"My Rhodesians," he addressed his audience, and they took it as an endearment rather than a claim to ownership, and loved him for it.
"Together you and I have made a great leap forward towards the day when the map of Africa will be painted pink from Cape Town to Cairo, when this fair continent will be set beside India, a great diamond beside a lustrous ruby, in the crown of our beloved Queen.-" They cheered him, the Americans and Greeks and Italians and Irish as loudly as the subjects of the "beloved Queen" herself.
Robyn St. John endured half an hour of these sentiments before she lost control of the frosty dignity that Ralph had counselled, and from the veranda of the homestead she began a counter reading of her own, as yet unpublished, poetry. "Mild melancholy and sedate he stands Tending another's herds upon the field.
His father's once, where now the white man builds His home and issues forth his proud commands. His dark eyes flash not, his listless hand Leans on the shepherd staff, no more he wields The gleaming steel, but to the oppressor yields.-" Her high, clear voice rang over Mr. Rhodes', heads turned back and forth between the two of them like the spectators at a tennis match.
"This is only a beginning," Mr. Rhodes raised his volume, (a great beginning, yes but a beginning nonetheless. There are ignorant and arrogant men, not all of them black," and even the dullest listener recognized that the allusion was to old Kruger, the Boer president of the South African Republic in the Transvaal, "who must be allowed the opportunity to come beneath the shield of the pox britannica of their own free will, rather than be driven to it by force of arms." His audience was once again entranced, until Robyn selected another of her works in matching warlike mood, and let fly with. "He scorns the hurt, nor regards the scar Of recent wound, but burnishes for war His assegai and targe of buffalo-hide.
Is he a rebel? Yes, it is a strife Between the black-skinned raptor and the white. A savage? Yes, though loath to aim at life Evil for evil fierce he doth requite.
A heathen? Teach him then thy better creed, Christian! If thou deserv'st that name indeed!" The audience's critical faculty was dulled by two days and two nights of revelry and they applauded Robyn's impassioned delivery with matching fervour, though the sense of it was thankfully lost upon them.
"The Lord save us," Ralph groaned, "from emetic jingoism and aperient scansion!" And he wandered away down the valley to get out of earshot of the competing orators, carrying a bottle of Mr. Rhodes" champagne in one hand, and with his son perched upon his shoulder.
Jonathan wore a sailor suit with Jack Tar collar, and a straw boater on his head, the ribbon hung down his back, and he clucked and urged his father on with his heels as though he was astride a pony. There were fifty head of slaughter-oxen and a thousand gallon pots of Juba's beer to account for, and the black wedding guests were giving the task their dedicated attention. Down here the dancing was even more energetic than that under the spathodea trees, the young men were leaping and twisting and stamping until the dust swirled waist-high about them and the sweat cut tunnels down their naked backs and chests.
The girls swayed and shuffled and sang, and the drummers hammered out their frenetic rhythms until they dropped exhausted, and others snatched up the wooden clubs to beat the booming hollowed-out tree-trunks. While Jonathan, on Ralph's back, squealed with delight, one of the slaughter-oxen, a heavy hump-backed red beast, was dragged out of the kraal. A spears man ran forward and stabbed it through the carotid and jugular. With a mournful bellow the animal collapsed, kicking spasmodically. The butchers swarmed over the carcass, flaying off the hide in a single sheet, delving for the tit bits the kidneys and liver and tripes, throwing them wet and shiny onto the live coals, hacking through the rack of ribs, slicing off thick steaks and heaping them on the racks over the cooking-fire.
Half raw, running with fat and juice, the meat was stuffed into eager mouths and the beer pots tilted to the hot blue summer sky. One of the cooks tossed Ralph a ribbon of tripe, scorched from the fierce flames, and with the contents still adhering to the stomach lining.
Without a visible qualm, Ralph stripped away the lining and bit off a chunk of the sweet white flesh beneath.
"Mushle!" he told the cook. "Good! Very good." And passed up a sliver to the child on his back. "Eat it, Jon-Jon, what doesn't kill you, makes you fat," and his son obeyed with noisy relish, and agreed with his father's verdict.
"Mushle, it's really mush, Papa." Then the dancers surrounded them, prancing and whirling, challenging Ralph. Ralph sat Jonathan on the fence of the cattle kraal, where he had a grandstand view. Then he strode into the centre and set himself in the heroic posture of the Nguni dancer. Bazo had taught him well when they were striplings, and now he raised his right knee as high as his shoulder and brought his booted foot down on the hard earth with a crash, and the other dancers hummed in encouragement and approbation.
"Jee! Jee!" Ralph leaped and stamped and postured, and the other dancers were pressed to match him, the women clapped and sang and on the kraal fence Jonathan howled with excitement and pride.
"Look at my daddy!" His shirt soaked with sweat, his chest heaving, chuckling breathlessly, Ralph dropped out at last and lifted Jonathan back onto his shoulder. The two of them went on, greeting by name those they recognized in the throng, accepting a proffered morsel of beef or a swallow of tart gruel-thick beer, until at last on the rise beyond the kraal, seated on a log, aloof from the dancers and revellers, Ralph found the man he was seeking.
"I see you, Bazo the Axe," he said, and sat down on the log beside him, set the champagne bottle between them and passed Bazo one of the cheroots for which he had developed a taste so long ago on the diamond fields. They smoked in silence, watching the dancers and the feasting until Jonathan grew restless and edged away to seek more exciting occupation, and found it immediately.
He was confronted by a child a year or so younger than he was.
Tungata, son Of Bazo, son of Gandang, son of great Mzilikazi, was stark naked except for the string of bright ceramic beads around his hips.
His navel popped out in the centre of his fat little belly, his limbs were sturdy, dimpled knees and bracelets of healthy fat at his wrists.
His face was round and smooth and glossy, his eyes huge and solemn as he examined Jonathan with total fascination.
Jonathan returned his scrutiny with equal candour, and made no attempt to pull away as Tungata reached and touched the collar of his sailor suit.
"What is your son's name?" Bazo asked, watching the children with an inscrutable expression on his dark features. "Jonathan." "What is the meaning of that name?" "The gift of God, "Ralph told him.
Jonathan suddenly took the straw hat from his own head and placed it upon that of the Matabele princeling. It made such an incongruous picture, the beribboned boater on the head of the naked black boy with his pot belly and little uncircumcised penis sticking out under it at a jaunty angle, that both men smiled involuntarily. Tungata gurgled with glee, seized Jonathan's hand and dragged him away unprotestingly into the throng of dancers.