XII

Second attack on the Kromme – The Northern Highlands – Norris – To the aid of the Rifles – Mundell’s farm – A skull – Steaming mourners – Hymn on a darkling plain – The Great Western Ravine – Beauty and decay – A homestead – Roots of Pelargonium – Buried again – Providence, the healer.

THERE HAD BEEN rumour and report for some time that the main forces of the heathen were leaving the mountains to the east and consolidating in the Kromme under Jinqi and Branders the Hottentot defector. It was said also that Jinqi and Branders controlled their forces from a cave hidden on the heights of Mount Misery and the Captain was pleased when he received the orders for a general move against their strongholds.

On the 12th of October the General left Fort Cox with the artillery and the Cape Corps and he was joined on his route by a regiment of infantry which had departed Fort Adams on the same morning. At ten o’clock that night the irregulars marched out with the reserve battalion of the 12th Regiment and the 74th Highlanders and a squadron of the Cape Mounted Rifles and two companies of Fingos. They embarked on their journey under the command of the same Lieutenant Colonel Gaunt as before and this time they numbered one thousand one hundred and fifty men.

They marched through the empty moonlit streets of Fort Cox in a dark column and the sound of their footfall upon the earth was like massed and distant drums. Only one man remained awake to witness their passing and that was the disordered missionary who stood sentinel in the shadows of an alley.

They tramped for fourteen miles and rested for an hour on the banks of a stream and then they marched on. The sun hung yellow above them and the heat was such that at the time when they cast the least shadow the barrels of their weapons blistered any hand placed upon them. In the late afternoon they reached the foot of the mountains and lay down to rest beneath thorny bushes. The Lieutenant Colonel called for the guide to be brought to him. The guide proposed a path up the Kromme and various officers disputed his suggestion. They said that the route was impractical for horses at any time and almost impassable for infantry at night. As the discussion continued a thick mist came down and a cold rain began to fall and the irregulars huddled in their steaming blankets and cursed.

At midnight they rose from their pallets of stone and emerged from their wrappings and marched on in chill fog and drizzle. They moved west in search of a route and sometimes the clouds flickered with a strange green and yellow light and the lower slopes of the Kromme appeared as though called up out of the void and only when they were gone and it was dark again did the thunder rumble.

Out on the edges of the world the blackness bent and fractured in its plates and the furnace beyond showed itself in jagged fissures. The column stumbled up a gorge on a path so steep that the mounted men had to alight and led their horses and the Captain worried that they would lose the pack animals and his entire subsistence with them. The kid’s thighs burned and they struggled on and after some hours they gained the first ridge and moved along it on a grassy plain.

They staggered like drunk men. The kid had barely closed his eyes for forty hours and his ear throbbed. He walked sleeping through the wet grass and saw before his feet in the mist the scrubbed boards of a shifting deck and he heard the surge of the sea and he stepped aside to avoid a coil of faded hempen rope and he stumbled and woke regretfully. At other times the dim crushed grass of the path assumed the form of a worn carpet and the kid could trace the pattern of it and see about it a bed and chairs and a child’s ragged clothes and a chest of drawers and then he stumbled once more and those objects resolved themselves into rocks and bushes.

The 14th day of October came with a grey dim dawn as they reached the higher ranges. The slope by which they had ascended was bare and dark and around them the peaks appeared and disappeared in rolling cloud. They reached the plateau and came out on a burnt tableland and the troops were ordered to halt there for breakfast. Evans enquired as to the nature of the breakfast and Herrid told him that what breakfast there was was in their packs and so they sat on the black grass and gnawed with blackened teeth on black biscuit.

A thick heavy fog came down and hung about them and saturated their clothing. The kid could see only Evans and the joiner and Waine but the clink of bridles and the murmur of voices and the sound of distant shouted orders and cattle lowing gave notice of a thousand other beings all invisible in the mist. For two hours they waited shivering for the General’s column and it did not come and then they rose and felt their way forward.

They proceeded with flank patrols thrown out left and right and after a quarter of a mile they heard the dull boom of a gun and the clouds parted and they saw across an intervening valley how howitzers belched out white smoke and shells burst over a heathen village and small figures scattered into the trees.

They marched on for seven miles and piled arms near the spot where they had been attacked on the 8th of September. They were a quarter of a mile from the forest pass which separated the Kromme plateau from the General’s brigade on the tableland beyond. Several companies were extended to watch the forest and detached parties of Fingos went into the bush on the right and burned a homestead and exchanged fire with a small group of the displaced heathen. The irregulars lay in the shifting clouds and after an hour a party of the Cape Corps issued from the forest and the Lieutenant Colonel received orders to join the General on the other side.

The picquets were called in and while his horse was being saddled the Captain crowded with the other officers to hear that the General’s brigade had driven a large body of the enemy off the heights and into the Great Western Ravine. A lieutenant severely wounded and a colonel’s charger shot from under him and two or three other men lost. Captain Norris of the Mounted Rifles was dead of a ball through the throat.

The column formed up and entered the forest in file by a narrow rocky path. The Captain noted that the timber was very fine. Luxuriant evergreens grew beneath the tall trees and immense creepers hung like ropes in great festoons from branches fifty or sixty feet high. The kid trudged and staggered and his ear ached and his neck below it and he was deaf on that side and he looked only at the rocks before his feet.

There were puffs of smoke in the forest to the right and the world about him roared and the trees on the left-hand side of the path spat wood and bark as lead crashed into them. No man fell among the irregulars and they fired back at their invisible antagonists and they charged their rifles and moved on and fired again when they saw smoke in the trees. They gained the open ground and were greeted by a succession of volleys from an angle of the forest on the left. The Captain watched and saw that the volleys were timed to the arrival of the officers and that these men were lucky to escape with only a grazing of their accoutrements.

The companies re-formed in open column and moved on to join the General’s brigade. As they proceeded an alarm came that the Mounted Rifles were cut off in the rear with the pack animals. The irregulars were ordered to the right about and moved eastwards along the edge of the wood. The bush was fringed with rocky ground and from this cover they skirmished with the heathen and the heathen dodged behind the trees and fired from breastworks of low stone about their village but the irregulars’ rifles told and the heathen retreated.

The irregulars turned back towards the column and the kid saw five riderless horses gallop from the forest at the mouth of the trail and then the Mounted Rifles began to come through. Many were wounded and towards the rear came a pack horse with two men slung across it and their heads bounced on its flanks. Scattered groups of heathen were visible behind the emerging riders and when the last of the pack animals were clear of the trees the artillery opened fire from rising ground five hundred yards to the north. Round shot and spherical case howled above and the kid saw one warrior and the tree next to him simply evaporate and in their place was a void demarcated by splinter and blood.

The kid watched with Evans and the joiner and they saw a man called Ricketts carried past with a hole in his chest and he did not look like a man who would live. The artillery ceased their fire and the forest was still and for a moment all was quiet upon the plain. Then a bugle sounded the recall and the skirmishers closed and retired and the regiments were re-formed and the heavy masses of infantry moved out first across the high green grasslands to join the General.

Within an hour the two brigades were united and they moved on in open column over undulating tableland. The plain rolled out to the west and north and it was bounded by mountains and Mount Misery lay behind them to the east. A beam of yellow light came low across the green expanse and through this shaft the pilgrims moved as if in review before some ultimate censor. The first to be counted were the lean and bloodied Mounted Rifles and after that a group of heathen prisoners who carried pots and mats and gourds upon their heads. A train of groaning wounded passed through the light and then the stained and ragged veterans and then the irregulars. Behind them came new arrivals whose coats were still bright red and tattered Highlanders in their bush dress and the lumbering artillery and in the rear the great train of pack horse and mule.

The heathen emerged onto the plain behind the column and took points of cover and fired from a distance. A group of cavalry split off and galloped back and the heathen retreated into the forest and the cavalry did not follow.

The column moved on and in the evening the irregulars stumbled to a halt at the devastated homestead of a settler called Mundell. The wounded were placed in wagons and lay there leaking blood and waiting. They were about to embark for the fort at Post Retief when the Captain pointed out to the officer commanding that the shifting shadows on the plain to the north were parties of heathen horsemen and so the wounded remained on their wagons and a Highlander died quietly in the midst of their groaning.

The irregulars bivouacked in a little hollow and lit their fires. The hollow was close to a detached clump of bush on a stony outcrop and the kid went there. He stepped behind a great boulder and into a sheltered cranny beneath a tree and loosened his belt and lowered his trousers. He squatted next to a pale rock which was level with his head and he placed his hand thereon to steady himself. The rock shifted at his touch and the kid looked at it and saw that it was not stone but bone.

It was the monstrous skull of some animal. It owned two great eye-sockets on its sides and a strange hole like a smiling mouth in the middle of its forehead. It had no chin but two round heavy tubes that rested in the earth. It stood there beside the kid like the ritual mask of a tribe of Cyclops, like some arcane artefact made by a race of giant imagination and long extinct. They made a strange picture, the squatting boy and the skull. The sun sank into the horizon and the fires glowed across the plain and the kid left his offering and returned to his companions. He did not eat but lay down to sleep on the damp grass and he did not open his eyes again before the dawn came.

The Captain was about with the sunrise and hopeful of action but the General ordered that they could not move before he had received ammunition from Post Retief. And so the army remained on the tableland and the heathen came out once more to demonstrate their cavalry manoeuvres at a distance.

In the afternoon the Captain stood at the side of Captain Norris’ grave and looked about at the men assembled. A host of stained and weather-beaten faces. The sun shone briefly and the red coats of the infantry funeral party began to steam. The coats were patched with canvas and leather and cloth of many colours and the men wore battered straw hats and they stood steaming like damp itinerant clowns and their expressions were grave. The men of Norris’ platoon rested their hairy chins on the butts of their firelocks and their muddy toes protruded from the gaping seams of their boots. There was a rich waft of decay which mingled with the smell of unwashed men and the corpse lay roughly sewn in a blanket and blood seeped from it still.

A clergyman had come with escort from Post Retief and he stood by the side of the grave and spoke.

Captain Norris was a friend. He was an amiable and gallant and brave man and he has given his life for our cause.

The clergyman paused and looked about.

What is that cause?

The Captain knotted his fingers together before him and then he inverted his hands and pushed his palms away from him with his fingers locked. He released his hands and worked his neck and shoulders and then he relaxed them and he stood still.

This is a country roamed by ungoverned clans of Dutchmen and heathen. There are tribes to the north so devastated by the Zulu that they have taken to eating each other. Only when this land is settled with English citizens and ruled by English law can peace and productivity prevail. And it will. That is what Charles Norris died for.

The Captain nodded and the clergyman began to read the funeral service. Ashes to ashes, said the clergyman. Dust to dust. The Captain stood very straight and took a breath and cleared his throat. Evans was standing with the joiner and he indicated the Captain with an inclination of his head. The Captain raised his arm and brushed a sleeve across his eye. Evans turned to spit but the joiner nudged him with an elbow.

That night the Captain and the God-struck Lieutenant inspected their lines and came upon the kid who stood guard by himself. The kid held up a hand to indicate that they should be silent. The Captain and the God-struck Lieutenant obeyed and after a time they heard a sound that came on a light breeze from the south-west. It was a hymn sung and some trick of the wind and the acoustics of the ravines below amplified it and for a moment they could hear the words and the strange and complex harmonies with which they were sung.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below.

The God-struck Lieutenant stared about but he could see nothing but the darkling plain.

What’s that?

Totties.

Praise him above, angelic host.

Totties?

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Down in the ravines.

Hottentots?

The same ones who will be trying to kill you tomorrow.

But they’re defectors.

Not from Christ, said the Captain.

The men stood there on the chilled plateau and the God-struck Lieutenant looked up and the clouds were low above him and they reflected the dull glow of the fires on their dark and heavy bellies.

At two o’clock in the morning the irregulars were roused and took up their packs and their arms and stood and waited in darkness and bitter cold for an hour. Confused orders were shouted in the night and then the Lieutenant Colonel’s brigade marched south towards the pass onto the Kromme plateau. A large fire blazed up from a heathen observation post on the slopes of Mount Misery to signal their approach. As the horizon began to grey the column wheeled to the right and began to descend into the Great Western Ravine. They moved down by a stony pass and slipped from rock to rock in uncertain light and sometimes the irregulars slid down on their buttocks which were little protected by their dilapidated trousers and aside from their curses they might have been children at play.

They gained the head of the valley and halted near the ruin of a farmhouse. This skeleton of recent domesticity lay in a fine garden filled with vines and bananas and oranges and lemons and citrons and pomegranates and figs and peaches. There were trees in blossom and the kid noted through his daze how their sweet fragrance mingled with the warlike odours of men and animals and guns. The clouds were low and a thin drizzle came down and they marched on up a subsidiary valley. It was elegantly wooded and shut in by mountains and the clouds rested on their forested heights. A broad wagon path cut through a grove of flowering bushes and followed the course of a rocky stream and the water which flowed in it was clear and cold.

There were grey crags that towered above and belts of lichen-covered forest and slopes of green grass. The drizzle stopped and the clouds lifted to reveal basaltic towers rising out of the woods on the higher ridges. The sun broke through these eminences and the trees and the rocks and the grass sparkled with dew and gave off a fragrance in the sudden warmth that might have convinced a man that some kind of peace was possible. And then the irregulars came down into a depression and the kid retched.

Clouds of flies rose from the defector corpses which lay about like the remnants of a picnic which has been struck by a bomb. The flies buzzed and the bodies broiled in the sun. One lay on his front like a sleeper and others on their backs and their faces were grotesquely swollen by the bacterial processes within. One lay curled in a foetal position as though he had died in agony. There were wolf and jackal tracks about and the bodies were partially eaten and one owned a red raw stump where the lower leg had been gnawed off at the knee. Among them was a Bastaard who wore the uniform of an officer of the Cape levies and although the stench was such that the Captain was reluctant to approach with measuring tape in hand the Bastaard was at least six foot tall by his estimation.

The irregulars marched on and they passed the lonely ruins of another farmhouse which lay in the midst of fragrant orange orchards all aflower. The kid’s ear throbbed and he walked as if in a dream through the fecund landscape and he saw among the blossoms how a tendril of green creeper grew into a dead man’s rotting mouth.

They crossed the spoor of horses and sheep and cattle and the irregulars detached and followed the trail to the entrance of a narrow valley. They proceeded up a sandy path and it led them to a rocky gorge all tangled with bush. The chasm was silent and smelt of ambush and Evans said that he wasn’t going in for no one and the kid was glad when they turned and retraced their steps into the Great Western Ravine.

They rejoined the column which spread out across the breadth of the valley and commenced to move east towards the highlands. The Captain lifted his Dollond and saw how the General’s column moved like ants along the edge of the northern plateau. The distant brigade reached an enemy position and opened fire and the boom of the howitzers rolled out over the valley and the reports of the bursting shells answered in syncopation.

The Western Ravine formed an amphitheatre embraced by the Kromme Heights to the south and the cliffs of the plateau to the north and scavengers hung patiently above it. The great birds floated on updrafts and fires rose towards them from the immolation of hidden huts and blue smoke wreathed up through the trees. The Fingos worked side by side with the marauders and they called out their triumph across the valley and their voices mixed with the shrill cries of captured women and the column moved up the valley like a rake which tore out all human habitation before it.

The irregulars proceeded up the left of the gorge and worked through sloping bush and they burned and looted without opposition. High up on the edge of the forest near the base of the cliffs they came upon a group of spacious bee-hive huts. The huts were newly built of fine reeds and they were plastered with mud. They sheltered beneath overhanging trees and looked out on a smooth green slope and on the clear waters of a stream which bubbled down among the rocks.

The Captain ducked down and stepped into a dwelling. A small fire flamed in a circle of rocks in its centre. The fire was formed from three dry hardwood logs and made little smoke. There was a grinding stone next to it and the Captain squatted to examine the dark grains which lay in its hollow. He shifted the rough powder in his fingers and took a pinch and raised it to his nose and then he stood and looked about. There were gourds and sheep-skin rugs lying along the walls. The Captain lifted a gourd and it rattled and he turned it upside down and roasted coffee beans of good quality fell into his hand. On the smooth cow-dung floor were fresh piles of a white fibrous root that were still moist from their chewing. The Captain examined a portion of the root and smelt it and then he threw it down on the fire and wiped his hand on his thigh and stepped outside.

The huts and their contents were put to flame and the Captain did not see his letter to the General which the dust devil had taken. The letter lay concealed in its wooden box beneath a sheep skin. It was dusty and much worn and pored over and it lay in its place alongside strategic communications between Jinqi and Branders which were written in the Dutch language. The words burned, like the box and the domed hut that housed them, and when the irregulars reached the head of the valley the words were gone and the whole expanse of the ravine was filled with a haze of smoke.

The column ascended by a rocky track which rose through cool forest. The irregulars cut their way through underwood chocked with luxuriant shrubs and all intertwined with sweet-scented vine. In places the forest floor was covered with wood anemones and bright flowers and among these in a glade lay a heathen woman and child. The woman lay on her side with the baby strapped to her back and both were much cut by the splinters of a shell and the woman had bled profusely before she died.

The brigade gained the head of the pass with the irregulars as flank skirmishers on the left and the General’s column covering them with artillery from above. The Captain nodded at the thoroughness of the coordinated manoeuvre and then he heard in astonishment that the rear guard were being attacked in the bush from which the irregulars had just emerged.

The Captain cantered towards the Lieutenant Colonel but the Lieutenant Colonel was surrounded by officers and he was red in the face and he was shouting. The Captain turned his horse and rode out to the edge of the cliffs. He took out his Dollond and scoured the forest below and gained a glimpse of the track. He saw the heathen rush in on two men. One man was dragged from sight and the other fell and tried to rise with his arms aloft in surrender and the heathen beat him down with knobbed sticks and with the butts of their firelocks. The Captain saw two riderless horses scramble up and when they had passed the track was empty.

An hour later the battered rearguard came out upon the highlands with their wounded and some of their dead and the irregulars watched.

You don’t want to be at the back, said Evans.

The joiner spat. The kid swayed beside them and said nothing. He lowered himself carefully to the ground and put his head on his knees. He woke when Evans pulled him to his feet and he stared about like a mad person. Evans pushed him to his place in the column and he staggered out across the plain.

The heathen showed in considerable force on some low rocks to the right and opened fire at long range. The Lieutenant Colonel’s brigade formed line to the right and took cover behind a low ridge and the balls fell among them. Two companies went out towards the heathen flank and guns were turned on the heathen and when they found their range the heathen retreated.

The brigade re-formed and moved on to join the General’s column and almost immediately the heathen opened fire on them from a belt of bush to their left. The column halted and men took cover where they could and the skirmishers of the Highlanders were sent out once more.

The enemy were too spread out for artillery to be effective and an order came to the Captain and the Captain told the God-struck Lieutenant and Sergeant Major Herrid that it was time to show how it was done. He spoke to a lieutenant of the Highlanders and this man’s company fired a volley and the irregulars charged forward. They took cover behind a rocky shelf and fired a volley of their own and then they rose and ran screaming into the bush. Evans and Waine came upon two wounded Hottentots who struggled to reload their double-barrelled carbines.

The Hottentots threw down their weapons and knelt and one looked at Evans.

Gelieve te doden mij niet, he said.

Evans lifted his heel and brought it down on the side of the Hottentot’s head and the man fell away and groaned and tried to crawl. Evans leapt on him and put his knee in the centre of his back and lifted his head and began to cut through his throat with his reaping hook. Waine battered the second Hottentot about the head with the butt of his rifle and he struggled up onto his knees and Waine lifted his weapon and pounded him with it and so it went. When the Hottentots were dead Evans and Waine ran on through the undergrowth and fired at the fleeting defectors who bounded away into the forest and down the cliff faces with an antelope agility.

When the irregulars came to the edge of the plateau they looked down and the forest and the cliffs were silent and appeared deserted.

They turned to rejoin the column and on their way they found the kid sitting with his head upon his knees.

What’s wrong with him, said the Captain.

He’s sick, said the joiner.

The Captain stared at the kid for a moment and then he stooped and took him by the collar and lifted him to his feet and shook him.

What’s wrong with you?

The kid’s head lolled and he did not answer. Evans and the joiner came forward to take him under each arm but the kid pushed them off and the party moved on. The irregulars rejoined the column and the wounded and the dead were slung on stretchers and the brigade proceeded and they had gained no more than three-quarters of a mile when they came under fire from the bush they had just cleared. A group of some twenty Hottentots and heathen emerged thence and ran forward and fired but the shots fell short. The artillery unlimbered a gun and swung it round and their third shell fell directly among the heathen and the Captain could only count thirteen as they retreated.

Late in the afternoon the column regained their previous position at Mundell’s farm and found Norris’ body lying some distance from his excavated grave and partially eaten. The kid stumbled and Evans and the joiner steered him towards the hospital tent but he fought them off and sat on the ground and when the fire was made he lowered his head to his knees and slept. Evans and Waine and the joiner were eating when Providence the Fingo came to join them and squatted next to the kid. He took Evans’ reaping hook and he held it among the coals. Then he took the kid’s head in his hand and looked into his eyes.

I cut, he said.

The kid stared at Providence uncomprehending. Providence turned the kid’s head to the side and pushed with the point of the reaping hook into the taut swollen skin at the place where the kid’s lobe joined with his neck. The kid swore and rose unsteadily to his feet and Providence smiled and nodded and handed the reaping hook back to Evans. Evans took it and stared at it and then he sniffed at the blade.

The kid stood looking about wildly and a thick yellow ooze came out with the blood and plasma from his ear and flowed down his neck. Providence searched in his daghasack and found some dried and mouldy matter which might have been vegetable in origin. He took boiling water from the kettle and infused the substance in it. He took a rag and wet it and wiped the oozing matter from the kid’s ear and offered him the remains of the infusion.

Drink, he said.

The kid did as instructed and Providence pointed to the kid’s ear.

Gone, he said.

The kid sat and stared into the flames. His skull throbbed and he saw in the coals a child who stood in the doorway of a house and pulsed and dimmed in the same rhythm as the pain. The kid did not eat and after a time he laid down his blanket near the flames and slept and the men stepped over him as they went about their evening chores.