Men of Men by Wilbur Smith

came in their hundreds, but still not enough of them arrived to fill those hungry diamond pits. In vain Zouga and Jan Cheroot had ridden the workings. Every black man was signed on
contract, and jealously guarded by his employer.
    Zouga had told Jan Cheroot, ‘We’ll offer seven shillings and sixpence a week.’
    They signed five men that same day at the higher wage, and the next day there were a dozen deserters waiting outside Zouga’s camp, eager for the new coin.
    Before Zouga could sign them, Neville Pickering sauntered up. ‘Official visit, old man,’ he murmured apologetically. ‘As a member of the jolly old Diggers’ Committee, I
have to tell you the rate is five shillings not seven and six.’
    When Zouga opened his mouth to protest, Pickering smiled easily and held up his hand.
    ‘No, Major. I’m sorry. It’s five shillings, and not a penny more.’
    Zouga was already in no doubt about the sweeping powers of the Diggers’ Committee. An edict from the elected body was enforced firstly by a warning, then a beating, and finally by the full
aggression of the entire community of diggers which could end in a burning or even a lynching.
    ‘What do I do for a gang, then?’ Zouga demanded.
    ‘You do what we all do; you go out and find a gang, before another digger or a Boer commando grabs them.’
    ‘I might have to go as far north as the Shashi river,’ Zouga snapped sarcastically, and Pickering nodded in agreement.
    ‘Yes, you might.’
    Zouga smiled thinly at the memory of his first lesson in digger labour relations, and now he settled his hat firmly and gathered up his reins.
    ‘All right,’ he muttered, ‘let’s go recruiting!’ And he put his heels into the gelding’s flanks and went lunging up the bank of the ravine onto the open
plain.
    The tribesmen were five hundred yards dead ahead, and he counted swiftly: sixteen of them. If he could take them all he could start back for New Rush in tomorrow’s dawn. Sixteen men were
sufficient to work the Devil’s Own, and at that moment they had, for Zouga, the same value as a fifty-carat diamond. They were in single file, moving swiftly, the trotting gait of the
fighting impis of Zulu, no women or children with them.
    ‘Good,’ grunted Zouga as the gelding stretched out under him, and he held him back in an easy canter as he glanced right.
    Jan Cheroot was tearing across the plain, Jordan plugging along in his dust fifty strides behind. At this distance Jordan did not look like a child; they might have been a pair of armed riders,
and Jan Cheroot was swinging wide, trying to get behind the little group of men, pinning them before they scattered, pinning them long enough for Zouga to get within hail.
    Zouga glanced left and scowled as he saw that Ralph was at full gallop, leaning low over his horse’s neck, brandishing the Martini-Henry rifle – and Zouga hoped it was still
unloaded, wished that he had specially ordered Ralph not to show the rifle, and yet even in that moment of anger he experienced a little prickle of pride as he watched his son ride; the boy was
born to the saddle.
    Zouga checked the gelding again, bringing him down to a trot, giving his flank men time to complete the circle, and at the same time trying to reduce the dramatic effect of his approach. He knew
that they would appear to the tribesmen to be an armed commando, their intentions warlike, and he tried to soften this by lifting his hat and waving it over his head.
    Then suddenly Jan Cheroot was reining in, gesturing to Jordan to do the same. They had got behind the band, and opposite them, facing them across the wide circle, Ralph was wheeling his filly
and bringing her up sharply on her hind legs, rearing and shaking out her mane theatrically.
    In the centre the tribesmen had moved swiftly, and with the concerted action of trained fighting men.
    They had dropped the rolled bundles of sleeping-mat, cooking-pot and leather grain bag that they had been carrying on