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Wellington. He became anxious. Then he spotted them stumbling along, both clutching bundles of precious possessions. A tin mug, a mirror, a bag of maize meal: all that was left of their life on the Rand.
    “I salute you,” said Nandi, “but your son is tired now, and we must rest and find food.” She touched the beads at her plum-coloured throat, and Muhle felt tears prick his eyes at the sight of it.
    “I am not tired,” countered Wellington from beside her. “I can march as well as father, as well as any. My heart is full, my muscles are strong.”
    He lifted up a bony arm, as if to show that strength, and Muhle looked down at it, following the contours of the flesh up the dusty forearm to where a bicep swelled, then over the shoulder where the skin was smoother and cleaner, flowing into the neck and face: that face which reminded him of his own father’s, with broad cheeks and stubborn forehead, eyes the colour of honey from the acacia blossom of Natal and small ears set back flat against the skull.
    “What are we going to do?” demanded Nandi.
    Maseku could see the strain in her face, but did not answer. There was no appropriate reply to make. Instead he put an arm round her, reaching down at the same time to take Wellington’s hand. The boy—he was only twelve, but looked older—smiled at him. So handsome, Muhle thought, just one year younger than he had been when he married Nandi, but still just a sapling. A furrow creased his brow then. Already on this long march some other boys had tried to bully Wellington. He had beaten them fiercely off his son. Only Nandi’s urgent cry had stopped him from chasing after them.
    Now, as they walked towards a ridge of hills, the cry was coming from Muhle’s belly. Every time they passed a store by the side of the road the shopkeeper would turn them away. They were frightened, these Boer traders, Muhle could see that; frightened of the crowds of his people and their pain.
    They marched on, passing other groups of refugees: Hindus in bright saris, wearing bangles and gold noserings, a company of whites—Scots and Irish—on horseback, a Boer family in an ox wagon, going in the opposite direction, the mother with a baby clutched in her arms. At one point they came upon an accordion, dropped in the middle of the road: the column just opened up and passed round it, paying little heed. They knew what it meant, though. For all, like Muhle himself, had left behind households, possessions, livelihoods. And now they themselves, no less than their belongings, were flotsam scattered on the veld, by the wave of impending war.
    Late in the day, a long murmur came down the column, and it slowly eased to a halt. Muhle saw Marwick—the kindly Englishman from the Natal Native Affairs Department—go up to the front, where there was some commotion.
    “Stay in this spot,” he said to his wife. “I will go to see what happens. Maybe there is some food.” He followed Marwick past the ranks of black men—Zulu and Xhosa, Sotho, Swazi and other tribes from Natal and the Cape, and not a few from the north also, strangers from Nyasa and Bulawayo.
    This curiosity—no, it wasn’t that, it was responsibility—was the undoing of Muhle Maseku. For they had just crossed the border into Natal and on the British side were some Boers, on horseback, with their rifles in their hands and their trademark slouch hats upon their heads. The Boers were engaged in strenuous argument with Marwick, every now and then interjecting their broken English with the nee and ja of their own strange tongue. Marwick looked ill and afraid, Muhle thought. As he watched, many more Boers appeared and began sectioning off a part of the crowd of marchers, herding them with their rifles. Muhle panicked, trying to move back away from the vanguard. But then one young Boer with pale blue eyes prodded him back, and he began to be carried along by the flow of the rest. Terrified of being separated from his family, Muhle shouted