The Angels Weep Read Online Free Page A

is only one bottle of whisky
left,’ Zouga groaned, and stretched his aching shoulders,
‘but tonight I am going to let you pour your own
dop.’
    They watched with amusement the elaborate precautions which
Jan Cheroot took to get the last drop into his brimming mug. In
the process, the line around the bottom that marked his daily
grog ration was entirely ignored, and when the mug was full, he
did not trust the steadiness of his own hand but slurped up the
first mouthful on all fours like a dog.
    Ralph retrieved the bottle, and ruefully considered the
remnants of the liquor before pouring a dram for his father and
himself.
    ‘The Harkness Mine,’ Zouga gave them the
toast.
    ‘Why do you call it that?’ Ralph demanded, when he
lowered his mug and wiped his moustache with the back of his
hand.
    ‘Old Tom Harkness gave me the map that led me to
it,’ Zouga replied.
    ‘We could find a better name.’
    ‘Perhaps, but that’s the one I want.’
    ‘The gold will be just as bright, I expect,’ Ralph
capitulated, and carefully moved the whisky bottle out of the
little Hottentot’s reach, for Jan Cheroot had drained his
mug already. ‘I am glad we are doing something together
again, Papa.’ Ralph settled down luxuriously against his
saddle.
    ‘Yes,’ Zouga agreed softly. ‘It’s been
too long since we worked side by side in the diamond pit at New
Rush.’
    ‘I know just the right fellow to open up the workings
for us. He is a top man, the best on the Witwatersrand
goldfields, and I’ll have my wagons bringing up the
machinery before the rains break.’
    It was part of their agreement that Ralph would provide the
men and machinery and money to run the Harkness Mine when Zouga
led him to it. For Ralph was a rich man. Some said he was already
a millionaire, though Zouga knew that was unlikely. Nevertheless,
Zouga remembered that Ralph had provided the transport and
commissariat for both the Mashonaland column and the Matabeleland
expedition against Lobengula, and for each he had been paid huge
sums by Mr Rhodes’ British South Africa Company, not in
cash but in company shares. Like Zouga himself, he had speculated
by buying up original land grants from the thriftless drifters
that made up the bulk of the original column and had paid them in
whisky, carried up from the railhead in his own wagons.
Ralph’s Rhodesia Lands Company owned more land than did
even Zouga himself.
    Ralph had also speculated in the shares of the British South
Africa Company. In those heady days when the column first reached
Fort Salisbury, he had sold shares that Mr Rhodes had issued to
him at £1 for the sum of £3-15 s -0 d on
the London stock market. Then, when the pioneers’ vaunting
hopes and optimism had withered on the sour veld and barren ore
bodies of Mashonaland, and Rhodes and Jameson were secretly
planning their war against the Matabele king, Ralph had
re-purchased British South Africans at eight shillings. He had
then seen them quoted at £8 when the column rode into the
burning ruins of Lobengula’s kraal at GuBulawayo and the
Company had added the entire realm of the Matabele monarch to its
possessions.
    Now, listening to his son talk with that infectious energy and
charisma which even those hard days and nights of physical labour
on the claims could not dull, Zouga reflected that Ralph had laid
the telegraph lines from Kimberley to Fort Salisbury, that his
construction gangs were at this moment laying the railway lines
across the same wilderness towards Bulawayo, that his two hundred
wagons carried trade goods to more than a hundred of
Ralph’s own trading-posts scattered across Bechuanaland and
Matabeleland and Mashonaland, that as of today Ralph was a
half-owner of a gold mine that promised to be as rich as any on
the fabulous Witwatersrand.
    Zouga smiled to himself as he listened to Ralph talk in the
flickering firelight, and he thought suddenly, ‘Damn it,
but