Men of Men (3 page)

From experience Zouga knew there was one place where he might be able to establish human contact, and through it glean the information he so desperately needed. He was looking for a canteen that
sold hard liquor.

Below the kopje there was an open space, the only one in the camp. It was roughly square in shape, bordered by shacks of canvas and iron, cluttered with the wagons of the transport riders.

Zouga selected one of the shacks that grandly announced itself as ‘The London Hotel’ and on the same board advertised:

He was picking his way across the littered, rutted market square towards it when ragged cheers and a bellowed chorus of ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ from the
direction of the kopje checked him. A motley band of diggers came stamping through the dust carrying one of their number upon their shoulders, singing and yelling, their faces brick red with dust
and excitement. They shouldered their way into the rickety bar ahead of Zouga, while from the other canteens and from the parked wagons men came running to find the cause of the excitement.

‘What happened?’ the question was yelled.

‘Black Thomas pulled a monkey,’ the reply was hurled back.

It was only later that Zouga learned the diggers’ parlance. A ‘monkey’ was a diamond of fifty carats or more, while a ‘pony’ was that impossible diggers’
dream, a stone of one hundred carats.

‘Black Thomas pulled a
monkey
.’ The reply was picked up and called across the square and through the encampment, and soon the crowd overflowed the rickety canteen so that
the frothing schooners of beer had to be passed overhead to the men on the fringes.

The fortunate Black Thomas was hidden from Zouga’s view in the crowd that pressed about him, everybody trying to draw close as though some of the man’s luck might rub off onto
them.

The kopje-wallopers heard the excitement, hastily lowered their flags and hurried across the square, gathering like carrion birds to the lion’s kill. The first of them arrived breathless
on the fringe of the revellers, hopping up and down for a glimpse of the man.

‘Tell Black Thomas that Lion-heart Werner will make an open offer – pass it on to him.’

‘Hey, Blackie, Lion-arse will go open.’ The offer changed shape as it was yelled through the packed doorway. An ‘open offer’ was firm and the digger was free to tout the
other buyers. If he received no higher bid for his diamond, he was entitled to return and close with the open offer.

Once again Black Thomas was raised by his fellows until he could see over their heads. He was a little gypsy-dark Welshman and his moustache was rimed with beer froth. His voice had the sweet
Welsh lilt as he sang his defiance:

‘Hear me, then. Lion-arse the robber, I would sooner—’ what he proposed to do with his diamond made even the rough men about him blink and then guffaw with surprise ‘
– rather than let you get your thieving paws on it.’

His voice rang with the memory of a hundred humiliations and unfair bargains that had been forced upon him. Today Black Thomas with his ‘monkey’ was king of the diggings, and though
his reign might be short, he was determined to reap all the sweets that it promised.

Zouga never laid eyes on that stone; he never saw Black Thomas again; for by noon the following day the little Welshman had sold his diamond, and sold too his ‘briefies’, and taken
the long road south on the beginning of his journey home to a fairer, greener land.

Zouga waited in the press of hot sweat-stinking bodies that filled the canteen, choosing a man with care while he listened to the voices grow louder and the chaff coarser as the schooners went
down.

He selected one who by his comportment and speech was a gentleman, and home-bred rather than colonial born. The man was drinking whisky, and when his glass was empty Zouga moved closer and
ordered it refilled.

‘Very decent of you, old man,’ the man thanked him. He was in his twenties still and remarkably good-looking, with fair English skin and silky sideburns. ‘The name is
Pickering, Neville Pickering,’ he said.

‘Ballantyne – Zouga Ballantyne.’ Zouga took the proffered hand and the man’s expression altered.

‘Good Lord, you are the elephant hunter.’ Pickering raised his voice. ‘I say, fellows, this is Zouga Ballantyne. You know, the one who wrote
Hunter’s
Odyssey
.’

Zouga doubted half of them could read, but the fact that he had written a book made him an object of wonder. He found the centre of interest had shifted from Black Thomas to himself.

It was after dark when he started back to the wagon. He had always had a strong head for liquor and there was a good moon, so he could pick his way through the ordure that littered the
track.

He had spent a few sovereigns on liquor, but in return he had learned a great deal about the diggings. He had learned of the diggers’ expectations and fears. He knew now the going price
for ‘briefies’, the politics and economics of diamond pricing, the geological composition of the strike and a hundred other related facts. He had also made a friendship that would alter
his whole life.

Although Aletta and the boys were already asleep in the wagon tent, Jan Cheroot, the little Hottentot, was waiting for him, squatting beside the watch-fire, a small gnome-like figure in the
silver moonlight.

‘There is no free water,’ he told Zouga morosely. ‘The river is a full day’s trek away, and the thieving Boer who owns the wells sells water at the same price as they
sell brandy in this hell-hole.’ Jan Cheroot could be relied upon to know the going price of liquor ten minutes after arriving in a new town.

Zouga climbed into the wagon body, careful not to jolt the boys awake; but Aletta was lying rigidly in the narrow riempie bed. He lay down beside her and neither of them spoke for many
minutes.

Then she whispered. ‘You are determined to stay in this,’ her voice checked, then went on with quiet vehemence, ‘in this awful place.’

He did not reply, and in the cot behind the canvas screen across the body of the wagon Jordan whimpered and then was silent. Zouga waited until he had settled before he replied.

‘Today a Welshman named Black Thomas found a diamond. They say he has been offered twelve thousand pounds by one of the buyers.’

‘A woman came to sell me a little goat’s milk while you were away.’ Aletta might not have heard him. ‘She says there is camp fever here. A woman and two children have
died already and others are sick.’

‘A man can buy a good claim on the kopje for one thousand pounds.’

‘I fear for the boys, Zouga,’ Aletta whispered. ‘Let us go back. We could give up this wandering gypsy life for every. Daddy has always wanted you to come into the
business—’

Aletta’s father was a rich Cape merchant, but Zouga shuddered in the darkness at the thought of a high desk in the dingy counting-room of Cartwright and Company.

‘It is time the boys went to a good school, else they will grow up as savages. Please let us go back now, Zouga.’

‘A week,’ he said. ‘Give me a week – we have come so far.’

‘I do not think I can bear the flies and filth for another week.’ She sighed and turned her back to him, careful not to touch him in the narrow cot.

The family doctor in Cape Town, who had attended Aletta’s own birth, the birth of both boys and her numerous miscarriages, had warned them ominously.

‘Another pregnancy could be your last, Aletta. I cannot be responsible for what may happen.’ For the three years since then she had lain with her back to him, on those occasions when
they had been able to share a bed.

Before dawn Zouga slipped out of the wagon while Aletta and the boys still slept. In the darkness before first light he stirred the ashes and drank a cup of coffee crouching over them. Then in
the first rosy glow of dawn he joined the stream of carts and hurrying men that moved up for the day’s assault on the hill.

In the strengthening light and rising heat and whirls of dust he moved from claim to claim, looking and assessing. He had long ago trained himself as an amateur geologist. He had read every book
that he could find on the subject, often by candlelight on the lonely hunting veld; and on his infrequent returns home he had passed days and weeks in the Natural History Museum in London, much of
the time in the Geological Section. He had trained his eye and sharpened his instinct for the lie of the rock formations and for the grain and weight and colour of a sample of reef.

At most of the claims his overtures were met with a shrug and a turned back, but one or two of the diggers remembered him as the ‘elephant hunter’ or the ‘writer fellow’
and used his visit as an excuse to lean on their shovels and talk for a few minutes.

‘I’ve got two briefies,’ a digger who introduced himself as Jock Danby told Zouga, ‘but I call them The Devil’s Own. With these two hands,’ he held up his
huge paws, the palms studded with raised calluses, the nails chipped away and black with dirt, ‘with my own hands I’ve shifted fifteen thousand tons of stuff, and the biggest stone
I’ve pulled is a two. That there,’ he pointed to the adjoining claim, ‘was Black Thomas’s claim. Yesterday he pulled a monkey, a bloody fat stinking monkey, only two feet
from my side peg. Christ! It’s enough to break your heart.’

‘Buy you a beer.’ Zouga jerked his head towards the nearest canteen, and the man licked his lips then shook his head regretfully.

‘My kid is hungry – you can see the ribs sticking out of the little bugger and I have to pay wages by noon tomorrow.’ He indicated the dozen half-naked black tribesmen
labouring with pick and bucket in the bottom of the neatly squared off excavation with him. ‘These bastards cost me a fortune every day.’

Jock Danby spat on his callused palms and hefted the shovel, but Zouga cut in smoothly.

‘They do say the strike will pinch out at the level of the plain.’ At this point the kopje had been reduced to a mere twenty feet above the surrounding plain. ‘What do you
think?’

‘Mister, it’s bad luck to even talk like that.’ Jock checked the swing of his shovel and scowled heavily up at Zouga on the roadway above him, but there was fear in his
eyes.

‘You ever thought of selling out?’ Zouga asked him, and immediately Jock’s fear faded to be replaced by a sly expression.

‘Why, mister? You thinking of buying?’ Jock straightened. ‘Let me give you a little tip for free. Don’t even think about it, not unless you got six thousand pounds to do
the talking for you.’

He peered up at Zouga hopefully, and Zouga stared back at him without expression.

‘Thank you for your time, sir, and for your sake I hope the gravel lasts.’

Zouga touched the wide brim of his hat and sauntered away. Jock Danby watched him go, then spat viciously on the yellow ground at his feet and swung the shovel at it as though it were a mortal
enemy.

As he walked away Zouga felt a strange sense of elation. There was a time when he had lived by the turn of a card and the fall of a die, and he felt the gambler’s instinct now. He knew the
gravel would not pinch out. He knew it sank down, pure and rich into the depths. He knew it with a deep unshakable certainty, and he knew something else with equal certainty.

‘The road to the north begins here.’ He spoke aloud, and felt his blood thrill in his veins. ‘This is where it begins.’

He felt the need to make an act of faith, of total affirmation, and he knew what it must be. The price of livestock on the diggings was vastly inflated, and his oxen were costing him a guinea a
day to water. He knew how to close the road back.

By mid-afternoon he had sold the oxen: a hundred pounds a head, and five hundred for his wagon. Now he was committed, and he felt the currents of excitement coursing through his body as he paid
the gold coin over the raw wooden counter of the tin shack that housed the branch of the Standard Bank.

The road back was cut. He was chancing it all on the yellow gravel and the road northwards.

‘Zouga, you promised,’ Aletta whispered when the buyer came to Zouga’s camp to collect the oxen. ‘You promised that in one week—’ Then she fell silent when
she saw his face. She knew that expression. She drew the two boys to her and held them close.

Jan Cheroot went to each of the animals in turn and whispered to them as tenderly as a lover, and his stare was reproachful as he turned to Zouga while the span was led away.

Neither man spoke, and at last Jan Cheroot dropped his gaze and walked away, a slight, bare-footed, bow-legged little gnome.

Zouga thought he had lost him, and he felt a rush of distress, for the little man was a friend, a teacher and a companion of twelve years. It was Jan Cheroot who had tracked his first elephant,
and stood shoulder to shoulder with him as he shot it down. Together they had marched and ridden the breadth of a savage continent. They had drunk from the same bottle and eaten from the same pot
at a thousand camp fires. Yet he could not bring himself to call him back. He knew that Jan Cheroot must make his own decision.

He need not have worried. When ‘dop’ time came that evening, Jan Cheroot was there to hold out his chipped enamel mug. Zouga smiled and, ignoring the line that measured his daily
ration of brandy, he filled the mug to the brim.

‘It was necessary, old friend,’ he said, and Jan Cheroot nodded gravely. ‘They were good beasts,’ he said. ‘But then I have had many fine beasts go from my life,
four-legged and two-legged ones.’ He tasted the raw spirit. ‘After a little time and a dram or two, it does not matter so much.’

Aletta did not speak again until the boys were asleep in the tent.

‘Selling the oxen and the wagon was your answer,’ she said.

‘It cost a guinea a day to water them, and the grazing has been eaten flat for miles about.’

‘There have been three more deaths in the camp. I counted thirty wagons leaving today. It’s a plague camp.’

‘Yes.’ Zouga nodded. ‘Some of the claim holders are getting nervous. A claim that I was offered for eleven hundred pounds yesterday was sold for nine hundred today.’