Blue Horizon Quotes

“staring out across the lion-coloured”
― Wilbur Smith, Blue Horizon

“This was a man, tall and broad-shouldered, forged like steel in the furnace of life.”
― Wilbur Smith, Blue Horizon

“beautiful granddaughter at his side, guarding it like a pair of faithful watchdogs. Although they were all nearly at the end of their tether, Jim roused the camp again before dawn. Using a span of oxen, and with much shouting and cracking of long whips, they heaved the overturned wagon back on to its wheels. The robust vehicle had suffered little damage, and within a few hours they had repacked its scattered load. Jim knew that they must leave the battlefield at once. In the heat of the sun the corpses would very soon putrefy, and, with the stench of their rotting, sickness and disease would come. At his orders they inspanned every other wagon in the train. Then Smallboy and the other drivers fired the long whips and the oxen trundled the vehicles out of the gruesome laager and into the open grassland. They set up camp that evening among the deserted thatched huts of the Nguni town, surrounded by the vast herds of humpbacked cattle, with the piles of ivory securely enclosed within the wagon laager. The next morning, after breakfast, Jim summoned all his men to the indaba. He wanted to explain to them his future plans, and to tell them where he would lead them next. First he asked Tegwane to explain how the Nguni used their cattle to carry the ivory when they were on the march. ‘Tell us how they place the loads, and secure them to the backs of the animals,’ Jim ordered. ‘That I do not know,’ Tegwane admitted. ‘I have only watched their advance from afar.’ ‘Smallboy will be able to work out the harness for himself,’ Jim decided, ‘but it would have been better to use a method to which the cattle are accustomed.’ Then he turned to the small group of herd-boys and said, ‘Can you men’ – they liked to be called men and they had earned the right at the barricades – ‘can you men take care of so many?’ They considered the vast herds of cattle that were scattered down the full length of the valley. ‘They are not so very many,’ said the eldest, who was the spokesman. ‘We can herd many more than that,’ said another. ‘We have vanquished the Nguni in battle,’ squeaked Izeze, smallest and cheekiest of the boys, his voice not yet broken. ‘We can take care of their cattle, and their women also, when we capture them.”
― Wilbur Smith, Blue Horizon: A Courtney Novel 11

“uninvited help he might offer would be rejected. He was surprised and delighted when she placed a hand on his shoulder as she climbed the wagon steps. He left her to take off her torn, soiled clothing while he supervised the heating of the water cauldron and the preparation of the copper hip-bath. Zama and the other servants removed the afterchest from her wagon and set up the bath in its place. Then they filled it with steaming water. When all was ready, Jim retired and listened through the canvas tent to her splashes, and winced in sympathy at her small cries and exclamations of pain as the water stung her abrasions and thorn pricks. When at last he judged that she had finished he asked permission to enter her wagon tent. ‘Yes, you may come in, for I am as chastely attired as a nun.’ She was wearing the dressing-robe Sarah Courtney had given her. It reached from her chin to her ankles, and down to her wrists. ‘Is there aught I can do to ease your discomfort?’ he asked. ‘I have rubbed your aunt Yasmini’s sovereign balm and ointment upon my ankle and on most of my other afflictions.’ She lifted the hem of the robe a few inches to show her ankle tightly wrapped in bandages. Dorian”
― Wilbur Smith, Blue Horizon: A Courtney Novel 11

“wave of sound swept over the ring as every man in the convocation shouted together.”
― Wilbur Smith, Blue Horizon