"You will bring us there again - home," says she. "You are so brave and strong and good, and keep me safe. Do you know," she wiped her eyes, looking solemn, "I never saw you fight before? Oh, I knew, to be sure, from the newspapers, and what everyone said - that you were a hero, I mean - but I did not know how it was. Women cannot, you know. Now I have seen you, sword in hand - you are rather terrible, you know, Harry - and so quick!" She gave a little shiver. "Not many women are lucky enough to see how brave their husbands are - and I have the bravest, best man in the whole world." She kissed me on the forehead, her cheek against mine.
I thought of her finger, under that crushing boot, of the way she'd stood up in the bushes and walked straight out, of the bruising ride from Antan', of all she'd endured since Singapore - and I didn't feel ashamed, exactly, because you know it ain't my line. But I felt my eyes sting, and I lifted her chin with my hand.
"Old girl," says I, "you're a trump."
"Oh, no!" says she, wide-eyed. "I am very silly, and weak, and … and not a trump at all! Feckless, Papa says. But I love to be your `old girl' "— she snuggled her head down on my chest —"and to think that you like me a little, too … better than you like the horrid Queen of Madagascar, or Mrs Leo Lade, or those Chinese ladies we saw in Singapore, or Kitty Stevens, or - my dearest, whatever is the matter?"
"Who the hell," roars I, "is Kitty Stevens?"
"Oh, do you not remember? That slim, dark girl with the poor complexion and soulful eyes she thinks so becoming - although how she supposes that mere staring will make her attractive I cannot think - you danced with her twice at the Cavalry Ball, and assisted her to negus at the buffet …
We were off again before dawn, crossing the Angavo Pass which leads to the upland Ankay Plain, going warily because I knew the Hova Guard regiment which I'd sent out couldn't be far away. I kept casting north, and we must have outflanked them, for we saw not a soul until the Mangaro ford, where the villagers turned out in force to stare at us as we crossed the river with our little herd. It was level going then until the jungle closed in and the mountains began, but we were making slower time than I'd hoped for; it began to look like a five-day trek instead of four, but I wasn't much concerned. All that mattered was that we should keep ahead of pursuit; the frigate would still be there. I was sure of this because it was bound to wait for an answer to the protest which, according to Laborde, had only reached the Queen a couple of days ago. Her answer, even if she'd sent it at once, would take more than a week to reach Tamitave, so if we kept up our pace we'd be there with time in hand.
I kept telling myself this on the third day, when our rate slowed to a walk with the long, twisting climb up the red rutted track that led into the great mountains. Here we were walled in by forest on either hand, with only that tortuous path for a guide. I knew it because I'd been flogged over it in the slave-coffle, and I had to gulp down my fears as we approached each bend - suppose we met someone, in this place where we couldn't take to our heels, where to stray ten yards from the path would be certain death by wandering starvation? Suppose the path petered out, or had been overgrown? Suppose swift Hova runners overtook us?
I was in a fever of anxiety - not made any easier by the childish pleasure Elspeth seemed to be taking in our journey. She was forever clapping her hands and exclaiming at the saucer-eyed white monkeys who peered at us, or the lace-plumed birds that fluttered among the creepers; even the hideous water-snakes which cruised the streams, with their heads poking out, excited her - she barred the spiders, though, great marbled monsters as big as my hand, scuttling on webs the size of blankets. And once she fled in terror from a sight which had our horses neighing and bucking in the narrow way - a troop of great apes, bounding across the path in leaps of incredible length, both feet together.43 We watched them crash into the under-growth, and not for the first time I cursed the luck that I hadn't even a clasp-knife with me for defence, for God knew what else might be lurking in that dark, cavernous forest. Elspeth wished she had her sketch-book.
There's forty miles of that forest, but thanks to good Queen Ranavalona we didn't have to cross it all, as you would today. The jungle track runs clear across towards Andevoranto, whence you travel up the coast to Tamitave, but in 1845 there was a short-cut - the Queen's buffalo road, cut straight through the hilly jungle to the coastal plain. This was the track, hacked out by thousands of slaves, which I'd seen on the way up; we reached it on the fourth day, a great avenue through the green, with the mountain mist hanging over it in wraiths. It was eerie and foreboding, but at least it was flat, and with half our beasts already abandoned in exhaustion, I was glad of the easier going.
It's strange, as I look back on that remarkable journey, that it wasn't nearly as punishing as it might have been. Elspeth still swears that she quite enjoyed it; I dare say if I hadn't been so apprehensive - about our beasts foundering, or losing our way if the mist settled down, or being overtaken by pursuers (although I knew there was scant chance of that), or how we were going to make our final dash to the frigate - I might have marvelled that we came through it so easily. But we did; our luck held through hill and jungle, we hardly saw a native the whole way, and on the fourth afternoon we were trotting down through the strange little conical hillocks that line the sandy coastal plain, with nothing ahead of us but a few scattered villages and easy level going until we should come to Tamitave.
Of course, I should have been on my guard. I should have known it had gone too smooth. I should have remembered the horror that lay no great way behind, and the mad hatred and bloodlust of that evil woman. I should have thought of the soldier's first rule, to put yourself in the enemy's shoes and ask what you would do. If I'd been that terrible bitch, and my ingrate lover had tried to ruin me, cut up my guardsmen, and lit out for the coast - what would I have done, given unlimited power and a maniac's vengeance to slake? Sent out my fleetest couriers, over plain and jungle and mountain, to carry the alarm, rouse the garrisons, cut off escape - that's what I'd have done. How far can good runners travel in a day - forty miles over rough going? Say four days, perhaps five, from Antan' to the coast. We were approaching Tamitave on the evening of the fourth day.
Aye, I should have been on my guard - but when you're within the last lap of safety, when all has gone far better than you'd dared hope, when you've seen the Tamitave track and know that the coast is only a few scant miles away over the low hills, when you have the gamest, loveliest girl in the world riding knee to knee with you, that eager idiot smile on her face and her tits bouncing famously, when the dark terrors have receded behind you - above all, when you've hardly slept in four nights and are fit to topple from the saddle with sheer weariness … then hope can fuddle your wits a little, and you let the last of your rations slip from your hand, and the dusk begins to swim round you, and your head is on the turf and you slip down the long slide into unconsciousness - until someone miles away is shaking you, and yelping urgently in your ear, and you come awake in bleary alarm, staring wildly about you in the dawn. "Harry! Oh, Harry - quickly! Look, look!"
She had me by the wrist, tugging me to my feet. Where was I? - yes, this was the little hollow we'd camped in, there were the horses, the first ray of dawn was just peeping over the low downs to the east, but Elspeth was pulling me t'other way, to the lip of the hollow, pointing.