you followed him!"

"And we followed him for many days through bad country. Even when Master Zouga, your father, would have turned back, old Jan Cheroot was firm. We must go on, I told him, for by this time I, who have a deep knowledge and understanding of ghosts and spirits, realized that this was not a real honey-bird but a hobgoblin in the guise of a bird."

Zouga smiled softly. He remembered the incident differently. They had followed the bird for some hours, and it was Jan Cheroot who had lost interest in the hunt and had to be prodded and cajoled to continue.

"Then suddenly -" Jan Cheroot paused and flung out both hands theatrically, "- before our eyes, a wall of grey stone rose out of the bush. A wall so high it was like a mountain. With my axe I chopped away the vines and found a great gateway, guarded by fierce spirits "Spirits?" Zouga smiled.

"They were invisible to ordinary eyes," Jan Cheroot explained loftily. "And I put them to flight with a magical sign."

Zouga winked at Pickering, but Jan Cheroot ignored their smiles.

"Beyond the gateway was a temple yard, in which lay the falcon statues, cast down, some of them shattered, but all of them covered with heaps of gold, mountains of gold."

Zouga sighed. "Fifty pounds weight to be exact. Fragments and tiny pieces which we had to sift from the soil.

How I wish it had been a mountain."

"We gathered the gold from where it lay, and we took up that statue on our shoulders and carried it one thousand miles,"

"Complaining every step of the way," Zouga pointed out.

"until we reached Cape Town again."

It was after midnight when Jan Cheroot brought the saddled horses to the camp fire, and as Rhodes took the reins he paused in the act of mounting.

"Tell me, Major, this land to the north, this Zambezia as you call it in your book, what is it that keeps you from it? What are you doing here?"

"I need money," Zouga told him simply. "And somehow I know that the road to the north begins here. The money to take and hold Zambezia will come from the workings of New Rush."

"I like a man who thinks big, a man who counts not in ones and twos but in tens of thousands," Rhodes nodded approval.

"At this moment I count my fortune in ones and twos."

"We could change that." Rhodes shot a pale piercing glance towards the bird carving, but Zouga chuckled and shook his head.

"I would like first refusal," Rhodes persisted.

"If I sell, it will be to you," Zouga agreed, and Rhodes stepped up in the stirrup, swung a leg over the horse's rump, settled in the saddle and rode out of the camp.

Pickering edged his mount closer to Zouga and leaned down from the saddle to tell him seriously: "He will have it from you, in the end he will have it. "I think not." Zouga shook his head.

But Pickering smiled. "He always gets what he sets his heart on. Always."

He saluted Zouga with the hand that held the reins and then started his horse into a canter and followed Rhodes out onto the dusty starlit track.

"Give the stone to the yellow man," Karnuza urged quietly. "Five hundred gold queens, and we will return to our own people with treasures. Your father, the induna of Inyati, will be pleased, even the king will call us to the great kraal at Thabas Indunas for audience. We will become important men."

"I do not trust the Bastaard."

"Do not trust him. Trust only the yellow coins he brings."

"I do not like his eyes. They are cold and he hisses like a yellow cobra when he speaks."

They were silent then, a circle of dark figures in the smoky hut, squatting around the diamond as it lay on the clay floor and flickered with weird lights in the reflection of the fire.

They had argued since the sunset had released them from their labours. They had argued over the meal of stringy mutton with its rind of greasy fat and maize porridge baked until it was stiff as cake.

They had argued over the snuff-horn and beer pot, and now it was late. Soon, very soon, there would be a scratching at the door of the hut as the Bastaard came for his answer.

"The stone is not ours to sell. It belongs to Bakela.

Does a son sell the calves from his father's herds?"

Karnuza made a clucking sound of exasperation.

"Surely it is against law and custom to steal from the tribe, from the elders of the tribe, but Bakela is not Matabele. He is buni, white man, it is not wrong doing to take from him any more than it is against law and custom to send the assegai through the heart of a Mashona dog, or to mount his wife in sport, or to take the cattle of a Tswana and put fire into his kraal to hear his children squeal. Those are natural and right things for a man to do."

"Bakela is my father, the stone is his calf, given into my care."

"He will give you a single coin," Karnuza lamented, and Bazo seemed not to hear him.

He picked up the diamond again and turned it in his hand.

"It is a large stone," he mused aloud, "a very large stone." He held it to his eye and looked into the stone as though it were a mountain pool, and he watched with awe the fires and shapes move within it.

Still holding it to his eye, he said, "If I bring my father a newborn calf, he will be happy and give me a reward.

But if I bring him one hundred calves how much greater will be his joy, and one hundred times greater the reward that he will give me."

He lowered the stone and gave a series of orders that sent his men hurrying out into the night, to return immediately with the tools Bazo had sent them to fetch.

Then in silence they watched him make his preparations.

Firstly he spread a kaross of silver jackal pelts on the earth floor and then in the centre of the fur he placed a small steel anvil at which he had watched Zouga shaping horse-shoes and working the iron hoops to repair the wagon wheels.

On the anvil Bazo placed the diamond, and then he threw aside his cloak so that he stood stark naked in the firelight, tall and lean and hard, his belly muscles standing up in concentric ridges under the dark satiny skin and the wide rangy shoulders overdeveloped by practice with shield and spear.