by Wilbur Smith
His wife and two small children were packed off back to England for their own good, and with them went a letter to the directors of the London Missionary Society. God had made his will clear to Fuller Ballantyne. He was bidden to journey to the north, to carry God’s word across Africa, a missionary at large, no longer tied to one small station, but with the whole of Africa as his parish.
The directors were greatly troubled by the loss of their station, but they were further dismayed by the prospect of having to mount what seemed to be a costly expedition of exploration into an area which all the world knew was merely a vast desert, unpeopled and unwatered except around the littoral, a burning sand desert which stretched to the Mediterranean Sea four thousand miles northward.
They wrote hurriedly to Fuller Ballantyne, uncertain where exactly the letter should be addressed, but feeling the need to deny all responsibility and to express their deep concern; they ended by stating strongly that no further funds other than his stipend of £50 per annum could be voted for Fuller Ballantyne’s highly irregular activities. They need not have expended their energy and emotions, for Fuller Ballantyne had departed. With a handful of porters, his Christian gunbearer, a Colt revolver, a percussion rifle, two boxes of medicines, his journals and navigational instruments, Fuller Ballantyne had disappeared.
He emerged eight years later, down the Zambezi river, appearing at the Portuguese settlement near the mouth of that river, to the great chagrin of the settlers there who, after 200 years of occupation, had pushed no further than 100 miles upstream.
Fuller Ballantyne returned to England and his book A Missionary in Darkest Africa created a tremendous sensation. Here was a man who had made the ‘Transversa’, the over-land passage of Africa from west to east coast, who had seen, where there should be desert, great rivers and lakes, cool pleasant grassy uplands, great herds of game and strange peoples – but most of all he had seen the terrible depredations of the slave-raiders upon the continent, and his revelations rekindled the anti-slavery zeal of Wilberforce in the hearts of the British people.
The London Missionary Society was embarrassed by the instant fame of their prodigal, and they hurried to make amends. Fuller Ballantyne had chosen the sites for future missionary stations in the interior, and at the cost of many thousands of pounds they gathered together groups of devoted men and women and sent them out to the selected sites.
The British Government, prevailed upon by Fuller Ballantyne’s description of the Zambezi river as a wide roadway to the rich interior of Africa, nominated Fuller Ballantyne Her Majesty’s Consul, and financed an elaborate expedition to open this artery of trade and civilization to the interior.
Fuller had returned to England to write his book, but during this period of reunion with his family, they saw almost as little of the great man as when he was in the depths of Africa. When he was not locked in Uncle William’s study writing the epic of his travels, he was in London hounding the Foreign Office or the directors of the L.M.S. And when he had gained from these sources all that he needed for his return to Africa, then he was travelling about England lecturing in Oxford or preaching the sermon from the pulpit of Canterbury cathedral.
Then abruptly he was gone again, taking their mother with him. Robyn would always remember the feel of his spiky whiskers as he stooped to kiss his daughter farewell for the second time. In her mind her father and God were somehow the same person, all-powerful, all-righteous, and her duty to them was blind, accepting adoration.
Years later, when the missionary sites chosen by Fuller Ballantyne had proved to be death-traps, when the surviving missionaries had stumbled back to civilization, their fellows and spouses dead of fever and famine, killed by wild animals and by the wilder men whom they had gone out to save, then Fuller Ballantyne’s star had begun to fade.
The Foreign Office expedition to the Zambezi river, led by Ballantyne, had faltered and failed upon the terrible rapids and deep falls of the Kaborra-Bassa gorge through which the Zambezi crashed and roared, dropping a thousand feet in twenty miles. Men wondered how Ballantyne, who had claimed to have followed the Zambezi down from its source to the sea, could have not known of such a formidable obstacle to his dreams. They began to question his other claims, while the British Foreign Office, parsimonious as ever, was considerably miffed by the waste of funds on the abortive expedition and withdrew the title of Consul.
The London Missionary Society wrote another of their lengthy letters to Fuller Ballantyne, requesting him in future to confine his activities to the conversion of the heathen and the propagation of God’s word.
Fuller Ballantyne had replied by posting them his resignation, thereby saving the society £50 per annum. At the same time he had penned a letter of encouragement to his two children urging them to show fortitude and faith, and sent the manuscript, in which he vindicated his conduct of the expedition, to his publisher. Then he had taken the few guineas that remained from the huge royalties that his other books had earned and had disappeared once more into the interior of Africa. That was eight years previously and no one had heard from him since.
Now here was this man’s daughter, already nearly as notorious as the father, demanding admission to the Society as a working missionary.
Once again, Uncle William had come to Robyn’s aid, dear mild bumbling Uncle William with his thick pebble spectacles and wild grey bush of untamable hair. With her he had gone before the board of directors and reminded them that Robyn’s grandfather, Robert Moffat, was one of the most successful of all African missionaries, with tens of thousands of conversions to his credit. Indeed the old man was still working at Kuruman and had only recently published his dictionary of the Sechuana language. Robyn herself was dedicated and devout, with medical training and a good knowledge of African languages taught her by her now deceased mother, daughter of the same Robert Moffat, and by virtue of the reverence with which the said Robert Moffat was regarded by even the most warlike African king, Mzilikazi of the Ndebele, or as some people called them, the Matabele, the granddaughter would find immediate acceptance amongst the tribes.
The directors had listened stonily.
Then Uncle William had gone on to suggest that Oliver Wicks, the editor of the Standard who had championed the girl against the attempt by the governors of St Matthew’s Hospital to deprive her of her medical qualification, would be interested in their reasons for refusing her application to the Society.
The directors sat up and listened with great attention, conferred quietly and accepted Robyn’s application. They had then seconded her to another missionary movement who in turn sent her to the industrial slums of northern England.
It was her brother Zouga who had found the way back to Africa for both of them. He had returned from India on leave, a man of considerable achievement, already a major in the Indian army, promotion that he had won in the field, with the reputation of being a soldier and military administrator of great promise for one so young.
Despite this, Zouga was every bit as dissatisfied with his lot as was Robyn. Like their father, they were both lone wolves, responding badly to authority and regimentation. In spite of the promising start to his military career, Zouga recognized the fact that he had already made powerful enemies in India, and he had begun to doubt that his future lay on that continent. Like Robyn, he was still a searcher, and they had greeted each other after the parting of years with a warmth that they had seldom displayed during their childhood.
Zouga took her to dinner at the Golden Boar. It was such a change from Robyn’s daily surroundings that she accepted a second glass of claret and became gay and sparkling.
‘By God, Sissy, you really are a pretty thing, you know,’ he had told her at last. He had taken to swearing now, and though it had shocked her at first, she had grown accustomed to it quickly enough. She had heard a lot worse in the slums where she worked. ‘You are too good to spend your life amongst those ghastly crones.’
It changed the mood between them instantly, a
nd she was able at last to lean close to her brother and pour out all her frustrations. He listened sympathetically, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand so that she went on quietly but with utter determination.
‘Zouga, I have to get back to Africa. I’ll die if I don’t. I just know it. I will shrivel up and die.’
‘Good Lord, Sissy, why Africa?’
‘Because I was born there, because my destiny is there – and because Papa is there, somewhere.’
‘I was born there also.’ Zouga smiled, and when he did so it softened the harsh line of his mouth. ‘But I don’t know about my destiny. I wouldn’t mind going back for the hunting, of course, but as for Father – don’t you often think that Papa’s main concern was always Fuller Ballantyne? I cannot imagine that you still harbour any great filial love for him.’
‘He is different from other men, Zouga, you cannot judge him by the usual yardstick.’
‘There are many who might agree with that,’ Zouga murmured drily. ‘At the L.M.S. and at the Foreign Office – but as a father?’
‘I love him!’ she said defiantly. ‘After God, I love him best.’
‘He killed mother, you know.’ Zouga’s mouth hardened into its usual grim line. ‘He took her out to the Zambezi in fever season and he killed her as certainly as if he’d put a pistol to her head.’
Robyn conceded after a short, regretful silence, ‘He was never a father nor a husband – but as a visionary, a blazer of trails, as a torchbearer . . .’
Zouga laughed and squeezed her hand.
‘Really, Sissy!’
‘I have read his books, all his letters, every one he ever wrote to mother or to us, and I know that my place is there. In Africa, with Papa.’
Zouga lifted his hand from hers and carefully stroked his thick side whiskers. ‘You always had a way of making me feel excited—’ Then, seemingly going off at a tangent, ‘Did you hear that they have found diamonds on the Orange river?’ He lifted his glass and examined the lees in the bottom of it attentively. ‘We are so very different, you and I, and yet in some ways so much alike.’ He poured fresh wine into his glass and went on casually. ‘I am in debt, Sissy.’
The word chilled her. Since her childhood she had been taught a dread of it.
‘How much?’ she asked at last quietly.
‘Two hundred pounds.’ He shrugged.
‘So much!’ she breathed, and then, ‘You haven’t been gambling, Zouga?’
That was one of the other dread words in Robyn’s vocabulary.
‘Not gambling?’ she repeated.
‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ Zouga laughed. ‘And thank God for that. Without it I would be a thousand guineas under.’
‘You mean you gamble – and actually win?’ Her horror faded a little, became tinged with fascination.
‘Not always, but most of the time.’
She studied him carefully, perhaps for the first time. He was only twenty-six years old, but he had the presence and aplomb of a man ten years older. He was already a hard, professional soldier, tempered in the skirmishes on the border of Afghanistan where his regiment had spent four years. She knew they had been cruel encounters against fierce hill tribes, and that Zouga had distinguished himself. His rapid promotion was proof of that.
‘Then how are you in debt, Zouga?’ she asked.
‘Most of my brother officers, even my juniors, have private fortunes. I am a major now, I have to keep some style. We hunt, we shoot, mess bills, polo ponies—’ He shrugged again.
‘Will you ever be able to repay it?’
‘I could marry a rich wife,’ he smiled, ‘or find diamonds.’
Zouga sipped his wine, slumped down in his chair, not looking at her, and went on quietly.
‘I was reading Cornwallis Harris’s book the other day – do you remember the big game we saw when we lived at Koloberg?’
She shook her head.
‘No, you were only a baby. But I do. I remember the herds of springbok and wildebeest on the trek down to the Cape. One night there was a lion, I saw it clearly in the light of the campfire. Harris’s book described his hunting expeditions up as far as the Limpopo – nobody has been further than that, except Papa, of course. A damned sight better than potting pheasant or black buck. Did you know that Harris made nearly five thousand pounds from his book?’
Zouga pushed his glass away, straightened up in his seat and selected a cigar from his silver case. While he prepared and lit it, he was frowning thoughtfully.
‘You want to go to Africa for spiritual reasons. I probably need to go to Africa, for much better reasons, for blood and for money. I make you a proposal. The Ballantyne Expedition!’ He lifted his glass to her.
She laughed then, uncertainly, thinking he was joking, but lifted her own glass which was still almost full. ‘My word on it. But how? Zouga, how do we get there?’
‘What was the name of that newspaper fellow?’ Zouga demanded.
‘Wicks,’ she said, ‘Oliver Wicks. But why should he help us?’
‘I’ll find a good reason why he should.’ And Robyn remembered how, even as a child, he had been an eloquent and persuasive pleader of causes.
‘You know I rather think you might.’
They drank then, and when she lowered her glass, she had been as happy as she could ever remember being in all her life.
It was another six weeks before she saw Zouga again, striding towards her through the bustle of London Bridge Station as she clambered down from the carriage. He stood tall above the crowd, with the high beaver top hat on his head and the threequarter length paletot cloak flaring from his shoulders.
‘Sissy!’ he called, laughing at her, as he lifted her from her feet. ‘We are going – we really are going.’
He had a cab waiting for them, and the driver whipped up the horses the moment they were aboard.
‘The London Missionary Society were no use at all,’ he told her, still with his arm around her shoulders as the cab clattered and lurched over the cobbles. ‘I had them down on my list for five hundred iron men, and they nearly had apoplexy. I had the feeling they would rather Papa stayed lost in darkest Africa, and they would pay five hundred to keep him there.’
‘You went to the directors?’ she demanded.
‘Played my losing tricks first,’ Zouga smiled. ‘The next was Whitehall – actually managed to see the First Secretary. He was damned civil, took me to lunch at the Travellers’, and was truly very sorry that they were not able to give financial assistance. They remembered Papa’s Zambezi fiasco too clearly, but he did give me letters. A dozen letters, to every conceivable person – to the Governor at the Cape, to Kemp the Admiral at Cape Town, and all the others.’
‘Letters won’t get us far.’
‘Then I went to see your newspaper friend. Extraordinary little man. Smart as a whip. I told him we were going to Africa to find Papa – and he jumped up and clapped his hands like a child at a Punch and Judy show.’ Zouga hugged Robyn tighter. ‘To tell the truth, I used your name shamelessly – and it did the trick. He will have all the story rights to our diaries and journals, and the publishing rights to both books.’
‘Both books?’ Robyn pulled away from him and looked into his face.
‘Both.’ He grinned at her. ‘Yours and mine.’
‘I am to write a book?’
‘You certainly are. A woman’s account of the expedition. I have already signed the contract on your behalf.’
She laughed then, but breathlessly. ‘You’re going too far, much too fast.’
‘Little Wicks was in for five hundred, and the next on the list was the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade – they were easy. His Royal Highness is the Society’s patron, and he had read Papa’s books. We are to report on the state of the trade in the interior of the continent north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and they came up with another 500 guineas.’
‘Oh Zouga, you are a magician.’
‘Then there was the W
orshipful Company of London Merchants Trading into Africa. For the last hundred years they have based all their activities on the west coast, I convinced them that they needed a survey of the east coast. I have been appointed the Worshipful Company’s Agent, with instructions to examine the market in palm oil, gumcopal, copper and ivory – and they have come up with the third and last 500 guineas – and a presentation Sharps rifle.’
‘One thousand five hundred guineas,’ Robyn breathed, and Zouga nodded.
‘We are going back home in style.’
‘When?’
‘I have booked passage on an American trading clipper. We sail from Bristol in six weeks, for Good Hope and Quelimane inMozambique. I have written asking leave from my regiment for two years – you will have to do the same with the L.M.S.’
It had all happened with dreamlike rapidity after that. The directors of the L.M.S., perhaps relieved that they were not to pay for her passage nor the expense of relocating Robyn in the African interior, in a flush of extravagance decided to continue her stipend during the period she was away, and made a guarded promise to review the position at the end of that time. If she proved herself capable – then there would be a permanent post in Africa thereafter. It was more than she had ever expected, and she had thrown herself wholeheartedly into assisting Zouga with the preparations for departure.
There was so much to do that six weeks was barely sufficient, and it seemed only days had passed before the mountain of the expedition’s equipment was being swayed down into the holds of the big graceful Baltimore clipper.
The Huron proved as swift as she looked, another wise choice by Zouga Ballantyne, and under Mungo St John’s skilful navigation she made good her westings before attempting to cross the belt of the doldrums at their narrowest point. They were becalmed not a single day and sped across the line at 29￮ west and immediately Mungo St John put her on the port tack to stand down across the south-east trades. Huron clawed her way southwards with the flying fish sailing ahead of her, close on the wind until she broke from their grip at last with Ilha da Trinidade on the horizon. The north-wester came howling at them and Huron fled before it, under low, sullen, scudding skies day after day that denied them sight of sun or moon or stars, until she almost hurled herself ashore 200 miles up the west coast of Africa from her destination at the Cape of Good Hope.
