Men of Men b-2

by Wilbur Smith

  In the late "fifties Sint John had built up a commercial empire, a fleet of trading vessels which had carried the black ivory of slaves from the African continent to that of North America. Legend was that in three voyages, in the course of a single period of twelve months, across the notorious middle passage of the Atlantic, he had transported almost two million dollars" worth of slaves, and with those profits he had acquired vast estates in Louisiana.

  It was at this time that Zouga had first met him.

  Zouga had travelled as a passenger on Sint John's magnificent clipper Huron out of the Port of Bristol in southern England to the Cape of Good Hope. The irony of that voyage had been that Zouga at the time had not been aware that Sint John was engaged in the trade, and Zouga had been accompanied on the voyage by his only sister, Robyn Ballantyne, a medical missionary whose declared goal in life was the extinction of the trade on the African continent.

  When Robyn Ballantyne had discovered that Sint John was not sailing to Africa to barter beads and copper wire for ivory and ostrich feathers, for gumcopal and alluvial gold dust from the kingdom of Monomatapa, but was seeking richer, living black cargo, her hatred was rendered more implacable by her shame at having travelled in company with such a man.

  It was Robyn Ballantyne who had called up the avenging spectre of the Royal Navy. She had been the chief instrument in delivering Sint John and his beautiful clipper Huron, with her cargo of five hundred prime slaves, to the gunboats of the British anti-slavery squadron.

  Sint John, as was his right as an American captain, had resisted the British boarders, and in the savage action that followed, half his crew had been killed or maimed and his lovely ship so badly mauled that she had to be towed into Table Bay by her captors.

  Though after imprisonment in Cape Town castle, the British governor had finally released Sint John and allowed him to sail away, still his cargo of slaves were seized and released from their chains, and the African coast was closed for ever to his ships.

  It was then that Zouga had lost contact with him; but after Zouga's book A Hunter's Odyssey had been published, Sint John had written to him care of his London publishers, Messrs Rowland Ward, and since then they had corresponded at irregular intervals. Indeed it was Zouga's description of the diamond fields in one of these letters that was responsible for Sint John's presence here now.

  Through the exchange of letters Zouga had been able to follow Sint John's career, and he learned how after his release from the Cape Town castle, Sint John had returned to Fairfields, his cotton and sugar estates near Baton Rouge, only weeks before the first cannon shots were fired at Fort Sumter.

  Louisiana had voted for secession from the Union, and when the war began, Mungo raised his own force of irregular cavalry and led them in a brilliant series of hitand-run raids against the supply lines and rear bases of the Federal army. So successful were these depredations that the northeners christened him "Murdering Mungol, declared him an outlaw and placed a reward of fifty thousand dollars on his head. Promoted to major-general, he was later struck in the left eye by a red-hot splinter of shrapnel and dragged over a mile when his horse bolted.

  By the time he was discharged from the hospital, Vicksburg had fallen. Recognizing this as a fatal stab in the heart of the Confederacy, he had limped back along the empty road to Fairfields.

  The reek of fermenting sugar juices mingled with that of charred flesh was more revolting than any battlefield Mungo had ever smelled. Four colonnades stood above the ashes of his homestead, like monuments to all his dreams.

  Now, all these years later, Sint John had come up the road from Good Hope, driving a pair of magnificent pale gold horses with flowing white manes that he called "Palaminos", a long black cigar between his white teeth, an eagle gleam in his single eye and this strangely disturbing woman on the seat of the phaeton beside him.

  Sint John's first act in Kimberley had been to walk into the office of the Standard Bank on Market Square and present a letter of credit to the flabbergasted clerk. The letter of credit was on heavy, expensive paper, the printing embossed in rose and gold, the wax seal that of Messrs Coutts and Co. in the Strand, and the sum for which it was drawn was half a million of sterling.

  Sint John had drawn a modest hundred pounds against that formidable total, and taken rooms for himself and his wife at the Craven Hotel, Kimberley's most fashionable and comfortable.

  When he recovered from his shock, the bank-clerk had excitedly begun to spread the news. There was an American general on the fields who disposed of a half million Pounds in cash.

  The following noon Sint John had casually accepted an invitation to lunch at the Kimberley Club and smiled indulgently as his name was proposed for membership by mister C. J. Rhodes and seconded by Dr Leander Starr Jameson. There were men, rich and influential men, who had tried in vain since the foundation of the Club to obtain membership.

  Sint John was smiling that same indulgent smile now as he leaned back in his chair, twisting the stem of his champagne glass between his fingers and watching the other guests at the table fawning over his wife.

  Even mister Rhodes, who was famous for his immunity to female wiles, and who usually bluntly terminated any frivolous conversation, was responding to her artless questions and chuckling at her sallies.

  With an effort, Zouga tore his own attention from Louise and turned to Mungo Sint John. Quite pointedly he changed the discussion from the split skirts which allowed his wife to ride astride to Mungo's own doings since their last meeting.

  The reason for the change of subject was not missed by Louise. She shot a sharp speculative glance at Zouga, but then smiled graciously and relapsed into dutiful silence while the conversation became at last serious and important.

  Sint John had been in Canada and Australia, and without being specific they all understood that both journeys had been rewarding, for Sint John spoke of wheat and opals and wool and gold, and they listened avidly, shooting their questions like arrows and nodding to the deft replies, until at last Sint John ended: "Well, then I heard from my dear friend Zouga what you gentlemen have been doing here, and thought it was time to come and have a look."

  Almost on cue Ralph came down the verandah carrying the scrubbed carving board with its cargo of roasted venison enclosed in a crisp brown envelope of pastry.

  The company applauded with exclamations of delight and approbation.

  Zouga stood up to carve the roast and while he stropped the hunting knife against steel, he glanced at Ralph who still lingered on the verandah.

  "Are you feeling well?" he asked out of the side of his mouth, and Ralph roused himself, tearing his adoring gaze from Louise Sint John.

  "Oh yes, Papa, I'm fine."

  "You don't look fine. You look as if you have a belly ache. Better get Jan Cheroot to give you a dose of sulphur and treacle."

  Jan Cheroot, dressed in his old regimental jacket with burnished buttons and his scarlet cap set at a rakish angle, brought in fresh bottles of champagne, the buckets packed with crushed white ice.

  "Ice!" Louise clapped her hands with delight. "I never expected such sophistication here."

  "Oh, we lack very little, madam," Rhodes assured her.

  "My ice-making factory has been in operation for a year or more. In a year or so the railway line will reach Kimherley and then we shall become a city, a real City."

  "And all this on woman's vanity." Louise shook her long black tresses in mock dismay. "A lady's baubles, a city built on engagement rings!"

  Despite Zouga's best efforts, the focus of attention had shifted again. They were all hanging on her words with that slightly bemused expression which overcomes even the most sensible of men when he looks at a Beautiful woman." It was the first time Zouga had acknowledged that fact, even to himself, and for some reason it increased his resentment of her.

  "Do you know, mister Rhodes," she leaned across the table confidentially, "I have been here for five days now, and although I have searched the sidewa
lks diligently, I have not seen a single diamond, and I was assured the streets of Kimberley were paved with diamonds."

  They all laughed, more heartily than the witticism warranted, and Rhodes murmured a few words to Pickering before turning back to Louise.

  We shall do what we can to remedy that, missis Sint John," and while he spoke Pickering scrawled a note and then summoned one of the Coloured grooms who was lolling and smoking in the shade of the camel-thorn tree.

  "Major, may I borrow one of your champagne buckets?" Pickering asked, and when Zouga agreed, he handed the empty bucket and the note to the groom.

  Zouga was carving seconds off the roast when the groom returned. He was followed by a nondescript white man with an uncertain seat on his placid steed. He came up on to the verandah carrying the bucket as though it were filled with mister Alfred Nobel's newfangled blasting gelatine.

  He placed the bucket on the table in front of Rhodes with a timid flourish, and then seemed to disappear from sight. With his thin colourless hair and myopic eyes behind pebble-lens wire-rimmed spectacles, his dark jacket shiny with wear at elbows and cuffs, he blended like a chameleon with his background.

  "Where is young Jordan?" Rhodes asked. "That boy loves diamonds as much as any of us do., Jordan came from the kitchen in his apron and with his colour high from the heat of his stove. He greeted Rhodes shyly.

  "Ladies and Gentlemen, mister Jordan Ballantyne is not only the finest chef on the diggings, but he is also one of the best diamond sorters that we have." Rhodes was expansive as few of them had ever seen him. "Come and stand by me, Jordan, where you can have a good view., When Jordan was beside his chair, Rhodes tipped the bucket carefully and even Zouga heard himself gasp with shock, while Louise Sint John cried out aloud.

  The bucket was filled to the brim with uncut diamonds, and now they cascaded onto the white tablecloth in a sullenly glowing pyramid from which random darts of light sped to astound the eye.

  "All right, Jordan. Tell us something about them," Rhodes invited. And the boy stooped over the fabulous pile of treasure, his long tapered fingers flying lightly over the stones, spreading and sorting them into piles.

  While he worked he talked, and his voice was as lovely as his face, low and melodious. Fluently he explained the shapes of the crystals, pointed out the flaws in one, placed two side by side to compare the colours, twisting one to the light to bring up its smouldering fires.

  Zouga was puzzled. This little act was too theatrical to be Rhodes" usual style, and he would never go to such lengths to impress a woman, even a beautiful one; for by jumbling up a bucket of stones he had given his own sorters many days of extra work. Every one of those stones would have to be re-graded and appraised and returned to its own little white envelope.

  "Here is a perfect stone," Jordan picked a diamond the size of a green pea. "Look at that colour, blue as a bolt of lightning and as full of fire."

  Rhodes took it from him, considered it a moment, holding it between thumb and forefinger, then he leaned across the table and placed it before Louise Sint John.

  "Madam, your first diamond. I sincerely hope not your last," said Rhodes.

  "mister Rhodes, I cannot accept such a generous gift," said Louise, her eyes wide with delight, and she turned to Mungo Sint John. "Can I?"

  "If I agreed with you, you would never forgive me," Mungo Sint John murmured, and Louise turned back to Rhodes.

  "mister Rhodes, my husband insists, and I can find no words to express my gratitude."

  Zouga watched the scene attentively; there was so much happening here, so many nuances, so many undercurrents.

  it was on the surface merely a demonstration of the remarkable effect that these bright hard pebbles had upon a woman. That was their true value, perhaps their only value. When he looked at Louise Sint John's face he could see that it was not avarice that lit it so, but a mystical emotion not far removed from love, the love of a living thing, a child, a horse, a man, a warming thing to watch.

  Quite suddenly Zouga found himself wishing that he had been the author of such joy. That it had been he and not Rhodes who had made the gift which had transformed her, and it took a moment for him to free himself of that desire, so that he almost missed the glance that Rhodes shot beyond the woman's face.

  . Suddenly it was clear to Zouga. Rhodes was not baiting for the woman; he was fishing for the man. That display of treasure was for Mungo Sint John, the man with half a million sterling to dispose of.

  Rhodes needed capital. When a man sets out to buy every single claim on the Kimberley field, and when he is in a desperate hurry to do it, he must always be starved of capital. Rhodes" ambition was no secret.

  Zouga himself had been present at the long bar of the Kimberley Club when Rhodes had made the declaration of his intent.

  "There is only one way to stabilize the price of the goods -" Rhodes" euphemism for diamonds, "and that is an orderly, centralized marketing policy. There is only one way to stop the stealing of goods by the I.D.B., and that is through the institution of a rigorous security screen; and there is only one way to achieve both these objects, and that is to have every claim on the fields owned by one company! Everyone listening to him had known who Rhodes intended that the head of that company should be.

  That had been a year previously, and now the bucket of diamonds on Zouga's luncheon table was proof of how far Rhodes had made good his threat and had eaten up the field. Already he was more than halfway towards his goal, but he had been forced to take in partners and still he was short of capital, desperately short.

  For the serious obstacle that stood between him and complete ownership of the field was Barney Barnato's company. He would need millions, literally millions of sterling, for that final step.

  So the reason for the little charade was clear to Zouga now, and he was about to turn his head to study General Mungo Sint John's reaction to it when the tableau at the far end of the table struck him forcibly.

  The untidily dressed young man, heavy in the shoulders, hunched forward in his chair, unruly curling hair spilling over onto the broad forehead above the florid meaty face, thick arms and square powerful hands enclosing a glittering mound of treasure. At his shoulder the slim and graceful figure of the boy with the bright and lovely face, and behind them both, towering above them, holding them both in its thrall, the graven statue of the falcon god.

  Zouga shivered, touched for the first time in the presence of the falcon by a superstitious chill. For the first time he was aware of the sense of evil that the old Hottentot had immediately detected in the statue's stony eyes. For one horrifying instant Zouga was convinced that the bird was about to spread its sharp blade-shaped wings and hold them like a possessive canopy over the two human figures beneath it, and then the moment was past. The tableau broke up.

  Rhodes was sweeping the gems back into the bucket, talking quietly to Jordan.

  ,"Are you still studying the book of mister Pitman's shorthand that I sent you, Jordan?"

  "Yes, mister Rhodes."

  "Good, you'll find it of great value one day."

  The boy understood the dismissal and slipped away down the verandah to his kitchen, while Rhodes casually handed the bucket of diamonds to his clerk and addressed General Sint John directly.

  "In the section of the workings that we own we are recovering an average of ten carats to each ton of gravel that we process, to that we must add at least another two carats a ton which is being stolen by the labourers between the pit floor and the grading room. As our security system becomes more efficient and as we have better laws to control the I.D.B. we can expect to eliminate that wastage -" Rhodes was talking in that high-pitched voice so incongruous in such a big man, gesturing with strong square hands, persuasive and articulate. Reeling off figures for production costs and anticipated recovery, the expectations of profits on tonnage worked, returns on capital outlaid, he was addressing himself to one man only, the erect bearded figure with the black eye-patch, yet his m
anner was so persuasive that every one of them was listening with full attention, even Louise Sint John.

  Zouga glanced at her and saw that she was concentrating on the confusing jumble of figures, and that she seemed to be able to absorb them. She proved that immediately.

  "mister Rhodes, you said earlier that working costs on the number 9 Section were ten shillings and sixpence; now you use a new figure, twelve shillings?" She challenged unexpectedly, and Rhodes paused, gave a little nod of recognition for her perception before he replied.

  "At the deeper levels the costs rise. Ten and six is our present cost, twelve shillings our projected cost for twelve months hence."

  His voice had a new note of respect. "I am flattered that you have followed my discourse so closely, madam." Then he turned back to Sint John. "From this you will see, General, that the returns on capital invested are about the best you will find anywhere: ten percent is certain, fifteen percent is possible."

  Sint John had been holding an unlit cigar between his teeth; now he removed it and stared hard at Rhodes with his single eye.

  "So far, mister Rhodes, you have not mentioned the blue."

  "The blue." Every single one of them at the long table froze.

  "The blue." it was as if Sint John had spoken a gross obscenity, shocking them all into silence.

  "The blue" was the main reason why Rhodes was hungry for capital.

  "The blue" was the reason why the banks were calling on all diggers who had borrowed against the collateral of their claims to reduce their overdrafts by fifty percent; and Rhodes had borrowed a million pounds to finance his attempt to acquire every single claim on the New Rush field. As he had acquired each block, Rhodes had immediately used it as security to borrow money to buy the next block, pyramiding loan upon loan, debt upon debt.

  Zouga was one of the few who so far had resisted Rhodes" advances, resisted with pain and heart-searching an offer of 5,000 pounds for his claims on the Devil's Own.