Shaka the Great

Book 0: The Epic Story of the Zulu Empire

by Walton Golightly

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

1826. Shaka, king of the Zulus, has brutally consolidated his power, and is ready to move against those who continue to resist his authority. But now a new tribe has emerged: white men from across the Great Water, claiming they wish to trade with Shaka. As the king grows increasingly obsessed with these outsiders, he becomes oblivious to the threat growing from within his own court. Only Shaka's loyal captain and his young sidekick can thwart this conspiracy. But to succeed, their wits will need to be as sharp as their enemies' knives.

Release date: July 7, 2011

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 608

Sample

It is Untlolanja, the Time of the Fucking Dog: the month of the December–January moon when dogs are believed to be more interested in fornication than food, fleas and fighting. It’s also the month that marks the culmination of the First Fruits. Traditionally, the final Umkhosi rituals are conducted by the various village chiefs around the kingdom as well as by the King, their ceremonies mirroring his, but Shaka has decreed that from this year on only the King himself may conduct the rites that conclude the First Fruits.

And so they have come, the People Of The Sky. Leaving their swollen, alluring crops under the watchful eyes of caretakers threatened with a myriad of dire consequences should any harm befall the fields and groves, all but those in the furthest, most inaccessible reaches of the kingdom have journeyed to KwaBulawayo, Shaka’s capital, the Place of He Who Kills.

And the amabutho, the Zulu regiments, they have come as well. The Amawombe, with their dun-coloured cowhide shields. The Umgumanqa, whose white shields are speckled with red hairs like spatters of blood. The Isiklebhe, who have grey shields the colour of the morning mist and pride themselves on their stealth. The Iziyendane, made up of long-haired Hlubis, men of Lala and Swazi stock, carrying rust-coloured shields. And there are others, including, of course, the Ufasimba, the ‘Blue Haze’, with their black shields; one of the first ibutho to have been taught Shaka’s new tactics, they remain his favourite regiment. Each comprising men of the same age group, the amabutho have come in all their finery, eager to outdo the other regiments with their war songs and dances, the discipline displayed in their parade-ground manoeuvres, the skill with which they wield shield and spear. It’s the largest mustering of the Zulu army in the whole history of the nation, and a show of force partly intended as an ever-present reminder to the White Men of the chastisement Shaka can call down upon them should his guests forget their place, and the signal honour he has bestowed on them.

For that’s something else: it’s 1826. The throne of England creaks under the weight of King George IV, while Lord Charles Somerset, second son of the Duke of Beaufort, is pissing off the Whitehall mandarins in his capacity as governor of the Cape (and will in fact be removed from that post later in the year). To the north of Zulu territory, at the start of a reign that will outlast Shaka’s by decades, King Moshoeshoe is in the process of establishing the Basotho nation. And this year also marks the first time foreigners have been allowed to attend the climax of the First Fruits.

Foreigners? Some have other names for these izilwane, these barbarians who claim to serve a king called Jorgi who lives far across the waters. But Shaka wants them here, present despite the disapproval of even his closest advisors, for there is more to the Umkhosi – more to the First Fruits – than a mere harvest festival.

And the King has been doctored by his medicine men, his inyangas, and smeared with an especially potent muthi. And his warriors have gathered in the pre-dawn darkness and they have called on him to join them with a chant: ‘Woza ke! Woza lapha! Woza ke! Woza lapha!’ And the King has emerged from his hut and moved down an aisle lined by his concubines. And he has spat at the rising sun and entered the massive cattle kraal in the centre of KwaBulawayo, where his regiments await him. And now he sits on a throne made from rolled-up mats, and there listens to his praise singers.

And they tell his story, this son of Senzangakhona, the Zulu prince who believed he was tricked into marriage by Shaka’s mother. Ukuhlobonga, claimed he, the Pleasure of the Road: a dalliance between clenched thighs, and if both of you lost control and penetration occurred, well, a fine of a few cattle would appease the girl’s father and she’d still be regarded as a virgin. Besides, if what’s-her-name, Nandi, was pregnant, how could he be certain he was the father? Cha! How could they be certain she really was pregnant?

That was the line taken by Mduli, who was Senzangakhona’s uncle and to all intents and purposes, the King’s prime minister. Nandi wasn’t pregnant, he claimed; merely infected with an Ushaka, an intestinal beetle that made the stomach swell. Fine, replied Nandi, and when her son was born she named him Shaka. Now here is your Beetle, said her family, come and fetch him! And his mother too, for they were only too happy to be rid of the wilful girl. Senzangakhona had by then ascended the throne and was now told by his uncle that he no longer had any choice in the matter. So, reluctantly, he took Nandi as his wife.

Years of abuse and cruelty followed, and things didn’t get better when Nandi and Shaka were sent to live with his mother’s people, the Langeni. As if the scandal of the ‘banishment’ wasn’t bad enough, Shaka’s insistence on his being the heir to the Zulu throne saw him mocked and bullied by the other boys, while their parents shunned Nandi. She had brought this all on herself, yet still she acted as if she were a queen.

Finally it became too much and they left the Langeni to live like refugees, seeking succour where they could until at last they found themselves among the Mthetwas. Inducted into the army, along with others of his age-set, Shaka soon attracted the attention of the Mthetwa king, Dingiswayo, the Wanderer. Forced to flee his home when his brothers accused him of plotting to overthrow their father, Dingiswayo knew how it was to live as an outcast, and thus saw in Shaka a kindred spirit. After Shaka had proved his courage in battle time and time again – especially against the Mthetwas’ old foe, the Ndwandwes, who were ruled by Zwide at that time – Dingiswayo persuaded an ailing Senzangakhona to acknowledge his long-lost eldest son as his true heir. And when the old man reneged on his promise on his deathbed, the Wanderer sent Shaka, with the Izicwe legion, to claim the throne. Then, guided by Nandi and his beloved Pampata, this ‘Beetle’, this bastard son, set about putting to death all of those who had scorned his mother. Next, having reorganised the army, he taught his soldiers the Way of the Bull. He equipped them with the iklwa, a short stabbing spear one didn’t foolishly throw away, and made them discard their sandals and toughen their feet by marching across thorns. Then he turned his attention to the nation’s enemies …

And they sing his praises today, these izimbongi, and tell of his many great deeds. He is Bull Elephant! He is Sitting Thunder! He is Lightning Fire! Hai-yi hai-yi! I like him when he wrapped the Inkatha around the hill and throttled Zwide’s sons. I like him when he went up the hill to throttle Ntombazi of the skulls. Bayede, Nkosi, bayede! Blood of Zulu. Father of the Sky. Barefoot Thorn Man! I like him because we sleep in peace within his clenched fist. Hai-yi hai-yi! I like him because our cattle are free to roam our hills, never to be touched by another’s hand. I like him because our water is sweet. I like him because our beer is sweeter. Hai-yi hai-yi! Bayede, Nkosi, bayede!



Now here, on a morning in the Fucking Dog month, following precepts and prescriptions and the rites and rituals laid down by those who were here before Malandela, the father of Zulu – Zulu, the Sky, who begot Gumede KaZulu, who begot Phunga kaGumede, who begot Mageba, who begot Ndaba, who begot Jama, Shaka’s grandfather – he has been doctored by his inyangas …

Imithi Emnyama, or Black Medicine. Muthi of the dead moon, isifile, and ngolu mnyama namhla, the dark day thereafter, when human beings are especially vulnerable to evil and it’s best to sit in the shade and do nothing. Like repels like, and this Imithi Emnyama, this Night Muthi, is conjured from the fragments of that hole in the sky, that absence that has been crowded upon, cracked, then shattered by the slow-motion return of the moon. And these shards fall to the earth, to be trapped by inyanga chants, those words woven like nets to catch the blackness, and its power, in the spaces between the sounds. They are incantations that season and add potency to ingredients collected in secret from far and wide.

There is water gathered from the sea and the great rivers that traverse the kingdom; there is the King’s own shit and piss; grass from paths used by the King’s subjects, thatch from their huts and dirt from their doorways. There is soil taken from enemy territory, as well as samples of all the fruit and vegetables favoured by his nation. There is blood from a black goat, the fat of a leopard, and strips of flesh sliced from various snakes. There are the ground-down teeth and claws of a lion, as well as its heart.

Body, Soul substances, vital essence, unity, power and protection – he will need them all if he is to revive the occult obverse of the festival, reaching out and grasping where others have simply gone through the motions. Therefore let the King become at one with the people, let him be protected from the blackness by the blackness itself, let him draw strength and sustenance from the plants and animals of his kingdom.

Let him not inhale too deeply …



But who is this mighty ruler, this potentate? Who is this king, who casts a long shadow across the centuries?

Who is this Bull Elephant who has won more than merely territory for his people, whose monuments are pride, honour, courage, myth – alive and enduring where sullen stone crumbles and vain marble shatters?

Who is this monarch who never needed ships of wood, whose praises, carried across the singing veld, were enough to bring the world to his kraal?



Hai-yi hai-yi! He is Bull Elephant! He is Sitting Thunder! He is Defiler and Defier! Hai-yi hai-yi! But he is more, too …

He is the One They All Forgot, the boy who provided a bedtime story for his half-brothers Sigujana, Dingane, Mhlangana and the younger princes. And not even that; he is the vague memory of a bedtime story – a cautionary tale about what happens to bad boys – of whispered conversations and mocking laughter. How some had to rack their memories, rummage deep within their consciences, when this Shaka returned to claim the crown! As for the older adults, Nandi was the one they remembered best. She was that jackal bitch who tricked Senzangakhona into marrying her, but whatever plans she might have had had come to naught. Although nuptials eventually took place, there was no lobola, no bride price. Nandi had been treated more as a servant than a wife, and soon she and her two offspring – Shaka and his sister – were sent away. Thus Nandi was remembered in the way droughts and plagues were, while Shaka was by and large forgotten. Few had any inkling that the brave warrior who was making a name for himself in Dingiswayo’s army (and who could barely even speak Zulu) was also of the royal house of Zulu.



Hai-yi hai-yi! Bull Elephant! King of Kings! Sky that Thunders in the Open, Where there is Neither Mimosa nor Thorn Tree. Willow Tree that Overhangs Deep Pools. Hai-yi hai-yi! I like him when he chased Zwide from where the sun rises to where the sun sets! Bull Elephant! Spear Red to the Haft! Hai-yi hai-yi! But he is more, too …

He is King Inguos Chaka – the traders’ Shaka – and when Francis Farewell went looking for investors after his first trip to the fringes of the Zulu kingdom, this King Inguos Chaka appeared as a benign patron, affable, well behaved. And although they weren’t keen to annex yet another beach, the colonial administrators at the Cape were happy enough. And when trader James King returned from England and rather belatedly set about trying to raise money for his own venture, he too reported that this Inguos Chaka was obliging, pleasant, ‘stern in public, good-humoured in private’. Chaka’s attitude changed, though, when King failed to find any investors. He became a ‘cruel monster’ and, hell’s bells, did they think King was trying to raise funds for a speculation – no, they’d misunderstood him! Francis Farewell and the rest of his party were now little better than castaways living in terror of the savage despot. So they needed rescuing; and that’s what King wanted the money for – to rescue them. Somehow he managed to raise the ready cash, rushed off to save Farewell and promptly sank his ship in the process – meaning it was he himself who now needed rescuing by the ‘castaways’. Later, Farewell would intimate that if a ‘king’ was proving troublesome and treacherous, it wasn’t Shaka. Besides, if Shaka was such a terror, why was James King happy to take Farewell’s wife along with him when he sailed off to Port Natal? And the South African Commercial Advertiser was speaking for the British authorities when it suggested those ‘frightful stories’ one heard about Shaka from time to time were ‘mere fabrications’.



Hai-yi hai-yi! I like him when he pulled the Buffalo from its place. I like him when he tore down the thatch. When he swallowed their treachery and then spat out vengeance! Trampler of Burnt Grass! Sky that Thunders in the Open! Hai-yi hai-yi! But he is more, too …

He is the ‘duplicitous Zoolacratical tyrant’ of Nathaniel Isaacs, that halfwit who spent a brief time at Shaka’s court, while still a teen, and repaid the King’s hospitality by slandering him after his death. As did Farewell and Fynn, it has to be said. To their shame, when later accused of having served in Shaka’s army, they sought to vilify their deceased patron by claiming they’d been threatened with death if they didn’t accompany the ‘Zoola impis’.



Hai-yi hai-yi! He is Father of the Sky, son of Mother Africa, this strange southern land with its heat and mist, its frostbitten crags and singing veld, its blossoming deserts and painted caves where elongated wildebeest lope through the darkness. And those other, even more secret places, older than time: man-ape remains; the thumb that twitched, curled and held; the occipital lobe that tilted upward toward the stars. Ancestors of the ancestors. Pleistocene Woman who, fleeing a predator one day, ran into the waves and, to protect the baby clutched to her chest, walked upright … And he is more!

He is Rider Haggard’s Chaka, which is to say the lover of Nada the Lily, and Umslopogaas’ Father, who foresaw his own greatness and who rose out of a time of chaos and cannibalism to bring order and bloodthirsty benevolence. He is E. A. Ritter’s Shaka Zulu, a warrior-king in the Arthurian mould, with the iklwa as his Excalibur; visions of Avalon amid the birth pangs of apartheid. He is an aquarium and an airport, a simile and a model for capitalist middle management, a justification and also a metaphor. For certain whitey academics, political toadies who think cynicism and spite acceptable substitutes for scholarship, he is a nobody: just the Paltry Potentate Pushed Down the Coast by the Portuguese.



Hai-yi hai-yi! But he is more, too, this man of the moon who understood the power of the sun of the men from across the waters. Come close, my Brothers and Sisters, and I will tell you!

Come close.

Izindaba zami lezi …

These are my stories, of long ago and far away.

Uma ngiqambe amanga …

If I have lied, I have lied the truth.

If this is not the way things were, it’s the way they should have been.

To these white people, Shaka gave girls from his harem, who became their wives. They bore them many children, now comprising several clans, and those clans are still known by the surnames of their fathers. They are distinguishable by being white, but they are black in all other respects.

From The Black People and Whence They Came by Magema Fuze (translated by H. C. Lugg)

Strange to relate there was no Scotsman in the party.

From The Diary of Henry Francis Fynn (eds. James Stewartand D. McK. Malcolm)

They came from the sea.

In the beginning it was colonisation by shipwreck, although even that’s stretching a point. The Great Scramble would only begin much, much later, and these bedraggled Long Noses were more intent on survival than acquiring territory for their tribes across the waters. You could almost say that the missionary position in those days was to be on your knees gibbering for mercy. And they were helped to their feet and led to the village, where giggling children followed behind them and young maidens peeked at them from behind their fingers. Fed and rested, they were sent on their way, often with the benefit of a guide.

These aliens were too afraid to be fearsome and, if you include the Phoenicians – the Ma-iti of the Nguni chronicles – and the Arabs who reached the Mkuze River on the south-east coast of Africa towards the end of the thirteenth century, they had been washing up forever. Their comings and goings were a part of the folklore shared by the Zulus, Mthetwas, Xhosas and other Nguni nations who had settled on the coast of what would later become South Africa.

Then in 1415, at about the time the Chinese emperor was taking delivery of a giraffe from Malindi, Portuguese forces captured Ceuta on the North African coast. The port had been used as a base by Barbary pirates, when they had raided the Portuguese coast, destroying villages, taking the inhabitants captive and selling them in African slave markets. The Infante Henrique, Duke of Viseu and third son of King João I, took part in that expedition. He was twenty-one at the time, and the experience changed his world view. He got to thinking, considering the angles, as the alidade of his inner astrolabe swung rapidly between exploration, conquest and wealth. He certainly wasn’t the first to see how reconnaissance could be disguised as noble and courageous exploration, while paving the way to conquest that would bring in the riches. But the Ceuta campaign enabled him to add an entire new vane to his astrolabe called Africa. Everyone knew about the Mediterranean coast and Egypt, of course, but he was now looking the other way, and saw another coast that could be followed downward and, possibly, even around.

One of the key discoveries of the Age of Discovery being more of a Homeric Doh! Moment, the prince got to work and, as Henry the Navigator, he initiated the European wave of exploration that would ultimately bring the White Man to Shaka’s court.

About the first thing he did was ensure Portugal equipped herself with the right kind of ship for the job. This turned out to be the 35-metre-long three-masted caravel. With Arab-style lateen sails and a shallow draught, it was ideal for hugging the coast, exploring shallow waters, navigating reefs and sailing up rivers. By the time of Henry’s death in 1460, Portugal’s influence stretched as far as the Cape Verde Islands, six hundred kilometres west of Senegal.

In 1482, Diogo Cão reached the coast of Angola, where he erected a padrão, one of the two-metre-high stone crosses he’d brought along in order to mark the expedition’s most important landfalls.

In the wake of the mariners came the traders, settling wherever a victualling station was needed on the coast. They brought in copper ware, cloth, tools, wine, horses and, later, arms and ammunition. In exchange, they received gold, pepper, ivory and slaves.

But India was still the prize. With Venice controlling the older land and sea routes across the Persian Gulf, the only way Portugal was going to get there was by sailing south, then turning left and left again, as it were, all the while using Africa as a balustrade. Geographers of the time reckoned this could be done without impaling one’s ship on an iceberg, therefore João II duly sent Bartolomeu Dias along to give it a shot.

Things went reasonably well until he reached the Namibian coast, and saw lush greenery give way to a moonscape desert as dry as old bones, yet caressed by waters as icy as a pope’s heart.

Dias didn’t know it at the time, but he’d now entered the realm of Adamastor, tyrant of the seas, ruler of the wind, with his clay-clogged, steel-wool hair, his scowling hollow eyes and his yellow fangs. And Adamastor bided his time, letting a sense of unease grow among the members of the expedition, as they eyed that inhospitable coast and mulled over what they faced should they find themselves shipwrecked. For if they didn’t first freeze to death in the waters of the Benguela current, they’d burn up on those sands.

Then, after Dias had gingerly planted a padrão on the promontory of Luderitz Bay, Adamastor finally struck. Herding the mariner and his caravels out into a storm, he tossed them southward into the middle of nowhere.

Thirteen days passed before Dias could set about finding Africa again. First he turned east, groping for the north–south coastline that had been their companion these many months. Then, growing ever more frantic, he sailed due north – and finally made land at Mossel Bay, on a coast that now stretched directly from east to west. He continued on to the Great Fish River, to make sure this wasn’t just another bump in the continent, then he turned back.

And it was only now, on their voyage home, that he rounded Cape Agulhas, Africa’s southernmost tip, and discovered the Cape of Good Hope. (He, with no little feeling, called it Cabo das Tormentas – the Cape of Storms – but the king later reckoned Cabo da Boa Esperança would inspire more confidence among investors.)

That was in 1488, and Dias had shown it could be done, but almost ten years would elapse before a Portuguese expedition finally reached India by this same route.

That one was led by Vasco da Gama, and in December 1497 he sailed into the uncharted waters that lay beyond the Great Fish River. As Christmas was near, he christened the lush green coast he was passing ‘Natal’, to commemorate the Nativity.

A few days later, a headland running parallel to the coast caught his eye. He named it Ponta de Pescaria and sailed on, blithely missing the bay hiding behind this imposing bluff. It was only in 1554 that Manoel de Mesquita Perestrello, coming back from India, found Rio Natal for Portugal. Even so, the sheltered harbour was soon forgotten.

In 1652 the Dutch chose Table Bay, at the Cape of Good Hope, as the site of a settlement tasked with supplying provisions for the ships of the Dutch East India Company. As the years passed a mud fort evolved into a star-shaped stone castle, Company employees became settlers, vineyards were planted, and slaves imported. By 1793 the colony had a population of fourteen thousand burghers, of whom only four thousand lived in or near Cape Town. Hunters, traders and nomadic cattlemen called Trekboers had meanwhile pushed the borders of the settlement eight hundred kilometres eastward.

In 1806 the British occupied the Cape. As the century entered its late teens, they began to hear talk of great upheavals further along the coast, but they had other more immediate matters to deal with. Like pacifying the Xhosas, who stubbornly insisted on hampering the colony’s expansion beyond the Great Fish River, on the basis that they had got there first.

As a result, the nearest European settlement to the Zulus remained Delagoa Bay, where Lourenço Marques had established a trading post back in the 1540s.

But these Portugiza were different from the other savages who washed up on the beaches from time to time. Familiarity had long ago bred contempt; and they had been there, dying of fever, for so many generations that they were seen more as a mongrel offshoot of the Maputo tribe they customarily dealt with than as representatives of a mighty foreign nation.

Ascending to the Zulu throne in 1816, Shaka was more interested in the other tribes who came from across the water. Or rather – and this is where he differed from most of the other rulers in the region – he knew there was more to learn here than appearances might suggest.

That was thanks to his great mentor, Dingiswayo. For while in exile, fleeing his father’s wrath, the Mthetwa prince had befriended a White Man who may have been the last survivor of an expedition despatched from the Cape in 1807 and tasked with seeking an overland route to Portuguese East Africa. Dingiswayo agreed to guide the man to the coast but, after a few months, the barbarian contracted a fever and died. Dingiswayo inherited the man’s horse and his gun, then decided it was time to go and claim his own birthright. Although the gun was useless, lacking powder and shot, and the horse would soon die (this long being insalubrious territory for these naked zebra), they were nonetheless impressive talismans that played no small part in helping the Wanderer regain the throne.

And Dingiswayo never forgot all the things the White Man had told him, as they sat around the fire of an evening. Coming from the Cape, the White Man could speak Xhosa, a Nguni language Dingiswayo himself understood, and though the young prince could grasp most of the concepts he raised – trade, empires, wars of conquest – it was their sheer scale that awed him.

And got him thinking.

So it was Dingiswayo, not Shaka, who first set about uniting the tribes and clans along the south-east coast of Africa, organising something approaching a standing army and fighting wars not only to gain territory and cattle, but to secure trade routes with the Portuguese. The Zulu king merely completed what his mentor had started.

And Shaka wanted to know more, wanted to hear for himself. What else could these creatures from the sea tell him? Problem was, whatever trembling specimens his warriors found amid the seaweed could do little more than weep and grovel.

Possibly, in the end, they weren’t that different from all the others. Possibly, their claimed provenance aside, they were simply wild beasts like all the rest. For that’s how the Zulus saw things: they themselves were Abantu, human beings, while everyone else was izilwane, wild beasts, savages. But even as Shaka was taming the other beasts around him – those indigenous to the region – these newly found barbarians were poking at the map and wondering about the possibilities of this coast.

By the 1820s the British Admiralty was desperately seeking employment for the naval officers left idle and on half pay after the Napoleonic Wars. One of the projects embarked upon was a long delayed and much needed scientific survey of the coastline extending from the Cape of Good Hope up to Cape Guardafui north of Portuguese East Africa. Captain William Owen was the one put in charge of the expedition, which included the Leven and the Barracouta.

The HMS Barracouta left the Cape first, around the middle of 1822. Also tasked with making contact with the tribes beyond Algoa Bay, the furthermost outpost of British civilisation on that coast, the ship’s officers discovered something interesting.

The natives they encountered were a pathetic lot – cunning, treacherous and prone to ‘drunkenness and gluttony’. However, the Barracouta’s officers soon learnt that they were not the ‘aboriginal inhabitants’ of the coastal strip, but were refugees who had fled ‘the merciless and destructive conquests of a tyrannical monster named Chaka’. These reports, which caused a stir back at the Cape, mark one of the first official mentions of the Zulu king whose name would one day be known around the globe.

The despatches were later confirmed by the officers of the HMS Leven. While the ship was at Delagoa Bay, it was learnt the Portuguese were trading with a ‘warlike’ tribe to the south. They called this tribe ‘Vatwas’, but it was likely these were the ‘Zoolas’ the British had already been hearing about.

And why would the Portuguese risk dealing with such a bloodthirsty bunch? That’s what a few merchants, and at least one out-of-work Navy man, got to thinking after listening to the stories Owen’s expedition brought back to Cape Town. They knew the Portuguese were doing very well out of the gold and ivory coming into Delagoa otherwise why maintain a settlement in such a hellhole? But that the traders should be willing to do business with a ‘tyrannical monster’, presumably as likely to slaughter them in their sleep as hand over any goods, meant there had to be more gold and more ivory than hitherto suspected.

Consequently, while Shaka was consolidating his power after defeating Zwide, and wondering what to do about the irksome Thembus hunkered down on his western border, other izilwane, the very ones he wanted to learn more about, were making plans to come and find him. And thus ensure any future arrivals and departures were more organised, and less the result of storms and shattered hulls.

July 1823

The sea is choppy, the sky glowering; the foam stings and the waves do their best to unseat the boat, as if it were a particularly detested jockey.

Impatience, teeth-grinding, deck-pacing, mouths-to-feed, investors-to-appease impatience, has seen Lieutenant Francis Farewell, founder of the Farewell Trading Company – and sole bloody leader of this bloody expedition, the whole thing having been his idea in the first place, despite what a certain party might claim at a later date – attempt a landing in such inclement conditions.

The beach they’re aiming for keeps disappearing, tilting and slipping behind waves the colour of stone, until the boat rises again like the remnants of breakfast in a burning throat, while the water roars in its rage and the spindrift peppers one’s face like specks of gunpowder. Jakot, their interpreter, along with a matelot who’s never been the same since a tumble from a yard a few years ago, has broken one of the barrels they’ve brought wi