Company Of Spears

The names meant less to him than the landdrost supposed, especially since Johnson did not reveal his ignorance. He knew what a buffalo was, and for that matter antelope (he understood, too, that there were different types), but hippopotamus and rhinoceros were wholly novel. In any case, what he wanted more than anything to see was elephant. In India he had become quite used to them: they were but a part of the scene of daily life, domestic even. In Africa, however, he had heard that elephants were twice the size of their Indian cousins, with tusks that might gore a horse in an instant, toss it aloft indeed; and that these beasts ranged in herds ten times more destructive than a whole brigade of charging cavalry. This he wanted to see at a safe distance yet close enough to judge for himself the power of those massive tusks – any one of which, besides spelling death, might also bring him considerable fortune.

The road to Brown’s farm was a good one. It was not so much made as well travelled, though not by waggon, so that it was evenly worn rather than rutted, allowing a comfortable pace at both walk and trot. In two and a half hours, as the sun was nearing its highest, though its heat was no more than a June day on Salisbury Plain (and certainly nothing to what they had been used to in Bengal at this season), the party arrived at the farm. There was no marking its boundary save for a stone at the roadside, no fence or cleared perimeter, but half a mile distant they could see a cluster of white-washed buildings, and wispy smoke rising from a single chimney.

‘Do you know where his cattle graze?’ asked Hervey, puzzled that there was no sign of them.

‘Beyond the buildings yonder,’ replied the landdrost, looking about him at the good spring grass. ‘He ought by rights to have driven them up here by now, but the water’s all on the other side of the farm, and it’s easier. Brown’s not the most industrious of men. This is good soil here, and he ought to be growing maize, wheat even; but ploughing’s hard work, especially when cattle take no looking to at all.’

‘Except when the Xhosa take a fancy to them.’

‘Exactly so.’

When they came to the farmhouse, a plain, single-storey, stone-built affair with an iron roof, they found the two men of the Cape Corps saddling their horses in the lean-to stabling.

‘Is John Brown hereabout?’ called the landdrost.

The men, both Irish, red-coated but hatless, looked tired and dirty. It appeared to dawn on them slowly that here were reinforcements. ‘Ay, sor,’ said one of them, belatedly knuckling his forehead and standing to attention. ‘T’other side of the farm. Xhosa were thieving again last night, sor. Drove off a hundred head and more.’

Hervey decided that this was now as much military business as civil. ‘Stand easy, Corporal. What is Brown doing about it?’

The man turned to him, looking relieved to be in receipt of orders again. ‘Sor! Him and his men are trying to catch loose horses, and then he says he’s going to ride to Blaufontein to get up a posse of burghers, sor – Dutchmen.’

Hervey looked at the landdrost.

‘He’s within his rights, though I would wish he didn’t take the Dutch. They’re a good deal more savage, and that’s the last thing we need.’

‘I think the Xhosa’ve taken one of the boys with them as well, sor,’ said the corporal, looking now to the landdrost. ‘At least I hope they’ve taken him, and not just stuck a spear in him.’

‘One of the Hottentots?’

‘No, sor, one of the white boys.’

‘Oh God,’ groaned the landdrost. ‘That gives us little option but to chase them hard. What do you think, Captain Fairbrother?’

Fairbrother and the landdrost had got on well together the previous night. They had met before, when Fairbrother had come with his company of Royal Africans in the late troubles. The landdrost was evidently more disposed to take his advice than he would have been the Graham’s Town lieutenant’s. ‘I am of the opinion that if the Xhosa are chased by Dutch burghers they’ll fight as if it’s one band of brigands against another. If they’re pursued by redcoats – they’re not stupid – they’ll know it’s a matter of government.’

‘And?’ asked Hervey.

‘I doubt the boy would survive a fight between brigands. If they see that government is after them then they’ll be forced to think. As I said, they’re not stupid. And in Xhosa law, the tribe as a whole is responsible for any felony.’

‘Sor?’

‘Carry on, Corporal,’ said Hervey.

‘Sor! We heard yesterday the Xhosa’ve been raiding north of here as well, in the Dutch lands. I think the burghers’ll be turning out anyway, if they haven’t already.’

The landdrost’s brow furrowed. ‘That changes things. If there’s a general irruption of Xhosa, as it seems there may be, then I think, Colonel Hervey, we must send word back to Graham’s-town for troops to come forward. And to Port Elizabeth too.’

Hervey nodded. ‘By what means does Fort Willshire communicate with Graham’s-town? Will they not have detected the trouble? I should very much hope so.’