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."
Again Bazo was silent.
"I have a stone," he admitted at last. "But I do not know if it has the spirit you seek, for it is a strange stone, like none other we have ever seen."
"Let me see it, my old friend," Hendrick whispered encouragingly. "I will give you the advice of a father to his favourite son."
Bazo took the snuff-horn and turned it over and over between his fingers, the muscles in his shoulders and arms bulged and subsided and his smooth regular features, knitted now in thought, seemed to be carved from the wood of the wild ebony.
"Go," he said at last. "Return when the moon sets.
Come alone, without a gun, without a knife. And know you that one of my brothers will stand always at your back ready to drive the blade of his assegai out of your breastbone if you so much as think a treacherous thought."
When Hendrick Naaiman crawled through the low doorway again it was past midnight; the fire had sunk to a puddle of ruddy ash, the smoke swirled like grey phantoms in the light of the bull's-eye lantern he carried, and the naked blades of the short broad stabbing spears flickered blue and deadly in the shadows.
He could smell the nervous sweat of the men that wielded those dreadful weapons, and the vulture wings of death seemed to rustle in the dark recesses of the hut.
Hendrick knew how close that dark presence could crowd about him, for frightened men are dangerous men.
it was part of his trade, this ever-present threat of death, but he could never accustom himself to it, and he heard the quaver in his own voice as he greeted Bazo.