The Burning Shore

A

Now Centaine demonstrated the same acumen. She partnered Major Wright at the bridge table and they made a formidable pair, and her share of the wi

A

Yes, A

You are turning ugly brown, A

Look, A

There is nothing between it and Michael's star, except the pivot of the whole world, the celestial South Pole. He said between us we would hold the axis of the earth.

Wasn't that romantic, A

Then A

She's only a child, A

Here were these men according to a young girl the respect that thousands of other women, Emmeline Pankhurst and A

Centaine made the men listen to her, and very often she made them do what she wanted, although she was not above using the sly sexual tricks to which women over the ages have been forced to resort; Centaine achieved her ends by adding logic, cogent argument and force of character. These, combined with an appealing smile and level look from dark, fathomless eyes, seemed irresistible. For instance, it took her a mere five days to get Major Wright to rescind his order confining her to ADeck.

Although Centaine's days were filled to the last minute, she never for a moment lost sight of the ultimate destination. Each day her longing for first sight of the land where Michael had been born, and where his son would be born, became stronger.

However busy she was, she never missed the noonshot, and a few minutes before the hour she would race up the companion-way to the bridge and arrive in a swirl of her uniform skirts, gabbling breathlessly, Permission to enter the bridge, sir? And the officer of the watch, who had been waiting for her, would salute.

Permission granted. You are only just in time, Sunshine. Then she would watch fascinated as the navigating officers stood on the wing of the bridge with the sextants raised and made the noonday shot of the sun, and then worked out the day's run and the ship's position and marked it on the chart.

There you are, Sunshine, 17'23 south. One hundred and sixty nautical miles north-west of the mouth of the Cunene river. Cape Town in four days time, God and the weather permitting. Centaine studied the map eagerly. So we are already off the South African coast? No, no! That is German West Africa; it was one of the Kaiser's colonies until the South Africans captured it two years ago. What is it like, jungles? Sava

And Centaine left the chartroom and went out on to the wing of the bridge again and stared into the east, towards the great continent that still lay far below her watery horizon.

Oh, I can barely wait to see it at last!

This horse was an animal of the desert, its distant ancestors had carried kings and Bedouin chieftains over the burning wastes of Arabia. Its blood-lines had been taken north by the crusaders to the colder climes of Europe, and then hundreds of years later they had been brought out to Africa again by the colonial expedition of Germany and landed at the port of Uideritzbucht with the cavalry squadrons of Bismarck. In Africa these horses had been crossed and recrossed with the shaggy hardy mounts of the Boers and the desert-forged animals of the Hottentots until this animal emerged, a creature well suited to this rugged environment and to the tasks to which it was committed.

It had the wide nostrils and fine head of its Arabian type, broad spatulate hooves to cover the soft desert earth, great lungs in its barrel chest, pale chestnut coloration to repel the worst of the sun's rays, a shaggy coat to insulate it from both the burning noon heat and the crackling cold of the desert nights, and the legs and heart to carry its rider to far milky horizons and beyond.

The man upon his back was also of mixed blood-lines and, like his mount, a creature of the desert and the boundless land.

His mother had come out from Berlin when her father had been appointed second-in-command of the military forces in German West Africa. She had met and, despite her family's opposition, married a young Boer from a family rich only in land and spirit. Lothar was the only child of that union, and at his mother's insistence had been sent back to Germany to complete his schooling.

He had proved a good scholar, but the outbreak of the Boer War had interrupted his studies. The first his mother had known of his decision to join the Boer forces was when he arrived back in Windhoek una