Tales from the Veld
by Ernest Glanville · English · Gutenberg #36602 · 376,221 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Tales from the Veld
Author: Ernest Glanville
Illustrator: M. Nisbet
Release date: July 3, 2011 [eBook #36602]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36602
Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES FROM THE VELD ***
Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
Tales from the Veld
By Ernest Glanville
Illustrations by M. Nisbet
Published by Chatto & Windus, London.
This edition dated 1897.
Tales from the Veld, by Ernest Glanville.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
TALES FROM THE VELD, BY ERNEST GLANVILLE.
PREFACE.
The tales here set forth are, subject to a generous allowance for Uncle
Abe's gift of imagination, true to the animal life and the scenery of a
district in the Cape occupied by the British Settlers of 1820--a tract
rich in incidents of border warfare, hallowed by the struggles of that
early band of colonists, saturated with the superstitions and folk lore
of the Kaffirs, and thoroughly familiar to the author--who passed his
boyhood there.
E. Glanville.
Streatham: September 1897.
CHAPTER ONE.
ABE PIKE'S POISON BARK.
Abe Pike--Old Abe Pike, or Uncle Abe as he was variously called--lived
in a one-horse shanty in the division of Albany, Cape Colony. I won't
locate his farm, for various reasons, beyond saying that there is a
solitary blue-gum on the south side of the house and the rudiments of a
cowshed on the north. Uncle Abe was not ambitious; he was slow, but he
was sure. So he said. One blue-gum satisfied him, and as for the
cowshed he meant to complete it during the century. I don't introduce
him as a tree planter, but as a narrator of most extraordinary yarns.
He called them facts--but of the truth of this the reader may judge.
Riding over one warm afternoon, I found him leaning over a water-butt
examining the little lively and red worms therein, which would soon
hatch out into livelier mosquitoes.
"Well, Uncle, how d'ye fare?"
"Porly, lad, porly; pumpkins is scarce."
Uncle Abe took a very old pipe from his pocket, and showed the emptiness
of it by placing a very gnarled little finger into the black bowl.
I held out my pouch.
"I'll jest take a little dry to put on the top," he said, as he
deliberately filled the pipe. "We want a little `dry on the top' to
start us, but if there's nothin' deown below, why, it's a puff and out
it goes. Yo'll never get a crop from that bottom land o' yours until
you put some dry on the top in the shape of manure. See!"
Now, of all the laziest, shiftless beings there was no one who could
start level with old Abe Pike, and this advice from him was rasping, but
still he had his points.
"I've heard say there's a powerful heap o' money in portents," he
ventured presently.
"It depends on how you interpret them."
"Well, that's so. I've got a portent here in this very coat; that's
some small pumpkins, I tell you. It'll kill any sort o' vermin, rats,
skeeters, wild-cats, jackals, quicker'n winkin'. See! I found it out
myself come next Friday fortnight."
"You mean you interpreted the portent."
"Well, now, is that so? I tole you I got it in my pocket, and ef I
didn't find it, how did it get there? That's what I want to know."
"All right, Uncle, what is it?"
"That's my portent. I diskivered it, and I'm gwine to work it under my
name--Abe Pike's Sure Killer."
"Is it a patent medicine you're talking of?"
"Of course; that's what I said. There it is," and out of his pocket he
produced a strip of bark.
"Sneeze-wood bark, isn't it?"
"Looks like it, don't it? But there's bark and there's bark. This is
Abe Pike's Bark, possessing properties which will alleviate the
sufferings of the human race by putting a lightning end to the enemies
of the human kind. That's what I've studied out to put in the papers in
big letters. There's money in it, now; ain't there?"
"I don't see it, Uncle."
"Ah! the limitations of knowledge, my boy, is accountable for a pot of
ignorance. You think that's plain ordinary bark, but that's where your
limitations run dry. I'll jes' tell you how I diskivered this great and
marvellous killer of the centry. Come Friday fortnight I sot out with
the axe to chop out a pole for the cowshed--t'other on' been eaten thro'
by those plaguy ants. Well, I knew of a tree way down in the kloof that
had been growin' for that shed o' mine ever since the seed dropped on
the 'xact spot where nature had provided a bed for it. When you come to
think of it, everything has got its purpose all smoothed out from the
start, and that little seed spread itself out from the beginnin' to
build up a pole for ole Abe Pike's cowshed. I sot down on a fallen tree
and thought that all out, while the trees round about made a whisperin'
with their leaves over the head o' that there sneeze 'ood that was
doomed so to speak, by reason o' my cows, and the necessity of keepin'
'em out o' the rain in the winter. Well, I sot there thinking all these
thoughts until it was too dark, and I went away home 'thout having cut
the tree. Next mornin' I took up my axe and went down into the kloof
and took off my coat. I gave two blows and stopped."
"Too much work?"
"Jes' you wait. I tole you there was a fallen tree; well, in that tree
was a snake. The first blow of the axe woke him, and he popped his head
out. The second blow sent a chip that hit him square between the eyes.
Out he came biling with rage, and hissin' like a kettle o' water, and I
just had time to dodge behind the tree when he let out. His fangs stuck
right in the wood, and with a clip I cut his head off. I stood away
back looking at his writhing body and at his wicked head sticking there
in the tree jes' where I had made the wedge. As I looked in, there came
to pass a remarkable circumstance."
"Yes?"
"Yes; that tree began to lose colour. It was a healthy tree, sound as a
bell, with a heart o' iron and a crown o' green leaves; but as I stood
there in the space o' maybe one minit, or a minit and a half, it begun
to turn pale and sickly."
"Turn pale!"
"Yes, sir, that's what I said. First the leaves shuddered and rustled,
and grew moist; then they slowly turned yeller, curling up as if they'd
been frost-bitten, only sadder. It s'prised me, that did, for there was
somethin' in the way the leaves went that struck a shudder through me,
'twas so human like in the manner o' it. But that was nothing--the bark
suddenly cracked and peeled off--then the white trunk itself standin'
there, exposed in its nakedness began to swell--until it split with a
groan--ay, a groan, a moaning shivery gasp o' pain. 'Twas so like life,
I turned and ran, thinkin' that dead snakes was after me--so that as I
ran the fear grew upon me till I came out inter the open. After looking
around keerfully I sat on a stone an' steadied my thinking machine.
When I got the fear out o' me I went back and there was that tree dead
as tho' it had been struck by lightnin' and bleached by the rain an'
sun."
"Well?"
"That tree was pisened! It died o' snakebite--its system chock full o'
pisen. I cut it down and took it home, where I planted it under the
shed."
"And your portent?"
"I'm comin' to that, if you'll give me time. That night I couldn't
sleep for a procession of ants. They came out of a hole in the floor,
crept over my bed--which you may know is on the floor for convenience--
and marched out thro' the crack under the door. All the ants in the
country were there--red ants, black ants, working ants, soldier ants,
and the soldier ants nipped me whenever I moved. In the morning, when
they had passed away, I went outside, and in the shed there was
thousands an' thousands o' dead ants, not to speak o' flies."
"All dead?"
"They had been nipping that pisened pole, and those that didn't bite got
the news and moved off for other scenes. I tell you, you may speak o'
telegraph wires, but lor' bless you, news travels faster among the
creatures. Why I've knowed--"
"Yes; but you've not told me about your discovery."
"Well, now, the limitations of your knowledge is great. I've told you
enough to put two and two together. If not, I'll just make the plain
plainer. Seeing what the tree had done, I though o' the bark an' the
leaves left there behind in the kloof, and went for 'em. It was jus' as
I thought. They was deadly pisen, and when I laid some leaves about the
house they killed all the flies, and a piece o' bark laid in a rat-hole
brought all the rats out corpses.
"Yes sir, that's ole Abe Pike's Vermin Destroyer, and if you're setting
pills for jackals, why, don't you forget to come to my shop."
"Are you opening a shop?"
"That's what I said. Abe Pike's vermin pisen poles, warrented to stand
the ravages o' time an' insects, and Pike's bark; no other genuine. So
long!"
"Well, so long!"
CHAPTER TWO.
UNCLE ABE'S BIG SHOOT.
I had ridden out one day to the outpost, where a troop of young cattle
were running, when the horse rode into a covey of red-wing partridges, a
brace of which I accounted for by a right and left. Picking up the
birds, and feeling rather proud of the shot, I continued on to Uncle
Pike's to crow over the matter.
The old man was seated outside the door `braiding' a thong of forslag or
whip-lash.
"Hitch the reins over the pole. Ef the shed was ready I'd ask yer to
stable the hoss, but there's a powerful heap o' work yet to finish it
off nice an' shipshape--me being one o' those who like to see a job well
done. None o' yer rough and ready sheds for me, with a hole in the roof
after the fust rain. A plump brace o' birds--you got 'em up by the
Round Kopje."
"Yes, Uncle; a right and left from the saddle. Good shooting, eh!"
"Fair to middling, sonny--fair to middling--but with a handful o' shot
an' a light gun what can yer expect but to hit. Now, ef you'd bagged
'em with one ball outer an ole muzzle-loader, why I'd up an' admit it
was praisable."
"Why Uncle, where's the man who would knock over two birds with a ball?
It couldn't be done."
"Is that so? Well, now yer s'prise me."
"You're not going to tell me you have seen that done!"
"Something better. That's small potatoes."
He rose up, went indoors, and returned with an ancient single
muzzle-loader, the stock bound round with snake skin. "Jes' yer handle
that wepin."
I handled it, and returned it without a word. It was ill-balanced, and
came up awkwardly to the shoulder.
"That wepin saved my life."
"In the war?"
"In the big drought. You remember the time. The country was that dry,
you could hear the grass crackle like tinder when the wind moved, an'
every breath stirred up columns of sand which went cavorting over the
veld round and round, their tops bending over to each other an' the
bottoms stirring up everything movable, and the whole length of the
funells dotted about with snakes, an' lizards, an' bits of wood. Why, I
see one o' em whip up a dead sheep, an' shed the wool off o' the carcase
as it went twisting round an' round."
"And the gun?"
"The gun was on the wall over my bed. Don't you mind the gun. Well, it
was that dry the pumpkins withered up where they lay on the hard
ground--an' one day there was nought in the larder, not so much as a
smell. There was no breakfast for ole Abe Pike, nor dinner nor yet tea,
an' the next morning 'twas the same story o' emptiness. I took down the
old gun from the wall an' cleaned her up. There was one full charge o'
powder in the horn, an' one bullet in the bag. All that morning I
considered whether 'twould be wiser to divide that charge inter three,
or to pour the whole lot of it in't once. When dinner-time came an'
there was no dinner, I solumnly poured the whole bang of it inter the
barrel, an' listened to the music of the black grains as they rattled on
their way down to their last dooty. I cut a good thick wad from a
buck-hide and rammed it down, `Plunk, plenk, plank, plonk, ploonk,'
until the rod jumped clean out o' the muzzle. Then I polished up that
lone bullet, wrapped him round in a piece o' oil rag, an' sent him down
gently. `Squish, squish, squash, squoosh.' I put the cap on the
nipple, an' sent him home with the pressure o' the hammer. Then I took
a look over the country to 'cide on a plan o' campaign. What I wanted
was a big ram with meat on him ter last for a month, if 'twas made inter
biltong. There was one down by the hoek, but it warnt full grown. He
was nearest, but there was one I'd seen over yonder off by the river,
beyond the kloof, an' I reckoned 'twas worth while going a couple o'
mile extra to get him."
"You were sure of him?"
"He was as good as dead when I shouldered the gun an' stepped off out on
that wilderness o' burnt land. The wind came like a breath from a
furnace, an' the hair on my head split an' curled up under the heat.
Whenever I came across a rock with a breadth of shade I sot there to
cool off, panting like a fowl, an' also to cool off the gun for fear
'twould explode. By reason o' this resting the dark came down when I
reached the ridge above the river, an' I jest camped where it found me,
after digging up some _insange_ root to chew. The fast had been with me
for two days, an' the gnawing pain inside was terrible, so that I kept
awake looking up at the stars an' listening to the plovers."
"It must have been lonesome!"
"'Twas not the lonesomeness so much as the emptiness that troubled me.
Before the morning came, lighting up the valley, I was going down to the
river on the last hunt. 'Twas do or die that trip--an' it seemed to me
I could see the gleam o' my bones away down there through the mist that
hung over the sick river. I made straight for the river, knowing there
was a comfort an' fellowship in the water which would draw game there,
an' the big black ram, too, 'fore he marched off inter the thick o' the
kloof for his sleep. By-and-by, as I went down among the rocks an'
trees, I pitched head first--ker smash--in a sudden fit o' dizziness,
but the shock did me good. It rattled up my brain--an' instead o' jest
plunging ahead I went slow--slow an' soft as a cat on the trail--pushing
aside a branch here, shoving away a dry twig there, an' glaring around
with hungry eyes. I spotted him!"
"The ram?"
"Ay, the ram. The very buck I'd had in my mind when I loaded the old
gun. He stood away off the other side o' the river, moving his ears,
but still as a rock, and black as the bowl of this pipe, except where
the white showed along his side. He seemed to be looking straight at
me--an' I sank by inches to the ground with my legs all o' a shake.
Then, on my falling, he stepped down to the water, and stood there
admiring hisself--his sharp horns an' fine legs--an' on my belly, all
empty as 'twas, I crawled, an' crawled, an' crawled. There was a bush
this side the river, an' I got it in line. At last I reached it, the
sweat pouring off me, an' slowly I rose up. The water was dripping from
his muzzle as he threw his head up, an' he turned to spring back, when,
half-kneeling, I fired, an' the next moment the old gun kicked me flat
as a pancake."
"And you missed him?"
"Never! I got him. I said I would, an' I did. I got him, an' a 9
pound barbel."
"Uncle Abe!"
"I say a 9 pound barbel, tho' he might a been 8 and a half pound, an' a
brace of pheasants."
"Uncle Abe!"
"I zed so--an' a hare an', an'," he went on quickly, "a porkipine."
"Uncle Abe!"
"Well--what are you Abeing me for?"
"You got all those with one shot. Never!"
"I was there--you weren't. 'Tis easy accounted for. When I pulled the
trigger the fish leapt from the water in the line, and the bullet passed
through him inter the buck. I tole you the gun kicked. Well, it flew
out o' my hands, an' hit the hare square on the nose. To recover
myself, I threw up my hands, an' caught hold o' the two pheasants jest
startled outer the bush."
"And the porcupine?"
"I sot down on the porkipine, an' if you'd like to 'xamine my pants
you'll find where his quills went in. I was mighty sore, an' I could
ha' spared him well from the bag. But 'twas a wonderful good shot.
You're not going?"
"Yes, I am. I'm afraid to stay with you."
"Well, so long! I cut this yere forslag from the skin o' that same
buck."
"Let me see--it's nine years to the big drought."
"That's it."
"That skin has kept well."
"Oh, yes; 'twas a mighty tough skin."
"Not so tough as your yarn, Uncle. So long!"
CHAPTER THREE.
UNCLE ABE, THE BABOON, AND THE TIGER.
Abe Pike was one of those men who would walk ten miles to set a trap
without a murmur, while he thought himself badly used if he were called
upon to hoe a row in the mealie field. So when, for the third time
within one week, a calf was killed by a tiger, and our attempts to
shoot, poison, or trap the thief had failed, I rode over to Uncle Abe's
to secure his aid.
"I can't do it," he said, when I had stated my business.
"Too busy?"
"No; 'taint that, sonny, 'taint that--tho' there's a powerful heap o'
work to do on that shed."
"I'll put in a couple of days and help you finish it right off, as soon
as the tiger is laid by the heels."
"Thank ye kindly; but I've got to finish that there shed offun my own
bat. It's a job that wants doin' keerfly."
"Well, Uncle, I'll plough up your old land by the hoek, and put in two
muids of corn. How will that do?"
"'Twont do, my lad; that land's full o' charlock."
"Then, Uncle, the day you show me the dead body of that tiger, the red
heifer with the white patch on the hump is yours."
He heaved a sigh, and knocked the bowl of his pipe on his thumb, but he
did not accept the offer, though I knew he admired that heifer.
"Why, Uncle, what is the matter? You're not ill?"
"'Tain't that, either--not 'xactly--tho' there's such a thing as illness
o' the mind."
"I'm very sorry," as I unhitched the bridle and prepared to mount, "for
I'll have to go to Long Sam, and from the hairs I've seen I shouldn't be
surprised if this is a black tiger."
This was the last shot--Abe Pike had not yet trapped a black tiger, and
Long Sam was his rival in bush lore.
"That settles it," he said, with a groan.
"Come along then," I said, with a smile at my success in breaking
through his obstinacy.
Abe rose up and laid his gnarled hand on the mane of the horse. "'Tis
the same one," he muttered, "the same one, sure."
"Why, of course; you know the old horse, Black Dick."
"Black Nick," he said slowly, and, drawing his hand across his forehead;
"my boy, you'll never trap that animile; he's a witch tiger."
"A witch tiger?"
"That's so: he's given a lodging to some ole Kaffir. Abe Pike ain't
going arter any black tigers, not he."
"What are you driving at now, you old buffer?"
"Buffer, is it; well--well--buffer--oh, yes, of course; an' me that has
passed through sich a three weeks as ud have scared many another into
his grave."
I felt remorse at the thought that for three weeks I had not called on
the lonely old man, and concluded that he was paying me out for this
neglect.
"I am very sorry," I said eagerly, "I have not been over; but the truth
is the work has been very heavy. It must have been very lonely."
"I've had kempany."
"Oh, I see; and perhaps they've engaged your services?"
"That's it. On 'count o' 'em that's been callin' here I can't go
catching any black tigers."
"I should like to know who it is has set you against doing a service for
a neighbour?"
"There's kempany an' kempany. This yer kempany ud turn your hair
white."
"Ah!" I said, sniffing a story.
"Yes, 'twould that. There were some baboons away over by the big kloof.
A family party--ole man, wives, middle-aged, an' pickaninnies. They
came there for the Kaffir plum crop, an' were mighty lively, not to say
noisy, three weeks ago, when they began to drop. I yeared 'em dropping
off."
"Off the trees?"
"No; offun this mortal spear. As they dropped off in the dark, the
others howled an' whooped like mad. It was a tiger that did the
droppin'."
"A tiger?"
"You hold on to him. At last the ole man were left alone, an' he had a
mighty anxious time looking all around at onct, while he hunted for
grubs for fear the enemy 'ud spring on him. He used to come over yonder
in the lands for kempany. I've sot here on the door-step an' he sot
over there, glaring at me from his little grey eyes. Arter a time we
got to know each other, an' I found out he went to sleep on the roof
alongside the chimney."
"He was the company?"
"One on 'em. An' seein' him about reminded me o' the Kaffir plums, so
one mornin' I took up the can an' went away off to the big kloof where
the plums are red an' juicy. Well--my boy--that ole man baboon, he up
an' come along with me, an' when he found I were goin' to the kloof he
jabbered most like a human. I could see he were excited--anybody could
a seen that--an' I sot down on a rock to argy the point with him. He
wouldn't argy, but he started back for the house. Well, you know me,
when Abe Pike sots out to do a thing he does it, an' arter I had smoked
two pipes, I resoomed my way, jest as unconcarned as you are, for all
the plain meanin' o' the baboon that I should go away home. When he saw
that I were sot on it he came along at a canter, with his hind-quarters
slewed round an' the hair all standing up on his neck. He looked ugly,
but 'xcept he lifted his eyebrows very quick, he said nothin', and went
along very quiet, with the same anxious look on his face I had noticed
prev'ous. As I went into the kloof he swung into the trees, an' kept
along overhead. When we came to the thick o' the wood, he going along
all the time scarcely moving a leaf, he made a soft noise, an' looking
up I saw him bobbing his head up an' down to make you giddy. I know by
that he saw somethin', an' I jes' slipped behind a tree to take stock.
I yeerd a yawn, an' what d'ye think I see thro' the leaves stretched out
on a rock, not twenty foot away?"
"A black fellow?"
"Yes; a black feller, with four legs an' a tail, an' a red mouth all
agape, wide enough to take in my head, hat an' all."
"A black tiger?"
"Yes; an' me with only a tin can. I jes' sank down inter my boots. All
o' a sudden his jaws come to with a snap. Then he riz his head and
stired straight fer me, his eyes gitting flamier as he looked, an' his
tail all on the jerk. He moved his round head about, then shot out his
neck an' growled in his stummik as he peered under the leaves. Just
then that baboon let out a `baugh--baugh--bok-hem,' an' dropped down
beyond the tiger. There were a roar, a leap, a scramble, an' Abe Pike
were shooting on his tracks for the open veld. He didn't stop running
till he got home--he didn't--not me."
"And the baboon? He wasn't killed, was he?"
"You wait--jes' you wait. Before you get the end o' the journey you've
got to pass the half-way house. This is a solitary place--this
mansion--and beyond the ole Gaika-Bolo I have no visitors--an' he only
when he's doctorin' the Kaffirs down these parts. So that night, when
there were a tap at the door, I were skeered a little from the shake I
got when I saw that black critter staring at me with them wicked eyes of
hisn. `Come in!' I sed, an' the tap came agin, soft an' gentle, like
as if a child or a woman were standin' there--timid--tho' it's many a
year since a female brushed the door-post with her dress--a many years,
my lad."
"Yes, Uncle; who was it?"
"`Come in!' I sed, laying hold o' a piece of wood. `Jes' pull the
string,' I sed. Believe me, the string were pulled--the upper half o'
the door swung open, an' he stepped in."
"Who?"
"The old man baboon! He pulled the string, the door swung open, an' he
hopped in."
"Good gracious, Uncle!"
"Yer s'prised. Well, jes' think how it took me--an' on top o' what I
saw that day. I jes' sot there an' looked, an' when he turned an' shut
that door, an' moved the wooden button to secure it, I were fairly
paralysed. `Ho-hoo,' he sed, an' blinked his eyes. He jes' sed
`ho-hoo' in a friendly way, an' planked hisself down before the fire,
with the black palms o' his hands to the coals, his head turned over his
shoulder, an' his little grey eyes takin' stock o' everythin' in the
room."
"He must have escaped from captivity."
"That's the first thought that struck me when I steadied my brain pan.
Thinks I, he b'longed to some man, an' I looked at his waist for signs
of the chain, but there were no sign. I noticed he looked empty, an',
remembering how he'd saved me by leading the tiger off another way, I
got out a mealie cob. He snatched it quick, raised his eyebrows at me,
then begun to eat as ef he'd been hungry for a week. There we sot--he
one side, eating, me t'other, smoking. All o' a sudden he quit eating:
then he stood up on his hind legs an' looked outer the winder. `Wot's
up now?' sezs I to myself. There he stood looking outer that window;
then he gave a jump into the rafters, crowding hisself under the slope.
It gave me a sort o' creepy crawl to see him do that, an' I took down
the ole gun. Bymby I yeard a sniff under the crack of the door as if a
dog were taking a smell. Then there were a space o' stillness that was
terrible trying. I stood there looking at the door, 'xpecting to see it
fly open, when I chanced to give a glance at the winder, and my blood
froze."
"What did you see?"
"What did I see? A pair o' green eyes fixed on me. Then the gleam o'
white teeth an' a sort o' dim outline o' a big round head. I let out a
yell, an' fired. If you look you'll see where the winder's smashed."
"The tiger had tracked the baboon?"
"Very like 'twas jes' that."
"And then?"
"Then I jes' jumped inter the pantry an shut myself in till daybreak."
"Yes, Uncle Abe; and what happened then?"
"I jes' opened the door gently, an' looked out."
"Well?"
"Well! The door were open. I yeerd the cracking o' the fire an' the
humming o' the kettle."
"Someone had called?"
"Perhaps so; perhaps not. 'Tany rate the fire were lit. And when I
looked out the front door there were the old man baboon plucking the
feathers from the grey hen."
"Humph!"
"Yes. An' when he done plucking he popped the old fowl inter the pot."
"Ha! I suppose the tiger was lying dead?"
"Who--the tiger? Not he. The darned critter pulled the plug outer the
water barrel, then turned the barrel over an' let all the water out.
Arter that he pulled the roof offun my shed."
"I don't see the baboon around."
"He ain't around. Arter breakfast he went. When I come to think o' it,
he took the road to your place, an' it's my b'lief, sonny, he's on the
spoor o' the same tiger."
"And you won't come over, then?"
"I'm waitin' for that ole man baboon to come back. If he comes back an'
finds me gone I reckon he'd be disappointed. I tell yer I'd be mighty
keerful how you treat that tiger."
"Everything happened as you have related, Uncle Abe?"
"That's so, sonny."
"How did the baboon light the fire?"
"He jes' used the bellers, I 'xpect, used the beller, an' puffed the
embers. Tell me how yer get on. Sorry I can't go; but I dasn't. So
long!"
CHAPTER FOUR.
ABE PIKE AND THE WHIP.
I don't know what degree of truth there was in old Abe's account of his
adventure with the black tiger, but I certainly learnt to my cost that
whether the brute had or had not given a domicile to a witch-doctor, it
was too cunning for any efforts on my part to get even with it for the
heavy toll it levied on the young cattle. I was driven once more to
seek out his assistance, but I thought I would get him over to the
homestead on some other pretext, being firmly persuaded that once he was
there his hunting instincts would lead him on the tiger's spoor. One
afternoon, therefore, I drove over in the "spider," and found him busily
engaged waxing a stout fishing line for "kabblejauw," a very large, but
coarse sea fish, which loved to venture up the Fish River with the tide.
"Holloa, sonny!" he cried; "climb out an' make yerself at home. Got any
baccy?"
I stepped out, and handed him a cake of golden leaf, which he just
smelt, then turned over and over.
"Sugar stuff," he growled, with a queer look of disgust, wrinkling up
his nose.
"Good American leaf, Uncle."
"Well, well; what's the race comin' to? Sugar--all sugar. Sugar with
tea, sugar with coffee, so that the spoon stands up; sugar with pumkins,
sugar with grog, sugar with baccy, until the stummick which nature gives
us revolts an' cries out for salt an' the bitterness o' wholesome
plants. Bitterness 'ardens, my boy--bitterness in food, bitterness in
life--an' sugar softens. Jes' you hole on to that as you plough the
furrer thro' the ups an' downs o' your caryeer." He cut a slice from
the cake and stowed it away in his cheek. "Well! ha' yer cotched that
tiger yet?"
"He's prowling around yet, Uncle."
"Soh! An' you want ole Abe Pike to settle 'im, eh!--but 'taint no use."
"I want you to `ride' a load of wood to the house. The `boys' have gone
off to a beer dance, and I'm short-handed. The wood is cut and shaped."
"But I'm goin' a fishin'. Lemme see. It's full moon next week. Well
I'll come along."
He coiled up his line, stowed it away in his skin bag, locked his door,
and climbed in. Next morning the old chap went off with the wagon for
the wood, and returned late at night. He had a peculiar way of humming
to himself whenever he was pleased, and I caught the sound as he came in
through the kitchen to the dining-room, where the evening meal was on
the table. With a nod to me, he sat down to a hearty meal, then,
filling his pipe, he leant back and laughed silently.
"Seen anything, Uncle?"
"I don't know that I have seed anythin' outer the common, but I've
learnt somethin' that's given me a better understandin' o' the spread o'
kindness overlaying things."
"What was that?"
"You know where the wood were stacked?"
I knew the place very well, for that brute of a tiger had killed a foal
there only two days before, and I had directed Abe there in the hope
that he would drop across its tracks.
The old man, still chuckling, went out of the room and returned with a
long bamboo whip-stick, deprived, however, of the twenty-foot thong made
from buffalo hide.
"What's become of the thong?" I cried.
"That's it. It's on account of the missin' thong that I'm telling you
o' this remarkable cirkumst'nce. There's a clump o' trees 'long side
the path 'way over yonder, where the wood were stacked, an' the thong
flew off in the dusk o' the evening thereabouts. You see there were a
stick fas', and when I lammed into the oxen that ere thong flew off--
whizz!--whang!--into the dark o' the trees. I lay the stick down an'
searched fer it up an' down, in an' out--the oxen standin' there
knockin' their horns, an' the stars poppin' out. Well, I guv it up, an'
picked up the stick, an' the thong came through my fingers."
"You said the thong flew off."
"So it did; but there it were fast on the stick--long, smooth, round,
an' taperin' off inter a fine lash, as thick about the middle as my
little finger, an' as tough as steel."
"I know it. You couldn't match that thong in the Colony. But where is
it?"
"That's what I'm tellin' yer about. The thong flew off--whizz!--
whang!--but when I picked the stick up, there it were. I jes' stood
there ponderin' over the strangeness o' this, when a breath o' wind come
up the valley with a sigh on it--one o' those quiverin', mysterious,
solumnelly sounds that makes you look over yer shoulder an' start at a
shadder. `Hambaka--trek,' I cried, an' whirling the whip around,
touched up the fore-leaders, then brought the forslag down on the achter
ox. I told you them oxen had stuck fas'. Well! at the touch o' the
whip they jes' laid their shoulders agin the yokes, an', with a low
groan, they yanked the wagon up that stiff bit--up an' up, without a
pause, to the level veld. I tell you, sonny, I never seed oxen lay
themselves down like that span."
"Where does the kindness come in?"
"Hole on. The tortoise gets to the end o' his journey same as the hare,
only samer. On the level I called to the oxen to whoa!--whoa!--whoa!--
and, arter a time they whoa'd, tho' somehow 'twas ag'inst their will.
They were that active they could have trotted home--they could so. I
lay down that whip an' filled my pipe."
"Yes?"
"Then I took the stick up, an' the thong were gone agin."
"What!"
"Clean gone, sonny! Clean gone!"
"Did it fly off?"
"No, sonny; it crawled off."
"Crawled off?"
"That there thong were a whip-snake. It jes' gripped on ter the bamboo
with its jaws to help me outer that stick fas', an' when we got to the
level it unhitched. It knew as well as I did the oxen didn't want any
more whip when the flat were reached, and it unhitched."
"Uncle Abe Pike! Do you expect me to believe that?"
"I have my hopes, my lad. But when yer gets older you'll get more
faith. Why, man, an' I yeared that snake move off. It give a sort o'
friendly hiss as it slid away thro' the grass, an' it cracked its tail
in sport like a whip. The oxen yeared it, too, and they moved off
'thout waitin' for my call. I tell you there's a heap o' goodness among
animiles an' reptiles, tho' this is the fust time I 'xperienced the
thoughtfulness o' a snake. It jes' snapped its tail--ker--rack--as it
moved off."
When the old man prepared himself for sleep I saw the lash off my whip
projecting from the mouth of his skin bag.
CHAPTER FIVE.
THE SPOOK OF THE HARE.
The next day was hot and drowsy, and old man Pike simply lazed around,
with his smasher hat tilted over his eyes and his hands in his pockets.
He could not, however, be tempted to roam any distance from the house,
and he showed not the slightest curiosity about that fiend of a black
tiger, which in the night had killed a goat belonging to one of the
"boys." The kill was made out of sheer lust of blood, for he had eaten
nothing, the body being untouched, except for the festering marks about
the throat I had the carcase brought up for Abe's inspection, since he
would not walk down to the kraal, and he held an inquest upon it,
sitting on an upturned "vatje," or small water barrel.
"That goat," he drawled, "were killed!"
"There seems proof of it," I said mildly.
"Yes, killed by a ole tiger."
"Why old?"
"Well, you see, this yer goat died o' a broken shoulder an' shock--
mostly shock. The tiger just patted the shoulder in his spring with the
open paw. I see there are four scratches, an' the hook of the dew claw
over here, a span away from the fore claws. The middle an' end scratch
is shaller. Why? Cas the claws a been worn down. Now take these yer
wounds in the throat. These two deep holes here's where his fangs went
in, but on the top side there's jest the marks o' his small teeth. The
upper fangs is missing or worn down. Consekently, 'tis a ole tiger."
"And you will catch the old tiger?"
"Not me! Bein' ole, he's cunnin', an' bein' black, he's naturelly
fierce; and bein' ole an' black he's more'n a match fer me. See that
big blue fly? I swear there warn't a blue fly around here ten minutes
ago, an' now there's a whole cloud o' 'em followin' the track, an'
buzzin' like a telegraph wire! Little things is like big 'uns. That
there fly is like the first aasvogel sailin' away from the limits o' the
sky on the taint of a dead ox, an' behind him a whole string o'
vultures, with their wings outstretched like the sails of a ship, an'
ther bald heads bent down to spot the dead heap of corruption miles away
below."
I bade the Kaffir take away the dead goat which formed the principal
dish at the feast that night and, getting my double-barrelled gun,
whistled up the dogs, and went off on the spoor of the tiger, leaving
Abe listlessly whittling at a stick.
The scent was good, and the dogs went on it still-mouthed, except for an
occasional growl, and they led me through the large ostrich camp, over a
ridge, across an open strip of veld, to a deep and dark kloof, where the
trees grew so thick that underneath it was twilight in the glare of
mid-day. The dogs went on, with bristling hair, into the heart of the
kloof, when a singular thing happened. The shrill, piercing cry of a
"dassie," or rock coney, arose from out the deep silence, and the dogs
stopping, howled dismally, then suddenly turned and slipped away,
disappearing like shadows among the trees. The noise I knew must have
aroused the tiger, but I pushed on cautiously, hoping to get a shot at
him as he slunk off. I reached the krantz which rimmed in the kloof
without sight of him, and, hunting around, found his lair, still warm in
a small cave. Retracing my steps, I had almost reached the edge of the
trees, when in the way lay the body of one of the dogs, an old and
favourite buffalo dog of the mastiff breed, his throat torn, and the
mark of claws on his shoulder and flank.
"It's lucky for you," said Abe when I reached home, "that it were the
dog he took."
"How do you know he got the dog?"
"You went out with five, an' you come home with four, an' a look on your
face 's if you'd seen a ghost. I'm gwine back in the mornin'."
"You're no friend of mine, Abe Pike, if you don't help destroy that
brute!"
"I seed the ole man baboon makin' tracks for my place this arternoon--
an' mebbe that ther' tiger would be quittin' too."
"Hang you and your baboon!"
"All serene, sonny--all serene. I'd rayther be hanged than 'ave my
wizened open'd out by a blood-sucking four-footed witch. What happened
in your hunt?" I told him curtly enough. "My gum! You believe me:
that dassie cried out to warn the tiger. He were put there to watch
while his master slep'."
"Nonsense! His cry was an accident."
"Soh! Then tell me why the dogs scooted. You don't know! O' course
you don't know. But I know. I've had 'xperience o' the same thing.
Animiles have got a sense which is missin' from folk, or maybe lost for
want of use, I don't know which, tho' myself I think it's lost. What we
call a presentment is the remains o' that missin' sense, an' animiles is
got the full sense. Those dogs knew the meanin' o' that dassie's yell--
that's so."
"And what was your experience?"
"It were all along o' a spring hare hopping along in the night--without
enough solid body to put a shot in. It were away back in the sixties,
when I were younger nor I am now, an' a sailor chap, knockin' around
doin' odd jobs, happened across my house. He were a good-hearted
critter, tho' terrible lazy, 'xcept it were shootin' spring hares at
night by lamp-light, which came 'xpensive by reason of his usin' up the
oil an' powder. Well, one night the wind came off the seas, bringing up
a great stack of clouds, makin' it that dark you couldn't tell which
were solid yearth an' which were sky; but this sailor chap he would go
out, an' I had to go along to hold the lamp, he not bein' keerful enough
to carry it in the strap of his hat. Well, soon's I got outer the door
I knew there were somethin' wrong. The black night were full o' the
roar o' the surf breakin' six miles away, an' yet there were the same
sort of shivery stillness you find in a great cave while the echoes are
tossin' about the sound of a dying shout. In the stillness behind the
holler growl o' the sea I could tell there were somethin' watchful an'
bad. I wanted to turn back, but he yelled out he yeard the spring hare
gruntin', an' I were obliged to foller him inter the black, with a
sickly sort o' fan-shaped light streaming from the lamp. `Hist!' says
he. I histed, an' peering ahead seed a big bright eye glancing out o'
the dark, not mor'n twenty paces off--fer the lantern couldn't throw a
reflection farther than that. `Take him an inch below the eye,' says I,
an' he let rip. We went forrard to pick the hare up, but he warn't
there--not a hair o' him. The grunt o' him come jest ahead agin--an'
steadyin' the lamp, we caught his eye full an' bright. `I'll blow his
head off,' said the sailor chap, and taking a long aim, he banged off.
There warn't no dead spring hare. No, sonny; but while we gazed around
his grunt come to us onct more. I took the ole gun an' loaded her up.
`You take the lantern,' says I, `an' lets stop this 'ere foolishness.'
A step or two we took, an' sure enough that eye blazed out onct more. I
jes' knelt down under his arms, an' taking full aim at the eye, was dead
sure I had the long-tailed crittur, fer he sat still as a rock, an' as
onsuspicious as a tree trunk. An' I missed him. His body warn't there,
but his grunt came jest as lively as ever. The sailor chap were
laughing at me fer missin', but Abe Pike warn't doing no giggling. He
smelt somethin' onnatural."
"You had been taking grog, perhaps, that evening?"
"Not a sup nor a sip. We stood there, he laughin' and me listenin' to
the moan in the air, an' lookin' roun' at the black wall o' night `Blow
me!' says the sailor chap, `if the swab ain't come back,' an' with that
he took out his jack knife an' flung it at the flamin' eye, which had
moved back inter the light from the lantern. That eye never winked, an'
it made me shiver. `Come on,' says the sailor, `I'll foller him to the
devil,' says he. `Foller him,' says I, `but I'm goin' back;' and back I
went; and he, not havin' the lantern, had to come along too, which he
did cheekin' me the ole time. Well, before we'd gone a hundred paces,
ther' were that eye ahead, an' he says, `Let us get nearer.' We went
closer, when all on a sudden that eye went out like a burnt match. Jes'
then I yeard a rustlin' noise behind, an' whipping roun', saw there were
a pair o' sparkles shining green. He seed 'em too. `Don't shoot,' says
I, `it's a shadder.' `Shadder be blowed,' says he, `yer a ole fool.'
He were gettin' ready to fire, when I gripped him by the arm, while the
hair riz on my head, for I saw what was behind those green eyes. `Let
me go,' he says, hissin' through his teeth. `If you fire,' I says
speakin' solumn, `yere a dead man.' `You're silly,' he says, pulling
hard. `How can a little hare hurt me?'
"`That hare,' says I, `is a tiger.'"
"Was it?"
"You wait. You know's well as I do a hare, by reason of his eyes bein'
wide apart, only shows one eye to the light, an', moreover, he sits with
his head sideways. Well, these two eyes, when I looked ag'in, were
close together, an' they gave a green light. `A tiger,' says I, an'
with my hand on his arm we went back to the house. As I shut the door I
yeared that grunt ag'in--an' ag'in as we sat down listenin'. Well, that
sailor chap, he warn't satisfied. He must open the door an' look out.
`Come here,' he says, an' looking out over his shoulder there I seed
that hare sitting up, an' the light shining thro' his body, `'Tis a
white hare,' he says. `It's a sperrit,' says I. `Sperrit or no
sperrit,' he says, snatchin' the gun, `I lay him out!' With that he
stepped out into the darkness, an' the lantern went out. Then it
happened."
"What happened?"
"Something 'twixt the sailor lad and the tiger. As I searched aroun'
fer a match I yeard the gun, there were a roar and a shriek, an' when I
got the light started an' went out there were only his old hat an' the
gun. I'm not fooling with any o' yer tigers that's got sperrits
watchin' over 'em. I'm going home in the mornin'."
CHAPTER SIX.
THE BABOON AND THE TORTOISE.
I have referred to Bolo, an old Kaffir medicine man, who, on his
professional tour round the country, always remained a day or two with
Abe Pike, in his way, a great doctor with a valuable fund of information
about the medicinal properties of plants and roots. Bolo turned up in
the evening, fresh from a beer dance, and the manner of his coming was
that of a ravenous lion. He charged down upon the house in the dusk,
with his necklet bones rattling, the horsehair mane flying, and the
bellow of his deep voice setting the dogs off into a fury of barking, up
he came--leaping, bounding, hurling himself forward with in-creditable
swiftness, whirling his knobbed kerrie, his eyes glaring and his
features twitching, the dogs snapping around him--right up to the door,
as if he meant to burst in and brain everyone he met. Then he stopped,
smiled in a wide vacuous way, took snuff, and squatted down, while the
dogs as suddenly ceased their clamour and walked sheepishly away.
"Well, you clatterin' ole heathen," said Abe, seating himself on the
door-step, and shaving slices of tobacco against the ball of his thumb;
"what mischief have you been up to?"
"Yoh," said Bolo, resting his long arms on his knees; "I have heard
tales of the black tiger and the white man's fear. But my medicine has
sent the black evil away back again to the big kloof."
"To the kloof on my farm?"
"Eweh! Why not? The white man is a great medicine man. Has he not a
familiar in the old baboon--who is the most cunning of familiars?"
"That's so," said Abe gravely; "the baboon is cunnin', but he don't know
everything. Did I ever tell you the yarn o' the baboon an' the
tortoise?"
"No. Fire away, Uncle." He hitched himself up against the door-post
and related his story in Kaffir for Bolo's benefit, though I prefer to
render it in English.
"The ole skelpot, one day hunting aroun' nosed out a store o' yearth
nuts. He raked the yearth over an' flatten' it down, an' he jes' crawl
aroun' till the dry weather sot in, when he took'd up his quarters near
the hidden store. One day he meet ole man baboon searching fer grubs.
`Things is mighty dry,' says the baboon. `Might be drier,' says the
skelpot. `Food is skerce,' says the baboon. `Might be skercer,' says
the skelpot. `Ho! ho!' says the baboon, mighty sharp, `you don't seem
to be troubled in your shell. There's a shine on your shell, ole man
skelpot,' he says. `Shell shine when the stummick don't pine,' says the
skelpot."
"Er-umh!" grunted Bolo.
"`Shell shine when the stummick don't pine,' said the skelpot. `Baugh,'
says the baboon, `p'raps you got some food, skelpot,' says the baboon.
`I'm gwine to sleep,' says the skelpot, an' he drew his head into his
house, so the baboon couldn't ask him any more questions."
"Er-umh!" said Bolo, politely signifying his sustained interest.
"The ole man baboon he make sure the skelpot's got some store o' food,
so he hid hisself in a tree an' kep' watch. There ain't no hurry about
a skelpot, an' this yer skelpot he kep' on sleepin' all through the day,
an' the baboon got that hungry he were obliged ter gnaw the bark from
the tree. But he jes' kep' on watchin', an' in the dusk he seed the
skelpot pop out his head."
"Er-umh!" said Bolo.
"Then the baboon climbed down softly, an' when the skelpot move off, he
follow'd. Arter a time the skelpot begin to scrape up the yearth, an'
the baboon look over his shoulder. He can't see nothing, but he smelt
the yearth nuts, an' he makes a grab. `So! so!' he says chuckling, `you
got a fine pantry these dry times. Now you'll have to go shares, or
I'll give the news out.' Well, the skelpot he sees he were fairly
caught, an' so he take ole man baboon inter partnership, an' the baboon
show him where he's 'ole is, though it were empty now."
"Er-umh!" grunted Bolo.
"Well, the baboon got a bigger stummick than the skelpot, an it were not
long afore he took two nuts to one; then he began ter take some away to
his private 'ole in a Kaffir plum tree; then he break the agreement by
taking three meals a day to the skelpot's one."
"Er-umh!" said Bolo.
"Well, about this time the skelpot smell'd out the baboon."
"Eh-umh!" said Bolo.
"So he made a plan. He roll hisself in the mud, an' crawl up near the
store, where he draw his head in. Bymby ole man baboon come up, an
arter takin' some nuts, he sot down on ole skelpot to make his feast.
`Poor ole skelpot,' says the baboon, `three meals to his one, an' a heap
o' nuts in my store 'ole by the ole ant-hill.' `Too-loo-loo!' says the
skelpot. `What's that noise?' said the baboon. `Too-loo-loo!' says the
skelpot. `Hist!' says the baboon, knockin' his stummick.
`Too-loo-loo!' says the skelpot; then drawin' in his breath he let it
out ag'in, `Hiss! puff!' like a great big snake. O' coorse the baboon's
dead scared o' snakes, an' droppin' the nuts he jest scooted fer the
woods."
"Er-umph!" said Bolo.
"He jest up an' scooted fer the woods, an' the skelpot arter eatin' the
nuts, he went back to the 'ole, scooped the yearth away, an' crawled in.
The baboon were very scared, but when the hunger come back he went for
some more nuts. No sooner did he pop his hand in than the skelpot grab
him by the little finger and hold on."
"Eh! eh!" said Bolo.
"Grabbed him by ther little finger. The baboon nearly jumped outer his
skin. `Who's got hold o' me?' he yelled, but the skelpot he can't talk,
fer his mouth's full. `Let me go!' howled the baboon, an' he pull and
he pull, and bymby he draw the skelpot's head outer the 'ole. Well, the
skelpot he's got a head like a puff-adder when yer don't see his shell,
an' when the baboon see'd that yellow head glued onter his finger, he
jest went green, and turned over in a fit. Bymby the baboon shivers,
then he sot up. `Hiss! poof!' says the skelpot, an' the baboon lit out
with a shriek, never to come back to that part ag'in. `Hiss! poof!'
says the skelpot, an' the baboon lit out fer the nex' country."
CHAPTER SEVEN.
THE JACKAL AND THE WREN.
"Now, Bolo! let us hear something from you."
The old Kaffir took a pinch of snuff, and began about the jackal and the
netikee, the smallest of all South African birds, and a member of the
wren family.
"The jackal one day was boasting. Said he, `When we go on the hunt all
the animals are still. We--the lion and I--we rule the forest. When we
growl the trees shiver, when we roar the earth shakes, when we strike
the biggest goes down before us. Even the elephant turns out of our
path.' So he shook his tail and loped off to tell the lion that a fat
eland was drinking at the vlei. Then up stood the lion, and crawled on
his stomach to the shelter of a rock, while the jackal went round
beyond. `Look out, eland,' said the jackal; `here comes the lion.' So
the eland ran, and he ran straight for the lion, who rose through the
air and broke the eland's neck. The lion ate, and the jackal sat on his
tail, licking his chops and whimpering. But the lion ate, and ate--
first the hind legs, then the stomach, and the jackal ran up to take a
bite. `Wait,' grunted the lion, and the jackal sat on his tail and
howled. Bymby the lion went off to the vlei to drink, and the jackal
snap at the carcase, but before he gets a mouthful down swoop the ring
crows and the aasvogels. `Away,' said the jackal, `away--this food is
mine and the lion's.'
"`Tell the lion we are obliged to him for giving us a meal,' said the
chief aasvogel, and with his big wing he hit the jackal, ker-bluff--long
side the head, and the black crow dig him in the back. So the jackal
run away, and jump, and howl."
"`Why don't you roar?' said the netikee.
"The jackal looked up, and there he sees the netikee on a thorn tree.
"`Growl,' says the netikee; `growl, and the tree will shake me off,' and
he laughed.
"`What are you laughing at?'
"`At you.'
"`Why,' said the jackal, looking back over his shoulder at the bag of
bones that the birds had cleaned.
"`'Cos you're afraid of the birds, though the elephant gets out of your
way and you can strike down the biggest,' and the netikee laughs again.
"`Who's afraid?' said the jackal.
"`You are.'
"`What! me!'
"`Yes, you! I make my nest from your fur.'
"The jackal he bite, and snap, and howl, and then he say he'd only
wished he had a chance of a fight with the birds.
"`What's that spot I see in the sky?' said the netikee, looking up.
"The jackal look up and see the eagle swooping down, and he bolt into
the earth. Bymby he poke his head out. `Is he gone?' he said. `You
see, me and the eagle had a dispute over a lamb which I took away from
him, and I thought he would feel uncomfortable if he saw me. What did
he say?'
"`The eagle said he willing to fight if the lion leads the animals; but
he's not going to demean himself against any jackal trash.'
"The jackal grinned. `Well,' said he, `the lion won't fight, he's just
been feeding, and the eagle needn't trouble about it. You get all the
partridges, the pheasants, ducks, knorhaan, guinea fowl--the more the
merrier, and I'll bring the red cats, the muishonden, the wild dogs, the
tiger-cat, and we'll meet here to-morrow.'
"The netikee flip his tail about, and say, `Yes, he's willing to have a
battle,' and the jackal with a grin he run off to call all his friends
to a big feast off the birds. The netikee just bunch up his feathers,
tuck his head under his wing, and go to sleep. Next morning before
sunrise he fly to the bush, and he hear the jackal making a plan.
"`You keep your eye on my tail,' said the jackal. `Watch my tail,' said
the jackal, `I will hold it up straight like a banner, and you must
follow it into the thick of the fight.'
"The netikee flew away off to a honey-tree, and he had a word with the
bees: then he fly back to the thorn bush with a clump of bees with him.
"Bymby here comes the jackal with his bushy tail held up straight like a
banner, and behind him come a green-eyed, silent, swift, cruel pack of
wild-cats, red cats, grey cats, and wild dogs.
"`There they come,' said the nekitee; `see the jackal, with his tail up.
Stick his tail, creep into his hair, and make him yell.' So the
netikee left his perch and flew to meet the animals all by himself, for
they could not see the bees; but the bees they swarmed into the big
bushy tail, and the next minute there was the jackal scooting off across
the veld with his tail between his legs. Next thing you know the
animals is all scuttling home.
"That's why the netikee is so perky."
"Jes' like little men," says Abe Pike.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
ABE PIKE AND THE HONEY-BIRD.
In the night we heard the loud barking of a baboon, and next morning
Uncle Abe, accompanied by the witch-doctor, Bolo, started back for his
solitary homestead, saying that he had received a call from his
familiar. This I regarded as an excuse, and judged that the two old men
were bent, like boys, on some fishing excursion. Strangely enough,
however, the black tiger disappeared at the same time, leaving the live
stock free from his ravages--though human thieves as mischievous were
afoot, and during the week paid a visit in the night to the cattle
kraal, "lifting" a fine cow with a young heifer calf.
The spoor led away towards the dense bush of the Fish River to the east,
and setting a knowing old dog upon the scent, I followed on horseback.
The thief I judged had probably five hours' start, and allowing for the
feeble strength of the calf, I reckoned he was from six to ten miles
ahead, when, if surprised by day-light at any distance from the cover of
the bush, he would probably turn into a kloof. At intervals of about a
mile I came on spots which, from the numerous hoof marks, indicated that
the thief had stopped to let the calf rest and take milk, then, after
the third such resting, he went right ahead at a sharp pace directly
towards the big kloof on Abe Pike's farm. If the beasts had been driven
in there I made sure of recovering them, but I presently noticed that
the spoor led away along a ridge to the left, skirting the kloof, and
descending to a wide wooded valley which ran into the bush. I followed
without much hope into the valley, to find the spoor obliterated by the
tracks of a troop of cattle which had been on the move since sunrise.
After questioning the native herd without success, I turned back towards
Pike's house, reaching it just as he came out from his breakfast. He
took a long glance at me and my horse.
"Soh," he said, "been spooring a stock thief, eh? You've got to get up
early to catch that sort--earlier than bedtime. I seed you go over the
brow of that rand yonder with a dog nosing on in front, and I said to
myself, `Abe Pike, there's the young baas with the hope springing up in
him that he's got the glory of catching a cattle thief.' The young has
got all the hope and the old all the experience, and I'd swaap a whole
lot of experience for a glimmer of hope."
All this time he had been attending to the horse, rubbing its back and
legs with a wisp of straw.
"Who said I had been after a cattle thief?
"What are words, sonny; words is nothing--nothing but a slower way of
saying a thing you have already made plain enough by your actions. Says
I, `Abe Pike, the young baas has lost a beast, maybe a cow and calf, and
bymby he'll be looking as black as thunder and as hungry as a mule.'"
"Uncle Abe, you know something about this robbery. It is true I have
lost a cow and calf. Have you seen them?"
"What! me? Where is they? You know well if Abe Pike had seen them
they'd a been right here waiting for you. No, lad; but I saw you
follering straight on the spoor, and if there'd been several beasts some
on 'em would have broke from the track, making the spooring bend and
twist. So I reckoned there were only one beast, maybe a cow and calf.
There's a dough cookie under the coals and some good honey, with a
couple of fresh aigs and a roast mealie, not to say a cup of as good
coffee as you can get. Help yourself, lad; help yourself."
I sat down to this simple fare--after raking the "cookie" from the
fire-place, whence it came baking hot with wood cinders embedded in its
steaming crust; while Abe leant against the door-post, pulling
reflectively at his pipe.
"What has become of Bolo?" I asked.
"He quitted last night. No, he ain't gone off with your cow. He was
skeered."
I nodded an inquiry, being engaged with the mealie cob, the eating of
which occupies the mouth too fully for speech.
"Old Bolo were skeered. Try some of that honey--it's real good. None
of your euphorbia juice in it to burn your mouth out, but just ripe
sweetness from the hill flowers and sugar bushes."
The old man held his pipe away, and his lips were drawn in as I placed a
piece of gleaming yellow comb on my plate.
"Yes," he chuckled, "old Bolo were skeered, and he lit out for home.
You see, him and me were sitting away yonder, under the tree in the
shade, talking about things, when up comes a honey-bird.
`Chet-chet-chet-chee!' he said, sitting up there in the branches, with
his head on one side and then the other as he fussed about with his
news. `Chet-chet-chet-chee!' he said--which is his way of saying as how
he'd found a honey-tree and wanted someone to go shares with him.
"`Shall we foller him!' says I.
"Bolo he grunted. For a heathen he's spry, but it was his lazy time,
and for another thing he was in the middle of a long-winded story, which
he was bound to finish, being a born talker, and very strong ag'inst
being interrupted.
"`Chet-chet-chet-chee!' said the honey-bird, jumping from one branch to
another all in a quiver of impatience.
"`Come on,' says I, `let's see what sort of a nest he's got.'
"`That bird is a mischief bird,' said Bolo; `he will lead us to a snake
or a tiger. Eweh! to the black tiger.'
"`How?' says I.
"`Why,' says he, `if he were a good bird he would sit away over there on
that thorn bush and wait till we have finished our talk. This bird is
too anxious.'
"Just then that bird flew away, off to the thorn tree, and there he sat
dumb.
"`By Jimminy,' says I, `that's funny.'
"Bolo he took a pinch of snuff, and he drove on with his story, with his
`congella wetu,' and his `ke-ke-lo-ko-ke,' jes' 's if nothing had
happened, while I sat with my eyes fixed on that there bird.
"Well, the longest river reaches the sea some time, and at last Bolo
finished that yarn, and what it was about I couldn't tell you, sonny.
`Now,' says I, `let us investigate this matter,' and hang me ef at that
precise moment of the ending of that yarn, the bird didn't come back,
all agog with his news.
"Bolo he shook his head. `That bird is no bird,' he says, `it's a
familiar.'
"`Whose familiar?' says I.
"`It belongs to that dog of a Fingo,' naming a rival medicine man, `or
else 'tis a slave of the black tiger sent to lead us into a trap.'
"`Well,' says I, `honey is sweet, though it gives a man a bad _pense_,
as the Royal motter says, and I'm for follering him.' So up I got, and
that bird he jes' flew off, lighting here an' lighting there, so as I
could keep up, and after a mile he sot still as death on a thorn bush.
"`Is this the place?' says I.
"The honey-bird kep' quiet, but he jes' turn his eye on me all of a
sparkle.
"Well, I jes' sniffed aroun' and squinted aroun', and in a brace of
shakes I spotted the honey nest in a hollow ant-hill. Well, I scooted
back to the house for a bucket, and after smokin' the bees, got out
fifty pound weight of the finest sealed honey, not forgetting to set a
piece of comb with young bees in it for the bird.
"Well, Bolo was pretty sick when he saw me come in with that bucket
full, and he was standing there saying he knew all along that bird was a
good bird, but he didn't want to find the honey seeing as it was on my
farm, and he'd be sure to find it first, whereby he could claim half,
which was against hospitality. Right there, sonny, that there bird come
and perched on the roof. `Chet-chet-chee!' says he, as excited as if he
hadn't had a meal for a month. I see it was the same bird, for there
was a stickiness about his head.
"`Oh, aie;' says Bolo, then he shouted from his chest. `My little
friend in the grey suit, lead on!'
"Well, the bird flew off, and Bolo, he went after, whistling and calling
it good names. I jest pottered about by the house into the afternoon,
looking out every now and ag'in to see if Bolo were coming back, when of
a sudden I see him tearing acrost the veld. He shot by me into the
house, and hang me if he didn't bang the door in my face, and at the
same time that honey-bird lighted on the roof. You never see sich a
sight as that bird. He opened his mouth, spread his wings, rolled about
and laughed fit to bust himself. Bymby he flew away with a final
screech, and Bolo opened the door, his natrally black face being green,
his lips curled back from his teeth, and his eyes rolling. I up with a
beaker of water and threw it in his face to cool him off--and he came
round.
"`Did you find the honey-tree?' says I.
"`Honey-tree!' says he, and his eyes began to roll ag'in, as though he
were trying to look inside his head. `There were no honey-tree. It was
a bad bird I knew it, I told you, and you would not believe the words of
the wise man. I am going--where are my kerries?'
"`What happened?'
"`This. Listen. I followed the evil thing. It led me across the veld
and a thorn caught me by the leg. It was a warning, but I did not heed,
I went on across the ridge to the kloof, and into the kloof to a hollow
tree. I heard the owl cry, the night-bird calling in the day, giving
another warning, but I was deaf. I smelt honey, and there were no bees
flying in the hole; but the smell of honey was strong. Into the hole I
was about to thrust my arm when I saw on the bark long scratches. I
looked up through the plume on my head, so, without turning my face, and
up above on a branch I saw a black form stretching out and yellow eyes
fixed on me; at the same time out of the hollow of the tree there came a
low laugh, strange, fearful, not of man, and with a spring backwards and
a bound sideways, I was off like the deer, with the roar of the black
tiger in my ears.'
"So said Bolo, and without further words he took his kerries and his
bag, and he went away over the hill to the north, running. Yes, lad, he
quit at a gallop."
"And what do you think of this story, Uncle Abe?"
"I've done a lot of thinking about it. I thunked that there wooden
shetter for the window as a protection."
"Surely you don't believe that Bolo was led deliberately by the
honey-bird to the tiger?"
"Maybe I do. Maybe the bird led him to a sure enough bee-tree. Maybe
Bolo happened on the black critter. Maybe he were skeered at a shadder.
I dunno; but I tell you I see the bird laf fit to bust, and there's
more in the ways of these animiles than we can catch hold of--a jolly
sight more."
"Well, then, bring your gun along and we'll put the dog on the tiger's
spoor."
"Not this child! No, no, sonny! You leave me to get the blind side of
that tiger; but I've got my own plan, and it's not tracking him I am
when he's on the watch. Not me."
"What plan, Uncle?"
"There's a powerful thinking machine in a honey-bird," said the old man
slowly, so dismissing his plan from the talk; "and when you come to
think of it, the first bird that led a man to a nest must ha' been a
great diskiverer--a greater diskiverer in his way than was that Columbus
chap who smashed the egg. That bird must a reckoned the whole thing
out, an' if he could a reckoned way back in the years, why, it stands to
reason his children, after all the experience they've larnt, must reckon
a lot more. One day one of these birds called me, and I picked up a
bucket and a chopper, and followed after him at a run, for he was in a
mighty hurry, being, as I thought, hungry. It warn't that, sonny. He
was jes' mean, and he knew it, for the bee-tree he were leading me to
belonged to another bird. I found that out when that bird come along.
The two of them had a argument--the new one expostulatin', the other one
jes' ansering in a don't-care way. The second one he flew off--yelling
threats, and the other one, after bunching himself up, suddenly lit out
ag'in with me after him. I found the tree, took out the honey, and gave
the bird a piece of comb. Then, as I was sittin' down with the pipe, up
came a hull lot of birds, with a black-headed, white-throated fiscal--
the chap with a hooked beak who sticks the grasshoppers on thorns out of
sheer devilment. Well, sonny, believe me, those birds they jes' up and
tried that honey-bird, the other chap giving evidence. The jury, which
were composed of a yellow oriole, a blue spreuw, and a mouse-bird, they
found my bird guilty, and a old white ringed crow, who was the jedge,
pronounced sentence of death. My bird didn't say nothing. He jes' sot
there with a piece of honey in his mouth, and a set, gloomy look in his
eye. After the verdict that fiscal he swooped down, fixed his claws in
the prisoner's breast, and yanked his head off his neck with a twist.
It was summery justice on that bird for taking possession of the other
bird's honey-tree. Yes, the fiscal he just yanked the prisoner's head
off, and the body fell to the ground. Then the jedge he buried the
bird."
"How was that?"
"He jes' ate it. He jes' flopped down, give a caw, and swallowed the
corpse. I went home then, thinking as how they might try me for aiding
and abetting a crime."
CHAPTER NINE.
UNCLE ABE AND THE WILD DOGS.
There can be no denying that we were reaping a plentiful crop of
misfortunes, to which farmers in South Africa are especially exposed.
The cattle thieves had mysteriously come and swiftly gone, taking with
them a few head of stock into the dense cover of the Fish River Bush,
thence to slip them at favourable opportunities into Kaffraria. Then,
one morning the news was brought in that a pack of wild dogs, issuing
from the Kowie Bush on the west, had sallied out on a rush over the
intervening belt of well-stocked cattle country into the Fish River
Valley, and there were few farms on the route that had not suffered. At
one place a heifer had been pulled down and eaten; at another, a cow had
been attacked and so mauled that death from a rifle-ball was a happy
release; and on my place the pack had stampeded a mob of young cattle,
ran down and killed a steer, besides leaving their marks on many others.
In one night they had covered fifteen miles from one wooded fastness to
the other, killing as they went, and when in the morning the angry
farmers fingered their guns the brutes were resting secure in the
distant woods. The wild dogs hunt in packs when after game, and
according to a well arranged plan. Thus, one part of the pack will head
the quarry in a certain direction where other members are lying in wait,
but when on a wild rush across the veld they keep together, and on
coming across cattle or sheep they bite or kill out of sheer lust of
blood, seldom stopping to eat. Their jaws are enormously powerful, and
with a snap and a wrench they tear away mouthfuls of flesh--so that if a
pack gets among a flock of sheep they do a vast deal of mischief, and
though they cannot pull down an ox, they will cause the death of a cow
by tearing at her udder and belly. Fortunately their raids into the
comparatively open veld are not frequent, and they prefer to keep in the
shelter of wide stretches of bush until game becoming scarce they shift
quarters, when they may sometimes be caught in an isolated kloof and
shot or poisoned.
Uncle Abe had something to say when I met him next at the monthly
meeting of our Farmers' Association--an organisation of six paying
members and fifteen members who never had enough cash to pay, but who
regularly attended on the chance of getting a square meal from any one
of the five whose turn it was to give up his largest room to the
meeting. Uncle Abe did most of the orating, and it frequently happened
indeed that the formal business would be forgotten, while Abe from his
usual seat on the door-step held forth on the peculiar gifts of
"animiles." His idea was that all branches of animal life acted under a
stringent code of laws and regulations.
"Take these yer wild dogs," he said, pointing the stem of his
well-chewed pipe at the President, who sat at the end of the dining-room
table waiting patiently for a nervous young farmer to read his painfully
prepared paper on the vexed question of "Inoculation as a Cure for
Lung-sickness."
"Take these yer wild dogs. Haven't they got a leader? They have. Of
course they have, and wha' jer think they've got a leader for if it
isn't to follow him or her--for more often than not the leader's a she;
and wha' jer think they foller him or her if it ain't because they've
got rules and regulations which are be-known to that leader?"
"Don't they follow the leader because he happens to be the strongest in
the pack?" asked the nervous member anxiously, bent on shirking his
task.
"We ain't going to follow your lead this afternoon on that score," said
Abe caustically. "No sir, they follow the leader not because he is the
strongest, but for the reason that he knows the rules and regilations."
"Have you seen a printed copy, Abe?" asked one member shyly.
"No, sir. It's only human beings that ain't got sense enough to know
what they are setting out to do unless they put everything in print. A
human being wants to know everything, and he don't know nothing; but a
animile he calkalates to know what's necessary for him, and when he
learns his lesson he don't want any noospaper to tell him about it--you
jes' put that in your pipe. Now take your case--"
"Have some baccy, Uncle," said the interrupting member eagerly.
"Don't mind if I do. Lemme see. I were jes' going to tell ye a yarn
about some wild dogs, but I see the President's waiting for our young
friend to 'lighten us about 'noculation, which is good on his part,
considerin' there's some here as were curing lung-sick cattle before he
were born."
"My paper can wait," said the young farmer, hastily stuffing his notes
into his pocket. "Let us have your story."
"Drive ahead, ole man."
"Well, if it's the wish of the meeting, I'm at your service. If I
remember, 'twere away back in the sixties, when game were pretty thick
in these parts, and a pack took up lodgings in the big kloof over
yonder. I was mor'n ordinarily busy building my shed, and hadn't much
time to give any heed to them, though I yeard em often giving tongue as
they went after buck, and saw one of 'em sneaking along right up to the
old tree afore my door in the mealie garden. The brute were on the
spoor of a big black ram, which had taken that track from the big kloof
to a smaller shelter for a constitutional. I yapped at him, and after
looking at me with his big ears cocked and the round muzzle of his dirty
head held up, the yellow critter turned and went nosing back. Two days
after I seed three of 'em stealing up across the veld, and blow me if
they didn't come right up to the mealie patch. One of 'em lay down at
the bottom, the other come up to the top corner, and the third, a big
chap with a round belly, he stood back of the tree squinting round the
trunk. Thinks I, what's up? and lighting the pipe, I jes' plumped down
behind a bush, with the ole gun over my knee. The air was still, with
the drone of the sea, coming like the hum of a big bluebottle, and
bymby, through the stillness I yeard the sudden excited yapping of the
pack, followed after a spell by a loud bark, I looked at the three dogs,
and they was all looking across the veld with the water running from
their mouths. Casting my eye acrost the veld, there I seed a black spot
in the distance. It was the ram, sure enough, who had been put up in
the kloof and were now making for his second hiding-place. He were
taking it easy, though the wind was coming straight to him from the pack
behind. He came right on, with his head up, then he slowed down to a
walk, and looked back over his shoulder. Away back there were something
moving, a dark in-and-out patch, the pack on the spoor, and I seed the
ram shake his head and stamp with his hoof. Then he gave a short bark,
sort of defiant, and on he trotted again; but this time he turned away
to the left, as if he'd got a sudden fancy for the scattered bush clumps
about a mile over the ridge that way. Well, sir, he hadn't covered
more'n fifty yards when a yeller dog rose up and yapped at him. The
ram, he stood still, with his head up, looking at this oudacious
critter, when the pack behind gave tongue altogether, and the sound of
it made him skeered, for he wheeled round and came at a smart pace right
for the big tree and the mealie garden. I turned my head, biting
through my pipe, I was that excited, and I seed those two corner dogs
creeping nearer to the big one, who was standing back of the tree, with
his teeth showing and his tail twitching. Then I yeard the steps of the
ram, and there he were sailing along over the bushes, and the ant-hills,
his eyes full and bright with the light o' courage in 'em--for you know,
gentlemen, that the bush-buck carries a stout and gallant heart in his
great chest."
"Ay, ay, Uncle; so he does."
"There he came, his sharp hoofs pricking into the ground, his legs
slender and shapely, his great haunches gathering up as he cleared
everything in his way, and the points of his short, strong horns
catching the sparkle of the sun. Right for the tree he went, then on a
sudden he stopped and looked full ahead, his ears turned backward, but
his gaze fixed on a pair of gleaming eyes that glared at him. As he
stood there, as big as a year-old calf, with his side to me, I could ha'
driven a ball through his heart; but I didn't as much as go beyon'
closin' my grasp on the rifle. I wouldn't a shot him--no, not in them
cirkumstances. There were a duel of staring between those two for a
full half-minute, and in that time those other two yellow critturs were
slinking through the long grass bordering the mealies. Nex' thing
they'd a been on him from each side, with that other cur comin' up from
behind, not to speak of the pack hurrying up and of the big chap behind
the tree, when I gave a shout: `Look out!' say I, jes' as if he were a
human. `Look out!' says I, and the chap that was nearest me he rose up
outer the grass and jumped for the ram. You never seed sich a thing.
For all the ram had got his eyes on the big chap, he slewed his head
round quicker'n lightning, his horns went down, and the next thing that
yeller critter was lying on his back yelping, with a hole in his neck.
"The ram shook his head, and a tiny red mark went winding down the
furrows of his horn nearest me. Eh! you should a seen him and I jes'
held my breath, while my legs shook so I was obliged to stand up. Back
of him came the pack--silent now, and the speediest of 'em slipping
along like shadders, while two of the critters stood each side of the
ram watching him, and the big one standing clear of the tree, staring at
the great blazing eyes with his mean little yeller peepers. Suddenly
the big chap gave a few orders, sharp and snapping, and four leaders
from the pack shot out, two going one side and two the other. They were
surrounding the ram, and he knew it. He made a bound forward, and the
same minute the two dogs nearest him sprang open-mouthed, one of 'em
taking a clear mouthful outer the haunch. The ram swerved, and the big
chap waiting for him went for his belly, but the ram bounded into the
air, and when he came down he wheeled round with his back to the tree.
The dogs they jes' drew off and sat in a ring staring at him, one and
another opening his big jaws and bringing the white teeth together with
a snap, but the sight of that circle didn't shake the nerve of the buck,
for he shook his head at 'em and stamped his hoofs. One of the young
critters growing impatient ran in, but got a stroke from the pointed
hoof for his pains. Well, I were that 'xcited I moved towards the tree,
the pack jes' giving me one look, then closed in a step or two. Three
times the circle were drawn closer, and the sight of those staring eyes
from outer those ugly round heads fairly made me shudder. I up with the
gun and let 'em have a charge of slugs. In the confusion the ram went
off full slick this time, and the dogs, with a whimper, scattered after
him; but 'twas no use, he give 'em leg bail, and believe me them
critters come sneakin' back and s'rounded me. They did that."
"Did they think you were good to eat?"
"'Pears so, for they sat on their tails regarding me with loving looks.
I shoo'd to them, but they didn't shoo a inch. I went for 'em with the
gun clubbed, but while those in front give way, those ahind came
perilously near my legs. I heerd the snap of their steel jaws, but when
I turned there they were sitting down with their heads on one side.
Each time I tried that it were the same; and when I give up, there they
sat in a ring round me. Then I jes' swung up into the tree and snapped
my fingers at em.
"If I were to tell you what them ere wild dogs did, you 'ud up and say
the old man were a liar."
"You hurt our feelings, Uncle."
"Well, that big leader he up and made a speech--not a oration like our
gifted young friend here can make, but a few yaps and growls. After he
had finished they give him a cheer, and fell to scooping a big trench
round the tree. Then they gnawed the roots through. Then they boosted
the tree down. Yes, gentlemen, them wild dogs which you would call
unthinking critters, deliberately dug up that big tree with their teeth,
so's to get hold o' me."
"Hum! Did they eat you, Uncle?"
"They boosted the tree down; but while they stood away off, I lit on my
feet and were inside the house 'fore you could say Jack Robinson. Yes,
that's so."
CHAPTER TEN.
THE BLACK MAMBA.
We were talking about snakes at the little roadside _winkle_--a
composite shop, where you could buy moist black sugar, tinned butter,
imported; tinned milk, also imported; cotton, prints, boots, "square
face," tobacco, dates, nails, gunpowder, cans, ribbons, tallow candles,
and the "Family Herald." We always did talk about snakes when other
topics failed, and no one had been fishing for some time, and the big
pumpkin season had passed.
"Man," said Lanky John, the ostrich farmer, "I killed a snake, a
_ringhals_, yesterday morning back of the kraal, and in the evening when
I went by there was a live _ringhals_ coiled round the dead one."
"There's a lot of love among snakes," said Abe Pike, who had swapped a
bush-buck hide for a pound of coffee and a roll of tobacco. "They don't
talk much, but they think a lot, and you can't plumb the feelings of
silent folk; they're that deep."
"Ever been in love, Uncle?" asked Lanky John, popping a big lump of
black sugar into his mouth.
"I guess it won't take more'n a foot measure to get to the bottom of
your feelings, tho' you are long enough to be a telegraft pole," snorted
Uncle Abe.
"Snakes haven't got any brain," said Lanky John, after an awkward pause.
"No more has a whip-stick," said the old man, with a contemptuous glance
at Lanky's long, thin limbs.
"That's true," replied John, with a wink at us; "though I've heard of a
snake that glued on to a whip-stick all for love of you, Uncle."
"Snakes," said Abe, "knows when to speak and when to keep shut, which is
more than some folk can do. If you come unexpected on a snake in a
path, and he sees your foot coming down on him, he lets you know he's
about, and that foot of yours is jest fixed in the air. Well, suppose
that snake is not in the path, but jest stretched out 'longside, he
don't call out. For why? 'Cos he knows it's safer for him and for you
that he should keep quiet. I tell you there's not a man here who hasn't
time and again passed in the dark within a few inches of a snake."
A listener, who was seated in a dark corner, moved out into the
sunshine.
"Did I ever tell you that yarn about the black mamba?"
"You never did, old man, so shove along."
"You may thank your stars there's no mambas down in this country, for of
all critturs that crawl, or fly, or walk, there's not one for nateral
cussedness and steady hate to come up to a black mamba. Why! thunder!
if there was a mamba in these parts, and he'd a grudge against me, I'd
move off a hundred miles to where my sister 'Liza lives."
"A hundred miles! That's a good step."
"Maybe it wouldn't be fur enough neither. You wait! Ten years ago I
was riding goods to the Diamond Fields, and after one trip I was
starting back with the empty wagon, there being no produce to load up
with, when a chap came up and offered three guineas for his passage.
Well, a man's wagon is his home, and you don't want to give a fellow the
run of your tent for a month without knowing something about him. So I
jes' looked him all over--saw that his boots were worn out, and that he
kep' looking over his shoulder, when he climbed into the wagon and drew
the blanket over him--though the sun was fierce enough to light your
pipe. He gave me sich a look when he went in that I had not the heart
to drag him out, and off I trekked. He didn't join me at the fire that
night, and when I climbed in, thinking he was asleep, he was shiverin'
as though he had the ague. Well, I gave him a glass of Cango and went
to sleep. At sunrise I trekked again, and bymby I see him draw the
canvas aside and look back over the veld, which was as flat as the palm
of my hand. Thinks I, he's expecting the police, but I let him be, and
at dinner he came out, looking as skeered as a monkey with a candle.
First he took a walk round the wagon, then he shaded his eyes as he
glanced over the veld, then he took a bite and a look, then a sip and a
look.
"`What are you looking for?' says I.
"He let the beaker fall out of his hands and turned white.
"`Have you seen it?' he whispered, with a sort of choke.
"`Seen what?' I said.
"`I don't feel well,' he answered, with a twitch for a smile, and
climbed back into the wagon.
"I tell you his looks made me feel queer, and I slept that night under
the wagon. Well, I made a long skoff the next day, crossed the Modder
River, and no sooner'd we get across than the river came down with a
rush, brimming full with a boiling yeller flood right up to the lip of
the steep banks. That coon spent the whole day on the bank watching the
other side, and fixing his eyes on every tree and branch that went
sailing down.
"`It's a grand flood,' he said, rubbing his hands together; `'twould
sweep a whale away like a piece of straw.'
"`Yes, and a policeman too, eh?' said I, looking at him hard.
"He noticed the meaning in my words, and a human smile broke over his
face, chasing away the worried look that seemed carved into it.
`Policeman,' he said. `I've no cause to fear a policeman, or any man.
Good God!' he cried, catching me by the arm, `what's that?'
"`Where?' said I, fit to jump out of my skin for the terror in his face.
"He stood there with his eyes glaring at the water, and a shaking finger
pointing into the very heart of the yeller flood. There stood out the
root of a tree, and clinging to the root the coils of a snake, with his
gleaming head moving like a branch. Jest a moment it showed, then the
water swirled over it again.
"`Let go of my arm,' I said, for his fingers were biting into me, and
the look of him made me afeard, so that I talked gruffly.
"`Did you see it?' he said, and then he jest collapsed like a bundle of
clothes. I had a good mind to leave him there, but, instead, I histed
him on to my shoulders, and poured enough Cango into him to make him
forget his name. He wasn't fit to stand until a couple of days after,
and then wha' jer think he did? Cut up his clothes into shreds and
laughed fit to kill himself when I found him at it. Of course, I
thought he was clean daft, but he weren't, and for the first time, with
my old corduroys on him, he sat by the camp fire, sipping his coffee,
and talking--talking mainly about snakes and bloodhounds, and things
that made my backbone whang like a broken fiddle-string. He frightened
himself, too, so that when he saw the long _achter-oss_ sjambok
quivering on the ground where the driver had thrown it, his jaw got
rigid, and moved up and down without any words coming from his mouth.
Then, with a sort of sob, he snatched up the axe, and I'm blowed if he
didn't cut that sjambok into a thousand bits. It was a good sjambok,
too, made of rhinoceros hide, as thick as your wrist at the butt and
going off to a point, and when I told the idiot what he'd done, he jes'
went off into another unnateral fit of wild laughter, after which he
paid me a guinea and went to bed. Putting this, that, and the other
together, with the Cango brandy, I guessed my man had got snakes in his
head, and I kept the demijohn under lock. That calmed him down, and he
was all right until we came to the Orange River, where we had to camp
while the water went down. About fifty wagons were there waiting to
cross, and there was quite a stir with all the fellows moving about
visiting. When we had outspanned, I joined a group to hear about the
state of the roads, the condition of the veld for grazing, and all them
things that transport riders talk about, when one chap asked if I had
heard the news. `What news?' says I. `About that snake,' says he; `he
was seen at the Riet River drift last week.' `Yes,' says another, `and
two days before he was at Aliwal North.' `I heard from the mail coach
driver,' says a third, `that the snake overtook his coach, stopped the
horses, and took a steady look at all the passengers, after which he
went across the veld, leaving 'em all frozen with terror. It was twenty
feet long, and its eyes were like black diamonds.'
"Of course, I wasn't swallering that, but when I told my traveller the
sweat gathered in big drops on his forehead, and the old hunted look
came into his face. `You don't believe this silly yarn?' says I,
placing my hand on his shoulder. `Believe it, man!' he said. `Good
heavens! that snake is after me.' `After you,' says I. `Yes,' says he,
making an effort to swallow something. `It has chased me up and down
over a thousand miles for two months.' `Nonsense!' I said; `you're
nervous and fanciful.' `Listen,' he said. `Two months ago I was
hunting in the Zulu country, and one day, ten miles away from my camp, I
shot a mamba. I took the body back with me to skin it; but when the two
blacks I had with me saw it, they cried out to me to take it away, or
the mamba's mate would come in the night. I left them sleeping by the
fire, and the next morning they were still sleeping--ay, they were
sleeping the last sleep, for the mamba had been in the night.'
"As I looked at them, with the blood in me like water, I heard a heavy
breathing, and saw my horse on the ground, his eyes glazed and his
nostrils fighting for breath, while, resting on his body, was the awful
head of a mamba, his eyes fixed on mine, and his forked tongue darting
in and out. I fired at him with the rifle barrel, but clean missed in
my flurry; then I ran until my courage came back. I found that I had
left the powder behind, and slowly turned back. I had not gone a
hundred paces when I met him on my track, slipping like a black streak
through the grass, and I thought of nothing then but escape. After a
time I met a party of Zulus, but when I asked for their assistance, they
fled with loud cries of alarm, and at a Zulu kraal, where I stopped to
ask for thick milk, they drove me out when they learnt why it was I
fled. That night as I slept that snake coiled by my side.
"`What!'
"`Yes; he could have struck me then, but he preferred to have full
vengeance. I woke at the flicker of his tongue on my cheek, thinking it
was a fly--a fly! good Lord! and my hand fell upon his cold, sinewy
folds, and his head was resting on my shoulder. Ever since he has been
after me, with a deadly hate that is slowly driving me mad. Sometimes
he disappears, but I never escape from the glint of his unwinking eyes,
and one day he will strike, unless--unless--'
"`Well?' said I, looking at his drawn face.
"`Unless,' he said, `I forestall him.'
"`No my lad,' said I, `for that would be a sin, and when you are
stronger this dream of yours will go.'
"He looked so fallen in, so weak, all of a sudden, that I took him for a
walk to the river, and the rush of the waters seemed to comfort him. He
sat on a big boulder looking across, and the whiteness presently went
from his cheeks.
"`I've got an idea,' he said, `if I could reach the other side I'd be
all right again.'
"We sat there in a sort of a dream for an hour or two, when I happened
to look round, and right there on the flat of the ground was stretched
out the biggest and the ugliest snake I ever saw, black as night, with a
great vicious diamond-shaped head, and a pair of eyes that glowed all
colours. He looked as if he'd travelled; his scales, instead of being
glossy, were dull with scratches here and there, and his skin had a sort
of bagginess as if he hadn't eaten for weeks. As soon as he saw me turn
he raised his head about five feet from the ground, and from his eyes
there shot a look that jest kept me fixed like a stone. Then that poor
young feller on the stone began to speak again, in a soft way, of the
river and its journey to the sea.
"`I wish,' he said, `I could look on the sea again.' Then I heard him
move, and I knew he was looking into the eyes of his enemy, for that
snake began to sway his head to and fro, to and fro, while his tail went
twisting in and out, sending his body nearer and nearer. Suddenly there
was a shriek, and a splash, and the snake went by me--streamed over the
rock into the water, and when I leapt to my feet with a yell that
startled the whole camp, I saw an arm thrust above the yeller flood, and
above the arm the bend of that black snake, his head turned down looking
into the water, and a coil of his body round the elbow. Ole Abe Pike
has swound away once, and that was the time. Yes; there was his black
body gleaming with the water on it, and his head turned towards the face
of the enemy--that poor young chap he had follered over three countries
for one thousand miles--one thousand English miles."
"That a true story, Uncle Abe?"
"Ain't I told it? That's why I gave up transport riding. I darsn't go
near that Orange River again."
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
HOW THE MELONS DISAPPEARED.
I think I have said that Uncle Abe knew everything there was to be known
about farming, but he was content with his knowledge and never put it to
practical use, unless it was in the growing of water-melons. His melons
were the biggest and the sweetest, with the reddest hearts and the
smoothest rinds in the district. His patch was on the sunny side of the
slope, and when the big glistening globes were coming to fruition, the
old chap would sit on the worn sod bank above them and watch them
"drinking in the sunshine," as he said. I went over one morning to
collect six melons, previously selected, in exchange for a sack of meal,
and found him seated on a bank, the picture of misery.
"What's the matter, Uncle?"
"A go-hoppin' ghost's been around here eating my melons."
"A what?"
"A spook, and he's walked off with the very six melons you set your mark
against."
I dismounted, and walked into the melon patch, the old man silently
pointing out to me, with the stem of his pipe, the severed stems of my
melons.
"They're gone--you see."
"Yes," I answered dryly, "and the man who gathered them used a very
clean-cutting knife."
"What man?"
"Come, Uncle, you have parted with my melons to someone else, and I
consider you have behaved shabbily."
"That's it--go on. It isn't enough that my hair should turn white in
the loneliness of the dark at the dog-hopping terror that came out of
the deep pool down below there, 'midst a fearful groaning in the air and
a splashing in the water, but you must turn on me."
"What became of those melons, you old shuffler?"
"I ain't had a smoke for six days, and, on top of that, each morning I
woke up with an empty pipe to find a melon missing."
I handed him my pouch, and waited for explanations.
"Yes," he said, ramming the tobacco down with his little finger; "six
days ago when I came over here to watch them melons mopping in the
sunshine I saw at once one was gone--and gone, too, without so much as
leaving any sign but a straight cut through the stem to show how it
went, not a footprint, nor a bruised leaf, nor anything. Yes, that was
the smallest of the six; and next morning another was gone, the next
biggest, and there was no mark on the ground. I tell you that want of
sign made me queer, and when that night I yeard a splashing down there
in the pool--and there's no sound, mind you, that comes so mysterious as
the sudden splash of water out of the night--I wondered if the Kaffir's
devil was climbing out of the pool, or if the little brown man, the
Tikoloshe, was up to his mischief. There was that splash, loud and
sudden, as if the big tail of a monstrous snake had come down smack on
the water; then there was a humming all around me in the air. Have you
got a match?"
He struck the match on his corduroys, lifting his knee to stretch the
breeches taut, and his hollow cheeks nearly met inside as he puffed,
then he held the glow of the expiring match before me.
"There was a humming in the air all around me, and my skin tingled all
over jes'sif the wind were whipping the sand against my wet body when
coming from a sea bathe, and in the centre of that melon patch I seed a
spark of fire like that dying match, jes' one dull spark of fire without
any ray from it. That was all. Next morning the third melon was gone--
clean gone."
"Yes; and you ate it."
"I grow melons--I don't eat 'em. The next day I set a spring-gun with
the string from the fourth melon to the trigger, and in the middle of
the night I woke up with a start to the report of the gun and to a long
terrible wail, that seemed to come out of the depth of the sky and from
the heart of the earth. It just went soughing and sighing and wailing
through the house, and round it and over it, so that your eyes would
follow it up and down and round, as though there was some living person
there screeching. I tell you an ole rooster that was perched on the
foot of my bedstead fell down in a dead faint, so that I had to pour a
teaspoonful of brandy down his throat."
"The melon must have given you indigestion."
"Look here, sonny; if you play any longer on that string you'll wear it
out. In the morning there was one melon left, the spring-gun having
blown the fourth one to smithereens--pieces of it being scattered all
over the ground--though there was not a fragment of skin or hair or
feather to show what sort of thing it was had carried off the fifth
melon. There was one left. The biggest of the lot--a great dark-green
ball of liquid fire and honey, that would ha' fetched first prize at any
show. I made up my mind to save that one, so I built a kraal round it
with stakes driven in a foot deep, and roofed in with saplins, and over
all a fence of thorns. And when the dark came on I sat out there with
the gun and the bull's-eye lantern. I tell you I've suffered a lot in
trying to keep those six melons of yours--and that night there was a
stillness in the air that brought out all my sufferings on the stretch
like fiddle-strings. It was dead quiet far into the night, with the
stars blinking, and the voice of the sea appearing to pass overhead,
when of a sudden there came that splash from the pool, loud and
startlin'. I stood up to look down into the valley, then I slipped
inside."
"What did you see?"
"See! nothing; but I felt there was something crawling up that hill--and
through the air all around there came that humming. Yes, I slipped
inside; but on the bank I left that lantern glaring like a great eye
over the melon patch. I could not sleep for a melancholy sound in the
air, half whistle, half moan; and when I went into the middle room to
look out of the window, I'm gummed ef that bull's-eye lantern wasn't
standing on the table with the slide shut. That very same lantern I'd
left all ablaze on the bank--and in the room there was a smell of crabs,
a damp, muddy smell, and beyond the window was a smoulderin' fire--the
same dull spark-like point I had seen on the first night."
"Your pipe is out; do you want another match?"
"A match is not much good without baccy. Thankye, sonny. So I climbed
into bed again, or rather--for I'm not ashamed of being afraid--under
the bed, and there I was when I yeard the old rooster say good-morning
to the sun. The first thing I did was to look at the melon patch, and--
what'jer think--"
"Go on, you wretched old fabricator."
"I seed that last water-melon sliding down the hill."
"Sliding? Wasn't it walking?"
"Yes, sliding--not rolling, as you'd expect a round thing to do down a
steep like that, but jes' gently sliding, as though it were resting on a
coat. There was nothing by it, nothing at all, and it was the most
surprisin' sight I ever seed to watch that fine melon softly skimming
over the grass and dodging all the stones. I was so lost,
flabbergasted, unbalanced by this sight that I never saw what was
awaiting the melon, down by the pool, until the last thing, when it
slid, all of a sudden, into a dark hole. Into a dark hole--a sort of
tunnel level with the take-off into the pool--and that hole, that
tunnel, sonny, was the throat of the big devil-snake. All in a moment I
saw that. The melon disappeared, the jaws of the snake came together,
and a column of water shot into the air as he slid back into the pool."
"So; and that's where the six melons went?"
"Five, sonny; five--one of 'em was blown to smithereens by the gun. The
five of 'em were swallowed by that devil-snake."
"And how did he cut the stems so clean?"
"That's where the mystery comes in, sonny. I expect you'll have to take
six of the best that are left, sonny; and I'm going into town next week
to get some dynamite to blow the bottom outer that pool. That
devil-snake might take it into his head to swallow me one of these
fishing nights."
CHAPTER TWELVE.
ABE PIKE AND THE BIG FISH.
The Fish River was "down." It generally was down, in the sense of being
low, but colonial rivers run by contraries--when they are down they are
up. There had been a heavy fall of rain "up country," and the water
rushing off the sun-baked surface poured like a flood between the high
banks, sweeping, as we afterwards heard, a stone bridge away, and
catching in its career a wagon and span of eighteen oxen at a drift
which, at the time of crossing, had scarcely water enough to wet the
feet. For many a mile the banks of the river are of red soil, and as
the flood eats into the banks its waters are stained a dull brick
colour, which hue is imparted to the Atlantic itself for miles along the
coast as the red waters pour out into the sea, bearing with them a
wonderful collection of flotsam in the shape of timber, dead stock, and
live reptiles. Of late, railway sleepers formed no small part of the
flotsam, and if work was slack we sometimes, when the river was down,
spent a sloppy day on the banks fishing for these floating items. On
hearing the news I rode off to pick up Uncle Abe, but finding him out,
went to a spot on the bank which he particularly favoured, where a wide
flat rock stood at the base of a krantz. He was not there, however, and
the rock itself was covered by the flood, which reached half-way up the
krantz, but it was evident he had been there, for from a cave in the
rock, just above the lap of the waters, there issued a thin line of
smoke, and on climbing along a ledge I saw signs of his occupation in a
skin kaross, a dark lantern, a gun, and a few well-known traps which he
always carried with him when after _kablejauw_, the great hundred
pounders which come up as far as this point in the spring tides. Now
thoroughly alarmed for his safety, I rode down towards the sea, from
which, six miles away, there came the continuous roar and thunder of the
surf, and, to my great relief, met him in a bush path, with a full-grown
otter on his back, and the water oozing from his top boots and from his
clothes, which clung to his lank body.
"Halloa! Uncle; I thought you were drowned."
"That's me," he said, sweeping the water from his eyes; "I've been
drowned twice over. Got a pipe and baccy? I'm jest perishing for a
smoke."
I saw now that his knuckles were skinned, and that his face was pinched
and blue.
"Get up," I said dismounting.
"Not me. I'd spoil the saddle. Lemme catch hold of the stirrup--so.
Now get along quick, for I want to boil this yer soaking of water outer
my bones and body."
We went along, and presently I had a bright fire going in the cave, and
the kettle singing, while Abe, stripped of his clothes, sat shivering
still in his skin kaross, his eyes fixed on the red torrent, which
stretched across for a mile.
A tin beaker of boiling coffee soon brought back the warmth to his body,
and when he had my pipe between his teeth he began to talk.
"I believe I'm getting old, sonny; and I've lost my fishin' tackle."
"Not the _kablejauw_ tackle?"
"Jest that. It's stood by me, man and boy, for twenty-five years. I've
waxed it and waxed it, and wired it about the shank, till it were strong
enough to haul in a shark, and now it's gone--all along of this yer
flood. I don't like loosing old things, and the loss of it pains me as
tho' you'd pulled the sinews outer me."
"How did it happen?"
"Yesterday I came here to fish, and in the afternoon--when the tide
crept whispering along the rushes--I cast in from the big rock. 'Twas
as quiet as Sunday, with a fringe of bubbles right across the river
marking when the tide moved up. On the mud bank, jest below where the
big fish would soon be routing up the mud like pigs, there was a blue
crane dozing on one leg, with his head bunched between his shoulders; on
a dead tree above sat a big black and white kingfisher, with his red
beak pointing up, and on the top of the krantz a white-headed eagle was
all huddled up. After a smoke, I built up the fire in the cave, then
made another cast with the line, for the fish were coming up, and the
tide had reached up so high that the crane had to quit. I heaved the
lead out about thirty yards, and was drawing her in when there comes a
tug, and I was into a _steinbrasse_. That same moment the eagle started
into the air, sailing roun' and roun', and letting go screech after
screech; and when I looked up at him, surprised at the racket, I yeard a
hollow murmur, like an echo that comes from a cave. I knew what it
meant.
"'Twas the river comin' down, and in a hurry I began hauling in that
line, when, with a rush that parted the water, a big _kablejauw_ took
the _steinbrasse_, and, with a swirl of his tail, made for mid-stream to
bolt his food. I dunno how it happened, but a coil of the line whipped
roun' my leg, and I was yanked on to the broad of my back into the
river, with that eagle 'twixt me and the blue sky. That fish pulled me
right into the middle, then he paused to take bearings, and when the
strain slackened I took a breath, and reached along to get hold of the
line. But it was beyond me to slacken the knot without a knife, and I
turned over to swim to the rock. 'Twas easy enough till I tautened the
line, when the fish made another struggle. 'Twas pull devil, pull
saint, and the line wouldn't break. First he'd gain, then I'd gain; but
most of the time we just stuck there--he facing to the sea, me to the
rock, and that eagle ripping out up above. And then!"
"Well, Uncle?"
"Lord love you, lad. There were a roar in the air; I seed the tree tops
above the bend swaying; then there shot into the air a great tongue of
water, and round the corner, from side to side, there came a wall--the
face of it curved in, the top hissing in foam, and the sides of it
running right up the banks, so high it shut out the valley beyond. I
gave a yell, then turned over on my back, with my hands clasped behind
my head to protect it from the shock, and the next minute I were
scooting down the river for the sea, with that wall howling behind me
like a thousand thunders."
"I don't understand."
"That _kablejauw_ did. 'Twas a race between him and the flood, and the
way he flashed along showed he'd only been fooling with me before. And
the line didn't break, and overhead there sailed the eagle, with his
black wings outspread and his white head looking down at me. We flew so
fast that in a few minutes I saw the white lines one above the other,
which showed where the waves were breaking, and then with a snap like a
pistol-shot, the line snapped. 'Twasn't my weight that broke it, but a
snagged tree, into which, with the way on me, I went feet foremost. No
sooner'd I clung to a mud greasy branch than, with a roar like a fallen
mountain in my head, the red flood tossed the big tree into the air,
and, when we come down, we were in the thick of it--rushing on, at a
height of twelve feet above the blue waters of the tide. Phew! how we
did go; and in a minute there was the mouth of the river, the big waves
solemnly rolling in, and beyond them the heaving blue of the ocean.
With a fierce rush, like a live crittur, the flood threw itself at the
sea. We just footed it over the small waves, then we cut the top off
the first roller, throwing up columns of spray high as the church
steeple, and then the fight began. Behind us there was a hundred miles
of flood; before us was the tide with the Atlantic at the back, and the
sea after the first shock jes' gave a sort of surly roar, and away back
of the outermost breaker I seed a dark line coming along steady and
unbroken. 'Twas the last of the seven brothers, of the seven big waves
that roll in with the tide at intervals, and it was bigger than all.
Nearer it came, dark at the base, with a glistening curve, and a light
line along the top. We in the front had made a track for the flood
behind. For a little we stopped--then my tree was flung forward, and a
red, angry column shot forth to meet the big wave. My! Sonny! The
music of that meeting! The two waters coming together would neither
give in, and they piled up, and up, and up, until there was built up a
wall of water high as a hill, red on my side, blue on the other, and up
this wall my tree was forced by the flood behind. Up we went, until we
were balanced on the very ridge, with a black gulf on the other side of
smooth water. A breath we poised there while the fresh and the salt
were straining against each other, then a heaving mass out of the sea
swiftly smote the great wall, and we went headlong--the tree and me--
into the biggest toss-up you ever see. I dunno why it was I kept
a-hold, but I think the weight of the waters jammed me into a cleft
branch. Anyhow, the life kept in my body, and when I took a breath, the
next minute it was dark, the stars were blazing, and the tree was
a-rocking up and down away out on the ocean beyond the fighting
whirl-about of river flood and tide. In that one second between the
time I went headlong from the curling top of that hill-high wall of
water into the roarin' jumble some hours had gone--the tide had flowed
and turned, and the old tree, with me on it, hanging like a withered
apple, had floated miles. I must have been drowned over and over, and
reg'lar pickled with salt. I tell you it was lonesome out there on the
sea--and wet."
"It was a wonderful escape, Uncle."
"But it warn't over. Bymby the tide turned again, and the tree made
again for the shore, where the fighting was going on jes' the same from
the roar, and when the sun broke I saw we would strike the mouth of the
river again. I dunno, sonny, how it is, but it seemed to me the ole sea
was entering into the fight, for there was a sort of rush in the great
heaving masses that began to pile in out of the blue, and when I came
near the beat of the surf where the sea was all red, the breaker that
carried the tree on his round back rose higher and higher, as he swept
on until he reached the flood water, when he let the head of him curl
and plunge with a force that swept everything away, and in the wall of
his foam we were shot right into the river. That's when I was drowned
again; and when I came to I found we were settled in the still centre of
a great circle of waters under the left bank, outer the main current.
Everything that came into that circle went roun' and roun' till it came
gently into the centre, to drift up against the big tree. Already there
were three goats against the tree, legs up, an' a sheep were drifting
up, while in the circle sailin' roun' was a straw hat and a pair of
trousers. On the tree there was fifteen snakes--all alive, but
sluggish, mostly puff-adders, with some long yeller boomslangs, and
three or four ugly looking black snakes that must er come way down 200
miles from the karoo veld. While I was looking at these ugly lodgers
coiled round the branch, there was a swirl in the water, and the sheep
that were drifting along suddenly went under. 'Twas a shark took him.
That made things lively, but when three more sharks come up, and after
eating the goats, the straw hat, and the trousers began butting at the
tree with their shovel noses, I felt there was a lot of excitement in
this world if you only look for it patiently. The rolling of the tree
stirred the snakes, and the whole fifteen of them began crawling up. If
there'd been two I'd kicked 'em off, but being so many I sot and took
'em. When they had settled down again there was one round my neck, a
yeller boomslang, making a very fine collar, there were a pair of black
snakes on each of my arms, a brown boomslang round my waist, and no
less'n six big puff-adders coiled about my legs. I tell you I kept my
mouth shut less one should crawl in by mistake, an' if my hair hadn't
been so scant and wet it would ha' stood up straight."
"That was a tight fix, Uncle."
"Tight! By gum! The pressure of that six foot o' collar on my neck
tilted my chin up in the air, while the chap above my waist nearly broke
my ribs. The worst of it wer' I was freezing."
"Freezing! and the sun at 108."
"That's so; but fright turns a chap cold, and them snakes were drawing
all the remainin' warmth outer me. And ther' were those sharks
promenadin' roun' and roun' the tree, every now and again givin' it a
lazy shove. Jes' then the tide turned, and the tree began to move on
another cruise. This time I knew it would be all up with me. I
couldn't live through another fight with the surf, and if I moved there
was the snakes and the sharks. Soon as the tree moved those snakes woke
up and began hissing an' puffing an' swaying their heads about, while
their eyes got bright and brighter. Suddenly the collar chap crept up
over my face and took a twist round my head with the end of his tail in
my ear; then one by one the other snakes crawled up over my face, each
one of 'em giving me such a look as threatened my life in case I moved.
I wondered what they were about, for I couldn't see, but the pressure on
my neck was terrible, when, after the last one had gone, I heard a hiss,
a whizz, and a thud. What jer think?"
"I suppose they flew away."
"They jest piled on top of each other, tail round the other's neck, till
they made a column that would reach the bank; then the topmost one bent
forward, and there was a line of snakes from the tree to the bank. A
big puff-adder was at the far end, and he hitched his fangs over a tree
stump. Right there I spotted my chance. I softly hauled on the line,
and drew the tree ashore, when I jumped to the ground and cut."
"And where did you find the otter?"
"Picked him up, sonny. And to think that I lost my line."
"That's a wonderful story, Uncle."
"Eh! but it's so. You can see yourself I'm soaked through and through,
and if you look out, there's the river in flood plain enough, and here's
the otter which will make a good weskitt."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
THE BLACK TIGER AGAIN.
Abe suffered for several days from an attack of rheumatism in his
shoulder, brought on by his immersion in the flood waters, and he
applied himself steadily to the manufacture of a wonderful lotion, in
which camphorated oil was the main stock, with a dash of turpentine, a
strong trace of eucalyptus, and a few drops of the powerful euphorbia
juice, together with extracts from sundry potent herbs. When I visited
him this concoction was brewing in a pot, the steam from which filled
the house with an extremely pungent smell.
"There," said he, holding up a wooden ladle full of the mixture, "jes'
take a sniff of that. That's the sort to sift right through you, and
yank out rheumatics from the knuckle joints."
"It certainly is strong."
"Yes, sonny; but it lacks one thing."
"What's that?"
"Jes' a lump, as big as your fist, of fat from a tiger's inside."
"Is that so?"
"'Tw'd give substance to it; bind all these yer scents together, and
make 'em settle down to their work instead of fighting against each
other. This euphorby juice is mighty cantankerous, and is given to
blisterin' unless it's toned down by tiger fat."
"Well, Uncle, that black tiger is still alive."
"Hum! I don't know that the black tiger is good for this purpose. What
do you say?"
"I know nothing about it; but, if any tiger is good, I should say a
black tiger, by reason of his greater strength, should suit best, and,
if you remember, you said you had a plan for trapping him. I believe
he's still in the big kloof."
"Yes, he's there. That ole man baboon's been aroun' here, and maybe
he's got some notion of showing me where the black fellow takes his
snooze. I'll jes' think over it."
"If you want any help I can bring along some dogs and a couple of guns?"
"Dogs, eh! Seems to me that tiger's too smart for dogs. He chawed up
one of yours. I don't want no dogs, sonny, and if this tiger is to be
downed, he's got to be downed by cunning. You leave him to me."
After the lapse of a week I rode over to see how the old man had
succeeded, and found him peacefully employed boiling down wax berries
for the manufacture of candles for his own lighting--the rheumatism,
apparently, having been vanquished.
"Hallo! Abe," I said, taking a look round the room, "where's the tiger
skin?"
"I speck it's on the tiger."
"So your plan didn't succeed?" Abe solemnly skimmed a ladle full of
melted wax from the water, and poured it into a bamboo mould.
"Berries is terrible skerce this season. Time was when a body could
gather a bagful in a day from the bushes above the beach; but now--lor',
everything's different now. This very earth's agoing downhill--it's
getting played out."
"Are you mixing any tiger fat with that wax, Uncle, to bind it?"
"Maybe goose fat would be better, sonny; have you got any to spare?"
"That tiger must be a cunning beast if he's got the better of you,
Uncle!"
He shook his head gravely. "He's no tiger. He's jes' a ole witch
prowling aroun', that's what he is."
"Eh?"
"Yes. You believe me, that's what ole Black Sam is. I worked out a
plan to catch him, supposin' I could find where he put up in the
daytime, and what path he took on setting out in the night, for you know
these critturs in the woods don't go along anyhow, but follow paths jes'
as you or me would, and some of these paths they're more fond of than
others. Well, I kep' watch on that ole man baboon, and when I see him
strolling along outside the kloof I up and follered him. He knew, bless
you, what I was after, and the way he led me into the dark of that kloof
was a caution; so silent he went, and so careful to take the proper
track. Bymby he stopped and pointed--yes, pointed with his finger at
the ground--then he jumped for a bough, and there he sat grinning an'
working his eyebrows. Well, blow me, ef there wer'n't a spoor of the
tiger where he pointed, and squinting along through the underbush I see
a clean walk which the tiger had made--the sides of the trees worn
smooth and the ground jes' trodden down. That was enough. So I went
home and made a pill of meat, with enough poison in it to kill a museum
full of stuffed critturs. Nex' morning I went down, and if that baboon
hadn't a almost stopped me by force I'd a run bang into that tiger."
"Was he dead?"
"Dead! Thunderation! he was jes' lying full-stretched for a spring from
a tree branch jes' above where I laid that pill, awaiting for me to come
along. The baboon jes' invited me to climb a tree, and looking through
the leaves, I spotted that black devil, with his tail a-switching and
a-jerking. I jes' climbed down, and slipped off like a shadder, with my
heart in my boots. Well, I did some thinking. You know cats is fond of
certain smells, so is dogs--only dogs is not so dainty as cats. It's
jes' the same with a tiger, and he's got a nose for a partickler herb
which he rubs his head into. I dug up one of these year herbs, and I
fixed it up fine, jes' over the spring of a big man trap. Then, it
being near dusk, I climbed into a yeller wood, and waited for Black Sam
to walk up and put his foot into the jaws of that trap; but the dark
came before he did, and then I wasn't going to trust myself in the
wood--so there I stuck, with the stiffness in all my bones, till the
morning. By gum! it were skeery work, sittin' up there with the wind
moaning over the tree, and sounds of creeping things all aroun'. Then,
blame me! the first thing I clapped eyes on in the morning was that
black crittur standing there in the path, staring at that scent bush
'sif it were somethin' to be suspicious about instead of a nice smellin'
bottle. There he stood like a dark shadder, working his nose for maybe
half an hour, when he walked all around, finally sitting down on his
tail with a pucker between his eyes jes'sif he were thinking. Yes, he
sat there working his brain; then up he stood, looked about for a
spell--then, I'm hanged, if he didn't pick up a dry stick in his mouth
and poke it at that bush."
"What's that?"
"Yes, sir. He jes' sprung the trap. Of course, soon's he poked the
bush the spring give, and the jaws flew together with a snap that bit
clean through the stick. Then that there witch reached for the bush
with his claw, and fetched a grin that spread all over his face like a
gash in a water-melon. Then he smelt that trap all over and began to
switch his tail, and with a growl in his stummick off he went slinking
on my trail, taking long strides with his ears flattened. Luckily he
went on the long trail leading from the house, and soon's he'd gone I
lit out for the top of the krantz, where I could see the veld right up
to my door."
"Well?"
"Well, after a time, I saw him crossing the veld, making himself small
when he was on the level, and running when he got in a holler. Right up
near the house he went and hid himself in a clump of wild cotton,
waiting and watching for me to come out o' the door. I tell you he
stopped there till the sun was right over head, then suddenly he ran
right up to the house and looked in at the winder. I never was so glad
at being not at home to a visitor. He walked all round the house and
got on the roof; then he came back, full lick, having made up his mind I
was in the kloof. Yes, then I made a bee line for home, and shut myself
in."
"And that ends it?"
"No, sonny, it's the beginning of the chapter. He's jes' scheming to
get me; but the ole baboon's on the watch and maybe I'll have the black
skin yet."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
BUFFALO BULL AND THE SHORTHORN.
In one of the kloofs near the Fish River, an old buffalo bull had taken
up his quarters, and, like all solitary males, he was suspicious and
savage.
"And I don't wonder at it," said Abe Pike, when discussing the bull's
points. "Trouble sours the best of us, and he's had his share of
trouble--what with his struggles as a youngster to get a footing in the
herd, and his struggles, when he became leader, to guard his position
against enemies without in the shape of tigers and hunters, an' against
enemies within in the shape of younger bulls, not to speak of the
jealousy of his wives; and then on top of all this, the trouble of being
driven from the family when his powers were failing, maybe by a own son
of his. Yes, sir, that lonely animile, for all he's so savage, an'
a'most knocked the life outer me, has my sympathy in his proud old age.
Proud he is, you believe me. He might a stayed with the herd ef so be
he choose to behave himself and foller with the calves, but once a king
always a king. Ef he can't rule in the herd, he'll rule all alone in
that kloof--nursing his pride and his memories--and going scatter--
dash--on sight for any critters mad enough to enter his domain."
"Did you run against him, Uncle?"
"Well--I'd put it the other way--that he run against me. I tole you
often how he fit and killed my _rooi bonte_ bull, Red Prince, that old
red and white chap with a cross of shorthorn that was so masterful you
couldn't keep him in any kraal if he wanted to move out I've seen him
fix his horns under a heavy pole that took two men to place across the
gate, and jest hoist it as tho' it were a straw, and if he set out to go
into the mealie patch why he'd go in, an' there was an end of it,
bellowing all the time fit to drown the roar of the sea."
"Did the old solitary kill your bull?"
"You know that, sonny, for you saw his body with the rip that went to
his heart. I yeared ole Prince bellow one morning, and, lookin' over
the veld, I saw him away off yonder on the ridge slowly moving, with his
big head swaying from side to side, and as I watched him he would, every
now and again, stop to paw the ground and toss his horns. I thought,
maybe, there was some stray cattle beyond, and I set off after him with
the sjambok. After he topped the ridge I could still hear the rumble of
his challenge, and when I reached the divide there he was down below
raking up the earth with his hoof, but there was no sign of a horn or
hide beside him. I ran down to him, and at the sound of my running he
turned his head, showing the red of his eyes. He blew through his
nostrils at me, and he looked that wicked that I dodged away behind a
big rock, and soon's I peeped out I saw he was looking at the kloof with
his ears pricked forward. So I scanned the edge of the wood, which was
about fifty paces off, and there, poking out of the shadows, was the
head of that buffel, his black muzzle held high, and the sharp curved
tips of his horns showing above the great mass of bone on his forehead.
The foam was dripping from his muzzle. I saw, then, that red crittur of
mine had got the scent of the buffel, and here he had come to do battle
out of the love of a fight. I called to the old fool to come back, but,
with another dig of his hoof and a shake of his head, he went forward
with that slow, steady stride of a crittur that knows no fear. From the
wood there came a menacing growl, and at the hoarse rumble of it the red
bull sunk his crest and let out a beller that went rolling over the
kloof. Then the old solitary stepped out, big and black, with white
scars showing on his shoulders and his head held high and threatenin'.
There the two of them stood face to face with twenty yards between,
their ears twitching and the tails jerking against their sides, Red
Prince looking heavier with a mightier neck, the crest arching like the
neck of a horse, and the dewlap hanging down between his wide knees.
Bigger and stronger he looked than the buffel, but my heart went weak
within me for him when I saw the wild gleam of the buffel eyes, and
dwelt on the pile of rugged bone that spanned his forehead. Slowly they
walked up to each other, muttering deep threats, then their horns
clashed, and their foreheads were pressed closer and closer to the
strain of heaving quarters. A minute they stood so, the breathing
coming heavily, so that the dust below was blown about--then my old red
chap turned the buffalo right round, and with a snort and a sidelong
blow, he ripped a long red streak in the black thigh. The buffel sprang
a step aside, then his tail went up over his back, and he rushed
forward. Right round on his pins as nimble as a yearling the old red
went, and catching the buffel between the forelegs, he heaved him up and
sent him with a thud on to his side. If he had only known, poor old
chap, he would never have let his enemy reach his feet again, but he
curled his nose up and jest stood there watching the black devil gather
himself together. The buffel was up--phew--and then, with a savage
roar, his eyes gleaming like a tiger's, he jest leapt at the big red
body standing there so proud, and the next moment--'twas done so quick--
I saw the blood running from his side. I wept, lad, at the sight.
There stood the buffel, with his muzzle up--and the foam dripping from
it--watching the red bull, whose legs were planted wide apart to steady
himself. While the life was flowing from that terrible wound in his
side the old chap shook his head again. So they stood silent, eyeing
one another, then Prince lurched forward--dead--and the buffel went up
and smelt him, with his back toward me. I had moved round the rock to
watch the fight, and as I stood there tremblin' from the excitement,
that old black devil suddenly whipped round, and with a most hair-rising
roar, came straight at me. The outer curve of his horn caught me on the
shoulder, and sent me spinning till I tripped over a rock, and when he
turned I squeezed tight against the shelter of the stone. Then that ole
brute came and stood by with his nose a few inches off, and his
bloodshot eyes glaring at me, and every minute or so he'd try to chop me
with a hoof, or hook me out with his horns. And three times he trotted
off to smell the red bull--the which times I'd try to squeeze closer to
the rock, and then at the third time he cleared off to the left at a
gallop."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
THE END OF THE TIGER.
I had been busy all day `branding' the young cattle, and returning hot,
dusty, and tired to the house, found Abe Pike comfortably seated in the
cane chair, with the veldschoens of his outspread feet resting on the
top bar of the verandah rail, and his lined face looking up at the
thatched roof, whence came the loud zing of a bluebottle fly caught in
the meshes of a spider web. A jar of my Transvaal tobacco was on the
ground by his side, and a large jug of buttermilk near it.
"Don't disturb yourself, Uncle!"
"I'm not agoing to. Mind how you step, else you'll obset that
buttermilk--not that it would matter much, for it ain't been rightly
made. Should ha' been kep' in a calabash with a drop of old milk in the
bottom, to flavour it with a taste of biled leather and smoke that
belongs to the proper article. But all the old arts is dying out, and
insects and beasts is the only critturs that keep up the old customs.
Conservatism is a law of nature--among men who have broken away from
nature it's a blind, unreasonin' protest against change. Conservatism
is the preserving wisdom of the aged, the salt of experience, and change
is born of the rashness of youth. I'm a Conservative--I'm old. I
should be presarved for the edification and guidance of the young. Give
me the buttermilk."
As he would not move, I tilted his chair over by kicking the legs away,
and passed over his recumbent body to the bedroom. After a wash down I
found him still outspread on the ground, his long legs hooked over the
chair, and his head resting on his arm, while the glow of his pipe
showed that he was still calmly smoking.
"What's brought you over here, Uncle?"
"Well, I 'spect I walked. Have you ever observed, sonny, that the human
body is so built that it will fit itself to any position? This is
comfortable and the tobacco is fair to middlin', fair to middlin', with
a touch of sulphur in it."
I sat down on the stone steps to listen to the most delightful of all
sounds--those made by the domestic animals and birds settling to rest;
while from the deep black of the sky the stars shot out with a sudden
blaze, and the cool night wind came softly whispering through the
acacias.
Uncle Abe gathered himself up, and bunched upon the rail, his back bent
like a sickle to keep his balance. "What's acrost over yonder?" he
said.
"My boundary ridge."
"Your boundary ridge! An' a euphorby tree, and a sprinkling of white
thorn acacias, with the gum drops glistenin' on the rough bark, and a
few grey stones all covered with moss and a stretch of grey veld. Go
'long; there's more than that under the curtain of the dark, for if
there weren't why would you an' me sit here and look away off, an' look
an' look, as ef behind the curtain was all the mysteries of the unknown
world. The dark makes a wonderful difference."
"So it does--when you're five miles from home and hear the `gurr' of a
tiger."
"Sonny, I've downed that black tiger."
"You have!"
"That's so. Ole Abe Pike has come out on top--and soon's I skinned him
I lit out to tell you the news. You see it was my wits against his.
Traps was no good, so I determined to set my skin against his and trust
to the ole gun. I calculated to tackle him right close up to his lair."
"In the kloof?"
"Eweh! in the dark of the big kloof, where it's that still you can hear
the sap moving in the trees. You see that crittur was more'n ordinary
cunning, and he'd seen how he was feared, so he'd settle it down to a
certainty that no man would ever dare tempt death near his sleepin'
place. Therefore, though deadly risky, the best plan would be to go to
that very spot. Next thing was to give him a good feed far away--and
yet not too far. Ef the kill was too far he wouldn't come back to his
roost, and ef it was too near he wouldn't eat before returning. So I
built a little bush kraal near the kloof an got a brandzickt goat from
Ned Amos to turn in."
"Why not have tied the goat up in the kloof?"
"No good, sonny, with an 'xper'enced tiger. He'd a suspected a plant,
'cos his understanding 'ud tell him that goats don't grow in kloofs.
The kraal he would take as a piece of man's foolishness. Before this I
filed down a whole sixpence, and the filings I melted into a good round
bullet, with some clean lead. Two charges I put in behind that bullet,
and seed that the powder was well up in the nipple with the shiniest cap
well pressed down. Then I killed a stink-cat--I'll tell you why
afterwards. I got the goat down to the kraal an hour before sun-down,
and then I slipped into the kloof, treading like a shadder, with the
bleat of the old billy buck calling loud. I pulled up, an' waited till
that ole man baboon, who had watched all proceedings, gave me the sign
that the Black Sam was on the move. I felt my way on up to his lair
under a shelving rock at the foot of the precipice that hems in the
kloof on the top side. It was that dark I couldn't see my hand, and I
knew at once my plan would land me with a split throttle if I waited for
his coming back. I was that skeered, too, with the whisperin' in the
trees, that I was just making ready to run when I see a firefly dodging
around."
"And you thought it was the tiger's eye?"
"You wait. I seed a firefly making circles of flame against the
blackness--and I cotched him gently--so's not to spoil his lantern. I
fixed him in the bark of a tree that stood near the den--and two others
I fixed in line--one above, one below. The top was three feet above the
ground, the middle was two and a half, and the bottom one a foot high.
Next thing I threw that stink-cat in the den, and the smell of him came
out thick, covering up all taint of a man. Then I settled down opposite
the tree with the gun fixed on the little spark where I'd fixed the
middle fly. I reckoned when the ole chap came home and smelt that cat
he'd stand in disgust--and as the smell would strike him just by the
tree his body would blot out the flies and give me a mark."
"And he didn't come back that way?"
"He did that, as it was the easiest way; but before he came the feeling
grew in me that he was just behind watching me where I lay. I tell you,
sonny, that long watch in the stillness of the dark, with a drop of
water minute by minute falling into a little pool, and a sort of queer
stirring noise among the trees, gave me the ague. But he came at last.
It may have been three, or two o'clock; but without a sound he was there
before me. My eyes had grown tired of watching those three dots of
fire, and I'd been shutting them tight for a spell every now and again,
and when I opened them the last time I saw the light was there, but
altered. I looked away a second, then back, and there was three lights;
but two of 'em were close together, and bigger. Jimminy! it was the ole
man himself looking at me. I pulled the trigger, and the gun flew outer
my hands. Then I rolled over and over, with a roaring, scuffling, and
screaming in my ears as ef the gun had woke a whole crowd of devils and
brought them howling outer the rocks. I rolled against a tree, and I
was up it before I knew where I was, an' all the time there was that
scuffling an' growlin' and awful screamin' going on down below. Bymby
it got weaker and weaker, until it died off in gurglings and deep
breathing, and by the grey light of the morning there was the two of 'em
dead, the black tiger and the ole man baboon. The baboon had got his
two long teeth in the big throat, and there he had held while the tiger
with his hind claws raked the stomach clean out of him."
"And where did your bullet strike?"
"It struck the tree, and smashed the top firefly to smithereens. The
other two had dropped off."
"Then you didn't kill the tiger?"
"I reckon I did; at any rate, I've got his skin and the skull of the ole
baboon. He was the biggest tiger you ever see, and old as the hills,
with his teeth worn down. I'm sorry for the baboon, but I'm glad he was
there."
I have reason to believe that Uncle Abe maligned himself for the sake of
the yarn. On examining the tiger's skin subsequently, I found no traces
of the baboon's teeth, but exactly between the eyes was a bullet-hole.
The old man had held his gun straight in the dark kloof.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
WHERE THE QUAILS CAME FROM.
In the spring the quails come in from the west, and one September
morning I went out into the standing oat-crops with two other guns, each
one of us attended by a little Kaffir lad to retrieve the birds. By
noon we had traversed and re-traversed in line the upper lands and low
lands, bagging 98 brace, and then in the glare of the mid-day we took
shelter in the shade of a yellow-wood tree. There we argued the
ever-recurring theme of the coming of the quail.
In August there is not a quail to all seeming in the land, but suddenly,
as the spring advances, there comes from every thicket of grass and
square of growing corn on the coast the whistling call of the male
bird--`phee--phe--yew' calling in bird language, `where are you?--where
are you?' and the answering cry of the modest mate--`phee--
phee'--"here--here." Whence do they come--these thousands of birds that
throng along the coast? On that point regularly as September came
round, as the 12-bore gun was taken down, and the cartridges filled with
Number 6, we talked greatly, setting forth many theories. Silas Topper
was of opinion that the quails spent their time in travelling round the
continent of Africa in four huge armies, covering 500 miles from front
to rear, and that while one was passing along the southern coast, the
second army would be going north somewhere above the Zambesi, while the
third would be traversing the shores of the Mediterranean, and the
fourth skirting of Gold Coast. We all agreed that was a very good
theory, and one deserving more credence than the crude, but positive,
assertion of Amos Topper that the quail was originally a frog.
"It stands to reason," Amos would say, "that a quail is developed from a
frog. If 'tain't so, what becomes of all the frogs?--tell me that.
Take a caterpillar. A caterpillar comes from an egg, and a cocoon comes
from a caterpillar, and a butterfly from a cocoon."
"But a quail isn't a butterfly."
"Chuts! A tadpole comes from an egg, doesn't it? Well, a frog comes
from a tadpole, and a quail comes from a frog. That's clear enough,
ain't it?"
Then, of course, the argument would start, and this particular September
morning we had got well into the frog theory when old Abe Pike came
along.
"I don't mind if I do," he said, as he sat down and selected a plump
bird that Amos had carefully prepared for his own eating. He had opened
it out by a cut down the breast bone, laid the broad bare back on the
wood coals, and in the cup-like cavities of the breast had placed a pat
of butter, with pepper and salt. The juices of the bird had gathered in
these cavities, and Amos had just cut off a slice of bread to serve as a
plate when old Pike forestalled him.
"That's my bird," said Topper, fiercely.
"Just yeard you say 'twas a frog," grunted Abe, as he dug his knife into
the earth to clean it.
"I said it was a frog, but it's a sure enough bird now--blow you!"
"Go slow, sonny, go slow," said Abe, between the mouthfuls. "Stick to
one thing at a time. Once a frog always a frog."
"Humph," said Amos, as he picked out another bird from the heap. "I
s'pose you never heard frogs whistling of a night?"
"Well, of course."
"What do they whistle for, eh, if they're not fitting themselves for the
bird life--tell me that?" And Amos looked at us triumphantly.
"They whistle for the rain, you donderkop."
"P'raps, then, you can tell us where these birds come from, as you're so
mighty clever."
"To be sure, sonny, to be sure; they come from the clouds."
"Oh, thunder!"
"Yes; from the clouds, or maybe higher. I s'pose you yeard of the
people of Israel and how they were fed in the wilderness with manna and
quail. Where d'you expect those birds came from? Frogs! No; they just
dropped from the sky, and they've kep' on droppin' ever since in the
spring."
"Go along! There's no people wandering in the wilderness in these
days."
"I seed 'em."
"The Israelites?"
"No; the quail a-falling out the roof of the world. I'll tell you how
it came about that I diskivered this secret that's been kep' locked up
all these hundreds of years. I'd been a-fishin' off the great rock that
stands out of the breakers over there yonder by the Kasouga, an' the
spring tide, rolling in with a great heave, made a boilin' foam 'twixt
me an' the beach. I were fixed there for the night, sure enough; an' I
tell you what, sonny, when a man is brought face to face in the black of
the night with the leaping sea, he don't forget the time. Noise! by
gum! You know what it is to be waked all of a sudden out of a sleep a
full mile from the sea by the smacking crash of a great wave, and there
I was in the very thick of the thunderation, with the big black breakers
swishing out of the dark like a movin' wall, and jus' leapin' agin the
rock as though they were bent on sweeping it away. The white foam went
flying above, drenching me through and through--and it grew so slippery
up above on that table size top, that I was obliged to lay full
stretched on my back with my heels agin a crack, and my arms
outstretched--and my eyes fixed on the stars above whenever I could see
them through the flying scud. Even a spring tide turns--and in the
darkness before the early morning I could feel the rock under me growing
firmer. I was just thinking o' getting to the shore to dry myself in
the white sand when I yeard a queer sound from the sky. There's just
one thing wanting to this yer quail."
"What's that?"
"Just a dash of Dop brandy."
I passed him over the stone demijohn, and we listened to the cluck of
the liquor as it poured into the tin komeky.
"Yes; out of the black of the sky there came a sort of sound that goes
before a storm; and, boys, it licks me how such a shadder of a noise can
come on in advance."
"It's the way with shadows," said Amos, drily.
"Soh! but it's a queer thing to hear the hum of a wind-storm before the
wind comes along; jes' 'sif th're messages going ahead to warn critturs
and trees to stand firm. Well, I squinted around, and bymby, as the
light grew, far above I seed a something movin', and the noise of its
coming grew. 'Twas no bigger'n a umbrella when I fixed it; but it soon
spread out, wider and wider, and what was the curiosest, it lengthened
out behind like my old concertina. I tell you, I begun to get skeered,
for I thought maybe 'twas one o' them water-spouts. Then the light grew
stronger and there was a twinkling from the growing column jes' if
thousands and thousands o' poplar leaves was stirred by the wind. `'Tis
alive,' I said, jumping to my feet, and I scaled down that rock and
scooted through the pools, and up over the sand hills to the shelter of
the woods. I thought it was one o' them here sea-serpents."
"But it was not?"
"No sonny; it was a heaven-high column of quail. That's what it were."
"Falling from the moon, eh?"
"When the head of the column reached the ground, which it did, on the
beach the whole length just collapsd like a falling tree, and the whole
lot were just scattered along the coast in a twinkling."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
ABE PIKE AND THE GHON-YA.
Old Abe had strolled over to my place to see a new Harvester tried on a
good crop of wheat. In the previous reaping season I had been left
suddenly in the lurch by my Kaffirs, who had silently vanished in the
night for other scenes without a word of explanation, or a single regret
for the loss they would put me to, and I determined to be prepared in
future for such another vagary. Hence the Harvester, which reaped the
corn and bound up the sheaves, aided only by one man and a boy. We were
just sweeping clear the last square in the small field when Abe came up
and hung himself on the fence, with his back bent like a bow, and his
toes hitched under the lower wire. There, all bunched up, he eyed the
machine in silence.
"Well, Uncle, what do you think of it?" I said, with some pride, as the
last sheaf was tossed on one side by the human-like grippers.
He looked at me vacantly, then climbed slowly down, examined the sheaf
and the tie, and then took a look all round the country.
"Things is changing," he said.
"Yes; this is the age of progress and electricity."
"And snorting steam engines and that there man machine--that thing
without a heart, or a stomach, or eyes to see. Where's the good?"
"It is a labour-saving machine, and enables me to produce more."
"'Tis all vanity, an' foolishness, an laziness--that's what. Laziness
and pride," and the old sinner, who never did a fair day's work in a
month, wore an air of virtuous indignation as he resumed his seat on the
fence.
"Things is changing--that's so; and mankind's on the down track. Time
was when a reaper would take his sickle and harken to the rustlin' of
the yaller corn as he cut his way along, with the smell o' the yearth in
his nostrils, and the sight of all manner o' living insects below him.
And bymby he would straighten his back and look away over the land, or
at the shining layers behind, and then he would stoop to it again with
the thoughts busy in his mind as bees about a comb concerning the going
out of the wheat in waggons an' trains, an' ships across the sea to the
feeding of the nations. An' look at this yer cast-iron reaper; what's
it good for but to work for a cast-iron man? That's what's the world's
comin' to, with all the people cast in a mould. I'm gwine home!"
"Nonsense; come back with me and try the new lot of rolled tabak from
the Transvaal."
For all his disgust with the Harvester, Uncle Abe did not mind "riding,"
to the house on the driver's seat; neither was he cast down after supper
when he sat out on the stoep. The day's work was done for man and beast
and the great quiet of the evening brooded over the place. There we sat
and smoked in silence, until the glow died out of the sky, when the
night creatures began to stir, sending forth inquiring notes as if to
assure themselves that the time was really at hand for the starting of
the wonderful orchestra of the insect band. And, as we listened, there
rang out above the shrill drummings and chirpings and whistling, the
weird, mournful cry of the "ghon-ya," calling "ghon-ya!" "ghon-ya!" at
regular intervals, until the melancholy of its far-reaching cry stilled
the other noisy voices.
Abe stirred uneasily. "There's the lost sperrit," he muttered.
"Why, that's the night locust!"
"Soh; jes' a locust."
"Yes, with a transparent drum in place of a body which he blows out when
he wishes to make that noise, and rubs his legs upon the drum."
"How big is this yer drum?"
"About as large as a hen's egg."
"So; and with such a small thunder-bag he can send out a noise that
booms further than the greatest drum in the British army. Don't tell
me. That's no insect; it's a cry that comes from beyond."
"Beyond where?"
"Beyond the dark. I tell you, sonny, when the ghon-ya cries he ain't
bothering himself about any glass-eyed beetle-hunter who's just
hankering to label all the critturs in this yearth; he's not thinkin'
about you nor me, but he's jes' wailing in that shudderous voice to the
shadders that pass by in the night; whether it's to comfort 'em, or to
put 'em on the right track, or to warn 'em of danger, I can't say. One
night I had taken the short cut past the big krantz, being late from the
shop where I'd been for a tin of o' black sugar, and thinkin' of nothin'
at all when I yeard the ghon-ya's cry passin' overhead. There was
nothin' more'n ordinary solemn in the wail of it, but when I came to the
thick of the wood it seemed to me there was a queer whisperin' going on
among the trees. Have you ever marked a bee against the shadder? Of
course you have, and you'll know how he moves like a drop o' light as
the sun strikes on his wings against the dark of the hill behind. Well,
I happened to look back over my shoulder to the other side of the valley
where 'twas as black as black, and in the glance of my eyes, with the
blue and red light snapping from 'em as it does sometimes when you
blink, in that very moment of turning, I seed a passing of a many
shadders."
"Tree shadows?"
"Shadders of dreams, sonny, I tell you. Jes' in a flash I seed 'em
moving up, and then all was black groups of trees; but I knowed where
that whisperin' come from. Yes, a many shadders hurryin' on up that
valley with the cry of the `ghon-ya' pealin' out ahead. Well, I got
outer that valley pretty quick, and were hurryin' by the top of the
krantz overlooking the big kloof when the `ghon-ya' cried jes' ahead o'
me. A locust! Lor', sonny, right afore me there was a something
shaddery--a darker patch on the blackness, standing on the brink of the
krantz overlooking the deep kloof that lay below stretching towards the
sea, and the `ghon-ya,' loud, long, mournful as the solitary toll of the
death-bell, went out on the air, an' I jes' went to the ground as if the
bones had all been drawed out. Looking along the top, with my eyes to
the light that was in the sky over the sea, I seed them shadders from
the valley file down into the kloof. A many shadders, sonny, come out
of the valley--passed by that dark patch, and jes' floated down into the
kloof--whispering as they went. What sort o' shadders they were I
couldn't tell you, my lad; but they belong, sure enough, to the other
world beyond the dark. Many a time I yeard them same things in the
kloof, when the dead quiet has been broken by a movement in the air, and
a sort o' creepin' sound 'sif somethin' were peepin' at you from behind
a tree. You've felt it, too, of course. The dogs they know, 'cos
they're not so cock-sure as we are about knowin' everything jes' bekose
we can make a cast-iron reaper."
The ghon-ya from the darkness called again, as if the sorrows of the
world were in the cry.
"A locust!" cried Abe scornfully; "that's no locust. It's calling the
sperits of the woods together, and the ghostses of animiles--that's
what; and that's why all the other noises is hushed."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
ABE PIKE AND THE KAFFIR WAR.
"Were you ever in the wars, Abe?" I asked the old chap on one of my
off-days, when I had called on him to go out after rhea-buck.
"Were I ever in the wars? Did I ever grow pumpkins? There's some
fellows go through life asking questions about things that's as plain as
plain--why, blow me, I've known 'em ask ef 'twdn't be a fine day when
there's bin no rain for a month and not a stir o' wind."
"So you have been in the wars?"
Grunt.
"I suppose," said I, unmoved by Abe's indignation, "you never got into a
fix--always kept with the rear column?"
"What, me! Jes' you look here," and cocking up his chin, he showed a
long scar under his beard. "Assegai!" he said.
"Must have been a close shave!"
"'Twarnt no barber held that wepin I tell you, sonny. No, sir! I jes'
seed the whites of his eyes and the gleam of his teeth, and whizz!--
whough!--the assegai darted like a serpent's tongue. He was painted
red, he were!"
"Who?"
"The Kaffir, you blind eyed calabash. It was in Blaauw krantz in '45.
You don't remember those days, 'cos you weren't born, but Blaauw krantz
were jes' where it is now, and the red Kaffirs had suddenly got back
their old idea they could drive us into the sea. Wonderful how sot they
are on getting us into the salt water; and that time they was partikler
keen on making us take to the sea without so much as a plank. Of course
we knew there was something in the wind. When Kaffirs mean to fight
they don't fire off blank cartridges in the papers; they jes' keep dark,
uncommon dark an' sulky, but for all that they can't keep down the human
nature that's in 'em, and they have a way of giving you the shoulder
when you order them about that means mischief. When a Kaffir clicks at
you with his tongue you don't want him to tell you in plain words that
he's _quaai_ and would like to belt you over the head. Well, I tell
you, you dursen't order a boy to step a yard but he'd click, an' some of
the chaps with families took the hint and shifted into Grahamstown; but,
lor' bless yer, the Government didn't take any notice. Oh no; the
Government knew the Kaffirs and it knew the whites, and it believed in
the Kaffirs. Look here, sonny, Government's a ass--alus was a ass, and
alus will be a ass. Alus so darned cock-sure, and so blamed ignorant
that any Kaffir chief could best it every time. You know, sonny, the
chief he would jes' come along--simple an' humble--and pitch in a yarn
about how he loved the `great white ox,' how he wished to herd his
cattle in peace, and how thankful he'd be if the great white chief would
send him a little white chief to keep the wicked white men from his
kraals. All he wanted was peace--since he had listened to the words of
wisdom from the Government. Then the chief would say: `That is my
speech,' and the Government would up and pat him on the back; an' when
the farmers said the Kaffirs meant to fight, Government would tell 'em
they was a passel of fools. Oh, I tell you, Government is vain as a boy
in a new weskit, an' as easily humbugged. Well, about 1845 Government
was laced up and smoothed down by the chiefs, with their tongues in
their cheeks, and on a sudden the war smoke rose on the frontier."
"The war smoke!"
"Ay, bossie; the heaven-high columns of smoke going up blue and round in
the still air, as a sign to the Kaffirs waiting silently in the bush and
the kloofs. At the sign out they came, slipping from the bush paths
stealthy as leopards on the trail, and one morning the hill-sides yonder
were red, as though the aloes had blossomed."
"What--with fire?"
"Neh! karel with red clay smeared thick over the black faces, and with
the red blankets carried by the bearers. Then there was in-spanning of
horses, hurrying of women after their children, and the trail of dust
about each flying cart. The red Kaffirs! Ay, lad! many a mother an'
wife has gone white at times of peace at the sight of a Kaffir in his
paint--squatting, maybe, like a tame dog at the back door, waiting for
his women-folk in the kitchen to hand him out a bone--for in the
smouldering eyes of him she can see the leaping flames of a burning
homestead and assegais runnin' red, and if it's so in peace what must
she feel when her roving eye, searching the veld for the little ones to
bid them to breakfast, lights on the far-off streak on the border hills,
and when her ear catches a murmur that is not from the sea--the murmur
of fighting-men singing of death? The sun was level when it shone upon
the red Kaffirs, and when the shadder was close up to my heels in the
mid-day the country was empty of whites, except maybe a solitary cuss
like me, hating to leave his home, and lurking in the bush close to his
belongings."
"And the cattle?"
"It's the horned beasts that you think of--well, why not? they're meat
and drink and a roof over your head. A few there were who saved their
herds, but the bulk were swept in the net of the robbers. There was not
a many human fish caught in that net that time, 'cept old Dave Harkins,
an' his five sons who fell all in one spot by Palmiet Fontein fighting
to the last grain o' powder, and ole Sam Parkes. Poor ole Sam. He
found religion, did ole Sam, and many the day I've a-harkened to him
holdin' forth on his stoep, where he would sit for the rheumatism kep'
him from moving. Well, ole Sam, when they told him that he must fly, he
said, `Lift my chair to the stoep. The Kaffirs will not harm me.' They
placed him there with his face to the east, and there the Kaffirs found
him. I passed the house the next day, and he was leanin' back lookin'
so peaceful that I hailed him. But he were dead, sonny, with a gash in
his heart. Ay, they struck him as he sat, but they left the house
standing and when I peeped in at the window there was the table set with
all the chiney in the house. The Kaffirs did that One on 'em had been
about a white man's house, and he showed his friends how the white man
prepared his table. A little one's vanity and the blood dropping from
the assegai."
"What were you doing all this time, Uncle Abe?"
"Shiverin' and hidin', sonny; for a party on 'em swooped down on my
place led by a thunderin' ole thief I had once lammed with a sjambok for
stealin' my sugar. There was a fine bedstead in the house and a whole
shelf o' crockery, for I had some idees then of marryin', and, blow me,
if they didn't smash the lot, besides breaking all the winders and
burning the thatched roof. Then they killed an ox, a fine _rooi bonte_,
roasted him whole, and ate him--by gosh. After that they slept with
their bellies full! Yes, they did that; slep' with me a watching 'em
from an ant bear hole. I nearly spiflicated 'em, but somehow I didn't.
Then they moved off all but three, including that ole thief, which
gathered my cows an heifers an' calves an' oxen together, and druv 'em
off. 'Twas like partin' with my heart strings, and I followed 'em up.
That evenin' I druv the lot inter the big kloof."
"You recaptured them?"
"I s'pose so, sonny!"
"And the three Kaffirs?"
"I speck they ate too much beef, sonny, I speck they did. Any way they
died. They did so--and after I had druv the cattle into the kloof I sot
off for Grahamstown, passing ole Sam Parkes on the way. I came pretty
nigh close to parties o' Kaffirs, but 'twas when I came to Blaauw krantz
that I got the shivers. I were goin' along mighty keerful, I tell you
jes' 'sif I were `still huntin'' but ne'r a sound o' a Kaffir I could
hear. Well you know one side the road there's a yellow bank with a bush
on the top. I had turned a corner on the listen, with my eyes every
way, when I caught the move of a insect, or something like that, on the
left. Blow me, sonny, there was a big Kaffir standing agin' the bank,
all naked, but red with clay. What caught my eye was the roll of his
eyes, for he were jes' like a part of the wall. He'd been walking down
the road when he must a' yeard me comin' for all I went so soft. My! I
jes' give a jerk o' my head as he launched out with his assegai. Then I
gave him a charge o' buck-shot in the stummick and jumped back inter the
bush on the lower side. I yeard a shout from other Kaffirs, and, you
b'lieve me, I dodged through the bush like a blue-bok until I got right
under the big krantz, where I crep' inter a cave. I seed then the blood
running down, and like a streak I were out o' that cave inter a pool o'
water until I got under a thick `dry-my-throat' bush where I hid. The
Kaffirs they followed on the blood-spoor right up to the cave, but they
missed me where I lay in the dark o' the pool, an' next evenin' I were
in Grahamstown, where the doctor stitched up the wound."
"A very close call, Uncle."
"Oh, I've been in many tight places, sonny--a many, an' maybe I'll tell
you about 'em."
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
A BLACK CHRISTMAS.
"How is it you never married?" I asked of Abe on an evening after the
mealie cobs had been shelled, and we were too dead tired to brush the
husks from our hair.
"Me! Well, you see this yer cob. It's worth nothin', 'cos all the
mealies been shelled off. That's me--I'm a shelled cob, and wimmen folk
isn't got any use for that sort of bargain."
"But you told me the other day that you were thinking of marriage once.
That time, you know, when the Kaffirs smashed your furniture."
"Jes' so--the critturs. They broke a fine four-posted bed and a hull
lot o' chiney."
"And the lady."
"You see, bossie, she was gone on that four-poster and the chiney.
'Twasn't me she was thinkin' of nohow."
"Nonsense, Abe; you're too modest."
"Well, she forgot me, an' took up with a armchair an' a copper kettle
which belonged to young Buck Wittal, son to ole Bob. A armchair an' a
shiney kettle, that's what cut me out, sonny; but Buck went up the gum
'cos she would have a swing lookin'-glass. That's so! Wimmen is mighty
keen on the look o' things, an' that kettle fetched her. Them was
times!"
"Courting times?"
"Fighting times, sonny; all up an' down the country, in an' out the
kloofs, an' over the mountains, by gum. I tole you about that chief--
how I spoored him a full forty mile from the Chumie after Black 'Xmas?"
"Black 'Xmas!"
"You mean by that raising o' the voice you never yeard o' Black Xmas!
Well, well, the ignorance an' the vanity o' learnin' which takes no
account of the great happenings in your own country, and you come
swaggerin' about with your Greek turnips."
"I assure you I never heard of Black 'Xmas."
"Never yeard of the soldier settlers away up by the Chumie--them as were
planted there by Sir Harry Smith--of their wives and children, making
merry on Christmas Day, 1850--making merry with the old custom, and the
sounds of the laughing going out into the dark kloof, where the Kaffirs
crouched, eyeing them as they fingered their assegais. Lor' love you,
lad: when the poor little children were running at their games, and the
women were talking over their washing up, and the men at their pipes in
the quiet of the afternoon, the war shout broke suddenly from the wood.
There was stabbing, and a blaze, a great gasp, and the life went out of
them all that Christmas Day. That was Black Xmas--men, and women, and
children, and dogs, and every crawlin' crittur given to the assegai. I
were on my way there after stray cattle, and I yeard the cry of a little
child, sonny, and the sand went out o' young Abe Pike that day. I seed
it all--yes--lad, and I see it now in the nights, the stabbing of the
women and little ones."
"And what did you do, old man?"
"What did I do? I dunno, sonny--I dunno! I must a walked an' walked
all through the night, for the nex' morning I were away beyond the
Chumie in a deep kloof, without knowing how I came there. Then the cry
of the little one went out o' my ears and out of my eyes with the sight
of them leapin' devils about the burnin' houses, an' I saw the rifle in
my hand--for ther' came boomin' through the trees the sound of a Kaffir
singing from his chest. I found him in a clearin', stampin' with his
feet and swingin' his kerrie before the chief and his headmen seated all
aroun' against the trees, with their long pipes all agoin'. The blood
was still caked on his arms, an' I plunked him in the breast."
"You shot him? Good old Abe!"
"It were a ole muzzle-loader--one smooth, one rifle--and I shifted, but
it weren't long afor' they picked up my spoor, and in the fust rush I
could hear the rattle of assegais as they follered. Then it was quiet
in the kloof, an' I knew what a animile must feel when the hunter's
after him, or the tiger's tracking him down. Bymby I yeard the call of
the bush-dove every side, and I gave the call too at a venture, keepin'
my eye on a dark spot where the last cry came from. Sure enough I seed
the leaves tremble, and there was a show of red paint where the Kaffir
stood. That were the bush-dove, and he called again; then he came
steppin' along to the fern chump where I were hid, movin' like a shadder
with the whites of his eyes showin' as he glanced around. By gum, lad,
I thought it was all over, but another dove called an' he moved off. I
yeard the calls growin' softer an' softer, and I made a move to slip
away; but there's no gettin' to the bottom of a red Kaffir's cuteness."
"How is that?"
"Why, sonny; that chap never went off when he made as if he would. He
jes' slipped behind a tree, and when I ris my head out of them ferns he
druv his assegai at me, and it clean pinned my left arm to my side.
See, here's the scar;" and the old man rolled back the sleeve of his
worn shirt until a white scar was revealed on the fleshy part of the
upper arm.
"I fetched a groan, and he sprang out to belt me over the head, but I
kep' my senses, an' knocked the wind clear outer him with a straight
thrust of the muzzle. As he stood gasping, I give him back his own
assegai."
"You killed him?"
"Maybe he died; but Kaffirs is tough, and at the thrust he gave his cry,
standin' there with his legs wide apart, afore he sank among the ferns.
I turned an' ran, keeping down the little stream till I come to a
krantz, with the water slidin' down, an' I swung over, holdin' fast to a
monkey tow. I slid down fifty feet, and then let go, holdin' the rifle
high over head, and fell feet first inter a little round pool at the
bottom. It was a chance, sonny, but I kep' my bones sound and the
powder dry. I did that. I tell you young Abe Pike was some pumpkins.
Then I pushed on an' on till I went over a ridge into another kloof, an'
through that to another kop, standing up above the wood in a mass of
stone. I sat down in a cleft, and the weakness came on me from the loss
of blood and the want of food. Well, I tell you, sonny, I fit ag'inst
the weakness, an' with a spread of shirt, holdin' one end in my teeth, I
bound up the wound after plugging it with dirt. Right away I looked
over the country, an' I see'd to the right the smoke rising and across a
stretch of veld I seed a black patch movin'. 'Twere Kaffirs on the
march, an' following the directshun they were taking, I seed a white
speck to the left; a farmhouse, sonny, with a thin trail of smoke going
up from the one chimney."
"The Kaffirs were on their way to sack the place."
"They were that, and I set off to beat 'em. But look here, I said when
I started talking, I was going to tell you how I trekked the Kosa chief,
and here I been a' spinnin' on about another thing."
"Did you get to the house first?"
"What--me! I did that, sonny. I got there fust, an' there was nobody
in--not a one though the pot was on the fire. I went off with the pot
into a patch of mealies, and when the Kaffirs came up an' smashed things
I were eatin' pap outer the pot, yes, that's so."
"And did they find you?" I ventured after a long pause.
"That pap were good, but it wanted salt--it did that. So long, sonny,
so long," and the old man moved off to bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
TRACKING THE KOSA CHIEF.
"I tole you all about it, and, what's more, I ain't got no time to jaw
along when that shed o' mine wants mendin'," and Abe resolutely
re-filled his pipe, unheeding my request for the completion of his last
yarn.
"Leave the shed alone. It will keep--besides, this is resting weather."
"Sonny, listen to me. Restin' weather's been the ruin of this yer
country. That so. When a man should span in and plough, when he should
take the hoe and skoffel the lands, what does he do? Why up and say at
the first touch of the warm wind, that it's restin' weather. I can't
stand such laziness, and I ast you, sonny, where'd I been to-day, if I'd
taken notice of the weather?"
I glanced round at the neglected lands, at the solitary gum tree, at the
old water barrel on its tree sledge, at the tumble-down shed, and shook
my head, for there really was nothing to say.
Old Abe followed my look, and then shoved himself back with his heels
into a breadth of shade.
"That's it, my lad," he said with a queer smile, "cast your eyes round
and see what can be done by one man if his heart's in his work. Forty
years agone this yer land were wilderness, and now look at it, with that
there shed, them pumpkin lands, and this yer tree standin' up like the
steeple of a church as a token of honest labour."
"Wonderful!" I said.
"That it are. I watched that old gum grow since it were no higher than
my knee. I watered it an' tended it, an' measured it by the buttons on
my shirt till it topped my head, and now, blow me, you could send a hull
regiment with the band in the shadder of it."
"I suppose you have seen regiments on the march?"
"What, me? Well, now, I was tellin' you of that time I give the slip to
the Kaffirs beyond Chumie and took hiding in the mealie field. Well,
that time I came on a regiment in Pluto's Vale, when a Kaffir poked his
assegai in the big drum, and the Colonel he give me a big knife for what
I did."
I said nothing about the shed or the resting weather, and Uncle Abe,
sprawling in the shade, went on with his story.
"Yes, sonny, there I were in the mealies, and there were the Kaffirs
about the house banging at the windows because there was nobody at home
for 'em to kill. They were mostly young bucks, and they all jawed
together, 'cept two or three who started singin' about what big potatoes
they was. Well, after knocking around an' smashin' things, they set off
in a cluster anyhow, on the back trail. And as I watched 'em go, blow
me ef one of them in the rear didn't drop his assegai on puppose. On
they went out o' sight behind the bush, but Abe Pike he jest kep' where
he were. I tell you, Kaffirs is mighty stuck on their assegais, and
bymby, sure enough, back came that chap lopin' along. When he reached
the house he shouted out to his friends that it was all right and he'd
foller. Well, they gave him the answer back, saying they would go on.
He were a young chief this, with an ivory ring round his wrist, and a
feather sticking out behind his ear, and as springy on his feet as a
young ram. I spotted him well, for I were wondering what his game were,
and marked the look in his eyes, and the smooth sweep of his jaws. He
picked up his wepin and then he giv' a sharp look all roun', and nex' he
went steppin' roun' the house with his head bent. I saw it then, sonny.
He were lookin' for spoor, and, by gum, he found it sooner you could
snap your fingers. I yeard him give a grunt, and nex' thing I see him
sailin' along over the veld with his head down on a trail quite away
from that taken by his friends."
"He was spooring the people who had escaped from the house?"
"Don't jump over a gate when you can open it, bossie. I crep' out of
the mealies and cast round the house; but for all I'd seen where that
young Kaffir went it were many minutes afore I saw the spoor--then it
were as slight as a brush of a hare's tail. But there it were--the
spoor of a man in _veldschoens_. You know, there's no heel to a
_veldschoen_, and it leaves little sign; but this yer chap had a habit
of stickin' his toes into the ground, and here and there he had kicked
up a tuft o' grass. Well, I laid down to that spoor, marking the
direction the Kaffir had taken, and went at a trot, thinking all the
time it were mighty queer for one Kaffir to leave his friends. When I
reached the wood it was easier going, for in the bush path the naked
spoor of the chief was plain enough in the dust. The spoor led deeper
into the wood, crossed a stream where the white man had drunk, for there
was the print of his corduroys where he had knelt, and then climbed a
hill, when I went slow. The darkness was coming on, and I reckoned that
the chief couldn't be but a mile ahead. Neither he nor me could spoor
in the dark, so I guessed he would pull up, an' I didn't want to run in
on his assegai. Turnin' away from the trail I pegged out under a rock
until the spreuws whistled before sun-up, when I crept once more on the
trail. 'Twere very faint now, but bymby I come on fresh spoor--so fresh
I jest squatted behind a tree. Then, after a time, I marked where this
new sign entered the path, and follering it back came on the spot where
the chief had slept. The beggar had turned back on his trail a matter
o' fifty paces, and if so be I'd follered him in the evening he'd a' had
me sure."
"He was up to his work!"
"Him--I guess so, lad. He were a caution for cunnin' and bush learnin',
were the chief."
"What chief was he?"
"This ain't the place to bring in his name, for I didn't know him then.
I tell you it was smart work tracking him through the woods, over the
hills, inter the kloofs, but Abe Pike did it sure enough, and he tracked
the white man, though he were half starved and lamed in the arm, by
gosh. Many a time that day, when my back ached from the bending of it,
and my stummick was jammed together for want of something to eat, many a
time I thought of the three of us strung out in the dark woods like
tigers on the scent. Hungry, by gum! I jest chewed leaves as I went
along; and sore--thunder--I kin feel now the throbbing of the wound in
my arm. But I kep' on. I tell you, young Abe Pike was tough as
_foreslag_, and he wern't going to cave in while that red Kaffir boy was
keepin' up. The chap in the lead, the man in _veldschoens_ who was
escaping, must a been made o' iron too, I reckon, for he only stopped
once the second day, when he ate some bread. There was some crumbs on
the yearth among the grass, with the ants over 'em where he'd sat and
ate, and the dry skin from a piece o' _biltong_. I took a chew o'
elephant leaves, and bymby in the afternoon I seed little balls of pith,
which showed the Kaffir had cut off a _insengi_ root to chew. The white
man kep' on for twenty miles, keeping to the woods all the time where he
could, and the Kaffir kep' on arter him, and Abe Pike he kep' on arter
the Kaffir. If it hadn't a been for that _insengi_ root I'd a lost the
spoor clean, for there were a big stretch of rock veld where they passed
over, and all I could follow was white balls of chewed root. I dunno
how the Kaffir picked up the trail on that stretch. He must ha' smelt
it. There were a bit o' hill to climb, and when I reached the top my
head swam, an' I pitched down like a log. When I opened my eyes it were
dark, and my bad arm was doubled up."
"You gave up?"
"Sonny; you didn't know young Abe--no, you didn't. But I did. And I
tell you, for all his emptiness, he jes' kep' on. Yes, sir--he did that
I said the darkness were down, but when I looked aroun' I seed the
glimmer o' a spark down below, an' I kep' my eyes on it whiles I crawled
down the steep of the hill to the kloof below. Things happen sometimes,
sonny, in a way that makes you very quiet an' thoughtful. A bird flew
up--a grey-wing partridge, I guess, from the whirr--and, searchin'
around, I found its eggs. They put life into me, and I steadied up--but
what's all this I'm telling you about? There's work to be done, and if
you don't stir 'twill be sun-down and too dark. As for me, I'm going to
boil the kettle."
"But you've not finished telling about the spooring."
"Ah, well, it can wait, sonny; but it's time the kettle were put on and
the mealies roasted."
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
THE BOOM OF THE DRUM.
"Oh, ghoisters!" said Abe, "there's the blamed bung come outer the
_vaitje_ and not a drop of Dop left, and all the _buchu_ collected for
the soaking."
"Do you soak the _buchu_ in brandy?"
"The brandy brings out the goodness from the yerb, and I tell you a dose
of it gets home every time. But what's the good--the brandy's gone,
there's not a tickey in the stocking, and not a man in the country would
offer ole Abe Pike so much as half-a-pint--not a one. The old people's
gone and the new ones, blow me--the new ones drink cold tea."
"What about the Kaffir chief you were following Abe?"
"I ain't follering no Kaffir chief, not me--and look here sonny, you get
along home, see, 'fore it gets dark."
"I think I could spare a gallon of brown Cango, Abe, if you come over in
the morning."
"Cango, eh! Stay right here, sonny--I've marked down a fine porkipine--
and we'll hunt him to-night. In the morning I'll go over with you,
arter showing you something as'll surprise you, I bet."
"What's that?"
"A horn-bill sitting on her nest in a hollow tree, and the entrance
built up with mud, so she can't get out, and the cats can't git in, by
gum, an' the ole chap a feeding her. Lor' love yer, there's no matchin'
animiles an' birds for cunnin'."
"Yet I remember you saying that young chief was very cunning."
"So he were; lad, he were born smart; an' them gleamin' eyes of his'n
could read the writin' on the ground, the signs of weather, and the ways
of fightin' men better'n you could read a big print book. That's so. I
tole you how I follered him, and how he follered a chap in _veldschoens_
all the way from the Chumie. Well, in the dark of the second evenin' I
seed a red light, and were blunderin' on towards it, being pretty well
dazed from the hunger and weakness and pain o' my bad arm, when
somethin' in the steady glow of it brought me up with a jerk. Says I,
that fire's been long lit, there's nothin' but coals blazing, and
whoever lit it must feel safe. Says I, who can feel safe in this yer
place? Why, a Kaffir. So I slowed down to a crawl, and blow me, when I
got within hearin' distance, I seed a man by the fire. Sonny, he were
the man in _veldschoens_."
"The white man the chief was after."
"'Twas a blanged half-caste, lad, that's what he were. I saw that in
the fust look by the red _dook_ he wore roun' his greasy head, and by
the spread of his flat nose, and the sight of him kept me still, I tell
you. Half-castes is mean. And to think I'd been goin' hungry to save a
thing like that, and him a sitting there with his mouth all smeared with
black coal from the bried meat he were eatin'. The smell of it came to
me where I lay in the shadder, an' I tell you it made me sick with
longing for a bite, but I jes' kept there sniffin' till the faintness
left me. Well, all ov a sudden I seed his jaws stop, and his eyes had
that sort o' fixed look which they has when a man's listenin'. Then,
without movin' his body, he reached out for his gun. Yes, sonny, he
reached out for his gun with his eyes starin' straight for me, and I
kivered him. While I was gettin' ready to shoot, outer the darkness
behin' him there come a voice callin' in greetin', `Gumela vietu!' I
giv' a start, but that ere half-caste he never stirred. The hand that
was reachin' out for his gun stopped, his jaws began to move, but his
voice were a bit shaky when he said `Gumela inkose!' and there was a
sort o' hunchin' of his shoulders as tho' he felt the assegai going in.
For a spell there was silence, then from the wall o' blackness there
stepped to the fire the young chief hisself. I see the gleam o' his
ivory bracelet. With his toe he moved the gun away. Then he reached
down, took up a length of roasting flesh, caught hold of a mouthful and
saw off the chunk with the blade of his assegai 'twixt his hand and his
lips. He jes' ate and ate, an' the smell o' the meat made my stummick
heave an' grumble most horrible."
"They were friends, then, after all?"
"You wait, sonny--jes' keep still an' wait. Arter a time they began to
talk. Then it came out that the half-caste was on some mission from the
head chief, and the young chap was mighty curious to know all about it;
but the half-caste he were too slim. They jes' paced roun' each other
like a couple o' strange dogs. At the end the chief he up and say, `I
know where you're going.' `Soh?' said the half-caste. `Yes,' said the
chief, `you're going to the white man's camp to give the white chief
news of our coming.' Well, the half-caste he spat in the fire. `You
are a boy,' he said; `your place is at home with the women.' `My place
is with you,' said the young chief, speaking soft, so that the other
laughed in his throat, and called the chief _quedin_--`boy'--again,
which you know is the easiest word to rile a Kaffir. `I know, in your
heart,' said the boy, `you will sell us for the white man's money.' The
half-caste spat again. `Oh, yes,' he said, `the white men are in terror
of you--a warrior like you would be worth a whole goat to them.' `I am
Sandili,' said the lad, `son of the head chief, and one day the Amakosa
will do my bidding.' The half-caste giv' a start; then he grew soft all
of a sudden. `I was but trying you,' he said. `Oh, chief, forget my
words, and take the path with me in the morning. We will find out where
the red-coats are, how many of them, and what road they take, so that we
can report to your father, and plans can be made to trap them.' I could
hear the hiss of a snake in the man's speech, sonny; and it struck me
then he had, in his heart, determined to take the young chief Sandili to
the English colonel."
"It was really Sandili?"
"It were, an' no mistake. I could a' shot him then, an' put a stop to
two wars; but a good many things could be done, sonny, if only we could
see ahead. Well, for all they'd made friends, those two didn't trust
one another--not a bit, not they--they jes' sat there glancing acrost
the coals, nodding, an' wakin' up with a start, and when one on 'em
moved t'other would have his eyes wide open. Long before sun-up they
moved off, an' I crep' outer my hidin' place to the fire, where I found
jes' a coal-blackened strip o' meat that jes' made me hungrier than
afore. Lor' love you, a human is a helpless crittur. There was
animiles about an' birds, but as I darn't use my gun I couldn't get one.
I cotched a salamander and ate him, an' a land crab by the stream, an'
ate him--an' I ate some berries, an' a clutch o' young birds from the
nest, and I had a bathe--and took up the spoor of the two of 'em. 'Twas
easier spoorin' now, for they was going slow, and at mid-day I had 'em
in sight, and so kep' 'em till the last. In the afternoon we were
climbing a ridge among the bushes, when boomin' along there came the
sound of music that brought the three of us to a dead stop. Never had
young Abe yeard any sound like that afore or since 'cept once--it went
through my worn-out body until I trembled like a leaf--yes, sonny--and
the wet ran down my cheeks. 'Twas the soun' of a big drum."
"There's not much music in that, Abe."
"Isn't there, sonny? Not when you've been three days in the woods,
skeered of every shadder; not when you've yeard the war-cry of the red
Kaffir; not when the cries of the little ones waitin' for the assegai
are ringin' in yer head. Only the soun' of a drum. One, big boomin'
note, rolling clear an' far with a message of help. The tiredness an'
the sickness fell from me, sonny, an' I could a' run up that hill. The
other two they crept up presently, and bymby I follered and hid behind
'em. They was crouchin' by a rock, lookin' down, and I forgot 'em in
lookin' at the picture. Far below in the valley was the white tents,
an' the cattle, an' a line of red where the soldiers were drawn up,
bayonets flashing. Then a troop of men on horseback rode down the line,
and again the drums beat and the bugles rang out. It was a picture,
sonny, that I could a' looked at all day, but I were jes' jerked out o'
my spell o' dreamin' by the chief talkin'."
"`Yoh,' he said, `they are few, but what noise is that?'
"`Tis their witch-music,' said the half-caste; `'tis kep' in a big box,
and when the man hits the top of it with a stick the witch cries out
what they should do.' `Yoh!' said the chief, `I will kill the box!
They are great warriors, these, but they are foolish to wear a red so
bright, that no man of them can hide.' `They do not hide,' said the
half-caste, and he shifted his gun as he looked at the chief from the
corner of his eyes. `Let us go.' `Nay,' said the chief, `it is a good
sight this--stay a little while. Why do they move about so?' `It's
their war-dance, and he on the white horse is the chief. At his words
they turn and stop, break up, and come together.' The young chief
watched like a dog straining at the leash--and, by gum, he yeard the
colonel's commands, though never a sound reached me. A smart Kaffir can
smell, and see, and hear like a animile. `Yoh!' he said; `listen to his
words!'--and in his excitement he raised his head, and the half-caste he
stood back and lifted his gun. But he measured his distance to the
camp, and he said, `Let us get nearer'--for why, the cuss wanted to be
near help when he went for the chief. The chief looked round, and,
ghoisters! he seed my face stickin' outer a bush. He jumped to his feet
and drew back his arm to fly the assegai, but the half-caste, after one
glance at me, dropped his gun, seized the haft of the assegai with one
hand and hooked his other arm round the chief's neck. `It was a good
word you spoke, _quedin_,' he said, hissing as he struggled with the
boy. `I will sell you to the white man.' Seein' how it was, I stepped
out, and as I went up I seed the chief's eyes rollin', while his
nostrils were blowed out like a horse. `I am a boy,' he said; `I give
in.' The half-caste he laughed, turnin' to me whiles he called out in
Dutch that it was he who took the _quedin_ prisoner, but he'd give me
somethin' if I helped him--the skunk, the blanged, mangy, yeller dog.
Well, sonny, that Kaffir were shamming. Soon's he give in, the
half-caste he loosed his hold, when, with a grunt, the Kaffir yanked his
assegai away, and with a wriggle o' his naked body he got a length and
struck the half-caste under the armpit. `Dog,' he said, and druv' his
assegai in over the blade. The half-caste he jes' went green. `_Ek 'es
dood_,' he said, lookin' at me; then he sat down all of a heap. The
young chief he stood there eyein' me like a tiger, with his lips curled
back and his chest heavin'. It was the first man he'd killed, I guess.
Well, I lifted the gun, but the left hand gave out and the barrel
wobbled--then, I dunno why, but I begin to laugh in a foolish way, an' I
kep' on laughin' whiles the Kaffir came crouchin' up with his assegai
held back. Nex' thing I seed the half-caste roll over, and then sit up
and point his gun at the boy's back. `Pass op,' I said 'mid the
laughin', while the sweat was drippin' off my nose; and the chief he
jumped aside as tho' there was a snake in his way, and the bullet
whizzed by him. The half-caste gave a groan and rolled over dead, out
of hate and disappointment, 'cause he'd missed. That's so. The chief
he looked at me, an' he looked at the soldiers who were hurrying up from
down below, then he jes' turned and walked away; yes, he jes' walked
away with his head up, and I could a' shot him--for the laughin' fit had
passed away. But before he could ha' killed me easy as sticking a pig,
so I watched him go; an' when he reached the bush he said, lookin' over
his shoulder, `Grow fat, man who laughs, an' you will be food for my
assegai.' The cheek of these young bucks; but I reckon, sonny, if he'd
a' known I'd killed two of his men in the Chumie he wouldn't a' waited,
for all I was like a shadder."
"Is that all?" I said, when the old man paused.
"Well, it were enuff, wern't it?"
"What did the Colonel say?"
"Oh, the Colonel! He said, `Who the devil are you, an' where the blazes
you come from?' That's what _he_ said, that time; but 'twern't long
afore he changed the tune of his remarks. `Who the devil are you, and
where the blazes you come from?' he sed, sittin' in his tent with his
officers by him; an' I jes' reached over to a black square bottle that
was ahind him and put the neck to my mouth."
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
THE RED DIAMOND.
Our big Christmas hunt was in full swing. In a smooth, well-carpeted
glade, surrounded by forest trees and bush, the three tent wagons of the
party were outspanned, drawn up in a hollow square which formed a
capacious outside room, roofed in by a wide stretch of canvas. From the
spreading branches of a yellow-wood hung the last day's `bag,'
consisting of seven bushbucks, two duikers, three blaauwboks, one
jackal, and a wild dog. Beyond the wagons was the servants' fire, and
the `boys' themselves were `brying' meat and talking, as only Kaffirs
can talk when the day's work is over and food is plentiful. In our
`scherm' one lantern swung from the centre pole, its light just
sufficient to mark out the position of the brown demijohn on the box
that served as a table; while across the breadth of darkness, where the
`scherm' opened to the wood, fireflies crossed and circled. The quiet
of the night was over the bush, intensified by the deep undertone from
the sea, and the brooding spirit in time reduced us to silence, even
stilling Long Jim's concertina, whose lugubrious notes had in the early
hours of the evening wailed complainingly over "The Old Camp Ground,"
"Poor Old Joe," and other old favourites.
"I envy you fellows," said Mr Strong, a crack shot from the town; "we
don't get such nights as this."
"The boot's on the other foot," said Long Jim, making his instrument
moan. "We've got poverty and pumpkins. You've got comfort and a
pianny." And he pumped out "Hard times come again no more" till a dog
pointed its nose to the sky and howled in sympathy.
"There's no chance of making a pile in the country," said Amos Topper,
who raised ten acres of "forage" regularly every season, and "rode"
firewood for a living in the balance of the year. "'Tis all hard work
and disappointment--ticks in the cattle and rust in the corn."
"Soh!" said Abe Pike.
"Well; so it is!"
"Yet," said Abe, "there's chances."
"Meanin' pine-apples and bananas, which Dick Purdy made a fortune out of
through growing them on the slope of a valley."
"No; meanin' diamonds."
"There's no diamonds down here."
"Is that so? Well, I seed one right here, as big as a plum an' as red
as the eye of a coal gleamin' outer the dark. Yes, sir."
"Of course. It belonged to some digger from the field. For the matter
of that, I've seen a whole bucketful of them, but then they was white,
and the sight of 'em never made me any the richer."
"Your head was allus too big for your hat, Amos. I expect that's why
there's a hole in the crown of it for your hair to grow through--but it
so happens this yer diamon' I'm speakin' of could ha' been gathered by
anyone who had the pluck to grab it."
"Fire ahead, old man," I said, seeing that Abe was preparing the way for
a yarn.
"You've hit it, sonny," said Abe solemnly; "it was fire-ahead, and no
mistake. Lemme see; you know ole Harkins, the mad trader?"
"I remember him," said Mr Strong, "a fine hunter in his youth, who
returned from his last trip into the interior broken by the Zambesi
fever. He had a suspicion that everyone was watching him, and I believe
he died in the bush after leading the life of a hermit."
"That's him," said Abe, pulling at his pipe until the glow lit up his
lined face. "Yes, he went into the bush--and for three years he hunted
for that same red diamond. Some people thought he was crazy--so he were
crazy after a fortune, but lor' bless yer, he'd got all his wits about
him, and the fortune was big enough to buy up the whole side of this
district--houses, land and stock--which is a big enough haul to turn the
minds of most of us. One night, many years ago, I was still-huntin'
buffel by the Kowie bush, when from the thick of the wood I yeard a
noise that sent me up a tree in a jif--a shrill sort o' scream that I
couldn't fix--an' whiles I was up the tree I seed ole Harkins slippin'
along through the moon light. He stood under the tree listenin', and
then he began talkin' to hisself in jerks. `That's him, I swear!' he
said, `and by God I'll have him or die!'
"I jes' kep' quiet, for I tell you I didn't like the look o' him, with
his long hair, and his lean fingers, and burnin' eyes, but when he
slipped along inter the wood like a shadder--for there the no boots on
his feet--I skimmed down and let out after him with my heart in my
mouth. I guess I hadn't got much sense, and when I'd gone no more'n
fifty paces inter the dark of the trees he grabbed me by the throat--
afore I knew where he were. Oh, lor'! He jes' grabbed me by the throat
and shook me. `You're follerin' me!' he hissed.
"Of course, I couldn't speak, but I kicked and spluttered, and he
loosened his hold. `You're follerin' me!' he said, stickin' his face
close up. `I ain't,' I said; `I'm after buffel.' `You yeard it,' he
hissed; `and you meant to rob me.' Well, I laughed. The idea of
robbing a scarecrow like him was too much, and I couldn't help laughing,
not though he looked as savage as a starved tiger. All the property he
carried were a big-bore elephant gun, and I noticed the trigger were
cocked. `Clear out,' he said; `and if I see you after me I'll kill
you.' By gum, he meant it, and I cleared out smart with him after me
over the ridge, when once ag'in there came that strange cry from the
woods, so near this time that I jumped inter a bush. Well, there were a
smashin' o' trees, and afore I knew what was up a bit of the country
rose up and came rolling down through the moonlight. Man alive--it were
a thunderation bull elephant, and I slipped outer the bush and bolted
for hum with Harkins's yell a-ringing in my ears. Well, sir, whiles I
was sittin' in the room gettin' back my wind, up along, in a flurry,
came Sam Dale. `It's true,' said he, with a gasp, as he flung open the
door. `What's true?' `Yes,' he said, `I seed it. I were crossing the
drift in Euphorby Valley when I yeard a splash in the pool, and out of
the dark end beneath the krantz I seed a glow of red. First I thought
it were a eye, but then I noted how it sparkled, and all in a breath it
struck me it were ole Harkins's diamond. Then there was a splash in the
water, and I ran on here to ask you to help me kill the crittur.' `Hol'
on,' I said; `what the blazes are you talking about? I never yeard of
any diamond, and I'm not killing any crittur to-night,' I said. Well,
Sam Dale he up and tole me how Harkins had courted his sister years
before, and how his sister had told him, unbeknown to Harkins, how she
had seen the big red diamond he kep' in his pocket, which he had bought
from a Kaffir chief. And Sam, he told me a most surprisin' story, how
Harkins being one night cornered by a animile in the wood had loaded his
big rifle with that same diamond instead of a bullet--and how he had
fired it into that animile--and how he went crazy in consequence.
That's what Sam tole me that very night arter I had met Harkins hisself,
and it wern't more'n a minute afore I seed that if there was any truth
in that yarn the red diamon' was in that bull elephant. Sam and me we
talked and talked, until in the early morning we fixed up a company."
"What did you do?"
"We made a company--that's what--the Dale-Pike Diamon' Mining Company,
but lor' bless yer, in the morning the whole thing seemed so blamed
ridiklus that we guv up the idea. All the same, Sam he went down to
Euphorby Drift, and I smoused over to the old spot where I seed the
elephant, and blow me--there was ole Harkins flattened out Yes, sir. He
were."
"What ailed him?"
"He were dead--that's all. That bull elephant must have charged him
down soon's I cleared off. We reckoned, Sam and me, that as Harkins
were dead that diamon' mine b'longed to us, and we started that company
over again. It was quite reg'lar. Sam he studied up a prospectus, and
fixed up a capital, he subscribin' two trek oxen, an' me a cow, a bull
calf, and a pair o' gobblers. The hull lot came to 16 pounds, and with
that we laid in a stock o' powder, lead, blankets, boots, coffee, sugar,
tabak, an' a demijohn o' Cango. Then we shut up our homes, both on us
being bachelors, and started after that ere blasted bull elephant."
"I thought you were after a diamond?"
"You ain't got any more thinking machine than a biled rabbit, Sam
Topper. That bull elephant were the diamon' mine, in course."
"How was that?"
"Ain't I tole you? Why, when Harkins made that mistake and fired off
that diamon' it went plump into the ole bull. I seed that as soon's Sam
Dale told me the yarn, and we started after that property of ourn. That
was forty-five year ago, and I guess from the size of his right tusk,
the left been broken off, he were then about one hundred years old. I
tell you what, chaps, that diamon's still knocking aroun' in the Addo
bush."
"The company didn't come into possession, then?" said Mr Strong.
"Well, do I look as if I had a fortune of one hundred and fifty thousand
golding sovereigns, which we reckoned was the value of that stone? Not
much! No, sir."
"Well, did you ever see the diamond?"
"I'll tell you. Sam and me we struck the spoor at Euphorby, follered it
fifteen miles in an' out of the Kowie bush, away over to the Kasouga,
and ten miles to the Kareiga--in an' out of the thickest bush--sleepin'
out o' nights. Back ag'in to the Kowie bush, over into the Fish River,
without settin' eyes once on the blanged thing. One month we were on
the spoor, and the food run out, so's we'd got to raise more capital,
which we riz by selling Sam's plough and my harrow--the two of 'em
bringing in twenty-five shillings. Then we ran ag'inst the mine after
Sam had taken a horn o' Cango--and his ribs were broken in. Yes, the
fust thing we knowed one night thet bull charged us out of a patch of
bush in the open. Well, I took Sam to a farmhouse, and picked up the
spoor, and two nights after came on the bull standin' in a vley on the
flats over yonder. My! He were jes' standing there shooting the water
over his mountain-high body, with his big ears flapping, when he turned
his head, and I seed that diamon' shinin' in his forehead like a
blood-red star. I tell you that mine lit out a yell and came arter me
like a rock hurled from the hilltop. The land was as flat as the palm
of your hand, and the only thing was ter double. Well, I did that, and
slipped into the vley, and the ole bull, arter ramping around, stood
there on the brink listenin', while his trunk went twistin' about to
catch my wind. He kep' me there till the cold got into my bones, and
then, when the dawn was breaking, off he made for the Kareiga again.
Arter that Sam and me we called in fresh capital, an' Jerry Wittal
joined us with a piebald mare and twenty-five sheep. Part o' the money
was paid to mend Sam's ribs, and then we went arter the ole bull ag'in.
This time he went west, through the Addo and on to the Knysna. Six
months we kep' on arter him, sometimes he came arter us; and at last he
smashed up the company one morning by takin' us as we slep'. Yes, sir.
That crittur, he waited till the cold of the mornin', when we couldn't
see for the sleep, and he pounded Jerry into the groun'. He did that,
and ef he hadn't a screamed in his joy he might a done for us; but Sam
and me, we dodged roun' a tree an' blazed inter him. Sam right there
said the company must go inter liquidation, an' he worked his way back
home as a handy-man from farm to farm. Poor Sam! His nerves went, and
in less than a year he was dead, sure enuf. Of course all this huntin'
got about, and a chap from Port Elizabeth said he would help me refloat
the company; but when I giv' him all the facts blow me if he didn't try
to `jump' the claim."
"How was that?"
"Why, he went off on the hunt with a couple o' niggers, and afore I
knowed about it he'd been out three days in the bush. It makes me laugh
now. Wha' yer think? I came across him without his gun, or his hat, or
his kit, making tracks for home. He found the bull sure enough, but the
bull chased him up a yellow-wood tree and kep' him there one day and a
night."
"Did he see the diamond?"
"Oh, yes; he seed too much of it; but he didn't want any more of that
sort o' minin'--and 'tweren't long afore I chucked the job, too."
"How was that?"
"Well, you wouldn't believe me if I tole you. At any rate it's bedtime;
and if you young ones don't roost now you'll never hold your guns
straight in the mornin'. So long!"
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
ABE'S D
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