Company Of Spears

Hervey saw that the pandour lay lifeless, so he closed to the wounded Xhosa instead. The ball had struck in the same place as the Burman ball had struck him, three years before. But there would be no surgeon of Mr Ritchie’s vulnerary skill to save this man’s arm; not unless they could get him to Graham’s Town, which they could not do inside of twenty-four hours – even by way of Trompetter’s Drift and with no Xhosa to trouble them. Not unless they rode through the night; even supposing they could find their way by moonlight.

Fairbrother had already calculated the odds, and the time and the distance. ‘We must back-track for Trompetter’s Drift at once,’ he began, calmly but insistently. ‘We might make a couple of leagues before nightfall, and every mile we get nearer the post is another mile further from the Xhosa, except we can’t be certain they won’t follow. We might run into the patrol, too.’ He looked hard at their captive as Wainwright dressed the wound.

‘We can’t leave him, I think,’ said Hervey.

‘Would you leave the pandour if he weren’t dead?’

‘No, indeed: not in a red coat!’

‘And an enemy of that red coat?’

‘A wounded enemy, Fairbrother. I would not chance him to the wild things here. Are you trying me?’

Fairbrother smiled grimly. ‘I am.’

And Hervey thought he knew why. Did Fairbrother imagine he might somehow think the worth of a man’s life, the effort to be expended in its preservation, was in some measure dependent on the shade of his skin? That the white – the grubby white – of a British soldier entitled him to the greater effort, more than any half-caste, and infinitely more than an ebony-coloured savage, who was so far removed from the decencies of good society as to be little more than an animal, to be killed to prevent its predation? ‘I believe you are more a soldier than you will admit. You are content to shoot a pandour in a red coat – in the back – and yet I surmise that a stricken enemy engages every last sentiment.’

‘It is not possible to shoot a fleeing man anywhere but in the back, Hervey.’ ‘

I know that!’

‘And by what right do we expect quarter, and aid, when we are fallen if we do not treat with an enemy, however base, in the same way?’

‘You push at an open door.’

Fairbrother sighed. ‘I wanted only to be sure. It has not always been the way on the frontier.’

Hervey could believe it. It had not always been the way anywhere. He looked about him: a dead redcoat, two dying horses, two pandours fled: not circumstances to be proud of. An ambush, not much less; an affair of bad scouting (or at least superior scouting on the part of the Xhosa). This was no adornment to his reputation. But much more than that, it was notice that they themselves might yet end as vulture-meat in a tract of country that could no longer boast the King’s peace. He was not afraid, however. That sort of fear did not trouble him (he would stand his ground abler than any man who might challenge him hereabouts). Rather was he suddenly aware of how much he had taken for granted – that the Xhosa, whose reputation was hardly fearsome after all, were not as the Burmans or Maharatas, the Pindarees or the Jhauts. Neither was this country desert or tropical forest, nor like anything he had seen in the Peninsula or in France, or Canada. He knew he had been worsted. Courage and address on Wainwright’s and Fairbrother’s part had saved the day. And he was already drawing his conclusions. He had proceeded to the frontier in pursuit of the reiving party as if he had been commanding a troop of His Majesty’s Cavalry of the Line. It would not serve.

XVIII

THE SUN NEVER SETS WITH OUT FRESH NEWS

Later

An hour of straining every muscle and of bending every sense to the detecting of concealed Xhosa induced a feeling of exhaustion quite unlike any Hervey could remember. Although reason told him that every mile meant greater safety, in his water he could not quite feel it. Only when the scrub began to thin – both in thickness of the thorn and its occurrence – did he begin to feel the advantage shifting back in his direction. He had been in closer country – the Burman jungle, the Canadian forest – but he had never before supposed that the country gave the natural advantage to his opponent. The Burmans had known their jungle, and the Iroquois their forest, but Hervey had been certain it was possible to match them; here, in this strange mix of country, he half believed the Xhosa had some magic by which they transported themselves. How else had they covered the ground so quickly, and taken them unawares at the Gwalana’s head?