by John Wilcox
But they were not. At about one hundred yards away, Mzingeli pointed. The boots were unattached to human limbs and merely propped up against the edge of the awning. The whereabouts of their owners became clear as two shots rang out from behind the horses, where Murphy and Laxer had been taking cover. The bullets sang over the heads of the approaching horsemen and Fonthill made an immediate decision.
‘Don’t fire,’ he cried. ‘We’ll charge at them while they are reloading. Go quickly, NOW!’
Remembering a technique used by Jenkins years ago, Simon let out a penetrating shriek and dug his heels sharply into his mount’s flanks. Heads down, the two galloped towards the little group of horses, mule and men, with Mzingeli screaming his own tribal cry, dredged up, Fonthill presumed, from distant days when the Malakala were more warlike. The combination of the gunshots, the shrieks and the thunder of the hooves bearing down on them had the effect of causing the overseers’ horses to rear and scatter, knocking the two men to the ground and sending spinning away their rifles and the cartridges they were clumsily trying to insert.
Fonthill reined in and pointed his rifle at the men as they tried to scramble after their guns. ‘Stay down or I will fire,’ he cried. ‘Lie flat, I say.’
Murphy looked up over his shoulder. ‘Don’t shoot, your honour,’ he cried. ‘We’re not armed.’
‘I said lie flat. Go on. Faces on the earth.’ Fonthill’s voice was emotionless. ‘You are liars as well as thieves.’ He seemed now to address Mzingeli. ‘Best thing is to put two shots in their spines and just leave them to the vultures. Save both of us a lot of time and trouble. No one is going to miss scum like this.’
‘Now, now, sor.’ Murphy’s voice was high-pitched. ‘That wouldn’t be the action of a gentleman, so it wouldn’t. You couldn’t do that, now. I admit we did you wrong but we didn’t cause you harm. Sure, we only took two o’ the boxes now. We left you the rest, did we not?’
‘You only took two because you couldn’t carry more. I’m not a fool. Stay down! Faces to the earth. That’s better. Mzingeli, get their rifles and bring back the horses and the mule.’
As Mzingeli busied himself with retrieving the horses and the mule - none had gone far, and the poor beast of burden had only trotted a few yards - the little tableau in the desert was maintained for five minutes or more, with the two overseers lying spreadeagled, faces down on the hot ground, and Fonthill remaining in the saddle, keeping the men covered with his Colt as his mount shuffled in a half-circle and then back again. Eventually the tracker returned, leading the horses and the mule, with the Martini-Henrys lying across his saddle. He looked expectantly at Simon, with a faint gleam of amusement in his eye.
‘We kill them now, Nkosi?’ he enquired.
‘No, mate.’ Laxer’s voice was a whine, as he spoke with his nose pressed against the red soil. ‘Don’t shoot us. We never meant no ’arm, honest.’
Murphy’s plea was almost a shriek. ‘Don’t shoot, your honour. I’m sorry, I really am. We’re white men like you, so we are. You can’t kill us in this terrible country. It would be an unchristian act, so it would.’
Fonthill grinned across at Mzingeli. ‘Oh, very well.’ Slowly he dismounted and gestured to the two with his revolver. ‘Get up. You, Laxer, go and get your boots. Cover him with your rifle as he goes, Mzingeli, and if he moves sharply shoot him.
‘Now,’ he addressed Murphy. ‘Do you have full water bottles?’
‘What? Oh yes, your honour. More or less.’
‘Right. We will top up your bottles from our reserves. Do you have knives?’
‘Oh yes, sor. We have knives.’
‘Good. You may need them if you are attacked, because I am taking back the rifles, your horses and the mule, of course. They are not your property anyway. I don’t think this is lion country, but I know the beasts are about just a mile or two north, so you had better be prepared when you sleep. Oh, you can have your tent, of course. It will be a long walk back to Palapye, but if you keep the sun on your backs more or less, you will keep going south and you can follow our tracks. They are not going to be washed away by rain, that’s for sure.’
Murphy wiped his brow with the back of his hand. ‘Aw, yer not goin’ to leave us unprotected in lion country, are yer? Yer can’t do that, man.’
‘Oh yes I can. If I give you the rifles, you could well come after us. No, my friend. As I said, I don’t think this is lion country, but one or two could well come this far south. So thread the tent up tightly at night.’
Fonthill grinned. ‘Got the boots? Good. Mzingeli, top up their water bottles, there’s a good fellow, and give the horses, and particularly the mule, a drink from your hat.’
Five minutes later, Mzingeli linked up the three animals on a leading rein and slowly walked them away to the north. Fonthill mounted his own beast and looked down at the overseers.
‘You’ve been dishonest and stupid,’ he said. ‘If your greed hadn’t taken over, you would have been well paid for this journey. As it is, you won’t get a penny. Now, start packing that tent.’
The two men looked up at him with hatred in their gaze. Laxer was about to say something but, seeing the steel in Fonthill’s eyes, decided against it, and the pair trudged back to the tent and began striking the awning. Without a backward glance, Simon rode away after his tracker.
The black man gave him one of his rare grins. ‘You would not kill them, Nkosi?’ he asked.
Fonthill smiled grimly. ‘Only if it turned into a gun fight. Then there would have been no alternative. No, I just wanted to frighten them. I think it worked.’
‘Oh yes. It worked. They frightened.’
It was after dark when the two returned to the camp to find a fidgety Jenkins on guard and a relieved Alice tending a fire within a loose circle made by the wagons. The oxen had been put to graze on whatever vegetation they could find on the unpromising earth, with a boy to watch over them.
‘Why didn’t you leave the boxes with the stones?’ asked Alice.
‘Because we may just need them again, to serve the same purpose.’ Fonthill turned to Jenkins. ‘We will need to stand guard from now on, 352,’ he said. ‘I don’t think those two will bother us again, but you never know, and it won’t be long before we are back in lion country, and our oxen and horses are precious.’
He turned to Mzingeli. ‘Can we put Ntini in charge of the boys, do you think?’
The tracker nodded.
‘Good. Then tell him he must put the boys on a guard rota for the animals through the night, and we three will do the same for the camp.’
‘Not three,’ said Alice over her shoulder. ‘Four.’
Fonthill sighed. ‘Very well. Four it shall be.’
The next few days proved uneventful as they resumed their journey north. The guard watch was maintained each night, with Alice taking her turn (and Fonthill struggling to stay awake on her watch to ensure her safety), and Mzingeli circled the camp each morning to look for signs of nocturnal visitors. It became clear, however, that the overseers had decided to leave well alone, and as the days rolled by, they felt able to relax their guard a little.
The going was now much more difficult. As they neared the Sashe river, which for a short way formed the border between this part of Bechuanaland and Matabeleland, the semi-desert gave way to more broken country, with tall kopjes standing up like broken teeth from terrain that had become more verdant, and thorny plants hindering their progress. Particularly annoying were the wagt-jen-betges, or ‘wait-a-bit’, a generic name for plants that had double thorns, one slender and outward-pointing and the other curled backwards from it. They caught and held the clothing and often reduced it to rags.
Fonthill’s mind had been occupied for some time with de Sousa. Given the way news travelled in this barren country, it was likely that the Portuguese knew of their coming. Would he make an effort to stop the arms reaching Lobengula and so cementing his treaty with Rhodes? It was highly likely, and after the first reverse,
he would probably bring more men with him to attack this second time. Once across the river, the expedition would enter the densely wooded country of southern Matabeleland, and this would be the most likely place for the Portuguese to strike. Simon confided as much to his companions.
‘We know that country,’ he went on, ‘and it’s difficult to see through the bush for a hundred yards. I think that’s where he will hit us if he does. What do you two think?’ He nodded towards Jenkins.
‘Well, bach sir, the thinkin’ bit is your department, but that sounds about right to me.’ The Welshman frowned. ‘What worries me is that now that them two rascals ’ave gone a-walkin’, like, we’re a bit light-’anded in the fightin’ department, see.’
Fonthill nodded. ‘True. Mzingeli, can Ntini use a Martini-Henry, do you think?’
‘Not good yet. Perhaps Nkosi can teach?’
‘Good idea. Better Jenkins than me, though. Can you teach him, 352?’
‘Certainly. Would you care to join the class, bach sir?’
‘That will be enough of that. What about any of the boys, Mzingeli? Could we trust them to use a rifle properly?’
‘Only one. Boers call him Joshua. Lead driver. Good boy. He has fired the Snider. Give him lessons too.’
‘Very well. See to it, Jenkins. I think we are safe until we are across the Sashe.’
But they were not. On the sixth day after losing their overseers, Mzingeli, who had ridden on far ahead as usual, could be seen in the distance galloping back towards the wagons. Reining in, he called to Fonthill: ‘Tree across track further up. Not blown down. Cut down by axe. Fresh marks on stump. Could be . . . what you call it?’
‘Ambush?’
‘That is word.’
‘Did you see anybody?’
‘No.’ He used his hands to gesture. ‘Two kopjes close together, like this, about mile away. Trail narrow down. I see tree down on other side of kopjes. Other side is plenty bush. I think men hide there but I don’t see.’
‘Did they see you?’
‘I think no. I get off horse long way off and take look, very careful. Keep hidden.’
‘Good.’
‘I think they expect us to ride through, stop at tree and then they come back and front, all around. We . . . ah . . . strung out. They kill us easy.’
‘Mzingeli, you should be a general. Now, get Joshua to circle the wagons here in the open, and have Ntini get the boys to drive the oxen and horses inside the laager. It’s going to be very crowded with the cattle in here, so we will have to space the wagons out a little and somehow fill in the gaps. We must be quick. They will come at us immediately they realise that we have sensed what they are up to, and we don’t want them down upon us before we’ve laagered. Alice . . . yes, what is it?’
His wife had taken out her notebook and her pencil was poised. ‘Exactly how many are there of us to fight now?’ she enquired.
‘Er . . . ten boys, Mzingeli, Ntini and the three of us.’
She scribbled in her book. ‘And how many rifles?’
‘Why do you need to . . . Oh well. We have five Martini-Henrys, the Snider and your hunting rifle.’ Alice wrote down the figure.
A touch of exasperation now crept into Fonthill’s voice. ‘Since you are so interested in our firepower, perhaps you would break out the ammunition and distribute the spare rifles. Jenkins, you come with me.’
‘Where’re we goin’, then? To fight ’em single-handed?’
‘Not quite. If there are many of them, we could have our hands full keeping them off, given that our firepower has been sadly reduced. But I have an idea.’ Fonthill looked around carefully. ‘It’s good that we’re in a nice open spot, before the bush begins. Come on, we’ve got to work quickly.’
He strode towards the wagon that housed the bedding and tents and extracted from under the cargo two small kegs of powder. They had been taken along as an afterthought in case the expedition needed to manufacture its own cartridges. So far they had not been opened. Fonthill rummaged again and produced a small bottle of lamp oil and then a bottle of Cape brandy. Quickly he twisted out the cork and threw away half the brandy.
‘’Ere’ bach,’ wailed Jenkins. ‘Steady on. That’s good stuff.’
‘If it is, it may save our lives.’ He unstoppered the lamp oil and, again, threw away half its contents. Then he took two of their tin cups and filled one with brandy and the other with lamp oil, before pouring the contents back into the wrong bottles so that each contained a mixture of brandy and oil. He then tore his handkerchief in half, poured a little of the mixture on to each half so that it was thoroughly soaked and laid them to one side. As a puzzled Jenkins watched, Fonthill then withdrew the cork from one of the powder kegs and poured a little powder into each bottle so that it was completely full. His last act was to screw up the wet pieces of fabric and twist them into the tops of the bottles as substitute corks.
A slow smile spread across Jenkins’s face. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘bombs, is it?’
‘Not as such. I am not sure that they would explode when I want them to, or if the explosion would be effective. But I am damned sure that they will burn for a short while, and that’s all I want. Pick up the kegs and come along.’
Down from the wagon, Fonthill pointed to the edge of the scrub, which stopped some two hundred yards from the trail and ran parallel to it on both sides of the camp.
‘The oxen have beaten out all the vegetation from the trail to there,’ he said. ‘So a fire wouldn’t cross these strips either side of our wagons. But it would take hold deeper in the bush. I want you to spread a thin trail of powder just inside the edge of the vegetation all the way round the camp in a rough circle.’
Jenkins frowned. ‘What are we doin’ with the bottles, then? You can’t ’ave wasted good grog for nothin’, surely?’
‘No.’ Fonthill looked ahead down the trail. It twisted a little over ground that undulated, so that the distant twin kopjes could not be seen. ‘Good. It looks as though they didn’t spot Mzingeli. That means they’re still waiting for us and we’ve got a few more minutes yet. But when we don’t turn up, they’ll send scouts out to look for us and then they’ll attack. But at least we can face them in the open.’
‘Yes, that’s all very well, but what are we doin’ with the bloody bottles, look you?’
‘Don’t worry about them. That’s my department - until I call you in, that is. When you cross the open space, across the trail itself, make sure that you continue the powder line so that there’s an unbroken circle of the stuff.’
Jenkins nodded. ‘Just inside the edge of the bush, then?’
‘Yes. Off you go, there’s no time to lose.’
The Welshman pulled a face and, keg under each arm, set off. ‘With respect, bach sir,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘I do not approve of the use of alcohol in this way - even though I don’t know what you’re goin’ to be doin’ with it. It could set a bad example to the natives.’
Fonthill watched him go and then turned to observe Mzingeli directing the formation of the laager. The boys were cracking their long whips, and slowly, agonisingly slowly, the five wagons were being pulled into a small, very irregular circle within which the oxen and the horses were now being herded. It was becoming clear that there were not sufficient wagons to form a tight circle big enough to enclose the beasts, and as the oxen were freed from their traces, Simon rushed to help Mzingeli tie the long boom of each wagon to the rear of that in front to extend the perimeter of the ring. Even so, a space had to be left between some of the wagons and the booms to stretch the ring and accommodate the animals.
‘We have to fill these gaps,’ he called to Mzingeli. ‘Get some of the boys to cut thorn bushes and pile them under the booms and in the spaces. Bring bedding and whatever else they can carry.’
He turned and noted that Alice had carefully laid out the Martini-Henrys, her own hunting rifle and Mzingeli’s Snider at intervals around the ring, with piles of cartridges beside each
one. Her action, however, had only underlined the paucity of their firepower. Seven rifles - two of them of doubtful efficiency - against . . . how many? He shrugged. Out in the bush, Jenkins had almost completed his circle. Well, they would soon find out how effective his plan would be.
He walked back to the wagon from which they had taken the kegs and picked up the two bottles. Carrying them carefully, he strode out into the bush and located the powder trail at an angle of ninety degrees to one side of the flattened circle formed by the wagons. There he found a thorn bush of the size he was seeking and which was just a touch away from the powder line. He smeared dust over the bottle so that it would not reflect light from the sun and would be, if not invisible, then at least difficult to distinguish. Gingerly he placed the bottle at the base of the bush and partially concealed within it. With his knife he cut away a large branch and wedged it at the top of the bush, so that it stood out clearly. Running now, he took the remaining bottle into the vegetation on the opposite side of the wagons and repeated the same operation.
