Birds of Prey (72 page)

She was not alone in her terror for all the camp was suddenly awake. Zwaantie screamed, and the baby echoed her terror. Even the men sprang to their feet and cried out to God.

Aboli appeared beside them like a dark moonshadow and calmed Sukeena with a hand on her trembling shoulder. ‘It is no phantom, but a creature of this world,’ he told them.
‘They say that even the bravest hunter is frightened three times by the lion. Once when he sees its tracks, twice when he hears its voice, and the third time when he confronts the beast face
to face.’

Hal sprang up, and called to the others, ‘Throw fresh logs on the fire. Light the slow-match on all the muskets. Place the women and the child in the centre of the stockade.’

They crouched in a tight circle behind its flimsy walls, and for a while all was quiet, quieter than it had been all that night for now even the scavengers has been silenced by the mighty voice
that had spoken from out of the darkness.

They waited, their weapons held ready, and stared out into the night where the yellow light of the flames could not reach. It seemed to Hal that the flickering firelight played tricks with his
eyes, for all at once he thought he saw a ghostly shape glide silently through the shadows. Then Sukeena gripped his arm, digging her fingernails into his flesh, and he knew that she had seen it
also.

Abruptly that gale of terrifying noise broke over them again, raising the hair on their scalps. The women shrieked and the men quaked and tightened their grip on the weapons that now seemed so
frail and inadequate in their hands.

‘There!’ whispered Zwaantie, and this time there could be no doubt that what they saw was real. It was a monstrous feline shape that seemed as tall as a man’s shoulder, which
passed before their gaze on noiseless pads. The flames lit upon its brazen glossy hide, turning its eyes to glaring emeralds like those in the crown of Satan himself. Another came and then another,
passing in swift and menacing parade before them, then disappearing into the night once more.

‘They gather their courage and resolve,’ Aboli said. ‘They smell the blood and the dead flesh and they are hunting us.’

‘Should we flee from the stockade, then?’ Hal asked.

‘No!’ Aboli shook his head. ‘The darkness is their domain. They are able to see when the night stops up our eyes. The darkness makes them bold. We must stay here where we can
see them when they come.’

Then, from out of the night, came such a creature as to dwarf the others they had seen. He strode towards them with a majestic swinging gait, and a mane of black and golden hair covered his head
and shoulders and made him seem as huge as a haystack. ‘Shall I fire upon him?’ Hal whispered to Aboli.

‘A wound will madden him,’ Aboli replied. ‘Unless you can kill cleanly, do not fire.’

The lion stopped in the full glare of the firelight. He placed his forepaws apart and lowered his head. The dark hair of his mane came erect, swelling before their horrified gaze, seeming to
double his bulk. He opened his jaws, and they saw the ivory fangs gleam, the red tongue curl out between them, and he roared again.

The sound struck them with a physical force, like a storm-driven wave. It stunned their ear-drums and startled their senses. The beast was so close that Hal could feel the breath from its mighty
lungs blow into his face. It smelt of corpses and carrion long dead.

‘Quietly now!’ Hal urged them. ‘Make no sound and do not move, lest you provoke him to attack.’ Even the women and the child obeyed. They stifled their cries and sat
rigid with the terror of it. It seemed an eternity that they remained thus, the lion eyeing them, until little one-eyed Johannes could bear it no longer. He screamed, flung up his musket and fired
wildly.

In the instant before the gunsmoke blinded them Hal saw that the ball had missed the beast and had struck the dirt between its forelegs. Then the smoke billowed over them in a cloud, and from
its depths came the grunts of the angry lion. Now both women screamed and the men barged into each other in their haste to run deeper into the stockade. Only Hal and Aboli stood their ground,
muskets levelled, and aimed into the bank of smoke. Little Sukeena shrank against Hal’s flank but did not run.

Then the lion burst in full charge out of the mist of gunsmoke. Hal pressed the trigger and his musket misfired. Aboli’s weapon roared deafeningly, but the beast was a blur of movement so
swift, in the smoke and the darkness, that it cheated the eye. Aboli’s shot must have flown wide for it had no effect upon the lion, which swept into the stockade, roaring horribly. Hal flung
himself down on Sukeena, covering her with his own body and the lion leapt over him.

It seemed to pick out Johannes from the huddle of terrified humanity. Its great jaws closed in the small of the man’s back and it lifted him as a cat might carry a mouse. With one more
bound it cleared the rear wall of the stockade and disappeared into the night.

They heard Johannes screaming in the darkness, but the lion did not carry him far. Just beyond the firelight it began to devour him while he still lived. They heard his bones crack as the beast
bit into them, then the rending of his flesh as it tore out a mouthful. There was more roaring and growling as the lionesses rushed in to share the prey, and while Johannes still shrieked and
sobbed they tore him to pieces. Gradually his cries became weaker until they faded away entirely and from the darkness there were only the grisly sounds of the feast.

The women were hysterical and Bobby wailed and beat his little fists in terror against Althuda’s chest. Hal quieted Sukeena, who responded swiftly to the feel of his arm around her
shoulder. ‘Do not run. Move quietly. Sit in a circle. The women in the centre. Reload the muskets, but do not fire until I give the word.’ Hal rallied them, then looked at Daniel and
Aboli.

‘It is our store of meat that draws them. When they have finished with Johannes they will charge the stockade again for more.’

‘You are right, Gundwane.’

‘Then we will give them eland meat to distract them from us,’ Hal said. ‘Help me.’

Between the three of them they seized one of the huge hindquarters of raw eland flesh and staggered with it to the edge of the firelight. They threw it down in the dust.

‘Do not run,’ Hal cautioned them again, ‘for as the cat pursues the mouse, they will come after us if we do.’ They backed into the stockade. Almost immediately a lioness
rushed out, seized the bloody hindquarter and dragged it away into the night. They could hear the commotion as the others fought her for the prize, and then the sounds as they all settled down to
feed, snarling and growling and spitting at each other.

That hunk of raw meat was sufficient to keep even that voracious pride of the great cats feeding and squabbling for an hour, but when once more they began to prowl at the edge of the firelight
and make short mock charges at the huddle of terrified humans Hal said, ‘We must feed them again.’ It soon became clear that the lions would accept these offerings in preference to
rushing the camp, for when the three men dragged out another hindquarter from the stockade, the beasts waited for them to retire before a lioness slunk out of the night to haul it away.

‘Always it is the female who is boldest,’ Hal said, to distract the others.

Aboli agreed with him. ‘And the greediest!’

‘It is not our fault that you males lack courage and the sense to help yourselves,’ Sukeena told them tartly, and most of them laughed, but breathlessly and without conviction. Twice
more during the night Hal had them carry out legs of eland meat to feed the pride. At last as the dawn started to define the tops of the thorn trees against the paling sky the lions seemed to have
assuaged their appetites. They heard the roaring of the black-maned male fading with distance as he wandered away. He roared for the last time a league off, just as the sun pushed its flaming
golden rim above the jagged tops of the mountain range that ran parallel with the route of their march.

Hal and Althuda went out to find what remained of poor Johannes. Strangely the lions had left his hands and his head untouched, but had consumed the rest of him. Hal closed the staring eyes and
Sukeena wrapped these pathetic remnants in a scrap of cloth and prayed over the grave they dug. Hal placed slabs of rock over the fresh-turned earth to deter the hyenas from digging it up.

‘We can spend no more time here.’ He lifted Sukeena to her feet. ‘We must start out immediately if we are to reach the river today. Fortunately, there is still enough meat left
for our purpose.’

They slung the remaining legs of eland meat on carrying poles, and with a man at each end staggered with them over the rolling hills and grasslands. It was late afternoon when they reached the
river and, from the high bluff, looked down onto its broad green expanse, which had already proved such a barrier to their march.

T
he
Golden Bough
dropped her anchor at the head of the channel in Elephant Lagoon, and at once Llewellyn set his crew to work, pumping out
the bilges and repairing the storm damage to the hull and the rigging. A full gale still raged overhead, but though the surface of the lagoon was whipped into a froth of white wavelets the high
ground of the heads broke its main force.

Cornelius Schreuder fretted to go ashore. He was desperate to get off the
Golden Bough
and rid himself of this company of Englishmen whom he had come to detest so bitterly. He looked upon
Lord Cumbrae as a friend and an ally and was anxious to join him and ask him to act as his second in the affair of honour with Vincent Winterton. In his tiny cabin he packed his chests hurriedly
and, when a man could not be spared to help him, lugged them up onto the deck himself. He stood with the pile of his possessions at the entryport, staring out across the lagoon to Cumbrae’s
shore base.

The Buzzard had set up his camp on the same site as Sir Francis Courtney’s, which Schreuder had attacked with his green-jackets. A great deal of activity was taking place among the trees.
It seemed to Schreuder that Cumbrae must be digging trenches and other fortifications and he was puzzled by this: he saw no sense in throwing up earthworks against an enemy that did not exist.

Llewellyn would not leave his ship until he was certain that the repairs to her were well afoot and that, in all other respects, she was snugged down and secure. Eventually he placed his first
mate, Arnold Fowler, in charge of the deck and ordered one of his longboats made ready.

‘Captain Llewellyn!’ Schreuder accosted him, as he came to the ship’s side. ‘I have decided that, with Lord Cumbrae’s agreement, I will leave your ship and transfer
to the
Gull of Moray
.’

Llewellyn nodded. ‘I understood that was your intention and, in all truth, Colonel, I doubt there will be many tears shed on board the
Golden Bough
when you depart. I am going
ashore now to find where we can refill the water casks that have been contaminated with seawater during the gale. I will convey you and your possessions to Cumbrae’s camp, and I have here
the fare money which you paid to me for your passage. To save myself further unpleasantness and acrimonious argument, I am repaying this to you in full.’

Schreuder would have dearly loved to give himself the pleasure of disdainfully refusing the offer, but those few guineas were all his wealth in the world and he took the thin purse that
Llewellyn handed him, and muttered reluctantly, ‘In that, at least, you act like a gentleman, sir. I am indebted to you.’

They went down into the longboat, and Llewellyn sat in the stern sheets while Schreuder found a seat in the bows and ignored the grinning faces of the crew and the ironical salutes from the
ship’s officers on the quarterdeck as they pulled away. They were only half-way to the beach when a familiar figure wearing a plaid and a beribboned bonnet sauntered out from amongst the
trees, his red beard and tangled locks blazing in the sunlight, and watched them approach with both hands on his hips.

‘Colonel Schreuder, by the devil’s steaming turds!’ Cumbrae roared as he recognized him. ‘It gladdens my heart to behold your smiling countenance.’ As soon as the
bows touched the beach Schreuder leapt ashore and seized the Buzzard’s outthrust hand.

‘I am surprised but overjoyed to find you here, my lord.’

The Buzzard looked over Schreuder’s shoulder, and grinned widely. ‘Och! And if it’s not my beloved brother of the Temple, Christopher Llewellyn! Well met, cousin, and
God’s benevolence upon you.’

Llewellyn did not smile, and showed little eagerness to take the hand that Cumbrae thrust at him as soon as his feet touched the sand. ‘How d’ye do, Cumbrae? Our last discourse in
the Bay of Trincomalee was interrupted at a crucial point when you left in some disarray.’

‘Ah, but that was in another land and long ago, cousin, and I’m sure we can both be magnanimous enough to forgive and forget such a trifling and silly matter.’

‘Five hundred pounds and the lives of twenty of my men is not a trifling and silly matter in my counting house. And I’ll remind you that I’m no cousin nor any kin of
yours,’ Llewellyn snapped, and his legs were stiff with the memory of his old outrage.

But Cumbrae placed one arm around his shoulder and said softly, ‘
In Arcadia habito.
’

Llewellyn was obviously struggling with himself, but he could not deny his knightly oath, and at last he gritted the response, ‘
Flumen sacrum bene cognosco.
’

‘There you are.’ The Buzzard boomed with laughter. ‘That was not so bad, was it? If not cousins, then we are still brothers in Christ, are we not?’

‘I would feel more brotherly towards you, sir, if I had my five hundred pounds back in my purse.’

‘I could set off that debt against the grievous injury that you inflicted on my sweet
Gull
and my own person.’ The Buzzard pulled back his cloak to display the bright scar
across his upper arm. ‘But I’m a forgiving man with a loving heart, Christopher, and so you shall have it. I give you my word on it. Every farthing of your five hundred pounds, and the
interest to boot.’