Men of Men - Smith Wilbur (книги бесплатно без txt) 📗

Added to the Hottentot was the blood of the captured yellow bushman girls. Tiny doll-like creatures whose buttery yellow skins and dainty triangular faces with orientally slanted eyes and flattened pug features were only part of their attraction. To a people who regarded a large female posterior as a mark of beauty, the buttocks of the bushmen girls were irresistible, a bountiful double bulge that stood out behind them like the hump of a camel and in the and deserts of the Kalahari served the same purpose.

To this blood mixture was added the contribution of outcast Fingo and Pondo tribesmen, fugitives from the wiles of their own cruel chiefs and merciless witchdoctors, and Malayan slaves, escaped from their Dutch burgher masters, who had found their way through the secret passes of the mountains that defended the Cape of Good Hope like the turreted walls of a great castle.

They also joined the bands of wandering Griquas on the vast plains of the interior.

This blood mixture was compounded with that of little English girls, orphaned survivors of shipwrecked East India men that had perished on the treacherous rocks scoured by the Agulhas current, and taken to wife at puberty by their darker-skinned rescuers. And there was other northern blood, that of British seamen, pressed into the Royal Navy's service in the time of Napoleon's wars and desperate to exchange that harsh duty even for the life of deserter in such a wild and desert land as Southern Africa. Others had fled into the same wilderness, escaped convicts from the transport ships that had called at Good Hope to reprovision for the long eastern leg of the voyage to Australia and penal settlement of Botany Bay.

Then came travelling Jewish pedlars, Scottish missionaries taking God's injunction "Be fruitful" as their text for the day, riders on commando, collecting slaves and taking others of the traditional spoils of war in a dusty donga or behind a thorn bush under the inscrutable African sky. The old hunters had passed this way at the century's turn, and had paused in their pursuit of the great elephant herds to take on more tender game at closer range.

These were Hendrick Naaiman's ancestors. He was a Bastaard and proud of it. He had dark gypsy ringlets that dangled to the collar of his tanned buckskin jacket. His teeth were square and strong and starred with tiny white specks from drinking the lime-rich waters of the Karroo wells since childhood.

His eyes were black as tarpits, and his toffee-coloured skin thickly sown with the darker coin-like scars of smallpox, for his white ancestors had bestowed upon the tribe many of the other virtues of civilization: gunpowder, alcohol and more than one variety of the pox.

Despite the scarring, Hendrick was a handsome man, tall, broadshouldered, with long powerful legs, flashing black eyes and a sunny smile. He squatted across the fire from Bazo now, with his wide-brimmed hat still on his head; the ostrich feathers nodded and swirled above the flat crown as he gestured widely, laughing and talking persuasively.

"Only the ant-bear and "the meercat dig in the earth for no reward more than a mouthful of insects." Naaiman spoke in fluent Zulu, which was close enough to their own tongue for the Matabele to follow him readily. "Do these hairy white-faced creatures own all the earth and everything upon and beneath it? Are they then some kind of magical creature, some god from the heavens that they can say to you "I own every stone in the earth, every drop of water in the-"

" Hendrick paused, for he was about to say oceans, but he knew that his audience had never seen the sea, every drop of water in the rivers and lakes." Hendrick shook his head so that the ringlets danced on his cheeks. "I tell you then to see how, when the sun burns away their skin, the red meat that shows through is the same coloured meat as yours or mine. If you think them gods, then smell their breath in the morning or watch them squatting over the latrine pit. They do it the same way as you or me, my friends."

The circle of black men listened fascinated, for they had never heard ideas like these expressed aloud.

"They have guns," Bazo pointed out, and Hendrick laughed derisively.

"Guns," he repeated, and patted the Enfield in his own lap. "I have a gun, and when you finish your contract you also will have a gun.

Then we are gods also, you and me. Then we own the stones and the rivers also."

Cunningly Hendrick used "we" and "ours", not "me" and mine", although he despised these naked black savages as heartily as did any of the other bigots on New Rush.

Bazo took the stopper from his snuff-horn and poured a little of the fine red powder onto the pink palm of his hand, a palm still riven and scabbed from the rescue in number 6 Section, and he closed one nostril with his thumb and with the other sniffed the powder deep, left and right, and then sat back blinking deliciously at the ecstatic tears before passing the snuff-horn on to Kamuza, his cousin, who sat beside him.

Hendrick Naaiman waited with the patience of a man of old Africa, waited for the snuff-horn to complete the circle and come into his own hands. He took a pinch in each nostril and threw back his head to sneeze into the fire, then settled into silence again, waiting for Bazo to speak.

The Matabele frowned into the living coals, watching the devils form and fade, the figures and faces of strange men and beasts, the spirits of the flames, and he wished they had counsel for him.

At last he lifted his gaze to the man across the fire, once again studying the laced velskoen on his feet, the breeches of fine corduroy, the Sheffield-steel knife on this brass-studded belt, the embroidered waistcoat of beautiful thread and velvet and the flaming silk at his throat.

He was without doubt an important man, and a rogue.

Bazo did not trust him. He could almost smell the deceit and cunning upon him.

Why does a great chief, a man of worth, like yourself, come to tell us these things?"

"Bazo, son of Gandang," Hendrick intoned, his voice becoming deep and laden with portent, "I dreamed a dream last night. I dreamed that under the floor of your hut he buried certain stones."

For a moment the eyes of every Matabele warrior swivelled from Hendrick's face to the mud-plastered floor at the back of the low, smoky thatched hut, the darkest area of the circular room, and Hendrick suppressed the smile that crowded his lips.

Treasure was always buried under the floor of the hut, where a man could spread his sleeping-mat over it at night and guard it even in his sleep. It had not been difficult to guess where, the only question had been whether or not the gang of Matabele had yet learned the value of diamonds and begun gathering their own, as every other gang on the diggings was doing. Those furtive, guilty glances were his answer, but he let no trace of satisfaction show as he went on quietly.

"In my dream I saw that you were cheated, that when you took the stones to the white man, Bakela, he gave you a single gold coin with the head of the white queen upon it." Hendrick's broad handsome face darkened with melancholy. "My friend, I come to warn you. To save you from being cheated. To tell you that there is a man who will pay you the true value of your stones, and that you will have a fine new gun, a horse with a saddle, a bag of gold coins; whatever you desire will be yours."

"Who is this man?" Bazo asked cautiously, and Hendrick spread his arms and for the first time smiled.

"It is me, Hendrick Naaiman, your friend."

"How much will you give? How many white queens for these stones?"

Hendrick shrugged. "I must see these stones. But one thing I promise, it will be many, many times more than the single coin that Bakela will give you."