"Smith, Wilbur - Ballantyne 03 - The Angels Weep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

Then Cathy looked across at Louise, and saw that she was as piqued by the dismissal. There was a blue spark in her eyes and a faint heat under the fine freckles on her cheeks, but her voice was level and cool as she replied for both Cathy and herself, "Of course you are chrrect, Mr. Rhodes. Will you please excuse us." It was well known that Mr. Rhodes was uncomfortable in the presence of females. He employed no female servants, would not allow a painting nor statue of a woman to decorate his ornate mansion at Groote Schuur in the Cape of Good Hope, he would not even employ a married man in a position close to his person, and immediately discharged even the most trusted employee who took the unforgivable plunge into matrimony. "You cannot dance to a woman's whims and serve me at the same time," he would explain as he fired an offender.

Now Rhodes beckoned Ralph. "Sit here, where I can see you," he commanded, and immediately turned back to Zouga, and began rapping out questions. His questions cut like the lash of a stock whip, but the attention with which he listened to the replies was evidence of the high regard he had for Zouga Ballantyne. Their relationship went back many years, to the early days of the diamond diggings at Colesberg kopje which had since been renamed Kimberley after the colonial secretary who accepted it into Her Majesty's dominions.

On those diggings Zouga had once worked claims which had yielded up the fabulous "Ballantyne Diamond', but now Rhodes owned those claims, as he owned every single claim on the fields. Since then, Rhodes had employed Zouga as his personal agent at the kraal of Lobengula, King of the Matabele, for he spoke the language with colloquial fluency. When Doctor Jameson had led his flying column in that swift and victorious strike against the king, Zouga had ridden with him as one of his field officers and had been the first man into the burning kraal of GuBulawayo after the king had fled.

After Lobengula's death, Rhodes had appointed Zouga "Custodian of Enemy Property, and Zouga had been responsible for rounding up the captured herds of Matabele cattle and redistributing them as booty to the company and to Jameson's volunteers.

Once Zouga had completed that task, Rhodes would have appointed him Chief Native Commissioner, to deal with the indunas of the Matabele, but Zouga had preferred to retire to his estates at King's Lynn with his new bride, and had let the job go to General Mungo St. John. However, Zouga was still on the Board of the British South Africa Company, and Rhodes trusted him as he did few other men.

"Matabeleland is booming, Mr. Rhodes," Zouga reported. "You will find Bulawayo is almost a city already, with its own school and hospital. There are already more than six hundred white women and children in Matabeleland, a sure sign that your settlers are here to stay at last. All the land grants have been taken up, and many of the farms are already being worked. The blood stock from the Cape is taking to the local conditions and breeding well with the captured Matabele cattle." "What about the minerals, Ballantyne?" "Over ten thousand claims have been registered, and I have seen some very rich crushings."

Zouga hesitated, glanced at Ralph, and when he nodded, turned back to Rhodes. "Within the last few days, my son and I have rediscovered and pegged the ancient workings I first stumbled on in the sixties." "The Harkness Mine," Rhodes nodded heavily, and even Ralph was impressed by the range and grasp of his mind. "I remember your original description in The Hunter's Odyssey. Did you sample the reef?" In reply, Zouga placed a dozen lumps of quartz upon the table in front of him, and the raw gold glistened so that the men around the table craned forward in rapt fascination. Mr. Rhodes turned one of the samples in his big mottled hands before passing it to the American engineer.

"What do you make of these, Harry?" "It will go fifty ounces a ton," Harry whistled softly. "Perhaps too rich, like Nome and Klondike." The American looked up at Ralph. "How thick is the reef?

How broad is the strike?" Ralph shook his head. "I don't know, the workings are too narrow to get into the face." "This is quartz, of course, not the ban ket reef like we have on the Witwatersrand," Harry Mellow murmured.

The ban ket reef was named after the sweetmeat of toffee and nuts and almonds and cloves which the conglomerated reef so much resembled.

It was made up of the thick sedimentary beds of ancient buried lakes, not as rich in gold as this chip of quartz, but many feet thick and extending as wide as the broad lakes had once stretched, a mother lode which could be mined for a hundred years without exhausting its reserves.

"It's too rich," Harry Mellow repeated, fondling the sample of quartz. "I can't believe that it will be more than a stringer a few inches thick." "But if it isn't?" Rhodes demanded harshly.

The American smiled quietly. Then you will not only control nearly all the diamonds in the world, Mr. Rhodes, but most of the gold as well." His words were a sharp reminder to Ralph that the British South Africa Company owned fifty per cent royalty in every ounce of gold mined in Matabeleland, and Ralph felt his resentment return in full force. Rhodes and his ubiquitous BSA Company were like a vast octopus that smothered the efforts and the fortunes of all lesser men.

"Will you allow Harry to ride with me for a few days, Mr. Rhodes, so that he can examine the strike?" Ralph's irritation sharpened the tone of his request, so that Rhodes" big shaggy head lifted quickly and his pale blue eyes seemed to search out his soul for a moment before he nodded, and then with a mercurial change of direction abandoned the subject of gold and shot his next question at Zouga.

"The Matabele indunas how are they behaving themselves?" This time Zouga hesitated. "They have grievances, Mr. Rhodes." Yes? "The swollen features coagulated into a scowl.

"The cattle, naturally enough, are the main source of trouble," Zouga said quietly, and Rhodes cut him off brusquely.

"We captured less than 125,000 head of cattle, and we returned 40,000 of those to the tribe." Zouga did not remind him that the return was made only after the strongest representation by Robyn St. John, Zouga's own sister. Robyn was the missionary doctor at Khami Mission Station and she had once been Lobengula's closest friend and adviser.

"Forty thousand head of cattle, Ballantyne! A most generous gesture by the Company! "Rhodes repeated portentously, and again he did not add that he had made this return in order to avert the famine which Robyn St. John had warned him would decimate the defeated Matabele nation, and which would have surely brought the intervention of the Imperial government in Whitehall, and possibly the revocation of the Royal Charter under which Rhodes" Company ruled both Mashonaland and Matabeleland. Not such an outstanding act of charity, after all, Ralph thought wryly.

"After giving back those cattle to the indunas, we were left with less than eighty-five thousand head, the Company barely recouped the cost of the war." "Still the indunas claim they were given back only inferior beasts, the old and barren cows and scrub bulls." "Damn it, Ballantyne, the volunteers earned the right to first pick from the herds. Quite naturally, they chose the prime stock." He shot out his right fist with the forefinger aimed like a pistol at Zouga's heart.

"They do say that our own herds, chosen from the captured cattle, are the finest in Matabeleland." "The indunas don't understand that" Zouga answered. "Well then, the least they should understand is that they are a conquered nation. Their welfare depends on the goodwill of the victors. They extended no such consideration to the tribes that they conquered when they lorded it across the continent. Mzilikazi slew a million defenceless souls when he devastated the land south of the Limpopo, and Lobengula, his son, called the lesser tribes his dogs, to kill or cast into slavery as the whim took him. They must not whine now at the bitter taste of defeat." Even gentle Jordan, at the end of the table, nodded at this. "To protect the Mashona tribes from Lobengula's depredations was one of the reasons why we marched on Bulawayo,"he murmured.

"I said that they had grievances," Zouga pointed out. "I did not say that they were justified." "Then what else do they have to complain about?" Rhodes demanded.

"The Company police. The young Matabele bucks whom General St. John has recruited and armed are strutting through the kraals, usurping the power of the indunas, taking their pick of the young girL---" Again Rhodes interrupted. "Better that than a resurrection of the fighting imp is under the indunas. Can you imagine twenty thousand warriors in impi under Babiaan and Gandang and Bozo? No, St. John was right to break the power of the indunas. As Native Commissioner, it is his duty to guard against resurgence of the Matabele fighting tradition."

"Especially in view of the events that are in train south of where we now sit." Dr. Leander Starr Jameson spoke for the first time since he had greeted Ralph, and Rhodes turned to him swiftly.

"I wonder if this is the time to speak of that, Doctor Jim." "Why not? Every man here is trustworthy and discreet. We are all committed to the same bright vision of Empire, and the Lord knows, we are in no danger of being overheard. Not in this wilderness. What better time than now to explain why the Company police must be made even stronger, must be better armed and trained to the highest degree of readiness?"Jameson demanded.

Instinctively Rhodes glanced at Ralph Ballantyne, and Ralph raised one eyebrow, a cynical and mildly challenging gesture that seemed to decide Rhodes.