The Burning Shore

By: Wilbur Smith

Synopsis:

Centaine screamed and drove the point of her stave down into the jaws with
all her strength. She felt the sharpened end bite into the soft pink mucous
membrane in the the back of its throat, saw the spurt of scarlet blood, and
then the lion locked its jaws on the stave and with a toss of its flying
mane ripped it out of her hands and sent it windmilling out and down to hit
the earth below.
The passionate love of a beautiful French aristocrat for a courageous South
African aviator is begun and extinguished in the blazing skies of war-torn
France. But Centaine de Thiry is bent on realising some of the dreams which
she and Michael Courtney had shared - and sets out to seek a future for his
unborn child in the country of Michaels birth. But in a monumental odyssey
of disaster and adventure she must first brave all the combined terrors of
war, shipwreck, thirst , fever and the burning fastnesses of Nabia's
Skeleton Coast before she sees another living soul...

The novels of Wilbur Smith

The Courtney Novels

When the Lion Feeds

The Sound of Thunder

A Sparrow Falls

The Burning Shore

Power of the Sword

Rage

A Time to Die

The Ballantyne Novels: A Falcon Flies

Men of Men

The Angels Weep

The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

Also: The Dark of the Sun

Shout at the Devil

Gold Mine

The Diamond Hunters

The Sunbird Eagle

The Eye of the Tiger

Cry Wolf

Hungry as the Sea

Wild justice

Golden Fox

Elephant Song

The Burning Shore

Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933.  He was educated at
Michaelhouse and Rhodes University.

He became a full-time writer in 1964 after the successful publication of
When the Lion Feeds, and has since written twenty-three novels,
meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide.

He normally travels from November to February, often spending a month
skiing in Switzerland, and visiting Australia and New Zealand for sea
fishing.  During his summer break, he visits environments as diverse as
Alaska an d the dwindling wilderness of the African interior.  He has an
abiding concern for the peoples and wildlife of his native continent, an
interest strongly reflected in his novels.

He is married to Danielle, to whom his last nineteen books have been
dedicated.

WILBUR SMITH

The Burning Shore

This book is for Danielle Antoinette with all my love always

A Mandarin Paperback

THE BURNING SHORE

First published in Great Britain 1976 by William Heinemann Ltd

This edition published 1993 by Mandarin Paperbacks an imprint of Reed
International Books Limited Michelin House, 8i Fulham Road, London SW3
6RB and Auckland, Melbourne, Singapore and Toronto

Copyright 0 Wilbur Smith 1976

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British
Library

ISBN, 741) 3 .6

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or oth erw ise
circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding
or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser.

So have I heard on Afric's burning shore, A hungry lion give a grievous
roar.

William Barnes Rhodes, Bombastes Furioso, sc.  IV

Michael awoke to the mindless fury of the guns.

It was an obscene ritual celebrated in the darkness before each dawn in
which the massed banks of artillery batteries on both sides of the
ridges made their savage sacrifice to the gods of war.

Michael lay in the darkness under the weight of six woollen blankets and
-watched the gunfire flicker through the canvas of the tent like some
dreadful aurora borealis.

The blankets felt cold and clammy as a dead man's skin, and light rain
spattered the canvas above his head.  The cold struck through his
bedclothes and yet he felt a glow of hope.  In this weather they could
not fly.

False hope withered swiftly, for when Michael listened again to the
guns, this time more intently, he could judge the direction of the wind
by the sound of the barrage.

The wind had gone back into the south-west, muting the cacophony, and he
shivered and pulled the blankets up under-his chin.  As if to confirm
his estimate, the light breeze dropped suddenly.  The patter of rain on
canvas eased and then ceased.  Outside he could hear the trees of the
apple orchard dripping in the silence, and then there was an abrupt gust
so that the branches shook themselves like a spaniel coming out of the
water and released a heavy fall of drops on to the roof of the tent.

He decided that he would not reach across to his gold half-hunter on the
inverted packing-case which acted as a bedside table.  It would be time
all too soon.  So he snuggled down in the blankets and thought about his
fear.

All of them suffered under the affliction of fear, and yet the rigid
conventions under which they lived and flew and died forbade them to
speak of it, forbade them to refer to it in even the most oblique terms.

Would it have been a comfort, Michael wondered, if last night he had
been able to say to Andrew as they sat with the bottle of whisky between
them, discussing this morning's mission, Andrew, I'm frightened gutless
by what we are going to do?

He grinned in the darkness as he imagined Andrew's embarrassment, yet he
knew that Andrew shared it with him.  It was in his eyes, and in the way
the little nerve twitched and jumped in his cheek so that he had
constantly to touch it with a fingertip to still it.  All the old hands
had their little idiosyncracies; Andrew had the nerve in his cheek and
the empty cigarette-holder which he sucked like an infant's comforter.
Michael ground his teeth in his sleep so loudly that he woke himself; he
bit the nail of his left thumb down into the quick and every few minutes
he blew on the fingers of his right hand as though he had just touched a
hot coal.

The fear drove them all a little mad, and forced them to drink far too
much, enough to destroy the reflexes of normal men.  But they were not
normal men and the alcohol did not seem to affect them, it did not dull
their eyesight nor slow their feet on the rudder bars.  Normal men died
in the first three weeks, they went down flaming like fir trees in a
forest fire, or they smashed into the doughy, shell-ploughed earth with
a force that shattered their bones and drove the splinters out through
their flesh.

Andrew had survived fourteen months, and Michael eleven, many times the
life-span that the gods of war had allotted to the men who flew these
frail contraptions of wire and wood and canvas.  So they twitched and
fidgeted, and blinked their eyes, and drank whisky with every thing, and
laughed in a quick loud bray and then shuffled their feet with
embarrassment, and lay in their cots at dawn, stiff with terror, and
listened for footsteps.

Michael heard the footsteps now, it must be later than he had realized.
Outside the tent Biggs muttered a curse as he splashed into a puddle,
and his boots made obscene little sucking noises in the mud.  His
bull's-eye lantern glowed through the canvas as he fumbled with the flap
and then he stooped into the tent.

Top of the mornin& Sir, his tone was cheerful, but he kept it low, out
of courtesy to the officers in the neighbouring tents who were not
flying this morning wind has gone sou'-sou'-west, Sir, and she's
clearing something lovely, she is.  Stars shining out over Cambrai -
Biggs set the tray he carried on the packing case and bustled about the
tent, picking up the clothing that Michael had dropped on the
duck-boards the night before.

What time is it?  Michael went through the pantomime of awaking from
deep sleep, stretching and yawning so that Biggs would not know about
the hour of terror, so that the legend would not be tarnished.

Half-past five, Sir.  Biggs finished folding the clothes away, then came
back to hand him the thick china mug of cocoa.  And Lord Killigerran is
up and in the mess already.  I Bloody man is made of iron, Michael
groaned, and Biggs picked the empty whisky bottle off the floor beneath
the cot and placed it on the tray.

Michael drained the cocoa while Biggs worked up a lather in the shaving
mug and then held the polished steel mirror and the lantern while
Michael shaved with the straight razor, sitting up in his cot with the
blankets over his shoulders.

What's the book?  Michael demanded, his voice nasal as he pinched his
own nostrils and lifted the tip of his nose to shave his upper lip.

They are giving three to one that you and the major take them both with
no butcher's bill.  Michael wiped the razor while he considered the
odds.

The sergeant rigger who ran the betting had operated his own book at
Ascot and Aintree before the war.  He had decided that there was one
chance in three that either Andrew or Michael, or both of them, would be
dead by noon, no butcher's bill, no casualties.

Bit steep, don't you think, Biggs?  Michael asked.  I mean, both of
them, damn it?  I've put half a crack on you, sir, Biggs demurred.

Good on you, Biggs, put on a fiver for me.  He pointed to the sovereign
case that lay beside his watch, and Biggs pressed out five gold coins
and pocketed them.  Michael always bet on himself.  It was a racing
certainty: if he lost the bet, it wasn't going to hurt much, anyway.

Biggs warmed Michael's breeches over the chimney of the lamp and then
held them while Michael dived out from under the blankets into them.  He
stuffed his nightshirt into the breeches while Biggs went on with the
complicated procedure of dressing his man against the killing cold of
flight in an open cockpit.  There followed a silk vest over the
nightshirt, two cable-stitched woollen fisherman's jerseys, then a
leather gilet, and finally an army officer's greatcoat with the skirts
cut off so that they would not tangle with the controls of the aircraft.

By this time Michael was so heavily padded that he could not bend to
pull on his own footwear.  Biggs knelt in front of him and snugged silk
undersocks over his bare feet, then two pairs of woollen hunting socks,
and finally eased on the tall boots of tanned kudu skin that Michael had
had made inAfrica.  Through their soft, pliable soles, Billy Michael had
touch and feel on the rudder bars.  When he stood up, his lean muscular
body was dumpy and shapeless under the burden of clothing, and his arms
stuck out like the wings of a penguin.  Biggs held the flap of the tent
open, and then lit his way along the duckboards through the orchard
towards the mess.

As they passed the other darkened tents beneath the apple trees Michael
heard little coughs and stirrings from each.  They were all awake,
listening to his footsteps pass, fearing for him, perhaps some of them
cherishing their relief that it was not they who were going out against
the balloons this dawn.

Michael paused for a moment as they left the orchard and looked up at
the sky.  The dark clouds were rolling back into the north and the stars
were pricking through, but already paling out before the threat of dawn.
These stars were still strange to Michael; though he could at last
recognize their constellations, they were not like his beloved southern
stars, the Great Cross, Achernar, Argus and the others, so he lowered
his gaze and clumped after Biggs and the bobbing lantern.

The squadron mess was a ruined labourers chaurnire which they had
commandeered and repainted, covering the tattered thatch with tarpaulin
so that it was snug and warm.

Biggs stood aside at the doorway.  I'll ave your fifteen quid winnings
for you when you get back, sir, he murmured.  He would never wish
Michael good luck, for that was the worst of all possible luck.

There was a roaring log fire on the hearth and Major Lord Andrew
Killigerran was seated before it, his booted feet crossed on the lip of
the hearth, while a mess servant cleared the dirty plates.

Porridge, my boy, he removed the amber cigarette holder from between his
even white teeth as he greeted Michael, with melted butter and golden
syrup.  Kippers poached in milk- Michael shuddered.  I'll eat when we
get back.  His stomach, already knotted with tension, quailed at the
rich smell of kippers.  With the cooperation of an uncle on the general
staff who arranged priority transport, Andrew kept the squadron supplied
with the finest fare that his family estates in the highlands could
provide, Scotch beef, grouse and salmon and venison in season, eggs and
cheeses and jams, preserved fruits, and a rare and won erful single malt
whisky with an unpronounceable name that came from the family-owned
distillery.

Coffee for Captain Courtney, Andrew called to the mess corporal, and
when it came he reached into the deep pocket of his fleece-lined flying
jacket and brought out a silver flask with a big yellow cairngorm set in
the stopper and poured a liberal dram into the steaming mug.

Michael held the first sip in his mouth, swirling it around, letting the
fragrant spirit sting and prickle his tongue, then he swallowed and the
heat hit his empty stomach and almost instantly he felt the charge of
alcohol through his bloodstream.

He smiled at Andrew across the table.  Magic, he whispered huskily, and
blew on his fingertips.

Water of life, my boy.  Michael loved this dapper little man as he had
never loved another man, more than his own father, more even than his
Uncle Sean who had previously been the pillar of his existence.

It had not been that way from the beginning.  At first meeting, Michael
had been suspicious of Andrew's extravagant, almost effeminate good
looks, his long, curved eyelashes, soft, full lips, neat, small body,
dainty hands and feet, and his lofty bearing.

One evening soon after his arrival on the squadron, Michael was teaching
the other new chums how to play the game of Bok-Bok.  Under his
direction one team formed a human pyramid against a wall of the mess,
while the other team attempted to collapse them by taking a full run and
then hurling themselves on top of the structure.  Andrew had waited for
the game to end in noisy chaos and had then taken Michael aside and told
him, We do understand that you hail from somewhere down there below the
equator, and we do try to make allowances for you colonials.  However-
Their relationship had thenceforth been cool and distant, while they had
watched each other shoot and fly.

As a boy, Andrew had learned to take the deflection of a red grouse,
hurtling wind-driven only inches above the tops of the heather.  Michael
had learned the same skills on rocketing Ethiopian snipe and sand-grouse
slanting on rapid wingbeat down the African sky.  Both of them had been
able to adapt their skills to the problem of firing a Vickers
machine-gun from the unstable platform of a Sopwith Pup roaring through
the three dimensions of space.

Then they watched each other fly.  Flying was a gift.

Those who did not have it died during the first three weeks; those who
did, lasted a little longer.  After a month Michael was still alive, and
Andrew spoke to him again for the first time since the evening of the
game of BokBok in the mess.

Courtney, you will fly on my wing today, was all he said.

It was to have been a routine sweep down the line.

they were going to blood two new chums who had joined the squadron the
day before, fresh from England with the grand total of fourteen flying
hours as their combined experience, Andrew referred to them as Fokker
fodder, and they were both eighteen years of age, rosyfaced and eager.
Did you learn aerobatics?  Andrew demanded of them. "Yes, sir.  In
unison.  We have both looped the loop."How many times?  Shamefaced they
lowered their shining gaze.  "Once, they admitted.

God!  muttered Andrew and sucked loudly on his cigarette-holder.

Stalls?  They both looked bemused, and Andrew clutched his brow and
groaned.

Stalls?  Michael interposed in a kindly tone.  You know, when you let
your airspeed drop and the kite suddenly falls out of the sky.  They
shook their heads, again in unison.  No, sir, nobody showed us that. The
Huns are going to love you two, Andrew murmured, and then he went on
briskly, Number one, forget all about aerobatics, forget about looping
the loop and all that rot, or while you are hanging there upside down
the Hun is going to shoot your anus out through your nostrils,
understand?  They nodded vigorously.

Number two, follow me, do what I do, watch for my hand signals and obey
them instantly, understand?  Andrew jammed his tam o shanter down on his
head and bound it in place with the green scarf that was his trademark.
Come along, children.  With the two novices tucked up between them they
barrelled down past Arras at 10,000 feet, the Le Rhone engines of their
Sopwith Pups bellowing with all their eighty horsepower, princes of the
heavens, the most perfect flying fighting machines man had ever devised,
the machines that had shot Max Immelmann and his vaunted Fokker
Eindekkers out of the skies.

It was a glorious day, with just a little fairweather cumulus too high
up there to hide a boche Jagdstaffel, and the air so clear and bright
that Michael spotted the old Rumpler reconnaissance biplane from a
distance of ten miles.  It was circling low over the French lines,
directing the fire of the German batteries on to the rear areas.

Andrew picked out the Rumpler an instant after Michael, and he flashed a
laconic hand signal.  He was going to let the new chums take a shot at
her.  Michael knew of no other squadron commander who would stand aside
from an easy victory when a big score was the high road to promotion and
the coveted decorations.  However, he nodded agreement and they
shepherded the two young pilots down, patiently pointing out the
lumbering German two-seater below them, but with their untrained eyes
neither of them could pick it out.  They kept shooting puzzled glances
across at the two senior pilots.

The Germans were so intent on the bursting high explosive beneath them
that they were oblivious of the deadly formation closing swiftly from
above.  Suddenly the young pilot nearest Michael grinned with delight
and relief and pointed ahead.  He had seen the Rumpler at last.

Andrew pumped his fist over his head in the old cavalry command, Charge!
and the youngster put his nose down without closing the throttle.  The
Sopwith went into a howling dive so abrupt that Michael winced as he saw
the double wings bend back under the strain and the fabric wrinkle at
the wing roots.  The second novice followed him just as precipitously.
They reminded Michael of two half-grown lion cubs he had once watched
trying to bring down a scarred old zebra stallion, falling over
themselves in comical confusion as the stallion avoided them with
disdain.

Both the novice pilots opened fire at a range of a thousand yards, and
the German pilot looked up at this timely warning; then, judging his
moment, he banked under the noses of the diving scoutplanes, forcing
them into a blundering overshoot that carried them, still firing wildly,
half a mile beyond their intended victim.  Michael could see their heads
screwing around desperately in the open cockpits as they tried to find
the Rumpler again.

Andrew shook his head sadly and led Michael down.

They dropped neatly under the Rumpler's tailplane, and the German pilot
banked steeply to port in a climbing turn to give his rear gunner a shot
at them.  Together Andrew and Michael turned out in the opposite
direction to frustrate him, but as soon as the German pilot realized the
manoeuvre had failed and corrected his bank, they whipped the Sopwiths
hard over and crossed his stern.

Andrew was leading.  He fired one short burst with the Vickers at a
hundred feet and the German rear gunner bucked and flung his arms open,
letting the Spandau machine-gun swivel aimlessly on its mounting as the
.303 bullets cut him to pieces.  The German pilot tried to dive away,
and Andrew's Sopwith almost collided with his top wing as he passed over
him.

Then Michael came in.  He judged the deflection of the diving Rumpler,
touched his port rudder bar so that his machine yawed fractionally just
as though he were swinging a shotgun on a rocketing snipe, and he hooked
the forefinger of his right hand under the safety bar of the Vickers and
fired a short burst, a flurry of .303 ball.  He saw the fabric of the
Rumpler's fuselage ripped to tatters just below the rim of the pilot's
cockpit, in line with where his upper body must be.

The German was twisted around staring at Michael from a distance of a
mere fifty feet.  Michael could see that his eyes behind the lens of his
goggles were a startled blue, and that he had not shaved that morning,
for his chin was covered with a short golden stubble.  He opened his
mouth as the shots hit, and the blood from his shattered lungs blew out
between his lips and turned to pink smoke in the Rumpler's slipstream,
and then Michael was past and climbing away.  The Rumpler rolled
sluggishly on to its back and with the dead men lolling in their straps,
fell away towards the earth.  It struck in the centre of an open field
and collapsed in a pathetic welter of fabric and shattered struts.

As Michael settled his Sopwith back into position on Andrew's wingtip,
Andrew looked across at him, nodded matter-of-factly, and then signalled
him to help round up the two new chums who were still searching in
frantic circles for the vanished Rumpler.  This took longer than either
of them anticipated, and by the time they had them safely under their
protection again, the whole formation had drifted further west than
either Andrew or Michael had ever flown before.  On the horizon Michael
could make out the fat shiny serpent of the Somme river winding across
the green littoral on its way down to the sea.

They turned away from it and headed back east towards Arras, climbing
steadily to reduce the chances of an attack from above by a Fokker
Jagdstaffel.

As they gained height, so the vast panorama of northern France and
southern Belgium opened beneath them, the fields a patchwork of a dozen
shades of green interspersed with the dark brown of ploughed lands.  The
actual battle lines were hard to distinguish; from so high, the narrow
ribbon of shell-churned earth appeared insignificant, and the misery and
the mud and the death down there seemed illusory.

The two veteran pilots never ceased for an instant their search of the
sky and the spaces beneath them.  Their heads turned to a set rhythm in
their scan, their eyes never still, never allowed to focus short or
become mesmerized by the fan of the spinning propellor in front of them.
In contrast, the two novices were carefree and selfcongratulatory. Every
time Michael glanced across in their direction they grinned and waved
cheerfully.  In the end he gave up trying to urge them to search the
skies around them, they did not understand his signals.

They leveled out at 15,000 feet, the effective ceiling of the Sopwiths,
and the sense of unease that had haunted Michael while he had been
flying at low altitude over unfamiliar territory passed as he saw the
town of Arras abeam of them.  He knew that no Fokker could be lurking
above them in that pretty bank of cumulus, they simply did not have the
ability to fly that high.

He swept another searching glance along the lines.

There were two German observation balloons just south of Mons, while
below them a friendly flight of DH2 single-seaters was heading back
towards Amiens, which meant they were from No.  24 Squadron.

In ten minutes they would be landing, Michael never finished the
thought, for suddenly and miraculously the sky all around him was filled
with gaudily painted aircraft and the chatter of Spandau machine-guns.

Even in his utter bewilderment Michael reacted reflexively.  As he
pulled the Sopwith into a maximum-rate turn, a shark-shaped machine
checkered red and black with a grinning white skull superimposed on its
black Maltese cross insignia flashed across his nose.  A hundredth of a
second later and its Spandaus would have savaged Michael.  They had come
from above, Michael realized; even though he could not believe it, they
had been above the Sopwiths, they had come out of the cloud bank.

One of them, painted red as blood, settled on Andrew's tail, its
Spandaus already shredding and clawing away the trailing edge of the
lower wing, and swinging inexorably towards where Andrew crouched in the
open cockpit, his face a white blob beneath the tam al shanter and the
green scarf.  Instinctively, Michael drove at him, and the German,
rather than risk collision, swung away.

Ngi dIa!  Michael shouted the Zulu warcry as'he came on to the killing
quarter on the tail of the red machine, and then in disbelief watched it
power away before he could bring the Vickers to bear.  The Sopwith
juddered brutally to the strike of shot and a rigging wire above his
head parted with a twang like a released bow string as another one of
these terrible machines attacked across his stern.

He broke away and Andrew was below him, trying to climb away from yet
another German machine which was swiftly overhauling him, coming up
within an ace of the killing line.  Michael went at the German head-on
and the red and black wings flickered past his head, but instantly there
was another German to replace him, and this time Michael could not shake
him off, the bright machine was too fast, too powerful, and Michael knew
he was a dead man.

Abruptly the stream of Spandau fire ceased, and Andrew plunged past
Michael's wingtip, driving the German off him.  Desperately Michael
followed Andrew around, and they went into the defensive circle, each of
them covering the other's belly and tail while the cloud of German
aircraft milled around them in murderous frustration.

Only part of Michael's mind recorded the fact that both the new chums
were dead.  They had died in the first seconds of the assault; one was
in a vertical dive under full power, the maimed Sopwith's wings buckling
under the strain and at last tearing away completely, while the other
was a burning torch, smearing a thick pall of black smoke down the sky
as it fell.

As miraculously as they had come, the Germans were gone, untouched and
invulnerable, they disappeared back towards their own lines, leaving the
pair of battered, shot-torn Sopwiths to limp homewards.

Andrew landed ahead of Michael and they parked wingtip to wingtip at the
edge of the orchard.  Each of them clambered down and walked slowly
round his own machine, inspecting the damage.  Then at last they stood
in front of each other, stony-faced with shock.

Andrew reached into his pocket and brought out the silver flask.  He
unscrewed the cairngorm and wiped the mouth of the flask with the tail
of the green scarf, then handed the flask to Michael.

Here, my boy, he said carefully, have a dram.  I think you earned it, I
really do.  So on the day that Allied superiority was wiped from the
skies above France by the shark-nosed AlbatrosD type scoutplanes of the
German jagdstaffels, they had become comrades of desperate necessity,
flying at each other's wingtips, forming the defensive mutually
protective circle whenever the gaily painted minions of death fell upon
them.  At first they were content merely to defend themselves, then
between them they tested the capability of this new and deadly foe,
poring together at night over the intelligence reports that belatedly
came in to them, learning that the Albatros was driven by a 160
horsepower Mercedes engine, twice as powerful as the Sopwith's Le Rhone,
and that it had twin Spandau 7.92 `men machine-guns with interrupter
gear firing forward through the arc of the propeller, against the
Sopwith's single Vickers .303.  They were outgunned and outpowered.  The
Albatros was 700 pounds heavier than the Pup and could take tremendous
weight of shot before it fell out of the sky.

So, old boy, what we'll do is learn to fly the arses off them, Andrew
commented, and they went out against the massed formations of the Jastas
and they found their weaknesses.  There were only two.  The Sopwiths
could turn inside them, and the Albatros radiator was situated in the
upper wing directly above the cockpit.  A shot through the tank would
send a stream of boiling coolant hissing over the pilot, scalding him to
a hideous death.

Using this knowledge, they made their first kills, and found that in
testing the Albatros they had tested each other and found no fault
there.  Comradeship became friendship, which deepened into a love and
respect greater than that between brothers of the blood.  So now they
could sit quietly together in the dawn, drinking coffee laced with
whisky, waiting to go out against the balloons, and take comfort and
strength from each other.

Spin for it?  Michael broke the silence, it was almost time to go.

Andrew flicked a sovereign into the air and slapped it on to the
table-top, covering it with his hand.

Heads, said Michael and Andrew lifted his hand.

Luck of a pox-doctor!  he grunted, as they both looked down on the
stern, bearded profile of George V.

I'll take number-two slot, said Michael, and Andrew opened his mouth to
protest.

I won, I call the shot.  Michael stood up to end the argument before it
began.

Going against the balloons was like walking on to a sleeping puff-adder,
that gross and sluggish serpent of the African veld; the first man woke
it so that it could arch its neck into the S of the strike, the second
man had the long recurved fangs plunged into the flesh of his calf.

With the balloons they had to attack in line astern, the first man
alerted the ground defences and the second man received their full fury.
Michael had deliberately chosen the number-two slot.  If he had won,
Andrew would have done the same.

They paused shoulder to shoulder in the door of the mess, pulling on
their gauntlets, buttoning their coat's and looking up at the sky,
listening to the rolling fury of the guns and judging the breeze.

The mist will hang in the valleys, Michael murmured. The wind won't move
it, not yet.  Pray for it, my boy, Andrew answered, and, hampered by
their clothing, they waddled down the duckboards, to where the Sopwiths
stood at the edge of the trees.

How noble they had once appeared in Michael's eyes, but how ugly now
when the huge rotary engine, vomiting forward vision, was compared to
the Albatros sleek shark-like snout, with its in-line Mercedes engine.
How frail when considered against the Germans robust airframe.

God, when are they going to give us real aeroplanes to fly!  he grunted,
and Andrew did not reply.  Too often they had lamented the endless wait
for the new SEsa that they had been promised, the Scout Experimental No.
5a that would perhaps allow them to meet the Jastas on equal terms at
last.

Andrew's Sopwith was painted bright green, to match his scarf, and the
fuselage behind the cockpit was ringed by fourteen white circles, one
for each of his confirmed victories, like notches on a sniper's rifle.
The aircraft's name was painted on the engine housing: The Flying
Haggis.

Michael had chosen bright yellow, and there was a winged tortoise with a
worried frown painted below his cockpit and the appeal, Don't ask me, I
just work here. His fuselage was ringed by six white circles.

Assisted by their ground crews, they clambered up on to the lower wing,
and then eased themselves into the narrow cockpits.  Michael settled his
feet on to the rudder bars and pumped them left and right, peering back
over his shoulder to watch the response of the rudder as he did so.
Satisfied, he held up a thumb at his mechanic who had worked most of the
night to replace one of the cables shot away on the last sortie.  The
mechanic grinned and ran to the front of the machine.

Switches off?  he called.

Switches off!  Michael confirmed, leaning out of the cockpit to peer
around the monstrous engine.

Suck in" Suck in!  Michael repeated, and worked at the handle of the
hand fuel pump.  When the mechanic swung the propeller, he heard the
suck of fuel into the carburettor under the cowling as the engine
primed.

Switches on!  ContactV Switches on!  At the next swing of the propeller
the engine fired and blathered.  Blue smoke blew out of the exhaust
ports, and there was the stink of burning castor oil.  The engine
surged, and missed, caught again and settled down to its steady idling
beat.

As Michael completed his preflight checks, his stomach rumbled and
spasmed with colic.  Castor oil lubricated the precision engines, and
the fumes they breathed from the exhausts gave them all a perpetual
low-grade diarrhoea.  The old hands soon learned to control it; whisky
had a marvellously binding effect if taken in sufficient quantity.
However, the new chums were often affectionately referred to as treacle
bottoms, or slippery breeks when they returned red-faced and odorous
from a sortie.

Michael settled his goggles and glanced across at Andrew.  They nodded
at each other, and Andrew opened his throttle and rolled out on to the
soggy turf.  Michael followed him, his mechanic trotting at his
starboard wing tip to help him swing and line up on the narrow muddy
strip between the apple trees.

Ahead of him Andrew was airborne and Michael opened his throttle wide.
Almost immediately the Sopwith threw her tail up, clearing his forward
vision, Michael felt a prick of conscience at his earlier disloyalty.
She was a lovely plane and a joy to fly.  Despite the sticky mud of the
strip, she broke swiftly free of the earth, and at 200 feet Michael
levelled out behind Andrew's green machine.  The light was just good
enough by now for him to make out to his right the green copper-clad
spire of the church of the little village of Mort Homme; ahead of him
lay the T-shaped grove of oak and beech trees, the long leg of the T
perfectly aligned with the squadron's landing strip, a most convenient
navigational aid when coming in during bad weather.  Beyond the trees
stood the pinkroofed chAteau set in the midst of its lawns and formal
gardens, and behind the chAteau the low knoll.

Andrew banked fractionally to the right, to pass the knoll.  Michael
conformed, peering ahead over the edge of his cockpit.  Would she be
there?  It was too early, the knoll was bare, He felt the slide of
disappointment and dread.  Then he saw her, she was galloping up the
pathway towards the crest.  The big white stallion lunging powerfully
under her slim girlish body.

The girl on the white horse was their good-luck talisman.  If she was
there waiting on the knoll to wave them away, all would be well.  Today,
when they were going against the balloons, they needed her, how
desperately they needed her benediction.

She reached the crest of the knoll and reined the stallion down.  just a
few seconds before they drew level she whipped the hat off her head and
the thick dark bush of her hair burst from under it.  She waved the hat,
and Andrew waggled his wings as he roared past.

Michael edged in closer to the crest.  The white stallion backed up and
nodded nervously as the yellow machine came bellowing at him, but the
girl sat him easily, waving gaily.  Michael wanted to see her face.  He
was almost at the same height as the top of the hillock and very close
to where she sat.  For an instant he looked into her eyes.

They were huge and dark, and he felt his heart trip.  He touched his
helmet in salute, and he knew now, deep down, that it would go well this
day, then he put the memory of those eyes from his mind and looked
ahead.

Ten miles ahead, where the low chalk ridges ran across their front, he
saw with relief that he had been right, the breeze had not yet dispersed
the morning mist that hung in the valleys.  The chalk ridges were
horribly chewed by shellfire, no vegetation remained upon them, the
stumps of the shattered oak trees were nowhere as tall as a man's
shoulder, and the shell craters overlapped each other, brimming with
stagnant water.  The ridges had been fought over, month after month, but
at the moment they were in Allied hands, taken at the beginning of the
preceding winter at a cost in human lives that challenged belief.

The leprous and pockmarked earth seemed deserted, but it was peopled by
the legions of the living and the dead rotting together in the
waterlogged earth.  The smell of death home on the breeze reached even
to the men in the low flying machines, an obscenity that coated the back
of their throats and made them gag.

Behind the ridges the Allied troops, South Africans and New Zealanders
of the Third Army, were preparing reserve positions as a contingency
measure, for should the Allied offensive which was being prepared upon
the Somme river further to the west fail, then all the fury of the
German counter-attack would be unleashed upon them The preparation of
the new line of defences was being seriously hampered by the massed
German artillery to the north of the ridges, which deluged the area with
an almost continuous barrage of high explosive.  As they roared towards
the front, Michael could see the yellow haze from the bursting howitzer
shells hanging in a poison bank below the ridges, and he could imagine
the anguish of the men toiling in the mud, harassed by the unremitting
fall of explosives.

As Michael raced towards the ridges, the sound of the barrage rose above
even the thunder of the big rotary Le Rhone engine and the buffeting
rush of the slipstream.

The barrage was like the sound of storm surf on a rocky shore, like the
beat of a demented drummer, like the fevered pulse of this sick, mad
world, and Michael's fierce resentment at the men who had ordered them
to go against the balloons abated as the roar of the barrage mounted. It
was work that must be done, he realized it when he saw this dreadful
suffering.

Yet the balloons were the most feared and hated targets that any man
could fly against, that was why Andrew Killigerran would send nobody
else.  Michael saw them now, like fat silver slugs hanging in the dawn
sky high above the ridges.  One was directly ahead, the other a few
miles further east.  At this range the cables that tethered them to
earth were invisible, and the wicker basket from which the observers
obtained a grandstand view over the Allied rear areas were merely dark
specks suspended beneath the shining spheres of hydrogen-filled silk.

At that moment there was a shocking disruption of air that hit the
Sopwiths and rocked their wings, and immediately ahead of them a
fountain of smoke and flame shot into the sky, rolling upon itself,
black and bright orange, rising anvil-headed, high above the low-flying
Sopwiths, forcing them to bank away steeply to avoid its fiery pillar. A
German shell directed from one of the balloons had hit a forward Allied
ammunition dump, end Michael felt his fear and resentment shrivel, to be
replaced by a burning hatred of the gunners and of the men hanging in
the sky, with eyes like vultures, calling down death with cold
dispassion.

Andrew turned back towards the ridges, leaving the tall column of smoke
on their right wingtips, and he dropped lower and still lower until his
undercarriage was skimming the tops of the sandbagged parapets and they
could see the South African troops moving in file along the
Communication trenches, dun-coloured beasts of burden, not really human,
toiling under the weight of their packs and equipment.  Very few of them
bothered to look up as the gaily painted machines thundered overhead.
Those that did had grey, mud-streaked faces, the expression dulled and
the eyes blank.

Ahead of them opened the mouth of one of the low passes that bisected
the chalk ridges.  The pass was filled with the morning mist.  With the
thrust of the dawn breeze agitating it, the mist bank undulated softly
as though the earth was making love beneath a silver eiderdown.

There was the rattle of a Vickers machine-gun close ahead.  Andrew was
testfiring his weapon.  Michael turned slightly out of line to clear his
front and fired a short burst.  The phosphorus-tipped incendiary bullets
spun pretty white trails in the clear air.

Michael turned back into line behind Andrew and they hurtled into the
mist, entering a new dimension of light and muted sound.  The diffused
light spun rainbow-coloured haloes around both aircraft and the moisture
condensed on Michael's goggles.

He lifted them on to his forehead and peered ahead.

The previous afternoon, Andrew and Michael had carefully reconnoitred
this narrow pass between the ridges, reassuring themselves that there
were no obstacles or obstructions, and memorizing the way it twisted and
turned through the higher ground, and yet it was still a perilous
passage, with visibility down to 600 feet or less and the chalky slopes
rising steeply at each wingtip.

Michael closed up on the green tailplane and flew on that alone,
trusting Andrew to take him through, while the icy cold of the mist ate
corrosively through his clothing and numbed his fingertips through the
leather gauntlets.

Ahead of him Andrew banked steeply, and as Michael followed him round,
he caught a glimpse of the barbed wire, brown with rust and tangled like
bracken beneath his wheels.

No man's land, he muttered, and then the German front lines flashed
beneath them, a mere glimpse of parapets beneath which crouched men in
field-grey uniforms and those ugly coal-scuttle helmets.

Seconds later they burst out of the mist bank into a world lit by the
first low rays of the sun, into a sky that dazzled them with its
brilliance, and Michael realized that they had achieved total surprise.
The mist bank had hidden them from the observers in the balloon and it
had deadened the beat of their engines.

Directly ahead, the first balloon hung suspended in the sky, 1500 feet
above them.  Its steel anchor-cable, fine as a spider's strand of
gossamer, led down to the ugly black steam winch half-buried in its
emplacement of sandbags.

It looked utterly vulnerable, until Michael's eye dropped to the
peaceful-seeming fields beneath the balloon, and there were the guns.

The machine-gun nests resembled anti-lion burrows in the African soil,
tiny dimples in the earth, lined with sandbags.  He could not count them
in the brief seconds left to him, there were so many.  Instead, he
picked out the anti-aircraft guns, standing tall and ungainly as
giraffes on their circular baseplates, the long barrels already pointed
skywards, ready to hurl their air-burst shrapnel as high as 20,000 feet
into the sky.

They were waiting.  They knew that sooner or later the planes would
come, and they were ready.  Michael realized that the mist had won them
only seconds, for he could see the gunners running to man their weapons.
One of the long anti-aircraft barrels began to move, depressing and
swinging towards them.  Then, as Michael pushed the throttle lever hard
open against its stop and the Sopwith surged forward, he saw a cloud of
white steam spurt from the massive winch as the ground crew began
desperately to haul the balloon down into the protective fire of the
banks of guns.  The shimmering sphere of silk sank swiftly towards the
earth, and Andrew lifted the nose of his machine and roared upwards.

With the throttle wide open and the big rotary engine howling in full
power, Michael followed him up, aiming his climb at the cable halfway
between the earth and the balloon, at the spot where the balloon would
be when he reached it, and that was a mere 500 feet above the heads of
the gunners.

Andrew was four hundred yards ahead of Michael, and still the guns had
not opened up.  Now he was on line with the balloon and engaging it.
Michael clearly heard the clatter of his Vickers and saw the streaking
phosphorous trails of the incendiary bullets, lacing through the icy
dawn air, joining the balloon and the racing green aircraft for fleeting
seconds.  Then Andrew banked away, his wingtip brushed the billowing
silk and it rocked sedately in his slipstream.

Now it was Michael's turn, and as he picked up the balloon in his
gunsight, the gunners below him opened up.  He heard the rip-crash of
shrapnel bursts, and the Sopwith rocked dangerously in the tornado of
passing shot, but the shells were all fused too long.  They burst in
bright silver balls of smoke three or four hundred feet above him.

The machine-gunners were more accurate, for they were at almost
point-blank range.  Michael felt the solid his plane, and tracer flew
thick and crash of shot into white as hail about him.  He hit the rudder
bar and at the same time threw on opposite stick, crossing controls to
induce a gut-wrenching side-slip, throwing off the sheets of fire for a
moment while he lined up for the balloon.

It seemed to rush towards him, the silk had the repulsively soft sheen
of a maggot coated in silver mucus.  He saw the two German observers
dangling in their open wicker basket, both of them bundled in clothing
against the cold.  One stared at him woodenly, the other's face was
contorted with terror and fury as he screamed a curse or a challenge
that was lost in the blare of engines and the rattling clatter of
machine-gun fire.

it was barely necessary to aim the Vickers, for the balloon filled all
his vision.  Michael opened the safety lock and pressed down on the
firing lever; the gun hammered, shaking the entire aircraft, and the
smoke of burning phosphorus from the incendiary bullet blew back into
his face, choking him.

Now that he was flying straight and level, the ground gunners found him
again, shooting the Sopwith to tatters - but Michael held on, pressing
on alternate rudders to wing his nose slightly from side to side,
directing his incendiaries into the balloon as though he was wielding a
garden hose.

Burn!  he screamed.  Burn!  Damn you, burn!  Pure hydrogen gas is not
inflammable, it has to mix with oxygen in proportions of I:2 before it
becomes violently explosive.  The balloon absorbed his fire without
visible effect.

Burn!  he screamed at it.  His clawed hand locked on the firing handle,
the Vickers hammering, and the spent brass shells spewing from the
breech.  Hydrogen must be pouring from the hundreds of bullet holes that
both he and Andrew had shot in the silk, the gas must be mingling with
the air.

Why won't you burn?" He heard the anguish and despair in his own wild
cry.  He was on the balloon, he must break away now, he must turn to
avoid collision, it had all been in vain.  Then, in that instant of
failure, he knew that he would never give up.  He knew he was going to
fly into the balloon if he had to.

As he thought it, the balloon exploded in his face.  it seemed to swell
to a hundred times its size to fill the sky and at the same time turn to
flame.  A stunning dragon's breath licked over Michael and the Sopwith,
scorching the exposed skin of his cheeks, blinding him, flinging both
man and machine aloft like a green leaf from a garden bonfire.  Michael
fought for control as the Sopwith tried to turn on her back, then
tumbled down the sky.  He caught her before she smashed into the earth
and as he climbed away he looked back.

The hydrogen gas had burned away in that single demoniac gust, and now
the empty, fiercely burning silk shroud collapsed, spreading like a
fiery umbrella over the basket and its human cargo.

One of the German observers jumped clear and fell 300 feet, his
greatcoat fluttering about him, his legs kicking convulsively,
disappearing abruptly, without sound or The second trace, into the short
green grass of the field.

observer stayed with the basket and was enveloped by the billows of
burning silk.

On the ground the crew were scrambling from the winch emplacement, like
insects from a disturbed nest, but the burning silk fell too swiftly,
trapping them in its fiery folds.  Michael felt no pity for any of them,
but was overcome instead by a savage triumph, a primeval reaction from
his own terror.  He opened his mouth to shout his warcry, and at that
moment a shrapnel shell, fired from one of the guns near the north edge
of the field, burst beneath the Sopwith.

Again it was tossed upwards, and humming, hissing shards of steel tore
up through the belly of the fuselage.

As Michael struggled to control this second wild surge and drop, the
floor of the cockpit was ripped open so that he could see the ground
below him and arctic winds howled up under his greatcoat, making the
folds billow.

He held her on even keel, but she was hard-hit.  Something was loose
below the fuselage, it banged and whipped in the wind and she was flying
one wing heavy, so he had to hold her up by brute force, but at least he
was out of range of the guns at last.

Then Andrew appeared on his wingtip, craning across at him anxiously,
and Michael grinned and whooped with triumph.  Andrew was signalling for
his attention, and stabbing his thumb in the signal, Return to base!
Michael glanced around him.  While he had been fighting for control,
they had been roaring northwards, deeper and still deeper into German
territory.  They flashed over a crossroads jammed with animal-drawn and
motorized transport, startled field-grey figures scattered for cover in
the ditches.  Michael ignored them and swivelled in the cockpit; three
miles away across the flat and featureless green fields the second
balloon still sailed serenely above the ridges.

Michael gave Andrew the cut-out negative and pointed at the remaining
balloon.  No, continue the attack. Andrew's signal was urgent.  Return
to base!  and he A pointed at Michael's machine, and gave him the
cutthroat signal.

Danger!  Michael looked down through the hole between his feet where the
belly had been shot out of her.  That banging was probably one of his
landing wheels dangling on the bracing wires.  Bullet holes had peppered
the wings and body of the aircraft, and loose ribbons of torn fabric
fluttered like Buddhist prayer flags as the slipstream plucked at them,
but the Le Rhone engine roared angrily, still under full throttle,
without check or stutter in its warlike beat.

Andrew was signalling again, urging him to turn back, but Michael gave
him a curt flick of the hand, Follow me!'- and threw the Sopwith up on
one wingtip, bringing her round in a steep turn that strained her
damaged bodywork.

Michael was lost in the raptures of fighting madness, the berserker's
wild passion, in which the threat of death or fearful injury was of no
consequence.  His vision was heightened to unnatural clarity, and he
flew the damaged Sopwith as though it were an extension of his own body,
as though he were part-swallow skimming the water to drink in flight, so
lightly did he brush the hedgerows and touch the stubble in the fields
with his single remaining landing wheel, and part-falcon, so cruel was
his unblinking gaze as he hated at the ponderously descending balloon.

Of course, they had seen the fiery destruction of the first balloon, and
they were winching in.  They would be down before Michael reached the
site.  The gunners would be fully alerted, waiting with finger on the
trigger.  It would be a ground level attack, into the prepared
positions, but even in his suicidal rage, Michael had lost none of the
hunter's cunning.  He was using every stick of available cover for his
approach run.

A narrow country lane angled across the front, the row of slim, straight
poplars that flanked it was the only feature on this dreary plain below
the ridge.  Michael used the line of trees, banking steeply to run
parallel with them, keeping them between him and the balloon site, and
he glanced up at the mirror fixed to the wing section above his head.
Andrew's green Sopwith was so close behind him that the spinning
propeller almost touched his rudder.  Michael grinned like a shark and
gathered the Sopwith in his hands and lifted it over the palisade of
poplar trees the way a hunter takes a fence at full gallop.

The balloon site was three hundred yards ahead.  The balloon itself had
just reached ground level.  The ground crew were helping the observers
out of the basket and then running in a group for the cover of the.
nearest trench.  The machine-gunners, their aim frustrated up to that
moment by the row of poplar trees, had a fair target at last, and they
opened together.

Michael flew into a torrent of fire.  It filled the air about him, and
the shrapnel shells sucked at the air as they passed, so that his
eardrums clicked and ached with the pressure drops.  In the emplacements
he saw the faces of the gunners turned up towards him; they were pale
blobs behind the foreshortened barrels that swung to follow him and the
muzzle flashes were bright and pretty as fairy lights.  However, the
Sopwith was roaring in at well over 100 miles an hour and he had barely
300 yards to cover.  Even the solid crunch of bullets into the heavy
engine block could distract Michael as he lined up his sights with
delicate touches on the rudder bars.

The group of running men escaping from the balloon was directly ahead of
him, racing back towards the trench.

In their midst the two observers were slow and clumsy, still stiff with
the cold of the upper air, burdened by their heavy clothing.  Michael
hated them as he might hate a venomous snake, he dropped the Sopwith's
nose fractionally and touched the firing lever.  The group of men blew
away, like grey smoke, and disappeared into the low stubble.  Instantly
Michael lifted the aim of the Vickers.

The balloon was tethered to earth, looking like a circus tent.  He fired
into it, bullets streaming on silvery trails of phosphorus smoke into
the soft silken mass without effect.

In the berserker's rage, Michael's brain was clear, his thought so
swift, that time seemed to run slower and still slower.  The
micro-seconds as he closed with the stranded silken monster seemed to
last an-eternity, so that he could follow the flight of each individual
bullet from the muzzle of his Vickers.

Why won't she burn?  he screamed the question again, and the answer came
to him.

The hydrogen atom is the lightest of all in weight.  The escaping gas
was rising to mingle with oxygen above the balloon.  It was so obvious
then, that he was shooting too low.  Why hadn't he realized it before?

He hauled the Sopwith up on her tail, streaming his fire upwards across
the swelling side of the balloon, still up until he was shooting into
empty air, over the top of the balloon, and the air turned to sudden
flame.  As the great exhalation of fire rolled towards him, Michael kept
the Sopwith climbing into the vertical and jerked the throttle closed.
Without power she hung for an instant on her nose and then stalled and
dropped.  Michael kicked hard at the rudder bar, spinning her into the
classic stall turn, and as he opened the throttle again he was headed
back, directly away from the immense funeral pyre that he had created.
Beneath him he caught a green flash as Andrew banked on to his wingtip
in a maximum-rate turn, breaking out left, almost colliding with
Michael's undercarriage, and then hurtling away at right angles to his
track.

There was no more ground fire; the sudden acrobatics of the two
attackers and the roaring pillar of burning gas entirely distracted the
gunners, and Michael dropped back behind the cover of the poplar trees,
Now that it was all over, his rage abated almost as swiftly as it had
arisen, and he swept the skies above him, realizing that the columns of
smoke would be a beacon for the Albatros Jagdstaffels.  Apart from the
smoke, the skies were clear, and he felt a lift of relief and looked for
Andrew as he banked low over the hedgerows.  There he was, a little
higher than Michael, already heading back towards the ridges, but
angling in to intercept in.

They came together.  Strange what comfort there was in having Andrew on
his wingtip, grinning at him and shaking his head in mock disapproval of
the disobeyed order to return to base and the berserker fit which had
seized Michael.

Side by side they roared low across the German front lines again,
contemptuous of the splattering of fire they drew and then as they began
to climb to cross the ridge, Michael's engine spluttered and lost power.

He dropped towards the chalky earth, and then the engine fired again,
bellowed and surged, lifting him just clear of the crest, before missing
and banging unevenly once more.  Andrew was still beside him, mouthing
encouragement, and the engine roared again I and then missed and popped.

Michael nursed it, pumping the throttle, fiddling with the ignition
setting, and whispering to the wounded Sopwith.  Come on, my darling.
Stick it out, old girl.  Nearly home, there's my sweetheart.  Then he
felt something break in her body, one of the main frames shot through,
and the controls went soft in his hands, and she sagged, sick unto
death.  Hold on, Michael exhorted her, but suddenly there was the
pungent stink of petrol in his nostrils, and he saw a thin transparent
trickle of it ooze from under the engine cowling and turn to white
vapour in the slipstream as it blew back past his head.

Fire.  It was the airman's nightmare, but the vestiges of rage were
still with Michael and he murmured stubbornly, We're going home, old
girl.  just a little longer.  They had crossed the ridges, there was
flat terrain ahead, and he could already make out the dark T-shaped wood
which marked the approach to the airstrip.  Come on, my sweeheart.
Beneath him there were men, out of the trenches, lining the parapets,
waving and cheering as the damaged Sopwith clattered and popped close
above their heads, one of its landing wheels shot away, the other
dangling and slamming against its belly.

Their faces were upturned, and he saw their open mouths as they called
to him.  They had heard the storm of fire that heralded the attack, and
seen the great balls of burning hydrogen shoot into the sky beyond the
ridges, and they knew that for a little while the torment of the guns
would ease, and they cheered the returning pilots, shouting themselves
hoarse.

Michael left them behind, but their gratitude was uplifting and ahead
lay all the familiar landmarks, the spire of the church, the pink roof
of the chAteau, the little knoll.

We are going to make it, my sweetheart, he called to the Sopwith, but
under the engine cowling a dangling wire touched the metal of the engine
block and a tiny blue spark arced across the gap.  There was the whoosh
of explosive combustion, and the white trail of vapour turned to flame.
Heat washed over the open cockpit like the pressure flame from a blow
lamp, and Michael instinctively flung the Sopwith into another side-flip
so that the flames were pushed out obliquely away from his face and he
could see ahead.

Now he had to get her down, anywhere, anyhow, but fast, very fast,
before he was cooked and charred in the burning carcass of the Sopwith.
He dipped towards the field that opened ahead of him, and now his
greatcoat was burning, the sleeve of his right arm smouldered and burst
into flame.

He brought the Sopwith down, holding the nose up to bleed off speed, but
she hit the ground with a force that cracked his teeth together in his
jaw, and instantly she pivoted on her one remaining wheel and then
cartwheeled, tearing off one wing and crashing into the hedgerow that
bordered the field.

Michael's head slammed against the edge of the cockpit, stunning him,
but there were flames crackling and leaping up all around him now and he
clawed himself out of the cockpit, fell on to the crumpled wing and
rolled on to the muddy earth.  On his hands and knees he crawled
desperately away from the flaming wreckage.  The burning wool of the
greatcoat flared and the heat spurred him to his feet with a- scream. He
ripped at the buttons, trying to rid himself of the agony, running and
flapping his arms, wildly, fanning the flames and making them fiercer
and hotter.

In the crackling roar of the burning wreckage, he did not even hear the
galloping horse.

The girl put the big white stallion to the hedge and they flew over it.
Horse and rider landed in balance and immediately plunged forward again
after the burning, screaming figure in the centre of the field.  The
girl unhooked her leg from the pommel of the side-saddle, and as they
came up behind Michael she pulled the stallion down to a sliding halt
and at the same time launched herself from his back.

She landed with her full weight between Michael's shoulder-blades, and
both arms locked around his neck, so that he was knocked sprawling flat
on his face with the girl on his back.  She rolled to her feet and
whipping the thick gabardine skirt of the riding-habit from around her
waist, spread it over the burning figure at her feet.

Then she dropped to her knees beside him and wrapped the voluminous
skirt tightly around him, beating with her bare hands at the little
tendrils of flame that escaped from around it.

As soon as the flames were snuffed out, she pulled off her skirt and
heaved Michael into a sitting position on the muddy ground.  With quick
fingers, she unbuttoned the smoking greatcoat and stripped it off his
shoulders and flung it aside.  She pulled away the smouldering jerseys,
there was only one place where the flames had reached his flesh.  They
had burned through across his shoulder and down his arm.  He cried out
with the pain when she tried to pull the nightshirt away.  For the love
of Christ!  The cotton shirt had stuck to the burns.

The girl leaned over him, took the cloth in her teeth and worried it
until it tore.  Once she had started it, she ripped it open with her
hands and her expression changed. Mon Dieu!  she said, and jumped up.
She stamped on the smoking greatcoat to extinguish the last of the
smouldering wool.

Michael stared at her, the agony of his burned arm receding.  With her
long skirt removed, her riding jacket reached only to the top of her
thighs.  On her feet she wore black patent-leather riding boots fastened
up the sides with hooks and eyes.  Her knees were bare, and the skin at
the back of them was smooth and flawless as the inner lining of a
nautilus shell, but her knee-caps were smudged with mud where she had
knelt to help him.

Above the knees she wore a pair of carni-knickers of a sheer material
through which he could distinctly make out the sheen of her skin.  The
legs of the knickers were fastened above the knee with pink ribbons, and
they clung to her thighs and lower body as though she were naked - no,
the semi-veiled lines were even more riveting than naked flesh would
have been.

Michael felt his throat swell, so that he could not breathe, as she
stooped to pick up his charred coat, and he was allowed a brief vision
of her small, firm buttocks, round as a pair of ostrich eggs, gleaming
palely in the early-morning light.  He stared so hard, he felt his eyes
begin to water and as she turned back to him, he saw in the fork framed
by her hard young thighs a dark triangular shadow through the thin silk.
She stood with that mesmeric shadow six inches from his nose while she
spread the coat gently over his burned shoulder, murmuring to him in the
tone a mother uses to a hurt child.

Michael caught only the words froid and brfiW.  She was so close that he
could smell her; the natural musk of a healthy young woman sweating with
the exertion of hard riding was mingling with a perfume that smelled
like dried rose petals.  Michael tried to speak, to thank her, but he
was shaking with shock and pain.  His lips wobbled and he made a little
slurring sound.

Mon pauvre, she cooed to him, and stepped back.  Her voice was husky
with concern and exertion, and she had the face of a pixie with huge
dark Celtic eyes.  He wondered if her ears were pointed, but they were
hidden by the dark bush of her hair.  It was windblown and kinked into
dense springy curls.  Her skin was tinted by her Celtic blood to the
colour of old ivory and her eyebrows were thick and dark as her hair.

She began to speak again, but he could not help himself, and he glanced
down again to that intriguing little shadow under the silk.  She saw the
movement of his eyes and her cheeks glowed with a dusky rose colour as
she snatched up her muddy skirts and whipped them around her waist, and
Michael ached more with embarrassment at his gaffe than he did from his
burns.

The overhead roar of Andrew's Sopwith gave them both respite and they
looked up gratefully as Andrew circled the field.  Painfully and
unsteadily Michael clambered to his feet, as the girl settled her
skirts, and he waved up at Andrew.  He saw Andrew lift his hand and give
him a relieved salute, then the green Sopwith circled out and came in on
a straight run not higher than fifty feet above their heads, and the
green scarf, with something knotted in one end, fluttered down and
plunked into the mud a few yards away.

The girl ran to it and brought it back to Michael.  He unknotted the
tail of the scarf and grinned lopsidedly as he brought out the silver
flask.  He unscrewed the stopper and lifted the flask to the sky.  He
saw the flash of Andrew's white teeth in the open cockpit and the raised
gauntleted hand, and then Andrew turned away towards the airfield.

Michael lifted the flask to his lips, and swallowed twice.  His eyes
clouded with tears and he gasped as the heavenly liquid flowed scalding
down his throat.  When he lowered the flask, she was watching him, and
he offered it to her.

She shook her head, and asked seriously, Anglais?"Oui, non, Sud
Africain.  His voice shook.

Ah, vous parlez franqais!  She smiled for the first time, and it was a
phenomenon almost as stunning as her pearly little bottom.

A peine, hardly.  He denied it swiftly, staving off the flood of voluble
French that he knew from experience an affirmative would have brought
down on his head.

You have blood.  Her English was appalling, only when she pointed to his
head did he understand what she had said.  He lifted his free hand and
touched the trickle of blood which had escaped from under his helmet. He
inspected his smeared fingertips. Yes, he admitted.  Buckets of it, I'm
afraid. The helmet had saved him from serious injury when his head had
struck the side of the cockpit. Pardon?  She looked confused.

J'en ai beaucoup, he tianslated.

Ah, you do talk French.  She clapped her hands J-n_ nn endearing,
childlike gesture of delight and took his arm in a proprietorial.
gesture.

Come, she ordered, and snapped her fingers for the stallion.  He was
cropping the grass, and pretended not to hear her.

Wiens ici tout de suite, Nuage!  She stamped her foot. Come here, this
instant, Cloud!  The stallion took another mouthful of grass to
demonstrate his independence and then sidled across in leisurely
fashion.

Please, she.  asked, and Michael made a stirrup of his cupped hands and
boosted her up into the saddle.  She was very light and agile.

Come up.  She helped him, and he settled behind her on the stallion's
broad rump.  She took one of Michael's hands and placed it on her waist.
Her flesh under his fingers was firm and he could feel the heat of it
through the cloth.

Tenez, hold on!  she instructed, and the stallion cantered towards the
gate at the end of the field nearest the chateau.

Michael looked back at the smoking wreckage of his Sopwith.  Only the
engine block remained, the wood and canvas had burned away.  He felt a
shadow of deep regret at her destruction, they had come a long way
together.

How do you call yourself?  the girl asked over her shoulder, and he
turned back to her.

Michael, Michael Courtney.  Michel Courtney, she repeated
experimentally, and then, I am Mademoiselle Centaine de Thiry Enchante,
mademoiselle.  Michael paused to compose his next conversational gem in
his laboured schoolboy French.  Centaine is a strange name, he said, and
she stiffened under his hand.  He had used the word drole, or comical.
Quickly he corrected himself, An exceptional name.  Suddenly he
regretted that he had not applied himself more vigorously to his French
studies; shaken and shocked as he still was, he had to concentrate hard
to follow her rapid explanation.

I was born one minute after midnight on the first day of the year 1900.
So she was seventeen years and three months old, teetering on the very
brink of womanhood.

Then he remembered that his own mother had been barely seventeen when he
was born.  The thought cheered him so much that he took another quick
nip from Andrew's flask.

You are my saviour!  He meant it lightheartedly, but it sounded so crass
that he expected her to burst into mocking laughter.  Instead, she
nodded seriously.  The sentiment was in accord with Centaine's own
swiftly developing emotions.

Her favourite animal, apart from Nuage the stallion, had once been a
skinny mongrel puppy which she had found in the ditch, blood-smeared and
shivering.  She had nursed it and cherished it, and loved it until a
month previously when it had died under the wheels of one of the army
trucks trundling up to the front.  Its death had left an aching gap in
her existence.  Michael was thin, almost starved-looking under all those
charred and muddy clothes; apart, then, from his physical injuries, she
sensed the abuse to which he had been subjected.  His eyes were a
marvelous clear blue, but she read in them a terrible suffering, and he
shivered and trembled just as her little mongrel had.

Yes, she said firmly.  I will look after you.  The chateau was larger
than it had seemed from the air, and much less beautiful.  Most of the
windows had been broken and boarded up.  The walls were pocked with
shell splinters, but the shell craters on the lawns had grassed over,
the fighting last autumn had come within extreme artillery range of the
estate, before the final push by the Allies had driven the Germans back
behind the ridges again.

The great house had a sad and neglected air, and Centaine apologized.

Our workmen have been taken by the army, and most of the women and all
the children have fled to Paris or Arniens.  We are three only.  She
raised herself in the saddle and called out sharply in a different
language, Anna!  Come and see what I have found.  The woman who emerged
from the vegetable gardens behind the kitchens was squat and broad with
a backside like a percher on mare and huge shapeless breasts beneath the
mud-stained blouse.  Her thick dark hair, streaked with grey, was pulled
back into a bun on top of her head, I and her face was red and round as
a radish, her arms, bare to the elbows, were thick and muscular as a
man's and caked with mud.  She held a bunch of turnips in one large,
calloused hand.

What is it, kleintjie, little one?  I have saved a gallant English
airman, but he is terribly wounded-, He looks very well to me Anna,
don't be such an old grouse!  Come and help me.

We must get him into the kitchen The two of them were gabbling at each
other, and to Michael's astonishment, he could understand every word of
it.

I will not allow a soldier in the house, you know that, kleinjie!  I
won't have a tomcat in the same basket with my little kitten- He's not a
soldier, Anna, he's an airman."And probably as randy as any tomcat, She
used the word fris, and Centaine flashed at her, You are a disgusting
old woman, now come and help me.  Anna looked Michael over very
carefully, and then conceded reluctantly, He has nice eyes, but I still
don't trust him, oh, all right, but if he so much as, Mevrou, Michael
spoke for the first time, your virtue is safe with me, I give you my
solemn word.  Ravishing as you are, I will control myself.  Centaine
swivelled in the saddle to stare at him, and Anna reeled back with shock
and then guffawed with delight. He speaks Flemish!  You speak Flemish!
Centained echoed the accusation.

It's not Flemish, Michael denied.  It's Afrikaans, South African Dutch.
It's Flemish, Anna told him as she came forward.  And anybody who speaks
Flemish is welcome in this house. She reached up to Michael.

Be careful, Centaine told her anxiously.  His shoulder - She slipped to
the ground and between the two of them they helped Michael down and led
him to the door of the kitchen.

A dozen chefs could have prepared a banquet for five hundred guests in
this kitchen, but there was only a tiny wood fire burning in one of the
ranges and they seated Michael on a stool in front of it.

Get some of your famous ointment, Centaine ordered, and Anna hurried
away.

You are Flemish?  Michael asked.  He was delighted that the language
barrier had evaporated.

No, no.  Centaine was busy with an enormous pair of shears, snipping
away the charred remnants of the shirt from his burns.  Anna is from the
north, she was my nurse when my mother died, and now she thinks she is
my mother and not just a servant.  She taught me the language in the
cradle.  But you, where did you learn it?  Where I come from, everybody
speaks it.  I'm glad, she said, and he was not sure what she meant, for
her eyes were lowered to her task.

I look for you every morning, he said softly.  We all do, when we fly.
She said nothing, but he saw her cheeks turn that lovely dusky pink
colour again.

We call you our good luck angel, I'ange du bonheur, and she laughed.

I call you le petit jaune, the little yellow one, she answered.
Theyellow Sopwith, Michael felt a surge of elation.  She knew him as an
individual, and she went on, All of you, I wait for you to come back,
counting my chickens, but so often they do not come back, the new ones
especially.  Then I cry for them and pray.  But you and the green one
always come home, then I rejoice for you I You are kind, he started, but
Anna bustled back from the pantry carrying a stone jar that smelled of
turpentine and the mood was spoiled.

Where is Papa?  Centaine demande&.

In the basement, seeing to the animals.

We have to keep the livestock in the cellars, Centaine explained as she
went to the head of the stone stairs, otherwise the soldiers steal the
chickens and geese and even the milk cows.  I had to fight to keep
Nuage, even She yelled down the stairs, Papa!  Where are you?  There was
a muffled response from below and Centaine called again, We need a
bottle of cognac.  And then her tone became admonitive.  Unopened, Papa.
It is not a social need, but a medicinal one.  Not for you but for a
patient, here.  Centaine tossed a bunch of keys down the stairs and
minutes later there was a heavy tread and a large shaggy man with a full
belly shambled into the kitchen with a cognac bottle held like an infant
to his chest.

He had the same dense bush of kinky hair as Centaine, but it was woven
with grey strands and hung forward on to his forehead.  His moustaches
were wide and beeswaxed into impressive spikes, and he peered at Michael
through a single dark glittering eye.  The other eye was covered by a
piratical black cloth patch. Who is this?  he demanded. An English
airman. The scowl abated.  A fellow warrior, he said.  A
comrade-in-arms, another destroyer of the cursed boche!  You have not
destroyed a boche for over forty years, Anna reminded him without
looking up from Michael's burns, but he ignored her and advanced on
Michael, opening his arms like a bear to envelop him. Papa, be careful.
He is wounded. Wounded!

cried Papa.  Cognac!  as though the two words were linked, and he found
two heavy glass tumblers and placed them on the kitchen table, breathed
on them with a decidedly garlicky breath, wiped them on his coat-tails,
and cracked the red wax from the neck of the bottle.

Papa, you are not wounded, Centaine told him severely as he filled both
tumblers up to the brim.

I would not insult a man of such obvious valour by asking him to drink
alone.  He brought one tumbler to Michael.

Comte Louis de Thiry, at your service, monsieur.  Captain Michael
Courtney.  Royal Flying Corps.  A votre sont6, Capitaine!  A la v6tre,
Monsieur le Comte!  The comte drank with undisguised relish, then sighed
and wiped his magnificent dark moustaches on the back of his hand and
spoke to Anna.

Proceed with the treatment, woman.  This will sting Anna warned, and for
a moment Michael thought she meant the cognac, but she took a handful of
the ointment from the stone jar and slapped it on to the open burns.

Michael let out an anguished whinny and tried to rise, but Anna held him
down with one huge, red, work-chafed hand.

Bind it up, she ordered Centaine, and as the girl wound on the bandages,
the agony faded and became a comforting warmth.

It feels better, Michael admitted.

Of course it does, Anna told him comfortably.  My ointment is famous for
everything from smallpox to piles.  So is my cognac, murmured the comte,
and recharged both tumblers.

Centaine went to the wash basket on the kitchen table and returned with
one of the comte's freshly ironed shirts, and despite her father's
protests, she helped Michael into it.  Then as she was fashioning a
sling for his injured arm, there was a buzzing clatter of an engine
outside the kitchen windows and Michael caught a glimpse of a familiar
figure on an equally familiar motor-cycle skidding to a halt in a spray
of gravel.

The engine spluttered and hiccoughed into silence and a voice called
agitatedly, Michael, my boy, where are you?  The door burst open and
admitted Lord Andrew Killigerran in tam o shanter, followed closely by a
young officer in the uniform of the Royal Medical Corps.  Thank God,
there you are.  Panic not, I've brought you a sawbones Andrew pulled the
doctor to Michael's stool and then, with relief and a shade of pique in
his voice, You seem to be doing damn well without us, I'll say that for
you.  I raided the local field hospital.  Kidnapped this medico at the
point of a pistol, been eating my heart out about you, and here you are
with a glass in your hand, and- Andrew broke off and looked at Centaine
for the first time, and forgot all about Michael's condition.  He swept
the tam o shanter from his head.  It's true!  he declaimed in perfect
sonorous French, rolling his Rs in true Gallic fashion.  Angels do
indeed walk the earth.  Go to your room immediately, child, Anna
snapped, and her face screwed up like one of those fearsome carved
dragons that guard the entrance to Chinese temples.

I am not a child, Centaine gave her an equally ferocious glare, then
recomposed her features as she turned to Michael.  Why does he call you
his boy?  You are much older than he is!  He's Scots, Michael explained,
already ridden by jealousy, and the Scots are all mad, also, he has a
wife and four children.  That's a filthy lie, Andrew protested.  The
children, yes, I admit to them, poor wee hairns!  But no wife,
definitely no wife.  Ecossais, murmured the comte, great warriors and
great drinkers.  Then, in reasonable English, May I offer you a little
cognac, monsieur?  They were descending into a babble of languages,
crossing from one to the other in mid-sentence.

Will somebody kindly introduce me to this paragon among men, that I may
accept his fulsome offer?  Le Comte de Thiry, I have the honour to
present Lord Andrew Killigerran.  Michael waved them together and they
shook hands. Tiens!  A genuine English milord.  Scots, my dear fellow,
big difference.  He saluted the Comte with the tumbler.  Enchanted, I'm
sure.  And this beautiful young lady is your daughter, the resemblance
beautiful- Centaine, Anna intersposed, take your horse to the stable and
groom him.  Centaine ignored her and smiled at Andrew.  The smile
stopped even his banter, he stared at her, for the smile transformed
her.  It seemed to glow through her skin like a lamp through alabaster,
and it lit her teeth and sparkled in her eyes like sunlight in a crystal
jar of dark honey.

I think I should have a look at our patient.  The young army doctor
broke the spell and stepped forward to unwrap Michael's bandages.  Anna
understood the gesture, if not the words, and she interposed her bulk
between them.

Tell him, if he touches my work, I will break his arm.  Your services
are not required, I'm afraid, Michael translated for the doctor.

Have a cognac, Andrew consoled him.  It's not bad stuff, not bad at all.
You are a landowner, milord?  the Comte asked Andrew with subtlety.  Of
course?  Bien sfir- Andrew made an expansive gesture which portrayed
thousands of acres and at the same time brought his glass within range
of where the Comte was filling the doctor's glass.  The Comte topped him
up and Andrew repeated, Of course, the family estates, you understand?
Ah.  The Comte's single eye glittered as he glanced across at his
daughter.  Your deceased wife has left you with four children?  He had
not followed the earlier exchange all that clearly.

No children, no wife, my humorous friend, Andrew indicated Michael, he
likes to make jokes.  Very bad English jokes.

Ha!  English jokes.  The Comte roared with laughter and would have
clapped Michael on his shoulder had not Centaine rushed forward to
protect him from the blow. Papa, be careful.

He is wounded.  You will stay for lunch, all of you, the Comte declared.
You will see, milord, my daughter is one of the finest cooks in the
province.  With a little help, Anna muttered disgustedly.

I say, I rather think I should be getting back, the young doctor
murmured diffidently.  I feel rather superfluous."We are invited to
lunch, Andrew told him.  Have a cognac.  Don't mind if I do.  The doctor
succumbed without a struggle.

The Comte announced, It is necessary to descend to the cellars."Papa -
Centaine began ominously.

We have guests!  The Comte showed her the empty cognac bottle and she
shrugged helplessly.

Milord, you will assist me in the selection of suitable refreshments?
Honoured, Monsieur le Comte.  As Centaine watched the pair, arms linked
descend the stone staircase, there was a thoughtful look in her eyes.

He is a drole one, your friend, and very loyal.  See how he rushed here
to your aid.  See how he places a charm on my Papa.  Michael was
surprised by the strength of his dislike for Andrew at that moment.  He
smelled the cognac, he muttered.  That's the only reason he came.  But
what of the four children?  Anna demanded.  And their mother?  She was
having as much difficulty as the comte in following the conversation.

Four mothers, Michael explained.  Four children, four different mothers.
He is a polygamist!  Anna swelled with shock and affront, and her face
went a shade redder.

No, no, Michael assured her.  You heard him deny it.

He is a man of honour, he would not do such a thing.  He is married to
none of them.  Michael felt not a qualm, he had to have an ally
somewhere in the family, but at that moment the happy pair returned from
the cellars laden with black bottles.

Aladdin's cave, Andrew rejoiced.  The comte has got it filled with good
stuff!  He placed half a dozen bottles on the kitchen table in front of
Michael.  Look at this!

Thirty years old, if it's a day!  Then he peered closely at Michael. You
look awful, old boy.  Death warmed up.  Thanks, Michael grinned at him
thinly.  You are so kind.  Natural brotherly concern - Andrew struggled
to draw the cork from one of the bottles, and dropped his voice to a
conspiratorial whisper.  By God, isn't she a corker!  He glanced across
the kitchen to where the women were at work over the big copper pot. I'd
rather feel her than feel sick, what?  Michael's dislike for Andrew
turned to active hatred.

I find that remark utterly revolting, he said.  To talk like that about
a young girl, so innocent, so fine, so so- Michael stuttered into
silence, and Andrew held his head on one side and peered at him
wonderingly.

Michael, my boy, this is worse than just a few burns and bruises, I'm
afraid.  It's going to need intensive treatment.  He filled a glass.  To
start with, I prescribe a liberal dose of this excellent claret!  At the
head of the table the comte had the cork out of another of the bottles,
and refilled the doctor's glass.

A toast!  he cried.  Confusion to the damned boche!  A has les boches!

they all cried, and as soon as the toast was drunk the comte placed his
hand over the black patch which covered the socket of his missing eye.

They did this to me at Sedan in 7o.  They took my eye, but they paid
dearly for it, the devils, Sacrg bleu, how we fought!  Tigers!  We were
tigers-, Tabby cats!  Anna called across the kitchen.

You know nothing of battle and war, these brave young men, they know,
they understand!  I drink to them!  He did so copiously and then
demanded, Now, where is the food?  It was a savoury ragofit of ham and
sausage and marrow bones.  Anna brought bowls of it steaming from the
stove and Centaine piled small loaves of crisp new bread on the bare
table.

Now tell us, how goes the battle?  the comte demanded as he broke bread
and dipped it into his bowl.  When will this war end?  Let us not spoil
good food.  Andrew waved the question away, but with crumbs and gravy on
his mustache the comte insisted. What of a new Allied offensive?  It
will be in the west, on the Somme river again.  It is there that we have
to break through the German lines. It was Michael who answered; he spoke
with quiet authority, so that almost immediately he had all their
attention.

Even the two women came from the stove and Centaine slipped on to the
bench beside Michael, turning serious eyes up to him as she struggled to
understand the English conversation.

How do you know all this?  the comte interrupted.

His uncle is a general, Andrew explained.

A general!  The comte looked at Michael with new interest.  Centaine, do
you not see that our guest is in difficulty?  And while Anna gruffed and
scowled, Centaine leaned over Michael's bowl and cut the meat into
manageable portions so that he could eat with one hand.

Go on!  Continue!  the comte urged Michael.  What then?  General Haig
will pivot right.  This time he will succeed in cutting across the
German rear, and roll up their line.  Ha!  So we are secure here.  The
comte reached for the claret bottle, but Michael shook his head.

I am afraid not, not entirely anyway.  This section of the line is being
stripped of reserves, regimental fronts of the line are being reduced to
battalion strength, everything that can be spared is being moved to take
part in a new push across the Sornme.  The comte looked alarmed.  That
is criminal folly surely the Germans will counter-attack here to try and
reduce pressure on their front at the Somme?  The line here, it will not
hold?  Centaine asked anxiously and involuntarily glanced up at the
kitchen windows.  From where they sat, they could see the ridges on the
horizon.

Michael hesitated.  Oh, I am sure that we will be able to hold them long
enough, especially if the fighting round the Somme goes as well and as
quickly as we expect.  Then the pressure here will swiftly be relieved
as the Allied advance swings across the German rear.

But if the battle bogs down and is stalemated once again?  Centaine
asked softly in Flemish.

For a girl, and one with little English, she had a firm grasp on the
essentials.  Michael treated her question with respect, answering, in
Afrikaans, as though he was speaking to another man.

Then we will be hard-pressed, especially as the Huns have aerial
superiority.  We may lose the ridges again.  He paused and frowned. They
will have to rush in reserves.

We may even be forced to pull back as far as Arras- Arras!  Centaine
gasped.  That means- She did not finish, but looked around at her home
as though already taking farewell of it.  Arras was far to the rear.

Michael nodded.  Once the attack begins, you will be in extreme danger
here.  You will be well advised to evacuate the chateau and go back
south to Arras or even Paris."Never!  cried the comte switching back
into French. A de Thiry never retreats.

Except at Sedan, Anna muttered, but the comte did not deign to hear such
levity.

I will stand here, on my own land.  He pointed at the ancient chassepot
rifle that hung on the kitchen wall. That is the weapon I carried at
Sedan.  The boche learned to fear it there.  They will relearn that
lesson.  Louis de Thiry will teach it to them!  Courage!  cried Andrew.
I give you a toast.  French valour and the triumph of French arms!
Naturally the comte had to reply with a toast to General Haig and our
gallant British Allies!'Captain Courtney is a South African, Andrew
pointed out.  We should drink to them."Ah!  the comte responded
enthusiastically in English. To General, what is your uncle, the
general, called?  To General Sean Courtney and his brave South
Africans."This gentleman, Andrew indicated the slightly owl VIA eyed
doctor swaying gently on the bench beside him, is an officer in the
Royal Medical Corps.  A fine service, and worthy of our toast!  To the
Royal Medical Corps!  The comte accepted the challenge, but as he
reached for his glass again, it trembled before he touched it, and the
surface of the red wine was agitated into little circular ripples which
lapped against the crystal bowl.  The comte froze and all their heads
lifted.

The glass of the kitchen window-panes rattled in their frames and then
le of the guns rolled down from the north.  Once again the German guns
were hunting along the ridges, clamouring and barking like wild dogs,
and as they listened in silence, they could imagine the misery and agony
of the men in the muddy trenches only a few miles from where they sat in
the warm kitchen with their bellies filled with food and fine wine.

Andrew lifted his glass and said softly, I give you those poor blighters
out there in the mud.  May they endure. And this time even Centaine
sipped from Michael's glass and her eyes swam with dark tears as she
drank the toast.

I hate to be a killjoy, the young doctor stood up unsteadily, but that
artillery barrage is the work-whistle for me, I'm afraid, the butchers
vans will be on their way back already.  Michael tried to rise with him,
but clutched quickly at the edge of the table for support.  I wish to
thank you, Monsieur le Comte, he began formally, for your gentility -
The word tripped on his tongue and he repeated it, but his tongue
blurred and lost track of his speech.  I salute your daughter,
Mademoiselle de Thiry, Pange du bonheur - His legs folded up unde r him,
and he collapsed gently.

He is wounded!  Centaine cried as she leaped forward and caught him
before he hit the floor, supporting him with one slim shoulder under his
armpit.  Help me, she pleaded.  Andrew reeled forward to her assistance,
and between them they half-carried, half-dragged Michael through the
kitchen door.

Careful, his poor arm, Centaine gasped under the weight, as they lifted
Michael into the side-car of the motor-cycle.  Do not hurt him!  He
lolled in the padded seat with a beatific grin on his pale features.

Mademoiselle, rest assured he is beyond all pain, the lucky devil.
Andrew tottered around the machine to take the controls.

Wait for me!  cried the doctor as he and the comte, giving each other
mutual support, bounced off the door jamb and came crabbing down the
steps in an unintended sideways charge.

Climb aboard, Andrew invited, and at the third attempt kick-started the
Ariel in a roar of blue smoke.

The doctor clambered on to the pillion behind him, and the comte thrust
one of the two bottles of claret that he carried into Andrew's side
pocket. Against the cold, he explained.

You are a prince among men.  Andrew let out the clutch and the Ariel
screeched into a tight turn. Look after Michael!

cried Centaine.

My cabbages!  screamed Anna, as Andrew took a short cut through the
vegetable garden.

A has les boches!  howled the comte and took a last surreptitious pull
at the other claret bottle, before Centaine could confiscate it from him
and relieve him of the cellar keys once more.

At the end of the long drive that led down from the chAteau Andrew
braked the motor-cycle and then at a more sedate pace joined the
pathetic little procession that was trickling back from the ridges along
the muddy, rutted main road.

The butchers'vans, as the field ambulances were irreverently known, were
heavily loaded with the fruits of the renewed German bombardment.  They
chugged through the muddy puddles, with the racks of canvas stretchers
in the open backs swaying and lurching to each bump.

The blood from the wounded men in the upper tiers soaked through the
canvas and dripped on to those below.

On the verges of the lane little groups of walking wounded straggled
back, their rifles discarded, leaning on each other for support, lumpy
field dressings strapped over their injuries, all their faces blank with
suffering, their eyes dead of expression, their uniforms caked with mud
and their movements mechanical, beyond caring.

Beginning to sober rapidly, the doctor climbed down off the pillion and
selected the more seriously hurt men from the stream.  They loaded two
of them on to the pillion, one astride the petrol tank in front of
Andrew and three more into the side-car with Michael.  The doctor ran
behind the overloaded Ariel, pushing it through the mud holes, and he
was completely sober when a mile up the road they reached the VAD
hospital in a row of cottages at the entrance to the village of Mort
Homme.  He helped his newly acquired patients out of the side-car and
then turned back to Andrew. Thanks.  I needed that break.  He glanced
down at Michael, still passed out in the side-car.  Look at him.

We can't go on like this forever."Michael is just slightly pissed, that
is all. But the doctor shook his head.  Battle fatigue he said. Shell
shock.  We don't understand it properly yet, but it seems there is just
a limit to how much these poor has tards can stand.  How long has he
been flying without a break, three months?  He will be all right,
Andrew's voice was fierce, he's going to get through.  He placed a
protective hand on Michael's injured shoulder, remembering that it was
six months since his last leave.

Look at him, all the signs.  Thin as a starvation victim, the doctor
went on, twitching and trembling.  Those eyes - I'll bet he is showing
unbalanced illogical behaviour, sullen dark moods alternating with mad
wild moods?  Am I correct?  Andrew nodded reluctantly.  One minute he
calls the enemy loathsome vermin and machine-guns the survivors of
crashed German aircraft, and the next they are gallant and worthy foes,
he punched a newly arrived pilot last week for calling them Huns.
Reckless bravery?  Andrew remembered the balloons that morning, but he
did not answer the question.

What can we do?  he asked helplessly.

The doctor sighed and shrugged, and offered his hand. Goodbye and good
luck, major.  And as he turned away, he was already stripping off his
jacket and rolling up his sleeves.

At the entrance to the orchard, just before they reached the squadron's
bivouac, Michael suddenly heaved himself upright in the side-car and
with all the solemnity of a judge pronouncing the death sentence, said,
I am about to be sick.  Andrew braked the motor-cycle off the road and
held his head for im.

All that excellent claret, he lamented.  To say nothing of the Napoleon
cognac, if there was only some way to save it!  Having noisily
unburdened himself, Michael slumped down again and said, just as
solemnly, I want you to know that I am in love, and his head flopped
back as he passed out cold once more.

Andrew sat on the Ariel and drew the cork from the claret bottle with
his teeth.  That definitely calls for a toast.  Let's drink to your true
love.  He offered the bottle to the unconscious form beside him.  Not
interested?  He drank from it himself, and when he lowered the bottle,
he began unaccountably and uncontrollably to sob.

He tried to choke back the tears, he had not wept since he was six years
old, and then he remembered the young doctor's words, unbalanced and
illogical behaviour, and the tears overwhelmed him.  They poured down
his cheeks, and he did not even attempt to wipe them away.

He sat on the driver's seat of the motor-cycle, shaking with silent
grief.

Michael, my boy, he whispered.  What is to become of us?  We are doomed,
there is no hope for us.  Michael, no hope at all for any of us, and he
covered his face with both hands and wept as though his heart was
breaking.

Michael awoke to the clatter of the tin tray as Biggs placed it beside
his field cot.

He groaned as he tried to sit up, but his injuries pulled him down
again.  What time is it, Biggs?"All past seven, sir, and a lovely spring
morning."Biggs, for God's sake, why didn't you wake me?

I've missed the dawn patrol- No, we oven't, sir, Biggs murmured
comfortably, we've been grounded."Grounded?  Lord Killigerran's orders,
grounded until further orders, sir.  Biggs ladled sugar into the cocoa
mug and stirred it.

"Igh time too, if I may be allowed to say so.  We've flown thirty-seven
days straight.  Biggs, why do I feel so bloody?  According to Lord
Killigerran, we were severely attacked by a bottle of cognac,
sir."Before that, I smashed up the old flying tortoise Michael began to
remember. Spread her all over France, sir, like butter on toast, Biggs
nodded. But we got them, Biggs!  Both of the blighters, sir.  The book
paid out, I trust, Biggs?  You didn't lose your money?  We made a nice
packet, thanking you, Mr Michael, and Biggs touched the other items on
the cocoa tray.

"Ere's your loot- There was a neat sheaf of twenty onepound notes.

Three to one, sir, plus your original stake.  You are entitled to ten
percent commission, Biggs.  Bless you, sir.  Two notes disappeared
magically into Biggs pocket.  Now, Biggs.  What else have we here?  Four
aspirins, compliments of Lord Killigerran.  He is flying, Biggs, of
course?

Gratefully Michael swallowed the pills.

Of course, sir.  They took off at dawn.  Who is his wingman?  Mr Banner,
sir.  A new chum, Michael brooded unhappily. Lord Andrew will be all
right, don't you worry, sir.  Yes, of course, he will, and what is this?

Michael roused himself.

Keys to Lord Killigerran's motor-cycle, sir.  He says as you are to give
the count his salaams, whatever those may be, sir, and his tender
admiration to the young lady Biggs - the aspirins had worked a miracle,
Michael felt suddenly light and carefree and gay.  His wounds no longer
pulled and his head no longer ached.  Biggs, he repeated, you could lay
out my number ones and give the brass buckles a lick and the boots a bit
of a shine?  Biggs grinned at him fondly.  Going calling, are we, sir?
hat we are, Biggs, that we are.

Centaine woke in darkness and listened to the guns.  They terrified her.
She knew she would never become accustomed to that bestial, insensate
storm that so impersonally dealt death and unspeakable injury, and she
remembered the months of late summer the previous year when, for a brief
period, the German batteries had been within range of the chateau.  That
was when they had abandoned the upper levels of the great house and
moved below stairs.  By then the servants had long since fled all except
Anna, of course, and the tiny cell that Centaine now occupied had
belonged to one of the maids.

Their whole way of life had changed dramatically since the stormwaves of
war had swept over them.  Though they had never kept the same grand
style as some of the other leading families of the province, there had
always been dinners and house-parties and twenty servants to sustain
them, but now their existence was almost as simple as had been that of
their servants before the war.

Centaine threw off her forebodings with her bedclothes, and ran down the
narrow stoneflagged corridor on bare feet.  In the kitchen Anna was at
the stove, already feeding it with split oak.

I was on my way to you with a jug of cold water, she said gruffly, and
Centaine hugged her and kissed her until she smiled, and then went to
warm herself in front of the stove.

Anna poured boiling water into the copper basin on the oar and then
added cold.  Come along, mademoiselle"

she ordered.

Oh, Anna, do I have to?  Move!  Reluctantly Centaine lifted the
nightdress over her head, and shivered as the cold raised a fine rash of
goosepimples on her forearms and over her small rounded buttocks.

Hurry.  She stepped into the basin and Anna knelt beside her and dunked
a flannel.  Her movements were methodical and businesslike as she soaped
down Centaine's body, starting at the shoulders and working to the
fingertips of each arm, but she could not conceal the love and pride
that softened her ugly red face.

The child was delightfully formed, though perhaps her breasts and bottom
were a little too small, Anna hoped to plump them out with a good
starchy diet, once that was freely obtainable again.  Her skin was a
smooth, buttery colour, where the sun had not touched it, though where
it had been exposed, it tended to take on a dark bronze sheen that Anna
found most unsightly.

You must wear your gloves and long sleeves this summer, she scolded.
Brown is so ugly Do hurry up, Anna.  Centaine hugged her soapy breasts
and shivered, and Anna lifted her arms one at a time and scrubbed the
dense bushes of dark curly hair under them.

The suds ran in long lacy lines down her lean flanks where the rack of
her ribs showed through.

Don't be so rough, Centaine wailed.  And Anna examined her limbs
critically: they were straight and long, though much too strong for a
lady, all that riding and running and walking.  Anna shook her head.

Oh, what now?  Centaine demanded.

You are as hard as a boy, your belly is too muscular for having babies.
Anna ran the flannel down her body. Ouch!  Stay still, you don't want to
smell like a goat, do you?  Anna, don't you just love blue eyes?  Anna
grunted, knowing instinctively where the discussion was headed.

What colour eyes would a baby have, if its mother's eyes were brown and
its father's a lovely shimmering blue?  Anna slapped her bottom with the
flannel.  That is enough of that.  Your father will not like that kind
of talk.  Centaine did not take the threat seriously, she went on
dreamily.  Airmen are so brave, don't you think, Anna?

They must be the bravest men in the world.  She became brisk.  Hurry,
Anna, I'll be late to count my chickens.  She sprang from the basin,
scattering water drops on the flagged floor, while Anna wrapped her in a
towel that she had heated in front of the stove. Anna, it's almost light
outside.

You come back here immediately after, Anna ordered. We have a lot of
work to do today.  Your father has reduced us to starvation level with
his misplaced generosity."We had to offer a meal to those gallant young
airmen. Centaine pulled on her clothes and sat on the stool to hook up
her riding boots. Don't go mooning off into the woods- Oh, hush, Anna.
Centaine jumped up and went clattering down the stairs. You come
straight back!  Anna yelled after her.

Nuage heard her coming and whickered softly.  Cen tame flung both arms
around his neck and kissed his velvety grey muzzle.

Bonjour my darling.  She had stolen two cubes of sugar from under Anna's
nose and now Nuage salivated over her hand as she fed them to him.  She
wiped her palm on his neck and then when she turned to lift down the
saddle from its rack, he bumped her in the small of the back, demanding
more.

Outside it was dark and cold, and she urged the stallion into a canter,
revelling in the icy flow of air across her face, her nose and ears
turning bright pink and her eyes beginning to stream tears.  At the
crest of the hillock, she reined Nuage to a standstill and looked into
the soft gunmetal sheen of dawn, watching the sky above the long horizon
turn to the colour of ripe oranges.  Behind her the false dawn caused by
the harsh, intermittent glow of the artillery barrage flickered against
the heavens, but steadfastly she turned her back to it and waited for
the planes to come.

She heard the distant beat of their engines, even over the sound of the
guns, and then they came snarling into the yellow dawn, as fierce and
swift and beautiful as falcons, so that, as always, she felt her pulse
race, and she rose high in the saddle to greet them.

The lead machine was the green one with its tiger stripes of victory,
the mad Scotsman.  She lifted both hands high above her head.

Go with God, and come back safely!  she shouted her blessing, and saw
the flash of white teeth under the ridiculous tartan tam o shanter, and
the green machine waggled its wings and then it was past, climbing away
into the sinister sombre clouds that hung above the German lines.

She watched them go, the other aircraft closing up around the green
leader into their fighting formation, and she was overwhelmed with a
vast sadness, a terrible sense of inadequacy.

Why couldn't I be a man!  she cried aloud.  Oh, why couldn't I be going
with you!  But already they were out of sight, and she turned Nuage down
the hill.

They will all die, she thought.  All the young and strong and beautiful
young men, and we will be left only with the old and maimed and ugly.
And the sound of the distant guns counterpointed her fears.  I wish, oh,
how I wish, she said aloud, and the stallion flicked his ears back to
listen to her, but she did not go on, for she did not know what it was
she wished for.  She knew only that there was a void within her that
ached to be filled, a vast wanting for she did not know what, and a
terrible sorrow for all the world.  She turned Nuage loose to graze in
the small field behind the chateau and carried his saddle back on her
shoulder.

Her father was sitting at the kitchen table and she kissed him casually.
His eyepatch gave him a rakish air despite that fact that his other eye
was bloodshot; his face was a baggy and wrinkled as a bloodhound's and
he smelled of garlic and stale red wine.

As usual, he and Anna were bickering in a companionable fashion, and as
Centaine sat opposite him cupping the big round coffee bowl in her
hands, she wondered suddenly if Anna and her father mated together, and
immediately after she wondered why the notion had never occurred to her
before.

As a country girl, the processes of procreation were no mystery to her.
Despite Anna's original protests, she was always there to assist when
mares from the surrounding district were brought to visit Nuage.  She
was the only one who could manage the big white stallion once he smelt
the mare, and calm him sufficiently to enable him to perform his
business without injuring himself or the object of his affections.

By a process of logic, she had reached the conclusion that man and woman
must work on similar principles.

When she had questioned Anna, she had at first threatened to report
Centaine to her papa and wash her mouth out with lye soap.  Patiently
Centaine had persisted until at last Anna had in a hoarse whisper
confirmed her suspicions, and glanced across the kitchen at the comte
with a look on her face that Centaine had never seen before, and at the
time could not fathom, but which now made logical sense.

Watching them argue and laugh together, it all fell into place, the
occasions when after a nightmare she had gone to Anna's room for comfort
and found her bed empty, the puzzling presence of one of Anna's
petticoats under her father's bed when she was sweeping out his bedroom.

Only last week Anna had come out of the cellar after helping the comte
clean out the improvised animal stalls with straw sticking both to the
back of her skirts and to the bun of greying hair on the top of her
head.

The discovery seemed somehow to increase Centaine's desolation and her
feeling of emptiness.  She felt truly alone now, isolated and without
purpose, empty and aching.

I'm going out.  She sprang up from the kitchen table.

Oh no.  Anna barred her way.  We have got to get some food into this
house, since your father has given away all we possess, and,
mademoiselle, you are going to help me!  Centaine had to escape from
them, to be alone, to come to terms with this terrible new desolation of
her spirit.

Nimbly she ducked under Anna's outstretched arm and flung open the
kitchen door.

On the threshold stood the most beautiful person she had ever seen in
all her life.

He was dressed in glossy boots and immaculate riding breeches of a
lighter tan colour than his khaki uniform jacket.  His narrow waist was
belted in lustrous leather and burnished brass, his Sam Browne crossed
his chest and emphasized his wide shoulders.  On his left breast were
the RFC wings and a row of coloured ribbons, on his epaulettes sparkled
the badges of his rank, and his cap had been carefully crushed in the
manner affected by veteran fighter pilots and set at a jaunty angle over
his impossibly blue eyes.

Centaine fell back a pace and stared up at him, for he towered over her
like a young god, and she became aware of a sensation that was entirely
new to her.  Her stomach seemed to turn to jelly, hot jelly, heavy as
molten lead that spread downwards through her lower body until it seemed
that her legs could no longer support the weight of it.  At the same
time she had great difficulty breathing.

Mademoiselle de Thiry.  This vision of martial splendour spoke and
touched the peak of his cap in salute.  The voice was familiar, and she
recognized the eyes, those cerulean blue eyes, and the man's left arm
was supported by a narrow leather strap Michel, her voice was unsteady
and she corrected herself.  Captain Courtney, and then she changed
languages, Mijnheer Courtney?  The young god smiled at her, and it did
not seem possible that this was the same man, tousled, bloodied and
muddied, swaddled in ill-fitting charred rags, trembling and shaking and
pathetic, that she had helped load in a stupor of pain and weakness and
inebriation into the sidecar of the motor-cycle the previous afternoon.

When he smiled at her, Centaine felt the world lurch beneath her feet.
When it steadied, she realized that it had altered its orbit and was on
a new track amongst the stars.  Nothing would ever be the same again.

Entrez, monsieur.  She fell back, and as he stepped over the threshold,
the comte rose from the table and hurried to meet him.

How goes it with you, captain?  He took Michael's hand.  Your wounds?
They are much better.  A little cognac would help them, the comte
suggested and looked at his daughter slyly.  Michael's stomach quailed
at the suggestion and he shook his head vehemently.

No, said Centaine firmly, and turned to Anna.  We must see to the
captain's dressing.  Protesting only mildly, Michael was led to the
stool in front of the stove and Anna unbuckled his belt, while Centaine
stood behind him and eased his jacket off his shoulders.

Anna unwrapped the dressings and grunted with approval.

Hot water, child, she ordered.

Carefully they washed and dried his burns, and then smeared them with
fresh ointment and rebandaged them with clean linen strips.

They are healing beautifully, Anna nodded, while Centaine helped him
into his shirt.

She had not realized how smooth a man's skin could be, there down his
flanks and across his back.  His dark hair curled on to the nape of his
neck, and he was so thin that each knuckle of his spine stood out as
cleanly as beads on a rosary, with two ridges of lean muscle running
down each side of it.

She came round to button the front of his shirt.

You are very gentle, he said softly, and she dared not look into his
eyes, lest she betray herself in front of Anna.

His chest hair was thick and crisp and springy as she brushed it almost
unintentionally with her fingertips, and the nipples of his flat hard
chest were dusky-pink and tiny, yet they hardened and thrust out under
her gaze, a phenomenon which both amazed and enchanted her.  She had
never dreamed that happened to men also.

Come, Centaine, Anna chided her, and she started as she realized that
she had been staring at his body.

I came to thank you, Michael said.  I didn't mean to make work for you.
It is no trouble.  Centaine still dared not look into his eyes. Without
your help I might have burned to death."No!  Centaine said with
unnecessary emphasis.  The idea of death and this marvelous creature was
totally unacceptable to her.

Now she looked at his face again at last, and it seemed that the summer
sky showed through chinks in his skull so blue were his eyes.

Centaine, there is much work to do.  Anna's tone was sharper still.

Let me help you, Michael cut in eagerly.  I have been grounded, I am not
allowed to fly.  Anna looked dubious, but the Comte shrugged. Another
pair of hands, we could use.  A small repayment, Michael insisted.

Your fine uniform.  Anna was looking for excuses, and she glanced down
at his glossy boots.

We have rubber boots and overalls, Centaine cut in swiftly, and Anna
threw up her hands in capitulation.

Centaine thought that even the blue serge deNim, or denim as it was
colloquially known, and black rubber boots looked elegant on Michael's
tall lean body as he descended to help the Comte muck out the animal
stalls in the cellars.

Centaine and Anna spent the rest of the morning in the vegetable
gardens, preparing the soil for the spring sowing.

Every time Centaine went down to the cellars on the flimsiest of
excuses, she paused beside wherever Michael was working under the
Comte's direction, and the two of them made halting and self-conscious
conversation until Anna came down the staircase.

Where is that child now!  Centaine!  What on earth are you doing?  As if
she did not know.

All four of them ate lunch in the kitchen, omelettes flavoured with
onions and truffles, cheese and brown bread, and a bottle of red wine
over which Centaine relented, but not enough to hand over the cellar
keys to her father.  She fetched it herself.

The wine softened the mood, even Anna took a glass of it and allowed
Centaine to do the same, and the talk became easy and unrestrained,
punctuated with bursts of laughter.

Now, captain, the Comte turned to Michael at last with a calculating
glitter in his single eye - you and your family, what do you do in
Africa?

Farmers, Michael replied.

Tenant farmers?  the Comte probed cautiously. No, no -'Michael laughed.

We farm our own lands.  Landowners?  The Comte's tone changed, for, as
all the world knew, land was the only true form of wealth.  What size
are your family estates?  Well- Michael looked embarrassed quite large.

You see, it is mostly held in a family company, my father and my
uncle-'Your uncle, the general?  the Comte prompted. Yes, my Uncle
Sean-'A hundred hectares?  the Comte insisted.

A little more.  Michael squirmed on the bench and fiddled with his bread
roll.

Two hundred?  The Comte looked so expectant that Michael could not evade
him longer.

Altogether, if you take the plantations and the cattle ranches, and some
land we own in the north, it's about forty thousand hectares.  Forty
thousand?  The comte stared at him, and then repeated the question in
English so there could be no misunderstanding.  Forty thousand?  Michael
nodded uncomfortably.  It was only recently that he had begun to feel a
little self-conscious about the extent of his family's worldly
possessions.

Forty thousand hectares!  The comte breathed reverently, and then, and,
of course, you have many brothers?  Michael shook his head.  No,
unfortunately I am an only son.  Ha!  said the comte with transparent
relief.  Do not feel too badly about that!  I And patted his arm in a
paternal gestur The comte shot a glance at his daughter, and for the
first time recognized the expression on her face as she looked at the
airman.

Quite right too, he thought comfortably.  Forty thousand hectares, and
an only son!  His daughter was a Frenchwoman, and knew the value of a
sou.  and a franc, sacrg bleu, she knew it better than he did himself.
He smiled lovingly across the table at her.  A child in many ways, but a
shrewd young Frenchwoman in others.  Since the comte's factor had fled
to Paris, leaving the accounts and books of the estate in chaos, it had
been Centaine who had taken over the purse-strings.  The comte had never
bothered much with money anyway, for him land would always remain the
only true wealth, but his daughter was the clever one.  She even counted
the bottles in the cellar and the hams on the smoke-rack.  He took a
mouthful of red wine and mused happily to himself.

There would be so few eligible young men left after this slaughter, this
charnel-house ...  and forty thousand hectares!

Cherie, he said.  If the captain were to take the shotgun and get us a
few fat pigeon, and you were to fill a basket with truffles, you might
still find some, what a dinner we could have this evening!  Centaine
clapped her hands with delight, but Anna glared at him in red-faced
indignation across the table.

Anna will go with you as chaperone, he said hastily. We don't want any
unseeming scandal, now, do we?  Might as well sow a seed, he thought, if
it wasn't already ripely germinating.  Forty thousand hectares, merde!

The pig was named Kaiser Wilhelm, or Klein Willie, for short.  He was a
piebald boar, so gross that as he waddled into the oak forest, he
reminded Michael of a bull hippopotamus.  His pointed ears drooped
forward over his eyes and his tail curled like a roll of barbed wire up
over his back, exposing ample evidence of his gender, contained in a
bright pink sac that looked as though it had been boiled in oil.

Willie!  Cherchel cried Centaine and Anna in unison; at the same time it
required both of them on the leash to restrain the enormous beast.
Cherche!  Seek up!  And the boar snuffled eagerly at the damp,
chocolatebrown earth under the oak trees, dragging the two women behind
him.  Michael followed them, a spade over his good shoulder, laughing
delightedly at the novelty of the hunt, and trotting to keep up with it.

Deeper into the forest they came across a narrow stream, running
strongly with discoloured water from the recent rains, and they followed
the bank, with snorts and cries of encouragement.  Suddenly the pig let
out a gleeful squeal and began rooting in the soft earth with his flat
wet snout.

He's found one!  Centaine shrieked with excitement and she and Anna
hauled unavailingly on the leash.

Michel!  she panted over her shoulder.  When we get him away, you must
be very quick with the spade.  Are you ready?  Ready!  From the pocket
of her skirt Centaine pulled a wizened nub of a truffle that was
mildewed with age.  She pared off a sliver with a clasp knife, and held
as close to the boar's snout as she could reach.  For a few moments the
pig ignored her, and then it got the fresher scent of the cut truffle
and grunted gluttonously, tried to take her hand in his streaming jaws.
Centaine jerked away and backed off with the boar following her.

,Quickly, Michel!  she cried, and he went at the earth with the spade.
In half a dozen strokes he had exposed the buried fungus and Anna
dropped to her knees and freed it from the earth with her bare hands.
She lifted it out, crusty with chocolate soil, a dark knobbly lump
almost the size of her fist.

Look, what a beauty!  At last Centaine allowed the pig to take the
sliver of fungus from her fingers, and when he had gulped it, she let
him return to the empty hole and snuffle around in the loose earth to
satisfy himself that the truffle had disappeared, then Cherche!  she
shouted at him, and the hunt was on again.  Within an hour the small
basket was filled with the unappetizing-looking lumpy fungi, and Anna
called a halt.

More than this will merely spoil.  Now for some pigeons.  Let's see if
our captain from Africa can shoodThey hurried after the boar, laughing
and panting back through the open fields to the chAteau, where Centaine
locked the truffles in the pantry and Anna returned the boar to his
stall in the cellars and then lifted the shotgun down from its rack on
the kitchen wall.  She handed the weapon to Michael and watched as he
opened the breech and checked the barrels, then snapped them closed and
put the gun to his shoulder and tried the balance.  Despite the burns
that hampered his swing a little, Anna could tell a good workman by the
way he handled his tools, and her expression softened with approval.

For Michael's part he was surprised and then delighted to discover that
the weapon was a venerable Holland and Holland, only the English
gunsmiths could fashion a barrel that would throw a perfectly even
pattern of shot no matter how fast the gun was traversed.

He nodded at Anna.  Excellent!  And she handed him the canvas bag of
cartridges.

I will show you a good place.  Centaine took his hand to lead him and
then saw Anna's expression and dropped it hurriedly.  In the afternoon
the pigeons come back to the woods, she explained.

They skirted the edge of the forest, Centaine leading and lifting her
skirts over the mud puddles so that Michael had an occasional flash of
her smooth white calves, and his pulse accelerated beyond the exertion
of keeping up with her.  On her short, stubby legs, Anna fell far behind
and they ignored her calls to Wait, wait for me.  At the corner of the
forest, in the angle of the T that the pilots used as the landmark for
the return to the airfield, there was a sunken lane with high hedges on
each side.

The pigeons come in from there, Centaine pointed across the open fields
and vineyards, all of them overgrown and neglected.  We should wait here
The hedgerow afforded excellent cover, and when Anna came up they all
three hid themselves and began to search the sky.  Heavy low cloud had
begun to roll in again from the north, threatening rain, and forming a
perfect backdrop against which the tiny specks of a pigeon flock showed
clearly to Michael's trained eye.

There, he said, coming straight in.  I don't see them.  Centaine
searched agitatedly.  Where - oh yes, now I see them.  Although they
were quick on the wing, they were flying straight and descending only
gently towards the forest.

For a marksman of Michael's calibre, it was simple shooting.  He waited
until two birds overlapped each other, and took them both with his first
shot.  They crumpled in midair and as the rest of the flock flared up
and scattered, he knocked down a third pigeon in a burst of feathers
with his second barrel.

The two women raced out into the open field to bring in the birds.

Three with two shots.  Centaine came back and stood close beside him,
stroking the soft warm body of the dead pigeon and looking up at
Michael.

It was a fluke, said Anna gruffly.  Nobody shoots two A pigeons by
intention, not if they are flying.  The next flock was a larger one, and
the birds were bunched.  Michael took three of them with his first
barrel and a fourth bird with his second, and Centaine turned
triumphantly to Anna.

Another fluke, she gloated.  What luck the captain is having today.  Two
more flocks came within range in the next half hour, and Centaine asked
seriously, Do you never miss, Mijnheer?  Up there, Michael looked into
the sky, if you miss, you are dead.  So far I have never missed.
Centaine shivered.  Death, that word again.  Death was all around them,
on the ridges over there were for the moment the sound of the guns was
just a low rumble, death in the sky above them.  She looked at Michael
and thought, I don't want him to die, never!  Never!  Then she shook
herself, driving away the gloom, and she smiled and said, Teach me to
shoot.  The request was inspired.  It allowed Michael to touch her, even
under Anna's jealous gaze.  He stood her in front of him, and coached
her into the classic stance, with her left foot leading.

This shoulder a little lower.  They were both electrically aware of each
contact.  Just turn your hips this way slightly.  He placed his hands
upon them and Michael's voice sounded as though he were choking as she
pushed back with her buttocks against him, an untutored but devastating
pressure.

Centaine's first shot drove her back against his chest, and he clasped
her protectively while the pigeons headed untouched for the horizon.

You are looking at the muzzle of the gun, not the bird, Michael
explained, still holding her.  Look at the bird, and the gun will follow
of its own At her next shot a fat pigeon tumbled out of the sky, amid
shrieks of excitement from both women, but when Anna ran out to pick it
up, the rain that had been holding off until that moment fell upon them
in a silver curtain.

The barn!  cried Centaine, and led them scampering down the lane.  The
rain slashed the tree-tops and exploded in miniature shell bursts on
their skin so that they gasped at its icy sting.  Centaine reached the
barn first, and her blouse was sticking to her skin, so that Michael
could see the exact shape of her breasts.  Strands of her dark hair were
plastered against her forehead, and she shook the drops off her skirts
and laughed at him, making no attempt to avoid his gaze.

The barn fronted on to the lane.  It was built of squared attered yellow
stone blocks and the thatched roof was t and worn as an old carpet.  it
was half-filled with bales of straw that rose in tiers to the roof ,This
will set in, Anna groused darkly, staring out at the streaming rain and
shaking the rain off herself like a water buffalo emerging from the
swamp.  We will be stuck here.  Come, Anna, let's clean the birds.  They
found comfortable perches on the straw bales, Centaine and Michael with
their shoulders almost touching, they chatted.

and while they plucked the pigeons Tell me about Africa, Centaine
demanded.  is it really so dark?  It's the sunniest land in the world,
too much sun, even, Michael told her.

hate the I love the sun, Centaine shook her head cold and the wet. There
could never be too much sun for me.  He told her about the deserts where
it never rained. Not as much in a year as it does here in a single
day."I thought there were only black savages in Africa."No, he laughed.
There are plenty of white savages too - and black gentlemen, and he told
her about the tiny yellow pygmies of the Ituri forests, tall as a man's
waist, and the giant Watusi who considered any man under two metres tall
to be a pygmy, and those noble warriors of Zulu who called themselves
children of heaven.

You talk as though you love them, she accused.

The Zulu?  he asked, and then nodded.  Yes, I suppose I do.  Some of
them, anyway.  Mbejane- Mbejane?  She did not pronounce the name right.

A Zulu, he has been with my Uncle Sean since they were lads together. He
used the Zulu word Umfaan and had to translate for her.

Tell me about the animals.  Centaine did not want him to stop talking.
She could listen to his voice and his stories for ever.  Tell me about
the lions and the tigers.  No tigers, he smiled at her, but plenty of
lions.  And Even Anna's hands, busy with plucking the birds, stilled as
she listened while Michael described a camp on the hunting veld where he
and his Uncle Sean had been besieged by a pride of lions, and had had to
stand by the horses heads all night, protecting and soothing them, while
the great pale cats prowled back and forth at the edge of the firelight,
roaring and grunting, trying to drive the horses into the darkness where
they would have been easy prey.

Tell us about the elephants.  And he told her about those sagacious
beasts.  He described how they moved with that slow somnambulistic gait,
huge ears flapping to cool their blood, picking up dirt to dash it over
their heads for a dust bath.

He told them about the intricate social structures of the elephant
herds, how the old bulls avoided the uproar of breeding herds.  Just
like your father, said Anna.  And how the barren old queens took upon
themselves the duties of nanny and midwife: how the great grey beasts
formed relationships with each other, almost like human friendships,
that lasted their lifetimes; and about their strange preoccupation with
death, how if they killed a hunter who had plagued and wounded them they
would often cover his body with green leaves, almost as though they were
trying to make atonement.  He explained how when one of the members of
the herd was stricken, the others would try to succour it, holding it on
its feet with their trunks, supporting it from each side with their
bulks, and when it fell at last, if it was a cow, the herd bull would
mount her, as though trying to frustrate death with the act of
generation.

This last tale roused Anna from her listening trance and reminded her of
her role of chaperone; she glanced sharply at Centaine.

It has stopped raining, she announced primly, and she began to gather up
the naked caracasses of the pigeons.

Centaine still watched Michael with huge shining dark eyes.

One day I will go to Africa, she said softly, and he returned her gaze
steadily and nodded. Yes, he said.  One day.  It was as though they had
exchanged a vow.  It was a thing between them, firm and understood.  In
that moment she became his woman and he her man.

Come, Anna insisted at the door of the barn.  Come on, before it rains
again, and it took a vast effort from both of them to rise and follow
her out into the wet and dripping world.

They dragged on leaden feet up the lane towards the chateau, side by
side, not touching but so acutely aware of each other that they might as
well have been locked in each other's arms.

Then the planes came out of the dusk, low and swift, the thunder of
their engines rising to a crescendo as they passed overhead: In the lead
was the green Sopwith.  From this angle they could not see Andrew's
head, but they could see daylight through the rents in the fabric of his
wings, through the lines of bullet holes which the Spandaus had torn.

The five aircraft that followed Andrew had all been shot up as well.
There were tears and neatly punched holes in their wings and fuselages.

It's been a hard day, Michael murmured, with his head thrown back.  J
Another Sopwith trailed the others, its engine popping and missing,
vapour trailing back in a stream behind it, one wing skewed out of line
where the struts had been shot through.  Centaine, watching them,
shuddered, and crept closer to Michael.

Some of them died out there today, she whispered, and he did not have to
reply.

Tomorrow you will be with them again.  Not tomorrow.  Then the next day,
or the next Once more it was not necessary to reply.

I Michel, oh Michel!  There was physical agony in her i voice.  I must
see you alone.  We might never, we might never have another chance. From
now on we must live each precious minute of our lives as though it is
the last.  The shock of her words was like a blow to his body.

He could not speak, and her own voice dropped.

The barn, she whispered.

When?  He found his voice, and it croaked in his own ears.

Tonight, before midnight, I will come as soon as I am able to.  it will
be cold.  She looked directly into his face social conventions had been
burned away in the furnace of war.  You must bring a blanket She whirled
then and ran to catch up with Anna, leaving Michael staring after her in
a daze of disbelief and uncertain ecstasy.

Michael washed at the pump outside the kitchen and changed back into his
uniform.  When he entered the kitchen again, the pigeon pie was rich and
redolent of fresh truffles under its crumbly brown crust, and Centaine
was filling and refilling her father's glass without a protest from him.
She did the same for Anna, but with a lighter more cunning hand, so that
Anna did not seem to notice, though her face became redder and her
laughter more raucous.

Centaine placed Michael in charge of the His Master's Voice gramophone,
her most prized possession, and made it his duty to keep it fully wound
up and change each of the wax discs as they ended.  From the huge brass
trumpet of the machine blared the recording of Toscanini conducting the
La Scala orchestra in Verdi's Afda, filling the kitchen with glorious
sound.  When Centaine brought his plate laden with pigeon pie to where
he sat opposite the comte, she touched the nape of Michael's neck, those
dark silky curls, and she purred in his ear as she leaned over him, I
love Afda, don't you, Captain?  When the comte questioned him closely on
the production of his family estates, Michael found it difficult to
concentrate on his replies.

We were growing a great deal of black wattle, but my father and uncle
are convinced that after the war the motor car will completely supersede
the horse, and therefore there will be a drastic reduction in the need
for leather harness, and consequently the demand for wattle tanningWhat
a great shame that the horse should have to give way to those noisy,
stinking contraptions of the devil, the comte sighed, but they are
right, of course.  The petrol engine is the future.  We are replanting
with pines and Australian blue gums.  Pit props for the gold mines and
raw material for paper.  I Quite right.  Then, of course, we have the
sugar plantations and the I cattle ranches.  My uncle believes that soon
there will be ships fitted with cold rooms that will carry our beef to
the worldThe more the comte listened, the more pleased he became.

Drink up, my boy, he urged Michael, as an earnest of his approval.  You
have had hardly a drop.  Is it not to your taste?  Excellent, truly,
however, le fbie, my liver.  Michael clasped himself under the ribs and
the comte made sounds of sympathy and concern.  As a Frenchman he
understood that most of the ills and woes of the world could be
attributed to the malfunctions of that organ.

Not serious.  But please don't let my little indisposition prevent you.
Michael made a self-depracating gesture, and obediently the comte
recharged his own glass.

Having served the men, the two women brought their own plates to the
table to join them.  Centaine sat beside her father, and spoke little.
Her head turned between the two men as though in dutiful attention,
until Michael felt a light pressure on his ankle and with a leap of his
nerves realized that she had reached out with her foot beneath the
table.  He shifted guiltily under the comte's scrutiny, not daring to
look across at Centaine.  Instead, he made that nervous gesture of
blowing on his fingertips as though he had burned them on the stove, and
he blinked his eyes rapidly.

Centaine's foot withdrew as secretly as it had advanced, and Michael
waited two or three minutes before reaching out his own.  Then he found
her foot and took it between both of his; from the corner of his eye he
saw her start and a flush of dark blood spread up her throat to her
cheeks and ears.  He turned to stare at her, so enchanted that he could
not pull his eyes away from her face, until the comte raised his voice.

How many?  the comte repeated with mild asperity, and guiltily Michael
jerked his foot back. I am sorry.  I did not hearThe captain is not
well, Centaine cut in quickly and a little breathlessly.  His burns are
not healed, and he has worked too hard today.  We should not keep him
unnecessarily, Anna agreed with alacrity, if he has finished his dinner.
Yes.  Yes.  Centaine stood up.  We must let him go home to rest.  The
comte looked truly distressed to be deprived of a drinking companion,
until Centaine reassured him. Don't disturb yourself, Papa, you sit here
and finish up your wine.  Anna accompanied the couple out into the
darkness of the kitchen yard and stood close by, eagle-eyed and arms
akimbo, while they said their shy goodbyes.  She had taken just enough
of the claret to dull the razor-edge of her instincts, or she might have
wondered why Centaine was so eager to see Michael on to his motor-cycle.

May I call upon you again, Mademoiselle de Thiry?  If you wish, Captain.

Anna's heart, softened by wine, went out to them.  It took an effort to
harden her resolve.

Goodbye, Mijnheer, she said firmly.  This child will catch a chill. Come
inside now, Centaine.

The comte had found it imperative to wash down the claret with a fine de
champagne or two.  it cut the acidity of the wine, he explained
seriously to Centaine.  It was, therefore, necessary for the two women
to help him to bed.  He made this rather perilous ascent singing the
march from Aida with more gusto than talent.  When he reached his bed,
he went down like a felled oak, flat upon his back.  Centaine took each
of his legs in turn, straddled it and pulled off the boot with her
knees.

Bless you, my little one, your Papa loves you. Between them they sat him
up and dropped his nightshirt over his head, then let him collapse back
on to the bolster.  His decency preserved by the nightshirt, they
removed his breeches and rolled him into the bed.

May angels guard your sleep, my pretty, the comte mumbled, as they
spread an eiderdown over him and Anna blew out the candle.

Under cover of darkness, Anna reached out and caressed the tousled wiry
brush of the comte's head.  She was rewarded by a reverberating snore
and followed Centaine from the room, softly closing the door behind her.

Centaine lay and listened to the old house groan and creak around her in
the night.

Wisely, she had resisted the temptation to climb fully clothed beneath
her bedclothes, for Anna made one of her unannounced visits just as
Centaine was about to extinguish her candle.  She sat on the edge of the
bed, garrulous with wine, but not so befuddled that she would not have
known if Centaine had not been in her nightclothes.  By yawning and
sighing Centaine tried telepathically to make her feel sleepy, but when
that didn't work, and she heard the distant chimes of the church clock
at Mort Homme strike ten o'clock, she herself feigned sleep.

It was agony to lie still and regulate her breathing, for she burned and
itched with excitement.

At last Anna realized that she was talking to herself, and she moved
around the tiny chamber, picking up and folding Centaine's discarded
clothing, and finally stooping over her to kiss her cheek and then pinch
out the wick of the lamp.

As soon as she was alone, Centaine sat up and hugged herself in a
ferment of anticipation and trepidation.

Although it was very clear in her mind what the final outcome of this
meeting with Michael must be, the precise mechanics were at this stage
still tantalizingly obscure.  A process of logic had suggested to her
that the broad concept could not differ too widely from what she had
witnessed countless times in field and barnyard.

She had received confirmation of this one drowsy summer afternoon, when
a mild commotion in one of the disused stables had attracted her
attention.  She had climbed into the loft and through a chink watched
Elsa, the kitchenmaid, and Jacques the undergroom with amazement, until
gradually it had dawned upon her that they were playing rooster and hen,
stallion and mare.

She had thought about it for days afterwards, and then eavesdropped with
more attention upon the gossip of the female servants.  Finally, she had
taken her courage in both hands and gone to Anna with her questions.

All these researches had left her confused and puzzled by the
contradictions.  According to Anna, the procedure was extremely painful,
accompanied by profuse bleeding and dire danger of pregnancy and
disease.  This conflicted with the unrestrained glee with which the
other female servants discussed the subject, and with the giggles and
muffled cries of delight that she had heard coming from Elsa as she lay
beneath Jacques on the straw of the stable floor.

Centaine knew that she had a high threshold of pain, even the good
doctor Le Brun had remarked upon it after he had reset her broken
forearm without benefit of chloroform.  Not a cheep out of her, he had
marvelled.  No, Centaine knew she could bear pain as well as any of the
peasant girls on the estate, and apart from her monthly courses she had
bled before.  Often, when she was certain that she was unobserved, she
would take the cumbersome side-saddle from Nuage's back, tuck up her
skirts and ride him astride.  The previous spring, riding bareback, she
had put the stallion to the stone wall that bordered North Field,
jumping him from the low side and dropping down seven feet to the deep
side of the wall.  As they landed, she had come down hard on Nuage's
withers, and a pain like a knife blade had shot up through her body. She
had bled so that Nuage's white shoulders were stained pink and she was
so ashamed that despite the pain she had washed him off in the pond at
the end of the field before limping home, leading Nuage behind her.

No, neither pain nor blood frightened her.  Her trepidation had another
source.  She was deadly afraid that Michael might find her
disappointing, Anna had also warned her of that.

Afterwards men always lose interest in a woman, les cochons.  If Michael
loses interest in me, I think I will die, she thought, and for a moment
she hesitated.  I will not go I will not take that chance.

Oh, but how can I not go?  she whispered aloud, and felt her chest
swelling with the strength of her love and her wanting.  I must.  I
simply must.  In an agony of impatience she listened to the sounds of
Anna preparing for bed in the chamber next door.  Even after there was
silence, she waited on, heard the church clock strike the quarter and
then the half hour before she slipped from under the eiderdown.

She found her petticoats and cami-knickers where Anna had folded them
away, and then paused with one foot in the leg of the knickers.

What for?  she asked herself and smothered a giggle with her hand as she
kicked them off again.

She buttoned on the thick woollen riding skirts and jacket, then spread
a dark shawl over her head and shoulders.  Carrying her boots in her
hand, she slipped into the passage and listened outside Anna's door.

Anna's snores were low and regular and Centaine crept down into the
kitchen.  Sitting on the stool before the fire she buckled on her boots
and then lit the bull's-eye lantern with a taper from the stove.  She
unlocked the kitchen door and let herself out.  The moon was in its last
quarter, sailing sharp-prowed through wisps of flying cloud.

Centaine kept to the grassy verge, so that the gravel would not crunch
under her boots, and she did not open the shutter of the lantern, but
hurried down the lane by the moon's faint silvery light.  In the north,
up on the ridges, there was a sudden brilliance, a dawn of orange light,
that subsided slowly, and then came the rumble of the explosion muted by
the wind.

A mine!  Centaine paused for a moment, wondering how many had died in
that monstrous upheaval of earth and fire.  The thought spurred her
resolve.  There was so much death and hatred, and so little love.  She
had to grasp at every last grain of it.

She saw the barn ahead of her at last, and started to run.  There was no
light showing within, no sign of the motor-cycle.

He has not come.  The thought left her desperate with desire.  She
wanted to scream his name.  She tripped at the threshold of the barn,
and almost fell.

Michel!  She could restrain herself no longer, she heard the panic in
her own voice as she called again, MicheW

and opened the shutter of the lantern.

He was coming towards her, out of the gloom of the barn.  Tall and
broad-shouldered, his pale face beautiful in the lantern light.

Oh, I thought you were not coming.

He stopped in front of her.  Nothing, he said softly, nothing in this
world could have kept me away.  They stood facing each other, Centaine
with her chin lifted to look up at him, staring at each other hungrily
and yet neither of them knowing what to do next, how to bridge those few
inches between them that seemed like the void of all eternity.  Nobody
saw you?  he blurted. No, no, I don't think so.  Good.  Michel?  Yes,
Centaine.  Perhaps I should not have come, perhaps I should go back?  It
was exactly the right thing to say, for the implied threat galvanized
Michael and he reached out and seized her, almost roughly.

No, never, I don't want you to go, ever. She laughed, a husky breathless
sound, and he pulled her to him and tried to kiss her, but it was a
clumsy attempt.  They bumped noses and then their teeth clashed together
in their haste, before they found each other's lips.  However, once he
found them, Centaine's lips were hot and soft, and the inside of her
mouth was silky and tasted like ripe apples.  Then her shawl slipped
forward over her head, half smothering them both and they had to break
apart, breathless and laughing with excitement.

Buttons, she whispered, your buttons hurt, and I am cold.  She shivered
theatrically.

I'm sorry.  He took the lantern from her and led her to the back of the
barn.  He handed her up over the bales of straw, and in the lamplight
she saw that he had made a nest of soft straw between the bales and
lined it with grey army blankets.

I went back to my tent to get them, he explained, as he set the lamp
down carefully, and then turned to her again, eagerly.

Attends!  She used the familiar form of address to restrain him, and
then unbuckled his Sam Browne belt.

I'll will be covered in bruises.  Michael tossed the belt aside and
seized her again.  This time they found each other's mouths and clung
together.

Great waves of feeling washed over Centaine, so powerful that she felt
giddy and weak.  Her legs sagged but Michael held her up and she tried
to match the flood of kisses that he rained on her mouth and her eyes
and her throat but she wanted him to go down on to the blankets with
her.  Deliberately she let her legs go and pulled him off balance, so
that he fell on top of her as she tumbled into the blanket-lined nest in
the straw.

I'm sorry.  He tried to disentangle himself, but she locked one arm
around his neck and held his face to hers.

over his shoulder she reached out and pulled the blankets to cover them
both.  She heard herself making little mewing sounds like a kitten
denied the teat, and she ran her hands over his face and into his hair
as she kissed him.  His body weight on top of her felt so good that when
he tried to roll off her, she hooked her ankle into the back of his knee
to prevent him.

The light, he croaked, and groped for the lantern to close the shutter.

No.  I want to see your face.  She caught his wrist and pulled his hand
back, holding it to her bosom as she looked up into his eyes.  They were
so beautiful in the lamplight that she thought that her heart might
break and then she felt his hand on one of her breasts, and she held it
there while her nipples ached with the need for his touch.

It all became a delirium of delight and wanting, becoming more and more
powerful until at last it was unbearable , something had to happen
before she fainted away with the strength of it, but it did not happen,
and she felt herself coming back off the heights and it made her
impatient and almost angry with disappointment.

Her critical faculties that had been dulled by desire returned to her,
and she sensed that Michael was floundering in indecision, and she
became truly angry.  He should have been masterful, taking her up there
where she longed to go.  She took his wrist again and she drew his hand
downwards, at the same time she moved beneath him so that her thick
woollen skirts rode up and bunched about her waist.

Centaine, he whispered.  I don't want to do anything that you don't
want.  Tais-tai!  she almost hissed at him.  Be quiet!  , and she knew
that she would have to lead him all the way, she would have to lead him
always, for there was a difference in him that she had not been aware of
before, but she did not resent it.  Somehow it made her feel very strong
and sure of herself.

They both gasped as he touched her.  After a minute, she let go his
wrist and searched for him and when she found him she cried out again,
he was so big and hard that she felt daunted.  For a moment, she
wondered if she was capable of the task she had taken upon herself, then
she rallied.  He was awkward above her, and she had to wriggle a little
and fumble.  Then abruptly, when she was not expecting it, it happened,
and she gasped with the shock.

But Anna had been wrong, there was no pain, there was only a
breathtaking stretching and filling sensation, and after the shock
abated, a sense of great power over him.

Yes, Michel, yes, my darling.  She encouraged him as he butted and
moaned and thrashed in the enfolding crucifix of her limbs, and she rode
his assault easily, knowing that in these moments he belonged to her
completely, and revelling in that knowledge.

When the final convulsion gripped him, she watched his face, and saw how
the colour of his eyes changed to indigo in the lamplight.  Yet although
she loved him then with a strength that was physically painful, still
there was a tiny suspicion in the depths of her consciousness that she
had missed something.  She had not felt the need to scream as Elsa had
screamed beneath Jacques in the straw, and immediately after that
thought she was afraid.

Michel, she whispered urgently, do you still love me?

Tell me you love me.  I love you more than my own life.  His voice was
broken and gusty, she could not for an instant doubt his sincerity.

She smiled in the darkness with relief and held him close, and when she
felt him going small and soft within her, she was overcome with a wave
of melting compassion.

My darling, she whispered, there, my darling, there, and she stroked his
thick springing curls at the back of his head.

It was a little time before her emotions had calmed enough for her to
realize that something had changed irrevocably within her during the few
brief minutes of that simple act they had performed together.  The man
in her arms was physically stronger than she was but he felt like a
child, a sleepy child, as he cuddled against her.

While she felt wiser and vital, as though her life up until that moment
had been becalmed, drifting without direction, but now she had found her
trade winds and like a tall ship she was at last bearing away
purposefully before them.

Wake up, Michel.  She shook him gently and he mumbled and stirred.

You cannot sleep now, talk to me.

What about?  Anything.  Tell me about Africa.  Tell me how we will go to
Africa together.  I've told you that already.  Tell me again.  I want to
hear it all again And she lay against him and listened avidly, asking
questions whenever he faltered.

Tell me about your father.  You haven't told me what he looks like.  So
they talked the night away cuddled in their cocoon of grey blankets.

Then, too soon for both of them, the guns began their murderous chorus
along the ridges, and Centaine held him to her with desperate longing.
Oh, Michel, I don't want to go!  then she drew away from him, sat up and
began to pull on her clothes and refasten the buttons.

That was the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, Michael
whispered as he watched her, and in the light of the lantern and the
flickering glow of the guns, her eyes were huge and soft, as she turned
to him again.  We will go to Africa, won't we, Michel?  I promise you we
will.

And I will have your son in the sunshine, and we will live happily ever
after just like in the fairy stories, won't we, Michel?  They went up
the lane clinging together under Centaine's shawl, and at the corner of
the stables they kissed with quiet intensity until Centaine broke out of
his grip and fled across the paved yard.

She did not look back when she reached the kitchen door, but disappeared
into the huge dark house, leaving Michael alone and unaccountably sad
when he should have been joyous..  .  .

Biggs stood over the cot and looked down fondly at Michael as he slept.
Biggs's eldest son who had died in the trenches at Ypres a year ago,
would have been the same age.  Michael looked so worn and pale and
exhausted that Biggs had to force himself to touch his shoulder and wake
him.

What time is it, Biggs?  Michael sat up groggily.

It's late, sir, and the sun's shining, but we aren't flyin& we are still
grounded, sir.  Then a strange thing happened.

Michael grinned at him, a sort of inane idiotic grin, that Biggs had
never seen before.  It alarmed him.  God, Biggs, I feel good.  I'm glad,
sir.  Biggs wondered with a pang if it might be fever.  How's our arm,
sir?  Our arm is marvelous, bloody marvelous, thank you, Biggs.  I would
have let you sleep, but the major is asking for you, sir.  There is
something important that he wants to show you.  what is it?  I'm not
allowed to say, Mr Michael, Lord Killigerran's strict instructions Good
man, Biggs!  Michael cried without apparent reason, and bounded from his
cot.  Never do to keep Lord Killigerran waiting Michael burst into the
mess and was disapointed to find it empty.  He wanted to share his good
spirits with somebody.  Andrew for preference, but even the mess
corporal had deserted his post.  The breakfast dishes still cluttered
the dining-table, and magazines and newspapers lay on the floor where
they had obviously been dropped in haste.  The adjutant's pipe, with
malodorous wisps of smoke still rising from it, lay in one of the
ashtrays, proof of how precipitously the mess had been abandoned.

Then Michael heard the sound of voices, distant but excited, coming
through the open window that overlooked the orchard.

He hurried out and into the trees.

Their full squadron strength was twenty-four pilots, but after the
recent attrition they were down to sixteen including Andrew and Michael.
All of them were assembled at the edge of the orchard, and with them
were the mechanics and ground staff, the crews from the antiaircraft
batteries that guarded the field, the mess servants and batmen, every
living soul was on the field, and it seemed that all of them were
talking at once.

They were gathered round an aircraft parked in the No.

1 position at the head of the orchard.  Michael could see only the upper
wings of the machine and the cowling of the motor over the heads of the
crowd, but he felt a sudden thrill in his blood.  He had never seen
anything like it before.

The nose of the machine was long, giving the impression of great power,
and the wings were beautifully raked yet with the deep dihedral which
promised speed, and the control surfaces were full, which implied
stability and easy handling.

Andrew pushed his way out of the excited throng around the aircraft and
hurried to meet Michael with the amber cigarette-holder sticking out of
the corner of his mouth at a jaunty angle.

Hail, the sleeping beauty arises like Venus from the waves.  Andrew,
it's the SE 5 a at last, isn't it?  Michael shouted above the uproar,
and Andrew seized his arm and dragged him towards it.

The crowd opened before them and Michael came up short and stared at it
with awe.  At a glance he could see it was heavier and more robust than
even the German Albatros, and that engine!  It was enormous! Gargantuan!

Two hundred gee-gees!  Andrew patted the engine cowling lovingly.

Two hundred horsepower, Michael repeated.  Bigger than the German
Mercedes.  He went forward and stroked the beautifully laminated wood of
the propeller as he looked up over the nose at the guns.

There was a .303 Lewis gun on a Foster mount set on the top wing, a
light, reliable and effective weapon firing over the arc of the
propeller, and below it mounted on the fuselage ahead of the cockpit was
the heavier Vickers with interrupter gear to fire through the propeller.
Two guns, at last they had two guns and an engine powerful enough to
carry them into battle.

Michael let out the highland yell that Andrew had taught him, and Andrew
unscrewed the cairngorm and sprinkled a few drops of whisky on the
engine housing.

Bless this kite and all who fly in her, he intoned, and then took a swig
from the flask before handing it to Michael.

Have you flown her?  Michael demanded, his voice hoarse from the burn of
whisky, and he tossed the flask to the nearest of his brother officers.

Who the devil do you think brought her up from Arras?  Andrew demanded.
How does she handle?  Just like a young lady I know in Aberdeen, quick
up, quick down and soft and loving in between.  There was a chorus of
cat-calls and whistles from the assembled pilots, and somebody yelled,
When do we get the chance to fly her, sir?  Order of seniority, Andrew
told them, and gave Michael a wicked grin.  If only Captain Courtney
were fit to fly!  He shook his head in mock sympathy.

go Biggs.  P shouted Michael.  Where is my flying jacket, man?  Thought
you might want it, sir.  Biggs stepped out of the crowd behind him and
opened the jacket for Michael to slide his arms into the sleeves.

The mighty Wolseley Viper engine hurled the SE5a down the narrow muddy
runway, and as the tail lifted Michael had a sweeping view forward over
the engine cowling.  It was like sitting in a grandstand.

I'll get Mac to strip off this piddling little windshield he decided,
and I'll be able to spot any Hun within a hundred miles.  He lifted the
big machine into the air and grinned as he felt her begin to climb.

Quick up, Andrew had said, and he felt himself pressed down firmly into
the seat, as he lifted the nose through the horizon and they went up
like a vulture in a thermal.

There's no Albatros been built that is going to climb away from us now,
he exalted, and at five thousand feet he levelled out and swept her into
a right-hand turn, pulling the turn tighter and tighter still, hauling
back hard on the stick to keep the nose up, his starboard wing pointing
vertically down at the earth and the blood draining from his brain by
the centrifugal force so that his vision turned grey a nd colourless,
then he whipped her hard over the opposite way and yelled with elation
in the buffet of wind and the roar of the huge engine.

Come on, you bastards!  He twisted to look back at the German lines.
Come and see what we have got for you now!  When he landed, the other
pilots surrounded the machine in a clamorous pack.  What's she like,
Mike?  How does she climb?

gi Can she turn?

And standing on the lower wing above them, Michael bunched all his
fingers together and then kissed them away towards the sky.

That afternoon Andrew led the squadron in tight formation, still in
their shot-riddled, battered and patched old Sopwith Pups, down to the
main airfield at Bertangles and they waited outside No.  3 hangar in an
impatiently excited group as the big SE5as were trundled out by the
ground crews and parked in a long line abreast on the apron.

Through his uncle at divisional headquarters, Andrew had arranged for a
photographer to be in attendance.  With the new fighters as a backdrop,
the squadron pilots formed up around Andrew like a football team.  Every
one of them was differently dressed, not a single regulation RFC uniform
amongst them.  On their heads they wore forage caps and peaks and
leather helmets, while as always Andrew sported his tam o'shanter. Their
jackets were naval monkey jackets, or cavalry tunics, or cross-over
leather flying coats, but every one of them wore the embroidered RFC
wings on his breast.

The photographer set up his heavy wooden tripod and disappeared under
the black cloth while his assistant stood by with the plates.  Only one
of the pilots was not included in the group.  Hank Johnson was a tough
little Texan, not yet twenty years old, the only American on the
squadron, who had been a horse tamer, or, as he put it, a bronco buster,
before the war.  He had paid his own passage over the Atlantic to join
the Lafayette Squadron, and from there had found his way into Andrew's
mixed bunch of Scots and Irish and colonials and other strays that made
up No.  21 Squadron RFC.

Hank stood behind the tripod with a thick black Dutch cigar in his mouth
giving bad advice too the harassed photographer.

Come on, Hank, Michael called to him.  We need your lovely mug to give
the picture some class Hank rubbed his twisted nose, kicked into that
shape by one of his broncos, and shook his head.

None of you old boys ever hear that it's bad luck to have your picture
took?  They booed him, and he waved his cigar at them affably.  Go
ahead, he invited, but my daddy got himself bit by a rattle snake the
same day he had his picture took for the first time.  There aren't any
rattle snakes up there in the blue, one of them taunted.

No, Hank agreed.  But what there is, is a whole lot worse than a nest of
rattle snakes.  The derisive cries lost their force.  They glanced at
each other and one of them made as if to leave the group.

Smile, please, gentlemen.  The photographer emerged from beneath his
black cloth, freezing them, but their smiles were just a shade fixed and
sickly as the shutter opened and their images were burned into silver
nitrate for posterity.

Quickly Andrew acted to change the sombre mood that held them as they
broke up.  Michael, pick five, he ordered.  The rest of us will give you
ten minutes start, and you're to try and head us off, and make a good
interception before we reach Mort Homme.  Michael led his formation of
five into the classic ambush position, up sun and screened by wisps of
cloud, blocking the return route to Mort Homme.  Still, Andrew almost
gave them the slip; he had taken his group well south and was sneaking
in right down on the ground.  It would have worked with duller eyes than
Michael's, but he picked up the flash of the low sun off the glass of a
windshield from six miles and fired the red Very flare to signal Enemy
in Sight to his group.  Andrew, realizing that they had been spotted,
climbed up to meet them, and the two formations came together in a whirl
of turning, diving, twisting machines.

Michael picked Andrew's SE5a out of the pack and went for him, and the
two of them locked into an intricate aerial duet, pushing the big
powerful machines harder and still harder, seeking their outer limits of
speed and endurance; but evenly matched in skill and aircraft, neither
was able to wrest the final advantage, until quite by chance as Andrew
came up on his tail, almost into the killing line, Michael kicked on
full rudder without bank and the SE5a tail skidded, turning flat,
whipping him around with a force that almost dislocated his neck, and he
found himself roaring back head-on to Andrew's attack.

They flashed past each other, only the lightning reflexes of veteran
fighter pilots saving them from collision, and instantly Michael
repeated the flat skid turn and was flung violently against the side of
the cockpit, striking his partially healed shoulder on the rim so that
his vision starred with the pain, but he was round in a flash and he
fastened on to Andrew's tail.  Andrew twisted desperately, but Michael
matched every evasive twist and held him in the ring sight of the
Vickers, pressing closer until the spinning boss of his propeller almost
touched Andrew's rudder.

Ngi dla!  Michael howled triumphantly.  I have eaten!  the ancient Zulu
war cry that King Chaka's warriors had screamed as they put the long
silver blade of the assegai into living flesh.

He saw Andrew's face reflected in the rear-view mirror on the cross
struts of the wing above his head, and his eyes were wide with dismay
and disbelief at that incredible manoeuvre.

Andrew fired a green Very flare to signal the recall to the squadron and
to concede victory to Michael.  The squadron was scattered across the
sky, but at the recall they re-formed on Andrew and he led them back to
Mort Homme.

The moment they landed, Andrew sprang from his machine and rushed to
Michael, seizing him by both shoulders and shaking him impatiently.

How did you do that, how the hell did you do that?  Quickly Michael
explained.

It's impossible.  Andrew shook his head.  A flat turn if I hadn't seen
it- He broke off.  Come on.  Let's go and try it again.  Together the
two big scout planes roared off the narrow strip, and only returned as
the last light was fading.

Michael and Andrew jumped down from their cockpits and fell on each
other, slapping each other on the back and dancing in a circle, so
padded by their flying clothes that they looked like a pair of
performing bears.  Their ground crews stood by with indulgent grins
until they sobered a little and then Mac, the head mechanic, stepped
forward and tipped his forage cap.

Begging your pardon, sir, but that paint job is like my mother-in-law's
Sunday-go-to-meeting dress, sir, dull and dirty and God-help-us.  The
SE5as were in factory drab.  A colour that was intended to make them
inconspicuous to the enemy.

Green, said Andrew.  A few of the pilots on both sides, German as well
as British, desired the opposite effect.

With them it was a matter of pride that their paintwork should be bright
enough to advertise their presence to the enemy, a direct challenge.
Green, Andrew repeated.

Bright green to match my scarf, and don't forget the flying haggis on
the nose.  Yellow, please, Mac, Michael decided.

Now what made me think you would choose yellow, Mr Michael?  Mac
grinned.

Oh, Mac, while you are about it, take that awful little windshield off
her and tighten up the rigging wires, won't you?  The old hands all
believed that by screwing up the rigging wires and increasing the
dihedral angle of the wings, they could put a few knots on their speed.

I'll see to it, Mac promised.

Trim her to fly hands off, Michael added.  The aces were all fusspots,
everybody knew that.  If the SESa flew straight and level with hands off
the controls, the pilot could use both hands for the guns.

Hands off it is, sir!  Mac grinned indulgently.

Oh, and Mac, train the guns for fifty yards- Anything else, sir?  That
will do for now, Mac, Michael answered his grin, but I'll work on it.

I'm sure you will, sir.  Mac shook his head with resignation.  She'll be
ready by dawn.  There's a bottle of rum for you if she is, Michael
promised.

And now, my boy, Andrew threw his arm around Michael's shoulders, how
about a drink?  I thought you would never offer, Michael said.

The mess was full of excited young men all eagerly and loudly discussing
the new machines.

Corporal!  Lord Killigerran called over their heads to the mess servant.
All drinks tonight will be on my book, please, and his pilots cheered
him delightedly before turning back to the bar to make the most of the
offer.

An hour later when all eyes were glittering feverishly and the laughter
had reached that raucous pitch which Andrew judged to be appropriate, he
hammered on the bar for their attention and announced solemnly, As Grand
Bok-Bok Champion of Aberdeen and greater Scotland, not to mention the
outer Hebrides, it behaves me to challenge all corners to a bout of that
ancient and honourable sport.  Behaves, forsooth!  Michael cocked a
mocking eye at him.  Kindly pick your team, sir.  Michael lost the toss
and his team was required to form the rugger scrum against the far wall
of the mess, while the mess servants swiftly stowed away all breakables.

Then one at a time Andrew's lads took a run across the mess and landed
with all possible force upon the scrum, endeavouring to collapse it for
an outright win.  If, however, any part of their anatomy touched the
ground in the process, it would have meant an immediate disqualification
of their team.

Michael's scrum withstood the weight and violence of the onslaught, and
finally all eight of Andrew's men, making sure that not a toe or finger
touched the ground, were perched like a troop of monkeys on top of
Michael's pyramid.

From the top of the pile Andrew asked the crucial question which would
decide glorious victory or ignoble defeat. Bok-Bok, how many fingers do
I hold up?  His voice, muffled by the weight of bodies above him,
Michael guessed.  Three.  Two!  Andrew claimed victory and with a dismal
groan the scrum deliberately collapsed itself, and in the ensuing chaos
Michael found Andrew's ear within inches of his mouth.

I say, do you think I might borrow the motor-cycle tonight?  he asked.

Pinned as he was, Andrew could not move his head, but he rolled his eyes
towards Michael.

Going out for a breath of air, my boy, once again?  and then when
Michael looked sheepish and could find no clever reply, he went on, All
I have is yours, go with my blessing and give the lucky lady my deepest
respects, won't you?

Michael parked the motor-cycle in the woods behind the barn, and
carrying the bundle of army blankets sloshed through the mud to the
entrance.  As he stepped in there was a flash of light as Centaine
lifted the shutter of the lantern and shone it in his face.

Bonsoir, monsieur.

She was sitting up on top of the bales of straw with her legs tucked
under her and she grinned impishly down at him.  What a surprise to meet
you here.

He scrambled up to her and seized her.

You are early, he accused.

Papa went to bed early- she got no further, for his I mouth covered
hers.  I I I saw the new airplanes, she gasped when they broke apart to
breathe, but I didn't know which was you.  They are all the same.  It
troubled me not to know which was you.

Tomorrow mine will be yellow again.  Mac is re-doping it for me.  i We
must arrange signals she told him, as she took the blankets from him and
began to build their nest in between the bales of straw.

If I lift my hand over my head like this, that will mean that I will
meet you in the barn.  tonight, he suggested.

That is the signal I will look for hardest.  She smiled up at him and
then patted the blankets.  Come here, she ordered, and her voice had
gone husky and purring.

A long time later as she lay with her ear against his naked chest and
listened to his heart pumping, he stirred slightly and then whispered,
Centaine, it's no good!  You cannot travel to Africa with me.  She sat
up quickly and stared at him, her mouth hardening, and her eyes, dark as
gunmetal, gleamed dangerously.

I mean, what would people say?  Think of my reputation, travelling with
a woman who was not my wife. She went on staring at him, but her mouth
softened into the beginning of a smile.

There must be a solution, though.  He pretended to puzzle over it.  I
have it!  He snapped his fingers.  What if I were to marry you!  She put
her cheek back against his chest.

Only to save your reputation, she whispered. You have not yet said
"yes"."Oh, yes.

Yes!  A million times yes!  And then, characteristically, her next
question was pragmatic. When, Michel?  Soon, as soon as possible.  I
have met your family, but tomorrow I will take you to meet mine.  Your
family?  She held him at arm's length.  Your family is in Africa.  Not
all of it, he assured her.  Most of it is here.  When

1 say most I don't mean numbers, I mean the most important single part
of it.  don't understand.  You will, ma cheri, you will!  he assured
her.

Michael had explained to Andrew what he had in mind.

If you get caught I will disclaim any knowledge of the whole nefarious
scheme.  I will, furthermore, preside with great enjoyment at your court
martial, and will personally command the firing-squad, Andrew warned
him.

Michael had paced out the firm ground at the edge of North Field on the
side of the de Thiry estate furthest from the squadron base.  He had to
slide-slip the bright yellow SE5a down behind the line of oaks that
guarded the field, and then as he skimmed over the seven-foot stone
wall, he shut the throttle and let her drop to the soft earth.  He
pulled up quickly, and left the engine idling as he clambered out on the
wing.

Centaine was running out from the corner of the wall where she had been
waiting.  He saw she had followed his instructions and was warmly
dressed: fur-lined boots under her yellow woollen skirt, and a yellow
silk scarf at her throat.  Over it all she wore a lustrous cape of
silver fox fur, and the hood dangled down her back as she ran.

She carried a soft leather bag on a strap over one shoulder.

Michael jumped down and swung her in his arms. Look!  I am wearing
yellow, your favourite.  Clever girl.  He sat her down.  Here!  He
pulled the borrowed flying helmet from the pocket of his greatcoat and
showed her how to fit it over her thick dark curls and buckle the strap
under the chin.

Do I look gallant and romantic?  she asked, posing for him.

You look marvelous And it was true.  Her cheeks were rouged with
excitement, and her eyes sparkled.

Come on.  Michael climbed back on to the wing and then lowered himself
into the tiny cockpit.

It is so small.  Centaine hesitated on the wing. So are you, but I think
you are also afraid, no?  Afraid, ha!  She flashed a look of utter scorn
at him, and began to climb in on top of him.

This was a complicated business.  which involved lifting her skirts
above her knees and then balancing precariously over the open cockpit,
like a beautiful bird settling on its clutch of eggs.  Michael could not
resist the temptation, and as she came down on top of him, he ran his
hand up under the skirts, almost to the junction of luscious silk-clad
thighs.  Centain squealed with outrage. You are forward, monsieur!  and
she plopped down on to his lap.

Michael fastened the safety-belt over both of them and then nuzzled her
neck below the edge of the helmet.  You are in my power now.  You cannot
escape.  I am not sure that I wish to, she giggled.

It took some further minutes for them to arrange all Centaine's skirts
and furs and petticoats, and to make sure that Michael could manipulate
the controls with her strapped on to his lap.

All set, he told her, and taxied to the end of the field, giving himself
every inch of runway that he could, for the earth was soft and the strip
short.  He had ordered Mac to remove the ammunition from both guns and
drain the coolant from the Vickers, which saved almost sixty pounds in
weight, but still they were overloaded for the length of runway
available to them.

Hold on, he said in her ear, and opened the throttle and the big
scoutplane bounded forward.

Thank God for the south wind, he murmured as he felt her unstick from
the mud and strive mightily to lift them into the air.

As they scraped over the far wall, Michael banked slightly to lift his
port wing over one of the oaks, and then they were climbing away.  He
felt how rigid Centaine was in his lap, and he thought she was really
afraid.  He was disappointed.

We are safe now, he shouted over the engine beat, and she turned her
head, and he saw in her eyes not fear but ecstasy.

It's beautiful, she said, and kissed him.  To know that she shared his
passion for flight delighted him.

We will go over the chateau, he told her, and banked away steeply,
dropping down again.

For Centaine it was the second most marvelous experience of her whole
life better than riding or music, almost as good as Michael's loving.
She was a bird, an eagle, she wanted to shout her joy aloud, she wanted
to hold the moment for ever.  She wanted to always be on high with the
wild wind howling around her and the strong arm of the man she loved
holding her protectively.

Below her lay a new world, familiar places that she had known since her
earliest childhood, now viewed from a different and enchanting
dimension.  This is the way the angels must, see the world!  she cried,
and he smiled at the fancy.  The chateau loomed ahead of them, and she
had not realized how big it was, or how pink and pretty was the roof of
baked tiles.  And there was Nuage in the field behind the stables,
galloping ahead of them, racing the roaring yellow aircraft, and she
laughed and shouted in the wind, Run, my darling!  and then they passed
over him, and she saw.  Anna in the gardens, straightening up from her
plants as she heard the engine, shading her eyes, peering up at them.
She was so close that Centaine could see the frown on her red face, and
she leaned far out from the cockpit.  Her yellow scarf flowed behind her
in the slipstream as she waved, and she saw the look of crumpled
disbelief on Anna's face as they flashed by.

Centaine laughed in the wind and called to Michael, Go higher.  Go up
higher.  He obeyed and she was never still for a moment, twisting and
hopping about in his lap, leaning out of the cockpit first on one side,
then on the other.

Look!  Look!  there is the convent, if only the nuns could see me now.
There, that is the canal, and there is the cathedral at Arras, oh, and
there- Her excitement and enthusiasm were infectious, and Michael
laughed with her, and when she turned her head back to him, he kissed
her, but she broke away.

oh, I don't want to miss a second!  Michael picked out the main airforce
base at Bertangles; the runways formed a cross of mown green turf
through the dark forest, with the cluster of hangars and buildings
nestling in the arms of the cross.

Listen to me, he shouted in her ear.  You must keep your head down while
we land.  She nodded.  When I give you the word, jump down and run into
the trees.  You will find a stone wall on your right.  Follow it for
three hundred metres until you reach the road.  Wait there.  Michael
joined the Bertangles circuit in textbook fashion, taking advantage of
his sedate down-wind leg to scrutinize the base for any activity which
might indicate the presence of high-ranking officers or other potential
troublemakers.  There were half a dozen aircraft parked in front of the
hangars, and he saw one or two figures working on them or wandering
about amongst the buildings.

Looks as though it's clear, he muttered, and turned crosswind and then
on to final approach, with Centaine scrunched down on his lap, out of
sight from the ground.

ichael came in high, like a novice; he was still at fifty feet when he
passed the hangars, and he touched down deep at the far end of the
runway and let his rollout carry them almost to the edge of the forest
before he swung broadside and braked hard.

Get out and run!  he told Centaine, and boosted her out of the cockpit,
Hidden from the hangars and buildings by the fuselage of the SE5a, she
hoisted up her skirts, tucked her leather bag under her arm, and
scampered into the trees.

Michael taxied back to the hangars and left the SE5a on the apron.

Better sign the book, sir, a sergeant mechanic told him as he jumped
down.

Book?  New procedure, sir, all flights have to log in and out.  Damned
red tape, Michael groused.  Can't do a thing without a piece of paper
these days.  But he went off to find the duty officer.

Oh yes, Courtney, there is a driver for you.  The driver was waiting
behind the wheel of a black Rolls-Royce parked at the back of No.  1
hangar, but as soon as he saw Michael he sprang out and stood to
attention.

Nkosana!  he grinned with huge delight, his teeth gleaming in his dark
moon-shaped face, and he threw Michael a sweeping salute that quivered
at the peak of his cap.  He was a tall young Zulu, taller even than
Michael, and he wore the khaki uniform and puttees of the African
Service Corps.

Sangane!  Michael returned the salute, grinning as widely, then
impulsively hugged him.

To see your face is like coming home again.  Michael spoke easy fluent
Zulu.

The two of them had grown up together, roaming the grassy yellow hills
of Zululand with their dogs and hunting-sticks.

Naked they had swum together in the cool green pa ols of the Tugela
river, and fished them for eels as long and thick as their arms.  They
had cooked their game on the same smoky fire, and lain beside it in the
night, studying the stars and seriously discussing the occasions of
small boys, deciding on the lives they would live and the world they
would build when they were grown men.

What news from home, Sangane?  Michael demanded as the Zulu opened the
door of the Rolls.  How is your father?  Mbejane, Sangane's father, was
the old servant companion and friend of Sean Courtney, a prince of the
royal house of Zulu, who had followed his master to other wars, but was
now too old and infirm, and was forced to send his son in his place.

They chatted animatedly, as Sangane drove the Rolls out of the base and
turned on to the main road.  On the back seat Michael stripped his
flying gear to reveal his dress uniform, complete with wings and
decorations, that he wore beneath.

Stop over there, Sangane, at the edge of the trees. Michael jumped out
and called anxiously, Centaine!  She stepped out from behind one of the
tree trunks and Michael gaped at her.  She had used the time since he
had left her to good effect, and he realized now why she brought the
leather bag.  Michael had never seen her wearing make-up before, but she
had applied it so artfully that he could not at first fathom the
transformation.  It was simply that all her good points seemed enhanced,
her eyes more luminous, her skin more glowing and pearly.

You are beautiful, he breathed.  She was no longer a child-woman, she
was possessed of a new poise and confidence, and he felt awed by her. Do
you think your uncle will like me?  she asked. He will love you, any man
would.  The yellow suit was of a peculiar shade that seemed to gild her
skin and throw golden reflections into her dark eyes.  The brim of the
billy cock hat was narrow on one side and full on the other, where it
was pinned up to the crown with a spike of green and yellow feathers.
Beneath the jacket she wore a blouse of fine creamy crepe-dechine, with
a high lace collar, that emphasized the line of her throat and the
dainty set of her small head above it.  The boots had been replaced by
elegant shoes.

He took both her hands and kissed them reverently, and then handed her
into the back of the limousine.

Sangane, this woman will be my wife one day soon. The Zulu nodded in
approval, judging her as he would a horse or a young thoroughbred
heifer.

May she bear you many sons, he said.

When Michael translated, Centaine blushed and laughed.

Thank him, Michael, but tell him I would like at least one daughter. She
looked about the luxurious cab of the Rolls.  Do all the English
generals have such motor-cars?  My uncle brought it from Africa with
him.  Michael ran his hand over the fine soft leather seat.  It was a
gift from my aunt.  Your uncle has style to go to war in such a chariot,
she nodded, and your aunt has good taste.  One day I hope I will be able
to give you such a gift, Michel.  I should like to kiss you, he said.

Never in public, she told him primly, but as much as you want when we
are alone.  Now tell me, how far is it?  Five miles or so, but with this
traffic on the road, God alone knows how long it will take us.  They had
turned into the main Arras-Arniens road, and it was clogged with
military transport, guns and ambulances and heavy supply lorries,
horse-drawn wagons and carts, the verges of the road crowded with
marching men, hunch-backed beneath their heavy packs, with the steel
helmets giving them a mushroom-headed uniformity.

Michael caught resentful and envious glances as Sangane threaded the big
glistening Rolls through the slower traffic.  The men trudging in the
mud looked into the interior and saw an elegant officer with a pretty
girl on the soft leather seat beside him.  However, most of those sullen
stares turned to grins when Centaine waved to them.

Tell me about your uncle, she demanded, turning back to Michael.

Oh, he's a very ordinary chap, not much to tell actually.  He was thrown
out of school for beating up his headmaster, fought in the Zulu War and
killed his first man before he was eighteen, made his first million
pounds before he was twenty-five and lost it in a single day.  Shot a
few hundred elephant while he was a professional ivory hunter, killed a
leopard with his bare hands.  Then, during the Boer War, he captured
Leroux, the Boer general, almost unaided, made another million pounds
after the war, helped negotiate the charter of Union for South Africa.
He was a cabinet minister in Louis Both's government, but he resigned to
come to this war.  Now he commands the regiment.  He stands a few inches
over six feet and can lift a 200-lb sack of maize in each hand.  Michel,
I am afraid to meet such a man, she murmured seriously. Why on earth-'I
am afraid I might fall in love with him. Michael laughed delightedly.  I
also am afraid.  Afraid he will fall in love with you!

Regimental Headquarters was temporarily located in a deserted monastery
on the outskirts of Arniens.  The monastery grounds were unkempt and
overgrown, for they had been abandoned by the monks during the fighting
of the previous autumn, and the rhododendron bushes had turned to
jungle.  The buildings were of red brick, mosscovered and with wistaria
climbing to the grey roof.  The bricks were pocked with old shell
splinters.

A young second lieutenant met them at the front entrance.

You must be Michael Courtney, I am John Pearce, the general's ADC.  Oh,
hello.  Michael shook hands.  What happened to Nick van der Heever? Nick
had been at school with Michael, and he had been General Courtney's
aide-de-camp ever since the regiment arrived in France.

Oh, didn't you hear?  John Pearce looked grave, the familiar expression
so often these days when someone asked after an acquaintance.  Nick
bought the farm, I'm afraid.  Oh God, no!  Afraid so.  He was up at the
front with your uncle.

Sniper got him."But the lieutenant's attention was wavering.  He
couldn't keep his eyes off Centaine.  Obligingly, Michael introduced him
and then cut short the lieutenant's pantomime of admiration.

Where is my uncle?

He asked you to wait.  The young lieutenant led them through to a small
enclosed garden which had probably belonged to the abbot.  There were
climbing roses on the stone walls and a sun-dial on a sculptured plinth
in the centre of the small neat lawn.

A table had been laid for three in the corner where the sun penetrated.
Uncle Sean was keeping his usual style king's pattern silver and Stuart
crystal, Michael noticed.

The general will be with you as soon as he can, but he asked me to warn
you that it will be a very short lunch.

The spring offensive, you know-, The lieutenant made a gesture towards
the decanter on the small serving table.

In the meantime, may I offer you a sherry, or something with claws?
Centaine shook her head, but Michael nodded.  Claws, please, he said.
Although he loved his uncle as much as he did his own father, yet e
always found his imminent presence after a long absence unnerving.  He
needed something to soothe those nerves.

The aide-de-camp poured Michael a whisky.  Will you forgive me, but I do
have a few things- Michael waved him away and took Centaine's arm.

Look, the buds are beginning to form on the roses and the narcissusShe
leaned against him.  Everything is coming to life again.  Not
everything, Michael contradicted softly.

For the soldier, spring is the time of death.  Oh, Michel, she began,
and then broke off and looked towards the glass doors behind him with an
expression that made Michael turn swiftly.

A man had stepped through them, a tall man, erect and broad-shouldered.
He stopped when he saw Centaine and looked at her with penetrating
appraisal.  His eyes were blue and his beard was thick but neatly
trimmed in the same style as the king's.

Those are Michel's eyes!  Centaine thought, staring back into them, but
so much fiercer, she realized.

Uncle Sean!  Michael cried and released her arm.  He stepped forward to
shake hands, and those fierce eyes swivelled to him and softened. My
boy. He loves him- Centain understood.  They love each other very
deeply, and she studied the general's face.  His skin was sun-darkened
and tanned like leather, with deep creases at the corners of his mouth
and around those incredible eyes.  His nose was large, like Michael's,
and hooked, his forehead broad and deep, and above it was a dense dark
cap of hair, shot through with silver threads, that glistened in the
spring sunlight.

They were talking earnestly, still gripping each other's hands,
exchanging the vital assurances, and as Centaine watched them, the full
extent of their resemblance came through to her.

They are the same, she realized, differing only in age and in force.
More like father and son, than- The fierce blue eyes came back to her.
So this is the younglady.  May I present Mademoiselle de Thiry.
Centaine, this is my uncle, General Sean Courtney.  Michel has told me
much, a great deal- Centaine stumbled over the English.

Speak Flemish!  Michael cut in quickly.

Michel has told me all about you, she obeyed, and the general grinned
delightedly.

You speak Afrikaans!  he answered in that language.

When he smiled, his whole person changed.  That savage, almost cruel
streak that she had sensed seemed illusory.

It isn't Afrikaans, she denied, and they fell into an animated
discussion and argument, and within the first few minutes Centaine found
that she liked him, liked him for his resemblances to Michael, and for
the vast differences that she detected between them.

Let's eat!  Sean Courtney exclaimed, and took her arm.  We have so
little time- He seated her at the table.

Michael over here, and we'll let him carve the chicken.  I'll take care
of the wine.  Sean gave them the toast.  To the next time the three of
us meet again, and they all drank it fervently, all too aware of what
lay behind it, though here they were out of earshot of the guns.

They chatted easily, the general quickly and effortlessly smoothing over
any uneasy silences, so that Centaine realized that for all his bluff
exterior he was intuitively gracious, but always she was aware of the
scrutiny of those eyes, the valuations and appraisals that were in
progress behind them.

Very well, mon General, she thought defiantly, look all you want, but I
am me and Michel is mine.  And she lifted her chin and held his gaze,
and answered him directly and without simperings or hesitations, until
she saw him smile, and nod almost imperceptibly.

So this is the one Michael has chosen, Sean mused.  I would have hoped
for a girl of his own people, who spoke his own language and observed
the same faith.  I would have wanted to know a damned sight more about
her before I gave my blessing.  I would have made them take their time
to consider each other and the consequences, but there is no time.
Tomorrow or the next day, God knows what will happen.  How can I spoil
what might be their only moment of happiness ever?  For a moment longer
he looked at her, searching for signs of spite or meanness, for weakness
or vanity, and saw only the small determined jaw, the mouth that could
smile easily but just as easily harden, and the dark intelligent eyes.
She's tough and she's proud, he decided, but I think she will be loyal,
with strength to stay the full distance.  So he smiled and nodded and
saw her relax, and he saw also true affection and liking dawn in her
eyes before he turned to Michael.

All right, my boy, you didn't come all this way to chew on this stringy
little bird.  Tell me why you came, and see if you can surprise me.
Uncle Sean, I have asked Centaine to be my wife.  Sean wiped his
moustaches carefully and then laid down his napkin.

Do not spoil it for them, he warned himself.  Don't put the smallest
cloud on their joy.

He looked up at them and he began to smile.

You don't surprise me, you stun me!  I had given up expecting you to do
something sensible.  He turned to Centaine.  Of course, young lady, you
had too much good sense to accept, didn't you?  General, I hang my head
when I admit that I did not.

I have accepted him.  Sean looked fondly at Michael.  Lucky brighter!

She is too darned good for you, but don't let her get away."Don't worry,
sir.

Michael laughed with relief.  He hadn't expected such instant
acceptance.  The old boy could still surprise him.  He reached across
the table to take Centaine's hand, and Centaine looked at Sean Court
they with puzzlement.  Thank you, General, but you know nothing about
me, or my family.  She remembered the catechism to which her own father
had subjected Michael.

I doubt that Michael is intending to marry your family, Sean said drily.
And about you, my dear.  Well, I am one of the best judges of horseflesh
in Africa, and that's not false modesty.  I can judge a likely filly
when I see one.  You are calling.  me a horse, General?  she bridled
playfully.

I'm calling you a thoroughbred, and I'll be surprised if you aren't a
country girl and a horsewoman, and if you haven't got some pretty fancy
bloodlines, tell me that I'm wrong, he challenged.

Her papa is a count, she rides like a centaur, and they have an estate
that was mostly vineyards before the Huns shelled it.  Ha!  Sean looked
triumphant, and Centaine made a gesture of resignation.

He knows everything, your uncle.

Not everything- Sean turned back to Michael.  When do you plan to do it?
I would have liked my father- Michael did not have to finish the
thought, -but we have so little time.  Sean, who knew truly how little
time there was, nodded.  Garry, your father, will understand.  We want
to marry before the spring offensive begins, Michael went on.

Yes.  I know.  Sean frowned and sighed.  Some of his peers could send
the young men out there with dispassion, but he was not a professional
as they were.  He knew he would never grow hardened to the pain and the
guilt of it, sending men to die.  He began to speak and stopped himself,
sighed again and then went on.

Michael, this is for you alone.  Though you'll learn of it soon enough,
anyway.  A field order has been issued to all fighter squadrons.  That
order is to prevent all enemy aerial observation over our lines.  We
will be throwing in all our squadrons to keep the German spotters from
following our preparations over the next weeks.  Michael sat quietly,
considering what his uncle had told him.  It meant that as far ahead as
he could anticipate, the future would be an incessant and ruthless
battle with the German Jagdstaffels.  He was being warned that few of
the fighter pilots could expect to survive that battle.

Thank you, sir, he said softly.  Centaine and I will marry soon, as soon
as we can.  May I hope that you will be there?  I can only promise you
that I will do my level best to be there.  Sean looked up as John Pearce
came back into the garden.  What is it, John?  I'm sorry, sir.  Urgent
despatch from General Rawlinson I'm coming.  Give me two minutes.  He
turned to his young guests.

Bloody awful lunch, I'm sorry.  The wine was excellent, and the company
was even better, Centaine demurred.

Michael, go and find Sangane and the Rolls.  I want a word with this
young lady in private.  He offered Centaine his arm, and they followed
Michael out of the small garden and down the cloisters towards the stone
portals of the monastery.  Only when she stood at his side did Centaine
realize how big he was, and that he had a slight limp, so that his
footfalls on the stone paving were uneven.  He spoke quietly but with
force, leaning over her slightly to make each word tell.

Michael is a fine young man, he is kind, he is thoughtful, he is
sensitive.  But he does not have the ruthlessness that a man needs in
this world to get to the top of the mountain.  Sean paused, and she
looked up at him attentively.

I think you have that strength.  You are still very young, but I believe
that you will grow stronger.  I want you to be strong for Michael
Centaine nodded, finding no words to reply.

Be strong for my son, Sean said softly, and she started.

Your son?  and she saw the consternation in his eyes, which was swiftly
masked, and he corrected himself.

I'm sorry, his father is my twin, sometimes I think of him that way I
understand, she said, but somehow she sensed that it had not been a
mistake.  One day I will follow that until I find the truth, she
thought, and Sean repeated, Look after him well, Centaine, and I will be
your friend to the gates of hell.  I promise you that I will.  She
squeezed his arm, and they had reached the entrance where Sangane waited
with the Rolls. Au revoir, Gn&al, Centaine said.

Yes, Sean nodded.  Until we meet again, and helped her into the back
seat of the Rolls.

I will let you know as soon as we decide the day, sir.  Michael shook
his uncle's hand.

Even if I can't be there, be happy, my boy, said Sean Courtney, and
watched the Rolls purr sedately down the driveway, then with an
impatient shrug, he turned and marched back down the cloisters with that
long uneven stride.

With her hat and jewellery and shoes packed back into the soft leather
bag, and with the fur-lined boots on her feet and the flying helmet on
her head, Centaine crouched at the edge of the forest.

When Michael taxied the SESa down to where she waited and swung it
broadside to the distant airport buildings, she sprinted out from cover,
tossed the bag up to him, and scrambled on to the wing.  This time there
was no hesitation and she clambered up into the cockpit like an old
hand.

Head down, Michael ordered and swung the aircraft on to line for the
take-off.

All clear, he told her once they were airborne and she popped her head
up again, just as eager and excited as she had been on the first flight.
They climbed higher and still higher.

See how the clouds look like fields of snow, and the sunshine fills them
with rainbows.  She wriggled around in his lap, to look back over the
tailplane, and then a quizzical look came into her eyes and she seemed
to lose interest in the rainbows.

Michel!  She moved again in his lap, but with deliberation.

Michel!  No longer a query, and her tight round buttocks performed a
cunning little oscillation that made him squirm.

Forgive me!  He tried desperately to move out of contact, but her
posterior hunted after him, and she twisted her upper body around so
that she could place both arms around his neck and she whispered to him.

Not in broad daylight, not at five thousand feet!  He was shocked by her
suggestion.

Why not, mon cheri She kissed him lingeringly. Nobody will ever know,
and Michael realized that the SE5a had dropped a wing and was starting a
shallow spiral dive.  Hastily he corrected the machine, and she hugged
him and began to move in a slow voluptuous rhythm in his lap.

Don't you want to?  she asked.

But, but, nobody has ever done it before, not in an SE5a.  I don't know
if it's possible.  His voice was becoming weaker, his flying more
erratic.

We will find out, she said firmly.  You fly the aeroplane and do not
fret yourself, and she hoisted herself slightly and began drawing up the
back of her fur coat and the yellow skirt with it.

Centaine, he said uncertainly, and then a little later, Centaine!  more
definitely, and a little later still, Oh my God, Centaine!

It is possible!  she cried triumphantly, and almost immediately she was
aware of sensations which she had never suspected were harboured within
her.  She felt herself borne upwards and outwards as though she was
departing her own body, and as though she were drawing Michael's soul
out with her.  At first she was terrified by the strength and
strangeness of it, and then all other emotions were swept away.

She felt herself tumbling and swirling, upwards and upwards, with the
wild wind roaring about her, and the rainbow-girded clouds undulating on
every side, and then she heard herself screaming, and she thrust all her
fingers into her mouth to still her own cries, but it was too strong to
be contained, and she threw her head back and screamed and sobbed and
laughed with the wonder of it, as she went over the peak and fell down
the other side into the gulf, spinning downwards, settling softly as a
snowflake into her own body again, and feeling his arms around her,
hearing him groaning and gasping in her ear, and she twisted and held
him fiercely and cried, I love you, Michel, I will always love you!

Mac hurried to meet Michael as soon as he cut the engine and climbed out
of the cockpit.

You're just in time, sir.  There is a pilots briefing in the mess.  The
major has been asking for you, best hurry, sir, and then, as Michael
started along the duckboards towards the mess, he called after him, How
is she flying, sir?  Like a bird, Mac.  just reload the guns for me.
First time ever that he hadn't fussed about his machine, Mac thought
wonderingly, as he watched Michael walk away.

The mess was full of pilots, all the armchairs were taken and one or two
new chums were standing against the wall at the back.  Andrew sat on the
bar counter swinging his legs and sucking on the amber cigaretteholder.
He broke off as Michael appeared in the doorway.

Gentlemen, we are being honoured.  Captain Michael Courtney has
graciously consented to join us.  Despite other pressing and important
business, he has been kind enough to devote an hour or two to help us
settle our little difference with Kaiser Wilhelm IL I think we should
show our appreciation.

There were howls and catcalls, and somebody blew a loud raspberry.

Barbarians, Michael told them haughtily, and dropped into the armchair
hastily vacated by a new chum.

Are you comfortable?  Andrew asked him solicitously. Do you mind if I
carry on?  Good!  Well, as I was saying, the squadron has received an
urgent despatch, delivered by motor-cycle less than half an hour ago,
direct from divisional headquarters.  He held it up and waved it at
arm's length, pinching his nostrils with the other hand so that his
voice was nasal as he went on.

You will be able to smell the quality of the literary style and the
contents from where you are sitting- There were a few polite guffaws,
but the eyes that watched him were screwed up nervously, and here and
there were little nervous movements, the shuffling of feet, one of the
old hands cracking his knuckles, another nibbling on his thumbnail,
Michael unconsciously blowing on his fingertips, for all of them knew
that the scrap of coarse yellow paper that Andrew was waving at them
might be their death warrant.

Andrew held it at arm's length and read from it.

From Divisional Headquarters, Arras.

To the Officer Commanding No.  21 Squadron RFC.

Near Mort Homme.

As Of 24:00 hrs 4th April 1917, you will at all costs prevent any enemy
aerial observation over your designated sector until further orders to
the contrary.

That's all, gentlemen.  Four lines, a mere bagatelle, but A let me point
out to you the succinct phrase "at all costs" without dwelling upon it.
He paused and looked over the mess slowly, watching it register on each
strained and gaunt face.

My God, look how old they have grown, he thought, irrelevantly.  Hank
looks fifty years old, and Michael-he glanced up at the mirror over the
mantelpiece, and when he saw his reflection, he brushed nervously at his
own forehead where in the last few weeks the sandy hair had receded in
two deep bays, leaving pink skin like a beach at low tide.  Then he
dropped his hand selfconsciously and went on.

Beginning at 0500 hours tomorrow morning, all pilots will fly four daily
sorties until further notice, he announced.  There will be the usual
dawn and dusk sweeps, but from now on they will be at full squadron
strength.  He looked around for questions, there were none.  Then each
flight of aircraft will make an additional two sorties, one hour on, and
two hours off, or as our friends in the Royal Navy are wont to say,
"Standing watch and watch".  That way we will maintain a perpetual
presence over the squadron's designated area They all stirred again and
then heads turned towards Michael, for he was the eldest and their
natural spokesman.  Michael blew on his fingers and then studied them
minutely. Do I have any questions?  Hank cleared his throat.

Yes?  Andrew turned to him expectantly, but Hank subsided back into his
armchair.

Just to get this straight, Michael spoke at last.  We will all fly the
two hours dawn and dusk patrols, that's four hours, and then an
additional four hours during the day?  Is my arithmetic correct, or does
that make eight hours of combat a day?

Give Captain Courtney a coconut, Andrew nodded.

My trade union isn't going to like it, and they laughed, a nervous
braying chorus quickly cut off.  Eight hours was too much, far too much,
no man could exercise the vigilance and nervous response necessary to
sustain that length of combat flight for a single day.  They were being
asked to do it day after day without promise of respite.

Any other questions?  Service and maintenance of the aircraft?  Mac has
promised me that he can do it, Andrew replied to Hank.  Anything else?
No?  All right, gentlemen, my book is open.  But the pilgrimage to the
bar to take advantage of Andrew's offer was subdued, and nobody
discussed the new orders.  They drank quietly but determinedly, avoiding
each other's eyes.  What was there to discuss?

The Comte de Thiry, with a vista of forty thousand hectares of lush
farming land before his eyes, gave his rapturous approval to the
wedding, and shook hands with Michael as though he were wringing an
ostrich's neck.

Anna hugged Centaine to her bosom.  My baby!  she wheezed, slow fat
tears seeping out of the creases around her eyes and coursing down her
face.  You are going to leave Anna.  Don't be a goose, Anna, I will need
you still.  You can come with me to Africa, and Anna sobbed aloud.

Africa!  and then even more dolorously, What kind of wedding will it be?
There are no guests to invite, Raoul the chef is in the trenches
fighting the boche, oh, my baby, it will be a scandalous wedding!  The
priest will come over, and the general, Michel's uncle, has promised,
and the pilots from the squadron.

It will be a wonderful wedding, Centaine contradicted her.

No choir, sobbed Anna.  No wedding feast, no wedding dress, no
honeymoon.  Papa will sing, he has a wonderful voice, and you and I will
bake the cake and kill one of the suckling pigs.  We can alter Mama's
dress, and Michel and I will have our honeymoon here, just the way Papa
and Mama did.  Oh, my baby!  Once Anna's tears had started, they would
not that readily be dried.

When will it be?  The comte had not yet relinquished Michael's hand.
Name the day."Saturday, at eight in the evening."So soon!  wailed Anna.
Why so soon?  The comte struck his thigh as inspiration came to him.

We will open a bottle of the very best champagne and perhaps even a
bottle of the Napoleon cognac!  Centaine, my little one, where are the
keys?  And this time she could not refuse him.

In their nest of blankets and straw they lay in each other's embrace,
and in halting sentences Michael tried to explain the new squadron
orders to her.  She could not fully comprehend their dreadful
significance.  She understood only that he was going into dire peril and
she held him with all her strength.

But you will be there on our wedding day?  Whatever happens, you will
come to me on our wedding day?  Yes, Centaine, I will be there."Swear it
to me, Michel."I swear it.  No!  No!  Swear the most dreadful oath you
can think of.

I swear it on my life and on my love for you."Ah, Michel, she sighed and
pressed against him, satisfied at last.  I will watch for you as you fly
by each dawn and each dusk, and I will meet you here each night.  They
made love in a frenzy, a madness of the blood, as though they were
trying to consume each other, and the fury of it left them exhausted so
that they slept in each other's arms until Centaine woke, and it was
late.  The birds were calling in the forest and the first light filtered
into the barn.

Michel!  Michel!  It is almost half past four.  By the light of the
lantern she checked the gold watch pinned to her jacket.

Oh, my God, Michael began pulling on his clothes, still groggy with
sleep, I'll miss the dawn patrol-'No.  Not if you go directly.  I can't
leave you.  Don't argue!  Go, Michel!  Go quickly.

Centaine ran all the way, slipping and sliding in the mud of the lane,
but determined to be on the hill for the squadron take-off, to wave them
away.

At the stables she stopped, panting and clutching her chest to try and
control her breathing.  The chdteau was in darkness, lying-like a
sleeping beast in the dawn, and she felt a rush of relief.

She crossed the yard slowly, giving herself time to catch her breath,
and at the door she listened carefully before letting herself into the
kitchen.  She slipped off her muddy boots and placed them in the airing
cupboard behind the stove, then she climbed the stairs, keeping close to
the wall so that the tread would not squeak under her bare feet.

With another lift of relief she opened the door to her cell, crept in
and then closed it behind her.  She turned to face the bed, and then
froze with surprise as a match flared and was touched to a lantern wick,
and the room bloomed with yellow light.

Anna, who had just lit the lantern, was sitting on her bed, with a shawl
around her shoulders and a lace nightcap on her head. Her red face was
stony and forbidding.

Anna!  Centaine whispered.  I can explain, you haven't told Papa?  Then
the chair by the window creaked and she turned to find her father
sitting in it and staring at her with his single malevolent eye.

She had never seen such an expression upon his face.

Anna spoke first.  My little baby creeping out at night to go whoring
after soldiers.  He is not a soldier, Centaine protested.

He is an airman.

Harlotry, said the comte.  A daughter of the house of de Thiry behaving
like a common harlot.  Papa, I am to be Michel's wife.  We are as good
as married to each other.  Not until Saturday night, you are not.  The
comte rose to his feet.  There was a dark smudge of sleeplessness under
his one eye and his thick mane of hair stood on end.

Until Saturday, his voice rose to an angry bellow, you are confined to
this room, child.  You will remain here until one hour before the
ceremony begins."But, Papa, I have to go to the hill- Anna, take the
key.  I place you in charge of her.  She is not to leave the house.
Centaine stood in the centre of the room looking around her, as though
for escape, but Anna rose and took her wrist in a powerful calloused
hand and Centaine's shoulders slumped as she was led to the bed.

The pilots of the squadron were scattered in dark groups of threes and
fours amongst the trees at the edge of the orchard, talking softly and
smoking the last cigarettes before take-off, when Michael came clumping
down the duckboards, still buttoning his greatcoat and pulling on his
flying gauntlets.  He had missed the preflight briefing.

Andrew nodded a greeting as he joined them, making no mention of
Michael's late arrival or of the example to the new pilots, and Michael
did not apologize.  They were both acutely aware of the dereliction of
his duty, and Andrew unscrewed his silver flask and drank without
offering it to Michael; the rebuke was deliberate.

Take-off in five minutes, Andrew studied the sky, and it looks like a
good day to die.  It was his term for good flying weather, but today it
jarred on Michael.

I'm getting married on Saturday, he said, as though the ideas were
linked, and Andrew stopped with the flask halfway back to his lips and
stared at him.

The little French girl up at the chateau?  he asked, and Michael nodded.

Centaine, Centaine de Thiry You crafty old dog!  Andrew began to grin,
his disapproval forgotten.

So that is what you've been up to.

Well, you have my blessing, my boy.  He made a benedictory gesture with
the flask.  J drink to your long life and joy together.  He passed the
flask to Michael, but Michael paused before drinking.

I'd be honoured if you would agree to act as my best man.  Don't worry,
my boy, I will be flying at your wingtip as you go into action, I give
you my oath on it.  He punched Michael's arm and they grinned happily at
each other and then marched side by side to the green and yellow
machines standing at the head of the squadron line-up.

one after another the Wolseley Viper engines crackled and snarled and
blue exhaust smoke misted the trees of the orchard.  Then the SESas
bumped and rocked over the uneven ground for the massed take-off.

Today, because it was a full squadron sweep, Michael would not be flying
as Andrew's wingman, but as leader of B flight.  He had five other
machines in his flight, and two of his pilots were new chums and would
need protecting and shepherding.  Hank Johnson was leadingC flight and
he waved across as Michael taxied past him, and then gunned his machine
into his slot behind him.

As soon as they were airborne, Michael signalled to his flight to close
the formation into a tight !  and he followed Andrew, conforming to his
slight left-hand turn that would carry them past the hillock beyond the
chateau.

He lifted the goggles on to his forehead and slipped his scarf down off
his nose and mouth so that Centaine would be able to see his face, and
flying one-handed he prepared to make their private rendezvous signal to
her as he passed.  There was the knoll, he started smiling in
anticipation, then the smile faded.

He could not see Nuage, the white stallion.  He leaned far out of the
cockpit, and ahead of him Andrew was doing the same, screwing his head
around as he searched for the girl and the white horse.

They roared past and she was not there.  The hillock was deserted.
Michael peered back over his shoulder as it receded, making doubly sure.
He felt the dull weight in his belly, the cold and heavy stone of
forboding.  She wasn't there, their talisman had forsaken them.

He lifted the scarf over his mouth and covered his eyes with the
goggles, as the three flights of aircraft bore upwards, climbing for the
vital advantage of height, aiming to cross the ridges at 12,000 feet
before levelling out into the patrol pattern.

His mind kept going back to Centaine.  Why wasn't she there?  Was
something wrong?

He found it hard to concentrate on the sky around him, She has taken our
luck.  She knows what it means to us and she has let us down.  He shook
his head.  I mustn't think about it, watch the sky!  Don't think about
anything but the sky and the enemy.  The light was strengthening, and
the air was clear and icy cold.  The land beneath them was patched with
the geometrical patterns of fields and studded with the villages and
towns of northern France, but directly ahead was that dung-brown strip
of torn and savaged earth that marked the lines, and above it the
scattered blobs of morning cloud, dull as bruises on one side and
brilliant gold on the side struck by the rising sun.

To the west lay the wide basin of the Somme river where the beast of war
crouched ready to spring, and in the east the sun hurled great burning
lances of fire through the sky, so that when Michael looked away, his
vision was starred with the memory of its brilliance.

Never look at the sun, he reminded himself testily.

Because of his distraction, he was making the mistakes of a novice.

They crossed the ridges, looking down on the patterns of opposing
trenches, like worm castings on a putting green.

Don't fix!  Michael warned himself again.  Never stare at any object. He
resumed the veteran fighter pilot's scan, the quick flitting search that
covered the sky about him, sweeping back and forth, and down and over.

Despite all his efforts to prevent it, the thought of Centaine and her
absence from the knoll crept insidiously back into his mind again, so
that suddenly he realized that he had been staring at one whale-shaped
cloud for five or six seconds.  He was fixing again. God, man, pull
yourself together!  he snarled aloud.

Andrew, in the leading flight, was signalling, and Michael swivelled to
pick out his sighting.

it was a flight of three aircraft, four miles south-west of their
position, and 2,000 feet below them.

Friendlies.  He recognized them as De Havilland twoseaters.  Why hadn't
he seen them first?  He had the best eyes in the squadron.

Concentrate.  He scanned the line of woods south of Douai, the
German-held town just east of Lens, and he picked out the freshly dug
gun emplacements at the edge of the trees.

About six new batteries, he estimated, and made a note for his flight
log without interrupting the pattern of his scan again.

They reached the western limit of their designated patrol area, and each
flight turned in succession.  They started back down the line, but with
the sun directly into their eyes now, and that line of dirty grey-blue
cloud on their left hand.

Cold front building, Michael thought, and then suddenly he was thinking
of Centaine again, as though she had slipped in through the back door of
his mind.

Why wasn't she there?  She could be sick.  Out at night in the rain and
cold, pneumonia is a killer.  The idea shocked him.  He imagined her
wasting away, drowning in her own fluids.

A red Very pistol flare arched across the nose of his machine, and he
started guiltily.  Andrew had fired theEnemy in Sight signal while he
was dreaming.

Michael searched frantically.  Ah!  with relief.  There it is!  Below
and to the left.

It was a German two-seater, a solitary artillery spotted, just east of
the ridges, bustling down in the direction of Arras, a slow and outdated
type, easy prey for the swift and deadly SE5as.  Andrew was signalling
again, looking back-at Michael, the green scarf aflutter, and that
devilmay-care grin on his lips.

I am attacking!  Give me top cover Both Michael and Hank acknowledged
the hand signals and stayed on high as Andrew banked away into a shallow
diving interception, with the other five aircraft of his flight
streaming down behind in attacking line astern.

What a grand sight!  Michael watched them go.  Thrilling to the chase,
that wild charge down the sky, cavalry of the heavens in full flight,
swiftly overhauling their slow and cumbersome prey.

Michael led the rest of the squadron into a series of slow shallow
S-turns, holding them in position to cover the attack, and he was
leaning from the cockpit waiting for the kill when abruptly he felt a
slide of unease, that cold weight of premonition in his guts again, the
instinct of impending disaster, and he swept the sky above and around
him.

It was clear and peacefully empty, then his gaze switched towards the
blinding glare of the sun and he held up his hand to cover it, and with
one eye only looked past his fingers, and there they were.

They were boiling out of the cloud line like a swarm of gaudy glittering
poisonous insects.  It was the classic ambush.  The decoy sent in low
and slow to draw the enemy, and then the swift and deadly onslaught from
out of the sun and the clouds.

Oh, sweet Mother of God, Michael breathed, as he snatched the Very
pistol out of its holster beside his seat.

How many?  It was impossible to count that vicious host.  Sixty, perhaps
more, three full Jagdstaffels of Alba tros DIIIs in their rainbow
colours dropping falcon-swift upon Andrew's puny flight of SESas.

Michael fired the red Very flare to warn his pilots and then winged over
into a dive, aiming to intercept the enemy squadron before it could
reach Andrew.  Swiftly he estimated the triangle of speeds and distances
and realized that they were too late, four or five seconds too late to
save Andrew's flight.

Those four or five seconds which he had squandered in dreaming and
fruitlessly watching the attack on the German decoy plane, those crucial
seconds in which he had neglected his duty, weighed on him like leaden
bars as he pushed the throttle of the SE5a to its stop.  The engine
whined, that peculiar wailing protest of overdriven machinery as the tip
of the spinning propeller accelerated through the speed of sound, and he
could feel the wings flexing and bending under the strain as the speed
and pressure built up in that suicidal dive. Andrew!  he shouted.  Look
behind you, man!  and his as lost in the howl of wind and the scream of
the voice w overdriven engine.

All Andrew's attention was fixed on his quarry, for the German decoy
pilot had seen them and was also diving away towards the earth, drawing
the SESas after him and transforming the hunters into unwitting prey.

The massed German Jagdstaffel held their diving attack, though they must
have been fully aware of Michael's desperate attempt to head them off.
They would know as well as Michael did that his attempt was futile, that
he had left it too late.  The Albatroses would be able to make an
attacking run over Andrew's flight, and with complete surprise aiding
them must destroy most of the SE5as in that single stroke before turning
back to face Michael's avenging counter-stroke.

Michael felt the adrenalin surge burning in his blood like the clean
bright flame of a spirit lamp.  Time seemed to slow down into those
eternal micro-seconds of combat, so that he floated sedately downwards,
and the horde of enemy aircraft appeared to hang suspended on their
multicoloured wings, as though they were set like gems in the heavens.

The colours and patterns of the Albatroses were fantastic, with scarlet
and black the dominant colours, but some were chequered like bar1equins,
and others had the silhouettes of bat wings or birds outlined on their
wings and fuselage.

At last he could see the faces of the German airmen, turning towards him
and then back towards their primary quarry.

Andrew!  Andrew!  Michael lamented in agony as each second made it
clearer just how late he would be to prevent the ambush succeeding.

His fingers numb with cold and dread, Michael reloaded the Very pistol
and fired another flare forward over his own nose, trying to attract
Andrew's attention, but the red ball of flame fell away towards the
earth, fizzling and spinning a pathetic thread of smoke, while half a
mile further on Andrew lined up on the hapless German spotter plane, and
Michael heard the tut-tut-tuttering of his Vickers as he attacked from
astern.

In the same instant the wave of Albatroses broke over Andrew's flight,
from above.

Michael saw two of the SE5as mortally struck in the first seconds, and
spin away with smoke and pieces of fuselage flying from them; the rest
of them scattered widely, each with two or three Albatroses racing after
them, almost jostling each other for a chance to take the killing line.

Only Andrew survived.  His response to the first crackle of the Spandau
machine-gun was instantaneous.  He kicked the big green machine into
that flat skidding turn that he and Michael had practised so often.  He
went tearing back straight into the heart of the pack, forcing the
Albatroses to swerve wildly away from his head-on charge, firing
furiously into their faces, emerging from behind them seemingly
unscathed.

Good on you!  Michael rejoiced aloud, and then he saw the rest of
Andrew's flight shot out of the sky, burning and twisting downwards, and
his guilt turned to anger.

The German machines, having wrought quick destruction, were wheeling now
to face the charge of Michael's and Hank's flights.  They came together
and the entire pattern of aircraft disintegrated into a milling cloud,
turning like dust and debris in a whirlwind.

Michael came out on the quarter of a solid black Albatros with scarlet
wings on which the black Maltese crosses stood out like gravestones.  As
he crossed, he laid off his aim for the deflection of their combined
tracks and speeds, and fired for the radiator in the junction of the
scarlet wings above the German pilot's head, attempting to cook him
alive in boiling coolant liquid.

He saw his bullets hitting exactly where he had aimed, and at the same
time noticed the small modification in the Albatros's wing structure.
The Germans had altered the Albatros.  They had been forcibly shown the
lethal design fault, and they had relocated the radiator.  The German
ducked from Michael's field of fire, and Michael pulled up the nose of
his machine.

An Albatros had picked on one of Michael's new chums, sticking on his
tail like a vampire, within an ace of the killing line.  Michael came
out under the Albatros's belly and reached up to swivel the Lewis gun on
its Foster mounting, aiming upwards, so close that the muzzle of the
Lewis gun almost touched the bright pink belly of the Albatros.

He fired the full drum of ammunition into the German's guts, waggling
his wings slightly to spray his fire from side to side, and the Albatros
reared up on its tail like a harpooned shark, and then fell over its
wing and dropped away in its death plunge.

The new chum waved his thanks to Michael, they were almost touching
wingtips, and Michael signalled imperiously, Return to base!  and then
gave him the clenched fist.  Imperative!  Get out of here, you bloody
fool!  he shouted uselessly, but his contorted face emphasized the hand
signal, and the novice broke off and fled.

Another Albatros came at Michael and he turned out hard, climbing and
twisting, firing at fleeting targets, turning, turning for very life.
They were outnumbered six or seven to one, and the enemy were all
veterans, it showed in the way they flew, quick and agile, and unafraid.
To stay and fight was folly.  Michael managed to reload the Very pistol,
and he fired the green flare of the recall.  In these circumstances it
was the order to the squadron to break off and run for home with all
possible speed.

He came round hard, fired at a pink and blue Albatros, and saw his
bullets cut through the cowling of the engine a few inches too low to
hit the German's fuel tank.

Damn!  Damn it to hell!  he swore, and he and the Albatros turned out in
opposite directions and Michael had a clear run for home.  He saw his
remaining pilots already tearing away, and he put the yellow machine's
nose down and went after them, heading for the ridges and Mort Homme.

He swivelled his head just once more, to make sure that his tail was
clear, and at that moment he saw Andrew.

Andrew was a thousand metres out on Michael's starboard side.  He had
been separated from the main dogfight, engaged with three of the
attacking Albatroses, fighting them single-handed, but he had given them
the slip and now he too was running for home like the rest of the
British squadron.

Then Michael looked above Andrew and he realized that not all the German
Albatroses had come down in that first attacking wave.  Six of them had
remained up there under the clouds, led by the only Albatros that was
painted pure scarlet from tail to nose, and from wingtip to wingtip.
They had waited for the dogfight to develop and for stragglers to
emerge.  They were the second set of jaws to the trap, and Michael knew
who piloted the allred Albatros.

The man was a living legend on both sides of the lines, for he had
already killed over thirty Allied aircraft.  It was the man they called
the Red Baron of Germany.

The Allies were countering the legend, trying to smear the invincible
image that Baron Manfred Von Richthofen was building, by calling him a
coward and a hyena who had built up his score of kills by avoiding
combat on equal terms and by singling out novices and stragglers and
damaged aircraft before attacking.

Perhaps there was truth to that claim, for there he was, hovering above
the battlefield like a scarlet vulture, and there was Andrew, isolated
and vulnerable below him, his nearest ally, Michael, 1,000 metres away,
and Andrew seemed unaware of this new menace.  The scarlet machine
dropped from above, the shark-like nose aimed directly at Andrew.  The
five other hand-picked veteran German fighter pilots followed him down.

Without thought, Michael began the turn that would carry him to Andrew's
assistance, and then his hands and feet, acting without conscious
volition, countered the turn and kept the yellow SESa roaring on its
shallow dive for the safety of the British lines.

Michael stared over his shoulder and superimposed on the pattern of
swirling aircraft was Centaine's beloved face, the great dark eyes dark
with tears, and her words whispered in his head louder than guns and
screaming engines, Swear to me you will be there, Michael!  With
Centaine's words still ringing in his ears, Michael saw the German
attack sweep over Andrew's solitary aircraft, and once again
miraculously Andrew survived that first deadly wave and whirled to face
and fight them.

Michael tried to force himself to turn the yellow SE5a, but his hands
would not obey, and his feet were paralysed upon the rudder bars.  He
watched while the German pilots worked the solitary green aircraft the
way a pack of a sheepdogs might round up a stray ewe, driving Andrew
relentlessly into each other's crossfire.

He saw Andrew fighting them off with a magnificent display of courage
and flying skill, turning into each new attack, and facing it head-on,
forcing each antagonist to break away, but always there were others
crossing his flanks and quarters, raking him with Spandau fire.

Then Michael saw that Andrew's guns were silenced.

The drum of his Lewis gun was empty, and he knew that it was a lengthy
process to reload it.  Clearly the Vickers machine-gun on the cowling
had overheated and jammed.

Andrew was standing in the cockpit, hammering at the breech of the
weapon with both fists, trying to clear it, and Von Richthofen's red
Albatros dropped into the killing line behind Andrew.

Oh God, no!  Michael heard himself whimpering, still .  for safety,
stricken as much by his own cowardice running as by Andrew's peril.

Then another miracle happened, for without opening fire the red Albatros
turned away slightly, and for an instant flew level with the green SE5a.

Von Richthofen must have seen that Andrew was unarmed, and he had
declined to kill a helpless man.  As he passed only feet from the
cockpit in which Andrew was struggling with the blocked Vickers, he
lifted one hand in a laconic salute, homage to a courageous enemy - and
then turned away in pursuit of the rest of the fleeing British SE5as.

Thank you, God, Michael croaked.

Von Richthofen's fight followed him into the turn.  No, not all of them
followed him.  There was a single Albatros that had not broken off the
engagement with Andrew.  It was a sky-blue machine with its top wing
chequered black and white, like a chessboard.  It fell into the killing
line behind Andrew that Von Richthofen had vacated, and Michael heard
the stuttering rush of its Spandau.

Flame burst into full bloom around the silhouette of Andrew's head and
shoulders as his fuel tank exploded.

Fire, the airman's ultimate dread, enveloped him and Michael saw Andrew
lift himself out of the flames like a blackened and scorched insect and
throw himself over the side of the cockpit, choosing the swift death of
the fall to that of the flames.

The green scarf around Andrew's throat was on fire, so that he wore a
garland of flame until his body accelerated and the flames were snuffed
out by the wind.  His body turned with his arms and legs spread out in
the form of a crucifix, and dwindled swiftly away.  Michael lost sight
of him before he struck the earth 10,000 feet below.

In the name of all that is holy, couldn't anyone have let us know that
Von Richthofen had moved back into the sector?  Michael shouted at the
squadron adjutant.  Isn't there any bloody intelligence in this army?
Those desk wallahs at Division are responsible for the murder of Andrew
and six other men we lost today!  That is really unfair, old man, the
adjutant murmured, as he puffed on his pipe.  You know how this fellow
Von Richthofen works.  Will-o'-the-wisp, and all that stuff.  Von
Richthofen had devised the strategy of loading his aircraft on to open
goods trucks and shuttling the entire Jagdstaffel up and down the line.
Appearing abruptly, with his sixty crack pilots, wherever he was least
expected, wracking dreadful execution amongst the unprepared Allied
airmen for a few days or a week, and then moving on again.

I telephoned Division as soon as the first of our planes landed and they
had only just received the intelligence themselves.  They think Von
Richthofen and his circus have taken up temporary residence at the old
airstrip just south of Douai- A lot of good that does us now, with
Andrew dead.  As he said it, the enormity of it at last hit Michael, and
his hands began to shake.  He felt a nerve jumping in his cheek.  He had
to turn away to the small window of the cottage that the adjutant used
as the squadron office.

Behind him the adjutant remained silent, giving Michael time to collect
himself.

The old airstrip at Douai- Michael thrust his hands into his pockets to
keep them still, and he drove his mind from the memory of Andrew to
consider instead the technical aspects -those new gun emplacements, they
must have moved up to guard Von Richthofen's jagdstaffel.  Michael, you
are commanding the squadron, at least temporarily, until Division
confirms or appoints another commander.  Michael turned back, hands
still in pockets, and nodded, not yet trusting his voice.

You will have to draw up a new duty roster, the adjutant prompted him
gently, and Michael shook his head slightly as though to clear it.

We can't send out less than full squadron strength, he said, not with
the circus out there.  Which means that we can't maintain full-time
daylight cover over the designated squadron sector.  The adjutant nodded
in agreement.  It was obvious that to send out single flights was
suicidal.

What is our operational strength?  Michael demanded.

At the moment, eight, four machines were badly shot up.  If it goes on
like this, it's going to be a bloody April, I am afraid.  All right,
Michael nodded.  We will scrub the old roster.  We can only fly two more
sorties today.  All eight aircraft.  Noon and dusk.  Keep the new chums
out of it as much as possible.  The adjutant was making notes, and as
Michael concentrated on his new duties, his hands stopped shaking and
that corpse-grey pallor of his face improved.  Telephone Division and
warn them that we will not be able to cover the sector adequately.  Ask
them when we can expect to be reinforced.  Tell them that an estimated
six new batteries have been moved up to-'Michael read the map references
off his note-pad -and tell them also that I noticed a design
modification on the Albatroses of the circus.  He explained the
relocation of the engine radiator.  Tell them I estimate the boche have
sixty of these new Albatros in Von Richthofen's Jagdstaffel.  When you
have done all that call me, and we will work out a new roster, but warn
the lads there will be a squadron sweep at noon.  Now I need a shave and
a bath.  Mercifully, there was no time during the rest of that day for
Michael to dwell on Andrew's death.  He flew both sorties with the
depleted squadron, and although the knowledge that the German circus was
in the sector worked on all their nerves, the patrols were completely
uneventful.  They saw not a single enemy machine.

When they landed for the last time in the dusk, Michael took a bottle of
rum down to where Mac and his team of mechanics were working by lantern
light on the damaged SE5 as and spent an hour with them, giving them
encouragement, for they were all anxious and depressed by the day's
losses, particularly the death of Andrew, whom they had all adored and
hero-worshipped.

He was a good un.  Mac, with black grease to the elbows, looked up from
the engine he was working on, and accepted the tin mug of rum that
Michael handed him.  He was a real good un, the major was.  He said it
for all of them.  Don't often find one like him, you don't.  Michael
trudged back through the orchard; looking up at the sky through the
trees, he could see the stars.  It would be flying weather again
tomorrow, and he was deadly afraid.

I've lost it, he whispered.  My nerve has gone.  I am a coward, and my
cowardice killed Andrew.  That knowledge had been at the back of his
mind all that day, but he had suppressed it.  Now, when he faced it
squarely, it was like a hunter following a wounded leopard into cover.

He knew it was there, but the actual sight of it as they came face to
face turned a man's belly to water.

A coward, he said aloud, lashing himself with the word, and he
remembered Andrew's smile and the tam o shanter set jauntily on his
head.

What cheer, my boy?  He could almost hear Andrew's voice, and then he
saw him falling down the sky with the burning green scarf around his
throat, and Michael's hands began to shake again.

A coward, he repeated, and the pain was too much to bear alone and he
hurried to the mess, blinded by his guilt so that he missed his footing
and stumbled more than once.

The adjutant and the other pilots, some of them still in flying rig,
were waiting for Michael.  It was the senior officers duty to begin the
wake, that was squadron ritual.

On a table in the centre of the mess were seven bottles of Black Label
Johnny Walker whisky, one for each of the missing airmen.

When Michael entered the room, everybody stood, not for him, but as a
last respect to the missing men.

All right, gentlemen, Michael said.  Let us send them on their way.  The
most junior officer, briefed by the others in his duties, opened a
bottle of whisky.  The black labels gave the correct funereal touch.  He
came to Michael and filled his glass, then moved on to the others, in
order of seniority.  They held the brimming glasses and waited while the
adjutant, his briar still clamped in his teeth, seated himself at the
ancient piano in the corner of the mess and began to bang out the
opening chords of Chopin's Funeral March.  The officers of No.21
Squadron stood to attention and tapped their glasses on table-tops and
the bar counter, keeping time with the piano, and one or two of them
hummed quietly.

On the bar counter were laid out the personal possessions of the missing
pilots.  After dinner these would be auctioned off, and the squadron
pilots would pay extravagant prices so that a few guineas could be sent
to a new widow or a bereaved mother.  There were Andrew's golf clubs,
which Michael had never seen him use, and the Hardy trout rod, and his
grief came back fresh and strong so that he thumped his glass on the
counter with such force that whisky slopped over the rim, and the fumes
prickled his eyes.  Michael wiped them on his sleeve.

The adjutant crashed through the last bar and then stood up and took his
glass.  Nobody said a word, but they all lifted their own glasses,
thought their own thoughts for a second, and then drained them.
Immediately the junior officer refilled each tumbler.  All seven bottles
must be finished, that was part of the tradition.  Michael ate no
supper, but stood by the bar and helped consume the seven bottles.  He
was still sober, the liquor seemed to have no effect on him.

I must be an alcoholic at last, he thought.  Andrew always said I had
great potential.  And the liquor did not even deaden the pain that
Andrew's name inflicted.

He bid five guineas each for Andrew's golf clubs and the Hardy
split-cane rod.  By that time the seven bottles were all empty.  He
ordered another bottle for himself and went alone to his tent.  He sat
on the cot with the rod in his lap.  Andrew had boasted that he had
landed a fiftypound salmon with that stick, and Michael had called him a
liar.

Oh ye of little faith, Andrew had chided him sorrowfully.

I believed you all along Michael caressed the old rod and drank straight
from the bottle.

A little later, Biggs looked in.  Congratulations on your victory, sir.
Three other pilots had confirmed Michael's shooting down of the pink
Albatros.

Biggs, will you do me a favour?  Of course, sit Bugger off, there's a
good fellow.

There was three-quarters of the bottle of whisky left when Michael,
still in his flying clothes, stumbled out to where Andrew's motor-cycle
was parked.  The ride in the cold night air cleared his head, but left
him feeling brittle and fragile as old glass.  He parked the motor-cycle
behind the barn, and went to wait among the bales of straw.

The hours, marked by the church clock, passed slowly, and with each of
them his need for Centaine grew until it was almost too intense to bear.
Every half hour he would go to the door of the barn and peer up the dark
lane, before returning to the bottle and the nest of blankets.

He sipped the whisky, and in his head those few seconds of battle in
which Andrew had died played over and over, like a gramophone record
that had been scratched.  He tried to shut out the images, but he could
not.  He was forced to relive, time and again, Andrew's last agony.

Where are you, Centaine?  I need you so much now.  He longed forher, but
she did not come, and again he saw the skyblue Albatros with the black
and white chequered wings bank steeply on to the killing line behind
Andrew's green aircraft, and yet again he glimpsed Andrew's pale face as
he looked back over his shoulder and saw the Spandaus open fire.

Michael covered his eyes and pressed his fingers into the sockets until
the pain drove out the images.  Centaine, he whispered.  Please come to
me.  The church clock struck three o'clock and the whisky bottle was
empty.

She isn't coming.  He faced it at last, and as he staggered to the door
of the barn and looked up at the night sky, he knew what he had to do to
expiate his guilt and grief and shame.

The depleted squadron took off for the dawn patrol in the grey
half-light.  Hank Johnson was now second-incommand, and he flew on the
other wing.

Michael turned out slightly, as soon as they were above the trees, and
headed for the knoll beyond the chateau.

Somehow he knew that she would not be there this morning, yet he pushed
up his goggles and searched for her.

The hill top was deserted, and he did not even look back.

It's my wedding day, he thought, searching the sky above the ridges, and
my best man is dead, and my bride- He did not finish the thought.

The cloud had built up again during the night.  There was a solid
ceiling at I2,000 feet, dark and forbidding, stretching unbroken to
every reach of the horizon.  Below that it was clear to 5,000 feet where
straggly grey cloud formed a layer that varied in thickness between 500
and

1,000 feet.

Michael led the squadron up through one of the holes in this
intermittent layer, and then levelled out just below the top bank of
cloud.  The sky below them was empty of aircraft.  To a novice it would
seem impossible that two large formations of fighter planes could patrol
the same area, each searching for the other, and still fail to make
contact.  However, the sky was so deep and wide that the chances were
much against a meeting, unless the one knew precisely where the other
would be at a given time.

While his eyes raked back and forth, Michael reached with his free hand
into the pocket of his greatcoat and assured himself that the package he
had prepared just before take-off was still there.

God, I could use a drink, he thought.  His mouth was parched and there
was a dull ache in his skull.  His eyes burned but his vision was still
clear.  He licked his dry lips.

Andrew always used to say that only a confirmed drunkard can drink on
top of a hangover.  I just wish I'd had the courage and common sense to
bring a bottle.  Through the holes in the cloud beneath him he kept a
running check on the squadron's position.  He knew every inch of the
squadron's designated area the way a farmer knows his lands.

They reached the outward limit and Michael made the turn, with the
squadron coming round behind him, and he checked his watch.  Eleven
minutes later he picked out the bend in the river, and a peculiarly
shaped copse of beech trees that gave him an exact positional fix.

He eased the throttle a fraction and his yellow machine drifted back a
few yards until he was flying on Hank Johnson's wingtip.  He glanced
across at the Texan and nodded.  He had discussed his intentions with
Hank before take-off and Hank had tried to dissuade him.  Across the gap
Hank screwed up his mouth as though he had sucked a green persimmon, to
show his disapproval, then raised a war-weary eyebrow and waved Michael
away.

Michael backed the throttle a little further and dropped below the
squadron.  Hank kept leading them eastwards, but Michael made an easy
turn into the north and began to descend.

Within a few minutes the squadron had disappeared into the limitless
sky, and Michael was alone.  He went down until he reached the lower
layer of broken cloud and then used it as cover.  Dodging in and out of
the cold damp banks and the intervening open patches, he crossed the
front lines a few miles south of Douai, and then picked out the new
German gun emplacements at the edge of the woods.

The old airstrip was marked on his field map.  He was able to pick it
out from a distance of four miles or more, for the wheels of the German
Albatroses on landing and take-off had traced muddy ruts in the turf.
Two miles out, he could see the German machines parked along the edge of
the forest, and in the trees beyond he made out the rows of tents and
portable sheds which housed the German crews.

Suddenly there was a woof and a crack of bursting explosive, and an
anti-aircraft shell burst above and slightly ahead of him.  It looked
like a ripe cotton pod, popping open and spilling fluffy white smoke,
deceptively pretty in the muted light below the clouds.

Good morning, Archie, Michael greeted it grimly.

It was a ranging burst from one of the guns, and was followed
immediately by the thud and crack of a full salvo.  The air all around
him was studded with shrapnel bursts.

Michael pushed his nose down and let the speed build up, and the needle
of the rev counter in front of him began to wind upwards into the red
sector.  He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the cloth package and
placed in on his lap.

The earth and forest came up swiftly towards him, and he dragged a long
smear of bursting shrapnel behind him.

Two hundred feet above the tree-tops he levelled out, and the airfield
was directly ahead of him.  He could see the multicoloured biplanes
standing in a long row, their shark-like snouts pointed up towards him.
He looked for the sky-blue machine with the chequered wings but could
not pick it out.

There was agitated movement all along the edge of the field.  German
ground crews, anticipating a torrent of Vickers machine-gun fire, were
running into the forest, while off-duty pilots, trying to struggle into
their flying jackets, were racing towards the parked aircraft.  They
must know it was useless to take off and try to intercept the British
machine, but they were making the attempt nonetheless.

Michael reached for the firing-handle.  The aircraft were parked in a
neat line, the pilots crowding towards them - and he smiled without
humour and depressed his nose, picking them up in the ring sight of the
Vickers.

At 100 feet he levelled again, dropped his right hand from the firing
handle and picked up the cloth package from his lap.  As he passed over
the centre of the German line, he leaned from the cockpit and tossed the
package overboard.  The ribbon he had attached to it unrolled in the
slipstream of the SESa and fluttered down to the edge of the field.

As Michael opened the throttle and climbed away again towards the cloud
layer, he glanced up into the mirror above his head and saw one of the
German pilots stoop over the package, and then the SESa bounced and
rocked as the German anti-aircraft guns opened up on him again, and a
shell burst just below him.  Within seconds he was into the haven of the
cloud bank with his guns cold and unfired, and a few shrapnel tears in
the belly and the underwings.

He turned on to a heading for Mort Homme.  While he flew he thought
about the package he had just dropped.

During the night he had torn a long ribbon from one of his old shirts to
use as a marker and weighted the end of it with a handful Of .303
cartridges.  Then he had stitched his handwritten message into the other
end of the ribbon.

He had at first considered attempting the message in German, and then
admitted to himself that his German was hopelessly inadequate.  Almost
certainly there would be an officer on Von Richthofen's Jagdstaffel who
could read English well enough to translate what he had written.

To the German pilot of the blue albatros with black and white chequered
wings.

Sir, The unarmed and helpless British airman whom you murdered yesterday
was my friend.

Between 1600 hrs and 1630 hrs today I will be patrolling over the
villages of Cantin and Aubigny-all-Bac, at a height of

8,000 feet.

I will be flying an SE5a scoutplane painted yellow.

I hope to meet you.

The rest of the squadron had already landed when Michael returned to the
base.

Mac, I seem to have picked up some shrapnel."I noticed, sir.  Don't
worry, fix it in a jiffyI haven't fired the guns, but check the sights
again, will you.  Fifty yards?  Mac asked for the range at which he
wanted fire from both Lewis and Vickers gun to converge. Make it thirty,
Mac.

Working close, sir, Mac whistled through his teeth.

I hope so, Mac, and by the way, she is a touch tailheavy.  Trim her
hands-off See to it myself, sir, Mac promised.

Thank you, Mac.  Give the bastards one for Mr Andrew, sir.  The adjutant
was waiting for him.  We have all aircraft operational again, Michael.
Twelve on the duty roster.  All right.

Hank will take the noon patrol, and I will fly at 1530 hrs alone.

Alone?  The adjutant took his pipe out of his mouth in surprise.

Alone, Michael confirmed.  Then a full squadron sweep at dusk, as usual.

The adjutant made a note.  By the way, message from General Courtney. He
will do his best to attend the ceremony this evening.  He thinks he will
almost certainly be there.  Michael smiled for the first time that day.
He had wanted very badly for Sean Courtney to be at his wedding.

Hope you can make it also, Bob.  You can bet on it.  Whole squadron will
be there.  Looking forward to it no end.  Michael wanted a drink badly.
He started towards the mess.

God, it's eight o'clock in the morning, he thought, and stopped.  He
felt brittle and dried-out, whisky would put warmth and juice into his
body again, and he felt his hands begin to tremble with his deep need
for it.  It took all his resolve to turn away from the mess and go to
his tent.  He remembered then that he hadn't slept the previous night.

Biggs was sitting on a packing case outside the tent, polishing
Michael's boots, but he jumped to attention, his face expressionless.

Enough of that!  Michael smiled at him.  Sorry about last night, Biggs.
Bloody rude of me.  I didn't mean it.  I know, sir.

Biggs relaxed.  I felt the same way about the major.  Biggs, wake me at
three.  I've got some sleep to catch up on.  It was not Biggs who woke
him but the shouts of the ground crews, the sound of running men, the
deep bellowing tone of the anti-aircraft guns along the edge of the
orchard, and the roaring overhead of a Mercedes aircraft engine.

Michael staggered out of his tent with tousled hair and bloodshot eyes,
still half-asleep. What the hell is happening, Biggs?

A Hun, sir, cheeky brighter beating up the base."He's pushed off again.

Other pilots and ground crew were shouting qnongst the trees as they ran
to the edge of the field.

Didn't even fire a shot Did you see him?

An Albatros, blue with black and white wings.  The devil almost took the
roof of the mess He dropped something, Bob's picked it up.

Michael ducked back into the tent and pulled on his jacket and a pair of
tennis shoes.  He heard two or three of the aircraft starting up as he
ran out of the tent again.

Some of his own pilots were setting off in pursuit of the German
interloper.

Stop those men from taking off!  Michael yelled, and before he reached
the adjutant's office he heard the engines switched off again in
response to his order.

There was small crowd of curious pilots at the door, and Michael pushed
through them just as the adjutant untied the drawstring that closed the
mouth of the canvas bag that the German machine had dropped.  The chorus
of question and comment and speculation was silenced immediately as they
all realized what the bag contained.

The adjutant gently ran the strip of green silk through his fingers.
There were black-rimmed holes burned through it and it was stained with
dried black blood.

Andrew's scarf, he said unnecessarily, and his silver flask.  The silver
was badly dented, but the cairngorm stopper gleamed yellow and gold as
he turned it in his hands, and the contents gurgled softly.  He set it
aside and one by one drew the other items from the bag: Andrew's medal
ribbons, the amber cigarette-holder, a spring -loaded sovereign case
that still contained three coins, his pigskin wallet.  The photograph of
Andrew's parents standing in the grounds of the castle fell from the
wallet as he turned it over.

What's this?  The adjutant picked out a buff-coloured envelope of thick
glossy paper sealed with a wax wafer. It's addressed, he read the face
of the envelope to the pilot of the yellow SE5a.  The adjutant looked up
at Michael, startled.

That's you, Michael, how the hell?

Michael took the envelope from him and split the seal with his
thumbnail.

There was a single sheet of the same first-quality paper.

The letter was handwritten, and though the writing was obviously
continental, for the capitals were formed in Gothic script, the text was
in perfect English: Sir, Your friend, Lord Andrew Killigerran, was
buried this morning in the cemetery of the Protestant church at Douai.
This Jagdstaffel accorded him full military honours.

I have the honour to inform you, and at the same time also to warn you
that no death in war is murder.  The object of warfare is the
destruction of the enemy by all means possible.

I look forward to meeting you.

OTTO VON GREIM.  Near Douai.

They were all looking expectantly at Michael as he folded the letter and
thrust it into his pocket.

They recovered Andrew's body, he said quietly, and he was buried with
full military honours at Douai this morning.  Bloody decent of them, one
of the pilots murmured.

Yes, for Huns, that is, said Michael, and turned towards the door.

Michael, the adjutant stopped him, I think Andrew would have wanted you
to have this.

He handed the silver hip flask to Michael.  Michael turned it slowly in
his hands.  The dent in the metal had probably been caused by the
impact, he thought, and he shivered.

Yes, he nodded.  I'll look after it for him.  He turned back to the door
and pushed his way through the group of silent officers.

Biggs helped him dress with even more than his usual attention to
detail.

I gave them a good rub of dubbin, sir, he pointed out as he helped
Michael into the soft kudu-skin boots.

Michael appeared not to have heard the remark.

Although he had lain down again after the disturbance of the German
aircraft's fly-over, he had not managed to sleep.  Yet he felt calm,
even placid.  What's that, Biggs?  he asked vaguely.

I said, I'll have your number ones laid out for you when you come back,
and I've arranged with the cook for a good five gallons of hot water for
your bath.  Thank you, Biggs.  Not every day it happens, Mr Michael.
That's true, Biggs, once in a lifetime is enough.  I'm sure you and the
young lady are going to be very happy.  Me and my missus been married
twenty-two years come June, sir.  A long time, Biggs.  I hope you break
my record, Mr Michael.  I'll try One other thing, sir.  Biggs was
embarrassed, he did not look up from the lacings of the boots.  We
shouldn't ought to be flying alone, sir.  Not safe at all, sir, we
should take Mr Johnson with us at least, beg your pardon, sir I know
it's not my place to say so.  Michael laid his hand on Bigg's shoulder
for a moment.

He had never done that before.

Have that bath ready for me when I get home, he said as he stood up.

Biggs watched him stoop out through the flap of the tent, without saying
goodbye or wishing him luck, though it took an effort to restrain
himself from doing so, then he picked up Michael's discarded jacket and
folded it with exaggerated care.

When the Wolseley engine fired and caught, Michael advanced the ignition
until she settled to a fine deep rumble.  Then he listened to it
critically for thirty seconds before he looked up at Mac who was
standing on the wing beside the cockpit, his hair and overalls
fluttering in the wash of the propeller.

Lovely, Mac!  he shouted above the engine beat, and Mac grinned.

Give them hell, sir, and jumped down to pull the chocks from in front of
the landing-wheels.

Instinctively Michael drew a deep breath, as though he were about to
dive into one of those cool green pools of the Tugela river, and then
eased the throttle open and the big machine rolled forward.

The knoll behind the chAteau was deserted once again, but he had not
expected anything else.  He lifted the nose into the climb attitude and
then changed his mind, let it drop again and brought her round in a
tight turn, his wingtip almost brushing the tops of the oaks.

He came out of the turn with the chAteau directly ahead, and he flew
past it at the height of the pink-tiled roof.  He saw no sign of life
and as soon as he was past, he banked the SE5a into a figure-of-eight
turn and came around again, still at roof level, This time he saw
movement.  One of the windows at ground level, near the kitchens, was
thrown open.  Someone was waving a yellow cloth from it, but he could
not make out who it was.

He came around again and this time dropped down until his landing-wheels
almost touched the stone wall that enclosed Anna's vegetable garden.  He
saw Centaine in the window.  He could not mistake that dark bush of hair
and the huge eyes.  She was leaning far out over the sill, shouting
something and waving the yellow scarf that she had worn the day they
flew together to meet Sean Courtney.

As Michael lifted the nose and opened the throttle to climb away, he
felt rejuvenated.  The placid and passive mood that had held him
evaporated and he felt charged and vital again.  He had seen her, and
now it would be all right.

It was Michael, Centaine cried happily as she turned back from the
window to where Anna sat on the bed, I saw him, Anna, it was surely him.
Oh, he is so handsome - he came to find me, despite Papa!  Anna's face
crumpled and reddened with disapproval. It is bad luck for a groom to
see his bride on the wedding day Oh nonsense, Anna, sometimes you talk
such rubbish.

Oh, Anna, he is so beautiful!

And you will not be if we do not finish before this evening.

Centaine fluffed out her skirts and settled on to the bed beside Anna.
She took the antique ivory-coloured lace of the wedding dress into her
lap, and then held the needle up to the light and squinted as she
threaded it.

I have decided, she told Anna as she recommenced work on the hem of the
dress, I will have only sons, at least six sons, but no daughters. Being
a girl is such a bore, I don't wish to inflict it on any of my children.
She completed a dozen stitches and then stopped.  I'm so happy, Anna,
and so excited.  Do you think the general will come?  When do you think
this silly war will end, so that Michel and I can go to Africa?
Listening to her chatter Anna turned her head slightly to hide her
doting smile.

The yellow SE5a bored up powerfully into the soft grey belly of the sky.
Michael chose one of the gaps in the lower layer of cloud, roared
swiftly through it and burst out into the open corridor.  High above
there was still the same high roof of solid cloud, but below it the air
was limpid as crystal.  When his altimeter registered 8,000 feet,
Michael levelled out.  He was in the clear, equidistant from the layers
of cloud above and below him, but through the gaps he could pick up his
landmarks.

The villages of Cantin and Aubigny-all-Bac were deserted,
shell-shattered skeletons.  Only a few stone chimney-pieces had survived
the waves of war which had washed back and forth over them.  These stuck
up like funeral monuments from the muddy torn earth.

The two villages were four miles apart, the road that once joined them
had been obliterated, and the front lines twisted like a pair of maimed
adders through the brown fields between them.  The shell holes, filled
with stagnant water, blinked up at him like the eyes of the blind.

Michael glanced at his watch.  It was four minutes to four o'clock, and
his eyes immediately returned to their endless search of the empty sky.
One at a time he lifted his hands from the controls and flexed his
fingers, at the same time wriggling his toes in the kudu-skin boots
loosening up like a runner before the pistol.  He reached up to the
firing-handle with both hands, to test the trim of the machine, and she
flew on straight and level.  He fired both his guns, a short burst from
each of them, and he nodded and blew on the gloved fingers of his right
hand.

I need a drink, he told himself, and took Andrew's silver flask from his
pocket.  He took a mouthful and gargled it softly, and then swallowed.
The fire of it bloomed in his bloodstream, but he resisted the
temptation to drink again.  He stoppered the flask and dropped it back
into his pocket.  He touched the left rudder to begin his turn into the
square patrol pattern and at that moment he picked up the flea-black
speck on the grey mattress of the clouds far ahead and he met the turn,
holding her steady while he blinked his eyes rapidly and checked his
sighting.

The other machine was at 8,000 feet, exactly his own height, and it was
closing swiftly, coming in from the north, from the direction of Douai,
and he felt the spurt of adrenalin mingle with the alcohol in his blood.
His cheeks burned and, his guts spasmed.  He eased the throttle open and
flew on to meet it.

The combined speeds of the two aircraft hurled them together, so that
the other machine swelled miraculously in front of Michael's eyes.  He
saw the bright blue of the nose and propeller-boss hazed by the spinning
blades, and the wide black hawk's wings outstretched.  He saw the
helmeted top of the pilot's head between the two black Spandau
machine-guns mounted on the engine cowling, and the flash of his goggles
as he leaned forward to peer into his sights.

Michael pushed the throttle fully open and the engine bellowed.  His
left hand held the joystick like an artist holding his brush with the
lightest pressure of his fingertips, as he positioned the German exactly
in the centre of the concentric rings of his own gun-sight, and his
right hand reached up for the firing-handle.

His hatred and his anger grew as swiftly as the image of his enemy, and
he held his fire.  The battle clock in his head started to run so that
the passage of time slowed.

He saw the muzzles of the Spandau machine-guns begin to wink at him,
bright sparks of fire, flickering red as the planet Mars on a moonless
night.  He aimed for the head of the other pilot, and he pressed down on
the trigger and felt the aircraft pulse about him as his guns shook and
rattled.

No thought of breaking out of that head-on charge even occurred to
Michael.  He was completely absorbed by his aim, trying to stream his
bullets into the German's face, to rip out his eyes, and blow his brains
out of the casket of his skull.  He felt the Spandau bullets plucking
and tugging at the fabric and frame of his machine, heard them passing
his head with sharp flitting sounds like wild

locusts, and he ignored them.

He saw his own bullets kicking white splinters off the German's spinning
propeller, and in anger knew that they were being deflected from his
true aim.  The two aircraft were almost in collision, and Michael braced
himself for the impact without lifting his hand from the firinghandle,
without attempting to turn.

Then the Albatros winged up violently, at the very last instant avoiding
the collision, flicking out to starboard as the German hurled her over.
There was a jarring bang that shook the SE5a.  The two wings had just
brushed each other as they passed.  Michael saw the torn strip of fabric
trailing from his own wingtip.  He kicked on full rudder, into that flat
skidding turn that only the SESa was capable of, and felt the wings flex
at the strain, and then he was around.  The Albatros was ahead of him,
but still out of effective range.

Michael thrust with all his strength on the throttle handle, but it was
already wide open, the engine straining at full power and still the
Albatros was holding him off.

The German turned and went up left, and Michael followed him.  They
climbed more steeply, going up almost into the vertical, and the speed
of both machines began to bleed off, but the SE5a more rapidly so that
the German was pulling ahead.

It's not the same Albatros.  Michael realized with a shock that the
relocation of the radiator was not the only modification.  He was
fighting a new type of aircraft, an advanced type, faster and more
powerful than even his own SE5a.

He saw the wide sweep of those black and white chequ ered wings, and the
head of the German pilot craning to watch him in his mirror, and he
tried to bring his guns to bear, swinging his right sight in a short arc
as he wrenched his nose across.

The German flipped his Albatros into a stall-turn and came straight back
at Michael, head-on again with the Spandaus flicking their little red
eyes at him, and this time Michael was forced to break, for the German
had height and speed.

For a crucial moment, Michael was hanging in his turn, his speed had
dwindled and the German rounded on him, and dropped on to his tail.  The
German was good, Michael's guts tightened as he realized it.  He pushed
his nose down for speed, and at the same time flung the SE5 a into a
vertical turn.  The Albatros followed him round, turning with him, so
that they were revolving around each other like two planets caught in
immutable orbits.

He looked across at the other pilot, lifting his chin to do so, for each
of them was standing on one wingtip.

The German stared back at him, the goggles making him appear monstrous
and inhuman, and then for an instant Michael looked beyond the bright
blue fuselage, up towards the high cloud ceiling, his hunter's eyes
drawn by a tiny insect speckle of movement.

For an instant his heart ceased to pump and his blood seemed to thicken
and slow in his veins, then with a leap like a startled animal, his
heart raced away and his breathing hissed in his throat.

I have the honour to inform you, and at the same time also to warn you,
the German had written, the object of warfare is the destruction of the
enemy by all means possible.  Michael had read the warning, but only now
did he understand.  They had turned his woolly-headed romantic notion of
a single duel into a death-trap.  Like a child, he had placed himself in
their power.  He had given them time and place, even the altitude.  They
had used the blue machine merely as a decoy.  His own naivety amazed him
now, as he saw them come swarming down out of the high cloud.

How many of them?  There was no time to count them, but it looked like a
full Jasta.  of the new-type Albatroses, twenty of them at least, in
that swift and silent flock, their brilliant colours sparkling
jewel-like against the sombre backdrop of cloud.

I'm not going to be able to keep my promise to Centaine, he thought, and
looked down.  The low cloud was 2,000 feet below him, it was a remote
haven but there was no other.  He could not hope to fight twenty of
Germany's most skilled aces, he would not last for more than a few
seconds when they reached him, and they were coming fast, while the blue
machine pinned and held him for the killing stroke.

Suddenly, faced with the death which he had deliberately sought, Michael
wanted to live.  He had been dragging back on the joystick with all his
weight, holding the SESa into its turn.  He flicked the stick forward
and she was flung outwards, like a stone from a slingshot.

Michael was hurled up against his shoulder straps as the forces of
gravity were inverted, but he collected the big machine and used its own
impetus to push it into a steep dive, going down with a gut-swooping
rush towards the low cloud bank.  The manoeuvre caught his opponent
off-balance, but he recovered instantly and the Albatros was after him
in a blue flash of speed, while the swarming multicoloured pack was
overhauling them both from above.

Michael watched them in the mirror above his head, realizing bow much
quicker this new type of Albatros was in the dive.  He glanced ahead to
the clouds.  Their grey folds which had seemed so clammy and uninviting
a few seconds before were his only hope of life and salvation, and now
that he had started to flee his terror came back and settled upon him
like a dark and terrible succubus, draining him of his courage and
manhood.

He wasn't going to make it, they would catch him before he reached
cover, and he clung to the joystick, frozen with his new and crippling
terror.

The clatter of twin Spandaus roused him.  In the mirror he saw the
dancing red muzzle flashes, so close behind him, and something hit him a
numbing blow low down in his back.  The force of it drove the air from
his lungs, and he knew he must turn out of the killing line of the blue
Albatros's guns.

He hit the rudder bar with all his force, attempting the flat skidding
turn that would bring him face to face with his tormentors, but his
speed was too great, the angle of dive too steep, the SESa would not
respond.  She lurched and yawed into a turn that brought him broadside
on to the pursuing pack, and although the blue Albatros overshot, the
others fell upon him one after the other, each successive attack a split
second after the last.  The sky was filled with flashing wings and
bright-coloured fuselages.  The crash of shot into his aircraft was
continuous and unbearable, the SE5a dropped a wing and went into a spin.

Sky and cloud and patches of earth, interspersed with bright-coloured
Albatroses with flickering, chattering guns, spun through Michael's
field of vision in dizzying array.  He felt another blow, this time in
his leg, just below the fork of his crotch.  He looked down and saw that
a burst had come up through the floor, and a bullet, misshapen and
deformed, had ripped through his thigh.

Blood pumped from it in bright arterial jets.  He had seen a Zulu
gunbearer, savaged by a wounded buffalo, bleed this way from a ruptured
femoral artery; he had died in three minutes.

Streams of machine-gun fire were still coming in at him from every
angle, and he could not defend himself for his aircraft was out of
control, flicking through the turns of the spin, throwing her nose up
viciously, and then dropping it again in that sava e rhythm.

Michael fought her, thrusting on opposite rudder to try to break the
pattern of her rotation, and at the exertion the blood pumped more
strongly from his torn thigh and he felt the first giddy weakness in his
head.  He dropped one hand from the joystick and thrust his thumb into
his groin, seeking the pressure point, and the great pulsing red spurts
shrivelled as he found it.

Again he coaxed the maimed aircraft, stick forward to stop that
high-nose attitude, and a burst of throttle to power her out of the
spin.  She responded reluctantly, and he tried not to think about the
machine-gun fire that tore at him from every side.

The clouds and earth stopped revolving about him, as her tight turns
slowed and she dropped straight.  Then with one hand only he pulled her
nose up and felt the overstressing of her wings and the suck of gravity
in his belly, but at last the world tilted before his eyes as she came
back on to an even keel.

He glanced in the mirror and saw that the blue Albatros had found him
again and was pressing in close on his tailplane for the coup de grdce.

Before that dreadful rattling chatter of the Spandau could begin again,
Michael felt the cold damp rush across his face as grey streamers of
cloud blew over the open cockpit, and then the light was blotted out and
he was into a dim, blind world, a quiet, muted world where the Spandaus
could no longer desecrate the silences of the sky.  They could not find
him in the clouds.

Automatically his eyes fastened on the tiny glycerinefilled glass tubes
set on the dashboard in front of him, and with small controlled
adjustments he aligned the bubbles in the tubes within their markers so
that the SE5a.  was flying straight and level through the cloud.  The be
turned her gently on to a compass heading for Mort Homme.

He wanted to be sick, that was his first reaction from terror and the
stress of combat.  He swallowed and panted to control it, and then he
felt the weakness come at him again.  It was as though a bat was trapped
in his skull.

The dark soft wings beat behind his eyes and his vision faded in
patches.

He blinked away the darkness and looked down.  His thumb was still
thrust into his own groin, but he had never seen so much blood.  His
hand was coated, his fingers sticky with it.  The sleeve of his jacket
was soaked to the elbow.  Blood had turned his breeches into a sodden
mass and it had run down into his boots.  There were pools of blood on
the floor of the cockpit, already congealing into lumps like
blackcurrant jam, and snakes of it slithering back and forth with each
movement of the machine.

He let go of the stick for a moment, leaned forward against his shoulder
straps and groped behind his back.

He found the other bullet wound, three inches to the side of his spine
and just above the girdle of his pelvis.  There was no exit wound.  It
was still in there and he was bleeding internally, he was certain of it.
There was a swollen, stretched feeling in his belly as his stomach
cavity filled with blood.

The machine dropped a wing, and he snatched for the joystick to level
her, but it took him many seconds to make the simple adjustment.  His
fingers prickled with pins and needles, and he felt very cold.  His
reactions were slowing down, so that each movement, no matter how small,
was becoming an effort.

However, there was no pain, just a numbness that spread down from the
small of his back to his knees.  He removed his thumb to test the wound
in his thigh, and immediately there was a full spray of bright blood
from it like a flamingo's feather, and hastily he stopped it again and
concentrated on his flying instruments.

How long to reach Mort Homme?  He tried to work it out, but his brain
was slow and muzzy.  Nine minutes from Cantin, he reckoned, how long had
he been flying?

He did not know, and he rolled his wrist so that he could see his watch.
He found he had to count the divisions on the dial like a child.

Don't want to come out of the cloud too soon, they'll be waiting for me,
he thought heavily, and the dial of his wristwatch multiplied before his
eyes.

Double vision, he realized.

Quickly he looked ahead, and the silver clouds billowed around him, and
he had the sensation of falling.  He almost lurched at the stick to
counteract it, but his training restrained him and he checked the
bubbles in his artificial horizon, they were still aligned.  His senses
were tricking him, Centaine, he said suddenly, what time is it?  I'm
going to be late for the wedding.  He felt panic surface through the
swamp of his weakness, and the wings of darkness beat more frantically
behind his eyes.

I promised her.  I swore an oath!  He checked his watch.

Six minutes past four, that's impossible, he thought wildly.  Bloody
watch is wrong.  He was losing track of reality.

The SE5a burst out of the cloud into one of the holes in the layer.

Michael flung up his hand to protect his eyes from the brilliance of the
light, and then looked around him.

He was on the correct heading for the airfield, he recognized the road
and railway line and the star-shaped field between them. Another six
minutes flying, he calculated.  The sight of the earth had orientated
him again.  He took a grip on the real world and looked upwards.  He saw
them there, circling like vultures above the lion kill, waiting for him
to emerge from the cloud.  They had spotted him, he saw them turn
towards him on their rainbow-coloured wings, but he plunged into the
cloud on the far side of the opening, and the cold wet billows enfolded
him, bid him from their cruel eyes.

I've got to keep my promise, he mumbled.  The loss of contact with the
earth confused him.  He felt the waves of vertigo wash over him again.
He let the SESa sink slowly down through the layer of cloud, and once
again came out into the light.  There was all the familiar country side
below him, the ridges and the battle lines far behind him, the woods and
the village and the church spire ahead, so peaceful and idyllic.

Centaine, I'm coming home, he thought, and a terrible weariness fell
over him, its great weight seemed to smother him and crush him down in
the cockpit.

He rolled his head and he saw the chAteau.  Its pink roof was a beacon,
drawing him irresistibly, the nose of his aircraft turned towards it
seemingly without his bidding.

Centaine, he whispered.  I'm coming, wait for me, I'm coming.  And the
darkness drew in upon him, so that it seemed that he was receding into a
long tunnel.

There was a roaring in his ears, like the sound of surf heard in a
seashell, and he concentrated with all his remaining strength, staring
down the ever-narrowing tunnel through the darkness, looking for her
face, and listening over the sea sounds in his ears for her voice.

Centaine, where are you?  Oh God, where are you, my love?

Centaine stood before the heavy mirror in its walnut and gilt frame, and
she looked at her reflection with dark and serious eyes.

Tomorrow I will be Madame Michel Courtney, she said solemnly, never
again Centaine de Thiry.  Isn't that a formidable thought, Anna?  She
touched her own temples.  Do you think I will feel different?  Surely
such a momentous event must alter me can never be the same person after
thatV Wake up, child, Anna prodded her.  There is still so much to do.
This is no time for dreaming.  She lifted the bulky skirt and dropped it
over Centaine's head, then, standing behind her, she fastened the
waistband.

IT, I wonder if Mama is watching, Anna.  I wonder if she knows I am
wearing her dress, and if she is happy for me?  Anna grunted as she went
down on her knees to check the hem.  Centaine smoothed the delicate old
lace over her hips and listened to the muffled sound of men's laughter
from the grand salon on the floor below.

I am so happy that the general could come.  isn't he a handsome man,
Anna, just like Michel?  Those eyes, did you notice them?

Again Anna grunted, but with more emphasis, for a moment her hands
faltered as she thought about the general.

Now that is a real man, she had told herself, as she watched Sean
Courtney step down from the Rolls and come up the front staircase of the
chdteau.

He looks so grand in his uniform and medals, Centaine went on.  When
Michel is older, I will insist that he grows a beard like that.  So much
presence There was another burst of laughter from below.  He and Papa
like each other, don't you think, Anna?  Listen to them!

I hope they leave some cognac for the other guests Anna gnunped, and
hoisted herself to her feet, then paused with one hand on the small of
her back as a thought struck her.

We should have laid out the blue Dresden service rather than the Sevres.
It would have looked better with the pink roses.  You should have
thought of that yesterday, Centaine cut in quickly.  I'm not going to go
over all that again.  The two of them had worked all the previous day
and most of the night to reopen the grand salon which had been closed
ever since the servants left.  The draperies had been floury with dust,
and the high ceilings so laced with cobwebs that the scenes from
mythology that decorated them were almost obscured.

They had finished the cleaning red-eyed and sneezing before beginning on
the silver, which had been all tarnished and spotted.  Then each piece
of the red and gold Svres dinner service had to be washed and
hand-dried.

The comte, protesting volubly, A veteran of Sedan and the army of the
Third Empire forced to labour like a common varlet', had been dragooned
in to assist.

Finally it had all been done.  The salon once again splendid, the floor
of intricately fitted and patterned wooden blocks glossy with wax, the
nymphs and goddesses and fauns dancing and cavorting and chasing each
other across the domed ceiling, the silver aglitter and the first of
Anna's cherished roses from the greenhouse glowing like great gems in
the candlelight.

We should have made a few more pies, Anna worried, those soldiers have
appetites like horses.  They are not soldiers, they are airmen, Centaine
corrected her, and we have enough to feed the entire Allied army, not
merely a single squadron, Centaine broke off.  Listen, Anna!  Anna
waddled to the window and looked out.  It is them!  she declared.  So
early!  The drab brown truck came puttering up the long gravel drive,
looking prim and old-maidish on its high narrow wheels, the back crowded
with all the off-duty officers from the squadron, the adjutant at the
wheel with his pipe clamped in his jaws and a fixed and terrified
expression on his face as he steered the vehicle on an uneven course
from one verge of the wide driveway to the other, loudly encouraged by
his passengers.

Have you locked the pantry?  Anna demanded anxiously.  If that tribe
find the food before we are ready to serve Anna had enlisted her cronies
from the village, those who had not fled the war, and the pantry was an
Aladdin's cave of cold pies and pAstas and the wonderful local terrines,
of hams and apple tarts, of pigs trotters with truffles in aspic, and a
dozen other delights.

It's not the food they have come for so early in the day.  Centaine
joined her at the window.  Papa has the keys to the cellar.  They will
be well taken care of.  Her father was already halfway down the marble
staircase to greet them, and the adjutant braked with such abruptness
that two of his pilots landed in the front seat with him in a tangle of
legs and arms.

I say, he cried in obvious relief at being once again at a standstill,
you must be the jolly old count, what?  We are the advance guard, how do
you say it in French, le d'avant garde, don't you know?  Ah, to be sure!
The comte seized his hand.  Our brave allies.  You are welcome! Welcome!
May I offer you a small glass of something?  You see, Anna, Centaine
smiled as she turned back from the window, there is no need to worry.
They understand each other.  Your food will be safe from them, for a
while at least.

She picked up the wedding veil from the bed and arranged it loosely over
her head, and studied herself in the mirror.

This must be the happiest day of my life, she whispered.  Nothing must
happen to spoil it.  Nothing will, my child, Anna came up behind her and
arranged the filmy lace of the veil upon her shoulders.

You will be the loveliest bride, what a pity that none of the gentry
will be here to see you Enough, Anna, Centaine told her gently.  No
regrets.

Everything is perfect.  I would not have it any other way.  She cocked
her head slightly.  Anna!  Her expression became animated. What is it?
Do you hear?  Centaine spun away from the mirror. It's him.  It's
Michel. He is coming back to me.  She ran to the window, and unable to
contain herself, she hopped up and down, dancing like a little girl at
the window of a toy shop.

Listen!  He is coming this way!  She could recognize the distinctive
beat of the engine that she had so often listened for.

I don't see him.  Anna was behind her, screwing up her eyes, looking
upwards in the ragged clouds.

He must be very low, Centaine began.  Yes!  Yes!  There he is, just
above the forest.  I see him.  Is he going to the airfield in the
orchard?  No, not with this wind.  I think he's coming this way. Is it
him?  Are you sure?  Of course I'm sure, can't you see the colour?  Mon
petit jaune!  Others had heard it also.  There were voices below the
window, and a dozen of the wedding guests trooped out through the french
doors of the salon on to the terrace.

They were led by Sean Courtney in the full dress uniform of a British
general, and the comte even more resplendent in the blue and gold of a
colonel of the infantry of Napoleon I'll.

They all carried their glasses and their voices were raised in mounting
spirits and cheerful camaraderie.

That's Michel all right, someone called.  I'll bet he's going to give us
a low-level beat-up.  Take the roof off the chateau, you'll see!  It
should be a victory roll, considering what he's got in store.

Centaine found herself laughing with them, and she clapped her hands as
she watched the yellow machine approaching, then her hands froze an
instant before they came together.

Anna, she said, there is something wrong.  The aircraft was close enough
now for them to see how irregularly it was flying, one wing dropped and
the machine yawed and dipped towards the tree-tops, then pulled up
sharply, and its wings wobbled, and then it dropped on the opposite
side.

What's he up to?  The timbre of the voices from the terrace changed. By
God, he's in trouble, I think The SE5a began a meandering, purposeless
turn to starboard, and they could see the side of the damaged fuselage
and the torn wing surfaces as it banked.  It looked like the carcass of
a fish that had been attacked by a pack of sharks.

He's been badly shot up!  one of the pilots yelled.

Yes, he's hard hit.  The SESa turned back too steeply, the nose dropped
and almost hit the trees.

He's going to try for a forced landing!  Some of the pilots jumped over
the wall of the terrace and ran out on to the lawns, frantically
signalling to the crippled aircraft.

This way, Michael!  Keep the nose up, man!

Too slow!  screamed anther.  You'll stall her in!  Open the throttle.
Give her the gun!  They shouted their futile advice, and the aircraft
settled heavily towards the open lawns.

Michel, Centaine breathed, twisting the lace between her fingers and not
even feeling it tear, come to me, Michel.  There was one last row of
trees, ancient copper beech, with the new leaf buds on their gnarled
branches just beginning to pop open.  They guarded the bottom of the
lawns furthest from the chAteau.

The yellow SESa dropped behind them, the beat of her engine faltering.
Get her up, Michael!  Pull her up!  Damn it!  They were shouting to him,
and Centaine added her own entreaty.

Please, Michael, fly over the trees.  Come to me, my darling.  The Viper
engine roared again at full power, and they saw the machine rocket up
like a great yellow pheasant rising from cover. He's going to make it.
The nose was too high, they all saw it, she seemed to hover above the
stark, leafless branches, and they reached up like the claws of a
monster, then the yellow nose dropped.

He's over!  one of the pilots exulted, but one of the landing-wheels
caught on a heavy curved branch, and the SE5a somersaulted in midair,
then fell out of the sky.

It hit the soft earth at the edge of the lawn, landing on its nose, the
spinning propeller exploding in a blur of white splinters, and then with
the wooden frames of the fuselage crackling, the entire machine
collapsed, crushed like a butterfly, its bright yellow wings folding
around the crumpled body, and Centaine saw Michael.

He was daubed with his own blood, it had streaked his face, his head was
thrown back, and he was hanging halfway out of the open cockpit,
dangling in his straps like a man on the gallows.

Michael's brother officers were streaming down the lawn.  She saw the
general throw his glass aside and hurl himself over the terrace wall. He
ran with a desperate, uneven gait, the limp throwing him off balance,
but he was gaining on the younger men.

The first of them had almost reached the wrecked aircraft when the
flames engulfed it with miraculous suddenness.  They shot upwards with a
drumming, roaring sound, very pale-coloured but plumed with black smoke
at their crests, and the running men stopped and hesitated and then drew
back, holding up their hands to protect their faces from the heat.

Sean Courtney charged through them, going straight into the flames,
oblivious of the seaTin& dancing waves of heat, but four of the young
officers leaped forward and seized his arms and his shoulders, and
pulled him back.

Sean was struggling in their grip, so wildly that three others had to
run up and help to restrain him.  Sean was roaring, a deep, throaty,
incoherent sound, like a bull buffalo in a trap, trying to reach out
through the flames to the man trapped in the crumpled body of the yellow
aircraft.

Then quite suddenly the sound ceased and he sagged.

If the men had not been holding him, he would have fallen to his knees.
His hands dropped to his sides, but he went on staring into the wall of
flame.  had Years before, on a visit to England, Centaine watched with
horrid fascination as the children of her host had burnt the effigy of
an English assassin called Guy Fawkes on a pyre that they had built
themselves in the garden.  The effigy had been cleverly fashioned, and
as the flames rose up over it, it had blackened and begun to twist and
writhe in a most lifelike fashion.  Centaine had woken in the sweat of
nightmare for weeks afterwards.  Now, as she watched from the upper
window of the chateau, she heard somebody near her begin to scream.  She
thought that it might be Anna.  They were cries of the utmost anguish,
and she found herself shaking to them the way a sapling shakes to the
high wind.

It was the same nightmare as before.  She could not look away as the
effigy turned black and began to shrivel, its limbs spasming and
jack-knifing slowly in the heat, and the screams filled her head and
deafened her.  Only then did she realize that it was not Anna, but that
the screams were her own.  As these gusts o agonized sound came up from
the depths of her chest, they seemed to be of some abrasive substance,
like particles of crushed glass, that ripped at the lining of her
throat.

She felt Anna's strong arms around her lifting her off her feet,
carrying her away from the window.  She fought with all her strength,
but Anna was too powerful for her.

She laid Centaine on the bed and held her face to her vast soft bosom,
stifling those wild screams.  When at last she was quiet, she stroked
her hair and began to rock her gently, humming to her as she used to do
when Centaine was an infant.

They buried Michael Courtney in the churchyard of Mort Homme, in the
section reserved for the de Thiry family.

They buried him that night by lantern light.  His brother officers dug
his grave, and the padre who should have married them said the office
for the burial of the dead over him.

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord Centaine was on the
arm of her father, with black lace covering her face.  Anna took her
other arm, holding her protectively.

Centaine did not weep.  after those screams had silenced, there had been
no tears.  It was as though her soul had been scorched by the flames
into a Saharan dryness. O remember not the sins and offences of my youth
-The words were remote, as though spoken from the far side of a barrier.

Michel had no sin, she thought.  He was without offence, but, yes, he
was too young, oh Lord, too young.

Why did he have to die?  Sean Courtney stood opposite her across the
hastily prepared grave, and a pace behind him was his Zulu driver and
servant, Sangane.  Centaine had never seen a black man weep before.  His
tears shone on his velvety skin like drops of dew running down the
petals of a dark flower.

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full
of misery Centaine looked down into the deep muddy trench, at the
pathetic box of raw deal, so swiftly knocked together in the squadron
workshop, and she thought, That is not Michel.  This is not real.  It is
still some awful nightmare.

Soon I will wake and Michel will come flying back, and I will be waiting
with Nuage on the hilltop to welcome him.  A harsh, unpleasant sound
roused her.  The general had stepped forward, and one of the junior
officers had handed him a spade.  The clods rattled and thumped on the
lid of the coffin and Centaine looked upwards, not wanting to watch.

Not down there, Michel she whispered behind the dark veil.  You don't
belong down there.  For me, you will always be a creature of the sky.
For me, you will be always up there in the blue- And then, Au revoir,
Michel, till we meet again, my darling.  Each time I look to the sky I
will think of you.

.  .  .

Centaine sat by the window.  When she placed the lace wedding veil over
her shoulders Anna started to object, and then stopped herself.

Anna sat on the bed near her, and neither of them spoke.

They could hear the men in the salon below.  Someone had been playing
the piano a short while before, playing it very badly, but Centaine had
been able to recognize Chopin's Funeral March, and the others had been
humming along and beating time to it.

Centaine had instinctively understood what was happening, that it was
their special farewell to one of their own, but she had remained
untouched by it.  Then later she had heard their voices take on that
rough raw quality.

They were becoming very drunk, and she knew that this too was part of
the ritual.  Then there was laughter drunken laughter but with a
sorrowful underlying timbre to it, and then more singing, raucous and
untuneful, and she had felt nothing.  She had sat dry-eyed in the
candlelight and watched the shell-fire flickering on the horizon and
listened to the singing and the sounds of war.

You must go to bed, child, Anna had said once, gentle as a mother, but
Centaine had shaken her head and Anna had not insisted.  Instead, she
had trimmed the wick, spread a quilt over Centaine's knees and gone down
to fetch a plate of ham and cold pie and a glass of wine from the salon.
The food and wine lay untouched on the table at Centaine's elbow now.

You must eat, child, Anna whispered, reluctant to intrude, and Centaine
turned her head slowly to her.

No, Anna, she said.  I am not a child any longer.  That part of me died
today, with Michel.  You should never call me that again.  I promise you
I will not, and Centaine turned slowly back to the window.

The village clock struck two and a little later they heard the officers
of the squadron leaving.  Some of them were so drunk that they had to be
carried by their companions and thrown into the back of the truck like
sacks of corn, and then the truck puttered away into the night.

There was a soft tap on the door, and Anna rose from the bed and went to
open it.

Is she awake?  Yes, Anna whispered back.

May I speak to her?

Enter Sean Courtney came in and stood near Centaine's chair.

She could smell the whisky, but he was steady as a granite boulder on
his feet and his voice was low and controlled: despite that, she sensed
there was a wall within him, holding back his grief.

I have to leave now, my dear, he said in Afrikaans, and she rose from
the chair, letting the quilt slip off her knees, and with the wedding
veil over her shoulders went to stand before him, looking up into his
eyes.

You were his father, she said, and his control shattered.  He reeled and
put his hand on the table for support, staring at her.

How did you know that?  he whispered, and now she saw his grief come. to
the surface, and at last she allowed her own to rise and mingle with
his.  The tears started, and her shoulders shook silently.  He opened
his arms to her, and she went into them and he held her to his chest.

Neither of them spoke again for a long time, until her sobs muted and at
last ceased.  Then Sean said, I will always think of you as Michael's
Wife, as my own daughter.  If you need me, no matter where or when, you
have only to send for me.  She nodded rapidly, blinking her eyes, and
then stepped back as he opened his embrace.

You are brave and strong, he said.  I recognized that when first we met.
You will endure.  He turned and limped from the room, and minutes later
she heard the crunch of wheels on the gravel of the drive as the Rolls
with the big Zulu at the wheel pulled away.

At sunrise Centaine was on the knoll behind the chAteau, mounted on
Nuage, and as the squadron took off on dawn patrol, she rose high in the
saddle and waved them away.

The little American whom Michel had called Hank was flying in the lead,
and he waggled his wings and waved to her, and she laughed and waved
back, and the tears ran down her cheeks while she laughed and they felt
like icicles on her skin in the cold morning wind.

She and Anna worked all morning to close the salon again, cover the
furniture with dust sheets, and pack away the service and the silver.
The three of them ate lunch in the kitchen, terrines and ham left over
from the previous evening.  Though Centaine was pate and her eyes were
underscored with blue as dark as bruises, and though she barely tasted
the food or sipped her wine, she spoke normally, discussing the chores
and tasks that must be done that afternoon.  The comte and Anna watched
her anxiously but surreptitiously, uncertain how to take her unnatural
calm, and at the end of the meal the comte could contain himself no
longer. Are you all right, my little one?  The general said that I would
endure, she answered. I want to prove him to be right.  She stood up
from the table.  I will be back within the hour to help you, Anna. She
took the armful of roses that they had salvaged from the salon, and went
out to the stables.  She rode Nuage down to the end of the lane, and the
long columns of khaki-clad men, bowed under their weapons and packs,
called to her as she passed, and she smiled and waved at them, and they
looked back after her wistfully.

She hitched Nuage to the churchyard gate, and with her arms full of
flowers, went around the side of the mosscovered stone church.  A dark
green yew tree spread its branches over the de Thiry plot, but the newly
turned earth was trampled and muddy and the grave looked like one of
Anna's vegetable beds, only not as neatly dressed and squared.

Centaine fetched a spade from the shed at the far end of the churchyard
and set to work.  When she had finished, she arranged the roses and
stood back.  Her skirts were muddy and there was dirt under her
fingernails.

There, she said with satisfaction.  That's much better.

As soon as I can find a mason I will arrange the headstone, Michel, and
IT come again tomorrow with fresh flowers. That afternoon she worked
with Anna, hardly looking up from her tasks or pausing for a moment,
breaking off just before dusk to ride up to the knoll and watch the
planes come back from the north.  That evening, there were two moire of
them missing from the squadron, and the burden of mourning that she
carried as she rode home was for them as well as for Michel.

After dinner she went to her bedchamber as soon as she and Anna had
washed the dishes.  She knew that she was exhausted and she longed for
sleep, but instead the grief that she had held at bay all that day came
at her out of the darkness and she pulled the bolster over her face to
smother it.

Still Anna heard it, for she had been listening for it.

She came through in her frilled bed-cap and nightdress, carrying a
candle.  She blew out the candle and slipped under the bedclothes and
took Centaine in her arms, crooning to her and holding her until at last
she slept.

At dawn Centaine was on the knoll again, and the days and weeks repeated
themselves, so that she felt trapped and hopeless in the routine of
despair.  There were only small variations from this routine: a dozen
new SESas in the squadron flights, still painted in factory drab, and
flown by pilots whose every manoeuvre proclaimed even to Centaine that
they were new chums, while the numbers of the brightly painted machines
that she knew dwindled at each return.  The columns of men and equipment
and guns moving u p the main road below the chateau became denser each
day, and there was a building current of anxiety and tension that
infected even the three of them in the chateau.

Any day now, the comte kept repeating, it's going to begin.  You see if
I'm wrong.  Then one morning the little American circled back over where
Centaine waited on the hillock and he leaned far out of the open cockpit
and let something drop.  It was a small package, with a long bright
ribbon attached to it as a marker.  it fell beyond the crest of the
hillock and Centaine urged Nuage down the slope and found the ribbon
dangling in the hedgerow at the bottom.  She reached up and disentangled
it from the thorns, and when Hank circled back again, she held it up to
show him that she had retrieved it, and he saluted her and climbed away
towards the ridges.

In the privacy of her room Centaine opened the package.  It contained a
pair of embroidered RFC wings and a medal in its red leather case.  She
stroked the lustrous silk from which the silver cross was suspended, and
then turned it over to find the date and Michael's name and rank
engraved upon it.  The third item, in a buff envelope, was a photograph.
It showed the squadron aircraft drawn up in a wide semi-circle, wingtip
to wingtip, in front of the hangars at Bertangles, and in the foreground
the pilots stood in a group and grinned self-consciously at the
photographer.  The mad Scotsman, Andrew, stood beside Michael, barely
reaching to his shoulder, while Michael had his cap on the back of his
head and his hands in his pockets.  He looked so debonair and carefree
that Centaine's heart squeezed until she felt she was suffocating.

She placed the photograph in the same silver frame as that of her
mother, and kept it beside her bed.  The medal and the RFC wings she
placed in her jewelbox with her other treasures.

Then every afternoon Centaine spent an hour in the churchyard.  She
paved the raw grave with red bricks that she had found behind the
toolshed.

Only until we can find a mason, Michel, she explained to him as she
worked on her hands and knees, and she scoured the fields and the forest
of wild flowers to bring to him.

In the evenings she played the Aida recording and pored over that page
of her atlas that depicted the horse-headshaped continent of Africa, and
the vast red expanses of empire that were its predominant coloration, or
she read aloud from the English books, Kipling and Bernard Shaw, that
she had retrieved from her mother's upstairs bedroom, while the comte
listened attentively and corrected her pronounciation.  None of them
mentioned Michael, but they were all aware of him every minute; he
seemed to be part of the atlas and the English books and the jubilant
strains of Ai'da.

When at last Centaine was certain she was utterly exhausted, she would
kiss her father and go to her room.

However, as soon as she blew out the candle, her grief would overwhelm
her once again, and within minutes the door would open softly and Anna
would come to take her in her arms, and the whole cycle would begin
again.

The comte broke in.  He hammered on Centaine's bed room door, awakening
them in those dark and early hours of the morning when all human energy
is at its lowest ebb.

What is it?  Anna called sleepily. Come!  the comte shouted back.  Come
and see. With gowns hastily thrown over their nightclothes, they
followed him through the kitchens and out into the paved yard.  There
they stopped and stared up at the eastern sky in wonder, for although
there was no moon, it glowed with a strange wavering orange light as
though somewhere below the horizon Vulcan had thrown open the door to
the furnace of the gods.

Listen!  commanded the comte, and they heard the sussuration upon the
light breeze, and it seemed that the earth beneath their feet trembled
to the force of that distant conflagration.

It has begun, he said, and only then did they realize that this was the
opening barrage of the great new Allied offensive upon the Western
Front.

They sat up the rest of that night in the kitchen, drinking pots of
black coffee, and every little while trooping out again into the yard to
watch the fiery display as though it were some astronomical phenomenon.

The comte was exultant as he described to them what was taking place.
This is the saturation barrage which will flatten the barbed wire and
destroy the enemy trenches.  The boche will be annihilated, he pointed
to the fiery sky, who could withstand that!  The thousands of artillery
batteries were each firing on a front of a hundred yards, and over the
next seven days and nights they never ceased.  The sheer weight of metal
which they hurled on to the German lines obliterated the trench work and
parapets, and ploughed and reploughed the earth.

The comte was aflame with warlike and patriotic ardour.  You are living
in history.  You are witness to one of the great battles of the ages,
But for Centaine and Anna, seven days and seven nights was too long a
time; the first amazement soon turned to apathy and disinterest.  They
went about the daily life of the chAteau, no longer heeding the distant
bombardment, and at night slept through the pyrotechnics and the comte's
summonses to Come and watch!  Then on the seventh morning, while they
were at breakfast, even they were aware of the change in the sound and
intensity of the guns.

The comte sprang up from the table and ran into the yard again, his
mouth still full of bread and cheese, and the corf ee bowl in his hand.
Listen!  Do you hear it?  The rolling barrage has begun!  The artillery
batteries were rolling their fire forward, creating a moving barrier of
high explosive through which no living things could advance or retreat.

The brave Allies will be ready for the final assault now In the forward
British trenches they waited below the parapets.  With each man in full
battle-dress, his equipment burden was almost sixty pounds in weight.

The thunder of the bursting high-explosives Tolled away from them,
leaving them with dulled senses and singing eardrums.  The whistles of
the section leaders shrilled along the trenches, and they roused
themselves and crowded to the feet of the assault ladders.  Then, like
an army of khaki lemmings, they swarmed out of their burrows into the
open, and peered around them dazedly.

They were in a transformed and devastated land, so ravaged by the guns
that no blade of grass nor twig of tree remained.  Only the shattered
tree stumps stuck up from the soft fecal-coloured porridge of mud before
them.  This dreadful landscape was shrouded in the yellowish fog of
burned explosives.

forward!  the cry passed down the line, and again and whistles trilled
and goaded them on.

The long Lee Enfield rifles held out before them, the fixed bayonets
aglitter, sinking ankle and knee deep into the soft earth, slipping into
the overlapping shell holes and dragging themselves out again, their
line bulging and lagging, their horizon limited to a mere hundred paces
by swirling nitrous fog, they trudged forward.

Of the enemy trenches they saw no sign, the parapets had been
obliterated and flattened.  Overhead passed the continuous roar of the
barrage, while every few seconds a short shell from their own guns fell
into their densely packedlines.

Close up in the centre!  The gaps torn in their ranks by the guns were
filled by other amorphous khaki bodies.

Keep the line!  Keep the line!  The orders were almost drowned by the
tumult of the guns.

Then in the wilderness ahead of them they saw the glint of metal through
the smoke.  It was a low wall of metal, interlocking scales of grey
steel like those on the back of a crocodile.

The German machine-gunners had had the benefit of seven days
forewarning, and as the British barrage rolled away behind them, they
carried their weapons up the shafts from their dugouts to the surface
and set them up on their tripods on the churned muddy lip of the ruined
trenches.  The Maxim machine-guns were each fitted with a steel shield
to protect the crews from rifle-fire, and the guns were so closely
aligned that the edges of the shields overlapped each other.

The British infantry was out in the open, walking down on a wall of
machine-guns.  The front ranks yelled when they saw the guns and started
forward at a run, trying to reach them with the bayonet.  Then they ran
into the wire.

They had been assured that the barbed wire would be cut to pieces by the
barrages.  It was not.  The high-explosive had made no impression upon
it, except to tangle and twist it into an even more formidable barrier.
While they floundered and struggled in the grip of the wire, the German
Maxim machine-guns opened up on them.

The Maxim machine-gun has a cyclic rate of fire of 500 rounds per
minute.  It has the reputation of being the most reliable and rugged
machine-gun ever built, and that day it added to that reputation the
distinction of becoming the most lethal weapon that man had ever
devised.  As the plodding ranks of British infantry emerged from the fog
of nitro-smoke, still attempting to maintain their rigid formation,
shoulder to shoulder and four ranks deep, they made a perfect target for
the Maxims.  The solid sheets of fire swung back and forth, the
scythe-blades of the harvesters, and the carnage surpassed anything seen
before upon the battlefields of history.

The losses would certainly have been greater had not the troops, under
the extreme duress of the Maxims, used their common sense and broken
ranks.  Instead of that ponderous, wooden-beaded advance, they had tried
to creep and crawl forward in small groups, but even these had finally
been beaten back by the wall of machine-guns.

Then with another grand offensive on the Western Front decimated almost
as it began, the German force holding the ridges opposite Mort Homme
counterattacked jubilantly.

Centaine became gradually aware of the cessation of that distant
holocaust, and the strange stillness which followed it.

What has happened, Papa?  The British troops have overrun the German
artillery positions, the comte explained excitedly.  I have a mind to
ride across and view the battlefield.  I want to bear witness to this
turning-point in history - You will do no such idiotic thin& Anna told
him brusquely.

You don't understand, woman, even as we stand here talking, our Allies
are rolling forward, eating up the German lines What I understand is
that the milch cow has to be fed, and the cellars have to be mucked ouC
While history passes me by, the comte capitulated ungraciously, and went
muttering down to the cellar.

Then the guns began again, much closer, and the windows rattled in their
frames.  The comte shot up the stairs and into the yard.

What is happening now, Papa?  it is the death-throes of the German army,
the comte explained, the last thrashings of a dying giant.  But do not
worry, my little one, the British will soon invest their positions.  We
have nothing to fear.  The thunder of the guns rose to a crescendo and
was heightened by the din of the British counter-barrages as they sought
to destroy the German counter -attack that was massing in the front-line
trenches facing the ridges.

It sounds just like last summer.  Centaine stared with foreboding at the
stark outline of the chalk ridges upon the horizon.  They were blurring
slightly before her eyes, shrouding in the haze of shell-bursts. We must
do what we can for them, she told Anna.

We have to think of ourselves, Anna protested.  We still have to go on
living and we cannot-'Come, Anna, we are wasting time.  Under Centaine's
insistence they cooked up four of the huge copper kettles of soup,
turnip and dried peas and potato, flavoured with ham bones.  They used
up their reserves of flour at a prodigious rate to bake ovenful after
ovenful.  of bread loaves, and then they loaded the small hand-cart and
trundled it down the lane to the main road.

Centaine remembered clearly the fighting of the previous summer, but
what she witnessed now shocked her afresh.

The highway was choked, filled from hedgerow to hedgerow with the tides
of war, flowing in both directions, piling up and intermingling and then
separating again.

Down from the ridges came the human detritus of the battle, torn and
bloody, mutilated and bleeding, crowded into the slowly moving
ambulances, into horse-drawn carts and drays, or limping on improvised
crutches, borne on the shoulders of their stronger fellows, or clinging
to the sides of the over-crowded ambulances for support as they stumbled
through the deep muddy ruts.

In the opposite direction marched the reserves and reinforcements moving
up to help hold the ridges against the German assault.  They were in
long files, already worn down under the weight of equipment they
carried, not even glancing at the torn remnants of the battle which they
might soon be joining.  They trudged forward, watching their feet, and
stopped when the way ahead was blocked, standing with bovine patience,
only moving forward again when the man ahead of them started.

After the initial shock, Centaine helped Anna push the hand-cart up on
to the verge, and then while Anna ladled out the thick soup, she handed
the mugs, each with a thick slice of newly baked bread, to the exhausted
and injured soldiers as they stumbled past.

There was not nearly enough, she could feed only one man in a hundred.
Those whom she picked out as being in greatest need gulped down the soup
and wolfed the bread.

Bless yer, missus, they mumbled, and then staggered on Look at their
eyes, Anna, Centaine whispered as she held up the mugs to be refilled.
They have already seen beyond the grave.  Enough of that fanciful
nonsense, Anna scolded her, you will give yourself nightmares again.  No
nightmare can be worse than this, Centaine answered quietly.  Look at
that one!  His eyes had been torn out of his head by shrapnel and the
empty sockets bound up with bloody rags.  He followed another soldier,
both of whose shattered arms were strapped across his chest.  The blind
man held on to his belt, and almost dragged him down when he tripped on
the rough and slippery roadway.

Centaine drew them out of the stream, and she held the mug to the lips
of the armless soldier.

You are a good girl, he whispered.  Do you have a cigarette?  I'm sorry.
She shook her head and turned to rearrange the bandages over the other
man's eyes.  She had a glimpse of what lay beneath them, and she gagged
and her hands faltered.

You sound so young and pretty- The blinded man was about the same age as
Michael, he also had thick dark hair, but it was clotted with dried
blood.

Yes, Fred, she's a pretty girl.  His companion helped him to his feet
again.  We'd best be getting on again, miss.

What is happening up there?  Centaine asked them.

All hell is what is happening Will the line hold?  Nobody knows that,
miss, and the two of them were washed away on the slowly moving river of
misery.

The soup and bread were soon finished, and they wheeled the cart back to
the chAteau to prepare more.

Remembering the wounded soldiers pleas, Centaine raided the cupboard in
the gunroom.  where the comte kept his hoard of tobacco, and when she
and Anna returned to their post at the end of the lane, she was able for
a short time to give that extra little comfort to some of them.

There is so little we can do, she lamented.

We are doing all we can, Anna pointed out.  No sense in grieving for the
impossible.  They laboured on after dark, by the feeble yellow light of
the storm lantern, and the stream of suffering never dried up, rather it
seemed to grow ever denser, so that the pale ravaged faces in the
lantern light blurred before Centaine's exhausted eyes and became
indistinguishable one from the other, and the feeble words of cheer
which she gave each of them were repetitive and meaningless in her own
ears.

At last, well after midnight, Anna led her back to the chateau, and they
slept in each other's arms, still in their muddy, bloodstained clothes,
and woke in the dawn to boil up fresh kettles of soup and bake more
bread.

Standing over the stove, Centaine cocked her head as she heard the
distant roar of engines.

The airplanes!  she cried.  I forgot them!  They will fly without me
today, that is bad luck!  Today there will be many suffering from bad
luck, Anna grunted as she wrapped a blanket around one of the soup
kettles to prevent it cooling too quickly, and then lugged it to the
kitchen door.

Halfway down the lane Centaine straightened up from the handle of the
cart. Look, Anna, over there on the edge of North Field!  The fields
were swarming with men.  They had discarded their heavy back-packs and
helmets and weapons, and they were labouring in the early summer sun,
stripped to the waist or in grubby vests. What are they doing, Arma?
There were thousands of them, working under the direction of their
officers.  They were armed with pointed shovels, tearing at the yellow
earth, piling it up in long lines, sinking into it so swiftly that as
they watched, many of them were already knee-deep, then waist-deep
behind the rising earth parapets.

Trenches.  Centaine found the answer to her own question.  Trenches,
Anna, they are digging new trenches."Why, why are they doing that?

Because, Centaine hesitated.  She did not want to say it aloud, Because
they are not going to be able to hold the ridges, she said softly, and
both of them looked up to the high ground where the shellfire sullied
the bright morning with its sulphurous yellow mists.

When they reached the end of the lane, they found that the roadway was
clogged with traffic, the opposing streams of vehicles and men
hopelessly interlocked, defying the efforts of the military police to
disentangle them and get them moving again.  One of the ambulances had
slid off the road into the muddy ditch, adding to the confusion, and a
doctor and the ambulance driver were struggling to unload the stretchers
from the back of the stranded vehicle. Anna, we must help them.  Anna
was as strong as a man, and Centaine was as determined.  Between them
they seized the handles of one of the stretchers and dragged it up out
of the ditch.

The doctor scrambled out of the mud.

Well done, he panted.  He was bare-headed but his tunic sported the
serpent and staff insignia of the medical corps at the collar, and the
white armbands with the scarlet crosses.

Ah, Mademoiselle de Thiry!  He recognized Centaine, over the wounded man
on the stretcher between them.  I should have known it was you.  Doctor,
of course- It was the same officer who had arrived on the motor-cycle
with Lord Andrew, and who had helped the comte with the consumption of
Napoleon cognac on the day that Michael crashed in North Field.

They set the stretcher down under the hedgerow and the young doctor
knelt beside it, working over the still figure under the grey blanket.

He might make it, if we can get help for him soon. He jumped up.  But
there are others still in there.  We must get them out.  Between them
they unloaded the other stretchers from the back of the ambulance and
laid them in a row.

This one is finished.  With his thumb and forefinger the doctor closed
the lids of the staring eyes, and then covered the dead man's face with
the flap of the blanket.

The road is blocked, it's hopeless trying to get through, and we are
going to lose these others, he indicated the row of stretchers, unless
we can get them under cover, where we can work on them.  He was looking
directly at Centaine, and for a moment she did not understand his
enquiring gaze.

The cottages at Mort Homme are overfilled, and the road is blocked he
repeated.

Of course, Centaine cut in quickly.  You must bring them up to the
chateau.

.  .  .

The comte met them on the staircase of the chdteau and when Centaine
hastily explained their needs, he joined enthusiastically in
transforming the grand salon into a hospital ward.

They pushed the furniture against the walls to clear the centre of the
floor and then stripped the mattresses from the upstairs bedrooms and
bundled them down the stairs.  Assisted by the ambulance driver and
three medical orderlies the young doctor had recruited, they laid the
mattresses out on the fine woollen Aubusson carpet.

In the meantime the military police, under instructions from the doctor,
were signalling the ambulances out of the stalled traffic on the main
road and directing them up the lane to the chAteau.  The doctor rode on
the running-board of the leading vehicle, and when he saw Centaine, he
jumped down and seized her arm urgently.

Mademoiselle!  Is there another way to reach the field hospital at Mort
Homme?  I need supplies, chloroform, disinfectant, bandages, and another
doctor to help me. His French was passable, but Centaine answered him in
English. I can ride across the fields.  You're a champion.  I'll give
you a note.  He pulled the pad from his top pocket and scribbled a short
message. Ask for Major Sinclair, he tore out the sheet of paper and
folded it, the advance hospital is in the cottages.  Yes, I know it. Who
are you?  Who must I tell them sent me?  With recent practice, the
English words came more readily to Centaine's lips.

Forgive me, Mademoiselle, I haven't had a chance to introduce myself
before.  My name is Clarke, Captain Robert Clarke, but they call me
Bobby.  Nuage seemed to sense from her the urgency of their mission and
he flew furiously at the jumps and threw clods of mud from his hooves as
he raced across the fields and down the rows of vineyards.  The streets
of the village were jammed with men and vehicles, and the advance
hospital in the row of cottages was chaotic.

The officer she had been sent to find was a big man with arms like a
bear, and thick greying curls that flopped forward on his forehead as he
leaned over the soldier on whom he was operating.

Where the hell is Bobby?  he demanded, without looking up at Centaine,
concentrating on the neat stitches he was pulling into the deep gash
across the soldiers back.

As be pulled the thread tight and knotted it the flesh rose in a peak
and Centaine's gorge rose with it but she explained quickly.

All right, tell Bobby I'll send what I can, but we are running short of
dressing ourselves.  They lifted his patient off the table, and in his
place laid a boy with his entrails hanging out of him in an untidy
bunch.

I can't spare anybody to help him either.  Off you go, and tell him. The
soldier writhed and shrieked as the doctor began to stuff his stomach
back into him.

If you give me the supplies, I will carry them back with me.  Centaine
stood her ground, and he glanced up at her and gave her the ghost of a
smile.

You don't give up easily, he grudged.  All right, speak to him.  He
pointed across the crowded room of the cottage with the scalpel in his
right hand.  Tell him I sent you, and good luck, young lady."To you
also, doctor.  God knows, we all need it, he agreed, and stooped once
more to his work.

Centaine pressed Nuage as hard as before on the ride back and let him in
his stall.  As she entered the courtyard, she saw that there were three
more ambulances parked Igo in the yard; the drivers unloading their
cargoes of wounded and dying men.  She hurried past them into the house
carrying a heavy kitbag over her shoulder, and paused at the door of the
salon in amazement.

All the mattresses were full, and other wounded men were lying on the
bare floor, or propped against the panelled walls.

Bobby Clarke had lit every branch of the silver candelabra in the centre
of the massive ormolu dinner table and was operating by candlelight.

He looked up and saw Centaine.  Did you bring the chloroform?  he called
across to her.

For a moment she could not reply and she hesitated at the tall double
doors, for the salon already stank.  The cloying odour of blood mingled
with the reek of the bodies and clothing of men who had come from the
mud of the trenches, mud in which the dead had been buried and had
decomposed to the same soupy consistency, men with the acrid sweat of
fear and pain still upon them.

Did you get it?  he repeated impatiently, and she forced herself to go
forward. They do not have anyone to help you.  You'll have to do it.
Here, stand on this side of me, he ordered.  Now hold this.

For Centaine it all became a blur of horrors and blood and labour that
exhausted her both physically and nervously.

There was no time to rest, barely time to snatch a hasty mug of coffee
and one of the sandwiches which Anna turned out in the kitchen.  just
when she believed that she had seen and experienced so much that nothing
else could shock her, then there would be something even more harrowing.

She stood beside Bobby Clarke as he cut down through Igi the muscles of
a man's thigh, tying off each blood vessel as he came to it.  When he
exposed the white bone of the femur and took up the gleaming silver
bone-saw, she thought she would faint with the sound it made, like a
carpenter sawing a hard-wood plank.

Take it away!  Bobby ordered, and she had to force herself to touch the
disembodied limb.  She exclaimed and jerked back when it twitched under
her fingers.

Don't waste time, Bobby snapped, and she took it in her hands; it was
still warm and surprisingly weighty.

Now there is nothing that I will not dare to do, she realized as she
carried it away.

At last she reached the stage of exhaustion when even Bobby realized
that she could not stay on her feet.

Go and lie down somewhere, he ordered, but instead she went to sit
beside a young private on one of the mattresses.  She held his hand, and
he called her motherand spoke disjointedly of a day at the seaside long
ago.

At the end she sat helplessly and listened to his breathing change,
panting to stay alive, and his grip tightened as he felt the darkness
coming on.  The skin of his hand turned clammy with sweat and his eyes
opened very wide and he called out, Oh Mother, save me!  and then
relaxed, and she wanted to cry for him, but she did not have the tears.
So she closed those staring eyes as she had seen Bobby Clarke do and
stood up and went to the next man.

He was a sergeant, a heavily built fellow almost her father's age, with
a broad, pleasant face covered with grey stubble, and a hole in his
chest through which each breath puffed in a froth of pink bubbles.  She
had to put her ear almost to his lips to hear his request, and then she
looked round quickly and saw the silver Louis X!  soup tureen on the
sideboard.  She brought it to him and unfastened his breeches and held
the tureen for him, and he kept whispering, I'm sorry, please forgive
me, a young lady like you.  It isn't proper.  So they worked on through
the night, and when Centaine went down to find fresh candles to replace
those that were guttering in the holders of the candelabra, she had just
reached the kitchen floor when she was seized by sudden compelling
nausea, and she stumbled to the servants toilet and knelt over the
noisome bucket.  She finished, pale and trembling, and went to wash her
face at the kitchen tap.  Anna was waiting for her.

You cannot go on like this, she scolded.

Just look at YOU, you are killing yourself, I she almost added child,
but caught herself.  You must rest.  Have a bowl of soup and sit by me
for a while.  It never ends, Anna, there are always more of them. By now
the wounded had overflowed the salon and were lying on the landing of
the staircase and down the passageways, so that the orderlies bringing
out the dead on the canvas stretchers had to step over their recumbent
bodies.  They laid the dead on the cobbles at the side of the stables,
each wrapped in a grey blanket, and the row grew longer every hour.

Centaine!  Bobby Clarke shouted from the head of the stairs.

He is familiar, he should call you Mademoiselle, Anna huffed
indignantly, but Centaine leapt up and ran up the stairs, dodging the
bodies that sprawled upon them.

Can you get through to the village again?  We need more chloroform and
iodine.  Bobby was haggard and unshaven, his eyes red-rimmed and
bloodshot, and his bare arms caked with drying blood.

It's almost light outside, Centaine nodded.

Go past the crossroads, he said.  Find out if the road is clearing, we
have to begin moving some of these. Centaine had to turn Nuage back
twice from the crowded roads and find a short cut across the fields, so
by the time she reached the hospital at Mort Homme, it was almost full
daylight.

She saw at once that they were evacuating the hospital.

Equipment and patients were being loaded into a mongrel convoy of
ambulances and animal-drawn vehicles, and those wounded who could walk
were being assembled into groups and led out into the road to begin to
trek southwards.

Major Sinclair was bellowing instructions to the ambulance-drivers.  By
God, man, be careful, that chap has a bullet through his lung- but he
looked up at Centaine as she rode up on the big stallion.

You again!  Damn it all, I'd forgotten about you.  Where is Bobby
Clarke?  Still at the chateau, he sent me to ask- How many wounded has
he got there?  the major interrupted.

I do not know.  Dash it all, girl, is it fifty or a hundred, or more?

Perhaps fifty or a few more.  We have to get them out, the Germans have
broken through at Haut Pornmier.  He paused and examined her critically,
noting the purple weals under her eyes and the almost translucent sheen
of her skin.  At the end of her tether, he decided, and then saw that
she still held her head up and that there was light in her eyes, and he
changed his estimate.  She's made of good stuff, he thought.  She can
still go on.  When will the Germans get here?

Centaine asked.

He shook his head.  I don't know, soon I think.  We are digging in just
beyond the village, but we may not even be able to hold them there.  We
have to get out, you, too, young lady.  Tell Bobby Clarke I'll send him
as many vehicles as I can.  He must get back to Arras.  You can ride
with the ambulances.  Good.  She turned Nuage's head.  I will wait for
them at the crossroads and guide them to the chateau.  Good girl, he
called after her as she galloped out of the yard and swung the stallion
into the vineyard on the eastern side of the village.

Beyond the wall of the vineyard she reached the path that led up to her
knoll above the forest.  Then she gave Nuage his head and they went
flying up the slope and came out on the crest.  It was her favourite
lookout, and she had a fine view northward to the ridges and over the
fields and woods surrounding the village.  The early sun was shining,
the air bright and clean.

Instinctively she looked first to the orchard at the base of the
T-shaped forest, picking out the open strip of turf that served as the
airstrip for Michael's squadron.

The tents were gone, the edge of the orchard where the brightly painted
SE5as were usually drawn up was now deserted, there was no sign of life,
the squadron had moved out during the night, gone like gypsies and
Centaine's spirits lurched and sank.  While they had been there it was
as though something of Michael also remained, but now they had gone and
they had left an empty hole in her existence.

She turned away, and looked to the ridges.  At first glance the
countryside seemed so peaceful and undisturbed.  The early summer
weather painted it a lovely green in the early sunlight, and near her in
the brambles a lark was calling.

Then she stared harder and saw the tiny specks of many men in the
fields, scurrying back from the ridges like insects.  They were so
distant and insignificant that she had almost overlooked them, but now
she realized how many there were, and she tried to work out what they
were doing.

Abruptly she saw a tiny greyish-yellow puff of smoke spurt up in the
midst of one of the groups of running men, and as it drifted aside, she
saw four or five of the antlike figures lying in an untidy tangle, while
the others ran on.

Then there were more of those smoke puffs, scattered haphazardly on the
green carpet of the fields, and she heard the sound of it on the wind.

IShellfire!  she whispered, and understood what was going on out there.
These were troops that had been driven out of their trenches and
earthworks by the German attack, and in the open ground they were being
harassed by the artillery batteries which the Germans must have brought
up behind their advancing infantry.

Now, when she looked down at the base of the hillock on which she stood,
she could make out the line of hastily dug trenches that she and Anna
had seen them preparing the previous morning.  The trenches ran like a
brown serpent along the edge of the oak forest, then under the lee of
the stone wall on the top side of North Field, turning slightly to
follow the bank of the stream and then losing themselves amongst the
vineyards that belonged to the Concourt family.

She could see the helmets of the troops in the trenches, and make out
the stubby swollen barrels of the machineguns protruding over the
earthern parapets as they were lifted into position.  Some of the
running figures began to reach the trench line, and fell out of sight
into it.

She started at a crashing explosion close behind her, and when she
looked around, she saw the thin grey feathers of smoke drifting from a
British artillery battery at the foot of the hill.  The guns were so
cleverly concealed beneath A their camouflage nets that she had not
noticed them until they fired.

Then she saw other guns, concealed in forest and orchard, begin firing
at the unseen enemy, and the answering German salvoes burst in random
fury along the line of freshly dug fortifications.  A raised voice
roused her from her fearful fascination, and she looked around to see a
platoon of infantry men doubling up the path to the crest of the hill.
They were led by a subaltern who waved his arms wildly at her.

Get out of here, you damned fool!  Can't you see that you are in the
middle of a battle?  She swung Nuage's head around to the path and urged
him into a gallop.  She swept past the file of soldiers and when she
looked back, they were already frantically digging into the stony earth
at the crest of the hill.

Centaine checked her mount as they reached the crossroads.  All the
vehicles had passed, except those stuck in the ditches and abandoned.
However, the roadway was crowded with a rabble of retreating infantry
who staggered under their loads, carrying on their backs the dismembered
machine-guns and boxes of ammunition, and the other equipment that they
had managed to salvage.

Amid the squeal of whistle and shouted orders their officers were
rallying them and sending them off the roadway to the freshly dug
trenches.

Suddenly over Centaine's head passed a mighty rushing sound, like a
hurricane wind, and she ducked fearfully.  A shell burst a hundred paces
from where she sat, and Nuage reared on his hind legs.  She caught her
balance and gentled him with voice and touch.

Then she saw a lorry come towards the crossroads from the village, and
when she stood in her stirrups she could make out the red cross in its
white circle painted on the side.  She galloped down to meet it, and
seven more ambulances followed the first through the bend.  She reined
in beside the cab of the leading ambulance. Have you been sent to the
chAteau?  What's that, luv?  The driver could not understand her heavily
accented English, and she bounced on her saddle with frustration.

Captain Clarke?  she tried again, and he understood. You seek Captain
Clarke?  Yes, that's it.  Captain Clarke!  Where is he?  Come!  Centaine
raised her voice as another shell burst beyond the stone wall beside
them and there was the electric sound of shrapnel passing overhead.
Come!  she gestured, and swung Nuage into the lane.

With the line of ambulances following her, she galloped up the driveway
towards the chAteau, and saw a shell burst just beyond the stables and
another hit the greenhouse at the bottom of the vegetable gardens.  The
glass panels splintered into a diamond spray in the sunlight.

The chateau is a natural target, she realized, and galloped Nuage into
the yard.

Already they were bringing out the wounded, and as the first ambulance
pulled up at the bottom of the stairs, the driver and his orderly sprang
out to help load the stretchers into the back of the truck.

Centaine turned Nuage into the paddock beside the stables and ran back
to the kitchen door.  Behind her a howitzer shell hit the tiled roof of
the long stable building, blowing a hole through it and knocking out
part of the stone wall.  However, the stables were empty, so Centaine
darted into the kitchen.

Where have you been?  Anna demanded.  I have been so worried- Centaine
pushed past her and ran through to her own room.  She pulled the carpet
bag from the top of her wardrobe and began to throw clothing into it.

There was a deafening crash from somewhere above, and the plaster
ceiling cracked and chunks of it fell around her.  Centaine swept the
silver frame of photographs off the bedside table into the bag, then
opened the drawer and found her jewelbox and her travelling toilet set.
The air was full of white plaster dust.

Another shell burst on the terrace outside her room, and the window over
her bed exploded.  Flying glass rattled against the walls and a shard
grazed her forearm and left a bloody line on her skin.  She licked the
blood away and dropped on her knees, creeping half under the bed, and
prised up the loose floorboard.

The leather purse with their hoard of cash lay in the recess beneath it.
She weighed the purse in one hand almost two hundred francs in gold
louis d'or, then dropped it into the bag.

Lugging the carpet bag, she ran down the stairs into the kitchen.

Where is Papa?  she shouted at Anna.

He went up to the top floor.  Anna was stuffing strings of onions, hams
and bread loaves into a grain sack.  She pointed with her chin at the
empty hooks on the wall. He has taken his gun and plenty of cognac.  I
will fetch him, Centaine panted.  Take care of my bag.  She hitched up
her skirts and raced back up the stairs.

The upper levels of the chateau were in confusion.  The ambulance
orderlies were trying to clear the salon and the main staircase.

Centaine!  Bobby Clarke called across the stairwell at her.  Are you
ready to leave?  He was manhandling one end of a stretcher, and he had
to raise his voice above the shouts of the orderlies and the groans of
the wounded.

Centaine fought her way up against the press of humanity descending the
stairs, and Bobby caught her sleeve as she came level with him. Where
are you going?  We have to get out!  My father, I must find my father.
She shook off his hand and went on.

The topmost levels of the house were deserted and Centaine ran through
them, shouting shrilly, Papa!  Papa!

Where are you?  She ran down the long gallery, and from the walls the
portraits of her ancestors gazed down haughtily upon her.

At the end of the gallery she threw her weight on to the double doors
which led through into the suite of bedrooms that had been her mother's
and which the comte had kept unchanged all these years.

He was in the dressing-room, slumped in the highbacked tapestry-covered
chair in front of the portrait of Centaine's mother, and he looked up as
Centaine burst into the room. Papa, we must leave immediately.  He did
not seem to recognize her.  There were three unopened cognac bottles on
the floor between his feet, and he held another by the neck.  It was
half-empty, and he lifted it and took a mouthful of the raw spirit,
still gazing at the portrait. Please, Papa, we must go!  His single eye
did not even blink as another shell crashed into the chAteau, somewhere
in the east wing.

She seized his arm and tried to pull him to his feet, but he was a big
man and heavy.  Some of the brandy spilled down his shirt front.

The Germans have broken through, Papa!  Please come with me.  The
Germans!  he roared suddenly, and pushed her away from him.  I will
fight them once again.

He threw up the long-barrelled Shot rifle that had lain across his lap
and fired a shot into the painted ceiling.

Plaster dust filtered down on his hair and mustache, ageing him
dramatically.

Let them come!  he roared.  I, Louis de Thiry, say, let them all come! I
am ready for themV He was mad with liquor and despair, but she tried to
pull him to his feet.

We must leave.  Never!  he bellowed, and threw her aside, more roughly
than before.  I will never leave.  This is my land, my home the home of
my dear wife - his eye glittered insanely my dear wife.  He reached
towards the portrait.  I will stay here with her, I will fight them here
on my own soil.  Centaine caught the outstretched wrist and tugged at
it, but with a heave he threw her back against the wall, and began to
reload the ancient rifle on his lap.

Centaine whispered, I must fetch Anna to help me.  She ran to the door
and another shell ploughed into the north side of the chateau.  The
crash of bursting brickwork and splintering glass was followed
immediately by the blast wave.  It threw her to her knees, and some of
the heavy portraits were torn from the gallery walls.

She pulled herself up and raced down the gallery.  The nitro-acid stink
of explosive was mingled with the biting odour of smoke and burning. The
staircase was almost empty.  The very last of the wounded were being
carried out.  As Centaine ran into the yard two of the ambulances, both
of them overloaded, pulled out through the gateway and turned down the
driveway.

Anna!  Centaine screamed.  She was strapping the carpet bag and bulging
sack on to the roof of one of the ambulances, but she jumped down and
ran to Centaine. You must help me, Centaine gasped.  It's Papa. Three
shells hit the chateau in quick succession, and more burst in the stable
field and in the gardens.  The German observers must have noted the
activity around the building.  Their batteries were finding the range.

Where is he?  Anna ignored the shellfire.

Upstairs.  Mama's dressing-room.  He is mad, Anna.

Mad drunk.  I cannot move him.  The moment they entered the house they
smelt the smoke, and as they climbed the stairs the stench became
stronger and dense wreaths of it eddied about them.  By the time they
reached the second level, they were both coughing and wheezing for
breath.

The gallery was thick with smoke, so they could not see more than a
dozen paces ahead, and through the smoke shone a wavering orange glow,
the fire had taken hold in the front rooms and was burning through the
doors.

Go back, Anna gasped, I will find him. Centaine shook her head
stubbornly and started down the gallery.  Another salvo of howitzer fire
crashed into the chdteau, and part of the gallery wall collapsed,
partially blocking it, and swirling brick dust mingled with the dense
smoke, blinding them so that they crouched at the head of the staircase.

It cleared slightly and again they ran forward, but the opening that had
been torn in the wall acted as a flue for the flames.  They roared up
furiously and the heat came at them like a solid thing, barring their
way.

Papa!  screamed Centaine, as they cringed away from it.  Papa!  Where
are you?  The floor jumped under them as more shellfire hit the ancient
building, and they were deafened by the thunder of collapsing walls and
falling ceilings, and by the rising roar of the flames.

Tapa!  Centaine's voice was almost drowned, but Anna bellowed over her.

Louis, veins, ch&i, come to me, darling.  Even in her distress, Centaine
realized that she had never heard Anna use an endearment to her father.
It seemed to summon him.

Through the smoke and the dust the comte loomed.

Flames roared all around him, rising around his feet as the floorboards
burned, licking at him from the panelled walls, and smoke covered him in
a dark mantle, so that he seemed like a creature from hell itself.

His mouth was open and he was making a wild, anguished sound.

He is singing, whispered Anna.  The Marseillaise.  To arms, Citizens!

Form the ship of State.  Only then did Centaine recognize the garbled
chorus.

Let an impure blood swirl in the gutters-, The words became
indistinguishable, and the comte's voice weakened as the heat enveloped
him.  The rifle he was carrying slipped from his hand, and he fell and
dragged himself up and began to crawl towards them.  Centaine tried to
go to him again, but the heat stopped her dead and Anna pulled her back.

Dark brown blotches began to appear on her father's shirt, as the white
linen scorched, but still that terrible sound came from his open mouth,
and still he crawled along the burning floor of the gallery, Suddenly
the thick dark bush of his hair burst into flames, so that it seemed
that he wore a golden crown.

Centaine could not look away, could not speak again, but she clung
helplessly to Anna and felt the sobs wracking the older woman's body,
and the arm around Centaine's shoulder tightened so that the grip was
crushingly painful.

Then the floor of the gallery gave way beneath her father's weight, and
the burning floorboards o ened like a dark mouth with fangs of fire and
sucked him in.

No!  Centaine shrieked, and Anna lifted her off her feet and ran with
her to the head of the stairs.  Anna was still sobbing and tears
streamed down her fat red cheeks, but her strength was unimpaired.

Behind them part of the burning ceiling fell, taking the rest of the
gallery floor with it, and Anna set Centaine on her feet and dragged her
down the staircase.  The smoke cleared as they went down, and at last
they burst out into the yard again, and sucked in the sweet air.

The chateau was in flames from end to end, and shellfire still crashed
into it or burst in tall columns of smoke and singing shrapnel upon the
lawns and in the surrounding fields.

Bobby Clarke was supervising the loading of the last ambulances, but his
face lit with relief as he saw Centaine, and he ran to her.  The flames
had frizzled the ends of her hair and scorched her eyelashes, soot
streaked her cheeks.

We have to get out of here, where is your father?  Bobby took her arm.

She could not answer him.  She was shaking and the smoke had burned her
throat and her eyes were red and streaming tears. Is he coming?  She
shook her head and saw the quick sympathy in his expression.  He glanced
up at the flaming building.

He took her other arm and led her towards the nearest ambulance.

Nuage, Centaine croaked.  My horse.  Her voice was roughened by smoke
and shock.

No- Bobby Clarke said sharply and tried to hold her, but she pulled out
of his grip and ran towards the stable paddock. Nuage!  She tried to
whistle, but no sound came through her parched lips, and Bobby Clarke
caught up with her at the paddock gate.

Don't go in there!  His voice was desperate, and he held her.

Confused and bewildered, she craned to look over the gate.

No, Centaine!  He pulled her back, and she saw the horse and screamed.

Nuage!  The rushing roar and thunder of another salvo drowned out her
heart cry, but she fought in his grip.

Nuage!  she screamed again, and the stallion lifted his head.  He lay
upon his side; one of the shell bursts had shattered both his back legs
and ripped open his belly.

Nuage!  He heard her voice and he tried to lift himself on to his
forefeet, but the effort was too much and he fell back.  His head
thudded on the earth and he blew a soft fluttering sound through his
wide nostrils.

Anna ran to help Bobby and between them they dragged Centaine to the
waiting ambulance.

You can't leave him like that!  she pleaded, trying with all her might
to resist them.  Please, please, don't leave him to suffer.  Another
salvo of shells straddled the yard, driving in their eardrums and
filling the air around them with hissing chips of stone and steel
fragments.  No time, Bobby grunted, we must go.  They forced Centaine
into the rear of the vehicle, between the tiers of stretchers, and
crowded in after her.

immediately the driver clashed the gears and pulled away, the ambulance
swung in a tight circle, bouncing over the cobbles, and then accelerated
through the gateway and out into the driveway.

Centaine dragged herself to the tailboard of the speeding vehicle and
looked back at the chateau.  The flames were rushing up through the
shell holes in the pink tiles, and dark black smoke towered above it,
rising straight up into the sunlit sky.

Everything, Centaine whispered.  You've taken everything that I love.

Why?  Oh Lord, why have you done this to me?

Ahead of them the other vehicles had pulled off the road at the edge of
the forest, and parked under the trees to avoid the shellfire.  Bobby
Clarke jumped down and ran to each in turn, giving orders to the drivers
and regrouping them into a convoy.  Then, with his own vehicle in the
lead, they sped down to the crossroads and turned into the main road.

Again shell-fire fell close about them, for the German observers already
had the crossroads well covered.  Like a conga line the convoy wove from
one side of the road to the other to avoid the shell holes and the
litter of destroyed carts, dead draught-animals and abandoned equipment.

As soon as they were clear, they closed up and followed the curve of the
road down towards the village.  As they passed the churchyard, Centaine
saw that there was already a shell hole through the green copper-clad
spire.

Although she glimpsed the upper branches of the yew tree that marked the
family plot, Michael's grave was out of sight from the road.

I wonder if we will ever come back, Anna?  Centaine whispered.  I
promised Michael - her voice trailed off.

Of course we will.  Where else would we ever go?  Anna's voice was rough
with her own grief and the jolting of the ambulance.

Both of them stared back at the shot-holed church spire and the ugly
black column of smoke that poured up into the sky above the forest
marking the pyre of their home.

.  .  .

The ambulance convoy caught up with the tail of the main British retreat
on the outskirts of the village.  Here the military police had set up a
temporary roadblock.

They were sending all able-bodied troops off the road to regroup and to
set up a secondary line of defence, and they were searching all vehicles
for deserters from the battlefield.

Is the new line holding, sergeant?  Bobby Clarke asked the policeman who
checked his papers.  Can we halt in the village?  Some of my patients-
He was interrupted by a shellburst that hit one of the cottages beside
the road.  They were still within extreme range of the German guns.

There is no telling, sir, the sergeant handed Bobby back his papers.  I
were you I would pull back as far as the main base hospital at Arras.
It's going to be a bit hairy around here.  So the long, slow retreat
began.  They were a part of the solid stream of traffic that blocked the
road for as far ahead as they could see, and reduced to the same
excruciating pace.

The ambulances would start with a jolt, roll forward a few yards with
noses to tails, and then pull up again for another interminable wait. As
the day wore on so the heat built up, and the roads so recently running
with winter mud turned to talcum dust.  The flies came from the
surrounding farmyards to the bloody bandages and crawled on the faces of
the wounded men in the tiers of stretchers, and they moaned and cried
out for water.

Anna and Centaine went to ask for water at one of the farm houses
alongside the road, and found it already deserted.  They helped
themselves to milk pails and filled them from the pump.

They moved down the convoy, giving out mugs of water, bathing the faces
of those in fever from their wounds, helping the ambulance orderlies
clean those who had not been able to contain their bodily functions, and
all the time trying to appear cheerful and confident, giving what
comfort they could, despite their own grief and bereavement.

By nightfall the convoy had covered less than five miles, and they could
still hear the din of the battle raging behind them.  once more the
convoy was stalled, waiting to move on.

It looks like we have managed to hold them at Mort Homme, Bobby Clarke
paused beside Centaine.  It should be safe to stop for the night.  He
looked more closely at the face of the soldier who Centaine was tending.
God knows, these poor devils cannot take much more of this.

They need food and rest.  There is a farmyard with a large barn around
the next bend.  It hasn't been taken over by anyone else yet, we" bag
it."

I IL Anna produced a bunch of onions from her sack and used them to
flavour the stew of canned bully beef that they boiled up over an open
fire.  They served the stew with dry army biscuit and mugs of black tea,
all of it begged from the commissary trucks parked in the stalled column
of traffic.

Centaine fed the men who were too weak to help themselves, and then
worked with the orderlies changing the dressings.  The heat and dust had
done their worst, and many of the wounds were inflamed and swollen and
beginning to ooze yellow pus.

After midnight Centaine slipped out of the barn and went to the water
pump in the yard.  She felt soiled and sweaty and longed to bathe her
entire body and change into clean, freshly ironed clothes.  There was no
privacy for that, and the few clothes she had packed in the carpet bag
she knew she must hoard.  Instead she slipped off her petticoat and
knickers from under her skirt and washed them out under the tap, then
wrung them and hung them over the gate while she bathed her face and
arms with cold water.

She let the night breeze dry her skin and slipped her underclothes on
again, still damp.  Then she combed out her hair and she felt a little
better, although her eyes still felt raw and swollen from the smoke and
there was the heavy weight of her grief like a stone in her chest, and
an enormous physical fatigue dragged at her legs and arms.  The images
of her father in the smoke and the white stallion lying on the grass
assailed her once again, but she shut her mind to them.

Enough, she said aloud as she leaned against the gate to the yard.
Enough for today, I'll cry again tomorrow.  Tomorrow never comes.  A
voice replied in broken French from the darkness, and she was startled.
Bobby?  She saw the glow of his cigarette then, and he came out of the
shadows and leaned over the gate beside her.

You are an amazing girl, he went on in English, I have six sisters, but
I've never known a girl like you.  Matter of fact, I've known damned few
chaps that could match you, either.  She was silent, but when he drew on
his cigarette, she studied his face in the glow.  He was about Michael's
age, and handsome.  His mouth was full and sensitive-looking, and there
was a gentleness about him that she had never had an opportunity to
notice before.

I say- he was suddenly embarrassed by her silence_you don't mind me
talking to you, do you?  I'll leave you alone if you prefer.  She shook
her head.  I don't mind.  And for a while they were silent, Bobby
puffing on his cigarette and both of them listening to the distant sound
of the battle and to the occasional soft groan from one of the wounded
in the barn.

Then Centaine stirred and asked, Do you remember the young airman, the
first day you came up to the chAteau?  Yes.  The one with the burned
arm.  What was his name again, Andrew?  No, that was his friend.  The
wild Scot, yes, of course.  His name was Michel.  I remember both of
them.  What became of them?  Michel and I were to be married, but he is
dead- and her pent-up emotions came pouring out.

He was a stranger and gentle, and she found it so easy to talk to him in
the darkness.  She told him in her quaint English about Michel and how
they had planned to live in Africa, then she told him about her father
and how he had changed since her mother had died, and how she had tried
to look after him and stop him drinking so much.

Then she described what had taken place that morning in the burning
chateau.

I think that was what he wanted.  in his own way he was tired of living.
I think he wanted to die and be with Mama again.  But now both he and
Michel are gone.  I have nothing.  When at last she finished she felt
drained and tired, but quietly resigned.

You have really been through the grinder.  Bobby reached out and
squeezed her arm.  I wish I could help you.  You have helped me.  Thank
you.  I could give you something, a little laudanum, it all would help
you sleep.  Centaine felt a surge in her blood, a longing for the quick
oblivion he offered her, it was so strong that it frightened her.  No,
she refused with unnecessary emphasis.  I will be all right.  She
shivered.  I'm cold and it's late now.  Thank you again for listening to
me.  Anna had hung a blanket as a screen at one end of the barn and made
a mattress of straw for them.  Centaine dropped almost immediately into
a deathlike sleep, and woke in the dawn in a sickly sweat with the
urgent nausea on her again.

Still groggy with sleep, she stumbled out and managed to get behind the
stone wall of the yard before heaving up a little bitter yellow bile.
When she straightened up and wiped her mouth, clinging to the wall for
support, she found that Bobby Clarke was beside her, his expression
troubled as he took her wrist and checked her pulse rate.

I think I had better have a look at you, he said.

No.  She felt vulnerable.  This new sickness worried her for she had
always been so healthy and strong.  She was afraid he might discover
some dreadful disease.

I am all right, truly.  But he led her firmly by the hand to the parked
ambulance and drew down the canvas side screens to give them privacy.

Lie there, please.  He ignored her protests and unfastened her blouse to
sound her chest.

His manner was so clinical and professional, that she no longer argued,
and submitted meekly to his examination, sitting up and coughing and
breathing at his instruction.

Now I will examine you, he said.  Do you wish your maid to be present as
a chaperone?  She shook her head mutely and he said, Please remove your
skirt and petticoat.  When he had finished, he made a show of packing
his instruments back in the roll and tying up the retaining ribbons,
while she rearranged her clothing.

Then he looked up at her with such a peculiar expression that she was
alarmed.  Is it something serious?  He shook his head.  Centaine, your
fiance is dead.  You told me that last night.  She nodded.

It is still very early to be certain, very early, but I believe that you
will need a father for the child you are carrying.  Her hands flew to
her stomach, an involuntary protective gesture.

I have really known you only a few days, but that is long enough for me
to realize that I have fallen in love with you.  I would be honoured,
his voice trailed off, for she was not listening to him.

Michel, she whispered.  Michel's baby.  I have not lost everything.  I
still have a part of him Centaine ate the sandwich of ham and cheese
that Anna brought her with such relish that Anna examined her
suspiciously.

I feel so much better now, Centaine forestalled her inquiry.

They helped feed the wounded and ready them for the day's trek.  Two of
their critical cases had died during the night, and the orderlies buried
them hastily in shallow graves at the edge of the field and then the
ambulances started up and pulled out into the main stream of traffic.

The congestion of the previous day's route had abated as the army shook
itself out of mindless confusion into a semblance of order.  The traffic
still rolled slowly, but with fewer halts and false starts, and
alongside the road they passed the rudimentary supply dumps and advanced
headquarters echelons that had been set up during the night.

During one of their halts on the outskirts of a tiny village,
half-concealed by trees and vineyards, Centaine made out the shapes of
aircraft parked at the edge of the vineyard.

She climbed up on the running-board of the ambulance for a better view,
and a flight of aircraft took off from the field and flew low over the
road.

Her disappointment was intense as she realized that they were ungraceful
two-seater De Havilland scouts, not the lovely SESas of Michel's
squadron.  She waved to them, and one of the pilots looked down at her
and waved back.

.  it cheered her somehow and as she returned to her selfimposed duties,
she felt strong and lighthearted, and she joked with the wounded men in
her accented English, and they reacted with delight.  One of them called
herSunshine and the name passed quickly down the line of ambulances.

Bobby Clarke stopped her as she passed.  Great stuff but remember, don't
overdo it."I will be all right.  Don't worry about me.  I can't help it.
He dropped his voice.  Have you thought about my offer?  When will you
give me an answer?  Not now, Bobby.  She pronounced his name with equal
emphasis on each syllable, Bob-bee, and every time she said it he lost
his breath.  We will talk later, but you are very gentil, very kind. Now
the roadway was almost impassable once more, for the reserves were being
hastened up to help hold the new line at Mort Homme.  Endless columns of
marching men slogged past them, and interspersed between the ranks of
bobbing steel helmets were batteries of guns and lines of supply trucks
loaded with all the accoutrements of war.

Their forward progress faltered, and for hours at a time the ambulances
were signalled off the roadway into a field or a side lane while fresh
hordes streamed past.

I'll have to send the ambulances back soon, Bobby told Centaine during
one of their halts.  They are needed .  As soon as we can find a field
hospital, I'llhand over these patients.  Centaine nodded and made as if
to go to the next vehicle where one of the men was calling weakly.  Over
here, Sunshine, can you give me a hand.  Bobby caught her wrist.

Centaine, when we reach the hospital there is bound to be a chaplain
there.  It would only take a few minutes- She gave him her new smile,
and reached up to touch his unshaven cheek with her fingertips.  You are
a kind man, Bobby, but Michel is the father of my son.  I have thought
about it, and I do not need another father.  Centaine, you don't
understand!  What will people think?  A child without a father, a young
mother without a husband, what will they say?  As long as I have my
baby, Bobby, I don't give a, how do you say in English, I don't give
them a fig!  They can say what they like.  I am the widow of Michel
Courtney.

In the late afternoon they found the field hospital they were searching
for.  It was in a field outside Arras.

There were two cottage tents, emblazoned with the red crosses.  These
were serving as operating theatres.  Rough shelters had also been
hastily thrown up around them to accommodate the hundreds of wounded
waiting their turns on the tables.  They were built of tarpaulins over
timber frames, or of corrugated iron scavenged from the surrounding
farms.

Anna and Centaine helped unload their own wounded and carry them into
one of the crowded shelters, then they retrieved their baggage from the
roof of the leading ambulance.  One of their patients noticed their
preparations to leave.

You aren't going, Sunshine, are you?  And hearing him, others pulled
themselves up on an elbow to protest.

What are we going to do without you, luv?

She went to them for the last time, passing from one to the next with a
smile and a joke, stooping to kiss their filthy, pain-contorted faces,
and then at last unable to bear it any more, hurrying back to whence
Anna waited for her.

They picked up the carpet bag and Anna's sack, and started along the
convoy of ambulances which were being refuelled, ready to return to the
battlefield.

Bobby Clarke had waited for them, and now he ran after Centaine. We are
going back, orders from Major Sinclair."Au revoir, Bobby."I'll always
remember you, Centaine. She went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. I hope
it will be a boy, he whispered.

it will be, she told him seriously.  A boy, I am certain of it The
convoy of ambulances trundled away, back into the north, and Bobby
Clarke waved and shouted something that she did not catch, as they were
carried away on the river of marching men and lumbering equipment.

What do we do now?  Anna asked.

We go on, Centaine told her.  Somehow, subtly she had taken charge, and
Anna, increasingly indecisive with each mile between her and Mort Homme,
plodded after her.  They left the sprawling hospital area and turned
southwards once again into the crowded roadway.

Ahead of them over the trees Centaine could make out the roofs and
spires of the town of Arras against the fading evening sky.

Look, Anna!  she pointed.  There is the evening star we are allowed a
wish.  What is yours?  Anna looked at her curiously.  What had come over
the child2 She had seen her father burned to death and her favourite
animal mutilated barely two days before, and yet there was a ferocious
gaiety about her.  It was unnatural.

I wish for a bath and a hot meal Oh, Anna, you always ask for the
impossible.  Centaine smiled at her over her shoulder, transferring the
heavy carpet bag from one hand to the other.

What is your wish, then?  Anna challenged.

I wish that the star leads us to the general, like it led the three wise
men- Don't blaspheme, girl.  But Anna was too tired and uncertain for
the rebuke to have real force behind it.

Centaine knew the town well, for it contained the convent where she had
spent her schooldays.  It was dark by the time they made their way
through the town centre.

The fighting of the early years of the war had left terrible scars on
the lovely seventeenth-century Flemish architecture.  The picturesque
old town hall was pocked with shrapnel splinters and part of the roof
destroyed.  Many of the gabled brick houses surrounding the Grande Place
were also roofless and deserted, although the windows of others were
candlelit.  The more stubborn of the popu lotion had moved back again
immediately the tides of war had rolled by.

Centaine had not made a special note of the way to the monastery that
General Courtney was using as his headquarters when she had last visited
it with Michael, so she could not hope to find it in the dark.  She and
Anna camped in a deserted cottage, eating the last scraps of stale bread
and dried-out cheese from Anna's sack, using the carpet bag for a pillow
and each other for warmth as they lay on the bare floor.

The next morning Centaine dreaded finding the monastery deserted when
she finally rediscovered the lane leading to it, but there was a guard
on the main gate.

Sorry, miss, Army property.  Nobody goes in.  She was still pleading
with him when the black Rolls came racing down the lane behind her and
braked as it reached the gates.  It was coated with dried mud and dust,
and there was a long ugly scratch down both the doors on the nearest
side.

The guard recognized the pennant on the bonnet and waved the Zulu driver
on, and the Rolls accelerated through the tall gates, but Centaine ran
forward and shouted desperately after the car.  In the back seat was the
young officer she had met on her last visit.

Lieutenant Pearce!  She remembered his name, and he glanced back, then
looked startled as he recognized her.

Quickly he leaned across to speak to the driver, and the Rolls pulled up
sharply and then reversed.

,Mademoiselle de Thiry!  John Pearce jumped out and hurried to her.  The
last person I expected, what on earth are you doing here?  I must see
Michael's uncle, General Courtney.

It's important.  He is not here at the moment, the young officer told
her, but you can come with me.  He should be back fairly soon, and in
the meantime we'll find you a place to rest, and something to eat.  It
seems to me that you could use both He took Centaine's carpet bag from
her.  Come along - is this woman with you?  Anna, my servant.  She can
sit in front with Sangane.  He helped Centaine into the Rolls.  The
Germans have made it a pretty busy few days, he settled beside her on
the soft leather, and it looks as though you have been through it as
well.  Centaine looked down at herself: her clothes were dusty and
bedraggled, her hands were dirty and her fingernails had black
half-moons under them.  She could guess what her hair looked like.

I have just come back from the front.  General Courtney went up to take
a look for himself.  John Pearce politely looked away as she tried to
put her hair into place again. He likes to be right up there, still
thinks he's fighting the Buer War, the old devil.  We got as far as Mort
Homme-'That is my village.  Not any more, he told her grimly.  It's
German now, or almost so.  The new front line runs just north of it, and
the village is under fire.  Most of it shot away already you wouldn't
recognize it, I'm sure.

Centaine nodded again.  My home was shelled and burned down.

I'm sorry.  John Pearce went on quickly.  Anyway, it looks as though we
have stopped them.  General Courtney is sure we can hold them at Mort
Homme-'Where is the general?  Staff meeting at Divisional HQ.  He should
be back later this evening.  Ah, here we are.  John Pearce found a
monk's cell for them, and had a servant bring them a meal and two
buckets of hot water.

once they had eaten, Anna stripped off Centaine's clothes, and then
stood her over one of the buckets and sponged her down with hot water.

oh, that feels marvelous.  For once there are no squeals, Anna muttered.
She used her petticoat to dry Centaine, then slipped a clean shift from
the carpet bag over her head and brushed out her hair.  The thick dark
curls were tangled.

Oh Id, Anna, that hurts!  It was too good to last, Anna sighed.

When she had finished, she insisted that Centaine lie on the cot to rest
while she bathed herself and washed out their soiled clothes.  However,
Centaine could not lie still and she sat up and hugged her knees.

Oh darling Anna, I have the most wonderful surprise for you- Anna
twisted the thick grey horse-tail of her damp hair up on to her head and
looked at Centaine quizzically.

Darling Anna, is it?  It must be good news indeed. oh it is, it is!  I'm
going to have Michel's baby. Anna froze.  The blood drained from her
ruddy features, leaving them grey with shock, and she stared at
Centaine, unable to speak.

It's going to be a boy, I'm sure of it.  I can just feel it.

He will be just like Michel!  How can you be sure?  Anna blurted.

Oh, I am sure.  Centaine knelt quickly and pulled up the shift.  Look at
my tummy, can't you just see, Anna?  Her pale smooth stomach was flat as
ever, with the neat dimple of the navel its only blemish.  Centaine
pushed it out strenuously.

Can't you see, Anna, It might even be twins, Michel's father and the
general were twins.  It may run in the family, think of it, Anna, two
like Michel!

No, Anna shook her head, aghast.  This is one of your fairy stories.  I
won't believe that you and that soldier-'Michel isn't a soldier, he's a-
Centaine began, but Anna went on, I won't believe that a daughter of the
house of de Thiry allowed a common soldier to use her like a kitchen
maid.  Allowed, Anna!  Centaine pulled down her shift angrily.  I didn't
allow it, I helped him do it.  He didn't seem to know what to do, at
first, so I helped him, and we worked it out beautifully.  Anna clapped
both hands over her ears.  I don't believe it, I'm not going to listen.
Not after I taught you to be a lady, I just won't listen.  Then what do
you think we were doing at night when I went out to meet him, you know I
went out, you and Papa caught me at it, didn't you?  My baby!  wailed
Anna.  He took advantage-'Nonsense, Anna, I loved it.  I loved every
little thing he did to me.  Oh no!  I won't believe it.  Besides, you
couldn't possibly know, not so soon.  You are teasing old Anna.  You are
being wicked and cruel."You know how I've been sick in the morning."That
doesn't prove- The doctor, Bobby Clarke, the army doctor.

He examined me.  He told me.  Anna was struck dumb at last, there was no
more protests.  It was inescapable: the child had been out at night, she
had been sick in the morning, and Anna believed implicitly in the
infallibility of doctors.  Then there was Centaine's strange and
unnatural elation in the face of all her adversity, it was inescapable.

It's true, then, she capitulated.  Oh, what are we going to do?  Oh, the
good Lord save us from scandal and disgrace, what are we going to do?

Do, Anna?  Centaine laughed at her theatrical lamentations.  We are
going to have the most beautiful baby boy, or if we are lucky, two of
them, and I'm going to need you to help me care for them.  You will help
me, won't you, Anna?  I know nothing about babies, and you know
everything.  Anna's first shock passed swiftly, and she began to
consider not the disgrace and scandal, but the existence of a real live
infant; it was over seventeen years since she had experienced that joy.
Now, miraculously, she was being promised another infant.  Centaine saw
the change in her, the first stirrings of maternal passion.

You are going to help me with our baby.  You won't leave us, we need
you, the baby and !  Anna, promise me, please promise me, and Anna flew
to the cot and swept Centaine into her arms and held her with all her
strength, and Centaine laughed with joy in her crushing embrace.

It was after dark when John Pearce knocked again at the door of the
monk's cell.

The general has returned, Mademoiselle de Thiry.  I have told him you
are here, and he wishes to speak to you as soon as possible.  Centaine
followed the aide-de-camp down the cloisters and into the large
refectory which had been converted into the regimental operations room.
Half a dozen officers were poring over the large-scale map that had been
spread over one of the refectory tables.  The map was porcupined with
coloured pins, and the atmosphere in the room was tense and charged.

As Centaine entered, the officers glanced up at her, but young and
pretty girl could not hold their attention even a for more than a few
seconds and they returned to their tasks.

On the far side of the room, General Sean Courtney was standing with his
back to her.  His jacket, resplendent with red tabs and insignia and
ribbons, hung over the chair on which he was resting one booted foot. He
leaned his elbow on his knee and scowled furiously at the earpiece of a
field telephone from which a faint distorted voice quacked at him.

Sean wore a woollen singlet with sweat-stained armpits and marvellously
flamboyant embroidered braces, decorated with stags and running hounds,
over his shoulders.

He was chewing on an unlit Havana cigar, and suddenly he bellowed into
the field telephone without removing the cigar from his mouth.

That is utter horseshit!  I was there myself two hours ago.  I know!  I
need at least four more batteries Of 25 pounders in that gap, and I need
them before dawn, don't give me excuses, just do it, and tell me when
it's done!

He slammed down the hand-set, and saw Centaine.

My dear, his voice altered and he came to her quickly and took her hand.
I was worried.  The chateau has been completely destroyed.  The new
front line runs not a mile beyond it- He paused, and studied her for a
moment.

What he saw reassured him and he asked, Your father?

She shook her head.  He was killed in the shelling.  I'm sorry, Sean
said simply, and turned to John Pearce. Take Miss de Thiry through to my
quarters.  Then to her, I will follow you in five minutes.  The
general's room opened directly into the main refectory, so that with the
door open Sean Courtney could lie on his cot and watch everything that
went on in his operations room.  It was sparsely furnished, just the cot
and a desk with two chairs, and his locker at the foot of the cot.

Won't you sit here, Mademoiselle?  John Pearce offered her one of the
chairs, and while she waited, Centaine glanced round the small room.

The only item of interest was the desk.  On it stood a hinged photograph
frame, one leaf of which contained the picture of a magnificent mature
woman, with dark Jewish beauty.  It was inscribed across the bottom
corner, Come home safely to your loving wife, Ruth.  The second leaf of
the frame held the picture of a girl of about Centaine's age.  The
resemblance to the older woman was apparent, they could only be mother
and daughter, but the girl's beauty was marred by a petulant, spoiled
expression; the pretty mouth had a hard, acquisitive quirk to it, and
Centaine decided that she did not like her very much at all.

My wife and daughter, Sean Courtney said from the doorway.  He had put
on his jacket and was buttoning it as he came in.

You have eaten?  he asked as he sank into the chair opposite Centaine.

Yes, thank you.  Centaine stood up and picked up the silver box of
Vestas from the desk, struck one and held it for him to light the
Havana.  He looked surprised, then leaned forward and sucked the flame
into the tip of the cigar.  When it was well lit, he leaned back in the
chair and said, My daughter, Storm, does that for me.  Centaine blew out
the match, sat down again and waited quietly for him to enjoy the first
few puffs of fragrant smoke.  He had aged since their last meeting, or
perhaps it was only that he was very tired, she thought.  When did you
last sleep?  she asked, and he grinned.

Suddenly, he looked thirty years younger. You sound like my wife."She is
very beautiful.

Yes, Sean nodded and glanced at the photograph, then back to Centaine.
You have lost everything, he said.

The chateau, my home, and my father She tried to be calm, not let the
terrible hurt show.

You have other family, of course.  Of course, she agreed.  My uncle
lives in Lyon, and I have two aunts in Paris.  I will arrange for you to
travel to Lyon.

No.

Why not?  He looked piqued at her abrupt refusal.

I don't want to go to Lyon, or Paris.  I am going to Africa.  Africa?
Now he was taken aback.  Africa?  Good Lord, why Africa?  Because I
promised Michel, we promised each other we would go to Africa.  But, my
dear- He dropped his eyes, and studied the ash of his cigar.  She saw
the pain that the mention of Michael's name inflicted, she shared it
with him for a moment, and then said, You were going to say, "But Michel
is dead. He nodded.  Yes.  His voice was almost a whisper. I promised
Michel something else, General.  I told him that his son would be born
in the sunshine of Africa. Slowly Sean lifted his head and stared at
her. Michael's son?  His son.  You are bearing Michael's child?  Yes,
All the stupid mundane questions rushed to his lips.  Are you sure?  How
can you be certain?  How do I know it's Michael's child?  And he bit
them back. He had to have time to think to adjust to this incredible
twist of fate.

Excuse me.  He stood up and limped back into the operations room.

Are we in contact with the third battalion yet?  he demanded of the
group of officers.

We had them for a minute, then lost them again.  They are ready to
counter-attack, sir, but they need artillery support.  Get on to those
damned shell wallahs again, and keep trying to get through to Caithness.
He turned to another of his staff.  Roger, what is happening to the
First?  No change, sir.

They have broken two enemy attacks, but they are taking a beating from
the German guns.

Colonel Stevens thinks they can hold.  Good man!  Sean grunted.  It was
like trying to close the leaks in a dyke holding back the ocean with
handfuls of clay, but somehow they were doing it, and every hour they
held on was blunting the cutting edge of the German attack.

The guns are the key, if we can get them up soon enough.  How is the
traffic on the main road?  Clearing and moving faster, it seems, sir. If
they could move the 25-pounders into the gap before morning, then they
could make the enemy pay dearly for their gains.  They would have them
in a salient, they could hit them from three sides, pound them with
artillery.

Sean felt his spirits droop again.  This was a war of guns, it all came
back in the end to the bloody attrition of the guns.  At the front of
his mind Sean made the calculations, assessed the risks and the costs
and gave the orders, but behind that he was making other calculations.
He was thinking of the girl and her claims upon him.

Firstly he had to control his natural reaction to what she had told him,
for Sean was a son of Victoria, and he expected all people, but
especially his own family, to live by the code that had been set in the
previous century.  Of course, young men were expected to sow their wild
oats - by God, Sean himself had sown them by the barrowload, and he
grinned shamefacedly at the memory.  But decent young men left decent
young girls alone, until after they were married.

I'm shocked, he realized, and smiled again.  The officers at the
operations table saw the smile and looked puzzled and uneasy.  What is
the old devil up to now?  They exchanged nervous glances.

Have you got hold of Colonel Caithness yet?  Sean covered the smile with
a ferocious scowl, and they applied themselves diligently to their tasks
once more.

I'm shocked, Sean told himself again, still amused at himself but this
time keeping his face impassive.  And yet Michael himself was your own
love-baby, the fruit of one of your escapades.  Your first-born- The
pain of Michael's death assailed him again, but he drove it back.

Now, the girl.  He began to think it out.  Is she really pregnant, or is
this some elaborate form of blackmail?  It did not take him more than a
few seconds to decide.

I can't be that wrong in my estimate of her.  She truly believes she is
pregnant.  There were areas of the female anatomy and the feminine mind
that were completely alien terrain to Sean.  He had learned, however,
that when a girl believed she was pregnant, she sure as all hell was.

How she knew escaped him, but he was prepared to accept it.  All right,
she's pregnant, but is it Michael's child, and not some other young-
Again his rejection of the idea was swift.  She's a child of a decent
family, carefully guarded by her father and that dragon of hers.  How
she and Michael managed it beats me- He almost grinned again as he
recalled how often and how adroitly he had managed it in his youth,
against equally fearsome odds.  The ingenuity of young love He shook his
head.  All right, I accept it.  It's Michael's child.  Michael's son!
And only then did he allow the joy to rise in him.  Michael's son!
Something of Michael still lives on.  Then he cautioned himself quickly.
Steady on now, don't let's go overboard.  She wants to come out to
Africa, but what the hell are we going to do with her?  I can't take her
in at Emoyeni.  For a moment the image appeared in his mind of the
beautiful home on the hill, The place of the wind in Zulu, which he had
built for his wife.  The longing to be back there with her came
powerfully upon him.

He had to fight it off and apply himself to the immediate problems
again.

Three of them, three pretty girls, all of them proud and strong-willed,
living in the same house.  Instinctively he knew that this little French
girl and his own beloved but lovingly indulged daughter would fight like
two wild cats in a sack.  He shook his head.  By God, that would be the
perfect recipe for disaster, and I wouldn't be there to turn them over
my knee.  I've got to come up with thing better than that.  What in the
name of all that is holy do we do with this pregnant little filly?  Sir!
Sir!  one of his officers called, and offered Sean the head-set of the
field telephone.  I've got through to Colonel Caithness at last.  Sean
snatched the set from him.  Douglas!

He barked into it.  The line was bad, the background hissed and rushed
like the sea, so Douglas Caithness's voice seemed to come from across an
ocean.

Hello, sir, the guns have just come up-'Thank God, Sean growled.

I have deployed them- Caithness gave the map reference.  They are
hammering away already and the Huns seem to have run out of steam.  I am
going to raid them at dawn.

Douglas, be careful, there are no reserves behind you, I won't be able
to support you before noon All right, I understand, but we can't let
them regroup unopposed.  Of course not, Sean agreed.  Keep me informed.
In the meantime I'm moving up four more batteries, and elements of the
Second Battalion, but they won't reach you before noon.  Thank you, sir,
we can use them.  Go to it, man.

Sean handed the instrument back, and while he watched the coloured pins
rearranged on the map, the solution to his personal problem came to him.

Garry- He thought of his twin brother, and felt the familiar twinge of
guilt and compassion.  Garrick Courtney, the brother whom Sean had
crippled.

It had happened so many years ago and yet every instant of that dreadful
day was still so clear in Sean's mind that it might have taken place
that very morning.  The two of them, teenage scamps, arguing over the
shotgun that they had stolen out of their father's gunroom and loaded
with buckshot, as they trotted through the golden grass of the Zululand
hills.

i saw the inkonka first, Garry protested.  They were going out to hunt
an old bushbuck ram whose lair they had discovered the previous day.

I thought of the shotgun, Sean told him, tightening his grip on the
weapon, so I do the shooting.  And, of course, Sean prevailed.  It was
always that way.

It was Garry who took Tinker, their mongrel hunting dog, and circled out
along the edge of thick bush to drive the antelope back where Sean
waited with the shotgun.

Sean heard again Garry's faint shouts at the bottom of the hill, and
Tinker's frantic barks as he picked up the scent of the wary bushbuck.
Then the rush in the grass, and the long yellow stems bursting open as
the inkonka came out, heading straight up to where Sean lay on the crest
of the hill.

He looked immense in the sunlight, for in alarm his shaggy mane was
erected and his dark head with the heavy spiral horns was raised high on
the thick powerful neck.  He stood three foot high at the shoulder and
weighed almost two hundred pounds, and his chest and flanks were barred
and spotted with delicate patterns, pale as chalk on the dark rufous
ground.  He was a magnificent creature, quick and formidable, those
horns were sharp as pikes and could rip the belly out of a man or slice
through his femoral artery, and he came straight at Sean.

Sean fired the choke barrel, and he was so close that the charge of
buckshot struck in a solid blast, and tore through the animal's barrel
chest into lung and heart.

The bushbuck screamed and went down, kicking and bleating, its sharp
black hooves clashing on the rocky ground as it slid back down the hill.

I got him!  howled Sean, leaping from his hiding place. I got him first
shot.  Garry!  I got him!  From below Garry and the dog came pelting
through the coarse golden grass.  It was a race as to which of them
could get to the dying animal first.  Sean carried the shotgun, the
second barrel still loaded, and the hammer at full cock, and as he ran a
loose stone rolled under his foot and he fell.  The gun flew from his
grip.  He hit the ground with his shoulder and the second barrel fired
with a stunning thump of sound.

When Sean scrambled up again, Garry was sitting beside the dead
bushbuck, whimpering.  His leg had taken the full charge of buckshot at
almost point blank range.

it had hit him below the knee, and the flesh was wet red ribbons, the
bone white chips and slivers and the blood a bright fountain in the
sunlight.

Poor Garry, Sean thought, now a lonely one-legged old cripple.  The
woman whom Sean had put with child, and whom Garry had married before
she gave birth to Michael, had finally been driven insane by her own
hatred and bitterness and died in the flames she herself had set.

Now Michael, too, was gone, and Garry had nothing nothing except his
books and his scribblings.

I'll send him this bright pert girl and her unborn infant.  The solution
came to Sean with a flood of relief. At last I can make some retribution
for all I have done to him.  I will send him my own grandchild, the
grandchild I should so dearly love to claim as my own; I'll send to him
in part payment.  He turned from the map and limped quickly back to
where the girl waited.

She rose to meet him and stood quietly, her hands clasped demurely in
front of her, and Sean saw the worry and fear of rejection in her dark
eyes, and the way her lower lip trembled as she waited for his judgment.

He closed the door behind him, and he went to her and took her small
neat hands in his great hairy paws and he stooped over her and kissed
her gently.  His beard scratched her soft cheek, but she sobbed with
relief and flung both arms around him.

I'm sorry, my dear, he said.  You took me by surprise.

I just had to get used to the idea.  Sean hugged her, but very gently,
for the mystery of pregnancy was one of the very few things that daunted
and awed Sean Courtney.

Then he settled her back in the chair.

Can I go to Africa?  She was smiling, though the tears still trembled in
the corners of her eyes.

Yes, of course, that's your home now, for as far as I am concerned, you
are Michael's wife.  Africa is where you belong.  I'm so happy, she told
him softly, but it was more than merc happiness.  It was a vast sense of
security and protection, this man's aura of power and strength was now
held over her like a shield.

You are Michael's wife, he had said.  He had acknowledged that which she
herself believed, somehow his endorsement made it a fact.

This is what I am going to do.  The German U-boats have been playing
such havoc.  A sailing for you on one of the Red Cross hospital ships
that leave directly from the French Channel ports will be the safest way
of getting you home.  Anna- Centaine cut in quickly.

Yes, of course, she must go with you.  I'll fix that also.

You will both volunteer for nursing duties, and I'm afraid you'll be
expected to work your passage.  Centaine nodded eagerly.

Michael's father, my brother, Garrick Courtney-Sean started.

yes, yes!  Michel told me all about him.  He is a great hero, he won the
cross of the English Queen Victoria for his courage in a battle against
the Zulus, Centaine cut in excitedly, and he is a scholar who writes
books of history.  Sean blinked at the description of poor Garry, but of
course it was factually correct and he nodded.

He is also a kind and gentle person, a widower who has just lost his
only son- An almost telepathic understanding passed between them;
although Centaine knew the truth, from now on Michael would always be
referred to as Garrick Courtney's son.  Michael was his whole life, and
you and I know how he must feel at the loss, for we share it. Centaine's
eyes sparkled with unshed tears and she bit down on her lower lip as she
nodded vehemently.

I will cable him.  He will be at Cape Town to meet you when the ship
docks.  I will also give you a letter to take to him.  You can be
certain of his welcome and his protection, for both you and Michael's
child.  Michael's son, said Centaine firmly, and then hesitantly, but I
will see you also, General, sometimes?  Often, Sean assured her, leaning
forward to pat her hand gently.  Probably more often than you wish.

After that it all happened very quickly; she would learn that with Sean
Courtney, this was always the way.

She remained only five more days at the monastery, but in that time the
German breakthrough at Mort Homme was contained by dour bloody fighting,
and once the line was stabilized and reinforced, Sean Courtney had a few
hours each day to spare for her.

They dined together every evening, and he answererd her endless
questions about Africa and its people and animals, about the Courtney
family and its members, with good-natured patience.  Mostly they spoke
English, but when at a loss for a word, Centaine lapsed into Flemish
again.

Then at the end of the meal she would prepare his cigar and light it for
him, pour his cognac and then perch beside him, talking still, until
Anna came to fetch her or Sean was summoned to the operations room; then
she would come to him and hold up her face for his kiss with such a
childlike innocence, that Sean found himself dreading the approaching
hour of her departure.

John Pearce brought their nursing uniforms to Centaine and Anna.  The
white veils and the white cross-straps of the apron were worn over a
blue-grey dress and Centaine and Anna made the finer adjustments
themselves, their needles giving a touch of French flair to the baggy
shapeless outfits.

Then it was time to leave, and Sangane loaded their meagre baggage into
the Rolls, and Sean Courtney came down the cloisters, gruff and stern
with the pain of leavetaking.

Look after her, he ordered Anna, and Anna glowered at him in righteous
indignation at this gratuitous advice.

I will be at the docks to meet you when you come home, Centaine promised
him, and Sean scowled with embarrassment and pleasure when she went up
on tiptoe to kiss him in front of his staff.  He watched the Rolls Pull
away with the girl waving at him through the back window, then roused
himself and rounded on his staff.

Well, gentlemen, what are we all gawking at, we're fighting a war here,
not conducting a bloody Sundayschool picnic.

And he stomped back down the cloisters, angry at himself for already
feeling the girl's absence so painfully.

The Protea Castle had been a mailship of the Union Castle Line.  She was
a fast three-funnel passenger liner which had operated on the Cape to
Southampton run before being converted to a hospital ship and repainted
pristine white with scarlet crosses on her sides and funnels.

She lay at the dock of the inner harbour of Calais, taking on her
passengers for the southward voyage, and they were a far cry from the
elegant affluent travellers who had filled her pre-war lists.  Five
railway coaches had been shunted on to the rail spur of the wharf, and
from these the pathetic stream of humanity crossed to the liner and went
up her fore and aft gangways.

These were the veritable sweepings of the battlefield.

They had been rejected by the medical board as so incapacitated that
they could not even be patched up sufficiently to feed the man-hungry
Baal of the British Expeditionary Force.

There would be twelve hundred on board for the southbound voyage, and on
the return northbound leg the Protea Castle would be repainted in the
camouflage of an ordinary troopship and bring another load of young
eager and healthy young men for a sojourn in the hell of the trenches of
northern France.

Centaine stood beside the Rolls at the wharfside and stared with dismay
at this ruined legion as they went aboard.  There were the amputees,
missing an arm or a leg, the lucky ones with the severance below knee or
elbow.  They swung across the wharf on their crutches, or with an empty
sleeve of their tunic pinned up neatly.

Then there were the blind, led by their companions, and the spinal cases
carted aboard on their stretchers, and the gas victims with the mucous
membranes of their noses and throats burned away by the chlorine gas,
and the shell-shocked who twitched and jerked and rolled their eyes
uncontrollably, and the burn victims with monstrous pink shiny scar
tissue that had contracted to trap their limbs into the bent position,
or drawn down their ravaged heads on to their chests, so that they were
as twisted and contorted as hunchbacks.

You can give us a hand here, luv.  one of the orderlies had spotted her
uniform, and Centaine roused herself.

She turned quickly to the Zulu driver. I will find your father, Mbejane?

Mbejane!  Sangane grinned happily that she had the name right. And I
will give him your message.  Go in peace, little lady.

Centaine clasped his hand, then snatched her carpet bag from him and,
followed by Anna, hurried to her new duties.

The loading went on through the night, and only when it was completed a
little before dawn were they free to try and find the quarters that they
had been allocated.

The senior medical officer was a grim-faced major, and it was apparent
that word had been whispered to him from on high.

Where have you been?  he demanded when Centaine reported to his cabin. I
have been expecting you since noon yesterday.  We sail in two hours.  I
have been here since noon down on "C" Deck, helping Doctor Solomon.  You
should have reported to me, he told her coldly. You can't just wander
around the ship suiting yourself.

I am responsible to General - he cut himself off, and went off on a new
tack.  Besides, "C" Deck is other ranks."Pardon?

Through practice, Centaine's English had improved immeasurably, but many
terms still eluded her.

Other ranks, not officers.  From now on you will be working with
officers only.  The lower decks are out of bounds to you, out of bounds,
he repeated slowly, as though speaking to a backward child.  Am I making
myself clear to you?  Centaine was tired, and not used to this type of
treatment.  Those men down there hurt just as much as the officers do,
she told him furiously.  They bleed and die just like officers do.  The
major blinked and sat back in his chair.

He had a daughter the same age as this French chippy, but she would
never have dared answer him like that.

I can see, young lady, that you are going to be a handful, he said
ominously.  I did not like the idea of having you ladies on board, I
knew it would lead to trouble.

Now you listen to me.  You are going to be quartered in the cabin right
across from mine, he pointed through the open door.  You will report to
Doctor Stewart and work to his orders.  You will eat in the officers
mess, and the lower decks are out of bounds to you.  I expect you to
conduct yourself with the utmost propriety at all times, and you can be
certain that I will be keeping a very sharp eye on you.  After such a
bleak introduction, the quarters that she and Anna had been allocated
came as a delightful surprise, and again she suspected that the hand of
General Sean Courtney had moved.  They had a suite that would have cost
20o guineas before the war, twin beds rather than bunks, a small
drawing-room with sofa and armchairs and writing-desk, and their own
shower and toilet, all tastefully furnished in autumn shades.

Centaine bounced on the bed and then fell back on the pillows and sighed
blissfully.

Anna, I am too tired to undress.  Into your nightdress, Anna ordered.

And don't forget to clean your teeth.  They were wakened by the alarm
gongs ringing, the blast of whistles in the companionway and a hammering
on the cabin door.  The ship was under way, vibrating to her engines and
working to the scend of the sea.

After the first moments of panic, they learned from their cabin steward
that it was a boat drill.  Dressing and strapping themselves hastily
into their bulky life-jackets, they trooped on to the upper deck and
found their lifeboat station.

The ship had just cleared the harbour breakwater and was standing out
into the Channel.  It was a grey misty morning and the wind whipped
about their ears so that there was a general murmur of relief when the
stand down was sounded and breakfast was served in the firstclass
dining-room, which had been converted into the officers mess for the
walking wounded.

Centaine's entrance caused a genteel pandemonium.

Very few of the officers had realized that there was a pretty girl on
board, and they found it difficult to conceal their delight.  There was
a great deal of jockeying for position, but very quickly the first
officer, taking advantage of the fact that the captain was still on the
bridge, exercised his rank, and Centaine found herself installed at his
right hand surrounded by a dozen attentive and solicitous gentlemen,
with Anna seated opposite, glowering like a guardian bull-dog.

The ship's officers were all British, but the patients were colonials,
for the Protea Castle was going on eastwards after rounding the Cape of
Good Hope.  Seated around Centaine there were a captain of Australian
Light Horse who had lost a hand, a pair of New Zealanders, one with a
piratical black patch over his missing eye and the other with an equally
piratical Long John Silver wooden stump, a young Rhodesian named
Jonathan Ballantyne who had won an MC at the Somme but paid for it with
a burst of machine-gun fire through the belly, and other eager young men
who had all lost parts of their anatomy.

They plied her with food from the buffet.  No, no, I cannot eat your
great English breakfasts, you will make me fat and ugly like a pig.  And
she glowed at their concerted denials.  The war had been in progress
since Centaine was a mere fourteen years old, and with all the young men
gone, she had never known the pleasure of being surrounded by a horde of
admirers.

She saw the senior medical officer scowling at her from the captain's
table, and as much to spite him as for her own amusement, she set
herself out to be pleasant to the young men surrounding her.  Although
she felt a stirring of guilt that she might be less than faithful to
Michael's memory, she consoled herself.

It is my duty, they are my patients.  A nurse must be good to her
patients.  And she smiled and laughed with them, and they were
pathetically eager to catch her attention, render small services for her
and answer her questions.

Why are we not sailing in convoy?  she asked.  Is it not dangerous to go
down Channel en plein soleil, in broad daylight?  I have heard about the
Rewa.  The Rewa was the British hospital ship, with 300 wounded on
board, that had been torpedoed by a German U-boat in the Bristol Channel
on January 4th that year.

Fortunately, the ship had been abandoned with the loss of only three
lives, but it had fuelled the anti-German propaganda.  Displayed in most
public places were the posters headed: What a Red Rag is to a bull, the
Red Cross is to the Hun, with a graphic account of the atrocity beneath.

Centaine's question precipitated a lively argument at the breakfast
table.

The Rewa was torpedoed at night, Jonathan Ballantyne pointed out
reasonably.  The U-boat commander probably didn't see the red crosses.
Oh, come now!  Those U-boat chaps are absolute butchers- I don't agree.
They are just ordinary fellows like you and me.  The captain of this
ship obviously believes that too, that's why we are covering the most
dangerous down-channel leg in daylight, to let the U-boats get a good
look at our Red Cross markings.  I think they'll leave us alone, once
they know what we are.  Nonsense, damned Huns would torpedo their own
mothers-in-law-'So would I, mind you!  This ship is steaming at
twenty-two knots, the first officer reassured Centaine.  The U-boat is
capable of only seven knots when submerged.  It would have to be lying
directly in our track to have any chance of a shot at us.

Odds of a million to one, miss, you don't have to worry at all.  just
enjoy the voyage.  A tall, round-shouldered young doctor with a mild
scholarly air and steel-rimmed spectacles stood before Centaine as she
rose from the breakfast table.

I am Dr Archibald Stewart, Nurse de Thiry, and Major Wright has put you
in my charge.  Centaine liked the new form of address.  Nurse de Thiry
had a nice professional ring to it.  She was not so certain that she
enjoyed being in anyone's charge, however.

Do you have any medical or nursing training?  Dr Stewart went on, and
Centaine's initial liking for him cooled.

He had exposed her in the first few seconds, and in front of her
new-found admirers.  She shook her head, trying not to make the
confession public, but he went on remorselessly.

I thought not.  He eyed her dubiously, and then seemed to become aware
of her embarrassment.  Never mind, a nurse's most important duty is to
cheer up her patients.

From what little I've seen, you are very good at that.  I think we'll
make you chief cheerer-upper, but only on "A" Deck.  Strict orders from
Major Wright.  "A" Deck only.  Dr Archibald Stewart's appointment turned
out to be inspired.  From an early age, Centaine's organizational skills
had been honed in the running of the chAteau of Mort Homme, where she
had been her father's hostess and assistant housekeeper.  Effortlessly
she manipulated the band of young men that had gathered about her into
an entertainments team.

The Protea Castle had a library of many thousands of volumes, and she
quickly instituted a distribution and collection scheme for the
bedridden cases, and a roster of readers for the blind and illiterate
amongst the men on the lower decks.  She arranged smoking concerts and
deck games and card tournaments, the comte had been a wicked bridge
player and taught her his skills.

Her team of one-eyed, one-legged, maimed assistant alleviators of the
boredom of the long voyage vied with each other to win her approval and
render their services; and the patients in the tiers of bunks thought up
a dozen tricks to delay her beside them when she made her unofficial
rounds each morning.

Amongst the patients was a captain of the Natal Mounted Rifles who had
been in the convoy of ambulances during the retreat from Mort Homme, and
he greeted her ecstatically the first time she entered his ward with her
armful of books.

Sunshine!  It's Sunshine herself!  and the nickname followed her about
the ship.

Nurse Sunshine."When the usually surly chief medical officer, Major
Wright, used the nickname for the first time, Centaine's adoption by the
ship's company was unanimous.

In the circumstances there was little time for mourning, but every night
just before composing herself for sleep, Centaine lay in the darkness
and conjured up Michael's image in her mind's eye, and then clasped both
hands over her lower stomach. Our son, Michel, our son!  The brooding
skies and brutal black seas of the Bay of Biscay were left behind on the
long white wake, and ahead of the bows the flying fish spun like silver
coins across the blue velvet surface of the ocean.

At latitude 3c, degrees north, the debonair young Captain Jonathan
Ballantyne, who was the reputed heir to the 100,000-acre cattle ranches
of his father Sir Ralph Ballantyne, Prime Minister of Rhodesia, proposed
marriage to Centaine.

I can hear poor Papa, Centaine mimicked the comte so accurately that it
cast a shadow in Anna's eyes.  "100,000 acres, you crazy wicked child.
Tiens alors!  How can you refuse 100,000 acres?"

After that the marriage proposals became an epidemic even Dr Archibald
Stewart, her immediate superior, blinking through his steel-rimmed
spectacles and sweating nervously, stammered through a carefully
rehearsed speech, and looked more gratified than abashed when Centaine
kissed both his cheeks in polite refusal.

At the equator Centaine prevailed on Major Wright to don the regalia of
King Neptune, and the crossing ceremony was conducted amidst wild
hilarity and widespread inebriation.  Centaine herself turned out to be
the main attraction, clad in a mermaid costume of her own design.

Anna had protested strenuously at the dkollet6_, all the while she
helped to sew it, but the ship's company adored it.  They whistled and
clapped and stamped, and there was another rash of proposals immediately
after the crossing.

Anna huffed and gruffed, but secretly was well content with the change
she saw coming over her charge.  Before her eyes Centaine was making
that wonderful transformation from girl to young womanhood.  Physically
she was beginning to bloom with early pregnancy.  Her fine skin took on
a lustre like mother-of-pearl, she lost the last vestiges of adolescent
gawkiness as her body filled without losing any of its grace.

However, more powerful were the other changes, the growing confidence
and poise, the awareness of her own powers and gifts that she was only
now beginning to exercise fully.  Anna had known that Centaine was a
natural mimic, could switch from the midi accent of Jacques, the groom,
to the Walloon of the chambermaids and then to the Parisian intellectual
of her music teacher, but now she realized that the child had a talent
for Ian guages which had never been tested.  Centaine was already
speaking such fluent English that she could differentiate between the
Australian and South African and pure Oxford English accents, and take
them off with startling accuracy.  When she greeted her Aussies with a
dinky Gid die!  they hooted with delight.

Anna had known also that Centaine had a way with figures and money.  She
had taken over the family accounts when the estate factor had fled to
Paris in the first months of the war, and Anna had marvelled at her
ability to cast a long column of figures simply by running her pen down
it, without the laborious carrying over of digits, and without moving
her lips, all of which Anna considered miraculous.

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 winnings flabbergasted Anna who did not really approve of gambling.
Centaine reinvested these.  She organized a syndicate with Jonathan
Ballantyne and Dr Stevens and they were big punters on the daily auction
and sweepstake on the ship's I run.  By the time they crossed the
equator, Centaine had added nearly two hundred sovereigns to the hoard
of louis I I d'or they had salvaged from the chateau.

Anna had always known that Centaine read too much. It will damage your
eyes, she had warned her often enough, but she had never realized the
depth of the knowledge that Centaine had gathered from her books, not
until she heard it demonstrated in conversation and discussion.  She
held her own even against such formidable i debaters as Dr Archibald
Stewart, and yet Anna noticed that she was cunning enough not to
antagonize her audience by ostentatiously flaunting her learning, and
would usually end an argument on a conciliatory note that allowed her
male victim to retreat with only slightly ruffled dignity.

Yes, Anna nodded comfortably to herself, as she watched the girl
blooming and opening like some lovely flower in the tropical sunshine,
she's a clever one, just like her Mama.  It seemed that Centaine really
had a physical need for warmth and sunlight.  She would turn her face up
to the sun every time she went on deck.  Oh, Anna, I did so hate the
cold and the rain.  Doesn't this feel wonderful?

You are turning ugly brown, Anna warned her.  It's so unladylike.  And
Centaine considered her own limbs thoughtfully. Not brown, Anna, gold!
Centaine had read so much and queried so many people, that she seemed
already to know the southern hemisphere into which their ship now thrust
its bows.  Centaine would wake Anna and take her on to the upper deck to
act as chaperone while the officer of the watch showed her the southern
stars.  And despite the late hour, Anna was dazzled by the splendours of
this sky that each evening revealed more of itself before their upturned
eyes.

Look, Anna, there is Achernar at last!  It was Michel's own special
star.  We should all have a special star, he said, and he chose mine for
me.  Which is it?  Anna asked.  Which is your star?  Acrux.  There!  The
brightest star in the Great Cross.

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, Anna?  Romantic twaddle, Anna sniffed, and
secretly regretted that she had never had a man to say such things to
her.

Then Anna came to recognize in her charge a talent that seemed to make
all the others pale.  It was the ability of making men listen to her. It
was quite extraordinary to see men like Major Wright and the Protea
Castle's captain actually keep silent and attend, without that
infuriatingly indulgent masculine smirk, when Centaine spoke seriously.

She's only a child, Anna marvelled, yet they treat her like a woman, no,
no, more than that even, they are beginning to treat her like an equal.
That was truly astonishing.

Here were these men according to a young girl the respect that thousands
of other women, Emmeline Pankhurst and Annie Kenney at their head, had
been burning property, throwing themselves under racehorses,
hunger-striking and enduring prison sentences to obtain, so far
unsuccessfully.

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?
Savannahs?  No such luck Sunshine, it's one of the most Godforsaken
deserts in the entire world.

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
unannounced.  Hers was a warrior family, so her pride was fierce when
Lothar had ridden away with a Hottentot servant and three spare horses
to seek his father who was already in the field against the English.

Lothar had found his father at Magersfontein with his uncle Koos De La
Rey, the legendary Boer commander, and had undergone his initiation to
battle two days later when the British tried to force the passage
through the Magersfontein hills and relieve the siege of Kimberley.

Lothar De La Rey was five days past his fourteenth birthday on the dawn
of the battle, and he killed his first Englishman before six that
morning.  It had been a less difficult target than a hundred springbok
and running kudu had offered him before.

Lothar, one of the five hundred picked marksmen, had stood to the
parapet of the trench that he had helped dig along the foot of the
Magersfontein hills.  The idea of digging a trench and using it as cover
had at first repelled the Boers, who were essentially horsemen and loved
to range fast and wide.  Yet General De La Rey had persuaded them to try
this new tactic, and the lines of advancing English infantry had walked
unsuspectingly on to the trenches in the deceptive early light.

Leading the advance towards where Lothar lay was a powerful, thickset
man with flaming red muttonchop whiskers.  He strode a dozen paces ahead
of the line, his kilts swinging jauntily, a tropical pith helmet set at
a rakish angle over one eye and bared sword in his right hand.

At that moment the sun rose over the Magersfontein hills, and its ripe
orange light flooded the open, featureless veld.  it lit the ranks of
advancing highlanders like a stage effect, perfect shooting light, and
the Boers had paced out the ranges in front of their trenches and marked
them with cairns of stones.

Lothar took his aim on the centre of the Englishman's forehead, but like
the men beside him was held by a strange reluctance, for this seemed not
much short of murder.  Then, almost at its own volition, the Mauser
jumped against his shoulder and the crack of the shot seemed to come
from very far away.  The British officer's helmet sprang from his head
and spun end over end.  He was driven back a pace and his arms flew
open.  The sound of the bullet striking the man's skull came back to
Lothar, like a ripe watermelon dropped on to a stone floor.  The sword
flashed in the sunlight as it fell from the soldier's hand, then with a
slow, almost elegant pirouette, he sank into the low coarse scrub.

Hundreds of highlanders had lain pinned in front of the trenches all
that day.  Not a man of them dared lift his head, for the waiting rifles
in the trenches a hundred paces from where they lay were wielded by some
of the finest marksmen in the world.

The African sun burned the backs of their knees below I the kilts until
they swelled, and the skin burst open like over-ripe fruit.  The wounded
highlanders cried for water and some of the Boers in the trenches threw
their water bottles towards them, but they fell short.

Though Lothar had killed fifty men since then, that was the day he would
remember all his life.  He always marked it as the day he had become a
man.

Lothar was not among those who had thrown his water bottle.  Instead, he
had shot dead two of the Englishmen as they wriggled forward on their
bellies to try and reach the water-bottles.  His hatred of the English,
learned at the knees of both his mother and his father, had truly be,
zun to flower that day and had come into full fruiting in the years that
followed.

The English had hunted him and his father like wild animals across the
veld.  His beloved aunt and three female cousins had died of diphtheria,
the white sore throat, in the English concentration camps, but Lothar
had made himself believe the story that the English had put fish-hooks
in the bread that they fed the Boer women to rip out their throats.  It
was an English thing, this war on the women and the young girls and the
children.

He and his father and his uncles had fought on long otter all hope of
victory was gone, the Bitter Enders, they called themselves with pride.
When the others, starved to walking skeletons, sick with dysentery and
covered with the running ulcerations which they called veld sores,
caused by exposure and malnutrition, dressed in their rags and sacking,
with only three rounds a piece remaining in their bandoliers, had gone
in to surrender to the English at Vereeniging, Petrus De La Rey and his
son Lothar had not gone in with them.

Witness my oath, oh Lord of my people, Petrus had stood bareheaded in
the veld, with his seventeen-year-old son Lothar beside him.  The war
against the English will never end.  This I swear in your sight, oh Lord
God of Israel.  Then he had placed the black leather-covered Bible in
Lothar's hands and made him swear the same oath.

The war against the English will never end- Lothar had stood beside his
father as he cursed the traitors, -he cowards who would no longer fight
on, Louis Botha and jannie Smuts, even his own brother Koos De La Rey.
You, who would sell your people to the Philistine, may you live all your
lives under the English yoke and all burn in hell for ten thousand
years.  Then the father and the boy had turned their backs and ridden
away, towards the vast and land that was the domain of Imperial Germany,
and left the others to make peace with England.

Because both father and son were strong, hard workers, both of them
endowed with natural shrewdness and courage, because Lothar's mother was
a German of good family with excellent connections and some wealth, they
had prospered in German South-West Africa.

Petrus De La Rey, Lothar's father, was a self-taught engineer of
considerable skill and ingenuity.  What he did not know he could
improvise: the saying was, "N Boer maak altyd n plan', a Boer will
always make a plan.

Through his wife's connections he obtained the contract to reconstruct
the breakwater of Liideritzbucht harbour, and when that was successfully
completed, the contract to build the railway line northwards from the
Orange river to Windhoek, the capital of German South-West.

He taught Lothar his engineering skills.  The boy learned swiftly, and
by the age of twenty-one was a full partner in the construction and
road-building company of De La Rey and Son.

His mother, Christina De La Rey, selected a pretty blonde German girl of
good family and moved her diplomatically into her son's orbit, and they
were married before Lothar's twenty-third birthday.  She bore Lothar a
beautiful blond son on whom he doted.

Then the English intruded upon their lives once more, threatening to
plunge the entire world into war by opposing the legitimate ambitions of
the German empire.

Lothar and his father had gone to Governor Seitz with an offer to build
up, at their own expense, supply dumps in the remote areas of the
tcrritory to be used by the German forces to resist the English
invasion, which"would surely come from the Union of South Africa, now
governed by those traitors and turncoats Smuts and Louis Botha.

There had been a German naval captain in Windhoek at the time; he had
quickly recognized the value of the De La Rey offer and prevailed on the
governor to accept it.

He had sailed with the father and son along that dreadful littoral that
so well deserved the name Skeleton Coast, to select a site for a base
from which German naval vessels could refuel and revictual, even after
the ports of Lilderitzbucht and Walvis Bay were captured by the Union
forces.

They discovered a remote and protected bay three hundred miles north of
the tenuous settlements at Walvis Bay and Swakopmund, a site almost
impossible to reach overland, for it was guarded by the fiery deserts.
They loaded a small coastal steamer with the naval stores sent out to
them secretly from Bremerhaven in a German cruise ship.  There were 500
tons of fuel oil in 44-gallon drums, engine spares and canned foods,
small arms and ammunition, nine-inch naval shells, and fourteen of the
long Mark VII acoustic torpedoes, to re-arm the German U-boats if they
should ever operate in these southern oceans.  These supplies were
ferried ashore and buried amongst the towering dunes.  The lighters were
painted with protective tar and buried with the stores.

This secret supply base was finally established only weeks before the
Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo and the Kaiser was
forced to move against the Serbian revolutionaries to protect the
interests of the German empire.  immediately France and Britain had
seized upon this as a pretext for precipitating the war after which they
had been lusting.

Lothar and his father saddled their horses and called out their
Hottentot servants, kissed their women and Lothar's son farewell, and
rode out on commando against the English and their unionist minions once
again.  They were six hundred strong, riding under the Boer General
Maritz, when they reached the Orange river and built their laager and
waited for the moment to strike.

Each day armed men rode in to join them, tough, bearded men, proud, hard
fighters with the Mousers slung on their shoulders and the bandoliers of
ammunition crisscrossing their wide chests.  After each joyous greeting,
they gave their news, and it was all good.

The old comrades were flocking to the cry of Commando!  Everywhere Boers
were repudiating the treacherous peace which Smuts and Botha had
negotiated with the English.  All the old Boer generals were taking to
the field.  De Wet was camped at Mushroom Valley, Kemp was a
Treurfontein with eight hundred, Beyers and Fourie were all out and had
declared for Germany against England.

Smuts and Botha seemed reluctant to precipitate a conflict between Boer
and Boer, for the Union forces consisted of seventy percent Dutch-born
soldiers.  They were begging, wheedling and pleading with the rebels,
sending envoys to their camps, prostrating themselves in the attempt to
avoid bloodshed, but each day the rebel forces grew stronger and more
confident.

Then a message reached them, carried by a horseman riding in great haste
across the desert from Windhoek.  It was a message from the Kaiser
himself, relayed to them by Governor Seitz.

Admiral Graf Von Spee with his squadron of battlecruisers had won a
devastating naval battle at Coronel on the Chilean coast.  The Kaiser
had ordered Von Spee to round the Horn and cross the southern Atlantic
to blockade and bornbark the South African ports in support of their
rebellion against the English and the Unionists.

They stood under the fierce desert sun and cheered and sang, united and
sure of their cause, and certain of their victory.  They were waiting
only for the last of the Boer generals to come in to join them before
they marched on Pretoria.

Koos De La Rey, Lothar's uncle, grown old and feeble and indecisive, had
still not come in.  Lothar's father sent messages to him, urging him to
do his duty, but he vacillated, swayed by the treacherous oratory of
Jannie Smuts and his misguided love and loyalty for Louis Botha.

Koen Brits was the other Boer leader they were waiting for, that giant
of granite, standing six foot six inches tall, who could drink a bottle
of fiery Cape Smoke the way a lesser man might quaff a mug of ginger
beer, who could lift a trek ox off its feet, spit a stream of tobacco
juice a measured twenty paces and with his Mauser hit a running
springbok at two hundred paces.  They needed him, for a thousand
fighting men would follow him when he decided which way to ride.

However, Jannie Smuts sent this remarkable man a message: Call out your
commando, Oom Koen, and ride with me.  The reply was immediate.  Ja my
old friend, we are mounted and ready to ride, but who do we fight,
Germany or England?  So they lost Brits to the Unionists.

Then Koos De La Rey, travelling to a final meeting with Jannie Smuts at
which he would make his decision, ran into a police roadblock outside
Pretoria and instructed his chauffeur to drive through it.  The police
marksmen shot him in the head.  So they lost De La Rey.

Of course, Jannie Smuts, that cold, crafty devil, had an excuse.  He
said that the roadblock had been ordered to prevent the escape of the
notorious band of bank robbers, the Foster gang, from the area, and that
the police had opened fire on a mistaken identity.  However, the rebels
knew better.  Lothar's father had wept openly when they received the
news of his brother's murder, and they had known that there was no
turning back, no further chance for parley, they would have to carry the
land at rifle-point.

The plan was for all the rebel commandos to join up with Maritz on the
Orange river, but they had underestimated the new mobility of the forces
against them, afforded by the petrol-driven motor car.  They had
forgotten also that Botha and Smuts had long ago proved themselves the
most able of all the Boer generals.  When at last they moved, these two
moved with the deadly speed of angry mambas.

They caught De Wet at Mushroom Valley and smashed his commando with
artillery and machine- guns.  There gu were terrible casualties, and De
Wet fled into the Kalah ari, pursued by Koen Brits and a motorized
column that captured him at Waterburg in the desert.

Then the Unionists swung back and engaged Beyers and his commando near
Rustenberg.  Once the battle was lost Beyers tried to escape by swimming
the flooded Vaal river.  His boot-laces became entangled and they found
his body three days later on the bank downstream.

On the Orange river, Lothar and his father waited for the inevitable
onslaught, but bad news reached them before the Unionists did.

The English Admiral, Sir Doveton Sturdee, had intercepted Von Spee at
the Falkland Islands, and sunk his great cruisers Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau and the rest of his squadron with only ten British seamen
killed.  The rebels hope of succour had gone down with the German fleet.

Still they fought doggedly when the Unionists came, but it was in vain.
Lothar's father took a bullet through the gut, and Lothar carried him
off the field and tried to get him back across the desert to Windhoek
where Christina could nurse him.  It was five hundred miles of terrible
going through the waterless wastes.  The old man's pain was so fierce
that Lothar wept for him, and the wound was contaminated by the contents
of his perforated intestines and mortified so that the stench brought
the hyenas howling around the camp at night.

But he was a tough old man and it took him many days to die.

Promise me, my son, he demanded with his last breath that stank of
death, promise me that the war with the English will never end.  I
promise you, Father.  Lothar leaned over him to kiss his cheek, and the
old man smiled and closed his eyes.

Lothar buried him under a camelthorn tree in the wilderness; he buried
him deeply so that the hyena would not smell him and dig him up.  Then
he rode on home to Windhoek.

Colonel Franke, the German commander, recognized Lothar's value, and
asked him to raise a levy of scouts.

Lothar assembled a small band of hardy Boers, German settlers,
Bondelswart Hottentots and black tribesmen, and took them out into the
desert to await the invasion of Unionist troops.

Smuts and Botha came with 45,000 men and landed at Swakopmund and
Ldderitzhucht.  From there they drove into the interior, employing their
usual tactics, lightning forced marches, often without water for great
distances, double-pronged attacks and encircling movements, using the
newfangled petrol-driven motor cars the same way they had used horses
during the Boer War.  Against this multitude Franke had 8,ooo German
troops to defend a territory of over 300,000 square miles with a
1,000-mile coastline.

Lothar and his scouts fought the Unionists with their own tactics,
poisoning the water-holes ahead of the Union troops, dynamiting the
railway lines, hooking around them to attack their supply lines, setting
ambushes and landmines, raiding at night and at dawn, driving off the
horses, pushing his scouts to even their far borders of endurance.

It was all unavailing.  Botha and Smuts caught the tiny German army
between them, and with a casuality list of only 5 3o dead and wounded
exacted an unconditional surrender from Colonel Franke, but not from
Lothar De La Rey.  To honour the promise he had made to his father, he
took what remained of his band of scouts northwards into the dreaded
kakao veld to continue the struggle.

Lothar's mother, Christina, and his wife and child went into the
internment camp for German nationals that was set up by the Unionists at
Windhoek, and there all three of them died.

They died in a typhoid epidemic, but Lothar De La Rey knew who was
ultimately to blame for their deaths, and in the desert he cherished and
nourished his hatred, for it was all that he had left.  His family was
slain by the English and his estates seized and confiscated.  Hatred was
the fuel that drove him forward.

He was thinking of his murdered family now as he stood at his horse's
head on the crest of one of the high dunes that overlooked the green
Atlantic Ocean where the Benguela current steamed in the early sunlight.

His mother's face seemed to rise out of the twisting fog banks before
him.  She had been a beautiful woman.  Tall and statuesque, with thick
blonde hair that hung to her knees when she brushed it out, but which
she wore twisted into thick plaited golden ropes on top of her head to
enhance her height.  Her eyes had been golden also, with the direct cold
gaze of a leopardess.

She could sing like one of the Valkyries from Wagner, and she had passed
on to Lothar her love of music and learning and art.  She had passed on
to him also her finc looks, classical Teutonic features, and the dense
curls that now hung to his shoulders from under the wide terai hat with
the waving bunch of ostrich feathers stuck jauntily in the puggaree.
Like Christina's, his hair was the colour of newly minted bronze, but
his eyebrows were thick and dark over the golden leopard eyes that were
now probing the silver mists of the Benguela.

The beauty of the scene moved Lothar the way that music could; like the
violins playing Mozart, it induced in him the same feeling of mystic
melancholy at the centre of his soul.  The sea was green and still, not
a ripple spoiled its velvety sheen.  The low and gentle sound of the
ocean swelled and subsided like the breathing of all creation.  Yet
along the shoreline the dense growth of dark sea-kelp absorbed the sea's
motion and there was no break of white water.  The kelp beds danced a
slow, graceful minuet, bowing and undulating to the rhythm of the ocean.

The horns of the bay were armed with rock, split into geometric shapes
and streaked white with the droppings of the seabirds and seals that
basked upon them.  The coats of the seals glowed in the mist-filtered
sunlight, and their weird honking cries carried on the windless air to
where Lothar stood on the crest of the dune high above them.

In the throat of the bay the rock gave way to tawny, lion-coloured
beach, and behind the first dune was trapped a wide lagoon hemmed in by
nodding reedbeds, the only green in this landscape.  In its shallow
waters there waded troops of long-legged flamingo.  The marvelous pink
of their massed formations burned like unearthly fire, drawing Lothar's
gaze away from his search of the sea.

The flamingo were not the only birds upon the lagoon.

There were troops of pelican and white egrets, solitary blue herons and
a legion of smaller long-legged waders foraging the food-rich waters.

The dunes upon which Lothar waited rose like the crested back of a
monstrous serpent, writhing and twisting along the shoreline, rising
five hundred feet and more against the misty sky, their restless,
ever-changing bulk sculptured by the sea wind into soft plastic coils
and knife-sharp peaks.

Suddenly, far out on the sea there was a dark boil of movement, and the
silk green surface changed to the colour of gunmetal.  Lothar felt the
jump of his nerves and the race of anticipation through his veins as his
gaze darted to it.  Was this what he had waited and kept vigil for all
these weary weeks?  He lifted the binoculars that hung upon his chest,
and felt the slide of disappointment.

What he had seen was merely a shoal of fish, but what a shoal!  The
tip-top of the living mass dimpled the surface, but as he watched, the
rest of the shoal rose to feed on the rich green plankton and the
commotion spread out until as far as he could see, to the edge of the
fog banks three miles out; the ocean seethed and boiled with life.  It
was a shoal of pilchards five miles across, each individual only as long
as a man's hand, but in their countless millions generating the power to
move the ocean.

Over this mighty multitude, the yellow-headed gannets and hysterical
gulls shrieked and wheeled and plunged, their bodies kicking up white
puffs of spray as they hit the water.  Squadrons of seals charged back
and forth, like the cavalry of the sea, breaking the water white as they
gorged on the silver masses, and through this gluttonous chaos, the
triangular fins of the great sharks passed with the stately motion of
tall sailing ships.

For an hour Lothar watched in wonder, and then abruptly, as though at a
signal, the entire living mass sounded, and within minutes the stillness
descended over the ocean again.  The only movement was the gentle swell
of waters and the soft advance and retreat of the silver fog banks under
the watery sun.

Lothar hobbled his horse, took a book from his saddlebag and settled on
the warm sand.  Every few minutes he raised his eyes from the page, but
the hours wore away and at last he stood and stretched and went to his
horse, his fruitless vigil ended for another day.  With one foot in the
stirrup, he paused and made a last careful survey of the seascape
smudged to bloody carnelian and dull brass by the sunset.

Then, even as he watched, the sea opened before his eyes, and out of it
rose an enormous dark shape, in the image of Leviathan, but greater than
any living denizen of the oceans.  Shining with wetness, gleaming water
streaming from its decks and steel sides, it wallowed upon the surface.

At last!  Lothar shouted with excitement and relief.  I thought they
would never come.  He stared avidly through his binoculars at the long
sinister black vessel.  He saw the encrustations of barnacle and weed,
that fouled the hull.  She had been long at sea, and battered by the
elements.  On the tall conning tower her registration numerals were
almost obliterated.  U-32.Lothar read them with difficulty, and then his
attention was diverted by activity on the submarine's foredeck.

From one of the hatches a gun team swarmed out and ran forward to man
the quick-firing cannon near the bows.  They were taking no chances.
Lothar saw the weapon traverse towards him, ready to reply to any
hostile gesture from the shore.  On the conning tower human heads
appeared, and he saw binoculars trained towards him.

Hastily Lothar found the signal rocket in his saddlebag.  Its glowing
red fireball arced out over the sea, and was answered immediately by a
rocket from the submarine hurling skyward on a tail of smoke.

Lothar flung himself on to the back of his mount and pushed him over the
edge of the dune.  They went sliding down, the horse squatting on its
haunches and bringing down a slipping, hissing cascade of sand around
them.

At the bottom of the dune Lothar gathered his mount and they went flying
across the hard damp beach, with Lothar waving his hat, standing in the
stirrups and shouting with laughter.  He rode into the camp at the edge
of the lagoon and sprang from the saddle.  He ran from one of the crude
shelters of driftwood and canvas to the next, who had come intimately to
understand death and fear down there in the dark and secret depths. You
have had a successful cruise, Kapitiin?  One hundred and twenty-six days
at sea and twentysix thousand tons of enemy shipping, the submariner
nodded.

With God's help, another twenty-six thousand tons, Lothar suggested.

With God's help, and your fuel oil, the captain agreed, and glanced down
at the deck where the first drums were being swayed aboard.  Then he
looked back at Lothar. You have torpedoes? he asked anxiously.

Content yourself, Lothar reassured him.  The torpedoes are ready, but I
thought it prudent to refuel before rearming.  Of course.  Neither of
them had to mention the consequence of the U-boat, with her tanks empty,
being caught against a hostile shore by an English warship.

I still have a little schnapps, the captain changed the subject, my
officers and I would be honoured.  As Lothar descended the steel ladder
into the submarine's interior, he felt his gorge rise.

The stench was a solid thing, so that he wondered that any man could
endure it more than a few minutes.  It was the smell of sixty men living
in a confined space for months on end, living without sunlight or fresh
air, without the means of washing their bodies or their clothing.  It
was the smell of pervading damp and of the fungus that turned their
uniforms green and rotted the cloth off their bodies, the stench of hot
fuel oil and bilges, of greasy food and the sickly sweat of fear, the
clinging odour of bedding that had been slept in for I26 days and
nights, of socks and boots that were never changed and the reek of the
sewage buckets which could only be emptied once every twenty four hours.

Lothar hid his revulsion and clicked his heels and bowed when the
captain introduced his junior officers.

The overhead deck was so low that Lothar had to hunch his head down on
his shoulders, and the space between the bulkheads was so narrow that
two men were forced to turn sideways to pass each other.  He tried to
imagine living in these conditions and found his face beading with cold
sweat.

Do you have any intelligence of enemy shipping, Herr De La Rey?  The
captain poured a tiny measure of schnapps into each of the crystal
glasses and sighed when the last drop fell from the bottle.

I regret that my intelligence is seven days old.  Lothar saluted the
naval officers with a raised glass, and when they had all drunk went on,
The troopship Auckland docked at Durban eight days ago for bunkers.  She
is carrying 2,000 New Zealand infantry, and was expected to sail again
on the 15 th - There were many sympathizers in the civil service of the
Union of South Africa, men and women whose fathers and family had fought
in the Boer War, and had ridden with Maritz; and De Wet against the
Union troops.  Some of them had relatives who had been imprisoned and
even executed for treason once Smuts and Botha had crushed the
rebellion.  Many of these were employed by the South African Railway and
Harbours Authority, others had key positions in the Department of Post
and Telegraphs.  Thus vital information was gathered and swiftly encoded
and disseminated to German agents and rebel activists over the Union
government's own communications network.

Lothar reeled off the list of arrivals and sailings from South African
ports, and again apologized.  My information is received at the
telegraph station at Okahandia, but it takes five to seven days for it
to be carried across the desert by one of my men.

I understand, the German captain nodded.  Nevertheless, the information
you have given me will be invaluable in helping me plan the next stage
of my operations. He looked up from the chart on which he had been
marking the enemy dispositions which Lothar had given him, and for the
first time noticed his guest's discomfort.  He kept his expression
attentive and courteous, but inwardly he gloated, You great hero,
handsome as an opera star, so brave out there with the wind in your face
and the sun shining over your head, I wish I could take you with me and
teach you the true meaning of courage and sacrifice!

How would you like to hear the English destroyers go drumming overhead
as they hunt you, how would you like to hear the click of the primer as
the deat -c arge sinks down towards you?  Oh, I would enjoy watching
your face when the blast beats against the pressure hull and water
squirts in through the cracks and the lights go out.  How would you like
to smell yourself shit with fear in the dark and feel it running hot and
liquid down your legs?  Instead he smiled and murmured, I wish I was
able to offer you a little more schnapps- No, no!  Lothar waved the
offer aside.  This corpsefaced creature and his stinking vessel
disgusted and sickened him.  You have been most gracious.  I must go
ashore I and supervise the loading.  These Schwarzes, you cannot J trust
them.  Lazy dogs and born thieves, all of them.  They understand only
the whip and the goad.  Lothar escaped thankfully up the ladder and in
the conning tower sucked the sweet cool night air greedily into his
lungs.  The submarine captain followed him up.

Herr De La Rey, it is essential that we complete bunker- i ing and
stores before dawn, you realize how vulnerable we are here, how helpless
we would be, trapped against the shore, with our hatches open and our
tanks empty?

If you could send some of your seamen ashore to assist with the loading-
The captain hesitated.  Placing his valuable crew on land would make him
more vulnerable still.  He weighed the odds swiftly.  Way was all a
gambler's throw, risk against reward, for the stakes of death and glory.

I will send twenty men to the beach with you.  He made the decision in
seconds, and Lothar, who had understood his quandary, nodded with
reluctant admiration.

They had to have light.  Lothar built a bonfire of driftwood on the
beach, but built a screen between it and the sea, trusting on this and
the hovering fog banks to shield them from any searching English
warships.  By the diffused glow they loaded and reloaded the lighters
and rowed them out to the submarine.  As each drum of fuel oil was
tunnelled into the vessel's tanks, the empty canister was holed and
thrown overboard to sink into the kelp beds, and gradually the long slim
vessel sank lower in the water.

It was four in the morning before the fuel tanks were brimming, and the
U-boat captain fretted and fumed on his bridge, glancing every few
seconds towards the land where the false dawn was giving a hard
knife-edge to the dark crests of the dunes, and then down again to the
approaching lighter with the long glistening shape of a torpedo balanced
delicately across the thwarts.

Hurry.  He leaned over the gunwale of the conning tower to urge on his
men, as they fitted the slings around the monstrous weapon, gingerly
took the weight on the straining tackle and swung it on board.  The
second lighter was already alongside with its murderous burden, and the
first lighter was thrashing back towards the beach, as the torpedo was
eased gently into the forward hatch and slid into the empty tube below
deck.

Swiftly the light strengthened and the efforts of the crew and the black
guerrillas became frantic as they fought off their fatigue and struggled
to complete the loading before full daylight exposed them to their
enemies.

Lothar rode out with the last torpedo, sitting casually astride its
shining back as though upon his Arab, and the captain watching him in
the dawn found himself resenting him more fiercely, hating him for being
tall and sungilded and handsome, hating him for his casual arrogance,
and for the ostrich feathers in his hat and the golden curls that hung
to his shoulders, but hating him most of all because he would ride away
into the desert and leave the U-boat commander to go down again into the
cold and deadly waters.

Captain, Lothar scrambled out of the lighter and climbed the ladder to
the bridge of the conning tower.

The captain realized that his handsome face was glowing with excitement.

Captain, one of my men has just ridden into camp.  He has been five days
reaching me from 0kahandja, and he has news.  Splendid news.  The
captain tried not to let the excitement infect him, hands began to
tremble as Lothar went on.

but his jk, The assistant harbour master at Cape Town is one of our men.
They are expecting the English heavy battle cruiser Inflexible to reach
Cape Town within eight days.

She left Gibraltar on the Sth and is sailing direct.  The captain dived
back into the hatch, and Lothar suppressed his repugnance and followed
him down the steel ladder.  The captain was already bending eagerly over
the chart-table with the dividers in his hands firing questions at his
navigating officer.

Give me the cruising speed of the enemy "I" class battle cruisers The
navigator thumbed swiftly through intelligence files.  Estimated 22
knots at 26o revolutions, captain.  Hal The captain was chalking in the
approximate course from Gibraltar down the western coastline of the
African continent, around the great bulge and then on to the Cape of
Good Hope.

Ha!  Again, this time with delight and anticipation. We can be in patrol
position by i8oo hours today, if we sail within the hour, and she cannot
possibly have passed by then.  He raised his head from the chart and
looked at his officers crowded around him.  but not an An English battle
cruiser, gentlemen, ordinary one.  The Inflexible, the same ship that
sank the Scharnhorst at the Falkland Islands.  A prize!  What a prize
for us to take to the Kaiser and Dos Vaterland Except for the two
lookouts in the wings, Captain Kurt Kohler stood alone in the conning
tower Of U-32 and shivered in the cold sea mist despite the thick white
rollneck sweater he wore under his blue pea-jacket.  Start main engine
secure to diving stations!  He bent to the voice tube, and immediately
his lieutenant's confirmation echoed back to him. Start main engine.
Secure to diving stations.  The deck trembled under Kohler's feet and
the diesel exhaust blurted above his head.  The oily reek of burned fuel
oil made his nostrils flare.

Ship ready to dive!  the lieutenant's voice confirmed, and Kohler felt
as though a crushing burden had been lifted from his back.  How he had
fretted through those helpless and vulnerable hours of refuelling and
rearming.

However, that was past, once again the ship was alive beneath his feet,
ready to his hand, and relief buoyed him up above his fatigue.

ordered.  New courseRevolutions for seven knots, he 270.1 As his order
was repeated, he tipped his cap with its gold-braided peak on to the
back of his head, and turned his binoculars towards land.

Already the heavy wooden lighters had been dragged away and hidden
amongst the dunes; there remained only the drag marks of their keels in
the sand.  The beach was empty, except for a single mounted figure.

As ohler watched him, Lothar De La Rey lifted the wide-brimmed bat from
his brazen curls and the ostrich feathers fluttered as he waved.  Kohler
lifted his own right hand in salute and the horseman swung away, still
brandishing his bat, and galloped into the screen of reeds that choked
the valley between two soaring dunes.  A cloud of water fowl, alarmed by
the horseman, rose from the sur- J milled in a gaudily coloured cloud
face of the lagoon and above the forbidding dunes, and the horse and
rider disappeared .

Kohler turned his back upon the land, and the long pointed bows of the
U-boat sliced into the standing cur tams of silver fog.  The hull was
shaped like a sword, a broadsword I70'feet long, to be driven at the
throat of at 6oo-horsep the enemy by her gre ower diesel engine, and
Kohler did not try to suppress the choking sense of pride that he always
felt at the beginning of a cruise.

He was under no illusion but that the outcome of this global conflict
rested upon him and his brother officers in the submarine service.  It
was in their power alone to A it break the terrible stalemate of the
trenches where two vast armies faced each other like exhausted
heavyweight boxers, neither having enough strength left to.  lift their
arms to throw a decisive punch, slowly rotting in the mud and the decay
of their own monstrous strivings.

It was these slim and secret and deadly craft that could still wrest
victory out of despair and desperation before the breaking-point was
reached.  If only the Kaiser had decided to use his submarines to their
full potential from the very beginning, Kurt Kohler brooded, how
different the outcome might have been.

In September I9I4, the very first year of the war, a single submarine,
the U-9, had sunk three British cruisers in quick succession, but even
with this conclusive demonstration, the German high command had
hesitated to use the weapon that had been placed in their hands, fearful
of the outrage and condemnation of the entire world, of the simplistic
cry of the beastly underwater butchers.

Of course, the American threats after the sinking of the Lusitania and
Ara C wit t e ass of American lives had served also to constrain the use
of the undersea weapon.

The Kaiser had feared to arouse the sleeping American giant, and to have
its mighty weight hurled against the German Empire.

Now, when it was almost too late the German high command had at last let
slip the U-boats, and the results were staggering, surpassing even their
own expectations.

The last three months of 1916 saw more than 300,000 tons of Allied
shipping go down before the torpedoes.

That was only a beginning; in the first ten days of April alone, another
incredible 250,000 tons was I917, destroyed, 875,000 tons for the full
month, the Allies were reeling under this fearful infliction.

Now that two million fresh and eager young American troops were ready to
cross the Atlantic to join the conflict, it was the duty of every
officer and seaman of the German submarine service to make whatever
sacrifice was demanded of him.  If the gods of war chose to place a
British heavy battle cruiser of such illustrious lineage as t the
Inflexible on a converging course with his battered little vessel, Kurt
Kohler would gladly give up his own life and the lives of his crew for
an opportunity to empty his torpedo tubes at her.

Revolutions for i2 knots, Kurt spoke into the voice tube.  That was the
U-32'S top surface speed, he had to get into patrol position as swiftly
as possible.  His calculations I indicated that the Inflexible must pass
between no and 14o nautical miles offshore, but Kurt refused to
calculate his chances of making a good interception, even if he reached
the patrol area before the cruiser passed by.

The horizon from the U-32's lookout wings was a mere seven miles, the
range of her torpedoes 2,5oo yards, the quarry capable of a sustained
speed Of 2.2 knots or more.

He had to manoeuvre his vessel within 2, 5 00 yards of the speeding
cruiser, but the chances were many thousands of times against him even
sighting her.  Even if he obtained a sighting, it would probably be only
to watch the distinctive tripod-shaped superstructure of the cruiser
pass hull down on his limited horizon.

He thrust his forebodings aside.  Lieutenant Horsthauzen to the bridge.

J Arlien his first officer clambered up to the bridge, Kurt i i gave him
orders, to drive out of the patrol area with all I possible speed, with
the ship secured to diving stations ready for instant action.

Call me at I83o hours if there is no change.  Kurt's exhaustion was
aggravated by the dull headache from the diesel fumes.  He took one last
look around the horizon before going below.  The fog banks were being
stripped away by the rising wind, the sea was darkening, its anger
rising at the whip of the elements.  The U-32 thrust her bows into the
next swell, and white water broke over her foredeck.  Spray splattered
icily into Kurt's face.

The glass is dropping swiftly, sit Horsthauzen told him quietly.  I
think we are in for a sharp blow.  Stay the sur ce, maintain speed. Kurt
ignored the opinion.  e didn't want to hear anything that might
complicate the hunt.  He slid down the ladder and went immediately to
the ship's logbook on the chart-table.

He made his entry in his meticulous formal script. Course 27o degrees.

Speed I2 knots.  Wind north-west, i 5 knots and freshening.  Then he
signed it with his full signature and pressed his fingers into his
temples to still the ache within his skull.

My God, I am tired, he thought, and then saw the navigation officer
watching his reflection surreptitiously, in the polished brass of the
main control panel.  He dropped his hands to his sides, brushed aside
the temptation to go to his bunk immediately and instead told his
coxswain, I will inspect the ship He made a point of stopping in the
engine compartment to compliment the engineers on the swift and
efficient refuelling procedure, and in the torpedo compartment in the
bows he ordered the men to remain in their bunks when he stooped in
through the narrow entrance.

The three torpedo tubes were loaded and under compression, and the spare
torpedoes were stacked in the narrow space; their long shiny bulk almost
filled the entire cabin and made any movement difficult.  The torpedo
men would be forced to spend much of their time crouched in their tiny
bunks, like animals in a her of cages.

Kurt patted one of the torpedoes.  We'll make more room for you soon, he
promised them, just as soon as we mail these little parcels off to Tommy
It was an antique joke, but they responded dutifully and, noting the
timbre of the laughter, Kurt realized how those few hours on the surface
in the sweet desert air had refreshed and enlivened them all.

Back in the tiny curtained cubical which was his cabin, he could let
himself relax at last, and instantly his exhaustion overcame him.  He
had not slept for forty hours, every minute of that time he had been
exposed to constant nervous strain.  Still, before he crawled
laboriously into his narrow, confined bunk, he took down the framed
photograph from its niche above his desk and studied the image of the
placid young woman and the small boy at her knee, dressed in Lederhosen.

Goodnight, my darlings, he whispered.  Goodnight to you, also, my other
son, whom I have never seen.

The diving klaxon woke him, bellowing like a wounded beast, echoing
painfully in the confines of the steel hull, so that lie was torn from
deep black sleep and cracked his head on the jamb of the bunk as he
tried to struggle out of it.

He was aware instantly of the pitch and roll of the hull.

The weather had deteriorated, and then he felt the deck cant under his
feet as the bows dropped and the submarine plunged below the surface. He
ripped open the curtains and burst fully dressed into the control
centre, just as the two lookouts came tumbling down the ladder from the
bridge.  The dive had been so swift that seawater cascaded down on to
their heads and shoulders before Horsthauzen could secure the main hatch
in the tower.

Kurt glanced at the clock at the top of the brass control panel as he
took control.  I8.23 hrs.  He made the calculation and estimated that
they must be loo nautical miles offshore on the edge of their patrol
area.  Horsthauzen would probably have called him in another few
minutes, if he had not been forced to make this emergency dive.

Periscope depth, he snapped at the senior helmsman seated before the
control panel, and used the few moments of respite to rally his senses
and orientate himself fully by studying the navigational plot.

Depth nine metres, sir, said the helmsman, spinning the wheel to check
her wild plunge.

Up periscope, Kurt ordered, as Horsthauzen dropped down the tower,
jumped off the ladder and took up his action station at the attack
table.

The sighting is a large vessel showing green and red navigation lights,
bearing o6o degrees, he reported quietly to Kurt.  I could make out no
details.

As the periscope rose up through the deck, the hydraulic rams hissing
loudly, Kurt ducked down, unfolded the side handles and pressed his face
into the rubber pads, peering into the Zeiss lens of the eyepiece and
straightening his body to follow the telescope up, already swinging it
on to the bearing marks o6o degrees.

The lens was obscured by water, and he waited for it to clear.

Late twilight- he judged the light up there on the surface, and then to
Horsthauzen, range estimate?  Sighting is hull down.  That meant she was
probably eight or nine miles, but red and green navigation lights
indicated that she was headed almost directly towards the U-32.  That
she should be showing lights at all indicated the vessel's supreme
confidence that she was alone on the ocean.

The lens cleared of water and Kurt traversed slowly.

There she was.  He felt his pulse leap and his breathing check.  It
never failed, no matter how often he saw the enemy, the shock and the
thrill was as intense as the very first time.

Bearing mark!  he snapped at Horsthauzen, and the lieutenant entered the
bearing on the attack table.

Kurt stared at the quarry, feeling the hunger in his guts, the almost
sexual ache in his loin as though he were watching a beautiful naked and
available woman; at the same time he was gently manipulating the knob of
the rangefinder with his right hand.

In the tens of the periscope the double images of the target ship were
brought together by the rangefinder.

Range mark!  Kurt said clearly as the images coalesced into a single
sharp silhouette.

Bearing 075 degrees, said Horsthauzen.  Range 7,650 metres!  and entered
the numerals into the attack table.

Down periscope!  New heading 34o degrees!  ordered Kurt, and the thick
telescoping steel sections of the periscope hissed down into their well
on the deck between his feet.  Even at this range and in the bad light
Kurt was taking no chances that a wary lookout might pick out the plume
of spray thrown up by the tip of the periscope as it cut the surface,
turning on to an interception course into the north.

Kurt was watching the second hand of the clock on the control panel. lie
must give Horsthauzen at least two minutes before he made his next
sighting.  He glanced across at his first officer and found him totally
absorbed in his calculations, stopwatch in his right hand, left hand
manipulating the tumblers of the attack table like a Chinaman with an
abacus.

Kurt switched his attention to his own calculations concerning the light
and the surface condition of the sea.

The fading light favoured him.  As always, the hunter needed stealth and
secrecy, but the rising sea would hamper his approach; breaking over the
lens of the periscope, it might even affect the running of his
torpedoes.

Up periscope!  he ordered.  The two minutes had expired.  He found the
image almost instantly.

Bearing mark!  Range mark!

Now Horsthauzen had his references, elapsed time between sights and the
relative ranges and bearings of the submarine and its target, together
with the U-32's own speed and course.

Target is on a heading of 175 degrees.  Speed 22 knots, he read off the
attack table.

Kurt did not look away from the eyepiece of the periscope, but felt the
thrill of the chase in his blood like the flush of strong spirits.  The
other ship was coming straight down on them, and its speed was almost
exactly that to be expected of a British battle cruiser making a long
passage.  He stared at the distance image, but the light was going even
as he studied the shadowy superstructure just visible between the
pinpricks of the navigational lights and yet, and yet, he was not
absolutely certain, perhaps he was seeing what he wished to see, but
there was a vague triangular shape against the darkening sky, the sure
tripod mark of the new F-class battle cruiser.

Down periscope.  He made his decision.  New heading 3 5 5 degrees, the
head-on course to intercept the target, designate the target as the
"chase".  That was the intimation to his officers that he was attacking,
and he saw their expression turn wolfish in the subdued light and they
exchanged eager gloating glances.  The chase is an enemy cruiser.  We
will attack with our bow tubes.  Re art battle stations.  In quick
succession the reports came in assuring him of the instant readiness of
the entire ship.  Kurt nodded with satisfaction, standing facing the
brass control panel, studying the dials over the heads of his seated
helmsmen, his hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his pea-jacket so
that their trembling did not betray his agitated excitement, but a nerve
jumped in his lower eyelid, making him wink sardonically, and his thin
pale lips trembled uncontrollably.  Each second seemed an eternity,
until he could ask, Estimated bearing?  The seaman with the hydrophones
over his ears looked up.  He had been closely monitoring the distant
sound of the chase's propellers.

Bearing steady, he replied, and Kurt glanced at Horsthauzen.

Estimated range?  Horsthauzen kept all his attention on his attack
table.

Estimated range 4,000 metres."Up periscope. She was still there, exactly
where he had expected her she had not turned away.  Kurt felt almost
nauseated with relief.  At any time that she suspected his presence the
chase could simply turn and run away from him, without even bothering to
increase speed, and he would be helpless to stop her.  But she was
coming on unsuspectingly.

It was fully dark in the world above the surface, and the sea was
breaking and tumbling with white caps.  Kurt had to make the decision
which he had postponed to the last possible moment.  He made one last
sweep of the entire horizon, swinging the handles of the periscope the
full 36o degrees, shuffling around behind the eyepiece, satisfying
himself that there was no other enemy creeping up behind his stern, no
destroyers escorting the cruiser, and then he said, I will shoot from
the bridge.  Even Horsthauzen glanced up momentarily, and he heard the
sharp intake of breath from his junior officers when they realized they
were going to surface almost under the bows of an enemy battle cruiser.

Down periscope!  Kurt ordered his senior helmsman. Reduce speed to five
knots and come to tower depth.

He saw the needles on the control dials tremble and then begin to move,
the speed dropping back, the depth decreasing gently, and he moved
across to the ladder.

I am transferring to the bridge, he told Horsthauzen, and stepped on to
the ladder.  He climbed nimbly and at the top spun the locking wheel of
the main hatch.

As the submarine broke through the surface, the internal air pressure
blew the hatch open and Kurt sprang through it.

The wind lashed him immediately, tugging at his clothing and blowing
spray into his face.  All about him the sea was breaking and boiling,
and the ship rolled and wallowed.  Kurt had relied on the turmoil of
waters to disguise the disturbance that the U-32 would make as she
surfaced.  With one glance, he satisfied himself that the enemy was
almost dead ahead and coming on swiftly and unswervingly.  He bowed to
the aiming table at the forward end of the bridge, unstoppered the voice
pipe and spoke into it. Prepare to attack!  Stand by bow tubes.  Bow
tubes closed up, Horsthauzen answered him from below, and Kurt began to
feed him the details of the range and bearing, while on the deck below,
the lieutenant read off from the attack table the firing heading and
passed it to the helmsman.  The submarine's bows swung gradually as the
helmsman kept her on the exact aiming mark.

Range 2,5oo metres, Kurt intoned.  She was at extreme range now, but
closing swiftly.

There were lights burning on her upper decks but apart from that she was
merely a huge dark shape.  There was no longer any definite silhouette
against the night sky, although Kurt could make out the shapeless loom
of her triple funnels.

The lights troubled Kurt.  No Royal Naval captain should be so negligent
of the most elementary precautions.  He felt a small chill wind of doubt
cool his excitement and battle ardour.  He stared at the enormous vessel
through the spray and darkness and for the first time in a hundred such
dangerous nerve-racking situations, he felt himself hesitant and
uncertain.

The vessel before him was in the exact position and on the exact course
where he had expected to find the inflexible.  It was the right size, it
had three funnels and a tripod superstructure, it was steaming at 22
knots, and yet it was showing lights.

Repeat range mark!  Horsthauzen spoke through the voice tube, gently
prodding him, and Kurt started.  He had been staring at the chase,
neglecting the rangefinder.

Quickly he gave the decreasing range and then realized that within
thirty seconds he would have to make his final decision.

I will shoot at 1,000 metres, he said into the voice tube.

It was pointblank range; even in this confused sea there was no question
of missing with one of the long sharklike missiles.

Kurt stared into the lens of the rangefinder, watching the numerals
decreasing steadily as hunter and hunted came together.  He drew a deep
breath like a diver about to plunge into the cold black waters and then
he raised his voice for the first time. Number one tube, ]Os!  Almost
immediately Horsthauzen's voice came back to him, with that slight
catchy stutter that always afflicted him when he was over-excited.
Number one fired and running. There was no sound, nor recoil.  No
movement of the submarine's hull to signal the release of the first
torpedo.

In the darkness and the breaking white waters Kurt could not even
distinguish the wake of the speeding torpedo.

Number two tube, Ms!  Kurt was firing a spread of torpedoes, each on a
minutely diverging course, the first aimed forward, the second
amidships, the third aft.

Number three tube, lose All three fired and running!  Kurt raised his
eyes from the aiming table and slitted them against the flying spray and
the wind as he gazed down the track of his torpedoes.  It was standard
service procedure to crash dive immediately all torpedoes were fired and
to await the explosions of the hits down in the safety of the depths,
but this time Kurt felt compelled to remain on top and watch it happen.

Running time?  he demanded of Horsthauzen, watching the tall bulk of his
victim festooned with lights like a cruise ship, so that she paled out
the fields of stars that sprinkled the black curtain of the sky behind
her.

Two minutes fifteen seconds to run, Horsthauzen told him, and Kurt
clicked down the button of his stopwatch.

Always in this time of waiting after his weapons were sped upon their
way, the remorse assailed Kurt.  Before the firing there was only the
heat of the chase and the tingling excitement of the stalk, but now he
thought of the brave men, brothers of the sea, whom he had consigned to
the cold dark and merciless waters.

The seconds dragged, so that he had to check the luminous dial of his
stopwatch to assure himself that his torpedoes had not sounded or
swerved nor run past.

Then there was that vast blurt of sound which even when expected made
him flinch, and be saw the pearly fountain of spray rise against the
bulk of the battle cruiser, shining in the starlight and in the
decklights with a beautiful iridescent radiance.

Number one, hit.  Horsthauzen s shout of triumph came from the voice
pipe, followed immediately by another thunderous roar as though a
mountain had fallen into the sea.

Number two, hit And yet again, while the first two tall shining columns
of spray still hovered, the third leapt high in the dark air beside
them. Number three, hit.  As Kurt still watched, the columns of spray
mingled, subsided and blew away on the wind, and the great ship ran on,
seemingly unscathed.

Chase is losing speed, Horsthauzen exalted.  Altering course to
starboard.  The doomed ship began a wide aimless turn into the wind.  It
would not be necessary to fire their stern tubes.

Lieutenant Horsthauzen to the bridge, Kurt said into the voice tube.  It
was a reward for a task perfectly performed.  He knew how avidly the
young lieutenant would relate every detail of the sinking to his brother
officers later.  The memory of this victory would sustain them all
through the long days and nights of privation and hardship that lay
ahead.  Horsthauzen burst from the hatch and stood shoulder to shoulder
with his captain, peering at their monstrous victim.

She has stopped!  he cried.  The British ship lay like a rock in the
sea.

We will move closer, Kurt decided, and relayed the order to the
helmsman.

The U-32 crept forward, butting into the creaming waves, only her
conning tower above the surface, closing the range gradually and
gingerly.  The cruiser's guns might still be manned and only a single
lucky shot was needed to hole the submarine's thin plating.

Listen!  Kurt ordered abruptly, turning his head to catch the sounds
that came to them faintly above the clamour of the wind.

I hear nothing.

Stop engines!  Kurt ordered, and the vibration and hum of the diesels
ceased.  Now they could hear it more clearly.

Voices!  Horsthauzen whispered.  It was a pathetic chorus, borne to them
on the wind.  The shouts and cries of men in dire distress, rising and
falling on the vagaries of the wind, punctuated by a wild scream as
somebody fell or leapt from the high deck.

She is listing heavily.  They were close enough to see her against the
stars.

She's sinking by the bows.  The great stem was rearing out of the black.
She's going quickly, very quickly They could hear the crackle and rumble
of her hull as the waters raced through her, and twisted and distorted
her plating.

Man the searchlight, Kurt ordered, and Horsthauzen turned to stare at
him.

Did you hear my order?  Horsthauzen roused himself.

It went against all a submariner's instincts to betray himself so
blatantly to the eyes of the enemy, but he crossed to the searchlight in
the wing of the deck.

Switch on!  Kurt urged him when he hesitated still, and the long white
beam leapt out across half a mile of tempestuous sea and darkness.  It
struck the hull of the ship and was reflected in a dazzle of purest
white.

Kurt threw himself across the bridge and shouldered his lieutenant from
the searchlight.  He gripped the handles and swung the solid beam across
and down, slitting his eyes against the dazzling reflection from the
ship's paintwork; he searched frantically and then froze, with his
fingers hooked like claws over the searchlight handles.

In the perfect round circle of the searchlight beam, the scarlet arms of
the huge painted cross were outflung, like the limbs of a condemned man
upon the crucifix.

Mother of the Almighty God, Kurt whispered, what have I done?  With
horrid fascination he moved the beam slowly from side to side.  The
decks of the white ship were canted steeply towards him, so he could see
the clusters of human figures that scurried about them, trying to reach
the lifeboats dangling from their davits.  Some of them dragging
stretchers or leading stumbling figures dressed in long blue hospital
robes, and their cries and supplications sounded like a colony of
nesting birds at sunset.

As Kurt watched, the ship suddenly tipped towards him with a rush, and
the men on the decks were sent sliding across them, piling up against
the railings.  Then singly and in clusters they began to fall overboard.

One of the lifeboats let go and dropped out of control to hit the water
alongside the hull and immediately capsized.  Still men were dropping
from the high decks, and he could hear their faint shrieks above the
wind, see the small spouts of white spray as they struck the water.

What can we do?  Horsthauzen whispered beside Kurt, staring with him
down the searchlight beam, his expression pale and appalled.

Kurt switched off the searchlight.  After the intense light, the
darkness was crushing.

Nothing, said Kurt in the darkness.  There is nothing we can do."And he
turned and stumbled to the hatchway.

By the time he reached the bottom of the ladder, he had control of
himself again, and his voice was flat and his expression stony as he
gave his orders.

Lookouts to the bridge.  Revolutions for 12 knots, new course i5o
degrees.  He stood at ease as they turned away from the sinking ship,
fighting theurge to lift his hands to cover his ears.

He knew he could not shut out the cries and shrieks that still echoed in
his skull.  He knew he would never be able to shut them out, and that he
would hear them again at the hour of his own death.

Secure from action stations, he said with dead eyes, his waxen features
wet with spray and sweat.

Resume patrol routine.

Centaine was perched on the foot of the lowest bunk in her favourite
ward on C deck.  She had the book open on herlap.

It was one of the larger cabins, with eight bunks, and all the young men
in the bunks were spinals.  Not one of them would ever walk again, and
almost in defiance of this fact they were the noisiest, gayest and most
opinionated bunch on board the Protea Castle.

Every evenin& during the hour before lights-out, Centaine read to them,
or that was the intention.  It usually only required a few minutes of
the author's opinions to trigger a spirited debate which ran unchecked
until the dinner gong finally intervened.

Centaine enjoyed these sessions as much as any of them, and she
invariably chose a book on a subject about which she wanted to know
more, always an African theme.

This evening she had selected volume 11 of Levaillant's Voyage dans
Pint6rieur de IAfrique in the original French.  She translated directly
from the page of Levaillant's description of a hippopotamus hunt which
her audience followed avidly, until she reached the description:The
female beast was flayed and cut up on the spot.  I ordered a bowl to be
brought me, which I filled with her milk.  It appears to be much less
disagreeable than that of the elephant and the next day had changed
almost wholly to cream.  It had an amphibious taste, and a filthy smell
which gave disgust, but in coffee it was even pleasant.  There were
cries of revulsion from the bunks.  My God!  somebody exclaimed.  Those
Frenchies!  Anybody who will drink hippo milk and eat frogs- Instantly
they all turned upon him.  Sunshine is a Frenchy, you dog!  Apologize
immediately!  and a barrage of pillows was hurled across the cabin at
the offender.

Laughing, Centaine jumped up to restore order, and as she did so the
deck bucked under her feet and she was hurled backwards on to the bunk
again, and the blast of a massive explosion ripped through the ship.

Centaine struggled up and was knocked down again by another explosion
more violent than the first.

What is happening?  she screamed, and a third explosion plunged them
into darkness and threw her from the bunk on to the deck.  In the utter
darkness somebody tumbled on top of her, pinning her in a welter of
bedclothes.

She felt herself suffocating and she screamed again.  The ship rang to
other cries and shouts.

Get off me!  Centaine fought to free herself, crawled to the doorway and
pulled herself upright, The pandemonium all around her, the rush of
bodies in the dark, the shouts and senseless bawling of orders, the
sudden terrifying tilt of the deck under Centaine's feet panicked her.
She lashed out to protect herself as an unseen body crashed into her,
and then groped her way down the long narrow corridor.

The alarm bells began to ring through the darkness, a shrill,
nerve-ripping sound that added to the confusion, and a voice roared, The
ship is sinking, they are abandoning ship.

We'll be trapped down here. There was an immediate rush to the
companionway, and Centaine found herself borne along helplessly,
fighting to keep her balance, for she knew if she fell she would be
trampled.  Instinctively she tried to protect her belly, but she was
sent reeling into the bulkhead with a force that clashed her teeth and
she bit her own tongue.  As she fell, her mouth filled with the slick
metallic taste of blood; she flung out both hands and they closed on the
guide rail of the companionway and she hung on with all her strength.
She dragged herself up the staircase, sobbing with the effort to keep
her feet in the crush of panicstricken bodies.

My baby!  She heard herself saying it aloud.  You can't kill my baby.
The ship lurched, and there was the crackle and shriek of metal on
metal, the crash of breaking glass, and the renewed rush and trample of
feet all around her.

It's going down!  shrieked a voice beside her.  We've got to get out!
Let me out- The lights went on again, and she saw the companionway to
the upper deck choked with struggling, cursing men.  She felt bruised
and crushed and helpless.

My baby!  she sobbed, as she was pinned against the bulkhead.  The
lights seemed to sober the men around her, shaming them out of their
blind terror.

Here's Sunshine!  a voice bellowed.  It was a big Afrikaner, one of her
most fervent admirers, and he swung his crutch to forge an opening for
her.

Let her through, stand back, you bastards, let Sunshine through. Hands
seized her, and she was lifted off her feet. Let Sunshine through!  They
passed her overhead, like a doll.  She lost her veil and one of her
shoes.

Here's Sunshine, pass her up" She found herself sobbing as she was
jostled and hard fingers seized her and bit painfully into her flesh,
but she was borne swiftly upwards.

At the top of the companionway, other hands grabbed her and hustled her
out on to the open deck.  it was dark out here and the wind snatched at
her hair and wrapped her skirts constrictingly about her legs.  The deck
was listing heavily, but as she stepped upon it, it canted even more
viciously and she was hurled against a stanchion with a force that made
her cry out.

Suddenly she thought about the helplessly maimed young men that she had
left down there on C deck.

I should have tried to help them, she told herself, and then she thought
of Anna.  Hesitating and confused she looked back.  Men still swarmed up
and out of the companionways.  It would be impossible to move against
that throng, and she knew that she did not have the strength needed to
assist a man who could not walk himself.

All around her the officers were trying to restore order, but most of
these men who had stoically borne the hell of the trenches were
terrified witless by the thought of being trapped in a sinking ship, and
their faces were contorted and their eyes wild with unreasoning terror.
However, there were others who were dragging out the cripples and the
blind and leading them to the lifeboats along the rail.

Clinging to the stanchion, Centaine was torn with indecision and fear
and horror for the hundreds of men below who she knew would never reach
the deck.  Then beneath her the ship rumbled and belched in its death
throes, air rushed from the holes beneath her waterline with the
roarings of a sea monster and the sound decided Centaine.

My baby, she thought.  I have to save him, the others don't matter, only
my baby!  Sunshine!  One of the officers had seen her and he slid down
the steep deck to her and put an arm around her protectively.

You've got to get to a lifeboat, the ship will go at any moment.  With
his free hand he ripped open the tapes that secured his bulky canvas
life-jacket, and he pulled it off his shoulders and lifted it over
Centaine's head.

What happened?  Centaine gasped as he knotted the tapes of the
life-jacket under her chin and down her chest.

We've been torpedoed.  Come on.  He dragged her along with him, reaching
for handholds, for it was impossible to stand unaided on the steep angle
of the deck.

That lifeboat!  We've got to get you into it. just ahead of them a
crowded lifeboat was swinging wildly on its davits, an officer was
bellowing orders as they tried to clear the jammed tackle.

Looking down the ship's side, Centaine saw the black sea boiling and
foaming, and the wind blew her hair into her face and half-blinded her.

Then, from far out on the black waters, a solid white shaft of light
burst over them, and they flung up their hands to protect their eyes
from the cruel glare.

Submarine!  shouted the officer who held Centaine in the crook of his
arm.  The swine has come to gloat on his butchery.  The beam of light
left them and swivelled away down the side of the hull.

Come on, Sunshine.  He dragged her towards the ship's rail, but at that
moment the tackle of the lifeboat gave way at the bows, and spilled its
frantic cargo screaming into the pounding waves far below.

With yet another vast exhalation of air from her underwater wounds the
ship swung further outwards to an impossible angle, and Centaine and the
officer slid irresistibly across the deck and hit the rail together.

The merciless beam of white light moved from one end of the ship to the
other and when it passed over them, it left them blinded and it seemed
the night was even blacker and more menacing than before.

The swines!  The bloody swines!  The officer's voice was rough and
hoarse with rage.

We must jump!  Centaine shouted back at him.  We have to get off!

When the first torpedo struck, Anna was seated at the dressing-table in
the cabin.  She also had spent the afternoon working with the men on C
deck and had left them only to help Centaine prepare for dinner.  She
had expected Centaine to be in the cabin waiting for her and was mildly
irritated when she was not.

That child has no idea of time, she muttered, but laid out clean
underwear for her charge before beginning her own toilet.

The first explosion threw Anna off the stool and she struck the back of
her head on the corner of the bed.  She lay there stunned while the
successive blasts tore into the ship, and then darkness blinded her. She
dragged herself on to her knees with the alarm bells deafening her, and
forced herself to begin the drill that they had practised almost daily
since leaving Calais.

Lifejacket!  She groped under the bed and pulled the clumsy apparatus
over her head and began to crawl towards the door.  Suddenly the lights
went on again and she dragged herself to her feet and leaned against the
bulkhead and massaged the lump on the back of her head.

Her senses cleared and immediately she thought of Centaine.

My baby!  She- started towards the door and the ship lurched under her.
She was thrown back against the dressing-table and at the same moment
Centaine's jewelbox slid across the table-top and would have fallen, but
instinctively Anna caught it and held it to her chest.

Abandon ship!  a voice shrieked outside the cabin.  The ship is sinking!
Abandon ship!  Anna had learned enough English to understand.  Her
practical phlegmatic sense reasserted itself.

The jewelbox contained all their money and documents.  She opened the
locker over her head and pulled out the carpet bag and dropped the box
into it.  Then she looked around her swiftly.  She swept the silver
frame with the photographs of Centaine, her mother and Michael's
squadron into the bag, then she jerked open the drawer and stuffed warm
clothing for Centaine and herself on top of the jewelbox and the picture
frame.  She fastened the bag as she glanced quickly about the cabin.

That was all of value that they possessed, and she heaved open the door
and stepped into the passageway beyond.

Immediately she was picked up in the relentless stream of men, most of
them still struggling with their lifejackets.  She tried to turn back
-'I must find Centaine, I must find my baby!', but she was borne out on
to the dark deck and hustled towards one of the lifeboats.

Two seamen grabbed her.  Come on then, Itiv.  Ups-adaisy!  and though
she aimed a blow at the head of one of them with the carpet bag, they
boosted her over the side of the lifeboat and she landed in a tangle of
skirts and limbs between the thwarts.  She dragged herself up, still
clutching the carpet bag, and tried to climb out of the boat again.

Catch hold of that silly bitch, somebody!  a seaman shouted with
exasperation, and rough hands seized her and pulled her down.

In minutes the lifeboat was so crowded that Anna was packed helplessly
between bodies and could only rave and implore in Flemish and French and
broken English.

You must let me out.  I have to find my little girl-Nobody took any
notice of her, and her voice was drowned out by the shouting and
scurrying, by the moaning of the wind and the Crash of waves against the
steel hull, and by the ship's own groans and squeals and dying roars.

We can't take any more!  a commanding voice shouted. Swing her out and
let go!  There was a gut-swooping drop down through the darkness and the
lifeboat struck the surface with such force that water was sprayed over
them and Anna was once more thrown to the half-flooded deck with a
huddle of bodies on top of her.  She dragged herself up again, with the
lifeboat tossing and leaping and thudding against the ship's side.

Get those oars out!  The voice again, harsh with authority.  Fend her
off there, you men.  That's right!  All right, give way starboard. Pull,
damn you, pull!  They dragged themselves away from the ship's side and
got their bows into the seas before they were swamped.

Anna crouched in the bottom of the boat, clutching her bag to her chest,
and looked up at the tall hull that rose above them like a cliff.

At that instant a great white shaft of light sprang out of the darkness
behind them and struck the ship.  It played slowly across the glistening
white hull, like the spotlight of a theatre, picking out brief tragic
vignettes before passing on, groups of men trapped at the rail, a
twisting figure in an unattended stretcher sliding across the deck, a
seaman caught in the tackle of a lifeboat and swinging go like a figure
on the gallows tree, and finally the beam rested for a few moments on
the huge red crosses painted on the white hull.

Yes, take a good look, you bloody swine!  one of the men near Anna in
the lifeboat yelled, and immediately the cry was taken up.

You murdering Hun- You filthy butchers- All around Anna they were
howling their anger and outrage.

Implacably the beam of searchlight travelled on, swinging down to the
waterline of the hull.  The surface of the sea was dotted with the heads
of hundreds of swimmers.

There were clusters of them, and individuals whose pale faces shone like
mirrors in the intense white light, and still others were dropping and
splashing into the water amongst them, while the sea surged and sucked
them back and forth and threw them against the steel cliff of the hull.

The searchlight lifted up to the high decks again, and they were canted
at an improbable angle while the ship's bows were already thrusting
below the surface and the stern was rising swiftly against the
star-riddled sky.

For an instant the searchlight settled on a tiny group of figures pinned
against the ship's rail and Anna shrieked, Centaine!  The girl was in
the middle of the group, her face turned towards the sea, looking down
at the dark drop beneath her, the wild bush of her dark hair whipping in
the wind.

Centaine!  Anna screamed again, and with a lithe movement the girl had
leaped to the top of the brass rail.  She had lifted the heavy woollen
skirts to her waist and for an instant she balanced like an acrobat. Her
bare legs were pale and slim and shapely, but she looked frail as a bird
as she leaped away from the rail and with her skirts ballooning wildly
about her, fell out of the beam of light into the blackness beneath.

Cantaine!  Anna screamed one last time with despair in her voice and ice
in her heart.  She tried to rise, the better to watch the fall of that
small body but somebody pulled her down again, and then the searchlight
beam was extinguished and Anna crouched in the lifeboat and listened to
the cries of the drowning men.

Pull, you men!  We must get clear, or she will suck us down with her
when she goes.  They had oars out on both sides of the lifeboat and were
striking out raggedly, inching away from the stricken liner.

There she goes!  somebody yelled.  Oh God, will you look at that!  The
steRN of the huge ship swung up, higher and still higher into the night
sky, and the rowers rested on their oars and stared up at her.

When she reached the vertical she hung for long seconds.  They could see
the silhouette of her propeller against the stars, and her lights were
still burning in the rows of portholes.

Slowly she began to slide downwards, bows first, her lights still
shining beneath the water like drowning moons.  Faster and still faster
she slid downwards and her plates began to buckle and crackle with
pressure, air burst out of her in a seething frothy turmoil, and then
she was gone.  Vast spoutings and eruptions of air and white foam still
fountained up out of the black waters, but slowly these subsided and
once again they could hear the lonely cries of the swimmers. Pull back!
We must pick up as many as we can!  All the rest of that night they
worked under the direction of the ship's first officer who stood at the
tiller in the stERN of the lifeboat.  They dragged the sodden shivering
wretches from the sea, packing them in until the lifeboat wallowed
dangerously and took water over her gunwales at every swell, and they
had to hate continuously.

No more!  the officer shouted.  You men will have to tie yourselves on
to the LIFelines.  The swimmers clustered around the overloaded vessel
like drowning rats, and Anna was close enough to the stern to hear the
first officer murmur, The poor devils won't last until morning, the cold
will get them, even if the sharks don't.  They could hear other
lifeboats around them in the night, the splash of oars and voices on the
wind.

The current is running up into the north-northeast at four knots, Anna
overheard the first officer again, we will be scattered to the horizon
by dawn.  We must try to keep together.  He rose in the stern and
hailed, Ahoy there!  This is lifeboat sixteen."Lifeboat five, a faint
voice hailed back. We will come to you!  They rowed through the
darkness, guided by cries from the other boat, and when they found each
other they lashed the two hulls together.  During the night they called
two other lifeboats to them.

in the watery grey dawn they found another lifeboat half a mile away;
the sea between them was strewn with wreckage and dotted with the heads
of swimmers, but all of them were insignificant specks in the immense
reaches of ocean and sky.

In the boats they huddled together like cattle in the abattoir truck,
already slumping into bovine lethargy and indifference, while those in
the water bobbed and nodded as they hung in their lifejackets, a macabre
dance of death, for already the icy green water that tumbled over their
heads had sucked the body warmth from many of them and they lolled pale
and lifeless.

Sit down, woman!  Anna's neighbours roused themselves as she tried to
stand on the thwart.

You'll have us all in the water, for God's sake!  But Anna ignored their
protests.

Centainel she called.  Is Centaine anywhere?  And when they stared at
her uncomprehendingly, she searched for the nickname and remembered it
at last.

Sunshine!  she cried.  Het remand Sunshine gesien?

Has anybody seen Sunshine?  and there was a stir of interest and
concern.

Sunshine?  Is she with you," The query was passed swiftly about the
cluster of tossing lifeboats.

I saw her on the deck, just before the ship went down.  She had a
lifeJacket.  She isn't here?  No, she isn't here.  I saw her jump, but I
lost her after that.  She isn't here, not in any of the boats. Anna
sagged down again.  Her baby was gone.  She felt despair overwhelm and
begin to suffocate her.  She looked over the side of the lifeboat at the
dead men hanging in their lifejackets, and imagined Centaine killed by
the green waters, dead of the cold and the infant in her womb dead also,
and she groaned aloud.

No, she whispered, God cannot be that cruel.  I don't believe it.  I'll
never believe it.  The denial gave her strength and the will to endure.
There were other lifeboats, Centaine is alive somewhere out there, she
looked to the wind-smeared horizon, she's alive, and I will find her. If
it takes my whole life, I will find her again.  The small incident of
the search for the missing girl had broken the torpor of cold and shock
that had gripped them all during the night, and now the leaders emerged
to rally them, to adjust the loading and the trim of the lifeboats, to
count and take charge of the fresh-water containers and the emergency
rations, to see to the injured, to cut loose the dead men and let them
float away and to allocate duties to the rowers, and finally to set a
course for the mainland a hundred miles and more out there in the east.

With teams of rowers alternating at the long oars, they began to inch
across the wild sea, nearly every small gain wasted by the following
wave that dashed into their bows and drove them back.

That's it, lads, the first officer exhorted from stern. Keep it up- any
activity would stave off despondency, their ultimate enemy -let's sing,
shall we?  Who'll give us a tune?  What about Tipperary?  Come along,
then.

"'It's a long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go-" But the wind and
the sea grew stronger, and flung them about so that the oars would not
bite, and one after the other the rowers gave up and slumped glumly, and
the song died away and they sat and waited.  After a while the sense of
waiting for something to happen passed, and they merely sat.  Long after
midday, the sun broke through the low scudding cloud for a few minutes
and they lifted their faces to it, but then the cloud obscured it again
and their heads drooped like wild Namaqua daisies at sunset.

Then from the lifeboat alongside where Anna sat a voice spoke in a dull,
almost disinterested tone. Look, isn't that a ship?  For a while there
was silence, as though it took time to understand such an unlikely
proposition, and then another voice, sharper and more alive. It is, it's
a ship!  Where?

Where is it?  A babble of excited voices now. There, just below that
dark patch of cloud.  Low down, just the top-'It's a ship!

A ship!  Men were trying to stand, some of them had stripped off their
jackets and were waving frantically and shouting as though their lungs
might burst.

Anna blinked her eyes and stared in the direction they were all pointing
in.  After a moment she saw a tiny triangular shape, darker grey against
the dreary grey of the horizon.

The first officer was busy in the stern, and abruptly there was a fierce
whooshing sound and a trail of smoke shot up into the sky and burst in a
cluster of bright red stars as he fired one of the signal rockets from
the steRN locker.  She has seen us!  Look!  Look, she's altering course!
It's a warship, three funnels.  Look at the tripod director tower, she's
one of the "I class cruisers- By God, it's the Inflexible!  I saw her at
Scopa Flow last year- God bless her, whoever she is.  She's seen us! Oh,
thank God, she's seen us!  Anna found herself laughing and sobbing, and
clutching the carpet bag that was her only link with Centaine.

It will be all right now, my baby, she promised.  Anna will find you
now.  You don't have to worry any more, Anna is coming to get you.  And
the deadly grey shape of the warship raced down upon them, shouldering
and breaking the waters aside with her tall, axe-sharp bows.

Anna stood at the rail of HMS Inflexible in a group of the survivors
from the lifeboats and watched that immense flat-topped mountain rise
out of the southern ocean.

From this distance the proportions of the mountain were so perfect, the
tableland at its summit so precisely cut and the steep slopes so
artfully fashioned that it might have been sculptured by a divine
Michelangelo.  The men around her were excited and voluble, hanging on
the rail and pointing out the familiar features of the land as their
swift approach made each apparent.  This was a homecoming of which most
of them had many times despaired, and their relief and joy were
pathetically childlike.

Anna shared none of it with them.  The sight of land induced in her only
a corrosive impatience that she knew she could not long abide.  The
drive of the great ship under her was too puny, too snail-like for her
antici potion every minute spent out here upon the ocean was wasted, for
it delayed the moment when she could set out on the quest which had in a
few short days become the central driving force of her existence.

She fretted while the drama of sea and elements unfolded before her,
while the wind which had crossed the wide sweep of the Atlantic free and
unfettered, met the sudden constraint of the great mountain, and like a
wild horse feeling the bit for the first time, reared and struggled in
monstrous pique.

Before Anna's eyes a dense white cloud blossomed upon the broad flat
summit of the mountain and began to boil over the sheer lip in a slow,
gelatinous tide down the stark cliffs, and when the men around her
exclaimed with wonder, she had only an insufferable desire to feel the
land beneath her feet, and to turn those feet back into the north to
begin the search.

Now the angry wind racing down the cliffs came again to the sea and
ripped the placid sweet blue first to sombre gunmetal and then to
foam-flecked fury.  As the Inflexible came out of the lee of the
mountain into the narrow roadway between Table Harbour and Roben Island,
the southeaster struck her like a mallet, and even she was forced to
make obeisance and heel to the power of the wind.

In the days of sail, many great ships had come this close to the
mountain only to be blown out again with rigging in disarray, not to
sight land again for days or even weeks, but Inflexible, once she had
acknowledged its force, drove in through the concrete breakwater, and
surrendered only to the attentions of the fussy little steam tugs which
bustled out to meet her.  Like a lover she kissed the wharf, and the
crowd that lined it waved up at the decks, the women struggling with
rebellious skirts and the men clutching their hats to their heads, the
strains of the Marine band on the cruiser's foredeck rising and falling
as the wind squalls gave Rule Britannia an unusual cadence.

As soon as the gangways were lowered, a group of figures hurried up
them, harbour officials and naval officers in tropical whites and gold
braid, together with a few obviously important civilians.

Now, despite herself, Anna felt a slight prickle of interest as she
studied the white buildings of the town that were scattered along the
foot of the high grey cliffs.

Africa, she murmured.  So what was all the fuss about?

I wonder what Centaine- At the thought of the girl, all else was
banished from her mind; although she still stared towards the shore, she
saw nothing and heard nothing, until a light touch on her shoulder
pulled her back to the present.

One of the ship's midshipmen, callow as a schoolboy even in his smart
tropical whites, saluted her diffidently. There is a visitor for you in
the wardroom, ma'am.

When it was obvious that Anna did not understand, he beckoned her to
follow him.

At the door of the wardroom, the midshipman stood aside and ushered her
through.  Anna stood in the entrance and glowered around her
suspiciously, holding the carpet bag protectively in front of her hips.
Visitors and officers were already doing full justice to the ship's
store of gin and tonic, but the cruiser's flag lieutenant saw Anna.

Ah, here we are.  This is the worrian, and he drew one of the civilians
from the group of men and led him to meet Anna.

Anna looked him over carefully.  He was a slim, boyish figure dressed in
a dove-grey three-piece suit of expensive material and superior cut.

Mevrou Stok?  he asked, almost diffidently, and with surprise Anna
realized that, far from being a boy, he was probably twenty years or so
her senior.

Anna Stok?  he repeated.  His hair had receded in deep bays on each side
of the smooth scholarly forehead, but had been allowed to grow feathery
wisps down his neck and on to his shoulders.

We should take the scissors to you, she thought, and said [a, I am Anna
Stok, and he replied in Afrikaans that she understood readily. A
pleasant meeting, aangename kennis am Colonel Garrick Courtney, but I am
saddened, as you must be, by the terrible loss we have experienced.  For
a few moments Anna did not understand what he was talking about. Instead
she studied him more closely, and now she saw that his unbarbered hair
had sprinkled the shoulder of his expensive suit with flakes of white
dandruff.  There was a button missing from his waistcoat and the thread
dangled loosely.  There was a grease spot on his silk cravat and the toe
of one of his boots was scuffed.

A bachelor, Anna decided.  Despite his intelligent eyes and the
sensitive gentle mouth, there was something childlike and vulnerable
about him, and Anna felt her maternal instincts stir.

He stepped closer to her, and the clumsy movement reminded Anna of what
General Courtney had told Centaine and her, that Garrick Courtney had
lost one of his legs in a hunting accident when he was a boy.

Coming on top of the death in action of my only son, Garrick lowered his
voice and the look in his eyes was enough to soften Anna's reserves,
this new loss is almost too much to bear.  I have not only lost my son,
but my daughter and my grandson before even I had a chance to know them.
Now at last Anna understood what he was talking about, and her face
flushed with such fury that Garry recoiled instinctively.

Never say that again!  She followed him as he retreated, thrusting her
face so close to his that their noses almost touched.  Don't you dare
ever to say that again!  Madam, Garry faltered, I am sorry, I don't
understand have I given you offence?  Centaine is not dead and don't you
ever dare again to speak as though she is!  Do you understand?  You mean
Michael's wife is alive?  Yes, Centaine is alive.  Of course, she is
alive.  Where is she?

Slow delight dawned in Garry's faded blue eyes.

That is what we have got to find out, Anna told him firmly.  We have got
to find her again, you and U Garry Courtney had a suite at the Mount
Nelson Hotel above the centre of Cape Town.

There was, of course, no real alternative lodging for a gentleman
traveller visiting the Cape of Good Hope.  Its guest book read like a
roll of honour: statesman and explorers, diamond magnates and big game
hunters, gallant soldiers and illustrious peers of the realm, princes
and admirals had all made it their temporary home.

The Courtney brothers, Garry and Sean, always had the same suite on the
corner of the top floor with a view on one side over the gardens laid
out by the governors of the Dutch East India Company, across the waters
of Table Bay to the smoky blue mountains on the far side; on the other
side the grey rock ramparts of the mountain were so close that they
blotted out half the sky.

These legendary views did not distract Anna for a moment.  She glanced
quickly around the sitting-room, then placed the carpet bag on the
centre table and rummaged in it.  She brought out the silver picture
frame and showed it to Garry, who was hovering behind her indecisively.

Good Lord, that's Michael- He took the frame from her and stared
hungrily at the photograph of NO 2 I Squadron, taken only a few months
previously.  It's so hard to believe- Garry broke off and gulped before
going on. Could I please have a copy of this made for myself?  Anna
nodded, and Garry transferred his attention to the two photographs in
the second leaf.  This is Centaine?  He pronounced it in the English
way.

Her mother.  Anna touched the other.  This is Centaine.  She corrected
his pronounciation.

They are so much alike, Garry turned the photographs to catch the light.
Yet the mother is prettier, but the daughter, Centaine, has more force
of character.  Anna nodded again.

Now you know why she cannot F be dead, she does not give up easily.  Her
manner became brusque.  But we are wasting time.  We need a map.  The
hotel porter knocked on the door within minutes of Garry's call, and
they spread the chart he brought between them.

I do not understand these things, Anna told him. Show me where the ship
was torpedoed.  Garry had the position from the Inflexible's navigating
officer, and he marked it for her.

Do you see?  Anna was triumphant.  It is only a few centimetres from the
land.  She stroked the outline of Africa with her finger.  So close, so
very close-'It's a hundred miles, even further perhaps."Are you always
so miserable?  Anna snapped.  They told me that the tide runs towards
the land, and the wind also was blowing so strongly towards the land,
anyway, I know my little girl.  The current runs at four knots and the
wind, Garry made a quick calculation.  It's possible.  But it would have
taken days.  Already Garry was enjoying himself.  He liked this woman's
absolute assurance.  All his life he had been a victim of his own doubts
and indecision, he could not remember even once being as certain of a
single thing as she seemed certain of everything.

So, with the wind and water pushing her, where has she come ashore? Anna
demanded.  Show me.  Garry pencilled in his estimates.  I would say,
about here!  Ah!  Anna placed a thick powerful finger on the map and
smiled.  When she smiled, she looked less like Chaka, Garry's huge
fierce mastiff, and Garry grinned with her. Ah, so!  Do you know this
place?  Well, I know a bit about it.  I went with Botha and Smuts in
I9I4, as a special correspondent for The Times.

We landed here, at Walvis Bay, the Bay of Whales.  Good!  Good!'Ann a
cut him short.  So there is no problem.  We will go there and find
Centaine, yes?  When can we leave, tomorrow?  It isn't quite that easy.
Garry was taken aback.

You see, that is one of the fiercest deserts in the world.

Anna's smile disappeared.  Always you find problems she told him
ominously.  Always you want to talk instead of doing things, and while
you talk, what is happening to Centaine, hey?  We must go quickly! Garry
stared at her in awe.

Already she seemed to know him intimately.  She had recognized that he
was a dreamer and a romantic, content to live in his imagination, to
live through the characters of his writings rather than in the real
harsh world which frightened him so.

Now there is no more time for your talking.  There are things to be
done.  First, we will make a list of these things, and then we will do
them.  Now begin.  What is the first thing?  Nobody had ever spoken to
Garry like this, not at least since his childhood.  With his military
rank and his Victoria Cross, with his inherited wealth, his scholarly
works of history and his reputation as a philosopher, the world treated
him with the respect accorded to a sage.  He knew he did not truly merit
any of these considerations, so they terrified and confused Garry, and
his defence was to withdraw further into this imaginary world. While you
make the list, take off your waistcoat."Madam?  Garry looked shcoked.

I am not madam, I am Anna.  Now give me your waistcoat, there is a
button missing. He obeyed quietly.

The first thing, Garry, in his shirtsleeves, wrote on a sheet of hotel
notepaper, is to cable the military governor in Windhoek.  We will need
permits, this is all a closed military area.  We will need his
cooperation, he will be able to arrange provisions and water points. Now
that Garry had been prodded into taking action, he was working quickly.
Anna sat opposite him, stitching on the button with those strong,
capable fingers.

What provisions?  You will need a second list for those.  Of courseGarry
pulled another sheet towards him.

There!  Anna bit off the thread and handed him back his waistcoat.  You
can put it on now.

Yes, Mevrou, said Garry meekly, but he could not remember when last he
had felt so good.

It was after midnight when Garry went out on to the small balcony of his
bedroom in his dressing-gown to take a last breath of night air, and
while he reviewed I the events of the day, the buoyant feeling of
well-being I i remained with him.  I I Between them, he and Anna had
performed prodigies of labour.  They already had a reply from the
military governor in Windhoek.  As always, the Courtney name had opened
the door to wholehearted cooperation.  Their reservations had been made
on the passenger train that would leave tomorrow afternoon, and take
them over the Orange river and across the wastes of Namaqualand and
Bushmanland, four days travel to Windhoek.

They had even completed the major part of outfitting the expedition.
Garry had spoken on the telephone, an i instrument which he usually
viewed with grave misgivings, to the owner of Stuttafords General Dealer
Stores.

The stores he required would be packed in wooden cases, the contents of
each clearly labelled on it, and delivered to the railway station the
following afternoon.  Mr Stuttaford had given Garry his personal
assurance that it would all be ready in time, and had sent one of his
green motor vans up to the Mount Nelson Hotel with a selection of safari
clothing for both Garry and Anna.

Anna had rejected most of My Stuttaford's offerings as being either too
expensive or too frivolous, I am not a poule', and she chose long thick
calico skirts and heavy lace-up boots with hobnailed soles, flannel
underwear and only at Garry's insistence, the African sun is a killer',
a cork solar topee with a green neck-flap.

Garry had also arranged a transfer Of 4000 to the Standard Bank in
Windhoek to cover the expedition's final outfitting.  It had all been
done swiftly, decisively and efficiently.

Garry took a long draw on his cigar and flicked the butt over the edge
of the balcony, then turned back into his bedroom.  He dropped his
dressing-gown over the chair and climbed in between white sheets as
crisp as lettuce leaves, and switched out the bedside light.  Instantly
all his old misgivings and self-doubts came crowding out of the
darkness.

It's madness, he whispered, and in his mind's eye saw again those
terrible deserts, shimmering endlessly in the blinding heat.  A thousand
miles of coastline, swept by a cruel current so cold that even a strong
man could survive in those waters for only a few hours before
hypothermia sucked the life out of him.

They were setting out to look for a young girl of delicate breeding, a
pregnant girl, who had last been seen plunging from the high deck of a
stricken liner into the icy dark sea a hundred miles from this savage
coast.  What were their chances of finding her?  He flinched from even
trying to estimate them.

Madness, he repeated miserably, and suddenly he wished that Anna was
there to bolster him.  He was still trying to find an excuse to summon
her from her single bedroom at the end of the corridor when he fell
asleep.

Centaine knew that she was drowning.  She had been sucked so deeply
beneath the surface that her lungs were crushing under the weight of the
dark waters.  Her head was full of the monstrous roaring of the sinking
ship, and of the crackle and squeal of the pressure in her own eardrums.

She knew she was doomed, but she fought with all her strength and
determination, kicking and clawing for life against the cold leaden drag
of waters, fighting against the burning agony of her lungs and the need
to breathe, but the turbulence swirled her into vertigo so that she lost
any sense of upward and downward movement, but still she fought on and
she knew that she would die fighting for her baby's life.

Then suddenly she felt the cracking weight of water on her ribs
releasing, felt her lungs swelling in her chest, and an updraught of air
and bubbles from the ruptured hull picked her up like a spark from a
campfire and hurled her towards the surface with the pressure pain
burning in her eardrums, and the drag of the life-jacket cutting into
her armpits.

She broke through the surface and was thrown high on the seething
fountain of escaping air.  She tried to breathe but took water into her
straining lungs and coughed and wheezed in agonized paroxysms until she
cleared her air passages, and then it was almost as though the sweet sea
air was too strong and rich for her, it burned like fire and she gasped
and laboured like an asthmatic.

Slowly she managed to control her breathing, but the waves came at her
unexpectedly out of the darkness, breaking over her head, smothering her
again so she had to train herself to regulate each breath to the rhythm
of the ocean.  Between the breaking swells, she tried to assess her own
condition and found herself undamaged.  No bones seemed broken or
cracked, despite that terrible gut-swooping drop from the ship's rail
and the stunning impact on water as hard as a cobbled street.  She still
had full control of her limbs and her senses, but then she felt t e
first stealthy invasion of the cold through her clothing, into her body
and her blood.

I have to get out of the water, she realized.  One of the lifeboats. Now
for the first time she listened for sounds and at first there was only
the wind and the rushing break of white caps.  Then she heard faintly,
very faintly, a gabble of human voices, a magpie chorus of croaks and
cries, and she opened her mouth and called for help, but a wave broke in
her face and she took more water and gasped and choked.

it took her minutes to recover, but as soon as her lungs were clear, she
struck out grimly towards where she thought the voices were, no longer
wasting strength on vainly beseeching the aid of others.  The heavy
life-jacket dragged and the crests broke over her, she was lifted on the
swells and dropped into the troughs, but she kept swimming.

I have to get out of the water, she kept telling herself. The cold is
the killer, I have to reach one of the boats. She reached out for the
next stroke and hit something solid with a force that broke the skin of
her knuckles, but instantly she grasped for it.  It was something large
that floated higher than her head, but she could find no secure
handholds upon it and in panic realized that already she was too far
gone to drag herself up by main strength.  She began to grope her way
around the piece of floating wreckage, searching for a handhold.

Not big- In the darkness she judged it to be not more than twelve feet
long, and half as broad, made of timber but coated with smooth oil
paint, one edge of it torn and splintered so that she scratched her hand
on it.  She felt the sting of the tearing skin, but the cold numbed the
pain.

One end of the wreckage floated high, the other end dipped below the
surface, and she pulled herself on to it, belly down.

Immediately she felt how precariously balanced the structure was.
Although she had only dragged her upper body on to it, and her legs from
the waist down were still hanging in the water, the wreckage tipped
dangerously towards her, and there was a hoarse cry of protest. Be
careful, you bloody fool, you'll have us over. Somebody else had found
the raft before her. I'm sorry, she gasped, I didn't realize-'All right,
lad.

just be careful.  The man on the raft had mistaken her voice for that of
one of the ship's boys. Here, give me a hand.  Centaine groped
frantically and touched outstretched fingers.  She seized the offered
hand.

Easy does it.  She kicked as the man pulled her up the sloping angle of
slippery painted wreckage, and then with her free hand she found a hold.
She lay belly down on the tossing, unstable deck, and felt suddenly too
weak and trembling to lift her head.

She was out of the deadly water.

Are you all right, son?  Her rescuer was lying beside her, his head
close to hers.

I'm all right.  She felt the touch of his hand on her back.

You've got a life-jacket, good boy.  Use the tapes to tie yourself to
this strut, here, let me show you. He lashed Centaine to the strut in
front of her.

I've tied a slippery knot.  If we capsize, just pull this end,
savvy?"Yes, thank you.  Thank you very much."Save it for later, lad. The
man beside her lowered his head on to his arms and they lay shivering
and sodden and rode the headlong rush of waves out of the night on their
frail, unstable vessel.

Without speaking again, without even being able to see more than each
other's vague shapes in the darkness, they quickly learned to balance
the raft between them with coordinated, subtle movements of their
bodies.  The wind increased in viciousness, but although the sea rose
with it, they managed to keep the higher side of the raft headed into
it, and only an occasional burst of spray splattered over them.

After a while, Centaine lapsed into an exhausted sleep, so deep that it
was almost comatose.  She awoke in daylight, a muted grey and dreary
light in a world of wild grey waters and low sagging grey clouds.  Her
companion on the raft was squatting on the canted insecure deck beside
her, and he was watching her steadfastly.

Miss Sunshine, he said, as soon as she stirred and opened her eyes.
Never guessed it was you when you came aboard last night.  She sat up
quickly and the tiny raft dipped and rocked dangerously under them.

Steady on, luv, that's the ticket.  He put out a gnarled hand to
restrain her.  There was a tattoo of a mermaid on his forearm.

My name's Ernie, miss.  Leading Seaman Ernie Simpson.  Of course, I knew
you right away.  Everybody on board knows Miss Sunshine."He was skinny
and old, thin grey hair plastered with salt to his forehead, and his
face wrinkled as a prune, but though his teeth were yellow and crooked,
his smile was kindly.

What has happened to the others, Ernie?  Frantically, Centaine looked
around her, the true horror of their situation coming over her again.
Gone to Davy Jones, most of them.

Davy Jones, who is he?  Drowned, I mean.  Rot the bloody Hun who did it.
The night had hidden the true extremity of their situation from
Centaine.  The reality that was revealed now was infinitely more
frightening than her imaginings.  As they dropped into the swells, they
were dwarfed by the cold opaque canyons of the sea, and as they rode up
and over the crests, the vista of loneliness was such as to force
Centaine to cringe down on the tiny deck.  There was nothing but the
water and the sky, no lifeboat nor swimmer, not even a seabird.

We are all alone, she whispered.  Taus seuls.  Cheer up, luv.  We are
still kicking, that's what counts.  Ernie had been busy while she still
slept.  She saw that he had managed to glean a few fragments of debris
and floating wreckage from the sea around them.  There was a sheet of
heavy-gauge canvas dragging behind the raft, around its edge short
lengths of hemp rope had been spliced into eye holes.  It floated like
some monstrous octopus with limp tentacles.

Lifeboat cover, Ernie saw her interest.  And those are ship's spars and
some other odds and sods, begging your pardon, miss, never know what
will come in useful.  He had lashed this collection of wreckage together
with the lengths of rope from the lifeboat cover, and even while he
explained to Centaine, he was working with scarred but nimble fingers
splicing short pieces of rope into a single length.

I'm thirsty, Centaine whispered.  The salt had scalded her mouth and her
lips felt hot and bloated.

Think about something else, Ernie advised.  Here, give us a hand with
this.  Can you splice?  Centaine shook her head.  Ernie dropped all his
aitches and as a French woman, she sympathized with him, and found it
easy to like him.

It's easy, come on, luv.  I'll learn you how.  Watch!Ernie had a clasp
knife attached by a lanyard to his belt, and he used the spike on the
back of it to open the weave of the hemp. One over one, like a snake
into its hole!  See!Quickly Centaine got the hang of it.  The work
helped to take her mind off their awful predicament.

Do you know where we are, Ernie?  I'm no navigator, Miss Sunshine, but
we are west of the coast of Africa, how far off I haven't a clue, but
somewhere out there is Africa.  Yesterday at noonsight, we weremiles
offshore."I'm sure you're right, Ernie nodded.  All I know is we've got
the current helping us, and the wind also- He turned his face up to the
sky.  if only we can use the wind.  Have you got a plan, Ernie?  Always
got a plan, miss, not always a good one, I admit.  He grinned at her.
Just get this rope finished first. As soon as they had a single length
of rope, twenty feet long, Ernie handed her the clasp knife.

Tie it around your middle, luv.  That's the ticket.  We don't want to
drop it now, do we?  He slid over the side of the raft and paddled like
a dog to the dragging wreckage.  With Centaine heaving and shoving under
his direction, they worked two of the salvaged spars into position and
lashed them securely with the hemp rope.

Outriggers, Ernie spluttered with seawater.  A trick I learned from the
darkies in Hawaii.  The raft was dramatically stabilized, and Ernie
crawled back on board.  Now we can think about putting up some kind of
sail.  It took four abortive attempts before the two of them were able
to rig a jury mast, and hoist a sail hacked from the canvas of the boat
cover.

We aren't going to win the America's Cup, luv, but we are moving.  Look
at the wake, Miss Sunshine.  They were spreading a sluggish oily wake
behind their cumbersome craft, and Ernie trimmed their tiny sail
carefully.

Two knots at least, he estimated.  Well done, Miss Sunshine, you're a
game one, and no mistake.  Couldn't have done that alone.  He was
perched on the stern of the raft, steering with a salvaged length of
timber as a tiller. Now you settle down and take a rest, luv, you and I
will have to stand watches, back to back.  All the rest of that day the
wind came at them in gusts and squalls, and twice their clumsy mast was
thrown overboard.  Each time Ernie had to go into the water to retrieve
it, and the effort required to lift the heavy spar and the wet canvas,
then to restep and lash it back in place, left Centaine trembling and
exhausted.

At nightfall the wind moderated and held steady and gentle out of the
south-west.  The clouds broke up so they had glimpses of the stars.

I'm tuckered out.  You'll have to take a turn at the tiller, Miss
Sunshine.  Ernie showed her how to steer, and the raft responded
sullenly to the push of the tiller.  That red star there, that's
Antares, with the small white star on each side of him, just like a
sailor on shore leave with a girlfriend on each arm, begging your
pardon, Miss Sunshine, but you just keep heading towards Antares and
we'll be all right.  The old seaman curled up at her feet like a
friendly dog, and Centaine crouched on the stem of the raft and held the
crude tiller under one arm.  The swells dropped with the wind and it
seemed to her that their passage through the water was faster.  Looking
back, she could see the green phosphorescence of their wake spreading
out behind them.  She watched the red giant Antares with his two
consorts climb up the black velvet curtain of the sky.

Because she was lonely and still afraid, she thought of Anna.

My darling Anna, where are you?  Are you still alive?

Did you reach one of the lifeboats, or are you, too, clinging to some
scrap of wreckage, waiting on the judgment of the sea?  Her longing for
the solid bulky assurance of her old nurse was so intense that it
threatened to turn her into a child once more, and she felt the
childlike tears scalding her eyelids, and Antares glaring red light
blurred and multiplied before her.  She wanted to crawl into Anna's lap
and bury her face in the warm, soapy smell of her vast bosom, and she
felt all the resolve and purpose of the day's struggle melt in her, and
she thought how easy it would be to lie down beside Ernie and not have
to try any more.

She sobbed aloud.

The sound of her own sob startled her, and suddenly she was angry with
herself and her own weakness.  She wiped the tears away with her thumbs
and felt the gritty crunch of dried salt crystals on her eyelashes.  Her
anger grew stronger, and deliberately she turned it away from herself to
the fates which so afflicted her.

Why?  she demanded of the great red star.  What have I ever done that
you single me out?  Are you punishing me?  Michel, and my father, Nuage
and Anna, everything I have ever loved.  Why do you do this to me?  She
broke off the thought, appalled at how close she had come to blasphemy.
She hunched over, placed her free hand on her own belly and shivered
with the cold.  She tried to feel some sign of the life in her body,
some swelling, some lump, some movement, but she was disappointed and
her anger returned full strength, and with it a kind of wild defiance.

I make a vow.  As mercilessly as I have been afflicted, so hard will I
fight to survive.  You, whether you are God or Devil, have thrust this
upon me.  So I give you my oath.  I will endure, and my son will endure
through me. She was raving.

She realized it but did not care, she had nsen to her knees and was
shaking her fist at the red star in defiance and anger.

Come!  she challenged.  Do your worst, and let's have done!  If she had
expected a blast of thunder and a lightning bolt, there was none, only
the sound of the wind in the rude mast and the scrap of sail, and the
bubble of the wake under the stern of the raft.  Centaine sagged back on
to her haunches and gripped the tiller and grimly pointed the raft up
into the east.

In the first light of the day, a bird came and hovered above Centaine's
head.  It was a small seabird, the dark blue-grey of a rifle barrel with
soft white chalky marks over its beady black eyes, and its wings were
beautifully shaped and delicate, and its cry was lonely and soft.

Wake up, Ernie, Centaine cried, and her swollen lips split at the
effort.  and a bubble of blood ran down her chin.  The inside of her
mouth was furry and dry as an old rabbit skin, and her thirst was a
bright, burning thing.

Ernie struggled up and looked about him dazedly.  He seemed to have
shrunk and withered during the night, and his lips were flaky and white
and encrusted with salt crystals.

Look, Ernie, a bird!  Centaine mumbled through her bleeding lips.

A bird, Ernie echoed, staring up at it.  Land close. The bird turned and
darted away, low over the water, and was lost to sight, steel-grey
against the dark grey sea.

A-A in the middle of the morning Centaine pointed ahead, her mouth and
her lips so desiccated that she could not speak.  There was a dark
tangled object floating on the surface just ahead of the raft.  It
wallowed and waved its tentacles like a monster from the depths.

Sea kelp!  Ernie whispered, and when they were close enough, he gaffed
it with the tiller arm and drew the heavy mat of vegetation alongside
the raft.

The stalk of the kelp was thick as a man's arm and five metres long,
with a bushy head of leaves at the end.  It had obviously been torn from
the rocks by the storm.

Moaning softly with thirst, Ernie cut a length of the thick stalk. Under
the rubbery skin there was a pulpy section of stem, and a hollow air
chamber within.  Ernie shaved the pulp with the clasp knife and thrust a
handful of the shavings into Centaine's mouth.  It was running with sap.
The taste was strong and unpleasant, iodine and peppery, but Centaine
let the liquid trickle down her throat and whispered with delight.  They
gorged themselves on the juice of the kelp and spat out the pith.  Then
they rested a while and felt the strength flowing back into their
bodies.

Ernie took the tiller again and headed the raft down the path of the
wind.  The storm clouds had blown away, and the sun warmed them and
dried their clothing.  At first they held their faces up to its caress,
but soon it became oppressive, and they tried to huddle away from it in
the tiny patch of shade from the sail.

When the sun reached its zenith, they were exposed to the scourge of its
full strength and it sucked the moisture from their bodies.  They
squeezed a little more of the kelp juice, but now the unplesant chemical
taste nauseated Centaine and she realized that if she vomited, she would
lose so much of her precious uids.  They could drink the kelp juice only
sparingly.

With her back against the jury mast, Centaine stared out at the horizon,
the great ring of threatening water that surrounded them unbroken except
in the east where a line of sombre cloud lay low on the sea.  it took
her almost an hour to realize that despite the wind, the cloud had not
changed shape.  If anything, it had firmed and grown a hairline taller
along the horizon.  She could make out tiny irregularities, tow peaks
and valleys that did not alter shape as ordinary clouds would.

Ernie, she whispered, Erme, look at those clouds. The old man blinked
his eyes and then rose slowly into a crouch.  He started to make a soft
moaning sound in his throat, and Centaine realized it was a sound of
joy.

She rose beside him, and for the first time looked upon the continent of
Africa.

Africa rose from the sea with tantalizing deliberation, and then almost
shyly swathed herself in the velvet robes of night and retreated once
more from their gaze.

The raft trundled on gently through the hours of darkness, and neither
of them slept.  Then the eastern sky began to soften and glow with the
dawn, the stars paled out and there close before them rose the great
purple dunes of the Narnibian Desert. How beautiful it is!  Centaine
breathed. It's a hard fierce land, miss, Ernie cautioned her. But so
beautiful.  The dunes were sculptured in mauve and violet, and when the
first rays of the sun touched the crests, they burned red gold and
bronze.

Beauty is as beauty does, mumbled Ernie.  Give me the green fields of
old blighty and bugger the rest, begging your pardon, Miss Sunshine.

The yellow-throated gannets came out in long formations from the land,
flying high enough to be gilded by the sunlight, and the surf upon the
beaches sighed and rumbled like the breathing of the sleeping continent.
The wind that had stood steadily behind them for so long now felt the
land and eddied and twisted.  It caught their tiny sail aback, and the
mast collapsed and fell overboard in a tangle of canvas and ropes.

They stared at each other in dismay.  The land was so very close, it
seemed that they might reach out and touch it, and yet they were forced
to go through the whole weary business of restepping the mast.  Neither
of them had the energy for this new endeavour.

Ernie roused himself at last, wordlessly untied the lanyard of the clasp
knife and handed it to Centaine.  She fastened it around her own waist
as the old man slid over the side of the raft once again and paddled to
the peak of the stubby mast.  On her knees, Centaine began to untangle
the sheets and lines.  The knots had all swollen with moisture and she
had to use the spike of the clasp knife to break them open.

She coiled the ropes, and looked up as Ernie called, Are you ready, luv?
Ready.  She stood and balanced uncertainly on the tossing raft with the
guide rope from the top of the mast in her hands taking up the slack,
ready to assist Ernie to raise it back into position.

Then something moved beyond the old man's bobbing head, and she froze
and lifted her hand to shade her eyes.

She puzzled over the strangely shaped object.  It rode high on the green
current, as high as a man's waist, and the early morning sun glinted
upon it like metal.  No, not metal, but like a lustrous dark velvet.  It
was shaped like the sail of a child's yacht, and with a nostalgic pang
she remembered the little boys around the village pond on a Sunday
afternoon, dressed in their sailor suits, sailing their boats.

What is it, luv?  Ernie had seen her expectant pose and her puzzled
expression.

I don't know, she pointed.  Something strange, coming towards us, fast,
very fasCErnie swivelled his head.

Where?  I don't see- At that moment a swell lifted the raft high.

God help us!  screamed Ernie, and flailed the water with his arms,
tearing at it in an ungainly frenzy as he tried to reach the raft. What
is it?  Help me out!  Ernie gulped, smothering in his own wild spray.
It's a bloody great shark.  The word paralysed Centaine.

She stared in stony horror at the beast, as another swell lifted it
high, and the angle of the sunlight changed to pierce the surface and
spotlight it.

The shark was a lovely slaty-blue colour, dappled by the rippling
surface shadows, and it was immense, much longer than their tiny raft,
wider across the back than one of the hogsheads of cognac from the
estate at Mort Homme.  The double-bladed tail slashed as it drove
forward, irresistibly attracted by the wild struggles of the man in the
water, and it surged down the face of the swell.

Centaine screamed and recoiled.

The shark's eyes were a catlike golden colour with black, spade-shaped
pupils.  She saw the nostril slits in its massive, pointed snout.

Help me!  screamed Ernie.  He had reached the edge of the raft and was
trying to drag himself on board4 He was kicking up a froth of water and
the raft rocked wildly and listed towards him.

Centaine dropped to her knees and grabbed his wrist.

She leaned back and pulled with all the strength of her terror, and
Ernie slid halfway up on to the raft, but his legs still dangled over
the side.

The shark seemed to hump out of the water, its back rose glistening
blue, streaming with sea water, and the tall fin stood up like an
executioner's blade.  Centaine had read somewhere that a shark rolled on
its back to attack, so she was unprepared for what happened now.

The great shark reared back and the grinning slit of its mouth seemed to
bulge open.  The lines of porcelain-white fangs, rank upon rank of them,
came erect like the quills of a porcupine as the jaws projected
outwards, and then they closed over Ernie's kicking legs.  She clearly
heard the grating rasp of the serrated edges of its fangs on bone, then
the shark slid back, and Ernie was jerked backwards with it.

Centaine kept her grip on his wrist, although she was pulled down on to
her knees and started to slide across the wet deck.  The raft listed
over steeply under their combined weight and the heavy drag of the shark
on Ernie's legs.

Centaine could see its head under the surface for an instant.  Its eye
stared back at her with a fathomless savagery, and then the inner
nictitating membrane slid across it in a sardonic wink, and quite slowly
the shark rolled in the water with the irresistible weight of a teak
log, exerting a shearing strain on to the jaws still clamped over
Ernie's legs.

Centaine heard the bones part with a sound like breaking green sticks.

The drag on the old man's body was released so suddenly that the raft
bobbed up and swung like a crazy pendulum in the opposite direction.

Centaine, still with her grip on Ernie's arm, fell backwards, dragging
him up on to the raft after her.  He was still kicking, but both his
legs were grotesquely foreshortened, taken off a few inches below the
knee, the stumps protruding from the torn cuffs of his duck trousers.
The cuts were not clean, dangling ribbons of torn meat and skin flapped
from the stumps as Ernie kicked, and the blood was a bright fountain in
the sunlight.

He rolled over and sat up on the pitching raft, and stared at his
stumps.  Oh merciful mother, help me!  he moaned.  I'm a dead man. Blood
spurted from the open arteries, dribbled and ran in rivulets across the
white deck, cascaded to the surface of the sea and stained it cloudy
brown.  The blood looked like smoke in the water.

My legs!  Ernie clutched at his wounds, and the blood fountained up
between his fingers.  My legs are gone.  The devil has taken my legs.
There was a huge swirl almost under the raft, and the dark triangular
fin came up and knifed the surface, cutting through the discoloured
water.

He smells the blood, Ernie cried.  He won't give up, the devil.  We are
all dead men.  The shark turned, rolling on his side, so they saw his
snowy belly and the wide grinning jaws, and he came back, sliding
through the bright clear water with majestic sweeps of his tail.  He
thrust his head into the blood clouds, and the wide jaws opened as he
gulped at the taste.  The scent and the taste infuriated him and he
turned again; the waters roiled and churned at the massive movement
below the surface, and this time he drove straight under the raft.

There was a crash as the shark struck the underside of the raft with his
back, and Centaine was thrown flat with the force of the impact.  She
clung to the raft with clawed fingers. He is trying to capsize us,
shouted Ernie.  Centaine had never seen so much blood.  She could not
believe that the thin ancient body held so much, and still it spurted
from Ernie's severed stumps.

The shark turned and came back.  Again the heavy crash of rubbery flesh
into the timbers of the raft and they were lifted up high.  The raft
hovered on the edge of capsizing and then fell back on to an even keel
and bobbed like a cork.

He won't give up, Ernie was sobbing weakly.  Here he comes again.  The
shark's great blue head rose out of the water, the jaws opened and then
closed on the side of the raft.  Long white fangs locked into the
timber, and it crunched and splintered as the shark hung on.

It seemed to be staring directly at Centaine as she lay on her belly
clinging to the struts of the raft with both hands.  It looked like a
monstrous blue hog, snuffling and rooting at the frail timbers of the
little raft.  Once again it blinked its eyes, the pale translucent
membrane slipping over inscrutable black pupils was the most obscene and
terrifying thing Centaine had ever seen, and then it began to shake its
head, still gripping the side of the raft in its jaws.  They were thrown
about roughly, as the raft was lifted out of the water and swung from
side to side.

Good Christ, he'll have us yet!  Ernie dragged himself away from the
grinning head.  He'll never stop till he gets us!  Centaine leapt to her
feet, balancing like an acrobat, and she seized the thick wooden tiller
and swung it high overhead.  With all her strength she brought it down
on the tip of the shark's hoglike snout.  The blow jarred her arms to
the shoulders, and she swung again and then again.  The tiller landed
with a rubbery thump, then bounced off the great head without even
marking the sandpapery blue hide, and the shark seemed not to feel it.

He went on worrying the side of the raft, rocking it wildly, and
Centaine lost her balance and fell half overboard, but instantly she
dragged herself back and on her knees kept beating the huge invulnerable
head, sobbing with the effort of each stroke.  A section of the woodwork
tore away in the shark's jaw's, and the blue head slipped below the
surface again, giving Centaine a moment's respite.

He's coming back!  Ernie cried weakly.  He will keep coming back, he
won't give up!  And as he said it, Centaine knew what she had to do. She
couldn't allow herself to think about it.  She had to do it for the
baby's sake.  That was all that counted, Michel's son.

Ernie was sitting flat on the edge of the raft, those fearfully
mutilated limbs thrust out in front of him, turned half away from
Centaine, leaning forward to peer down into the green waters below the
raft.

Here he comes again!  he shrieked.  His sparse grey hairs were slicked
down over his pate by seawater and diluted blood.  His scalp gleamed
palely through this thin covering.  Beneath them the waters roiled, as
the shark turned to attack once more, and Centaine saw the dark bulk of
him coming up from the depths, driving back at the raft.

Centaine came to her feet again, Her expression was stricken, her eyes
filled with horror, and she tightened her grip on the heavy wooden
tiller.  The shark crashed into the bottom of the raft, and Centaine
reeled, almost fell, then caught her balance.

He said himself he was a dead man.  She steeled herself.

She lifted the tiller high and fixed her gaze on the naked pink patch at
the back of Ernie's head and then with all her strength she swung the
tiller down in an axe-stroke.

She saw Ernie's skull collapse under the blow.

Forgive me, Ernie, she sobbed, as the old man fell forward and rolled to
the edge of the raft.  You were dead already, and there was no of er way
to save my baby.  The back of his skull was crushed in, but he rolled
his head and looked at her.  His eyes were afire with some turbulent
emotion and he tried to speak.  His mouth opened, then the fire in his
eyes died and his limbs stretched and relaxed.

Centaine was weeping as she knelt beside him.

God forgive me, she whispered, but my baby must live.  The shark turned
and came back, its dorsal fin standing higher than the deck of the raft,
and gently, almost tenderly, Centaine rolled Ernie's body over the side.

The shark whirled.  It picked up the body in its jaws and began to worry
it like a mastiff with a bone, and as it did so the raft drifted away.
The shark and its victim sank gradually out of sight into the green
waters and Centaine found she still had the tiller in her hands.

She began to paddle with it, pushing the raft towards the beach.  She
sobbed with each stroke, and her vision was blurred.  Through her tears
she saw the kelp beds swaying and dancing at the edge of the ocean, and
beyond them the surf humping and then hissing over a beach of brassy
yellow sands.  She paddled in a dedicated frenzy, and an eddy of the
current caught the raft, assisting her efforts, and bore it in towards
the beach.  Now she could see the bottom, the corrugated patterns of
sea-washed sands, through the limpid green water.

Thank you, God, oh thank you, thank you!  she sobbed in time to her
strokes, and then again there came that shattering impact of a huge body
into the underside of the raft.

Centaine clung desperately to the strut again, her spirits plunging with
despair.  It's come back again.

She saw the massive dappled shape pass beneath the raft, starkly
outlined against the gleaming sandy bottom.

It never gives up.  She had won only temporary respite.

The shark had devoured the sacrifice she had offered it within minutes,
then drawn by the odour of the blood that was still splattered over the
raft, it had followed her into water barely as deep as a man's shoulder.

It came around in a wide circle and then raced in from the sea side to
attack the raft again, and this time the impact was so shattering that
the raft began to break up.

The planks bad been worked loose by the heavy flogging of the storm, and
they opened now under Centaine, so her legs dropped through and she
touched the horrid beast beneath the raft.  She felt the rasping of its
coarse hide across the soft skin of her calf, and screamed as she
jackknifed her lower body up away from it.

Inexorably the shark circled and came back, but the slope of the beach
forced it to come from the sea side and its next attack, murderous as it
was, drove the raft in closer to the beach, and for a moment or two the
colossal beast was stranded on the shelving sand.  Then, with a swirl
and a high splash, it pulled free and circled out into deeper water, but
with its fin and broad blue back exposed-.

A wave hit the raft, completing the demolition that the shark had begun,
and the raft shattered into a welter of planks and canvas and dangling
ropes.  Centaine was tumbled into the surging waters, and spluttering
and coughing came to her feet.

She was breast-deep in the cold green surf, and through eyes streaming
with salt water, she saw the shark come boring full at her.  She
screamed and tried to back up the shelving beach, brandishing the tiller
she still had in her hands. Get away!  she screamed.  Get away!  Leave
me!

The shark hit her with his snout and threw her high in the air.  She
fell back on top of the huge black back, and it reared under her like a
wild horse.  The feel of it was cold and rough and unspeakably
loathsome.  She was thrown clear of it and then was struck a heavy blow
by the flailing tail.  She knew it had been a glancing blow a full sweep
of that tail would have crushed in her ribcage.

The shark's own wild thrashing had churned up the sandy bottom, blinding
it so that it could not see its prey, but it sought her with its mouth
in the turbid water.  The jaws champed like an iron gate slamming in a
hurricane, and Centaine was beaten and hammered by the swinging tail and
the massive contortions of the blue body.

Slowly she fought her way up the sloping beach.  Every time she was
knocked down, she struggled up, gasping and blinded and striking out
with the tiller.  The gnashing fangs closed on the thick folds of her
skirt and ripped them away, and immediately her legs were freed.  As she
stumbled back a last few paces, the level of the water fell below her
waist.

At the same moment, the surf drew back, sucking away from the beach, and
the shark was stranded, suddenly powerless as it was deprived of its
natural element.  It wriggled and writhed on the sand, helpless as a
bull elephant in a pitfall, and Centaine backed away from it, knee-deep
in the dragging surf, too exhausted to turn and run, until miraculously
she realized that she was standing on hard-packed sand above the
waterline.

She threw the tiller aside and staggered up the beach towards the high
dunes.  She did not have the strength to go that far.  She collapsed
just above the high-water line and lay face down in the sand.  The sand
coated her face and body like sugar, and she lay in the sunlight and
wept with the fierce gales of fear and sorrow and remorse and relief
that racked her entire body.

She had no idea how long she lay in the sand, but after a while she
became aware of the sting of the harsh sunlight on the backs of her bare
legs, and she sat up slowly.

Fearfully she looked back to the edge of the surf, expecting still to
see the great blue beast stranded there, but the flooding tide must have
lifted it and it had escaped out into deep water.  There was no sign of
it at all.  She let out her breath in an involuntary gasp of relief and
stood up uncertainly.

Her body felt battered and crushed and very weak, and looking down at it
she saw how contact with the rough abrasive hide of the shark had grazed
her skin raw, and that already there were dark blue bruises spreading
across her thighs.  Her skirts had been torn off her by the shark, and
she had discarded her shoes before she jumped from the deck of the
hospital ship, so except for her sodden uniform blouse and a pair of
silk carni-knickers, she was naked.  She felt a rush of shame, and
looked around her quickly.  She had never been further from other human
presence in her life.

No one to peek at me here.  She had instinctively covered her pudenda.
with her hands, and she let them fall to her sides again, and touched
something hanging from her waist.  It was Ernie's clasp knife, dangling
on its lanyard.

She took it in her hand and stared out over the ocean.

All her guilt and remorse returned to her with a rush.

I owe you my life, she whispered, and the life of my son.  Oh, Ernie,
how I wish you were still with us.  The loneliness came upon her with
such an overpowering rush that she sagged down on to the sand again and
covered her face with her hands.  The sun roused her once again.  She
felt her skin beginning to prickle and burn again under its baleful
rays, and immediately her thrist returned to nag at her.

Must protect myself from the sun.  She dragged herself upright and
looked around her with more attention.

She was on a wide yellow beach backed by mountainous dunes.  The beach
was totally deserted.  It stretched away in sweeping curves on each side
of her to the very limit of her vision, twenty or thirty kilometres, she
estimated, before it shaded into the sea fret.  It seemed to Centaine to
be the picture of desolation, there was no rock or leaf of vegetation,
no bird or animal, and no cover from the sun.

Then she looked at the edge of the beach where she had struggled ashore,
and she saw the remnants of her raft swirling and tumbling in the surf.
Fighting down her terror of the shark, she waded in knee-deep and
dragged the tangled sail and sheets of the raft high above the tideline.

For a skirt, she cut a strip of canvas and belted it around her waist
with a length of hemp rope.  Then she cut another piece of canvas to
cover her head and shoulders from the sun.

Oh!  I'm so thirsty!  She stood at the edge of the beach and longingly
peered out to where the kelp beds danced in the current.  Her thirst was
more powerful than her distaste for the kelp juice, but her terror of
the shark was greater than both, and she turned away.

Though her body ached and the bruises were purple and black across her
arms and legs, she knew her best chance was to start walking, and there
was only one direction to take.  Cape Town lay to the south.  However,
nearer than that were the German towns with strange names she recalled
them with an effort, Swakopmund and Uderitzbuclit.  The nearest of these
was probably five hundred kilometres away.

Five hundred kilometres, the enormity of that distance came over her,
and her legs turned to water under her and she sat down heavily on the
sand.

I won't think about how far it is, she roused herself at last.  I will
think only one step ahead at a time.  She pushed herself to her feet and
her whole body ached with braises.  She began to limp along the edge of
the sea, where the sand was wet and firm, and after a while her muscles
warmed and the stiffness eased so she could extend her stride.

Just one step at a time!  she told herself.  The loneliness was a burden
that would weigh her down if she let it.  She lifted her chin and looked
ahead.

The beach was endless, and there was a frightening sameness to the vista
that stretched before her.  The hours that she trudged on seemed to have
no effect upon it and she began to believe that she was on a treadmill
with always the unbroken sands ahead of her, the changeless sea on her
right hand, the tall wall of the dunes on her left, and over it all the
vast milky blue bowl of the sky.

I am walking from nothingness on to nothing, she whispered, and she
longed with all her soul for the glimpse of another human form.

The soles of her bare feet began to hurt and when she sat down to
examine them, she found that seawater had softened her skin and the
coarse yellow sand had abraded it almost down to the flesh.  She bound
up her feet with strips of canvas and went on.  The sun and the exertion
dampened her blouse with sweat, and thirst became her constant spectral
companion.

The sun was halfway down the western sky when in the distance ahead of
her a rocky headland appeared, and merely because it altered the dreary
vista, she quickened her pace.  But her step soon faltered again and she
realized how the single day's trek had already weakened her.

I haven't eaten for three days, and I haven't drunk since yesterday- The
rocky headland seemed to come no nearer, and at last she had to sit down
to rest, and almost immediately her thirst began to rage.

If I don't drink very soon, I won't be able to go on, she whispered, and
she peered ahead at the low rampart of black rock and straightened up
incredulously; her eyes were tricking her.  She blinked them rapidly and
stared again.

People!  she whispered and pulled herself to her feet. People!  She
began to stagger forward.

They were sitting on the rocks, she could see the movement of their
heads silhouetted against the pale sky, and she laughed aloud and waved
to them.

There are so many, am I going mad?  She tried to shout, but it came out
as a reedy little whine.

Disappointment, when it struck, was so intense that she reeled as though
from a physical blow.

Seals, she whispered, and their mournful honking cries carried to her on
the soft sea breeze.

For a while she did not think that she had the strength to go on.  And
then she forced one foot in front of the other, and plodded on towards
the headland.

Several hundred seals were draped over the rocks, and there were many
more bobbing about in the waves that broke over the rocky point, and the
stench of them came to Cental the on the wind.  As she approached, they
began to retreat towards the sea, flopping over the rocks in their
ludicrously clownish way, and she saw that there were dozens of calves
amongst them.

If I could only catch one of those.  She gripped the clasp knife in her
right hand and opened the blade.  I have to eat soon- But already
alarmed by her approach, the leaders were sliding from the rocks into
the surging green water, their ungainly lumberings transformed instantly
into miraculous grace.

She started to run, and the movement precipitated a rush of dark bodies
over the rocks; she was still a hundred yards from the nearest of them.
She gave up and stood panting weakly, watching the colony escape into
the sea.

Then suddenly there was a wild commotion amongst them, a chorus of
squeals and terrified cries, and she saw two dark agile wolf-like shapes
dart from amongst the rocks and drive into the densely packed troop of
seals.

She realized that her approach had distracted the colony, and given
these other predators a chance to launch their own attack.  She did not
recognize them as brown hyena for she had only seen illustrations of the
bigger and more ferocious spotted hyena which almost every book on
African exploration contained.

These animals were the beach wolf of the Dutch settlers, the size of a
mastiff, but with sharp pointed ears and a shaggy mane of long ashy
yellow fur that was now erect in excitation as they dashed into the
colony of seals; unerringly they picked out the smallest and most
defenceless of the infants, seizing them from the flanks of their
cumbersome dams, and dragged them away, easily avoiding the grotesque
efforts that the mothers made to defend their young.

Centaine began running again, and at her approach the female seals gave
up and flopped down the black rocks into the surf.  She snatched up a
club of driftwood from the pile of rubbish on the high-tide mark and
raced across the end of the headland to cut off the nearest of the brown
hyena.

The hyena was hampered by the squealing baby seal that it was dragging,
and Centaine managed to get ahead of it.  The animal stopped and lowered
its head in a threatening stance, and watched Centaine approaching.  The
young seal was bleeding copiously from where the hyena's fangs were
locked into its glossy pelt, and it was crying like an human infant.

The hyena growled fiercely and Centaine stopped, facing the beast, and
swung the club and shrieked at it.

Drop it!  Get away, you brute!  Leave it!  She sensed that the hyena was
perplexed by her aggressive attitude, and though it growled again, it
backed up a few steps and crouched protectively over its wriggling prey.

Centaine tried to stare it down, holding the gaze of the formidable
yellow eyes as she shouted and brandished the club.  Abruptly the hyena
dropped the badly injured seal cub and rushed directly at Centaine,
baring long yellow fangs and making a roaring bellow in its throat.
Instinctively Centaine knew that this was the crucial moment.

If she ran the hyena would follow her and savage her.

She rushed forward to meet the animal's charge, redoubling her yells and
swinging the club with all her strength.

Evidently the hyena had not expected this reaction.  Its courage failed.
It turned and ran back to its floundering prey, and burying its fangs in
the silky skin of its neck, began to drag it away again.

At Centaine's feet was a crevice in the rocks and it was filled with
waterworn round stones.  She grabbed one of these, the size of a ripe
orange, and hurled it at the hyena.

She aimed for the head, but the heavy stone fell short and it hit the
creature's paw, crushing it against the rocky ground.  The hyena
squealed, dropped the seal cub and limped swiftly away on three legs.

Centaine ran forward and opened the clasp knife.  She was a country girl
and bad bel ed Anna and her father slaughter and dress animals before.
With a single, swift, merciful stroke, she cut the seal's throat and let
it bleed.

The hyena circled back, growling and whining, limping heavily, undecided
and confused by the attack.

Centaine snatched up stones from the crevice in both hands and threw
them.  One of them struck the hyena on the side of its bushy-maned head
and it yelped and fled fifty paces before stopping and staring back at
her over its shoulder with hatred.

She worked swiftly.  As she had watched Anna do so often with a sheep's
carcass, she slit open the belly cavity, angling the point of the blade
so as not to nick the stomach sac or the entrails, sawing through the
cartilage that closed the front of the ribcage.

With bloodied hands she hurled another stone at the circling hyena, and
then carefully lifted out the infant seal's stomach.  The need for
moisture was a raging fever within her; already she sensed that lack of
it was threatening the existence of the embryo in her own womb, and yet
her gorge rose at the thought of what she must do.

When I was a girl, Anna had told her, the shepherds used to do it
whenever a suckling lamb died.  Centaine held the seal cub's little
stomach bag in her cupped and bloodied hands.  The stomach lining was
yellowish and translucent so that she fancied that she could see the
contents through the walls.  The cub must obviously have been lying with
its mother up to the moment of the hyena attack, and it must have been
suckling greedily.  The small stomach was drum-tight with milk.

Centaine gulped with revulsion and then told herself, If you don't
drink, you'll be dead by morning, you and Michel's son, both.  She made
a tiny incision in the stomach wall, and immediately the thick white
curds of milk oozed from it.

Centaine closed her eyes and placed her mouth over the slit.  She forced
herself to suck the hot curdled milk.  Her empty stomach heaved and she
choked with an involun tory retching reflex, but she fought and at last
controlled it.

The curds had a slightly fishy taste but were not altogether repulsive.

After she had forced down the first mouthful, she thought it tasted a
little of the goat's-milk cheese that Anna made, strong with rennet.

She rested after a while, and wiped the blood and mucus from her mouth
with the back of her hand.  She could almost feel the fluid soaking back
to replace that lost by her body tissues, and new strength seemed to
radiate through her exhausted body.

She hurled another rock at the hyena, and then drank the rest of the
thick curdled milk.  Carefully she slit open the tiny empty stomach sac,
and licked up the last drops.

Then she threw the empty membrane to the hyena.

I will share it with you, she told the snarling beast.

She skinned the carcass, cutting off the head and the rudimentary limbs,
and threw those to the hyena also.

The big doglike carnivore seemed to have resigned itself.

It sat on its haunches twenty paces from Centaine, with its pointed ears
pricked up and a comically expectant expression, waiting for the scraps
she threw it.

Centaine cut as many log narrow strips of the bright red seal meat as
she could get off the skeleton, and wrapped them in the canvas of her
headdress.  Then she retreated and the hyena rushed forward to lick up
the spilled blood from the rocks and to crush the small skeleton in its
ugly, over-developed jaws.

At the top of the headland the wind and wave action had cut a shallow
overhang from the compacted sandstone, and it had provided a shelter for
others before Centaine.  She found the scattered ashes of a long-dead
cooking fire on the sandy floor of the cave, and when she scratched in
the dirt, she turned up a small triangular flint scraper or cutting
tool, similar to those for which she and Anna had hunted on the hillock
behind the chAteau at Mort Homme.  It gave her a peculiarly nostalgic
pang to hold the scrap of flint in the grubby palm of her hand, and when
she felt self-pity overcoming her, she placed the sliver of stone in the
pocket of her blouse, and forced herself to face harsh reality rather
than mope over bygone days in a far-off land.

Fire, she said, as she examined the dead sticks of charcoal, and she
laid out the precious scraps of seal meat on a rock at the mouth of the
cave to dry in the wind and went back to gather an armful of driftwood.

She piled this beside the ancient hearth and tried to remember
everything she had ever read about making fire.

Two sticks, rub them together, she muttered.

It was a human need so basic, so taken for granted in her life until
then, that now the lack of fire with its warmth and comfort was an
appalling deprivation.

The driftwood was impregnated with salt and damp.

She selected two pieces, not having the vaguest notion of the qualities
of the wood she required, and she set about experimenting.  She worked
until her fingers were raw and hurting, but she could not induce a
single spark or even a wisp of smoke from her scraps of wood shavings.

Depressed and despondent, she lay back against the rear wall of the rock
shelter and watched the sun set into the darkening sea.  She shivered
with the chill of the evening breeze and wrapped the canvas shawl more
securely around her shoulders; she felt the small lump of flint press
into her breast.

She noticed how tender her nipples had become recently, and how her
breasts had begun to swell and harden, and she massaged them now.
Somehow the thought of her pregnancy gave her renewed strength, and when
she looked southwards, she saw Michel's special star hanging low on the
horizon where a sombre ocea was blending into the night sky.

Achernar, she whispered.  Michel- and as she SAID -his name her fingers
touched the flint in her pocket agaiN it was almost as though it was
Michel's gift to her, AND her hands shook with excitement as she struck
the fliNT against the steel blade of the clasp knife, and the whitE

sparks flared in the darkness of the rocky shelter.

She worried the threads of canvas into a loose BaLl.

mixed with fine wood shavings, and struck flint and steeL over it.
Although each attempt produced a shower OF bright white sparks, it took
all her care and persistANCE before at last a wisp of smoke rose from
the ball of kiNDLING

and she blew it into a tiny yellow flame.

She grilled the strips of seal meat over the coals.  they tasted like
both veal and rabbit.  She savoured each bitE and after she had eaten,
she anointed the painful blisters that the sun had raised on her skin
with seal FAT She set aside the remaining strips of cooked meat FOR the
days ahead, built up the fire, wrapped the caNVAS

around her shoulders and settled herself against the wall of the shelter
with the club beside her.

I should pray- and as she began, Anna seemed verY close, watching over
her as she had so often before wheN

Centaine, the child, knelt beside her bed with haNDS Clasped before her.

Thank you, Almighty God, for saving me from the se and thank you for the
food and drink you have provide(but- The prayer petered out, and
Centaine felt recrimnations rather than gratitude pressing to her lips.

Blasphemy.  She almost heard Anna's voice and shE

ended the prayer hastily.

And, oh Lord, please give me the strength to face what ever further
trials you have in store for me in the dayahead, and if it please you,
give me also the wisdom to see your design and purpose in heaping these
tribulations upon me.  That was as much of a protest as she would risk,
and while she was still trying to decide on a suitable ending for the
prayer, she fell asleep.

Al When she awoke, the fire had died down to embers, and she did not at
first know where she was or what had woken her.  Then her circumstances
came back to her with a sickening rush, and she heard some large animal
out in the darkness just beyond the opening of the shelter.

It sounded as though it was feeding.

Quickly she piled driftwood on the fire and blew up a flame.  At the
edge of the firelight she saw the lurking shape of the hyena and she
realized that the package of cooked seal meat that she had so carefully
wrapped in a strip of canvas the previous evening was gone from the rock
beside the fire.

Sobbing with rage and frustration, she picked up a flaming brand and
hurled it at the hyena.

You horrible thieving brute!  she screamed, and it yelped and galloped
away into the darkness.

The seal colony lay basking on the rocks below her shelter in the early
morning sunlight, and already Centaine felt the first stirrings of the
hunger and the thirst that the day would bring.

She armed herself with two stones, each the size of her fist, and the
driftwood club, and with elaborate stealth crawled down one of the
gulleys in the rocks, attempting to get within range of the nearest
members of the colony.

However, the seals fled honking before she had covered half the distance
and they would not emerge from the surf again while she was in sight.

Frustrated and hungry, she went back to the shelter.

There were spots of congealed white seal fat on the rock beside the
hearth.  She crushed a knob of charcoal from the dead fire to powder and
mixed it with the fat in the palm of her hand, then she carefully
blacked the tip of her nose and her cheeks, the exposed areas which had
been burned by the sun the previous day.

Then she looked around the shelter.  She had the knife and the scrap of
flint, the club and canvas hood, all her worldly possessions, and yet
she felt a dragging reluctance to leave the shelter.  For a few hours it
had been her home.

She had to force herself to turn and go down to the beach, and to set
out southwards into that ominously monotonous seascape once again.

That night there was no cave shelter and no pile of driftwood trapped
against a rocky headland.  There was no food and nothing to drink and
she rolled herself in the strip of canvas and lay on the hard sand under
the dunes.

All night a chill little wind blew the fine sands over her so that at
dawn she was coated with sparkling sugary particles.  Sand had encrusted
her eyelashes, and salt and sand were thick in her hair.  She was so
stiff with cold and bruises and over-taxed muscles that at first she
hobbled like an old woman, using the club as a staff.  As her muscles
warmed, the stiffness abated, but she knew she was getting weaker and as
the sun rose higher, so her thirst became a silent scream in the depths
of her body.

Her lips swelled and cracked, her tongue bloated and furred over with
thickening gluey saliva that she could not swallow.

She knelt in the edge of the surf and bathed her face, soaked the canvas
shawl and her skimpy clothing, and resisted somehow the temptation to
swallow a mouthful of the cool, clear sea water.

The relief was only temporary.  When the sea water dried on her skin,
the salt crystals stung the sun-tender spots and burned her cracked, dry
lips, her skin seemed to stretch to the point of tearing like parchment,
and her thirst was an obsession.

In the middle of the afternoon, far ahead of her on the smooth wet sand,
she saw a cluster of black moving shapes, and she shaded her eyes
hopefully.  However, the specks resolved into four large seagulls, with
pure white chests and black backs, squabbling and threatening each other
with open yellow bills as they competed for a piece of flotsam washed
ashore by the tide.

They rose on outsretched wings as Centaine staggered towards them,
leaving their disputed prize, too heavy for them to carry, lying on the
sand.  It was a large dead fish, already badly mutilated by the gulls,
and with new strength Centaine ran the last few paces and dropped on her
knees.  She lifted the fish with both hands and then gagged and dropped
it again, wiping her hands on her canvas skirt.  The fish was stinking
rotten, her fingers had sunk into the soft putrefying flesh as though
into cold suet.

She crawled away and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, hugging
them to her breast, staring at the lump of stinking carrion and trying
to subdue her thirst.

it took all her courage, but at last she crawled back to it, and with
her face turned away from the stench, hacked off a fillet of the
maggot-white flesh.  She cut a small square of it and placed it
cautiously in her mouth.  Her stomach heaved at the taste of sickly
sweet corruption, but she chewed it carefully, sucked out the reeking
juices, spat out the pulpy flesh and then cut another lump from the
fillet.

Sickened as much by her own degradation as by the rotten flesh, she kept
sucking out the juices and when she reckoned that she had forced a large
cupful down her throat, she rested a while.

Gradually the fluids fortified her.  She felt much stronger, strong
enough to go on again.  She waded into the sea and tried to wash the
stench of rotten fish from her hands and lips.  The taste lingered in
her mouth as she started once more plodding along the edge of the beach.

just before sunset a new, crippling wave of weakness came over her and
she sank down on to the sand.  Suddenly an icy sweat bra across her
forehead and cramp, like a sword thrust through her belly, doubled her
over.

She belched, and the taste of rotten fish filled her mouth and nostrils.

She heaved, and hot reeking vomit shot up her throat.

She felt despair as she saw so much of her vital fluids splash on to the
sand, but she heaved again, and at the contraction she felt a spluttery
explosive release of diarrhoea.

I'm poisoned.  She fell and writhed on the sand as spasm after spasm
gripped her and her body involuntarily purged itself of the toxic
juices.  It was dark by the time the attack passed, and she dragged off
her soiled carniknickers and threw them aside.  She crawled painfully
into the sea and washed her body, splashed her face and rinsed the taste
of rotten fish and vomit from her mouth, prepared to pay for the
momentary relief of a clean mouth with later thirst.

Then still on her hands and knees, she crawled up above the high-water
mark, and in the darkness, shaking with cold, she lay down to die.

At first Garry Courtney was so involved in the excitement of planning
the rescue expedition into the Namib desert, across that dreaded
littoral that was named the Skeleton Coast for very good reason, that he
did not have the leisure to weigh the chances of success.

It was enough for Garry to be playing the man of action.

Like all romantics, he had daydreamed of himself in this role on so many
occasions, and now that the opportunity was thrust upon him, he seized
it with a frenzy of dedicated effort.

In the long months after the war department cable had arrived, that
coarse buff envelope with its laconic message, His Majesty regrets to
inform you that your son Captain Michael Courtney has been reported
killed in action', Garry's existence had been a dark void, without
purpose or direction.  Then had come the miracle of the second cable
from his twin brother: Michael's widow expecting your grandson has been
rendered homeless and destitute by tides of war stop I am arranging
priority passage on first sailing for Cape Town stop will you meet and
take into your care stop reply urgently stop letter follows Sean.  A new
sun had risen in his life.  When that in its turn had been cruelly
extinguished, plunged into the cruel green waters of the Benguela
Current.  Garry had realized instinctively that he could not afford to
let reason and reality beat him down once again into the dark night of
despair.  He had to believe, he had to push aside any calculation of the
probabilities and cling mindlessly to the remote possibility that
Michael's wife and her unborn child had somehow survived sea and desert
and were waiting only for him to find and rescue them.  The only way to
do this was to replace reasoned thought with feverish activity, however
meaningless and futile, and when that failed, to draw upon the limitless
reserve of Anna Stok's rock-solid and unwavering faith.

The two of them arrived at Windhoek, the old capital of German South
West Africa which had been captured two years before, and were met at
the railway station by Colonel John Wickenham, who was acting military
governor of the territory. How do you do, sir.  Wickenham's salute was
diffident.  He had received a string of cables in the last few days,
amongst them one from General Jannie Smuts and another from the ailing
prime minister, General Louis Botha, all of them instructing him to
extend to his visitor full assistance and cooperation.

This alone did not account for the measure of his ct towards his guest.
Colonel Garrick Courtney was respe the holder of the highest award for
gallantry, and his book on the Anglo-Boer War, The Elusive Enemy, was
required reading at the Staff College that Wickenham had attended, while
the political and financial influence of the brothers Courtney was
legend.  I should like to offer you my condolences on your loss, Colonel
Courtney, Wickenharn told him as they shook hands.

That is very decent of you.  Garry felt like an imposter when addressed
by his rank.  He always felt the need to explain that it had been a
temporary appointment with an irregular regiment in a war almost twenty
years past;

to cover his uneasiness he turned to Anna, standing foursquare beside
him in her solar topee and long calico skirts.

I would like to introduce Mevrou Stok, Garry switched to Afrikaans for
her benefit, and Wickenharn followed him quickly.

Aangename kennis, a pleasant meeting, Mevrou."Mevrou Stok was a
passenger on the Protea Castle, and one of the survivors picked up by
the Inflexible. Wickenharn gave a little whistle of sympathy.  A most
unpleasant experience.  He turned back to Garry.  Let me assure you,
Colonel Courtney, that it will be my pleasure to offer you any possible
assistance.  Anna replied for him.  We will need motor-cars, many
motor-cars, and men to help us.  We will need them quick, very quickly!
For the command car they had a new T model Ford, repainted from factory
black to a pale sand colour.  Despite its frail appearance, it was to
prove a formidable vehicle in the desert conditions.  The light vanadium
steel body and slow-revving engine carried it over soft sand that would
have sucked down heavier machines.  Its only weakness was a tendency to
over-heat and send a jet of precious water streaming high in the air to
scald driver and passengers in the open body.

As supply vehicles, Wickenham provided them with four Austin lorries,
each capable of carrying half a ton of cargo, and a fifth vehicle which
had been modified in the railway workshops by army engineers and fitted
with a cylindrical steel tank with a capacity of five hundred gallons of
water.  Each of the vehicles was assigned a corporal driver with an
assistant.

With Anna firmly crushing any tendency of Garry's to procrastinate, and
riding roughly over the practical objections of engineers and mechanics
and military experts, the convoy was ready to leave from the capital
thirty-six hours after her arrival.  It was fourteen days since the
German torpedoes had struck the Protea Castle.

They clattered out of the sleeping town at four in the morning, the
trucks piled high with equipment and fuel stores and the passengers
bundled against the cold highland night airs.

They took the wagon road that ran beside the narrow-gauge railway line
down to the coastal town at Swakopmund, over two hundred miles away.

Steel-shod wagon wheels had cut ruts so deep that the rubber tyres of
the vehicles were trapped in them and could not be steered out except at
the rocky sections where the double ruts became boulder-strewn gulleys
more like the bed of a dry mountain stream than a road.

Laboriously they climbed down those rugged passes, crashing and jolting
over the heavy going, forced to stop unexpectedly to repair a punctured
tyre or replace a broken spring leaf, descending four thousand feet in
fourteen hours of bone-cracking, neck-wrenching travel.

They came out on the flat, scrub-covered coastal plains at last, and
raced across them at an exhilarating twenty-five miles per hour,
dragging behind them a long rolling pall of dun-coloured dust like the
smoke from a runaway bush fire.

The town of Swakopmund was a startling touch of Bavaria transported to
the southern African desert, complete with quaint Black Forest
architecture and a long pier stretching out into the green sea.

it was Sunday noon when their dusty cavalcade trundled down the paved
main street.  There was a German oom-pa-pa band playing in the gardens
of the residency, the band members dressed in green Lederhosen and
alpine hats.  They lost the beat and trailed into silence as Garry's
convoy pulled up outside the hotel across the road.  Their trepidation
was understandable, for the walls of the building were still pitted with
shrapnel from the last British invasion.

After the dust and heat of the desert crossing, the local Pilsner,
product of a master brewer from Munich, tasted like resurrection in
Valhalla.

Set them up again, harman, Garry ordered, revelling in the masculine
camaraderie, in the after-glow of the achievement of having brought his
command safely down from the mountains.  His men bellied up to the long
teak bar with a will, and when they raised their tankards and grinned at
him, their masks of packed dust cracked and powdered into their beer.

Mijnheer!  Anna had performed her perfunctory ablutions and appeared in
the doorway of the saloon.  She stood with her thickly muscled arms
akimbo, and her face, already inflamed by sun and wind, was slowly
becoming truly fiery with outrage. Mijnheer, you are wasting time! Garry
rounded on his men swiftly.  Come on, you fellows, there is work to do.
Let's get on with it.  By this time none of them had any doubts as to
who was in ultimate command of the expedition, and they gulped their
beers and trooped out into the sunlight, shamefacedly wiping the froth
from their lips and unable to meet Anna's eye as they sidled past her.

While his men refuelled, filled the water tanks, repacked the loads that
had come loose on the journey, and carried out maintenance and running
repairs on the vehicles, Garry went off to make inquiries at the police
station.

The police sergeant had been warned of Garry's arrival. I'm very sorry,
Colonel, we weren't expecting you for three or four days.  If only I had
known, He was eager to be of assistance.  Nobody knows much about that
country up there, as he glanced from the window of the charge office
towards the north, the sergeant shivered involuntarily, but I have a man
who can act as a guide for you.  He took down his key-ring from the hook
on the wall behind the desk and led Garry through to the cells.

Hey, you swart dander, you black thunder!  he growled as he unlocked one
of the cells, and Garry blinked as his chosen guide shuffled out
sullenly and glowered about him.

He was a villainous-looking Bondelswart Hottentot with a single
malevolent eye; the other was covered by a leather eye-patch, and he
smelled like a wild goat.

He knows that land out there, he should do, the sergeant grinned.

That's where he poached the rhinoceros horn and ivory that is going to
send him to the clanger for five years, isn't that right, Kali PietV
Kali Piet opened his leather jerkin and searched his chest hair
reflectively.

If he works well for you, and you are pleased with him, he might get off
with only two or three years breaking stones, the sergeant explained,
and Kali Piet found something amongst his body hair and cracked it
between his

fingernails.

And if I am not pleased with him?  Garry asked uncertainly.  Kali was
the Swahili word for bad or wicked, and it inspired no great confidence.

Oh, the sergeant said airily, then don't bother to bring him back.  just
bury him where nobody will find him. Kali Piet's attitude changed
miraculously.

Good master, he whined in Afrikaans, I know every tree, every rock,
every grain of sand.  I will be your dog. Anna was waiting for Garry,
already seated in the rear seat of the T model.

What took you so long?  she demanded.  My baby has been out there in the
wilderness alone for sixteen days now!  Corporal, Garry handed Kali Piet
into the care and keeping of the senior NCO.  If he tries to escape,
Garry tried unconvincingly to look jeeringly sadistic, shoot him!  As
the last whitewashed red-tiled buildings fell away behind them, Garry's
driver belched softly and retasted the beer with a dreamy smile.

Enjoy it, Garry warned him, it will be a long trek to the next tankard.

The track ran along the edge of the beach, while at their left hand the
green surf tipped with ostrich feathers of spume pounded the smooth
yellow sands, and before them stretched that dismal featureless
littoral, shrouded in a haze of sea fret.

The track was used by kelp gatherers who collected the cast-up seaweed
for fertilizer, but as they followed it northwards, so it became
progressively less defined until it petered out altogether.

What is ahead?  Garry demanded of Kali Piet, who had been led forward
from the rear vehicle.

Nothing, said Kali Piet, and never had Garry sensed in a common-place
word such menace.

We will make our own road from here on, Garry told them with a
confidence he did not feel, and the next forty miles took four days to
cover.

There were ancient water courses, dry for a hundred years perhaps, but
with steep sides and their bottoms strewn with boulders like cannon
balls.  There were treacherous flats on which the vehicles sank
unexpectedly to their axles in soft sand and had to be manhandled
through.  There was broken ground where one of the lorries toppled over
on its side and another broke a rear axle and had to be abandoned,
together with a pile of luggage which they had discovered was
superfluous, tents and camp chairs, tables and an enamel bath, boxes of
trade goods to bribe savage chieftains, cases of tea and tinned butter
and all the other equipment which had seemed essential when they were
shopping in Windhoek.

The abbreviated and lightened convoy struggled northwards.

In the noonday heat the water boiled in the radiators, and they drove
with plumes of white steam spurting from the safety valves, and they
were forced to halt every half hour to allow the engines to cool.  in
other places there were fields of black stone, sharp as obsidian knives,
which slashed through the thin casing of their tyres.  In one day Garry
counted fifteen halts to change wheels, and at night the stink of rubber
solution hung over the bivouac as exhausted men sat up until midnight
repairing the ruined inner tubes by the light of hurricane lanterns.

On the fifth day they camped with the seared bare peak of the Brandberg,
the Burned Mountain, rising out of the purple evening mist ahead of
them, and in the morning Kali Piet was gone.

He had taken a rifle and fifty rounds of ammunition, a blanket and five
water-bottles, and as a final touch, the gold hunter watch and the coin
case with twenty gold sovereigns in it that Garry had placed carefully
beside his blanket roll the previous evening.

Furiously, threatening to shoot him on sight, Garry led a punitive
expedition after him in the T model.  However, Kali Piet had chosen his
moment, and less than a mile beyond the camp he had entered an area of
broken hills and sheer valleys where no vehicle could follow him.

Let him go, Anna ordered.  We are safer without him, and it's twenty
days since my darling, she broke off. We must go forward, Miinheer,
nothing must stand in our way.  Nothing.  Each day now the going became
more difficult, and their progress slower, more frustrating.

At last, facing another barrier of rock that rose out of the sea like
the crest on the back of a dinosaur and ran inland, jagged and
glittering in the sunlight, Garry felt suddenly physically exhausted.

This is madness, he muttered to himself as he stood on the cab of one of
the trucks, shading his eyes against the flat blinding glare and trying
to spy out a way through this high impenetrable wall.  The men have had
enough. They were standing in dispirited little groups beside the dusty,
battered trucks.  It's almost a month, and nobody could have survived
out here that long, even if they had been able to get ashore.  The stump
of Garry's missing leg ached and every muscle in his back was bruised,
every vertebra in his spine felt crushed by the vicious jolting over
rough ground.  We'll have to turn back!  He clambered down off the cab,
moving stiffly as an old man, and limped forward to where Anna stood
beside the Ford at the head of the column.

Mevrou, he began, and she turned to him and laid a big red hand on his
arm.

Mijnheer - Her voice was low, and when she smiled at him Garry's
protests stilled, and he thought for the first time that except for the
redness of her face and the forbidding frown lines, she was a handsome
woman.  The line of her jaw was powerful and determined, her teeth were
white and even, and there was a gentleness in her eyes that he had never
noticed before.

'Mijnheer, I have been standing here thinking that there are few men who
would have brought us this far.  Without you we would have failed.  She
squeezed his arm.  Of course I knew that you were wise, that you had
written many books, but now I know also that you are strong and
determined, and that you are a man who allows nothing to stand in your
way.  She squeezed his arm again.  Her hand was warm and strong.  Garry
found that he was enjoying her touch.  He straightened his shoulders,
and tipped his slouch hat forward at a debonair angle.  His back was not
quite so painful.  Anna smiled again.

I will take a party over the rocks on foot, we must search the sea
front, every foot of it, while you lead the convoy inland and find
another way around.  They had to slog four miles inland before they
found a narrow precarious route over the rocks and could turn back
towards the ocean.

When Garry saw Anna's distant figure striding manfully through the heavy
beach sands far ahead, with her party straggling along behind her, he
felt an unexpected relief, and realized how painfully he had missed her
for even those few brief hours.

That evening as the two of them sat side by side, with their backs
against the side of the T model Ford, eating bully beef and hard biscuit
and washing it down with strong coffee heavily sweetened with condensed
milk, Garry told her shyly: My wife's name was Anna also.  She died a
long time ago.  Yes, Anna agreed, chewing steadily.  I know."How do you
know?

Garry was startled.

Michel told Centaine.  The variation of Michael's name still
disconcerted Garry.

I always forget that you know so much about Michael. He took a spoonful
of bully, and stared out into the darkness.  As usual, the men had
bivouaced a short distance away to give them privacy, and their fire of
driftwood cast a yellow nimbus and their voices were a murmur in the
night.

On the other hand, I don't know anything about Centaine.  Tell me more
about her, please, Mevrou.  This was a subject that never palled for
either of them. She's a good girl, Anna always began with this
statement, but spirited and headstrong.  Did I ever tell you about the
time-? Garry sat close to her with his head cocked towards her
attentively, but this evening he wasn't really listening.

The light of the camp fire played on Anna's homely lined face, and he
watched it with a feeling of comfort and familiarity.  Women usually
made Garry feel inadequate and afraid, and the more beautiful or
sophisticated they were, the greater his fear of them.  He had long ago
come to terms with the fact that he was impotent, he had found that out
on his honeymoon, and the mocking laughter of his bride still rang in
his ears over thirty years later.  He had never given another woman the
opportunity to laugh at him again, his son had not truly been his son,
his twin brother had done that work for him, and at well over fifty
years of age Garry was still a virgin.

Occasionally, as now, when he thought about it, that fact made him feel
mildly guilty.

With an effort he put the thought aside and tried to recapture the
feeling of content and calm, but now he was aware of the smell of the
body of the woman beside him.  There had been no water to spare for
bathing since they had left Swakopmund, and her odour was strong.

She smelled of earth and sweat and other secret feminine musks, and
Garry leaned a little closer to her to savour it.  The few other women
he had known smelled of cologne and rosewater, insipid and artificial,
but this one smelled like an animal, a strong warm, healthy animal.

He watched her with fascination, and still talking in her low thick
voice she lifted her hand and pushed back a few strands of grey hair
from her temple.  There was a thick dark bush of curls in her armpit,
still damp with the day's heat and staring at it Garry's arousal was
sudden and savage as a heavy blow in his groin.  It grew out of him like
the branch of a tree, rigid and aching with sensations that he had never
dreamed of, thick with yearning and loneliness, tense with a wanting
that came from the very depths of his soul.

He stared at her, unable to move or speak, and when he did not reply to
one of her questions, Anna glanced up from the fire and saw his face.
Gently, almost tenderly, she reached out and touched his cheek.

I think, Mijnheer, it is time for my bed.  I wish you good sleep and
pleasant dreams.  She stood up and moved heavily behind the tarpaulin
that screened her sleeping place.

Garry lay on his own blankets, his hands clenched at his sides, and
listened to the rustle of her clothing from behind the tarpaulin screen,
and his body hurt like a fresh bruise.  From behind the screen came a
long-drawn-out rumble that startled him; for a moment he could not place
it.  Then he realized that Anna was snoring.  It was the most reassuring
sound he had ever heard, for it was impossible to be afraid of a woman
who snored; he wanted to shout his joy into the desert night.

I'm in love, he exulted.  For the first time in over thirty years, I'm
in love.  However, in the dawn all the transient courage he had gathered
in the night had evaporated, only his love was still intact.  Anna's
eyes were swollen and red with sleep, her grey-streaked hair was
powdered with crystals of sand that the night wind had blown over her,
but Garry watched her with adoration until she ordered him brusquely,
Eat quickly, we must go forward at first light.  I have a feeling that
today will be good.  Eat up, Mijnheer!  What a woman!  Garry told
himself admiringly.  If only I could inspire a little of such devotion,
such loyalty!  Anna's premonition seemed at first to be well founded,
for there were no more rocky barriers in their path, instead an open
undulating plain ran right down to where the beach began, and the
surface was firm gravel studded with knee-high salt bush.  They could
motor over it as though it were an open highway, forced only to swerve
and weave in column to avoid the lumpy scrub, keeping just above the
coppery beach so that they could spot any wreckage, or the signs left by
a castaway on the soft sand.

Garry sat beside Anna on the back seat of the Ford and when they bumped
over uneven ground, they were thrown together.  Garry murmured an
apology but left his good leg pressed against her thigh, and she made no
effort to withdraw from his touch.

Suddenly, in the middle of an afternoon that trembled with heat, the
watery curtains of mirage opened ahead of them for a few moments and
they saw the beginning of the dunelands rise sheer out of the plain. The
little convoy stopped before them, and everybody climbed out and stared
up at them with awe and disbelief.

Mountains, Garry said softly, a mountain range of sand.  Nobody ever
warned us of this.  There must be a way through!

Garry shook his head dubiously.  They must be five hundred feet
high."Come, Anna said firmly.  We will go to the top."Good Lord!  Garry
exclaimed.  The sand is so soft it's so high, it might be
dangerous-'Let's go!  The others will wait here.  They toiled upwards
with Anna leading, following the sloping razorback spine of one of the
sand ridges.  Far below them the cluster of vehicles was toylike, the
waiting men tiny as ants.  Beneath their feet the orange-coloured sand
squeaked as their feet sank in to the ankles.

When they stepped too close to the edge of the razorback, the lip
collapsed and an avalanche of sand went hissing down the slip-face.

This is dangerous!  Garry murmured.  If you went over the edge, you'd be
smothered.  Anna hoisted her thick calico skirts and tucked them into
her bloomers, then she plodded on upwards, and Garry stared after her,
his mouth dry and his heart banging against his ribs, driven with
exertion and shock at the sight of her bared legs.  They were massive
and as solid as tree trunks, but the skin at the backs of her knees was
creamy and velvety, dimpled like that of a little girl, the most
exciting thing he had ever seen.

Incredibly, Garry felt his body react again, as though a giant's hand
had seize is crotch, and his fatigue fell away.  Sliding and stumbling
in the soft footing, he scrambled upwards after her, and Anna's
haunches, wide as those of a brood mare under the thick skirts, swayed
and rolled at the level of his staring eyes.

He came out on the crest of the dune before he realized it, and Anna put
out a hand to steady him.

My God, he whispered, it's a world of sand, an entire universe of sand.
They stood upon the foothills of the great dunes and even Anna's faith
wilted.

Nobody, nothing could get through them.  Anna was still holding his arm,
and now she shook him.

She is out there.  I can almost hear her voice calling to me.  We cannot
fail her, we must get through to her.  She can't last much longer.  To
attempt to go in on foot would be certain death.  A man wouldn't last a
day in there.  We must find a way round.  Anna shook herself like a huge
St Bernard dog, throwing off her doubts and momentary weakness.

Come.  She led him back from the crest. We must find the way round.  The
convoy with the Ford leading turned inland, skirting the edge of the
high dunes while the day wasted away and the sun fell down the sky and
bled to death upon their soaring crests.  That night as they camped
below them, the dunes were black and remote, implacable and hostile
against the moonlit silver of the sky.

There is no way round.  Garry stared into the fire, unable to meet
Anna's eyes.  They go on for ever.  In the morning we will go back
towards the coast, she told him placidly, and rose to go to her sleeping
place, leaving him aching with his want of her.

The next day they retraced their tracks, riding in their own
tyre-prints, and it was evening again before they had returned to the
point where the dunes met the ocean.

There is no way, Garry repeated hopelessly, for the surf ran right up
under the sand mountains and even Anna sagged miserably, staring
silently into the flames of their camp fire.

If we wait here, she whispered huskily, perhaps Centaine is making her
way down towards us.  Surely she knows that her only hope is to head
southwards.  If we cannot go to her, we must wait for her to come to us.
We are running out of water, Garry told her, quietly. We can't How long
can we last?  Three days, no more.  Four days, Anna implored, and there
was such a desolation in her voice and her expression that Garry acted
without thought.  He reached for her with both arms.  He felt a kind of
delicious terror as she came to meet him, and they clung to each other,
she in despair and he in a fearful frenzy of lust.  For a few moments
Garry worried that the men at the other fire would see them, then he no
longer cared.

Come.  She raised him to his feet and led him behind the canvas screen.
His hands were shaking so that he could not unfasten the buttons of his
shirt.  Anna chuckled fondly. Here, she undressed him, my silly baby.
The desert wind was cool on his back and flanks, but he was burning
internally with fires of long-suppressed passion.  He was no longer
ashamed of his hairy belly that bulged out in a little pot, nor of his
thighs that were thin as those of a stork and too long for the rest of
his body.

He scrambled on top of her with frantic haste, desperate to bury himself
in her, to lose himself in that great white softness, to hide there from
the world that had been so cruel to him for so long.

Then suddenly it happened again, and he felt the heat and strength drain
from his groin, he felt himself wilt and shrivel just as he had on that
other dreadful night over thirty years before.  And he lay on the white
mattress of her belly, cradled between her thick, powerful thighs, and
he wished to die of shame and futility.  He waited for her taunting
laughter and her scorn.  He knew it would destroy him utterly this time.
He could not escape, for her powerful arms were wrapped around him and
her thighs held his hips in a fleshy vice.

Mevrou, he blurted.  I am sorry, I'm no good, I've never been any good.
She chuckled again, and it was a fond and compassionate sound.

There's my baby, she whispered huskily in his ear. Let me help you a
little.  And he felt her hand go down, pressing between their naked
bellies.

Where's my puppy?  she said, and he felt her fingers fold about him and
he panicked.  He began to struggle to be free, but she held him easily
and he could not escape her fingers.  They were rough as sandpaper from
hard manual work, but cunning and insistent, tugging and plucking at
him, and her voice was purring and happy.

There's a big boy, then.  What a big boy. He couldn't struggle any more,
but every nerve and muscle in his body was tensed to the point of pain,
and her fingers kneaded and coaxed and her voice became deeper, almost
drowsy, without urgency, calming him so he felt his body unclenching.

Ah!  she gloated.  What's happening to our big puppy, then?

Suddenly there was a stiffening resistance to her touch, and she
chuckled again, and he felt the great thighs that held him fall slowly
apart.  Gently, gently, she cautioned him, for he was beginning to
struggle again, bucking against her.  Like that!  Yes, there, that's it.
She was guiding him, trying to control him, but he was desperate with
haste.

Suddenly there was a hot gust of her body smell in his nostrils, rich
and strong, the marvelous aroma of her own arousal, and he felt the new
surge of strength into the core of his being.  He was a hero, an eagle,
the very hammer of the gods.  He was strong as a bull, long as a sword,
hard as granite.

Oh yes!  she gasped.  There, like that!  and resistance to him was not
to be brooked, he drove forward and broke through and went sliding into
the depths of her and the exquisite heat which was far beyond any place
he had been in his entire existence.  With increasing urgency and
violence, she rose and fell beneath him as though he were a ship in an
ocean gale and she made little crooning sounds, and urged him on in a
ragged throaty voice, until the sky crashed down upon him and he was
crushed between it and the earth.

He came back slowly from far away, and she was holding him and caressing
him and talking to him like a child again. There, my baby.  It's all
right.  It's all right now.  And he knew that it was so.  It was all
right now.  He had never felt so safe and secure.  He had never known
such deep pervading peace.  He pressed his face between her breasts, and
smothered himself in her abundant motherly flesh and wanted to rest
there forever.

She stroked the sparse silky hairs back from off his ears, looking down
on him fondly, and the bald pink patch at the crown of his scalp gleamed
in the firelight and made her breasts ache with the need to comfort him.
All her pent-up love and concern for the missing girl found new
directions, for she was born to give succour and loyalty and duty to
others.  She began to rock him, cradling him and crooning to him.

Then, in the dawn, Garry found that there had been another miracle.  For
when he crept out of the camp and went down to the head of the beach, he
found the way was open for them.  Under the influence of a waxing moon,
the ocean was building up to full spring tides, and the waters had drawn
back, leaving a wide strip of hard smooth wet sand below the dunes.

Garry rushed back to the bivouac and hauled his senior NCO out of his
blankets.

Get your men looking alive, Corporal!  he shouted.  I want the Ford
refuelled, loaded with rations including water-cans for four people for
three days, and I want it ready to leave in fifteen minutes, is that
clear?  Well then, get on with it, man, don't stand there gaping at me!
He turned and ran back to meet Anna as she emerged from behind the
tarpaulin. Mevrou, the tide!  We can get through."I knew you would find
a way, Mijnheer!  Weill go in with the For, you and I and two men.  We
will drive hard until the tide turns, then push the Ford up above the
high-water mark, and when it's out again we'll press on.  Can you be
ready to leave in ten minutes?

We have to take full advantage of the tide.  He wheeled away from her.
Come on, Corporal, get these men moving!  And as he turned away, the
Corporal rolled his eyes and grumbled just loudly enough for the others
to hear him.  What's come over our old sparrow, damned if all of a
sudden he isn't acting like a turkey cock!  They had two hours of hard
driving, pushing the Ford to her top speed of forty miles an hour when
the sand was firm and hard.  When it turned soft, the three passengers,
including Anna, leaped over the side and kept her rolling, throwing
their full combined weight behind her, and then, as the sand firmed
again, they scrambled on board, and hooting with excitement, sped
northwards again.

At last the tide came surging back at them, and Garry picked out a gap
in the dunes into which they backed the Ford, manhandling her through
the dry, floury sand until she was well above the high-water mark.

They built a fire of driftwood, brewed coffee, and ate a picnic meal,
and then settled down to wait for the next low tide to open the beach
for them.  The three men stretched out in the shade of the vehicle, but
Anna left them and began picking her way along the high-water mark,
pausing every once in a while to shade her eyes against the glare of sea
and sand and peer restlessly into the north again.

Propped on one elbow, Garry watched her with such overwhelming affection
and gratitude, that he found difficulty in breathing.

In the autumn of my life she has given me the youth that I never knew.
She has brought me the love that passed me by, he thought, and when she
reached the corner of the next sandy bay and disappeared behind the
guardian dune, he could not bear to let her out of his sight.

He sprang up and hurried after her.  As he reached the corner, he saw
her a quarter of a mile ahead.  She was stooped over something at the
head of the beach, but now she straightened and saw him, and waved both
hands over her head, shouting at him.  The boom of the surf drowned out
her voice, but her excitement and agitation was so obvious that he began
to run.

Mijnheer, she ran to meet him, I have found, She could not finish, but
seized his arm and dragged him after her.

Look!  She fell on her knees next to the object.  It was almost
completely buried in the beach sand, and already the incoming tide was
washing and swirling around it.

It's part of a boad Garry dropped beside her, and together they attacked
the sand with their bare hands, frantic to expose the fragment of
white-painted woodwork.

Clinker-built, Garry grunted.  Looks like part of an Admiralty-type
lifeboat.  The next wave rushed up the beach and wetted them to the
waist, but as it drew back it washed away the sand that they had
loosened and exposed the name that was painted in black letters on the
shattered hull.

Protea C- The rest o it was missing, the timers were raw and splintered
where they had broken up in the hammering surf.

The Protea Castle, whispered Anna, and wiped the sand away from the
lettering with her sodden skirts.

Proof!  She turned her face to Garry, and tears were running freely down
her red cheeks.  Proof Mijnheer, it's proof that my darling has reached
the shore and is safe. Even Garry, who was as eager as a bridegroom to
please her, who wanted desperately to believe that he would have a
grandson to replace Michael, even he gawked at her.

It's proof that she is alive, you do believe that now, don't you,
Mijnheer?  Mevrou, Garry fluttered his hands in an agony of
embarrassment, there is an excellent chance, I do agree."She is alive.

I know it.  How can you doubt it?  Unless you believe- Her red face
folded into a ferocious scowl, and Garry capitulated nervously.

I do, oh yes!  I certainly believe it!  No question she's alive,
absolutely no question. Having carried the field, Anna faced the
incoming tide, F and turned the full force of her displeasure upon the
ocean. How long must we wait here, Mijnheer?  Well, Mevrou, the tide
flows for six hours and then ebbs for six, he explained apologetically.
It will be another three hours before we can go on.

Every minute we waste now could make all the difference, she told him
fiercely.

Well, I'm frightfully sorry, Mevrou.  Humbly Garry took full
responsibility for the rhythm of the universe upon himself, and Anna's
expression softened.  She glanced around her to make certain they were
unobserved and then slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.

Well, at least we know she is still alive.  We will go forward again the
very minute we are able.  In the meantime, Mijnheer, we have three
hours.  She looked at him speculatively, and Garry's knees began to
shake so that she could barely support him.

Neither of them spoke again while she led him back off the beach into a
secluded gulley between two tall dunes.

As the tide turned and began its ebb, they drove the Ford down on to the
sand.  The rear wheels threw fish-tails of glistening seawater and wet
sand high into the air behind them as they sped northwards.

Twice within five miles they found flotsam cast up on the beach, a
canvas life-jacket and a broken oar.  They had obviously been exposed to
the elements for a considerable time, and although neither of these were
marked with identifying numbers or lettering, they confirmed Anna's
faith.  She sat in the back seat of the Ford with a scarf knotted under
her chin, holding her solar topee on her head, and every few minutes
Garry darted a loving glance at her like an amorous fox terrier paying
court to a bulldog.

It was the slack of low tide, and the Ford was travelling thirty miles
per hour when it went into the quicksand.  There was little warning. The
beach appeared as hard and smooth as it had been for the last mile.
There was only a slight change in its contour.  It was dished and the
surface trembled like a jelly as seawater welled up beneath the sand,
but they had been moving too fast to notice the warning signs, and they
went in at speed.

The front wheels dropped into the soft porridge, and stopped dead.  It
was like running into the side of a mountain.  The driver was hurled
against the steering column.

With a harsh crackle the spokes of the steering wheel collapsed, but the
steel shaft tore through his sternum, pinning him like a mullet on a
fish spear, and the jagged point ripped out of his back below his
shoulder-blade.

Anna was thrown high out of the back seat, and landed in the soft mire
of quicksand.  Garry's forehead thudded into the dashboard, a flap of
skin was torn from the bone and dangled over his eyebrow, while blood
poured down his face.  The corporal was caught in a tangle of loose
equipment, and his arm broke with a crack like a dry stick.

Anna Was first to recover and she waded knee-deep through the soft sand,
and with an arm around Garry's shoulder, helped him out of the front
seat and dragged him to where the beach sand hardened.

Garry fell on his knees.  I'm blind, he whispered.

Just a little blood!  Anna wiped his face with her skirt.

She ripped a strip of calico from the hem of her skirt and hastily bound
the flap of skin back in place, then left him and waded back to the
Ford.

It was sinking slowly, tipping forward as it went down.

Already the engine bonnet was covered by soft yellow mush, and it was
pouring gluttonously over the doors and filling the interior.  She
seized the driver by the shoulders and tried to drag him clear, but he
was firmly impaled on the steering shaft, and bone grated on steel as
she tugged at him.  His head rolled lifelessly from side to side, and

she left him and turned to the corporal.

He was mumbling and twitching spasmodically as he regained
consciousness.  Anna pulled hiim free and dragged him back to the hard
sand, grunting red-faced with the effort.  He screamed weakly with pain
and his left arm dangled and twisted as she lowered him to the sand.

Minheer, Anna shook Garry roughly, we must save the water before it
sinks also.  Garry staggered to his feet.  His face was painted with his
own blood, and his shirt was streaked and splattered, but the flow had
quenched.  He followed her back to the doomed Ford and between them they
dragged the watercans to the beach.

There is nothing we can do for the driver, Anna grunted, as they watched
the Ford and the dead man gradually settle below the treacherous
surface.  Within minutes there was no trace of them.  She turned her
attention to the corporal.

The bone is broken.  His forearm was swelling alarmingly, and he was
pale and haggard with agony.  Help me!  While Gary held him, Anna
straightened the damaged limb and using a piece of driftwood as a
splint, strapped it.  Then she fashioned a sling from another strip of
her skirt, and while she settled the arm into it, Garry said hoarsely, I
calculate it's forty miles back, but he could not finish, for Anna
glared at him. You are talking of turning back!

Mevrou' he made a little fluttery, conciliatory gesture, ,we have to
turn back.  Two gallons of water and an injured man, we will be
extremely fortunate to save ourselves.  She continued to glare at him
for a few seconds longer, then gradually her shoulders slumped.

We are close to finding her, so near to Centaine.  I can sense it -she
may be around the next headland.  How can we give her up?  Anna
whispered.  It was the first time that he had ever seen her defeated,
and he thought his heart might burst with love and pity.

We will never give her up!  he declared.  We will never give up the
search, this is only a setback.  We will go on until we find her.
Promise me that, Mijnbeer.  Anna looked up at him with pathetic
eagerness.  Swear to me that you will never give up, that you will never
doubt that Centaine and her baby are alive.  Swear to me here and now in
the sight of God that you will never give up the search for your
grandson.  Give me your hand and swear to it!  Kneeling together on the
beach, with the incoming tide swirling around their knees, facing each
other and holding hands, he made the oath.

Now we can go back, Anna climbed heavily to her feet.  But we will
return, and go on until we find her."Yes, Garry agreed.  We will return.

Centaine must indeed have died a small death, because when she regained
consciousness, she was aware of the morning light through her closed
lids.  The prospect of another day of torment and suffering made her
clench her eyelids tightly and try to retreat again into black oblivion.

Then she became aware of a small sound like the morning breeze in a pile
of dry twigs, or the noise of an insect moving with clicking armoured
limbs over a rocky surface .  The sound troubled her, until she made the
enormous effort required to roll her head towards it and open her eyes.

A small humanoid gnome squatted ten feet from where she lay, and she
knew that she must be hallucinating.

She blinked her eyes rapidly and the congealed mucus that gummed her
lids smeared across her eyeballs and blurred her vision, but she could
just make out a second small figure squatting behind the first.  She
rubbed her eyes and tried to sit up, and her movements provoked a fresh
outburst of the strange soft crepitating and clicking sounds, but still
it took her a few seconds to realize that the two little gnomes were
talking to each other in suppressed excitement, and that they were real,
not merely the figments of her weakness and illness.

The one nearest to Centaine was a woman, for a pair of floppy dugs hung
from her chest to well below her belly-button.  They looked like empty
pig-skin tobacco pouches.  She was an old woman, no, Centaine realized
that old was not the word to describe her antiquity.  She was as
wrinkled as a sun-dried raisin.  There was not an inch of her skin that
did not hang in loose folds and tucks, that was not crinkled and riven.
The wrinkles were not aligned in one direction only, but crossed each
other in deep patterns like stars or puckered rosettes.  Her dangling
breasts were wrinkled, as was her fat little belly, and baggy wrinkled
skin hung from her knees and elbows.  In a dreamlike way, Centaine was
utterly enchanted.  She had never seen another human being that vaguely
0 resembled this one, not even in the travelling circus that had visited
Mort Hormne every summer before the war, She struggled up on one elbow
and stared at her.

The little old woman was an extraordinary colour, she seemed to glow
like amber in the sunlight, and Centaine thought of the polished bowl of
her father's meerschaum pipe which he had cured with such care.  But
this colour was even brighter than that, bright as a ripe apricot on the
tree, and despite her weakness, a little smile flickered over Centaine's
lips.

Instantly the old woman who had been studying Centaine with equal
attention, smiled back.  The network of wrinkles constricted about her
eyes, reducing them to slanted Chinese slits.  Yet there was such a
merry sparkle in those black shiny pupils that Centaine wanted to reach
out and embrace her, as she would have embraced Anna.

The old woman's teeth were worn down almost to the gums and were stained
tobacco brown, but there were no gaps in them, and they appeared even
and strong.

Who are you?  Centaine whispered through her dark swollen dry lips, and
the woman clicked and hissed softly back at her.

Under the loose wrinkled skin she had a small, finely shaped skull, and
her face was sweetly heart-shaped.  Her scalp was dotted with faded grey
woolly hair that was twisted into small tight kernels, each the size of
a green pea, and there was bare scalp between them.  She had small
pointed ears lying close to the skull like the pixies in Centaine's
nursery books, but there were no lobes to the ears, and the effect of
sparkling eyes and pricked ears was to give her an alert, quizzical
expression.

Do you have water?  Centaine whispered.  Water.

Please.  The old woman turned her head and spoke in that sibilant
clicking tongue to the figure behind her.  He was almost her twin, the
same impossibly wrinkled, apricot, glowing skin, the same tight wisps of
hair dotting the scalp, bright eyes and pointed lobeless ears, but he
was male.  This was more than evident, for the leather loincloth had
pulled aside as he squatted and a penis out of all proportion to his
size hung free, the uncircumcised tip brushing the sand.  It had the
peculiar arrogance and half erect tension of the member of a man in full
prime.  Centaine found herself staring at it, and swiftly averted her
eyes.

Water, she repeated, and this time Centaine made the motion of drinking.
Immediately a spirited discussion flickered back and forth between the
two little old people.

O'wa, this child is dying from lack of water, the old Bushwornan told
her husband of thirty years.  She pronounced the first syllable of his
name with the popping sound of a kiss.  Kiss-wa.  She is already dead,
the Bushman replied quickly.  it is too late, Hlani.  His wife's name
began with a sharp, explosive aspirate and ended with a soft click made
with the tongue against the back of the top teeth, the sound that in
Western speech usually signifies mild annoyance.

Water belongs to all, the living and the dying, that is the first law of
the desert.  You know it well, old grandfather.  H'ani was being
particularly persuasive, so she used the enormously respectful term old
grandfather.

Water belongs to all the people, he agreed, nodding and blinking.  But
this one is not San, she is not a person.

She belongs to the others.  With that short pronouncement O'wa had
succinctly stated the Bushman's view of himself in relation to the world
about him.

The Bushman was the first man.  His tribal memories went back beyond the
veils of the ages to the time when his ancestors had been alone in the
land.  From the far northern lakes to the dragon mountains in the south,
their hunting grounds had encompassed the entire continent.  They were
the aboriginals.  They were the men, the San.

The others were creatures apart.  The first of these others had come
down the corridors of migration from the north, huge black men driving
their herds before them.  Much later, the others with skins the colour
of fish's belly that redden in the sun, and pale, blind-looking eyes had
come out of the sea from the south.  This female was one of those.  They
had grazed sheep and cattle on the ancient hunting grounds, and
slaughtered the game which were the Bushman's kine.

With his own means of sustenance wiped out, the Bushman had looked upon
the domesticated herds that had replaced wild game on the veld.  He had
no sense of property, no tradition of ownership nor of private
possession.

He had taken of the herds of the others as he would have taken of wild
game, and in so doing had given the owners deadly offence.  Black and
white, they had made war upon the Bushmen with pitiless ferocity,
ferocity heightened by their dread of his tiny childlike arrows that
were tipped with a venom that inflicted certain, excruciating death.

In impis armed with double-edged stabbing assegais, and in mounted
commandos carrying firearms, they had hunted down the Bushmen as though
they were noxious animals.  They had shot them and stabbed them and
sealed them in their caves and burned them alive, they bad poisoned and
tortured them, sparing only the youngest children from the massacre.
These they chained in bunches, for those that did not pine and die of
broken hearts could be tamed.  They made gentle, loyal and rather
lovable little slaves.

The Bushmen bands that survived this deliberate genocide retreated into
the bad and waterless lands where they alone, with their marvelous
knowledge and understanding of the land and its creatures could survive.

She is one of the others, O'wa repeated, and she is already dead.  The
water is only sufficient for our journey. H'ani had not taken her eyes
off Centaine's face, but she reproached herself silently.  Old woman, it
was not necessary to discuss the water.  If you had given without
question, then you would not have been forced to endure this male
foolishness.  Now she turned and smiled at her husband.

Wise old grandfather, look at the child's eyes, she wheedled.  There is
life there yet, and courage also.  This one will not die until she
empties her body of its last breath.  Deliberately, H'ani unslung the
rawhide carrying bag from her shoulder, and ignored the little hissing
sound of disapproval that her husband made.  in the desert the water
belongs to everybody, the San and the others, there is no distinction,
such as you have argued.  From the bag she took out an ostrich egg, an
almost perfect orb the colour of polished ivory.  The shell had been
lovingly engraved with a decorative circlet of bird and animal
silhouettes and the end was stoppered with a wooden plug.  The contents
sloshed as H'ani weighed the egg in her cupped hands and Centaine
whimpered like a puppy denied the teat.

You are a wilful old woman, said O'wa disgustedly.  It was the strongest
protest the Bushman tradition allowed him.  He could not command her, he
could not forbid her.

A Bushman could only advise another, he had no rights over his fellows;
amongst them there were no chiefs nor captains, and all were equal, man
and woman, old and young.

Carefully H'ani unplugged the egg and shuffled closer to Centaine.  She
put her arm round the back of Centaine's neck to steady her and lifted
the egg to her lips.  Centaine gulped greedily and choked, and water
dribbled down her chin.  This time H'ani and O'wa hissed with dismay,
each drop was as precious as life blood.  H'ani withdrew the egg, and
Centaine sobbed and tried to reach for it.

You are impolite, H'ani admonished her.  She lifted the egg to her own
lips and filled her mouth until her cheeks bulged.  Then she placed her
hand under Cen tame's chin, bent forward and covered Centaine's mouth
with her own lips.  Carefully she injected a few drops into Centaine's
mouth and waited while she swallowed before giving her more.  When she
had passed the last drop into Centaine's mouth, she sat back and watched
her until she deemed that she was ready for more.  Then she gave her a
second mouthful, and later a third.

This female drinks like a cow elephant at a waterhole, O'wa said sourly.
Already she has taken enough water to flood the dry riverbed of the
Kuiseb.  He was right, of course, H'ani conceded reluctantly.

The girl had already used up a full day's adult ration.  She replugged
the ostrich egg, and though Centaine pleaded and stretched out both
hands appealingly, she replaced it firmly in the leather carrying
satchel.

Just a little more, please, Centaine whispered, but the old woman
ignored her and turned to her companion.

They argued, using their hands, graceful birdlike gestures, fluttering
and flicking their fingers.

The old woman wore a headband of flat white beads round her neck and
upper arms.  Around her waist was a short leather skirt and over one
shoulder a cape of spotted fur.  Both garments were made from a single
skin, unshaped and unstitched.  The skirt was held in place by a rawhide
girdle from which were suspended a collection of tiny gourds and
antelope-horn containers, and she carried a long stave, the sharp end of
which was weighted by a pierced stone.

Centame lay and watched her avidly.  She recognized intuitively that her
life was under discussion, and that the old woman was her advocate.

All that you say, revered old grandfather, is undoubtedly true.  We are
on a journey, and those who cannot keep up and endanger the rest, must
be left.  That is the tradition.  Yet, if we should wait that long,
H'ani pointed to a segment of the sun's transit across the sky which was
approximately an hour!  then this child might find enough strength and
such a short wait would put us in no danger.  O'wa kept making a deep
glottal sound and flicking both hands from the wrist.  It was an
expressive gesture that alarmed Centaine.

Our journey is an arduous one, and we still have great distances to
travel.  The next water is many days; to loiter here is folly.  O'wa
wore a crown on his head, and despite her plight Centaine found herself
intrigued by it, until suddenly she realized what it was.  In a beaded
rawhide headband the old man had placed fourteen tiny arrows.  The
arrows were made of river reeds, the flights were eagles feathers, and
the heads, which were pointed sykwards, were carved from white bone.
Each barb was discoloured by a dried paste, like freshly made toffee,
and this it was that recalled to Centaine the description from
Levaillant's book of African travels.

Poison!  Centaine whispered.  Poisoned arrows.  She shuddered, and then
remembered the hand-drawn illustration from the book.  They are Bushmen.
These are real live Bushmen!  She managed to push herself upright, and
both the little people looked back at her.

Already she is stronger, H'ani pointed out, but O'wa began to rise.

We are on a journey, the most important journey, and the days are
wasting.  Suddenly H'ani's expression altered.  She was staring at
Centaine's body.  When Centaine sat up, the cotton blouse, already
ragged, had caught and exposed one of her breasts.  Seeing the old
woman's interest, Centaine realized her nudity and hastily covered
herself, but now the old woman hopped close to her and leaned over her.

impatiently she pushed Centaine's hands aside and with the surprisingly
powerful fingers of her narrow, delicatelooking hands, she pressed and
squeezed Centaine's breasts.

Centaine winced and protested and tried to pull away, but the old woman
was as determined and authoritative as Anna had been.  She opened the
torn blouse and took one of Centaine's nipples between forefinger and
thumb and milked it gently.  A clear droplet appeared on the tip and
H'ani hummed to herself and pushed Centaine backwards on to the sand.
She put her hand up under the canvas skirt, and her little fingers
prodded and probed skilfully into Centaine's lower belly.

At last Hlani sat back on her heels and grinned at her mate
triumphantly.

Now you cannot leave her, she gloated.  It is the strongest tradition of
the people that you cannot desert a woman, any woman San or other, who
carries new life within her.  And O'wa made a weary gesture of
capitulation and sank down to his haunches again.  He affected an aloof
air, sitting a little detached as his wife trotted down to the edge of
the sea with the weighted digging stick in her hands.  She inspected the
wet sand carefully as the wavelets swirled around her ankles and then
she thrust the point of the stick into the sand and walked backwards,
ploughing a shallow furrow.  The point of the stick struck a solid
object beneath the sand and H'ani darted forward, digging with her
fingers, picked out something and dropped it into her carrying bag. Then
she repeated the process.

Within a short time she returned to where Centaine lay and emptied a
pile of shellfish from her bag on to the sand.  They were double-shelled
sand clams, Centaine saw at once, and she was bitterly angry at her own
stupidity.

For days she had starved and thirsted as she had hobbled over a beach
alive with these luscious shellfish.

The old woman used a bone cutting tool to open one of the clams, holding
it carefully so as not to spill the juices from the
mother-of-pearl-lined shell, and she passed it to Centaine.
Ecstatically, Centaine slurped the juices from the half-shell and then
dug out the meat with her grubby fingers and popped it into her mouth.

Bon!  she told H'ani, her whole face screwed up with exquisite pleasure
as she chewed, Trs bon!  H'ani grinned and bobbed her head, working on
the next clam with the bone knife.  it was an inefficient tool that made
the opening of each shell a laborious business and broke chips of the
shell on to the body of the clam that gritted under Centaine's teeth.
After three more clams, Centaine groped for her clasp knife and opened
the blade.

O'wa had been demonstrating his disapproval by squatting a little apart
and staring out to sea, but at the click of the knife blade his eyes
swivelled to Centaine and then widened with intense interest.

The San were men of the Stone Age, but although the quarrying and
smelting of working iron were beyond their culture, O'wa had seen iron
implements before.  He had seen those picked up by his people from the
battlefields of the black giants, others that had been taken secretly
from camps and bivouacs of strangers and travellers, and once he had
known a man of the San who had possessed an implement as this girl now
held in her hand.

The man's name had been Xja, the clicking sound at the back of his teeth
that a horseman makes to urge on his steed, and Xja had taken O'was
eldest sister to wife thirty-five years before.  As a young man, Xja had
found the skeleton of a white man at a dry water-hole at the edge of the
Kalahari.  The body of the old elephant hunter had lain beside the
skeleton of his horse, with his long four-to-the-pound elephant gun at
his side.

Xja had not touched the gun, because he knew from legend and bitter
experience that thunder lived in this strange magical stick, but
gingerly he had examined the contents of the rotting leather saddle-bags
and discovered such treasures as Bushmen before him had only dreamed of.
Firstly there was a leather pouch of tobacco, a month's supply of it,
and Xja had tucked a pinch under his lip and happily examined the rest
of the hoard.  Quickly he discarded a book and a roll of cardboard,
which contained small balls of heavy grey metal, they were ugly and of
no possible use.  Then he discovered a beautiful flask of yellow metal
on a leather strap.  The flask was filled with useless grey powder which
he spilled into the sand, but the flask itself was so marvellously shiny
that he knew no woman would be able to resist it.  Xja, who was not a
mighty hunter nor a great dancer or singer, had long pined after the
sister of O'wa who had a laugh that sounded like running water.  He had
despaired of ever catching her attention, had not even dared to shoot a
miniature feather-tipped arrow from his ceremonial love bow in her
direction, but with his shiny flask in his hand he knew that at last she
would be his woman.

Then Xja found the knife, and he knew that with it he would win the
respect of the men of his tribe for which he longed almost as much as he
longed for the lovely sister of O'wa.  It was almost thirty years since
O'wa had last seen Xja and his sister.  They had disappeared into the
lonely wastes of the dry land to the east, driven from the clan by the
strange emotions of envy and hatred that the knife had evoked in the
other men of the tribe.

Now O'wa stared at a similar knife in this female's hands as she split
open the clam shells and wolfed raw the sweet yellow meat, and drank the
running juices.

To this moment he had been merely repelled by the female's huge ungainly
body, bigger than any man of the San, and her enormous hands and feet,
by her thick wild bush of hair and her skin which the sun had parboiled,
but when he looked at the knife, all the confusing feelings of long ago
flooded back and he knew he would lie awake at night thinking about the
knife.

O'wa stood up.  Enough, he said to H'ani.  It is time to go on.  A
little longer.  Whether carrying a child or not, no one can endanger the
lives of all.  We must go on, and again H'ani knew he was right.  They
had already waited much longer than was wise.  She stood up with him and
adjusted the carrying bag on her shoulder.

She saw panic flare in Centaine's eyes as she realized their intention.
Wait for me!  Attendez!  Centaine scrambled to her feet, terrifed at the
taught of being deserted.

Now O'wa shifted the small bow into his left hand, tucked his dangling
penis back into the leather loincloth and tightened the waistband. Then,
without glancing back at the women, he started off along the edge of the
beach.

H'ani fell in behind him.  The two of them moved with a swaying jog trot
and for the first time Centaine noticed their pronounced buttocks,
enormous protuberances that jutted out so sharply behind that Centaine
was sure that she could sit astride H'ani's backside and ride on it as
though on a pony's back, and the idea made her want to giggle.  H'ani
glanced back at her and flashed an encouraging smile, and then looked
ahead.  Her backside bobbed and joggled and her ancient breasts flapped
against her belly.

Centaine took a step after them and then came up short, stricken by
dismay.

Wrong way!  she cried.  You're going the wrong way!  The two little
pygmies we-re heading back into the north, away from Cape Town and
Walvis Bay and Uideritzbucht and all of civilization.

You can't- Centaine was frantic, the loneliness of the desert Jay in
wait for her and like a ravening beast it would consume her if she were
left alone again.  But if she followed the two little people she was
turning her back on her own kind and the succour that they might hold
out for her.

She took a few uncertain paces after Ram.  Please don't go!  The old
woman understood the appeal, but she knew there was only one way to get
the child moving.  She did not look back.

Please!  Please!  That rhythmic jog trot carried the two little people
away disturbingly quickly.

For a few moments longer Centaine hesitated, turning to look away
southwards, torn and desperate.  H'ani was almost quarter of a mile down
the beach and showing no sign of slackening.

Wait for me!  Centaine cried and snatched up her driftwood club.  She
tried to run but after a hundred paces settled down to a short, hampered
but determined walk.

By noon the two figures she followed had dwindled to specks and finally
disappeared into the sea fret far ahead up the beach.  However, their
footprints were left upon the brassy sands, tiny childlike footprints,
and Centaine fastened her whole attention upon them and never really
knew how or where she found the strength to stay on her feet and live
out that day.

Then in the evening when her resolve was almost gone, she lifted her
eyes from the footprints and far ahead she saw a drift of pale blue
smoke wafting out to sea.  It emanated from an outcrop of yellow
sandstone boulders above the high-water mark and it took the last of her
strength to carry her to the encampment of the San.

She sank down, utterly exhausted, beside the fire of driftwood, and
H'ani came to her, chattering and clucking, and like a bird with its
chick fed her water from mouth to mouth.  The water was warm and slimy
with the old woman's saliva, but Centaine had never tasted anything so
delicious.  As before, there was not enough of it and the old woman
stoppered the ostrich-egg shell before Centaine's thirst was nearly
slaked.

Centaine tore her gaze away from the leather carrying bag full of eggs
and looked for the old man.

She saw him at last.  Only his head was visible as he ferreted amongst
the kelp beds out in the green waters.

He had stripped naked, except for the beads aound his neck and waist,
and had armed himself with H'ani's pointed digging stick.  Centaine
watched him stiffen to point like a gundog and then launch a cunning
thrust with the stick, and the water exploded as O'wa wrestled with some
large and active prey.  H'ani clapped her hands and ululated
encouragement, and finally the old man dragged a kicking struggling
creature on to the beach.

Despite her weariness and weakness, Centaine rose up on her knees and
exclaimed with amazement.  She knew what the quarry was, indeed lobster
was one of her favourite dishes, but still she thought that her senses
must have at last deserted her for this creature was too big for O'wa to
lift.  its great armoured tail dragged in the sand, clattering as it
flapped, and its long thick whiskers reached above O'wa's head as he
gripped one in each of his little fists.  H'ani rushed down to the
water's edge armed with a rock the size of her own head and between them
they beat the huge crustacean to death.

Before it was dark O'wa killed two more, each almost as large as the
first, and then he and H'ani scraped a shallow hole in the sand and
lined it with kelp leaves.

While they prepared the cooking hole, Centaine examined the three huge
crustaceans.  She saw immediately that they were not armed with claws
like a lobster, and so must be the same species as the Mediterranean
langouste that she had eaten at her uncle's table in the chAteau at
Lyon.  But these were a mammoth variety.  Their whiskers were as long as
Centaine's arm and at the root were as thick as her thumb.  They were so
old that barnacles and seaweed adhered to their spiny carapaces as if
they were rocks.

O'wa and H'ani buried them in a kelp-lined pit under a thin layer of
sand and then heaped a bonfire of driftwood over them.  The flames lit
their glowing apricot-coloured bodies as they chatted exuberantly.  When
their work was finished O'wa sprang up and began a shuffling little
dance, singing in a cracked falsetto voice as he circled the fire.

H'ani clapped a rhythm for him and hummed in her throat, swaying where
she sat, and O'wa danced on and on while Centaine lay exhausted and
marvelled at the little man's energy, and wondered vaguely at the
purpose of the dance and the meaning of the words of the song.

I greet you, Spirit of red spider from the sea, And I dedicate this
dance to you, sang O'wa, jerking his legs so that his naked buttocks
that protruded from under the leather loincloth bounced like jellies.

I offer you my dance and my respect, for you have died that we may
live-And H'ani punctuated the song with shrill piping cries.

O'wa, the skilled and cunning hunter, had never killed without giving
thanks to the game that had fallen to his arrows Or his snares, and no
creature was too small and mean to be so honoured.  For being himself a
small creature, he recognized the excellence of many small things, and
he knew that the scaly anteater, the pangolin, was to be honoured even
more than the lion, and the praying mantis, an insect, was more worthy
than the elephant or the gemsbok, for in each of them reposed a special
part of the godhead of nature which he worshipped.

He saw himself as no more worthy than any other of these creatures, with
no rights over them other than those dictated by the survival of himself
and his clan, and so he thanked the spirits of his quarry for giving him
life, and when the dance ended he had beaten a pathway in the sand
around the fire.

He and H'ani scraped away the ashes and sand and exposed the carcasses
of the giant crayfish now turned deep vermilion in colour and steaming
on the bed of kelp.

They burned their fingers and squealed with laughter as they broke open
the scaly red tails and dug out the rich white meat.

H'ani beckoned to Centaine and she squatted beside them.  The legs of
the crayfish contained sticks of flesh the size of her finger, the
thorax was filled with the yellow livers which had been broken down in
the cooking to a custard.  The San used this as sauce for the flesh.

Centaine could not remember ever having so much enjoyed eating.  She
used the knife to slice bite-sized chunks off the tail of the crayfish.
H'ani smiled at her in the firelight, her cheeks bulging with food, and
she said, Nam!  and then again, Nam!  Centaine listened carefully, then
repeated it, with the same inflexion as the old woman had used. Nam! And
H'ani squealed gleefully.  Did you hear, O'wa, the child said "Good!"

O'wa grunted and watched the knife in the female's hand.  He found he
could not take his eyes off it.  The blade sliced through the meat so
cleanly that it left a sheen on it.  How sharp it must be, thought O'wa,
and the sharpness of the blade spoiled his appetite.

With her stomach so full that it was almost painful, Centaine lay down
beside the fire, and H'ani came to her and scraped out a hollow for her
hip in the sand beneath her.  It was immediately more comfortable and
she settled down again, but H'ani was trying to show her something else.

You must not lay your head on the ground, Nam Child, she explained.  You
must keep it up, like this. Ham propped herself on one elbow and then
laid her head on her own shoulder.  It looked awkward and uncomfortable,
and Centaine smiled her thanks but lay flat.

Leave her, grunted O'wa.  When a scorpion crawls into her ear during the
night, she will understand.  She has learned enough for one day, H'ani
agreed.  Did you hear her say "Nam"?  That is her first word and that is
the name I will give her, "Nam", she repeated it, Nam Child.  O'wa
grunted and went off into the darkness to relieve himself.  He
understood his wife's unnatural interest in the stranger and the child
she carried in her womb, but there was a fearful journey ahead and the
woman would be a dangerous nuisance.  Then, of course, there was the
knife, thinking about the knife made him angry.

Centaine awoke screaming.  It had been a terrible dream, confused but
deeply distressing, she had seen Michael again, not in the flaming body
of the aeroplane, but riding Nuage.  Michael's body was still blackened
by the flames and his hair was burning like a torch, and beneath him
Nuage was torn and mutilated by the shells and his blood was bright on
the snowy hide and his entrails dangled from the torn belly as he ran.

There is my star, Centaine, Michael pointed ahead with a hand like a
black claw.  Why don't you follow it?  I cannot, Michael, Centaine
cried, oh, I cannot. And Michael galloped away across the dunes into the
south without looking back and Centaine screamed after him, Wait,
Michel, wait for me!  She was still screaming when gentle hands shook
her awake.

Peace, Nam Child, H'ani whispered to her.  Your head is full of the
sleep demons, but see, they are gone now. Centaine was still sobbing and
shivering and the old woman lay down beside her and spread her fur cape
over them both and held her and stroked her hair.  After a while
Centaine quietened down.  The old woman's body smelled of woodsmoke and
animal fat and wild herbs, but it was not offensive and her warmth
comforted Centaine, and after a while she slept again, this time without
the nightmares.

H'ani did not sleep.  Old people do not need the sleep that the young
do.  But she felt at peace.  The bodily contact with another human being
was something she had missed all these long months.  She had known from
childhood how important it was.  The infant San was strapped close to
its mother's body, and lived the rest of its life in intimate physical
contact with the rest of the clan.  There was a saying of the clan, The
zebra on his own falls easy prey to the hunting lion, and the clan was a
close-knit entity.

Thinking thus, the old woman became sad again, and the loss of her
people became a great stone in her chest too heavy to carry.  There had
been nineteen of them in the clan of O'wa and H'ani, their three sons
and their wives and the eleven children of their sons.  The youngest of
H'ani's grandchildren was still unweaned and the eldest, a girl whom she
loved most dearly, had just menstruated for the first time when the
sickness came on the clan.

It had been a plague beyond anything in the annals of the clan and of
the San; something so swift and savage that H'ani still could not
comprehend it or come to terms with it.  It had started first as a sore
throat which changed to raging fever, a skin so hot that it was almost
searing to the touch and a thirst beyond anything the Kalahari itself,
which the San called the Great Dry, could generate.

At this stage the little ones had died, just a day or two after the
first symptoms, and the elders had been so debilitated by the sickness
that they did not have the strength to bury them and their tiny bodies
decomposed swiftly in the heat.

Then the fever passed and they believed that they had been spared.  They
buried the babies, but they were too weak even to dance for the spirits
of the infants or to sing them away on their journey into the other
world.

They had not been spared, however, for the sickness had only changed its
form, and now there came a new fever, but at the same time their lungs
filled with water and they rattled and choked as they died.

They all died, all of them except O'wa and H'ani, but even they were so
close to death that it was many days and many nights before they were
strong enough to appreciate the full extent of the disaster that had
overtaken them.

When the two old people were sufficiently recovered, they danced for
their doomed clan, and H'ani cried for her babies that she would never
again carry on her hip nor enchant with her fairy-tales.

Then they had discussed the cause and the meaning of the tragedy, they
discussed it endlessly around their campfire in the night, grieving
still to the depths of their beings, until one night O'wa had said, When
we are strong enough for the journey, and you know, H'ani, what a
fearsome journey it is, then we must go back to the Place of All Life,
for only there will we find the meaning of this thing, and learn how we
can make recompense to the angry spirits that have smitten us so.  H'ani
became once more aware of the young and fruitful body in her arms and
her sadness lifted a little and she felt the resurgence of the mother
instinct in her milkless and withered bosom, which had been snuffed out
by the great sickness.

It may be, she thought, that already the spirits are mollified because
we have begun the pilgrimage, and that they will grant this old woman
the boon of hearing once more the birth cry of a new infant before she
dies.  In the dawn H'ani unstoppered one of the little buckhoms that
hung from her girdle and with an aromatic paste dressed the sun blisters
on Centaine's cheeks and nose and lips, and the grazes and bruises on
her legs and arms, chattering away to her as she worked.  Then she
allowed Centaine a carefully measured ration of water.

Centaine was still savouring it, holding it in her mouth as though it
were a rare Bordeaux, when without further ceremony the two San stood
up, turned their faces northwards and set off along the beach in that
rhythmic jogtrot.

Centaine sprang up in consternation and without wasting breath on
entreaties, she snatched up her club, adjusted the canvas hood over her
head and started after them.

Within the first mile she realized how the food and rest had
strengthened her.  She was at first able to hold the pair of tiny
figures in sight.  She saw H'ani prod the sand with her digging stick,
scoop up a sand clam almost without breaking stride and hand it to O'wa,
then pluck another for herself and eat it on the run.

Centaine sharpened one end of the club to a point and imitated her, at
first unsuccessfully, until she realized that the clams were in pockets
in the beach, and H'ani had some means of locating them.  It was useless
to scrape at random.  From then on she dug only where H'ani had marked
the sand and drank the juice from the shells thankfully as she trotted
along.

Despite her best efforts, Centaine's pace soon flagged and gradually the
two San drew away from her and once again disappeared from her view.  By
midday Centaine was down to a dragging walk and knew that she had to
rest.  As she accepted it, she lifted her eyes and recognized far ahead
of her the headland of the seal colony.

it was almost as though Hand had divined the exact limit of her
endurance, for she and O'wa were waiting for her in the rock shelter,
and she smiled and chittered with pleasure as Centaine dragged herself
up the slope into the cave and fell exhausted on to the floor beside the
fire.

H'ani gave her a ration of water, and while she did so, there was
another lively argument between the old people which Centaine watched
with interest, noticing that every time H'ani pointed at her she used
the word nam.

The gestures that the old people made were so expressive that Centaine
was sure she understood the old woman wanted to stay for her sake, while
O'wa wanted to go on.

Every time H'ani pointed at her mate, she made that kissing pop of her
lips.  Suddenly Centaine interrupted the discussion by also pointing at
the little Bushman and saying, O'wa!  They both stared at her in
stupefied amazement, and then with delighted squeals of glee
acknowledged her accomplishment.

O'wa!  H'ani prodded her husband in the ribs, and hooted.

O'wa!  The old man slapped his own chest, and bobbed up and down with
gratification.

For the moment the argument was forgotten, as Centaine had intended, and
as soon as the first excitement had passed, she pointed at the old
woman, who was quick to understand her query. H'ani?  she enunciated
clearly.

On the third attempt, Centaine sounded the final click to Ham's
satisfaction and high delight.

Centaine.  She touched her own chest, but this precipitated shrill
denials and a fluttering of hands.

Nam Child!  H'ani slapped her gently on the shoulder, and Centaine
resigned herself to another christening. Nam Child!  she agreed.

So, revered old grandfather, H'ani rounded on her husband, Nam Child may
be ugly, but she learns fast and she is with child.  We will rest here
and go on tomorrow.

The matter is at an end!  And grumbling under his breath O'wa shuffled
out of the shelter, but when he came back at dusk, he carried-the fresh
carcass of a half-grown seal over one shoulder, and Centaine felt so
rested that she joined in the ceremony of thanksgiving, clapping with
H'ani and imitating her piping cries while O'wa danced around them and
the seal meat grilled over the embers.

The ointment which H'ani had used on her injuries brought rapid results.
The raw burns and blisters on her face dried up, and her skin with its
Celtic pigmentation darkened to the colour of teak as it became
conditioned to the sun, though she used her fingers to brush out her
thick dark hair to shade as much of her face as possible.

Each day she grew stronger as her body responded to hard work and the
protein-rich diet of seafood.  Soon she could really reach out with her
long legs and match the pace that O'wa set, and there was no more
lagging behind, or argument about early halts.  For Centaine it became a
matter of pride to keep up with the old couple from dawn until dusk.

I'll show you, you old devil, she muttered to herself, fully aware of
the strange antagonism which O'wa felt towards her but believing that it
was her weakness and helplessness and her drag on the party that was the
cause.

one day as they were about to begin, and despite the old woman's
protests, she took half the water-filled ostrich eggs from H'ani's load
and slung them in her canvas shawl.  Once H'ani realized her intention,
she acquiesced willingly and ribbed the old man mercilessly as they set
out on the day's trek.

Nam Child carries her share, just like a woman of the San, she said, and
when she had exhausted her gibes she turned all her attention to
Centaine and began her instruction in earnest, pointing with her digging
stick and not satisfied until Centaine had the word right or showed that
she understood the lesson.

At first Centaine was merely humouring the old woman, but soon she was
delighting in each fresh discovery and the day's journey seemed lighter
and swifter as her body strengthened and her understanding grew.

What she had at first believed was a barren wasteland was instead a
world teeming with strange and wonderfully adapted life.

The kelp beds and underwater reefs were treasure houses of crustaceans
and shellfish and seaworms, and occasionally the low tide left a shoal
of fish trapped in a shallow rock pool, They were deep, fullbodied fish
with gunmetal gleaming scales and a slightly greenish tinge to the
flesh, but when split and grilled on the coals, were better than turbot.

Once they came across a nesting colony of jackass penguins.  The
penguins were on a rocky island, connected to the mainland by a reef
across which they waded at low tide, although Centaine had shark horrors
all the way over.  The thousands of black and white jackass penguins
nested on the bare ground, and hissed and brayed with outrage as the
Bushmen harvested the big green eggs and filled the canvas carrying bag
with them.  Roasted in the sand under the fire they were delicious, with
transparent, jelly-like whites and bright yellow yolks, but so rich that
they could only be eaten one at a time and the supply lasted many days.

Even the shifting dunes with precipitous slip-faces of loosely running
sand were the homes of sand-burrowing lizards and the venomous
side-winding adders that preyed upon them.  They clubbed both lizards
and adders and cooked them in their scaly skins, and after Centaine had
mastered her initial aversion, she found that they tasted like chicken.

As they trekked northwards, the dunes became intermittent, no longer
presenting an unbroken rampart, and between them were valleys whose
bottoms were of firm earth, albeit as bare and as blasted as the dunes
or the beaches.  H'ani led, Centaine over the rocky ground and showed
her succulent plants which exactly resembled stones.  They dug beneath
the tiny inconspicuous leaves and found a bloated root the size of a
football.

Centaine watched while H'ani grated the pulp of the root with her stone
scraper, then took a handful of the shavings, held them high with her
thumb pointed downwards like a teat on a cow's udder and squeezed. Milky
liquid ran down her thumb and dribbled into her open mouth, and when she
had squeezed out the last drop, she used all the remaining damp pulp to
scrub her face and arms, grinning all the while with pleasure.

Quickly Centaine followed her example.  The juice was quinnine-bitter,
but after the first shock of the taste, Centaine found that it slaked
her thirst more effectively that water alone, and when she had scrubbed
her body with the pulp, the dryness caused by wind and sun and salt was
alleviated and her skin felt and looked cleaner and smoother.  The
effect was to make her aware of herself for the first time since the
shipwreck.

That evening as they sat around the fire waiting for the kebabs of
limpets threaded on a piece of driftwood to broil, Centaine whittled a
stick and with the point cleansed between her teeth, and then used her
forefinger dipped in evaporated crystals of seasalt that she had scraped
from the rocks to scrub them again.  H'ani watched her knowingly, and
after they had eaten, she came and squatted behind Centaine and crooned
softly to her as she used a twig to pick the knots and tangles out of
her hair, and then dressed it into tight new braids.

Centaine woke when it was still dark to the realization that a change
had taken place while she slept.  Although the fire had been built up,
the light was weirdly diffused, and the excited voices of H'ani and O'wa
were muted as though they came from a distance.  The air was cold and
heavy with moisture and it took Centaine a while to realize that they
were enveloped in dense fog that had rolled in from the sea during the
night, H'ani was hopping with excitement and impatience.

Come, Nam Child, hurry.  Centaine's vocabulary already contained a
hundred or so of the most important words of San, and she scrambled up.

Carry.  Bring.  H'ani pointed at the canvas container of ostrich eggs
and then picking up her own leather bag scampered away into the fog.
Centaine ran after her to keep her in sight, for the world had been
obliterated by the pearly fog banks.

in the valley between the dunes H'ani dropped to her knees.

Look, Nam Child.  She seized Centaine's wrists and drew her down beside
her, and pointed to the desert plant that was spread out flat against
the ground.  The thick smooth skin that covered the stone-like leaves
chameleoned to the exact colour of the surrounding earth. Water, H'anfl
Centaine exclaimed delightedly. Water, Nam Child.  H'ani cackled with
laughter.

The fog had condensed on the smooth leaves and had run down the slanted
surface to gather in the trough-like depressions of the point where the
foreshortened stems disappeared into the earth.  The plant was a
marvellously designed gatherer of moisture, and Centaine understood now
how that bloated subterranean root was replenished at each coming of the
fog.

Quick!  H'ani ordered.  Sun come soon.  She stood one of the empty
ostrich shells upright in the soft earth and unplugged it.  With a ball
of animal fur she mapped up the glistening pool of dew and then squeezed
it carefully into the egg-bottle.  With that demonstration, she handed
Centaine a wad of fur.

Work!  she ordered.

Centaine worked as quickly as the old woman, listening to her chattering
happily and understanding only an occasional word as they hurried from
plant to plant.

This is a blessing indeed, the spirits are kind to send the water-smoke
from the sea.  Now the crossing to the Place of All Life will be less
arduous.  Without the watersmoke we might have perished.  They have made
the road smooth for us, Nam Child, perhaps your baby will be born at the
Place of All Life.  What a prodigious benevolence that would be.  For
then your child would have the special mark of the spirits upon him for
all his life, he would be the greatest of hunters, the sweetest of
singers, the nimblest of dancers and the most fortunate of all his clan.
Centaine did not understand, but she laughed at the old woman, feeling
lighthearted and happy, and the sound of her own laughter startled her,
it had been so long and she replied to the old woman's chatter in
French.

I had begun truly to hate this harsh land of yours, H'ani.  After all
the anticipation I had to see it, after all the wonderful things that
Michel told me and all the things I had read about it, how different it
all was, how cruel and how malicious.  Hearing the tone of her voice,
H'ani paused with the wet wad of fur poised over the egg-bottle and
looked at her quizzically.

Just now was the first time I have laughed since I have been in Africa.
Centaine laughed again, and H'ani giggled with relief and returned her
attention to the bottle.  This day Africa has shown me its first
kindness.  Centaine lifted the sodden fur to her lips and sucked the
cold sweet dew from it.  This is a special day, H'ani, this is a special
day for me and my baby.  When all the egg-bottles were brimming full and
carefully replugged, they indulged themselves, drinking the dew until
they were satiated, and only then did Centaine look around her and begin
to appreciate what the fog meant to the plants and creatures of the
desert.

Bright red ants had come up from their deep nests to take advantage of
it.  The worker-ants scurried from plant to plant, sucking up the
droplets so that their abdomens swelled and became translucent, on the
point of bursting before they disappeared back into the burrows.  At the
entrance to each burrow a cluster of other ants were assembled, the
wedding party to see off the breeding queens and their consorts as they
lifted into the foggy air on paper-white wings, fluttering off, most of
them to die in the desert, but a very few of them to survive and found
new colonies.

The sand lizards had come down from the dunes to feast an the flights of
ants, and there were small rodents, gingery-red in colour, that hopped
down the valley floor on overdeveloped hindlegs like miniature
kangaroos.

Look, H'ani, what is this?  Centaine had discovered a strange insect the
size of a locust which was standing on its head in an exposed position.
The dew condensed in silver droplets on its shiny iridescent armour
plating, then trickled slowly down the grooves in the carapace and were
channelled into the creature's hooked beak.

Good eat, H'ani told her and popped the insect into her mouth, crunched
it up and swallowed it down with relish.

Centaine laughed at her, You dear, funny old thing. Then she looked
around at the small secret life of the desert.  What an enchanted land
Africa is!  At last I can understand a little of what Michel tried to
explain to me. With an African abruptness that no longer surprised
Centaine, the mood changed.  The curtains of fog peeled away, the sun
struck through and within minutes the gem-like droplets of dew had
vanished from the stoneplants.  The ants disappeared into their burrows,
sealing the entrances behind them, and the sand lizards scurried back
into the slippery dunes, leaving the dismembered paper wings of the
flying ants they had devoured to blow idly on the small offshore wind.

At first the lizards, still chilled by the fog, basked on the sunny
front of the dunes, but within minutes the heat was oppressive and they
ran across the ridges of the slipface to shelter on the shady side,
Later, when the noon sun dispelled all the shadows, they would dive
below the surface and swim down through it to the cooler sands beneath.

H'ani and Centaine shouldered their carrying bags and, bowed under the
weight of the egg-bottles, went down to the beach.  O'wa was already at
the camp and he had a dozen fat lizards impaled on a stick of driftwood,
and a goodly bag of the gingery desert rats laid out on the flat stone
beside the fire.

Oh, husband, what an intrepid provider you are.  H'ani laid down her
carrying bag the better to praise the old man's efforts.  Surely there
has never been a hunter of all the San to match your skills!  O'wa
preened quite unashamedly at the old woman's blatant flattery, and H'ani
averted her face for a moment and her eyes flashed a message to Centaine
in the secret language of womankind.

They are little boys, her smile said clearly.  From eight to eighty,
they remain children.  And Centaine laughed again and clapped her hands
and joined in H'ani's little pantomime of approbation.

O'wa good!  O'wa clever!  And the old man bobbed his head and looked
solemn and important.

The moon was only four or five days from full, so that after they had
eaten, it was bright enough to throw purple dark shadows below the
dunes.  They were all still too excited by the fog visitation to sleep,
and Centaine was trying to follow and even join in the chatter of the
two old San.

Centaine had by now learned the four click sounds of the San language,
as well as that glottal choke which sounded as though the speaker was
being strangulated.

However, she was still struggling to understand the tonal variations.
The different tones were almost undetectable to the Western ear, and it
was only in the last few days that Centaine had even become aware of
their existence.

She had puzzled over the way H'ani seemed to repeat the same word and
showed exasperation when Centaine had obviously not been able to detect
any difference in the pronunciations.  Then, quite suddenly, as though
wax plugs had been removed from her ears, Centaine had heard five
distinct inflexions, high, middle, low, rising and falling, that changed
not only the sense of a word but the relationship of the word to the
rest of the sentence.

It was difficult and challenging and she was sitting close to H'ani so
she could watch her lips, when suddenly she let out a surprised gasp and
clutched her stomach with both hands.

It moved!  Centaine's voice was filled with wonder. He moved, the baby
moved!  H'ani understood immediately and she reached out swiftly and
lifted Centaine's brief tattered skirt and clasped her stomach.  Deep in
her body there was another spasm of life, Ai!  Ai!  shrilled H'ani. Feel
him!  Feel him kick like a zebra stallion!  Fat little tears of joy
squeezed out of her slanted Chinese eyes and as they ran down the deep
corrugated wrinkles on her cheeks, they sparkled in the light of the
fire and the moon.  So strong, so brave and strong!

Feel him, old grandfather.  O'wa could not refuse such an invitation,
and Centaine, kneeling in the firelight with her skirts lifted high over
her naked lower body, felt no embarrassment at the old man's touch.

This, announced O'wa solemnly, is a most propitious thing.  It is
fitting that I should dance to celebrate it.  And Uwa stood up and
danced in the moonlight for Centaine's unborn infant.

The moon dipped into the dark, slumbrous sea, but already the sky over
the land was turning to the colour of ripe orange at the approach of day
and Centaine lay for only a few seconds after she awoke.  She was
surprised that the two old people still lay beside the dead ash of last
night's fire, but she left the camp hurriedly, knowing that that day's
trek would begin before sunrise.

At a discreet distance from the camp she squatted to relieve herself,
then stripped off her rags and ran into the sea, gasping at the cold
invigorating water as she scrubbed her body with handfuls of sand.  She
pulled her clothing over her wet body and ran back to the camp.  The old
people were still wrapped in their leather cloaks and lying so still
that Centaine felt a moment of panic, but then H'ani coughed throatily
and stirred.

They are still alive, anyway, Centaine smiled and assembled her few
possessions, feeling virtuous for usually H'ani had to chivvy her, but
now the old woman stirred again and mumbled sleepily.

Centaine understood only the words Wait, rest, sleep. Then H'ani
subsided and pulled her cloak over her head again.

Centaine was puzzled.  She fed a few sticks to the fire and blew up a
flame, then sat to wait.

Venus, the morning star, lay on the backs of the dunes, but paled and
faded at the approach of the sun, and still the two San slept on, and
Centaine began to feel irritated by the inactivity.  She was so strong
and healthy already that she had actually been looking forward to the
day's journey.

Only when the sun cleared the tops of the dunes did H'ani sit up and
yawn and belch and scratch herselfGo?  Centaine used the rising tone
that changed the word into a question.

No, no, H'ani made the negative waving sign.  Wait night, moon, go
there.  And she pointed with a quick stabbing thumb at the dunes.

Go land?  Centaine asked, not sure that she understood.

Go land, H'ani agreed, and Centaine felt a quick thrill.

They were going to leave the seashore at last.

Go now?  Centaine demanded impatiently.

Twice during the last few days when they had stopped to make camp,
Centaine had climbed to the top of the nearest dune and stared inland.
Once she had imagined the distant outline of blue mountains against the
evening sky, and she had felt her spirit summoned away from this
monotonous seascape towards that mysterious interior.

Go now?  she repeated eagerly, and O'wa laughed derisively as he came to
squat at the fire.

The monkey is eager to meet the leopard, he said, but listen to it
squeal when it does!  H'ani clucked at him in disapproval and then
turned to Centaine.  Today we will rest.  Tonight we will begin the
hardest part of our journey.  Tonight, Nan Child, do you understand
that?  Tonight, with the moon to light us.

Tonight, while the sun sleeps, for no man nor woman can walk hand in
hand with the sun through the land of the singing sands.  Tonight.  Rest
now.  Tonight, Centaine repeated.

Rest now.  But she left the camp and once again climbed up through the
sliding slippery sands to the top of the first line of dunes.

On the beach four hundred feet below her, the two tiny figures sitting
at the campfire were insignificant specks.

Then she turned to look inland and she saw that the dune on which she
stood was a mere foothill to the great mountains of sand that rose
before her.

The colours of the dunes shaded from pale daffodil yellow, through gold
and orange, to purplish-brown and dark song de boeuf, but beyond them
she imagined she saw ghost mountains with rocky crenellated peaks.  Even
as she stared, however, the horizon turned milky-blue and began to waver
and dissolve, and she felt the heat come out of the desert, a whiff of
it only, but she recoiled from its scalding breath, and before her eyes
the land was veiled by the glassy shimmering veils of heat mirage.

She turned and went down to the camp again.  Neither O'wa nor H'ani was
ever completely idle.  Now the old man was shaping arrowheads of white
bone, while his wife was putting together another necklace, fashioning
the beads from pieces of broken ostrich shell, chipping them into coins
between two small stones and then drilling a hole through each with a
bone sliver and finally stringing the finished beads on a length of gut.

Watching her work Centaine was reminded vividly of Anna.  She stood up
quickly and left the camp again, and H'ani looked up from the string of
beads.

Nam Child is unhappy, she said.

There is water in the egg-bottles and food in her belly, o'wa.  grunted
as he sharpened his arrowhead.  She has no reason to be unhappy.  She
pines for her own clan, H'ani whispered, and the old man did not reply.
Both of them understood vividly and were silent as they remembered those
they had left in shallow graves in the wilderness.

I am strong enough now, Centaine spoke aloud, and I have learned how to
keep alive.  I don't have to follow them any more.  I could turn back to
the south again alone.  She stood uncertainly, imagining what it would
be like, and it was that single word that decided her.

Alone, she repeated.  If only Anna were still alive, if only there was
somewhere out there for me to go to, then I might attempt it.  And she
slumped down on the beach and hugged her knees despondently.  There is
no way back.  I just have to go on.  Living each day like an animal,
living like a savage, living with savages.  And she looked down at the
rags which barely covered her body.  I just have to go on, and I don't
even know where, and her despair threatened to overwhelm her completely.
She had to fight it off as though it were a living adversary.  I won't
give in, she muttered, I just won't give in, and when this is over I
will never want again.  I'll never thirst and starve nor wear rags and
stinking skins again.  She looked down at her hands.  The nails were
ragged and black with dirt and broken off down to the quick.  She made a
fist to cover them.  Never again.  My son and I will never want again, I
swear it.  it was late afternoon when she wandered back into the
primitive camp site under the dunes.  H'ani looked up at her and grinned
like a wizened little ape, and Centaine felt a sudden rush of affection
for her.

Dear H'ani, she whispered.  You're all I have got left. And the old
woman scrambled to her feet and came towards her, carrying the finished
necklace of ostrich shell in both hands.

She stood on tiptoe and placed the necklace carefully over Centaine's
head and arranged it fussily down her bosom, cooing with
self-satisfaction at her handiwork.

It's beautiful, H'ani, Centaine's voice husked.  Thank you, thank you so
very much, and suddenly she burst into tears.  And I called you a
savage.  Oh, forgive me.

With Anna you are the sweetest, dearest person I've ever known.  She
knelt so that their faces were level and she hugged the old woman with a
desperate strength, pressing her temple against H'ani's withered
wrinkled cheek.

Why is she weeping?  O'wa demanded from beside the fire.

Because she is happy.  That, O'wa opined, is a most stupid reason.  I
think this female is a little moon-touched.  He stood up, and still
shaking his head, began the final preparations for the night's journey.

The little old people were unusually solemn, Centaine noticed, as they
adjusted their cloaks and carrying satchels, and H'ani came to her and
checked the sling of her bag, then knelt to adjust the canvas booties
bound around Centaine's feet.

What is it?  Their serious mien made Centaine uneasy.

H'ani understood the question, but did not try to explain.  Instead she
called Centaine and the two of them fell in behind O'wa.

O'wa raised his voice.  Spirit of Moon, make a light for us in this
night to show us the path.  He used the cracked falsetto tone which all
the spirits particularly enjoyed, and he performed a few shuffling dance
steps in the sand. Spirit of Great Sun, sleep well, and when you rise
tomorrow be not angry, that your anger burn us up in the singing sands.
Then when we have passed safely through and have reached the sip-wells,
we will dance for you and sing our thanks.  He finished the short dance
with a leap and a stamp of his small childlike feet.  That was enough
for now, a small down payment, with the balance promised when the
spirits had honoured their part of the contract.

Come, old grandmother, he said.  Make sure that Nam Child stays close
and does not fall behind.  You know that we cannot turn back to search
for her if she does.  And in that quick, swaying jog, he started up the
slope of the beach into the mouth of the valley, just as the moon broke
clear of the darkening horizon and started its journey across the starry
heavens.

It was strange to travel in the night, for the desert seemed to take on
new and mysterious dimensions, the dunes seemed taller and closer,
decked in silver moonlight and dark purple shadows, and the valleys
between them were canyons of silence, while above it all the vast
panoply of the stars and the milky way and the moon were closer and
brighter than Centaine had ever believed possible.  She had the illusion
that by simply reaching up she could pluck them down like ripe fruit
from the bough.

The memory of the ocean stayed with them long after it was out of sight,
the soft hiss of their footsteps in the sand seined to echo its gentle
kissing surf on the yellow beaches, and the air was still cooled by its
vast green waters.

They had been following the valley for almost a half of the moon's rise
to its zenith when suddenly Centaine trotted into an eddy of heat. After
the ocean-cooled airs it was like running into a solid barrier. Centaine
gasped with surprise and H'ani murmured without breaking the rhythm of
her gait, Now it begins."But they passed swiftly through it, and beyond
the air was so cold by contrast that Centaine shivered and drew her
cloak closer about her shoulders.

The valley twisted and as they came around the corner of a towering dune
on which the moon shadows lay like bruises, the desert breathed upon
them again.

Stay close, Nam Child.  But the heat had a viscosity and weight so that
Centaine felt that she was wading into a lava flow.  At midnight it was
hotter than in the boiler room at Mort Homme with the furnace stoked
with oak logs, and as she breathed it into her lungs, she felt the heat
entering her body like an invader, and with each breath expelled, she
could feel it taking her moisture like a thief.

They paused once, only briefly, and drank from an eggbottle.  Both H'ani
and O'wa watched carefully as Centaine lifted it to her lips, but
neither of them had to caution her now.

When the sky began to lighten, O'wa slackened his pace a little, and
once or twice paused to survey the valley with a critical eye.  It was
obvious that he was choosing a place to wait out the day, and when at
last they halted, it was close under the lee of a steep dune wall.

There was no material for a fire, and H'ani offered Centaine a piece of
sun-dried fish wrapped in seaweed, but she was too tired and hot to eat
and afraid also that food would increase her thirst during the day
ahead.  She drank her ration of water from the egg-bottle, and then
wearily stood up and moved a short distance from the others.  But as
soon as she squatted, H'ani let out a shrill reprimand and hurried to
her.

No!  she repeated, and Centaine was embarrassed and confused, until the
old woman fished in her satchel and brought out the dried wild gourd
that she used as a bowl and ladle.

Here, this one - She proffered it to Centaine, who still did not
understand.  Exasperated, the old woman snatched back the gourd and
holding it between her own legs urinated into it. Here, do.  She offered
the bowl to Centaine again.

I can't, H'ani, not in front of everybody, Centaine protested modestly.

O'wa, come here,H'ani called.  Show the child."The old man came across
and noisily reinforced H'anils demonstration.

Despite her embarrassment, Centaine could not help feeling a touch of
envy.  How much more convenient!  Now, do!  Rani offered her the gourd
once again, and Centaine capitulated.  She turned away modestly and with
both the old people encouraging her loudly, she added her own tinkling
stream to the communal gourd.  H'ani bore it away triumphantly.

Hurry, Nam Child, she beckoned.  The sun will come soon.  And she showed
Centaine how to scoop a shallow trench in the sand in which to lie.

The sun struck the face of the dune on the opposite side of the valley,
and it flung reflected heat at them like a mirror of polished bronze.
They lay in the strip of shade and cringed into their trenches.

The sun rose higher and the dune shadow shrank.  The heat rose and
filled the valley with silvery mirage so that the dunes began to dance,
and then the sands began to sing.  It was a low but pervading vibration
as though the desert was the sounding box of a gigantic string
instrument.  It rose and fell and died away and then started again.

The sands are singing, H'ani told her quietly, and Centaine understood.

She lay with her ear to the ground and listened to the strange and
wonderful music of the desert.

Still the heat increased, and following the example of the San, Centaine
covered her head with the canvas shawl and lay quietly.  It was too hot
to sleep, but she fell into a sort of stupefied coma, and rode the long
swelling waves of heat as though they were the sound of the sea.

Still it became hotter, and the shade shrivelled away as the sun nooned,
and there was no relief or asylum from its merciless lash, Centaine lay
and panted like a maimed animal, and each quick and shallow breath
seemed to abrade her throat and burn the strength from her body.

It can't get worse, she told herself.  This is the end of it, soon it
will begin to cool.  She was wrong.  The heat grew stronger yet and the
desert hissed and vibrated like a tortured beast, and Centaine was
almost afraid to open her eyes lest it sear her eyeballs.

Then she heard the old woman moving and she lifted the corner of her
head cover and watched her carefully mixing sand into the gourdful of
urine.  She brought the bowl to where Centaine lay and plastered the wet
sand over her baking skin.

Centaine gasped with relief of the cool touch of it, and before it could
dry in the fierce beat, H'ani filled in the shallow trench with loose
sand, burying Centaine under a thin layer and then arranging the shawl
over her head.

Thank you, H'ani, Centaine whispered, and the old woman went to cover
her husband.

With the damp sand next to her skin and the protective layer over that,
Centaine lasted out those hottest hours of the desert day, and then with
that African suddenness she felt the temperature on her cheeks change,
and the sunlight was no longer stark dazzling white, but shaded with a
mellow, buttery tone.

At nightfall they rose out of their beds and shook themselves, throwing
off the sand.  They drank in a transport that was almost religious, but
again Centaine could not force herself to eat, and then O'wa led them
off.

Now there was no novelty or fascination for Centaine in the night's
trek, and the heavenly bodies were no longer marvels to gaze upon with
awe but merely instruments to mark the long tortuous passage of the
hours.

The earth beneath got its character from loose sand that gave under each
step and ragged at her feet, to hard, compacted mica flats where the
flowerlike crystals called desert roses had edges to them like knives;
they cut through her canvas sandals, and she had to pause to rebind
them.  Then they left the flats and crossed the low spine of a sub-dune,
and from its crest saw another vast valley yawn before them.

O'wa never wavered or showed the least hesitation.

Although Centaine realised that these mountains of sand would walk
before the prevailing winds, endlessly changing shape, trackless and
unknowable, yet the little man moved through them the way a master
mariner rides upon the shifting currents of the ocean.

The silence of the desert seemed to enter Centaine's head like molten
wax, deadening her sense of hearing, filling her eardrums with the
sussurations of nothingness as though she held a seashell to her ear.

Will the sand never end?  she asked herself.  Is this a continent of
dunes?  In the dawn they halted and prepared their defences to resist
the siege of the sun, and in the hottest hour of the day as Centaine lay
in her shallow grave-like bed, coated with urine-damp sand, she felt her
baby move within her more strongly this time, as though he too were
fighting the heat and the thirst.

Patience, my darling, she whispered to him.  Save your strength.  We
must learn the lessons and the ways of this land, so that we will never
have to suffer like this again, Never again.  That evening, when she
rose from the sand, she ate a little of the dried fish for the baby's
sake, but as she had feared, the food made her thirst almost
insupportable.

However, the strength it gave her bore her up through the night's
journey.

She did not waste strength by speaking aloud.  All three of them were
conserving energy and moisture, no unnecessary words or actions, but
Centaine looked up at the sky as it made its grand and ponderous
revolution, and she could still see Michael's star standing across the
black void of the South Pole from her own.

Please let it end, she prayed silently to his star.  Let it end soon,
for I don't know how much longer I can go on.  But it did not end, and
it seemed that the nights grew longer, the sand deeper and more cloying
around her feet, while each day seemed fiercer than the last and the
heat beat down upon them like a blacksmith's hammerstrokes on the iron
of the anvil.

Centaine found that she had lost track of the days and nights, they had
blended in her mind into a single endless torment of heat and thirst.

Five days, or six or even seven?  she wondered vaguely, and then she
counted the empty egg-bottles.  It must be six, she decided.  Only two
full bottles left.  Centaine and H'ani each placed one of the full
bottles in their pack, sharing the load exactly, then they ate the last
shreds of dried fish and stood up to face the night's journey, but this
time it did not begin immediately.

O'wa stared for a while into the east, turning his head slightly from
side to side as though he were listening, and for the first time
Centaine detected a fine shade of uncertainty in the way he held his
small head with its crownlike nimbus of arrow shafts.  Then O'wa began
to sing softly in what Centaine had come to recognize as his
ghost-voice.

Spirit of great Lion Star, he looked up to Sirius shining in the
constellation of Canis Major, you are the only one who can see us here,
for all the other spirits avoid the land of singing sand.  We are alone,
and the journey is harder than I remember it when I passed here as a
young man.  The path has become obscure, great Lion Star, but you have
the bright eye of a vulture and can see it all.

Lead us, I beg of you.  Make the path clear for us.

Then he took the egg-bottle from H'ani's satchel and drew the stopper
and spilled a little of the water on to the sand.  It formed small round
balls, and Centaine made a little moaning sound in her throat and sank
on to her knees.

See, spirit of great Lion Star, we share water with you, O'wa sang and
replugged the bottle, but Centaine stared at the little wet balls of
sand and moaned again.

Peace, Nam Child, H'ani whispered to her.  To receive a special boon, it
is sometimes necessary to give up what is precious.  She took Centaine's
wrist and pulled her gently to her feet, and then turned to follow O'wa
over the endless dunes.

With the silences deafening her, and weariness a crushing burden to
carry, and thirst a raging torment, Centaine struggled on, once again
losing all sense of time or distance or direction, seeing nothing but
the two dancing figures ahead of her, transformed by the rays of the
waning moon into tiny hobgoblins.

They stopped so suddenly that Centaine ran into H'ani and would have
fallen had not the old woman steadied her, and then quietly drawn her
down until they lay side by side.

What, Centaine began, but H'ani placed a hand over her mouth to quieten
her.

O'wa lay beside them, and when Centaine was quiet he pointed over the
lip of the dune on which they were lying.

Two hundred feet below at the dune's foot began a level plain, awash
with soft silver moonlight.  It reached to the very limit of Centaine's
night vision, flat, without end, and it gave her hope that at last the
dunes were behind them.  Upon this plain stood a scattered forest of
longdead trees.

Leprous-grey in the moonlight, they lifted the blighted and twisted
limbs of arthritic beggars of an uncaring sky.

The weird scene invoked in Centaine a superstitious chill, and when
something large but shapeless moved amongst the ancient trees like a
monster from mythology, she shivered and wriggled closer to H'ani.

Both the San were trembling with eagerness like hunting dogs on the
leash, and H'ani shook Centaine's hand and pointed silently.  As
Centaine's eyes adjusted, she saw that there were more living shapes
than the one she had first spotted, but they were as still as great grey
boulders.

She counted five of them altogether.

Lying on his side, O'wa was restringing his little hunting bow, and when
he had tested the tension of its string, he selected a pair of arrows
from the leather band around his forehead, made a sign to H'ani and then
slithered back from the crest of the dune.  Once he was off the skyline,
he leaped to his feet and slipped away into the shadows and folds of
windblown sands.

The two women lay behind the ridge, still and silent as the shadows.
Centaine was learning the animal patience that this ancient wilderness
demanded of all its creatures.  The sky began to bloom with the first
promise of day, and now she could see more clearly the creatures on the
plain below them.

They were huge antelopes.  Four of them lying quietly, while one of
them, larger and more thickset in shoulders and neck, stood a little
apart.  Centaine judged that he was the herd bull, for at his shoulder
he stood as tall as Nuage, her beloved stallion, but he carried a
magnificent pair of horns, long and straight and vicious, and Centaine
was reminded vividly of the tapestry La Dame d la Licorne at the Muse de
Cluny, which her father had taken her to see on her twelfth birthday.

The light strengthened and the bull gleamed a lovely soft mulberry-fawn
colour.  His face was marked with F darker lines in a diamond pattern,
that looked as though he were wearing a head halter, but there was that
wild dignity about him that immediately dispelled any suggestion of
captivity.

He swung his noble head towards where Centaine lay, extended his
trumpet-like ears and swished his dark bushy horse-like tail uneasily.
H'ani laid her hand on Centaine's arm and they shrank down.  The bull
stared in their direction for many minutes, rigid and still as a marble
carving, but neither of the women moved, and at last the bull lowered
his head and began to dig in the loose earth of the plain with his sharp
black forehooves.

All, yes!  Dig for the sweet root of the hi plant, great and splendid
bull, O'wa exhorted him silently.  Do not lift your head, you marvelous
chieftain of all gemsbok, feed well, and I will dance you such a dance
that all the spirits of the gemsbok will envy you for ever!  O'wa lay
one hundred and fifty feet from where the gemsbok bull was standing,
still far beyond the range of his puny bow.  He had left the shadow of
the dune valley almost an hour before, and in that time had covered less
than five hundred paces.

There was a slight depression in the surface of the plain, a mere
indentation less than a hand's span deep, but even in the vague light of
the moon O'wa had picked it out unerringly with his hunter's eye and he
had slid into it like a small amber-coloured serpent, and like a serpent
moved on his belly with slow, sinuous undulations and silent prayers to
the spirits of Lion Star who had guided him to this quarry.

Suddenly the gemsbok flung up his head and stared about him
suspiciously, ears flared wide.

Don't be alarmed, sweet bull, O'wa urged him.  Smell the hi tuber and
let peace enter your heart again.  The minutes stretched out, and then
the bull blew a small fluttery sound through his nostrils, and lowered
his head.  His harem of fawn-coloured cows who had been watching him
warily relaxed, and their jaws began working again as they chewed on the
cud.

o'wa slithered forward, moving under the flattened lip of the
depression, his cheek touching the earth so as not to show a head
silhouette, pushing himself over the soft earth with his hips and his
knees and his toes.

The gemsbok had rooted out the tuber and was chewing on it with noisy
gusto, holding it down with a forehoof to break off a mouthful, and O'wa
closed the gap between them with elaborate, patient stealth.

Feast well, sweet bull, without you three persons and an unborn child
will be dead by tomorrow's sun.  Do not , great gemsbok, stay a while,
just a little while longer. He was as close as he dared approach now,
but it was still too far.  The gemsbok's hide was tough and his fur
thick. The arrow was a light reed, and the point was bone that could not
take the same keen edge as iron.

Spirit of Lion Star, do not turn your face away now, O'wa beseeched, and
raised his left hand so that the tiny pale-coloured palm was turned
towards the bull.

For almost a minute nothing happened, and then the bull noticed the
disembodied hand that seemed to rise out of the earth, and he lifted his
head and stared at it.  It seemed too small to be dangerous.

After a minute of utter stillness, O'wa wriggled his fingers seductively
and the bull blew through his nostrils and stretched out his muzzle,
sucking in air, trying to get the scent, but O'wa was working into the
small, fitful morning breeze, with the deceptive dawn light behind him.

He held his hand still again and then slowly lowered it to his side. The
bull took a few paces towards him and then froze, another few paces,
craning inquisitively, ears pricked forward, he peered at the shallow
indentation where O'wa lay pressed to the earth without breathing.

Then the bull's curiosity took him forward again into range of O'wa's
bow.

In a flash of movement, like the strike of the adder, O'wa rolled on to
his side, drew the eagle feather flights to his cheek and let the arrow
fly.  It darted like a bee across the space between them and alighted
with a slapping sound on the patterned cheek of the bull, fixing its
barbs in the soft skin below his trumpet-like ear.

The bull reared back at the sting of it, and whirled away.  Instantly
his harem cows sprang from their sandy couches into full gallop and the
whole herd went away after the running bull, switching their long dark
tails and dragging a pale train of dust behind them.

The bull was shaking his head, trying to rid himself of the the arrow
that dangled from his cheek, and he swerved in his run and deliberately
brushed his head against the trunk of one of the ancient dead trees.

Stick deep!  O'wa was on his feet, capering and yelling. Hold fast,
arrow, carry the poison of O'wa to his heart.

Carry it swiftly, little arrow.  The women came running down from the
dune to join him.

Oh, what a cunning hunter, H'ani lauded her husband, and Centaine was
breathless but disappointed for the herd was already out of sight across
the dark plain, lost in the grey of predawn. Gone?  she asked H'ani.

Wait, the old woman answered.  Follow soon.  Watch now.  O'wa make
magic.  The old man had laid aside his weapons, except for two arrows
which he arranged in his headband to prick up at the same angle as the
horns of a gemsbok.  Then he cupped his hands on each side of his head
into trumpet-shaped ears, and subtly altered his entire stance and the
way he carried his head.  He snorted through his nostrils and pawed at
the ground, and before Centaine's eyes was transformed into a gemsbok.
The mimicry was so faithful that Centaine clapped her hands delightedly.

o'wa went through the panotominie of seeing the beckoning hand,
approaching it warily, and then being struck by the arrow.  Centaine had
a sense of due,!  vu, so accurately was the incident portrayed.

O'wa galloped away with the same stride and carriage as the gemsbok, but
then he began to weaken and stagger.

He was panting, his head drooping, and Centaine felt a pang of sympathy
for the stricken beast.  She thought of Nuage and tears sprang into her
eyes, but H'ani was clapping and uttering little shrieks of
encouragement.

Die, oh bull that we revere, die that we may live!  O'wa blundered in a
wide circle, his horned head too heavy to carry, an he sagged to the
earth and went into the final convulsions as the poison coursed through
his blood.

It was all so convincing that Centaine was no longer seeing the little
San, but rather the bull that he was portraying.  She did not for a
moment doubt the efficacy for the sympathetic spell that O'wa was
weaving over his quarry.

Ah!  H'ani cried.  He is down.  The great bull is finished, and Centaine
believed without question.

They drank from the egg-bottles, and then O'wa broke a straight branch
from one of the dead trees and shaped one end to fit the spearhead made
from the thighbone of a buffalo which he carried in his pouch.  He bound
the spearhead in place and weighed the heavy weapon in his hand.

It is time to go after the bull, he announced, and led off across the
plain.

Centaine's first impression was correct.  They had passed beyond the
dune country, but the plain that lay ahead of them was every bit as
forbidding, and the strange shapes of the dead forest gave it a surreal
and otherworldly feeling.

Centaine wondered how long ago the forest had died, and shivered as she
realized that these trees might have stood like this for a thousand
years, preserved by the desiccated air as the mummies of the pharaohs
had been.

O'Wa was following the tracks of the gemsbok herd, and even over the
hard pebbled expanses of the plain where Centaine could see no sign of
their passing, the little San led them at a confident unwavering trot.
He paused only once to pick up the shaft of his arrow, lying at the base
of the dead tree upon which the bull had brushed itself.  He held it up
and showed it to the women. See.  The barb has struck.  The head of the
arrow was missing.  O'wa had deliberately designed it in two pieces with
a weak section just at the back of the poisoned barb so that it would
break away.

The light improved swiftly, and H'ani, trotting ahead of Centaine,
pointed with her digging stick.  At first Centaine could not see what
she was indicating, then she noticed a small dried vine with a few
parched brown leaves lying close to the earth, and the first sign of
living plant life since they had left the coast.

Because she now knew where and how to look, Centaine noticed other
plants, brown and blasted and insignificant, but she had learned enough
of this desert to guess what lay beneath the surface.  It gave her
spirits a small lift when she noticed the first scattered clumps of fine
silver dry desert grass.  The dunes were behind them, and the land about
them was coming alive again.

The morning breeze that had aided O'wa in his stalk persisted after the
sun had cleared the horizon, so the heat was not as oppressive as it had
been in the dune country.  The whole temper of the San was lighter and
more carefree, and even without H'ani's assurances 'Good now, eat, drink
soon', Centaine was sure that they had passed through the worst stage of
the journey.

She had to screw up her eyes and shade them, for already the low sun
sparkled in dazzling points of white light from the mica chips and
bright pebbles and the sky was aglow with a hot soapy radiance that
dissolved the horizon and washed out all colour and altered shape and
substance.

Far ahead of them Centaine saw the humped shape lying, and beyond it the
four gemsbok cows lingering loyalty but fearfully by their fallen liege
bull.  They abandoned him at last only when the little file of human
shapes was within a mile, and they galloped away into the shimmering
heat haze.

The bull lay as O'wa had mimed him, panting and so weakened by the
poison of the arrowhead that his head rolled and his long straight
annulated horns waggled from side to side.  His eyes glistened with
tears and his eyelashes were as long and curved as those of a beautiful
woman, yet he tried to rise to defend himself as O'wa faced him, and
hooked with those rapier horns that could impale a full-grown lion,
swinging them in a vicious flashing arc, before sagging back.

O'wa circled him cautiously, seeming so frail against the animal's bulk,
waiting for his opening, the clumsy spear poised, but the bull dragged
its semi-paralysed body around to face him.  The arrowhead still dangled
from the wound beneath his ear, and the lovely black and white pattern
of his face mask was smeared with dark coagulated blood from the
poisoned wound.

Centaine thought of Nuage again, and she wanted the suffering to end
quickly.  She laid down her satchel, loosened her skirt and held it like
a matador's cape and sidled up to the stricken bull on the far side from
O'wa.

Be ready, O'wa, be ready!  The bull turned to her voice.

She caped the bull and he lunged at her, his horns hissed in the air
like a swinging cutlas, and he dragged himself towards her, kicking up
dust with his giant hooves, and Centaine leaped nimbly aside.

As he was distracted, O'wa rushed forward and lanced the bull in the
throat, driving the bone spearhead deep, twisting and worrying it,
seeking the cartoid artery.  Bright arterial blood sprayed like a
flamingo feather in the sunlight, and O'wa leapt back and watched him
die.

Thank you, great bull.  Thank you for letting us live.

Between them they rolled the carcass on to its back, but when O'wa
prepared to make the first cut with his flint knife, Centaine opened the
blade of her clasp knife and handed it to him.

O'wa hesitated.  He had never touched that beautiful weapon.  He
believed that if he did it might cleave to his fingers and he would
never be able to give it up again.

Take, O'wa, Centaine urged him, and when he still hesitated, staring at
the knife with a timid reverence, Centaine with a sudden intuitive flash
realized the true reason for O'wa's antagonism towards her.

He wants the knife, he is lusting after it. She almost laughed but
controlled it.  Take, O'wa, and the little man reached out slowly and
took it from her hand.

He turned it lovingly between his fingers.  He stroked the steel,
caressing the blade, and then tested the edge with his thumb.

Ai!  All be exclaimed as the steel sliced through his skin and raised a
beaded chain of blood drops across the ball of his thumb.  What a
weapon.  Look, H'ani!  He displayed his injured thumb proudly.  See how
sharp it is!  My stupid husband, it is usual to cut the game and not the
hunter!  O`wa cackled happily at the joke, and bent to the task.

He took the bull's scrotum in his left hand and drew it out, then with a
single stroke lopped it free.

Ai!  How sharp!  He laid the scrotum aside, the testicles grilled on the
coals were a delicacy and the sac of soft skin would make a fine pouch
for arrowheads and other small valuables.

Starting from the wound between the bull's hindlegs, he made a shallow
cut through the skin, angling the blade forward so as not to pierce the
belly cavity.  He led the cut with his forefinger hooked under the skin,
up between the bull's forelegs under its throat to the point of the
chin.

He made ring cuts around the bull's neck, and around the hocks of all
four limbs, then sliced down the inside of the legs until he intercepted
the first long lateral incision.

With the women pulling on the white underside of the skin and the blue
marbled muscles sheathed in their transparent capsules, they flayed the
hide off the carcass in a single sheet.  It made a soft, tearing
crackling sound as it came away; they spread it out, fur-side down on
the ground.

Then O'wa opened the stomach cavity with the precision of a surgeon,
lifted out the heavy wet viscera and laid them on the sheet of skin.

H'ani scurried away and collected a bunch of the fine pale desert grass.
She had to range widely, for the clumps of grass were scattered and
sparse.  She hurried back and arranged the grass over the gourd bowl,
while O'wa slit open the slippery white bag of the bull's rumen and
lifted out a double handful of the contents.  Water dribbled from the
undigested vegetation even before O'wa began to squeeze it out.

Using the bunch of grass as a sieve, O'wa filled the gourd with fluid
and then lifted it with both hands to his lips.  He drank deeply,
closing his eyes with ecstasy, and when he lowered the bowl, he belched
thunderously and grinned hugely as he passed the gourd to H'ani.  She
drank noisily and finished with a belch and a hoot of appreciation,
wiping her mouth on the back of her hand as she passed the gourd to
Centaine.

Centaine examined the pale greenish-brown liquid.  It's only vegetable
juice, she consoled herself.  It hasn't even been chewed or mixed with
gastric juices yet- and she lifted the gourd.

it was much easier than she had anticipated, and it tasted like a broth
of herbs and grass, with the bitter aftertaste of the hi tuber.  She
handed the empty gourd back to O'wa, and while he squeezed and strained
the rest of the contents of the rumen, she imagined the long table at
Mort Homme set with silver and crystal and SEvres porcelain, and the way
Anna fussed over the flowers, the freshness of the turbot, the
temperature of the wine and the exact shade of pink of the slices of
freshly carved filet, and she laughed aloud.  She had come a long, long
way from Mort Homme.

The two little San laughed with her in complete misunderstanding, and
they all drank again and then again.

Look at the child, H'ani invited her husband.  In this land of the
singing sand I feared for her, but already she blooms like the desert
flowers after the rain.  She is a strong one, with the liver of a lion,
did you see how she helped at the moment of the kill, by drawing the eye
of the bull to herself?  H'ani nodded and cackled and belched.  She will
breed a fine son, you hear the word of old H'ani, a fine son indeed.
O'wa, his belly ballooning with good water, grinned and was about to
concede, when his eye dropped to the knife that lay between his feet,
and the grin faded.

Silly old woman, you chatter like the brainless spotted guinea fowl,
while the meat spoils.  He snatched up the knife.  Envy was an emotion
so alien to his nature that O'wa was deeply unhappy and not really
certain of the reason why, but the thought of handing the knife back to
the girl filled him with a corrosive anger that he had never known
before.  He frowned and muttered as he dressed out the viscera of the
bull, cutting thin slices of the rubbery white tripes and chewing them
raw as he worked.

It was midmorning before they had festooned the branches of one of the
dead trees with long ribbons of bright scarlet gemsbok meatf and the
heat built up so swiftly that the meat darkened and dried out almost
immediately.

It was too hot to eat.  Between them H'ani and Centaine spread the wet
gemsbok skin over a framework of dead branches and they huddled under
this tent-like structure, taking refuge from the sun, cooling their
bodies with the evaporating fluids of the gemsbok's secondary stomach.

At sundown O'wa took out his fire sticks and began the laborious process
of coaxing a spark from them, but impatiently Centaine took the ball of
dry kindling from him.  Up to that time she had always been too
intimidated by the little San and her own feeling of total inadequacy to
make any show of initiative.  Now, somehow, the crossing of the dunes
and her part in the gemsbok hunt emboldened her, and she laid out the
kindling and the knife and flint with the San looking on curiously.

She struck a shower of sparks into the kindling and stooped quickly to
blow it into the flame.  The San shrieked in amazement and
consternation, and backed away in superstitious awe.  Only once the fire
was burning steadily could Centaine reassure them, and they crept back
and marvelled over the steel and the flint.  Under Centaine's tutelage,
O'wa at last succeeded in striking sparks, and his joy was spontaneous
and childlike.

As soon as the night brought relief from the heat of the sun, they
prepared a feast of broiled liver and tripes and kidneys wrapped in the
lacework of white fat that had enclosed the intestines.  While the women
worked at the fire, O'wa danced for the spirit of the gemsbok, and as he
had promised, he leaped as high as he had done when he was a young man,
and he sang until his voice cracked and failed.  Then he squatted down
at the fire and began to eat.

The two San ate with the fat greasing their chins and running down on to
their cheeks; they ate until their stomachs were distended and bulged
out like balloons, hanging down on their laps; they went on eating long
after Centaine was gorged and satiated.

Every once in a while Centame was sure they were faltering, as their
jaws slowed and they blinked at each other like sleepy owls in the
firelight.  Then O'wa would place both hands on his bulging stomach and
roll on to one buttock, his wrinkled face contorted, and he would grunt
and strain until he was able to clap off a resounding fart.  Across the
fire, H'ani would answer him with a squealing blast every bit as
ear-splitting, and they both hooted with laughter and crammed more meat
into their mouths.

As Centaine drifted off into sleep with her own stomach stuffed with
meat, she realized this orgy was a natural reaction of a people
accustomed to privation faced suddenly with a mountain of food and no
means of preserving it.  When she woke at dawn they were still feasting.

With the sun the two San lay under the tent of gemsbok hide, their
bellies distended, and snored through the heat, but at sunset they blew
up the fire and began feasting again.  By this time what remained of the
gemsbok was smelling high and strong, but this seemed if anything to
stimulate their appetite.

When O'wa rose to stagger out of the firelight on private business,
Centaine saw that his buttocks which had been slack and sagging and
wrinkled when they came down from the dunes, were now tight and round
and polished.

Just like a camel's hump, Centaine giggled, and H'ani giggled with her
and offered her a slice of the belly fat, cooked brown and crisp.

Once again they slept through the day like a nest of pythons digesting
the gargantuan banquet, but at sunset with the carrying bags packed with
the hard black strips of dried gemsbok meat, O'wa led them eastwards
across the moonlit plain.  He carried the folded gemsbok skin balanced
on his head.

Gradually the plain over which they travelled altered in character.
Amongst the fine desert grasses there appeared scraggy little scrubs,
not as high as Centaine's knee, and once O'wa stopped and pointed ahead
at a tall ghostly shape that crossed with a high-stepping trot ahead of
them in the night, a dark body fringed with fluffy white, and only as it
disappeared into the shadows did Centaine realize that it was a wild
ostrich.

At dawn O'wa spread the gemsbok hide as a surishelter and they waited
out the day.  At sunset they drank the last drops of water from the
egg-bottles, and the San were quiet and serious as they set out again.
Without water, death was only hours away.

At dawn, instead of going into camp immediately, O'wa stood for a long
time examining the sky, and then he ranged in a half-circle ahead of
their track, like a gundog quartering for the bird, lifting his head,
turning it slowly from side to side, his nostrils sucking at the air.
What is O'wa doing?

Centaine asked. Smell.  H'ani snuffled to show her.  Smell water.
Centaine was incredulous.  No smell water, H'ani."Yes!  Yes!

Wait, you see.  O'wa reached a decision.  Come!  he beckoned, and the
women snatched up their satchels and hurried after him.

Within an hour Centaine realized that if O'wa was mistaken, then she was
dead.  The egg-bottles were empty, the heat and the sun were sucking the
moisture out of her, and she would be finished before the real burning
heat of noon fell upon them.

O'wa broke into a full run, the gait that the San calledthe horns, the
run of the hunter when he sees the horns of his quarry on the skyline
ahead, and the women under their burdens could not try to match him.

An hour later they made out his tiny form far ahead, and when they at
last came up with him, he smiled a broad welcome and with a sweep of his
arm announced grandly, O'wa has led you unerringly to the sip-wells of
the elephant with one tusk."The origins of the name were lost far back
in the oral history of the San.  O'wa swaggered shamelessly as he led
them down the gentle slope of the river bed.

It was a wide water-course, but Centaine saw immediately that it was
completely dry, filled with sand as loose and friable as that of the
dune country, and she felt her spirits drop sharply as she looked about
her.

The winding serpentine water course was about a hundred paces wide,
cutting through the gravel beds of the plain, and although there was no
water, both banks were dark with much denser plant growth then the and
flats beyond.  The scrub was almost waist-high, with an occasional dull
green bush rising above the rest.  The San were chattering brightly, and
H'ani followed closely behind her husband as he strutted about
importantly in the sand of the river bed.

Centaine sank down, picked up a handful of the bright orange-coloured
sand and let it trickle through her fingers disconsolately.  Then for
the first time she noticed that the river bed was widely trampled by the
hooves of the gemsbok, and that in places the sand had been heaped as
though children had been digging sandcastles.  O'wa was now examining
one of these piles critically, and Centaine dragged herself up and went
to see what he had found.

The gemsbok must have been digging in the river bed, but sand had
trickled into the hole, almost filling it.  O'wa nodded sagely, and he
turned to H'ani.

This is a good place.  Here we will make our sip-well.

Take the child and show her how to build a shelter. Centaine was so
thirsty and heat-lashed that she felt dizzy and sick, but she slipped
off the strap of her bag and wearily climbed the river bank after H'ani
to help her cut whippy saplings and thorny branches from the scrub.

in the river bed they quickly erected two rudimentary shelters, sticking
the saplings into the sand in a circle, bending them over to meet on top
and roofing one of them with branches and the other with the stiff,
stinking gemsbok skin.  They were the most primitive shelters, without
sides and floored with river sand, but Centaine flopped gratefully into
the shade and watched O'wa.

Firstly he removed the poisoned heads from his arrows, handling them
with elaborate care, for a single scratch would be fatal.  He wrapped
each arrowhead in a scrap of raw hide and packed them into one of the
pouches on his belt.

Then he began to fit the reed arrows together, sealing the joints with a
ball of acacia gum, until he had a single length of hollow reeds longer
than he was tall.

Help me, little flower of my life, he sweetened H'ani blatantly, and
with their hands they began to dig together in the sand.  To prevent the
sand running back into the hole, they made it funnel-shaped, wide at the
top and gradually narrowing until O'wa's head and shoulders disappeared
into it, and at last he started throwing up handfuls of darker, damp
sand.

Deeper still he dug, until H'ani had to hold him by the ankles while his
entire body was jammed in the hole.  At last, in response to muffled
cries from the depths, she passed the long hollow reed down to him.

Upside down in the well, O'wa placed the open end of the reed carefully
and then fitted a filter of twigs and leaves around the open end of it
to prevent it becoming clogged.  With both the women hauling on his
ankles, they drew him out of the narrow well, and he emerged coated with
orange sand.  H'ani had to clean out his ears and brush it from the
corms of his grey hair, and from his eyelashes.

Carefully, a handful at a time, O'wa refilled the well, leaving the
filter and reed undisturbed, and when he was finished, he patted the
sand down firmly, leaving a short length of the end of the reed pipe
sticking out above the surface.

While O'wa put the finishing touches to his well, H'ani chose a green
twig, stripped off the thorns and peeled it.

Then she helped Centaine unplug the egg-bottles and set them out in a
neat row beside the well.

O'wa stretched himself out, belly down on the sand, and placed his lips
over the end of the reed tube.  H'ani squatted beside him attentively,
the row of egg-bottles within reach and the peeled green twig in her
hand.

I am ready, hunter of my heart!  she told him, and O'wa began to suck.

From under her shelter Centaine watched as O'wa turned himself into a
human bellows; his chest swelled and subsided, seeming to double in size
with each hissing intake of air, and then Centaine could sense the
impediment of a heavy load in the tube.  O'wa's eyes closed tightly,
disappearing behind a network of baggy wrinkles, and his face darkened
with effort to the colour of toffee.

His body pumped and pulsated, he swelled like a bull frog and shrank and
swelled again, straining to draw a heavy weight up the long thin reed
tube.

Suddenly he made a mewing sound in his throat without breaking the
rhythm of his powerful suctions, and H'ani leaned forward and gently
fitted the peeled twig into the corner of his mouth.  A diamond-bright
drop of water bubbled out between O'wa's lips and slid down the twig; it
quivered on the tip for an instant and then dropped into the egg-bottles
that H'ani held below it.

Good water, singer of my soul, H'ani encouraged him. Good sweet water!

And the flow from the old man's mouth became a steady silver dribble, as
he sucked it in and let it run on the exhale.

The effort required was enormous, for O'wa was lifting the water over
six feet, and Centaine watched in awe as he filled one egg-bottle, then
another, and still a third without pause.

H'ani squatted over him, tending him, encouraging him, adjusting the
twig and the bottles, cooing to him softly, and suddenly Centaine was
struck with a strange feeling of empathy for this pair of little old
people.  She realized how they had been forged by joy and tragedy and
unremitting hardship into a union so fast and strong that they were
almost a single entity.  She saw how the hard years had gifted them with
humour and sensitivity and simple wisdom and fortitude, but most of all
with love, and she envied them without rancour.

If only, she thought, if only I could be bound to another human being as
these two are bound to each other!  And in that moment she realized that
she had come to love them.

At last O'wa rolled away from the tube and lay gasping and panting and
shaking like a marathon runner when the race is run, and H'ani brought
one of the egg-bottles to Centaine. Drink, Nam Child, she offered it to
Centaine.

Almost reluctantly, achingly aware of the effort that had gone into
reaping each priceless drop, Centaine drank.

She drank sparingly, piously, and then handed the bottle back.

Good water, H'ani, she said.  Though it was brackish and mingled with
the old man's saliva, Centame now understood completely that the San
definition of good water was any fluid which would sustain life in the
desert.

She rose and went to where O'wa lay in the sand.

Good water, O'wa.  She knelt beside him, and she saw how the effort had
drained him, but he grinned up at her and bobbed his head, still too
tired to rise.

Good water, Nam Child, he agreed.

Centaine unfastened the lanyard from around her waist and held the knife
in both hands.  it had saved her life already.  It might do so again in
the hard days ahead, if she kept it.

Take, O'wa, she offered it to him.  Knife for O'wa.  He stared at the
knife, and the dark, blood-suffused tones of his wrinkled face paled,
and a great devastation seemed to empty all expression from his eyes.

Take, O'wa, Centaine urged him.

It is too much, he whispered, staring at the knife with stricken eyes.
It was a gift without price.

Centaine reached out, took his wrist and turned his hand upwards.  She
placed the knife in his hand and folded his fingers over it.  Sitting in
the harsh sunlight with the knife in his hand, O'wa's chest heaved as
powerfully as it had as he drew water from the sip-well, and a tear
welled out of the corner of one eye and ran down the deep groove
alongside his nose.

Why are you weeping, you silly old man?  H'ani demanded.

I weep for joy of this gift.  O'wa tried to maintain dignity, but his
voice choked, That is a stupid reason to weep, H'ani told him, and
twinkled mischievously as she covered her laughter with one slim,
graceful old band.

They followed the dry river bed into the east, but now the urgency that
had accompanied their night marches through the dune country was left
behind them, for there was good water under the sand.

They travelled from before sunrise until the heat drove them into
shelter, and then from late afternoon until after dark; the pace was
leisurely for they foraged and hunted on the march.

H'ani cut a special digging stick for Centaine, peeled it and hardened
the point in the fire, and showed her how to use it.  Within a few short
days Centaine was recognizing the surface indications of many of the
edible and useful tubers and plants.  It soon became evident that though
O'wa was so adept in the bushcraft and lore of the desert and that
although his hunting and tracking skills were almost supernatural, it
was the foraging and gathering of the women that provided their little
clan with the staples of life.  In the days and weeks when game was
scarce or simply non-existent, they lived on the plants which the two of
them brought into camp.

Although Centaine learned swiftly and her young eyes were hawk-sharp,
she knew that she would never be able to match the innate knowledge and
gifts of perception of the old woman.  H'ani could find the plants and
insects that gave no sign on the surface of their hiding-place deep down
in the earth, and when she dug the hard dirt flew in all directions.

How do you do it?  Centaine could at last demand, for her command of the
San language increased every day she spent listening and responding to
the old woman's chatter.

Like O'wa found the sip-wells from afar, H'ani explained.  I smell it,
Nam Child.  Smell!  Use your nose!  You tease me, revered old
grandmother!  Centaine protested, but she watched Ram carefully after
that, and she saw that she indeed gave every indication of smelling out
the deep nests of termites to raid them of the crumbling white ant bread
which she made into a foul-tasting but nutritious porridge.

Just like Kaiser Wilhelm, Centaine marvelled, and she called to H'ani
ChercheP the way that she and Anna had called to the gross boar when
they had hunted truffles in the forest at Mort Homme.

Cherche, H'ani!  and the old woman laughed and hugged herself with glee
at the joke she did not understand and then quite casually produced a
miracle.

She and Centaine had fallen behind O'wa on the evening stage of the
journey, for the old man had gone ahead to search for an ostrich nesting
ground that he remembered from his last visit many years before.

The two of them were arguing amiably.  No, no!  Nam Child, You must not
dig two roots from the same place.  You must always walk past one before
you dig again, I have told you that before!  H'ani scolded.

Why?  Centaine straightened up and pushed the thick bushy curls off her
forehead, leaving a sweaty smear of mud on her face.

You must leave one for the children.  Silly old woman, there are no
children.  There will be- H'ani pointed at Centaine's belly
significantly.  There will be.  And if we leave nothing for them, what
will they say of us when they are starving?  But there are so many
plants!  Centaine was exasperated.

When O'wa finds the nest of the ostrich, he will leave some of the eggs.
When you find two tubers, you will leave one of them, and your son will
grow strong and smile when he repeats your name to his children.  H'ani
broke off from her lecture and scurried forward to a bare, stony patch
on the bank of the dry river bed, her nose twitching as she stooped to
examine the earth.

Cherche, H'ani!  Centaine laughed at her, and H'ani ghed back as she
started to dig, and then she dropped to her knees and lifted something
from the shallow excavation.

This is the first one you have seen, Nam Child.  Smell it.  It tastes
very good.  She handed the lumpy, dirt-crusted, potato-like tuber to
Centaine, and Centaine sniffed it gingerly, and her eyes flew wide open
at the well-remembered aroma.  Quickly she wiped the clinging dirt from
the lumpy surface and bit into it.

H'ani, you old darling, she cried.  It's a truffle!  A real truffle.
It's not the same shape or colour, but it smells and tastes just like
the truffles from our own land!  O'wa had found his ostrich nests and
Centaine whipped one of the eggs in its own half-shell and mixed in the
chopped truffles and cooked an enormous omelette aux truffes on a flat
stone heated in the camp fire.

Despite the dirt from Centaine's fingers, which gave it a faintly
greyish colour, and the grains of sand and eggshell chips that crunched
under their teeth, they ate it with relish.

it was only afterwards as she lay under the primitive roof of twigs and
leaves, that Centaine gave in to the homesickness which the taste of
truffles had invoked, and she buried her face in the crook of her arm to
muffle her sobs.

Oh, Anna, I would give anything, anything at all just to see your lovely
ugly old face again.

As they followed the dry river bed, and the weeks turned into months, so
Centaine's unborn child grew strongly With her sparse but healthy diet
and the daily exercise of walking and- digging and carrying and
reaching, the child never grew big and she carried it high, but her
breasts filled out and sometimes when she was alone, scrubbing her body
with the juicy pith of the hi tuber, she looked down at them proudly and
admired the jaunty upward tilt of the rosy tips.

I wish you could see them now Anna, she murmured. You couldn't tell me I
still look like a boy.  But as always you'd complain about my legs, too
long and thin and with hard muscles, oh, Anna, I wonder where you are.

One morning at sunrise when they had already been travelling for many
hours, Centaine stopped on the top of a low rise and looked around her
slowly.

The air was still cool from the night and so clear that she could see to
the horizon.  Later, with the heat, it would thicken to an opaline
translucence and the sun would drain all colour from the landscape.  The
heat mirage would close in around her, and shapes would be weirdly
deformed, the most mundane groups of rocks or clump of vegetation
transformed into quivering monsters.

Now they were sharp-edged and rich with their true colours.  The
undulating plains were hazed with pale silver grasses, and there were
trees, real, living trees, not those heat-struck ancient mummies that
had stood upon the plains below the dunes.

These stately camel-thorn acacias grew well separated.

Their massive trunks, clad in rough crocodile-skin bark, were at odds
with the wide umbrella-shaped crown of airy and delicate silvery-green
foliage.  In the nearest of them a colony of sociable weavers had built
a communal nest the size of a haystack, each generation of these
insignificant, dun-coloured little birds adding to it, until one day the
weight would be too much and would split the great tree.  Centaine had
seen others lying on the earth beneath the shattered acacia, still
attached to the supporting branches and stinking with carcasses of
hundreds of fledglings and broken eggs.

Beyond this open forest there were steep hills rising abruptly out of
the plain, the kopjes of Africa, riven by wind and split by the sun's
heat into geometrical shapes as hard-edged as dragons teeth.  The soft
light of the early sun struck hues of sepia and red and bronze from
their rocky walls, and the antediluvian kokerboom trees with their
fleshy trunks and palm-like heads crowned their summits.

Centaine paused and leaned upon her digging stick, awed by the harsh
grandeur of the scene.  Upon the dustcoloured plain grazed herds of
dainty antelope.  They were pale as smoke and as insubstantial, graceful
little animals with lyre-shaped horns, the lovely bright cinnamonbrown
of their backs divided from the snow white lower parts by a lateral band
of chocolate red.

As Centaine watched, the nearest antelopes took fright at the human
presence, and began stotting, the characteristic alarm behaviour that
gave them their name of springbok.  They lowered their heads until their
muzzles almost touched their four bunched hooves and shot stiff-legged
straight into the air, at the same time opening the long folded pouch of
skin that ran down their backs and flashing the feather mane of white
hair that it concealed.

Oh, look at them, H'ani!  Centaine cried.  They are so beautiful.  The
alarm stotting was wildly infectious, and across the plain hundreds of
springbok bounced on high, with white manes flashing.

O'wa dropped his burden, lowered his head and imitated them perfectly,
prancing stiff-legged, flicking his fingers over his back, so that he
seemed transformed into one of the fleet little antelope, and the two
women were so overcome with laughter that they had to sit down and hug
each other.  The joy of it lasted long after the mountains had receded
into the heat mists, and it alleviated the crushing misery of the
noonday sun.

During those long halts in the middle of the day, O'wa took to
separating himself from the women, and Centaine became accustomed to
seeing his tiny figure sitting crosslegged in the shade of an adjacent
came]-thorn tree, scraping with the clasp knife at the gemsbok skin that
was spread across his lap.  He carried the skin carefully folded and
rolled into a bundle on his head during the day's march, and once when
Centaine had begun to examine it casually, O'wa had become so agitated
that she quickly placated him.

I meant no harm, old grandfather.  But her curiosity had been piqued.

The old man was a craftsman, and usually he was delighted to show off
his handiwork.  He had not protested when Centaine watched as he split
the pliable yellow bark off the trunk of a kokerboom tree, rolled it
into a quiver to hold his spare arrows and decorated it with designs of
birds and animals burned into the bark with a coal from the camp fire.

He showed her how to shape arrowheads from hard white bone by patiently
grinding them against a flat stone, and Centaine was surprised at the
keenness of the cutting edges and the points.  He even took Centaine
with him when he went out to hunt for the grubs from which be made the
arrow poisons which had brought down the great gemsbok bull, and which
could kill a man within hours.  She helped him dig beneath a particular
type of scrub and pick out of the dirt the brown pellet-like capsules
which were the chrysalis in which the fat white grubs of the embryo
diamphidia beetle were enclosed.

Handling the insects with elaborate caution, for the minutest quantity
of their body juice entering through a scratch would mean lingering but
certain death, O'wa pounded them to paste which he thickened with the
juice of the wild sansevieria plant before dressing his arrowheads with
the sticky mixture.  From the sansevieria he separated the fibres from
which he braided the twine to bind the arrow head to the shaft.

He even allowed Centaine to watch while he whittled a primitive pen-like
flute on which he accompanied him self with piercing blasts when he
danced, or while he carved the decorations into the heavy throwing stick
which he used to knock the rocketing coqui francolin out of the air in a
puff of pretty feathers or the blue-headed lizards from the uppermost
branches of the camel-thorn trees, but when he worked on the gemsbok
skin he went off to a discreet distance and he worked alone.

The river of sand which they had followed for so long finally contorted
into a series of tight bends, like the convulsions of a dying adder, and
then abruptly ended in a dry pan, go wide that the trees on the far side
were merely a dark wavering line on the horizon.  The surface of the pan
was white with crystals of evaporated salts.

The reflection of the noon sun from this surface was painful to look at
directly, and it turned the sky above it to pale silver.  The Bushmen's
name for it was the big white place.

On the steep bank of the pan they built shelters sturdier and better
thatched than any of the others had been, giving an air of permanence to
the camp, and the two little San settled down to an undemanding routine,
albeit with an underlying air of expectancy which Centaine detected and
queried.

Why do we stop here, H'ani?  Each uneventful day made her more impatient
and restless.

We wait to make the crossing, was all that the old woman would tell her.

Crossing to where?  Where are we going?  Centaine insisted, but H'ani
became vague and pointed in a wide arc into the east, and answered with
a name that Centaine could only translate as a place were nothing must
die.

Centaine's child grew strongly within her pouting belly.

Sometimes it was difficult to breathe, and almost impossible to be
comfortable on the bare ground.  She made herself a nest of soft desert
grass in her little sun shelter, which amused the two old people.  For
them the bare earth was bed enough, and they used their own shoulders
are pillows.

Centaine lay in her nest and tried to count the days and months since
she and Michael had been together, but time was blurred and telescoped
so that all she could be sure of was that her time would be upon her
soon.  H'ani confirmed her estimate, probing her belly with gentle,
knowing fingers.

The baby rides high and fights to be free.  It will be a boy, Nam Child,
she Promised, and took Centaine off into the desert to gather special
herbs that they would need for the birthing.

Unlike many Stone Age peoples, the San were fully aware of the processes
of procreation and saw sexual intercourse not as an isolated and random
act, but as the first step in the long voyage to birth.

Where is the father of your growing infant, Nam Child?  H'ani asked, and
when she saw the tears in Centaine's eyes she answered herself softly.
He is dead in the north lands at the ends of the earth.  Is that not so?

How did you know that I came from the north?  Centaine asked, glad to
turn away from the pain of Michael's memory.

You are big, bigger than any of the San of the desert, H'ani explained.

Therefore you must come from a rich land where living is easy, a land of
good rains and plentiful food.  To the old woman water was all of life.
The rain winds comes from the north, so you also must come from the
north.

Intrigued by her logic, Centaine smiled.  And how did you know I was
from far away?  I Your skin is pale, not darkened like the skin of the
San.  Here in the centre of the world the sun stands overhead, but it
never goes north or south, and in the east and west it is low and
wasting, so you must come from far away where the sun lacks the warmth
and strength to darken your skin.  Do you know of other people like me,
H'ani, big people with pale skins?  Have you ever before seen people
like me?  Centaine asked eagerly, and when she saw the shift in the old
woman's gaze, she seized her arm.  Tell me, wise old grandmother, where
have you seen my people?

In what direction, and how far away?  Would I be able to reach them?
Please tell me.  H'ani's eyes clouded with a film of incomprehension and
she picked a grain of dried mucus from her nostril and examined it with
minute attention.

Tell me, H'ani.1 Centaine shook her arm gently.

I have heard the old people talk of such things, H'ani grudgingly
admitted, but I have never seen these people, and I do not know where
they could be found.  And Centaine knew she was lying.  Then, in a
sudden vehement gabble, Kain went on.  They are fierce as lions and
poisonous as the scorpion, the San hide from them- She jumped up in
agitation, seized her satchel and digging stick and hurried from the
camp and did not return until sunset.

That night after Centaine had curled in her grass bed, H'ani whispered
to O'wa.  The child yearns for her own people.  I have seen her look
southwards with sadness in her eyes, O'wa admitted.

How many days travel to reach the land of the pale giants?  Ram asked
reluctantly.  How far to travel to her own clan?  I Less than a moon,
Olwa grunted, and they were both silent for a long time, staring into
the hot bluish flames, of the camel-thorn log fire.

I want to hear a baby cry once more before I die, I H'ani said at last
and O'wa nodded.  And both their little heartshaped faces turned towards
the east.  They stared out into the darkness, towards the Place of All
Life.

Once when H'ani found Centaine kneeling alone and praying in the
wilderness, she asked, Who are you speaking to, Nam Child?  and Centaine
was at a loss, for though the San language was rich and complex in its
descriptive powers of the material aspects of the desert world, it was
extremely difficult to use it to convey abstract ideas.

However, after long discussion spread over many days while they foraged
in the desert or worked over the cooking fire, Centaine managed to
describe her concept of the Godhead, and H'ani nodded dubiously and
mumbled and frowned as she considered it.

You are talking to the spirits?  she asked.  But most of the spirits
live in the stars, and if you speak so softly, how will they hear you?
It is necessary to dance and sing and whistle loudly to attract their
attention.  She lowered her voice.  And it is even then not certain they
will listen to you, for I have found the star spirits to be fickle and
forgetful.  H'ani glanced around her like a conspirator.  It is my
experience, Nam Child, that Mantis and Eland are much more reliable.
Mantis and Eland?  Centaine tried not to show her amusement.

Mantis is an insect with huge eyes that see all and with arms like a
little man.  Eland is an animal, oh, yes, much larger than the gemsbok,
with a dewlap so full of rich fat that it sweeps the earth.  The San's
love of fat was almost equal to their love of wild honey.  And twisted
horns that sweep the sky.  If we are fortunate we will find both Mantis
and Eland at the place to which we are going.

In the meantime, talk to the stars, Nam Child, for they are beautiful,
but put your trust in Mantis and Eland.  Thus simply H'ani explained the
religion of the San, and that night she and Centaine sat under a
brilliant sky and she pointed out Orion's glittering train.

That is the herd of celestial zebras, Nam Child, and there is the inept
huntsman, she picked out the star Aldebaran, sent by his seven wives,
she stabbed a gnarled finger at the Pleiades, to find meat.  See how he
has shot his arrow, and it has flown high and wide to fall at the feet
of Lion Star.  Sirius, the brightest of all the fixed stars, seemed
truly lionlike.  And now the huntsman is afraid to retrieve his arrow
and afraid to return to his seven wives, and he sits there forever
twinkling with fear, which is just like a man, Nam Child.  H'ani hooted
with laughter, and dug her bony thumb into her husband's scrawny ribs.

Because the San were also star-lovers, Centaine's bond of affection for
them was so strengthened that she pointed out Michael's star and her own
in the far south.

But, Nam Child, O'wa protested, how can that star belong to you?  It
belongs to no one and to everybody, like the shade of the camel-thorn,
and the water in the desert pool, or the land on which we tread, to
nobody and yet to everybody.  Nobody owns the eland, but we may take of
his fat if we have need.  Nobody owns the big plants but we may gather
them on condition that we leave some for the children.  How can you say
that a star belongs to you alone?  It was an expression of the
philosophy which was the tragedy of his people, a denial of the
existence of property which had doomed them to merciless persecution, to
massacre and slavery or to exile in the far reaches of the desert where
no other people could exist.

So the monotonous days of waiting were passed in discussion and the
leisurely routine of hunting and foraging, and then one evening both the
San were galvanized by excitement and they faced into the north with
their little amber faces turned up to a sky that was the flawless blue
of a heron's egg.

It took Centaine a few minutes to discover what had excited them, and
then she saw the cloud.  It groped up over the rim of the northern
horizon like the finger of a gargantuan hand, and it grew as she watched
it, the top of it flattened into an anvil shape, and the distant thunder
growled like a hunting lion.  Soon the cloud stood tall and heaven-high,
burning with the colours of the sunset and lit with its own wondrous
internal lightnings.

That night O'wa danced and whistled and sang the praises of the cloud
spirits until at last he collapsed with exhaustion, but in the morning
the thunderhead had dispersed.

However, the sky had changed from unsullied blue, and there were streaks
of high mare's-tails cirrus smeared across it.  The air itself seemed
also to have changed.  It was charged with static that made Centaine's
skin prickle, and the heat was heavy and languorous, even harder to bear
than the dry harsh noons had been, and the thunderheads climbed above
the northern horizon and tossed their monstrous billowing heads to the
sky.

Each day they grew taller and more numerous, and they massed in the
north like a legion of giants and marched southward, while an enervating
blanket of humid air lay upon the earth and smothered it and everything
upon it.

Please let it rain, Centaine whispered each day, while the sweat snaked
down her cheeks and the child weighted her womb like an ironstone
boulder.

In the night O'wa danced and sang.

Spirit of Cloud, see how the earth waits for you the way that a great
cow eland in heat trembles for the bull.

Come down from on high, Spirit of Cloud whom we venerate, and spill your
generative fluids upon your earth wife.  Mount your lover and from your
seed she will bring forth new life in abundance.  And when H'ani trilled
and piped the chorus, Centaine cried out just as fervently.

One morning there was no sun, the clouds stretched in a solid grey mass
from horizon to horizon.  Low to begin with, they sank lower still, and
a stupendous bolt of lightning tore from their great grey sowlike belly
and clanged upon the earth so that it seemed to jump beneath their feet.
A single raindrop struck Centaine in the centre of her forehead, and it
was as heavy as a stone, so that she reeled back at the shock of it and
cried out in astonishment.

Then the hanging clouds burst open and the rain fell from them thick as
locusts.  Each drop as it struck the surface of the pan rolled into a
globule of mud, or made the wiry scrub branches around the edge jump and
quiver as though flocks of invisible birds had alighted upon them.

The rain stung Centaine's skin, and one drop struck her in the eye and
blinded her for a second.  She blinked it clear and laughed to see O'wa
and H'ani capering across the pan.  They had thrown aside their meagre
clothing and they danced naked in the rain.  Each drop burst in a silver
puff upon their wrinkled amber skin and they howled delightedly at the
pricks of it.

Centaine ripped off her own canvas skirt, threw aside the shawl, and
mother-naked stood with her arms thrown open and her face turned to the
clouds.  The rain thrashed her and melted her long dark hair down across
her face and shoulders.  She pushed it aside with both hands and opened
her mouth wide.

it was as though she stood under a waterfall.  The rain poured into her
mouth as fast as she could swallow.  The far edge of the pan disappeared
behind the blue veils of falling rain, and the surface turned to yellow
mud.

The rain was so cold that a rash of goose bumps ran down Centaine's
forearms and her nipples darkened and hardened, but she laughed with joy
and ran out to the pan to dance with the San, and the thunder sounded as
though massive boulders were rolling across the roof of the sky.

The earth seemed to dissolve under the solid sheets of silver water. The
pan was ankle-deep and the silky mud squelched up between Centaine's
toes.  The rain gave them new life and strength and they danced and sang
until O'wa stopped abruptly and cocked his head to listen.

Centaine could hear nothing above the thunder and the lash of the rain,
but O'wa shouted a warning.  They floundered to the steep bank of the
pan, slipping in the glutinous mud and the yellow waters which by now
reached to their knees.  From the bank Centaine heard the sound which
had alarmed O'wa, a low rushing like a high wind in tall trees.

The river, O'wa pointed through the thick palisade of silver rain, the
river is alive again.  It came like a living thing, a monstrous frothing
yellow python down the sandy river bed, and it hissed from bank to bank,
carrying the bodies of drowned animals and the branches of trees in its
flood.  It burst into the flooded pan and raced in serried waves across
the surface, breaking on the bank beneath their feet, swirling on to
catch them around the legs and threatening to drag them under.

They snatched up their few possessions and waded to higher ground,
clinging to each other for support.  The rain clouds brought on
premature night, and it was cold.

There was no chance of a fire and they huddled together for warmth and
shivered miserably.

The rain fell without slackening all that night.

In the dull leaden dawn they looked across a drowned landscape, a vast
shimmering take with islands of higher ground from which the water
streamed, and stranded acacia trees like the backs of whales.

Will it never stop?  Centaine whispered.  Her teeth chattered
uncontrollably, and the chill seemed to have to reached into her womb,
for the infant writhed and kicked in protest.

Please let it stop now.  The San suffered the cold with the fortitude
they showed for all hardship.  Rather than slackening, the rain seemed
to increase in tempo, and hid the sorry drowned land from them behind a
glassy curtain.

Then the rain stopped.  There was no warning, no faltering or tapering
off; one second it was falling in a solid cascade and the next it was
over.  The ceiling of low bruised cloud split open and peeled away like
the skin from a ripe fruit, revealing the clean washed blue of the sky,
and the sun burst upon them with blinding brilliance, once more stunning
Centaine with the sudden contrasts of this wild continent.

Before noon, the thirsty earth had drunk down the waters that had fallen
upon it.  The floods sank away without trace.  Only in the pan itself
surface water still lay glittering sulphurous-yellow from bank to far
bank.

However, the land was cleansed and vivid with colour.

The dust that had coated each bush and tree was washed away and Centaine
saw greens that she had never dreamed this tan, lion-coloured land could
contain.  The earth, still damp, was rich with ochres and oranges and
reds and the songs of the little desert larks were joyous.

They laid out their scant possessions in the sun and they steamed as
they dried.  O'wa could not contain himself and be danced ecstatically.

The cloud spirits have opened the road for us.  They have replenished
the water-holes to the east.  Make ready, H'ani, my little flower of the
desert: before the dawn tomorrow we will march.

Within the first day's march they entered a new country, so different
that Centaine could scarcely believe it was on the same continent.  Here
the ancient dunes had compacted and consolidated into gentle
undulations, and they now supported abundant plant life.

Stands of mopani and tall kiaat, alternating with almost impenetrable
thickets of paper-bark, stood tall along the ridges of high ground where
the dunes crests had weathered and flattened.  Occasionally a giant
silver terminalia or a monumental bac, hah soared seventy feet above the
rest of the forest.

in the valleys, fields of sweet golden grasses and scattered giraffe
acacias with flat tops gave the scene a park-like and cultivated aspect.

Here also, in the lowest depressions, the recent rains had been trapped
in the shallow water-holes, and the land seemed to hum and seethe with
life.

Through the yellow grasses fresh tender shoots of delicate green
appeared.  Gardens of wild flowers, daisies and arum lilies and gladioli
and fifty other varieties which Centaine did not recognize, sprang up as
though at a F magician's flourish, delighting her with their colours and
delicate beauty, and causing her to wonder anew at Africa's
prolificness.  She picked the blooms and plaited them into necklaces for
herself and H'ani, and the old woman preened like a bride.

Oh, I wish I had a mirror to show you how adorable you look.  Centaine
embraced her.

Even from the sky Africa gave of her abundance.  There were flocks of
quelea thick as hiving bees as they wheeled overhead, shrikes in the
undergrowth with chests of purest glowing ruby, sandgrouse and francolin
fat as domestic chickens, and water fowl on the brimming waterholes,
wild duck and long-legged stilts and gaunt blue heron.

It's all so beautiful, Centaine exulted.  Each day's journey was light
and carefree after the hardships of the and western plains, and when
they camped, there was the untold luxury of unlimited water and a Least
of wild fruits and nuts and game from O'wa's snares and arrows.

One evening O'wa climbed high into the swollen fleshy branches of a
monstrous baobab and smoked the hive that had inhabited its hollow trunk
since his great-grandfather's time and beyond.  He came down with a
gourd full of thick waxen combs running with dark honey redolent of the
perfume of the yellow acacia blossoms.

Each day they met new species of wild animals: sable antelope, black as
night with long scimitar horns that swept back almost to their hind
quarters, and Cape buffalo with mournful drooping heads of massively
bossed horn stinking like herds of domestic cattle.

They have come down from the big river and the swamps, O'wa.  explained.
They follow the water, and when it dries again they will go back into
the north. In the night Centaine woke to a new sound infinitely more
fearsome than the yelping of the black-backed jackal or the maniacal
screams and sobs of the hyena packs.  It was a storm of sound that
filled the darkness, rising to an impossible crescendo and then dying
away in a series of deep grunts.  Centaine scrambled out of her little
hut and ran to H'ani.

What was that, old grandmother?  It is a sound to turn the belly to
water!  Centaine found she was trembling and the old woman hugged her.

Even the bravest of men trembles the first time he hears the roar of the
lion, she placated her.  But do not fear, Nam Child, O'wa has made a
charm to protect us.

The lion will find other game tonight But they crowded close to the fire
all the rest of the night, feeding it with fresh logs, and it was
obvious that H'ani had as little faith in her husband's magical charms
as Centaine did.

The lion pride circled their camp site, keeping at the very limit of the
firelight so that Centaine caught only an occasional pale flicker of
movement amongst the dark, encroaching bushes, but with the dawn their
dreadful chorus receded as they moved away into the east, and when O'wa
showed her the huge catlike pugmarks in the soft earth, he was garrulous
with relief.

Then on the ninth morning after they had left the pan of the big white
place, they were approaching another water-hole through the open mopani
forests when ahead of them there was a crack like a shot of cannon and
they all froze.

What is it, H'ani?  But she waved Centaine to silence, and now she heard
the crackle of breaking undergrowth and then suddenly a ringing blast of
sound clear as a trumpet call.

Quickly O'wa tested the wind as Centaine had seen him do at the
beginning of every hunt, and then he led them in a wide stealthy circuit
through the forest until he stopped again beneath the spreading glossy
green foliage of a tall mopani tree where he laid aside his weapons and
his pack.

Come!  he signalled to Centaine and, swiftly as a monkey, shinned up the
trunk.  Hardly hampered at all by her fruitful belly, Centaine followed
him into the tree and from a fork in the top branches looked down into
the valley of grassland beyond and the water-hole that it contained in
its shallow bottom.

Elephant!  She recognized the huge grey beasts instantly.  They were
streaming down the far slope of the valley towards the water, striding
out with their ponderous rolling gait, heads swinging so that their
enormous ears flapped, and their trunks rolling and reaching reflexively
as they anticipated the sweet taste of water.

There were rangy old queens with tattered ear-lobes and the knuckles of
their spines sticking out of their gaunt backs, young bulls with yellow
ivories, tuskless youngsters, boisterous unweaned calves running to keep
up with their dams and, at their head, the herd bull strode
majestically.

He stood over ten feet tall at the shoulder and he was scarred and grey,
thick baggy skin hanging from his knees and bunched between his back
legs.  His ears were spread like the mainsail.  of a tall ship, and his
tusks were twice as long and thick as any of his lesser bulls.

He seemed aged and yet ageless, huge and rugged, possessed of a grandeur
and mystery which seemed to Centaine to contain the very essence of this
land.

Lothar De La Rey cut the spoor of the elephant herd three days after
they had left the Cunene river, and he and his Ovambo trackers studied
it carefully, spreading out and circling over the trodden earth like
gundogs.  When they assembled again, Lothar nodded at his headman.

Speak, Hendrick.  The Ovarnbo was as tall as Lothar, but heavier in the
shoulders.  His skin was dark and smooth as molten chocolate.

A good herd, Hendrick gave his opinion, forty cows, many with calf,
eight young bulls.  The dark turban of the warrior was wound around his
proud head, and garlands of necklaces strung with trade beads hung down
on to his muscular chest, but he wore riding breeches and a bandolier of
ammunition over one shoulder.

And the herd bull is so old that his pads are smooth, so old that he can
no longer chew his food and his dung is coarse with bark and twigs.  He
walks heavily on his forelegs, his ivory weighs him down, he is a bull
to follow, Hendrick said, and shifted the Mauser rifle into his right
hand and hefted it in anticipation.

The spoor is windblown, Lothar pointed out quietly and scratched over by
insect and quail.  Three days old."They are feeding, Hendrick opened his
arms, spread out, moving slowly, the calves slow them down.  We will
have to send the horses back, I Lothar persisted. We cannot risk them in
the tsetse fly.  Can we catch them on foot?  Lothar unknotted his scarf
and wiped his face thoughtfully.  He needed that ivory.  He had ridden
north to the Cunene as soon as his scouts had sent him word that good
rains had fallen.  He knew that the new growth and surface water would
lure the herds across the river out of Portuguese territory.

On foot we can make them in two days, Hendrick promised, but he was a
notorious optimist and Lothar teased him.

And at each night's camp we will find ten pretty Herero girls each
carrying a beerpot on her head waiting U for us.

i Hendrick threw back his head and laughed his deep growling tough.
Three days then, he conceded with a chuckle, and perhaps only one Herero
girl, but very beautiful and obliging.  Lothar pondered the chances a
moment longer.

It was a good bull, and the younger bulls would all carry mature ivory,
even the cows would yield twenty pounds each, and ivory was commanding
22s 6d a pound.

He had twelve of his best men with him, though two would have to be sent
back with the horses, but there were still enough riflemen to do the
job.  If they could come up with the herd they had a good chance of
killing every animal that showed ivory.

Lothar De La Rey was flat broke.  He had lost his family fortune, he had
been declared a traitor and an outlaw for continuing the fight after the
surrender of Colonel Franke, and there was a price on his head.  Perhaps
this would be his very last chance to repair his fortune.  He knew the
British welt enough to realize that when the war was over, they would
turn their attention to administering the new territories that they had
won.  Soon the re would be district commissioners and officers in even
the remotest areas, enforcing every detail of the law and paying special
attention to the illegal hunting of ivory.

The old free-booting days were probably numbered.  This could be his
last hunt.

Send back the horses!  he ordered.  Take the spoor!  Lothar wore tight
hunting velskoen.  His men were all tempered and hardened by long years
of war, and they ran on the spoor, taking it in turns to come to the
front and take the point, then dropping back to rest as another man hit
the front.

They entered the fly-bett in the late afternoon, and the vicious little
tsetse swarmed out of the shade of the forest to plague them, settling
light-footed on their backs to drive their blood-sucking probosces deep
into the flesh.

The men cut switches of green leaves and brushed the tsetse off each
other's backs as they ran.  By nightfall they had gained two days on the
herd, and the spoor was so fresh that the ant-lions had not yet built
their tiny funnelshaped traps in the crisply trodden pad marks.

Darkness stopped them.  They lay on the hard earth and slept like a pack
of hounds, but when the moon climbed over the tops of the mopani trees,
Lothar kicked them to their feet.  The slant of moonlight was in their
favour, outlining the spoor with a rim of shadow, and the raw trunks of
the mopani trees, from which the feeding elephant had stripped the bark,
shone like mirrors to guide them through the night, and when the sun
rose they lengthened their stride.

An hour after sunrise they suddenly ran out of the tsetse fly-belt.  The
territory of these little winged killers was sharply demarcated, the
border could be crossed in a hundred paces, from swarming multitudes to
complete relief.  The swollen itching lumps on the back of their necks
were the only souvenirs of their onslaught.

Two hours before noon, they reached a good water-hole in one of the
valleys of the mopani forest.  They were only hours behind the herd.

Drink quickly, Lothar ordered, and waded knee-deep into the filthy water
which the bathing elephant had churned to the colour of cafe all lait.
He filled his hat and poured the water over his own head.  His thick,
redgold locks streamed down over his face, and he snorted with pleasure.
The water was acrid and bitter with the salt of the elephant urine, the
beasts always emptied their bladders at the shock of cold water, but the
hunters drank and refilled the water-bottles.

Quickly, Lothar chivvied them, keeping his voice low, for sound carries
in the bush and the herd was very close.

Baas!  Hendrick signalled him urgently, and Lothar waded to the edge of
the pool, and skirted it quickly. What is it?

Wordlessly the big Ovambo pointed at the ground.  The spoor was
perfectly imprinted in the stiff yellow clay, and it was so fresh that
it overlaid that of the elephant herd water was still seeping into the
indentations.

Men!  Lothar exclaimed.  Men have been here since the herd left.
Hendrick corrected him harshly.  San, not men.  The little yellow
cattle-killers.  The Ovambo, were herdsmen, their cattle were their
treasure and their deep love.  The desert dogs who cut the teats off the
udders of our finest cows, the traditional revenge of the San for the
atrocities committed upon them, they are only minutes ahead of us.  We
could catch them within the hour.  The sound of gunfire would carry to
the herd.  Lothar shared his headman's hatred of the Bushmen.  They were
dangerous vermin, cattle-thieves and killers.  His own great-uncle had
been killed during one of the great Bushmen hunts of fifty years before,
a tiny bone-tipped arrow had found the chink in his rawhide armour, and
family history had recorded his death in every excruciating I detail.

Even the English with their sickly sentimentality towards the black
races had realized that there was no place in this twentieth-century
world for the San.  The standing orders of Cecil Rhodes famous British
South Africa Police contained instructions that all San and wild I dogs
encountered on patrol were to be shot out of hand.  I The two species
were considered as one.

Lothar was tempted, torn between the pleasure of performing the public
service of following and destroying the pack of San, and of mending his
own fortune by following the elephant.

The ivory, he decided.  No, the ivory is more important than culling a
few yellow baboons Baas, here!  Hendrick had moved around the edge of
the pool and stopped abruptly.  His tone and the alert set of his head
made Lothar hurry to him, and then sit quickly on his heels, the better
to examine this new set of prints.

Not San!  Hendrick whispered.  Too big But a woman, Lothar replied.  The
narrow foot and small shapely toe marks were unmistakable.  A young
woman.  The toe marks were deeper than the heel, a springy step, a young
step.

It is not possible!  Hendrick sank down beside him and without touching
the print traced the arched portion between ball and heel.  Lothar sat
back and shook his wet dangling locks again.

The black people of Africa who go barefooted from their very first step
leave a distinctive flat imprint.

A wearer of shoes, Hendrick said softly.

A white woman?  No, it's impossible!  Lothar repeated. Not here, not
travelling in the company of wild San!  For the love of God, we are
hundreds of miles from civilization!  It is so, a young white girl, a
captive of the San, Hendrick confirmed, and Lothar frowned.

The tradition of chivalry towards women of his own race was an integral
part of Lothar's upbringing, one of the -pillars of his Protestant
religion.  Because he was a soldier and hunter, because it was part of
the art of his trade, Lothar could read the sign left upon the earth as
though he were actually seeing the beast or the man, or woman, who had
made it.  Now as he squatted over these dainty prints, an image formed
in his mind.  He saw a girl, fine-boned, long-legged, gracefully
proportioned, but strong and proud, with a raking stride that drove her
forward on the balls of her feet.  She would be brave also, and
determined.  There was no place in this wilderness for weaklings, and
clearly this girl was flourishing.  As the image formed, Lothar became
aware of an emptiness deep in his soul.

We must go after this woman, he said softly, to rescue her from the San.
Hendrick rolled his eyes towards the sky and reached for his snuff
gourd, and poured a little of the red powder into his pink palm.

The wind is against us, he waved one hand along the run of the spoor,
they are travelling downwind.  We will never come up with them.  There
are always one hundred good reasons why we should not do what you don't
want to do.  Lothar raked his wet hair back with his fingers and retied
it with the leather thong at the nape of his neck.  We will be following
San, not animals.  The wind is of no consequence.  The San are animals.

Hendrick blocked one of his wide flat nostrils with his thumb and sucked
red snuff up the other before going on.  With this wind they will smell
you from two miles and hear you long before you sight them."He dusted
his hands and flicked the residual grains from his upper lip.

A beautiful story!  Lothar scoffed.  Even for you, the greatest liar in
all of Ovamboland.  And then, brusquely, Enough chatter, we are going
after the white girl.  Take the spoor.

From the high fork of the mopani tree, Centaine watched the elephant
herd at the water-hole with mounting delight.  once she had got over the
trepidation caused by their size and monumental ugliness, she swiftly
became aware of the endearing bond that seemed to unite all the members
of the herd.  They began to seem almost human to her.

The patriarch bull was crotchety and his arthritic joints obviously
ached.  They all treated him with respect, and left one side of the pool
for him alone.  He drank noisily, squirting the water down his throat.
Then he lowered himself, groaning with pleasure, into the mud, and
scooped it up in his trunk to slap it on to his dusty grey head.  It ran
down his cheeks, and he closed his eyes ecstatically.

On the opposite side of the pool the young bulls and cows drank and
bathed, blowing mud and water out of their trunks like fire hoses,
squirting themselves between the forelegs and down the flanks, lifting
their heads and thrusting their trunks deep down their throats to send
gallons of water hissing into their bellies.  Satiated, they stood
happily, trunks entwined in a loving embrace, and seemed to beam
indulgently at the calves cavorting around their legs and under their
bellies.

One of the smallest calves, not much bigger than a pig and just as fat,
tried to wriggle under the trunk of a dead tree that had fallen into the
pool and stuck fast in the mud.  In comical panic it let out a squeal of
alarm and terror.  Every elephant in the herd reacted instantly,
changing from contented indolence into raging behemoths of vengeance.
They rushed back into the pool, beating the water and kicking it in a
froth with their great hooves.

They think a crocodile has caught the calf, O'wa whispered.

Poor crocodile!  Centaine whispered back.

The mother yanked the calf out from under the dead tree, hindfeet first,
and it shot between her front legs and fastened on to one of her teats
where it suckled with almost hysterical relief.  The enraged herd
quietened down, but with every evidence of disappointment that they had
been denied the pleasure of tearing the hated crocodile into small
pieces.

When the old bull finally heaved himself upright and, glistening with
mud, strode away into the forest, the cows hastily rounded up their
offspring, chasing them from their muddy pleasures with swinging trunks,
and obediently they all trooped after the patriarch.  Long after they
had disappeared into the forest, Centaine could hear the crack of
breaking branches and the rumble of their waterfilled bellies as they
fed away southwards.

She and O'wa climbed down from the mopani grinning with pleasure.

The little ones were so naughty, Centaine told H'ani, just like human
babies.  We call them the big people, H'ani agreed, for they are wise
and loving as the San.  They went down to the edge of the water-hole and
Centaine marvelled at the mountainous piles of yellow dung that the
elephants had dropped.  Already the clucking francolin were scratching
in the steaming mounds for undigested nuts and seeds.

Anna would love that for the vegetable garden- she caught herself.  I
mustn't think so much of the past. She stooped to bathe her face, for
even the muddy water offered relief from the rising heat, but suddenly
O'wa stiffened and cocked his head, turning it towards the north, in the
direction from which the elephant herd had come.

What is it, old grandfather?  H'ani was instantly sensitive to his mood.

O'wa did not answer for a second, but his eyes were troubled and his
lips twitched nervously.

There is something, something on the wind, a sound, a scent, I am not
sure, he whispered.  Then, with sudden decision, There is danger, close.
We must go H'ani jumped up instantly and snatched up the satchel of egg
bottles.  She would never argue with her husband's intuition, it had
saved them often during their lifetime together.

Nam Child, she said softly but urgently, hurry H'ani- Centaine turned to
her with dismay.  She was already knee-deep in the muddy pool.  It is so
hot, I want to-, There is danger, great danger.  The two San whirled
together like startled birds and flew back towards the forest refuge.
Centaine knew that in seconds she would be left alone, and loneliness
was still her greatest terror.

She ran from the pool, kicking spray before her, grabbed her carrying
bag and stick and dressed as she ran.

O'wa circled quickly through the mopani forest, moving across the wind
until it blew upon the back of his neck.  The San, like the buffalo and
the elephant, always fled downwind when alarmed, so that the scent of
the pursuer would be carried down to them.

O'wa paused for Centaine to catch up with them. What is it, O'wa?  she
gasped.

Danger.  Deadly danger.  The agitation of both the old people was
obvious, and infectious.  Centaine had learned not to ask questions in a
situation such as this. What must I do?  Cover sign, the way I showed
you, O'wa ordered her, and she remembered the patient instruction that
he had given her in the art of anti-tracking, of confusing and hiding
the spoor so that a pursuer would find it difficult if not impossible to
follow them.  It was one of the skills on which San survival depended.
H'ani first, then you.  O'wa was in complete command now. Follow her. Do
as she does.  I will come at the back and cover your mistakes.  The old
woman was as quick and agile as a little brown francolin.  She flitted
through the forest, avoiding the game paths and open ground on which
their tracks would stand out clearly, picking the difficult line,
ducking under thorn thickets where a pursuer would not expect them to
pass, stepping on grass clumps or running along the trunks of fallen
trees, changing her length of stride, hopping sideways over harder
ground, employing every ruse she had learned in a long hard lifetime.

Centaine followed her, not as nimble, leaving an occasional blurred
footprint, knocking a green leaf from a bush as she passed, disturbing
the grass slightly.  O'wa came close behind her, a broom of grass stalks
in his hand to brush over the sign that Centaine left, stooping to pick
up the tell-tale green leaf, delicately rearranging the bent grass stems
that signposted the direction of their flight.

He guided H'ani with small chirping bird calls and whistles, and she
responded instantly, turning left or right, speeding up or freezing for
a few seconds so that J, O'wa could listen and sniff the breeze for the
scent of the pursuit, then plunging forward again at his signal.

Suddenly another open glade spread before them, half a mile wide,
studded with a few tall flat-topped giraffe acacia; beyond it rose the
low ridge, heavily forested with paper-bark trees and dense wild ebony
thickets for which O'wa was heading.

He knew that the ridge was composed of rock-hard calcrete, lumpy and
broken, and he knew also that no human being could follow him over that
ground.  Once they reached it, they were safe, but the glade lay before
them, and if they were caught there in the open, they would be easy
prey, especially if their pursuers were armed with the smoke that kills
from far off.

He wasted a few precious seconds to sniff at the air.  It was hard to
judge the distance of that faint offensive taint upon the light breeze,
the stink of carbolic soap and snuff, of unwashed woollen clothing and
socks, of the rancid cattle fat with which the Ovambo anointed their
bodies, but he knew that he had to risk the open ground.

His most skilful anti-tracking could not cover all the fil signs that
Nam Child had left over the soft sandy earth.

p t His efforts to do so would merely impede the pursuit, but he knew
that the bushcraft of the Ovambo was almost equal to his own.  Only on
the hard calcrete ridge could he be certain of losing them.  He
whistled, the call of a crimson -breasted shrike, and obediently H'ani
started out into the open glade, scuttling through the short yellow
grass.

Run, little bird, O'wa called softly.  If they catch us in the open, we
are dead.

They have smelled us, Hendrick looked back at Lothar.

See how they are covering sign.  At the forest edge it seemed as though
their quarry had turned into birds and taken to the air.  All trace of
them seemed to disappear.  Brusquely Hendrick signalled to the other
Ovarnbo hunters, and they spread out swiftly.

Throwing a wide net, they moved forward in line.  A man on the right
flank whistled softly and then waved under handed, indicating a new
direction.

They have turned down the wind, Hendrick mur inured to Lothar, who was
ten paces out on his flank.  I should have guessed it.  The net of
trackers wheeled on to the line, and moved forward.  A man whistled on
the left, and confirmed the line with that graceful underhand wave; they
speeded up, breaking into a trot.

just ahead Lothar noticed a faint colour difference on the seemingly
undisturbed earth, a tiny patch of lighter sand no bigger than a man's
foot, and he stooped to examine it.  A footprint had been carefully
brushed over and obliterated.  Lothar whistled softly, and waved them
forward on the line.

Now do you believe the San can smell like an elephant?  Hendrick asked
him as they jogged on.

I believe only what I see, Lothar grinned.  When I see a Bushman
sniffing the ground, then I will believe.  Hendrick chuckled, but his
eyes were cold and humourless.

They will have arrows, he said.

Do not let them get close, Lothar replied.  Shoot them down the moment
you see them, but be careful of the white woman.  I will kill the man
who harms her.  Pass it on to the others.  Lothar's order was called
softly down the line.

Shoot the San, but take great care of the white woman.  Twice they lost
the spoor.  They had to back up to the last marked sign, cast around it,
and then move off again on the new line.  The San were winning time and
distance with every check, and Lothar fretted.

They are getting away from us, he called to Hendrick.

I am going to run ahead on this line, you follow on the spoor, in case
they jink again.  Be careful!  Hendrick shouted after him.  They may lie
in ambush.  Watch out for the arrows.  Lothar ignored the warning and
raced through the forest, no longer tracking the sign, but taking the
chance that it was straight ahead, hoping to startle the Bushmen and
force them to show themselves, or to push them so that they would
abandon their captive.  He took no hard notice of the hooked thorns that
ripped at his clothing.

He ducked under the low mopani branches and hurdled fallen logs, running
at the very peak of his speed.

Suddenly he burst from the forest into an open glade and he pulled up,
his chest heaving for breath, sweat running into his eyes and soaking
the back of his shirt between the shoulder-blades.

On the far side of the glade below the low forested ridge he saw
movement, small black specks above the tops of the swaying yellow grass,
and he turned back to the nearest tree and scrambled into the first fork
for a better view.

Gasping wildly for breath, he fumbled the small brass telescope out of
his hunting bag and pulled it to full extension.  His hands were
shaking, so it was difficult to focus the telescope, but be swept the
far edge of the open glade.

Three human shapes appeared in the round field of the lens.  They were
in Indian file, heading directly away from him, almost at the palisade
formed by the trunks of the paper-bark trees.  Only their heads and
shoulders showed above the grass, bobbing up and down as they ran.  One
was taller than the other two.

He watched them for seconds only before they reached the tree line, and
two of them disappeared instantly, but the tallest figure paused,
stepped up on to a fallen log and looked back across the glade towards
Lothar.

It was a girl.  Her long dark hair was divided into two thick braids
that hung on to her shoulders.  Through the telescope Lothar could see
her expression, fearful, yet defiant.  The lines of her chin and brow
were aristocractic, and her mouth was full and firm, dark eyes proud and
bright, her skin stained to deep honey-gold, so for an instant he
thought she might be a mulatto.  As he watched she shifted the bag she
carried from one shoulder to the other, and the coarse material that
clothed her upper body fell open for an instant.

Lothar saw a flash of pale smooth skin, untouched by the sun, the form
of a full young breast, rosy tipped and delicately shaped, and he felt a
weakness in his legs that was not from hard running.  His breath stopped
for an instant, and then roared in his own ears as he panted to fill his
lungs.

The girl turned her head away from him, offering him a profile, and in
that instant Lothar knew that he had never seen a woman more appealing.
Everything in him yearned towards her.  She turned her back to him and
sprang lithely out of the field of the lens, and disappeared.

The branches of the edge of the forest trembled for a few seconds after
she was gone.

Lothar felt like a man blind from birth, who for a fleeting instant had
been shown the miracle of sight, only to be plunged back into darkness
again.  He stared after the girl, his feeling of deprivation so
appalling that he could not move for many seconds, and then he leapt
from the tree, rolling to his knees, breaking his fall, and sprang to
his feet again.

He whistled -sharply and heard his call answered by Hendrick far behind
him in the mopani, but he did not wait for his men to come up.  He
crossed the glade at a full run, but his feet seemed weighted with lead.
He reached the spot where the girl had stopped to look back towards him,
and found the tree stump on to which she had climbed.  The marks of her
bare feet that she had left in the soft earth as she jumped down from
the stump were deep and clear, but a few paces farther she had reached
the calcrete of the ridge.  It was hard as marble, rough and broken, and
Lothar knew that it would hold no sign.  He did not waste a moment
searching for it, but forced his way up through the thick bush to the
crest of the ridge, hoping for another sighting from there.

The forest hemmed him in, and even when he climbed into the top branches
of a solitary boabab, he looked down on the unbroken roof of the forest
that spread away, grey and forbidding, to the horizon.

He climbed down and wearily retraced his steps to the edge of the glade.
His Ovarnbos were waiting for him there.

We have lost them on the hard ground, Hendrick greeted him. Cast ahead,
we must find them, Lothar ordered. I have tried already, the spoor is
closed We cannot give up.  We will work at it, I will not let them go.
You saw them, Hendrick said softly, watching his master's face. Yes.  It
was a white girl, Hendrick insisted.  You saw the girl, did you not?  We
cannot leave her here in the desert.  Lothar looked away.  He did not
want Hendrick to see into the empty place in his soul.  We must find
her.  We will try again, Hendrick agreed, and then with a sly telling
grin, She was beautiful, this girl?  Yes, Lothar whispered softly, still
not looking at him. She was beautiful.  He shook himself, as though
waking from a dream, and the line of his jaw hardened.

Get your men on to the ridge, he ordered.

They worked over it like a pack of hunting dogs, quartering every inch
of the adamant yellow rock, stooping over it and moving in a slow
painstaking line, but they found only one further mark of the passage of
the San and the girl.

In one of the overhanging branches of a paper-bark tree, near the crest
of the ridge, just at the level of Lothar's shoulder, a lock of human
hair was caught, torn from the girl's scalp as she ducked beneath the
branch.  It was curly and springy, as long as his forearm, and it
glistened in the sunlight like black silk.  Lothar wound it carefully
around his finger, and then when none of his men was watchin& he opened
the locket that hung around his neck on a golden chain.  In the recess
was a miniature of his mother.

He placed the curl of hair over it and snapped the lid of the locket
closed.

Lothar kept them hunting for signs until it was dark, and in the morning
he started them again as soon as they could see the ground at their
feet.  He split them into two teams.  Hendrick took one team along the
eastern side of the ridge, and Lothar worked the western extremity where
the calcrete merged into the Kalahari sands, trying to discover the spot
at which their quarry had left the ridge again.

E Four days later they had still not intersected the spoor, and two of
the Ovarnbo had deserted.  They slipped away during the night, taking
their rifles with them.

We will lose the rest of them, Hendrick warned him ; : quietly.  They
are saying that this is a madness.  They cannot understand it.  Already
we have lost the elephant herd, and there is no profit in this business
any longer.

The spoor is dead.  The San and the woman have slipped away.  You will
not find them now.  Hendrick was right, it had become an obsession.  A

single glimpse of a woman's face had driven him mad.

Lothar sighed, and slowly turned away from the ridge on which the
pursuit had foundered.

Very well.  He raised his voice so that the rest of his men, who had
been trailing disconsolately, could hear him.  Drop the spoor.  It is
dead.  We are going back.  The effect upon them was miraculous.  Their
step quickened and their expressions sparkled to life again.

Lothar remained on the ridge as the gang started back down the slope. He
stared out over the forest towards the east, towards the mysterious
interior where few white men had ventured, and he fingered the locket at
his throat.

Where did you go?  Was it that way, deeper into the Kalahari?  Why
didn't you wait for me, why did you run?  There were no answers, and he
dropped the locket back into the front of his shirt.  If I ever cut your
spoor again, you won't lose me so easily, my pretty.  Next time I'll
follow you to the ends of the earth, he whispered, and turned back down
the slope.

O`wa jinked back and followed the ridge towards the south, keeping just
below the crest, driving the women as hard as they could run heavily
laden over the rough footing.  He would not allow them to rest, although
Centaine was beginning to tire badly, and pleaded with him over her
shoulder.

In the middle of the afternoon he allowed them to drop their satchels
and sprawl on the rocky slope while he scurried on down to reconnoitre
the contact line of the sands and the calcrete intrusion for a point at
which to make the crossover.  Halfway down he paused and sniffed;
picking up the faint stench of carrion, he turned aside and found the
carcass of an old zebra stallion.  Reading the sign, O'wa saw that
hunting lions had caught him as he crossed the ridge and dragged him
down.  The kill was weeks old, the tatters of skin and flesh had dried
hard and the bones were scattered amongst the rocks.

O'wa searched quickly and found all four of the zebra's feet intact. The
hyena had not yet crunched them to splinters.  With the clasp knife he
prised the horny sheath of the actual hooves from the bony mass of the
metatarsals, and hurried back to fetch the women.  He led them the soft
ground, and knelt in front of down to the edge of Centaine.

I will take Nam Child off, and then come back for you, he told H'ani as
he bound the hoof sheaths to Centaine's feet with sansevieria twine.

We must hurry, old grandfather, they could be close behind us.  H'ani
sniffed the light breeze anxiously, and cocked her head towards each
small forest sound.

Who are they?  Centaine had recovered not only her breath, but her
curiosity and reason.  Who is chasing us?

I haven't seen or heard a thing.  Are they people like me, O'wa, are
they my people?  Swiftly H'ani cut in before O'wa could reply.  They are
black men.  Big black men from the north, not your people.  Although she
and O'wa had both seen the white man at the edge of the glade when they
looked back from the ridge, they had reached agreement in a few words
that they would keep Nam Child with them.

f Are you sure, H'ani?  Centaine teetered on the zebra hooves, like a
little girl in her first high-heeled shoes. They were not pale-skinned
like me?  The dreadful possi- Ilk bility that she was fleeing from her
rescuers had suddenly occurred to her.

No!  No!  H'ani fluttered her hands in extreme agitation.  The child was
so close to birth, to witness that moment was the last thing in her life
that she still cared about.  Not pale-skinned like you.  She thought of
the most horrific being in San mythology.  They are big black giants who
eat human flesh.  Cannibals!  Centaine was shocked.

Yes!  Yes!  That is why they pursue us.  They will cut the child from
your womb and-, Let's go, O'wa!  Centaine gasped.  Hurry!  Hurry!"

O'wa, with the other pair of hooves strapped to his own feet, guided
Centaine away from the ridge, walking behind her and creating the
illusion of a zebra having left the rocky ground and wandered away into
the forest.

A mile from the ridge he hid Centaine in a clump of thorny scrub,
removed the hooves from her feet, reversed the pair upon his own feet
and set off back to fetch H'ani.

The two San, each of them wearing hoof sandals, tracked back along the
same trail and when they reached Centaine's hiding-place, discarded the
hooves and all three of them fled into the east.

O'wa kept them going all that night, and in the dawn while the women
slept exhausted, he circled back on their trail and guarded it against
the possibility that the pursuers had not been deceived by his ruse with
the zebra hooves.  Although he could discover no evidence of pursuit,
for three more days and nights he force-marched, allowing no cooking
fires, and used every natural feature to anti-track and hide their
trail.

On the third night, he was confident enough to tell the women, We can
make fire.  And by its ruddy wavering light he danced with dedicated
frenzy and sang the praise of the spirits in turn, including Mantis and
Eland, for, as he explained seriously to Centaine, it was uncertain who
had aided their escape, who had directed the wind to carry the warning
scent to them in the first place, and who had subsequently placed the
zebra carcass so conveniently to hand.  It is necessary, therefore, to
thank them all.  He danced until moonset, and the next morning slept
until sunrise.  Then they resumed the familiar leisurely pattern of
march, and even halted early that first day when O'wa discovered a
colony of spring-hare.

This is the last time we can hunt, the spirits are most insistent.  No
man of the San may kill any living thing within five days march of "the
Place of All Life", he explained to Centaine, as he selected long whippy
saplings of the grewia bush, peeled them and lashed them together until
he had a strong flexible rod almost thirty feet long.  On the final
section, he left a side branch that grew back at an acute angle to the
main stem, like a crude fish-hook, and he sharpened the point of this
hook and hardened it in the fire.  Then he spent a long time carefully
examining the burrows of the spring-hare colony, before selecting one
which suited his design.

While the women knelt beside him, he introduced the hooked end of the
rod into the opening of the burrow, and like a chimney-sweep worked it
gently down the shaft, deftly guiding it around the subterranean curves
and bends until almost the entire length was down in the earth.

Suddenly the rod pulsed strongly in his hands, and immediately O'wa
struck, jerking back like a hardline fisherman who feels the pull of the
fish.

He is kicking at the rod now, trying to hit it with his back legs, O'wa
grunted, pushing the rod deeper into the hole, tempting the trapped
spring-hare to kick out at it again.

This time, as he struck, the rod came alive in his hands, kicking and
twitching and jerking.

U I have hooked him!  He threw his weight back on the i k rod, driving
the sharpened wooden point deeper into the El t animals flesh.  Dig,
H'ani.  Dig, Nam Child!

The two women flew at the soft friable earth with their staves, digging
down swiftly.  The muffled shrieks of the ".

I hooked spring-hare grew louder as they came nearer to i the end of the
long gaff, until finally O'wa heaved the furry creature clear of its
earth.  It was the size of a large yellow cat, and it leaped about
wildly on the end of the pliant rod on its powerful kangaroo back legs,
until H'ani despatched it with a swinging blow of her stave.

By nightfall they had killed two more spring-hare, and after they had
thanked them, they feasted on the sweet tender roasted flesh, the last
they would eat for a long time.

in the morning when they set out again on the final leg of the journey,
a sharp hot wind blew into their faces.

Although it was taboo for O'wa to hunt, the Kalahari bloomed in a rich
and rare abundance both below and above the ground.  There were flowers
and green leafy plants to be eaten as salads, roots and tubers, fruits
and protein-rich nuts, and the water-holes, all of them brimming, were
easy marches apart.  Only the wind hampered them, standing steadily into
their faces, hot and abrasive with blown sand, forcing them to cover
their faces with their leather shawls and lean into it.

The mixed herds of fat handsome zebra and ungainly blue wildebeest with
their scraggy manes and skinny legs standing out on the wide pans or on
the grassy glades turned their rumps into the sultry blast.  The wind
ripped the talcum-fine dust off the surface of the pans and whirled it
into the sky, turning the air misty, so the sun itself was a hazy orange
globe and the horizons shrank in upon them.

The dust floated on the surface of the water-holes in a thin scum, and
it turned to mud in their nostrils and grated between their teeth.  It
formed little wet beads in the corners of their eyes and dried and
cracked their skins so that H'ani and Centaine had to roast and crush
the seeds of the sour plum tree to extract the oil to dress their skins
and the soles of their feet.

However, with each day's march the old people became stronger, more
active and excited.  They seemed less and less affected by the scouring
wind.  There was a new jauntiness in their step and they chattered
animatedly to each other on the march, while Centaine faltered and
dropped far behind, almost as she had done at the beginning.

On the fifth evening after crossing the ridge, Centaine staggered into
the camp that the San had already set up on the edge of yet another open
pan.  Centaine lay on the bare earth, too hot and exhausted to gather
grass for her bed.

When Rani came to her with food, she pushed it away petulantly.  I don't
want it.  I don't want anything.  I hate this land, I hate the heat and
the dust.  Soon, H'ani soothed her, very soon we will reach the Place of
All Life, and your baby will be born.  But Centaine rolled away from
her.  Leave me, just leave me alone.  She woke to the cries of the old
people, and she dragged herself up, feeling fat and dirty and unrested,
even though she had slept so late that the sun was already tipping the
tops of the trees, on the far side of the pan.  immediately she saw that
the wind had dropped during the night and most 0 f the dust had settled
out of the air.  The residue transformed the dawn to a kaleidoscope of
flamboyant colour.

Nam Child, do you see it!  H'ani called to her, and then trilled like a
Christmas beetle, inarticulate with excitement.  Centaine straightened
up slowly and stared at the scene that the dust clouds had obscured the
previous evening.

Across the pan a great whale-backed mountain rose abruptly out of the
desert, steep-sided and with a sym.

A metrically rounded summit.  Aglow with all the rich reds and golds of
the dawn, it looked like a headless monster.

Parts of the mountain were bald and bare, glowing red rock and smooth
cliffs, while in other places it was heavily forested; trees much taller
and more robust than those of the plain crowned the summit or grew up
the steep sides.  The strange reddish light suffused with dust and the
silences of the African dawn cloaked the entire mountain in majestic
serenity.

Centaine felt all her miseries and her woes fall away as she stared at
it.

"The Place of All Life"!  As H'ani said the name, her agitation passed
and her voice sank to a whisper.  This is the sight we have travelled so
far and so hard to look upon for the last time.

Olwa had fallen silent as well, but now he bobbed his head in agreement.
This is where we will make our peace at last with all the spirits of our
people.  Centaine felt the same sense of deep religious awe that had
overcome her when first she had entered the cathedral of Arras, holding
her father's hand, and looked up at the gemlike stained glass in the
high gloomy recesses of the towering nave.  She knew that she stood on
the threshold of a holy place, and she sank slowly to her knees and
clasped her hands over the swell of her stomach.

The mountain was further off than it had seemed in the red light of the
dawn.  As they marched towards it, it seemed to recede rather than draw
closer.  As the light changed, so the mountain changed its mood.  It
became remote and austere, and the stone cliffs glittered in the
sunlight like a crocodile's scales.

O'wa sang as he trotted at the head of the file: See, spirits of the San
We come to your secret place With clean hands, unstained by blood.

Al See, spirit of Eland and Mantis, We come to visit you with joyous
hearts, and songs for your amusement The mountain changed again, began
to quiver and tremble i in the rising heat.  It was no longer massive
stone, but rippled like water and wavered like smoke.

It broke free of the earth and floated in the air on a shimmering silver
mirage.

O, bird mountain That flies in the sky We bring YOU praises.

O, Elephant Mountain, greater than Any beast of earth or sky, we hail
you, O'wa sang, and as the sun swung through its zenith and the air
cooled, so the Mountain of All Life settled to earth again and loomed
high above them.

They reached the scree slopes, loose stone and debris that lay piled
against the cliffs, and paused to look up at the high summit.  The rocks
were painted with lichen growth, sulphur-yellow and acid-green, and the
little hyrax rock rabbits had stained the cliffs with seepage from their
middens, like tears from an elephant's eyes.

On a ledge three hundred feet above them stood a tiny antelope.  It took
fright and with a bleat like a child's penny whistle, shot straight up
the cliff, leaping from ledge to unseen ledge with all the nimbleness of
a chamois, until it disappeared over the crest.

The y scrambled up the steep scree slope until they touched the base of
the cliff.  The rock was smooth and cool and overhung them, leaning out
at a gentle angle like a vast cathedral roof.

Be not angry, ye spirits, that we come into your secret place, H'ani
whispered, and tears were coursing down her ancient yellow cheeks.  We
come in humble peace, kind spirits, we come to learn what our offence
has been, and how we can make amends.  O'wa reached out and took his
wife's hand and they stood like two tiny naked children before the
smooth rock.

We come to sing for you and to dance, O'wa whispered.  We come to make
peace, and then with your favour to be reunited with the children of our
clan who died of the great fever in a far place.  There was such
vulnerability in this intimate moment that Centaine felt embarrassed to
watch them.  She drew away from the two old people, and wandered alone
along the narrow gallery before the cliff.  Suddenly she stopped, and
stared up in wonder at the high rock wall that hung out over her head.

Animals, she whispered.

She felt the goose-flesh of superstitious fear rise along her forearms,
for the walls were decorated with paintings, frescoes of weirdly wrought
animals, the childlike simplicity of form giving them a beauty that was
dreamlike, and yet a touching resemblance to the beasts that they
depicted.  She recognized the darkly massive outlines of tusked
elephants and horned rhinoceros, the wildebeest and sassaby with horns
like crescent moons marching in closely packed phalanxes across the rock
walls.

And people, Centaine whispered, as she picked out the sticklike human
shapes that ran in pursuit of the herds of wild game.  Fairy beings, the
San's view of him self, armed with bows and crowned with wreaths of
arrows, the men adorned with proudly erect penises, disproportionately
large, and the women with prominent breasts and buttocks, the badges of
feminine beauty.

The paintings climbed so high up the sheer walls that the artists must
have built platforms, in the fashion of Michelangelo, to work from.  The
perspectives were naive, one human figure larger than the rhinoceros he
was hunting, but this seemed to deepen the enchantment, and Centaine
lost herself in wonder, sinking down at last to examine and admire a
lovely flowing waterfall of overlapping eland, ochre and red, with
dewlaps and humped shoulders, so lovingly depicted that their special
place in San mythology could not be overlooked.

H'ani found her there, and squatted beside her.

Who painted these things?  Centaine asked her.

The spirits of the San, long, long ago.

Where they not painted by men?

No!  No!  Men do not have the art, these are spirit drawings.

So the artists skills were lost.  Centaine was disappointed .  She had
hoped that the old woman was one of , i the artists and that she would
have an opportunity to J

watch her work.

Long ago, H'ani repeated, before the memory of my father or my
grandfather.

Centaine swallowed her disappointment and gave her self up to enjoyment
of the marvelous display.

There was little left of the daylight, but while it lasted, they picked
their way slowly around the base of the cliff, i walking with heads
thrown back to marvel at the gallery of ancient art.  At places the rock
had broken away, or the storms and winds of the ages had destroyed the
frescoes, L but in the protected gulleys and beneath the sheltering
overhangs the paint seemed so fresh, and the colours so vivid, that they
might have been painted that very day.

In the last minutes of daylight they reached a shelter where others had
camped before them, for the hearth was thick with wood ash and the cliff
was blackened with soot, and there was a pile of dead wood left beside
it, ready for use.

Tomorrow we will learn if the spirits are hostile still, or if we will
be allowed to proceed, H'ani warned Centaine.  We will start very early,
for we must reach the hidden place before the sun rises, while it is
still cool.

The guardians become restless and dangerous in the heat."What is this
place?  Centaine insisted, but once again the old woman became vague and
deliberately absentminded.  She repeated the San word which had the
various meanings hidden place or safe shelter, or vagina, and would say
no more.

As Hlani had warned, they started out long before sunrise the next
morning and the old people were quiet and anxious and, Centaine
suspected, fearful.

The sky was barely lighting with the dawn when abruptly the path turned
a sharp corner in the cliff and entered a narrow wedge-shaped valley,
the floor was thickly covered with such luxuriant growth that Centaine
realized there must be good water below the surface.  The path was
ill-defined, overgrown and clearly had not been trodden for many months
or years.  They had to duck under the interlocking branches and step
over fallen boughs and new growth.  In the cliffs high above them
Centaine made out the huge shaggy nests of vultures, and the grossly
ugly birds with their bare pink heads crouched on the rim of their
nests.

The Place of All Life, H'ani saw her interest in the nesting birds.  Any
creature born here is special, blessed by the spirits.  Even the birds
seem to know this The high cliffs closed in upon them as the valley
narrowed, and at last the path ended against the rock in the angled
corner where the valley finally pinched out, and the sky was hidden from
them.

O`wa stood before the wall and sang in his hoarse ghostchant, We wish to
enter your most secret place, Spirits of all Creatures, Spirits of our
clan.  open the way for us. He spread his arms in entreaty.  May the
guardians of this passage let us pass through.  O'wa lowered his arms,
and stepped into the black rock of the cliff and disappeared from
Centaine's sight.  She gasped with alarm, and started forward, but Ham
touched her arm to restrain her.

There is great danger now, Nam Child.  If the guardians reject us, we
will die.  Do not run, do not wave your arms.

Walk slowly, but with purpose, and ask the blessing of the spirits as
you pass through.  H'ani released her arm, and stepped into the rock
following her husband.

Centaine hesitated.  For a moment she almost turned back, but at last
curiosity and fear of loneliness spurred her and she went slowly to the
wall where H'ani had disappeared.  Now she saw the opening in the rock,
a narrow vertical crack, just wide enough for her to pass through if she
turned her shoulders.

She drew a deep breath and slipped through.

Beyond the narrow portals she paused to allow her eyes to become
accustomed to the gloom, and she found herself in a long dark tunnel. It
was a natural opening, she saw at once, for the walls had not been
worked by tools, and there were side branches and openings high
overhead.

She heard the rustle of the old people's bare feet on the rocky floor
ahead of her, and then another sound.  A low, murmurous hum, like the
sea surf heard from afar.

Follow, Nam Child.  Stay close, H'ani's voice floated back to her, and
Centaine went forward slowly, staring into the shadows, trying to find
the source of that deep vibrating murmur.

In the gloom above her she saw strange shapes, platelike projections
from the walls, like the leaves of fungus growing on the trunk of a dead
tree, or the multiple wings of roosting butterflies.  They drooped so
low that she had to duck beneath them, and with a sudden chill she
realized where she was.

The cavern was an enormous beehive.  These deep winglike structures were
the honeycombs, so massive that each would contain hundreds of gallons
of honey.  Now she could see the insects swarming over the combs,
glittering dully in the poor light, and she remembered the stories that
Michael had told her of the African bees.

Bigger and blacker than your bees, he had boasted, land so vicious that
I have seen them sting a bull buffalo to death Barely allowing herself
to breathe, her skin crawling in anticipation of the first burning dart,
forcing herself not to run, she followed the diminutive figures ahead of
her.

The swarming masses of venomous insects were only inches above her, and
the humming chorus seemed to rise angrily until it threatened to deafen
her, This way, Nam Child.  Do not fear, for the little winged people
will smell your fear, H'ani called softly, and a bee alighted on
Centaine's cheek.

She raised her hand instinctively to strike it off her, and then with an
effort checked the movement.  The bee tickled across her face on to her
upper lip, then another settled on her upraised forearm.

She peered at it in horror.  It was enormous, black as coal, with dark
golden rings around its abdomen.  The filmy wings were closed like
scissor-blades and its multiple eyes twinkled in the poor light. Please,
little bee, Please Centaine whispered, and the insect arched its back,
and from its banded abdomen the point of its sting protruded, a dark red
needle-point. Please, let me and my baby pass!  The bee curved its body
and the sting touched the soft skin of her inner elbow.  Centaine tensed
herself; tanned she knew that the stabbing pain would be followed by the
sickly sweet odour of the venom that would madden and infuriate the vast
swarm above her.  She imagined herself smothered under a living carpet
of bees, writhing on the floor of the cavern, dying the most hideous of
deaths.

Please, she whispered.  Let my baby be born in your secret place, and we
will honour you all the days of our lives.  The bee retracted the
throbbing sting and performed an intricate weaving dance upon her arm,
turning and curtseying and reversing, and then with a quicksilver
flicker of its wings darted away.

Centaine walked on slowly, and ahead of her she saw a golden nimbus of
reflected light.  The insect on her face crawled down over her lips, so
she could not speak again, but she prayed silently.

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" please, little
bee, let me go for my baby's sake.  A sharp buzz and the bee flashed
before her eyes, a golden mote as it left her, and though her skin
tingled and itched from the memory of its horny feet, she kept her hands
at her sides and walked on with a measured step.  It seemed for ever,
then she reached the tunnel's end and stooped through it into the early
dawn light, and her legs began to fold in reaction to her terror.  She
might have fallen if O'wa had not steadied her.

You are safe now.  The guardians have allowed us to enter the sacred
place.

The words roused her, and though she still trembled and her breathing
was rough, Centaine looked around her.

They had passed through into a hidden basin in the heart of the
mountain, a perfectly round amphitheatre in the rock.  The walls were
sheer, hundreds of feet high and with a dark satanic sheen to them, as
though scorched in the flames of a blast furnace, but above that it was
open to the sky, The deep bowl of rock was perhaps a mile across at its
widest point.  At this time of day the sunlight had not penetrated down
to the floor, and the groves of graceful trees that covered it were cool
and dewy.  They reminded Centaine of olives, with fine pale leaves and
bunches of reddish-yellow fruit on the wide-spread boughs.  The floor of
the valley was gently dished, and as Centaine followed H'ani down
through the trees, the ground beneath them was carpeted with fallen
fruit.

H'ani picked up one of them and offered it to Centaine.

Mongongo, very good Centaine bit into it and exclaimed as her tooth
struck painfully on the large kernel in its centre.  There was only a
thin layer of flesh around it, but it was tart and tasty as a palm date,
though not as sweet.

From the branches above them a flight of plump green pigeons exploded
into noisy flight, and Centaine realized that the valley was alive with
birds and small animals come in the dawn to feast on the fruits of the
mongongo groves.

The Place of All Life, she whispered, entranced by the weird beauty, by
the stark contrast of bare blasted rock cliffs against this gently
wooded bottom land.

O'wa hurried along the rough path that led down into the centre of the
bowl, and as Centaine followed she glimpsed a small hillock of black
volcanic rock through the trees ahead.  Centaine saw that the hill was
symmetrical and cone-shaped, and set in the exact centre of the
amphitheatTe like the boss in the centre of a shield.

Like the valley floor, the hill itself was heavily forested.

Tall elephant grass and niongongo trees grew profusely among the black
volcanic boulders.  A troop of black-faced vervet monkeys chattered at
them from the trees and ducked their heads threateningly, grimacing with
alarm, as they approached the hillock.

When Centaine and H'ani caught up with O'wa, he was standing facing a
dark opening in the side of the hill.  It looked like the mouth of a
mine-shaft, but as she peered into it Centaine realized that the floor
of the shaft sloped down at a gentle angle.  She pushed past O'wa the
better to examine it, but the old man seized her arm.

Be not hasty, Nam Child, we must make preparation in the correct manner.
And he drew her back and led her gently away.

A little further on, there was an ancient San camp-site amongst the
sheltering rocks.  The thatched roofs of the shelters had collapsed with
age.  O'wa burned them to the ground, for disused huts harbour snakes
and vermin, and the two women rebuilt them with saplings and freshly cut
grass.

I am hungry.  Centaine realized that she had not eaten since the
previous evening.

Come.  H'ani led her into the grove, and they filled their satchels with
the fallen fruit of the mongongo trees.

Back in the camp, HaM showed Centaine how to strip off the outer layer
of flesh and then to crack the hard central nut between two flat stones.
The kernel looked like a dried almond.  They ate a few of these, to take
the edge off their hunger.  They tasted like walnuts.

We will eat them in many ways, H'ani promised.  And each way they taste
different, roasted, pounded with leaves, boiled like maize bread, they
will be our only food in this place where all killing is forbidden.
While they prepared the meal, O'wa returned to camp with a bundle of
freshly dug roots, and went aside to prepare them in private, scraping
and chopping with his beloved clasp knife.

They ate before dark, and Centaine found the meal of nuts unexpectedly
satisfying.  As soon as her stomach was filled, the effect of the day's
excitements and exertions caught up with her, and she could barely drag
herself to her shelter.

She awoke refreshed and with a sense of unexplained excitement.  The San
were already busy around the camp fire and as soon as she joined them
and squatted in the circle, O'wa, puffed up with nervous anticipation
and self importance, told them, We must now prepare to go down into the
most secret of places.  Do you agree to the purification, old
grandmother?  It was obviously a formal question.

I agree, old grandfather.  H'ani clapped softly in acquiescence.

Do you agree to the purification, Nam Child?  I agree, old grandfather.

Centaine clapped in imitation and O'wa bobbed his head and from the
pouch on his belt brought out a buck-horn.  The top had been pierced,
and O'wa had stuffed the horn with the chopped roots and herbs that he
had gathered the previous afternoon.

Now he picked a live coal out of the fire with his fingers, and juggling
it to prevent it burning his skin, he dropped it into the trumpet-shaped
opening of the buckhom.  He blew upon it and a tendril of blue smoke
rose in the still air as the herbs smouldered.

Once the pipe was burning evenly, Ofwa rose and stood behind the two
squatting women.  He placed his mouth over the pierced tip of the horn
and sucked on it strongly, then blew the smoke over them.  It was acrid
and sharply unpleasant, and left a bitter taste in Centaine's throat.

She murmured a protest and began to rise, but H'ani pulled her down
again.  O'wa kept puffing and exhaling, and after a while Centaine found
the smoke less offensive.

She relaxed and leaned against H'ani.  The old woman placed an arm
around her shoulders.  Slowly Centaine became aware of a marvelous sense
of well-being.  Her body felt as light as that of a bird, she felt she
could float up with the spirals of blue smoke.

Oh, H'ani, I feel so good, she whispered.

The air around her seemed sparkling clear, her vision sharp and
magnified so she could see every crack and 4A crevice in the surrounding
cliffs, and the groves of trees A seemed to be made of green crystals.
They reflected the sunlight with an ethereal radiance.

She became aware that O'wa.  was kneeling in front of her, and she
smiled at him dreamily.  He was offering something, holding it out
towards her with both hands.  I It is for the child, he told her, and
his voice seemed A to come from far away and echo strangely in her ears.
It is the birthing mat.  His father should have made it for him, but
that could not be.  Here, Nam Child, take it and bear a brave son upon
it.  O'wa leaned forward and placed the gift upon her lap.

it took long seconds before she realized that it was the gemsbok skin
over which O'wa had worked so long and so intently.  She unfolded it
with exaggerated care.  The skin had been scraped and tanned to the
pliability and softness of fine cloth.  She stroked it and the fur felt
like satin.  I i Thank you, old grandfather, her voice came from far
away, and reverberated strangely in her own ears.

It is for the child, he repeated, and sucked on the buckhorn pipe.

For the child, yes Centaine nodded and her head seemed to float free of
her body.  O'wa gently exhaled a Stream of blue smoke into her face and
she made no effort to av old it, rather she leaned forward to stare into
his eyes.  O'wa's pupils had shrunk to glittering black pinpricks, the
irises were the colour of dark amber with a fanlike pattern of black
lines surrounding the pupils.

They mesmerized her.

For the child's sake, let the peace of this place enter your soul.  O`wa
spoke through the smoke, and Centaine felt it happen.

Peace, she murmured, and at the centre of her being was a wondrous
stillness, a monumental calm.

Time and space and white sunlight mingled and became one.  She sat at
the centre of the universe and smiled serenely, She heard O`wa singing
far away, and she swayed gently to the rhythm and felt each beat of her
heart and the slow pump of her blood through her veins.

She felt the child lying deep within her, curled in an attitude of
prayer, then, unbelievably, she felt the tiny heart beating like that of
a trapped bird, and the wonder of it engulfed her whole being.

We have come to be cleansed O'wa sang.  We have come to wash away all
offence, we have come to make atonement Centaine felt H'ani's hand creep
into hers like a fragileboned animal, and she turned her head slowly and
smiled into the beloved old face.

It is time, Nam Child Centaine drew the gemsbok skin over her shoulder.
It required no effort to rise.  She floated above the earth, with
H'ani's little hand clutched in hers.

They came to the opening in the hillside, and though it was dark and
steep, Centaine went forward smiling, and she did not feel the coarse
volcanic rock beneath her feet.  The passageway descended for a short
distance, and then levelled out and opened into a natural cavern.  They
followed O'wa down.

Light filtered from the stairway behind them and from a number of small
openings in the domed roof.  The air was warm and moist and steamy.  The
clouds of steam tly from the surface of a circular pool that filled rose
gen the cavern from side to side.  The surface of the pool seethed and
bubbled softly, and the steam smelled strongly of sulphur.  The waters
were cloudy green.

O'wa let his loincloth fall to the rocky floor and stepped into the
pool.  It reached to his knees but as he waded forward it deepened,
until only his head was above the surface.  H'ani followed him naked
into the pool, and Centaine laid the gemsbok skin aside, and let her
skirt fall.

The water was hot, almost scalding, a thermal spring welling up out of
the matrix, but Centaine felt no discomfort .  She moved deeper and then
sank down slowly on to her knees until the water came to her chin.  The
floor of the pool was coarse pebble and gravel.  The fierce heat of the
waters soaked into her body.  It swirled and eddied about her, kneading
her flesh, as it bubbled up out of the depths of the earth.

She heard O'wa singing softly, but the steam clouds closed in around her
and blinded her.

We wish to make atonement, O'wa sang.  We wish to be forgiven our
offences to the Spirits- Centaine saw a shape forming in the steam,
clouds, a dark, insubstantial phantom.

Who are you?  she murmured, and the shape firmed, and she recognized the
eyes, the other features were obscure, as those of the old seaman she
had sacrificed to the shark.

Please, she whispered, forgive me.  It was for my baby.

Please forgive my offence.  It seemed that for a moment there was
understanding in those sad old eyes, and then the image faded and
vanished in the steam banks, to be replaced by others, a host of
memories and dream creaand she spoke to them.

tures, Oh, Papa, if I had only been strong enough, if only I could have
filled Mama's place-, She heard the voices of the San in the steam,
crying out in greeting to their own ghosts and memories.  O'wa hunted
again with his sons, and H'ani saw her babies and her grandchildren and
crooned her love and mourning.

Oh, Michel, his eyes were a Marvellous blue, I will love you for ever.
Yes, oh yes, I will name your son for you.  I promise you that, my love,
he will carry your name.  How long she remained in the pool she did not
know, but gradually the fantasies and the phantoms faded, and then she
felt H'ani's hands leading her to the rocky lip.

The scalding waters seemed to have drained all the strength from her.
Her body glowed a bright brick colour, and the ingrained dirt of the
desert was scoured from the pores of her skin.  Her knees were weak and
rubbery.

H'ani draped the gemsbok skin over her wet body and helped her up the
rocky passage to the surface.  Night had fallen already, and the moon
shone bright enough to cast shadows at their feet.  H'ani led her to the
rude shelter and wrapped her in the gemsbok skin.

The Spirits have forgiven, she whispered.  They are pleased that we have
made the journey.  They sent my babies to greet me and tell me so.  You
can sleep well, Nam Child, there is no more offence.  We are welcome in
this place.

Centaine woke in confusion, not sure what was happening to her, not even
certain where she was, imagining for the first few seconds that she was
back in her chamber at Mort Homme and that Anna was standing beside her
bed.  Then she became aware of the coarse grass and hard earth beneath
her and the smell of the rawhide that covered her, and immediately
following that the pain came again.  It was as though a claw had closed
on her lower body, a cruel taloned claw, cramping and crushing her, and
she cried out involuntarily and doubled over, clutching her stomach.

With the pain, reality rushed back upon her.  Her mind was clear and
sharp after the hallucinations of the previous day.  She knew what was
happening, she knew instinctively that the immersion in the heated
waters of the pool and the drugged smoke she had breathed must have
precipitated it.

H'ani!  she called, and the old woman materialized out of the grey half
light.  It has begun!  H'ani helped her to her feet, then gathered up
the gemsbok skin.

Come, she whispered.  We must go where we can be alone.  H'ani must have
already chosen the place, for she led Centaine directly to a hollow a
short way beyond the camp, but screened from it by the mongongo grove.
She spread the gemsbok skin at the base of a large mongongo tree and
settled Centaine upon it.  She knelt over her and removed her ragged
canvas skirt, then with quick, strong fingers, she made a brief but
thorough examination and then rocked back on her heels.

Soon, Nam Child, very soon now, she smiled happily, but Centaine's reply
choked off as another spasm caught her. Ah, the child is impatient!
H'ani nodded.

The spasm passed and Centaine lay and panted, but she had barely caught
her breath before she stiffened again.

Oh, H'ani, hold my hand, please!  PleaseV

Something burst deep within Centaine's body and hot liquid poured from
her, and sprayed down her legs.

Close, very close now, H'ani assured her, and Centame gave a little
hunted cry.

Now- H'ani pulled her into a sitting position, but she slumped back.

It's coming, Hlani.  Get up!  H'ani snapped at her.  You must help it
now.

Get up.  You cannot help the baby if you lie on your back!  She forced
Centaine into a squatting position, with her feet and knees splayed
apart, the natural position for voiding.

Hold the tree to steady yourself, she instructed her urgently.  There!
She guided Centaine's hands on to the rough bark and Centaine moaned and
pressed her forehead hard against the trunk.

Now!  H'ani knelt behind her, and encircled Centaine's body with her
thin wiry arms.

Oh, H'ani, Centaine's cry rose sharply.

Yes!  I will help you push him out.  And she tightened her grip as
Centaine bore down instinctively.  Push, Nam Child, hard!  Hard!  Push!
H'ani entreated her as she felt the girl's stomach muscles bunch up and
harden into bands of iron.

There was a great blockade within her and Centaine clung to the tree and
strained and moaned, and then she felt the obstruction move a little,
then jam hard again.

H'ani!  she cried, and the thin arms locked around her and the old woman
moaned with her as they strained together.  H'ani's naked body was
pressed to Centaine's arched back, and she felt strength flowing out of
the old wizened flesh like an electrical current.

Again, Nam Child, H'ani grunted in her ear.  He is close, so close. Now!
Nam child, push hard.  Centaine bore down with all her strength and
will.  Her jaws were clenched so that she thought her teeth would crack,
and her eyes swelled in their sockets.  Then she felt something tear, a
stinging burning pain, but despite the pain she found strength for
another rigorous convulsion.  it moved again, then there was a rush, a
release and something enormous and impossibly heavy slid out of her at
the same moment H'ani's hand reached under I her buttocks to guide and
welcome and protect.

Like a benediction, the pain wilted away, and left her I shaking as
though in high fever and running with her I own sweat, but empty,
blessedly empty, as though her viscera had been drawn out of her.

H'ani released her grip, and Centaine clutched at the treetrunk for
support, and drew long ragged breaths.

Then she felt something hot and wet and slippery squirming between her
feet, and she pushed herself wearily away from the treetrunk and looked
down.  A tangle of fleshy glistening tubes still dangled out of her, and
joined to them, enmeshed in their coils, the infant lay in a pool of
blood-speckled fluid on the gemsbok-skin mat.

it was small, she was surprised at how small, but its clutching and
kicking limbs were stretching in spasmodic gestures.  The face was
turned away from her but the M;, small neat head was covered with a
dense cap of sodden black curls, plastered to the skull.

H'ani's hands reached down between her legs from behind and lifted the
baby out of her sight.  Instantly Centaine felt a devastating sense of
deprivation, but she was too weak to protest.  She felt a gentle
twitching and tugging on the umbilical cord as H'ani handled the child,
and then suddenly there was a furious squalling howl.  It struck
Centaine to the heart.

Then H'ani's laughter joined in chorus with the angry bawls.  Centaine
had never heard a sound of such unequivocal joy.

Oh, listen to him, Nam Child.  He roars like a lion cub!  Centaine
waddled around awkwardly, hampered by the fleshy ropes dangling from her
own body and still linking her to the infant.  He was struggling in
H'ani's hands, all wet and defiant, his face red with anger and his
bee-stung eyes tight closed, but his toothless pink mouth wide as he
howled his outrage.

A boy, H'ani?  Centaine panted wildly.

Oh yes, H'ani laughed, by all means, a boy, and with the tip of her
forefinger she tickled his tiny penis.  it stuck out stiffly as though
to endorse his anger, and at H'ani's touch released a powerful arcing
jet of urine.

Look!  Look!  H'ani choked with laughter.  He pisses on the world.  Bear
witness, all the Spirits of this place, a veritable lion cub has been
birthed this day.  She offered the squirming red-faced infant to
Centaine.

Clean his eyes and nose, she ordered, and, like a mother cat, Centaine
did not need further instruction.

She licked the mucus from the tiny swollen eyelids, from his nostrils
and mouth.

Then H'ani took the child, handling him with familiar expertise, and she
tied off the umbilical cord with the soft white inner bark threads of
the mongongo tree, before severing it with a quick slash of her bone
knife.  Then she rolled the end of the tube in the medicinal leaves of
the wild quince and bound it in place with a rawhide strip around his
middle.

Sitting on the soiled gemsbok skin, in a puddle of her own blood and
amniotic fluids, Centaine watched her work with shining eyes. Now! H'ani
nodded with vast self-satisfaction.

He is ready for the breast.  And she placed him in Centaine's lap.

He and Centaine needed only the barest introduction.

H'ani squeezed Centaine's nipple and touched the milkwet tip to the
infant's lips, and he fastened on it like a leech, with a noisy rhythmic
suction.  For a few moments Centaine was startled by the sudden sharp
sympathetic contractions of her womb as the child suckled, but this was
lost and forgotten in the wonder and mystery of examining her incredible
accomplishment.

Gently she unfolded his fist and marvelled at the perfection of each
tiny pink finger, at the pearly nails, each no bigger than a grain of
rice, and when he suddenly seized her finger in the surprisingly
powerful grip, he squeezed her heart as well.  She stroked his damp dark
hair, and as it dried it sprang up into ringlets.  It awed her to see
the pulsing movement under the thin membrane that covered the opening of
his skull.

He stopped suckling and lay quiescent in her arms, so she could take him
from her breast and examine his face.

He was smiling.  Apart from the puffy eyelids, his features were well
formed, not squashed and rubbery like those of the other newborn infants
she had seen.  His brow was broad and deep and his nose was large.  She
thought of Michael, no it was More arrogant than Michael's nose and then
she remembered General Sean Courtney.  t That's it!  she chuckled aloud.
The true Courtney nose.

The infant stiffened and broke wind simultaneously both fore and aft, a
trickle of her milk dribbled from the i corner of his mouth, and
instantly he began to hunt for I the nipple again, mouthing demandingly,
rolling his head from side to side.  Centaine changed him to her other
arm, and guided her nipple into his open mouth.

Kneeling in front of her, H'ani was working between Centaine's knees.
Centaine winced and bit her lip as the afterbirth came free, and H'ani
wrapped it in the leaves of the elephant-ear plant, tied it with bark
and scampered away into the grove with the bundle.

When she returned, the child was asleep in Centaine's lap, with his legs
splayed and his belly tight as a balloon.

If you permit, I will fetch O'wa, H'ani suggested.  He will have heard
the birth cries.  Oh, yes, fetch him quickly.  Centaine had forgotten
the old man, and now was delighted at the opportunity to exhibit her
marvelous acquisition.

O'wa came shyly and squatted a little way off, showing the usual
masculine lack of temerity when faced with the feminine mystery of
birth.

Approach, old grandfather, Centaine encouraged him, and he shuffled
closer on his haunches and peered solemnly at the sleeping child.

What do you think?  Centaine asked.  Will he be a hunter?  As skilful
and brave a hunter as O'wa?

O'wa made the little clicking sound reserved for those rare occasions
when he was at a loss for words, and his face was a web of convoluted
wrinkles like that of a worried Pekinese lap dog.  Suddenly the child
kicked out strongly and yelped in his sleep, and the old man dissolved
into uncontrolled giggles.

I never thought I would see it again, he wheezed, and gingerly reached
out and took a tiny pink foot in his hand.

The child kicked again and it was too much for O'wa.

He sprang up and began to dance.  Shuffling and stamping, circling the
mother and child on the gemsbok skin, around and around he went, and
H'ani controlled herself for three circuits, then she too leaped to her
feet and danced with her husband.  She followed him, with her hands on
his hips, leaping when he leaped, twitching her protruding backside,
performing the intricate stamp and double shuffle, and singing the
chorus to O'wa's praise song: His arrows will fly to the stars and when
men speak his name it will be heard as far and H'ani came in with the
chorus. -And he will find good water, wherever he travels, he will find
good water.

O'wa squeaked and jerked his legs and made his shoulders shake.

His bright eye will pick out the game when other men are blind.

Effortlessly he will follow the spoor over rocky ground -And he will ri.
nd good water, at every camp site he will find good water -prettiest
maidens will smile and tiptoe to his camp fire in the night And H'ani
reiterated in her reedy singsong: -And he will find good water, wherever
he goes, he will find good water.

They were blessing the child, wishing upon him all the treasure of the
San people, and Centaine felt that her heart would break with love for
them and for the small pink bundle in her lap.

When at last the old people could dance and sing no more, they knelt in
front of Centaine.

As the great-grandparents of the child, we would like to give him a
name, H'ani explained shyly.  Is it permitted?  Speak, old grandmother.
Speak, old grandfather. H'ani looked at her husband and he nodded
encouragement. We would name the child Shasa.  Tears prickled Centaine's
eyelids as she realized the great honour.  They were naming him after
the most precious, life-sustaining element in the San universe. Shasa,
Good Water. Centaine blinked back the tears and smiled at them.

I name this child Michel Shasa de Thiry Courtney, she said softly, and
each of the old people reached out in turn and touched his eyes and
mouth in blessing.

The sulphurous, mineralized waters of the subterranean pool were
possessed of extraordinary qualities.  Every noon and evening Centaine
soaked in their heat, and the manner in which her birth injuries healed
was almost miraculous.  Of course, she was in superb physical health,
without an ounce of superfluous fat or flesh upon her, and Shasa's neat
lean body and the ease of his delivery was a consequence of this.
Furthermore the San looked upon parturition as such a routine process
that H'ani neither pampered her, nor encouraged her to treat herself as
an invalid.

Young muscles, elastic and well exercised, swiftly regained their
resilience and strength.  Her skin, not overstretched, was free of
stria, and her belly swiftly shrank back into its greyhound profile.
Only her breasts were swollen hard with copious milk, and Shasa gorged
and grew like one of the desert plants after rain.

Then again there was the pool and its waters.

It is strange, H'ani told her, the nursing mothers who drink this water
always grow children with bones as hard as rock and teeth that shine
like polished ivory.  It is one of the blessings of the spirits that
guard this place.  At noon the sun struck through one of the apertures
in the domed roof of the cavern, a solid white shaft of light through
the steam-laden air, and Centaine loved to bask in it, moving across the
pool as the beam swung, to keep in its charmed circle of light.

She lay chin-deep in the seething green water, and listened to Shasa
snuffling and mewing in his steep.  She had wrapped him in the gemsbok
skin and laid him on the ledge beside the pool where she could see him
merely by turning her head.

The bottom of the pool was lined with gravel and pebbles.  She scooped
up handfuls of them and held them up in the sunlight, and they gave her
a special kind of pleasure for they were strange and beautiful.  There
were veined agates, waterworn and smooth as swallows eggs, stones of
soft blue with lines of red through them, or pink or yellow, and Jaspers
and carnelians in a hundred shades of burgundy, shiny black onyx and
tiger's eyes of gold barred with iridescent waves of shifting colour.

I will make a necklace, for H'ani.  A gift to thank her, from Shasa! She
began to collect the prettiest stones with the most interesting and
unusual shapes.

I need a centrepiece for the necklace, she decided, and she dredged
handfuls of gravel and washed them in the hot green waters, then
examined them in the sunlight until at last she found exactly what she
was searching f or.

It was a colourless stone, clear as water, but when it caught the
sunlight it contained a captive rainbow, an internal fire that burned
with all the colours of the spectrum .  Centaine spent a long lazy hour
in the pool, turning this stone slowly in the beam of sunlight to make
it flash and sparkle, staring into its depths with delight, watching it
explode into wondrous cascades of light.  The stone was not large, only
the size of one of the ripe mongongo fruit - but it was a symmetrical
many-sided crystal, perfect for the centrepiece of the necklace.

She designed H'anils necklace with infinite care, spending many hours
while Shasa nursed at her breast, arranging and rearranging her
collection of pebbles until at last she had them in the order which most
pleased her.  Yet still she was not entirely satisfied, for the
colourless central stone, so sparkling and regular in shape, made all
the other coloured stones seem somehow drab and uninteresting.

Nevertheless, she began to experiment in stringing the pebbles in a
necklace and here she immediately encountered problems.

One or two of the pebbles were so soft that by dint of persistent effort
and many worn-out bone augers she was finally able to drill a stringing
hole through them.  Others were brittle and shattered, and others again
were too hard.  In particular, the sparkling crystal resisted her best
efforts, and remained absolutely unblemished after she had broken a
dozen bone tools upon it.

She appealed to O'wa for assistance, and once he understood what she was
working on, he was boyishly enthusiastic.  They experimented and met
with failure a dozen times before they finally worked out a means of
cementing the harder stones on to the plaited sansevieria twine with
acacia gum.  Centaine began to assemble the necklace, and almost drove
O'wa to distraction in the process, for she discarded fifty lengths of
twine.

This is too thick, she would say.  This is not strong enough.  And Uwa,
who, when working on his own weapons and tools, was also a
perfectionist, took the problem very seriously.

Finally Centaine unravelled the hem of her canvas skirt and by plaiting
the threads with the sansevieria fibres, they had a string for the
necklace that was fine and strong enough to satisfy both of them.

When the necklace was at last finished, O'wa's selfsatisfaction could
not have been more overbearing had he conceived, planned and executed
the project entirely on his own.  It was a more of a pectoral than a
necklace, with a single string around the back of the neck and the
stones woven together in a plate-like decoration which hung on the
breast with the big crystal in the centre, and a mosaic of coloured
agates and jaspers and beryls surrounding it.

Even Centaine was delighted with her handiwork.

It's turning out better than I had hoped, she told O'wa, speaking in
French and holding it up and turning it to catch the sunlight.  Not as
good as Monsieur Cartier, she remembered her father's wedding gift to
her mother which he had allowed her to wear on her birthdays -but not
too bad for a wild girl's first effort in a wild place!  Th y made a
little ceremony of the presentation, and H'ani sat beaming like a little
amber-coloured hobgoblin while Centaine thanked her for being such a
paragon of a grandmother and the best midwife of the San, but when she
placed the gift around the old woman's neck it seemed too big and
weighty for the frail wrinkled body.

Ha, old man, you are so proud of that knife of yours, but it is as
nothing to this, H'ani told O'wa as she stroked the necklace lovingly.
This is a true gift.  Look you!  Now I wear the moon and the stars
around my throatV She refused to remove it.  It thumped against her
breastbone as she wielded her digging stick or stooped to gather the
mongongo nuts.  When she crouched over the cooking fires, it dangled
between the empty pouches of her swinging dugs.  Even in the night as
she slept with her head cradled on her own bare shoulder, Centame looked
across from her own shelter and saw the necklace shining on her chest,
and it seemed to weigh the little old body down to the earth.

Once Centaine's preoccupation with the necklace was over, and her
strength and vitality fully recovered after childbirth, she began to
find the days too long and the rock cliffs of the valley as restrictive
as the high walls of a prison.

The daily routine of life was undemanding, and Shasa slept on her hip or
strapped to her back while she gathered the fallen nuts in the grove or
helped H'ani bring in the firewood.  Her menses resumed their course,
and she itched with unexpected energy.

She had sudden moods of black depression, when even H'ani's innocent
chatter irritated her, and she went off alone with the baby.  Though he
slept soundly through it all, she held him on her lap and spoke to him
in French or English.  She told him about his father and the chateau,
about Nuage and Anna and General Courtney, and the names and the
memories instilled in her a deep and undirected melancholy.  Sometimes
in the night, when she could not sleep, she lay and listened to the
music in her head, the strains of Afda or the songs the peasants sang in
the fields at Mort Homme during the vendange.

So the months passed and the seasons of the desert rotated.  The
mongongo tree flowered and fruited again, and one day Shasa lifted
himself on to hands and knees and to the delight of all set off on his
first explorations of the valley.  Yet Centaine's mood swung more
violently than the seasons, her joy in Shasa and her contentment in the
old people's company alternating with blacker moods when she felt like a
life prisoner in the valley.

They have come here to die, she realized as she saw F how the old San
had settled into an established routine, i but I don't want to die, I
want to live, to live!  H'ani watched her shrewdly until she realized it
was e, and then told Uwa, Tomorrow Nam Child and I tim are going out of
the valley.  Why, old woman?  O'wa looked startled.

He was entirely contented and had not yet thought about leaving.

We need medicines, and a change of food.  That is no reason to risk
passing the guardians of the tunnel We will go out in the cool of the
dawn, when the bees are sleepy, and return in the late evening, besides,
the guardians have accepted us.  O'wa started to protest further, but
she cut him short.

It is necessary, old grandfather, there are things that a man does not
understand.  As Hlani had intended, Centaine was excited and happy with
the promised outing, and she shook H'ani awake long before the agreed
hour.  They slipped quietly through the tunnel of the bees, and with
Shasa bound tightly to her back and her carrying satchel stung over one
shoulder, Centaine ran down the narrow valley and out into the endless
spaces of the desert like a schoolchild released from the classroom. Her
mood lasted through the morning and she and H'ani chattered happily as
they moved through the forest, searching and digging for the roots that
H'ani said she needed.

In the heat of the noonday they found shelter under an acacia, and while
Centaine nursed the baby, H'ani curled up in the shade and slept like an
old yellow cat.  Once Shasa had drunk his fill, Centaine leaned back
against the trunk of the acacia and dozed off as well.

The stamp of hooves and horsey snorts disturbed her, and she opened her
eyes, but remained absolutely still.

With the breeze behind them, a herd of zebra had grazed down upon the
sleeping group, not noticing them in the waist-high grass.

There were at least a hundred animals in the herd newly born foals with
legs too long for their fluffy bodies and w th smudged
chocolate-coloured stripes not yet set into definite patterns, staying
close to their dams and staring around at the world with huge dark
apprehensive eyes, older foals quick and surefooted as they chased each
other in circles through the trees, the breeding mares, sleek and
glossy, with stiff upstanding manes and pricked ears, some of them huge
with foal, milk already swelling in their black udders.  Then there were
the stallions with powerful bulging quarters, necks arched proudly as
they challenged each other or snuffled one of the mares, reminding
Centaine vividly of Nuage in his prime.  Barely daring to breathe, she
lay against the acacia trunk and watched them with deep pleasure.  They
moved down still closer, she could have reached out and touched one of
the foals as it gambolled past her.  They passed so close that she could
see that each animal was different from the others, the intricate
patterns of their hides as distinct as finger-prints, and the dark
stripes were shadowed by a paler orangey-cream duplicate, so that every
animal was a separate work of art.

As she watched, one of the stallions, a magnificent animal standing
twelve hands and with a bushy tail sweeping below his hocks, cut a young
mare out of the main pack of the herd, nipping at her flanks and her
neck with square yellow teeth, heading her off when she tried to circle
back, pushing her well away from the other mares, but closer to the
acacia tree, before he started to gentle her by nuzzling her neck.

The mare bridled flirtatiously well aware of her highly desirable
condition, and she rolled her eyes and bit him viciously on his muscled
glossy shoulder so that he snorted and reared away, but then circled
back and tried to push his nose up under her tail where she was swollen
tensely with her season.  She squealed with a modest outrage and lashed
out with both back legs, her shiny black hooves flying high past his
head, and she spun around to face him, baring her teeth.

Centaine found herself unaccountably moved.  She shared the mare's
mounting excitation, empathized with her charade of reluctance that was
spurring the circling stallion to greater ardour.  At last the mare
submitted and stood stock-still, her tail lifted as the stallion nosed
her gently.  Centaine felt her own body stiffen in anticipation - then
when the stallion reared over her and buried his long pulsing black root
deeply in her, Centaine gasped and pressed her own knees together
sharply.

That night in her rude thatched shelter beside the steaming thermal
pool, she dreamed of Michael and the old barn near North Field, and woke
to a deep corroding loneliness and an undirected discontent that did not
subside even when she held Shasa to her breast and felt him tugging
demandingly at her.

Her dark mood persisted, and the high rocky walls of the valley closed
in around her so she felt she could not breathe.  However, four more
days passed before she could wheedle H'ani into another expedition out
into the open forests.

Centaine looked for the zebra herd again as they meandered amongst the
mopani trees, but this time the forests seemed strangely deserted and
what wild game they did see was mistrusting and skittish, taking instant
alarm at the first distant sign of the upright human figures.

There is something, H'ani muttered as they rested in the noon heat, I do
not know what it is, but the wild things sense it also.  It makes me
uneasy, we should return to the valley that I might talk with O'wa.  He
understands these things better than I do.  Oh Rani, not yet, Centaine
pleaded.

Let us stay here a little longer.  I feel so free.  I do not like
whatever is happening here, H'ani insisted.

The bees- Centaine found inspiration, we cannot pass through the tunnel
until nightfall, and though H'ani grumped and frowned, she at last
agreed.

But listen to this old woman, there is something unusual, something bad-
and she sniffed at the air and neither of them could sleep when they
rested at noon.

H'ani took Shasa from her as soon as he had fed.

He grows so, she whispered, and there was a shadow of regret in her
bright black eyes.  I wish I could see him in his full growth, straight
and tall as the mopani tree."You will, old grandmother, Centaine smiled,
you will live to see him as a man.  H'ani did not look up at her.  You
will go, both of you, one day soon.  I sense it, you will go back to
your own people.  Her voice was hoarse with regret.  You will go, and
when you do there will be nothing left in life for this old woman.  No,
old grandmother, Centaine reached out and took her hand.  Perhaps we
will have to go one day.  But we will come back to you.  I give you my
word on that. Gently H'ani disentangled her grip, and still without
looking at Centaine, stood up.  The heat is past.  They worked back
towards the mountain, moving widely separated through the forest,
keeping each other just in sight, except when denser bush intervened. As
was her habit, Centaine chatted to the sleeping infant on her hip,
speaking French to train his ear to the sound of the language, and to
keep her own tongue exercised.

They had almost reached the scree slope below the cliffs when Centaine
saw the fresh tracks of a pair of zebra stallions imprinted deeply in
the soft earth ahead of her.  Under H'ani's instruction, she had
developed acute powers of observation, and O'wa had taught her to read
the signs of the wild with fluent ease.  There was something about these
tracks that puzzled her.  They ran side by side, as though the animals
that made them had been harnessed to each other.  She hefted Shasa on to
her other hip and turned aside to examine them more closely.

She stopped with a jerk that alarmed the child, and he squawked in
protest.  Centaine stood paralysed with shock, staring at the hoof
prints, not yet able to comprehend what she was seeing.  Then suddenly a
rush of emotions and understanding made her reel back.  She understood
the agitated behaviour of the wild creatures, and H'ani's undirected
premonition of evil.  She began to tremble, at the same moment filled
with fear and joy, with confusion and shaking excitement.

Shasa, she whispered, they are not zebra prints.  The hooves that had
made these chains of tracks were shod with crescents of steel. Horsemen,
Shasa, civilized men riding horses shod with steel!  It seemed
impossible.  Not

here, not in this desert fastness.

Instinctively her hands flew to the opening of the canvas shawl she wore
about her shoulders, and from which her breasts thrust out unashamedly.
She covered them and glanced around her fearfully.  With the San she had
come to accept nudity as completely natural.  Now she was aware that her
skirts rode high on her long slim thighs, and she was ashamed.

She backed away from the prints as though from an accuser s finger.

Man, a civilized man, she repeated, and immediately the image of Michael
formed in her mind, and her longing overcame her shame.  She crept
forward again and knelt beside the spoor, staring at it avidly, not able
to bring herself to touch it in case it proved to be hallucination.

It was fresh, so very fresh that even as she watched the crisply
outlined edge of one hoofprint, it collapsed and slid in upon itself in
a trickle of loose sand.

An hour ago, Shasa, they passed only an hour ago, not longer.  The
riders had been walking their horses, moving at less than five miles an
hour, There is a civilized man within five miles of us at this very
moment, Shasa.  She jumped up and ran along the line, fifty paces,
before she stopped again and dropped to her knees.  She would not have
seen it before, without O'wa's instruction she had been blind, but now
she picked out the alien texture of metal, even though it was only the
size of a thumbnail and had fallen into a clump of dry grass.

She picked it out and laid it in her palm.  It was a tarnished brass
button, a military button with an embossed crest, and the broken thread
still knotted in the tang.

She stared at it as though it were a priceless jewel.

The design upon it depicted a unicorn and an antelope guarding a shield
and below there was a motto in a ribbon.

Ex Unitate Vires, she read aloud.  She had seen the same buttons on
General Sean Courtney's tunic, but his were brightly polished.  From
Unity Strength.  The coat of arms of the Union of South Africa. A
soldier, Shasa!  One of General Courtney's men!  At that moment there
was a distant whistle, H'ani's summons, and Centaine sprang to her feet
and hovered undecidedly.  All her instinct was to race desperately after
the horsemen, and to plead to be allowed to travel with them back to
civilization, but then H'ani whistled again and she turned to look back.

She knew how terrified the San were of all foreigners, for the old
people had told her all the stories of brutal persecution.  H'ani must
not see these tracks.  She shaded her eyes and stared longingly in the
direction in which the spoor pointed, but nothing moved amongst the
mopani trees.  She will try to stop us following them, Shasa, she and
O'wa will do anything to stop us.  How can we leave the old people, and
yet they can't come with us, they will be in great danger- she was torn.
and undecided -but we can't let this chance go.  It might be our only-
H'ani whistled again, this time much closer, and Centaine saw her small
figure amongst the trees coming towards her.  Centaine's hand closed
guiltily on the brass button and she thrust it into the bottom of her
satchel.

H'ani mustn't see the tracks, she repeated, and glanced quickly up at
the cliffs, orientating herself so that she could return and find them
herself, and then whirled and ran to meet the old woman and led her
away, back towards the hidden valley.

That evening, as they performed the routine camp chores, Centaine had
difficulty disguising the nervous excitement that gripped her, and she
replied distractedly to H'ani's questions.  As soon as they had eaten
and the short African dusk ended, she went to her shelter and settled
down as though to sleep, pulling the gemsbok skin over both the infant
and herself.  Although she lay quietly, and regulated her breathing, she
was fretting and worrying, as she tried to reach her decision.

She had no means of guessing who the horsemen were, and she was
determined not to lead the San into mortal danger, yet she was equally
determined to take her own chances and to follow up those tantalizing
tracks for the promise they held of salvation and return to her own
world, of escape from this harsh existence which would at last turn her
and her infant into savages.

We must give ourselves a start, so that we can catch up with the
horsemen before H'ani and O'wa even realize we have gone.  That way they
will not follow us, will not be exposed to danger.  We will go as soon
as the moon rises, my baby.  She lay tense and still, feigning sleep,
until the gibbous moon showed over the rim of the valley.  Then she rose
quietly and Shasa murmured and grunted sleepily as she gathered up her
satchel and stave and crept quietly out on to the path.

She paused at the corner of the hill and looked back.

the fire had died to embers, but the moonlight played into the old
people's shelter.  O'wa was in the shadows, just a small dark shape, but
the moonlight washed H'ani.

Her amber skin seemed to glow in the soft light, and her head, propped
on her own shoulder, was turned towards Centaine.  Her expressed seemed
forlorn and hopeless, a harbinger of the terrible sorrow and loss that
Centaine knew she would suffer when she woke, and the necklace of
pebbles gleamed dully on her bony old chest.

Goodbye, old grandmother, Centaine whispered. Thank you for your great
humanity and kindness to us.

I will always love you.  Forgive us, little H'ani, but we have to go.
Centaine had to steel herself before she could turn the rocky corner
that cut her off from the camp.  As she hurried up the rough pathway to
the tunnel of the bees, her own tears blurred the moonlight and tasted
of seawater as they ran into the corners of her mouth.

She groped her way through the utter darkness and the warm honey smell
of the tunnel and out into the moon light in the narrow valley beyond.
She paused to listen for the sound of bare feet on the rocks behind her,
but the only sound was the yelp of the jackal packs out on the plains
below, and she started forward again.

As she reached the plain Shasa mewed and wriggled on her hip, and
without stopping she adjusted his sling so that he could reach her
breast.  He fastened on it greedily, and she whispered to him as she
hurried through the forest, Don't be afraid, baby, even though this is
the first time we have been alone at night.  The horsemen will be camped
just a short way ahead.  We will catch up with them before sunrise,
before H'ani and O'wa are even awake.  Don't look at the shadows, don't
imagine things, Shasa- She kept talking softly, trying to shore up her
own courage, for the night was full of mystery and menace, and she had
never realized until that moment how she had come to rely on the two old
people.

We should have found the spoor by now, Shasa.  Centaine stopped
uncertainly and peered about her.  Everything looked different in the
moonlight.  We must have missed it.  She turned back, breaking into an
anxious trot.  I'm sure it was at the head of this glade.  And then,
with a rush of relief, There it is, the moon was against us before. Now
the hoof-prints were rimmed clearly with shadow and the steel shoes had
bitten deeply into the sandy earth.

How much O'wa had taught her!  She saw the tracks so clearly that she
could break into a trot.

The horsemen had made no effort to hide their spoor, and there was no
wind to wipe it out.  They had ridden the easy line, keeping out in the
open, following wellbeaten game paths, not pushing their mounts above an
easy ambling walk, and once Centaine found where one of them had
dismounted and led his horse for a short distance.

She was elated when she saw that this man wore boots.

Riding-boots with medium high heels, and well-worn soles.  Even in the
uncertain moonlight, Centaine could tell by the length of his stride and
the slight toe-out gait that he was a tall man with long narrow feet and
an easy, yet confident stride.  It seemed to confirm all her hopes.

Wait for us, she whispered.  Please, sir, wait for Shasa and me to catch
up.  She was gaining rapidly.  We must look for their camp fire, Shasa,
they will be camped not far from- she broke off.  There!  What's that,
Shasa?  Did you see it?  She stared into the forest.

I'm sure I saw something.  She stared about her.  But it's gone now. She
changed Shasa to her other hip.

What a big lump you are becoming!  But never mind, we'll be there soon.
She started forward again, and the trees thinned out and Centaine found
herself at the head of another long open glade.  The moonlight laid a
pale metallic sheen on the short grass.

Eagerly she surveyed the open ground, focusing her attention on each
dark irregularity, hoping to see hobbled horses near a smouldering fire
and human shaped rolled into their blankets, but the shapes were only
tree stumps or anthills, and at the far side of the glade a small herd
of wildebeest grazing heads down.

Don't worry, Shasa, she spoke louder to cover her own intense
disappointment, I'm sure they'll be camped in the trees.  The wildebeest
threw up their heads and erupted into a rumbling snorting stampede,
streaming away into the trees, fine dust hanging behind them like mist.

What frightened them, Shasa?  The wind is with us, they could not have
taken our scent.  The sound of the running herd dwindled.  Something
chased them!  She looked around her carefully.  I'm imagining things.

I'm seeing things that aren't there.  We mustn't start panicking at
shadows.  Centaine started forward firmly, but within a short distance
she stopped again fearfully.

Did you hear that, Shasa?  There is something following us.  I heard the
footfalls, but it's stopped now.  It's watching us, I can feel it.  At
that moment a small cloud passed over the moon and the world turned
dark.

The moon will come out again soon.  Centaine hugged the infant so hard
that Shasa gave a little bleat of protest. I'm sorry, baby.  She relaxed
her grip and then stumbled as she started forward.

I wish we hadn't come, no, that's not true.  We had to come.  We must be
brave, Shasa.  We can't follow the spoor without the moon.  She sank
down to rest, looking up into the sky.  The moon was a pale nimbus
through the thin gunmetal cloud, and then it broke out into a hole in
the cloud layer and for a moment flooded the glade with soft platinum
light.

Shasa!  Centaine's voice rose into a high thin Scream.

There was something out there, a huge pate shape, as big as a horse, but
with sinister, stealthy, unhorselike carriage.  At her cry, it sank out
of sight below the tops of the grass.

Centaine leapt to her feet and raced towards the trees, but before she
reached them the moon was snuffed out again, and in the darkness
Centaine fell full length.  Shasa waited fretfully against her chest.

Please be quiet, baby.  Centaine hugged him, but the child sensed her
terror and screamed.  Don't, Shasa.  You'll bring it after us.  Centaine
was trembling wildly.  That big pale thing out there in the darkness was
possessed of an unearthly menace, a palpable aura of evil, and she knew
what it was.  She had seen it before.

She pressed herself flat to the earth, trying to cover Shasa with her
own body.  Then there was a sound, a hurricane of sound that filled the
night, filled her head seemed to fill her very soul.  She had heard that
sound before, but never so close, never so soul-shattering.

Oh, sweet mother of God, she whispered.  It was the full-blooded roar of
a lion.  The most terrifying sound of the African wilds.

At that moment, the moon broke out of the cloud again, and she saw the
lion clearly.  It stood facing her, fifty paces away, and it was
immense, with its mane fully extended, a peacock's tail of ruddy hair
around the massive flat head.

Its tail swung from side to side, flicking the black tuft like a
metronome, and then it extended its neck and humped its shoulders,
lowering and opening its jaws so that the long ivory fangs gleamed in
the moonlight like daggers, and it roared again.

All the ferocity and cruelty of Africa seemed to be distilled into that
dreadful blast.  Though she had read the descriptions of the travellers
and hunters, they could not prepare her for the actuality.  The blast
seemed to crush her chest, so that her heart checked and her lungs
seized.

It loosened her bowels and her bladder so she had to clench fiercely to
keep control of herself.  In her arms Shasa screeched and wriggled, and
that was enough to jar Centaine out of her paroxysm of terror.

The lion was an old red torn, an outcast from the pride.

His teeth and claws were worn, his skin scarred and almost bald across
the shoulders.  In the succession battle with the young prime male who
had driven him from the pride, he had lost one eye, a hooked claw had
ripped it from the socket.

He was sick and starving, his ribs racked out under his scraggy hide,
and in his hunger he had attacked a porcupine three days before.  A
dozen long poisonous barbed quills had driven deeply into his neck and
cheeks and were already suppurating and festering.  He was old and weak
and uncertain, his confidence shattered, and he was wary of man and the
man odour.  His ancestral memories, his own long experience had warned
him to stay clear of these strange frail upright creatures.  His
roarings were symptoms of his nervousness and uncertainty.  There was a
time when, as hungry as he was now, he would have gone in swiftly and
silently.  Even now his jaws had the strength to crunch through a skull
or thighbone and a single blow of one massive forepaw could shatter a
man's spine.  However, he hung back, circling the prey.  Perhaps, if
there had been no moon, he would have been bolder, or if he had ever
eaten human flesh before, or if the agony of the buried quills had been
less crippling, but now he roared indecisively.  Centaine leaped to her
feet.  It was instinctive.  She had watched the old black stable torn
cat at Mort Homme with a mouse, and his reflex action to his victim's
attempted flight.  Somehow she knew that to run would be to bring the
great cat down on her immediately.

She screamed, -and holding the pointed stave high, she rushed straight
at the lion.  He whirled and galloped off through the grass, fifty
paces, and then stopped and looked back at her, lashing his tail from
side to side, and he growled with frustration.

Still facing him, clutching Shasa under one arm and the stave in the
other hand, Centaine backed away.  She glanced over her shoulder, the
nearest mopani tree stood isolated from the rest of the forest.  It was
straight and sturdy with a fork high above the ground, but it seemed to
be at the other end of the earth from where she stood.

We mustn't run, Shasa, she whispered, and her voice shook.  Slowly.
Slowly, now.  Her sweat was running into her eyes though she shivered
wildly with cold and terror.

The lion circled around towards the forest, swinging its head low, ears
pricked, and she saw the gleam of his single eye like the flash of a
knife-blade.

We must get to the tree, Shasa, and the infant whined and kicked on her
hip.  The lion stopped and she could hear it sniffing.

Oh God, it's so big.  Her foot caught and she almost fell.  The lion
rushed forward, grunting terrible exhalations of sound, like the pistons
of a locomotive, and she screamed and waved the stave.

The lion stopped, but this time stood its ground, facing her, lowering
its great shaggy head threateningly and lashing the long, black-tipped
tail, and when Centaine began to back away, it moved forward, slinking
low to the earth. The tree, Shasa, we must reach the tree!  The lion
started to circle again, and Centaine glanced up at the moon.  There was
another dark blot of cloud trundling down from the north.

Please don't cover the moon!  she whispered brokenly.

She realized how their lives depended on that soft uncertain light, she
instinctively knew how bold the great cat would become in darkness. Even
now its circles were becoming narrower, it was working in, still
cautious and wary, but watching her and perhaps beginning to realize how
utterly helpless she was.  The final killing charge was only seconds
away.

Something hit her from behind and she shrieked and almost fell, before
she realized that she had walked backwards into the base of the mopani
tree.  She clung to it for support, for her legs could not hold her, so
intense was her relief.

Shaking so much that she almost dropped it, she unslung the leather
satchel from her shoulder and tipped the ostrich-egg bottles out of it.
Then she pushed Shasa feet first into the bag, so only his head
protruded, and slung him over her back.  Shasa was redfaced and yelling
angrily.

Be quiet, please be quiet- She snatched up her stave again, and stuck it
into her rope belt like a sword.  She d to catch the first branch above
her head and she jumped got a hold and scrambled with her bare feet for
a grip on the rough bark.  She would never have believed it possible,
but in desperation she found untapped reserves and she hauled herself
and her load upwards by the main strength of arms and legs, and crawled
on to the branch.

Still, she was only five feet above the ground, and the lion grunted
fearsomely and made a short rush forward.

She teetered on the branch and reached up for another hold, and then
another.  The bark was rough and abrasive as crocodile skin and her
fingers and shins were bleeding by the time she scrambled into the fork
of the mopani thirty feet above the ground.

The lion smelled the blood from her grazed skin and it drove him frantic
with hunger.  He roared and prowled around the base of the mopani
stopping to sniff at the ostrich eggs that Centaine had dropped, and
then roaring again.

We are safe, Shasa, Centaine was sobbing with relief, crouched in the
high fork, holding the child on her lap and peering down through the
leaves and branches on to the broad muscled back of the old lion.  She
realised that she could see more clearly, the light of dawn was flushing
the eastern sky.  She could clearly make out that the great cat was a
gingery reddish colour, and unlike the drawings she had seen, his mane
was not black but the same ruddy colour.

O'wa called them red devils, she remembered, hugging Shasa and trying to
still his outraged yells.  How long until it's light?  She looked
anxiously to the east and saw the dawn coming in a splendour of molten
copper and furnace reds.

It will be day soon, Shasa, she told him.  Then the beast will go away-
Below her the lion reared up on its hindlegs and stood against the
trunk, looking up at her.

One eye, he's only got one eye.  The black scarred socket somehow made
the other glowing yellow eye more murderous, and Centaine shuddered
wildly.

The lion ripped at the trunk of the tree with the claws of both front
feet, erupting into those terrible crackling roars once more.  It ripped
slabs and long shreds of bark from the trunk, leaving wet wounds weeping
with sap.

Go away!  Centaine screamed at it, and the lion gathered itself on its
hindquarters and launched itself upwards, hooking with all four feet.

No!  Go away!  Michael had told her and she had read in Levaillant that
lions did not climb trees, but this great red cat came swarming up the
trunk and then pulled itself on to the main branch ten feet above the
ground and balanced there staring up at her.

Shasa!  She realized then that the lion was going to get her, her climb
had merely delayed the moment.  We've got to save you, Shasa.  She
dragged herself upward, standing in the fork, and clutching the side
branch.

There!  Above her head there was a broken branch that stuck out like a
hatpeg, and using all that remained of her strength, she lifted the
rawhide bag with Shasa in it and hooked the strap over the peg.

Goodbye, my darling, she panted.  Perhaps H'ani will find you.  Shasa
was struggling and kicking, the bag swung and twisted, and Centaine sank
back on to the fork and drew the sharpened stave from her belt. Be
still, baby, please be still.  She did not look up at him.  She was
watching the lion below her.  If you are A quiet it might not see you,
it might be satisfied. The lion stretched up with its forelegs,
balancing on the branch, and roared again.  She smelt it now, the stink
of its festering wounds and the dead carrion reek of its breath, and
then the beast hurled itself upwards.

With claws ripping the bark, clinging with all four paws, it came up in
a series of convulsive leaps.  Its head I was thrown back, its single
yellow eye fastened on Centaine, and with those monstrous explosions of
sound bursting up out of its gaping pink jaws, it came straight i at
her.

Centaine screamed and drove the point of her stave down into the jaws
with all her strength.  She felt the sharpened end bite into the soft
pink mucus membrane in the back of its throat, saw the spurt of scarlet
blood, and then the lion locked its jaws on the stave and with a toss of
its flying mane ripped it out of her hands and sent it windmilling out
and down to hit the earth below.

Then with bright blood streaming from its jaws, blowing a pink cloud
every time it roared, the lion reached up with one huge paw.

Centaine jack-knifed her legs upwards, trying to avoid it, but she was
not quick enough; one of the curled yellow claws, as long and thick as a
man's forefinger, sank into her flesh above her bare ankle, and she was
jerked savagely downwards.

As she was pulled out of the fork, she flung both her arms around the
side branch and with all her remaining strength she held on.  She felt
her whole body racked, drawn out, the unbearable weight of the lion
stretching her leg until she felt her knee and hip joint crack, and pain
shot up her spine and filled her skull like a bursting sky rocket.

She felt the lion's claw curling in her flesh, and her arms started to
give way.  Inch by inch she was drawn out of the tree.

Look after my baby, she screamed.  Please God, protect my baby.

It was another wild-goose chase, Garry was absolutely convinced of it,
though of course he would never be foolhardy enough to say so.  Even the
thought made him feel guilty, and he glanced sideways at the woman he
loved.

Anna had learned English and lost a little weight in the eighteen short
sweet months since he had met her, and the latter was the only
circumstance in his life he would have altered if it had been in his
power, indeed he was always urging food upon her.  There was a German
pitisserie and confectioner's opposite the Kaiserhof Hotel in Windhoek
where Garry had taken a permanent suite.  He never passed the shop
without going in to buy a box of the marvelous black chocolates or a
creamy cake, Black Forest Cherry Cake was a favourite, which he took
back to Anna.  When he carved, he always reserved the fattest, juiciest
cuts for her, and replenished the plate without allowing her time to
protest.  However, she had still lost weight.

They didn't spend enough time in the hotel suite, he brooded.  They
spent too much of their time chasing about the bush, as they were doing
now.  No sooner had he put a few pounds on her than they were off again,
banging and jolting over remote tracks in the open Fiat tourer that had
replaced the T model Ford, or when the tracks faded, resorting to horses
and mules to carry them over rugged ranges of mountains or through the
yawning canyons and rock deserts of the interior, chasing the
will-o'-the-wisp of rumour and chance and often of deliberately
misleading information.

The crazy old people, Die twee ou onbeskofters that was the title which
they have gained themselves from one end of the territory to the other,
and Garry took a perverse and defiant pleasure in the fact that he had
earned it the hard way.  When he had totted up the actual cost in hard
cash of the continuing search, he had been utterly appalled, until
suddenly he had thought, What else have I got to spend it on anyway,
except Anna?  And then, after a little further reflection, What else is
there except Anna?  And with that discovery he had thrown himself
headlong into the madness.

Of course, sometimes when he woke in the night and thought about it
clearly and sensibly, he knew that his grandson did not exist, he knew
that the daughter-in-law that he had never seen had drowned eighteen
months ago, out there in the cold green waters of the Atlantic, taking
with her the last contact he could ever have with Michael.

Then that terrible sorrow came upon him once again, threatening to crush
him, until he groped for Anna in the bed beside him and crept to her,
and even in her sleep she seemed to sense his need and she would roll
towards him and take him to her.

Then in the morning he awoke refreshed and revitalized, logic banished
and blind faith restored, ready to set out on the next fantastic
adventure that awaited them.

Garry had arranged for five thousand posters to be printed in Cape Town,
and distributed to every police station, magistrate's court, post office
and railway station in South West Africa.  Wherever he and Anna
travelled, there was always a bundle of posters on the back seat of the
Fiat or in one of the saddle-bags, and they stuck them SIO on every
blank wall of every general dealer's or barroom they passed, they nailed
them to tree trunks at desolate crossroads in the deep bush, and with a
bribe of a handful of sweets dished them out to black and white and
brown urchins they met on the roadside, with instructions to take them
to their homestead or kraal or camp and hand them to their elders.

X5000 REWARD L5ooo For information leading to the rescue Of CENTAINE DE
THIRY COURTNEY A SURVIVOR OF THE HOSPITAL SHIP PROTEA CASTLE most
barbarously torpedoed by a GERMAN SUBMARINE on the 28th Aug.  1917 off
the coast Of SWAKOPMUND.

MRS COURTNEY would have been cast ashore and may be in the care of wild
TRIBESMEN or alone in the WILDER NESS.

Any information concerning her whereabouts should be conveyed to the
undersigned at the KAISERHOF HOTEL

WINDHOEK.

LT.  COL.  G.  C.  COURTNEY Five thousand pounds was a fortune, twenty
yearssalary for the average working man, enough to buy a ranch and stock
it with cattle and sheep, enough to provide a man with a secure living
for his entire life, and there were dozens eager to try for the reward,
or for any lesser amount that they could wheedle out of Garry by vague
promises and fanciful stories and outright lies.

In the Kaiserhof suite he and Anna interviewed hopefuls who had never
ventured beyond the line of rail but were willing to lead expeditions
into the desert, others who knew exactly where the lost girl could be
found, still others who had actually seen Centaine and only needed a
grubstake of SI,Ooo to go and fetch her in.  There were spiritualists
and clairvoyants who were in constant con Sir tact with her, on a higher
plane, and even one gentleman who offered to sell his own daughter, at a
bargain rate, to replace the missing girl.

Garry met them all cheerfully.  He listened to their V stories and
chased their theories and instructions, or sat around an ouija board
with the spiritualists, even followed one of them who was using one of
Centaine's rings suspended on a piece of string as a lodestone, on a
fivehundred-mile pilgrimage through the desert.  He was presented with a
number of young ladies, varying in texture and colour from blonde to caM
all lait, all claiming to be Centaine de Thiry Courtney, or willing to
do for him anything that she could do.  Some of them became loudly
abusive when they were refused and had to be evicted from the suite by
Anna in person.

No wonder she is losing weight, Garry told himself, and leaned over to
pat Anna's thigh as she sat beside him in the open Fiat tourer.  The
words of the blasphemous old grace came into his mind:We thank the Lord
for what we have, But for a little more we would be glad.  He grinned at
her fondly, and aloud he told her, We should be there soon.  She nodded
and replied, This time I know we will find her.  I have a sure feeling!
Yes, Garry agreed dutifully.  This time will be different.  He was quite
safe in that assertion.  No other of their many expeditions had begun in
such a mysterious manner.

One of their own reward posters had arrived folded upon itself and
sealed with wax, bearing a postmark dated four days previously at
Usakos, a way station on the narrow-gauge railway line halfway between
Windhoek and the coast.  The package was unstamped, Garry had been
obliged to pay the postage, and it was addressed in a bold but educated
band, the script unmistakably German.

When Garry split the wax seal and unfolded it he found a laconic
invitation to a rendezvous written on the foot of the sheet, and a
hand-drawn map to guide him.  The sheet was unsigned.

Garry immediately telegraphed the postmaster at Usakos, confident that
the volume of business at such a remote station would be so low that the
postmaster would remember every package handed in for postage.

The postmaster did indeed recall the package and the circumstances of
its delivery.  It bad been left on the threshold of the post office
during the night and nobody had

even glimpsed the correspondent.

As the writer probably intended, all this intrigued both Garry and Anna,
and they were eager to keep the rendezvous.  it was set for a site in
the barren Kamas Hochtland a hundred and fifty miles from Windhoek.

It had taken them all of three days to negotiate the atrocious roads,
but after losing themselves at least a dozen times, changing
approximately the same number of punctured tyres, and sleeping rough on
the hard ground beside the Fiat, they had now almost reached the
appointed meeting place.

The sun blazed down from a cloudless sky and the breeze from behind blew
eddies of red dust over them as they rattled and rumbled over the stony
ruts.  Anna seemed impervious to all the heat and dust and hardship of
the desert and Garry, gazing at her in unstinted admiration, almost
missed the next tight bend in the track.  His off-wheels skidded over
the verge, and the Fiat teetered and rocked over the yawning void that
opened abruptly before them.  He hauled the steering over, and as they
bumped back into the wheel ruts he pulled on the handbrake.

They were on the rim of a deep canyon that cut the plateau like an axe
stroke.  The track descended into the depths in a series of hairpin
twists like the contortions of a maimed serpent, and hundreds of feet
below them the river was a narrow ribbon that threw dazzling reflections
of the noon sun up the orange-coloured cliffs.

This is the place, Garry told her, and I don't like it.

Down there we will be at the mercy of any bandit or murderer.  Mijnheer,
we are already late for the meeting-'I don't know if we'll ever get out
of there again, and ows, nobody is likely to find us here.  Probably God
kn just our bare bones.  Come, Mijnheer, we can talk later.  Garry drew
a deep breath.  Sometimes there were distinct drawbacks to being paired
with a strong-willed woman.  He let off the handbrake and the Fiat
rolled over the rim of the canyon, and once they were committed, there
was no turning back.

It was a nightmare descent, the gradient so steep that hairpin bends so
tight the brake shoes smoked, and the that he had to back and fill to
coax the Fiat through them. Now I know why our friend chose this place.
He has us at his mercy down here.  Forty minutes later they came out in
the gut of the canyon.  The walls above them were so sheer that they
blotted out the sun.  They were in shadow, but it was stiflingly hot. No
breeze reached down here, and the air had a flinty bite on the back of
the throat.

There was a narrow strip of level land on each bank of the river,
covered with coarse thorn growth, and Garry nd they clim backed the Fiat
off the track a bed down stiffly and beat the red dust from their
clothing.  The m bubbled sullenly over a low causeway of rock, and strea
the water was opaque and a poisonous yellow colour like the effluent
from a chemical factory.

J Y Well, Garry surveyed both banks and the cliffs above them, we seem
to have the place to ourselves.  Our friend is nowhere to be seen.  We
will wait.  Anna forestalled the suggestion she knew was coming.

Of course, Mevrou.  Garry lifted his hat and mopped his face with the
cotton bandanna from around his neck. May I suggest a cup of tea?  Anna
took the kettle and went down the bank.  She tasted the river water
suspiciously, and then filled it.

When she climbed back, Garry had a fire of thomwood crackling between
two hearthstones.  While the kettle boiled, Garry fetched a blanket from
the back of the Fiat, and the bottle of schnapps from the cubbyhole.  He
poured a liberal dram into each of the mugs, added a heaped spoon of
sugar, then topped them up with strong hot tea.

He had found that schnapps, like chocolate, had a most tempering effect
on Anna, and he was never without a bottle.  Perhaps the journey would
not be entirely wasted, he thought, as he added another judicious splash
of spirits into Anna's mug and carried to to where she sat in the middle
of the rug.

Before he reached her, Garry let out a startled cry and dropped the mug,
splashing his boots with hot tea.  He stood staring into the bush behind
her, and raised both hands high above his head.  Anna glanced round and
then bounded to her feet and seized a brand of firewood which she
brandished before her.  Garry edged swiftly to her side and stood close
to her protective bulk.

Keep away!  Anna bellowed.  I warn you, I'll break the first skull- They
were surrounded.  The gang had crept up on them through the dense scrub.

Oh Lord, I knew it was a trap!  Garry muttered.  They sis were almost
certainly the most dangerous-looking band of cut-throats he had ever
seen.

We have no money, nothing worth stealing- How many of them?  he wondered
desperately.  Three, no, there was another behind that tree, four
murderous ruffians.  The obvious leader was a purple-black giant with
bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossing his chest, and a Mauser rifle in
the crook of his arm.  A ruff of thick woolly beard framed his broad
African features like the mane of a man-eating lion.

The others were all armed, a mixed band of Khoisan Hottentots and Ovambo
tribesmen, wearing odd items of military uniform and civilian clothing,
all of it heavily worn and faded, patched and tattered, some of them
barefooted and others with scuffed boots, shapeless and battered from
hard marches.  Only their weapons were well cared for, glistening with
oil and home lovingly, almost the way a father might carry his firstborn
son.

Garry thought fleetingly of the service revolver he kept bolstered under
the dashboard of the Fiat, and then swiftly abandoned such a reckless
notion.

Don't harm us, he pleaded, crowding up behind Anna, and then with a
feeling of utter disbelief, Garry found himself abandoned as Anna
launched her attack.

Swinging the burning log like a Viking's axe, she charged straight at
the huge black leader.

Back, you swine!  she roared in Flemish.  Get out of here, you
bitch-born son of Hades!  Taken by surprise, the gang scattered in
pandemonium, trying to duck the smoking log as it hissed about their
heads.

How dare you, you stinking bastard spawn of diseased whores-, Still
shaking with shock, Garry stared after her, torn A between terror and
admiration for this new revelation of cursers in his life, there had
been the legendary sergeantmajor whom he had known during the Zulu
rebellion; men travelled miles to listen to him addressing a parade
ground.  The man was a Sunday School preacher in comparison.  Garry
could have charged admission fees to Anna's performance.  Her eloquence
was matched only by her dexterity with the log.

She caught one of the Hottentots a crashing blow between the shoulders
and he was hurled into a thorn bush, his jacket smoking with live coals,
shrieking like a wounded wart hog.  Two others, reluctant to face Anna's
wrath, leaped over the river bank and disappeared with high splashes
beneath the yellow waters.  That left only the big black Ovambo to bear
the full brunt of Anna's onslaught.  He was quick and agile for such a
big man, and he avoided the wild swings of the log and danced behind the
nearest camel-thorn tree.  With nimble footwork he kept the trunk
between Anna and himself, until at last she stopped, gasping and
redfaced, and panted at him, Come out, you yellow-bellied black-faced
apology for a blue-testicled baboon!  Garry noticed with awe how she
managed to cram the metaphor with colour.  Come out where I can kill
you!  Warily the Ovambo declined, backing off out of reach. No!  No!  We
did not come to fight you, we came to fetch you- he answered in
Afrikaans.  She lowered the log slowly.

Did you write the letter?  and the Ovambo shook his head.  I have come
to take you to the man who did. The Ovambo ordered two of his men to
remain and guard the Fiat.  Then he led them away along the floor of the
canyon.  Although there were stretches of open easygoing on the river
bank, there were also narrow gorges through which the river roared and
swirled, and the path was steep and so narrow that only one man could
pass at a time.

These gaps were guarded by other guerillas.  Garry saw only the tops of
their heads and the glint of their rifle barrels amongst the rocks, and
he noticed how cunningly the site for the rendezvous had been chosen.
Nobody could follow them undetected.  An army would not be able to
rescue them.  They were totally vulnerable, completely at the mercy of
these rough hard men.  Garry shivered in the sweltering gut of the
canyon.

We'll be damned lucky to get out of this, he muttered to himself, and
then aloud, My leg is hurting.  Can't we rest?  But no one even looked
back at him, and he stumbled forward to keep as close to Anna as he was
able.

Quite unexpectedly, long after Garry had relapsed into resigned misery,
the Ovambo guide stepped around the corner of a yellow sandstone
monolith and into a temporary camp site under an overhanging cliff on
the river bank.  Even in his exhaustion and unhappiness, Garry saw that
there was a steep pathway up the canyon wall behind the camp, an escape
route against surprise attack.

They have thought of everything.  He touched Anna's arm and pointed out
the path, but all her attention was on the man who sauntered out from
the deep shadow of the cavern.

He was a young man, half Garry's age, but in the first seconds of their
meeting he made Garry feel inadequate and foolish.  He didn't have to
say a word.  He merely stood in the sunlight and stared at Garry with a
catlike stillness about his tall elegant frame, and Garry was reminded
of all the things he was not.

His hair was golden, hanging to his bare shoulders, streaked white by
the sun, yet as lustrous as raw silk, offering a startling contrast to
his deeply tanned features.

These might once have been as beautiful as those of a comely girl, but
all softness had been burned by the flames of life's furnace, and like
forged iron, the marks of the anvil had been left upon them.

He was tall but not gawky or round-shouldered, and he was lean, with
hard, flat muscle.  He wore only ridingbreeches and boots, and the hair
on his chest sparkled like fine copper wire.  Around his neck on a gold
chain he had hung a small gold locket, something that no English
gentleman would ever do.  Garry tried to feel superior, but under that
flat level gaze it was difficult.

Colonel Courtney, he said, and again Garry was taken off balance. Though
accented, it was the voice of an educated and cultivated man, and his
mouth altered shape, losing its hard stern line as he smiled.

Please do not be alarmed.  You are Colonel Courtney, are you not?  Yes.
It took an effort for Carry to speak.  I am Colonel Courtney, did you
write the letter?  He took the poster from his breast pocket, and tried
to unfold it, but his hands were shaking so that it fluttered and tore
in his fingers.  The man's smile gently mocked him as he nodded, Yes, I
sent for you.  You know where the lost girl can be found?  Anna
demanded, stepping closer to him in her eagerness.

Perhaps, he shrugged.

You have seen her?  Anna insisted.

First things come first.  You want money- Garry's voice was
unnecessarily loud.  Well, I have not brought a single sovereign with
me.  You can be sure of that.  If your intention is to rob us, I have
nothing of value on me.  Ah, Colonel, the golden man smiled at him, and
it was so charming, so unexpectedly exuberant and boyish that he could
feel Anna's stiff and antagonistic stance melt beneath that smile, my
nose tells me that is not true.  He sniffed theatrically.  You have
something of immense value, Havana!  he said and sniffed again.  No
doubt about it, Havana! Colonel, I must warn you that I would kill for a
Havana cigar.  took a hurried step backwards involuntarily Garry before
he realized it was a jest. Then he grinned weakly and reached for the
cigar case in his hip pocket.

The golden man inspected the long black cigar.  Romeo y Julieta!  he
murmured reverently and then sniffed it lovingly.  A whiff of Paradise.
He bit off the tip and struck a match off the sole of his boot.  He
sucked the flame into the cigar and closed his eyes with ecstasy.

When he opened them again, he bowed slightly to Anna.

I beg your pardon, madam, but it has been a long time, over two years,
since I tasted a good cigar.

All right, Garry was bolder now.  You know my name and you are smoking
my cigar, the least you can do is introduce yourself.  Forgive me.  He
drew himself up and snapped his heels together in the teutonic manner. I
am Lothar De La Rey, at your service.  ,oh my God, all Garry's new-found
courage deserted him.  I know all about you.  There is a price on your
head - they'll hang you when they catch you.  You are a wanted criminal
and a notorious outlaw, sir.  My dear Colonel, I prefer to think of
myself as a soldier and patriot.

Soldiers do not go on fighting and destroying property after a formal
surrender.  Colonel Franke capitulated nearly four years ago- I did not
recognize Colonel Franke's right to surrender, Lothar interjected
contemptuously.  I was a soldier of the Kaiser and Imperial Germany.
Even Germany surrendered three months ago.

Yes, Lothar agreed.  And I have not perpetrated an act of war since
then.  But you are still in the field, Garry pointed out indignantly.
You are still under arms, and- I have not gone in to give myself up yet
for the very good reason that you have so succinctly stated: if I do,
your people will hang me As if under Garry's scrutiny he had suddenly
become aware that he was bare to the waist, Lothar reached for his
tunic.  Freshly laundered, it hung from a thorn bush beside the entrance
to the cave.  As he shrugged into it, the brass buttons sparkled and
Garry's eyes narrowed, Damn you, sir, your insolence is insupportable.
That's a British military tunic, you are wearing one of our uniforms.
That in itself is cause enough to shoot you out of hand!  Would you
prefer I went naked, Colonel?  It must be obvious even to you that we
are reduced in circumstances.  It gives me no pleasure to wear a British
jacket.

Unfortunately there is no choice.  You insult the uniform in which my
son died I take no pleasure in your son's death, just as I take no
pleasure in these rags.  By God, man, you have the effrontery- Garry
puffed himself up to deliver a devastating broadside, but Anna cut
across him impatiently.

Mijnheer De La Rey, have you seen my little girl?  And Garry subsided as
Lothar turned back to her, his features taking on a strangely
compassionate cast.

I saw a girl, yes, I saw a young girl in the wilderness, but I do not
know if she was the one you seek Could you lead us to her?  Garry
demanded, and Lothar glanced at him, his expression hardening again. I
would try to find her again on certain conditions.  Money, said Garry
flatly.

Why are rich men always obsessed with their money?  Lothar drew on the
cigar, and let the fragrant smoke trickle over his tongue.  Yes,
Colonel, I would need some money, he nodded.  But not 5,000.  I would
need 1,000 to equip an expedition to go into the desert fastness where I
first saw her.  We will need good horses, ours are from out, and wagons
to carry water, and I would almost w need to pay my men.  1,000 would
cover those expenses.  What else?

Garry demanded, There must be some other price.  Yes, Lothar nodded.
There is.  I am tired of living in the shadow of the gallows.  you want
a pardon for your crimes!  Garry stared incredulously.  What makes you
think that is in my power!  A personal friend of You are a powerful man,
Colonel.

both Smuts and Botha, your brother is a general, a cabinet minister in
the Botha Government, I would not thwart the course of justice.  to the
I fought an honourable war, Colonel.  I fought it d Botha once fought
bitter end, like your friends Smuts an their war.  I am no criminal, I
am no murderer.  I lost a father, a mother, a wife and a son, I paid the
price of defeat in a heavy coin.  Now, I want the right to live the life
of an ordinary man, and you want this girl.  ,I couldn't agree to that.
You are an enemy, Garry blustered.

You find the girl, said Anna softly, and you will be a free man. Colonel
Courtney will arrange it.  I give you my word on it.  Lothar glanced at
her and then back at Garry, and he smiled again as he divined the true
chain of authority here.

Well, Colonel, do we have an agreement?  How do I know who this girl is?
How do I know she is my daughter-in-law?  Garry hedged uncomfortably.
Will You agree to a test?

Lothar shrugged.  As You wish And Garry turned to Anna.

Show him, he said.  Let him choose this test Between them, Garry and
Anna had designed to thwart the rogues and chancers that the reward
posters had attracted.  Anna snapped open the clasp of the voluminous
carpet bag she carried on a strap over one shoulder and took out a thick
buff envelope.  It contained a pack of postcard-sized photographs, and
she handed these to Lothar.

He studied the top photograph.  it was a studio portrait of a young
girl, a pretty girl in a velvet dress and feathered hat; dark ringlets
hung to her shoulders.  Lothar shook his head and placed the photograph
at the bottom of the pack.

Swiftly he flicked through the rest of them, all of young women, and
then handed them back to Anna.

No, he said.  I'm sorry to have brought you so far for nothing.  The
girl I saw is not amongst those, he lookedVery well, Hend over his
shoulder at the big Ovambo.

rick, take them back to the drift.

Wait, Mijnheer."Anna dropped the pile of photographs into the bag and
took out another smaller stack.  There are more.  You are careful,
Lothar smiled in acknowledgement.

We have had many try to cheat us, 5,000 pounds is a great deal of money,
Garry told him, but Lothar did not even look up from the photographs.

He turned over two of the paste boards, then stopped at the third.
That's her.  Centaine de Thiry, in her white confirmation dress, smiled
self-consciously up at him.

She is older now, and her hair, Lothar made a gesture describing a thick
wild bush.  But those eyes.  Yes, that's her.  Neither Garry nor Anna
could speak.  For a year and a half they had worked for this moment, and
now that it had come they could not truly believe it.

I have to sit down!  Anna said faintly, and Garry helped her to the log
beside the entrance to the cave.  While he tended her, Lothar pulled the
gold locket from his shirt front, and snapped open the lid.  He took out
a lock of dark hair and offered it to Anna.  She accepted it from him
almost fearfully, and then with a fiercely protective gesture she
pressed the lock to her lips.  She closed her eyes, but from the corners
of her clenched lids two fat oily tears squeezed out and began to
trickle slowly down her red cheeks.

It's just a Thank of hair.  It could be anyone's hair.  How do you know?
Garry asked uncomfortably.

Oh, you silly man, Anna whispered hoarsely.  On a thousand nights I
brushed her hair.  Do you think I would not know it again, anywhere?

How long will you need?  Garry asked again, and Lothar frowned with
irritation.

In the name of all that's merciful, how many times must I tell you I
don't know?  The three of them were seated around the fire at the
entrance to the overhanging cave.  They had been talking for hours,
already the stars showed along the narrow strip of sky that the canyon
walls framed.

I have explained where I saw the girl, and the circumstances.  Didn't
you understand, must I go over it all again?

Anna lifted a hand to placate him.  We are very anxious.

We ask stupid questions.  Forgive us.  Very well.  Lothar relit the butt
of the cigar with a burning twig from the fire.  The girl was the
captive of the wild San.  They are cunning and cruel as animals.

They knew I was following them and they threw me off the spoor with
ease.  They could do it again, if I ever find their spoor.  The area I
will have to search is enormous, almost the size of Belgium.  It's over
a year since I last saw the girl, she could be dead of disease or wild
animals or those murderous little yellow apes Do not even say it,
Mijnheer, l Anna pleaded, and Lothar threw up both hands.

I do not know, he said.  Months, a year?  How can I tell how long I will
need?  We should come with you, Garry muttered.

We should be allowed to take part in the search, at least be told in
what area of the territory you first saw her.  Colonel, you did not
trust me.  Very good.  Now I don't trust you.  As soon as the girl is in
your hands, my usefulness to you is at an end.  Lothar took the cigar
butt from his mouth and inspected it ruefully.  There was not another
puff left in it; sadly he dropped it into the fire.

No, Colonel, when I find the girl we will make a formal exchange,
amnesty for me, and your daughter for you.  We accept, Mijnheer.  Anna
touched Garry's elbow. We will deliver the sum of 1,000 pounds to you as
soon as possible.  When you have Centaine safely with you, you will send
us the name of her white stallion.  Only she can tell you that, so that
way we will know you are not cheating us.  We will have your pardon
signed and ready. Lothar held out his hand across the fire. Colonel, is
it agreed?  Garry hesitated a moment, but Anna prodded him so heavily in
the ribs that he grunted and reached to take the preferred hand. It's
agreed.  One last favour, Mijnheer De La Rey.

I will prepare a package for Centaine.  She will need good clothes,
women's things.  I will deliver it to you with the money.

Will you give it to her when you find her?  Anna asked. If I find her,
Lothar nodded. When you find her, Anna told him firmly.

It took almost five weeks for Lothar to make his preparations and then
trek back to that remote water-hole below the Cunene river where he had
cut the spoor of his quarry.

There was still water in the pan, it was amazing how long those shallow
unshaded basins retained water even in the sweltering desert conditions,
and Lothar wondered, as he had before, if there wasn't some subterranean
seepage from the rivers in the north that found its way into them.  In
any event, the fact that there was still surface water boded well for
their chances of being able to penetrate deeper eastwards, the direction
which the long-dead spoor had taken.

While his men were refilling the water barrels from the water-hole,
Lothar strolled around the periphery of the circular pan and there,
incredibly, was the girl's footprint still preserved in the clay, just
as he had last seen it.

He knelt beside it, and with his finger traced out the shape of the
small, graceful foot.  The cast was baked by the sun as hard as a brick.
Though all around it the mud had been trampled by buffalo and rhinoceros
and elephant, this single print remained.

It's an omen, he told himself, and then chuckled cynically .  I've never
believed in omens, why should I begin now?  Yet his mood was buoyant and
optimistic when he assembled his men around the camp fire that evening.

Apart from the camp servants and the wagoners, he had four mounted
riflemen to help him conduct the actual search.  All four of them had
been with him since the days of the rebellion.  They had fought and bled
together, shared a looted bottle of Cape smoke, or a woollen blanket on
a frosty desert night, or the last shreds of tobacco in the pouch, and
he loved them a little, though he trusted them not at all.

There was Swart Hendrick or Black Henry, the tall, purplish-black Ovambo
and Klein Boy, or Little Boy, his bastard son by a Hereto woman.  There
was Vark Janor Pig John, the wrinkled yellow Khoisan.  Mixed blood of
Nama and Bergdama and even of the true San ran in his veins, for his
grandmother had been a Bushman slave, captured as a child on one of the
great commando raids of the last century that the Boers had ridden
against the San people.  Lastly there was Vuil Lipped, the Bondelswart
Hottentot with lips like fresh-cut liver and a vocabulary that gave him
his name Dirty Lips.

My hunting pack, Lothar smiled, half-affectionately and half in
revulsion as he looked them over.  Truly the term outlaw had meaning
when applied to them, they were beyond the rules of tribe or tradition.
He studied their faces in the firelight.  Like half-tamed wolves, they
would turn and savage me at the first sign of weakness, he thought.

All right, you sons of the great hyena, listen to me.  We are looking
for San, the little yellow killers.  Their eyes sparkled.  We are
looking for the white girl they had as their captive, and there are a
hundred gold sovereigns for the man who cuts her spoor.  This is how we
will conduct the hunt, Lothar smoothed the sand between his feet and
then traced out the plan for them with a twig.

The wagons will follow the line of the water-holes, here and here, and
we will fan out, like this and like this.

Between us we can sweep fifty miles of country.  So they rode into the
east, as he had planned it, and within the first ten days they cut the
spoor of a small party of wild San.  Lothar called in his outriders and
they followed up the trail of tiny childlike footprints.

They moved with extreme caution, carefully spying out the terrain ahead
through Lothar's telescope, and skirting each stand where an ambush
could be laid.  The idea of a poisoned bone arrowhead burying itself in
his flesh made Lothar shudder every time he let himself think about it.

Bullets and bayonets were the tools of his trade, but the filthy poisons
that these little pygmies brewed unmanned him, and he hated them more
each hot tortuous nervewracking mile that they followed the spoor.

Reading the sign, Lothar learned that there were eight San in the party
they were following: two adult males and two women, probably their
wives.  There were also four small children, two still at the breast and
two just old enough to walk on their own.

The children will slow them down, Vark Jan gloated, they will not be
able to stand the pace.  I want one of them alive, Lothar warned them.

I want to know about the girl.  Vark Jan's slave grandmother had taught
him enough of the San language to interrogate a captive and he grinned.
Catch one of them and I will make him talk, be sure of that. The San
were hunting and foraging and Lothar's band gained on them rapidly. They
were only an hour behind when the San, with their animal perceptions,
sensed their presence.

Lothar found the spot where they had become aware, the spot where the
trail seemed to vanish.

They are anti-tracking, he growled.  Get down and search, he ordered.

They are carrying the children, Vark Jan squatted to examine the earth,
the babies are too young to cover their own spoor.  The women are
carrying them, but they will tire quickly under the load.  Though the
trail seemed to end and the ground beyond seemed unmarked even to
Lothar's experienced eye, yet even the San had left sign that Vark Jan
and Swart Hendrick could follow.  The pace was slower, for they had to
dismount to be closer to the earth, but still they followed, and within
four hours Swart Hendrick nodded and grinned.

The women are tiring quickly.  They are leaving better sign and moving
slower.  We are gaining on them now.  Far ahead the San women, toiling
under the weight of the children, looked back and wailed softly.  The
following horses showed across the plain, magnified by the mirage until
they loomed like monsters, but even the sight of their pursuers could
not drive the women on at a better speed.

So I must play the plover, said the oldest of the San hunters.  He was
re erring to t e way the plover feigns injury to lead a predator away
from its nest.  If I can make them follow me, I may be able to burn up
their horses with thirst, he told his clan.  Then when you reach the
next water-hole and after you have drunk and filled the water-eggs- He
proffered a sealed buckhom container to his wife and he did not have to
say the fateful words.

Poisoning a water-hole was such a desperate deed that none of them
wanted to talk of it.  If you can kill the horses, you will be safe, the
hunter told them.  I will try to give you time to do it.

The old San hunter went quickly to each of the children and touched
their eyelids and lips in blessing and farewell, and they stared at him
solemnly.  When he went to his woman who had borne him two sons, she
gave a short keening wall.  He admonished her with a glance which told
her clearly, Show no fear in front of the little ones. Then as he shed
his clothing and his leather satchel, the old San whispered to the
younger man, his companion in a thousand hunts, Be a father to my sons.
He handed his satchel to him, and stepped back.  Now, go!

While he watched his clan trot away, the old man restrung his little bow
and then carefully unwound the strips of leather that protected the
heads of his arrows.

His family disappeared across the plain, and he turned his back upon
them and went to meet his pursuers.

Lothar was fretting at the pace.  Though he knew that the quarry was
only an hour ahead, they had lost the spoor again and were held up while
his flanks cast forward to pick it up.  They were in open country, a
flat plain that stretched away to an indeterminate meeting with the sky.

The plain was dotted with dark clumps of low scrub, and the mirage made
them dance and squirm in the field of the telescope.  It would be
impossible to pick out a human figure amongst them at more than a mile
distance.

The horses were almost knocked up, they had to have water soon.  Within
the next hour he would have to call off the pursuit and turn back to the
water wagon.  He lifted the telescope again, but a wild shout made him
start and glance around.  Swart Hendrick was pointing out to the left.
The man on the extreme left flank, Vuil Lippe, the Bondelswart, was
trying to control his mount.

It was rearing and walking on its hindlegs, dragging him with it in a
sheet of flying dust.

Lothar had heard that a horse would react to the hot scent of a wild
Bushman as though to that of a lion, but he had doubted it.  Vuil Lippe
was helpless, both hands on the reins, his rifle in the boot on the
saddle, and as Lothar watched he was dragged over one of the salt bushes
and sprawled in the dirt.

Then quite miraculously another human shape seemed to appear out of the
very earth.  The tiny naked pixie-like shape stood up only twenty paces
beyond the dragging rider.  Unlikely as it seemed, he must have been
completely concealed behind a clump of scrub that should not have hidden
a hare.

As Lothar watched with helpless horror, the little mannikin drew his bow
and let fly.  Lothar saw the flight of the arrow, like a dust mote in
the sunlight, and then the naked Bushman whirled and trotted directly
away from the line of horsemen.

Lothar's men were all shouting and struggling to remount, but terror
seemed to have infected the horses, and they pranced and circled. Lothar
was the first up.  He did not touch the stirrups, but with a hand on his
horse's withers, sprang into the saddle, turned its head and galloped
down the line.

Already the running Bushman was disappearing amongst the low
mirage-shrouded scrub, in a swinging trot that carried him away at an
incredible rate.  The man he had fired at had let his horse run free and
had pulled himself to his feet.  He stood with his legs braced apart,
swaying slightly from side to side.

Are you all right?  Lothar shouted as he rode up, and then he saw the
arrow.

It dangled down Vuil Lippe's chest, but the arrow-head was buried in his
cheek, and he stared up at Lothar with a bewildered expression.  Lothar
jumped down and caught him by the shoulders.

I'm a dead man, Lippe said softly, his hands hanging by his sides, and
Lothar seized the dangling arrow and tried to pull it free.  The flesh
of Lippe's cheek was drawn out in a peak and he screamed and staggered.
Gritting his teeth, Lothar heaved again, but this time the frail reed
shaft snapped, leaving the bone arrowhead embedded in the man's flesh,
and he began to struggle.

Lothar seized a handful of his greasy black hair and twisted his head
over to examine the wound.  Keep still, damn you.  A short length of
bone protruded from the wound.  It was caked with a black rubbery
coating.

Euphorbia latex.  Lothar had examined San weapons before, his father had
once possessed an important collection of tribal artefacts.  Now Lothar
recognized the poison, the distilled latex from the roots of one of the
rare desert euphorbia plants.  Even as he studied it, he could see the
poison spreading beneath the skin, discolouring it a deep
lavender-purple, blooming like crystals of permanganate of potash
dropped into water, following the course of the shallow blood vessels as
it was absorbed.

How long?  Lippe's tortured eyes held Lothar's, beseeching comfort.

The latex looked freshly distilled, none of its virulence dissipated,
but Vuil Lippe was big and strong and healthy, his body would fight the
toxin.  It would take time, a few dreadful hours that would seem like
eternity.

Can't you cut it out?  Lippe pleaded.

It's gone deep, you'd bleed to death.  Bum it out!

The pain would kill you.  Lothar helped him down into a sitting
position, just as Hendrick rode up with the bunch.

Two men stay to look after him, Lothar ordered.  Hendrick, you and I
will go after the little yellow swine. They pushed the tired horses, and
within twenty minute s they saw the Bushman ahead of them.  He seemed to
dissolve and dance in the heat mirage, and Lothar felt a dark rage seize
him, the kind of hatred a man can only feel towards something he fears
in the deep places of his soul.

Go right Lothar waved Hendrick over.  Head him off if he turns.  And
they spurred forward, riding down swiftly on the fleeing figure.

I'll give you a death to wipe out the other, Lothar promised grimly, and
he loosened his blanket roll from the pommel in front of him.

The sheepskin that he used as a mattress would shield him from the frail
bone-tipped arrows.  He wrapped it around his torso, and tucked the end
over his mouth and nose.  He pulled his wide-brimmed hat low, leaving
only a slit for his eyes.

The running Bushman was two hundred yards ahead.

He was naked, except for the bow in one hand and the halo of tiny arrows
in the leather thong around his head.

His body shone with a coating of sweat, and it was the colour of bright
amber, almost translucent in the sunlight.  He ran lightly as a gazelle,
his small neat feet seemed to skim the earth.

There was the crack of a Mauser and a bullet kicked a fountain of pale
dust just beyond the running Bushman like the spout of a sperm whale,
and the Bushman jerked and then, unbelievably, increased the speed of
his flight, drawing away from the two galloping horsemen.  Lothar
glanced across at Hendrick; he was riding with a loose rein, using both
hands to reload the Mauser.

Don't shoot!  Lothar yelled angrily.  I want him alive!  and Hendrick
lowered the Mauser.

For another mile the Bushman kept up that last wild spring, then
gradually he faltered.  Once again they began to overhaul him.

Lothar saw his legs begin to wobble under him, his feet flopping from
the ankles with exhaustion, but Lothar's mount was almost blown.  it was
lathering heavily, and froth splattered his boots as he drove it
forward.

Fifty yards ahead the exhausted Bushman spun round to face him, standing
at bay, his chest pumping like a bellows, and sweat dripping from his
small spade-shaped beard.  His eyes were wild and fierce and defiant as
he fitted an arrow to the bow.

Come on, you little monster!  Lothar yelled, to draw the Bushman's aim
from the horse to himself, and the ruse succeeded.

The Bushman threw up the bow, and drew and loosed in a single movement,
and the arrow flew like a beam of light.  It struck Lothar at the level
of the throat, but the thick wool of the sheepskin smothered it, and it
fell away, tapping against his riding boot and falling to the dry earth.

The Bushman was trying desperately to notch another arrow as Lothar
leaned out of the saddle like a polo player reaching for a forehand
drive, and swung the Mauser.  The rifle barrel crunched into the side of
the Bushman's skull above the ear and he collapsed.

Lothar reined down his horse and sprang from the saddle, but Hendrick
was there before him, swinging wildly with his Mauser butt at the
Bushman's head as he lay against the earth.  Lothar grabbed his shoulder
and pushed him away with such force that he staggered and almost fell.

Alive, I told you!  Lothar snarled, and went down on his knees beside
the sprawling body.

There was a sluggish trickle of blood out of the Bushman's earhole, and
Lothar felt a prickle of concern as he felt for the pulse of the carotid
artery in the throat, and then grunted with relief.  He picked up the
tiny bow and snapped it in his hands and threw the pieces aside, then
with his hunting knife he cut the leather thong around the Bushman's
forehead and one at a time broke the poisoned arrow beads from their
shafts, and handling them with extreme care threw them as far from him
as he could.

As he rolled the Bushman on to his belly, he shouted at Hendrick to
bring the leather thongs from his saddlebag.  He trussed the captive
securely, surprised at his perfect muscular development and at the
graceful little feet and hands.  He knotted the leather thongs at wrist
and elbow, and at knee and ankle, and pulled the knots so tight that
they bit deeply into the bright amber skin.

Then he picked up the Bushman in one hand, as though he were a doll, and
slung him over the saddle.  The movement revived the Bushman and he
lifted his head and opened his eyes.  They were the colour of new honey,
and the whites were smoky yellow.  It was like looking into the eyes of
a trapped leopard, so ferocious that Lothar stepped back involuntarily.

They are animals, he said, and Hendrick nodded.

Worse than animals, for they have the cunning of a man without being
human.  Lothar took the reins and led his exhausted steed back to where
they had left the wounded Vuil Lippe.

The others had rolled him in a grey woollen blanket and laid him on a
sheepskin.  Clearly they were waiting on Lothar to attend to him, but
Lothar was reluctant to involve himself.  He knew that Vuil Lippe was
beyond any help he could give, and he put off the moment by dragging the
bound Bushman out of the saddle and dropping him on the sandy earth. The
little body curled up defensively, and Lothar hobbled his horse and went
slowly to join the circle around the blanket-wrapped form.

He could see immediately that the poison was acting swiftly.  One side
of Lippe's face was grotesquely swollen and laced with furious purple
lines.  One eye was closed by the swelling, and the lid looked like an
over-ripe grape, shining and black.  The other eye was wide open but the
pupil was shrunken to a pinprick.  He made no sign of recognition as
Lothar stooped over him and had probably already lost his sight.  He was
breathing with extreme difficulty, fighting wildly for each breath as
the poison paralysed his lungs.

Lothar touched his forehead and the skin was cold and clammy as that of
a reptile.  Lothar knew that Hendrick sions and the others were watching
him.  On many occa they had seen him dress a bullet wound, set a broken
leg, draw a rotten aching tooth, and perform all manner of minor
surgery.  They were waiting for him to do something for the dying man,
and their expectations and his own helplessness infuriated Lothar.

Suddenly Lippe uttered a strangled cry and began to shake like an
epileptic, his single open eye rolled back into his skull, showing the
yellow blood-shot white, and his body arched under the blanket.

Convulsions, said Lothar, like a mamba bite.  It won't be long now.  The
dying man bit down, grinding his teeth together, and his swollen
protruding tongue was caught between them.  He chewed -on his tongue,
mincing it to ribbons while Lothar tried desperately and futilely to
prise his jaws open, and the blood poured down the Hottentot's own
throat into his semi-paralysed lungs and he choked and moaned through
his locked jaws.

His body arched in another rigid convulsion, and there was a spluttering
explosion beneath the blanket as his wracked body voided itself.  The
sweet fecal stench was nauseating in the heat.  It was a long-drawn-out
and messy death, and when it was over at last, it left those hardened
men shaken and morose.

They scraped a shallow grave and rolled Vuil Lippe's corpse, still in
the soiled grey blanket, into it.  Then they hastily covered it, as
though to be rid of their own loathing and horror.

One of them built a small fire of brush twigs, and brewed a canteen of
coffee.  Lothar fetched the half-bottle of Cape brandy from his
saddle-bag.  As they passed it from hand to hand, they avoided looking
at where the Bushman lay curled naked in the sand.

They drank the coffee in silence, squatting in a circle, and then Vark
Jan, the Khoisan Hottentot who spoke the San language, flicked his
coffee grounds on to the fire and stood up.

He crossed to where the San lay and picked him up by his bound wrists,
forcing his arms high behind him as they bore his full weight.  He
carried him back to the fire and picked out a burning twig.  Still
holding the San dangling from one hand, he touched the naked glans of
his penis with the glowing tip of the twig.  The San gasped and wriggled
wildly and a blister formed miraculously on the skin of his genitals. It
looked like a soft silver slug.

The men around the fire laughed, and in their laughter was the sound of
their loathing and their terror of the death by poison, and their sorrow
for their companion, of their craving for vengeance and the sadistic
need to inflict pain and humiliation the worst that they could devise.

Lothar felt himself shaken by the quality of that laughter, felt the
insecure foundations of his humanity totter, and the same animal
passions arise in him.  With a supreme effort he forced them back.  He
rose to his feet.

He knew he could not prevent what was about to happen, just as you
cannot drive hungry lions from their fresh kill.  They would turn on him
if he tried.

He averted his eyes from the Bushman's face, from those wild haunted
eyes.  It was clear that he knew that death awaited him, but even he
could not guess at the manner of it.  Instead Lothar looked at the faces
of his own men, and he felt sickened and soiled by what he saw.

Their features seemed distorted as though seen through a poorly glazed
window, thickened and smeared with lust.

He thought that after the Bushman had been mounted by each of them in
turn, ravished as though he were a woman, he would probably welcome what
awaited him at the very end.

So.  Lothar tried to keep his expression neutral, but his voice was
hoarse with disgust.  I am returning to the wagons now.  The San is
yours, but I must know if he has seen or has heard of the white girl. He
must answer that one question.  That is all.  Lothar went to his horse
and mounted.  He rode away towards the wagons without looking back. just
once, far behind, he heard a cry of such outrage and agony that it made
his skin prickle, but then it was muted and lost on the moan of the
desert wind.

Much later when his men rode up to the wagons, Lothar was lying under
the side awning of his living wagon, reading his faithful old copy of
Goethe by the light of a hurricane lantern, stained and battered, it had
sustained him a hundred times before when the substance of his being had
been drawn thin.

The laughter of his men as they dismounted and unsaddled had a fat,
satisfied sound, like that of men who had well feasted and drunk, and
were replete.  Swart Hendrick came to where he lay, swaggering as though
he had taken wine, and the front of his breeches was speckled with black
drops of dried blood.

The San had not seen a white woman, but there was something strange and
unexplained that he had heard whispered at the fire when they met other
San in the desert; a tale of a woman and a child from a strange land

?

where the sun never shines, who lived with two old people of the San.
Lothar came up on his elbow.  He remembered the two little Bushmen he
had seen with the girl. Where?  Did he say where?  he demanded eagerly.
There is a place, deep in the Kalahari, that is sacred to all the San.
He gave us the direction-'Where, Hendrick, damn you.

Where?  A long journey, fifteen days of their travel."What is this
place?  How will we know it?

That, Hendrick admitted sadly, he did not say.  His will to stay alive
was not as great as we thought it might be.  He died before he could
tell us.  Tomorrow we will turn in that direction, Lothar ordered.

There are the other San that we lost today.  With fresh horses we might
catch them before sundown tomorrow.

They have women with them- No!  Lothar snarled at him.  We go on towards
this sacred place in the wilderness.

When the great bald mountain rose abruptly out of the plain, Lothar
believed at first that it must be some trick of the desert light.

He knew of no description in the folklore or verbal history of the
desert tribes to warn that the existence of such a place was possible.
The only white men who had travelled this country, Livingstone and
Oswell on their route to the discovery of Lake Ngarni, and Anderson and
Galton on their hunting forays, had made no mention of such a mountain
in their writing.

Thus Lothar doubted what he was seeing in the uncertain evening light,
and the sunset was so laden with dust, so garish and theatrical as to
heighten the effect of a stage illusion.

However, in the first light of the next day when he looked for it
eagerly, the silhouette was still there, dark and clearly incised
against a sky that was turned to mother-of-pearl by the coming of the
dawn.  As he rode towards it, so it rose higher and still higher from
the plain, and finally detached itself from the earth and floated in the
sky on its own shimmering mirage.

When at last Lothar stood beneath the tall cliffs, he did not doubt that
this was the sacred place of which the San had spoken as he died, and
his conviction was made complete when he scrambled up the scree slopes
and discovered the wondrous paintings upon the sheltered cliff face.

This is the place, but it's so extensive, Lothar realized. If the girl
is here, we might never find her.  So many caves and valleys and hidden
places, we could search for ever.  He divided his men again and sent
them on foot to explore and search the nearest slopes of the mountain.

Then he left the wagons in a shaded grove in the charge of Swart
Hendrick, whom he mistrusted least, and taking only a spare horse set
out to circumnavigate the mountain's bulk.

After two days of travel, during which he kept notes and sketched a
rough map with the aid of his pocket compass, he could estimate with
some certainty that the mountain was probably about thirty miles long
and four or five miles wide, a long extended ridge of gneiss and
intruding sandstone strata.

He rounded the eastern extremity of the mountain and deduced from his
compass headings that he was heading back along the opposite side from
where he had left the wagons.  Whenever some feature of the cliffs
caught his attention, a fissure or a complex of caves, for instance, he
hobbled the horses and climbed up to explore.

Once he discovered a small spring of clear sweet water welling up from
the base of the cliff and trickling into a natura I rock basin.  He
filled his water canteens, then he stripped and washed his clothes.  At
last he bathed, gasping with delight at the cold, and went on refreshed.

At other places he found more of the San paintings covering the rock
face, and he marvelled at the accuracy of the artist's eye and hand that
depicted the shape of eland and buffalo so that even his hunter's eye
could find no fault.  However, these were all ancient signs and he found
nothing of recent human presence.

The forest and plain below the cliffs teemed with game, and he had no
difficulty in shooting a plump young gazelle or antelope each day and
keeping himself in fresh meat.  On the third evening, he killed an
impala ewe and made a kebab of the tripes and kidneys and liver,
impaling them on a green twig and grilling them over the coals.

However, the scent of fresh meat attracted unwelcome attention to his
camp, and he had to spend the rest of the night standing by the horses
with his rifle in his hand while a hungry lion grunted and moaned in the
darkness just outside the circle of firelight.  He examined the beast's
tracks in the morning and found that it was an adult male, past its
prime and with a damaged limb that forced it to limp heavily.

A dangerous brute, he muttered, and hoped that it had moved away.  But
this was a vain hope, he discovered that evening when the horses began
to fidget and whicker as the sun set.  The lion must have followed him
at a distance during the day, and emboldened by the gathering dusk, it
again closed in and began to prowl around his camp fire. Another
sleepless night.  He resigned himself and heaped wood on the fire.
Preparing to stand guard, he pulled on his overcoat, and suffered
another minor irritation.  One of the brass buttons was missing, which
would let in the cold of the desert night.

it was a long, unpleasant night, but a little after midnight the lion
seemed at last to tire of its fruitless vigil and it moved away.  He
heard it utter one last string of moaning grunts at the head of the
grassy vlei half a mile away, then there was silence.

Wearily Lothar checked the head halters on the horses and then went to
the fire and rolled himself in his blankets, still fully dressed, and
keeping his boots on.  Within minutes he had fallen into a deep
dreamless sleep.

He came awake with bewildering suddenness and found himself sitting up
with the rifle in his hands, and the din of an angry lion's thunderous
roars echoing in his ears.

The fire had died down to white ash but the tree-tops were black against
the paling morning sky.  Lothar threw off his blankets and scrambled to
his feet.  The horses were stiff with alarm, their ears pricked forward,
staring towards the open glade whose silver grasses just showed through
the screen of mopani forest.

The lion roared again, and he judged it as a half-mile distant, in the
direction in which the horses were staring.

So clearly does the roar of a lion carry in the night, that an
inexperienced ear would have reckoned it much closer and been unable to
pinpoint the direction, for it played ventriloquist tricks upon the ear.

Once more the awful cacophony filled the forest.  Lothar had never heard
one of these beasts behaving like this, such sustained anger and
frustration in those great blasts of sound, and then his head jerked
with shock.  In the lull between this roar and the next, he heard
another unmistakable sound, a human scream of utmost terror.

Lothar reacted without thought.  He seized the head halter of his
favOUTite hunting horse and leaped to its bare back.  He socked his
heels into its ribs, urging it into a gallop, and guided it with his
knees, turning it towards the head of the glade.  He lay forward on the
horse's neck as the low branches lashed past his head, but as he broke
into the open glade, he straightened and looked about him frantically.

In the few minutes since he had woken, the light had strengthened, and
the eastern sky was a throbbing orange glow.  There was a single tall
mopani tree standing detached from the rest of the forest, surrounded by
the low dry grass of the glade.  High in its branches was a huge dark
mass, and indistinct but violent movement made the branches of the
mopani wave and thrash against the sky.

Lothar turned his horse towards it, and the thunderous growls of a lion
were punctuated by yet another highpitched shriek.

Only then could Lothar distinguish what was happening in the top of the
mopani, and he found it hard to believe.

Great God!  he swore with surprise, for he had never heard of a lion
climbing a tree.  There was the great tawny cat high in the waving
branches, clinging with its hindlegs to the trunk and reaching up with
vicious swipes of its forepaws towards the human shape just beyond its
reach.

Ya!  Ya!  Lothar worked his horse with elbows and heels, urging it to
its top speed, and as he reached the mopani he flung himself from its
back, and rode the shock of landing with his legs and back.  Then he
danced out to one side, head thrown back, rifle at high port across his
chest, trying for a clear shot at the animal high above him.

The lion and its victim made an indistinguishably confused silhouette
against the sky, a shot from below could hit one as easily as the other,
and there were thick intervening branches of the mopani to deflect his
bullet.

Lothar dodged sideways until he found a hole in the branches, and he
flung the rifle up to his shoulder, braced himself over backwards,
aiming straight up, but still reluctant to chance the shot.  Then the
lion snatched the human shape half off its precarious perch, dragging it
down, and the screams were so piteous, so agonized, that Lothar could
not wait longer.

He aimed for the lion's spine, at the root of the tail, a point as far
as possible from the twisting body of its victim who was still clinging
with desperate strength to one of the mopani branches.  He fired and the
heavy Mauser bullet smashed into the base of the lion's spine, between
its bunched and straining haunches, and tore upwards, following the line
of the vertebrae for the span of a hand, shattering and crushing the
bony knuckles, destroying the great nerves of the legs at their roots,
before ripping out again from the centre of the lion's back.

The lion's hindlegs spasmed, the long yellow claws retracted
involuntarily into their sheaths in the leathery pads, loosening their
grip on the mopani bark, and the paralysed legs could hold no longer.
The great tawny cat came sliding and twisting and roaring down out of
the tree, crashing against the lower branches as it fell, arching back
on itself, snapping at the pain in its shattered spine with gaping pink
jaws.

It brought its human victim down with it, its foreclaws still hooked
deeply into tender flesh, shaking and throwing the frail body about with
its convulsions.  They hit the earth in a tangle, with an impact that
jarred up through the soles of Lothar's boots.  He had jumped clear as
they came down through the branches, but now he ran forward.

The lion's back legs were splayed behind it like those of a toad, and it
lay half over the human body.  Now it reared up on its forelegs, pinned
by its paralysed hindquai ters, and as it dragged itself towards Lothar,
it opened its jaws and bellowed.  The stench of its breath was carrion
and corruption, and hot stinking froth splattered his face and bare
arms.

Lothar thrust the muzzle of the Mauser almost into that dreadful mouth
and without aiming, he fired.  The bullet entered the soft palate at the
back of the lion's throat, tore through the back of its skull, and
erupted in a fountain of pink blood and brains.  For a second longer, it
stood braced on its stiff forelegs, then with a gusty sigh its lungs
emptied and it rolled slowly over on to its side.

Lothar dropped the Mauser and fell on his knees beside the huge
twitching yellow carcass, and tried to reach the body beneath it, but
only the bottom half protruded, a pair of slim brown naked legs, the
narrow, boyish loins bound up in a tattered canvas kilt.

Lothar sprang up and seized the lion's tail; he flung all his weight
upon it, and sluggishly the furry carcass rolled over on to its back,
freeing the body beneath it.  A woman, he saw at once, and he stooped
and lifted her.  Her head with its thick mop of dark curling hair
flopped lifelessly, and he cupped his hand at the back of her neck, as
though he were holding a newborn infant, and he looked into her f ace.

It was the face of the photograph, the face he had glimpsed so long ago
in the field of his telescope, the face that had haunted and driven him,
but there was no life in it.

The long dark eyelashes were closed and meshed together, the smooth,
darkly tanned features were without expression, and the strong wide
mouth was slack; the soft lips drooped open to reveal the small white
even teeth and a little string of saliva dribbled from one corner of her
mouth.

No!  Lothar shook his head vehemently.  You can't be dead, no, it's not
possible, after all this.  I won't- He broke off.  Out of the thick dark
mane of her hair a serpent crawled down across the broad forehead
towards her eye, a slow dark red serpent of new blood.

Lothar snatched the cotton bandanna from around his neck and wiped away
the blood, but it flooded down her face as fast as he could clear it. He
parted her crown of curls and found the wound in her shiny white scalp,
a short but deep cut where she had hit one of the mopani branches.  He
could see the gleam of bone in the bottom of the wound.  He pressed the
lips of the cut together and wadded his kerchief over it, then bound it
in place with the bandanna.

He cradled the injured head against his shoulder and lifted the limp
body into a sitting position.  One of her breasts flopped out of her
skimpy fur cloak, and he felt an almost blasphemous shock, it was so
pale and tender and vulnerable.  He covered it swiftly and guiltily,
then turned his attention to her injured leg.

The wounds were frightening; parallel slashes that had ripped deep into
the flesh of her calf, cutting down to the heel of her left foot.  He
laid her back gently and knelt at her feet, lifting the leg and dreading
the sudden spurting rush of arterial blood.  It did not come, there was
only the dark seepage of venous blood, and he sighed.

Thank you, God.  He dragged off his heavy military greatcoat, and placed
the wounded leg upon it to keep it out of the dirt, then he pulled his
shirt over his head.  It had not been washed since the rock spring two
days before and it stank of his stale sweat.

Nothing else for it.  He ripped the shirt into strips and bound up the
leg.

He knew that this was the real danger, the infections that a carrion
eater, such as a lion, carried on its fangs and its claws were almost as
deadly as the poisons of a Bushman's arrowhead.  The claws of a lion
particularly were sheathed in deep scabbards in the pads.  Old blood and
putrefied meat lodged in the cavities, an almost certain source of
virulent mortification and gas-gangrene.

We have to get you to the camp, Centaine.  He used her name for the
first time, and it gave him a tiny flicker of pleasure, quickly
smothered by fear as he touched her skin again and felt the cold, the
mortuary chill upon it.

Quickly he checked her pulse and was shocked at its weak, irregular
flutter.  He lifted her shoulders and wrapped her in the thick
greatcoat, then looked about him for his horse.  It was down at the far
end of the glade, grazing head down.  Bare to the waist and shivering in
the cold, he ran after it and led it back to the mopani.

As he stooped to lift the girl's unconscious body, he froze with shock.

From above his head came a sound that ripped along his nerves and
triggered his deepest instincts.  It was the loud cry of an infant in
distress, and he straightened swiftly and stared up the tall trunk.
There was a bundle hanging in the top branches, and it twitched and
swung agitatedly from side to side.

A woman and a child.  The words of the dying Bushman came back to
Lothar.

He pillowed the unconscious girl's head against the warm carcass of the
lion, then jumped to catch the lowest mopani branch.  He drew himself
bodily upwards and swung one leg over the branch.  He climbed swiftly up
to the suspended bundle, and found it was a rawhide satchel.

He unhooked the straps and lowered it until he could peer into the
opening.

A small, indignant face scowled up at him, and as it saw him it flushed
and yelled with fright.

The memory of Lothar's own son assailed him so suddenly and bitterly
that he winced and swayed on the high branch, and then drew the kicking,
yelling child more securely against his own body and smiled, a painful,
lopsided smile.

That is a big voice for a small man, he whispered huskily.  it never
occurred to him that it might be a girl that arrogant anger could only
be male.

It was easier to shift his camp to the mopani tree under which Centaine
lay, than move her to the camp.  He had to carry the child with him, but
he managed it in less than twenty minutes.  He was fearful every minute
that he left the helpless mother alone, and vastly relieved when he led
the pack horse back to where she lay.  Centaine was still unconscious,
and the child he carried had soiled itself and was ravenous with hunger.

He wiped off the boy's small pink bottom with a handful of dry grass,
remembering how he had performed the same service for his own son, and
then placed him under the greatcoat where he could reach his unconscious
mother's breast.

Then he set a canteen of water on a small fire and dropped the curved
sacking needle and a Thank of white cotton thread from his canvas
housewife into the boiling water to sterilize.  He washed his own hands
in a mug of hot water and carbolic soap, emptied the mug, refilled it
and began to scrub out the deep tears in the girl's calf.

The water was painfully hot, and he lathered carbolic soap and forced
his finger to the bottom of each wound, poured hot water into it, and
then washed it out again and again.

Centaine moaned and thrashed about weakly, but he held her down and
scrubbed grimly at the fearful lacerations.  At last, not truly
satisfied, but certain that if he persisted in his rough cleansing he
would do irreparable damage to delicate tissue, he went to his
saddle-bag and fetched a whisky bottle which he had carried with him for
four years.  It had been given to him by the German Lutheran missionary
doctor who had nursed him through the wounds he had received during the
campaign against Smuts and Botha's invasion.  It may save your life one
day, the doctor had told him.  The handwritten label was illegible now,
Acriflavin'- with an effort he remembered the name, and the dark
yellow-brown liquid had evaporated to half its volume.

He poured it into the open wounds and worked it in with his forefinger,
making certain that it reached the bottom of each deep cut.  He used the
last drops from the bottle on the rent in Centaine's scalp.

He fished the needle and cotton from the boiling canteen.  With the
girl's leg in his lap, he took a deep breath. Thank the Lord she's
unconscious, and he held the lips of raw flesh together and worked the
point of the needle through them.

It took him nearly two hours to sew the meat of her tattered calf
together again, and his stitches were crude but effective, the work of a
sailmaker rather than a surgeon, He used strips from one of his clean
shirts to bind up the leg, but as he worked he knew that despite his
best efforts, infection was almost certain.  He transferred his
attention to her scalp.  Three stitches were sufficient to close that
wound, and afterwards the nervous strain of the last hours swamped him,
and he felt shaken and exhausted.

it took an effort of will to begin work on the litter.  He skinned out
the carcass of the lion, and strung the wet hide between two long limber
mopani saplings with the fur side uppermost.  The horses shied and
fidgeted at the rank smell of lion, but he gentled them and fitted the
straight poles of the drag litter on to the pack horse, then tenderly
lifted Centaine's limp body, wrapped in the greatcoat, into the litter
and strapped her securely with strips of mopani bark.

Carrying the now sleeping child in the satchel and leading the pack
horse with the litter sliding along behind it, he set off at a walk
towards the wagons.  He calculated that it was a full day's march, and
it was now long past noon, but he could not force the pace without risk
of injuring the girl in the litter.

A little before sundown, Shasa woke and howled like a hungry wolf.
Lothar hobbled the horses and took him to his mother.  Within minutes
Shasa was howling with frustration and kicking under the flap of the
greatcoat, presenting Lothar with a difficult decision.

It's for the child, and she will never know, he decided.

He lifted the flap of the greatcoat, and hesitated again before touching
her so intimately.

Forgive me, please, he apologized to the unconscious girl, and took her
barest breast in his hand.  The weight and the heat and velvet feel of
it was a shock in his loins, but he tried to ignore it.  He pressed and
kneaded, with Shasa blustering and mouthing furiously at his hand, and
then rocked back on his heels and covered Centaine with the coat.

Now, what the hell do we do, boy?  Your mother's lost her milk.  He
picked Shasa up.  No, don't try me, my friend, this is another dry
house, I'm afraid.  We'll have to camp here while I go shopping.  He cut
thorn branches and dragged them into a circular laager to keep out hyena
or other predators and built a large fire in the centre.

You'll have to come with me, he said to the querulous infant, and
strapping the canvas bag across his shoulder, he rode out on his hunting
horse.

He found a herd of zebra around the next bluff of the mountain.  Using
his horse as a screen, he worked to within easy rifle-shot of the herd
and picked out a mare with a young foal at her side.  He hit her cleanly
in the head and she dropped instantly.  When he walked up to the dead
zebra, the foal ran only a few yards, and then circled back.

Sorry, old fellow, Lothar said to it.  The orphan would have no chance
of survival and the bullet he gave it in the head was swift mercy.

Lothar knelt beside the dead mare and pulled back her top leg to expose
the swollen black udders.  He was able to draw half a canteen of warm
milk from her.  It was rich and topped with thick yellow cream.  He
diluted it with an equal quantity o warm water and soaked a folded
square of cotton torn from his shirt into the mixture.

Shasa spluttered and kicked and turned his head away, but Lothar
persisted.  This is the only item on the menu Suddenly Shasa learned the
trick of it.  Milk dribbled down his chin, but some of it went down his
throat, and he yelled impatiently every time Lothar pulled the wad of
shirt out of his mouth to resoak it.

Lothar slept that night with Shasa against his chest, and woke before
dawn when the child demanded his breakfast.  There was zebra milk
remaining from the previous evening.

By the time he had fed the boy, and then washed him in a mug of water
warmed on the fire, it was after sunrise.  When Lothar set him down,
Shasa set off at a gallop on his hands and knees towards the horses,
giving breathless cries of excitement.

Lothar felt that swollen feeling in his chest that he had not known
since the death of his own son, and lifted him on to the horse's back.
Shasa kicked and gurgled with laughter, and the hunting pony reached
back and snuffled at him with ears pricked.

We'll make a horseman of you before you walk, Lothar laughed.

However, when he went to Centaine's litter and tried gently to rouse
her, his concern was intense.  She was still unconscious, though she
moaned and rolled her head from side to side when he touched the leg. It
was swollen and bruised, and clotted blood had dried on the stitches.

My God, what a mess, he whispered, but when he searched for the livid
lines of gangrene up her thigh, he found none.

There was another unpleasant discovery, however, Centaine needed the
same attention as her son.

He undressed her quickly.  The canvas skirt and mantel were her only
clothing, and he tried to remain unmoved and clinical when he looked at
her.

He could not do so.  Up to this time Lothar has based his concept of
feminine beauty on the placid round blonde Rubensesque charms of his
mother, and after her, his wife Amelia.  Now he found his standards
abruptly overturned.

This woman was lean as a greyhound, with a tucked-in belly in which he
could see the separate muscles clearly defined beneath the skin.  That
skin, even where it was untouched by the sun, was cream rather than pure
milk.

Her body hair, instead of being pale and wispy, was thick and dark and
curly.  Her limbs were long and NVillowy, not round and dimpled at elbow
and knee.  She was firm to the touch, his fingers did not sink into her
flesh as they had into other flesh he had known, and where the sun had
reached her legs and arms and face, she was the colour of lightly oiled
teak.

He tried not to dwell upon these things, as he rolled her deftly but
gently on to her face, but when he saw that her buttocks were round and
hard and white as a perfect pair of ostrich eggs, something flopped in
his stomach, and his hands shook uncontrollably as he finished cleaning
her.

He experienced no revulsion at the task, it was as natural as his
attention to the child had been, and afterwards he wrapped her in the
greatcoat again and squatted on his heels beside her to examine her face
minutely.

Again he found her features differed from his previous conception of
feminine beauty.  That halo of thick, kinky dark hair was almost
African, those black eyebrows were too stark, her chin too thrusting and
stubborn, the whole cast and set of her features was far too assertive
to bear comparison with the gentle compliance of those other women. Even
though she was totally relaxed, Lothar could still read on her face the
marks of great suffering and hardship, perhaps as great as his own, and
as he touched the smooth brown cheek, he felt almost fatalistically
drawn to her, as though it had been ordained from that first glimpse of
her so many months before.  Abruptly he shook his head with annoyance
and a quick sense of his own ridiculous sentimentality.

I know nothing of you, or you of me.  He looked up quickly, and with a
guilty start realized that the child had crawled away under the horses
hooves.  With chuckles of glee, he was snatching at their inquisitive
puffing nostrils, as they stretched down to him, sniffing at him.

Leading the pack horse and carrying the child, Lothar reached his wagons
late that same afternoon.

Swart Hendrick and the camp servants ran out to meet him, agog with
curiosity, and Lothar gave his orders.

I want a separate shelter for the woman, alongside mine.  Thatch the
roof to keep it cool, and hang canvas sides we can raise to let in the
breeze, and I want it ready by nightfall.  He carried Centaine to his
own cot and bathed her again before dressing her in one of the long
nightgowns that Anna Stok had provided.

She was still not conscious, though once she opened her eyes.  They were
unfocused and dreamy, and she muttered in French so he could not
understand.

He told her, You are safe.  You are with friends.  The pupils of her
eyes reacted to light, which he knew was an encouraging sign, but the
lids fluttered closed and she relapsed into unconsciousness, or sleep
from which he was careful not to rouse her.

With access to his medicine chest again, Lothar was able to redress her
wounds, spreading them liberally with an ointment which was his
favourite cure-all inherited from his mother.  He bound them up in fresh
bandages.

By this time the child was once again hungry and letting it be widely
known.  Lothar had a milch-goat amongst his stock, and he held Shasa on
his lap while he fed him the diluted goat's milk.  Afterwards he tried
to make Centaine drink a little warm soup, but she struggled weakly and
almost choked.  So he carried her to the shelter which his servants had
completed, and laid her on a cot of laced rawhide thongs with a
sheepskin mattress and fresh blankets.  He placed the child besided her
and during the night he woke more than once from a light sleep to go to
them.

just before dawn he at last fell into deep sleep, only to be shaken
awake almost immediately.

What is it?  He reached instinctively for the rifle at his head.

Come quickly!  Swart Hendrick's hoarse whisper at his ear.  The cattle
were restless.  I thought it might be a lion.  What is it, man?  Lothar
demanded irritably.  Get on with it, spit it out.  It was not a lion,
much worse!  There are wild San out there.  They have been creeping
around the camp all night.  I think they are after the cattle.  Lothar
swung his legs over the cot and groped for his boots.

Have Vark Jan and Klein Boy returned yet?  It would be easier with a
large party.

Not yet, Hendrick shook his head.

Very well, we'll hunt alone.  Saddle the horses.  We must not let the
little yellow devils get too much of a start on us.  As he stood up, he
checked the load of the Mauser, then pulled the sheepskin off his cot
and stooped out of the shelter.  He hurried to where Swart Hendrick was
holding the horses.

O'wa had not been able to force himself to approach closer than two
hundred paces to the camp of the strangers.

Even at that distance the strange sounds and odours that carried to him
confused him.  The ring of axe on wood, the clatter of a bucket, the
bleat of a goat made him start; the smell of paraffin and soap, of
coffee and woollen clothing troubled him, while the sounds of men
speaking in unfamiliar cadence and harsh sibilance were as terrifying to
him as the hissing of serpents.

He lay against the earth, his heart hammering painfully, and whispered
to H'ani, Nam Child is with her own kind at last.  She is lost to us,
old grandmother.  This is a sickness of the head, this crazy following
after her.  We both knew well that the others will murder us if they
discover that we are here.  Nam Child is hurt.  You read the sign
beneath the mopani tree where the naked carcass of the lion lay, H'ani
whispered back.  You saw her blood on the earth She is with her own
kind, O'wa repeated stubbornly. They will care for her.  She does not
need us any more.

She went in the night and left us without a word of farewell.  Old
grandfather, I know that what you say is true, but how will I ever smile
again if I never know how badly she has been hurt?  How will I ever
sleep again if I never see little Shasa safe at her breast?  You risk
both our lives for a glimpse of someone who has departed.  They are dead
to us now, leave them be.  I risk my own life, my husband, for to me it
has no further value if I do not know that Nam Child, the daughter of my
heart if not of my own womb, is alive and will stay alive.  I risk my
own life for the touch of Shasa once more.  I do not ask you to come
with me.  H'ani rose, and before he could protest, scuttled away into
the shadows, heading towards the faint glow where the watch-fire showed
through the trees.  O'wa came up on his knees, but his courage failed
him again, and he lay and covered his head with an arm.

Oh, stupid old woman, he lamented.  Do you not know that without you my
heart is a desert?  When they kill you, I will die a hundred deaths to
your one.  H'ani crept towards the camp, circling downwind, watching the
drift of smoke from the fire, for she knew that if the cattle or the
horses scented her, they would stamp and mill and alert the camp.  Every
few paces she sank to the ground and listened with all her soul, staring
into the shadows around the wagons and the crude huts of the encampment,
watching for those tall, very black men, dressed in outlandish apparel
and hung with glittering metal weapons.

They were all asleep, she could make out the shapes around the fire and
the stink of their bodies in her nostrils made her shake with fear.  She
forced herself to rise and go forward, keeping one of the wagons between
her and the sleeping men, until she could crouch beside the tall rear
wheel of the wagon.

She was certain that Nam Child was in one of the thatched shelters, but
to choose the wrong one would bring disaster upon her.  She decided on
the nearest of the shelters and crawled on her hands and knees to the
entrance.  Her eyes were good in the gloom, almost like those of a cat,
but all she could see was a dark indefinite bundle on a raised structure
at the far end of the shelter, a human shape, perhaps, but there was no
way of being certain.

The shape stirred, and then coughed and grunted.

A man!  Her heart thudded so loudly, she was certain it would wake him.
She drew back, and crawled to the second shelter.

Here there was another sleeping form.  H'ani crept towards it timidly,
and when she was within arm's length, her nostrils flared.  She
recognized the milky smell of Shasa, and the odour of Nam Child's skin
which to the old woman was as sweet as the wild melon.

She knelt beside the cot, and Shasa sensed her presence and whimpered.
H'ani touched his forehead, and then slipped the tip of her little
finger into his mouth.  She had taught him well, all Bushmen children
learned to be still under this special restraint, for the safety of the
clan could depend on their silence.  Sasha relaxed under the familiar
touch and smell of the old woman.

H'ani felt for Nam Child's face.  The heat of her cheeks told her that
Nam Child was in light fever, and she leaned forward and smelled her
breath.  It was soured with pain and sickness, but lacked the rank feral
stench of virulent infection.  H'ani longed for the opportunity to
examine and dress her wounds, but knew it was vain.

Instead she placed her lips against the girl's ear and whispered, My
heart, my little bird, I call all the spirits of the clan to protect
you.  Your old grandfather and I will dance for you, to strengthen and
cure you.  The old woman's voice reached something deep in the
unconscious girl's being.  Images formed in her mind.

Old grandmother, she muttered, and smiled at the dream images.  Old
grandmother- I am with you, H'ani replied.  I will be with you always
and always- That was all she could say, for she could not risk the sob
that crouched in her throat ready to burst through her lips.  She
touched them each once more, the child and the mother, on their lips and
their closed eyes, then she rose and scuttled from the shelter.  Her
tears blinded her, her grief swamped her senses, she passed close to the
thorn laager where the horses stood.

One of the horses snorted and stamped and tossed its head at the sharp
unfamiliar scent.  As H'ani disappeared into the night, one of the men
lying beside the fire sat up and threw aside his blanket to go to the
restless horses.

Halfway there, he paused and then stooped over the tiny footprint in the
dust.

It was strange how weary H'ani felt now, as she and O'wa made their way
back around the base of the mountain towards the secret valley.

While they had followed the trail of Nam Child and Shasa, she had felt
as though she could run for ever, as though she were a young woman
again, imbued with boundless energy and strength in her concern for the
safety of the two she loved as dearly as she loved her ancient husband.
Now, however, when she had turned her back upon them for ever, she felt
the full weight of her age, and it pressed her down so that her usual
alert swinging trot was reduced to a heavy plod, and the weariness ached
in her legs and up her spine.

In front of her O'wa moved as slowly, and she sensed the effort that
each pace cost him.  in the time that it had taken the sun to rise a
handspan above the horizon, both of them had been deprived of the force
and purpose that made survival in their harsh world possible.  Once more
they had suffered terrible bereavement, but this time they did not have
the will to rise above it.

Ahead of her O'wa hatted and sank down on his haunches.  She had never
in all the long years seen him so beaten, and when she squatted beside
him, he turned his head slowly to her.  Old grandmother, I am tired, he
whispered.  I would like to sleep for a long time.  The sun hurts my
eyes.  He held up his hand to shield them.

It has been a long hard road, old grandfather, but we are at peace with
the spirits of our clan, and Nam Child is safe with her own kind.  We
can rest awhile now. Suddenly she felt the grief come up her throat and
she choked upon it, but there were no tears.  It seemed that all the
moisture had dried from her wizened old frame.

There were no tears, but the need to weep was like an arrow in her
chest, and she rocked on her heels and made a little humming sound in
her throat to try to alleviate the pain, so she did not hear the horses
coming.

It was O'wa who dropped his hand from his eyes and cocked his head to
the tremor on the still morning air, and when H'ani saw the fright in
his eyes, she listened and heard it also.

We are discovered, said O'wa, and for a moment H'ani felt drained of
even the will to run and hide.

They are close already.  The same resignation was in his eyes, and it
spurred the old woman.

She pulled him to his feet.  On the open ground they will run us down
with the ease of a cheetah taking a lame gazelle.  She turned and looked
to the mountain.

They were at the foot of the scree slope, with scattered brush and loose
rock ramping gently up to the mountain's bulk.

If, H'ani whispered, if we could reach the top, no horse could follow
us.  It is too high, too steep, O'wa protested.

There is a way.  With a bony finger, H'ani pointed out the faint track
that zigzagged up the vast bare rocky flank of the mountain.

Look, old grandfather, see, the spirits of the mountain are showing us
the way.  Those are klipSpTinger, O'wa muttered.  The two tiny
chamois-like antelope, alarmed by the approach of horsemen in the forest
below, went prancing lightly up the barely discernible track.  They are
not mountain spirits, O'wa repeated, watching the nimble brown animals
fly almost straight up the tall rock-face.

I say they are spirits in the guise of antelope.  H'ani dragged him
towards the scree slope.  I say they are showing us the way to escape
our enemies.  Hurry, you stupid and argumentative old man, there is no
other way open to us.  She took his hand in hers, and together they
hopped and skipped from boulder to boulder, climbing with the awkward
agility of a pair of ancient baboons up the tumbled rock of the scree
slope.

However, before they reached the base of the cliff, O'wa was dragging
back on her hand, and gasping with pain, reeling weakly as she urged him
on.

My chest, he cried and staggered.  In my chest an animal is eating my
flesh, I can feel its teeth- and he fell heavily between two boulders.

We cannot stop, H'ani pleaded as she stood over him. We must go on.

She tried to drag him up.

There is such pain, he wheezed.  I can feel its teeth ripping out my
heart.  With all her strength she heaved him into a sitting position,
and at that moment there was a faint shout from the foot of the scree
slope below them.

They have seen us, H'ani said, looking down at the two horsemen as they
rode out of the forest.  They are coming up after us.  She watched them
jump down from their horses, tether them and then come at the slope. One
was a black man and the other had a head that shone like sunlight off a
sheet of still water, and as they came on to the slope they shouted
again, a fierce and jubilant sound, like the clamour of hunting hounds
when they first take the scent.

That sound roused O'wa and with H'ani's help he came unsteadily to his
feet, clutching at his chest.  His lips had blanched and his eyes were
like those of a mortally wounded gazelle; they terrified her as much as
the shouts of the men below.

We must go on.  Half-carrying, half-dragging him, she led him to the
base of the cliff.

I cannot do it.  His voice was so faint she had to put her ear to his
lips.  I cannot go up there.  You can, she told him stoutly.  I will
lead you, place your feet where I place mine.  And she went on to the
rock, on to the steep pathway that the klipspringer had marked with
their sharp pointed hooves, and behind her the old man came on
unsteadily.

one hundred feet up they found a ledge, and it shielded them from the
men below.  They toiled upwards, clinging to the harsh abrasive surface
with their fingertips, and the open drop below them seemed to steady
O'wa.  He climbed more determinedly.  Once when he hesitated and swayed
outwards from the wall, she reached back and caught his arm and held him
until the fit of vertigo passed.

Follow me, she told him.  Do not look down, old grandfather.  Watch my
feet and follow me.  They went upwards, higher and still higher, and
although the plain opened below them, yet the hunters were hidden
beneath the sheer of the cliff.

Only a little further, she told him.  See, there is the crest, just a
little further and we will be safe.  Here, give me your hand.  And she
reached out to help him over a bad place where the drop opened below
them and they had to step across the void.

H'ani looked down between her feet and she saw them again, dwarfed by
distance and foreshortened and misshapened by the overhead perspective.
The two hunters were still at the base of the cliff, directly below her,
looking up at her.  The white man's face shone like a cloud, so
strangely pale and yet so malignant, she thought.  He lifted his arms
and pointed at her with the long staff he carried.

H'ani had never seen a rifle before, and made no effort to hide herself
as she stared down at him.  She knew she was far out of range of an
arrow from even the most powerful bow, and, unafraid, she leaned out
from the narrow ledge for a better view of her enemy.  She saw the white
man's extended arms jerk, and a little feather of white smoke flew from
the tip of his staff.

She never heard the rifle shot, for the bullet arrived before the sound.
It was a soft lead-nosed Mauser bullet and it entered low down in the
front of her stomach and passed obliquely upwards, traversing her body,
tearing through her bowels and her stomach, up through one lung and out
through her back a few inches to one side of the spinal column.  The
force of the impact flung her backwards against the rock wall, and then
her lifeless body bounced loosely forward and spun out over the edge.

Opwa cried out and reached for her as she went over.

He touched her with his fingertips, before she fell away from him and he
teetered on the brink of the precipice.

My life!  he called after her.  My little heart!  And the pain and the
grief were too intense to be borne.  He let his body sway outwards, and
as it passed its centre of gravity, he cried softly, I am coming with
you, old grandmother, to the very end of the journey."And he let himself
plunge unresisting into the void, and the wind ripped at him as he fell,
but he made not another sound, not ever.

Lothar De La Rey had to climb twenty feet to where the body of one
Bushman had wedged in a crack in the cliff face.

He saw it was the corpse of an old man, wrinkled and skeletal-thin,
crushed by the fall and with the skin and flesh ripped away to expose
the bone of his skull.  There was very little blood, almost as though
the sun and the wind had desiccated the tiny body while it was still
alive.

About the narrow, childlike waist there was a brief loin-cover of tanned
rawhide and then, remarkably, a Ianyard from which dangled a clasp
knife.  It was an Admiralty-type knife with a horn handle such as
British sailors carried, and Lothar had not expected to find a tool like
this one on a Bushman's corpse in the wastes of the Kalahari.  He
unlooped the lanyard and dropped the knife into his pocket.  There was
nothing else of value or interest on the body, and he certainly would
not bother to bury it.  He left the old man jammed into the rocky
crevice and climbed back down to where Swart Hendrick waited for him.

What did you find?  Hendrick demanded.

Just an old man, but he had this.  Lothar showed him the knife and Swart
Hendrick nodded without particular interest.

Ja.  They are terrible thieves, like monkeys.  That's why they were
creeping around our camp.  Into the kloof there, amongst that horn bush.
It will be dangerous to climb down.  I would leave it.  Stay here, then,
Lothar told him and went to the edge of the deep ravine and looked down.
The bottom was choked with dense Thorn growth, and the climb would
indeed be dangerous, but Lothar felt a perverse whim to go against Swart
Hendrick's advice.

it took him twenty minutes to reach the bottom of the ravine, and as
long again to find the corpse of the Bushman he had shot.  It was like
trying to find a dead pheasant in thick scrub without a good gundog to
sniff it out, and in the end it was only the buzz of big metallic-blue
flies that led him to the hand protruding from a clump of scrub, with
the pink palm uppermost.  He dragged the body out of the thorn scrub by
the wrist and realized that it was a female, an ancient hag with
impossibly wrinkled skin and dangling breasts like a pair of empty
tobacco pouches.

He grunted with satisfaction when he saw the bullet hole exactly where
he had aimed.  It had been an extremely difficult shot, at that range
and deflected.  He transferred his attention immediately from the bullet
wound to the extraordinary decoration that the old woman wore around her
neck.

Lothar had never seen anything like it in southern Africa, although in
his father's collection there had been a Masai necklace from east
Africa, which was vaguely similar.  However, the Masai jewellery had
been made with trade beads, while for this collar the old woman had
collected coloured pebbles and had graded and arranged them with
remarkable aesthetic appreciation.  Then she had most cunningly fastened
them into a breast plate that was at once strong and decorative.

Lothar realized that it would have considerable value for its rarity,
and he rolled the old woman on to her face to unknot the string that
held it at the back of her neck.

Blood from the massive exit wound had soaked the string, run down it and
clotted on some of the coloured stones, but he wiped it off carefully.

Many of the stones were in their original crystalline form, and others
were water-worn and polished.  The old woman had probably picked them
out of the gravel banks in the dry river beds.  He turned them to catch
the light and smiled with pleasure at the lovely sparkle of reflected
sunlight.  He wrapped the necklace in his bandanna and placed it
carefully in his breast pocket.

One last glance at the dead Bushwoman convinced him that there was
nothing else of interest about her, and Lothar left her lying on her
face and turned to the difficult climb up the ravine wall to where Swart
Hendrick waited above him.

Centaine became aware of the feeling of woven cloth upon her body, and
it was so unfamiliar that it brought her to the very threshold of
consciousness.  She thought that she lay upon something soft, but she
knew that was impossible, as was the filtered light through green
canvas.

She was too tired to ponder these things, and when she tried to keep her
eyelids open, they drooped against her best efforts and she became aware
of her weakness.  Her insides had been scooped out of her as though she
were a soft-boiled egg, and only her brittle outer shell remained.  The
thought made her want to smile, but even that effort was too great and
she drifted away into that lulling darkness again.

When next she became aware, it was to the sound of someone singing
softly.  She lay with her eyes closed and realized that she could
understand the words.  It was a love song, a lament for a girl that the
singer had known before the war began.

It was a man's voice, and she thought it was one of the most thrilling
voices she had ever heard.  She did not want the song to end, but
suddenly it broke off, and the man laughed.

So, you like that do you?  he said in Afrikaans, and a child said, Da!
Da!  so loudly and so clearly that Centaine's eyelids flew open.  It was
Shasa's voice and every memory of that night with the lion in the mopani
came rushing back at her, and she wanted to scream again.

My baby, save my baby!  and she rolled her head from side to side, and
found she was alone in a hut with thatched roof and canvas sides.  She
lay on a camp cot, and she was dressed in a long cool cotton nightgown.

Shasa!  she called out, and tried to sit up.  She managed only a
spasmodic jerk, and her voice was a dull, hoarse whisper.

Shasa!  This time she summoned all her strength. Shasa!  and it came out
as a croak.

There was a startled exclamation, and she heard a stoat clatter as it
was overturned.  The hut darkened as someone stepped into the doorway,
and she rolled her head towards the opening, A man stood there.  He was
holding Shasa on his hip.

He was tall, with wide shoulders, but the light was behind him so she
could not see his face.

So, the sleeping princess awakes- that deep, thrilling voice -at last,
at long last.  Still carrying her son, he stepped to the side of her cot
and bent over her.

We have been worried, he said gently, and she looked up into the face of
the most beautiful man she had ever seen, a golden man, with golden hair
and yellow leopard's eyes in his tanned golden face.

On his hip Shasa bounced up and down and reached towards her.

Mama!  My baby!  She lifted one hand, and the stranger swung Shasa off
his hip and placed him beside her on the cot.

Then he lifted Centaine's shoulders and propped her into a sitting
position with a bolster behind her.  His hands were brown and strong,
yet the fingers were as elegant as those of a pianist.

Who are you?  Her voice was a husky whisper, and there were dark smears
below her eyes, the colour of fresh bruises.

My name is Lothar De La Rey, he answered, and Shasa clenched his fists
and pounded his mother's shoulder in a gesture of overwhelming
affection.

Gently!  Lothar caught his wrist to restrain him.  Your mama is not up
to so much love, not yet.  She saw how Lothar's expression softened as
he looked at the child.

What happened to me?  Centaine asked.  Where am YOU were attacked and
mauled by a lion.  When I shot the beast, you fell out of the tree. She
nodded.  Yes, I remember that, but afterwards You suffered concussion
and then the wounds from the lion claws mortified. How long?  she
breathed.

Six days, but the worst is past.  Your leg is still very swollen and
inflamed, Mevrou Courtney. She started.  You use that name.

Where did you learn that name?  i know that your name is Mevrou Centaine
Courtney and that you were a survivor from the hospital ship Protea
Castle.  How?  How do you know these things?  I was sent by your
father-in-law to search for you.  My father-in-law?  Colonel Courtney,
and that woman, Anna Stok.  Anna?  Anna is alive?  Centaine reached out
and seized his wrist.  is no doubt about that at all!  Lothar laughed.
ThereShe is very much alive.  That is the most wonderful news! I thought
she was drowned -Centaine broke off as she realized that she was still
holding his wrist.  She let her hand fall to her side and sank back
against the bolster.

Tell me, she whispered, tell me everything.  How is she?  How did you
know where to find me?  Where is Anna now?  When will I see her?  Lothar
laughed again.  His teeth were very white.  So many questions!  He drew
the stool to her cot.  Where shall I begin?  Begin with Anna, tell me
all about her.  He talked and she listened avidly, watching his face,
asking another question as soon as one was answered, fighting off the
weakness of her body to revel in the sound of his voice, in the intense
pleasure of hearing glad tidings of the real world from which she had
been so long excluded, of communicating with one of her own kind and
looking on a white and civilized face again.

The day was almost gone, the evening gloom filling her little shelter
when Shasa let out a demanding shout and Lothar broke off.

He is hungry."I will feed him if you will leave us a while,
Mijnheer."No, Lothar shook his head.  You have lost your milk.

Centaine's head jerked as though the words were a blow in her face, and
she stared at him while thoughts tumbled and crowded in her mind.  Up to
that moment she had been so wrapped up in listening and questioning that
she had not considered that there was no other woman in the camp, that
for six days she had been entirely helpless, and that somebody had
tended her, washed her and changed her, fed her and dressed her wounds.
But his words, such an intimate subject spoken of in direct fashion,
brought all this home to her, and as she stared at him, she felt herself
begin to blush with shame.  Her cheeks flamed, those long brown fingers
of his must have touched her where only one other man had touched
before.  She felt her eyes smart, as she realized what those yellow eyes
of his must have looked upon.

She felt herself burning up with embarrassment, and then incredibly with
a hot and shameful excitement, so that she had difficulty breathing, and
she lowered her eyes and turned her head away so that he could not see
her scarlet cheeks.

Lothar seemed to be entirely unaware of her predicament.  Come on,
soldier, let's show mama our new trick. He lifted SHasa and fed him with
a spoon, and Shasa bounced on his lip and said, Hum!  Hum!  as he saw
each spoonful coming, and then launched himself at it with mouth wide
open. He likes you, Centaine said.

We are friends, Lothar admitted, as he removed the heavy coating of
gruel from Shasa's forehead and chin and ears with a damp cloth.

You are good with children, Centaine whispered and saw the sudden biting
pain reflected in the darkening gold of his eyes.

Once I had a son, he said, and placed Shasa at her side, then picked up
the spoon and empty bowl and went to the doorway.

Where is your son?  she called softly after him, and he paused in the
opening, then turned slowly back to her. My son is dead, he said softly.

She was ripe and over-ripe for love.  Her loneliness was a hunger so
intense that it seemed it could not be assuaged, not even by those long
languid conversations under the awning of the wagon tent when, with
Shasa between them, they talked away the hottest hours of those lazy
African days.

Mostly they discussed the things she held dearest, music and books.
Although he preferred Goethe to Victor Hugo and Wagner to Verdi, these
differences gave them grounds for amusing and satisfying dispute.  in
those arguments she discovered that his learning and scholarship far
exceeded her own, but she strangely did not resent it.

it merely made her more attentive to his voice.  It was a marvelous
voice; after the clicking and grunting of the San language, she could
listen to it for the lilt and cadence as though it were music in itself.

Sing for me!  she ordered, when they had for the moment exhausted a
particular topic.  Both Shasa and I command it.

Your servant, of course!  he smiled, and gave them a mocking little bow,
then he sang without any selfconsciousness.

Take the chick and the hen will follow you Centaine had often heard Anna
repeat the old proverb, and when she watched Shasa riding around the
camp on Lothar's shoulder, she realized the wisdom behind it, for her
eyes and her heart followed both of them.

At first she felt quick resentment whenever Shasa greeted Lothar with
cries of Da!  Da!  That name should have been reserved for Michael
alone.  Then with a painful stab she remembered that Michael was lying
in the cemetery at Mort Homme.

After that it was easy to smile when Shasals first attempts at walking
unaided on his own two legs ended with a precipitous and headlong return
to earth and he bawled for Lothar and crawled to him, seeking comfort.

It was Lothar's tenderness and gentleness with her son that nudged her
affections and her need for him forward, for she recognized that beneath
that handsome exterior he was a hard man and fierce.  She saw the awe
and respect in which his own men held him, and they were tough men
themselves.

just once she witnessed him in a cold, killing rage that terrified her
as much as it did the man against whom it was directed.  Vark Jan, the
wrinkled yellow Khoisan, in indolence and ignorance had ridden Lothar's
hunting horse with an ill-fitting saddle and galled the creature's back
almost to the bone.  Lothar had knocked Vark Jan down with a fist to the
head, and then cut the jacket and shirt off his back with razor strokes
from his sjambok, a five-foot whip of cured hippo-hide, and left him
unconscious in a puddle of his own blood.

The violence had appalled and frightened Centaine, for she had witnessed
every brutal detail from where she lay on her cot beneath the awning.
Later, however, when she was alone in her shelter, her revulsion faded
and in its place was a trembly feeling of exhilaration and a heat in the
pit of her stomach.

He's so dangerous, she thought, so dangerous and cruel, and she shivered
again and could not sleep.  She lay and listened to his breathing in the
shelter beside hers, and thought about how he must have undressed her
and touched her while she was unconscious, and her flesh tingled at the
memory and she blushed in the darkness.

In startling contrast the next day he was gentle and tender, holding her
injured leg in his lap while he snipped the threads of cotton and
plucked them from her swollen, inflamed flesh.  They left dark punctures
in her skin, and he bent over her leg and sniffed the wound.

It's clean now.  That redness is only your body attempting to rid itself
of the stitches.  It will heal swiftly now they are gone.  Lothar was
right.  Within two days she was able, with the help of the crutch he had
whittled for her, to make her first foray out of the canvas shelter.

My legs feel wobbly, she protested, and I am as weak as Shasa.  You'll
soon be strong again.  He placed his arm around her shoulders to steady
her, and she trembled at his touch and hoped he would not notice and
withdraw his arm.

They paused by the horse lines and Centaine petted the animals, stroking
their silky muzzles and revelling in that nostalgic horse odour.

I want to ride again, she told him.

Anna Stok told me you were a skilled horsewoman she told me you had a
stallion, a white stallion.  Nuage.  Tears prickled her eyes as she
remembered, and she pressed her face against the neck of Lothar's
hunting horse to hide them.  My white cloud, he was so beautiful, so
strong and swift.

Nuage, Lothar took her arm, a lovely name.  Then he went on, Yes, you
will ride again soon.  We have a long journey ahead of us, back to where
your father-in-law and Anna Stok will be waiting for you.  It was the
first time she had considered an end to this magical interlude, and she
pulled away from the horse and stared at him over its back.  She didn't
want it to end, she didn't want him to leave her, as she knew he soon
would.

I'm tired, she said.  I don't think I am ready to start riding just yet.
That evening as she sat under the awning with a book in her lap,
pretending to read, while watching him from under her lowered lids, he
looked up suddenly and smiled with such a knowing glint in his eye that
she blushed and looked away in confusion, I'm writing to Colonel
Courtney, he told her, sitting at the collapsible travelling bureau with
the pen in his hand smiling across at her, I will send a rider back to
Windhoek tomorrow, but it will take him two weeks or more to get there
and back.  I am letting Colonel Courtney know when and where we can
meet, and I have suggested a rendezvous for the i9th day of next month.
She wanted to say, So soon?  but instead, she nodded silently.

I am sure you are most anxious to be reunited with your family, but I
don't think we will be able to reach the rendezvous before that date.  I
understand.  However, I would be delighted to send any letter that you
might care to write, with the messenger Oh, that would be wonderful,
Anna, dear Anna, she will be fussing like an old hen.  Lothar stood up
from the bureau.

Please seat yourself here and use the pen and what paper you need, Mrs
Court they.  While you are busy, master Shasa and I will see to his
dinner.  Surprisingly, once she penned the opening salutation, My
dearest dear Anna, she could think of nothing to follow it mere words
seemed so paltry.

I give thanks to God that you survived that terrible night, and I have
thought of you every day since then-The dam holding back the words
burst, and they flooded out on to the paper.

We will need a pack horse to carry that epistle.  Lothar stood behind
her shoulder, and she started as she realized that she had covered a
dozen sheets with close script.

There is so much still to tell her, but the rest will have to wait.
Centaine folded the sheets and sealed them with a wax wafer from the
silver box fitted into the top of the bureau, while Lothar held the
candle for her.

It was strange, she whispered.  I had almost forgotten how to hold a
pen.  It has been so long.  You have never told me what happened to you,
how you escaped from the sinking ship, how you survived so long, how you
came to be so many hundreds of miles from the coast where you must have
come ashore- I don't want to talk about it.  She cut him off quickly.

She saw for a moment in her mind's eye, the little heartshaped,
wrinkled, amber-coloured faces, and suppressed her nagging guilt at
having deserted them so cruelly.

I don't even want to think about that.  Kindly never address the subject
again, sir.  Her tone was stingingly severe.

Of course, Mrs Courtney."He picked up the two sealed letters.  If you
will excuse me, I will give these to Vark Jan now.  He can leave before
dawn tomorrow.  He was stiff-faced and resentful of the rebuff.

She watched him cross to the servants fire and heard the murmur of
voices as he gave Vark Jan his orders.

When he returned to the shelter, she made a pretence of being engrossed
with her book, hoping that he would interrupt her, but he seated himself
at the bureau and opened his journal.  It was his nightly ritual, his
entry in the leather-bound journal.  She listened to his pen scratching
on the paper, and she resented his attention being focused anywhere but
on herself.

There is so little time left to us, she thought, and he squanders it so.
She closed her book loudly but he did not look up.

What are you writing?  she demanded.

You know what I am writing, since we have discussed it before, Mrs
Courtney Do you write everything in your journal?  Almost everything. Do
you write about me?

He laid down the pen and stared at her, and she was flustered by the
direct gaze of those serene yellow eyes, but could not bring herself to
apologize.

You were prying into things that did not concern you, she told him.

Yes, he agreed with her, and to cover her discomfort, she demanded, What
have you written about me in your famous journal  I And now, madam, it
is you who are inquisitive, he told her as be closed his diary, placed
it in the drawer of the bureau and stood up.  If you will excuse me, I
must make my rounds of the camp.

So she learned that she could not treat him the way she had treated her
father, or even the way she had treated Michael Courtney.  Lothar was a
proud man and would not allow her to trespass on his dignity, a man who
had fought his whole life for the right to be his own master.

He would not permit her to take advantage of his strong sense of
chivalry to her and to little Shasa.  She learned that she could not
bully him.

The next morning she found herself dismayed by his formal aloof bearing,
but as the day wore on she became angry.  Such a small tiff, and he
sulks like a spoiled child, she told herself.  Well, we'll see who sulks
longest and hardest.  By the second day her anger had given way to
loneliness and unhappiness.  She found herself longing for his smile,
for the pleasure of one of their long convoluted discussions for the
sound of his laughter and his voice when he sang to her.

She watched Shasa tottering around the camp, hanging on to one of
Lothar's hands and engaging him in loquacious conversation that only the
two of them could understand, and was appalled to find that she was
jealous of her own child.

I will give Shasa his food, she told him coldly.  It is time I resumed
my duties.  You need no longer discommode yourself, sir.

Of course, Mrs Courtney.  And she wanted to cry, Please, I am truly
sorry, But their pride was a mountain range between them.

She listened all that afternoon for the sound of his horse returning.
She heard only the sound of distant rifle fire, but it was after dark
when Lothar rode in, and she and Shasa were already in their cots.  She
lay in the darkness and listened to the voices and the sounds as the
carcasses of the springbok that Lothar had shot were offloaded from his
hunting horse and hung upon the butchering rack.

Lothar sat late at the fire with his men, and bursts of their laughter
carried to her as she tried to compose herself to sleep.

At last she heard him come to the shelter beside hers, and she listened
to the splash of water as he washed in the bucket at the entrance, the
rustle of his clothing and finally the creak of the lacings of his cot
as he settled upon it.

Shasa's cries awoke her, and she knew instantly that he was in pain, and
she swung her legs off the cot and still half-asleep groped for him.  A
match flared and lantern light bloomed in Lothar's shelter.

Shh!  Quiet, my little one.  She cradled Shasa against her chest, and
his hot little body alarmed her.

May I enter?  Lothar asked from the entrance.

Oh, yes.  He stooped into the tent and set down the lantern.

Shasa, he's sick, Lothar took the child from her.  He wore only a pair
of breeches, his chest and feet were bare.  His hair was tangled from
the pillow.

He touched Shasa's flushed cheek and then slipped a finger into his
squalling mouth.  Shasa choked off his next howl and bit down on the
finger like a shark.

Another tooth, Lothar smiled, I felt it this morning. He handed Shasa
back to her and he let out a howl of rejection.

I'll be back, soldier, and she heard him rummaging in the medicine chest
he kept bolted to the floor of his wagon.

He had a small bottle in his hand when he returned, and she wrinkled her
nose at the pungent odour of oil of cloves as he pulled the cork.

We'll fix that bad old tooth, won't we just.  Lothar massaged the
child's gums as Shasa sucked on his finger. That's a brave soldier.  He
laid Shasa back in his cot and within minutes he had fallen asleep
again.

Lothar picked up the lantern.  Good night, Mrs Courtney, he said
quietly, and went to the entrance.

Lothar!  His name on her lips startled her as it did him.

Please, she whispered, I've been alone for so long.

Please, don't be cruel to me any more.  She held out both arms towards
him and he crossed to her and sank down on to the edge of the cot beside
her.

Oh, Lothar- Her voice was choked and gusty, and she wrapped her arms
around his neck.  Love me, she pleaded, oh, please love me, and his
mouth was hot as fever on hers, his arms about her so fierce that she
gasped as the breath was driven from her lungs.

Yes, I was cruel to you, he told her softly, his voice trembling in his
throat, but only because I wanted so desperately to hold you, because I
ached and burned with my love for you- Oh, Lothar, hold me and love me,
and never ever let me go.

The days that followed were full recompense for all the hardships and
loneliness of the months and years.  It was as though the fates had
conspired to heap upon Centaine all the delights that she had been
denied for so long.

She woke each dawn in the narrow cot and before her eyes were open, she
was groping for him with a tantalizing terror that he might no longer be
there, but he always was.  Sometimes he was feigning sleep and she had
to try and open one of his eyelids with her fingertips, and when she
succeeded, he rolled his eyeball upwards until only the white showed,
and she giggled and thrust her tongue deeply into his ear, having
discovered that that was the one torture he could not endure, and the
gooseflesh sprang up on his bare arms and he came awake like a lion and
seized her and turned her giggles to gasps and then to moans.

In the cool of the morning they rode out together with Shasa on the
saddle in front of Lothar.  For the first few days they kept the horses
to a walk and stayed close by the camp.  However, as Centaine's strength
returned, they ventured further and on the return they covered the last
mile at a mad flying gallop, racing each other, and Shasa, secure in
Lothar's arms, shrieked with excitement as they tore into the camp, all
of them flushed and ravenous for their breakfasts.

The long sultry desert noondays they spent under the thatched shelter,
sitting apart, touching only fleetingly when he handed her a book or
when passing Shasa between them, but caressing each other with their
eyes and their voices until the suspense was a kind of exquisite
torment.

As the heat passed and the sun mellowed, Lothar again called for the
horses and they rode to the foot of the scree slope below the mountain.
They hobbled the horses and with Shasa riding on Lothar's shoulder
climbed up into one of the narrow sheer-sided valleys.  Here, below a
fresco of ancient Bushman paintings, screened by dense foliage, Lothar
had discovered another of the thermal springs.  It spurted from out of
the cliff face and drained into a small circular rock pool.

On their first visit, it was Lothar who had to be coaxed out of his
clothes, while Centaine, happy to be rid of long skirts and petticoats
which still irked her, delighting in the freedom of nakedness to which
the desert had accustomed her, splashed him with water and teased and
challenged him until at last, almost defiantly, he dropped his breeches
and plunged hurriedly into the pool. You are shameless, he told her,
only half-jokingly.

Shasa's presence placed a restraint upon them, and they touched lightly
and furtively under the concealment of the green waters, driving each
other to trembling distraction, until Lothar could bear it no longer,
and reached for her with that determined set to his jaw that she had
come to know so well.  Then she would evade his clutches with a maidenly
squeal, and leap from the pool, slipping on her skirts over her long wet
gleaming legs and her bottom that glowed pink from the heat of the
water.

Last one home misses his dinner!  It was only after she had laid Shasa
in his cot, and blown out the lantern, that she crept breathlessly
through to Lothar's shelter, He was waiting for her, strung out by all
the touching and teasing and artful withdrawals of the day.  Then they
went at each other in a desperate frenzy, almost as though they were
antagonists locked in mortal combat.

Much later, lying in the darkness in each other's arms, talking very
softly so as not to disturb Shasa, they made their plans and their
promises for a future that stretched before them as though they stood on
the threshold of paradise itself.

It seemed he had been gone only a few days, when in the middle of a
baking afternoon, on a lathered horse, Vark Jan rode back into camp.

He carried a package of letters, sewed up in canvas wrapping and sealed
with tar.  One letter was for Lothar, a single sheet, and he read it at
a glance.

I have the honour to inform you that I have in my possession a document
of amnesty in your favour, signed by both the Attorney-General of the
Cape of Good Hope and the Minister of justice of the Union of South
Africa.

I congratulate you on the success of your endeavours and I look forward
to our meeting at the time and place nominated when I shall take
pleasure in handing the document to you.

Yours truly, Garrick Courtney (Col.) The other letters were both for
Centaine.  One was also from Garry Courtney, welcoming her and Shasa to
the family and assuring them both of all the love and consideration and
privilege that that entailed.

From the most miserable creature, immersed in unbearable grief, you have
transformed me at a stroke into the happiest and most joyful of all
fathers and grandfathers.

I long to embrace you both.

Speed that day, Your affectionate and dutiful father-in-law, Garrick
Courtney The third letter, many times thicker than the other two
combined, was in Anna Stok's clumsy, semi-literate scrawl.  Her face
flushed with excitement, alternately laughing aloud with joy or her eyes
sparkling with tears, Centaine read snatches aloud for Lothar's benefit,
and when she had reached the end, she folded both letters carefully.

I long to see them, and yet I am reluctant to let the world intrude upon
our happiness together.  I want to go, and yet I want to stay here for
ever with you.  Is that silly?  Yes, he laughed.  It certainly is.  We
leave at sunset.

They travelled at night to avoid the heat of the desert day.

With Shasa sound asleep in the wagon cot, lulled by the motion of
rolling wheels, Centaine rode stirrup to stirrup with Lothar.  His hair
shone in the moonlight, and the shadows softened the marks of hardship
and suffering on his features, so she found it difficult to take her
eyes from his face.

Each morning before the dawn, they went into laager.

If they were between water-holes, they watered the cattle and the horses
from the bucket before they sought the shade of the wagon awnings to
wait out the heat of the day.

In the late afternoon while the servants packed up the camp and
inspanned for the night's trek, Lothar would ride out to hunt.  At first
Centaine rode with him, for she could not bear to be parted from him for
even an hour.

Then one evening in failing light Lothar made a poor shot and the Mauser
bullet ripped through the belly of a beautiful little springbok.

It ran before the horses with amazing stamina, a tangle of entrails
swinging from the gaping wound.  Even when at last it went down, it
lifted its head to watch Lothar as he dismounted and unsheathed his
hunting knife.  After that Centaine stayed in camp when Lothar went out
for fresh meat.

So Centaine was alone this evening when the wind came suddenly out of
the north, niggling and chill.  Centaine climbed up into the living
wagon to fetch a warm jacket for Shasa.

The interior of the wagon was crammed with gear, packed and ready for
the night's trek.  The carpet bag which contained all the clothing that
Anna had provided, was stowed at the rear and she had to scramble over a
yellow wood chest to reach it.  Her long skirts hampered her, and she
teetered on the top of the chest and put out her hand to steady herself.

Her nearest handhold was the brass handle on the front of Lothar's
travelling bureau which was lashed to the wagon bed.  As she put her
weight on it the handle gave slightly, and the drawer slid open an inch.

He has forgotten to lock it, she thought, I must warn him.  She pushed
the drawer closed and crawled over the chest, reached the stowed carpet
bag, pulled out Shasa's jacket, and was crawling back when her eye fell
again on the drawer of the bureau, and she checked herself sharply and
stared at it.

Temptation was like the prickle of a burr.  Lothar's journal was in that
drawer.

What an awful thing to do, she told herself primly, and yet her hand
went out and touched the brass handle again.

What has he written about me?  She pulled the drawer open slowly and
stared at the thick, leather-covered volume.  Do I really want to know?
She began to close the drawer again, and then capitulated to that
overwhelming temptation.

I'll only read about me, she promised herself.

She crawled quickly to the wagon flap and peered out guiltily.  Swart
Hendrick was bringing up the draught oxen preparatory to inspanning. Has
the master returned yet?  s e called to him.

No, missus, and we have heard no shots.  He will be late tonight.  Call
me if you see him coming, she ordered, and crept back to the bureau.

She squatted beside it with the heavy journal in her lap, and she was
relieved to find it was written almost entirely in Afrikaans with only
occasional passages in German.  She riffled through the pages until she
found the date on which he had rescued her.  The entry was four pages
long, the longest single entry in the entire journal.

Lothar had given a full account of the lion attack and the rescue, of
their return to the wagons while she was unconscious, and a description
of Shasa.  She smiled as she read: A sturdy lad, of the same age as
Manfred when last I saw him, and I find myself much affected.

Still smiling, she scanned the page for a description of herself, and
her eyes stopped at the paragraph: I have no doubt that this is indeed
the woman, though she is changed from the photograph and from my brief
memory of her.  Her hair is thick and fuzzy as that of a Nama girl, her
face thin and brown as a monkey- Centaine gasped with affront -yet when
she opened her eyes for a moment, I thought my heart might crack, they
were so big and soft.

She was slightly mollified and skimmed forward, turning the pages
quickly, listening like a thief for the sound of Lothar's horse.  A word
caught her eye in the neat blocks of teutonic script; Boesmanne.  Her
attention flicked to it.  Bushmen', and her heart tripped, her interest
entirely captivated.

Bushmen harassing the camp during the night.  Hendrick discovered their
spoor near the horse lines and the cattle.  We followed at first light.
A difficult huntThe word jag stopped Centaine's eye.  Hunt?  she
puzzled.  This was a word only applied to the chase, to the killing of
animals, and she raced on.

We came up with the two Bushmen, but they almost gave us the slip by
climbing the cliff with the agility of baboons.

We could not follow and would have lost them, but their curiosity was
too strong, again, just like baboons.  One of them paused at the top of
the cliff and looked down at us.  it was a difficult shot, at extreme
upward deflection and long range The blood drained from Centaine's face.
She could not believe what she was reading, each word reverberated in
her skull as though it were an empty place, cavernous and echoing.

However, I held true and brought the Bushman down.  Then I witnessed a
remarkable incident.  I had no need of a second shot, for the remaining
Bushman fell from the cliff top.  From below it seemed almost as though
he threw himself over the edge.  However, I do not believe that this was
the case, an animal is not capable of suicide.  It is more likely that
in terror and panic, he lost his footing.  Both bodies fell in difficult
positions.  However, I was determined to examine them.  The climb was
awkward and dangerous, but I was in fact, well rewarded for my
endeavours.  The first body, that of a very old man, the one that had
slipped from the cliff, was unremarkable except that he carried a clasp
knife made by "Joseph Rodgers"

of Sheffield on a lanyard about his waist.

Centaine began to shake her head from side to side. No!  she whispered.
No!

This, I believe, must have been stolen from some other traveller.  The
old rogue probably entered our camp in the hope of similar booty.

Centaine saw again little O'wa squatting naked in the sunlight with the
knife in his hands and the tears of pleasure running down his withered
cheeks.

Oh, in the name of mercy, no!  she whimpered, but her eye was drawn
remorselessly on by the orderly ranks of brutal words.

The second body, however, yielded the greater trophy.  It was that of a
woman.  If anything she was more aged than the man, but around her neck
she wore a most unusual decorationThe book slid from Centaine's lap and
she covered her face with both hands.

H'ani!  she cried out in the San tongue.  My old grandmother, my old and
revered grandmother, you came to us.  And he shot you down!  She was
rocking from side to side, humming in her throat, the San attitude of
grief.

Suddenly she hurled herself at the bureau.  She pulled the drawer from
its runners, scattering loose pages of writing-paper and pens and sticks
of wax on the floor of the wagon.

The necklace, she sobbed.  The necklace.  I have to be certain!  She
seized the handle of one of the small lower compartments and tugged at
it.  It was locked.  She snatched the handle of the wagon jack from its
slot in the frame, and with the steel point shattered the lock and
jerked the compartment open.  It contained a silver framed photograph of
a plump blonde woman with a child in her lap and a wad of letters tied
up with a silk ribbon.

She spilled them on to the floor and smashed open the next compartment.
There was a Luger pistol in a wooden holster, and a packet of
am-munition.  She threw them on top of the letters, and at the bottom of
the compartment she found a cigar box.

She lifted the lid.  It contained a bundle wrapped in a patterned
bandanna and as she picked it out with shaking hands, H'ani's necklace
tumbled from the roll of cloth.

She stared at it as though it was a deadly mamba, holding her hands
behind her back and blubbering softly, H'ani - oh, my old grandmother.
She brought her hands to her mouth, and pressed her lips to stop them
quivering.  Then she reached out slowly for the necklace and held it up,
but at the full stretch of her arms.

He murdered you, she whispered, and then gagged as she saw the black
stains of blood still upon the gaudy stones.  He shot you down like an
animal.  She hugged the necklace to her breast, and began to hum and
rock herself again, her eyes tightly closed to dam back her tears.  She
was still sitting like that when she heard the drum of hooves and the
shouts of the servants welcoming Lothar back to the wagons.

She stood up and swayed on her feet as an attack of giddiness seized
her.  Her grief was like an affliction, but then when she heard his
voice, Here, Hendrick, take my horse!  Where is the missus?  her grief
changed shape, and though her hands still shook, her chin lifted and her
eyes burned not with tears but with a consuming rage.

She snatched up the Luger pistol and drew it from its curved wooden
holster.  She snapped back the slide and watched a shiny brass cartridge
feed up into the chamber.

Then she dropped it into the pocket of her skirt and turned to the wagon
flap.

As she jumped down, Lothar was coming towards her, and his face
brightened with pleasure at the sight of her.

Centaine- he paused as he saw her expression.  Centaine, something is
wrong!  She held out the necklace towards him, and it glittered and
twinkled between her shaking fingers.  She could not speak.

His face darkened and his eyes were hard and furious. You have opened my
bureau!  You killed her!

Who?  He was truly puzzled, and then, Oh, the Bushwoman 'H'ani!  I don't
understand.  My little grandmother.  He was alarmed now.  Something is
very wrong, let me - He stepped towards her, but she backed away and
screamed, Keep away, don't touch me!  Don't ever touch me again!  She
reached for the pistol in her skirt.

Centaine, calm yourself.  And then he stopped as he saw the Luger in her
hands.

Are you mad?  He gazed at her in amazement.  Here, give that to me.
Again he stepped forward.

You murderer, you cold-blooded monster, you killed her.  And she held
the pistol double-handed, the necklace entangled with the weapon, the
barrel waving in erratic circles.  You killed my little H'ani.  I hate
you for it!  Centaine!  He put out his hand to take the pistol from her.

There was a flash of gunsmoke and the Luger kicked upwards, flinging
Centaine's hands above her head.  The shot cracked like a trek whip,
numbing her eardrums.

Lothar's body jerked backwards and he spun on his heels.  His long
golden locks flickered like ripe wheat in a high wind as he collapsed on
to his knees, and then toppled on to his face.

Centaine dropped the Lugger and fell back against the side of the wagon,
as Hendrick rushed forward and snatched the Luger out of her hand.

I hate you, she panted at Lothar.  Die, damn you.  Die and go to hell!

Centaine rode with a slack rein, letting her mount choose its own pace
and path.  She had Shasa on her hip with a sling under him to support
his weight.  She held his head in the crook of her arm, and he slept
quietly against her.

The wind had scourged the desert for five days now without cease, and
the driven sands hissed and slithered across the earth's surface like
sea spume across a beach, and the round seed pods of tumbleweed trundled
across the plain like footballs.  The small herds of springbok turned
their backs to its chilling blast and tucked their tails up between
their legs.

Centaine had wound a scarf around her head like a turban, and thrown a
blanket over her shoulders to cover Shasa and herself.  She hunched down
in the saddle and the cold wind tugged at the corners of the blanket and
tang led her horse's long mane.  She slitted her eyes against the gritty
wind, and saw the Finger of God.

It was still far ahead, indistinct through the dun dustladen air, but it
spiked the low sky, even in this haze visible from five miles off.  This
was the reason that Lothar De La Rey had chosen it.  it was unique,
there could be no confusion with any other natural feature.

Centaine pulled up the pony's head and urged him into a trot.  Shasa
whimpered a protest in his sleep at the change of gait, but Centaine
straightened in the saddle, trying to throw off the sorrow and rage that
lay upon her with a weight that threatened to crush her soul.

Slowly the silhouette of the Finger of God hardened against the dusty
yellow sky, a slim pillar of rock, thrusting towards the heavens and
then thickening into a flaring cobra's head, two hundred feet above the
plain.  Staring at it, Centaine was aware of the same superstitious awe
that must have gripped the old Hottentots who named itMukurob.

Then from the base of the great stone monument a dart of light,
reflected off metal, pricked her eyes and she shaded them with the
blanket and peered intently.

Shasa, she whispered.  They are there!  They are waiting for us.  She
urged the weary pony into a canter, and rose in the stirrups.

in the shadow of the stone pillar was parked a motor vehicle, and beside
it a small green cottage tent had been d.  erected There was a camp fire
burning in front of the tent, and a plume of smoke, blue as a heron's
feather, smeared by the wind across the plain.

Centaine whipped the turban from her head and waved it like a banner.
Here!  she screamed.  Hullo!  Here I am!  The two indistinct human
figures rose from beside the fire, staring towards her.

She waved and hulloed, still at full gallop, and one of the figures
broke into a run.  It was a woman, a big woman in long skirts.  She held
them up over her knees, ploughing with desperate haste through the soft
footing.  Her face was bright scarlet with effort and emotion. Anna!
Centaine screamed.

Oh, Anna!  There were tears streaming down that broad red face, and Anna
dropped her skirts and stood with her arms spread wide.

My baby!  she cried, and Centaine flung herself from the saddle and
clutching Shasa to her breast, ran into her embrace.

They were both weeping, holding hard to each other, trying to talk at
once, but incoherently, laughing between the sobs, when Shasa, crushed
between them, let out a protesting howl.

Anna snatched him from her and hugged him. A boy, he's a boy.  Michel.

Centaine sobbed happily.  I named him Michel Shasa.  And Shasa let out a
hoot and grabbed with of hands at t at marvelous face, so big and red as
a fruit ripe for eating.

Michel!  Anna wept as she kissed him.  Shasa, who knew all about
kissing, opened his mouth wide and smeared warm saliva down her chin.

Still carrying Shasa, Anna dragged Centaine by one arm towards the tent
and the camp fire.

A tall, round-shouldered figure came towards them diffidently.  His
thinning sandy-grey hair was swept back from a high scholarly forehead,
and his mild, vaguely myopic eyes were a muddier shade of the Courtney
blue than Michael's had been; his nose, while every bit as large as
General Sean Courtney's, seemed somehow to be ashamed of the fact.

I am Michael's father, he said shyly, and it was like looking at a faded
and smudged photograph of her Michael.  Centaine felt a rush of guilt,
for she had been false to her vows and to Michael's memory.  It was as
though Michael confronted her now.  For an instant she remembered his
twisted body in the cockpit of the burning aircraft, and in grief and
guilt she ran to Garry and threw her arms around his neck.

Papa!  she said, and at that word Garry's reserve collapsed and he
choked and clung to her.

I had given up hope- Garry could not go on, and the sight of his tears
set Anna off again, which was too much for Shasa.  He let out a doleful
wall, and all four of them stood together beneath the Finger of God and
wept.

The wagons seemed to swim towards them through the streaming dust,
rolling and pitching over the uneven ground, and as they waited for them
to come up, Anna murmured, We must be eternally grateful to this man-She
sat in the back seat of the Fiat tourer with Shasa on her lap and
Centaine beside her.

He will be well paid.  Garry stood with one booted foot on the
running-board of the Fiat.  In his hand he held a rolled document,
secured with a red ribbon.  He tapped the roll against his artificial
leg.

Whatever you pay him will not be enough, Anna affirmed, and hugged
Shasa.

He is an outlaw and a renegade, Garry scowled.  It goes very much
against the grain- Please give him what we owe him, Papa, Centaine said
softly, then let him go.  I don't want ever to see him again.  The
small, half-naked Nama boy leading the ox-team whistled them to a halt,
and Lothar De La Rey climbed down slowly from the wagon seat, wincing at
the effort.

When he reached the ground, he paused for a moment, steadying himself
with his free hand against the wagon body.  His other arm was in a sling
across his chest.  His face was a yellowish putty colour beneath the
smoothly tanned skin.  His eyes were darkly underscored, the lines of
suffering at the corners of his mouth accentuated, and a dense stubble
of pale beard covered his jaws and sparkled even in the poor light.

He has been hurt, Anna murmured.  What happened to him?  And beside her
Centaine silently turned her head away.

Lothar braced himself and went to meet Garry.  Halfway between the Fiat
and the wagon they shook hands briefly, Lothar awkwardly offering his
uninjured left hand.

They spoke in low tones that did not reach to where Centaine sat.  Garry
offered him the roll of parchment, and Lothar loosened theribbon with
his teeth and spread the sheet against his thigh, holding it with his
one good hand as he stooped to read it.

After a minute he straightened and let the parchment spring back into a
roll.  He nodded at Garry and said something.  His face was
expressionless, and Garry shuffled selfconsciously and made an uncertain
gesture, halfoffering another handshake and then thinking better of it,
for Lothar was not looking at him.

He was staring at Centaine, and now he pushed past Garry and started
slowly towards her.  Immediately Centaine snatched Shasa off Anna's lap
and crouched in the furthest corner of the seat, glaring at him, holding
Shasa away from him protectively.  Lothar stopped, lifted his good hand
towards her in a small gesture of appeal, but let it drop to his side
when her expression did not change.

Puzzled, Garry glanced from one to the other of them.

Can we go, Papa?  Centaine spoke in a clear sharp voice.

Of course, my dear.  Garry hurried to the front of the Fiat and stooped
to the crank handle.  As the engine fired, he ran round to the driver's
seat and adjusted the ignition lever.

Is there nothing you wish to say to the man?  he asked, and when she
shook her head, he clambered up behind the wheel and the Fiat jerked
forward.

Centaine looked back only once, after they had bumped over a mile of the
sandy track.  Lothar De La Rey still stood below the towering monument
of rock, a tiny lonely figure in the desert, and he stared after them.

The green hills of Zululand were so utterly different from the
desolation of the Kalahari or the monstrous dunes of the Namib, that
Centaine had difficulty believing that she was on the same continent.
But then, she remembered, they were on the opposite side of Africa, a
thousand miles and more from the Finger of God.

Garry Courtney stopped the Fiat on the crest of the steep escarpment
high above the Baboonstroom river and switched off the engine and helped
both women down.

He took Shasa from Centaine and led them to the edge.

There, he pointed.  That's Theuniskraal where both Sean and I, and then
Michael, were all born.  It stood at the foot of the slope, surrounded
by rambling gardens.  Even from this distance Centaine could see that
the gardens were unkempt and overgrown as tropical jungle.  Tall palms
and flowering spathodea trees were hung with untrammelled mantles of
purple bougainvillaea creepers, and the ornamental fish ponds were
poisonous green with algae growth.

of course the house was rebuilt after the fire, Garry hesitated, and a
shadow passed behind his muddy blue eyes, for in that fire Michael's
mother had died, then he hurried on.  I've added to it over the years.
Centaine smiled, for the house reminded her of a haphazard old woman who
had thrown on garments of a dozen different fashions, none of which
suited her.  Grecian columns and Georgian red brick glared sullenly at
the white painted curlicue gables in the Cape Dutch style.

The twisted barley sugar chimney-pots huddled in uneasy alliance with
crenellated buttresses and towers of stonework.  Beyond it, stretching
to the horizon, were waving fields of green sugar cane that moved in the
light wind like the surface of a summer sea.

And over there is Lion Kop.  Garry turned to point to the west, where
the escarpment made a stately sweep, forming a heavily forested
amphitheatre around the town of Ladyburg.  That's Sean's land, all of it
from my boundary.  There!

Right as far as you can see.  Between us, we own the whole escarpment.
That's the homestead of Lion Kop, you can just make out the roof through
the trees."It's so beautiful, Centaine breathed.  Oh look, there are
mountains beyond, with snow on the peaksrThe Drakensberg Mountains, a
hundred miles away."And that?  Centaine pointed over the roofs of the
town, over the complex of sugar refinery and lumber mills, to an elegant
white mansion on the slope of the valley.  is that Courtney land also?
Yes.  Garry's expression changed.  Dirk Courtney, Sean's son.  I didn't
know that General Courtney had a son."Sometimes he wishes he did not,
Garry murmured, and then briskly, before she could pursue it, Come along
everybody, it's almost lunchtime, and if we are in luck and the postman
has delivered my cable, the servants will be expecting us.  How many
gardeners do you keep, Mijnheer?  Anna asked, as the Fiat puttered up
Theuniskraal's long twisting driveway, and Anna surveyed the confusion
of vegetation with a disapproving frown. Four, I think, or maybe five.
Well, Mijnheer, you are not getting your money's worth, Anna told him
severely, and Centaine smiled at the certainty that from now on the
unsuspecting bevy of gardeners would be earning every sou.  of their
wages.  Then her attention was diverted.

Oh, look!  She stood up impulsively and gripped the front seat, holding
on to her hat with the other hand.  On the far side of the white-painted
fence that ran beside the driveway, a troop of yearlings took mock alarm
at the clattering Fiat and fled across the lush green kikuyu grass
paddock, manes streaming, hooves flying and glossy hides flashing in the
sunlight.

One of your duties, my dear, will be to see that the horses are kept in
exercise.  Garry twisted round in the driver's seat to smile at her. And
we will have to pick out a pony for young Michel here."He is not yet two
years old, Anna intervened. Never too young, Mevrou.  Garry transferred
the smile to her, and it changed to a lascivious leer.  Or too old!
Although her frown stayed firmly in place, Anna could not prevent the
softening of her eyes before she turned her face away from him. Ah,
good! The servants are expecting us after alP Garry exclaimed, and
braked the Fiat to a halt before the double teak front doors.  The
servants stepped forward in order of seniority to be introduced,
beginning with the Zulu chef in his tall white hat and ending with the
grooms and the gardeners and stable boys, all of them clapping their
hands respectfully and beaming with white teeth so that Shasa leaped in
Centaine's arms and let out an excited shout. Ah, Bayete, the chef
laughed, as he gave Shasa the royal salute, all hail, little chieftain,
and may you grow as strong and straight as your father!  They went into
Theuniskraal, and Garry led them proudly through the cavernous rooms in
their genteel disarray. Though Anna ran her finger over every object
that came in range and scowled at the dust that came off on it, yet from
the long baronial dinning-room with hunting trophies decorating the
walls to the library with more expensive but dusty volumes stacked on
the desk and the floor than on the shelves, the homestead of
Theuniskraal possessed a benign and friendly atmosphere.

Centaine felt at home almost immediately. Oh, it will be so good to have
young people here again, and pretty girls, and a small boy.  Garry put
it into words, The old place so needs livening up."And a little cleaning
up won't hurt it either, growled Anna, but Garry was dashing up the
central stair case, sprightly as a lad with excitement.

Come along, let me show you your rooms The room Garry had selected for
Anna was beside his own suite, and although the significance of this was
lost on Centaine, Anna lowered her eyes and looked like a demure bulldog
as she noticed that a discreet door connected with Garry's
dressing-room. This will be your room, my dear.  Garry led Centaine
along the upper gallery and ushered her into a huge sunny room with
french doors opening on to a wide terrace that overlooked the gardens.
It's lovely.  Centaine clapped her hands with delight and ran out on to
the terrace. Of course it needs redecorating, but you must choose your
own colours and carpets and curtains, now, come alon, let's look at
young Michel's room.

As Garry opened the door across the gallery facing Centaine's room, his
mood changed dramatically, and as she stepped into the room, Centaine
realized the reason.

Michael's presence was everywhere.  From the framed photographs on the
walls he smiled down at her; Michael in rugby football togs standing
arms folded across his chest with fourteen other grinning young men,
Michael in white cricket flannels with bat in hand, Michael with a
shotgun and a brace of pheasant, and the shock drained the blood from
Centaine's face. I thought it would be appropriate for Michel to have
his father's room, Garry murmured apologetically.  Of course, my dear,
if you don't agree, there are fifteen other rooms to choose from. Slowly
Centaine looked around her at the shotguns in their racks, and the
fishing-rods and cricket-bats standing in the corner, at the books on
the shelves above the writing-desk, at the oilskins and tweed jackets
hanging from their pegs.

yes, she nodded.  This will be Shasa's room, and we'll keep it just as
it is.

Oh, good!  Garry nodded happily.  I'm so glad you agree.

And he bustled out into the gallery, shouting orders at the servants in
Zulu.

Centaine moved slowly around the room, touching the bed on which Michael
had slept, stopping to press a fold of the rough tweed jacket against
her cheek and imagining she could smell that special clean odour of his
body upon the cloth, moving on to his desk and tracing with her
fingertips his initials MC carved in the oaken top, lifting down a copy
of Jock of the Bushveld from the shelf and opening it at the fly leaf:
This book was stolen from Michael Courtney.  She closed the book and
turned back to the door.

There was a mild commotion in the passageway, and bustled back directing
two of the Zulu servants Garry who were staggering under the weight of a
child's cot.  Its high sliding sides and massive mahogany construction
would have caged a full-grown lion.

This was Michael's, I think it should hold his son, what do you think,
my dear?  Before Centaine could answer, the telephone rang demandingly
in the hall downstairs.

Show them where to put it, my dear, Garry called as he dashed out again.
He was gone for almost half an hour, and Centaine heard the telephone
jangling at irregular intervals.  When Garry came rushing in again, he
was bubbling over.

Damned telephone just won't stop.  Everybody wants to meet you, my dear.
You are a very famous lady.

Another ruddy journalist wants to interview you-'I hope you told them
"no", Papa.  It seemed that in the last two months every journalist in
the Union had requested an interview.  The story of the lost girl
rescued from the African wilds with her infant had, for the moment,
captivated the fickle interest of every newspaper editor from
Johannesburg and Sydney to London and New York.

I sent him packing, Garry assured her.  But there is someone else very
eager to see you again.  Who is it?  My brother, General Courtney, he
and his wife have come up from their home in Durban to their other home
in Lion Kop.  They want us to go across to have luncheon and spend the
day with them tomorrow.  I accepted on your behalf.  I hope I did the
right thing?  Oh, yes, oh, indeed yes!

Anna refused to accompany them to the luncheon at Lion Kop.

There is too much that needs doing here!  she declared.

The servants of Theuniskraal had already given her the name Checha'-
Hurry Up!  the first word of the Zulu language Anna had learned, and all
of them had conceived for her a wary and growing respect.

So Garry and Centaine drove up the escarpment with Shasa on the seat
between them and as they pulled up before the sprawling homestead of
Lion Kop with its lovely thatched roof, the familiar burly, bearded
figure came limping swiftly down the front stairs to take both of
Centaine's hands in his.

It's like having you back from the dead, Sean Courtney said softly.
Words cannot express what I feel.  Then he turned to take Shasa from
Garry's arms.  So this is Michael's son!  Shasa crowed with delight,
grabbed a double handful of the general's beard and attempted to pull it
out by the roots.

Ruth Courtney, Sean's wife, in that period of her life beyond forty
years of age and below fifty when a magnificent woman reaches the zenith
of her beauty and elegance, kissed Centaine's cheek and told her gently,
Michael was a very special person to us, and you will take his place in
our hearts.  Waiting behind her was a young woman, and Centaine
recognized her immediately from the framed photograph that the general
had kept with him in France.  Storm Courtney was even more beautiful
than her photograph, with a skin like a rose petal and her mother's
glowing Jewish eyes, but there was a pout to her lovely mouth and the
petulant expression of a child indulged to the highest degree of
discontent.  She greeted Centaine in French.

Comment vas-tu, cherie?  Her accent was atrocious.

They looked into each other's eyes and their dislike was strong, mutual
and clearly acknowledged by both of them.

Beside Storm was a tall, slim young man with a serious mien and gentle
eyes.  Mark Anders was the general's private secretary, and Centaine
liked him as instinctively as she had disliked the girl.

General Sean Courtney took Centaine on one arm and his wife on the other
and led them into the homestead of Lion Kop.

Though the two houses were separated by only a few miles, they could
have been worlds apart.  The yellow wood floor of Lion Kop gleamed with
wax, the paintings were in light cheerful colours, Centaine recognized a
whimsical Tahitian scene by Paul Gauguin, and everywhere there were
great bowls of fresh flowers.

If you'll excuse Garry and myself for a few minutes, ladies, we'll leave
young Mark here to entertain you.

Sean led his brother away to his study while his secretary poured each
of the ladies a cordial.

I was in France with the general, Mark told Centaine, as he brought her
glass to her, and I know your village of Mort Homme quite well.  We were
billeted there while waiting to go up the line.  Oh, how wonderful to
have a memory of my home!  Centaine cried, and impulsively touched his
arm, and from across the drawing-room Storm Courtney, who was curled
with an elaborately languid air on the silk-covered sofa, shot Centaine
a look of such undiluted venom as to make her exult silently.

Alors, cherie!  So that is the way it is!  And she turned back to Mark
Anders and looked up into his eyes and exaggerated her throaty French
accent.

Do you perhaps recall the chAteau, beyond the church to the north of the
village?  she asked, making the question sound like an invitation to
forbidden delights, but Ruth Courtney intuitively caught the whiff of
gunpowder in the air and intervened smoothly.

Now, Centaine, come and sit by me, she ordered.  I want to hear all
about your incredible adventures.  So Centaine repeated, for the
fiftieth time since her rescue, her carefully edited version of the
torpedoing and her subsequent wanderings in the desert.

Extraordinary!  Mark Anders interjected at one stage. I have often
admired the Bushman paintings in the caves of the Drakensberg;
Mountains, some of them are really quite beautiful, but I did not
realize that there were still wild Bushmen in existence.  They were
hunted out of these mountains sixty years ago, dangerous and treacherous
little blighters by all accounts, and I understood that they had all
been exterminated.  on the silk sofa Storm Courtney shuddered
theatrically.  I just can't think how you could bear to let one of those
little yellow monsters touch you, cherie.  I know I would have simply
expired!  Bien ser, cherie, and you would not have enjoyed eating live
lizards and locusts either?  Centaine asked sweetly, and Storm paled.

Sean Courtney stumped back into the drawing-room and interrupted them.
Well, now, it's good to see how already you are one of the family,
Centaine.  I know that you and Storm are going to be great chums, what?
Indubitably, Pater, Storm murmured and Centaine laughed.

She is so sweet, your Storm, I love her already.  Centaine chose.

unerringly the one adjective sweet that brought forth a blooming of
furious roses in Storm's perfect cheeks.

Good!  Good!  Is the lunch ready, my love?  and Ruth rose to take Sean's
arm and lead them all out on to the patio where the table was set under
a canopy of jacaranda.

The very air seemed coloured purple and green by the sunlight through
the blossom-laden boughs, and they might have been in an underwater
grotto.

The Zulu servants, who had been hovering expectantly, at a nod from Sean
bore Shasa away like a prince to the kitchens.  His pleasure in their
smiling black faces was as obvious as their delight in him.

They'll spoil him, if you let them, Ruth warned Centaine.  Only one
thing a Zulu loves better than his cattle, and that's a boy child.  Now,
will you sit next to the general, my dear?  During the luncheon Sean
made Centaine the complete centre of attention, while Storm tried to
look aloof and bored at the end of the table.

Now, my dear, I want to hear all about it.  Oh God, Pater, we've just
been over it all.  Storm rolled her eyes.

Language, girl, Sean warned her, and then to Centaine, Begin on the last
day I saw you, and don't leave anything out, do you hear?  Not a single
thing!  Throughout the meal Garry was withdrawn and silent, in contrast
to his ebullient mood of the last weeks, and after the coffee he stood
up quickly when Sean said, Well, everybody, you must excuse us for a few
minutes.  Garry and I are taking Centaine off for a little chat.  The
general's study was panelled in mahogany, the books on the shelves were
bound in maroon calf, while the chairs were upholstered in buttoned
brown leather.

There were oriental carpets on the floor and an exquisite little bronze
by Anton Van Wouw on the corner of his desk, ironically a sculpture of a
Bushman hunter with his bow in his hand, peering out across the desert
plains from under his other hand.  It reminded Centaine so vividly of
O'wa that she drew breath sharply.

With his cigar Sean waved her into the wingback chair facing his desk,
and it seemed to dwarf her.  Garry took another chair to the side.

I've spoken to Garry, Sean opened, without preliminaries.  I've told him
the circumstances of Michael's death, before the wedding.  He sat down
behind his desk and turned his own gold wedding ring on his finger
thoughtfully.

We all of us here know that in every sense but the legal one, Michael
was your husband, and the natural father of Michel.  However,
technically Michel is, he hesitated, Michel is illegitimate.  In the
eyes of the law, he is a bastard.  The word shocked Centaine.  She
stared at Sean through the rising wreaths of cigar smoke while the
silence drew out.

We can't have that, Garry broke it.  He's my grandson.

We can't have that.

No, Sean agreed.  We can't have that.  With your consent, my dear,
Garry's voice was almost a whisper, I should like to adopt the lad.
Centaine turned her head towards him slowly, and he hurried on, It would
only be a formality, a legal device to ensure his status in the world.
It could be done most discreetly, and it would in no way affect the
relationship between you.  You would still be his mother and have
custody of him, while I would be honoured to become his guardian and do
for him all the things that his father cannot.  Centaine winced, and
Garry blurted, Forgive me, my dear, but we have to talk about it.  As
Sean has said, we all accept that you are Michael's widow, we would want
you to use the family name and we would all treat you as though the
ceremony had taken place that day, he broke off, and coughed throatily.
Nobody would ever know, except the three of us in this room, and Anna.
Would you give your consent, for the child's sake?  Centaine stood up
and crossed to where Garry sat.

She sank on to her knees before him and placed her head in his lap.

Thank you, she whispered.  You are the kindest man I know.  You have
truly taken the place of my own father now.

The months that followed were the most contented that Centaine had ever
known, secure and sunny and rewarding, filled with the sound of Shasa's
laughter, and with the benign if diffident presence of Garry Courtney
always in the background and the more substantial figure of Anna in the
foreground.

Centaine rode every morning before breakfast and again in the cool of
the evening, and often Garry accompanied her, regaling her with tales of
Michael's childhood or relating the family history as they climbed the
forested tracks along the escarpment or paused to water the horses at
the pool below the falls of the river where the spray and white water
fell a hundred feet over wet black rock.

The rest of the day was spent in choosing curtaining and wallpaper, and
supervising the artisans who were redecorating the house, consulting
with Anna on the restructuring of Theuniskraal's domestic arrangements,
romping with Shasa and trying to prevent the Zulu servants from spoiling
him utterly, taking instruction from Garry Courtney in the subtle art of
steering and driving the big Fiat tourer, in pondering the printed
invitations that arrived with every day's mail, and generally taking
over the management and running of Theuniskraal as she had that of the
chateau at Mort Homme.

Every afternoon she and Shasa took tea with Garry in the library where
he had been ensconced for most of the day, and with his gold-rimmed
spectacles on the end of his nose he would read aloud to her his day's
writings.

Oh, it must be wonderful to have such a gift!  she exclaimed, and he
lowered the sheaf of manuscript. You admire those of us that write2 he
asked. You are a breed apart.  Nonsense, my dear, we are very ordinary
people except that we are vain enough to believe that other people might
want to read what we have to say.  I wish I could write.  You can, your
penmanship is excellent."I mean really Write."You can.  Help yourself to
paper and get on with it.  If that's what you want.  But, she stared at
him aghast, what could I write about?  Write about what happened to you
out there in the desert.  That would do very well for a beginning, I
should say.  it took three days for her to accustom herself to the idea,
and brace herself to the effort.  Then she had the servants move a table
into the gazebo at the end of the lawns and sat down at it with a pencil
in her hand, a pile of Garry's blank paper in front of her and terror in
her heart.  She experienced that same terror each day thereafter when
she drew the first blank sheet of paper towards her, but it passed
swiftly as the ranks of words began to march down across the emptiness.

She moved pleasant and familiar things into the gazebo to alleviate the
loneliness of creative endeavour a pretty rug for the tiled floor, a
Delft vase on the table-top which Anna filled with fresh flowers each
day, and in front of her she placed O'wa's clasp knife.  She used it to
resharpen her pencils.

At her right hand she placed a velvet-lined jewelbox and in it she laid
H'ani's necklace.  Whenever she lacked inspiration, she threw down her
pencil and took up the necklace.  She rubbed the bright stones between
her fingets like Greek worry beads and their smooth touch seemed to calm
her and recharge her determination.

Every afternoon from the end of lunch until it was time to take tea with
Garry in the library, she wrote at the table in the gazebo, and Shasa
slept in the cot beside her or climbed over her feet.

it did not take many days for Centaine to realize that she could never
show what she was putting on to the paper to another living soul.  She
found that she could hold nothing back, that she was writing with a
brutal candour that admitted no reserve or equivocation.

Whether it was the details of her lovemaking with Michael, or the
description of the taste of rotten fish in her mouth as she lay dying
beside the Atlantic, she knew that nobody could read them without being
shocked and horrified.

It's for myself alone, she decided.  At the end of each session when she
laid the handwritten sheets on the jewelbox on top of H'ani's necklace,
she was suffused with a sense of satisfaction and worthwhile
achievement.

There were, however, a few jarring notes in this symphony of
contentment.

Sometimes in the night she would rise to the surface of consciousness
and reach instinctively for the lithe golden body that should have been
beside hers, longing for the feel of hard smooth muscle and the touch of
long silky hair that smelled like the sweet grasses of the desert.

Then she would come fully awake and lie in the darkness hating herself
for her treacherous longings and burning with shame that she had so
debased the memory of Michael and O'wa and little H'ani.

On another morning Garry Courtney sent for her and, when she was seated,
handed her a package.

This came with a covering note to me.  It's from a lawyer in Paris. What
does it say, Papa?  My French is awful, I'm afraid, but the gist of the
matter is that your father's estates at Mort Homme have been sold to
defray his debts."Oh, poor Papa.  They had presumed that you were dead,
my dear, and the sale was ordered by a French court.  I understand The
lawyer read of your rescue in a Parisian paper, and has written to me
explaining the situation.  Unfortunately the Comte de Thiry's debts were
considerable, and as you are too well aware, the chateau and its
contents were destroyed in the fire.  The lawyer has set out an
accounting, and after all the debts were paid and the legal expenses
including this fellow's not inconsiderable fees, were deducted, there is
very little that remains to you.  Centaine's healthy acquisitive
instincts were aroused. How much, Papa?  she asked sharply.

A little less than 2,000 sterling, I'm afraid.  He will send a bank
draft when we return the acknowledgement to him duly signed and
attested.  Fortunately I am a commissioner of oaths, so we can do the
business privately.  When the draft finally arrived, Centaine deposited
the most part with the Ladyburg Bank at 3,- percent interest, indulging
only her new passion for speed.  She used 120 pounds to buy herself a T
model Ford, resplendent in brass and glistening black paintwork, and
when for the first time she tore up the driveway of Theuniskraal at
thirty miles per hour, the entire household turned out to admire the
machine.  Even Garry Courtney hurried from the library, his gold-rimmed
spectacles pushed up on top of his head, and it was the first time he
ever chided her.

You must consult me, my dear, before you do these things, I will not
have you squandering your own savings.  I am your provider, and besides
which- he looked lugubrious -I was looking forward to buying you a
motor-car for your next birthday.  You have gone and spoiled my plans
Oh, Papa, do forgive me.  You have given us so much already, and we love
you for it.  It was true.  She had come to love this gentle person in
many ways as she had loved her own father, but in some ways even more
strongly, for her feelings towards him were bolstered by growing respect
for and awareness of his unvaunted talents and his hidden qualities, his
deep humanity and his fortitude in the face of a fate that had deprived
him of a limb, a wife and a son, and had withheld from him until this
late hour a loving family.

He treated her like- the mistress of his household, and this evening he
was discussing the guest-list for the dinner-party they were planning.

I must warn you about this fellow Robinson.  I gave myself pause before
inviting him, I'll tell you!  Her mind had been on these other things,
however, not on the invitation list, and she started.

I am so sorry, Papa, she apologized, I did not hear what you were
saying.  I am afraid I was dreaming.  Dear me, Garry smiled at her.  I
thought I was the only dreamer in the family.  I was warning you about
our guest of honour.  Garry liked to entertain twice a month, not more
often, and there were always ten dinner guests, never more.

I like to hear what everybody has to say, he explained. Hate to miss a
good story at the end of the table.  He had a discerning palate and had
accumulated one of the finest cellars in the country.  He had stolen his
Zulu chef from the Country Club in Durban, so his invitations were
sought after even though acceptance usually involved a train journey and
an overnight stay at Theuniskraal.

This fellow Joseph Robinson may have a baronetcy, which in many cases is
the mark of an unprincipled scoundrel too cunning to have been caught
out, he may have more money than even old Cecil John ever accumulated -
the Robinson Deep and Robinson Goldmine belong to him, as does the
Robinson Bank, but he is as mean as any man I've ever met.  He'll spend
$10,000 on a painting and grudge a starving man a penny.  He is also a
bully and the greediest most heartless man I've ever met.  When the
prime minister first tried to get a peerage for him, there was such an
outcry that he had to drop the idea."If he is so awful, why do we invite
him, papa?  Garry sighed theatrically.  A price I have to pay for my
art, my dear.  I am going to try to prise from the fellow a few facts
that I need for my new book.  He is the only living person who can give
them to me."Do you want me to charm him for you?  Oh no, no!  We don't
have to go that far, but you could wear a pretty dress, I suppose.
Centaine chose the yellow taffeta with the embroidered seed-pearl bodice
that exposed her shoulders, still lightly tanned by the desert sun.  As
always, Anna was there to prepare her hair and help her dress for the
dinner.

Centaine came through from her private bathroom, which was one of the
great luxuries of her new life, with a bathrobe wrapped around her
still-damp body and a hand towel around her head.  She left wet
footprints on the yellow wood floor as she crossed to her
dressing-table.

Anna, who was seated on the bed restitching the hook and eye on the back
of the yellow dress, bit off the thread, spat it out and mumbled, I have
let it out three full centimetres.  Too many of these fancy
dinner-parties, young lady.  She laid out the dress with care and came
to stand behind Centaine.

I do wish you would sit down to dinner with us, Centaine grumbled.  You
aren't a servant here.  Centaine would have had to be blind not to have
realized the relationship that was flourishing between Garry and Anna.
So far, however, she had not found an opportunity of discussing it,
though she longed to share Anna's joy, if only vicariously.

Anna seized the silver-backed brush and attacked Centaine's hair with
long powerful strokes which jerked her head backwards.

You want me to waste my time listening to a lot of fancy folk hissing
away like a gaggle of geese?  She imitated the sibilance of the English
tongue so cleverly that Centaine giggled delightedly.  No, thank you, I
can't understand a word of that clever chatter and old Anna is a lot
happier and more useful in the kitchen keeping an eye on those grinning
black rogues.  Papa Garry so wants you to join the company, he's spoken
to me ever so often.  I think he is becoming so fond of you.  Anna
pursed her lipsand snorted.  That's enough of that nonsense, young lady,
she said firmly, as she set down the brush and arranged the fine yellow
net over Centaine's hair, capturing its springing curls in the spangled
mesh set with yellow sequins.  Pas mal!  She stood back and nodded
critical approval.  Now for the dress.  She went to fetch it from the
bed, while Centaine stood up and slipped the bathrobe from her
shoulders.  She let it fall to the floor and stood naked before the
mirror.

The scar on your leg is healing well, but you are still so brown, Anna
lamented, and then broke off and stood with the yellow dress
half-extended, frowning thoughtfully, staring at Centaine.

Centaine" Her voice was sharp.  When did you last see your moon?  she
demanded, and Centaine stooped and snatched up the fallen robe, covering
herself with it defensively.

I was sick, Anna.  The blow on my head, and the infection.  How long
since your last moon?  Anna was remorseless.

You don't understand, I was sick.  Don't you remember when I had
pneumonia I also missed- Not since the desert!  Anna answered her own
question.  Not since you came out of the desert with that German, that
cross-breed German Afrikaner.  She threw the dress on to the bed and
pulled the covering robe away from Centaine's body.

No Anna, I was sick.  Centaine was trembling.  Up to that minute she had
truly closed her mind against the awful possibility that Anna now
presented.

Anna placed her big callused hand on Centaine's belly, and she cringed
from the touch.

I never trusted him, with his cat's eyes and yellow hair and that great
bulge in his breeches, Anna muttered furiously.  Now I understand why
you would not speak to him when we left, why you treated him like an
enemy, not a saviour.  Anna, I have missed before.  It could be- He
raped you, my poor child!  He violated you!  You could not help it. That
is how it happened?  Centaine recognized the escape that Anna was
offering her, and she yearned to take it.

He forced you, my baby, didn't he?  Tell Anna.  No, Anna.  He did not
force me.  You allowed him, you let him?  Anna's expression was
formidable.

I was so lonely.  Centaine sank down on to the stool and covered her
face with her hands.  I had not seen another white person for almost two
years, and he was so kind and beautiful, and I owed him my life.  Don't
you understand, Anna?  Please say you understand!  Anna enfolded her in
those thick powerful arms, and Centaine pressed her face into her soft
warm bosom.  Both of them were silent, shaken and afraid.

You cannot have it, Anna said at last.  We will have to get rid of it.
The shock of her words racked Centaine, so she trembled afresh and tried
to hide from the dreadful thought.

We cannot bring another bastard to Theuniskraal, they would not stand
for it.  The shame would be too much.

They have taken one, but Mijnheer and the general could not take
another.  For the sake of all of us, Michael's family and Shasa, for
yourself, for all those whom I love, there is no choice in the matter.
You must get rid of it."Anna, I can't do that. Do you love this man who
put it in your belly?  Not now.  Not any more.  I hate him, she
whispered. Oh God, how I hate him!

Then get rid of his brat before it destroys you and Shasa and all of us.

The dinner was a nightmare.  Centaine sat at the bottom of the long
table and smiled briefly, though her eyes burned with shame and the
bastard in her belly felt like an adder, coiled and ready to strike.

The tall elderly man beside her droned on in a particularly rasping and
irritating tone, directing his monologue almost exclusively at Centaine.
His bald head had been turned by the sun to the colour of a plover's
egg, but his eyes were strangely lifeless, like those of a marble
statue.

Centaine could not concentrate on what he was saying, and it became
unintelligible as though he were speaking an unknown language.  Her mind
wandered off to pluck and worry at this new threat that had loomed up
suddenly, a threat to her entire existence and that of her son.

She knew that Anna was right.  Neither the general nor Garry Courtney
could allow another bastard into Theuniskraal.  Even if they were able
to condone what she had done, and it was beyond reason or hope that they
could, even then they could not allow her to bring disgrace and scandal
not only upon Michael's memory, but upon the entire family.  It was not
possible, Anna's way was the only escape open to her.

She jumped in her seat and almost screamed aloud.

Below the level of the dinner-table, the man beside her had placed his
hand upon her thigh.

Excuse me, Papa.  She pushed back her chair hurriedly, and Garry looked
down the length of the table with concern.  I must go through for a
moment, and she fled into the kitchen.

Anna saw her distress and ran to meet her, then led her into the pantry.
She locked the door behind them.

Hold me, please Anna, I am so confused and afraid and that awful man -
she shuddered.

Anna's arms quieted her, and after a while she whispered, You are right,
Anna.  We must get rid of it We will talk about it tomorrow, Anna told
her gently. Now bathe your eyes with cold water and go back to the
dining-room before you make a scene.  Centaine's rebuff had served its
purpose, and the tall, bald-headed mining magnate did not even glance at
her when she came back to her seat beside him.  He was addressing the
woman on his other hand, but the rest of the company was listening to
him with the attention due to one of the richest men in the world.

Those were the days, he was saying.  The country was wide open, a
fortune under every stone, by gad.  Barnato started with a box of cigars
to trade, bloody awful cigars too, and when Rhodes bought him out he
gave him a cheque for $3,000,000, the largest cheque ever issued up to
that time, though I can tell you I myself have written a few bigger
since thenAnd how did you start, Sir Joseph?  Five pounds in my pocket
and a nose to sniff out a real diamond from a schlenter, that's how I
got my start."And how do you do that, Sir Joseph?  How do you tell a
real diamond?  The quickest way is to dip it into a glass of water, my
dear.  If it comes out wet, it's a schlenter.  If it comes out dry, it's
a diamond.  The words passed Centaine without seeming to leave any
impression, for she was so preoccupied, and Garry was signalling her
from the head of the table that it was time to take the ladies through.

However, Robinson's words must have made a mark deep in her
subconscious, for the next afternoon as she sat in the gazebo staring
unseeingly out across the sundrenched lawns, fiddling miserably with
H'ani's necklace, rubbing the stones between her fingers, almost without
conscious t ught she suddenly leaned over the table and from the crystal
carafe poured a tumbler full of spring water.

Then she lifted the necklace over the tumbler and slowly lowered it into
the water.  After a few seconds she lifted it out and studied it
distractedly.  The coloured stones glistened with water, and then
suddenly her heart began to race.  The white stone, the huge crystal in
the centre of the necklace, was dry.

She dropped the necklace back into the water and pulled it out again.
Her hand began to shake.  Like the breast of a swan, shining white, the
stone had shed even the tiniest droplets, although it glistened more
luminously than the wet stones that surrounded it.

Guiltily she looked around her, but Shasa slept on his back with a thumb
deep in his mouth and the lawns were deserted in the noonday heat.  For
the third time she lowered the necklace into the glass and when the
white stone came out dry once again, she whispered softly, H'ani, my
beloved old grandmother, will you save us again?  It is possible that
you are still watching over me?

Centaine could not consult the Courtney family doctor in Ladyburg, so
she and Anna planned a journey to the capital town of the province of
Natal, the sea port of Durban.  The pretext for the journey was the
perennial feminine favourite, shopping to be done.

They had hoped to get away from Theuniskraal on their own, but Garry
would not hear of it.

Leave me behind, forsooth!  You've been on at me, both of you, about a
new suit.  Well, it's a fine excuse for me to visit my tailor, and while
I'm about it I might even pick up a pair of bonnets or some other litt e
gewgaws for two ladies of my acquaintance.  So it was a full-scale
family expedition, with Shasa and his two Zulu nannies, with both the
Fiat and the Ford needed to convey them all down the winding dusty
hundred and fifty miles of road to the coast.  They descended on the
Majestic Hotel on the beach front of the Indian Ocean, and Garry took
the two front suites.

It needed all the ingenuity of both Anna and Centaine to evade him for a
few hours, but they managed it.  Anna had made discreet enquiries and
had the name of a doctor with consulting-rooms in Point Road.  They
visited him under assumed names, and he confirmed what they had both
known to be true.

My niece has been a widow for two years, Anna explained delicately.  She
cannot afford scandal.  I'm sorry, madam.

There is nothing I can do to help you, the doctor replied primly, but
when Centaine paid him his guinea, hu murmured, I will give you a
receipt. And he scribbled on the slip of paper a name and an address.

In the street Anna took her arm.  We have -an hour before Miinheer
expects us back at the hotel.  We will go to make the arrangements.

No, Anna, Centaine stopped.  I have to think about this.  I want to be
alone for a while There is nothing to think about, said Anna gruffly.

Leave me, Anna, I will be back long before dinner.

We will go tomorrow.  Anna knew that tone and that expression.  She
threw up her hands and climbed into the waiting rickshaw.

As the Zulu runner bore her off in the high two-wheeled carriage, she
called, Think all you like, child, but tomorrow we do it my way.
Centaine waved and smiled until the rickshaw turned into West Street,
then she spun round and hurried back towards the harbour.

She had noticed a shop when they passed it earlier: m.

NA11300.  JEWELLER.

The interior was small, but clean and neat, with inexpensive jewellery
set out in glass-topped display cabinets.

The moment she entered, a plump, dark-skinned Hindu in a tropical suit
came through the bead screen from the rear of the building.

Good afternoon, honoured madam, I am Mr Moonsarny Naidoo at madam's
service.  He had a bland face and thick wavy hair dressed with coconut
oil until it glowed like coal fresh from the face.

I would like to look at your wares.  Centaine leaned over the
glass-topped counter and studied the display of silver -filigree
bracelets.

A gift for a loved one, of course, good madam, these are truly loo
percent pure silver hand-manufactured by learned craftsmen of the
highest calibre.  Centaine did not reply.  She knew the risks that she
was about to take, and she was trying to form some estimate of the man.
He was doing the same to her.  He looked at her gloves and shoes,
infallible gauges of a lady's quality.

of course, these trinkets are mere bagatelle.  If esteemed madam would
care to see something more prince or more princessly?

Do you deal in, diamonds?  Diamonds, most reverend madam?  His bland
plump face creased into a smile.  I can show you a diamond fit for a
king, or a queen.  And I will do the same for you, Centaine said
quietly, and placed the huge white crystal on the glass counter top
between them.

The Hindu jeweller choked with shock, and apped his hands like a
penguin.  Sweet madam!  he gasped.  Cover it, I beseech you.  Hide it
from my gaze!  Centaine dropped the crystal back into her purse and
turned towards the door, but the jeweller was there before her.

An instant more of your time, devout madam.  He drew down the blinds
over the windows and the glass door, then turned the key in the lock,
before he came back to her.

There are extreme penalties, his voice was unsteady, ten years of
durance of the vilest sort, and I am not a well man.  The goalers are
most ugly and unkind, good madam, the risks are infinite-'I will trouble
you no further.  Unlock the door."Please, dear madam, if you will follow
me."He backed towards the bead screen, bowing from the waist and making
wide flourishing gestures of invitation.

His office was tiny, and the glass-topped desk filled it so there was
barely room for both of them.  There was one small high window.  The air
was stifling and redolent with the aroma of curry powder.

May I see the object again, good madam?  Centaine place it on the centre
of the desk, and the Hindu screwed a jeweller's loupe into his eye
before he picked up the stone and held it towards the light from the
window.

Is it permitted to ask where this was obtained, kind madam?  No.  He
turned it slowly under the magnifying lens, and then placed in on the
small brass tray of the jeweller's balance that stood on the side of the
desk.  As he weighed he murmured, IDB, madam, Illicit Diamond Buying oh,
the police are most strict and severe.  Satisfied with the weight, he
opened the drawer of the desk and brought out a cheap glass-cutter,
shaped like a pen, but with a sharp chip of boart, the black
industrialgrade diamond, set in the tip.

What are you going to do?  Centaine asked suspiciously.

The only real test, madam, the jeweller explained.  A diamond will
scratch any other substance on earth except another diamond.  To
illustrate the point he drew the stylus of boart across the glass top of
the desk.  it screeched so that Centaine's skin prickled and her teeth
were set on edge, but the point left a deep white scratch across the
glass surface.  He looked up at her for permission and then Centaine
nodded, he braced the white stone firmly against the desk-top, and drew
the point of the stylus across it.

It slipped smoothly over one plane of the crystal as though it had been
lubricated, and it left no mark on the surface.

A droplet of sweat fell from the Hindu's chin and splashed loudly on the
glass.  He ignored it, and made another stroke across the stone, putting
more strength behind the stylus.  There was no sound, no mark.

His hand began to tremble, and this time he leaned the full weight of
his arm and shoulder as he attempted to make the cut.  The wooden shaft
of the stylus snapped in half, but the white crystal was unmarked.  They
both S stared at it, until Centaine said softly, How much?  The risks
are terrible, good madam, and I am an excessively honest man.  How much?

One thousand pounds, he whispered.

Five, said Centaine.

Madam, dear sweet madam, I am a man of impeccably high reputation.  If I
were apprehended in the act of IDB

Tive, she repeated.

Two, he croaked, and Centaine reached for the stone.

Three, he said hurriedly, and Centaine held back.

Tour, she said firmly.

Three and a half dear madam, my very last and most earnest offer.
Three'and a half thousand pounds.  Done, she said.

Where is the money?  I do not keep such vast sums of lucre on my person,
good madam.  I will return tomorrow at the same time, with the diamond.
Have the money ready.

I don't understand, Garry Courtney wrung his hands miserably.  Surely
all of us could accompany you No, Papa.  It is something I have to do
alone.  One of us, then, Anna or myself?  I just can't let you go off
again.  Anna must stay and look after Shasa."I will come with you, then.
You need a man-'No, Papa.  I beg your indulgence and understanding.  I
have to do this alone.  Entirely on my own.

Centaine, you know how much I have come to love you.  Surely I have some
rights, the right to know where it is you are going, what you intend
doing?  Iam desolated, for much as I love you in return, I cannot tell
you.  To do so would destroy the whole point of my going.  Think of it
as a pilgrimage which I am obliged to make.  That is all I can tell you
Garry rose from his desk, crossed to the tall library windows and stood
looking out into the sunlight with his hands clasped behind his back.

How long will you be gone?  am not sure, she told him quietly.  I do not
know how long it will take, some months at least, perhaps much longer,
and he lowered his head and sighed.

When he returned to the desk he was sad but resigned. What can I do to
help?  he asked. Nothing, Papa, except look after Shasa while I am gone
and forgive me for not being able to confide in you fully.  money?  ou
know I have money, my inheritance."Letters of introduction?  You will at
least let me do that for you?  They will be invaluable, thank you With
Anna it was not so easy.  She suspected part of what Centaine planned
and she d stubborn.

was angry an I cannot let you go.  You will bring disaster on yourself
and on all of us.  Enough of this madness.  Get rid of it the way I have
arranged, it will be swift and final.  No, Anna, I cannot murder my own
baby, you can't make me do that-I forbid you to leave.  No.  Centaine
went to her and kissed her.  You know you can't do that either.  just
hold me a while, and look after Shasa once I am gone."At least tell Anna
where you are goingNo more questions, dearest Anna.  just promise me
that you will not try to follow me, and that you will prevent Papa Garry
from doing so, for you know what he will find if he does.  Oh, you
wicked stubborn girl!  Anna seized her in a bear-hug.  If you don't come
back, you will break old Anna's heart."Don't even talk like that, you
silly old worrian.

The smell of the desert was like the smell of flint struck off steel, a
burnt dry odour that Centaine could detect underlying the harsher odour
of coal smoke from the locomotive.  The bogey clattered to the rhythm of
the cross-ties and the carriage kept the beat, lurching and swaying in
time.

Centaine sat in the corner of the small coups compartment upon the green
leather seat and stared through the window.  A flat yellow plain
stretched to the long far horizon, while the sky above it was traced the
faint promise of blue mountains.  There were clusters of springbok
grazing on the plain, and when the steam whistle of the locomotive
shrilled abruptly, they dissolved into pale cinnamon-coloured smoke and
blew away towards the horizon.  The animals closest to her carriage
pranced high in the air, and painfully Centaine remembered little O'wa
miming that arched-back and head-down stotting gait.

Then the pain.  passed and only the joy of his memory remained to her,
and she smiled as she stared out into the desert.

The great spaces, seared by the sun, seemed to draw out her soul, like
iron to the magnet, and slowly she became aware of a sense of building
anticipation, that peculiar excitement that a traveller feels on the
last homeward mile of along journey.

When later the evening shadows turned the plains soft mauve, they gave
definition to the land so that the undurations and low hillocks emerged
from the glare of the midday and the glassy curtains of heat mirage, and
she looked upon this austere and majestic landscape and felt a deep
sense of joy.

At sunset she put a coat around her shoulders and went out on to the
open balcony at the rear of the coach.  In turning dusty reds and orange
the sun went under, and the stars pricked out through the purple night.
She looked up and there were two particular stars, Michael's star and
hers with only the ghostly Magellanic clouds shining between them.

I haven't looked up at the sky, not since I left this wild land, she
thought, and suddenly the green fields of her native France and the lush
rolling hills of Zululand were only an effete and insipid memory.  This
is where I belong - the desert is my home now.

Garry Courtney's lawyer met her at the Windhoek railway station.  She
had telegraphed him before the train left from Cape Town.  His name was
Abraham Abrahams, and he was a dapper little man with large pricked-up
ears and sharp alert eyes, very much like one of the tiny battered
desert foxes.  He waved away the letter of introduction from Garry that
Centaine offered him.

My dear Mrs Courtney, everybody in the territory knows who you are.  The
story of your incredible adventure has captured all our imaginations.  I
can truthfully say that you are a living legend, and that I am honoured
to be in a position to render you assistance.  He drove her to the
Kaiserhof Hotel and after he had made sure she was settled and well
cared for, he left her for a few hours to bath and rest.

The coal dust gets into everything, even the pores of the skin, he
sympathized.

Whet- he returned and they were seated in the lounge with a tray of tea
between them, he asked, Now, Mrs Courtney, what can I do for you?  I
have a list, a long list.  She handed it to him.  And as you see, the
first thing I want you to do is to find a man for me.  That won't be too
difficult.  He studied the list.  The man is well known, almost as well
known as you are.

The road was rough, the surface freshly blasted rock, sharp as
knife-blades.  Long ranks of black labourers, stripped to the waist and
glistening with sweat, were pounding the rock with sledgehammers,
breaking up the lumps and levelling the roadway.  They stood aside,
resting on their hammers, as Centaine drove up the pass in Abraham
Abrahams dusty Ford, bumping slowly over the jagged stone, a nd when she
shouted a question, they grinned and pointed on upwards.

The road became steeper as it wound into the mountains and the gradients
became so severe that at one place Centaine had to turn the Ford and
reverse up the slope.

At last she could go no further.  A Hottentot foreman ran down the rough
track to meet her, waving a red flag over his head.

Paso PI missus!  Look out, madam!  They are going to fire the charges.
Centaine parked on the verge of the half-built road under a sign-board
that read: De La Rey Construction Company Road-building and
Civil-Engineering And she climbed down, and stretched her long legs. She
was wearing breeches and boots and a man's shirt, The Hottentot foreman
stared at her legs until she told him sharply, That will be all.  Go
about your duties, man, or your boss will know of it.  She unwound the
scarf from around her head and fluffed out her hair.  Then she dampened
a cloth from the canvas water-cooler that hung on the side of the Ford
and wiped the dust from her face.  It was fifty miles from Windhoek, and
she had been driving since before dawn.  She lifted the wicker basket
off the back seat and set it beside her as she settled on the
running-board of the Ford.  The hotel chef had provided ham and egg
sandwiches and a bottle of cold sweetened tea, and she was suddenly
hungry.

As she ate she gazed out across the open plains far below her.  She had
forgotten how the grass shone in the sunlight like woven silver cloth,
then suddenly she thought of long blond hair that shone the same way,
and against her will she felt a rising heat in the pit of her belly and
her nipples tightened and started out.

instantly she was ashamed of that momentary weakness, and she told
herself fiercely, I hate him, and I hate this thing he has placed inside
me.  Almost as though the thought might have triggered it, it squirmed
with her, a deep and secret movement, and her hatred wavered like a
candle flame in the draught.

I must be strong, she told herself.  I must be constant, for Shasa's
sake.  From behind her, up at the head of the pass, there came the
distant shrilling of a warning whistle, followed by a brittle waiting
silence.  Centaine stood up and shaded her eyes, involuntarily tensing
in expectation.

Then the earth leaped beneath her and the shock wave of the explosion
beat upon her eardrums.  A dust column shot high into the blue desert
air, and the mountai in was cleaved as though by a garantuan axe-stroke.
Sheets of grey-blue shale peeled away from the slope and slid in a
liquid avalanche down into the valley below.  The echoes of the
explosion leapt from kloof to kloof, dwindling gradually, and the dust
column blew softly away.

Centaine remained standing, staring up the slope, and after a while the
figure of a horseman was outlined on the high crest.  Slowly he rode
down the raw track, the horse picking its way gingerly over the broken
treacherous footing, and he was tall in the saddle, graceful and limber
as a sapling in the wind.

If only he were not so beautiful, she whispered.

He lifted the wide-brimmed hat with its ostrich feathers from his head
and slapped the dust from his breeches.  His golden hair burned like a
beacon fire, and she swayed slightly on her feet.  At the foot of the
slope, a hundred paces from Centaine, he threw his leg over the horse's
neck, slipped to the ground, and threw the reins to the Hottentot
foreman.

The foreman spoke urgently and pointed to where Centaine waited.

Lothar nodded and came striding down towards her.  Halfway, he stopped
abruptly and stared at her.  Even at that distance she saw his eyes turn
bright as yellow sapphires and he launched into a run.

Centaine did not move.  She stood stiffly, staring up at him, and ten
paces from her he saw her expression and halted again.

Centaine.  I never thought to see you again, my darling. He started
forward.

Don't touch me, she said coldly, fighting down the panic rising within
her.  I warned you once, don't ever touch me again.

Why do you come here then?  he asked harshly.  Isn't it enough that your
memory has plagued me these long lonely months since I last saw you?
Must you come in the flesh to torment me?  I have come to make a bargain
with you.  Her voice was icy, for she had control over herself now.  I
come to offer you a trade.  What is your bargain?  If you are a part of
it, then I accept before you state your terms.  No, she shook her head.
I would kill myself first. His chin came up angrily, though his eyes
were wretched and hurting.  You are without mercy."That I must have
learned from you!  State your terms.  You will take me back to the place
in the desert where you found me.  You will provide transport and
servants and all that is necessary for me to reach the mountain, and to
exist there for a year.  Why do you want to go there?  That does not
concern you. That is not true, it does concern me.  Why do you need me?
I could search for years, and die without finding it. He nodded.

You are right, of course, but what you are asking will cost a great
deal.  Everything I have is in this company, I don't have a shilling in
my pocket.  I want your services only, she told him.  I will pay for the
vehicles, the equipment and the wages of the servants.  Then it is
possible, but what about my side of the bargain?  In exchange, she
placed her right hand over her stomach, I will give you the bastard you
left in me.  He gaped at her.

Centaine- Slow, deep joy spread over his face.  A child!  You are to
have our child!  Instinctively, he came towards her again, Stay back,
she warned him, not our child.  It's yours alone.  I want nothing to do
with it after it is born.  I don't even want to see it.  You will take
it from the childbed, and do whatever you want with it.  I don't want
it.  I hate it, and I hate the man who put it in me.

With Lothar's wagons the journey from the Place of All Life to their
rendezvous with Garry Courtney at the Finger of God had taken weeks.
Their return to the mountain range took only eight days, and would have
been quicker, except that they had to build the road for the all, motor
vehicles through several rocky valleys and numerous dry river beds.
Twice Lothar had to resort to dynamite to break a way through obdurate
rock.

The convoy consisted of the Ford and two lorries, which Centaine had
purchased in Windhoek.  Lothar had chosen six camp servants, two black
drivers for the lorries, and as a bodyguard for Centaine and camp
overseer, he selected i Swart Hendrick, his Ovambo henchman.

I cannot trust him, Centaine had protested.  He's like a man-eating
lion.  You can trust him, Lothar assured her, because he knows that if
he fails you in even the smallest degree, I will kill him very, very
slowly.  He said it in front of Swart Hendric, who grinned, c It is
true, missus, he has done it to others. Lothar travelled in the lead
truck with Swart Hendrick and the construction gang.  In forest country
the black gang r an ahead of the slow-moving convoy, hacking out the
road, and when the forest opened, they swarmed on to the back of the
truck and the convoy bowled forward at a good speed.  The second lorry,
heavily laden with stores and equipment, followed the first, and
Centaine brought up the rear at the wheel of the Ford.

Each night she ordered her tent to be set up well separated from the
rest of the camp.  She ate her meals there and slept with a loaded
shotgun beside the bed.  Lothar seemed to have accepted her terms of
contract; his bearing was proud, but he became increasingly silent and
he spoke to her only when the conduct of the expedition demanded it.

Once in the middle of the morning when they halted unexpectedly,
Centaine climbed down from the Ford and impatiently hurried up to the
head of the convoy.  The lead truck had hit a spring-hare burrow and
broken a half-shaft.  Lothar and the driver were working on it, and
Lothar had stripped off his shirt.  He had his back to her and did not
hear her come up.

She stopped abruptly when she saw the pale muscles of his back bulging
as he pumped on the jack-handle, and she stared fascinated at the ugly
purple scar where the Luger bullet had torn out of his back. How close
it must have come to his lung!  She felt quick sharp remorse and turned
away, the angry words that had been on her lips left unspoken, and she
went softly back to her place at the end of the column.

When at last on the eighth day the mountain appeared ahead of them,
floating on its glistening lake of mirage like some great ark of orange
stone, Centaine stopped and climbed up on to the bonnet of the Ford, and
as she stared at it, she relived a hundred memories and found herself
swayed by many conflicting emotions, borne up on the joy of homecoming
and at the same time crushed down by the leaden burden of grief and
doubt.

Lothar roused her from her reverie; he had come back from the head of
the column without her even seeing him.

You have not told me exactly where you wish me to take you.  To the lion
tree, she told him.  To the place where you found me.  The marks of the
beast's claws were still slashed into the trunk of the mopani, and its
bones were scattered in the grass, beneath it, white as stars and
shining in the sun.

Lothar worked with his construction gang for two days to establish a
permanent camp for her.  He built a private stockade of mopani poles
around the solitary tree and piled Thorn branches against the exterior
wall of the stockade to reinforce it and make it proof against
predators.

He dug a screened latrine pit connected to the stockade by a tunnel of
poles and woven Thorn branches, and then he set up Centaine's tent in
the centre of the stockade, shaded by the mopani, and built an open
hearth for her camp fire in front of it.  At the entrance to her
stockade he constructed a -heavy timber gate and a guard house.

Swart Hendrick will sleep here, always within call, he told Centaine.

At the edge of the forest, two hundred paces from her camp, he built
another larger stockade for the servants and labourers, and when it was
all finished, he came to Cen .

tame again. I have done all that is necessary.  She nodded.  Yes, you
have completed your side of the bargain, she agreed.  Come back in three
months time, and I will complete my side.

He left within the hour in the second truck, taking only the black
driver with him and sufficient water and gasoline for the return journey
to Windhoek.

As they watched the truck disappear into the mopani, Centaine said to
Swart Hendrick, I will wake you at three o'clock tomorrow morning.  I
want four of the construction men to come with us.  They must bring
their blankets and cooking pots, and rations for ten days The moon lit
their way as Centaine led them up the narrow valley to the cavern of the
bees.  At the dark entrance, she explained where she was going to take
them, and Swart Hendrick translated for those who could not understand
Afrikaans.

There is no danger if you remain calm and do not run But when they heard
the deep hum resound through the cavern, the labourers backed out
hurriedly, threw down t their loads and got ere into a mutinous, sullen
bunch.

Swart Hendrick, tell them they have a choice, Centaine ordered.  They
can either follow me through or you will shoot them, one at a time.
Hendrick repeated this with such relish, and unslung his Mauser in such
workmanlike fashion, that they hurriedly gathered up their loads again
and crowded up behind Centaine.  As always, the transit of the cavern
was nerve-racking but swift, and as they filed out into the secret
valley, the moon was silvering the mongongo grove and polishing the high
surrounding cliffs.

There is much work to do, and we will live here, in this valley, until
it is finished.  That way you will only have to pass through the place
of the bees one more time.

That is when we leave.  Abraham Abrahams had instructed Centaine in
every aspect of pegging a mining claim.  He had written out a sample
notice for her and showed her how to set it up.

With a steel measuring tape he had demonstrated the trick of squaring a
claim across the diagonals, and how to overlap each claim slightly so
that there were no holes to give a claim-jumper a toehold.

Still it was hot, exhausting and monotonous work.

Even with the four labourers and Swart Hendrick to help her, Centaine
had to make every measurement herself and write out each claim notice
and attach it to the claim posts of Mongongo timber that they set up
ahead of her.

At dusk every evening, Centaine dragged herself wearily down to the
thermal pool in the subterranean grotto and soaked away her sweat and
the aches of her body in the steaming waters.  She was already starting
to feel the drag of her advancing pregnancy.  She was bigger this time
and it seemed harder and more wearying than Shasa's pregnancy had been,
almost as though the foetus sensed her feeling towards it, and was
responding vindictively.  Her back ached particularly viciously, and by
the end of the ninth day she knew that she could not continue much
longer without a rest.

However, the bottom land of the valley was crisscrossed with neat lines
of claim pegs, each standing on its little cairn of stones.  The gang
had by now become accustomed to the work and it was going more quickly.

One more day, she promised herself, and then you can rest.  On the
evening of the tenth day it was done.  She had pegged out every square
foot of the valley bottom.

Pack up, she told Swart Hendrick.  We are going out tonight.  And as he
turned away, Well done, Hendrick, you are a lion and you can be Sure I
will remember that on pay day. Hard work shared had made them
companions.

He grinned at her.  If I had ten wives as strong as you, and who worked
like you, missus, I could sit in the shade and drink beer all day long.
That is the nicest compliment anyone ever Paid me, she replied in
French, and found just enough strength left for a short, breathless
laugh.

Back in Lion Tree Camp Centaine rested for a day and then the next
morning settled down at her camp table in the mopani shade and filled in
the claim forms.  This was also monotonous and demanding work, for there
were claims to process, and every number had to be transposed from her
notebook and then fitted into her sketchmap of the valley.  Abraham
Abrahams had explained to her just how important this was, for each
claim would be scrutinized by the government mining inspector and his
surveyor and a careless error could invalidate the entire property.

It was another five days before she placed the last completed form on
the pile and then bundled them into a brown paper package and sealed
them with wax.

Dear Mr Abraham she wrote, please file the accompanying claims with the
mining office in my name and deposit the claim deeds with the Standard
Bank in Windhoek to the account over which you hold my power of
attorney.

I would be grateful if you could then make enquiries for the most
eminent independent mining consultant available.

Make a contract with him to survey and evaluate the property which is
the subject of these claims and send him to me here by return of the
vehicle which brings you this letter.

When the vehicle returns to me, please see that it is loaded with the
stores I have listed below and pay for these from my account.

One final favour.  I would be most grateful if, without disclosing my
whereabouts, you would be good enough to telegraph Colonel Garrick
Courtney at Theuniskraal to make enquiry of my son, Michel, and my
companion, Anna Stok.

Convey to all three of them my affection and duty, assure them of my
good health and my longing to see them again.

To you my sincere thanks and good wishes.

Centaine de Thiry Courtney She gave the package and letter to the driver
of the lorry and set him on the track back to Windhoek.  Because the
track was now well blazed and all the difficult placeshad been made
good, the truck was back within eight days.  There was a tall elderly
gentleman sitting up beside the driver in the cab.

May I introduce myself, Mrs Courtney?  My name is Rupert
Twenty-man-Jones.  He looked more like an undertaker than a mining
engineer.  He even affected a black alpaca jacket with high collar and
black string tie.  His hair was dead black and sleeked down, but his
sideburns were fluffy and white as cotton wool.  His nose and the tips
of his ears were eroded by rodent ulcers from the tropical sun so that
they looked as though mice had been nibbling at them.  There were bags
under his eyes like those of a basset, and he wore the same lugubrious
expression.

How do you do, Mr Jones.  Dr Twenty-man-Jones, he corrected her
mournfully. Double barrel, as in shotgun.  I have a letter for you from
Mr Abrahams.  He handed it over like an eviction notice.

Thank you, Dr Twenty-man-jones.  Won't you take a cup of tea while I
read it?

Please do not be misled by the man's sad mien, Abraham.

Abrahams assured her in the letter.  He was assistant to Doctor Merensky
who discovered the elevated diamond terraces of the Spieregebied, and is
now regularly consulted by the directors of the De Beers Consolidated
Mines.  if further evidence of his standing is required, consider the
fact that his fee for this contract is 1,200 guineas.

I am assured by Colonel Courtney that both Mevrou Anna Stok and your son
Michel are in astonishingly good health and all of them send their
loving wishes and hopes for your swift return.

I am sending the stores you require, and after paying for these and
settling Dr Twenty-man-Jones fee in advance, the balance standing to the
credit of your account at the Standard Bank is `60.  us.  6d.  The deeds
to your claims are safely deposited in the bank's strong room Centaine
folded the letter carefully.  Of her inheritance and the proceeds of the
sale of H'ani's diamond, there was little over S-66 remaining, she did
not even have the price of a fare back to Theuniskraal, unless she sold
the vehicles.

However, Twenty-man-Jones had been paid and she could survive for three
months longer on the stores she had in camp.

She looked up at him, sitting on her camp chair sipping hot tea. Twelve
hundred guineas, sir, you must be goodVNo, madam,he shook his head
mournfully.  I am quite simply the best.

She led Twenty-man-jones through the cavern of the bees in the night,
and when they emerged into the secret valley, he sat down on a rock and
mopped his face with a handkerchief.

This really isn't good enough, madam.  Something must be done about
those revolting insects.  We will have to get rid of them, I'm afraid.

No.  Centaine's reply was swift and decisive.  I want as little damage
done to this place and its creatures as possible, until- Until, madam?
Until we discover if it is necessary.  I do not like bees.  I swell most
horribly from their stings.  I will return the balance of the fees to
you, and you can find another consultant.  He began to stand up.

Wait!  Centaine restrained him.  I have explored the cliffs over there.
There is a way to get into this valley over the crest.  It will,
unfortunately, mean rigging a bucket and pulley system from the top of
the cliffs."That will greatly complicate my endeavours."Please, Dr
Twenty-man-jones, without your help -'and he made grumpy little
noncommittal noises and stumped off into the darkness, holding his
lantern high.

As the dawn light strengthened, he began his preliminary survey.  All
that day as Centaine sat in the shade of the mongongo, she caught
glimpses of his lanky figure striding here and there, chin against his
chest, pausing every few minutes to pick up a chip of rock or a handful
of soil, and then disappearing again amongst the trees and the rocks.

It was late afternoon before he returned to where she waited.

Well?  she asked.

I you are asking for my opinion, madam, then you are a little premature.
It will take me some months before- Months? Centaine cried out in alarm.

Certainly- and then he saw her face, and his voice dropped.  You didn't
pay me all that money for a guess.  I have to open it up and see what's
down there.  That will take time and hard work.  I will need all the
labourers you have available, as well as those I have with me."I hadn't
thought of that.

Tell me, Mrs Courtney, he asked gently, just what is it you are hoping
to find here?  She drew a deep breath and behind her back she made the
sign of the horns, which Anna had taught her averted the evil eye.

Diamonds, she said, and was immediately terrified that saying it out
aloud would bring the worst possible luck upon her.

Diamonds!  Twenty-man-jones repeated, as though it was news of his
father's death.  We'll see."His expression was lugubrious.  We'll see!
When do we start?  We, Mrs Courtney?

You will remain out of this place.

I do not allow anyone else around me when I am working."But, she
protested, am I not allowed even to watch?  That, Mrs Courtney, is a
rule I never vary, you will have to contain yourself, I'm afraid So
Centaine was banished from her valley, and the days in Lion Tree Camp
passed slowly.  From her stockade she could see Twenty-man-jones's
labour gangs toiling up the cliff path under their loads of equipment to
the summit and then disappearing over the crest.

After almost a month of waiting she made the ascent herself.  It was an
onerous and taxing climb, and she was aware of the load in her womb
every step of the way.

However, from the top she had an exhilarating eagle's view of the plains
that seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth, and when she looked
down into the secret valley, it was as though she were looking into the
very core of the earth.

The pulley and rope system from the lip of the cliff looked as
insubstantial as a spider's thread, and she shuddered at the thought of
stepping into the canvas bucket and being lowered down into the depths
of the amphitheatre.  Far below she could make out the antlike specks of
the prospect teams and the mounds of earth they had thrown up from their
potholes.  She could even distinguish Twenty-man-Jones lank storklike
gait as he passed from one to another of the prospects.

She sent down a note to him in the bucket.  Sir, have you found
anything?  And the reply came back an hour later.  Patience, madam, is
one of the great virtues.  That was the last time she went up the cliff,
for the child seemed to be growing like a malignant turnour.  She had
borne Shasa with joy, but this pregnancy brought pain and discomfort and
unhappiness.  She found no surcease even in the books she had brought
with her, for she found it difficult to concentrate to the end of a
page.

Always her eyes would go up from the printed word to the cliff path, as
though for sight of that lanky figure coming down to her.

The heat became every day more oppressive as the summer advanced into
the suicide days of late November, and she could not sleep.  She lay in
her cot and sweated away the nights, then dragged herself out again in
the dawn, feeling drained and depressed and lonely.  She was eating too
much, her only opiate against the boredom of those long sultry days. She
had developed a craving for devilled kidneys, and Swart Hendrick hunted
every day to bring them fresh to her.

Her belly swelled and the child grew huge, so that it forced her knees
apart when she sat, and it buffeted her mercilessly, thumping and
kicking and rolling inside her like a great fish struggling on the end
of a line until she moaned, Be still, you little monster, oh God, how I
long to be rid of you.

Then one afternoon, when she had almost despaired, Twenty-man-jones came
down the mountain.  Swart Hendrick saw him on the cliff path and came
hurrying to her tent to warn her, so that she had time to rise from her
cot, bathe her face and change her sweat-damp clothes.

When he strode into the stockade, she was seated at her camp table,
concealing her great belly behind it, and she did not rise to greet him.

Well, madam, there is your report.  He laid a thick folder on the table
before her.

She untied the tapes and opened it.  There, in his neat pedantic
handwriting, was page after page of figures and numbers, and words she
had never seen before.  She turned the pages slowly while
Twenty-man-Jones watched her sadly.  Once he shook his head and looked
as though he were about to speak, instead he pulled the handkerchief
from his top pocket and noisily blew his nose.

Finally, she looked up at him.

I'm sorry, she whispered, I don't understand any of this.  Explain it to
me.

I'll be brief, madam.  I sank forty-six prospect holes, each to a depth
of fifty feet and sampled at six-foot intervals.

Yes, she nodded.  But what did you find?  I found that there is a layer
of yellow ground overlaying the entire property to an average depth of
thirty-five feet. Centaine felt dizzy and sick.  Yellow ground sounded
so ominous.  Twenty-man-Jones broke off and blew his nose again.  It was
quite obvious to Centaine that he did not want to say the final words
that would kill for ever her hopes and dreams.

Please, go on, she whispered.

Below this stratum we ran into- his voice fell and he looked as though
his heart was aching for her -we ran into blue ground.

Centaine lifted her hand to her mouth, and she thought she would faint.

Blue ground.  It sounded even worse than yellow ground, and the child
heaved and struggled in her, and despair came down upon her like a flow
of poisonous lava.

All for nothing, she thought, and she was no longer listening as he went
on.

It's the classic pipe formation, of course, the decomposing breccia
composite above with the harder impermeable slaty-blue formation below.
So there were no diamonds after all, she said softly, and he stared at
her.

Diamonds!  Well, madam, I've worked out an average value of twenty-six
carats to a hundred loads.  I still don't understand, she shook her head
stupidly. What does that mean, sir?  What is a hundred loads?  A hundred
loads is approximately eighty tons of earth.  And what does twenty-six
carats mean?  Madam, the Jagersfontein assays at eleven carats to a
hundred loads, even the Wesselton goes only sixteen carats to a hundred
loads, and they are the two richest diamond mines in the world.  This
property is almost twice as rich.  So there are diamonds after all?  She
stared at him, and from the side pocket of his alpaca jacket he took a
bundle of small buff-coloured envelopes, tied together with string, and
placed these on top of the report folder.

Please do not mix them up, Mrs Courtney, the stones from each prospect
hole are in separate envelopes, all carefully notated.  With fingers
that felt numb and swollen, she untied the string and fumbled open the
top envelope.  She poured the contents into her hand.  Some of the
stones were chips not much bigger than sugar grains, one was the size of
a large ripe pea.

Diamonds?  she asked again, wanting his assurance.

Yes, madam, and of peculiarly good quality on the average.  She stared
dumbly at the little pile of stones in her hand, they looked murky and
small and mundane.

You will excuse the liberty, madam, but may I ask you a question?  You
might of course, choose not to answer. She nodded.

Are you a member of a syndicate, do you have partners in this venture?
She shook her head.

You mean, you are the sole holder and owner of this property?  That you
discovered this pipe and pegged the claims entirely on your own account?
She nodded again.

Then, he shook his head mournfully, at this moment, Mrs Courtney, you
are probably one of the wealthiest women in the world.

Twenty-man-Jones remained at Lion Tree Camp for three days longer.

He went over every line of his report with her, explaining any item of
which her understanding was unclear.  He opened each of the packages of
sample stones, and picked out unusual or typical diamonds with a pair of
jeweller's forceps, laid them on the palm of her hand and pointed out
their special features to her.

Some of these are so small, do they have any worth at all?  She rolled
the sugar-grain chips under the forefinger.

Those industrials, madam, will be your bread and butter.  They will pay
your costs.  And the big jewellery grade stones, like this one, will be
the jam on top of it all.  Strawberry jam, madam, of the very best
quality Crosse and Blackwell, if you like!  It was as close as she ever
heard him come to a witticism, and even then his expression was morose.

The last section of his report was twenty-one pages of recommendations
for the exploitation of the property.

You are extremely fortunate, madam, to be able to open this pipe
systematically.  All the other great diamond pipes, from Kimberly to
Wesselton, were pegged by hundreds of individual miners, and each
started working independently of his neighbour's efforts.  The results
was utter chaos.  He shook his head and tugged at his fluffy white
sideburns mournfully.  Hundreds of plots each thirty feet square all
going down at different speeds, with roadway in between the a tangle of
wires and pulleys and buckets connecting each to the lip.  Chaos, madam,
pandemonium!  Costs inflated, men killed in cave-ins, thousands of extra
labourers required, madness!  He looked up at her.  While you, madam,
have here the opportunity of constructing a model working, and this
report, he laid his hand upon it, explains exactly how you should do it.
I have even surveyed the ground and put in numbered pegs to guide you. I
have calculated your volumes of earth at each stage.  I have laid out
your first incline shaft for you, and explained how you should plan each
level of excavation.  Centaine broke in on his dissertation.  Dr
TwentymanJones, you keep saying "you".  You don't expect me personally
to perform all these complicated tasks, do you?  Good Lord, no!  You
will have to have an engineer, a good man, with experience of
earth-moving.  Ultimately I envisage that you will be employing several
engineers and many hundreds, possibly thousands, of men at thehe
hesitated -do you have a name for the property?  The Courtney Minc,
perhaps?  She shook her head.  The H'ani Mine, she told him.

Unusual.  What does it mean?  It is the name of the San woman who guided
me here."Very appropriate, then.  Now, as I was saying, you will require
a good engineer to put in hand the initial developments that I have
outlined.  Do you have a man in mind, sir?  Difficult, he mused.

Most of the best men are employed permanently by De Beers, and of the
others the one that comes to mind first was recently crippled in a
blasting accident.  He thought for a moment.  Now then, I have heard
good reports of a young Afrikaner chappie.

Never worked with him myself, damn me, what was his name again.  Oh,
yes, that's it.  De La Rey!  No!  Centaine exclaimed violently. I'm
sorry, madam.  Do you know him?  Yes.  I don't want him."As you wish,
I'll try and think of someone else. In her cot that night Centaine
tossed from side to side, trying to get comfortable, trying to adjust
the suffocating weight of the child so that she could sleep, and she
thought of Twenty-man-Jones's suggestion and sat up slowly.

Why not?  she said aloud in the darkness.  He must return here, anyway.
A stranger coming here at this time might see more than I would wish him
to.  And she cupped both hands under her belly.  It need only be for the
initial development stages.  I'll write Abraham Abrahams right now and
tell him to send Lothaff And she lit the lantern and waddled across the
tent to her camp table.

In the morning Twentiman Jones was ready to leave, All his gear was
packed into the back of the lorry and his black labourers were sitting
on top of it.

Centaine handed him back the report.

Would you be so good as to give your report to my lawyer in Windhoek,
sir, together with this letter?  Of course, madam.

He will want to go over the report with you, and then, as I have
instructed Mr Abrahams to solicit a loan from my bank, the bank-manager
will probably want to speak to you as well, to have your views on the
value of the property.  I expected that, he nodded.  You can rest
assured that I will inform him of the enormous value of your
discovery."Thank you.  In this letter I have instructed Mr Abrahams to
pay you from the loan an amount equal again to your original fee.  That
is unnecessary, madam, but very generous.  You see, Dr Twenty-man-jones,
at some future date I might wish to retain your services as a permanent
consultant to the H'ani Mine, I wish you to have a good opinion of me.
It does not require a fee for that, Mrs Courtney, I find you an
extraordinarily plucky, intelligent and comely young lady.  I would
consider it an honour to work with you again.  Then I will ask one final
service of you.  Anything, madam.

Please do not repeat anything of my personal circumstances that you may
have observed here.  His eyes dropped for just a fleeting instant to the
front of her dress.

Discretion, madam, is not the least prerequisite of my profession.
Besides which I would never do anything to injure a friend.

A good friend, Dr Twenty-man-Jones, she assured him, as she held out her
right hand.

A very good friend, Mrs Courtney, he agreed, as he took her hand, and
for one incredible moment she thought he was going to smile.  But he
controlled himself and turned from her to the waiting lorry.

Once again the journey and the return from Lion Tree Camp to Windhoek
took her truck-driver eight days, and Centaine wondered more than once
during that time if she had not left it too late.  The child in her was
big and urgent.  Impatiently it demanded release, so that when she at
last heard the distant beat of the motors of the returning vehicles, her
relief was intense.

From the canvas flap she watched the arrival.  In the lead truck rode
Lothar De La Rey, and though she tried to ignore it, she felt her pulse
quicken when she watched him climb down from the cab, tall and elegant
and graceful, despite the dust and heat of the long journey.

The next traveller whom Lothar handed down from the truck took Centaine
by surprise.  A nun in habit and hood of the Benedictine order.

I told him a nurse, I didn't expect a sister, she muttered angrily.  In
the back of the truck were two young Nama girls.  Golden-brown skins and
pretty little cheerful pug faces, each of them with an infant on her
hip, their breasts heavy with milk beneath the cotton print trade
dresses they wore, so much alike that they must be sisters.

The wet nurses, she realized, and now that they were here, these brown
strangers of another race that would give suck to her child, Centaine
felt the first truly bitter pang of regret of what she must do.

Lothar came to her tent, his bearing still aloof and reserved, and
handed her a packet of letters before introducing the nun to her.

This is Sister Amehana of the hospital of St Anne, he told her.  She is
of my mother's family, a cousin.  She is a trained midwife, but she
speaks only German.  We can rely upon her completely.  A gaunt,
white-faced woman, Sister Arneliana had the smell of dried roses petals
about her, and her eyes were frosty and disapproving as she looked at
Centaine and said something to Lothar.

She wishes to examine you, Lothar translated.  I will return later to
discuss the work you have for my company.  She does not like me.
Centaine returned Sister Ameliana's flat hostile stare, and Lothar
hesitated before he explained.

She does not approve of our bargain.  Her whole life is devoted to the
birth and care of babies.  She does not understand how you can give up
your own infant, as is apparent, neither do U Tell her that I do not
like her either, but she is to perform the task- she came for and not
place herself in judgment over me.  Centaine- he protested.

Tell her, Centaine insisted, and they spoke rapidly in German before he
turned back to Centaine.

She says that you understand each other.  That is good.

She has come only for the child.  As to judgment, she leaves that to our
Heavenly Father.  Tell her to get on with the examination then. After
Sister Arneliana had finished and left, Centaine read her letters. There
was one from Garry Courtney, full of all of Theuniskraalls news, and at
the end he had affixed Shasa's inky thumbprint below his own signature
with the notation: Michel Courtney, his mark.  Anna's voluminous wad of
notepaper, covered with her large ill-formed scrawl though difficult to
decipher, left Centaine with a warm after-glow of pleasure.

Then she broke the seal of Abraham Abrahams's letter, the last in the
package.

My dear Mrs Courtney, Your letter and Dr Twenty-man-Jones's intelligence
have thrown me into a fever of incredulous amazement.  I cannot find the
words to express my admiration for your achievement nor the pleasure I
feel for your great good fortune.  However, I will not weary you with my
felicitations and will come directly to business.

Dr Twenty-man-Jones and I have conducted extensive negotiations with the
directors and managers of the Standard Bank, who have studied and
evaluated the samples and report.  The bank has agreed to make available
to you a loan at 5% percent interest per annum in the sum of $100,000.
You may draw upon this as you require it, and it is further agreed that
this is merely a preliminary figure, and that additional amounts will be
forthcoming to you in future.  The loan is secured by the claim deeds of
the H'ani Mine.

Dr Twenty-man-jones has also met with Mr Lothar De La Rey, and set out
for him in detail the requirements of phase one of the development of
the property.

Mr De La Rey has tendered a contract price of 5,000 pounds for the
commission of this work.  By Virtue of your authority, I have accepted
this tender and delivered to him the initial payment of 11,000 f or
which I hold his receipt Centaine skimmed through the rest of the
letter, smiling at Abrahams's comment: I have sent you the stores you
required.  However, I am much intrigued by the two dozen mosquito nets
you have asked for.  Perhaps one day you will explain what you intend to
do with these, and thereby allay my burning curiosity.

Then she set the letter aside for later rereading and sent for Lothar.

He came immediately.  Sister Ameliana assures me that all is well, that
the pregnancy proceeds naturally without any complication, and that it
is very nearly over. Centaine nodded and indicated the camp chair facing
her.

I have not yet congratulated you on your discovery, he said as he sat
down.  Doctor Twenty-man-jones puts a conservative value on your mining
property Of S,3,000,000 sterling.  It almost surpasses belief, Centaine.
She inclined her head slightly and told him in a straight and level
voice, As you are working for me and because of the circumstances of our
personal relationship, I believe the correct address in future will be
Mrs Courtney.  The use of my given name suggests a familiarity that no
longer exists between us.  His smile shrivelled and died.  He remained
silent.

You wish me to begin at once, not after the birth?  At once, sir, she
said sharply, and I will personally oversee the clearing of the tunnel
that leads into the valley, which is the first step.  We will begin
tomorrow night.

By dusk they were ready.  The pathway leading up the valley to the
entrance of the cavern of the bees had been cleared and widened, and
Lothar's labour gangs had carried up the cords of mopani wood and
stacked -them at hand.

It was as though the bees of the great hive were aware of the threat,
for as the sun set, its rays were shot through with the darting golden
motes of the swift little insects, and the heated air trapped between
the cliffs vibrated with the hum of their wings as they swirled about
the heads of the sweating labourers.  If it had not been for the
protective mosquito nets, it was certain that all of them would have
been stung repeatedly.

As the darkness fell, however, the flights of disturbed insects vanished
back into the depths of the cavern.  Centaine allowed an hour to pass,
for the hive to quieten and settle for the night, then she told Lothar
quietly, You can light the smoke-pots.  Four men, Lothar's most
reliable, bent over their pots.

These were five-pound bully-beef cans, the sides perforated, the insides
packed with charcoal and the herbs which Centaine had pointed out to
them for gathering.

The secret of the herbs was a legacy to her from O'wa, and she thought
of the old Bushman now as they lit the smoke-pots and the acrid odour of
burning herbs prickled her nostrils.  Lothar's men were swinging the
smoke-pots on short lengths of wire, to fan the charcoal.  They reminded
Centaine of the incense-bearers in the Easter procession to the
cathedral of Arras on Good Friday.

When all four smoke-pots were burning evenly, Lothar gave a quiet order
to his men and they moved towards the entrance of the cavern.  In the
lantern light, they looked like wraiths.  Their lower bodies were
protected by heavy calf boots and leather breeches, while over their
heads and torsos were draped the ghostly white mosquito nets.  One by
one they stooped into the entrance of the cavern, thick blue smoke
boiling up from the swinging smoke-pots.

Centaine let another hour pass before she and Lothar followed them into
the cavern.

The acrid smoke had fogged the interior so that she could only see a few
paces ahead, and the eddying blue clouds made her giddy and nauseated.
However, the dynamo hum of the great hive had been lulled by the smoke.
The multitudes of glittering insects hung in drugged clusters from the
ceiling and the honeycombs.  There was only a sleepy whisper of sound.

Centaine hurried out of the cavern and lifted the net from her sweating
face, drinking down draughts of the cool sweet night air to still her
nausea, and when she could speak again, she told Lothar, They can begin
stacking the cordwood now, but warn them not to disturb the combs.  They
hang low from the roof.  She did not enter the dark cavern again, but
sat aside while Lothar's men carried in the cords of mopani.

It was after midnight when he came out to report to her.

It is ready.  I want you to take your men and go down to the bottom of
the valley.  Stay there for two hours, and then return."I don't
understand."I want to be alone here for a while.  She sat alone and
listened to their voices receded down into the dark gut of the valley.
When it was silent, she looked up and there was O'wa's star above the
valley.

Spirit of great Lion Star, she whispered, will you forgive this thing?
She stood up, and moved heavily to the cliff face.

Standing below it she raised the lantern high over her head and stared
up at the gallery of Bushman painting that glowed in the yellow light.
The shadows wavered so that the giant paintings of Eland and Mantis
seemed to pulse with life.

Spirit of Eland and of Mantis, forgive me.  All you guardians of the
"Place where nothing must die" forgive me for this slaughter.  I do it
not for myself but to provide good water for the child who was born in
your secret place.  She went back to the entrance of the cavern, moving
heavily with child and remorse and guilt.

Spirits of O'wa and of H'ani, are You watching?  Will you withdraw your
protection once this is done?  Will you still love and protect us, Nam
Child and Shasa, after this terrible betrayal?

She sank down on her knees and prayed in silence to all the spirits of
all the San gods and she did not realize that two hours had passed until
she heard the voices of the men coming back up the valley.

Lothar De La Rey held a can of gasoline in each hand as he stood before
her at the entrance to the cavern.

Do it!  she said, and he went into the cavern of the bees.

She heard the clank of a knife-blade piercing the thin metal of the
cans, and then the gurgle of running liquid.

The pungent stench of raw gasoline flooded from the dark narrow entrance
in the rock, and in her ears was the sound of a million bees roused from
their smoke-drugged stupor by the reek.

Lothar came out of the cavern, running backwards, spilling the last of
the gasoline on the rocky floor, leaving a wet trail behind him, then
dropped the empty can and ran back past her.

Quickly!  he panted.  Before the bees come out!  Already bees were
darting about in the lantern light, settling on the netting that
screened her face, and more and still more boiled from the apertures in
the cliff face above her.

Centaine backed away, and then swung the lantern over her head and
hurled it into the entrance of the cavern.  The lantern bounced off the
rock, the glass shattered and it rolled over the uneven floor.  The
little yellow flame flickered and was almost snuffed from the wick and
then suddenly the spilled gasoline caught.  in a whooshing implosion
that seemed to rock the earth beneath Centaine's feet and which hurled
her backwards, a great breath of flame shot down the mountain's throat
and its gaping mouth filled with fire.  The cavern was shaped like a
blast furnace, a gale of wind was sucked into it and red flames shot
from the openings high up in the cliff-face, burning like fifty torches,
illuminating the valley with noon light.  The rushing wind swiftly
drowned out the agonized din of a million burning bees, and within
seconds there remained only the steady roar of the flames.

As the stacked mopani timbers caught and burned, she could feel the heat
leap out at her like a savage thing, and Centaine backed away from it
and gazed with a horrid fascination at the destruction.  From the fiery
cavern she heard a new sound that puzzled her, the sound of soft heavy
weights thudding to the stone floor, almost as though many living bodies
were dropping from the roof of the cavern.  She did not understand what
it was until she saw a snake of dark liquid, slow and viscous as oil,
creep out of the cavern's entrance.

Honey!  she whispered.  The honeycombs are melting!  Those huge combs,
the product of a century of labour by a myriad bees, were softening in
the heat and falling, a hundredweight at a time, from the high roof into
the flames below.  The trickle of molten honey and wax turned into a
running rivulet, then into a flood of boiling

steaming liquid that seethed in the ruddy furnace glow.

The hot sweet stench of boiling honey seemed to thicken the air, and the
flood of molten gold drove Centaine back before it.

Oh God, she whispered, oh God, forgive me for what I have done.

Centaine stood by as the flames burned through the rest of that night,
and in the dawn light the cliffs were blackened with soot, the cavern
was a ruined black maw and the floor of the valley was coated thickly
with a caramelized layer of black sticky sugar.

When Centaine staggered wearily into the stockade of Lion Tree Camp,
Sister Amehana was waiting to help her to her cot, and to bathe the
sugar-reeking soot from her face and body.

An hour after noon, Centaine went into labour.

It was more like mortal combat than giving birth.

Centaine and the child fought each other through the rest of that
burning afternoon and on into the night.

I will not cry out, Centaine muttered through clenched teeth, you will
not make me cry, damn you And the pain came in waves that made her think
of the high surf of the Atlantic breaking on the barren beaches of the
Skeleton Coast.  She rode them, from their crests into the depths of
each sickening trough.

Each time, at the pinnacle of pain, she tried to struggle up into the
squatting birthing stance that H'ani had taught her, but Sister Ameliana
pushed her down on to her back, and the child was locked within her.

I hate you, she snarled at the nun, and the sweat burned her eyes and
blinded her.  I hate you, and I hate this thing inside me.  And the
child felt her hatred and ripped at her, twisting its limbs to block
her.

Out!  she hissed.  Get out of me!  and she longed to feel H'ani's thin
strong arms around her, sharing the strain as she bore down.

Once Lothar asked at the tent, How does it go, Sister?

It's a terrible thing, she fights like The nun replied, a warrior, not a
mother.  Two hours before dawn in one last spasm that seemed to cleave
through her spine and separate the joints of her thighs from her pelvis,
Centaine forced out the child's head, big and round as a cannon-ball,
and a minute later the birth cry rang out into the night.

You cried, she whispered triumphantly, not me!  As she subsided on to
the strength and resolve and r, so she was left an empty, aching husk.

hatred flowed out of he When Centaine awoke, Lothar was standing at the
foot of her cot.  The dawn was lighting the canvas of the tent behind
him, so he was in dark silhouette only. It's a boy, he told her.

You have a son."No, she croaked.  Not mine.  He's yours. A son, she
thought, a boy, part of me, part of my body, blood of my blood. His hair
will be gold, Lothar said. I didn't want to know, that was our bargain.
So his hair will burn in the sunlight, she thought, and will he be as
beautiful as his father?  His name is Manfred, after my firstborn."Call
him what you will, she whispered, and take him far away from me.
Manfred, my son, and she felt her heart breaking, tearing like silk in
her chest.

He is at the nurse's breast now, she can bring him to you if you wish to
see him.  Never.  I never want to see him.  That was our bargain.

Take him away.  And her swollen untapped breasts ached to give suck to
her golden-headed son.

Very welP He waited for a minute for her to speak again, but she turned
her face away from him.  Sister Ameliana will take him with her.  They
are ready to leave for Windhoek immediately.  Tell her to go, and let
her take your bastard with her. The light was behind him, so she could
not see his face.

He turned and left the tent and minutes later she heard the motor of the
truck, as it started and then dwindled away a cross the plain.

She lay in the quiet tent watching the sunrise through the green canvas
of the wall.  She breathed the flinty desert air that she loved, but it
was tainted by the sweet odour of blood, the birth blood of her son, or
was it the blood of a little old San woman clotting and congealing in
the hot Kalahari sun?  The image of H'ani's blood on the rocks changed
in her mind's eye, and became dark seething puddles of boiling honey
running like water from the sacred places of the San, and the choking
sugary smoke blotted out the smell of blood.

Through the smoke she thought she saw H'ani's little heart-shaped face
peering sadly out at her.

Shasa, my baby, may you always find good water.  But his image smudged
also and his dark hair turned to gold. You, too, my little one, I wish
you good water also. But it was Lothar's face now, or was it Michael's
face - she was no longer certain.  f her I'm so alone!  she cried into
the silent spaces o soul.  And I don't want to be alone Then she
remembered the words: At this moment, Mrs Courtney, you are probably one
of the wealthiest women in the world.  She thought, I would give it all,
every single diamond in the H'ani Mine, for the right to love a man, and
have him love me, for the chance to have both my babies, both my sons,
for ever at my side.

She crushed down the thought angrily.  Those are the woolly sentimental
notions of a weak and cowardly woman.  You are sick and weary.  You will
sleep now, she told herself harshly.  And tomorrow- she closed her eyes
-you will be brave again, tomorrow.

