A Falcon Flies Read Online Free Page A

the light of the campfire. Harris’s book described his hunting expeditions up as far as the Limpopo – nobody has been further than that, except Papa, of course. A damned sight better than potting pheasant or black buck. Did you know that Harris made nearly five thousand pounds from his book?’
    Zouga pushed his glass away, straightened up in his seat and selected a cigar from his silver case. While he prepared and lit it, he was frowning thoughtfully.
    â€˜You want to go to Africa for spiritual reasons. I probably need to go to Africa, for much better reasons, for blood and for money. I make you a proposal. The Ballantyne Expedition!’ He lifted his glass to her.
    She laughed then, uncertainly, thinking he was joking, but lifted her own glass which was still almost full. ‘My word on it. But how? Zouga, how do we get there?’
    â€˜What was the name of that newspaper fellow?’ Zouga demanded.
    â€˜Wicks,’ she said, ‘Oliver Wicks. But why should he help us?’
    â€˜I’ll find a good reason why he should.’ And Robyn remembered how, even as a child, he had been an eloquent and persuasive pleader of causes.
    â€˜You know I rather think you might.’
    They drank then, and when she lowered her glass, she had been as happy as she could ever remember being in all her life.

I t was another six weeks before she saw Zouga again, striding towards her through the bustle of London Bridge Station as she clambered down from the carriage. He stood tall above the crowd, with the high beaver top hat on his head and the threequarter length paletot cloak flaring from his shoulders.
    â€˜Sissy!’ he called, laughing at her, as he lifted her from her feet. ‘We are going – we really are going.’
    He had a cab waiting for them, and the driver whipped up the horses the moment they were aboard.
    â€˜The London Missionary Society were no use at all,’ he told her, still with his arm around her shoulders as the cab clattered and lurched over the cobbles. ‘I had them down on my list for five hundred iron men, and they nearly had apoplexy. I had the feeling they would rather Papa stayed lost in darkest Africa, and they would pay five hundred to keep him there.’
    â€˜You went to the directors?’ she demanded.
    â€˜Played my losing tricks first,’ Zouga smiled. ‘The next was Whitehall – actually managed to see the First Secretary. He was damned civil, took me to lunch at the Travellers’, and was truly very sorry that they were not able to give financial assistance. They remembered Papa’s Zambezi fiasco too clearly, but he did give me letters. A dozen letters, to every conceivable person – to the Governor at the Cape, to Kemp the Admiral at Cape Town, and all the others.’
    â€˜Letters won’t get us far.’
    â€˜Then I went to see your newspaper friend. Extraordinary little man. Smart as a whip. I told him we were going to Africa to find Papa – and he jumped up and clapped his hands like a child at a Punch and Judy show.’ Zouga hugged Robyn tighter. ‘To tell the truth, I used your name shamelessly – and it did the trick. He will have all the story rights to our diaries and journals, and the publishing rights to both books.’
    â€˜Both books?’ Robyn pulled away from him and looked into his face.
    â€˜Both.’ He grinned at her. ‘Yours and mine.’
    â€˜I am to write a book?’
    â€˜You certainly are. A woman’s account of the expedition. I have already signed the contract on your behalf.’
    She laughed then, but breathlessly. ‘You’re going too far, much too fast.’
    â€˜Little Wicks was in for five hundred, and the next on the list was the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade – they were easy. His Royal Highness is the Society’s patron, and he had read Papa’s books. We are to report on the state of the trade in