Olive the Lionheart by Brad Ricca

Author:Brad Ricca
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

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BOYD’S DAYS ON THE MARCH were repetitious, but only because over the years he had found a schedule that suited him. Every day he rose at five thirty when his boy brought him a cup of boiling coffee. Boyd would then go hunting for birds, before coming back at nine for breakfast. José did the same. After breakfast Boyd would skin what he had found and go out again until midday. Then he would have his lunch and rest until two o’clock before heading out till five. After a refreshing warm bath, he enjoyed a whiskey and sour to set his brain cogs in motion. On this day Boyd watched as José was trying to teach the men football, who took to it very well. Boyd smiled at the “capital” sight.

Every night they would all have supper at six thirty, either something they had shot or slices of ham they had carried, accompanied by cold tea. Then Boyd would sit down to write. He tried to find a shade-giving tree, preferably with a view and a lean to it. Sometimes he felt he could see the whole country mapped out before him, even imagining the sea just beyond the vista. Boyd believed that a good view stimulated the brain, which was helpful when there was writing to do.

“And so the days pass,” Boyd wrote one night, “but they are always delightful, since I feel that I am in close touch with Nature.”

By May they had arrived in Ninong, in southern Sudan. José was sick; a bad worm had left his foot, but he still had a very high temperature. Boyd treated him for rheumatic fever, but as José recuperated, Boyd himself came down with an attack of ague, a sharp form of fever he had never experienced before. Boyd thought the mountain mists might have gotten into his bones. He was looking forward to lower altitudes and warmer temperatures. He was shivering.

As they marched, morale began to flag. One of the boys, a member of the Mendi tribe, complained they had not enough food and threatened to desert the expedition. “We are still hungry,” he said. “It is always a Mendi,” Boyd muttered, as he reached for his stick. He stood up as the boy cowered. As Boyd flogged the boy’s back until it bled, he saw the looks the other men gave him. He felt that they had been brought to their senses. José watched from the edge of camp.

“A tight hold is necessary with these people,” wrote Boyd. He believed that Africans offered the finest labor in Africa, but he felt the British were spoiling them with overpay. Workers were often paid at the same rate as private soldiers at home! Boyd couldn’t believe this, especially since when they were paid, the natives usually gambled it away in games with the cowrie shell: “The Government really should do something to stop this,” he wrote. “The next thing that always follows is that the winners lend their gains to the losers at exorbitant rates.

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